After nearly an entire day of tinkering, the first phase of the "Uchiha Farming Plan" ended with the last light of day, amid almost universal skepticism.
After waving goodbye to the people remaining in the fields, now nominally tenant farmers of the Uchiha Clan, a haggard Shingetsu followed Madara Uchiha onto the road back to the clan compound.
She was distracted the whole way, her spirits as heavy and bleak as a mountain of debt.
Kazuko's tragic plight made her ponder what fate awaited ordinary people, who served as mere background scenery in this drama belonging exclusively to shinobi.
"Master, how do ordinary people even survive?"
Gazing at the blazing red sunset that seemed poised to burn the entire sky away, Shingetsu found her questions piling up until they made her shudder. That horror drove her to ask Madara Uchiha, who ambled ahead as though he had been waiting for her to speak.
"Ordinary people? Hmph. They're as tenacious as insects. Whatever hell they're thrown into, they'll do anything to survive."
Madara Uchiha stopped. With his back still turned, Shingetsu could not see his expression at all. Yet beneath that seemingly disdainful answer, she clearly sensed his admiration for that desperate will to survive.
Madara was a shinobi who had lived through two eras.
Unlike the young and inexperienced Shingetsu, Madara had personally experienced the cruelty and cold-bloodedness of the shinobi world and lost every one of his loved ones. He, too, knew the manifold suffering of this contradictory world as a pain cut deep into his flesh.
That pain had broadened his horizons. Even regarding ordinary people, whom most shinobi had neither the interest nor the need to understand, he had his own unique views.
"Doing anything to survive?"
Recalling those civilians whom the nobles and daimyō had oppressed until they were forced to flee from place to place, yet who still fought to stay alive, Shingetsu felt deep admiration. In their place, she would never have had such courage.
"They really are strong."
"Insects scraping out a living in the mud don't think they're in hell."
Madara offered no agreement or disagreement with her sentiment. He raised his head and stared at the sunset clouds burning like a sea of fire. Fragments of memory swiftly surfaced within those flames. Joyful or sorrowful, they flashed past like shooting stars, until finally, all burned to ash.
"The weak cannot choose their own fate."
Madara Uchiha's voice sounded like a lament.
"Take those people today. Their fate is in your hands now, decided by shinobi like us. Without Konoha, without your intervention, what do you think would happen to them?"
"They would die."
It was hardly a question that required thought. Without Konoha's protection, without the Uchiha's protection, those civilians would only be torn apart and devoured by nobles as cruel and greedy as jackals.
Considering how commonplace and unchanging such tragedies were, Shingetsu had to wonder whether the people of the shinobi world had already lost their last chance to change this unjust society.
If what Madara and Hashirama had founded together had been a new nation rather than a shinobi village like Konoha, would such tragedies no longer have to repeat themselves?
"Master, why don't you and Lord Hokage simply annex the Land of Fire?"
"...Shinobi affairs alone give Hashirama enough headaches."
Madara snorted irritably. Shingetsu's words had touched his sore spot.
If he and Hashirama joined forces, how could the Daimyō of the Land of Fire and its nobles, rotten and decayed to their cores, possibly stand against them? Not just the Land of Fire, but the Five Great Nations and even the entire shinobi world would bow at their feet!
Then they could burn every vile thing in this world to nothing, and build a new order upon the ashes and broken bodies.
But Hashirama had abandoned that prospect. His lifelong best friend had chosen another path, completely different and contrary to it.
"That naive fool cares more about the present than the distant future. Rather than have shinobi rule the world, he wants to separate shinobi from ordinary people entirely."
"Separate them?"
Shingetsu looked at Madara in surprise, but before he needed to answer, she worked it out herself.
"I see. So that's what one nation, one village means."
"Exactly. That makes what you want to do impossible, at least while Hashirama is alive. In his vision, to separate shinobi and ordinary people completely, both sides need someone to act as their ruler."
Realizing that Madara had long since seen through her little schemes, Shingetsu awkwardly touched her hair. Were her thoughts written straight across her face? How else could he guess them so easily? Before long, however, his words claimed her full attention.
