After cursing for most of the day, Ōnoki felt a little thirsty.
He turned to take a drink of water and spotted Kitsuchi sitting obediently nearby, reading the documents.
So he switched targets and began hurling abuse at Kitsuchi.
"You useless good-for-nothing! Why can't you learn from Uchiha Seiichi? He's only ten, and he's already like this. What are we supposed to do in the future? Huh? What are we supposed to do? Tell me!"
Kitsuchi felt helpless too.
Things were already like this. What could they do?
Unless the major Shinobi Villages joined forces against the Uchiha Clan, none of them could handle the Uchiha alone.
Besides, even if they joined forces, any victory would be a Pyrrhic one, and their losses certainly wouldn't be small.
The major Shinobi Villages might even lose their standing.
(Uchiha Seiichi: You really don't need to think so much about it. If we actually fight, you won't have to worry about any of this stuff afterward.)
Besides, he was used to his father by now. He just had to ignore him.
Kumogakure.
A, the Fourth Raikage, who had only recently taken office, was also reading the latest documents on the Uchiha.
"Yo, yo, yo~ Big bro~ Take a look~ This Uchiha kid is no joke~ Fool! Idiot!"
"Damn it, B! Talk properly!"
Watching Killer B rap and wave his arms around, A didn't indulge him. He threw a punch straight at Killer B's head.
"Oh~ Not bad, yo~ Big bro, you fool! Idiot!"
Killer B dodged the punch with a Body Flicker Technique.
Instead of running away, he stayed in the office and kept provoking A.
Veins bulged on A's forehead.
He forgot all about the Uchiha documents.
He lunged straight at Killer B.
"Thump, thump, thump~ No~ Yo~ Time to go~ If I stay~ My life's in danger~ Run, run, run~ Yo, yo, yo~ Bye, big bro~ Fool! Idiot!"
Killer B had grown up with A and knew him all too well.
One look at A's expression-
He would probably be spending at least three days in the hospital.
He had to get out of there.
But Killer B just couldn't help being obnoxious. Even as he ran, his mouth never stopped.
The two jumped out of the window, one after the other.
In the blink of an eye, both were gone.
A short while later-
There was a boom.
"Ah~ That hurts a little, yo~ Big bro~ Fool! Idiot!!!"
Boom! Boom! Boom!!!
First, a tremendous boom came from the distance, mixed with some rather indistinct rapping.
Then the booms began following the rapping, with a pretty good sense of rhythm.
Until the rapping disappeared, leaving only the booms.
Standing at the window of the Raikage's Office, one could see a huge cloud of dust rising at the edge of Kumogakure.
Kirigakure.
The Mizukage's Office.
"My lord, this is the latest intelligence on Konoha and the Uchiha."
The Fourth Mizukage, Karatachi Yagura, waited until the ninja reporting to him had left his office.
He rose from the Mizukage's seat, walked over to the empty sofa, placed the documents on the table, and knelt on one knee as though reporting to someone.
Suddenly-
The space above the sofa began to distort. Then a masked figure in black robes appeared on the sofa, listening to Karatachi Yagura's report while picking up the documents from the table to read.
The black-robed man wore a white mask with a spiral pattern that covered his entire head.
The entire mask had only one opening, over his right eye, revealing his scarlet Three-Tomoe Sharingan.
"Konoha! Uchiha!"
The man was none other than Obito Uchiha, the turncoat Seiichi called Tuzige.
He read the documents before him. The pictures of the Uchiha Clan celebrating with beaming smiles made him deeply uncomfortable.
His hand unconsciously tightened around the edge of the documents.
The three tomoe in his right eye involuntarily began spinning faster, before a Mangekyō Sharingan with a triangular throwing-star pattern appeared in his eye socket.
"Rin, wait for me! Kakashi! Minato Namikaze! Konoha! And the Uchiha! There's no hurry. We'll. Take. Our. Time!!!"
Obito forced the words through gritted teeth.
"Kirigakure will be first. Karatachi Yagura, make the preparations. The 'Bloody Mist Village' plan officially begins! If anyone stands in the way, you know what to do, don't you?"
"I understand, my lord!"
"As soon as possible."
"Yes."
Obito took one last look at Uchiha Seiichi's picture and casually tossed the documents into the air. As the pages fell one by one, his figure slowly vanished against the backdrop of papers fluttering down.
Within the Land of Fire.
A medium-sized town.
"Come on, place your bets! Hands off once you've bet!"
"Low, low, low!"
"High, high, high!"
"Haha, I won!"
"No, no, no! I don't believe it! You must be fucking cheating! Let go of me..."
The view rose.
It was a noisy, crowded gambling house.
At its very center stood an enormous gambling table.
Gamblers packed so tightly around it that there wasn't a gap.
Only one spot had a comfortable amount of room, with no one daring to squeeze in.
That spot belonged to two women. No, to be precise, a girl and a woman.
One was a black-haired girl who looked to be in her early teens, dressed in a black kimono and holding a little pink pig wearing clothes.
The other was a beautiful, mature woman with a stunning figure.
She had pale blonde hair, usually tied into two thick ponytails, a blue-purple Yin Seal mark on her forehead, fine, short, pale blonde eyebrows, light brown eyes, pale red lips, and red fingernails.
She had fair, delicate skin, an exceptionally ample bust, and a full, curvaceous figure.
Yes, she was a very beautiful, mature female ninja.
She wore a tea-green, black-trimmed coat over a loose, sleeveless kimono-style top, a black sash around her waist, and dark blue calf-length trousers.
This woman was Princess Tsunade, one of Konoha's Sannin, renowned throughout the shinobi world.
Tsunade loved gambling so much that even the back of her coat bore a large character for "gamble."
However, her gambling luck was so terrible that everyone had nicknamed her the "Legendary Sucker."
"Come on, place your bets! Hands off once you've bet!"
"Lady Tsunade, you can't gamble anymore! If you keep going, we really will have to sleep on the street tonight."
Shizune clutched their last little bit of money tightly against her chest, refusing to give it to Tsunade.
"Oh~ It's fine. Listen to me, Shizune. I've been losing for so many days now. Surely I can't keep losing.
"Even if we're taking turns, it should be my turn by now. Don't worry, I'll turn things around this round. Not only will I win back everything we've lost, I'll make a fortune too. Then we'll feast tonight! Hahahahaha..."
There was a flush on Tsunade's face. From the look of it, the alcohol had already gone to her head.
With her left arm around Shizune, she put down her sake flask with her right hand and forcibly pulled their lodging money out of Shizune's arms.
Then she slapped all the money down on the outcome with the lowest, outrageously tiny odds of appearing: a triple.
Not just any triple, either, but the highest of all triples-three sixes.
Since it was the least likely result, it also meant that a winning bet would bring the highest payout.
If three sixes really came up, not only could they recover everything they had lost that day, they could even get back a hundred times the stake they had lost before without any trouble.
But...
Before you continue