NRaO Chapter 59

Hiruzen Saritobi’s Point of View

With each new bit of information I gained involving Orochi, I felt my stomach sink further and further. I had originally thought he would lay low for a few years, but no, the boy was doing his best to pull powerful people to his own side. Now that he wasn’t linked to the village, every person he recruited was actively following him instead of the village.

I sighed again as I ashed my hashpipe and did the paperwork. Every year it was becoming more and more tedious with more things needing the Hokage’s approval to support. I had to sign off on not only the higher-rank missions but also the lower-ranked ones. Not only that but every skirmish on both warfronts needed to be written about and seen by me. I spent most of my time reading and approving cat-catching missions rather than doing actual work.

I was glad that White Fangs was thwarted and failed his mission. He was getting too big for his britches and even talking about becoming the Hokage in the future. The man was too loyal to be a truly good leader, if someone who would die for the sake of the village took over then we’d have the same situation that happened with Tobirama where he sacrificed himself instead of one of his students.

He was the damn Hokage for crying out loud. While I thought he was leaning more towards sending the Uchiha to die, which is why I volunteered assuming he’d send Kagami to die, I was shocked when he offered me the position of Hokage and sacrificed himself. That is the type of leader Sakumo would be and we didn’t need another person like that with how many vipers we had nipping at the heels of Konoha for any piece of flesh they could get a hold of.

I heard a knocking at the door. “Come in.” I didn’t bother looking up knowing it was an Anbu member. He sat in silence kneeling with one fist on the ground as I signed my approval to the fence painting mission for one of the fresh graduates of the school. “Speak.” I didn’t have to pretend to be the kind old man in front of my people. They already knew my nature as the cold calculating killer of Konoha. “We’ve just confirmed that lady Chiyo has defected from the sand along with having their Jinchuriki abducted.”

My eyes were raised at the news as what Sakumo said made more sense. Orochi didn’t care for the useless children but the poison master and used their safety as leverage to get her on his side… That would have been terrific news, it would certainly reduce the amount of ninjas dying to poison on the battlefield but that was half the purpose of these wars. These wars were designed to whittle our numbers down to keep the ninjas in check.

I put my pipe down as I knew I’d have to get a hold of the Daimyo for information this big. As I began to write of this news I couldn’t help but notice the slight difference in our correspondence. The Daimyo was previously a chatterbox, almost always sending a few notes I would be forced to read that discussed the most inane and trivial situations that happened in his life but now it was all business with him. He had only sent three letters, each making small changes to the regulations of clans inside the village that gave clans more power to make changes.

My word was already becoming less valuable and if I had a unanimous decision of the other clan heads they could overturn one of my decisions. The changes were small but they alluded to future plans, they may be all to willing to remove the Hokage position entirely and replace it with a council of some sort. At the very least he’s trying to strip more power from me. I couldn’t help but chuckle as we played this game before, we’d see how fast his view changed when I needed to step in to prevent the early end of this war again.

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Tsunade’s Point of View

What a damn fool! Dan Kato rushed forward again, leaving behind the team sent to protect him and fighting by himself instead of with the team. I came upon the clearing where I could see the aftermath of the battle. Dozens of enemy shinobi lay dead but at some point, one of them discovered the location of Dan and managed to send an explosive tag in his direction which had ripped open his chest.

I was more angry than anything else, with him running forward and ignoring all the shinobi sent to assist him in trying to prove himself worthy of the Hokage position. He was losing too much blood, no it wasn’t even that. Looking more closely there was something wrong with the blood I was replicating. As I tried to figure out what was going on, afraid to lose a close friend in such a stupid way I heard a voice come from behind me.

“His kidneys are shot. You can keep using that blood replenishment jutsu but you’re just replicating dirty blood now. You’ll kill him faster doing that than doing nothing.” For a second a spike of fear shot through me because I had dropped my guard so thoroughly I let someone sneak up on me, until I recognized the voice as he asked. “Do you know what type of blood he has?” I stopped replenishing his blood, instead focusing on recovering his organs. “B positive with the RH factor.”

Orochi walked over as many of the Konoha ninjas held their weapons towards him. None of them knew the situation fully so I had to lie. “Relax, Orochi would never attack the team of one of his wives. He’s clearly here to help.” He reached down grabbing Dan’s hand before piercing it with two tubes. One tube began to pull blood from Dan’s body while the other began to replenish clean blood to him.

Orochi had made himself into a dialysis machine. He had somehow matched his blood with Dan’s as He acted casually. It only prolonged his death without replacement kidneys, he’d still die. As if Orochi heard me, he unraveled a scroll and summoned many different body parts. He had six kidneys ready for this particular blood type as he spoke. “Thank god he wasn’t AB negative. I’d have had to synthesize one for him but the risk of rejection would have been much higher. Either way… This injury looks disastrous for his future prospects as Hokage.”

Me, Jiraiya, and Orochi didn’t want anything to do with becoming Hokage but all of us knew who the leading favorites were. Dan may have been made Hokage depending on how he fared in this war which was why he was trying to rack up accolades by himself. That is also why he was so severely injured and the possibility of him ever becoming Hokage was almost null and void.

As I transplanted the kidneys Orochi couldn’t help but ask. “Hey… After we’re done here, you want to have a quickie in the woods before you take this shmuck back to Konoha?” I couldn’t help but burst out laughing.