The Aftermath

After the events of the notorious Konoha Crush were over and the funerary rites for those that died were finished, the village was back to business as usual. Due to Shiki's actions, this time around the Crush didn't affect the village nearly as much.

Konoha's infrastructure was almost completely unharmed so there were no big construction projects, the casualties were very small too, only 27 shinobi including the Hokage whose loss was the most felt but no civilian casualties at all.

As such, the village was able to return to nearly full functionality right after the events. All that was left was to decide who the next Hokage would be. The elders, including the fake Danzo were discussing this right now and the only candidates up for discussion were Jiraiya and Tsunade but they had yet to decide who to approach.

By Shiki's command, the fake Danzo showed his support for Tsunade. She was of the Senju clan and was massively popular among the caircles of the village's older shinobi and citizens for her distinguished work in the medical field. Her distinction in the several wars the village fought was also greater than Jiraiya's due to the different nature of their skillset as shinobi.

Jiraiya was more apt in spywork and stealth which meant that a lot of his work was secret and not to be revealed to the public meanwhile, Tsunade's medical exploits and triumphs on the battlefield were promoted to increase moral in the troops and promote feelings of safety in the civilians. So her popularity was far greater than her former teammate.

In the end, the other two elders agreed with this reasoning and decided to approach Tsunade with the matter. Normally, they would get an instant refusal but Shiki had already warned her of what was coming and spent a lot of time buttering her up to take the job.

Tsunade understood that taking this job would allow her to help Shiki a lot more and since she already knew of his general plan and idea, it would make things far simpler . . . Shiki finally got her to accept by promising to help her with stuff so she wouldn't always be buried in work. His mention of using shadow clones for the endless piles of paperwork certainly helped a great deal.

Since Tsunade accepted the offer of the elders to be the Fifth Hokage far more easily than they expected, she got to lead the discussions with Sunagakure over the unprovoked assault on Konoha. With the info from the Reaper and their very valuable prisoners whose identities she was already informed of, she managed to get them to cave in to their demands.

Still, it took a lot of convincing until she was willing to do this, and she made a point to revise some of the terms Shiki had with Hiruzen since the boy and Tsunade had a much closer relationship and as such, there was very little need to hold back for both. Therefore, they built a much more tight knit alliance than the one SHiki had with the Third Hokage.

Things went something like this . . .

"First of all Shiki! Since it's just between you and me, let's dial down on the secrets. I don't need you to tell me every single bit but no withholding important information and of course, I shall do the same!" Tsunade proposed.

"Alright Tsuna-nee! I'll have regular reports with information I consider useful to you and the village be delivered regularly! Also . . ." Shiki gave her a special paper tag. "If Tsuna-nee has something in particular you want to know about or investigate, just pour some chakra into the tag and you'll be able to communicate with with the clone in charge of those matters."

Tsunade was once again surprised by the boy's means and was even more so when Shiki revealed how far he had managed to extend his web across the world. After a couple more details on their future professional relationship were discussed, they moved on to the matter of Suna.

"Do you think it's that easy!?" Tsunade asked after hearing what Shiki wanted as reparations for their attack on Konoha.

"Their Kazekage is dead, all three of his children are our hostages, we have they're sole jinchuriki and quite a few of their best jonin not to mention their massive losses in strength from the lopsided casualties. I don't see how they can refuse any of our demands." Shiki argued.

"That may be so . . . But what about the Daimyos of our two countries. Do you honestly thinks they would permit such a thing?" Tsunade countered.

It was true! What Shiki was trying to do was just a bit short of making Suna their subordinate. Well in the future, all the Kages would theoretically work for him so this was just the first step but the Daimyos and their aides might not be so thrilled at the prospect.

"First of all." Shiki started. "Suna's relationship with the Daimyo of the Land of Wind is already extremely poor so worsening it will basically do nothing. The power the lords have over shinobi is based on funding and since nearly all funding Suna was receiving from their Daimyo was cut, there would be no problem there . . ."

"Besides, in terms of military might, no Daimyo can threaten their village in fact, it's usually the other way around because even though a village depends on a country for funding, the country depends on it for protection so the Daimyo can't be too rash either."

"The soft attitude of konoha towards our own Daimyo is actually not very common in the world. As for things on our side, not only do mine and the Reaper's business produce enough funds to support two of three villages, if the Daimyo of the Land of Fire is not too agreeable . . ." Shiki made a longer pause.

"I needed a good excuse for the Reaper to break ties with Konoha . . . Murdering our Daimyo seems like a pretty good one right?"

Once Shiki finished his speech, to say Tsunade was shocked was a massive understatement. The worst part was that she didn't have much to say against his plans.

"What about Orochimaru? We still have him to worry about!" Tsunade said in way that meant "We shouldn't be finding possible troubles before fixing those we already have!" but Shiki had a response for that as well.

"The injuries made by the Third on Orochimaru can't be healed without my help since a special jutsu from my clan was used, I saw the effects from a distance and I recognized them . . . I also raided most of his facilities when he was focused on Konoha so he has very few resources right now. So we don't have to worry about him for the moment."

Tsunade made a couple of more arguments but after Shiki mercilessly shut them all down, she finally accepted to carry on Shiki's idea no matter how crazy it sounded to her. Meanwhile, Shiki had his own plans to deal with Orochimaru . . .

Those would be more effective later though, once he has suffered a little more from his injury. Moving on though, despite the interruption of the chunin exams, due to Shiki's great showing in all stages, he was promoted anyway, Hinata, Naruto and Sasuke were also being considered by Tsunade for the promotion but she said she wanted to think about it some more.

As for Shiki, Tsunade was even going to put him up for promotion to jonin based on his capture of a high ranking jonin of Suna and the children of the former kazekage, Suna's jinchuriki included.

Due to Shiki's massive number of completed D-rank missions in the village and his stellar performance in the chunin exams, he was actually very popular with the citizens, that meant he already had the recognition of the Hokage and the citizens, all he needed was recognition of other shinobi but since any shinobi worth the title who saw Shiki fight could tell how skilled he was, this posed no issue either and so, he was promoted to jonin without trouble.

Speaking of trouble, the condition of Shiki's soul kept worsening so, with a heavy heart, he affirmed once more his decision of going with the riskier method since it seem,ed to be the only one available as of the moment.

Teleporting to his desert fortress with Flying Raijin and greeting his subordinates who were inside, Shiki prepared to perform the Reaper Possession Seal.

It was now or never, he would use this short period of rest before important event began happening once more to complete this crucial task.