[Danzo's POV (He is that man after all—expect some edgy)]
The silence in my sanctum was a physical thing, thick and dutiful, broken only by the soft rustle of a page turning. I was engrossed in Tobirama-sensei's later works—not the jutsus, but the political treatises.
Sensei understood the architecture of power, the unspoken load-bearing walls that hold a village up. A lesson my old friend seems to have bookmarked, but never truly committed to memory.
A subtle shift in the air—a presence materializing from the gloom. Hinoe. My most reliable instrument in this shadow.
"Danzo-sama," his voice was a low hum, respectful. "Yari seeks an audience."
I did not look up immediately. To do so would be to grant the interruption an importance it had not yet earned. I finished the paragraph, allowing the weight of my focus to settle in the room.
Then, and only then, did I lift my gaze. A single, slow nod. It was all that was required. Hinoe melted back into the darkness, the message received. Efficiency, as always.
My mind, however, was already racing. Yari. A name from a different era—a sleeper agent planted in richer soil during Tobirama-sensei's reign.
The operation was a masterpiece of its kind: a noble's son, studied; his face, stolen; his memories, pilfered by a Yamanaka. Our man took his place—a seed of Konoha's will buried deep in the decadent compost of the capital.
For eighteen years, he had grown, fattened by privilege, now the head of his house and a whisper in the Daimyo's ear. For such a deeply buried root to surface personally… the soil of the capital must be shifting.
It is ironic, is it not? For decades, I have supported Hiruzen, propping up his sunlit reign from the edges of his glow. But true support for the village is not always found in the light.
I have finally carved out a more… substantive role. A garden of shadows where the necessary, ugly things can grow, so that Konoha's public gardens may remain pristine. And the catalyst for this long-overdue expansion? The very subject of my most persistent warnings: an Uchiha.
Azula.
For years, I have been a broken record to Hiruzen's sentimental ears. "Do not forget Tobirama-sensei's wisdom! The Uchiha are a blade of singular passion. They must be wielded, lest they turn in your hand. Reach out! Mold her! Make her the perfect, loyal weapon for Konoha!"
But no. He demurred. He spoke of "goodwill" and "trust," while he was, in fact, just scared and dared not act.
Now, the blade has forged itself, and the hilt is in no one's hand but her own. It is far too late to contain her. Her influence is a spider's web—glistening and inescapable.
Her reforms of the Uchiha Police, her position as Konoha's chief adjudicator—these are but the obvious strands. Her true power lies in the pulp and ink of her mangas.
The day a new chapter is released, the village's shinobi force might as well be afflicted with a collective genjutsu. Ninety percent of them are functionally useless, not taking missions, noses buried in her fantastical narratives.
Hiruzen may still command the village, but across the breadth of the Land of Fire? Her name resonates with a currency his does not.
Wealth? She lacks for nothing. Her personal coffers, swollen from hospitals, sealing tags, and that insidious entertainment empire, could bankroll Konoha's development for a decade. She is a financial entity second only to the Daimyo himself.
Yet all this—the influence, the wealth—are merely decorations.
A truth was branded onto my soul when I was nine years old, watching the world tear itself apart: in the end, only power matters. Raw, unadulterated power. Everything else is chaff before that wind.
And the girl—the infuriating, brilliant girl—does not lack for power. On the cusp of becoming the Uchiha Patriarch—a title she seized, not inherited—and having attained the now Three Sharingan… a development that simultaneously vindicates my every fear and my every desire for her potential.
But no matter. The recent… demonstrations during her last mission finally shook Hiruzen from his complacency. A day after the report landed on his desk, stained with implications he dared not speak aloud, he granted me my charter.
Root.
A special unit to tend to the weeds that the Hokage cannot be seen pulling.
The soft sound of approaching footsteps pulled me from my thoughts. They were measured, heavy with the weight of a cultivated nobleman's gait—but beneath it, the trained precision of an ANBU was as clear to me as a shout in the silence. They paused outside my door.
"Enter," I commanded, before the knock could come. Let there be no doubt that in these depths, I see all.
The door opened, and Yari entered, his form bloated by years of aristocratic performance. He dropped to one knee with a grunt, the gesture still pure ANBU despite the disguise of flesh.
"Danzo-sama!" he intoned.
I let the silence stretch—a small test of his nerve. "Speak."
He nodded, his jowls trembling slightly. "Danzo-sama, two days past, Lord Fukuyoshi convened a closed council. The meeting was supervised by the Daimyo himself. Only the heads of his most… trusted families were in attendance."
I already knew this, of course. Our other, lesser eyes in the capital had reported the gathering. We waited for Yari to provide the substance.
"The sole topic of discussion," Yari continued, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper, "was the growing power of Konoha. Specifically, strategies to systematically weaken our influence—to ensure we never slip the leash of the capital."
A cold, familiar fury, one I had not felt so keenly in years, began to simmer in my gut. These parasites. These gilded, soft-handed leeches.
Tobirama-sensei explained it time and again—they are the true architects of shinobi conflict, pitting clan against clan from the safety of their palaces to ensure no single village grows too strong to need them.
They play their games with our lives as the currency. Hashirama-sama's dream of a united front of villages was a beautiful fantasy, poisoned by their very existence.
"Rise," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "You will provide a full account. Leave no detail unmentioned, no matter how trivial it may seem."
I then turned my head slightly toward the shadows. "Hinoe."
He was there. He was always there. "Danzo-sama."
"You will record every word. Then, you will prepare the transcript for the Hokage." I allowed a thin, cold smile to touch my lips. "Let us see what the noble Lord Fukuyoshi and his friends have been discussing over their fine wine and roasted pheasant."
