Pre-Chapter A/N: Here we go with another chapter. Next four chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
XXXXXX- OROCHIMARU
"You sent for me, Hokage-sama," Orochimaru spoke from his knees. He hated every second of it, but this was not his time. Like a snake, he would wait. When the time came, when he was strong enough, this man would fall. It was inevitable.
"Rise, Orochimaru," his voice spoke. He was being mocked, he knew. Still he rose, even if he hated that he was doing as this man ordered. This boy. Tsuna's little brat of a cousin, now Orochimaru's superior.
Orochimaru stood at attention, only for him to gesture towards one of the seats in front of his desk.
"Everyone just stands there all the time. Makes me have to speak too loudly just to be heard. I think since it's just the two of us we can have a more relaxed vibe, no?" he asked. Another small bit of mockery. He was inviting Orochimaru within striking distance. At that distance, if he reached out with a kunai, he could split his throat open before the Anbu could even land on the ground. Yet he did so regardless, telling Orochimaru that he did not see him even as a slight threat. And it galled him that he was probably correct. But that would not be the case for long.
Orochimaru accepted the offered seat. He was the supplicant here.
"You asked for leave for personal reasons."
"Yes, Hokage-sama," he said.
"And for permission to leave the village as well. That is highly unusual."
"Per Article 43 point—"
"I know the law. My granduncle wrote them, did he not? Yes, you are entitled to leave, but that is only with my approval, and I don't see why I should grant it," he said.
Orochimaru remained silent. Sensei had said if it would just be a rejection, it would have come through a messenger.
"Of course, you can convince me," he said.
"My reasons are personal."
"I know. And as your Hokage, I can not ask what they are. However, if I do not know what they are, I am unable to grant the leave. I can't just have an S-ranked shinobi wandering about the Elemental Nations wearing a Konoha headband and have no idea what they are doing, can I?"
Orochimaru buried his desire to scoff. Sensei had predicted this all perfectly.
"I mean to train with my summons in their realm," he said.
"It was my understanding that the Ryuchi cave was lost," he said, leaning back and letting his eyes settle on Orochimaru. At least Orochimaru thought his eyes were on him. That Hyuga gaze was difficult to pin down at the best of times.
"I have managed to find a lead to it." he said.
"I see. And you mean to achieve sage mode?" he asked. It made sense that he would be able to easily estimate that. But it didn't matter. He had to approve the leave now that he knew the reason behind it. Orochimaru would have preferred for him not to be aware of the inevitable increase in his own power, but by doing so he had ensured that if the move was blocked then the village would see him as a coward blocking the development of another shinobi to maintain his hold on power. It would be disastrous.
The Hokage had all the power, but all the power in the world would matter little if he was facing a revolt of his jounin.
"I do," he confirmed.
"Well, I wish you all the best of luck. Three months and no more. I am sure you find that reasonable," he said.
Orochimaru had no complaints. He only needed a single month. The location of the cave had been narrowed down a fair bit. He just had to do the final legwork of searching for which one out of the few dozen that it could be in the area. And when he did, achieving sage mode could not itself be all that hard. The man across from him had managed it easily enough.
"Thank you, Hokage-sama," he said, suppressing his smile. And so you bring your reign to an end, Shorirama Senju.
He stood and turned to leave, walking a few steps before the Senju's voice brought him to a halt.
"And Orochimaru?" he turned to look at him only to find him smiling widely. His chakra was brought to bear, pushing down on Orochimaru's body. He could not move. There was so much of it. Like a boundless pool that just grabbed a hold of him and thrust him head first into the water, holding him down until it felt like he would drown. Was this the Kyubi? No, this felt nothing like tailed beast chakra. This was all him. Monstrous.
"When you come at the king, you best not miss," he said. And then Orochimaru could breathe again.
XXXXX- TOSHIRO TAKEHADA
Like he had suggested, they left at dawn the next day. All five of them stood in formation at the village gates while the sun rose from the distant forest ahead of them. He looked around at the group given to him. They were all wearing the temperature adjust stealth suits with what armour they felt they individually needed worn on top of said stealth suits. It made for a far from uniform group, but that was fine by his own estimation. It meant they had personality. Or as Shori had once joked when they were younger, it meant they weren't NPCs, and NPCs were always the first to die.
Of course, Shori had never explained just what an NPC was. Only that Toshiro needed to try his hardest not to become one by maintaining both a unique sense of style as well as his own unique skill set.
"We follow the plan to the letter. If we ever need to adjust, I will sign at you in Anbu standard. I trust you are all familiar?" he asked, receiving nods from all but one.
