(28 April, year 54 AK)
Yuta returned to the 28th of April for the one last time and spent these unending three days while resting and reflecting on his overall gains during the time-loop training.
'How long had it been, two years? That's about right...' Yuta lazily thought as he was laying on the roof of one of the buildings in the village, lazily looking at the clouds, 'During this period my chakra grew from less than 2G up to slightly more than 6G, I wanted to catch up to Itachi and Hikari in terms of chakra, but it would've taken another year or two to do that, and I already almost run out of things to train and got quite bored from constant training, so it is what it is, I guess.'
'What's more important, I finally developed the sound based genjutsu, modified my Shadow Cloak genjutsu to use it through sound, and also developed my first forceful type Shadow Chains genjutsu, although it requires a huge amount of chakra, it is a paralysis type genjutsu and if it succeeds – it's a sure kill jutsu. Both genjutsu being quite strong while being casted through sound, so I could say, that my combat strength had grown a lot during this period.'
'If before I had a good chance against a Chunin with my Shadow Cloak genjutsu, assumed that the said Chunin doesn't know about the jutsu specifics, then now, with sound based Shadow Cloak and Shadow Chains, I should be able to win against Chunins consistently in one on one combat or even one against two, or so I think. But if the enemy has too much chakra, like more than twice as me, then I will have a very hard time affecting them with my Shadow Chains, since establishing forceful control over the chakra network that is much stronger than my own would be hard.'
'Well, at least the Shadow Cloak jutsu will still work, it even affected that guy during my combat evaluation, and that guy had much more chakra than Mamoru, and my Shadow Cloak genjutsu still worked against him to some extent.'
'Also during the time I was trying to figure out how to infuse chakra into the sound, I was actively pushing my chakra senses to the limit by overly concentrating on the small amounts of chakra that was leaving my hands, and over time my chakra senses improved a lot, I can now sense chakra outside my body more clearly and the range that I could sense chakra when focused has increased up to a hundred meters or so, I wonder if I would be able to notice Shisui now before he reveals himself.'
'My chakra control was also pushed quite a lot during this period with all the efforts to reduce the hand seals requirements on the jutsus by directly molding the chakra, and it also improved in turn the strength of my genjutsu as well.'
'With this progress I would say that my chakra control is quite good, it's one of my strongest skills, maybe even the strongest one. I don't have much things to compare it against, but I could assume that my chakra control is even above of what is expected of a Chunin by this point, since not many ninja actually could afford to waste months or even years by training something like reducing the hand seals requirements on jutsus.'
'And since I trained to reduce the hand seals for the jutsus, I now can use the three academy jutsus without any hand seals, although it would require slightly more time, but if I time my Substitution jutsu correctly, I could use it much more efficiently without the hand seals to get out of danger during combat, this alone will improve my combat strength significantly. Also, leaving behind clones to distract enemies without using hand seals will also be a good addition to my combat style.'
'But it's about time for me to master some new ninjutsus, I'm desperately in need of something for offense, since my current strongest attack is a kunai, either thrown or hand-delivered, and it isn't something to be proud about. Also, I need something for defense. That time during the combat evaluation, that guy used a large area-of-effect jutsu against me, and I had no way to defend myself from it. If it's something targeted that being thrown at me – I could dodge it as long as I keep my distance from the enemy and stay on guard, but if it's something like that huge water wave, then I will need a defensive jutsu to counter that.'
'As for my physical strength, well, despite me training each day, it grows quite slow compared to Itachi and Hikari, I would estimate that without actively using chakra to enhance my moves, I'm currently still weaker than an average Genin in pure taijutsu combat, although with enhancing myself with chakra I could breach the gap and surpass the average Genin in speed and strength, but even then I won't be even close to Itachi and Hikari in that regard.'
'And while I'm not even close to them now, I could already imagine how the gap will grow in a month or two, or a year. Yea, taijutsu was never an option...'
'Well, that an "average" talent for you, I should be grateful already for my spiritual energy, and in turn - my chakra for being enhanced by the influence of the River of Time, so no point complaining, in the future I should be able to find a way to improve my average physique one way or another.'
...
While Yuta was resting on the roof of one of the buildings in the village's central area and reflecting on his gains during the time-loop, at the same time somewhere else, on the outskirts of the village, inside the Uchiha clan's compound, in the hidden basement of the Naka shrine, the secret Uchiha gathering was being held.
