Chapter 193: The Petty Uchiha Great-Grandma
"Who told you to kneel, Sasuke."
Sakura's voice landed at his ear, and the knee he'd been lowering went rigid.
Kneel.
Why was I going to kneel?
What reason made that feel automatic? What was it that pushed my shoulders down?
For a disorienting moment, Sasuke couldn't find the answer.
Submitting to a Daimyo — wasn't that just what shinobi did? Hadn't everyone always done this? Even the First Hokage, the so-called God of Shinobi, Hashirama Senju himself, had bowed before the nobility.
A shinobi who doesn't submit to a Daimyo.
What would that even be?
The thought had no clean resolution. But his body, following some instinct he couldn't name, was already straightening — bringing him up to stand beside Sakura.
Sakura's eyes moved to Kushina and Shino. Something in them dimmed slightly.
The law of this world. A law so old and uncontested that no one noticed the weight of it anymore.
Shinobi kneel before Daimyo. This is how things are. This is how they have always been. And this is how they will always be?
Sasuke was different from the others.
Rebellion was written into him at a molecular level. That bone-deep refusal to accept what he was handed.
That was exactly why, in the original story's timeline, he'd ended up wanting to tear the whole structure down after the war — to change everything. He probably hadn't been thinking about Daimyo specifically in that moment. But if one had been standing in his path, Sasuke would have gone straight through without hesitation.
As for Naruto—
"Very well. Do as you've arranged."
Koyuki's voice was flat, cold, looking out over all of it.
Sakura's refusal to kneel didn't interest her. Kneeling or not kneeling — what difference did it make? Her life, from here, was going to be spent inside a small palace, at the disposal of other people's needs.
Han rose slowly, pressing down something uneasy in his chest.
He'd caught one moment in Sakura's expression — just a glimpse — as she looked at Koyuki.
Jinchūriki developed a specific sensitivity to how others looked at them. Years of being watched, assessed, categorized.
What he'd seen in her eyes wasn't disdain for Koyuki herself. It was indifference to the title. To the entire category it represented. As if asking her to kneel before a Daimyo would be an affront to her personally.
This kind of person—
He couldn't make himself apply the word "shinobi" to her. Automatically. Without thinking.
Because a shinobi who didn't kneel before a Daimyo — was that still a shinobi?
Han stood with the question, unable to answer it, feeling something he couldn't name — fear, unease, and beneath those, a faint, uncomfortable flicker of something that might have been hope.
"Right then."
"Pack it up. We're moving."
Sakura said it evenly, looked at Koyuki once without ceremony, and turned away.
Sasuke followed without being asked.
Kushina stood for a moment, not quite sure what she'd gotten wrong.
Sakura...
Was that disappointment? Toward me?
What did I do?
The group returned to the ship. The crew loaded their remaining equipment. The ship continued toward Snow Country.
Iwa's vessel followed at a steady distance behind.
Sakura stood alone at the railing, watching the sea.
If kneeling is what makes you a shinobi, then I'd rather not be one.
If Hokage requires kneeling before a Daimyo—
Then why can't a Daimyo kneel before the Hokage?
"Sakura."
Sasuke appeared beside her, uncertain. He'd been replaying the last twenty minutes and finding no clean conclusions.
He just knew that the person who'd made his thoughts this tangled was standing right in front of him.
"Sasuke."
She turned toward him, her earlier abstraction gone. Whatever had been running through her was already settled.
"What do you think shinobi are?"
Sasuke blinked at the question. Then answered the way Iruka-sensei had taught him:
"Someone who uses chakra."
"Does the chakra come first, or does the person?"
She didn't pause.
"...The person."
He hesitated slightly.
"Are Daimyo and nobles people?"
"...Yes."
Her tone carried no deference to the categories whatsoever. Sasuke didn't know quite what to do with that.
"Shinobi are people. Daimyo and nobles are people. Why do we kneel to them?"
!!!
The question landed like something dropped from a height.
"Are you two seriously having this conversation out in the open?"
A lazy voice came from the upper deck.
Hikaru had apparently woken up at some point and was leaning over the second-level railing, looking down at them with considerable interest.
"Going to report us?" Sakura said, not looking up.
"Is that a challenge?"
Hikaru's eyes narrowed.
She remembered the last time she'd underestimated this girl — freshly dug out of the coffin, body not yet recovered, knocked out before she could finish a sentence. That grievance was still logged.