"I'm sure you'll get the gist of it," he said in consolation to the Uzumaki before signalling for them to get going. A communications issue like this would ideally have been resolved before the mission began, but this was something Toshiro felt equipped to address.
The Uzumaki had their own set of signs that they preferred and as the teammate to their clan head, he was more than familiar. He just had to be sure to sign in both Anbu basic and Uzumaki signs when the time came. Easier said than done, of course, but thankfully not impossible.
They made a beeline for the coast of the Land of Fire. They were going to take the straightest route to the Land of Waves and from there were going to take a more circuitous and slow path to the Land of Water. Kiri weren't the most organised of villages, but even they would be able to arrange a somewhat competent patrol when they were surrounded by water on all sides.
----
The Land of Waves was not the most prosperous of nations. They stuck out like sore thumbs upon arrival. The fisherman Toshiro had been able to convince to ferry them from the coast of the Land of Fire to the island had taken his money and then set off right away. It was almost like he wanted exactly nothing to do with what they had going on.
They walked on heedlessly though. Marching with full confidence into a market that, while already scarcely occupied, seemed to get even more deserted with their arrival. Those who remained stared at them like passing attractions, while those with more sense in their heads made excuses and left in no time. He waited until they were near in the middle of the market before making his move. Toshiro turned to the team, wordlessly instructing them to carry out stage two of the plan. He formed a shadow clone underground and substituted with it. He felt the chakra signatures of his teammates as they all carried out their own substitutions, spreading them out across the market place. Their clones continued to walk around. They would visit the mayor, ask if he had any missions for them and when he said he didn't, they would turn and leave by water walking, ensuring that a few of the villagers saw them leave.
The originals, however, they had business to conduct. With a single seal, he moulded his chakra to begin to bend the light around him to obscure him from the naked eye. The meisaigakure jutsu was something that their Sensei back when they were genin had not spared any effort in seeing that they mastered. Now well into his shinobi career, Toshiro could appreciate the foresight. He never left the village without finding a reason to use the jutsu, it felt like.
He rose from the ground, now invisible to the naked eye, and turned in the opposite direction, heading out of the market and towards one of the houses near the outskirts. Without the stealth suit, he would have worried about leaving a chakra trail that led straight to their informant, but with it he felt confident in his untraceability.
When he reached the house that looked just like any other, he knocked thrice. And then stopped before sharply kicking the bottom of the door. None of those sounds would pass the vicinity of the house. Seals would make sure of that. While he had not been involved in their planning, his clearance level had allowed him see just what the Safe Haven project had built. The door swung open. On the other side of it was a brown haired man with brown eyes, a stout frame and a slight body asymmetry that made his right side stand taller than his left. He was unsightly, and otherwise non-descript. The perfect appearance for a man who would spend most of his time indoors without arousing suspicion or interest.
Toshiro allowed his meisaigakure jutsu to fall upon entry.
"The sons of the leaf require shade," he said.
"The branches always provide," the man responded.
Now that he was properly within the safehouse, he noted that it was barely anything special even from the inside. Sparse yet, but what poor civilian had the tools to ensure their place had more than the most basic furnishings. Continuity errors like that one would break any cover faster than a full drunken confession. Konoha's intelligence apparatus had outgrown those sorts of blunders even since the time of the Second Hokage, and Shori had done nothing but improve and build upon the blocks left behind by his predecessors.
"I am expecting four others," he said.
The deep cover agent nodded easily. He asked no questions. While their anti-torture training was expected to be very effective against the enemy's means of information extraction and the man even had a deadman switch, there was no need to risk a deep cover agent like this one knowing more than he ought. And he was not even trying to put himself in such a difficult situation, which Toshiro found at least slightly commendable.
He would not have been able to deal with the curiosity. Another knock at the door. The man went through the same song and dance with the next person to come in as she revealed herself to be Fumikage. In a matter of minutes, the rest of his team had arrived at the house. Just as he had briefed them to do, everyone remained silent.
"Is that everyone?" the deep cover agent asked, turning to Toshiro.
"Everyone you need to worry about," he responded, keeping it vague. The agent nodded, like that was the answer he was expecting. It might even have been.
"Long stay or short stay?" he was asked.
"Brief visit," he responded with the correct code. All of this was multi-layered access confirmation. All aimed at showing they had the clearance to make use of the bunker's true purpose. It wasn't just a rest spot for shinobi or even a source of information. It was both of those things, of course. But also a less well-known third thing at the same time.
The agent weaved a long line of seals. Ninety-five was the number where Toshiro got bored of counting. And it kept going for a while after that. When he was done though, a set of handles appeared on the wooden ground beneath them. Pulling up on it showed it to be a set of double doors that opened upwards to reveal a stairwell. The agent gestured for them to follow, and they did.
