Chapter 26: Undercurrents of The Village

Hiruzen Sarutobi sat behind the large oak desk that he had come to love and hate all at the same time and sighed to himself. It had been several weeks since he had been reinstated as the Hokage and though he had accepted the appointment, he simply couldn't settle comfortably back into the position of power that he had already handed over to his successor.

The image of a smiling Minato as he waved to the villagers while wearing his ceremonial robe and Kage hat surfaced in his mind, but it only served to lower his already terrible mood even more.

He was gone to soon. A man of considerable skill and talent who was still bursting with more potential that would have been tempered and polished with time as he grew into his role as the Hokage. Yet before he had a chance to flourish into the amazing pillar of strength that he was meant to be, he was cut down by the schemes and evil machinations of enemies way before his time. 

The most intolerable part about it all was the fact that the only lead they had, the fact that the rampaging Tailed beast had clearly been under the influence of the sharingan, was an obvious dead end!

He had to admit that when he first saw the eyes of the Kyūbi that night, his heart had dropped and the thought that the Uchiha Clan where attacking the village had definitely crossed his mind, but he had pushed it aside in favor of subduing the rampaging beast.

It was only after everything had clamed down that he had been able to think about things logically. If the Uchiha where attacking the village, then they would have had combatants monitoring certain high risk shinobi like himself and Danzo. It wouldn't make sense to unleash the Kyūbi and not prevent them from intervening. In fact it would have made more sense for them to wait till the main combatants of the village where attacking and focused on subduing the Kyūbi in order to strike them down in the confusion.

Not to mention that simply unleashing the Kyūbi on the village was bound to have negative repercussions once they came to power. The villagers would have been incensed that they were treated as mere collateral and would have most likely rebelled against the new regime which would have resulted in the other villages mounting an attack on Konoha in a moment of weakness.

All these thoughts lead him to believe that the Uchiha truly where innocent. All the good that did him since even with that knowledge, things where still stacked against the Uchiha in every conceivable way.

He had been informed that Danzo had sidelined the Uchiha Clan members who had come willingly in order to assist with subduing the rampaging beast. He had ordered them to focus on the evacuation of the civilians while also allocating several Anbu and root shinobi to monitor them while they worked. His reasonings had been sound as even if the Uchiha were innocent, which couldn't be confirmed at the time, it was still a possibility that they might be able to use their sharingan to gain control of the beast, something that no one wanted to see.

It was only after everything had concluded that the faults in that decision had reared their heads. No matter how much the elders of the village shouted and clamored about how suspicious the Uchiha Clan were, there simply wasn't enough evidence to pin the attack on them. With no one to blame the attack on, the village was left with no where to vent their anger and rage. Resulting in the Uchiha still being viewed as guilty. Only this time they were seen as conniving villains who covered their tracks well enough to evade persecution.

As if that wasn't enough, because of Danzo's decision, the one clan who came out practically unscathed from the attack where the Uchiha. Sure they had casualties but they were so low compared to the other clans that it was noticed by just about everyone who bothered to pay attention. While it was indeed due to Danzo decision to be cautious of the Uchiha in a moment when their loyalties were in question, they the Uchiha were still the ones who still ended up suffering for it.

By now they should have been told about the plan to relocate them to the outer area of the village and while it was certain that they wouldn't be happy, they were bound to comply. Fugaku might not be pleased with the way the village heads had been keeping the Uchiha at an arms length over the years but he was wise enough to see that this relocation, which could be seen as a demotion of sorts was beneficial to Uchiha clan as much as it was to the Village heads.

With the Uchiha receiving the least damage the other clans were bound to pull away from them since their strength would have remained about the same while the other clans would have all been weakened to various degrees. If before the Uchiha still had hope of partnering with the other clans to place pressure of the Hokage faction, now those budding alliances where bound to grow cold as the other clans focused on rebuilding and regrowth.

And while the other clans were focused on themselves, the civilian shinobi were bound to start to flourish. With so many open positions needing to be filled, it was a given that a lot of promotions were going to occur. With the clans bound to keep their hands close to their chest and reserve their more powerful members to focus on training and mentoring their young ones, it would fall on the civilians to pick up the slack, something that if used well could cement the power of the Hokage faction even further.

