"Captain, everyone's here."
Uchiha Tetsuka stood at the front of the room. Behind him gathered more than a dozen Uchiha clan members—the full roster of shinobi currently on duty within the Military Police Force.
Under normal circumstances, most of them would still be patrolling Konoha's commercial districts, food streets, and residential quarters at this hour.
Even though the First Shinobi World War had dragged on for eight long years, the daily lives of Konoha's civilians hadn't been heavily disrupted.
Life-and-death battles were the business of shinobi. What did they have to do with ordinary people?
On this point, the Five Great Villages maintained an unspoken consensus.
Smaller villages, however, were far less disciplined. When times grew hard, they often resorted to extorting—or outright seizing—civilian property within their own territories.
Some shinobi from minor villages even defected outright to become rogue ninja, deliberately avoiding frontline deployments, gambling on the fact that their home villages lacked the strength to hunt them down.
As a result, civilians from those weaker regions began migrating toward the Five Great Villages in increasing numbers. And among them, Konoha was the most attractive destination.
While Konoha's active shinobi population declined due to the prolonged war, its civilian population actually continued to grow.
Commerce flourished accordingly.
Which meant the workload of the Uchiha Military Police Force only grew heavier.
Where there were more people, there were more problems. Petty theft, disputes, and all manner of minor conflicts cropped up endlessly, all of which fell under the Police Force's jurisdiction.
And it wasn't only civilians arriving in Konoha.
Spies from other major villages slipped in among the influx as well. The Police Force worked quietly with the Hokage's ANBU to identify and eliminate those infiltrators without drawing attention.
"Captain, what's so urgent that you called everyone on duty over?" someone complained. "We've been run ragged these past few days."
"Yeah. What's the status on expanding the Police Force staffing? The Hokage still hasn't given an answer. We're seriously understaffed. We might have to pull in ordinary clan members. We're managing civilians anyway—doesn't necessarily have to be shinobi, right?"
"…"
Uchiha Inka stood behind Tetsuka, grumbling nonstop.
He and Tetsuka were twins. They'd served on the same battlefield squad as Hokuto.
Neither of them were officially registered shinobi under Konoha's central roster.
They were clan-trained fighters—effectively the Uchiha's private force.
The war had lasted eight full years, and even the clan's private troops had been partially drafted to the front lines.
The brothers had a good relationship with Hokuto. They'd fought together through life-and-death situations, and Hokuto had once saved Inka's life on the battlefield.
Barely through the door, Inka had already launched into his complaints.
"Captain, honestly, I don't even want to rotate back from the front anymore. Dealing with this endless pile of trivial nonsense every day is worse than fighting on the battlefield."
"Captain…?"
Hokuto didn't respond.
He simply stared at Inka.
That gaze made Inka's scalp prickle.
The last time the captain had looked at them with that same heavy intensity was when their squad had been cornered by more than a dozen Cloud Village jōnin inside a stone cavern. If Hokuto hadn't erupted with terrifying force and cut them a path out, none of them would have made it back alive.
"Captain… I didn't say anything wrong, did I?"
Inka forced an awkward smile, shooting pleading looks toward his brother.
"Inka, shut your mouth," Tetsuka snapped, tapping Inka lightly on the head. "The captain hasn't spoken yet, and you're already running your mouth."
He then turned back to Hokuto, waiting.
The rest of the Uchiha present took the hint and fell silent as well.
Hokuto was usually warm and approachable within the clan, mild in temperament and restrained in manner. He didn't flaunt authority. He simply kept his head down, steadily accumulating strength.
But no one dared provoke him.
On the battlefield, Hokuto was a true killing machine—lightning surging across his body, blade-light hidden within dazzling arcs of electricity. In the blink of an eye, an enemy's head would already be rolling across the ground.
His position as captain of the Military Police had not been handed to him through favoritism.
It had been carved out through blood and merit.
Everyone in the room could feel it.
Today, something about Hokuto felt different.
"Inka," Hokuto finally said, setting Manji aside and standing up to stretch his shoulders. "You just complained that the Hokage has been delaying the expansion of the Police Force staffing. Is that right?"
"…Did I say something wrong?" Inka rubbed the back of his head. His brother's knock still stung faintly.
"Hmph."
Hokuto let out a cold laugh.
"The expansion of the Uchiha Military Police is probably going to be delayed for quite a while."
"The Hokage won't be approving anything anymore."
The room fell deathly silent.
"Just now, I received confirmed intelligence."
"The Hokage has already fallen during the negotiations with the Raikage."
The words crashed into the room like a sledgehammer.
Every Uchiha present felt their minds go blank.
"Captain…?"
"You're joking, right?"
"The Hokage… dead?"
"During negotiations?"
Tetsuka's voice carried raw disbelief.
Senju Tobirama's death felt unreal.
Among the elders who had survived from the Warring States era, Tobirama was infamous—described with words like cunning, black-hearted, and a walking pile of schemes.
Some of the more pessimistic elders had even sighed bitterly over the years:
"With how slippery that Tobirama is, he'll probably outlive even me. The Uchiha won't get a chance for decades. Who in the clan can outscheme that black-hearted bastard? The heavens truly don't favor the Uchiha…"
Tetsuka had grown up hearing those words from the older generation.
Among those elders were people who harbored bone-deep hatred toward Tobirama. Yet even while cursing him relentlessly, they were strangely united on one point.
Tobirama was hard to kill.
Very hard to kill.
"Do you think I'd joke about something like this?" Hokuto said flatly, meeting Tetsuka's eyes.
"According to the intel, the Second Raikage's subordinates, Gold and Silver, launched a coup. They ambushed both the Raikage and Lord Tobirama at the negotiation table."
"The Raikage was killed on the spot. Lord Tobirama was heavily wounded, escaped with the guard unit, and was pursued by Gold and Silver's elite forces."
"In the end, he stayed behind alone as a decoy, drawing the pursuers away so the guard unit could escape—fighting until he was killed."
Hokuto summarized the sequence with chilling clarity.
Tetsuka felt his head spin.
If the person saying this hadn't been Hokuto, he might have already thrown a punch.
What kind of absurd story was this?
The Hokage covering the retreat of his own guard unit?
What kind of guard unit lets their Hokage shield them while they flee for their lives?
To survive like that—
Wouldn't that itself be a disgrace?
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