"Take it however you want."
Sakura gave no ground.
If Hikaru intended to protect the Daimyo-and-nobility system — if she'd been listening and was going to make that choice — then she needed to be dealt with now. Every Kage in the current world combined was a smaller obstacle than Hikaru would be in that scenario.
"Hey — both of you — can we maybe—"
"Just talk—"
Sasuke, caught between the two of them, was doing his best impression of someone who wanted very much to be elsewhere.
Hikaru's hand was already on her sword. Sakura's knuckles had gone tight.
"Stop!"
Sasuke stepped between them.
Hikaru's blade stopped an inch from his neck. Sakura's knuckled fist stopped at his cheek.
Sasuke became very still, feeling the edge and the impact-force on either side of his face, and quietly swallowed.
Close.
Very close.
That was almost a very short reunion with Mom and Dad.
"Tch."
Hikaru stared at him for a moment, then sheathed the blade. She turned away.
"Fine. For his sake — I'll call that hand-chop of yours settled."
"What hand-chop?" Sakura said, immediately.
!!!
Both of them acquired question marks.
"The one where you knocked me out without any warning, the day you dug me up!"
Hikaru's composure slipped slightly, voice rising. "The one I've been—"
"Oh, that. That was because you were about to attack Sasuke."
"I don't care! You should have asked first!"
Hikaru set her hands on her hips, fully irritated now. The girl had enormous strength. That had hurt. The fact that no one seemed to consider it memorable was distinctly annoying.
"Fine, fine." Sakura leaned her head toward Hikaru. "There. Hit me back."
Hikaru stared at the pink head being presented to her.
Her face went red.
"I am NOT petty!"
Sakura straightened up.
"I didn't say you were."
...
...
Hikaru had accidentally said her own thought out loud.
"No one on this ship is surviving until we dock."
The sword came out again.
Wait—
After a considerable amount of noise and some structural damage to the upper railing, things eventually settled.
Hikaru stood with her arms crossed, glaring at Sakura. Sakura returned this with matching energy.
"In the future, could you just say what you mean."
Hikaru's jaw was set.
"My words were completely clear. Maybe you need to read more."
"I — what?!"
Sasuke closed his eyes briefly.
They were fine before. What happened today.
"She doesn't mean it the way you're taking it," he tried.
"Then how does she mean it?!"
"Forget it." Sakura looked away, expression closing down. "Pretend I wasn't talking about anything."
Hikaru's eye twitched.
She did it again. Now I look like the unreasonable one.
"Hmph."
"Your business doesn't involve me and I'm not getting involved."
She pulled her coat tighter, glared once more at Sakura, and started to leave.
"So when you're in that situation — what do you do?" Sakura asked, behind her.
Referring to the moment when Han had knelt.
Hikaru had been awake for the whole thing.
She stopped.
And this time, whatever had been sharp in her voice was gone.
She turned just enough to look back, meeting Sakura's eyes.
"My knees are harder than my blade."
She left that hanging in the salt air and disappeared around the corner of the upper deck.
Sakura exhaled — a quiet, real exhale.
Good. She stays out of it.
She looked up. Seabirds in the grey. The ocean stretching out forever.
She found herself thinking about the Fire Daimyo. She'd seen him once, at a distance, years ago — hadn't thought much of him at the time.
She was thinking about him now.
The image of kneeling in front of that particular person — the elaborate face paint, the small fan, the complete theatrical packaging of someone who had never worked a day toward anything — produced a distinct physical discomfort.
She was going to be Hokage.
And a Daimyo?
What is that worth, in front of a Hokage?
Sasuke watched her.
For the first time, he understood her completely — not the surface of her, not the version she showed in training or in a fight, but her. The thing underneath everything else.
She was a natural rebel. Not strategically, not as a method — it was structural, bone-deep. Her entire relationship to the Daimyo-and-nobility system was contempt so fundamental she'd never had to work at it.
She was different from everyone else here. She had always been different.
He thought about himself.
Would I kneel before them?
No. Never.
"So, Sakura—"
He leaned against the railing beside her, voice quiet.
"What do you want from me?"
She looked at him. Something in her expression opened.
"Sasuke. I'm going to become Hokage."
"When I do — be part of my personal guard."
The first time she'd ever said this to anyone directly. Not as maneuvering, not as strategy. Just as something true.