While Hiruzen mused to himself about the best way to take advantage of the current situation a shinobi wearing a dog mask vaulted through the window and kneeled towards the Hokage. Without saying a word he handed over a scroll once he was acknowledged by the Hiruzen, before once more retuning to kneeling to the side.

Without a moments hesitation Hiruzen unrolled the scroll and looked over the information on it. After a moment he paused and reached under his desk, and after fiddling with a drawer for a while he pulled out another two scrolls that he unrolled and glanced through. Once he was finished, he tsked before throwing the scrolls so the side. After a moment of silence he turned towards the Anbu.

"What do you think about the information you've collected so far?"

Silence pervaded the room but Hiruzen didn't rush the boy for an answer. He simply picked up his pipe and lite it, taking slow drags of the grounded tobacco leaves as he waited. Finally the Anbu stood and disclosed their thoughts.

"I didn't think much of it at first when I was tasked with retrieving the medical records of the shinobi who had been forced to retire due to the recent attack. I simply though you were worried that there would be some discrepancy between the reported amount and the actually amount of shinobi. I expected to find that the clans had been 'retiring' some of their more gifted members with the intention being to reinstate them after a period of time. Specifically after they would have already assisted the clan in training up a new batch of shinobi."

The Anbu paused as he thought about the significance of the clans pulling out their more competent experts during such a time but decided not to speak on it. After all the Sarutobi clan had also pulled back some of their members as well.

"However…As you instructed me to search deeper, I noticed a pattern. A disturbing one at that. If you simply looked at the numbers then you wouldn't notice much but when you looked at the actually members of the clans who where injured and forced to retire it was usually civilian shinobi who had joined or been attached to a clan in some way that were retiring.

I'm unsure as to what this could mean. It makes sense in a way that they would be the ones to most likely receive debilitating injures, but I assume since you issued this mission to me that there is more to it that I am not noticing."

Finished expanding on his thoughts the Anbu looked towards the Hokage for guidance. Hiruzen hummed to himself at how quickly his subordinates had pieced things together and wasn't against sharing the true scope of the clans machinations to the boy.

"Your preliminary thoughts are correct and you are also correct in assuming there is more to this matter than meets the eye. You might not have noticed because you aren't a medical ninja, but there is one glaring problem that if you have the adequate medical knowledge and are alerted of what patterns to look at, you will see.

A large number of those civilian shinobi that have retired are actually persons who either were recently promoted to Jōnin , about to be promoted to Jōnin or had unique Jutsu that would allow them to hold special positions of power in certain situations.

The clans may not like to acknowledge it, but every year civilian shinobi create and register new and unique jutsu all the time; and while they aren't truly powerful, if someone took the time to polish them up and truly research how to improve them, then some of those jutsu could very well become the foundation from which new clans could build on."

Hiruzen shuddered at the thought of more clans popping up in Konoha and the hassle he would have to go through in corralling them all. With that harrowing though coursing through his mind he continued.

"Many clans have tried to stifle this by recruiting civilian shinobi and supporting them in their endeavors. In exchange, the civilian shinobi report their jutsu to the clan and not the village, which only serves to strengthen the clans and allows them to keep a monopoly on a lot of information.

Of course we can't expect the clans to simply share their jutsu and research with everyone and so it has evolved into the current system where the clans recruit or marry their lesser members to civilians shinobi who show promise, with the intention of keeping a leash on them and their future endeavors while absorbing their techniques and research on jutsu so as to strengthen themselves and their clans even more.

The village system allows for civilians to grow on their own but comparing it to the help you can receive from a clan is ridiculous. No matter how much the village tries to foster new talent from amongst the civilian populace, there are simply to little limited resources which results in only shinobi who have proved their worth being invested in. Even clan shinobi can take advantage of this system but since they have to follow the same rules as everyone else, you can't really fault them

Normally this wouldn't be a problem but times have changed. Now we have a lot of holes in the power structure of the village that need to be filled.

The Kyūbi attack has weaken the village but it has hit the clans just as hard if not harder. In particular, a lot of their businesses where destroyed and they lost a lot of their strong combats during the battle. As a result, they will turtle up for a while so that they can regain their previous strength and while there is nothing wrong with that, the village currently still has a power vacuum that needs to be filled."

Hiruzen paused to take another drag of his pipe and watched the Anbu member as the proverbial gears whirred in his head. Though he couldn't see the boys face Hiruzen could still tell when the boy managed to put two and two together.

