I Am an Uchiha

Land of Fire, Hidden Leaf Village, Naka Shrine.

Today was the Uchiha Clan's monthly gathering.

The purpose of the gathering was to foster goodwill among the clan's factions, smooth over conflicts between clan members, and incidentally discuss how they could enter the Konoha Higher-Ups—or even become Hokage.

Though the Uchiha Clan was currently unpopular with the Konoha Higher-Ups, things had not yet reached the point of life-and-death hostility. At most, they simply could not stand the sight of one another.

Bang! An Uchiha Elder with white hair and beard, his face covered in wrinkles, slammed the table and rose to his feet. He glared furiously at the Clan Head seated at the head of the table and the old Uchiha men around him. So worked up was he that his voice had turned shrill.

"The Second Hokage's position was personally handed by Hashirama Senju to his younger brother, Tobirama.

"Because of Kagami Uchiha's death, we could only watch as the Third Hokage's position fell into Sarutobi Hiruzen's hands. And now, the Fourth Hokage's position has gone to Minato Namikaze.

"Wasn't the plan to hold second, fight for third, and charge for fourth?

"What kind of bullshit plan did you people make?

"Decades have passed, and This Old One has never even touched the Hokage's chair."

At that, he saw that the old men around him were either staring at the ceiling or looking at the floor. Not one of them spared him a glance.

"What?

"Are you still planning to charge at the Fifth Hokage Position??

"Minato Namikaze is only twenty-four this year. Looking at that long-lived face of his, he has no problem living another fifty years.

"Fifty years??

"Your sons will all be fucking dead by then."

"Sigh!"

Uchiha Fugaku sighed inwardly. He withdrew the hand tucked into his sleeve and calmly looked at the hot-tempered elder.

As the Clan Head of the Uchiha Clan, he had seen this sort of thing plenty of times.

The clan members were not in the best mental state. Whenever something displeased them, they overreacted. Some would even challenge his position as Clan Head at the slightest disagreement. After a weary silence, Fugaku pressed his hand down at the man, signaling him to sit, then turned his gaze toward the clan members in the hall.

Everyone gathered here was an Uchiha clansman who had awakened the Three-Tomoe Sharingan.

"Elder Ryoichi, sit down first."

"I refuse!"

Uchiha Ryoichi waved away the Clan Head's goodwill. He strode before the old man opposite him, grabbed him by the collar with both hands, and gritted his teeth.

"You old bastard, you were the one who proposed that hold-second, fight-for-third, charge-for-fourth plan back then, weren't you?"

"That's right!"

"Now the plan has failed."

"Ryoichi, don't panic. This Old One still has a follow-up plan."

"Follow-up, my ass—"

"My grandfather died back when he entered Konoha with Lord Madara."

"Ptoo!" Wiping the spittle that had splashed onto his face, Uchiha Asuka glanced at the two old men arguing nearby, then looked up at the ceiling as his mind slowly went blank.

He had been in the shinobi world for eighteen years. When he had first learned that he had transmigrated into the Uchiha Clan, he had been somewhat excited.

Then, just after his first birthday, he stopped being excited.

Because the Second Shinobi World War had left him as the only person in his family.

When he turned three, gained the ability to move around, and discovered that he had no golden finger, he had already begun considering how to leave the Uchiha Clan and make a living somewhere else. At worst, he could serve as breeding stock for another shinobi village and still live a wealthy life.

However, after reading through the clan's history, he gave up on the idea of becoming breeding stock.

Running away and changing his identity would have been fine, but if he chose to become a seed for another shinobi village, not only would he face Konoha's endless assassinations, he would also be hunted by his clan.

On top of that, the great shinobi villages had a secret agreement not to accept defectors from any other village.

It was entirely possible that the villages taking him in would chop him down with a single blade after he left behind offspring.

In the past, when certain Uchiha clansmen defected, they often died inexplicably while simply walking down the road.

