A few months blew by fast. While running the empire through Shadow Clones and personally lounging with the girls, I spent a sizable chunk of my time feeding my inner lab rat down in the laboratory.
As is customary for individuals of the blonde-haired Yamanaka persuasion, I, armed with suitable material, living and not-so-living subjects alike, developed a proper memory-reading technique. One that worked not just on humans, but on the Ōtsutsuki as well.
Through this, I read Kaguya's memories… and what I gleaned from her wasn't exactly a treasure trove. The most eyebrow-raising piece was about a certain progenitor of the Ōtsutsuki: Daidare. The catch was that Kaguya only knew she existed somewhere out there, and that she vastly surpassed even the Ōtsutsuki gods. Which was… unsettling. Not in a keep-me-up-at-night way, just a thought lingering in the back of my mind. I still had time on my side, and sooner or later, new visitors from that cursed clan would show up. Maybe one of them would know more.
As for Kaguya's more practical knowledge: she'd heard a great deal about what was called Shinjutsu, but she couldn't actually use most of it. Dimensional teleportation, various forms of spatial manipulation, cultivating and controlling the Ten-Tails. That last one I actually got to poke around with firsthand; her memories held a path to the dimension where Isshiki kept the Jūbi. That turned out to be particularly useful, giving me a working example of how to make a body even more resistant to hostile chakra than mine already was. On top of that, combined with the Ōtsutsuki's accumulated knowledge, it immediately made my planned globe-trotting search for the remaining Tailed Beasts completely pointless. I no longer needed them to learn how to absorb the full spectrum of the planet's Senjutsu chakra.
It just kept happening. Whether I was picking apart Kaguya, poking at the Ten-Tails, or tinkering with the Tenseigan up on the Moon, every single time, a flood of knowledge hit me that was damn near impossible to process all at once. But little by little, I managed.
Aside from the eye-cleansing ability, the product of all that effort was a unified Dōjutsu I'd managed to cobble together from literally every single one I'd ever seen. And now, both my eyes, and it should be noted, not only mine, housed what I'd generously describe as a mega-ultra-super-Dōjutsu. By local standards, anyway, and possibly even by the standards of some Ōtsutsuki. Though for me personally, it was nowhere near the ceiling.
To spare everyone a miles-long lecture, its abilities, on top of the Sharingan and Mangekyō I already had, included: significantly enhanced chakra perception and heightened sensory awareness, a near 360-degree field of view; improved combat tracking and elemental affinity comprehension; gravity manipulation, meaning attraction, repulsion, and the ability to create a gravitational trap-satellite; body mechanization, additional limbs and integrated weaponry; extraction of a person's Yin-spirit and the ability to read information from it; mass summoning of creatures; chakra absorption and technique neutralization; the summoning of the Earth's natural construct, the King of Hell, for interrogation, lie detection, and restoration of destroyed bodies; resurrection of the dead; creation and use of black chakra-receiver rods for suppression, immobilization, and signal transmission; remote control of bodies and puppets through said rods; summoning and control of the Ten-Tails' Earth Avatar; a chakra mode with a sharp boost to all stats, flight, and the formation of chakra "hands" and manipulators; controllable chakra spheres for simultaneous offense and defense with the ability to reshape them into weapons or constructs; a large-scale rotational destructive chakra attack; an immensely powerful chakra beam or blade capable of cleaving the Moon itself; control over the lunar mechanism and the Moon's trajectory; telekinesis and force pressure for manipulation of objects and masses; control over the Moon's dolls and guardians, previously operated by the Tenseigan; planetary genjutsu via lunar reflection; mass root manipulation to encase targets in cocoons and harvest their chakra; instantaneous replacement of the surrounding environment with an alternate dimension; opening portals between dimensions for travel and attacks; an instantaneous position-swap with a target or object at range; and the creation of invisible "doubles" existing just a hair outside this reality, capable of striking into the real world while being nearly imperceptible to ordinary senses.
In short: if the Mangekyō had been, as I called it, a "vat" containing only scraps of inherited properties, then now that same vat was nearly full. Relative to Kaguya, it was outright overflowing, since I'd unlocked fragments of techniques she herself couldn't use. And on top of all that, Isshiki's Dōjutsu abilities had been thrown into the mix as well.
All of it was well and good, of course, but over time it started to feel like too much, a kind of saturation that bred boredom. So, beyond entertaining myself through the aforementioned pursuits, my attention was caught by the arrival of a certain someone in Konoha. And for a bit of a change of pace, I decided to grace her with my Imperial presence.
