Peace
Introduction
A thousand years have passed since the Great Ninja War. And the peace has changed the world.
The very first faces on the Hokage Mountain have been weathered by the years so that they are barely distinguishable from each other, simple smooth indents and bumps only barely indicating where distinguishing features had once been. There are no Hokage now.
The legends—history books, they'd been once called, before modern historians studied them and found the feats described within impossible and without sufficient evidence, likely propaganda spread to the ill-informed public—spoke of the ninjas these smooth lumps had once depicted as gods of the elements.
Minari's comparative anthropology professor, in one of her efforts to keep the required class engaging, had drawn them on the chalk board to make that point.
"Wood, Water, Fire, Wind, Earth." Professor Go connected the dots to form a pentacle. "The elemental forms and order are slightly modified from what we see in neighboring regions, but we can attribute the precedence of Wood to the fact that Fire Country is a heavily forested area."
Needless to say, she was not doing a great job keeping them engaged. Minari eyed the cute blond teaching assistant standing on the side, hanging onto the prof's every word.
The things that I would do to his Wood element...
"Though you can find other feats they were known for if you dive deep enough into the texts of the era, they are first and foremost known for battling with a particular element, especially when you look at records of these Hokage from neighboring regions. from this we can gather that this may have been misinformation selected by the Hokage to intimidate the regions around them for security purposes."
Professor Go, one of the leading scholars in ancient pseudohistory, tapped the Earth element character excitedly.
"Particularly significant here is the fact that the Godaime, a renowned woman doctor elected in peacetime, was claimed to be able to smash the earth apart with her bare fists. Considering that she was in the first wave of female Kage, this was likely a compensation tactic on Konoha's part to maintain the appearance of military strength. We'll study the Godaime and the politics around her in greater depth in our later section on gender in Southern Fire Country, but it is enough to say here that these Hokage participated directly and consciously in the development of a mythology, which we find mirrors a pattern found over and over again in various areas of the so-called Elemental Nations."
Minari idly took notes, though her focus remained on taking in the view of the cute TA. His blue eyes against that sweater were looking particularly grey today.
I'd like to study his gender...
"When we find the mythology branching out past the traditional format, we can find real world reasons reflecting the reasons for this change. Which brings us to a fascinating moment in Konoha's history."
Professor Go looked out at the class, and sighed, seeing no one quite shared her fascination with this moment. Still, she tried.
"Who can tell me the element associated with the Sixth Hokage?"
Silence.
Professor Go looked exasperatedly to her TA. He smiled, and it was like the sun rising. "Lightning."
"Correct. Industrialization!"
Rapid clattering of keyboards as students took notes.
"This was a time when Konoha went through a period of rapid industrialization. Under the Sixth Hokage's reign, houses were electrified, public transportation was set in place, and Konoha became a place that would not be unfamiliar to you or I. It's easy to trace the starring role of electricity in this era to why the mythology around Kakashi Hatake would involve electricity."
Minari barely heard her, she was drooling too much over the TA's smile.
"We have more primary documents we can rely on starting in this period, thanks in part to the personal assistant of the Sixth, who set up a file database that Konoha still uses to this day and also in part to the fact that alliances between the nations allowed the government to keep consistent records, rather than maintaining two databases, one for the public and one for those with more intimate clearance. That dual database period in particular was a huge issue for me back in my doctoral thesis. It was virtually impossible to know which version was the truth and which was fabricated."
This part would likely be important though, so she took notes grudgingly. It really was unfair of the prof to put someone as cute as that up at the front and expect her to pay attention.
"In spite of better record keeping practices, the same legends regarding these magical feats in battle persisted for quite a time past this period, peaking perhaps with the Seventh before dying out over several generations. So we get a fascinating paradoxical moment in time where history and mythology live side by side, neither able to fully reconcile with the other."
The hairs on Minari's neck suddenly rose, and she raised her head, scanning the room. For what, she didn't know.
Professor Go continued.
"But history won out, and we know now that people can't walk up walls, or control the elements." She shared a grin with the class.
That was when the wall was smashed in.
With a ringing in her ears, Minari could only stare in horror at the sight of splatters of bright, bright red that had been classmates just seconds ago.
The dust cleared, revealing a giant figure cloaked in purple fire.
"Everyone run! Now!"
The TA leapt forward an impossible distance, flying through the air to place himself right in front of the burning figure.
Minari fumbled a moment for her bag, then realized she was being an idiot and abandoned it to run.
Behind her, she heard explosions.
A thousand years had passed since the Great Ninja War. And the peace had made them all weak.
Minari cursed her forebears every time she hauled another survivor from a ruin. Peace didn't mean you could throw away your weapons. Society had been caught fangless when a ninja from the past, a one Kabuto Yakushi, had finally awoken from his self-induced brumation.
The world had changed.
She went to sleep every night in a makeshift camp, only to wake up for another horrifying day trying to find survivors. All of this was orchestrated by the TA, now known to the surviving class as Moruto. He'd been trained by his family, well enough to protect them, not well enough to end this.
I hope you got what you wanted, she thought at her ancestors through angry tears as she put herself to bed.
There can be no ninja wars now. You need two sides to have a war.
AN: Thanks for reading!
Given Kabuto's inherited obsession with living forever, I could totally see him putting himself in a cryogenic chamber of sorts (what Minari here calls brumation since he's reptilian and I've watched Cobra Kai) in wait of a world that would give him what he wants. And since I'm in the habit of plotting world domination, I naturally got on the track of imagining what one power hungry ninja could do in a world that's forgotten chakra.