Anyway, when Asuka saw that final passage, conspiracy theories immediately sprang up in his mind.

To keep the Sharingan—or rather, Indra—under his control, that filial son Black Zetsu was probably pulling strings in secret.

After realizing that becoming breeding stock was too dangerous, he began looking into business.

After researching it for a few days, Asuka once again strangled the path of commerce in his mind.

The shinobi world's technology tree was simply bizarre.

Electric energy, Chakra energy, wind energy—it had all of them. Light bulbs, paper, and cement were cheaper than before his transmigration. Farming, medicine, and other industries were practically cheating; no machinery was needed at all. They relied entirely on a pair of hands to magically produce results.

Once he killed off the business route, he began studying the path of a shinobi.

People said hard work could change one's fate, but that did not really apply to the shinobi world. Here, bloodlines changed one's fate.

He possessed one of the shinobi world's top bloodlines. Since childhood, he had studied diligently and trained his shinobi skills. He had believed that he would surely become either wealthy or distinguished in the future, someone extraordinary. Even in the worst case, he would not be much weaker than Uchiha Itachi. He should at least have the strength to protect himself.

But only after reaching the battlefield did he understand that he could not compare himself to the older brother of the Sage of Six Paths' biological son, Sasuke. That would simply be lowering the other man's ceiling.

The first time Uchiha Itachi went to war and saw such horrific scenes, he awakened the Sharingan.

The first time he went to war and saw such horrific scenes, he went numb.

Uchiha Itachi saw the shinobi corpses scattered across the battlefield and pondered The meaning of life.

He saw the shinobi corpses scattered across the battlefield and wondered whether he should just defect now. Blades, swords, and kunai had no eyes—he should not die on the battlefield.

When Uchiha Itachi saw familiar comrades die before his eyes, his Sharingan evolved, and his strength greatly improved.

When he saw familiar comrades die before his eyes, his thoughts sublimated, and his temperament greatly improved.

Everything that happened afterward was fairly routine: enrollment—graduation—participation in war—awakening the Sharingan—participation in war—awakening the Three-Tomoe Sharingan.

After the Third Shinobi World War ended, he became one of the few jonin in the Uchiha Clan and gained the privilege of attending internal clan gatherings.

"A gathering??"

Watching the old men argue, Uchiha Asuka's mouth twitched. Before coming, he had assumed the atmosphere here would be exceedingly solemn and that they would discuss matters concerning the Hokage and the Uchiha Clan's future circumstances.

Only after arriving did he discover that the atmosphere was extraordinarily lively. The topics under discussion could not exactly be called related to the Hokage—at best, they barely had anything to do with it.

Then again, these old men had probably been discussing the Hokage for decades. They had likely long since lost the novelty they once felt about it.

This gathering was really boring.

Grrrrumble~ Grrrrumble~ Feeling his intestines protest, Uchiha Asuka rose directly to his feet and walked to the center of the hall in order to end this boring meeting sooner. Facing Fugaku and the Elders, he said,

"Elders, stop arguing. I have a way to make the Uchiha Clan the Fifth Hokage."

Hmm??

As the young voice rang out, the Elders who had been arguing instantly fell silent. One after another, they turned to look at Uchiha Asuka, who had just spoken.

Seeing that it was the clan's newly promoted jonin who had stepped forward, Ryoichi raised an eyebrow at Asuka and asked skeptically,

"Go on. Let This Old One see what interesting idea the younger Uchiha of the clan has to offer."

"My idea is..."

After taking in the expressions of all the Uchiha jonin in the hall, Asuka rubbed his flat stomach, took a deep breath, and said,

"Clan Head Fugaku, would you consider divorcing and then pursuing Tsunade, the current Clan Head of the Senju of the Forest Clan? The Senju of the Forest Clan now has only Tsunade left. As long as the two clans intermarry, not only will the future Fifth Hokage surely belong to the Uchiha Clan, but the Senju of the Forest will gradually merge into the Uchiha Clan over time.

