Chapter 57 - How To Defeat Your Greatest Enemy
After the group was finished with dinner, Hinata made some tea and served it to everyone. Hiruzen, meanwhile, still felt like something was off but couldn't put his finger on it.
'Have I forgotten something? I feel like I am missing something really important.'
Hiruzen scanned the people in the room with his eyes and Hinata and Naruto seemed to anticipate something to happen, while Yuna clearly had mischief in her eyes.
'Something is wrong, I need to get out of here.'
Hiruzen was just about to thank the trio for the dinner and then leave when Yuna interrupted him with a smile on her face.
"I have to say… Konoha's Hokage sure has guts."
Hiruzen, of course, had no idea what Yuna meant by that, but his bad feeling got worse and worse by the second.
"I mean, you should have heard Kakashi's report, right? You should know what is possible with just an hour of preparation time, and yet you boldly walk into our house. That is why I said that you have a lot of guts. Fearlessly walking into the jaw of the tiger isn't something everyone can do."
Hiruzen shuddered in terror when he realized the situation.
'A trap! There is probably an obscene number of seals hidden throughout the whole flat. I need to get ready to defend myself.'
Hiruzen flared his chakra causing it to wash over the trio. While Hinata and Naruto flinched a little from the powerful pressure of chakra, Yuna didn't react to it at all.
'Pretty good. Naruto and Hinata only flinched a little. A normal genin would probably be rather close to suffocating when they are hit by that.'
Hiruzen, in the meantime, had already jumped off his chair and had taken out two kunai to defend himself from the coming onslaught.
"""…"""
The trio, however, were only giving him weird looks. Hiruzen couldn't help but feel awkward. He was standing in the middle of the room and looked like he was ready to fight to the death, while the three teenagers just sat at the table, lazily drinking tea.
After seeing Hiruzen get more and more embarrassed she couldn't help but chuckle a little with Naruto and Hinata doing the same.
"Hehe, no worries. There is no reason for us to attack you, after all. It is not like you are our enemy."
Hiruzen only chuckled awkwardly and sat back down. He took the cup of tea in front of him and took a calming sip.
"Well, even if you were our enemy, we wouldn't use the seals. We would just poison your tea."
*Pfft!*
Yuna casually tilted her head to the side to dodge the tea projectiles that were flying at her. She lifted her hand and gave Hiruzen a thumbs up.
"Nice spit-take."
Hinata and Naruto, meanwhile, were already on the floor while attempting no to suffocate on their own laughter.
"*Caugh* Can't an old man like me get some peace. Where is Lady Chion, by the way?"
Yuna actually had to think for a moment who the hell "Lady Chion" was. After remembering that this was the name she used to negotiate with Hiruzen in her older form, Yuna quickly gave her answer.
"Here and there. She's apparently very busy and doesn't have time to stay here the whole time."
Although Hiruzen found that rather weird, he couldn't feel any falsehood in Yuna's words, so he only nodded his head.
"Well, let's get to business, shall we?"
Yuna leaned back, with a casual smile on her face, while Naruto and Hinata couldn't help but get a little nervous. Yuna had already explained to them why Hiruzen might come over to their flat. Although Yuna already pacified them that she had everything under control, they still couldn't help but get a little agitated.
"Sure, go ahead. I will answer what I am willing to answer without any lies."
Although Hiruzen's eyelid twitched a bit he decided to press onward.
"I can understand why Hinata hid her strength, but why did you two do the same?"
Yuna could only roll her eyes at that question.
'Haven't I already told the answer to Shikaku? Was he too lazy to report the whole conversation to the Hokage? Maybe he didn't want to admit that he would have done the same in my situation and mistrust the Hokage just like I did… Nah, he was probably too lazy.'
"Isn't that rather obvious? We did it to protect ourselves. How were we supposed to know who we could trust and who we couldn't? Having 3 people with 2 different affiliations following us around didn't exactly increase our trust in the people around us either. How could we know we wouldn't be cut down the moment we excel at something?"
Hiruzen was, naturally, outraged by this.
"What! I would never do that to my citizens!"
"Yeah, I already noticed that you are a big softy, but how could we have known about that all those years ago. There was a lot of scheming going on in the background and I wasn't even sure if you were the actual ruler of Konoha for quite a while."
"You weren't sure if I was the ruler? I am the Hokage, so I hold the village's highest position. Why wouldn't I be the ruler?"
"Well, first of all, from the information I gathered so far, you seemed to be rather friendly towards my father and you were even the one to declare him the fourth Hokage, right?"
Hiruzen could only give Yuna a wry smile when he heard how casually Yuna mentions that the fourth Hokage is her father. Hiruzen had already suspected her to know, but now it actually was a confirmed matter. He gave a quick glance at Naruto and Hinata and confirmed that those two also knew about it.
"Indeed. He was my student's student and we got along rather well."
"Alright, then, why was no one willing to adopt us?"
Hiruzen's face wrinkled up in annoyance when he heard that question.
"Because…"
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Those retarded laws concerning civilians and shinobi. I already read through all of that dribble. That is why I thought you were just a puppet ruler. Just crack the whip and do what you want to do. Strictly speaking, Konoha has a more lenient form of a military dictatorship. If you, the Hokage, want to do something, then do it. Who can stop you?"
Hiruzen could only shake his head at that naïve thinking.
"This is not how it works. If I just override the will of the civilians, they will grow unhappy and might even start a riot."
