"This… this is not something you should be doing yet."
Uchiha Soren lay on the cold ground long enough for the stars above him to tilt and blur. When he finally forced himself upright, pain rang through his skull like a struck drum. One conclusion carved itself into his thoughts with merciless clarity: until he reached Six-Paths strength, planar exploration was a luxury he could not afford.
He sifted through his options. Across the shinobi world, only three locations still demanded his personal attention. The first was Oni Country—the Oni (Ghost) Ninja Village—ruled by a prophetic shrine maiden and sustained by mōryō-class apparitions that could be treated like living power generators. The second was Loulan, already under Konoha's control, whose dragon veins twisted time and space itself. The third was the New Continent, the distant land toward which his wife Genkaori's ancestors had sailed a millennium ago.
Oni Village was ready.
Loulan was too dangerous; one misstep could send him crashing into a timeline ruled by Kaguya herself, or worse—an Infinite Tsukuyomi. As for the New Continent, it would require a full naval expedition, with the Three-Tails acting as escort. Isobu was ideal for that role, but not yet.
Soren flexed his fingers, blood still buzzing beneath his skin. He scribbled a compact plan—precise, layered with contingencies—and sent it by teleportation to the Hokage Building for his shadow clone to handle. Then, with a soft pop, he vanished and reappeared on the hot-spring street of the Land of Hot Water. After soaking long enough to ease the lingering pressure in his neck, he summoned Juno and stepped toward Oni Village.
Curled snugly in his arms, Juno blinked at the mountain city and yawned, her small black vest perfectly in place.
"You really think there's a cat sage out here?" Soren teased.
"A cat should be content being a cat," Juno replied, tail twitching.
Soren stroked her sleek, trimmed fur—once far rounder—and smiled in satisfaction. "Toads, snakes, and slugs can all master Sage Mode. Never heard of a cat doing it. And becoming a jinchūriki is even less likely. A cat's body can't hold a tail's power."
The words drew an indignant hiss. If becoming a cat-tailed jinchūriki was the fastest path to crushing that obnoxious ferret Nelugu, Juno would take it without hesitation. "I'm going to be a cat-jinchūriki!" she declared, wriggling fiercely.
"Fine," Soren said, amused. "Then we'll visit Oni Village's shrine maiden."
The capital lay beneath a colossal waterfall, its shrine-palaces carved directly into the cliff face like a chain of sanctuaries suspended in stone. Though its customs were ancient—villagers in traditional dress, rituals that felt lifted from a Sengoku painting—three years of change had forced modernization. Wooden poles bristled with electric lines, and new storefronts stitched fresh chaos into the streets. Beneath it all, Soren sensed steady governance.
After sampling the village's peculiar delicacies, he carried Juno into the innermost shrine complex. Tenchō Tenson swept the palace in a single glance, and Soren halted as a scene caught his interest.
Within a small hall, an official in a kariginu stood trembling with excitement. He leapt to his feet, waving wildly.
"Lady Koyo—look! The black chakra leaking from the mōryō I captured! If we harness it properly, Konoha—no, the future Oni Village—could—"
"A power capable of controlling the entire shinobi world!" he finished, voice quaking with awe and terror.
At the head of the hall sat the shrine maiden. White inner robes flowed beneath an outer garment embroidered with gold and silver cranes, paired with a violet hakama and a solemn crown. Her dark hair fell like a river. When the official proposed using the mōryō's power, her expression hardened.
"Sanzu," she said sharply, "the mōryō's power is our clan's greatest taboo. You are already being twisted by it. You are unfit to serve."
"Remove him."
Guards dragged Sanzu away as he shouted that everything he had done was for the village—that his will would live on through his son. They screamed the boy's name until their voices cracked. Eventually, the hall fell silent.
Koyo rose and entered the inner chamber where her child played. A three-year-old named Miroku tumbled at her feet, chasing a ribbon tied to Juno's tail. Juno greeted the shrine maiden with a polite mew. The sound tightened Koyo's expression—something about the cat felt unsettling, yet not hostile enough to trigger alarm.
