The Uchiha Clan.
A lineage spanning nearly a thousand years, they were the undisputed aristocracy of the ninja world. Throughout history, very few clans could even hope to rival them, and in the last century, that list had dwindled to perhaps one or two.
With the advent of the Great Ninja Village era and the mysterious, gradual decline of the Senju Clan, the Uchiha became the universally recognized "Number One Clan" in the shinobi world.
Even within the Hidden Leaf, though the Hyūga Clan liked to claim they were equal to the Uchiha in prestige, the reality was clear to everyone.
To the rest of the world, the Uchiha name was synonymous with power.
For a ninja village, a clan like this held immense strategic value. Just the fact that they possessed dozens of Jōnin with fully matured, three-tomoe Sharingan was a terrifying deterrent.
This was exactly why Hiruzen Sarutobi and the village higher-ups feared them.
If the Uchiha only had ten or twenty Jōnin—or fewer—would Hiruzen or Danzō have been so paranoid? Of course not.
If the Uchiha were weak, the ANBU could have wiped them out countless times over.
And yet... that very same Uchiha Clan was gone.
Annihilated.
The official statement from the Leaf was that a single person had wiped them out: Itachi Uchiha. The clan head's son, a prodigy of the clan, merely twelve or thirteen years old.
The only survivor was Itachi's younger brother, the other son of the clan head, Sasuke Uchiha.
The news shook the Hidden Leaf to its core.
It spread like wildfire across the ninja world. Every other village instantly turned their gaze toward the Leaf.
The sudden disappearance of a powerhouse clan was bound to have massive repercussions.
Iwagakure and Kumogakure immediately reinforced their borders. If a golden opportunity presented itself, it was obvious those two villages wouldn't hesitate to strike.
It had been seven or eight years since the Third Great Ninja War. The major villages had recovered enough to potentially start a fourth round, provided the Leaf showed enough weakness.
For the next while, the Leaf's leadership, headed by Hiruzen, would be walking on eggshells, hyper-focused on dealing with probing attacks and the looming threat of war.
But none of this mattered to Menma.
Putting aside his knowledge of the original plot—which told him no Great War would break out right now—even if a war did start, so what?
Would the village really send a seven-year-old Jinchūriki to the front lines?
Menma just needed to focus on his training.
The Uchiha Massacre passed through his mind once, and then he automatically filtered it out.
Sasuke might be a good person to cooperate with or manipulate in the future, but that wasn't a concern for the present.
His primary mission was to get stronger in the shortest amount of time possible.
Menma stopped paying attention to the gossip and stuck to his rigid daily schedule. He didn't slack off on theory or practice. In this life, his performance far exceeded that of the "Naruto Uzumaki" from the original story.
Menma was hungry for knowledge. The original Naruto grew almost entirely on instinct and raw talent. It wasn't that the original Naruto didn't try hard, but his efforts were lopsided—like a giant hopping forward on one leg.
Menma was different.
He didn't skip the theoretical stuff. The anime never showed it, but the amount of theory a ninja needed to learn was actually vast.
If the graduation standards were strictly enforced based on comprehensive academic performance, the original Naruto never would have graduated.
Of course, in the end, "personal combat strength" was king for a ninja.
Everything else took a backseat to raw power.
Menma knew where the priorities lay, but since he had the capacity, he wanted to be well-rounded.
Making his foundation more solid couldn't be a bad thing.
---
Time flowed on peacefully.
A week later, the Second Young Master of the Uchiha, the sole survivor, returned to the Academy.
Sasuke was different now.
He radiated a chilling, icy aura. The look on his face was one of absolute, frozen indifference.
This wasn't the "acting cool" pose from before. This was a fundamental shift in his psyche.
And it was inevitable.
He had watched his beloved brother murder their parents and slaughter their entire extended family. If he had come back to school acting normal, he would have been clinically insane.
This is the cruelty of the ninja world, Sasuke, Menma thought, glancing at the boy who seemed wrapped in a shroud of darkness. And this is just the first step of your life.
The destruction of the Uchiha Clan turned out to be just a small ripple in the grand river of history.
It was a critical plot point for the Leaf and the world, yes. But as time marched on, the shockwaves faded.
People in the village stopped whispering about it. The other Hidden Villages eventually lost interest and looked away.
Of course, the fact that things settled down was largely due to the efforts of Hiruzen and the Leaf's leadership.
Regardless of the process, the result matched the original timeline: the Five Great Nations did not go to war. The reasons were complex, but the key factor was that the Leaf didn't look weak enough to be an easy target.
It remained the "Number One Village," suppressing the others.
The other villages feared the Leaf's lingering strength and were suspicious of each other's intentions. In that standoff, the window for a Great War closed.
As for these geopolitical ripples?
As mentioned before, Menma didn't care. Unless an enemy army was marching on the village gates and threatening his personal safety, it had nothing to do with him.
Menma remained immersed in his training.
By the end of Year 55, as the third academic year approached, Menma's training was about to enter a brand new phase.