"Hmm, the kids are looking extra cute today."
That sounded a little odd...
It probably would look even more suspicious from an outsider's perspective; after all, it wasn't every day that you would see a person standing on the roof of the Academy to stare at the children below.
As his robes fluttered behind him due to the gentle lapping of the winds, Hidetada crouched down to observe the academy students duking it out in one-on-one matches against each other. He had come mostly out of curiosity, as he himself had never attended the academy.
By the looks of it, it was a total waste of time.
His brown eyes tracked the movements of the students below him. Their fighting skills were alright, but nothing to be surprised about. It wasn't so bad, considering that the ones fighting against each other right now were probably civilians because they did not have any sigils on their clothes.
Hidetada was almost about to leave due to boredom when an interesting name was called out from below him: "Mikoto Uchiha, step into the ring against..." He didn't care enough to hear the other girl's name as his eyes locked onto the figure of the familiar girl.
The black-haired girl looked the same as any other Uchiha. Freaking incestuous Uchihiggas, am I right? He always knew that Tobirama was correct.
It would have been almost impossible to tell whether the Uchiha was a girl or boy had he not already heard her name.
Mikoto stepped into the rather small circle for someone who would probably be around... thirteen? Dropping his own weight, Hidetada sat down on the roof with one foot dangling off the edge. The timeline made sort of sense? Maybe. The ages of the characters were never truly specified in the original anime. That made him wonder, actually, was this just some random Uchiha with a similar name to Sasuke's mother? That could certainly be a possibility.
His eyes traced the movement of her opponent, who had just stepped into the ring. By the looks of it, she was just a random civilian. Still, he was curious to see how Sasuke's mother would perform.
Rubbing his chin at the thought, he couldn't help but reflect on the fact that thirteen-year-olds were still in the academy. It lined up with the timeline of the war and the purpose of Konoha. The war hadn't reached a stage where the recruitment and graduation age of the academy students would be lowered just yet. Also, his grandfather had made this village for the sole purpose of making sure that children wouldn't need to suffer unnecessarily and fight on the front lines of the war. Yet, if things took a bad turn, then it was most definitely a certainty that children from the Hidden Leaf Village would be forced to participate as well. Though he was not entirely sure about the policies of the other villages, they did not truly maintain such ethics as Konoha and had already driven down the graduation age for their own respective shinobi academies.
Hidetada observed as Mikoto took up the traditional Uchiha taijutsu style. The form was easy to recognize after going through his great-uncle's notes. The Second Hokage had dissected everything and anything related to the Uchihas to a terrifying degree; he had noted down all their techniques and the respective strengths as well as weaknesses of those techniques.
Overall, his entire fighting style was made to counter everything that a normal Uchiha could throw at him. From his mastery over the Water Release to his invention of the Flying Raijin and the Reanimation Jutsu, everything was built to counter the Uchihas.
The Water Release to counter their Fire Release, the Flying Raijin to counter the prowess and prediction abilities of their Sharingan, and the Reanimation Jutsu to make sure that they had to fight their own loved ones. Hell, even the Shadow Clone was used to confuse the Uchihas, as they couldn't detect which clone was the original body.
Tobirama Senju deserved more credit than he was given.
He might not have been nearly as powerful as his brother Hashirama—no one was truly close to him in strength—but his strength was still nothing to scoff at. What his great-uncle didn't possess in raw power, he made up for through his innovation and intellect. More than half of the jutsu in the Forbidden Scroll of Sealing were made by him.
Even the ANBU Black Ops and the Academy system were created and popularized in the rest of the villages by him. Had it not been for the immense shadow cast by the legend of Hashirama, he would have surely been a lot more popular.
With a shake of his head, he drew himself out of his thoughts, Hidetada focused back on the fight that had just commenced.
Mikoto was waiting patiently for her opponent to make the first move, as expected. Without much delay, her opponent darted towards Mikoto—she was pretty slow—with her hand extended in the form of a fist to perform a hook. The Uchiha waited with a patient look on her gentle face before stepping backwards gracefully, causing her opponent overextend and letting the initial momentum from the hook carry her sideways. With a kick that barely had any effort behind it, Mikoto's opponent stumbled outside of the circle to fall on her ass.
