Chapter 30 — Minato, Aren't You a Little Afraid of Your Wife?
"I have three plans for our current situation — upper, middle, and lower."
Uchiha Yujiro flashed three fingers with theatrical confidence. Minato opened his mouth, fighting the urge to roll his eyes.
"Again? Really?" he wanted to say, but wary of Yujiro's temper, he chose a calmer tack: "Just tell me the middle plan."
Yujiro grinned. "Top plan: we storm the daimyō's treasury right now and rob the hell out of them — take the loot and maybe take some hostages. I know it sounds terrible coming from a Hokage and an Uchiha, but I've already prepared — look at this mask. It's a 'nine-bucket' design; way nicer than those clumsy Anbu masks. We break in disguised, split the haul 70/30. What do you think?"
Kushina couldn't help but blurt out, "Uh… that actually sounds… not bad?"
Minato, stony-faced: "…Let's hear the middle plan."
Yujiro stared at him as if to say, come on, you should be ashamed of yourself. In his view, someone who can use Flying Thunder God Technique and refuses to make stealthy night-hauls was wasting a national resource. If Minato would humble himself and do a little thievery — five-country treasuries, one after another — their coffers would swell. With tens of thousands more shinobi supported, they'd need no cunning. Force alone would rearrange the world. Too bad Minato wasn't that radical.
Yujiro continued: "Lower plan is to recuperate. The Fire Country's base is stronger than the others — let things heal, accept some temporary disadvantages and let other villages take small gains for a while. When we're ready with better equipment and numbers, the others will be the ones who suffer."
Kushina scoffed, "That sounds humiliating. Sounds like something the Third would do." Minato sighed a weary, helpless smile — yes, he too was a little afraid of his wife. Yujiro looked down on that, but as an Uchiha schemer he secretly liked it: Kushina was a lever he could use to influence Minato. The more Minato cared for Kushina, the more useful a pawn he was.
Yujiro mentally noted, Is he more loyal to his village or to his wife? He'll say the village — but use the wife to tilt the scales. He shrugged off the thought about making Naruto into his protegé. Then he heard Kushina mutter, "You don't act like an Uchiha at all."
She was annoyed that Yujiro was teasing Minato but not getting to the point. Yujiro wanted a leader who could play the role convincingly — someone who could recite a few lines and otherwise be a statue:
"Whatever shall we do?"
"What is to be done?"
"Speak quickly."
"Top plan too rash, lower plan too slow — middle plan steady and right."
Alas, Minato lacked the knack for stagecraft. Yujiro laughed at the idea of saying, "I will take care of your family; you have nothing to fear," and then arranging for Naruto to be molded into his own puppet. He'd left the joke half-formed and moved on.
For now Minato still lived in blissful ignorance — Yujiro had quietly arranged for contingencies should anything happen to him. But Minato, trusting and naive, only waited for the middle plan. Yujiro obliged and, predictably, presented the most sensible option:
"Logistics."
Silence, then: "Logistics?"
"Yes — the transport business." Yujiro's tone turned calm and practical. "It's the best business for shinobi and for Konoha."
He continued: transport is where the money is. With overloaded caravans you make big gains — that's true whether in antiquity or now. The ninja world's roads are terrible, so regular wagons aren't ideal, but transporting goods is a high-barrier, dangerous business that requires muscle and organization. Konoha already escorts shipments — why not own the whole thing?
"Build Konoha's own caravan and courier network. Offer merchants a Konoha-branded escort and haul service. We wouldn't just guard shipments anymore; we'd run the transport and take a bigger share of the profits."
"Next," Yujiro declared, his voice brimming with fire, "we build massive storage depots at every trade hub. Logistics alone isn't enough — we expand into warehousing. From there, Konoha will establish its own logistics empire."
He raised a hand, slicing the air with conviction.
"With this, Konoha won't just earn money. We'll dominate the arteries of trade itself. We'll extend the Fire Country's routes — no, the entire world's trade routes. Konoha will become the beating heart of commerce. Every day, endless caravans will pour in from north and south, east and west, flooding us with goods. We'll fuel prosperity not only for Konoha, but for the Fire Country — for the entire shinobi world!"
Yujiro's voice grew louder, his words more fevered. "We won't need the daimyō's scraps. We won't need to beg for missions. As long as we defend our roads and run our convoys, we'll harvest oceans of wealth and resources. Enough to feed a hundred thousand shinobi and march to conquer the world!"
At the climax of his speech, his Sharingan flared open, and he rose to his feet, arms wide as though embracing the heavens. The moonlight bled into the crimson glow of his eyes, making his presence terrifying, magnetic — an aura equal parts madness and charisma.
For a moment, Minato and Kushina both felt their blood surge as though caught in genjutsu. But no — it wasn't illusion. It was pure rhetoric, sharpened into a blade that could cut into their hearts without chakra.
This man is dangerous, Minato thought, unable to tear his gaze away. His wariness only grew when he noticed, from the corner of his eye, that Kushina was visibly moved, swept up in Yujiro's vision as though spellbound.
Still — cautious as he was, Minato had to give an answer.
"…We'll do it," he said at last. "The village will allocate resources. We'll establish a transport corps. And the Uchiha will have a share."
He clasped Kushina's hand tightly, and in a flicker of Flying Thunder God, vanished from Yujiro's home.
So hastily he left — as if staying a moment longer would mean sinking deeper into Yujiro's pull, swallowed by his schemes, unable to climb back out.