Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto
This chapter was edited by PraetorXyn
Chapter 04: Pulling Weeds
I vanished in a swirl. A moment later, I appeared right outside the Uchiha Police Force headquarters. It was an unsightly building in more than one regard. If I were to name the one thing that upset me the most, it would be the usage of the Uchiha clan symbol as part of the Police Force symbol.
My grandfather and father had made a monumental mistake in allowing the clan to be openly tied to the Police Force, resulting in many believing our clan and the Police Force to be one and the same. This widened the divide, and was the root cause for many of our problems. People didn't like others policing them, and they liked it even less when it was lorded over them. Apparently, the Uchiha pride — which many of my kin seemed to have been born with — didn't allow for anything else. This created lasting resentment, and it certainly didn't help matters that the Police Force wasn't partial to wearing a mask like ANBU to protect their identities.
With a smirk, I stepped into the building. At least severing those ties would help me release some stress. It had been some time since I had let loose, and straw dummies were a poor substitute for the smell of blood, the sound of breaking bones, and the sight of life leaving an enemy's eyes.
"Mikoto-sama," I was greeted by the chūnin, manning the large reception desk in the middle of the lobby. He served as a gatekeeper to the rest of the building through the corridors behind it. "It's a pleasure to see you. How may I be of service?"
His name was Junichiro. He was a pleasant enough man: eager to please, married, one kid, a two-year-old girl by the name of Ryoko. He was the embodiment of what was wrong with our clan, by deciding to stagnate for the last twelve years. He solely relied on his eyes to get him through the drunken brawls his superiors sent him to stop instead of trying to become the best version of himself. I was convinced that anyone born with the advantages our heritage provided should be able to get themselves at least rated as an A-rank shinobi in the bingo books.
At the end of the day, it wasn't that hard to do.
Shuffling closer to him as quickly as my outfit permitted, I arrived at the front desk. Giving him an alluring smile — one that I didn't even have to fake at the prospect of never again having to call Fugaku anything other than his name — I asked, „I am looking for my husband. He has not come home yet." It had the intended effect of lowering his guard — which was nearly non-existent to begin with.
„Just a moment," he declared. The instant he took his eyes off me and looked down upon what I assumed was a list outside my field of vision, I struck. My hand darted forward faster than a normal eye could track and closed around his mouth, keeping him from making a sound, thus allowing for the senbon senbon held between my index and middle finger to break his skin and flood his veins with toxins, which started to do their work. In one moment, his eyes widened when he realized what was going on, only for him to slump against my arm the next.
Without him resisting, it was simple to flip him over the desk. He landed on his back, the dull thud accompanied by a faint grunt the only sound that could be heard. Reaching into my kimono, I took out one of the chakra suppression and paralyzing seals and tagged him with one on his forehead. Secured that way, I made him disappear with Kamui.
The poison saturated in my senbon senbons was incredibly fast acting, but its effect was by no means instantaneous. Not that this would have changed the ultimate outcome if he would have managed to alarm his comrades. Given the state our clan was in, fighting two, twenty, or a hundred wouldn't make much of a difference.
The reason I still relied on subterfuge to take them out was simple: having to hunt down kinsman fleeing in all directions was not my definition of fun — especially not while wearing a kimono — and they would flee were they to witness me taking down a dozen of their comrades without a single scratch. So, taking them out in small groups was definitely less of a headache.
I walked around the desk and flipped through the duty roster. Twenty-six on-site and twelve two-man teams on patrol in the village: fifty altogether, so quite manageable. Fortunately, none of the teams was supposed to be back for another half hour, as their shifts were staggered to ensure there was always a police presence on the streets.
After some rumination, I decided to go through the station one room at a time. In order to do so, I created three additional Shadow Clones, reducing the chakra at my disposal even further. The clones' help would save some time, allowing me to send one of me down each corridor. A quick henge later, we all assumed the likeliness of Junchiro. It wouldn't hold up to scrutiny: the Sharingan could effortlessly penetrate this academy-ranked jutsu. This was one of the reasons given — besides it being a good lie detector — that it had to be us who policed the village.
For the Sharingan to matter, they would need to look at me with it activated. To the best of my knowledge, there was a standing order in place to flash your Sharingan at everyone approaching you that you had lost sight of for more than a moment in order to prevent the exact scenario I was about to implement. So, in theory, my approach shouldn't work. Then again, people grew complacent — doubly so when away from the battlefield — and if the Uchiha clan under Fugaku's leadership had become anything in spades, it was complacent.
