Restrictions and enemies.

"Why won't you remove the seal that allows me to do elemental nature transformation normally?!"

"Why should I remove it?"

"I just said the reason! So that I can more easily do elemental nature transformation!"

"Why do you want to do it more easily?"

"Because I have lesser chakra now! And by doing it the normal way I can reduce the wastage of my chakra!"

"What exactly do you think you'll achieve by going the normal route? There are so many people who are doing the exact same thing you're doing, why do you think they failed and weren't able to fight against the Sage of Six paths? What about me? Do you think I'm a fool to have given up the normal way?"

"...." Megumi couldn't bring himself to argue with Hashirama after that. He knew well enough than to call Hashirama a fool even though he usually behaved like a child when it came to matters other than chakra. But he ended up being surprisingly strict in matters relating to chakra and aything to do with it.

"Alright….I'll listen…Sensei."

"Ha! Finally! Why doesn't the younger generation ever want to listen to the older one!?"

"Fine! Then don't waste time! I don't want to spend time stuck inside here forever! I don't know how you're able to spend decades here without going crazy! There's literally nothing to do! How can you spend your entire time talking to Mito-baa-san! Or rather how does Mito-baa san tolerate talking to you for the entire time!? I'd have gone crazy in the first few minutes!"

"Haha! You can't leave from here! You know that well enough by now! Don't you?"

"You will see! I will leave from here! And I'll do it while I laugh at your face!"

"Sure, sure. And I'll be watching while laughing at your silly attempts at doing so. Didn't you say I have nothing else to do here, it should make good entertainment to watch you constantly break your head. I'm sure Mito will also appreciate the new entertainment you provide us."

"Keep looking! Now! Teach me!"

"Alright… alright. Sit down cross legged and try to first feel the nature energy around you…"

Hashirama carried on teach Megumi as Mito looked at them and then shook her head at the antics of their new resident as she went back to looking at the seal that was in her hands.

Megumi had drawn out the communication seal, by asking Hashirama for some Ekoji Sorui, which although did let him make the communication seal did not allow him to communicated with anyone else.

The seal like all of other Megumi's attempts at moving to the outside world had been blocked.

When Megumi asked both Hashirama and Mito why it didn't work they simply told him it was because he was no longer in the same space as the other person with the communication seal he wanted to communicate with, he was now inside Hashirama's own domain that had been locked down so that he could hold down his life here on earth for a little longer for according to his own words 'doing the world a great help by waiting for the right time to die.'.

At first Megumi didn't believe anything they said him, but he reluctantly had to when he found Mito secretly peeking a look at the seals he was drawing trying to understand them since as an Uzumaki she was, like the rest of them, a Sealing aficionado, showing that she clearly didn't have enough knowledge about the seals that Megumi was making to be able to block them on purpose.

It saddened Megumi a bit more when he realized that he couldn't contact anyone but it only furthered his resolve to break free from the place he was stuck inside.

….

Staring at the stars in the dark sky Megumi found himself feeling lost.

'How exactly can I get out of this place?'

'Hmm….' As Megumi stared at the sky while lying down on the roof, he felt something soft brush up against his palm.

'Oh, its just Kaguya.'

Megumi picked up the unassuming rabbit from under her arms and by her butt much to her dismay, since it exposed her underside to the cool breeze of the night, and looked at her face.

*squeak**squeak*

"Kaguya, you're also not immune to the boundary of Grandpa Hashirama's domain like the other life forms right?"

*squeak*

Kaguya responded as Megumi remembered the time when Kaguya first attempted to step out of the buddha statue and ended up bashing her head against an invisible barrier after attempting to jump through it and fainted by getting a concussion which Mito had to heal.

"But why is that?"

Kaguya just tilted her head as if to respond she didn't know.

"Hmm…. is it because you have your own spiritual energy even if you don't have any of your own chakra and use nature energy instead?"

Kaguya just stared back at him absolutely confused by what her master was talking to her about.

"So if I make something that doesn't have any of mine or its own spiritual energy and uses nature chakra then I can connect with the world outside? Something like the fire temple's earth spirit?"

*sigh*

"This is confusing and tiring."

"Why am I in a position where I have to create life artificially? Am I becoming Orochimaru or something?"