"Shinobi affairs for shinobi, worldly affairs for the secular world?"
Shingetsu sighed, feeling that Madara Uchiha was right. Hashirama really was too idealistic, and the peace he sought was far too fragile.
With his unmatched strength, he could of course carefully preserve that fragile peace while he lived. But after his death, once there was no longer anyone of equal strength to serve as a deterrent, the fragile order he had built would naturally crumble, leaving endless trouble for future generations.
"How could those things ever be separated? Shinobi are part of the secular world, too."
"That's why I said he's hopelessly naive!"
Those words successfully ignited Madara Uchiha's anger. Sparks swept across the long-suppressed wilderness of his heart, tearing through everything in their path and twisting his insides with pain.
Hashirama, even a five-year-old child can understand this. Why can't you?
That evening, back home and lying in her warm bed, Shingetsu could not sleep at all.
With her eyes open, she recalled everything she had seen and heard that day. For the first time in her life, she felt such an urgent desire to kill certain people.
The feeling was very strange to her. Even when Hiruzen Sarutobi had nearly gotten her killed, her urge to kill him had lasted only a short while.
Yet after learning what had happened to Kazuko and confronting that inhuman exploitation, the urge that kept rising in her heart blazed like a scorching fire, as though it would burn forever.
Yes, the people Shingetsu wanted to kill were the daimyō and nobles perched high atop their kingdoms.
She had come to understand one thing: the daimyō were neither mad nor stupid. They treated shinobi as tools and civilians as slaves, then used shinobi to control civilians and civilians to constrain shinobi. Far from being insane, they were terrifyingly shrewd.
Thinking carefully about it, the four Shinobi World Wars of the future had swept countless civilians and shinobi into an endless, bloody furnace. Those wars had destroyed countless lives and happiness, yet left the noble class entirely unscathed.
Even in the Fourth Shinobi World War, which had dragged everyone into the conflict, the five daimyō had remained well protected behind the lines. Aside from the Infinite Tsukuyomi cast upon everyone, they probably had not suffered so much as a tiny scratch, had they?
On a battlefield where tens of thousands had died on the very first day, that could only be called a miracle.
And so, late that night beneath the high, bright moon, Shingetsu settled on her goal-
Become a powerhouse as soon as possible, then slaughter the daimyō for their gold drops!
But if Hashirama Senju was still alive then, he probably would not let her do any of that, would he?
Shingetsu hugged the Black Cat Plush in her arms and lazily rolled over beneath the covers. Just recalling Hashirama's harmless-looking face gave her a headache.
Fighting him was certainly out of the question, and talking him around seemed equally impossible. Madara Uchiha had already put both approaches to the test, and neither worked on Hashirama Senju.
But since I'm so young, couldn't I simply outlive him without doing anything?
Lying on her stomach, Shingetsu could not stop her thoughts from wandering until drowsiness carried her into dreams. In the last second before sleep, she was still hazily thinking that she would have to work hard tomorrow so she could kill all the daimyō sooner.
Yet after she got up the next morning, before Shingetsu could put the previous day's vow into practice, two uninvited guests successfully disrupted all her plans for the day and threw the entire Uchiha Clan Compound into an uproar.
The Senju brothers had arrived!
When Shingetsu, who had only recently gotten up, heard the news, she was bewildered and overwhelmed. A jumble of wild guesses flashed through her mind-
What on earth are they here for? Is the night of the clan massacre happening early? Is there still time to get everyone out?
Clearly, Shingetsu was not the only one thinking along those lines. Hōkaku, who had been about to escort her to the Clan Leader's Mansion, immediately turned back home and slammed the front door shut, locking it. He looked for all the world as though he were hiding from a plague.
The Senju brothers, whom Hōkaku and many Uchiha who preferred to remain anonymous regarded as a plague, were currently sitting properly in the Clan Leader's Mansion's drawing room, opposite the mansion's owner, Madara Uchiha, across a tea table.