Walking down the corridor, I reached the first office. The door was slightly ajar, and the sound of a dipped pen scraping on paper could be heard. Without pause, I opened the door and stepped inside. Two heads bent forward over their work turned my way — neither bothering with activating their Sharingan — reinforcing my decision not to rely on a stealthy approach. With the room only having two small windows and only one other way in, getting discovered at some point sneaking down the hallways was a foregone conclusion.
"What is it?" One of them asked — irritated at his work being interrupted — the smile on the face of the person I pretended to be, not deterring the harsh response to my presence in the slightest. Not that it mattered, as two senbon sank into the neck of the chūnin in the room the next instant.
A surprised "What…" escaped the throat of the one who had addressed me as he slumped over in his seat. His female partner managed to close one hand around the senbon as she sprung from her seat. The other hand went to the kunai holster around her thigh, never getting there. Her hand stopped halfway as vertigo hit her, and she fell down onto the floor.
I remained standing in the doorframe, keeping an eye on the corridor in case anyone had overheard something and came to investigate. After waiting a few seconds in which I intently listened and heard nothing to that effect, I fully entered the room, tagged them, and transported them to the rest.
Back in the corridor, I made my way to the next room when a door further down opened, and someone stepped out. The man was balancing more than a dozen scrolls stacked on his arm, nearly impeding his vision. He walked towards me, most likely headed for the archives. A short nod my way was the only recognition I received.
I waited for him to pass me by when my hand struck sideways and put a senbon into his neck. Immediately turning on my heels and using chakra strings — a trick I learned from some Suna puppeteer during the Third Shinobi World War — I was able to prevent the scrolls from clattering onto the floor. With my other hand, I caught himand leaned him against the wall where he was slowly sagging into a heap.
I secured the scrolls, tagged him, and made him and the scrolls join the others.
It was getting boring — tedious really — to take them out. I didn't remember any mission ever being this mind-numbingly easy and repetitive. The thrill of battle that got my heart pumping with glee on many occasions was surprisingly absent. The whole thing started to feel more like a chore than an actual battle.
By now, I fully expected to have gotten at least one fight out of this. There had been a persistent itch for one since the moment I had seen how the village had treated my Naruto. So I dropped the Henge and took a few steps into the break room. Five of my clansmen were spread throughout. Two of them were standing near a table with a tea set atop it. One of them poured himself a cup of tea that I had smelt all the way back in the corridor.
Two more were engaged in a soft conversation sitting on chairs in one corner of the room. Then there was the last person, who — after just closing a cabinet and fetching himself a box of Beika — turned back to the room only to see me standing there. "Mikoto-sama, what are you doing here?" he asked when he finally overcame his surprise after a protracted few seconds in which I could have ended him and everyone in this room a dozen times over.
His words alerted the others to my presence, and their eyes landed on me nearly simultaneously. Inclining my head sideways, with a smile, I answered truthfully, "I am here to kill you. Please struggle to your heart's content."
The one taking the first sip from his freshly poured tea nearly choked on it. As the one who had first addressed me said, "Surely, you are jok—" that was as far as he got as the kunai I threw at him with a flick of my wrist was stopped just inches away from penetrating the skull of the sole girl in the room. Only the quick reflexes of her conversational partner — who caught the kunai midair, Sharingan ablaze — saved her from her brainstem being punctured.
The shock of the rest was short-lived as they, too, flashed their Sharingan, and those already standing settled into a loose stance. Finally — I just hoped they wouldn't be too much of a disappointment.
My kunai was returned to me in a vicious but well-aimed throw, which — to the chagrin of my adversaries — I had no trouble fishing out of the air, just in time to deflect the barrage of shuriken coming at me from the two at the tea counter.
The girl tried to put me into a genjutsu as our eyes briefly met. It was a crude attempt that might have worked on Fugaku as untalented as he was at genjutsu. On me, the genjutsu didn't even take hold, washing over me without effect.
Dropping the box, the last one in the room started a sequence of hand seals. It took him completing the first two to clue me in on what jutsu he was about to use. By then, the rest, sans the girl, were upon me, kunai in hand.
Their initial attack wasn't half bad: perfectly timed, striking at different targets simultaneously.
I met the attacks of two of them head-on, disrupting their timing.
The kunai of the attacker to my right was blocked by my own, and I caught the kunai-wielding hand of the attacker to my left in an iron grip. This left only the one in the center, who — given the space constraints with the two allies beside him — had to rely on a thrust.
Using the forward momentum of the attacker to my left, I slipped past his arm with a step to the side while simultaneously guiding him into the path of the thrust. It was only thanks to the Sharingan's insight that he could stop the thrust in time before the kunai was buried in his comrade's back.