"Let me remind myself to get you a map and a compass," I said, materializing in a hospital office buried under mountains of paperwork, where a blonde woman was currently rummaging through said mountains. "Welcome back, Tsunade."
She startled at the voice and turned toward its source by the time I finished speaking.
"…Emperor?" she asked. It was the question that, regrettably, far too many of my acquaintances had been asking me lately.
"For you, I'll make an exception, but only in official settings," I sighed. "Honestly didn't think I'd see you again. What've you got here… paperwork, logbooks."
"Shizune was very insistent, so we came back," Tsunade offered, as if justifying herself, still not entirely sure how to behave in my presence. "Asaka-san took me on, by the way. He said he'd report it to you at the monthly meeting."
That explained both why she was here and why she was reading things not just anyone was cleared to read.
"The chief physician, yes, I remember. As for you, that took guts. Good for you. Coming back to work in a hospital, in spite of a fear of blood…"
In response, the kunoichi turned away, clearly unwilling to revisit the past, the moment a beloved person died in her arms while she stood there helpless, unable to save them, and the trauma that had rooted itself in her ever since.
But I pressed on, shamelessly. "Want me to take that fear away?"
She looked at me with a mixture of skepticism and suspicion.
"I have some experience with digging around inside people's heads… and not only in the literal sense. One technique, and you could go back to being a full-fledged iryō-nin."
"A full-fledged iryō-nin…" Tsunade went blank. First at what was, in her view, a rather pointed insult from me; then from the realization that, given my current status, she was better off ignoring it. Then, turning it all over again, she gave a sharp shake of her head. "No. I don't want anyone poking around inside my head. Why did you even come here?"
"Oh, someone's already stopped doubting what I'm capable of. As for the reason, can't I just drop in on an old acquaintance?"
"According to Jiraiya, that never ends well."
"That's an insinuation, and it's not for everyone. As for the trauma… well then. I'll come to you in the night and do it to you without asking."
"…"
"I meant the technique. Just a bad joke."
Tsunade gave a careful nod. I took my leave of this unusually tight-lipped woman.
And so, the Village of Konoha gained a very high-ranking medic, and a second highly skilled iryō-nin in the form of Shizune. But my greed was far from satisfied. Because my offer of help had been refused, I was getting access to that very high-ranking medic in frustratingly limited doses. So, added to my daily downtime routine was a daily visit to Tsunade with the exact same question: "Mind if I do a little brainwashing?"
I'd planned to stop at ten. A person can only be tormented so much before it stops being fun. And besides, the reason I was doing it at all was because the odds of Tsunade actually feeling better and more whole after being healed were, frankly, very high. So I wasn't just stalking her. I was stalking her for her own good.
I always appeared in out-of-the-way spots, careful not to damage the Emperor's image. And collecting my daily "no" got more entertaining with every attempt. If at first she kept her composure, by the third day, there was a noticeable edge to her.
On the fourth day, she hit me with a "no" before I'd even asked. I asked anyway. Then, after a full minute of staring each other down, the Senju, who had figured out exactly what I was going to say, gave me her "no" after the question. Only then did I leave.
On the sixth day, catching her in the hospital corridor, I had the luck of stumbling upon her in a foul mood. That time, my "no" came wrapped in a stream of bitter muttering: "Another one… You people are driving me insane!"
Curious, I asked whether someone from the Yamanaka clan had started pestering her as well, which earned me a heated dressing-down in response. No, it was Jiraiya, pulling his old tricks, trying to court her. She'd smacked him across the face with the roses he'd brought and told him never to ask her out again. Again.
"Since Jiraiya's so persistent, why not just go on one date with him? He might turn out to be a decent person underneath it all," I suggested helpfully.
"He is not decent! A decent man doesn't peep through windows at fifty, and he doesn't write smutty pulp fiction for hormonal teenagers! And for the record, I'm not going out with anyone!"
"Our Hokage seems to enjoy the books," I shrugged. That earned me a look from her that communicated with crystal clarity exactly what she thought of Kakashi for that, what she thought of Jiraiya, and that she would very much prefer, putting it mildly, to never lay eyes on any of us ever again. "As for your rejection of companionship. Old age? Running a bit dry? If you let me deal with the blood phobia and actually come back into the world properly, I could help with that too, if it's been eating at you."
