Konoha Year 33, April 1.
The Ninja Academy began a new school year. With the sixth-years graduating and the first-years moving up, empty classrooms were freed up. A batch of familiar faces left, and a batch of strangers arrived.
Without realizing it, Konoha's "crown prince" had gone from a new student to a graduate.
Next March, this highly watched Hokage's grandson—bearing the glory of the Senju—would become an official ninja.
Gojo Yoru, now a fourth-year, paid very close attention to him.
The reason Yoru watched Nawaki so closely was because Nawaki represented an anchor point.
Tsunade's little brother. The First Hokage's grandson. Died at age twelve.
And the time period of his death was the Second Great Ninja War.
Which meant that if no "butterfly storm" intervened, then when Nawaki turned twelve, that would be when the Second Great Ninja War would erupt.
In other words… Konoha Year 35.
Yoru had two years—at most three—left to grow.
Once Konoha's firepower ran short, their cohort could be sent to the battlefield at any time.
In special cases, genin like them might even be led by jōnin or chūnin into battles on the scale of the Kannabi Bridge operation from the Third Great Ninja War.
They could run into chūnin- or jōnin-level enemies at any moment.
Before the Second Great Ninja War broke out, Yoru had to have the strength to deal with those hypothetical scenarios—and those hypothetical enemies.
He walked into school with his hands in his pockets. Aside from the brand-new first-years, the academy students reacted the same way they always had: they stopped, they stepped aside, and they didn't even dare meet Gojo Yoru's eyes—terrified of provoking the infamous demon king.
But no one knew that this "demon king" was only a shadow clone.
As early as last year, other than combat class, Yoru's real body hadn't come to the Ninja Academy at all.
If he weren't worried about getting matched against Namikaze Minato—having his clone smashed and exposing his true strength—Yoru wouldn't even bother coming to school.
…
May 17.
A piece of news shook the entire shinobi world.
For a thousand years through the Warring States era, it had stood firm: a distant blood relative of the Senju, feared across the shinobi world for sealing techniques, and a key ally of the Senju—
The Uzumaki clan, along with the Uzushio Village and the Land of Whirlpools they had founded overseas…
Had been wiped out.
The Land of Fire, an ally of the Land of Whirlpools, didn't even have time to react.
Because the invaders weren't nearby small island nations, and they weren't minor countries on the shinobi continent either—
They were the four great nations… all of them except the Land of Fire.
Unlike Konoha, which was built from multiple great clans of the Warring States era, the Land of Whirlpools had only the Uzumaki clan plus some immigrant population.
They didn't have the power to fight one against four.
Facing a joint encirclement by four great villages, they had no ability to resist.
Everyone on the island—Uzumaki or immigrant alike—was slaughtered without mercy. Bodies were either burned or drowned by ninjutsu, or packed up and taken away for research.
The number of survivors was tiny.
Ironically, those who escaped were mostly the women who had married outside and abandoned their original surnames.
But at least, as Uzushio's ally, Konoha had long stationed shinobi there.
At the desperate pleas of Uzushio's leadership, Konoha shinobi took away the Uzumaki clan's "hope" and escorted it back to Konoha.
By the time Konoha's reinforcements reached the Land of Whirlpools, the massacre was already over. The island was a wreck—corpses everywhere.
When this news reached Konoha, no one knew how the upper ranks reacted.
But Yoru noticed something: lately, it was hard to see shinobi in green flak vests on the streets.
Aside from the night patrols, you rarely saw afterimages flashing across rooftops anymore.
Clearly, the high-level ninja had all been dispatched.
As for what they'd been sent to do, Yoru didn't know—but he could guess.
Either they were carrying out missions… or guarding the borders.
The fall of the Land of Whirlpools was essentially a countdown to war.
Those four great nations had already been "bleeding" smaller countries and expanding territory. Now, with the Uzumaki clan's thousand-year inheritance in their hands, their strength had surged. They wouldn't stop—if anything, they'd push even harder.
All it would take was a single spark to set the entire shinobi world on fire.
And with the Uzumaki clan reduced to dust in history, the person Yoru had waited years for finally arrived in Konoha.
Starting the very next day, whether it was academics or combat class, Yoru went to the Ninja Academy in person, waiting for that figure to appear.
But he waited… and waited… all the way until the second term—September.
Clearly, the destruction of the Land of Whirlpools hit Uzumaki Kushina too hard.
If not for the comfort of Uzumaki Mito, that legendary clanswoman, Kushina might have "gone dark" like Uchiha Sasuke—living in hatred, turning into a revenge seeker.
But the simple-minded Kushina didn't realize she was being "brainwashed by love," treated as a container by the village's higher-ups.
If no one pulled her out of that fire, then after her pillar of support, Uzumaki Mito, died, Kushina's future life would be lived under surveillance.
Her area of movement would be permanently limited to a designated zone—unless the village faced a crisis and needed to deploy the jinchūriki's power, in which case Kushina would be allowed to leave Konoha.
"Tch… so it really was a conspiracy theory. Politicians' hearts really are black."
On the Hokage Rock, Gojo Yoru sat at the edge of a cliff, looking down at the beautiful village, his eyes full of mockery.
In that moment, he finally understood how jinchūriki must feel.
No wonder so many jinchūriki ended up mentally twisted—why even the younger brother of a Kage couldn't truly blend in a village.
The methods of these village higher-ups were simply too extreme. Anyone would feel chilled to the bone.
Yoru had always been curious why Konoha in this era didn't seem to have the later-era barrier system. He'd thought they simply hadn't developed it yet.
He hadn't expected Konoha's barrier to be born because of Uzumaki Kushina.
It still didn't cover the whole village, but because Yoru frequently used space–time abilities to sink underground and leave Konoha, his eyes were now like the Hyuga's Byakugan—he could almost see a whirlpool-shaped barrier covering the entire central street district of Konoha.
Yoru wasn't unfamiliar with that barrier.
It was the barrier described in the Minato one-shot—the system Konoha used to monitor Uzumaki Kushina.
He hadn't expected it to appear so soon.
That was why he sighed like that.
The canon arc where Kushina gets "rescued" by Minato has long been criticized—because it reeks of conspiracy.
The reasons were obvious: Kushina, the Nine-Tails jinchūriki, was kidnapped far too easily, and the Cloud ninja even left the border on foot.
The entire process was suspicious: a huge mansion with not a single guard; Cloud ninja finding Kushina with pinpoint accuracy; no patrols noticing their escape; no Anbu monitoring or protecting Kushina even after she became a jinchūriki; Konoha seeming to have no barrier at all—until Minato, who happened to be wandering around at night, followed the clues Kushina left behind.
After being "hero-saved," Kushina finally gained bonds in Konoha and became willing to live in the village.
Now it looked like it really had been a setup by the higher-ups.
And the method was practically identical to the trick Hiruzen later used at the start of the story—using Mizuki as bait to deepen the bond between Iruka and Naruto.
Clearly, the one pulling the strings was the Third Hokage himself.
This discovery felt bitterly ironic to Yoru—but it also made him completely at ease.
Minato had been qualified to be a pawn in that scheme because of his feelings for Kushina, his overwhelming talent, and his status as Jiraiya's student.
Now Gojo Yoru—backed by Orochimaru's investment and possessing talent just as strong—also qualified to be that pawn.
And after years of laying groundwork, deliberately building an unsociable persona, if Yoru and Kushina developed feelings for each other, it would amount to mutual salvation—something Hiruzen would be even happier to see.
"It's locked in. Next comes the performance."
The corner of Yoru's mouth lifted slightly.
Then he stood up—and vanished in a Body Flicker.
~~~
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