With that simple slip, I maneuvered them all into a line, right in front of me. It not only put a sudden stop to their plan of surrounding me should their first attack fail to bring me down but also put them into a position where they couldn't help each other for just a moment.
This was an opportunity I took full advantage of by severing the tendons in his arms before I let go of his hand. A kick to the side of his knee — accompanied by the familiar crunch of it breaking — was my parting gift before I retreated back another step.
A glance toward the back of the room confirmed that my last opponentwas still attempting to use a jutsu. Him spewing a fireball when he ended the sequence of hand seals was something I couldn't allow him to do. Not because I had to fear the jutsu — blocking or evading it wouldn't be that difficult, even in this confined space. It was the fire it would undoubtedly result in with all the combustible items around which would be the problem.
I was not referring to the reduced visibility it would create. I could deal with that — and was used to it, to be honest. There was hardly anyone out there worth their headband who hadn't tried to take away the advantage the Sharingan provided during a fight. Yet I doubted the same could be said about my adversaries.
This didn't mean the smoke wouldn't be a problem. On the contrary, the smell would carry on the wind, and the smoke column — even at night with the scattered light coming from houses — might be visible and attract undue attention. I would be better off without it.
Under normal circumstances, I would have used a genjutsu to take care of him. Subtly influencing someone into believing he had opened his mouth when he hadn't — thereby confining the molded fire chakra trying to escape his mouth to the inside of his body — would have been the most straightforward and efficient solution: using the inherent danger that molding chakra within your body carried against him by burning his inside to a crisp.
Unfortunately, doing this would most certainly kill him. It would be a far cry from the usual injuries Uchiha clansmen suffered trying to learn this jutsu ,since even when they failed, most of the harmful chakra got expelled out of their bodies, and the burns were limited to the mouth, making a burn to the throat or lungs exceedingly rare. Even those with a way for the chakra to escape were nothing life-threatening, unlike my genjutsu, which had been devised for one purpose only: to kill opponents using their own jutsu against themselves.
Since I needed them alive — for now — I chose a different way to deal with him. Pulling at the chakra string extending from my finger to the shuriken sticking out of the walls behind me, they detached and were flung in wide arcs at the opponent in the back.
Their numbers — despite their high speed — were nothing that anyone wielding a Sharingan should have a problem evading which was precisely what I was counting on: for him to assume this to be a desperate attempt at stopping his jutsu from completion. He dodged the shuriken by the thinnest of margins. A small step to the side and inclining his head to the side was all it took to make them miss.
In doing so, he positioned himself exactly where I wanted him to be. Thus, by the time he noticed the Kage Shuriken I had hidden in the shadow of the shuriken he had dodged, it was already too late to do anything about them. The widening of his eyes in surprise was immediately followed by a scream as his body was littered with metal stars.
As a result, the control of his chakra wavered, and the jutsu was canceled. The damage he suffered from my attack was concentrated on his arms stemming from his attempt to shield himself. His Konoha vest prevented the shuriken from inflicting more than superficial wounds on his torso, ensuring he would live while the ruined state of his arms would keep him out of the fight for good. All that was left was to make sure he wouldn't get any ideas like going looking for help.
My other adversaries weren't idle while this happened and renewed their attack. Jumping over their comrade — who was cradling his knee on the floor — they fanned out, trying to flank me. I parried a kunai from the left and then ducked under a high kick from the right as I circled left. It moved me out of the reach of the adversary to the right, forcing him to follow along as I defended against the increasingly frantic attacks of my leftmost adversary.
He must have realized that I was out of his league, and the only reason I hadn't skewered him yet was because of his friend. Every attack I would commit to would inevitably put me right back within his reach. Faced with non-Uchiha, I wouldn't hesitate a second to do exactly that, but against them — even if the short exchange allowed me to determine that my eye for insight was superior to theirs. It didn't make enough of a difference to allow me to escape unscathed — not within the limits of what I was willing to utilize against them.
Additionally, I was convinced I hadn't seen the full extent of what he could do. His speed had increased compared to his first attack sandwiched between the others. The high kick I had previously evaded had been without flaw: fast, and powerful — an exact replica of what that Guy kid showcased in his jōnin exam — and spoke volumes about his dedication, because without proper physical conditioning, not even copying from a master would replicate those attributes. If not for his partner — who was more a hindrance than a help — taking him down in taijutsu might actually be a decent workout.