"But then…They wouldn't have really…would they?" Confused and slightly perplexed at the conclusion he had come to, the Anbu member couldn't help but question the sanity of the clans.

"I assure you they can and they would." Hiruzen simply smiled gently, though the coldness in his eyes and their sinister gleam only made the Anbu member shiver.

"You might have forgotten but these clan have survived and thrived during the warring state period. There's no way they would have lasted this long without being ruthless when they needed to be."

"But they would be effectively crippling themselves further wouldn't they?"

Hiruzen scoffed at the insinuation that those senile old fossils that truly ran the clans from the background wouldn't be willing to do such a thing. He knew full well that they wouldn't hesitate to cut off their own arms if it meant that they could cut off both of the enemies arms in exchange.

"You're still too naive if that is what you think. Even if those civilian born shinobi are technically members of their clans, they were and to an extent still are civilian shinobi. With the current state of the village we need to find persons to fill the void and that means that a lot of civilian shinobi that would have had to fight tooth and nail to climb up and claim these position won't have to.

The clans can't push back against it without making their own people take those position, but the people who they can trust to keep the clans best interest at heart are needed to train the future shinobi of there respective clans. That therefore leaves the only available candidates being the very same civilian born shinobi that they have mistreated and have neglected to truly integrate into their clans. They can't be sure that they will bend to the clans will and so its much better to take them off of the board entirely."

Hiruzen pointed to the scroll that had been brought to him, highlighting several cases that he could tell just from a glance were fishy.

"A lot of these shinobi could have been healed back to perfect health had they received adequate care in time, but they didn't. A lot of them were operated on by inexperienced trainee medical-nin. Of course you could say that because of the large amount of injured from the attack, there simply weren't enough experienced medical-nin around to handle all of the patients and that's the reason why so many where seen by less experiences medical nin. But…"

He pointed to the other scroll that he had taken out of his desk before continuing

"None of the true clan members were seen by inexperienced or junior medical-nin and while some of them truly do need to retire, some of them are going to be fit as a fiddle within a month at the earliest and yet they are still all retiring. Meanwhile some of the civilians shinobi that have to retire are crippled because of the inexperienced medical-nin making a mistake during treatment. And all of this was well hidden.

No matter how I look at it, it's obvious that the clans saw this coming. They knew that after the battle there would be a lot of promotions but that they wouldn't be ready or able to handle, resulting in the influx of civilian shinobi which would effectively limit their voice and power over the village.

So they crippled their own members with the intention being that I would be forced to promote civilian shinobi who aren't truly qualified but are needed to fill the positions. That way once their more powerful members returned from their self imposed retirement they wouldn't have much problems climbing back up the power ladder of the village."

Hiruzen clenched his teeth in frustration and slammed his hand onto the desk before bellowing in anger.

"The worst part about all of this is that even though I've seen through it, there really isn't any thing that I can do about it!

Its practically an open scheme that I simple can't avoid. Because all of the clans did it I simply can't blame any one person. I can't even target the medical-nin since they truly are understaffed and were unprepared to handle such a large influx on patients all at once.

Not to mention that all of this is just my own conjecture after digging and fighting to find a connection. A connection that simply won't hold up once the clans push back against it!"

Hiruzen sat back in his chair in defeat as all of his bravado seemingly faded away to nothing.

"And as if I wasn't already a joke in the eyes of some people, the only clan that might be able to impact what has been occurring is the damn Uchiha. The only clan that would much rather watch me suffer than offer a helping hand due to their poor treatment over the years.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm going to be able to keep these uppity clans in check, or if their incessant squabbles and infighting are going to destroy the village first."

While Hiruzen was mumbling to himself about his mounting problems and searching around his deck for something. The Anbu member simply stood there completely shocked at the revelation that even after such a massive blow to the village there was still so many underlying problems to deal with.

If there were such power plays already in play, what would they be willing to do if the information about the new Jinchūriki got out?

With trepidation evident in his slightly shaky voice he raised an important question that had been on his mind for quite some time now.

"Hokage-sama, what are you going to do about… the baby?"

Hiruzen immediately stopped what he was doing and eyed the Anbu before him evenly. With conviction in his voice he tilted his head up and spoke with the dignity of which his position held.

"He is being delt with. You have nothing to worry about when it comes to his wellbeing. I made a promise to Minato, and I plan to keep it till my dying breath."