The walk back from the Hyūga compound to the heart of the Uchiha district was a journey through a canyon of Fugaku's own simmering rage. The afternoon sun, now slanting sharply, cast long, warped shadows from the fan-adorned roofs, making the familiar streets feel like a maze of dark blades. The usual ambient sounds of the compound—the shush of a broom on stone, the distant thwack of kunai practice, the low murmur of conversation—seemed to dampen and recede as he passed, as if the very air contracted around the force of his displeasure.
Clan members, catching sight of his stony face and the rigid set of his shoulders, offered shallow, silent bows and quickly found business elsewhere. The mood was a tangible thing, a heavy, humid pressure that promised a storm.
"…arrogant, preening, extortionist swan…"
Fugaku muttered under his breath, the words a venomous, rhythmic exhale that matched his stride. The image of Hiashi's placid, calculating face floated behind his eyes, the memory of the exorbitant price demanded feeling like a fresh brand on the Uchiha's treasury and pride. Every step on the gravel path was a sharp, angry crunch.
He arrived at the clan's administrative building, a structure of stern, dark wood that housed the Clan Head's offices. As he climbed the steps, the main door slid open before he could reach for it. His aide, Uchiha Katsuro, stood in the doorway, a man older than Fugaku in his late thirties with sharp, intelligent features and hair pulled back in a severe tail.
He wore the standard clan attire, but with an added layer of practical organization—a scroll holster at his hip, ink-stained fingertips. Katsuro was less a fighter and more a living ledger, a political quartermaster who understood power in terms of favours, alliances, and resources.
He took one look at Fugaku's face, at the barely contained tempest in his clan head's chakra—a sensation like ozone and smouldering embers—and his own expression became a mask of attentive neutrality.
"Fugaku-sama, welcome back. Your father, Daichi-sama, has sent word from his—"
Fugaku cut him off with a slashing gesture of his hand, not breaking stride as he moved past Katsuro into the cooler, darker interior of the building. "Before anything else," Fugaku said, his voice a low growl that echoed in the quiet hallway, "cross the Hyūga off the list."
A flicker of understanding passed through Katsuro's dark eyes. No celebration, no confirmation of success. Just the silent, efficient note-taking of a strategist. The Hyūga were secured, however painfully. He gave a curt nod, falling into step beside Fugaku as they moved toward the private office.
"Noted."
Inside the office, the atmosphere was one of controlled utility. Scrolls were neatly racked, maps of Konoha's political landscape were pinned to boards, and a large ledger lay open on a side table. Fugaku did not sit. He stood behind his desk, gripping the back of his chair, his knuckles white. "The update. Now."
Katsuro stood at a respectful distance, producing a small, personal scroll from his sleeve. He unfurled it with a soft snap.
"Clan outreach for the Jonin Commander nomination. Confirmed support, or at least non-opposition, secured: Inuzuka. Aburame. Hatake."
He glanced up. "And now, Hyūga." He rerolled the scroll. "These constitute the majority of the major clans not explicitly bound to the Sarutobi political bloc or the village council's old guard."
Fugaku absorbed the information, his mind already leaping ahead. "The Nara are next."
Katsuro's neutrality wavered for a heartbeat. "The Nara, sir? Shiba-sama's proximity to the Hokage is… significant. His son Shikaku is also being groomed within the Jounin command structure. Their allegiance is to village stability, which they likely see as synonymous with the Hokage's chosen candidate."
"I am aware of the difficulty," Fugaku said, finally releasing the chair and turning to face the window, looking out over his clan's territory.
"But we cannot leave any potential lever unused. Approach them. Not with threats, but with logic. Frame Renjiro as a stabilizing force—a powerful, proven entity who can command respect across clan lines. A counterbalance to… other influences." He meant Danzō, and they both knew it.
"We try. That is all."
"Understood." Katsuro made another note on a mental ledger. "Regarding your father's message. He undertook a discrete inquiry into the Hokage's own preferences, as well as sentiments among the Jonin command staff."