Still, before that could happen, I needed to get rid of any potential interlopers. While the sparks flew left and right from my kunai clashing against those of my attackers, I noticed from the corner of my eyes that the girl was readying another attack as she went through some familiar hand seals. Bringer of Darkness: it was quite presumptuous to think Tobirama's anti-Uchiha genjutsu would work on the heiress of the clan. Still, it deserved credit for an Uchiha to make the effort in learning non-Sharingan based genjutsu, and she'd had to learn it the hard way. Tobirama had gone to great lengths to guard his jutsus against being stolen with a glance from the Sharingan.
It was exactly what I needed to create an opening for myself. Meeting the girl's eyes for an instant, I put a simple genjutsu on her a split second before she cast her own. I switched the position of me and her comrades in her perception, timed in such a way that even were she to notice the genjutsu and immediately flare her chakra to disperse it, it would inevitably disrupt her own. Doing both of those things simultaneously required a chakra control seen only in a select few each generation, a group she was not part of, given the minuscule amount of chakra I saw her waste in her first genjutsu.
My opportunity to act arose the instant the eyes of the man in the back glazed over, informing me that the genjutsu had taken hold. I deflected the kunai aimed at my chest to the side and — for the first time in this exchange — went on the offensive myself. A step forward put me right past my adversary's guard with his arm flung to the side and out of position — leaving him vulnerable. A fast cut near the armpits severed the tendons in his arm as he tried to retract it to his body, only for him to lose any control of the limb, and the kunai it held clattered uselessly onto the floor.
Instead of hurting him further to remove him from the fight for good, I punctured his neck with one of my senbon. Now that I was free to do so, I also threw a senbon at both of the other men lying on the floor in agony. It took mere seconds for their moans to subside.
As a result, there were only three people left standing in the room. As I looked them over, it became clear that their ability to continue was questionable.
The man was stumbling around, blinded by the genjutsu he was hit with. As always, I took the greatest pleasure in using my enemies' jutsu against them. The girl had managed to break my illusion just in time to witness her comrades being taken down. Condemned to facing me alone, she let her hands drop to her sides, finally coming to realize the futility of resisting, ready to accept her fate.
It was not unheard of when people experienced an unsourmountable gap in ability that the will to fight left them, but I had expected better from an Uchiha. Obviously, I hadn't expect her to measure up to Kushina's lack of common sense, simply unable to comprehend the phrase "give up."
Nobody would.
Seeing an Uchiha doing it didn't feel right, though. I was about to act on my irritation when something unexpected happened, and the girl fell to her knees and prostrated on all fours in front of me, beseeching, "Mikoto-sama, this unworthy one begs for your mercy. Please allow me to swear myself to you."
Understandably, I was taken aback by this. Was this girl so pathetic as to resort to begging for her life?
At first, I thought this might have been a ploy to divert my attention to her. A cursory glance around the room confirmed the status of her comrades. Still, I didn't drop my guard. Using the reflective surfaces of the metal dishes this bout spread across the floor allowed me a nearly unbroken view of my surroundings. Carefully moving in such a way that my body wouldn't obstruct the reflections of my blinded foe in the unlikely case he managed to break the genjutsu, I closed the distance to the girl, coming to a stop right in front of her.
"Shigure, right? Look at me," I ordered to get a look at her eyes. When she complied, slowly lifting her head from the ground, the first thing that stood out was that she wasn't meeting my Sharingan with her own, and instead had chosen to deactivate them instead, adding to her vulnerability.
I was searching her eyes for any hints of fear and deception and found none. She was genuine, which begged the question of why she had attacked me if she thought that way. She averted her eyes after a few moments in our staring contest with a faint blush on her cheeks and was staring at the ground as if it was the most interesting thing she had ever seen.
My curiosity was piqued. I reached for the side of her head, placing my hand on her cheek, and gently forced her head to look at me again.
As our eyes met once more, I advanced my eyes to the Mangekyou and took a look at her memories to confirm my suspicions. As it turned out, they were correct.
From the moment I had made my intentions known, the girl had subtly tried to help me, painfully aware of taijutsu shortcomings that wouldn't allow her to do anything overt unless she wanted to risk being killed.
She had known the first genjutsu she had used on me wouldn't even be enough to slow me down, and had used it — deliberately wasting chakra in the process — to invite my own genjutsu to stop her from using the second one. She had done all that to deceive her comrades into thinking she was fighting me with everything she had while — in truth — stacking the deck in my favor. She had the makings of a deep cover agent.
It left a bad taste in my mouth that she could predict me this well, at least until I realized how she had done it. Not only had she consumed every single tidbit of information she could get her hands on about me — which had allowed her an understanding of me only a handful of people could match — and none of them still living. She also knew things about me no one should know, which was no surprise since she had cheated, quite hard at that.
