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Chapter 10: Pack Alpha

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"I'm going to bring my clan back to greatness!" Sasuke spat, punching Naruto through the gut.

"How are you going to do that, bastard, when all you do completely immoral? Your clan is dead. And good riddance!" Naruto replied, darting back as his stomach healed over.


It was a familiar battle, one that always happened, with some variation, in all of the lives. Sometimes there was more love, sometimes more hate, sometimes it was impersonal.

"I'm going to kill you." Sasuke said it like it was a fact, an inevitable outcome.

"Then I'll see you in hell, bastard." Naruto growled in response.

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"I said I wanted to talk to the head of the clan." Minato looked annoyed.

"Ok, so speak." Musume replied, matching his attitude.

"What?"

"I somehow became the head of the clan." She shrugged. "I think it's a reflection of their masochistic tendencies."

"You somehow became their clan head?" Minato repeated incredulously. "What did you do to them?"

"They were about to rebel, so I just offered to kill them quickly and painlessly to save everyone the trouble." Musume rubbed her chin. "Though I was cranky enough that I probably would have trapped them in the worst sort of hell for the few seconds before I killed their physical bodies." She mused. The whole standoff had been rather glorious. She was, however, somewhat depressed that they hadn't taken her up on her offer. It would have solved so many problems.

"Oh boy." Minato rubbed his head. "I think we both need to talk to the entire clan, then, or rather, the heads of all the households."

"Why?" She asked defensively.

"Because it is entirely possible that they are planning things underground and have set you up as a distraction." Minato said as he strode forward. "Especially considering that they left you to come out here on your own."

"Oh, well, not exactly." The kitsune grinned, rubbing the back of her head. "Firstly, they are all really freaking slow. And secondly, I'm still back there slapping sense into them." At Minato's horrified look she clarified. "With words, of course." She coughed. "Mostly."

"How can you be..."

"We're at the main meeting house. You know where that is, right?"She asked.

"Yes..."

"Good, good. You might want to get there quickly before something gets blown up. I think my chakra is being pulled away..." the clone didn't get to finish its statement because it dispersed in a poof of smoke.

Minato stared at the space it had occupied for several seconds, completely stunned that he had had no idea that it was a clone, and not Musume. She was so pathetic at any attempt to use jutsu that it was easy to forget that they had put dozens of chakra disruptors on her when she was first taken in for questioning before giving it up as an impossible task. She simply had too much chakra to disrupt it all.

Actually, though... Minato was struck by a sudden epiphany as he leapt toward the Uchiha meeting house. Musume could easily have the same problem as Naruto- that there was simply too much chakra to use properly. In her case, possibly compounded due to not being in control of if from birth until Madara's death. Minato contemplated himself suddenly dropped into his current body after being a spectator at best for the entirety of his life... it would be a miracle if he had enough control to even walk! Minato suddenly had a bit more sympathy for Musume being a flaky nutcase. But only a little bit.

His thoughts were set to the back of his mind as he neared the building. Like Musume's clone had intimated, it was chaos. However, he wasn't sure how he could get in to make a difference, as there was some sort of barrier made out of black flame that was surrounding the meeting house. Hopefully, it was not hot enough to melt the seal off of his special kunai. He drew one from his omnipresent pouch and tossed it through the fire. He could immediately sense the room on the other side- and what he sensed was not particularly soothing.

He looked at the ANBU bodyguards beside him that were his personal guard for the day. One of them stepped forward as if to protest the insanity of Minato's plan, but the Hokage knew that he was the only one who would be able to get through the flames, if they were what he thought they were.

Minato pulled himself through space, time and the fire and landed next to several scared and angry Uchiha. They ignored him, instead leaping to attack someone moving in the center of the entire mess. Minato assumed that it was Musume, though whoever it was was moving so quickly that he couldn't totally make them out. Which meant that whoever it was was continuously moving at body flicker speeds. He hadn't thought it possible.

The floor of the meeting house was covered in bodies- some screaming and grabbing their heads, but most still. There was also blood splashed on the walls and over the bodies, making almost artistic marks against the white shoji and tan tatami.

As Minato tried to figure out the best plan of action, Uchiha Battare leapt towards where Musume (?) had been several seconds ago and instead stabbed Uchiha Kobune in the neck, sending another spray of blood splashing against the wall. Battare's eyes widened in horror before he fell to the ground limply. Kobune was gurgling and staggered backwards, clutching his neck.

Three more Uchiha fell over, and then movement stopped. Minato was still trying to decide which side he should fight on, or what he should do at all. The previously almost invisibly fast person halted in the center of the room, resolving into a panting Musume.