Under Madara's piercing gaze, Hashirama lay slumped over the tea table without a shred of presence. His face was pressed tightly against its surface as he physically demonstrated the highest form of apology, while his free right hand clamped around his younger brother's white-haired head, trying to push him down onto the table as well.
"Tobirama, apologize to Madara!"
But Tobirama Senju strained his neck with all his might, resolutely refusing to bow his proud head before Madara Uchiha. For a moment, Hashirama's monstrous strength and Tobirama's stubbornly rigid neck reached a stalemate, with neither gaining the upper hand.
"Hashirama Senju! Let go!"
Tobirama was nearly driven mad with anger at his unreliable older brother. If his surname had been Uchiha instead of Senju, he probably would have been angry enough to awaken the Mangekyō Sharingan right then.
Of course, Hashirama was angry at his brother's refusal to cooperate, too. For whose sake had he left all those documents in the Hokage Building unattended and come all this way to apologize?
Wasn't it because Tobirama had been in the wrong and dragged him into it as well? Now that he was here, Tobirama had to apologize whether he wanted to or not!
"Tobirama, apologize!"
Sitting across from them, Madara Uchiha lifted his teacup and leisurely enjoyed the farce before him.
Only after he had slowly finished the entire cup, after Tobirama's neck and face had turned bright red, and one second before his own brother seemed about to wrench his head from his body, did Madara elegantly set the cup down.
"Speak. What exactly do you want?"
Hearing Madara's question, Hashirama finally lifted his head slightly from the tea table, cautiously revealing a pair of eyes like black glass marbles immersed in clear water, and stated the purpose of their visit.
"Madara, could you let the Uchiha children return to school?"
"What do you think?"
At Madara's cold retort, Hashirama immediately lowered the head he had only just raised, and his entire body began to droop.
He knew that meant no.
"Madara, I, I..."
After stammering for ages without getting anything out, an ashamed Hashirama Senju simply slammed his head straight into the tea table. His incredibly hard skull struck the little wooden table with a crack, splitting it, while he and his head remained completely unharmed.
"I'm truly sorry!"
Beside him, Tobirama Senju was utterly speechless. If Madara Uchiha had not been there, he would have rolled his eyes to the heavens long ago.
"Forgiving you isn't out of the question, provided you agree to one thing."
Watching Hashirama's comical display, Madara Uchiha curled his lips in a faint, mocking smile.
"Really?"
"Tell me, Madara! Whatever the condition is, I'll agree!"
Hashirama instantly recovered all his spirit. He promptly patted his chest and readily agreed to Madara's demand without a second thought. At the same time, Tobirama Senju's expression turned extremely ugly. He hurried to stop Hashirama from doing something foolish, but unfortunately, he was already too late.
"Brother, wait a moment..."
"Tobirama Senju is clearly unfit to continue teaching. Have him leave the school."
The spacious mansion of the Uchiha Clan Head fell utterly silent, so quiet that even the breeze seemed audible. Under Hashirama and Madara's gazes, Tobirama Senju's already pale face lost still more color.
"Master, I think Lord Hokage will probably come to discuss the school with you sometime soon."
The previous night, after escorting Shingetsu back to Hōkaku's home, Madara Uchiha had been about to turn and leave when she suddenly caught the hem of his clothes.
"You mean having you all return to school? Hmph. I've already given him one chance."
The recollection made Madara frown in disgust. He had trusted Hashirama when he sent Shingetsu and the clan's children to the school, yet that loathsome, despicable Tobirama Senju had dared use such underhanded methods against her!
If Hashirama had not stopped him, he would have torn that contemptible bastard to pieces long ago.
"There's nothing wrong with establishing a school itself. We just shouldn't let someone prejudiced run it."
Shingetsu calmly shook her head, as though being targeted did not bother her.
"Master, if Lord Hokage really does come to you, go ahead and agree."
At that, Shingetsu winked slyly. Light shimmered in her deep black eyes, brighter and more dazzling than the moon hanging in the night sky.
"But make sure you add a condition."
Before you continue