I Have a Bunch of Relatives Who Want to Be Hokage Chapter 42

"Everyone knows the Uchiha Clan's combat strength. It makes no sense for them not to take part in the fighting at the front." That was the Aburame Clan's stance.

"Lord Third, Lord Danzo, now is not the time to argue over this. Once the Nine-Tails enters the village, the consequences will be unthinkable. I believe the Uchiha Clan should go as well." Even the Hyuga Clan had taken the Uchiha Clan's side.

There were eight ninja clans in Konoha altogether. Counting the Uchiha themselves, it was now four against four.

Of course, the situation could not truly be calculated that way, but Sarutobi Hiruzen and Shimura Danzo were still taken aback. Setting aside the Hyuga and Inuzuka Clans, while the Aburame Clan was not part of the Hokage Building faction, it had always maintained relatively close ties with them.

If they still intended to make the entire Uchiha Clan cower in the rear, it would no longer be appropriate. It would stir dissatisfaction among these ninja clans.

No ninja who could become the leader of a village or a Shadow's advisor was an incompetent fool. What determined the success or failure of their political careers—or rather, their struggles for power—was the number of supporters they had, as well as the benefits their governance brought to the organization.

In the Hidden Leaf Village, the representatives of those supporters were, first, the Jonin Council, and second, the surviving ninja clans.

Though the ninja clans had declined, they were still an important foundation of the ninja village. As prominent families, they also possessed a certain ability to rally the common people.

Sarutobi Hiruzen made his decision immediately and announced, "Stop arguing. Ordinary ninja are useless against Tailed Beasts. All ninja of chunin rank and above, head to the walls and stop the Nine-Tails. Everyone else, guide the villagers to safety!"

It was a decision with no real flaws, one that did not target any particular ninja clan. Everyone could accept it.

Thus, the various ninja clans quickly divided up their people. Those meant to go to the walls went to the walls, while those assigned to evacuation hurried off to organize it.

Sarutobi Hiruzen and Shimura Danzo headed straight for the walls.

Yet for a long while along the way, the two old friends said nothing.

"Hiruzen, this is not a good sign," Shimura Danzo suddenly said.

"I know. Where is Orochimaru? Wasn't he with you? Why hasn't he come out for something this serious?"

"He is guarding Root, to prevent spies from slipping in amid the chaos."

The conversation ended. Sarutobi Hiruzen's expression turned grim, while Shimura Danzo's remained unchanged.

After so many years of mutual understanding, that brief exchange was enough for both men to grasp what the other meant.

But they likely had no spare energy to think about such matters now, because they heard a beast's roar they had not heard in many years.

The sound came from the south, accompanied by fierce winds that made the surrounding trees sway violently. The earth itself was trembling.

In the night sky, the southern horizon had been dyed a terrifying crimson red.

Both men's hearts sank, and they quickened their pace once more.

As the walls came into view, the two finally saw it over the distant structure, which did not seem particularly tall.

A gigantic crimson fox, its nine tails lashing through the air, was striding toward the walls.

In the distance, the ninja atop the walls unleashed a rain of shuriken and kunai, while all manner of ninjutsu erupted wildly. Yet none of it affected the Nine-Tails. As though it could not even sense the attacks, it simply continued walking toward the walls.

Inside the walls, people scattered in every direction amid cries of panic.

"You beast!" Sarutobi Hiruzen's eyes turned red.

Since inheriting the position of Hokage from the Second Hokage, regardless of what mistakes he might have made, he and Danzo had truly done everything in their power to keep the Hidden Leaf Village away from war. Such a sight had never appeared before.

This was the greatest mockery of all his years of effort!

Shimura Danzo controlled his expression a little better, but the fury within him was no less intense, and his gaze was dark.

The two old men quickened their steps. Behind them surged a dense mass of Konoha ninja from the northern and southern districts, charging toward the walls under their lead.

Outside the walls, Uchiha Shingen stood atop a great tree, watching the Nine-Tails draw ever closer.

Just moments ago, Namikaze Minato had used Flying Raijin: Guiding Thunder to transfer away one of the Nine-Tails' Tailed Beast Bombs. As a result, Uchiha Obito had no choice but to attack Namikaze Minato again, and the two had now run off somewhere else.

Only this Nine-Tails remained, its eyes glaring with Sharingan.

Kunai could not pierce Susanoo.

Likewise, ordinary ninjutsu was no damn use against the Nine-Tails.

To deal with such a massive aggregation of chakra, only power on the same scale would do.

Uchiha Shingen began forming hand seals with both hands.

Standing Upon the Earth

Uchiha Shingen had plenty of chakra.

Or rather, the Uchiha Clan itself was basically a clan of enormous chakra reserves.

