Naruto: Reborn as Yagura Karatachi

Of course, among the few who knew this information was Yagura himself.

He just didn't know the exact due date.

Kushina Uzumaki's pregnancy was top-level classified information in Konoha.

Even though Yagura had taken steps to investigate—despite Kirigakure having numerous spies within the Land of Fire—those who had actually infiltrated Konoha itself were few, and most had already been discovered and eliminated.

So in the end, Yagura had learned nothing from Konoha. He couldn't even confirm whether Kushina was truly pregnant.

All he knew was that Naruto, along with the other Twelve Little Champions, had all been born in the same year.

The fact that Kushina was carrying Naruto, and the approximate conception date, had come from none other than Orochimaru.

"Around late September or early October, I'd say."

Thankfully, no matter how wildly Yagura's butterfly wings had flapped, they hadn't disturbed the day Minato Namikaze and Kushina conceived Naruto.

Counting back from the usual ten-month pregnancy, Yagura could make an educated guess about Naruto's birth.

"It's August now... just a month or two to go."

The idea of making a move during the Nine-Tails' rampage—that wasn't even a question.

What really mattered was whether Yagura's butterfly effect had disturbed Obito's plans.

Would the Nine-Tails Incident still happen?

Yagura got his answer straight from the Akatsuki.

"That Obito brat failed to win Nagato over. Right now, he's in no position to capture the Tailed Beasts. He's cornered—and getting desperate."

Obito had approached Nagato again, this time while both Yahiko and Konan were present.

He had laid out his plan: to gather all the Tailed Beasts and use their power to bring peace to the world.

And right now, he saw a golden opportunity—Kushina Uzumaki, the Nine-Tails' jinchūriki, was pregnant.

Obito had invited Nagato to join him in capturing the Nine-Tails.

Even if they couldn't succeed, just unleashing the Nine-Tails would be enough to inflict a devastating blow on Konoha—the village Nagato and his friends still held a deep grudge against.

But once again, Nagato and his comrades turned him down. They didn't trust this mysterious Uchiha, whose goals remained unclear.

Obito wasn't upset. He told them plainly: even without their help,

"I, Uchiha Madara, will make it happen. You can reconsider once I prove myself."

Yahiko and the others didn't openly antagonize the dangerous Uchiha, but as soon as Obito left, they packaged up the whole conversation and sent it straight to Kirigakure.

They considered it a valuable tip—an offering in return for Kirigakure's repeated support.

Yagura received the intel.

"Is he trying to use the Nine-Tails Incident to show Nagato what he's capable of? Or is there some other reason?"

In the original story, Obito's motives for triggering the Nine-Tails rampage were always a bit murky—probably a retroactive attempt to patch up early plot holes involving the fox.

But honestly, Yagura didn't care about Obito's exact reasoning.

What mattered was that Obito would still go through with the traditional Konoha master-disciple disaster—the Nine-Tails Incident was going to happen.

That much was confirmed.

So now, Yagura had to decide what he could do.

Over the past five years, the other Kage had come to recognize Yagura as someone exceptionally good at exploiting opportunities to benefit himself and his village.

He needed to analyze the situation with what he already knew.

If the Nine-Tails Incident were a jigsaw puzzle, he just had to find the missing pieces and put them together to form a picture that worked in Kirigakure's favor.

Sending out Kirigakure's forces directly was out of the question. The village was still in its early stages of rebuilding—though Yagura had bolstered it in many ways, it lacked the depth that only time could provide.

"At the very least, I can't act alone. I can't let Kirigakure be the one to stick its neck out first."

Surrounded by the sea, unlike the flat lands around Konoha, Kirigakure wasn't especially vulnerable to invasion. Still, politics was about appearances.

What he needed was for another village to take the lead.

And that candidate was obvious—Kumogakure, always eager to topple Konoha and take the top spot for itself.

Thanks to support from the Daimyō of the Land of Lightning, a war-hungry battle maniac, Kumogakure had bounced back faster than any other hidden village after the last war.

The Fourth Raikage, A, had been constantly provoking Konoha, and his grudge against Iwagakure ran even deeper, due to his father's death at the hands of the Third Tsuchikage.

