No one spoke in the meeting hall.
The air was heavy enough to wring water from, and every face was drawn tight.
No one said a word, but everyone had begun recalculating the stakes.
The Uchiha had laid things out plainly this time. All this talk of "amending the law" was, at its core, an attempt to recruit allies.
Anyone who sided with them stood to gain. That much was obvious.
Of course, it came with problems, too.
Siding with the Uchiha meant standing against the village.
In the past, these shinobi clans would never have chosen the Uchiha, not even at gunpoint.
Everyone knew what the Uchiha were like. Their brains simply didn't work like normal people's. Taking them as allies was asking for misery.
But things were different now.
The old fox Yan Uchiha was now at the helm of the Uchiha.
When it came to scheming, he was every bit as capable as the Hokage's camp. Even Shikaku Nara could do no better.
On top of that, he was ruthless and powerful, yet absurdly cautious. For every step he took, he planned three steps ahead.
A man like that clearly had what it took to accomplish great things.
With brains and nerve at his disposal and the entire Uchiha behind him, who could say what the future held?
At that thought, the scales began to shift in the minds of the shrewd people present.
As for the laws themselves, no one really took them all that seriously.
Back when Konoha was first founded, the Konoha Military Police Force had already possessed that authority. The Uchiha of that time simply hadn't known how to use it.
Now that someone as ruthless as Yan Uchiha had stepped forward, the Konoha Military Police Force would only become more assertive.
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