Uchiha’s grimoire guide to winning: chapter 6: Saints and sinners

The chalk dust hung in the air like it owned the place, floating through the afternoon sunlight that came through the academy's high windows. Outside, I could hear Konoha doing its thing, shuriken hitting practice logs, some guy yelling about grilled squid he was selling, the usual village noise. Inside the classroom, though? Dead silent. The kind of silence that makes your skin crawl.

The air smelled like old paper, dried ink, and something metallic I couldn't quite place. Fear, maybe. Or anticipation. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Instructor Hayate stood at the blackboard like some kind of skeleton that had learned to walk. Seriously, the guy was all sharp angles and hollow cheeks. His knuckles looked like river stones under his skin as he gripped a piece of chalk like it had personally offended him.

He started drawing lines. Vertical. Horizontal. They crossed each other with the kind of precision that made me think of prison bars.

"Scale," Hayate said, his voice sounding like sandpaper on concrete. He didn't even turn around. His eyes had this weird faraway look, like he was seeing something the rest of us couldn't. "Forget the little fights you practice in the training yards. Forget the clan rivalries from before the Village existed. The First Shinobi World War..." He paused, letting the name sink in like a stone in water. "...was bigger than anything you can imagine."

He spun around fast enough to make his teaching robe swish against the floor. His eyes swept over all thirty of us, kids training to be killers, even if most of us still had baby fat on our faces. I felt the collective intake of breath from my classmates, saw spines straighten all around me.

Me? I felt that weird detachment I'd been dealing with ever since I woke up in this world with memories that weren't entirely mine. The part of me that remembered another life, one with bombs and napalm and cities burning on TV screens, just watched like I was outside my own body.

"Imagine," Hayate continued, dropping his voice to this creepy whisper that somehow carried to every corner of the room, "not regular soldiers. Not even shinobi like you think of them. Think of forces of nature in human form, wearing flak vests and headbands."

His chalk stabbed at the board, sketching jagged mountain peaks. "Iwagakure. The Rock ninja. Masters of Earth Release techniques. A single jutsu, Earth-Style Wall, but they didn't use it for defense. They used it as a weapon. One Rock-nin could shear off an entire cliffside and send it crashing down on a supply train going through the Kikyō Pass. Hundreds of tons of rock moving faster than any natural landslide. Men, horses, wagons, all crushed into paste before they could even scream. A whole supply line, destroyed with one hand gesture."

The chalk screeched on the board, making half the class wince.

He moved left, drawing swirling, cutting lines. "Sunagakure. Wind ninja. Their Wind Release techniques weren't just strong gusts. They were invisible blades. Picture this: a Konoha patrol moving through the sparse forests near the Wind Country border. A whisper in the air. A blur of movement. Then a Suna jonin's hand slicing down, not holding a sword, but using air itself, sharpened to a molecular edge. Trees as thick as a man's waist, cut clean through. Stone outcroppings, split like firewood. And the men..." He paused. "Cut into pieces. Clean cuts. No blood at first, just... separation. Then the flood."

He let that image sit in our heads for a moment. I could feel my classmates processing it, their horror building.

More chalk against the board, this time in jagged, branching lines that looked like lightning. "Kumogakure. Lightning ninja. Their Lightning Release didn't just shock you. It cooked you from the inside out. They developed techniques specifically designed to boil the blood in your veins, to flash-fry your organs. Or worse, jutsu that didn't kill immediately. They'd overload your nervous system, lock you in permanent, agonizing spasms. Victims left twitching, minds shattered, bodies smoking. And their speed? Like living thunderbolts. A flash of blue-white light, a crack of thunder, and boom, a crater where a fortified position used to be."

He tapped the board where all the lightning lines came together. "You think bandits are dangerous? Armed civilians? Those are playground bullies compared to what a coordinated Kumo squad could do."

