"…No way," she muttered before she could stop herself.
Her body moved on its own, a single unconscious step closer as she studied him again, eyes tracing his face with new urgency, her chest rising and falling a little faster than before.
"Kaguya…?" she said slowly. "The Land of Water's Kaguya clan?"
Kimimaro raised an eyebrow.
"You don't need to inspect me like that," he said dryly. "Why would I claim an ancestry like theirs for no reason?"
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
"I escaped," he continued, voice flat, unembellished. "I was a child. Smarter than most of them, apparently. That didn't make me valued. It made me dangerous to them."
His gaze didn't shift.
"They imprisoned me. Shunned me. Treated my talent like a disease. Then they were massacred by your village while I was gone."
A pause.
"Their stupidity solved the problem for me."
Mei felt a chill crawl up her spine.
It was too specific.
Too ugly.
Too… mundane to be fabricated on the spot.
And more importantly, it explained something that nothing else did.
His power.
There was no known framework that justified it.
No lineage, no village secret, no forbidden archive that could account for what she had just witnessed.
Unless it really did come from something this out of whack.
This forgotten.
Her eyes dropped, then lifted again.
"And," Kimimaro added, a faint hint of amusement creeping in, "unlike most of them, I didn't inherit their… aesthetic problems."
His gaze flicked briefly to her face. "My looks pair better with abnormal talent."
That earned him a startled sound that was half scoff, half breathless laugh.
Then he tilted his head slightly.
"Since I'm from the Land of Water," he went on, "even if the Kaguya and Kirigakure were historically at odds, your goal should be reconciliation. Bloodline users and the village finally aligning."
His eyes sharpened just a little.
"So I should get a say."
Mei stared at him.
Not just because of what he said.
But because of how wrong he was compared to every Kaguya she had ever known.
She had fought them. Seen them. Berserk brutes drowning in their own bloodlust. And this—
This man was nothing like them.
And yet.
Her gaze drifted upward, almost without permission, landing on the two faint red dots above his brows.
Subtle. Controlled.
But unmistakable.
Kaguya marks.
Realization hit her fully then.
He really was from the Land of Water.
Her breath caught.
"What else could I think?" she murmured, more to herself than to him.
Then, suddenly, she looked up, eyes widening.
"…How did you know?" she blurted out.
Her voice sounded strange to her own ears.
Too light. Too unguarded.
"How did you know that was my dream?"
Kimimaro smiled.
Just a little.
"That's a dumb question," he said calmly.
She flushed instantly.
"You have two kekkei genkai," he continued. "You survived a village that hunted people like you. Of course, you imagined yourself as some kind of a bridge. The one who fixes something old and broken. The one who proves it didn't all have to end that way."
Her cheeks warmed despite herself.
He saw right through it.
This quiet fantasy she'd never said out loud.
"…You really are unbearable," she muttered, turning her face away slightly.
"But accurate," he replied.
She exhaled slowly, heart beating harder than it should have.
For the first time since he arrived, the fear wasn't the loudest thing in her chest anymore.
Something else had taken its place.
Internally, Kimimaro scoffed at her goal.
Not openly. Not cruelly.
Just… honestly.
From his perspective, the story almost wrote itself.
Mei Terumi had likely been taken in by Kirigakure long before Obito ever laid a hand on the village, right in the middle of the quieter erasures of bloodlines, including her inherited ones.
Dual kekkei genkai didn't just slip through the cracks. Not in that place. Not in that era.
At thirty, experienced, perceptive, now living outside the village and commanding the largest organized resistance force it had seen in years, there was no way she didn't know what Kirigakure had done to her predecessors. To people like her. To the ones who came before.
Who knew what her real backstory was?
It wasn't hard to imagine darker possibilities. Parents hunted down by Kirigakure.
A child spared, not out of mercy, but because she was useful. Exotic. Powerful.
A future weapon wrapped in the lie of belonging. A trophy turned asset.
Taken from outside and raised within Kirigakure itself, thoroughly indoctrinated into its system. And yet. She still cared. Even now. Even knowing what she almost certainly knew.
Not for the institution. Not for the abstract idea of Kirigakure. But for the bonds.
The few threads that had mattered.
Ao. Chōjūrō.
The rebel shinobi who had accepted her leadership without fear.
People who worried about her, and whom she worried about in return.
Kimimaro could see it clearly. In how she ordered retreats.
In how she stopped making pointless sacrifices the moment she understood the futility.
In how her first instinct wasn't rage, but protection.
In his mind, it wasn't all that different from Naruto.
Both shunned. Both wronged.
Both raised in environments that treated them as problems rather than people.
And the moment they gained a little power, a little acknowledgment, a few scraps of acceptance, they leapt for it. Clung to it.
Built their entire sense of self around finally being seen.
It was foolish.
In Kimimaro's world, it was unforgivably naïve.
But it was also… pure.
And purity, while stupid, had value.
If someone like that was brought fully to heel, not broken, not lied to, but genuinely aligned, then they didn't betray.
