"How dare he be this arrogant!"
"What does he think Konoha is—a place he can come and go from whenever he pleases?"
Inside the Hokage's office, Tsunade looked at Hinata, who was standing there with her head lowered and nervously clutching the hem of her clothes, at Naruto beside her with that curious expression on his face, at Uchiha Chizumi's calm, unreadable look, and at Hiruzen Sarutobi, and felt nothing but exhaustion.
Today was supposed to be one of the happiest days of her life, and yet that shameless little thief had chosen this exact day to come stir up trouble in Konoha.
And not just any trouble, either—he had stolen the Tenseigan.
Never mind that Hyuga Hiashi had died at Uchiha Chizumi's hands. In Tsunade's and Hiruzen's eyes, that Tenseigan was practically worth a tailed beast.
Round it off, and what that meant was simple: on the very day Tsunade inherited the Hokage's seat, Konoha had effectively had a tailed beast snatched away.
"Lady Tsunade, I beg Konoha to recover the Tenseigan…"
At that moment, Hyuga Neji bowed deeply to Tsunade.
He was now the head of the Hyuga clan. Granted, the Hyuga clan currently consisted of little more than a few scattered children, and every one of them was still at the Academy, but Konoha had no real way of abandoning the Hyuga.
Just think about it: you go out on a mission, and your teammate has full-map vision. Now imagine there are a whole bunch of teammates like that.
There was almost no scenario where Konoha would ever willingly give up on the Hyuga, even if the clan's numbers were pitiful now. After all, they could still keep having children.
To be honest, Neji was feeling miserable too.
He had only come to the Hokage inauguration as the head of the Hyuga clan, figuring that with Hinata inside Konoha, there was no way anything could happen to her.
And yet it was exactly that bit of complacency that had led to the Tenseigan being stolen by some unknown enemy.
"From the way you described him, the one who stole the Hyuga clan's Tenseigan was very likely the same person behind the Nine-Tails incident."
Hiruzen's face stayed calm only because none of this mess was his problem anymore. But after hearing Hinata and Naruto's account, he was reminded of the night of the Nine-Tails attack.
Back then, he had been too far away to see everything clearly, but he had still witnessed the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, fighting a mysterious man. And when that man withdrew, he vanished into a spiral distortion in exactly the same way.
"The same man who caused the Nine-Tails incident and got the Fourth Hokage killed?"
The moment Hiruzen said that, the entire Hokage office fell silent.
And those who understood the implication unconsciously turned to look at Naruto.
Among Konoha's upper ranks, the fact that Naruto was the Fourth Hokage's son had never been any secret.
"Why's everyone looking at me…"
"I'm really not the Nine-Tails fox…"
Naruto shifted awkwardly under all those gazes. He knew people had always called him the Nine-Tails fox, but this was the first time he realized there had apparently been some larger scheme behind everything.
"Uchiha Obito."
"That man is Uchiha Obito—the Fourth Hokage's student, Kakashi's teammate, and his classmate."
Uchiha Chizumi revealed Obito's identity without the slightest hesitation.
As far as he was concerned, Obito daring to slip into Konoha right under his nose, hurt people, and steal something was a direct challenge to justice itself.
He didn't care what consequences exposing Uchiha Obito's identity might cause.
Right now, all he wanted was to learn the Flying Thunder God Technique as soon as possible, find Obito, and burn him to death.
"What?"
"How could it be him?"
Out of everyone in the room, Hiruzen was the one who lost composure the most.
He remembered Uchiha Obito. Or rather, he remembered every Uchiha who had ever stood out.
And in Hiruzen's memory, that Obito had been nothing but a fool—a talentless fool at that.
And yet now Chizumi was saying that the same fool had not only been the mastermind behind the Nine-Tails incident, but was also the one who stole the Great Tenseigan?
"You can ask Kakashi about the details. Tsunade, I need to study the Flying Thunder God Technique."
Uchiha Chizumi had no interest in explaining any further.
The whole reason he had come to the Hokage office was to use this chance to request access to Flying Thunder God.
To let evil roam free was the greatest insult possible to justice.
For the sake of justice, he had to learn Flying Thunder God. And he had to judge Obito as quickly as possible.
"The Flying Thunder God Technique…"
"Is this because that Uchiha Obito also has space-time ninjutsu?"
Tsunade didn't know much about Uchiha Obito, but she had no objection to Chizumi learning Flying Thunder God. Or rather, even if she did object, it wouldn't matter.
Even before learning Flying Thunder God, Uchiha Chizumi had already been someone Konoha couldn't really restrain. If he mastered it, all that would mean was that he could carry out justice across the shinobi world even more efficiently and reform this rotten world more quickly.
"The difficulty of the Flying Thunder God…"
Hiruzen instinctively wanted to object. In his mind, allowing an Uchiha to learn one of Tobirama Senju's forbidden techniques felt like a kind of betrayal toward his teacher.
But then he remembered Tsunade's status—and remembered that he was no longer Hokage—and swallowed the rest of his protest, only bringing up how difficult the technique was.
But even that point trailed off before he could finish it.
Because Uchiha Chizumi had already managed to create a kekkei tōta. That alone proved the level of his genius. Talking about the difficulty of Flying Thunder God in front of him was practically asking to be humiliated.
And so, once the Flying Thunder God scroll passed from Tsunade's hands into Uchiha Chizumi's, Chizumi didn't remain in the office any longer.
In truth, he wasn't actually all that confident he could learn Flying Thunder God.
That technique was different from other ninjutsu. It required an instinctive grasp of space-time. Even if Uchiha Chizumi could temporarily experience the power of a kekkei mōra, that only gave him an advantage in developing bloodline-based abilities.
After Chizumi left with the Flying Thunder God scroll, Kakashi was called into the Hokage office.
Because if anyone understood Uchiha Obito, it would have to be Kakashi.
As for Uchiha Chizumi, none of that mattered much anymore. Once he got hold of the Flying Thunder God scroll, he devoted almost all of every day to studying it.
For the sake of justice, Uchiha Chizumi had thrown himself into it with the same intensity he'd once had as a student at the Ninja Academy.
And in whatever time he had left, he still spent it carrying out justice.
Only now, Konoha had already become a place with so many supporters of justice that it was actually getting harder and harder for him to find anyone committing crimes.
And so time passed, little by little.
Until three days later, when news from Iwagakure spread across the entire shinobi world.