She had activated her Mangekyou Sharingan when she had witnessed the death of her mother, Saeko, my caretaker, who was only a few years my senior. She had been the only person within the clan I would have gone so far as to call a friend. She had been my sole link to the clan, a link that was severed when tragedy had struck and she died in childbirth of Shigure'syounger brother.
I had showed her kindness as we both mourned the same person and tried to get her out of her toxic home life. I knew it would only become worse without Saeko there to shield her from her father's worst impulses. He had been maimed in the Third Shinobi World War, and — unable to cope with the end of his shinobi career — had sought refuge in sake bottles. It hadn't helped matters that — just like Kagami — he had wished for a son as an heir, and — unlike Shisui — Shigure's brother hadn't turned out defective.
Even though I had failed in getting Shigure away from her father — I had Kagami to thank for that yet again — she had started idolizing me — her late mother's friend — who had cared for and fought for her. She had never blamed me for breaking off contact with her, because she had known the truth.
One of her Mangekyou allowed her to witness the past, and the other let her see the future —something I had thought impossible.
The ability — as she understood it — was limited, triggering on its own seemingly at random and showing her short visions of her future from her own eyes. Her other eye didn't seem to have the same restrictions, and allowed her to view past events that took place at the location she used it.
It explained why she was nearly blind in her right eye. Both abilities took a heavy toll on her eyes, and without being able to control her glimpses of the future — not daring to experiment with it, fearing she could accelerate her descent into darkness — blindness was inevitable.
This was in contrast to the damage to her left eye, which was completely self-inflicted on her quest to learn more about me. It had been the only way she had thought she could give herself the illusion of being close to me after she had learned what Kagami had done to me.
It had been heartwarming to see the despair she had felt for my sake, while at the same time, I should have felt resentment for her inaction, even though seeking me out would have changed nothing. The opposite was true: it could easily have made things worse for both of us. She also had a very convincing excuse. Having seen a glimpse of this exact moment, she had known I would eventually rid myself of the chains cast upon me.
It was a curiosity that she had seen the vision of this moment years ago. It was an outlier that allowed her a look far further into the future than the mere days of any other vision she had ever the common factor that every time it had happened, she had been forewarned about a situation in which her life was arguably in danger. This one didn't fit alongside the other premonitions.
Not only did she remember her eye bleeding uncontrollably after receiving the vision, but she shortly thereafter fell indicated a far greater strain than all her previous and later visions, and strongly hinted at a correlation between the burden and how far into the future the event shown to her was located.
Yet it also hadn't saved her life, at least not from me. Since she fulfilled all the requirements I was looking for in members to rebuild the clan with, I had no intention of killing or inflict lasting harm on her. The same couldn't be said about the rest of my clan.
On second thought, taking into account her emotional state when she had received that vision and what she was about to do, it became clear that it had saved her life, even though it didn't look like it at first glance.
She had been given exactly the information needed to stay her hand from doing something desperate in trying to save me, and knowing I would free myself would do the trick. I could only assume the deck was stacked against her and that she would have inevitably failed.
This obviously meant that those random snippets she was shown weren't truly that random, and her ability was more than just showing her the moments before death's cold embrace. It was influencing her decisions to get her to walk down a path that wouldn't kill was as if her visions had a mind of their own.
Since the girl was still staring up at me, awaiting my decision, I finally said, "Do you even have to ask? As Saeko's daughter, there will always be a place at my side for you." A shy smile was the response I received. "Sleep," I said as I jabbed her with a senbon hidden in my hand, cupping her face. "We will talk once you awaken."
Before she could form a reply, she lost consciousness and slumped against my hand. I gently lowered her to the floor and proceeded with her as I had with the others, putting a paralyzing seal on her and then storing her in my Kamui dimension.
By the time I stood up from my crouched position on the floor, my last remaining adversary had stopped his stumbling around. He had his guard up — his head turned sideways — and was attentively listening to any sound in the room.
I couldn't help but sigh at this pathetic display. Here I had held at least some hope regarding the skill of this one, only for him to also fall short of my expectations. While not immediately breaking out of the illusion he was caught in was forgiveable, still being trapped in it after all this time was not.
I granted him that Bringer of Darkness was undoubtedly a nasty piece of genjutsu designed to stop the brain from receiving signals from the optic nerve, thereby rendering the Sharingan useless. It also — unlike most other genjutsu — didn't just loosely attach itself to one's chakra network like a wet leaf to one's skin, so it couldn't be easily dislodged by simply stilling and flaring one's chakra. It instead encircled your chakra, functioning more like a bracelet.