Soren stepped forward and bowed. "I am the Hokage of Konoha—Uchiha Soren."
Koyo's gaze flicked to his Sharingan. For a heartbeat she bowed deeply, old scrolls and ancestral portraits aligning with the living proof before her. She accepted his tea with composed grace.
"Please, drink."
Soren set the cup aside. "Tell me about the mōryō."
"I want to hear about it," he added calmly.
Koyo stiffened. Her people had struggled for generations to suppress the shadow within themselves—the force that birthed the mōryō. "Our ancestors divided heart and thought," she said slowly. "They made peace with that separation. In time, those halves gained names: shrine maiden and mōryō." She glanced at Miroku, who giggled as she chased Juno. "I keep the mōryō sealed within my body. When I die, my daughter will inherit the burden."
Soren listened, smile easy but not careless. He felt the tension bound into the shrine itself. And then Sanzu's words echoed in his mind like a curse.
I will pass my will onto my son—
In an instant, reality shifted.
The hall dissolved into a cavern of molten rock. From its depths rose a black shadow, coiling into an eight-headed serpent whose roar tasted of ash.
"Human! How did you come here?!" the mōryō thundered.
Koyo and her attendants froze.
Soren clicked his tongue, studying it like a hunter inspecting prey. "This is what you call capable of destroying the shinobi world?" He smiled faintly. "It looks… about like this."
The Eternal Mangekyō flared. Kaleidoscopic force rippled outward as he reached into the cavern's core and plucked the mōryō free. The monster collapsed into a black bead, bound and inert in his palm.
Koyo stared in stunned silence. The nightmare that had plagued her bloodline for centuries—the thing that stole years, sanity, and freedom—now tumbled in the Hokage's hand like a trinket. The absurdity of it left her breathless.
She dropped into a deep kowtow, violet hakama pressed to the warm floorboards. "Hokage-dono… you have freed the shrine maiden from our nightmare. Thank you… though—"
Soren lifted her chin gently. Once, such a gesture would have earned a slap. Instead, Koyo flushed, momentarily reduced to a shy, disarmed woman rather than a sacred ruler.
"Miroku?" a small voice piped up. "Mother, is your eye sandy? Let me blow it out."
The innocence snapped Koyo back. She scooped her daughter up, gaze stern once more—but warmth lingered at its edges.
Soren studied the black bead. The mōryō's chakra shimmered like crude oil, reminiscent of the Zero-Tails' engineered darkness. The difference lay in scale and reproducibility. Still, its potential intrigued him.
"Hokage-dono," Koyo said quietly, "please… seal it with me. I will bear the responsibility."
Soren raised a brow. "Do you know what a tailed beast is?"
She nodded.
He explained Konoha's energy program—the Zero-Tails, the harvesting of darkness, the conversion of emotion into propulsion, teleportation, power. The teleport arrays themselves were proof of success.
"What you fear in the mōryō is born from the darkness in shrine maidens' hearts," Soren said. "It can be refined. Or sealed away. I will take it to Konoha's tower and see which future it chooses."
After a long pause, Koyo retrieved a scroll and presented it on her knees. Within lay the Shadow-Mirror Transformation techniques—arcane derivatives of transformation jutsu, some bordering on forbidden Body Activation.
Soren smiled inwardly. I wonder if a big-mouthed cat like Juno can learn it.
He pressed a finger to Juno's brow, transferring the knowledge with exquisite precision.
"Practice the formula before attempting it alone," he warned.
"Mew meow—understood," Juno replied eagerly, vanishing in a puff of light.
Koyo straightened, ruler once more, her gaze holding challenge—and something faintly admiring.
A taboo had been lifted. A village unburdened. And a cat had just been handed the key to standing on two legs.
Soren stepped into the mist of the waterfall, listening as the wheels of the future began to turn.
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