"…" Tsunade's gaze became a hundred times more eloquent. It was plain she very badly wanted to beat someone to a pulp. Funny who that could be.
Holding her temper together by the very last thread of self-control, the Senju cut sharply around me and stormed off.
On the seventh day, as I approached Tsunade in a dim back alley after her shift, her eye started twitching.
"I'd rather run into a serial killer," she began, arms folded tight across her chest. "You can stick a kunai in a serial killer's ribs. Break their nose, their arms, their legs, their spine, however many bones you like…"
"True. Mine are a bit too dense for that, and the Senjutsu chakra keeps the skin covered," I nodded along with complete understanding. "So, shall we fix that head problem of yours?"
"Fix yours first. No," she practically spat the last word and was gone.
I chuckled to myself. Cracking already?
The next day, we met when she opened her front door. By a remarkable coincidence, teleportation being what it is, I was standing right there on her threshold.
In my hands materialized the medical certificate I hadn't thought about in months.
Taking it, Tsunade read it through. Then, alongside the indignation of finding me at her home, a second expression joined the first.
"Did you bribe a psychiatrist? Or coerce him into issuing this using your position?" For a medical professional who hadn't grown up in some cartoonish post-Soviet bureaucracy, the idea was genuinely outrageous.
"No," I said simply. "If you don't trust me, you're welcome to go see him yourself. He used to help my academy instructor… The instructor got fired, admittedly. But for an entirely different reason."
She put her hands on my shoulders, seized me with chakra, and attempted to physically lift me out.
"Ngh…" Straining considerably more than she'd expected, Tsunade did manage to push me back over the threshold. "How much do you weigh?…"
"Not much," I answered honestly, measuring in terms of my own strength.
The Senju gave me a long, strange, drilling look, then shut the door once there were no uninvited persons left on her side of it.
On the ninth day, I met Tsunade by making myself at home in the armchair in her office, feet up on the desk, naturally.
Freezing in the doorway, she stared at the furniture I'd claimed, then exhaled deeply and crossed her arms.
"You're not going to leave me alone, are you," she stated. It wasn't a question. Before I could answer, she went on: "Fine! I… I've actually been thinking about what you said. A lot. And let's do the thing you're suggesting…"
"'Let's do the thing.' One-all," I cheapened her words without a shred of shame. "Though honestly, I expected you to hold out longer. Now I understand how Shizune managed to talk you into things. You're just a pushover." I nodded at her, completely unfazed by her irritated glare. "Well. It won't take long. Look me in the eyes…"
And so my daily micro-vacation came to an end, and Tsunade was relieved of her… trauma. Afterward, with almost no provocation on my end and almost no desire on hers to rearrange my face, we managed to have a reasonably civil conversation.
Tsunade mentioned that upon arriving, she'd gone to visit Hiruzen, and casually asked me what fate had befallen Orochimaru. She'd heard from the old man that he was "with me," but without the details, which the old man himself didn't know.
In response to her question, she accepted, with some suspicion, my offer of a trade: information for information. I then told her what had actually happened, that I'd done a considerably more thorough job of brainwashing the Snake than I had with her, pressing him into my service. Tsunade was… well, rather surprised by this, though it didn't seem to make her significantly more wary of me. My strength was already common knowledge, and my repeated asking rather than simply overriding her mind had actually demonstrated some degree of moral character and the fact that I kept myself in check. And since she felt no sudden urge to start worshipping me or erecting temples in my honor, she didn't have much real cause to suspect I'd quietly installed anything extra in her head. She suspected anyway, of course, purely on principle, which I met with cheerful ribbing that drove her up the wall even further.
Then, remembering the terms of our trade, I followed up with a shameless question about why she'd gone so passive on the personal front. In response, I received an irritated explanation: there had been someone, and she was observing a kind of celibacy out of loyalty to him. And said someone had, as it happened, died in her arms from blood loss, which was precisely what had given her the phobia she no longer had.
Not quite sure whether respect or pity was the appropriate response, I left without offering either.
After that, time lurched forward again.
I lived with my future harem in sprawling, brand-new residences, occasionally building new ones whenever I felt like switching scenery. Luxury had, without question, been added to the equation. In the home that Konoha was already beginning to quietly resent us for, my estate near the Village alone covered a hundred square kilometers. It was home to vast, manicured parks, pristine lakes, and a five-story villa of wood and stone built in a Scandinavian style, woven authentically into the landscape, with not a single goddamn pipe sticking out of the roof. Ahem. The villa itself measured over a million square meters of floor space. Modest, really, well within my means to build something orders of magnitude larger. But everything in that house was a work of art, of calm, of warmth. Its entire purpose was to bring peace of mind, and it delivered.
