Naruto: Reborn as Zoro

Konoha is mourning the death of many shinobi including their 3rd Hokage because of the attack initiated by Orochimaru. Many civilians are also killed in the attack. They hold a mass funeral just like in the series.

Zoro doesn't join them though. He stays in Tsunade's place with Hiyori and Torao. It's not that he doesn't sympathize with them, but he doesn't have any attachment to them, even the 3rd Hokage.

If he wanted, he could try to save Hiruzen, but he didn't feel the need to. Truthfully, he didn't like that old man when he read Naruto's manga years ago. It was just his personal opinion, but he thought that Hiruzen was a bad Hokage, and he still thinks like that to this day.

The geezer literally let Danzo do questionable things. Danzo often disobeyed him as a Hokage, yet he still allowed that guy to form Root, a military organization that even the Hokage couldn't control, all while knowing that Danzo has a big ambition to be the Hokage.

His reason was always that Danzo did all of those for the village. But Danzo literally used their people as guinea pigs in the research that he did with Orochimaru. While it was just Orochimaru who got exposed, Zoro was sure that Hiruzen knew about Danzo's involvement when it happened in the story or at least Hiruzen has some suspicion of Danzo.

Danzo even became the mastermind behind the massacre of a whole clan. While Uchiha was wrong for planning a Coup d'etat, it was caused by their dissatisfaction with the village. They felt discriminated against and even pushed away by the village since the 2nd Hokage's era.

Hiruzen did nothing significant to make it better and instead let his "friends" that he took into the village's management to worsen the relationship between Konoha and Uchiha. He always acted passively and kept being pushed around by the "elders" and "advisors".

Then after Minato's and Kushina's death during the 9 Tails' attack, Hiruzen was entrusted to take care of Naruto who literally is the 4th Hokage's son. Yet, he couldn't even give Naruto a better life and let the kid suffer too much. All while acting as if he was a caring grandpa and shit.

If he cared that much for Naruto, he should have given the kid more allowance at least, given him more attention, or just ordered Jiraiya to take care of Naruto, or maybe the best he could do was hide the fact that Naruto was the Jinchuriki so people won't hate him.

There were more odd things that Zoro thought about Hiruzen from the story. So for all of those reasons, Zoro just can't get to like Hiruzen. Well, at least he could keep Naruto safe until his death, so Zoro still gave him credit for that.

"Uncle, is it normal for people to just die so easily and so suddenly? I know some of the people who died yesterday. Sometimes I met them on the street and they would greet me. But now they've gone. My parents and Grandma Suzu also just died so suddenly." Hiyori suddenly asks while burying her face in her raised knees.

Zoro looks at her and rubs her head before he looks at the sky.

"Hiyori, no one knows what will happen in the future. No one knows when they will die even though we all know that we will die because no one lives forever. Good things can suddenly happen, but bad things can suddenly happen too. Someone can be very healthy and happy now, but they can suddenly die because they slip in the bathroom and their head hits the floor. Everything is possible, just like yesterday's attack, it could suddenly happen. There are many things beyond our control that can suddenly happen and affect us. We can't do anything about those things. What we can do however, is prepare ourselves to be ready for those things. Preparing for everything is almost impossible, so we need to prepare ourselves for the most dangerous life-threatening matters."

"By getting stronger?"

"Yeah. In my opinion, being strong will remove a lot of danger from your life. If you have enough power, you can handle most life-threatening things and most problems won't even get near you. At the very least, you can keep your life better than those weaker than you. This is a dangerous world. Things like yesterday can suddenly happen. If you are weak, you can only pray and beg to be saved by the strong. But if you are strong, you can decide your own fate. Which one do you want to be is up to you."

Hiyori seems to think for a bit after hearing what Zoro says.

"Then, I'll be strong, beautiful, and smart."

"Oh? Beautiful and smart too?" Zoro thinks it's funny that Hiyori mentions those too.

"Well, I can see from Uncle that many things can be solved just by being strong. But Aunty Shizune always says that just being strong isn't enough. She said that we need to be smart too. Uncle is strong, but you are stupid when finding directions, so you got into problems. Grandma Tsunade is strong, but she is stupid when gambling, so she lost a lot of money. That's why we need to be smart, like the 4th Hokage who is strong and smart too. Then Aunty Shizune also says that women need to be beautiful because just being beautiful can solve half of our problems. Though I don't really understand when she says beautiful women just need to charm men to solve their problems. Why would men help women just because they are beautiful?"

".... Well, I don't know because I'm stupid and not beautiful."

"I see. That makes sense."

Zoro swears in his heart that he will give Shizune some pieces of his mind for teaching Hiyori something like that. Telling her to be smart and beautiful is one thing, but telling her to weaponize her beauty like that is another thing.

It's not that he doesn't want Hiyori to not be beautiful. But he doesn't want her to depend on her beauty and use it to depend on others. He wants her to be able to depend on herself for most things even if it's life-threatening.

Anyway, Zoro also knows that he can't teach Hiyori everything. As she says, he isn't smart, so he can't teach her things that need the use of brains. At most, he can hire teachers for her or buy books to increase her knowledge.

Also, because he is a man, he knows that there are things he doesn't know about women. Things like menstruations, make up, girly stuff, or even things like women's unstable mood. Those are things he doesn't know how to handle, so he keeps learning about them.

Luckily, Tsunade and Shizune are willing to teach him most of the important things, especially about menstruation because when Hiyori starts her menstruation cycle in a few years, it will be a nightmare if Zoro doesn't know how to handle it without an adult woman there.

That's why Tsunade keeps teasing Zoro to find himself a woman so she can help him raise Hiyori. But Zoro would always get back at her for still not having a man for herself either despite being much older than him and that always led to a fight between them.

Well, Zoro himself always plans to find himself a wife and build his own family one day. But it's still a plan for the future. He'll only think about it after a few more years because he still wants to enjoy his youth now and focus on getting stronger.

Besides, even if he wants to do it now, he still doesn't have a wife candidate. It's a very important matter too, so he doesn't want to rush it. Also he still can't settle down somewhere to build a family because he still likes to go everywhere he wants freely.

*****

Meanwhile, in the desert, the Suna shinobi finally finds Rasa's corpse along with some of his guards. Their corpses have rotted because they've died for quite long. Sunagakure finally believes that Orochimaru has really toyed with them.

Now they have some big problems because of Orochimaru and their bad decision to believe him. They lost their Kazekage, their people's and country's trust in them drops, they lost many shinobi, and they also strain their relationship with Konoha.

Their people demand that the current village leaders with their old-fashioned ways of thinking and never listen to people to be removed from their positions and get replaced by the younger people who are willing to listen to people and are not extreme like Rasa and the current elders who think that everything can be handled with force.

Either way, both Konoha and Suna are lucky because the other villages don't see this as a chance to start another world war. But now all villages are wary about Otogakure and soon, Zoro is commissioned to do something about that village.

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Chapter: 173. Uchiha Madara

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