As a result, a chakra burst originating inside the body — extending outwards instead of blowing it away — would just put a strain on it and stretch it outwards, because the bracelet would experience an equal force in every direction, ultimately keeping it in place.
In theory, it could be ripped apart by a single sufficiently sharp and powerful burst of chakra, but not many possessed the power or chakra control required for that, and even fewer possessed both. The more elegant method involved grabbing the bracelet with your chakra and essentially slipping out of it, or first cutting it off and then blasting it away. As a last resort, one could use a rhythmic burst to strain the bracelet until it eventually dissolved, which was impractical and — worse — time intensive.
Nonetheless, it was a method that any chūnin and above should at least be familiar with. An Uchiha with our clan leanings towards genjutsu and clear advantages in that regard had even less of an excuse.
He was just another failure, and since in this day and age there was no Tobirama to expunge him from our bloodline, the duty fell to me.
Yet first, I wanted to see how far he could go in his chosen specialty. Bringing my left hand up in a tiger seal, I canceled the genjutsu. It was no easy feat to cancel someone else's genjutsu from a distance — doing it to a high-level illusion even less so — so I had to resort to using a hand seal to succeed on my first try.
This was a clear indication that my chakra control was slipping because of the eyes I had recently acquired. It was a problem to be solved at a later time.
Readying myself to the extent my dress allowed me, I waited for my opponent to come out of his stupor so we could continue where we had left off.
My adversary's face was displaying more than one question that my kunai aimed at his throat prevented from ever being voiced. He swatted it out of the air with his palm, and then he was upon me. I deflected his right fist while he was pivoting on his right foot. I slipped closer to him, and his left leg met my right leg, canceling each other out before it could gain any noteworthy momentum.
Immediately upon his leg touching the ground, he tried to gain some distance to make room for another kick. Aware that this particular form of taijutsu was the most devastating when able to use its powerful spinning and flying kicks, I didn't let him get away.
We ended up moving in unison. Every time he took a step back, I took a step forward, while our limbs were engaged in a violent exchange of blows. Every attack was stopped by a block and followed up by another attack and another block.
It went on that way for a few seconds with dozens and hundreds of attacks blocked, dodged, or deflected, fizzling uselessly. Neither of us was able to penetrate the other's defenses and land more than a glancing blow.
Caught in a stalemate, I was considering rending my dress. The additional freedom of movement my legs would gain should give me the advantage.
I was about to do just that when I noticed a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, and his breathing grew more labored with every exchange. He was clearly having problems keeping up with our high-speed exchange. This was something he was acutely aware of if his increasingly more desperate attacks were any indicator.
As I slipped beneath another of his punches and my blow aimed at his ribs was stopped by his elbow, I wondered how it could be that a clearly taijutsu-favoring member of my clan was flagging after a short bout. It didn't make any sense unless he was another fraud who had only invested the time needed for his muscles to make use of the full range of Guy's taijutsu for a short duration at the expense of burning through his stamina. Combined with his Sharingan, it would easily carry him through every fight. Using them — I was sure — he consistently managed to win spars against Guy, thinking himself to be his superior.
Yet that ignored the fact that a spar followed its own set of rules — rules that in many cases disadvantaged certain characteristics like the ability to take blows while emphasizing technique and landing clean blows — which in a spar would never be executed at full power.
Besides, if my impression of Guy's personality was accurate, I doubted he could even be convinced to take off those weights he hid in his leg warmers.
It was people like him who gave our clan a bad name.
In the past, we belittled members who merely copied the skills of others while resting on their laurels, but he was so inept that he couldn't even get that right. He had been unwilling or incapable of investing the work needed to make his copy equivalent to the original skillset he had observed, and was instead content with using an inferior one.
Witnessing what I had over the years — a prisoner within my own home — I had resigned myself to the members of my clan wasting our gifts, and I no longer harbored any hope that members of our clan would improve upon something they picked up. Gone were the times when our clan strived for perfection, but this: this was just disgraceful.
It wouldn't be long now, and there would be a noticeable drop in his speed. From there, winning the fight decisively could be done with relative ease — not that I intended to give him the satisfaction of losing to me by being outlasted.
No — for that display, for squandering our name, for not putting in the work to make that style truly his — he deserved to witness it being dismantled firsthand. He needed to fully experience the folly of his ways as he was crushed under my heel.
In order to do that, I adjusted my strategy. Instead of continuing to deflect his attacks, I purposely blocked a blow. The force behind it was enough to momentarily halt my movement, an opportunity my adversary had desperately waited for. He didn't hesitate and created the desperately sought distance between us, taking the bait.
