Chapter 95.4- One Thousand Hands

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It only took twenty minutes after Shika had left for my next appointment to be at the door. I had Retsu bring hum in while I waited patiently behind my desk. While the meeting with Shika had been about bringing her around to my way of thinking on an issue, this meeting was about the opposite. The civilian catastrophe, while tragic, had left me with an unexpected windfall.

Orphans. A lot of them. And two men were going to try to convince me to allocate the majority of this unexpected resource their way. The light or the dark of Konoha. It was going to be one or the other. And their jobs were to make my decision as easy as possible.

“Come in Toshiro” I said, when I heard his second set of knocks.

He swung the door open.

“This looks impressively good these days” he said, referring to the tower.

“It’s still temporary. We’ll be moving sooner or later” I said.

“Oh.”

“So impress me” I said.

“The academy program should be lengthened to eight years” He began. I lifted a brow. That was an interesting way to make your case for being assigned a truckload of orphans.

“Expatiate” I ordered.

“The present academy program is impressive, as you know, but it is poorly suited for helping the civilian populace to develop at a relative pace to, and even compete with the clan children” he started. Well, this has piqued my interest.

“You are one of the strongest Jounin in the village” I said instantly, giving him the low-hanging counterpoint.

“And that is both in spite of the academy, and because of you”

“Because of me? What do I have to do with anything?”

“You’re going to pretend like you didn’t do it on purpose, Shori? Showing me the basics of fuinjutsu, helping me refine my chakra control with techniques we never learned at the academy but which Sensei had somehow expected to know? That’s not even mentioning the sparring. Hanging out at your clan compound had me sparring with people from our class, the class above us, sometimes even full genin when they were available. Every— most clan shinobi has access to that just by virtue of being born. I wouldn’t have gotten the same exposure if I didn’t have you as a classmate and if you hadn’t somehow decided that I was worth both your time and your attention. You were the sun for me, Shori. Without you I would never have dared to bloom as I have. I would probably have died in months after becoming a genin, if I’d even made it that far.”

“Now you’re exaggerating” I said, touched with his words, but also not certain why Toshiro had taken the route of flattery to win this.

“Am I? In truth, before you gave me this position, I was jealous. Jealous of both you and Uzume. I’m one of the strongest jounin in this village but I couldn’t even think about coming close to what you managed last month. Uzume is just as strong. I worked just as hard as the both of you, I felt. So why was I so weak in comparison. It was because of birth.” He said, and where the words indicated that I should have expected to hear resentment in his tone, maybe jealousy at the lightest, the only thing I could hear was a grim acceptance. A grim acceptance that was not pleasing to me. I would never accept anyone being stronger than me. I’d rage against it, fight the light until the day I died. Why was he just going calmly?