Uchiha Madara had less chakra than Senju Hashirama, but that did not mean he truly had little chakra. Back then, no one had more chakra than Senju Hashirama.

The Uchiha Clan also had another trait: once they awakened the Sharingan, their chakra began to multiply.

With every evolution, their chakra increased by at least double.

The Uzumaki Clan was renowned for its powerful stamina, abundant innate chakra, vigorous life force, and long lifespans.

The Uchiha and Uzumaki were actually much the same. Once the Sharingan reached three tomoe, an Uchiha had no less chakra than an Uzumaki of the same level—only their life force was not as outwardly apparent, since the Uchiha did not actively develop their physical energy.

That might have been Indra's fault, but Indra had trained under Hagoromo Otsutsuki. From the beginning, he trained both aspects, and with his innate three-tomoe Sharingan, he had started at the peak. Ashura had only managed to catch up to him, never surpass him.

With the accumulated knowledge of three lifetimes, Uchiha Shingen had been developing his physical energy from the very start. Though his Sharingan was still three tomoe, it had long ceased to be the same breed as anyone else's three-tomoe Sharingan.

Even Shingen himself did not know where the limit of his chakra lay.

The most he had ever used was near the end of the Third Shinobi World War. After all his teammates were killed and only he remained, he had gone all out, chasing a group of Mist Ninja for an entire day before creating a "Mist Ninja Confession Wall" with a single Ice Release technique at the coast.

After finishing all this, he could still use the Body Flicker Technique all the way back to camp and make it in time for dinner.

In any case, he had never experienced the kind of exhaustion where you were too tired to stick out your tongue or move, where squeezing out chakra felt like squeezing toothpaste from a tube—not in either of his two playthroughs.

Hopefully, the Nine-Tails would come through and let him experience it. Opportunities to lavishly burn through chakra right on one's doorstep were rare.

There was actually no definitive answer as to whether Tailed Beasts grew stronger with more tails, though the Ten-Tails did indeed have ten tails.

Ninjas were also fond of setting up their own fan theories. For instance, many ninja claimed that Sand Village's One-Tail represented wind and sand, even though the One-Tail's chakra actually possessed an innate Magnetic Release nature.

Likewise, some people had wildly imagined that the Nine-Tails played with fire.

Up close, it really did look a bit like that. The Nine-Tails in the manga was depicted as a huge furry fox, but in Uchiha Shingen's eyes, the Nine-Tails directly ahead resembled a flaming mountain. Its crimson chakra radiated a dazzling light, like a raging blaze illuminating the sky.

But it was only chakra. Fundamentally, it was no different from the transformations of human chakra, except the violence of Tailed Beast chakra far surpassed the limits of human imagination.

The Nine-Tails' claws crashed brutally into the ground again and again. The earth trembled, violent winds howled, and trees that had once stood rooted there toppled in swathes.

It seemed like a god, an incarnation of light, blooming with its most fervent radiance as though determined to burn away all darkness and unleash the light.

On the city wall, the ninjas' gazes were filled with grief and despair. They were not worried about their own lives; Leaf Village lay behind them, and their families were all there.

The ninjas who had previously leaped from the city wall in an attempt to stop the giant beast could not even make it pause. Ninjutsu that had once reaped lives freely on the battlefield was not even enough to scratch the Nine-Tails' itch.

Yet when it sneezed or casually swiped a claw, people were sent flying.

The city wall gave no one any sense of safety.

Now, in the eyes of Leaf Village's ninjas, only Uchiha Shingen stood before it.

The Leaf Village ninjas led by Sarutobi Hiruzen and Shimura Danzo had also reached the city wall.

Only when they came close and faced the mountain-like beast before them did they feel as though they could barely breathe, their hearts crushed by extreme oppression.

They too saw Uchiha Shingen standing before the Nine-Tails.

Even among the Sarutobi Clan, who were at odds with the Uchiha Clan, no one took pleasure in his misfortune. Before such a catastrophe, there was no distinction between ninja clans. They were all ninjas of Leaf Village.

There were only two camps here: the mountain-tall Tailed Beast and humans as insignificant as grains of sand.

All sound vanished from the city wall. Between heaven and earth, only the heavy footsteps of the Nine-Tails remained, along with the sounds of forests being torn apart and great swathes of trees crashing down.

Some watched with sorrow in their eyes. Another unyielding comrade was about to try to stop the Tailed Beast with his fragile life, even if there was only the slightest possibility.

But he was not the first, nor would he be the last.

At this moment, every ninja present was prepared to die.

Under the gaze of countless eyes, Uchiha Shingen's voice rang out clearly.