They didn't waver.
They didn't scheme in the dark.
They stayed loyal.
Kimimaro looked at her again, really looked this time, not as a leader, not as a Mizukage candidate, but as a woman shaped by contradictions she refused to abandon.
If he could tame her.
If he could pull her fully into his orbit without shattering that core—
Then she would be trustworthy.
And in a world built on abandonment, that alone made her valuable.
Kimimaro continued before she could fully process everything he'd already said.
"My first subordinate is also from the Land of Water," he added calmly. "Yuki clan."
Mei's eyes widened despite herself.
"…The Yuki," she said quietly.
"Yes," Kimimaro replied. "Recently destroyed. Same pattern. Same excuses."
For a moment, something cold and sharp passed through her expression.
Not rage. Recognition.
Ao stiffened beside her, jaw tightening. He'd read the reports.
Purges justified as 'security.'
Entire bloodlines erased and written off as unfortunate necessities.
"So," Mei said slowly, "you're not the only one."
"No," Kimimaro said. "Just the one who survived first."
That landed heavier than he'd intended.
She exhaled once, steadying herself, then asked the question she'd been circling since the beginning.
"If we actually manage to remove Akatsuki from Kirigakure," she said, eyes fixed on him, "what do you intend to do with the village?"
Kimimaro didn't hesitate.
"You remain Mizukage," he said simply. "The face. The authority. The continuity."
Her breath caught.
"I'll resettle quietly," he continued. "Me and my subordinates."
"How many?" Ao asked cautiously.
"Four more S-rank," Kimimaro replied. "Not much weaker than me."
Both of them froze.
Then he added, almost casually, "I also lead the Jashinist cult."
That name hit differently.
Mei's eyes narrowed. "The… cult?"
"You've heard of it," Kimimaro said. "Everyone has. Largest one in the world now."
Ao grimaced. "We thought they were feral."
"They were," Kimimaro agreed. "They're disciplined now."
He continued without pause. "Roughly a hundred high chūnin to low jōnin equivalents. Around a thousand low to mid chūnin. Hardened. Loyal."
Mei's mind worked fast.
That wasn't a fringe group.
That was an army.
If it were true.
In raw power, it was only slightly weaker than the force she'd gathered for the coup.
"…And you want to bring them into Kirigakure?" she asked carefully.
Kimimaro shook his head.
"Only those hundred," he said. "The rest will be busy everywhere else in the Land of Water."
"Busy doing what?" she asked curiously.
"Subjugating," he replied flatly. "Permanently keeping in check."
He didn't pause.
"The local feudal 'lords' across the archipelago. The ones who like to test limits. Fund rebellions. Shelter missing-nin. Scare off merchants. Choke your mission flow."
His eyes hardened.
"The puny little parasites who poisoned our reputation in the first place. Who made any peaceful integration into Kirigakure impossible, and in doing so, helped pave the way for the massacres that followed."
Her eyes widened.
"So, you don't have to worry," he added, seeing her concern. "They won't live in the village."
She hesitated. "Their reputation—"
"It's useful," Kimimaro cut in.
He stepped closer, tone shifting into something almost instructional.
"You know why Kirigakure kept purging bloodlines," he said. "Why it never stabilized."
She didn't answer.
"Because power here was scattered," he continued. "Feudal lords acting like mini-daimyō. The hired, mostly bloodline, clans forming pseudo–hidden villages. Geography making conquest difficult. Constant low-level wars draining the village."
He looked at her directly.
"Central versus scattered power. That's been the root of every internal collapse in the Land of Water. The crux of the matter."
Mei's lips parted slightly.
"So you don't fix that by slaughtering more bloodlines like your village did," Kimimaro said evenly. "You fix it by ending fragmentation."
He didn't raise his voice.
"You fix it by making a certain politician stop underfunding his own village," he went on, "out of the belief that his land is isolated enough to coast by against the other nations. And by stopping him from forcing it to cannibalize its own islands and shinobi potential instead."
Heat crept up Mei's cheeks, irritation flaring more at herself than at him.
The logic was uncomfortably clean. Too clean.
Obvious in hindsight, and somehow worse for it.
She'd never framed it that way before.
"Wait…" She frowned, unease settling in her gut.
"You really intend to deal with the daimyō as well?"
She tried to keep her tone level, but worry slipped through anyway.
"Because if you move against him too openly—"
Kimimaro smirked.
"Deal with him?" he echoed, as if the word itself were faintly amusing.
Mei hesitated. "Then what? You intimidate him? Replace him?"
"I remind him," Kimimaro cut in calmly, "who actually holds the hard power."
He shrugged, casual, like this was administrative housekeeping rather than political heresy.
"For now, just a little. Enough to keep him polite, predictable, and out of my way."
His smile sharpened. "That's all it takes."
Mei went quiet, then let out a slow breath. "…That's disturbingly reasonable."
Kimimaro turned slightly, gesturing toward the village beyond the mist.
