A senior phone?

Three months passed in the blink of an eye. Today was Dave's birthday. He was six years old.

Inside the Senju Compound.

"Whoa!! Uncle Madara! Isn't this way too valuable a gift?!" Senju Dave stared at the Uchiha Gunbai in his hands, then looked up at Madara with Guang shining in his eyes.

This was no replica. It was the genuine Uchiha Gunbai, the one Madara had always kept with him.

"Kid, put it to good use. Consider it part of that little girl Tsukimi's dowry from the Uchiha Clan."

Naturally, Madara had faced considerable resistance from the clan over giving the Gunbai to Dave. After all, it was a symbol of the Uchiha Clan with hundreds of years of history behind it. Madara had only persuaded the other old fossils by joining forces with the Second Elder.

Bullshit. Madara was the only person in the clan who could use the thing anyway. Now that the Village had been founded, he had no use for it himself. He might as well give it to his future son-in-law.

As he finished speaking, Madara glanced at Hashirama and Tobirama beside him, especially that ugly mug Hashirama. Ever since Madara Uchiha had started regularly calling Hashirama ugly, the man had been wearing the facial masks Mito gave him every single day.

"Ah!!! Clan head... wh-what dowry...?" The little girl Tsukimi Uchiha stood beside them, her face completely red with embarrassment.

"Hmph. Dave, this is the Sword of the Thunder God. It was your father's weapon of choice for killing people back in the day." The look his son gave Madara made Tobirama thoroughly uncomfortable. He pulled the Sword of the Thunder God from inside his clothes and handed it to his son.

"Awesome!! Lord Tobirama's Sword of the Thunder God!!" Zang exclaimed, stars filling his eyes.

Hiruzen nodded repeatedly beside him. Neither of these two little shits had shown much reaction even when Madara Uchiha gave Dave the Gunbai.

As he spoke, Tobirama also raised an eyebrow at Madara. Madara's younger brother Izuna had died by this very sword, and Tobirama had deliberately emphasized the words "killing people."

The atmosphere instantly turned icy. Scarlet Sharingan flared in Madara's eyes. The most agonizing moment of his life had been watching his younger brother die right before him. That memory remained branded into his mind like a scar, and today, Tobirama, the murderer himself, had torn that scar open again.

Hashirama inwardly groaned. This is bad. Izuna's death had remained a source of pain for Madara all these years. Normally, even Hashirama himself did not dare bring it up in front of him.

Zang, Tsukimi, and Hiruzen swallowed. What the heck happened...? Why did it suddenly get so cold here...?

"Hehe, Uncle Madara, I told you I had a surprise for you. Here, this is my gift to you." Just as the atmosphere reached freezing point, Dave pulled a colorful lump of metal from inside his clothes and handed it to Madara.

"What is this, kid?" Madara glanced at Tobirama, then deactivated his Sharingan and accepted the lump of metal Dave offered him.

When Madara saw the design on the back of the phone, his heart gave a jolt. It depicted him with the Gunbai in his left hand and a scythe in his right, his hair flowing loose as he stood atop Susanoo. He looked incredibly imposing.

"Uncle Madara, this is called a telephone. Flip open this cover..." Dave then gave Madara a detailed introduction to the senior phone.

"So you're saying that anywhere within Konoha, I can contact you whenever I want using this lump of metal, without any Chakra?" Madara asked, giving Dave a puzzled look.

"Yes. Uncle Madara, try dialing 666." Dave nodded, then had Madara operate the phone.

Soon, the senior phone in Dave's hand began ringing. It was a very ordinary ringtone, without the slightest melody. It even sounded a little like noise.

"Uncle Madara, can you hear me?" Dave answered the call and held the phone to his ear.

"...This..." Madara froze for a moment, then Dave hung up.

"Hehe, what do you think, Uncle Madara? If you miss me, you can call me anytime, anywhere! Of course, if you run out of credit, you'll still have to pay to top it up," Dave said with a smile.

"Dave... doesn't your uncle get one?" Hashirama asked, looking at Dave with wounded eyes.

Even Madara, his lifelong rival, had one. As Dave's uncle, how could he possibly go without?

"Here, here, there's one for everyone. Don't rush. You all get one, though yours aren't as pretty as Uncle Madara's." Dave pulled a pile of senior phones from inside his clothes and handed them out. Even Danzo and Hiruzen received one, leaving the two deeply touched. Dave was a good comrade and a great buddy. Naturally, Tsukimi, his little bride-to-be, got one too. The back of her phone featured a little pink rabbit, which made her very grateful as well.

None of them were as flashy as the one in Madara's hand, though. They had only simple decorations in brown, black, red, and other plain colors.

Dave also handed everyone a Phone Card. Following his instructions, they inserted the cards into a slot by the battery on the back of their senior phones.

"There. From now on, everyone can use their phones to call each other anywhere within Konoha," Dave said with a smile.

"Is this what you've been working on while disappearing all over the place these past few months?" Tobirama asked, looking at Dave in puzzlement. Over the past few months, Dave had always come home late after school. Of course, Tobirama had sent a Shadow Clone to follow him, but once he saw that Dave was spending time with a young civilian man, he said nothing more.

As long as he wasn't with someone from that evil Uchiha Clan!

"Mm-hmm! I'll start selling these in Konoha in a couple of days. The price will be one thousand ryo, with Phone Cards costing fifty ryo. You'll only need to pay twenty ryo a month for two hundred minutes of calls," Dave said with a smile.

Tobirama and Hashirama both nodded. This child was contributing to Konoha. Such a revolutionary invention actually allowed two people to contact each other throughout Konoha, which spanned hundreds of li, without using chakra. Tobirama also conducted experiments often, so he knew the materials used in the lump of metal in his hands were far from ordinary. Many of those metals were expensive.

The phone could not possibly cost less than one thousand ryo to make, yet Dave had set its price at exactly one thousand ryo. Even civilians could afford that. Afterward, all they would have to pay was a monthly phone bill of twenty Ryo at most.

Madara, however, was not thinking about any of that. So this was what Dave had been using the hundreds of thousands of Ryo he gave him each month to make. And Dave had even specially given him such a unique one. Madara could not quite put his feelings into words.

Dave, meanwhile, was thinking that he was about to make an absolute killing. Sure, this little lump of metal used plenty of precious metals, but the proportions mattered too! For instance, a piece of metal with excellent conductivity and signal reception cost a whopping thirty thousand Ryo despite being smaller than his palm, but that single piece was enough for him to make five hundred senior phones.