Onwards and forwards. Into the breach.
The basement chamber was dark. And not a natural sort of darkness. It was like all the light that went into the room refused to do its job in lighting it up. The door was open behind them. Light should have beamed in through that and lit up at least the first few stairs, but no such thing was happening. Most likely a defensive measure. The Uzumaki did tend to come up with very strange things when instructed to make a place secure. He remembered a few of the things they had done with the Academy records when the worry had begun to rise that enemy operatives could seek to steal them to integrate Konoha's now much superior training measures.
Thinking about that made him wonder how the Academy was doing without him there now. Probably fine. It had been months since he had needed to step in for the day to day. There were dozens of smart chunin and jounin who worked to make sure that his attention was only needed for the rarest of events. And if Shori had been comfortable giving him a mission, it was unlikely that he would have done so without some plan in place for managing his absence.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, another round of seals followed before the darkness melted away, replaced by a soft glow that came from nowhere and everywhere at once. The bunker was at least multiple miles deep in the ground, he could tell already. Trying to funnel some chakra into the earth made that much clear. The stairs had done some space folding or something. He remembered Renji near putting the whole room to sleep with a long speech about how they had managed to figure it out in R&D. This was probably one of the first practical uses of that particular development.
He looked around the room next, noting how it stretched out farther than it should have. That had probably been a reason why they had gone this deep for the bunker. It made sure that they could expand laterally without any of the neighbouring villagers managing to notice a thing. It spoke of a degree of care and foresight that Toshiro had started to associate with that trio that ran Konoha's intelligence. Shika with the bureau, Uraume with Anbu, and Shiba with... whatever it was that he did.
"I assume that you are here for Operation Tidal," the deep cover operative said, turning to them now that the room was revealed. Code upon code.
"I have no idea of which you speak," he said, speaking the carefully memorised line. The agent nodded, and then walked over to the nearest wall— some distance away— before pressing his hand to it, on a seemingly random spot. The wall melted away, revealed to be a false wall that took them to a separate chamber.
And that was where the treasure was. Underwater exploration suits. Suits specially made to filter in oxygen from the water with specially designed seals. Flippers on the feet enhanced with seals that would enhance their swimming force to ensure that every stroke was maximally effective. Then there was the surface of the suit, designed to allow them to blend in with the bottom of the ocean.
"How many do you have?" he asked.
"Enough. Now for the five of you, I will need to make some adjustments for individual sizes. That should be done in about an hour. I'll get to it. Make yourselves at home in the open space," he said.
"Don't you need our measurements?" he asked.
"I've seen you, haven't I? I don't need more than that," he said, and then the wall was back in Toshiro's face.
"What even is this place?" Fumikage asked.
"A launching point," Fugaku said, looking around. The walls were filled with arrayed weaponry and other bits of equipment.
"Well deduced," Toshiro said to the Uchiha. The man just huffed, seeming to brush off the compliment. Didn't his sort thrive on positive reinforcement?
"A launching point for what?" Takeshi asked next.
"Don't be obtuse. It's obvious," Fumikage snapped at the redhead.
"An invasion of Kiri? Really?"
"He's really going to do it, isn't he? Fuck. They say it in the bars and I think they're insane conspiracy theories. But he actually is going to do it. Another war," she said with a whistle.
"A war to end all wars from what I heard," Isagi Akimichi stepped in here.
"Can someone explain what's going on to me?" Takeshi again. Toshiro chose to have pity on the least well-informed of the lot.
"They're talking about a bit of gossip that has been going around in jounin circles that the Hokage means to conquer all the hidden villages," he said.
"Gossip, huh? Guess you can confirm it for us. You're on the Council, no? So tell us the truth. Is it going to happen? Is there another war coming?" Fumikage pushed.
"First of all, there's always another war coming. We're shinobi. You might as well ask me if the sun will rise tomorrow. The answer would be equally as certain. As for whether I know anything about that bit of gossip, even if I did I wouldn't be able to tell you. What I can tell you is what I know from being classmates with the Hokage for years, and then teammates with him for years after that. If he picks a fight, it'll be one he's sure of winning," he said.
A/N: I don't know why this chapter just took so long to come together. Part of it is obviously procrastination (my greatest foe), but perhaps a bigger part of it is that I wasn't sure how I wanted to put a lot of things. I know what happens with this story, I just don't necessarily know in what order, and that seems to be a harder bit. Enjoy the chapter. Discount on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) for those interested. Next chapter comes on here on Wednesday night.
Next four chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.