Finally, he drew rough outlines of the Five Great Nations, with Konoha as a leaf shape in the center. "Konoha," he stated, and his voice held this note of pride. "We stood against all of that. Against this... elemental destruction. This industrialized shinobi warfare. Hashirama-sama, the First Hokage, was a force of nature himself, yes. Wood Release walls rising like ancient gods to block avalanches. Forests growing in seconds to trap wind blades. But even his strength had limits."

Hayate's voice got harder. "Tobirama-sama, the Second Hokage. Our shield. His genius wasn't raw power, it was strategy. Anticipation. Turning their strengths against them. His Water Release techniques diverted lightning strikes. He created jutsu that let him appear where their lines were weakest, causing chaos, buying precious seconds for retreat or counterattack. He understood the science of shinobi combat. He knew the value of a single second in a battle where fighters moved like living storms."

Then something shifted. I almost missed it. Would have missed it, if the part of me from that other world hadn't been trained from a young age to spot this kind of thing.

"Iwagakure," Hayate practically spat the name. "Honorable? They specialized in tunneling beneath civilian villages. Not for strategy, but for terror. Entire farming communities swallowed whole by the earth opening up beneath them while they slept. Men, women, children, buried alive in the dark."

He didn't mention that Konoha probably did the same thing. Or something similar. There's no such thing as clean hands in war.

"Sunagakure," his lip curled like he'd tasted something rotten. "Their scorched earth policy wasn't just tactical. They poisoned wells with slow-acting toxins. Crops died. Children died screaming weeks after the Suna shinobi had passed through."

I could see what he was doing now. See how he was arranging the facts, shaping them into the story he wanted us to believe.

"Kirigakure," his voice dropped to a growl. "The Bloody Mist earned its name even back then. They didn't just kill prisoners. They dismembered them ritually. Mounted heads on pikes facing Konoha. A message carved in flesh and bone."

Propaganda. The word echoed in my head, cold and clinical, courtesy of my other-world memories. Not clumsy, obvious brainwashing. No, this was surgical. Hayate was using facts like a scalpel, cutting away anything that made Konoha look bad, leaving only the shiny shell of victimhood and righteous defense.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was being too cynical. But we'd seen what Danzo did behind the scenes in the original timeline. I was willing to bet his master, Tobirama himself, had been even worse. You don't create the Edo Tensei, literal necromancy that requires human sacrifice, without having some serious darkness in your heart. And wasn't Tobirama basically happy in canon when he learned that the Village's discrimination against our clan had led to us being slaughtered by one of our own?

The academy teacher amplified every enemy atrocity. Each word dripped with disgust. He made the Rock-nin sound like underground monsters, the Sand-nin like desert demons who loved watching people die slowly, the Mist-nin like psychopaths who bathed in blood.

Konoha's actions? Framed as necessary. Defensive. Noble, even when harsh.

It was hard to believe any of this, knowing everything Konoha did through Danzo and Hiruzen. How Danzo caused Yahiko's death and created the Akatsuki. How my family would be massacred in the very village we helped create, thanks to Tobirama, Danzo, and Hiruzen's policies. I didn't remember everything from the original timeline, but I'd bet my last ryo that Konoha had plenty of skeletons in its closet.

And the worst part? It was working.

I could feel it in the room. The air got thicker, charged with something dangerous. Beside me, Toma, usually bright-eyed and always doodling ugly pictures in her notebook margins, sat rigid. Her knuckles were white where she gripped her desk. Her breathing came quick and shallow. Her eyes, locked on Hayate, burned with protective anger. Anger at enemies she'd never met, conjured from the teacher's words.

Across the aisle, Daiki looked ready to explode. The guy was built like a young bull anyway, but now his jaw was clenched, shoulders hunched forward, radiating heat like a furnace. Pure, unquestioning loyalty, ignited by perceived injustice against his village.

Other faces showed variations of the same thing. Fear hardening into determination. Confusion solidifying into belief. Empathy narrowing into us-versus-them. The whole classroom started vibrating with thirty pounding hearts beating in sync to Hayate's narrative.

