A week passed before Fugaku finally lined up enough support inside the clan.
He marched straight to the Hokage with one clear demand: Danzo had to be punished hard for letting his people try to murder Yohei and steal the Mangekyo Sharingan.
Hiruzen and the two advisors barely glanced at it at first. Old complaints from the Uchiha usually got shot down without much thought. This time the response was different. The Hyuga, Kurama, and every other bloodline clan stepped up first. Then the secret-technique families—the Nara, Yamanaka, Akimichi, Aburame, Inuzuka—fell in behind them.
Together they controlled most of Konoha's real power. If they wanted to, they could force the Hokage out.
Hiruzen finally understood the real issue wasn't one dead ninja. It was Root trying to rip a bloodline out of someone's head.
He pulled Jiraiya's old report and read it again, slower this time. The part about the attackers going straight for Yohei's eyes had been buried under everything else Danzo had done. Now it stood out like blood on snow.
Danzo was more than capable of it. Root already kept a collection of Sharingan eyes taken from dead Uchiha. The man had crossed a line everyone else pretended didn't exist.
Homura's face twisted. "Hiruzen, the Uchiha are getting out of hand. Are they trying to start something?"
"Shut your mouth, Homura." Hiruzen's voice cracked like a whip. "They're making a legitimate demand. Or do you think they don't even have the right to speak?"
Koharu shot Homura a warning look and pulled him back.
She spoke calmly. "Hiruzen, the Uchiha aren't asking for blood. They said punish him. That means they're leaving us room to negotiate. We just have to find the right terms."
When Fugaku returned, he didn't come alone. Hiashi and Yamanaka Inoichi walked in with him—one speaking for the bloodline clans, the other for the secret-technique families. This wasn't just an Uchiha problem anymore. It was every clan watching to see how far Root would go.
Hiruzen tried the old trick of retreating first. He admitted the report had been too brief and that Danzo's games had distracted everyone. He even threw in the emotional angle about the war already costing too many lives and how nobody needed more chaos on the fronts.
Fugaku didn't bite. "Hokage-sama, this isn't just about my clan anymore. I'm speaking for every family that sent people to fight. We all want to know the village won't let Root keep stealing bloodlines and secret techniques."
Hiruzen studied him for a long second. The easygoing clan head was gone. This version of Fugaku was sharp, controlled, and dangerous.
He laid out the offer. Danzo would lose his seat as elder. He would keep his command on the western front and his position as Root's leader for now—because the line against Iwa couldn't afford to collapse. If anything like this happened again, there would be no mercy. As for Yohei, he would be promoted to jonin and given one chance to pick a technique from the Scroll of Seals.
Fugaku listened without interrupting. Taiichi had called it exactly right. Danzo got the lightest slap possible while the village kept using him. Yohei got a real promotion and a reward. It was the best deal they were going to get.
He glanced at Hiashi and Inoichi. They gave tiny nods. As long as Root stopped reaching for other people's bloodlines and secrets, the rest was Uchiha business.
Fugaku accepted.
They talked a little longer, keeping things polite on the surface. Then they left.
The official notice went out the same day. Danzo was stripped of his elder title for gross negligence and sent to atone on the front lines. People who understood the game knew exactly how light the punishment really was. Some celebrated. Others stayed angry. The storm died down anyway.
On the western front, Danzo read the order in his command tent surrounded by his most loyal Root operatives. For a moment the rage almost swallowed him whole. Then he read the full intelligence report that came with it and went very still.
He had almost lost everything over a pair of eyes. He had been doing the same thing for years—collecting Sharingan from dead Uchiha without anyone stopping him. This time the Uchiha had used it against him perfectly.
Fugaku had moved with precision and timing that didn't match the weak, hesitant man Danzo thought he knew. Someone was feeding the clan head advice. Danzo didn't know who yet, but he would find out.
He made his decision. Finish Iwa first. Then burn the entire Uchiha clan to the ground. Only dead Uchiha were safe Uchiha.
In the Hot Springs Country camp, Taiichi got the news from one of Orochimaru's messengers and felt no surprise at all. Everything had played out the way he expected. Danzo took the smallest hit possible. The real win was that the other clans had finally seen Root for what it was and decided they wouldn't be next.
It was a small victory, but it mattered. The Uchiha had shown they could play the game. Taiichi had helped lay the first stones for pulling them back into the village instead of letting them stay isolated and bitter.
He set the scroll aside. The northern front needed his attention now.
The short truce with Cloud was over. Fighting had started again, but Cloud had changed its approach. They pulled every outpost out of the Land of Hot Springs and dug new lines in the Land of the Moon. Orochimaru had wanted to chase them, but the village ordered him to stop at the border.
Both sides understood the situation. The Land of Fire had no interest in taking more territory, and nobody wanted a fight to the death with Cloud. So the war settled back into the small, vicious team skirmishes both villages were best at.
Taiichi suddenly had more free time than he'd had in months. He started sending a shadow clone to work with Orochimaru on research whenever the front was quiet.
Orochimaru watched the clone work and shook his head. "No one else in Konoha can keep shadow clones running like you do, Taiichi. Not even close."
Taiichi had assumed it was just about having high enough constitution and spirit. Watching the Sannin and everyone else, he realized that wasn't true. Even they didn't maintain multiple clones around the clock the way he did. Only Naruto in the old stories had come close, and even he hadn't run them nonstop like this.
He had a real talent for it. That explained a lot about how far he'd come at his age.
He didn't brag. He just smiled and changed the subject. "You're spending more and more time on experiments, Orochimaru-sama. We're still in the middle of a war."
Orochimaru kept working without looking up. "Your clones have taken a lot of the load off me. And this is a battlefield. Test subjects are everywhere. It would be a waste not to use them while we have the chance."
Taiichi had joined Orochimaru's research four times now. The man really was a mad scientist—ninjutsu, curse marks, biology, whatever caught his interest. He had pulled Taiichi in for two reasons: the same obsessive curiosity, and Taiichi's medical skills.
Taiichi's healing had reached a level where almost anyone who wasn't already dead could be pulled back. That made him extremely useful when experiments went wrong and test subjects started dying too fast.
He still thought Orochimaru's methods were sloppy. No proper setup, no animal trials, straight to human captives. Taiichi had said so more than once. Orochimaru had laughed in his face and told him there were always more bodies in wartime. One dies, grab another. Don't slow the work down.
After the third time, Taiichi stopped arguing. Everyone was responsible for their own choices. Easy to get used to having endless test subjects. Hard to go back to scraping for them later. Taiichi wondered if this was the start of something darker—whether Orochimaru would eventually decide Konoha's own people made convenient replacements when the war ended.
He kept the thought to himself and focused on the work in front of him. The northern front was quiet for now. He planned to enjoy it while it lasted.