"Back in the Warring States Period, those clansmen dreamed of annexing the Senju Clan.

"And now... if Clan Head Fugaku could achieve the feat of annexing the Senju Clan, it would be an accomplishment worthy of being carved into stone tablets and passed down through the ages."

The moment he finished speaking, he noticed that the hall had become unnaturally quiet. At that moment, even the sound of a needle dropping to the floor would have been no quieter than a cup shattering.

The Uchiha Elders' gazes constantly shifted between Fugaku and Asuka.

"Hmph!"

An Elder whose face was covered in scars stood up. He turned to face Asuka, his voice low.

"A dignified Konoha noble clan actually has to rely on its Clan Head selling his body to become Hokage. Even if This Old One agreed to such a rotten idea, others would not, and the Clan Head certainly would not."

"That's right!"

An Uchiha Elder blind in one eye nodded in agreement.

"What a rotten idea. You actually want the Uchiha to mix with the Senju of the Forest. Though our plan to hold second, fight for third, and charge for fourth has failed, that does not stop us from once again pointing our swords at the Fifth Hokage."

"Bullshit!"

At this moment, the Elder named Ryoichi stood again. He pointed at the one-eyed Elder across from him and gritted his teeth.

"Back when Lord Madara was still around, we pointed our swords at the Hokage Position. But after the village was established, Lord Madara and your fathers handed the Hokage Position over to the Senju House, so we began pointing our swords at the Second Hokage.

"But less than two years after the village was founded, Lord Madara suddenly left Konoha.

"Our sword broke. Later, after hard work, Kagami Uchiha finally became the Second Hokage's guard, and we began pointing our swords at the Third Hokage. But when he followed the Second Hokage to the Land of Lightning for negotiations, he died on the road. The sword we had only just repaired broke again.

"Later, toward the end of the Second Shinobi World War, we hurriedly selected someone to serve as our figurehead and wanted to once again point our swords at the Third Hokage Position. After all, Sarutobi Hiruzen had not yet firmly secured his position at the time. Who would have thought that the man we selected was an idiot? He led the clan's shinobi into battle for a year, yet won fewer times than This Old One went to the toilet in a day, utterly destroying the clan's reputation.

"After the Third Shinobi World War began, the Clan Head finally gained a chance to become a Hokage candidate, and we once again pointed our swords at the Fourth Hokage.

"Then that freak Minato Namikaze appeared. Before our sword could even leave its sheath, it broke right at our doorstep."

At that, he swallowed, wet his throat, and continued berating the one-eyed old man while pointing at him.

"And now you want to drag This Old One into pointing our swords at the Fifth Hokage?? Go fuck yourself.

"If the Clan Head can become Hokage by selling his body now, This Old One accepts it. When I go to the Pure Land in the future, This Old One will personally kneel before Lord Madara and explain this matter."

Seeing the Uchiha in the hall gradually split into two factions, with a fight seemingly about to break out, Asuka quietly retreated to the doorway. As he slipped out of the hall, he casually shut the door from the outside.

"Tsk, tsk!"

Turning back to look at the group still erupting into argument behind him, Asuka curled his lips and said nothing.

There was something mentally wrong with the Uchiha. And as a mentally unstable clan, their management was naturally extraordinarily lax. At gatherings, not only could everyone speak freely, they could even discuss matters physically and settle arguments with ninjutsu.

And his suggestion that the Clan Head divorce and marry Tsunade, thereby indirectly becoming the Fifth Hokage, had successfully set off those clansmen who had failed in their attempt to point their swords at the Fourth Hokage.

"Lunatics!" With that, Asuka used the Body Flicker Technique and left the place directly. He planned to return and pack his things. After witnessing the Fourth Hokage's wedding, he would defect.

Sigh, no more stubborn talk. I've changed.