Watanabe Ichiro received the best possible treatment as he lay in Konoha Hospital.
His Senju bloodline was also steadily doing its work, and Watanabe Ichiro recovered rapidly.
But he was busy switching disguises and stirring up trouble elsewhere, so the Uchiha Ichiro lying in the hospital remained in a coma of unknown cause, showing no sign of waking.
This forced the medical ninja treating him to hold several all-night conferences on treatment plans. What little hair they had left fell out in handfuls, their bald crowns expanding from the Mediterranean Sea into the Sahara Desert until their scalps gleamed.
The Uchiha elders had stirred up serious trouble this time.
Actually, their attack on Uchiha Ichiro was not that big a deal. At most, their actions amounted to dissatisfaction with the current clan head and a collective attempt to impeach and remove him. It was an internal Uchiha matter, and Konoha had no grounds to interfere.
But Watanabe Ichiro's Wood Clone had found a way to rescue Kagami Uchiha, and after some treatment and rest, he revealed a bombshell-
Uchiha Kagami had colluded with forces from the Land of Lightning.
That immediately changed the nature of the incident. Whatever they did behind their own closed doors was their business, but what were they trying to do by bringing foreign powers into it? Betray Konoha?
Every last elder who had worked for Uchiha Kagami was hauled into the ANBU Interrogation Room and seated in a row. None escaped.
With the current Uchiha clan head still lying unconscious in the hospital, Acting Hokage Tobirama Senju directly stripped the Uchiha Clan of its Konoha Military Police Force duties and incorporated the force into the Konoha ANBU.
Between Watanabe Ichiro's purge when he first took office and Kagami Uchiha's desperate fighting on the night of the kidnapping, few rebellious members remained in the Uchiha Clan, and fewer still had any real strength.
Once the troublemaking elders were arrested, the only Uchiha left were ordinary clan members who wanted to live peacefully and stay out of trouble.
So they had no objections at all.
With this incident, every troublemaker in the Uchiha Clan had been dealt with on perfectly legitimate grounds.
From then on, the Uchiha belonged to Konoha. Its hawks would follow Konoha's lead without question, and the entire clan would stand united, with no further fear of internal unrest.
And with the two exceptional examples of Uchiha Ichiro and Kagami Uchiha before him, Tobirama Senju's prejudice against the Uchiha had all but vanished.
Though the Uchiha Clan tended to awaken their eyes after losing [love] and become extreme in their thinking.
If properly guided and taught the right values from childhood, however, they would become Konoha's strongest defenders and an indispensable part of the village.
And the Ninja Academy was the best way to instill those values.
The First Hokage of this world was Madara Uchiha, so he had been particularly forceful in certain areas.
For instance, he required every clan to allow a portion of each generation to marry outside the clan, and forced all school-age children from every clan to attend the Ninja Academy...
Naturally, the clans were unhappy with such rules. But faced with Madara Uchiha's Susanoo, they meekly thumped their chests and declared that the Hokage's will was their guiding light, and that they would obey all of Konoha's arrangements.
The Uchiha and Senju Clans set an excellent example, making especially bold reforms in many areas, which did much to reassure the other clans.
The only holdout was probably the rigidly traditional Hyuga Clan. Divided into a main family and branch families, they placed tremendous importance on bloodlines and particularly resented the intermarriage requirement.
The reason was simple: the Byakugan's awakening rate was just too high. Almost everyone in the clan had it. How could they allow such a powerful bloodline to spread outside the clan?
But could Gentle Fist beat Susanoo? Could it beat a Wooden Statue?
They had to comply whether they wanted to or not. They could leave Konoha and seek another path, of course, but where else in the shinobi world could they find an organization founded by two such powerful clans that was relatively harmonious and fair internally?
Besides, it bore repeating here that Madara Uchiha was particularly forceful.
When he caught wind that the Hyuga Clan wanted to leave Konoha, he dragged Hashirama Senju away from happily hauling bricks at a construction site that very night and paid a visit to the head of the Hyuga Main Family.
He simply said, "Konoha isn't somewhere you can come and go as you please."
Then he casually had his Susanoo perform a little dance to liven things up.
Before long, the food was finished, the cups and plates lay scattered, and the Hyuga clan members were sprawled together across the hall. One could say hosts and guests alike had enjoyed themselves thoroughly.
Utterly bewildered, Hashirama Senju was left there by Madara Uchiha to repair the house and, while he was at it, talk the Hyuga Clan around.
Konoha was wonderful, its prospects and future were bright, and the Hyuga absolutely wouldn't get cheated or lose out by joining. They should settle down and stay. He would protect them from now on and certainly wouldn't let Madara Uchiha come over to wreck their homes and beat them up whenever he pleased.
A slap followed by a sweet reward. Well, it hardly counted as a reward-Hashirama Senju had only offered them a dry, empty promise.
But the process didn't matter. In the end, the Hyuga Clan put down roots in Konoha.
Tobirama Senju disliked Madara Uchiha, but he had to admit that he thoroughly approved of Madara Uchiha's hard-line stance in certain areas. Hashirama Senju was too soft in that respect and could not compare.
After the First Hokage, Madara Uchiha, carried out sweeping reforms, his successor, the Second Hokage, Hashirama Senju, adopted a conciliatory approach. He talked the clans around, soothed their grievances, and brought everyone into greater harmony.
By the time things reached Tobirama Senju, Konoha as a whole was very easy to manage. Responsibilities large and small were sensibly distributed, and only a thin stack of documents sat in the Hokage's Office-a world apart from the village's founding days.
So Tobirama Senju intended to leave the position of Hokage vacant for the time being. Whether he took the title or not made little difference anyway.
He handled the official business now, just as he had during Hashirama Senju's tenure. Even when Madara Uchiha was Hokage, he had been pressed into service.
I may not be Hokage, but my presence is everywhere in Konoha.
Tobirama Senju, veteran of three administrations, felt utterly drained.
Especially since the cliff behind the village was meant to bear the carved faces of every Hokage. Looking at those two foolish faces carved into the mountainside, Tobirama Senju felt that only Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha could possibly find them handsome and imposing.
Besides, something still nagged at him.
-Am I really worthy of standing beside those two?
He had no answer, so he served only as Acting Hokage, leaving the Third's seat vacant for the time being.
He would leave the future to those who came after him.
Once the older generation who had fought one another passed away, their hatred would fade with the years. The tender new leaves sprouting on Konoha's great tree would support one another and become its new future.
We old leaves should become a raging fire that sweeps every obstacle from their path and burns all of Konoha's enemies to ash!
The internal troubles are gone. Next come the external threats...
Tobirama Senju sat in the Hokage's Office with his hands clasped, gazing expressionlessly at the green leaves dancing in the wind outside.
A green leaf flew into the room through an open side window of the Hokage's office building, drifted down on the breeze, and finally landed lightly on the desk.
Spread across the desk was a scroll that had been revised over and over, covered in dense, mottled handwriting.
Two red circles stood out on it. One enclosed the words "elite combat strength," and the other, "foundational talent."
And in the upper-right corner, a line of large, boldly flowing characters read-
"Shinobi World Unification Plan"
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