The part of me with memories from another world wanted to throw up. That part knew what this smelled like underneath the polish. It knew that war, any war, fought with kunai or missiles, by chakra-powered ninja or regular soldiers, was ultimately just a machine that ground up people and spat out corpses. Victory parades marched over fields fertilized with dead bodies. Heroes came home hollow-eyed, carrying ghosts in their heads that no jutsu could dispel. Widows cried themselves to sleep in empty beds. Kids starved in the ruins of "strategic targets," a mill, a bridge, a hospital that someone mistakenly identified as a command post.

There was no glory. Only survivors, stumbling through ash and rubble, carrying the weight of what they'd seen, what they'd lost, and sometimes what they'd done.

This careful creation of outrage, this meticulous framing of Konoha as the eternal, blameless victim, it reeked of calculated politics from the top of the Hokage Tower. I'd bet anything Tobirama himself was behind it.

The Second Hokage. Brilliant, sure. But pragmatic to the point of ruthless. He wasn't just running a village. He was forging a weapon. He understood what every politician and warlord throughout history figured out: lasting strength demanded more than powerful jutsu or sturdy walls. It demanded unity. The kind of unity forged in the white-hot fires of shared pain, shared sacrifice, and shared fury directed outward.

Paint the past with broad strokes of Konoha's suffering and the savagery of its enemies, and you prime the next generation. You mold young minds into vessels ready to march unquestioningly into the next war when the call comes.

My other-world memories whispered it with cold certainty: a Second War was coming. This peace was just an intermission. Konoha wasn't maintaining its defenses. It was sharpening its collective mind, honing the blade of nationalism.

A bitter taste filled my mouth. Nationalism. The concept wasn't alien to my older memories. It wasn't entirely evil, either. Here in Konoha, I saw its better side. It had forged this village from warring clans, made Senju and Uchiha allies instead of enemies. It gave orphaned kids without clans a family, a purpose beyond just surviving. It fueled quiet courage, the florist's daughter who would hide wounded comrades no matter the personal cost. It was shared identity. The Will of Fire they talked about with such reverence could be a sanctuary. A source of strength. A shield against the world's crushing indifference. A promise of belonging.

But shields could become prisons so fast. The hearth's warmth could ignite into wildfire. Us versus Them, the oldest, most seductive, most destructive lie humanity ever told itself. It erased complexity, painted over the truth that people everywhere were basically the same.

Did a mother in Suna love her kid any less than a mother in Konoha? Did a Mist shinobi sharpening his blade under the moon dream any less of peace, of coming home? Did the fear in a Rock genin's eyes on his first mission look different from the terror I sometimes saw in Daiki's face during brutal training spars?

The fundamental human stuff, wanting safety, craving connection, hoping for recognition, flowed just as strongly outside Konoha's walls. But Hayate's lesson, crafted under Tobirama's shadow, worked hard to carve differences in stone. To paint outsiders as alien, monstrous, deserving whatever violence Konoha might need to unleash.

That was the real poison. It justified the unjustifiable. Turned neighbors into cartoon villains. Paved the road to the next massacre with bones from the last one, all while singing hymns about righteousness and waving the banner of the Will of Fire.

It radicalized kids in classrooms, turning their natural empathy into a weapon aimed at enemies built from half-truths and convenient omissions.

Instructor Hayate stepped back from the board. His grid of lines, village symbols, and stark notes about atrocities covered the slate like a grim tapestry. The afternoon sun sat lower now, painting long shadows across the room and catching the dust motes, turning them into tiny galaxies drifting through space.

He placed his hands flat on the teacher's desk. The wood groaned under the pressure. His lean frame straightened, expanded somehow, radiating sudden intensity that pressed against the silence like a physical weight. The room held its breath, thirty young hearts suspended between horror and building enthusiasm.