Megumi switched his view back to the dark sky and away form Kaguya who he pulled back to his chest where she curled up and closed her eyes.

'I wonder how everyone else is doing? Were my last words and the words in the things I wrote down using the printer enough to keep them going? I'd be quite unhappy if I ended up being the cause of their downfall.'

…..

"Tsunade-sensei? What are you saying? Kumogakure is threatening war against us? Really? But why?"

"Minato said, that officially it was because they found proof that Konoha ninja were killling Kumo ninja at the borders."

"Officially?"

"Yes, although Minato suspects that the official reason is also true because he has been spotting root moving along the sidelines even after he has cut down their funding severely, he thinks their real reason is because they don't want to let Konoha prosper economically since it is already a military giant, and giving them any more power would only result in them becoming an indomitable force."

"Arggg! Danzo! Why can't I use my memories as roof against the bastard! Does he have no other work other than wanting to keep provoking people? I've become tired at his root harassing the employees of our stores and for changing the story of the book to show the other villages in a bad light and Konoha in a better one. How low can a person fall so low in character that they go around attacking random civilians!"

"Oh!? Why haven't you told me about it yet? You know I could just beat them up."

"You know Tsunade-sensei you're busy with the hospital and training the new staff besides dad and mom have it handled well, at least for now, they provide missions for maintaining the security of the stores to genin and have already made deals with the Uchiha police force to help them keep an eye out because they hate Danzo too. But about the news from Kumogakure, are they really going to go to war again? Can't they just convince their daimyo to follow what Konoha and the Fire nation are doing?"

"Well….the Land of Lightning daimyo like the other daimyo's are actually very interested in doing such a thing but they have chosen to take a waiting approach to observe the whole process so that they can estimate the problems and other things that might arise out of the new laws and liberalization of trade that has set in the Fire nation."

"So what? Since their countries aren't ready they want to drag down Konoha so that we don't get too strong? How selfish!"

"Yes… they are but it isn't like I don't understand them. After all anyone who be wary of a neighbor who goes around killing their border soldiers."

"Aghhh! It is Danzo's fault after all! Hold on a second!"

"Huh? What happened Sakura?"

Sakura ran up to the shelves where she had filed and placed the papers Megumi had written around and pulled out a few stacks of pages which she routinely went through as she pulled out a single page and read through the information in it.

With clear delight in her face, Sakura placed back the papers into the shelves and sealed them as she skipped over to Tsunade who looked confused about what she was doing.

"What was that about?"

"Sensei! Tell the Hokage to establish trade relations with the Hidden Cloud village."

"...? Huh? You know well that they can't do that Sakura! That's why they're so upset! Why would they try and go to war if they could earn money along with us?"

"Yes we can! Megumi wrote down something that I just checked, Megumi said in cases when we had less people who were able to to work with us as ninjas we should just speak to the Hokage and let us train people in the basics so that older civilians who hadn't been through the ninja academy could also be hired."

"... but what does that have to do with this!?"

"Simple! Just hire Kumo's civilians for businesses under the pretense that you are training their ninja for them!?"

"What….? But…." Tsunade opened and closed her mouth a few times a little caught up with words as if to fully comprehend what Sakura had just suggested.

"We could give them new 'ninja' for their work forces according to the existing laws of the daimyo's court in their lands such that they'd look like in reality they were just working missions, although the missions would be priced cheaper it would be a stable and consistently earning one and more than enough for civilians who in reality had no other opportunity to work."

"That's brilliant Sakura!!!!"

Sakura just bashfully smiled as Tsunade praised her but then frowned at Tsunade's next words.

"Of course you're able to do such a thing, you're my disciple after all!"

*BITE*

"AHHH!!! You feral child! What happened to the cute smile you were showing me a moment ago! You two faced b***h let go of me!"

....

"Found any proof yet Shikaku?"

"No Lord Hokage. He is very meticulous, his money holdings on paper are all very little but it is quite clear from simply the estimations I have had to make about the amount of people he has trained under his root that it is all an elaborately crafted lie to keep us off of his backs."

"What about the complaints from the shop owners where ninja were found causing disturbances to them, was he connected to any of them?"

