??? POV
Oh! Hello there.
Looks like you all made it in time. For what, you might ask?
Pull up a chair. Make yourself comfortable. This isn't the kind of story you hear from your Academy instructors, and it's certainly not the one they carve onto monuments. This is the truth. And the truth, well, it has a tendency to be messy.
You've gathered here for a story, and I'm going to give you one. It's a story about a very special place, a place that's been turned into myth and tales. A place called Uzushiogakure, the Land of Whirlpools. And more importantly, it's about the clan that resided there: the Uzumaki.
Ah, I see that name gets a flicker of recognition. Of course it does. Even now, decades after its fall, the name Uzumaki is spoken in hushed tones. It's a name synonymous with power, with vitality, and with a tragic, glorious end.
Let's go over the public record, shall we? The bedtime story version.
The Uzumaki clan members had everything a normal shinobi would kill to have. We're not talking about just being 'good' at one or two things. We're talking about a genetic lottery win so insane it bordered on divine.
First, there was their life force. An Uzumaki's vitality was exceptional. While other shinobi worried about chakra exhaustion in a prolonged fight, an Uzumaki was just getting warmed up. Their stamina was equally unreal. They could fight for days, not hours. This vitality also gave them incredible longevity; it wasn't uncommon for an Uzumaki elder to see their great-great-grandchildren born, all while still looking as active as a 50-year-old. And healing? A shinobi from another clan might take a kunai to the lung and be out of commission for months, if they survived. An Uzumaki would be on their feet in a week, the wound already healed, their body forcibly expelling the foreign metal. Their vibrant red hair was seen as the ultimate symbol of this unquenchable lifeblood.
Then, there was their chakra. Oh, the chakra. To say they had "massive chakra pools" is like saying the ocean is "a bit damp." It was an insult to reality. A typical jonin might have a deep well of chakra to draw from. A Kage might have a small lake. An Uzumaki? An Uzumaki was a raging, bottomless ocean in the middle of a typhoon. The sheer density and volume of it thrummed under their skin, a constant, vibrating power that made them a walking natural disaster. It was this chakra that allowed them to perform feats others could only dream of.
And what did they do with all that power? They perfected the art of Fūinjutsu. Sealing techniques.
Now, you hear 'sealing techniques' and you probably think of a simple storage scroll or an explosive tag. Child's play. An Uzumaki's fūinjutsu was an art form, a science, and a weapon of mass destruction all in one. They could seal anything. They could seal a person's chakra network shut with a single touch. They could create barriers that could withstand a Tailed Beast Bomb. They could seal abstract concepts: diseases, memories, even emotions. They were the ones Konoha called their supposed "closest allies". When they needed a living prison for the Nine-Tailed Fox. An Uzumaki woman, Mito Uzumaki, was the one who became the first Jinchūriki of Kurama, binding that creature of pure hate to her own soul using their arts.
But even that wasn't the peak. The crown jewels of the Uzumaki clan, the techniques that made them legends, were twofold. First, their mastery of powerful fūinjutsu, we already talked about that. And second, something even rarer, a bloodline trait that manifested in only the strongest: the Adamantine Sealing Chains.
Imagine that. From their very being, their soul, they could erupt chains of pure, golden chakra. Chains that were nearly indestructible. Chains that could bind anything, from a common shinobi to the Tailed Beasts themselves. Chains that could form a barrier so absolute that not even a god could pass. Okay, maybe that was too much. But you get the point.
And for the truly pure bloodline, there was more. Some members could display a unique sensory ability, detecting chakra miles away. And just as they could broadcast their immense power, they could also do the opposite: the ability to completely suppress their chakra signature, making them utterly undetectable. A ghost. The perfect infiltrator, the perfect assassin.
So, to summarize the public myth: A clan of long-lived, rapidly-healing, chakra-bloated demigods who were masters of god-tier sealing techniques and could manifest indestructible soul-chains.
Yeah. While this made them look super cool, this also made them look like a massive, terrifying threat to the entire world.
Power like that breeds fear. And fear breeds hate. The other great villages looked at Uzushiogakure and didn't see a cousin village to Konoha.
They saw a fortress nation with the keys to ultimate power. They saw a clan that could, if it chose, seal away all their Tailed Beasts, dismantle all their armies, and rule the world. They were too independent, too strong, and far too close to the growing power of the Hidden Leaf.
So, what did they do? The inevitable.
They formed a coalition. A grand, secret alliance. The Hidden Cloud, the Hidden Mist, and the Hidden Stone. Kumo, Kiri, and Iwa. Three of the Five Great Shinobi Nations, all united by a single, paranoid goal: wipe Uzushiogakure off the map.