Hiruzen had been pushing her toward the seat for years, steering her incrementally. Even the first time she'd said it out loud — in front of the old man, early on — it had been instrumental, a means to the Yin Seal.
Now she could feel the edge of it like something real and near. She knew what she actually wanted.
To sweep away the rot. The hierarchy. The thousand years of accumulated corruption wrapped in ceremony and called tradition.
Six Paths Hagoromo had said people should understand each other. If she couldn't understand the Daimyo class, and they couldn't understand her — wasn't that a betrayal of his entire principle? Two rigid hierarchies in one world, neither capable of seeing across the line?
She intended to correct that.
With everything at her disposal.
Sasuke looked at her — at the light coming through her hair, at the wiry frame that somehow felt immovable — and felt something distant and complicated.
She was right there. Close enough to touch. And completely unreachable.
Not in strength. In dimension. Like she existed in a part of the world he wasn't built to access.
He understood, finally, what the feeling had been — all of it, this whole time.
Longing. Genuine, specific longing.
And he also understood, in the same moment, that it was over before it started. Not because of anything she'd done or hadn't done. Just because of the nature of the distance.
His Mangekyo had opened for her.
Even the hatred — Kotoamatsukami, born from resentment's distortion — had dissolved in that moment when her life was at risk. And what was left, uncontested, was Amatsukami.
Fortune. In the direction of her continued existence.
"Alright," he said.
If I can't have it, then I'll witness it.
I'll be the sharpest thing she can reach for. Whoever stands in her way is mine to deal with.
The feeling that didn't get to start—
Let it stay buried. Let it just be something that was, briefly, and then wasn't.
"Thank you, Sasuke. When I'm Hokage, I'll make sure you eat well and drink well."
"I'll get you twenty wives."
Sasuke stared at her.
She'd been entirely serious a moment ago. Now this.
"...Alright," he said. "I'll hold you to it."
"I was joking. You know that'll make you look terrible, right? They'll call you all kinds of things."
"Well, our Hokage arranged it," he said. "As a subordinate, I have no choice but to accept."
He didn't know why, but somewhere in this ridiculous exchange, something in his chest had gotten slightly lighter.
Is this what I'm like?
More complicated than I knew.
"Sasuke, you've gotten devious. Did you know that?"
Snow Country harbor.
The ship reached port. The crew gathered their equipment. Sakura climbed off wrapped in a standard-issue Konoha cold-weather cloak, looked at the white expanse, and felt a memory of the Frost Country front surface briefly and recede.
Snow. Still annoying.
"Sakura — what do we do from here?"
Kushina appeared at her side, also cloaked, watching her carefully.
Something had shifted in the other girl. She couldn't have named what, exactly.
"What do we do?"
Sakura smiled.
"Protect the film crew. That's our mission. Don't forget."
She reached up and brushed a snowflake from Kushina's red hair.
The red stood out something vivid against all this white.
"But — aren't we supposed to handle the current Daimyo—"
Kushina glanced toward the Iwa group.
Sakura patted her shoulder once and didn't answer.
The cake had already been divided. She didn't need to lift a finger.
Iwa had sent one of their most serious shinobi on this errand. Doto Kazahana, Snow Country's current Daimyo, wasn't a meaningful obstacle against this roster. Even if the Third Raikage himself had come back from the dead and planted himself in the road, this group would walk over him.
Kushina worked through the logic and arrived at the same place.
B-rank mission for their team. A-rank for Iwa. Let Iwa earn their cut.
"Come on. Let's find the crew."
Sakura reached over and ruffled Kushina's hair once.
"Maybe you can get a cameo. There are stranger starts to a career."
"You're teasing me!"
Kushina's cheeks went slightly pink.
"I'm completely serious," Sakura said, already walking.
"You are absolutely not serious."
"I'm serious in a completely made-up way," Sakura agreed.
Kushina scrambled to catch up, muttering.
On the gangplank behind them, Hikaru stepped off the ship, took in the snowfield, and made a small dismissive sound.
"Come on," Sasuke said, resigned.
"Fine, fine~~"
She waved a hand at him and fell into step — technically following, technically in her own direction.
She'd never said anything out loud about it. But film production — cameras, lights, the whole orchestrated apparatus of it — was genuinely interesting to her.
Where she'd come from, a traveling performance troupe was a rare and remarkable thing.
This was something else entirely.
☆☆☆
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