"He should be most if not connected to all of them, since none of the ninja who were reported to have caused the disturbances should be well off enough to be able to afford a living simply based on the missions they were reported to be taking. They were all irregular in some way or the other. In fact some of them should be in complete poverty without food to eat for their next meal but somehow they were all living quite well, almost."

"Did you find out how?"

"We did. All their finances comes from 'working independently' for other business that they haven't harassed, which we suspect to all be businesses that Danzo is funding through illegal smuggling of information and arms but we haven't been able to get any proofs yet. He is using these businesses as a front to convert the money he likely has earned from the illegal ways to get them recorded by funding his 'employees' with them. But nothing on paper, the owner of the businesses is also a civilian."

"What about the ninja the police arrived in time to capture?"

"Some of them genuinely believe that what is happening is bad but their numbers are much smaller, the majority were the ninja who were classified as irregulars because of their 'earnings' that were coming from businesses that had nothing much to do with what a ninja would be doing. Do you want us to capture them and take hand them over to the KTIF for questioning?"

".....No. It'd be wrong to without proof bring simple trouble makers into the torture and interrogation department and it'd only further incite those that genuinely believe something wrong is happening and cause them to rebel further. It's better we do something else."

"Danzo is absolutely clean on the books, the third has given him a lot of freedom which possibly includes him having his own copy of books that he refuses to submit to us under the pretense of security and internal expenditures that have nothing to do with the village, even the elders and the advisors are on his side on this so we haven't been able to enter the root to check their finances personally."

"Hmm….then the only way left is to trap him in some way."

"Are we going to collaborate with Kumo on this mission then?"

"No. Letting shinobi from other nations interfere in solving our internal problems will set the wrong precedent. We've got to find a suitable cover story for Danzo to bite and attempt to ruin so that we can catch him in the act red handed. I'll get Kushina involved as a counter measure against his cursed tongue eradication seal."

"It would be obvious for Danzo that it is a trap if we offer Kumo a deal regarding shinobi missions since we are already going to be having a surplus of shinobi by the end of the year in our own village, so the only other option that remains is a business deal but it will be extremely hard to get Kumo to get agree to anything involving business since they wouldn't want us to profit. And if they get a wind of the idea that we might be using them to eradicate our own internal enemies it might just flare up their hatred against us."

"Hmm…. let's wait and think about it a little more. I don't want to rush when we deal with this situation, since it might set the tone of the other villages against us quite easily if we decide to be aggressive with Kumo. Perhaps there is a way to settle Kumo's appetite for money and strength in a way by making business deals with them, let us hold off on this issue for a while."

"Yes, lord fourth."

"By the way has Fugaku responded about the investigations regarding the Akatsuki group?"

"He has but, he said that he'll need a little more time since he has found quite interesting details while looking into the group that he thinks will be of great help to us with regards to Danzo."

"Danzo? From where did Danzo come up in this?" Minato looked at Shikaku with an utterly bewildered expression while Shikaku just sweat dropped and shrugged.

"What the hell!? What has been going on inside the village during the reign of the third!?"

"Lord fourth, it isn't good to bad mouth your predecessors… no matter how incompetent or stupid they might have been."

*knock**knock*

A sharp knock interrupted Minato's discussion with Shikaku.

As they composed themselves, Minato said calmly, "Please enter."

An ANBU member with a dog mask from the village entered the room as he knelt before Minato and waited for orders.

"You may report."

"Lord Hokgae on my last mission to explore Orochimaru's labs my position was compromised and I had to fight off three ninja who were pursuing me with intent to kill."

Both Minato and Shikaku paid total attention to Kakashi as they questioned about what had happened further.

"Did you find something from labs? Or had they been completely emptied out for a long time?"

"I did find a few pieces of papers containing data about a few experiments here and there but nothing tangible, I suspect it to have been emptied out well before I had gotten there since there were no researchers present in the lab."

"So it was a well orchestrated assassination event…" Shikaku commented.

"Do you have any suspects as to who were the ninja who were out for you? Did you recognize any of them from the bingo books?"

"No, lord fourth. But I suspect they belonged to the root under Danz-"

"&$^!%@&!@*$#!#$!" 

Minato cursed loud enough for the entire village to hear before Kakashi had even completed his sentences.

-------------------------

Thank you for reading!

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