On a dark, windy night, a crow perched atop a utility pole.
"Itachi, we can begin."
Kō put on the mask that had accompanied him through his bloody battles in Root. His mouth moved beneath it as he spoke to Itachi beside him.
"I see."
Itachi put on his mask. Through its two eyeholes, his scarlet Mangekyō spun rapidly.
"Then, begin the operation!"
At Itachi's command, the members of New Root quietly surrounded their destination.
The Naka Shrine.
At that moment, a group of middle-aged Uchiha had gathered inside the Naka Shrine.
As veterans of the Second and Third Shinobi World Wars, they had witnessed Konoha's former prosperity and experienced the deaths of close friends on the battlefield.
This inevitably led to a problem.
They had developed some minor mental issues.
Under the influence of various factors, those issues had led them to a new idea: overthrow Sarutobi's tyranny. Konoha belonged to the Uchiha.
After all, Konoha had been founded jointly by the Uchiha and the Senju.
The First and Second Hokage had both been from the Senju Clan. The Uchiha had accepted that. After all, those two were stronger, and they themselves had abandoned their own forebear.
Madara: "The day I left the village, not a single clan member was willing to follow me!!!"
Hashirama: "Didn't I follow you the whole way?"
|ू･ω･` )
When it came to the Third, everyone had initially been dissatisfied with Hiruzen Sarutobi's rise to power, too. But there was nothing they could do. They could not beat Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Shinobi Hero who had earned illustrious military honors on the battlefield and been entrusted with the village by the Second on his deathbed.
Fine, then. They would keep waiting.
Then came the Fourth: Minato, who had inherited and further developed Flying Thunder God,