'Not bad,' Hidetada couldn't help but commend Mikoto's quick disposal of her opponent. While the other student was pathetic, he could still tell from the bored look on her face that the Uchiha was not actually trying. 'But not very good either.'
The fight had actually made him more disgusted than anything. He curled his lips in distaste; if these weaklings were to be released onto the front lines, they would die immediately.
Or get raped, maybe both, actually.
He stayed there for a few more minutes observing all the students as they fought against each other. His sentiment was further solidified as he used his precious time examining them.
Except for Mikoto, there was not a single decent student in the entire batch.
Standing up, Hidetada prepared to depart after realizing that the only thing he had accomplished in this entire trip was wasting his time successfully.
Perhaps he was being too harsh on them; for all intents and purposes, he had meta-knowledge along with better tutors at their age. The combination of those two factors had made it extremely easy to advance as a shinobi. Accompanied by his desire to succeed, he shouldn't really be comparing himself to some random civilians.
Still, he would need to revise and overhaul the entire Academy system once he became the Hokage. Just another item in the list of things that he needed to accomplish and establish.
Taking one last glance at the group of students assembled below him, he paused as his senses tingled. Scanning the crowd, his eyes locked onto the person looking at him. Mikoto Uchiha was staring directly into his eyes. For a moment, she didn't move before her eyes widened. Deciding it was time now, he Body Flickered out of there.
...
The sun was a dying ember setting towards the west, bleeding its final light across the horizon. Its rays were a bruised palette of ochre and heavy gold, stretching long and skeletal shadows over the village, painting the rooftops in somber, flickering gradients of amber. On the surface, the moment possessed the stillness of peace, but it was a peace held together by thin threads. Beneath the quiet lay a sharp, jagged alertness that lived in the hearts of every passerby. Even within the high, nested walls of the village, safety could no longer be described as a certainty.
Eyes darted with a predatory caution, judging the worth of each person. The rhythm of the street had changed; the usual leisurely stroll found in times of peace by civilians was replaced by the frantic, clipped gait of the desperate.
Through the frantic currents of the crowd moved the tall, steady figure of the Senju heir. His pace was calm and serene, a sharp contrast to the jagged, hurried movements of the citizens around him. Even the shinobi traversing from one rooftop to another rapidly were not spared the tension of the period they currently resided in; they moved with a sharp, cautionary edge, their silhouettes flickering against the warm skyline like flittering shadows.
Hidetada walked with his long, brown hair trailing behind him, the strands catching the dying light of the sun. As the bruised gold of the evening brightened the warm honey colour of his eyes, he found himself once again struck by the raw beauty of the village.
The vast, crimson sky and the purity of the air were things he still struggled to reconcile with the memories of his previous life. Even after fifteen years in this world, the sheer vitality of the natural world, not polluted by the industrial revolution, felt like a gift that he was not willing to give up.
He wore robes of a pale, mossy green, the fabric light enough to twist and wave in the evening breeze. The sleeves were wide and edged in white, bearing the intricate designs of the Senju crest stitched in deep, traditional red. As he moved in the opposite direction of the crowd, the people seemed to part around him.
(Image)
"Good evening, Senju-sama," a voice called out.
A black-haired woman had paused in her rush to offer a respectful bow. Hidetada stopped, a gentle and genuine smile touching his lips as he returned the gesture with a depth that was uncommon for someone of his standing. "Good evening to you as well," he replied.
The woman lingered for a moment, her expression flickering with a mild, pleasant shock. It was clear she hadn't expected the heir of a founding clan to acknowledge a commoner with such practiced humility. She regained her wits quickly, offering a final, soft smile before disappearing back into the flow of the street. Hidetada watched her go before turning back.
An heir was probably not supposed to bow down to a civilian of no standing, yet he had never truly cared about his lessons on customs and social traditions; it was a difficult job not to fall asleep through them.
He could almost hear his grandmother's voice in the back of his mind, a sharp scoff followed by a playful threat to twist his ear for not paying attention to his lessons. It was an amusing thought, one that made a smile spread across his lips as the people around him started to take note of his presence. He didn't really mind the attention; he met every nod and every whispered greeting with the same respect and smile.
Taking a sharp turn off the main thoroughfare, Hidetada found himself in a narrow street of the village where the frantic energy of the crowds dissolved into a quiet as he took in his surroundings.