He never spoke the names of his ninjutsu aloud, since he found it unnecessary and silly, but today, an exception was needed.

"Ice Release: Uchiha Big Zam."

In a single instant, white replaced fiery red, blocking everyone's vision.

A white giant as large as a mountain stood upon the earth with its magnificent body.

It was a giant with sharply defined angles. It was supposedly modeled after a human shape, yet it did not really resemble one. The Akimichi Clan was plump enough, but even they could not eat themselves into a shape like this.

The outward-protruding shapes at the bottom of the white giant's legs and around its waist resembled a skirt.

Some had once said that the Zaku was the pride of the Principality of Zeon.

Naturally, no one in the Naruto world would say that. Yet when Uchiha Shingen shaped a mecha from another world with Ice Release and displayed it before them, everyone instinctively felt that the ferocious giant before them was something truly terrifying.

As for Sarutobi Hiruzen, Shimura Danzo, and the others of the older generation, something similar from the past surfaced in their minds.

Then they heard Uchiha Shingen's voice once more.

"Sage Art: Majestic Attire!"

Rather than white, it was more like a translucent crystalline substance. It rapidly crawled over the giant's body, forming something akin to armor.

At the very least, the ninjas thought that enormous thing was probably a shield.

It was just that the design of this armor... was so strange!

Wait, why did it look so familiar?

"Ah! Isn't that Master Shingen's creation?"

Someone suddenly shouted beneath the city wall.

They were civilians still being evacuated. Though the southern district was not as crowded as the northern district, it was still a densely populated urban area, and evacuation could not possibly be completed in such a short time.

The arrival of large numbers of Leaf Village ninja troops had merely made the evacuation more efficient.

But the Nine-Tails was already very close to the city wall, so even the "Big Zam" created by Uchiha Shingen could be seen by the people behind it.

At last year's Uchiha Ice and Snow Exhibition, Uchiha Shingen had gone all out. The exhibition grounds had been located in the southern district, and the people here had been deeply impressed by Uchiha Shingen, who could clap his hands together and raise ice sculptures from the ground. Even though nearly a year had passed, everyone still vividly remembered the immensely entertaining exhibition.

Back then, the Uchiha had erected two huge ice sculptures at the exhibition entrance.

The YMS-09 Prototype Big Zam and the RX-78-2 Gundam Unit 2, the latter also known as the Original Gundam.

There was no Gundam to watch in the Naruto world, but men had little resistance to giant mecha like these, so everyone remembered them vividly.

"So Master Shingen is such a powerful ninja!" The tension among the crowd seemed to ease somewhat.

At that moment, Uchiha Shingen noticed none of this. He was inside the Great Demon, and in Sage Mode, the markings on his face were still shifting.

Ahead of him, the Nine-Tails came to a halt. It stared blankly at the unfamiliar thing before it. Though controlled by the Sharingan, anger still welled up within it.

It opened its massive jaws, and another Tailed Beast Bomb began to form.

Uchiha Shingen changed his hand seals again.

Not only did the ground tremble violently, but even the city walls beneath the ninjas' feet shuddered.

The white giant known as the "Uchiha Great Demon" blasted Wind Release power from beneath its feet, lifting itself into the air.

It charged toward the Nine-Tails at astonishing speed, extending one hand toward the Tailed Beast Bomb!

Becoming a Ninja Means Riding a Tailed Beast at Least Once

For Tailed Beasts, firing a Tailed Beast Bomb felt much like vomiting. They simply shaped the chakra inside their bodies and spat it out.

There was no denying the power of a Tailed Beast Bomb. The number one Tailed Beast fan in the ninja world was Uchiha Madara. When he toyed with the Five Kage, he casually sliced off two mountaintops with a single swing while using Perfect Susanoo, yet he still solemnly claimed that the power of that strike was comparable to that of a Tailed Beast.

But in the end, the mechanism of a Tailed Beast Bomb was what it was. What kind of effect it could achieve depended on the person facing it.

The instant the Nine-Tails fired its Tailed Beast Bomb, Uchiha Shingen had already controlled the Great Demon to block its path, striking the classic pose of "Friend, please stay."

Power was never achieved overnight. Uchiha Shingen firmly believed that.

Fighting Tailed Beasts had always been his obsession.

Yang Release for health during the day, Yin Release tea tasting at night—never a single day of interruption. After all that hardship, this was the day he had been waiting for!

The Tailed Beast Bomb slammed solidly into the Great Demon's right palm.

The instant they made contact, it began to destabilize. At the same time, the Great Demon's right arm crackled. Even with the enhancement of Dragon Cave Sage Techniques, alarming cracks rapidly spread across it.

However, Uchiha Shingen had already completed his second technique.