NRaO Chapter 73 (Patreon)

With the sealing of the tailed beast and the death of the Hokage, things began to rapidly change inside the village. An investigation was done to see if there was any foul play with his death but it was almost impossible to prove and was quickly ruled that he was just another casualty to the tailed beast. The village began to be rebuilt, many of the buildings that were destroyed weren’t rebuilt but became businesses while the housing was moved further in.

While the village was being rebuilt, a new Hokage needed to be chosen and the only one with the qualifications was Tsunade. It took some convincing from her family, but soon she relented and became the next leader of the village. With that, the ball got rolling on updating the village from its old ways.

The old clan system was altered, the clans who had been grandfathered in like Sarutobi, Shimora, Mitokado, Utatane, Uchiha, and the Ino, Shika, Cho trio became normal clans and no longer had the protection of being a founding member of the village gave them. It meant that any clan that had shrunk wouldn’t be considered a large clan anymore, they would have to follow the same rules as the rest of the village, and they weren’t given any positions in the village out of nepotism like they had previously.

Almost fifty percent of the village infrastructure had to be reworked as the people who were hired to do certain jobs didn’t know how to do them leading to more and more work being given to the Hokage. People actually had to work for a living and couldn’t just sit around making terrible decisions for the village to feed the pockets of their own clans.

I had my rogue shinobi status revoked shortly after that. I had snuck into the village once every few months to visit my children and wives but it was nice to be able to do it while not sneaking around like I was a villain. The next big change was the future of Kirigakure. With the leadership dead, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen in the future.

My wives determined their fate as Melinda Terumi and some of my other wives went to rebuild. She quickly became the Kage of the village as all of the strongest shinobi were slain in the war, the botched hidden whirlpool attack, and the loss of the tailed beast. We couldn’t give it back to them for free, fortunately for the leadership of both villages, we could work out a deal with me as the middleman.

I didn’t like the idea of making one of my children a Jinchuriki, it just felt… Wrong, like it would be a mistake to do so. I would sleep with Jinchuriki but wouldn’t put it in one of my children. The Jinchuriki were known for one thing in particular. The vast majority of them die from assassinations. Putting the tailed beast in someone related to you was dooming them to a life where their life is constantly at risk of being taken.

They were also treated like outcasts… Which made no sense to me. It made them easy to flip, having a weapon that could walk away, defect, or betray the country would make you think they’d be treated better, but stupid people don’t think rationally most of the time. They will act in a way solely against their best interest and might actively put their lives in danger… But that was just an outsider's perspective. I didn’t care either way as long as they were under my control.

The big picture was that I already had ties to the leadership of every single village. In a few years, a decade at most, I’d kill the leader of Hidden Cloud and replace him with a woman I personally trained. Possibly the hydrification specialist from the Hozuki clan. The Jinchuriki of the village couldn’t become leaders but they could become my wives. One was already a girl and while she was still too young right now I could pull her to my side when the leadership needed replacing. Killing Killer B was another thing I had to do to secure my position.

Securing the remaining four Kage positions wasn’t hard work. While the Raikage wanted to have a Kage Summit, I was going to wait until after I took over the remaining Daimyo before having him show up. I was close, the war was ramping down and talks for peace had begun. Soon I would take over the rest of the Daimyo and there would be no one to stop me from pushing forward the shinobi agenda.

People might outnumber shinobi a thousand to one but shinobi were so strong that we could own everything. Civilians should serve shinobi, not the other way around. The time in which shinobi villages would go to war over the fertile lands in the center was coming to an end. Soon all the lands would be more fertile. Once a shinobi alliance is secured, I could begin undermining the leadership of the kingdoms that controlled the shinobi villages from behind the scenes.

I had two under my control already. Puppeting the corpses of the Daimyo until I could take control of all of them, but they had all bunkered down because of how the war played out. The remaining three were far more guarded, the shinobi they had guarding them weren’t anything to worry about but I’d rather no one know that they had secretly been replaced.

So far I have succeeded. No one knew that I controlled two of them, the others must have just been more wary because of how the war played out. Hiruzen’s death was a huge blow to them because they’d have to convince the next leader it was in their best interest to listen to them again. They’d be calling a summit soon, that was when I would finally make my move and take true control over the entire world.

In the process of becoming the hidden leader, I would guide humanity to a better future. The hidden village I created for the Uzumaki was a utopia, most were shinobi so it made it easier to cultivate the land into a paradise. Waterfalls bled into crop fields as no one went hungry. That was what I hoped for all shinobi. I wanted my clan to be known as the greatest clan of all time.

I hadn’t succeeded yet and this was when my plans could fall apart. A single person finding out what I did and spreading it could result in the villages or countries allying against me. I had to be extra careful but I was close now. It was just about waiting until my chance.

Which is why I got back to babymaking. A clan needed larger numbers to be successful. I had finally taken in a half dozen Uchiha women, my student practically handing them over as he wanted closer ties to the village and had begun reducing the segregation the Uchiha were under. They had never truly incorporated into the village but with talks about perhaps removing clan compounds, they’d be forced to integrate at a deeper level than was possible for them before.

Hyuga was in the same position. With the leadership removed, there were only a few holdouts stopping the stronger integration into the village. They held the largest compound in the village but with the removal of the compound, they’d be able to make twenty percent more housing for the Hyuga to live in. They desperately needed a source of income now that the war was winding down.