The tachi in Kushina's hand looked a bit like Mo Ke's released Three Thousand Worlds, but it was shorter, barely a meter long.
Its guard was shaped like a sakura blossom. The hilt was red and black, and from its end dangled a tiny golden chain.
"Wow! It finally worked!"
The moment she saw her Zanpakuto fully formed, Kushina let out a cheer, threw herself at Mo Ke and hugged him, bouncing up and down with him in her arms.
Mo Ke instinctively wanted to refuse this childlike celebration.
Very quickly, however, he made a discovery.
In this deep winter, Shinigami uniforms were… not exactly thick.
And Kushina's was… very much standard issue.
Hmph. No mask, no proper protection. Terrible health awareness.
Holding that critical attitude, he still took the chance to experience the moment very carefully.
"Ah!"
Kushina realized something was wrong at once. Her face flared scarlet as she shoved Mo Ke away and finally let go of the hand she had been holding ever since he walked through the door.
She smoothed her clothes in a panic. Her face was so red she could have passed as an actual tomato.
Back when she was still sealed, if something made her happy, she would hug the fox head of the Yin Mo Ke without thinking. Just now she had gotten excited and forgotten completely that Mo Ke was no longer a giant fox, but a young man in human form.
Mo Ke coughed into his fist when he saw her about to dig a hole and bury herself.
"Cough. Anyway. Kushina, your Zanpakuto's name is Fireflow Firefly."
Since her blade had been forged from Nine-Tails chakra as its base, the instant it took shape, Mo Ke knew its true name.
Not bad at all. He rubbed his chin. At this rate he would become both the Sword God and the True Name Monk of the ninja world.
Forging a Zanpakuto barely shaved anything off the "share" of life his clone carried. It was nothing.
On top of that, he could hand people blades, tell them the true names and even the elemental types. That was beyond cool.
"What is that supposed to mean. How can you just name my sword on your own I want to call it Lady's Sword. That fits my elegant temperament perfectly."
Mo Ke gave the woman in front of him a majestic eye roll.
She clearly did not know herself at all.
He still could not get used to this habit of lumping knives and swords under the same word either. Typical island naming conventions.
"That is the sword's real name. A Zanpakuto is not something you randomly name. It comes with a name the moment it is born. To command its full power you must know that true name."
"I see…" Kushina pouted, clearly unwilling to let go of her heroine fantasies.
"Then what does my Zanpakuto do"
"Do not push your luck. I already told you its true name. I will go as far as telling you it is fire type. As for what it can actually do, you will explore that yourself."
"So stingy," she huffed. "But a fire type sword is pretty nice. That means I have fire power now together with my wind and water chakra."
She turned the blade in her hand, eyes shining brighter the more she looked at it.
Mo Ke thought about it and decided he should at least teach this scatterbrained woman how to communicate with her sword spirit. At the very least she needed to learn sword meditation.
As he sat there explaining how to enter meditation, how to reach Shikai, how to eventually step toward Bankai, the setting sun washed his face in warm light, softening his sharp features.
Kushina's heart stuttered for a moment.
What are you thinking, Kushina. You are Lady Kushina. How can you have feelings for this brat… no, this ancient monster.
In the middle of scolding herself inside, she suddenly felt something was wrong.
She looked up.
A huge fox head was staring straight at her, eyes narrowed, ears pricked high.
It was over.
Kushina groaned inwardly. She had forgotten to seal the clone back inside.
She had just let the Nine-Tails listen to her entire inner monologue.
Mo Ke found himself tossed out of the room a few breaths later, his face blank.
As if he had wanted to eavesdrop.
She said she had lost face, yet she still sat through the entire explanation about Zanpakuto and only threw him out after she learned everything. That was a very calculated loss of face.
You are something else, Kushina.
He complained silently in his heart, then glanced up at the sky.
It did not matter. The time was nearly here. All that was left was to wait for the show to begin.
Konoha, Naka Shrine.
Night had already claimed the village. The red torii gates outside the shrine glowed a dull, flaky red under the moonlight.
Inside the main hall, candles burned everywhere, throwing warm light over solemn wooden pillars.
This was where the Uchiha clan's guardian spirit was enshrined. Beneath it, in the underground chamber, the Uchiha held their clan meetings.
Tonight, this chamber would also be the birthplace of Uchiha's revolution.
Itachi followed beside Shisui, stepping into the shrine with quiet feet. In his heart, he added a single line.
The Uchiha clan had come to stage a coup.
He and Shisui had come… to stage a different kind of coup.
As soon as the two stepped into the underground hall, the noise began to fade.
Shisui was one of the clan's strongest fighters. So young, yet already wielding three tomoe and a name that had shaken the Third Great Ninja War as "Shisui of the Body Flicker."
Radicals or moderates, both sides placed hope on him and wanted him in their camp.
Itachi should have been the same. Graduated at seven, two tomoe at eight, his talent rivaled Shisui's. Under any other circumstances, both factions would be fighting to win him over.
But everything changed when Itachi entered the ANBU.
Radical and moderate both shared the same goal. They wanted higher status and better treatment for their clan, and they opposed Konoha's quiet suppression. The only difference was their methods.
Itachi, however, was an outlier.
To him, being bound by clan interest alone was wrong. The village mattered more than any clan. The interests of Konoha came first.
After one particularly heated argument, he had simply stopped showing up to clan meetings altogether.
That kind of behavior was unforgivable in any clan.
That was why the hall fell quiet when Shisui and Itachi arrived.
Sitting at the head, Uchiha Fugaku lifted his gaze. His expression flickered with surprise.
This son of his had entered rebellion early. He had not expected Itachi to appear at the clan meeting at all. Fugaku simply assumed he had thought it through at last and said nothing.
He had originally agreed to let Itachi join ANBU partly to place a spy near the upper ranks, and partly in the hope that Itachi could act as a bridge between village and clan, easing the strain on both sides.
Instead, Itachi had done the opposite.
The clan's status inside Konoha had not improved in the slightest. Surveillance on the Uchiha had only grown stricter.
It even felt like the village elders had been informed about the content of several clan meetings in advance.
The anger in the Uchiha hearts had burned hotter and hotter. Their law enforcement had grown more severe in response. Villagers, in turn, had grown more and more resentful of them.
And what had the Third and his council done With every shift in public mood, they had simply continued to add more watchers around the Uchiha district. Even now, Fugaku was certain that ANBU and Root operatives lurked around the shrine.
The thought darkened his eyes.
Once, he had stood firmly with the moderates. He had wanted to pursue justice through peaceful means, to win the clan the respect and honor it deserved.
What finally pushed him to the radicals' side was not only seeing Shisui's true power.
It was fear.
Fear that his clansmen would snap completely.
Fear that if they let the current public hatred grow unchecked, then even if they one day won status and titles through peace, the rest of Konoha would never accept them.
They might stand higher, but they would never truly belong.
Shisui's stance was still ambiguous, but Fugaku believed that if they really chose that road, Shisui would stand with the clan in the end.
As long as he and Shisui moved together, they could strike at Konoha's leadership swiftly, seize control, and replace the upper ranks.
With the smallest possible bloodshed, they could force a new balance where Konoha and the Uchiha lived in true coexistence.
That, to him, was now the only path he could see.
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