Just as anticipated, he used the space he was presented with to launch a spinning kick aimed at my head. It — at first glance — was a perfectly executed attack, utilizing the full scope of his body's strength in addition to the centrifugal force of his half spin. It was a kick: sharp, fast, and more importantly powerful enough to break through a block with my hands — possibly capable of breaking them — but definitely able to stagger me if it were to hit. It would keep me at bay, and would also enable follow-up attacks, which were why I didn't allow it to connect.
I timed it in such a way that when his Sharingan would show him what I was about to do, he was already fully committed to his attack and unable to change its trajectory. Raising my elbows over my head, I slipped beneath his kick while redirecting his leg ever so slightly upwards.
It was a minor deviation from its course that should not have affected a martial artist who had performed any move in his repertoire a thousand, ten thousand, or a hundred thousand times against various dummies in the slightest. Their bodies were acutely aware of exactly how they had to react to a kick being slightly off target, what muscles they had to use to compensate when a kick just grazed an opponent.
His body had never learned those lessons. It also didn't help matters that he wasn't wearing any weights on his legs, tainting the imitation of what he had witnessed by him trying to adapt it to his body which had a vastly different distribution of mass compared to Guy's.
So, it came as no surprise to me when his balance faltered before he had finished a half-turn around his axis being forced to consciously shift his balance which only just barely allowed him to avoid crumbling into a heap. Readjusting his balance mid-spin came at a considerable cost, resulting in the loss of a great amount of momentum and speed. This turned an attack that was supposed to make it nearly impossible for anyone to close the distance between his kicks into a joke.
Additionally, his near stumble also prevented him from building up more speed and momentum on its second round. It was a cakewalk to slip through the gap this created in his defense between his two attacks.
It was unfathomable to me how someone could overlook such a fatal flaw that should have become obvious within the span of a few dozen serious spars.
When I got within arms reach of him, he had his back turned to me with one leg in the air. That allowed me the use my legs even within the constraints of my dress. With his whole weight situated on one leg, I swept his leg from under him with a kick against his ankle. The specific sound of a breaking bone was absent — my tightly fitting dress preventing me from putting the full power of my hips into the kick — but it was still more than enough to uproot him.
His leg uncontrollably flew past his hip height, the effects of my kick and the remaining momentum of his attempted second kick twisting his body into something resembling an ugly art piece as he shifted in mid-air, trying to brace himself for his landing.
My attack would have stopped here if I had managed to break his leg and thereby succeeded in removing his ability to use his kicks. Unfortunately, I couldn't rely on my little trick working again. I extended the knuckle of my right-hand middle finger and struck his spine.
A moment later, he hit the ground with a groan. He immediately used his arms to push himself up into the air, intending to flip himself upright before I could push my attack. It failed spectacularly. Instead of getting his legs under his torso, they just flailed uselessly through the air. Without any tension in his lower appendages — let alone directed movement — they gave out the instant they touched the ground, and he collapsed into a mess of tangled limbs.
With glee, I watched my perturbed adversary as he attempted to get his legs working again. It took him far longer than I would have thought possible to realize what I had done, and I could easily determine the exact instant he did, because the sweet fear he emanated throughout our encounter accompanying his life and death struggle turned into outright panic from one moment to the next.
When his eye landed on me again, there was an unvoiced plea in his eye that sent a pleasant shiver down my spine.
It was not what I had wanted to get out of this at all. I wanted a fight, an opportunity to ease myself back into things. Having lived the dull life of a trophy wife for the last few years, I had thought I could use this to get back my edge — something I knew would inevitably be lost without true challenges — and training by oneself can only do so much to retain it over such a long time.
Admittedly, I hadn't expected much from them going into this, but for the whole group of them to prove unable to land a single clean hit on me while I was holding back fell short of even those expectations. As a result, I had to settle for reveling in the fear I could instill in my opponents. It was a bad habit to play with one's food — one I had picked up from my sensei — so just this once, I decided to indulge in it: it had been some time since the last person had looked at me like that.
With measured steps, I followed my wounded prey, carefully keeping the distance between us the same. His short frantic escape came to a sudden end when his back hit the wall. His eyes widened, and when he looked away to see what was behind him, I moved.
I had him pinned against the wall before he could turn his head back. "You have been found wanting," I whispered into his ear as I pricked his neck with one of my senbon. His body fell unconscious a few heartbeats later. Placing a seal on his forehead, I proceeded to store him with the others in my Kamui dimension.
I took one last look around before I disappeared, too.