Here, the architecture was honest and ancient. The street was lined with houses built of dark, weathered timber and plaster walls the color of toasted grain, all of them bathed in the warm, honeyed glow of the setting sun. High above, the sprawling branches of willow and maple trees reached across the path, their leaves filtering the orange light into a mosaic of dancing shadows that flickered across the stone-paved ground.
He came to a halt, letting the stillness wash over him. It was a beautiful sight, stripped of the tension that gripped the rest of Konoha. Looking at the soft curve of a small red bridge in the distance and the rhythmic patterns of the terracotta roof tiles, a fierce sense of protectiveness settled in his chest as his eyes darted around, taking in the vista. This was the place he called home, something that he would sacrifice everything to make sure stayed safe.
(Image)
Shaking himself out of the quiet stupor, he continued down the lane until a familiar scent caught his attention. Tucked between a pair of traditional residences sat a small, open-fronted shop. It was an old-fashioned establishment, devoid of the bright, flashy signs of the newer districts. Instead, it featured a simple indigo curtain hanging from the eaves and a wooden counter polished smooth by decades of use. Inside, large ceramic vats were packed with ice and salt to keep the treats frozen, a precursor to the modern refrigeration found everywhere else in the village nowadays.
Hidetada stepped up to the counter, the wooden floorboards offering a welcoming creak beneath his weight. He caught the eye of the elderly shopkeeper and offered him a smile.
The scent of chilled sugar and salt-ice met him. Tucked into a large ceramic vat was a pile of bright blue popsicles, each frozen into a wide, rectangular block with two wooden sticks protruding from the bottom. It was a simple, dual-stick soda bar, designed specifically to be fractured down the center and shared.
"One of these, please," Hidetada said, reaching into the folds of his pale green robes.
The shopkeeper, a man whose face was a map of deep-set wrinkles and sun-darkened skin, looked up from his work. His eyes drifted from Hidetada's face to the red crest stitched into his sleeve. The old man's hands paused, and a small, knowing smile touched his mouth as he saw his arm approach the pocket where he kept his wallet.
"Keep your coins, young man," the shopkeeper said, his voice a raspy but warm sound. He reached into the vat, the ice crunching as he pulled out the popsicle and wrapped it in a thin, protective layer of paper. "It has been a long time since I've seen that crest walking these side streets. A descendant of Lord First is a sight worth more than a few ryo." The man seemed to pause, his wrinkled eyes becoming distant as he gazed at a wall, becoming lost in memory.
Hidetada paused, his hand still hovering near his pouch. He saw the genuine respect in the old man's gaze, "I cannot take it for nothing," Hidetada replied softly, his voice steady. The shopkeeper returned from his trip down memory lane and chuckled, waving a dismissive hand as he slid the frozen treat across the polished timber of the counter. "Consider it a discount for a neighbor then. Just make sure you enjoy it before the sun finishes its set. Cold things don't stay cold for long in this heat."
He paused, unsure of what to do before accepting the gift with a reluctant nod. Hidetada picked up the popsicle, the frozen block was solid; its cold temperature bit through the paper and pressed against the warmth of his palm. "Thank you. I'll be sure not to let it go to waste."
He stepped back out into the cooling evening air, the wooden floorboards offering a final, welcoming creak. He didn't unwrap the treat yet, simply holding it as he continued his walk through the quiet lane. The shadows of the willow trees danced across his path, and the air grew still as the last of the light began to fade, leaving him alone with his thoughts and the biting chill of the ice in his hand.
His feet led him towards the small bridge that he had sighted. The bridge spanned a narrow, clear stream that gurgled softly over smooth stones, its surface reflecting the indigo and violet hues of the approaching twilight. Hidetada paused once he was on top of it, the wooden railing cool beneath his touch, and unwrapped the popsicle.
Breaking it into two, his voice rang out gently with a hint of amusement.
"You know, you can stop hiding now."
...
A special thanks to viertel, Brandan Romine, Robert Thompson and Ivan Morales for subscribing to my $20 membership, I really appreciate it. Thank you.
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The second part of the chapter was inspired by Patrick Rothfuss's writing in the Nature of the Wind and the Wise Man's Fear. Check out his books if you're interested in fantasy with a strong male main character. I don't think I will be writing in this style in the future however, it's too time consuming and I almost fell asleep doing so.
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Word Count: 2675.