"They broke themselves against us," he declared. His voice no longer rasped but resonated deep, vibrating in your chest like distant thunder. It filled every corner of the silent hall. "They hurled their mountains, their cutting winds, their killing lightning against the spirit of Konoha. They unleashed savagery the world had rarely seen."

He paused, a perfectly timed beat, letting the image of that assault solidify in our minds.

"And what did they find?"

Another pause, longer this time. The silence became solid, thick with expectation.

Hayate leaned forward slightly. His dark eyes locked onto each of us in turn, pinning us in place. "They found the Will of Fire."

He let the phrase hang there, giving it mythic weight.

"Not just chakra reserves. Not simply powerful jutsu passed down in scrolls. But the unbreakable spirit of those who stand between darkness and home. The unwavering courage of the Senju, roots deep in earth, standing firm against avalanches. The brilliant intellect of the Nara, weaving strategies in shadows, outthinking despair itself. The silent, enduring strength of the Aburame. The cleansing fire of the Uchiha. The fierce loyalty of the Inuzuka, fighting tooth and claw for the pack they call family."

His gaze intensified, almost predatory now.

"They found you."

The word hit like a punch. Toma flinched, then straightened, eyes blazing. Daiki sucked in a sharp breath, fists clenching on his desk.

"The inheritors," Hayate pressed, voice rising now, gaining an almost religious fervor. "The next generation chosen to bear that sacred flame. They found the unshakeable conviction that this village, this fragile dream carved from wilderness and clan blood, this beacon of light in a world always teetering on the edge of shadow, is worth every sacrifice."

He slammed a fist lightly on the desk. The sound echoed like a gavel.

"Worth your sweat on the training fields! Worth your blood on distant battlefields! Worth... your very life!"

He drew himself up to full height, a silhouette against the fading light and the grim board behind him.

"Because Konoha is not just stone and timber! Not just streets and shops! It is the dream Hashirama-sama and Madara Uchiha first glimpsed! It is the future we build, day by day, with every act of courage, every spark of creativity, every bond of loyalty! It is the hearth against the howling dark! Protect it!"

The command wasn't a request. It was a summons, echoing in the ancient hall.

The silence that followed was absolute.

Then it shattered.

Not with applause, but with a raw, animal roar of pure conviction. Toma was first on her feet, tears streaming down her dust-smudged cheeks, small fist punching the air. "FOR KONOHA!" The scream ripped from her throat, ragged and fierce.

Daiki exploded upward, face red, veins bulging in his neck, his bellow deeper and primal: "FOR KONOHA!"

Others followed like dominoes. Desks scraped. Chairs toppled. Fists pumped the air. Voices, young and old, high and low, blended into a single deafening chant that pounded against the walls. "FOR KONOHA!" "FOR KONOHA!" "FOR KONOHA!"

The sound was a physical thing, a wave of pure devotion crashing through the room. Hayate stood motionless in the chaos, grim satisfaction etched deep in the lines around his mouth and eyes. A priest surveying his newly converted flock. An architect watching his structure bear weight.

My lips moved. My jaw tightened, then relaxed. Sound emerged, flat and toneless, lost instantly in the noise around me.

"For Konoha."

Seriously. Screw Tobirama.

***

The academy gates clattered shut behind me, ejecting me into late afternoon sunshine. The taste of chalk dust and manipulated history coated my tongue. The chants of "KONOHA!" echoed like phantom drums in my skull. The world outside felt jarringly normal, birdsong, the distant clang of a blacksmith's hammer, the smell of baking bread from a street vendor. After Hayate's curated nightmare, normalcy felt fake. Like a painted backdrop.

"Hope you had a nice day, sprout. Not too tired?"

The voice, warm and familiar, cut through my mental fog. Aunt Fumiko leaned against the academy wall, looking weirdly cheerful against the somber stone. She wore simple dark robes instead of her usual flak jacket, hair pulled back severely, but that mischievous glint remained in her eyes.