Fugaku turned from the window, his full attention now on Katsuro. The petty anger from the Hyūga negotiation was shoved aside, replaced by the cold, sharp focus of a commander awaiting a vital intelligence report. "And?"
Katsuro met his gaze, delivering the news with flat, unvarnished professionalism. "The consensus, both from the Tower and within the ranks, heavily favors one candidate."
A beat of silence. The only sound was the faint rustle of a map curling at the edge of the board.
"Who?" Fugaku asked, though a part of him already knew.
"Namikaze Minato."
The name hung in the office, not as a surprise, but as a confirmed, formidable obstacle. Fugaku did not rage. He did not curse. His expression hardened into something like obsidian—cold, dark, and impenetrable.
The resolve that had been tightening in his chest since the meeting with Hiashi now solidified into a diamond-hard certainty. The path was blocked by a living legend. They would have to go through him, or around him. Either way, the political battle had just been clearly defined.
=====
In a secluded training ground on the Uchiha compound's northern edge, far from the administrative buildings and residential lanes. Here, the land was scarred from decades of controlled fire-release practice.
The air itself wavered with remembered heat, a permanent distortion that made the distant trees shiver like mirages. The ground was a patchwork of blackened earth, vitrified glass from intense heat, and deep, radiating cracks in the stone viewing platforms. The dominant smell was not pine or earth, but ozone, ash, and the flinty scent of superheated rock.
In the centre of this scorched arena, seated in the lotus position on a lone, unscarred patch of smooth stone, was Miwa Uchiha.
She was a picture of profound, mature composure. Her eyes were closed, her face serene, her back straight. She wore a simple, dark training gi, her hair tied back in a no-nonsense knot. To an untrained observer, she might have been in deep meditation, perhaps communing with her chakra.
Then, without a single hand seal, without a twitch of muscle, her chakra ignited.
It was not a flare or a glow. It was a silent, internal switch being thrown. The air ten feet in front of her ripped apart. There was no gathering of flame, no building roar.
One moment, empty space. Next, a column of pure, white-hot fire erupted from the ground with a sound like a thousand sheets of parchment being torn simultaneously. The column roared skyward, a contained, furious geyser of annihilation that sucked the air from the clearing and made the very stone beneath her tremble. The heat was a physical wall, bending the light and causing the distant trees to visibly recoil.
As suddenly as it appeared, the fire vanished. Not a dying flicker, but a total, absolute cessation, leaving behind a swirling vortex of superheated air and a fresh, smouldering crater in the earth.
Miwa's chakra, visible only to a sensor or a Sharingan user as a brief, intense corona around her, subsided. For five steady breaths, there was only the ringing silence and the tink-tink sound of cooling, fractured stone.
Then, her chakra flared again.
Another rip in reality. Another devastating column of flame—this one erupting at a forty-five degree angle to her left, as if spawned from the very bedrock.
"WHUMPF."
The precision was terrifying. This was not a wild Katon: Gōkakyū. This was the manifestation of fire as a surgical, conceptual force—explosion itself, summoned at a point in space through sheer chakra control and will. It was a technique born of a deep, intimate understanding of destruction's very nature.
Again, it vanished. Again, silence, deeper now, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
A third flare. A third cataclysmic
"WHUMPF" behind her. The ground shook. The air cooked.
Amidst this display of chakra control, a subtle shift occurred. Miwa's meditation did not break. Her eyes remained closed. But her senses registered a new presence at the edge of the scorched field.
It was not an intrusion. There was no hostile chakra, no stealthy approach. It was simply a thereness, calm and familiar, observing without judgment. She felt no alarm. No tension tightened her shoulders.
As the echoes of the last man-made inferno died away, leaving only the sigh of wind over glassy stone, Miwa slowly opened her eyes. She did not turn her head fully, but a knowing, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips.
"Renjiro," she said, the name neither a question nor a greeting, but a simple statement of fact. "I suppose you finally got over the block?"
=====
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