Beneath the villa sat the laboratory. Besides my own work in it, the girls had their own pursuits to keep them busy. Primarily, this meant self-discovery through various professions, along with some assistance on my end of things.
Most of the Empire's operational matters were handled by my subordinates. But as for its expansion, in a certain respect, I offered that task to those I trusted. And they didn't say no.
Hinata, having accepted that this would bring her global renown and with it, power and greater means to realize her future projects, agreed in the end to go out and subjugate several countries on my behalf. Cruelty wasn't exactly in her nature, but living with it turned out to be less of a burden than it sounded, as contradictory as that might seem. And her assignments were, in essence, on the lighter side.
In Stone, where ties to the Empire had already been firmly established and everyone understood which way the wind was blowing, Ōnoki immediately began bowing the moment Hinata appeared. He trembled as he acknowledged the Emperor's authority, visibly flustering her. She'd thought she was merely the envoy of a godlike being capable of erasing entire countries in a single strike, so she hadn't expected that kind of reception, let alone for it to throw her so thoroughly off balance.
After the shy Hyūga's visit, the aforementioned Ōnoki practically herded the entire Land of Earth's elite to the Village, just so the Emperor could receive them all at once and wouldn't have to make a separate trip to the capital.
Then, specifically to avoid sending our pink-haired companion anywhere alone, Hinata proceeded to the Land of Iron, home not to shinobi but to those who called themselves samurai. Having observed the Empire's way of life, they joined without aggression or any unnecessary nonsense. They turned out to be some of the most reasonable people in the bunch.
Following much the same approach, Hinata visited several more countries, informing them that an Emperor was coming and they should gather at a single point. The only difficulty, if it could even be called that, arose in one country, which happened by sheer coincidence to be the smallest. By that same coincidence, its ruler had been living completely cut off from the outside world, ignoring every piece of news circulating the globe. When he first received a letter embroidered in gold thread, he threw it in his treasury and ordered the messenger, who had delivered it in an irritatingly declarative tone, killed on sight. Naturally, the guards failed entirely, and along with their ruler, they were beaten up and physically thrown out by the girl. New governors were then installed in the country, while the old ones were simply executed shortly thereafter for the attempted insurrection.
And so, Hinata broadened her horizons, tempered her character a little further, and made her mark on the world as the Empire's envoy, especially in Stone and the Land of Iron.
As for the other girls, Sakura contributed the most to the "world conquest" effort, bringing a large number of smaller countries to heel.
Among her accomplishments was the subjugation of Sand, where the Daimyō dropped to his knees and begged to be accepted into the Empire before she'd managed to say a single word. And, while still pleading, asked her to pass along a request to someone of three names: that next time he chose a battlefield, he pick somewhere outside their country.
Beyond that, her experiences were frequently similar to Hinata's last visit. Because all too often, the rulers of the least accomplished nations seemed to have egos significantly larger than the Emperor's. That is to say, very large indeed.
As for Karin, she'd been with us long enough that she'd quietly and firmly woven herself into the fabric of the group without anyone really noticing. Her assignments had progressed steadily in complexity and trust, climbing higher and higher. From the moment she'd started her shinobi training, she'd also taken on some ninja-adjacent responsibilities, not field work exactly. She'd been curious about what specifically I was doing in the laboratory, and even after I explained, she still asked to assist. Seeing eyes full of drive and an eagerness to learn, I didn't refuse. Myself, along with a few others, began bringing her up to speed in medical science.
Now, Karin, possessing considerable power following her "elevation" but with few opportunities to demonstrate it in any flashy capacity, was looking for a test. Watching what the other residents of my household were getting up to, she found herself increasingly fired up by the idea.
It took more than a few attempts before Karin finally wheedled out of me permission to go "dominate a country" herself, and a big one, at that. But in the end, I decided to give her what she wanted.
"You'll be going to the Land of Lightning," I said. A cryptic smile spread across my face as we stood in the laboratory beside the floating capsules of figures that vaguely resembled humans.
"Oh…" She actually faltered in surprise, before a shadow of contemplation fell over her face. Something about this felt like trouble waiting to happen. But soon enough, she gave a firm nod. "I'll handle it."
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