"I'm glad you came." She gasped out, straightening and wiping some sweat off her forehead. "Can you watch my back? The ones that are more recently down will probably be back up soon, I can't maintain more than a few moments anymore."

Her eyes rose to meet Minato's and he couldn't help the gasp as his vision was locked with red eyes that with three swirls chasing each other around her pupils and radiating black lines going out from them.

"Sorry." She muttered, lowering her gaze and giving a shaking sigh.

Minato came towards her, noting that some of the Uchiha on the floor were already stirring. He quickly performed a jutsu to secure them all.

"Thanks." She moved towards Kobune, who was starting to look deathly pale, and turned back to Minato with her normal dark eyes. "Will you keep me safe?" She asked again.

"Yes." Minato replied.

And with that she nodded and turned back to Kobune. The other Uchiha's eyes were rolling in fear and he looked to be on death's door. Minato looked at the man sadly. Though they had had their differences, he did not wish anyone of his villagers harm. In fact, he was sworn to protect them.

Minato watched with a mixture of confusion and curiosity as Musume put her hands over Kobune's neck and stared at it in a familiar intense look. He was about to get angry at her for deliberately spacing out in the middle of such a chaotic mess when he saw that Kobune was no longer looking like he was getting worse. In fact, he was starting to breathe easier and his color was coming back. Minato gaped at Musume. A well trained medic-nin would be hard-pressed to save a man whose throat had been as savaged as Kobune's was, especially after fighting such a pitched battle. For Musume, who theoretically had abyssmal chakra control, it seemed impossible. Yet, there she was.

"What are you doing to Kobune!" Came a yell from behind him. Minato grabbed Nibui and restrained her.

"Your husband will be fine." Minato said in something approaching wonder.

"How can he be fine? He was dying, and now that freak is doing something to him!"

"That's right." Minato replied easily. "And look at what it is that she is doing." He could tell when Nibui let out a startled gasp and relaxed from her efforts to get to her husband that she could see it, too. Together they waited the remaining twenty minutes it took for Musume to heal the Uchiha. By that time, all of those who had been struck down by the Mangekyou Sharingan were awake, and it was clear that some of the Uchiha would not be as lucky as Nibui and had already succumbed to their wounds.

"Did she attack any of you?" Minato asked, torn as to what he would do if the answer was yes.

"She came in here, saying that if she were our head than she should be in on all meetings, and that we couldn't sneak past her that easily. Like we would really elect her to the position of leader!" Nibui snarled as she stood some distance from the Hokage, eying him warily. "We told her to get out, but she refused. And then..." Nibui waved at the dead and bound bodies and the blood everywhere.

"People are dead." Minato prompted.

"She wouldn't stay still! How are we supposed to avoid one another in such close quarters?" Nibui asked hysterically.

"She didn't attack back?" Minato asked hopefully.

"Of course she did, with those horrible eyes." Nibui shuddered. "She's too good to 'deign to kill us' with traditional weapons." She spat.

"Deign to kill?" Minato asked- it had sounded like a quote.

"That's what she said before- that we should be grateful she deigned to suffer us to live." Nibui growled, and then crossed her arms over her chest and refused to say anything more.

Musume pulled away from Kobune, who looked up at her with wide eyes. She stood and swayed, and Minato hurried forward to catch her. "That's a lot more work than I thought it was going to be." She muttered, looking up at Minato with unfocused dark eyes. "Anyone else dying but not dead?"

"No. And you will pass out if you try anything more." Minato scolded.

"Heh. No way, I have lots of chakra left, it's just my body that is wearing thin. Probably should have eaten something." Musume mused. She closed her eyes.

"Musume!" Minato said sharply. "You can't blank out now, you need to put down the flames. Others are injured, and could use a medic-nin."

One dark eye cracked open. "Give me a little bit, I need to get some strength." It was several minutes later and Minato was about to start scribing a seal on the floor to shock her out of her daze when Musume's eyes opened again.

She straightened with a yawn, apparently back to full strength, relatively anyway. "Thanks." She grinned up at him. "If I keep playing the damsel in distress will you carry me?" She asked cheekily.

Minato felt his eyebrow quirk up. "Perhaps." He replied.

"Really?" Musume leaned on Minato's shoulder. "I'll remember that, then." She said before standing away from him and moving toward the edges of the building. "Amaratsu's fire's giving people troubles, it seems. Good. Sort of." She rubbed her chin. "Might have been better if people had been able to run away, but I was more concerned with reinforcements."