I blinked, the transition too sudden. "Why?" The question slipped out. Less about tiredness, more about her presence, this sudden shift from propaganda class to... whatever this was. I would've expected my cousins to pick me up at best. My parents had responsibilities, and since our last conversation four days ago, they'd seemed busier than ever.

Her hand landed on my shoulder. Not heavy. Not restraining. Just... there. Solid. Real.

Then the world folded.

Not blurred. Not sped up. Folded. Like the universe was a sheet of paper crumpled between one instant and the next. Pressure flared behind my eyes. My stomach lurched, not with nausea, but with the sheer wrongness of space betraying basic physics.

Body Flicker Technique, probably. Unless my aunt could actually teleport, which, given how ridiculous our clan's eyes could get, wouldn't surprise me at all.

One heartbeat: sunlight, academy stone, bread smell.

Next heartbeat: cool, damp air thick with old wood, incense, and stone. Sunlight replaced by dim, flickering oil lamps. The academy's noise vanished, replaced by profound silence and something that felt ancient. Sacred.

We stood on worn stone steps. Before us loomed the Naka Shrine.

My breath caught. Both sets of memories collided, Ren Uchiha's childhood recollections of hushed reverence and important clan gatherings, and my other-world knowledge connecting this place to secret meetings and the Uchiha Stone Tablet. The tablet originally written by Hagoromo and modified by Black Zetsu, which, now that I remembered, was something I needed to deal with as soon as possible.

The original Ren had known this place as the center of clan pride. More than a shrine. A vault. A council chamber. The beating, shadowed heart of the Uchiha clan.

Fumiko's hand left my shoulder. In the dim light filtering through the shrine's heavy wooden door, her face had shed all playfulness. A solemnity I rarely saw etched her features.

Without a word, her eyes ignited. Twin crimson pinwheels spun lazily to life in the darkness of her pupils, casting faint ruby highlights on the weathered door.

The Sharingan.

My response was instinct, a reflex honed since waking up in that hospital. Warmth flared behind my eyes. The world fractured, sharpened, gained crystalline edges painted in shades of crimson and black. My Sharingan whirled, twin mirrors reflecting the ancient door and Fumiko's blood-red gaze.

A silent understanding passed between us.

She pushed the heavy door. It swung open silently, revealing not darkness but deeper, warmer gloom.

I followed, stepping over the threshold. The air inside was still, thick, almost liquid. Tatami mats, old and smelling faintly of straw and time, covered the floor. Minimal furniture: a simple altar at the far end shrouded in shadow, a few low tables against the walls. The only light came from dozens of oil lamps in recessed alcoves, flames casting long, dancing shadows on the walls like restless spirits. Sandalwood incense hung heavy in the air, sweet against the age in the wood.

Then I saw the eyes.

Not dozens. Scores of them. Like a constellation of fallen stars, crimson pinwheels ignited one after another in the dimness. They hung in the shadows, disembodied at first, then resolving into faces as my Sharingan adjusted.

Uchihas. Everywhere.

Seated in perfect traditional posture on the tatami, rows upon rows facing forward. Others leaned against wooden pillars that supported the high ceiling, postures relaxed yet radiating coiled readiness. Still more stood near the walls, silhouetted against flickering lamplight.

Older cousins I'd shared spicy food with days ago. Uncles who'd ruffled the original Ren's hair at festivals. Aunts who'd scolded him for playing in mud. Jonin I recognized from Police Force patrols, their usual stern expressions replaced by focused intensity. Elders whose faces were maps of wrinkles and old battles.

The sheer number staggered me. The entire clan leadership, the core strength, gathered here.

For me.

A wave of primal awe washed over me, laced with a flicker of fear. This sight, this sea of activated Sharingan in sacred gloom, would send shivers down anyone's spine. Even Tobirama's. Actually, this was probably the stuff of our enemies' nightmares.