There was a spacious room with a stone tablet on the far end of the room. Fugaku Uchiha, the clan head, was seating on the floor in front of the stone tablet with a serious expression, facing about thirty people in the room.
The discussion about the unfairness of how the village is treating them was going on for a while now, and it's getting more and more heated by the second.
At first, the gathered Uchiha clansmen was voicing out the concerns about being watched all the time, while Fugaku being mostly silent and observing the clansmen, but the more the discussion goes, the more heated it becomes.
"This is outrageous!" Takeshi Uchiha said angerly at some point, escalating the situation sharply, "A while ago, during one of my patrols in the central area, I had overheard how people on the streets are openly blaming the Uchiha for the Nine-Tails incident, they were saying it must be Uchiha who are behind all of it because we didn't had any casualties during the Nine-Tails rampage! We can't tolerate this any longer!"
It wasn't the first time that Takeshi had spoken during this gathering, and each time it was something along those lines, but it was the first time he has raised his voice so much.
"That's right!" Satoru Uchiha said loudly, following the suit, "Those people always look at Uchiha as if we are the criminals! We are the Uchiha! It's we, Uchiha, who maintain the law and order in this village! How dare they look down on us!"
"Those Anbu ninja are not even trying to pretend to hide anymore!" Kazuo Uchiha interjected gravely, "A while ago I saw a group of Anbu monitoring the Uchiha grounds from one of the tall buildings outside the Uchiha compound!"
"Clan head!" Takeshi exclaimed with expression of righteous outrage, "We can't tolerate this any longer! Those village's scum must pay!"
"And what do you propose we should do?" Fugaku replied gravely but calmly.
"If the village doesn't treat us with respect we deserve, we should make them!" Takeshi yelled angerly as he stood up, his three-tomoe Sharingan was activated at some point and is spinning fast.
'This is going out of hand...' Shisui thought worriedly as he observed Takeshi and the others, Satoru, Kazuo and a few others were also activated their Sharingans due to the strong emotions and mutual hatred towards the village, 'What should I do? Should I follow the plan that Yuta proposed? I can't allow it to escalate any further...' Shisui thought hesitantly.
"The village has a lot of manpower." Fugaku stated, trying to reason with his clansmen.
"So what!?" Satoru interjected angerly as he stood up, "Our ninja are much stronger, with the power of the Sharingan it will be swift and decisive victory!"
"Hiruzen is old!" Kazuo said in a grave tone as he stood up, his Sharingan are spinning wildly as he looked at Fugaku, "There is not much strong ninja who could protect him, Orochimaru defected, Jiraiya and Tsunade are not in the village, White Fang is dead! While we have you, clan head, and we have our own Jonins and we have Shisui of the Body Flicker, Hyuga clan won't interfere, and if we do this swiftly enough, other clans won't have time to interfere either!"
"Sigh, since it had come to this..." Fugaku spoke slowly with a tired sigh, but he was suddenly interrupted.
"Please reconsider!" Shisui stood up and said with a loud and resolute voice, "I don't support the idea of coup, there must be another way!"
As everyone in the room was surprised by Shisui's sudden intervention, Fugaku's expression became thoughtful, while Takeshi, Satoru and Kazuo, as well as the most of the others looked at him with surprise being slowly replaced with anger in their eyes.
'It's better to interrupt this madness before the clan head said anything in support of it.' Shisui thought as he anxiously awaited how Fugaku would react. And as for the other clansmen, by this point after observing all their hatred, Shisui didn't care about them anymore, since he doesn't believe it was possible to reason with them at this point, all he wanted now is to prevent Fugaku from declaring open support for the coup, and hence delaying it as much as possible.
'Yuta said that the clan head are still looking for a peaceful resolution, but I have my doubts about that, but since I decided to act openly in opposition to the coup as Yuta suggested, it will all depend now on if the clan head is really looking for a peaceful resolution like Yuta said he was, or not.' Shisui thought as he stood firmly, looking directly at Fugaku's eyes with resolve, ignoring the others.
--- AN ---
Schedule notice: I'll be busy on Saturday and Sunday, the two days that I supposed to post new chapters according to my schedule. So instead, I'm posting this chapter early, on Friday, and the chapter that is supposed to be posted on Sunday, will be posted on Monday instead. After that the schedule will return to normal.
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Thanks to Loalola, Eyes_Of_The_Void, ParadoX691, Codelinka, waltersaaron16 and Krishna_Razz for the power stones. This week we are gathering more stones than the last one, thanks!