Minato could see why, only a very few of the Uchiha were here, all the most discontent about the current situation and the staunchest of Fugaku's supporters.

"Whether the election was a sham or not, Hokage-sama, these people have made themselves mine. As such I will deal with them. And cooperate fully with the wishes of Konoha." Musume said, her back ram-rod straight and proper, before she bowed deeply to Minato. With that gesture, the flames vanished as if they had never been.

ANBU and Konoha police flooded into the building, stopping as they caught sight of the bound men and few women on the floor.

"Hokage-sama?" Rat asked, tilting her head toward the prisoners.

"If you would take them to Police Headquarters, Rat-san, and stay with them until the Hokage and I can sort through everyone." Musume said formally, nodding her head to the ANBU. Everyone stared at her, a bit taken aback at the seriousness she was displaying, before the ANBU snapped to attention and started to body flicker the tied offenders away. "I would appreciate your help, Hokage-sama." Musume said, turning back to Minato. "There has been mutiny, but there may have been treason, as well."

"Of course." Minato nodded. Treason was his jurisdiction, mutiny hers.

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By the time Minato and Musume had sorted through the five bodies, seventeen prisoners, and eight bystanders of the illicit meeting, there were three more people who would be sharing Fugaku's scheduled execution and eight people who needed discipline from their leader. Who was still, despite the surrealism of it, Uchiha Musume.

The conspirators had pushed the election forward with their unlikely candidate, but they had done so through official channels. And surprisingly, most of the Uchiha were content with the decision. Musume was clearly the strongest, as she had defeated almost two dozen Sharingan users. That she was almost unable to use jutsu, was not born in the village and had spent the past five or so years causing chaos seemed to be less important to the general Uchiha populous than having a consistent, strong leader. It probably helped that Musume and Minato were known to be on good terms and the clan was worried about being wiped out by the village, which was less of a possibility since Danzo had fled, but was still being muttered about as a possibility in the rumor mill of the city.

"What are you going to do with them?" Minato asked Musume in a lull in the chaos. He looked at her warily. Literally anything she said would not surprise him.

"Tempting as it is to just kill them, probably that would be a bad idea." Musume looked very put out at the thought.

"I agree." Minato said with relief. "Right now they see you as strong but beneficial, if you start killing them, they might panic."

"Ch." She huffed. "I have an idea of what to do. Once they are officially sentenced you'll see."

"Musume..." he drew out her name warningly.

"It's nothing that is without precedence, don't worry." Musume smirked. "But I have other things I wanted to discuss, before we get sucked back into nonsense." She sighed.

"What?"

"I want the Konoha police to become separate from Uchiha, and for more Uchiha to be in ANBU. And this separate part of the town thing is ridiculous. We probably can't do anything with the other clan's complexes, but this clan needs to integrate to the rest of the town if it is going to survive." Musume mused.

Minato let out his breath, smiling. "I agree."

"Good." The Konoha police force, helped with ANBU, brought out the eight to be released to their clan head. Musume stood up and put her hands on the first two foreheads she came to. Their eyes widened but they stood still.

After a minute, she moved onto the next two, then the next, and the next. When her hand left their foreheads, it left behind a very familiar scrolling mark, except that the center had three commas chasing each other, not an 'x'. Minato frowned to see yet more evidence of Musume's ability to set the Hyuuga seal, though her ability to alter it was somewhat troubling.

Musume opened her eyes finally and regarded the seven men and one woman. "I have set a variant of the Hyuuga clan's seal on you. You will not be able to use your Sharingan, nor will you be able to conceive a child." There were shocked gasps and some started forward, though they were stopped by the police and ANBU.

Musume quirked an eyebrow up. "If you continue to cause trouble, I will put this seal on your children, siblings, and possibly parents as well, depending on how much you piss me off." The Uchiha were starting to growl. "But I will entertain petitions for its removal on a yearly basis." There were shocked gasps again, but this time they were followed by looks of confusion and some hope. "Now, shoo." She said, waving them off.

The eight scuttled away.

"You're not worried about them causing more trouble?" Minato asked bemusedly.

"You think they will?" Musume asked, sounding too hopeful for Minato's peace of mind.

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"I'll miss you, brat." Musume said fondly, rubbing Naruto's head and cooing a bit over his hair. She was in her official Uchiha clan head garb, which was entirely too much blue for her taste, but she decided at the crazed gleam in the eyes of Uchiha Shatsu, her wardrobe assistant, that this was perhaps one battle that she could take on after she'd finished turning everything else onto its ear. She still refused to wear shoes, however. The humans could wear bizarre footwear to separate them from their environment if they wanted to, but she had to draw the line somewhere.