My Kage Bunshin would take care of the patrolling Uchiha upon their return. Knowing myself, one would sit under a henge at the front desk while the other would hang from the ceiling — right above the door — just waiting to fall on top of them.
All that was left was Naruto.
Authors Note: Okay, there are a few things I think I might have to explain. First of all — as some of you might have noticed — Mikoto doesn't usually curse, so her way to insult someone is by belittling them. This is essentially the reason why in this chapter she assumes she can take a hundred Uchiha clan members at the same time. She actually can't, and she knows it. Make no mistake, this Mikoto's power — at the latest after gaining her MS — is definitely rooted solidly in the S-rank range with Kamui probably pushing it beyond that. However, unlike Minato or Ōnoki — the Third Tsuchikage — she has no outright army killer capabilities like Hiraishin and Dust Release clearly are. (I think I mentioned this, but Susanno v.3 is something that does not exist in this fic. A jutsu allowing an Uchiha with an MS or EMS — even for a time — to wrestle with a bijū is just a NO. Bijū should always be the ultimate upper end of the power scale to justify their weaponization by the villages in the first place, and the sole existence of something like this IMO begs quite a lot of questions… which I won't get into here.)
This means that taking on groups of people — especially if they are skilled — is a challenge, and Kamui — for all its apparent power — is no Hiraishin: its strength stems from the intangibility (with just the one eye) and not from the ability to teleport — which compared with Hiraishin is a relatively slow process and can't be used in conjunction with the intangibility, meaning in the second or so it takes to suck you in, you are left vulnerable.
Furthermore, we have seen what two competent shinobi can do against Kamui — see the Fu and Torune vs. Obito fight.
It took them two exchanges to figure out he had to become tangible to attack and that they needed to focus on counterattacking, which they did quite effectively — and that was without having the acute perception a Sharingan provides. They even managed to land a blow, which — if not for Obito's detachable arm — would have been a fatal one. So a halfway competent Uchiha jōnin (which does exist — despite Mikoto's views on the topic — belittling=insulting) should also be able to figure that out… presumably even faster because they have the advantage of a Sharingan, which would also have aided in the timing needed to land a hit.
You probably see where I'm going with this. I don't think Obito should have been able to take down the Uchiha as we were shown in the anime. Fighting more than one person has the inherent danger of being attacked from within your blindspots. Fighting a bunch of people guarantees it, and for all the Sharingan's great abilities, it doesn't give you eyes in the back of your head, meaning Obito should have lost a straight-up fight against a group (of competent chūnin or jōnin) above a certain size just as Mikoto would. She would most likely fare better because she isn't a one-trick pony (and genjutsu is an extremely powerful art in the right hands), but she would eventually die due to either chakra exhaustion from keeping a Susanō running to protect her blind spot or being stabbed in the back (just like Obito should have).
That doesn't mean that I think Obito and Itachi were unable to massacre the whole clan — I think, it is possible, just not in the way the anime depicted. It also doesn't mean Obito couldn't do it alone — just not in a straight-up fight. Throughout the course of a whole night, picking them off one by one, killing them in their sleep, ambushing them, and at most fighting some small group and taking them out quickly like Mikoto did in this chapter. I think under such circumstances, it is entirely possible.
50 Uchiha on duty during the night might not seem to be much, given the size of Konoha. The thing here is, as some of you might have noticed, I'm very much convinced that for a construct like Konoha to work, the various clans need to have been given extensive rights of self-determination. The probably best example canon provides us with is the Hyūga caged bird seal. Its very existence means that a Main Branch member is allowed to torture and / or kill a Side Branch member whenever they feel like it. Most of them are probably shinobi — subordinate to Hiruzen — so any attack on his shinobi outside of training should be a punishable offense, but that apparently wasn't the case, and since the seal existed in canon we are left with just one reasonable explanation: the clans having far-reaching self-governing rights extending as far as being allowed to inflict capital punishments like death upon members if they feel like it.
IMO those governing rights have to include the clan policing/protecting their own clan compounds (which should make up a majority of the village) and if we assume that regular troops and ANBU are responsible for defending the village from outside threats, I think the numbers are okay-ish. If all the Uchiha did was to guard/patrol the non-clan compounds and (parts of the) critical infrastructure.
Before someone writes a review that Fugaku's moniker was "wicked eye" — which hints at a certain talent for genjutsu, unlike what Mikoto says in the chapter. — telling me, to be wrong in her assessment of him. Let me say this: compared to Mikoto he is a novice… but despite that, he is up there in ability regarding genjutsu in the current Uchiha clan. So you can feel free to interpret Mikoto criticizing the girl's "weak" genjutsu as a roundabout way of complimenting her skill.