And they did. The story goes that in a single, brutal night, the combined fleets and armies of three villages descended on the Land of Whirlpools. It was a massacre. A slaughter so brutal that the nation itself was erased.
The swirling tides of the ocean ran red with Uzumaki blood.
Now, you might be thinking... "Wait a minute. You said they were close links to the Hidden Leaf. Konoha. The village founded by the Senju, who were direct relatives of the Uzumaki. The First Hokage's wife was an Uzumaki. They shared blood, history, and alliances. Surely, the Hidden Leaf would have done something, right?"
LOL. Wrong.
They did not do shit.
Nothing. Not a single damn thing. They sat back, safe behind their walls, and watched their "closest allies," their family, get systematically exterminated. Talk about camaraderie. Talk about the "Will of Fire." What a joke. They probably worried more about the diplomatic paperwork than the screams of their dying kin. The smoke from Uzushiogakure's destruction was likely visible from the Land of Fire's coastline. And the Leaf did nothing.
And so, the Land of Whirlpools was wiped from the face of the shinobi world. It's few, terrified survivors scattered to the winds, hiding their red hair, forgetting their names, just to survive. A tragic, noble end for a proud, powerful clan.
.
.
.
.
.
Or at least, that is the version the whole shinobi world knows. That's the story they tell to scare Academy students. The story Konoha tells to justify its own spinelessness. The story that the other villages tell to celebrate their "great victory."
It's a very good story. Compelling. Tragic.
It's also a complete and utter lie.
You see, when I said earlier that fūinjutsu being one of their crown jewels on par with Adamantine Sealing Chains, I was not over-hyping it. The world knows the Uzumaki were masters of seals. What the world forgets is that a seal's greatest strength... is also its greatest weakness. A seal is only as strong as its creator, and it can be undone.
Everyone, including the "victors" in Iwa and Kiri, thinks that we at the Hidden Cloud brute-forced our way in. They believe Kumo spearheaded the whole operation, that our shinobi just smashed through the "impenetrable" barriers with raw power, taking the brunt of the casualties.
Onoki, that cunning old geezer from Iwa, loved that part of the deal. It maximized our perceived damages and made him look like a brilliant strategist for letting the "Kumo barbarians" tire themselves out.
But you see... if that had actually happened... we all would have died.
Every last one of us. The entire Kumo fleet would be at the bottom of the ocean. The idea that a clan that could bind the Nine-Tails went down in a single night of conventional warfare... doesn't that sound just a little bit weird to you?
Because it is.
So here is the full version. The real story. The one only the Kumo knows.
You see, as perfect as the Uzumaki clan looked from the outside, it too had its internal disputes. That's putting it mildly. It had a sickness. A rot, right at its core. It was a dispute... no, a chasm... between the "Higher Class" and the "Lower Class."
What's that? Oh, you've never heard of the Uzumaki class system? Of course, you haven't. They guarded that secret even more fiercely than their fūinjutsu.
The Uzumaki, in their infinite arrogance, used to divide their entire population according to two metrics: the amount and density of their chakra, and their "bloodline purity."
"Purity" was everything. Was your red hair the color of bright, fresh blood? Or was it a duller, "muddy" auburn? Could you spontaneously manifest the Adamantine Chains by age ten? Or could you "only" call upon your massive chakra reserves? Were your chakra coils "only" three times the size of a Hyuuga's, instead of ten times? Were you... a half-breed? The result of a "lesser" shinobi marrying into the clan?
This created the Lower Class. And the Lower Class... we weren't just "lesser." We weren't just second-class citizens.
We were treated like cattle.
Let me paint you a picture of life as a "Dreg," as they so lovingly called us.
A war happened on the border? A dispute with Kiri over shipping lanes? Send the Lower Class. Send the "Dregs." We were the cannon fodder. The "purebloods" would stand on the high walls of Uzushio, their hands glowing as they "heroically" maintained the city's main barrier, while we were sent out with basic kunai and substandard armor to blunt the enemy's charge. Our lives were the currency they spent to keep their own hands clean.
We were running out of food? A bad harvest? A long siege? Starve the Lower Class. The great, sealed storehouses would be overflowing with grain, rice, and preserved meats. But the fūinjutsu on the doors? They were keyed only to the chakra signatures of the "Upper Class." We would starve in the streets, smelling the fresh bread they baked in their compounds.
