Chương 11: The Village

A few days later, in the faintly empty hallway of the Hokage Tower, Itachi and Shuji crossed paths again. Itachi's gaze lingered on Shuji's face for a moment.

"Senpai is not looking well." he said quietly, eyes on the barely visible shadows under the man's eyes.

"Yeah, training." Shuji rubbed his forehead, catching a yawn halfway through.

"Money came in. Let's go, Yakiniku, we can split it while we eat." Itachi had grown used to this by now. Before leaving, he'd told his mother where he was headed. They blended into the evening crowd, the street slowly filling with the smell of scorched fat and grilled meat. Shuji walked ahead, humming some tuneless melody, Itachi trailing half a step behind, quiet. There was something strange about being around Shuji that put him at ease. No one here looked at him like some prodigy on display.

No expectation pressed down on his shoulders. Here he was just some kid. The restaurant smelled of smoke and sizzling fat. The moment the pork belly hit the grill it let out a happy hiss, grease dripping and sparking against the coals. Shuji moved fast, grabbing a slightly charred, dripping slice, wrapping it in dark sauce, and shoving it into his mouth before it got cold. Hot juice and salty sauce burst across his tongue. Days of exhausted training seemed to wash away with the first bite.

"Hah..." He let out a satisfied breath, eyes narrowing, and picked up another perfectly cooked piece, setting it on Itachi's plate without thinking.

"Eat. You're still growing."

"Senpai, are working on a new jutsu?" Itachi asked, looking at the fragrant meat on his plate.

"Something like that. Not going well." Shuji answered vaguely, grabbing another piece for himself.

"What about you? What have you been training?"

"Taijutsu, ninjutsu, weapon throwing." Itachi picked up his chopsticks.

"With a senior from the clan."

"Uchiha Shisui?" Itachi's hand paused, barely noticeable, and he looked up.

"Senpai, you know Shisui?"

"Aside from you, the record holder who graduated in one year, he's the one with the loudest name in the Uchiha clan." Shuji said plainly, taking a sip of his tea.

"I've heard of him. Never met him." A few rounds of meat later, their empty stomachs were finally satisfied. Shuji wiped his mouth and got to business.

"The payment's confirmed. That sealing scroll off the Suna shinobi, we counted out something like ten million plus ryo..." That kind of money could fund over a dozen high-tier A-rank missions across the five great villages. For an average chunin, it was more than most would save in an entire career.

"Senpai," Itachi set down his chopsticks, eyes clear and focused, "why would that Suna shinobi betray his own village?" Shuji didn't answer directly. Instead he asked, "What do you think a village is?" Itachi thought for a moment, then gave a textbook answer.

"A place where shinobi live, take missions, and protect each other." Shuji nodded, gaze drifting to the lights coming on across the rooftops outside, "in the beginning, Konoha was just a settlement the Senju and Uchiha carved out together after they set down their blood feud."

"When the two strongest clans in the shinobi world shook hands and settled side by side..." he tapped his chopsticks lightly against the table, "every other clan in the Land of Fire lost the choice to stay independent. No single family could stand against that alliance alone. To survive, they had to join Konoha." Itachi's posture straightened without meaning to.

Everything he'd learned in the academy about the village's founding, all the polished glory of it, was being stripped down in front of him by Shuji's flat retelling, revealing something colder underneath: survival under threat, and a balance of raw power. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Once most of the shinobi clans in the Land of Fire gathered here,""this place naturally became the country's only real military backbone, and the strongest one. The local lords, even the Daimyo's court, could no longer set shinobi against each other for profit the way they did back in the Warring States era." A thick cut of meat on the grill dripped fat onto the coals, hissing loudly and sending up a curl of white smoke.

"So at first," Shuji's gaze came back to Itachi, "the village was more like a platform. Somewhere these clans could cooperate under relatively safe rules, and still compete within them."

"Back then, Konoha was basically a dozen or so clans huddled together for warmth."

