Chapter 77.2- One Thousand Hands

‘Thank you. I’ll stop suggesting stupid shit like that’ I said. Kurama had agreed to ally with me to take Madara out, not to fight my battles for me, and definitely not to cement my place as kage. He was fine enough with letting use his chakra when I fought— probably because he could see it as me training to get better and better at using it so I didn’t fuck up hen I finally faced Madara, but even that to some extent went against the spirit, if not the letter of our deal.

Madara. If things went the way I was expecting then we would have basically put an end to everything that could possibly lead to his return. No Kakashi meant there would be no Team Minato for Obito to sacrifice his life for and be put in Madara’s hands as a pawn. But that meant that I had to consider the other prospects. For one, there was still a chance that another Uchiha would fin their way into Madara’s orbit. With Black Zetsu working on it, it was almost guaranteed that that much would happen. The Akatsuki getting a hold of the tailed beasts was not going to happen as smoothly as it did in canon. For one, most of the jinchuriki from canon just would never exist.

Uzume had killed the two tails. That would take a while to respawn and when it did, it would be fun the land of Frost, not lightning. I was going to be gunning to be there to capture it just as surely as I knew the Raikage, and maybe even the Tsuchikage if Iwa managed to survive this mess the they had wandered into. The Eight wails was with Kushina, that wasn’t changing. The Four tails, we had that. Kokuo was free, and when the war was over and I had the time I was going to look into tracking him down. I wasn’t going to go against our deal by trying to have him sealed into a jInchuriki against his will, but a flying raijin marker placed on him would give me a ton of reassurance. Kiri would probably have both their jinchuriki when the time came. The Three tails would return somewhere around Uzu. I wouldn’t make an attempt for it. Concentrating too many jinchuriki around Konoha could bring as much danger as it brought security so there was the balance to consider.

And when it came down to it, I’d rather Kiri have two jinchuriki than Kumo having one. For one, Kiri was just as likely to shoot themselves in the foot as they were to aim their weapons anywhere useful. For another, Kiri would be terrible at keeping their jinchuriki loyal or even training them while Kumo had raised Bee. If I had a choice between Bee and Yagura or Ukataka on the other side, I’d pick the Kiri duo anytime anyday.