We need test subjects for fūinjutsu testing? Ah, this was their favorite. Fūinjutsu is a terribly precise, terribly dangerous art. One misplaced stroke in a seal matrix, one flicker of intent, and it can all go horribly, catastrophically wrong. Who better to test these unstable, potentially lethal new seals on than the "expendable" population? I heard stories from my grandmother... stories of a new paralysis seal being tested. It worked... too well. It left a dozen "Dregs" as living statues. Perfectly conscious, perfectly aware, but unable to move, to speak, to even blink. Just screaming in the prisons of their own minds until they starved.
Stories of experimental storage seals gone wrong, imploding the poor bastard they were drawn on, crushing them into a singularity of gore and bone.
The Upper Class men or women feeling... lustful? Feeling the needs of their "superior" bloodline? Use the Lower Class to satisfy those needs. They saw us as property. It wasn't an assault. It wasn't rape. How can you rape something you own? It was just... taking. Taking what was "theirs" for an evening's entertainment.
The Upper Class needs to take out their stress? Had a bad day negotiating? Feeling bored? Bingo! Go kill some Lower Class for entertainment. A "pureblood" youth testing the "cutting power" of a new chakra blade on a "Dreg" child was a common sight. It was seen as "practice."
And as most of you bright readers might know... whenever shit like this happens... whenever you press a boot onto a person's neck for generations... what happens next?
They snap.
The Lower Class, the "Dregs," the cattle... we came together. In secret. In the damp, dark sewers beneath the "glorious" city. We plotted. We planned. And we reached out.
We reached out to the one village we knew had the power to match the Uzumaki Elites and the ambition to see it through.
We joined hands with the Hidden Cloud.
It was the greatest gamble in shinobi history. A sensory-nin from the Lower Class, my great-grandfather, suppressing his "inferior" signature, made a suicidal run across the ocean. He carried a single scroll, detailing everything. The class system. The atrocities. The internal rot. And, most importantly... the schematics. The master keys to Uzushiogakure's "impenetrable" fūinjutsu arrays. The arrays are maintained, serviced, and powered... by us. The "Dreg" engineers.
The Second Raikage, A, was no fool. He saw the "public" threat of Uzushiogakure. But he also saw the opportunity. He saw thousands of "Lower Class" Uzumaki, shinobi who, despite being "inferior," still possessed the legendary stamina and chakra of their clan. He made us a promise. Not just a home. Not just safety. He promised us full and equal citizenship. He promised us that in Kumogakure, we would be seen as their own.
So the "Lower Class" helped the Hidden Cloud easily spearhead the operation.
That "brutal invasion"? It was a coup.
When the Kumo fleet appeared on the horizon, joined by the token forces from Iwa and Kiri, who we let believe this was a brute-force assault, the Upper Class Uzumaki manned their stations. They poured their "pure" chakra into the barrier arrays.
And nothing happened.
The seals fizzled. They died. The arrays, sabotaged from within by the very "cattle" they had abused for centuries, collapsed in an instant.
My grandmother told me she never forgot the look on the Uzumaki Clan Head's face. That look of pure shock. Chef's kiss.
The Kumo shinobi, led by the "Lower Class" guides, poured into the city through the now-open gates. It wasn't a massacre. It was an execution. We showed the "Upper Class" the same mercy they had shown us for a hundred years.
None.
Hence, leading to the end of the Land of Whirlpools. The "noble tragedy" was, in fact, a brutal, desperate, and successful slave revolt.
Now, you might be wondering who I am, and why I'm telling you this.
Well, you see... I am a descendant of those "Lower Class" Uzumaki. Born and raised not as a Dreg, not as cattle, but as a proud shinobi of Kumogakure. I live happily in the Hidden Cloud, a village my ancestors helped secure. A village where our "diluted" blood is still prized. A village that kept its promise.
And not only that... I'm a little... special.
You see, I was born with white hair.
Pure, snow-white hair. Not the fiery red of the "purebloods." Not the muddy auburn of the "Dregs." White. The doctors in Kumo, the researchers, they were fascinated. They say it's due to some unique kind of "step forward of the Uzumaki bloodline." A mutation. An evolution.
The old Uzumaki prized their fiery red... a symbol of their fiery, arrogant, self-destructive pride. My white... it's cold. It's precise. It's the color of the lightning that brought us our freedom. It's the color of the storm.
My name? You'll learn it soon enough.
So come, join my journey. Watch as I take this "evolved" bloodline, this power forged from oppression and freed by revolution, and tear through the shinobi world.
The "Upper Class" Uzumaki, in their pride, failed.
Konoha, in its cowardice, betrayed them.
But I will not fail.
I will lead the Hidden Cloud to its absolute peak.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Add this to your library to support me!!