...
...
...
While Danzo was tucked away in some shadowy corner of the village and the rest of the world continued its relentless turn, Azula was not being lazy.
Her current mental focus was a deep dive into the mechanics of her own potential. She understood the basic arithmetic of existence: with age came strength. It was a simple, boring, linear progression.
But Azula despised linear. She was interested in the exponential, the groundbreaking—the power-ups that skipped the tutorial and went straight to the final boss.
Foremost in her mind was the Uchiha's legendary bloodline limit, the Sharingan. For years, she had studied its patterns and pressures with the obsessive focus of a master architect reviewing blueprints.
She wasn't just learning to use it; she was learning how it broke. And she was utterly, arrogantly confident that unlocking the Mangekyou level wasn't a question of "if," but merely "when." It was an inevitable promotion she was already preparing to accept.
But what's a god-tier power-up without a catastrophic, soul-crushing weakness? The Mangekyou's fine print was a doozy: overuse it, and the world would slowly fade to a permanent, pitch-black curtain call. Blindness.
Azula loathed this design flaw with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. A temporary power? One you couldn't wield with wild abandon? One that demanded such a usurious price?
It was offensive. It was inelegant. It was, in her opinion, shoddy craftsmanship.
So, at the grand old age of nine—before her own Sharingan had even flickered to life—she was already brainstorming solutions.
It was the equivalent of planning your Nobel Prize acceptance speech while still in diapers, if it were back then on Earth.
While she hadn't gone too deep down every speculative rabbit hole, one particular case demanded immediate attention: her father.
She knew he had awakened the Mangekyou, which meant his clock was ticking down to darkness unless he didn't use them.
For him, and for the sake of solving this fascinating puzzle, she had delved into the annals of Uchiha history and bizarre medical phenomena. And she believed she had found the answer.
Or, to put it more accurately, she had simply identified the plot's most obvious cheat code. The most effective way to spam your Mangekyou abilities without a care in the world was to follow the "Obito Method."
Obito Uchiha, the certified dead-loss of his generation, clearly did not possess the upgraded Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan.
And yet, after a particularly bad day involving a boulder, he was suddenly able to use his Kamui like it was going out of style, teleporting across nations and fighting the legendary Yellow Flash for entire rounds without so much as an eye-itch.
How?
The answer wasn't just in his eyes; it was in his body. Rebuilt with a curious, plant-based substance infused with the cells of Hashirama Senju, Obito had essentially won the supernatural lottery.
Sure, the perks included a massive chakra pool and a neat junior Wood Release, but the real grand prize was the ultimate Mangekyou warranty: no-blindness insurance.
Those cells were so potent, so cheat-like—they were basically plot armor made manifest.
What made Hashirama's cells so obscenely precious? It all boiled down to life force, or more precisely, an overwhelming concentration of Yang Chakra.
His cells were so virulently alive, so potent, that they were downright corrosive to your average, off-the-shelf human. But for the Uchiha and their Sharingan? They were the perfect, if slightly unorthodox, battery.
The logic was simple. An Uchiha with a robust physique and stronger Yang Chakra could use the standard Sharingan far longer than a frail Uchiha leaning heavily on Yin Chakra and less Yang Chakra.
The Mangekyou, in Azula's refined analysis, was really just a degenerative flaw in the Ōtsutsuki bloodline. After all, Hagoromo skipped it entirely, going straight from Tomoe Sharingan to the almighty Rinnegan. His son, Indra, could use his Mangekyou without side effects. Why?
Because Indra, while a direct descendant, only inherited his father's Yin Chakra—the spiritual, form-giving half. His brother, Asura, got the Yang—the physical, life-energy half.
To achieve the Rinnegan, you needed both, a feat Madara eventually accomplished through decades of patience and a deeply questionable skincare routine involving Hashirama's flesh.
Azula wasn't initially aiming for the Rinnegan (though she'd happily accept it as a consolation prize). Her goal was more refined.
As a direct descendant of Indra himself, her bloodline was purer than the common rabble. She was sure of it.
She just needed enough Yang Chakra to catalyze her bloodline to its next natural state—a level that might simply mean having a colossal chakra reserve under normal circumstances, but would reveal its true worth when she unleashed the Mangekyou without the pesky side effect of eternal night.
And the best material for this catalytic infusion? Those gloriously overpowered Hashirama cells.
This, of course, was the source of her current monumental headache. Because this wasn't just a matter of acquiring a rare ingredient; it was a matter of personal history.
Mito Uzumaki, Hashirama's own wife, had taken care of Azula, treating her like her own granddaughter. And she had built a years-long, complicated, but genuine relationship with Tsunade, Hashirama's actual granddaughter.
The ethical calculus was infuriating. The very cells she needed to perfect her power were the living legacy of the woman who had shown her kindness—and the friend she had, against all odds, come to respect.
It was precisely this moral tug-of-war—this clash between cold ambition and unwelcome sentiment—that had finally forced her hand. She could no longer just sit and ponder.
And so today, with a carefully constructed calm masking a turbulent mind, Azula had come to see Tsunade.
(END OF THE CHAPTER)
Funnily enough, when I first started this fanfic, it was something like [Reincarnated As An Uchiha With Tsunade Template] then I changed to Azula with Tsunade template.
It was just that after writing and publishing the first chapter, I abandoned it for like three months before continuing, it was only know that I remember that Azula should have a template system starting with Tsunade Template, haha.
And I almost forgot that I have a chapter to publish today, see you later