Yuna was looking at Hiruzen like he was a complete idiot.
"So? F* 'em. If they are so unhappy then they can p* off to other places. Let's see how much they enjoy their life in a village that isn't protected by the world's strongest military force. If they prefer getting robbed and killed by missing-nin more than a slight inconvenience in their freedom that they can go ahead in my opinion. You can promote the Will of Fire all you want, but if it wasn't for me, Naruto would have very likely hated this village with all his being. Because a bunch of civilians were throwing a tantrum, you almost pointed Konoha's strongest asset at itself. You can't make everyone happy. As a leader, you need to be able to make the necessary sacrifices to protect as many as you possibly can. You are not the hero of a fairytale, you are the Hokage of Konoha. Act like it."
The more Yuna spoke, the older Hiruzen seemed to get. Since everything turned out fine with the Kyuubi situation he basically stopped paying attention to it. Every time trouble popped up, it was pretty much solved before he had to do anything, so he stopped paying attention to it. Only now did he realize what could have happened if the situation escalated. He could have 2 highly unstable Jinchuuriki on his hands that both had a deep hatred for the village. That might have actually been Konoha's doom one day. When he heard Yuna's last two sentences, however, some of his life returned to him.
'That's right. I truly have become senile, haven't I? When did I start trying to play hero and satisfy everyone instead of doing what I think is best for the village?'
He straightened his back as life returned to his eyes.
'That's right. I am not a hero, I am the Hokage and I will do what I deem is best for the village. I won't be swayed that easily by the opinion of others anymore.'
Some of the dignified aura he had in his prime reappeared and he finally started to look like a ruler again.
"By the way, I might actually have a way to solve the problem with your paperwork."
The dignified aura Hiruzen managed to build up, shattered like an egg that was thrown at a boulder. His eyes grew red like a madman as he instantly appeared in front of Yuna while lifting her up by the front of her shirt.
"Tell me! It doesn't matter what you want, you can have it, just give me the method!"
'Wow, this old man really hates paperwork, huh.'
"Err, can you let me down first?"
Hiruzen's eyes immediately widened in shock. He put Yuna back on the ground and quickly took a few steps back. He seems to be ready to kneel in front of Yuna as an apology, so Yuna stopped him before he could lose even more of his dignity in front of Hinata and Naruto.
"Now, now, old man, calm down. First of all, this is just a theory I have and I can't confirm it yet. Second, I will give it to you for free. If Konoha's leader has more time for other things, it would naturally be a good thing, right?"
When he heard Yuna's second point, he, for some reason, felt like a devil was whispering words in his ears, promising him great things without paying anything in return, but he suppressed that feeling. If there was a method to defeat his paperwork, parts of his soul should be a rather fair price for it.
"I assume you know the shadow clone jutsu?"
Hiruzen only gave a nod with a wry smile on his face.
'If her method is just using shadow clones then I really made a fool out of myself for nothing.'
"And I assume that just letting your clones do part of the work doesn't work, because there is simply too much information condensed into a short timeframe."
Hiruzen, again, nodded his head with the interest returning to his face.
'Indeed, using shadow clones during a fight is still fine, because during high-speed combat a lot of reactions will be due to muscle memories, but paperwork is a totally different matter. You need to read the whole document, understand it and then come to a decision. If it is one or two documents, then that is still fine, but I have to work through hundreds of documents every day. Another idea is to continuously make shadow clones, let them work through one or two documents, and then pop them and make new ones. This is actually how I handled the paperwork during my earlier days, but that is not something I can do at my current age.'
"Then won't it be fine to stretch it into a longer timeframe? I heard that the T&I department has a jutsu that lets them read a person's memories at a very high speed. This is the method I came up with: Make some clones that won't share their memories with you when they disappear, let them help you do the paperwork, read their memories at a higher speed with the T&I departments jutsu. Done."
Hiruzen was silent for a while. He was contemplating if this actually could work or not. He had a very deep understanding of chakra and jutsu, so he can figure out rather quickly whether this method was feasible or not. The more he thought about it the happier he became.
'This could actually work. I need to adjust the memory absorption rate of the jutsu and test out how many clones are reasonable. I also need to make sure that no clones disappear before I got their memories. If this works out, I need to come up with a backup system in case an accident happens and a clone disappears too early. Maybe have two clones work on the same paperwork simultaneously? This should also reduce the mistakes I make during filling out the paperwork which would reduce my workload even further. This might work, this might actually work. Hehe, just you wait damn paperwork, after all these years I will finally be able to retaliate.'
Seeing how the smile on Hiruzen's face seemed to twist further and further away from what a human should look like, Yuna decided to intervene.
"Oi, old man! You're still with me?"
Hiruzen was awoken out of his fantasy of finally defeating his worst enemy and looked at Yuna with a bit of worship in his eyes.
"Haha, of course, I am awake. I am more awake than I have ever been. I will be taking my leave now. I will come over for another visit when I have time. Have a good night, you three."
Hiruzen walked towards the exit while being in high spirits.
""Good night, old man""
Naruto and Hinata also wished him a good night and Hiruzen didn't even twitch after being called an old man again. His mood was simply too good to bother about something this minor, but Yuna still had something else to say.
"There actually is another minor matter, old man."
"Oh? What is…"
*Splat*
A cake smashed straight into Hiruzen's face.
"""…"""
"Sorry, I couldn't hold it in anymore."
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