On the flip side, the Daimyō of the Land of Earth had drastically slashed military funding for Iwagakure.

Ōnoki, who had exhausted himself plotting behind the scenes during the Third Great Ninja War, had ended up losing both the war and the Daimyō's favor. And now, he had to suffer the indignity of being taunted by the much younger Fourth Raikage, with no way to respond.

"Then let's pull Kumogakure in."

Let the Fourth Raikage charge in first.

Yagura had never been one to hesitate in matters of state. Once he decided this was viable, he immediately sent Kumogakure a top-secret intelligence package and a diplomatic invitation.

He shared the news that Kushina Uzumaki was about to give birth, and invited them to join him in launching an assault on Konoha.

The Fourth Raikage's response? Instant. Practically a text message reply.

He immediately began mobilizing troops toward the border between Kumogakure and Konoha.

Just from his lightning-fast response, it was clear how seriously he was taking this.

Just as Yagura didn't care why Obito wanted to attack Kushina, the Fourth Raikage didn't care how the Mizukage had obtained the information.

What mattered was the outcome—and what benefits they could extract from it.

Kumogakure's military maneuvers didn't go unnoticed. The sudden shift sent a shockwave through Konoha. The whole village braced itself once more.

"That musclehead Raikage really can't sit still, huh?"

...

Yagura smiled faintly when he received the news, his expression unreadable.

He had thought himself decisive—but the Fourth Raikage was even more aggressive.

All the better. If the Raikage didn't mind making a spectacle of things, Yagura certainly didn't mind letting Kumogakure draw the fire.

"Well then, well then…"

He turned to Onime Kaede and said, "Apologies, something came up. You were saying, Kaede? Let's continue."

"Yes, sir."

Kaede resumed his report about their team's mission in the Land of Fire—how it had ended in a confrontation with Konoha's own Uchiha Shisui.

Yagura narrowed his violet eyes.

Two important takeaways.

First: Konoha was intentionally obstructing Kirigakure's shinobi from entering the Land of Fire. That was the main thing Kaede had wanted to report.

Such blatant obstruction was nearly unheard of during peacetime. Cross-border missions were a common part of shinobi life.

But now, with Sunagakure forced to grovel in surrender, Konoha clearly felt the pressure.

Second: Uchiha Shisui.

If Kaede hadn't mentioned him, Yagura might have forgotten that this character, in the main storyline, only ever appeared through hearsay.

Shisui's Mangekyō Sharingan ability—the most powerful genjutsu, Kotoamatsukami—could control a person's every action without them realizing it.

Yagura was disturbingly familiar with that power.

He began tapping the table with his fingers, the rhythm growing heavier.

Nine-Tails… Uchiha… Uchiha Shisui… genjutsu…

The keywords snapped together in his mind. The scattered puzzle pieces fell into place to form a clear image.

There it was.

"Kaede, Mei."

He called out to both Kaede, who had encountered Shisui, and Mei Terumi.

He gave them new orders: "Since the Hokage clearly doesn't want us operating in the Land of Fire, we'll simply respect that."

"Pass my orders down: from now on, any Kirigakure shinobi assigned to missions in the Land of Fire are permitted to abandon them if they run into Uchiha Shisui. There will be no consequences from our side."

This was the same approach Iwagakure had taken with Minato Namikaze.

Except, of course, Shisui was nowhere near as dangerous to Kirigakure as Minato had been to Iwagakure.

Yagura was planning to elevate Shisui—to turn him into a threat so significant that the entire Uchiha clan would seem like a menace to Konoha itself.

Both Mei and Kaede responded promptly with a "Yes, sir."

Neither of them were fools. Yagura said this was due to pressure from the Hokage—but they understood the real message lay in the name: Uchiha Shisui.

After all, this was just one ambush. Just one retreat after a single encounter with Shisui.

Wasn't that a bit of an overreaction?

Both of them had their doubts.

But Yagura's decisions had never steered them wrong before. Neither voiced their concerns—they simply accepted the order and moved to carry it out.

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Pls Drop some Power Stones

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