"I might miss you, too." Naruto confessed. "Especially since Jiraiya won't do fun things like this with me." He pouted.

"Well, what a way to leave the village- with a legacy of explosions!" The kitsune laughed. She turned to the others who were arrayed along the wall, a good portion of them shadow clones of herself and Naruto, most of the rest were younger Uchiha, with some scattering of other villagers with a love of destruction. Musume felt a sniffle of pride at the amassed destructive power. "Everyone ready?" She called.

"YES!" Came a happy roar in response.

"Then let's do this!" She said, sending a swift punch to the wall with her reinforced fist. A wide crack appeared in the wall around the Uchiha compound. She busied herself with cracking the wall and tearing great chunks from it, while Naruto at her side used some sort of lightening jutsu overloaded to shatter large pieces from the wall, and others on either side of her used various jutsu and physical attacks to turn the once proud wall to rubble. As her clones dispersed, she felt the memories of her demolition magnified and smiled happily.

She hopped up onto a pile of rubble and beamed at her helpers, who had gathered back to what used to be the gate. "Thank you all, you have done a great service to the Uchiha clan." She smiled. "One person could have probably done this with some Doton skill, but where would be the fun in that? Or the symbolism, no?" She saluted the youngling humans in front of her. "And now for the ramen dinner, courtesy of the Uchiha clan and Uchiha Teyaki and Uruchi. They wanted me to note that their baked goods leftover from the day will be available, too. So, let's go eat!" With a roar of approval, the Uchiha and assorted villagers stormed to restaurant.

Naruto ate what seemed like more than his weight in ramen, and stole a couple of sticky buns for his trip.

"You sure you don't want to stay for dinner?" Musume asked the kit.

"You've already managed to keep the pervert here another whole month!" Naruto chuckled. "We need to get going, so I can learn stuff and become a chuunin!"

"I suppose." Musume sighed. She knew how much the brat learned on his journeys with the hermit, no matter what the circumstances.

"And, hey, you helped me get past the dangerous bit of the summoning, right? Figuring out how to draw a fox. So now all the rest I have to do is just tweak some stuff." Naruto puffed out his chest proudly, while the kitsune winced. The brat's first several attempts to draw a summons had been embarrassing. It had looked more like a jellyfish with legs. As a potential target for his jutsu, it was her moral duty to help him draw a fox properly. Although if he actually managed to summon jellyfish, perhaps they could have eaten them?.

The two stopped by the gate, where Jiraiya and Minato were waiting.

"How was the destruction?" Minato asked, smiling.

"Great!" Naruto said, jumping into the air and pumping his fist.

"Good." Minato handed his son a large pack. "Here you go. And do you have the special kunai I gave you?"

Naruto pulled out a small dull knife from under his shirt, where it was hanging on a string. "Yes, dad." He said while rolling his eyes. "If there's any problems, I'm supposed to throw it on the ground so that you can come and save me."

"That's right." Minato said, smiling a bit more fragilely. "Pay attention to your godfather and listen to what he says, alright?"

"Unless it has to do with anything female." Musume added.

The two watched the brat and his mentor walking off down the road until they turned a corner and couldn't be seen anymore. "Well." Minato sighed. "I hope this is the right decision."

"He'll learn a lot. And they said they would stop back every couple of months." Musume replied, not sure who she was soothing. This was a good thing, she told herself, she was becoming too addicted to the brat, anyway.

"It's good that he is leaving- he needs to learn about the harshness of ninja life, but I am glad he won't be learning that by seeing his fellow villagers put to death." Minato looked disturbed at the thought, either of his son seeing it, or the concept at all.

The kitsune started walking back into the village, bumping her shoulder to Minato's companionably and letting her arm trail against his side. "It has to be done; they brought it onto themselves." She said, speaking only the truth.

"I know."

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A/N: So the answer to last chapter's trivia is : Jareth the Goblin king from the Labyrinth, played by David Bowie. The quote was about being generous. When Sarah whines that he isn't, he then wonders what her basis for comparison is.

No trivia for this chapter, sadly. But it is a bit shorter, so maybe I'll put the next up quicker. Last weekend was Otakon, though, so really... couldn't have expected one last week, eh?

All the names in this chapter are random words in Japanese. I didn't write down what they all mean, but if you care, just google them.

Thanks for all the reviews, they make my day every time. Yay!