"Until..." Shuji's eyes sharpened, "the Senju clan dissolved itself, and the village started absorbing orphans and wandering shinobi with no clan to fall back on. After the Second Hokage founded the Anbu..." he paused, choosing his words, "the village finally had power of its own. Power that didn't depend entirely on the clans. Power that answered only to the village itself." Outside the private room, a waiter's footsteps carrying a tray passed by and faded, leaving a brief silence.

"That shift mattered." Shuji's voice dropped lower.

"Shinobi clans stopped being the village's only foundation. Once the basic pressure of survival eased, personal ambitions that had been buried started surfacing. And some of those ambitions..." he picked up his teacup, watching the hot liquid inside, "were bound to clash with the intrests of the group. Something that couldn't be resolved." Smoke from the grill drifted between them, blurring their faces.

"Senpai, you said that being a shinobi is just a job to you." Itachi pressed.

"So how do you see missing-nin?" Shuji's expression stayed even.

"Normally, I treat them as enemies. Under the village system, shinobi are bound by strict rules. They can't just do whatever they want to ordinary people." He picked up a hot piece of meat and dipped it in sauce.

"Ordinary people get to farm, run their shops, live their lives in peace. The damage stays contained. The economy grows, life gets better, and things like this," he gestured at the sizzling grill and the food covering the table, "keep piling up too."

"But a missing-nin, like that Suna shinobi," Shuji's tone shifted, "he ran from his village chasing what he thought was a better life. On the surface, that sounds fair enough. But in reality..." he gave a small laugh with no warmth in it at all.

"And he was still a careful chunin, wary of the village's reach, not bold enough to go too far. If you run into someone worse. Someone with no restraint left, who treats human lives as nothing..." He paused, took a sip of tea, throat working as he swallowed.

"I just want to eat a decent meal in peace. If someone insists on ruining that for me..." he set the cup down, and it clicked against the table, "then within whatever I'm capable of, I'll stop them." Itachi listened in silence, fingers tracing the warm rim of his cup without thinking, feeling the fine texture of the ceramic under his fingertips.

"Senpai," he asked carefully after a moment, voice quieter now, "do you think the village system can keep holding this... order together?" Shuji's gaze drifted out the window. Dusk had settled fully. Konoha's streets glowed warm under the lamplight, tracing the silhouettes of people heading home.

"No system is perfect, Itachi."

"What matters is whether it produces better results than the era before it. As for the village system..."

"Looking at it from the angle of ending the Warring States period and cutting down on pointless killing, it's a real improvement over scattered clans fighting each other for territory." Shuji's gaze came back, settling on the boy across the table.

"The village as a platform gave shinobi something they could call home. It cut down on the endless bleeding conflict between clans. But it also brought new restraints, and new frictions."

"No system removes every conflict completely. There's always tension between what an individual shinobi wants and what the village as a whole needs. Friction between clan tradition and the village's unified will. Those are problems the village has to face. It can't avoid them. Every generation has to keep solving them, keep balancing them."

"Senpai," Itachi seemed to catch something in that, "so inside a village, does that mean a powerful clan shouldn't exist at all?"

"Not entirely." Shuji laid out his view.

"The village actually needs clans to some degree."

"Especially families with unique Kekkei Genkai. A clan is genuinely the most effective structure for protecting and passing down that kind of rare power."

"You could even say that clans help the village by taking responsibility for raising talented people and protecting secret techniques. In a way, this also reduces direct conflicts between powerful individuals with strong bloodlines and the village's rules." He picked up a leaf of lettuce, wrapped a grilled slice of meat in it, voice calm but final.

"But a clan's power can never grow too large. It can never stand above the village. After all..."

"Look at the three great shinobi wars. In all that blood and all those bodies, plenty of the heroes who stood up to protect the village came from families with no famous bloodline at all. It was countless people like that, ordinary and unremarkable, one after another, who kept the village standing through the wars, all the way to now." Itachi didn't say anything else. He looked down at the piece of meat Shuji had put on his plate earlier.

It had already gone cold, and the warm lamplight reflected faintly off the oily surface. There was only the sound of crackling coals and faint laughter drifting over from the next table.... Extra Chapter for every 5 power stones. 2 Extra Chapters for every 5 reviews