"Kirigakure can't afford to be weak anymore," he said.
"Weak villages get used. Broken. Turned into battlegrounds for other people's grudges."
His voice dropped, steady and certain.
"With enough stability, it won't just survive. It'll prosper."
He'd mentioned Kirigakure in the end.
But Mei couldn't hear what he wasn't saying.
This had never been about just one village.
Or just one daimyō.
Kimimaro had wanted to deal with the largest parasites of all for a long time.
All five of them.
Unlike most shinobi, he'd never felt even a flicker of fear toward them.
What power did civilians like that actually possess?
None of their authority was intrinsic.
Every ounce of it was borrowed, propped up by shinobi themselves who chose to respect the system and play along with it.
Strip that away, and they were nothing.
Of course, killing or too obviously coercing the Water Daimyō himself outright currently would have consequences.
The other four could suddenly forget their "national rivalries", rally the great villages, and point the entire world at him.
That scenario was entirely possible.
That logic was precisely why he also planned to begin everything in the most isolated place first, just in case.
The Land of Water.
Do it gradually, use covert means as well, and by the time the rest realized the full extent of what was happening here, the dominoes would already be falling, and the rest would go down more easily.
After all, Akane's Mangekyō-level genjutsu was practically tailor-made for daimyō himself.
Leave a clone behind, adjust a few thoughts, and the problem solved itself.
Eventually, once enough of the shinobi world followed his lead, resistance would stop being ideological and start being logistical.
At that point, conquest wouldn't even be difficult anywhere.
And really, what was the point of conquering just those five villages?
Kimimaro wanted the world.
The irony was that while his drive was rooted in personal ambition and power, the outcome would benefit everyone else far more than it ever benefited him.
The daimyō system might once have made sense.
When shinobi were a tiny fraction of the population, perhaps it was reasonable for them to leave governance and economics to civilians and focus purely on war.
But that world was gone.
Kimimaro didn't doubt his own knowledge, his intellect, or his ability to rule.
He didn't doubt his permanence either.
No more wars. No more great hidden villages playing warring and playing games through unfortunate proxies.
Under his hand, the world would enter an unprecedented era of development, chakra productivity unlocked at scale, civilization finally unified and hardened enough to face threats like the Ōtsutsuki, or whatever else lurked beyond the stars.
Not because he was benevolent.
But because he was capable.
Mei felt it then.
The momentum.
The inevitability.
The way his vision pulled her forward before she could fully question it.
Her face felt warm, her thoughts racing, heart beating faster than she liked to admit.
This wasn't a madman promising chaos.
This was someone offering order.
And for the first time in years, the future he described didn't feel like a gamble.
It felt… solid. That realization unsettled her more than anything else he'd done.
Kimimaro let the silence stretch just long enough for everything he'd said to settle.
Then he lifted one hand.
Chakra folded inward, precise and quiet, and a shadow clone stepped out beside him.
Not aggressive. Not looming. It simply stood there, identical, composed, waiting.
"This stays," Kimimaro said, nodding toward it. "With you."
Mei's eyes flicked to the clone, then back to him. "…As what?"
"Alignment," he replied. "Continuity. A channel. If something shifts, if the board changes, you'll know before it breaks. And I'll know if you're about to walk into something you can't see."
Ao frowned. "A leash."
Kimimaro didn't deny it. "A safeguard."
The clone met Mei's gaze without pressure, without presence beyond its existence.
It didn't feel like surveillance. It felt like inevitability.
"You'll proceed with your plan," Kimimaro continued. "As scheduled. Same timing. Same signals. Same expectations."
Mei nodded slowly. "And you?"
"We won't be announced," he said. "We won't be expected. We'll join when it matters."
Her breath tightened. "You're going to let them commit."
"Yes," Kimimaro said evenly. "And then we end it before it becomes a civil war."
He looked at her directly. "I'll make sure the village suffers as little as possible. No bloodletting for the sake of theater."
A pause.
"You don't save Kirigakure by drowning it first."
Something in Mei's chest eased at that. Not relief. Permission.
"…When?" she asked.
"When the trap closes," he said. "And before it snaps shut on you."
The clone stepped forward half a pace, then stopped, as if to emphasize it wasn't there to command. Just to remain.
Kimimaro turned away.
"We're aligned until then," he said over his shoulder. "Don't make me regret trusting your restraint."
She watched him walk into the mist, his presence withdrawing without drama, without flare, as if the world simply accepted his absence.
The clone remained, but it retreated a short distance, deliberately giving them space while staying well within range, present without intruding.
Mei exhaled slowly.
Ao glanced between her and the clone. "…He's serious."
"Yes," Mei said quietly.
Her gaze lingered where Kimimaro had disappeared, warmth still faintly present beneath the weight of everything else.
"Then," she added, voice steady now, "we move forward."
Not blindly.
Not alone.
And when the coup began, when the enemy moved to tighten the noose—
Kirigakrue would learn, far too late, that something else had already stepped onto the board.