But then the fear dissolved. Transformed. Because I knew these eyes. Behind that terrifying crimson glow, I saw Uncle Takeshi's familiar crooked grin. I saw Aunt Yumi give me the faintest reassuring nod. I saw Kenji leaning on his father's shoulders, looking wide-eyed but fiercely proud.

These weren't predators circling prey. This was family.

The fierce, protective, overwhelming love my father spoke of, made manifest in a hundred pairs of burning eyes. The certainty crystallized: nowhere in this world, or any other, was safer for me than right here. They were Uchiha. They were mine. They'd carve out their own hearts before letting harm touch me within these sacred walls.

The crimson light wasn't a threat. It was a shield. A collective gaze of absolute guardianship.

Fumiko guided me forward with gentle pressure on my back. We walked the central aisle between silent, watching clan members. The air hummed, not with sound, but with focused chakra, with the weight of collective attention. My footsteps on the tatami were unnaturally loud in the stillness.

At the front, before the shadowed altar, sat three figures on slightly raised platforms. Elders. Time had bent their frames but couldn't extinguish the fierce intelligence burning in their Sharingan-lit eyes. One woman with white hair like spun moonlight, her face a delicate painting of wrinkles that somehow enhanced her sharp gaze. Two men, one lean and hawk-faced, the other broader, bearing years like worn armor.

And standing slightly before them, radiating contained power that seemed to bend lamplight around him, was Arashi Uchiha.

Clan Chief. My father's cousin... technically. But genetics in the Uchiha were complicated. Centuries of marrying within the clan to concentrate the Sage's son's potent blood had woven everyone tightly together. Arashi and my father shared the same sharp jawline, the same black hair, the same way of holding stillness that felt like a coiled spring. With the intensity of their bond, the shared history in every glance, they looked less like cousins and more like brothers forged in the same fire.

How are we not all walking genetic disasters? The irreverent thought flickered through my mind. Oh right. Space alien gods. Otsutsuki DNA. That explains the eyebrows, the drama, and the frankly ridiculous power levels.

Fumiko stopped me before them. She leaned down, voice a whisper only I, and likely the elders with their enhanced senses, could catch. "I'm right behind you," she murmured, breath warm against my ear. "With your dad and your mother." Her hand gave my shoulder a final reassuring squeeze. Then, with a flash of her usual self, she added with a ghost of a smirk, "At the slightest worry, sprout, just say something. We're family, after all."

She stepped back, melting into the ranks against a nearby pillar. I caught a glimpse of my parents further back, Mother's serene face watchful, Father's stoic expression radiating unwavering support.

Arashi Uchiha stepped forward. He wasn't tall, but he possessed a presence that filled the space anyway. His dark eyes, already holding the faintest crimson gleam even before full activation, fixed on me. A slow, deliberate smile spread across his face.

It wasn't warm. It wasn't gentle. It was the smile of a predator who'd spotted interesting prey. A warrior acknowledging a fascinating new weapon. Sharp, savage, and utterly, terrifyingly confident.

"Hey, little Ren," he said, voice a low rumble that carried effortlessly in the silent hall. No false warmth. No condescension. Just straightforward address, laced with keen assessment. "Your dad told me interesting things about you. Things... almost impossible to believe." His gaze intensified. "Things I wouldn't have believed..." He paused, letting potential disbelief hang in the air. "...had they not come from the mouth of Family."

The word resonated, imbued with the sacred weight this place held.

"This," he gestured around at the sea of crimson eyes, his arm sweeping to encompass the entire clan gathered in silent witness, "is why everyone here has the Sharingan active."

As he spoke, his own eyes ignited. Not a lazy spin but a swift, decisive flare. Not three tomoe. More. Twin evolved Sharingan patterns, intricate, interlocking geometric designs far more complex than my simple tomoe, blazed into existence within his irises.

Mangekyō Sharingan.

The air around him seemed to crackle with invisible power.

"We're going to analyze it completely," he stated, voice gaining a sharper edge, the rumble turning into grinding stone. "To see how it works. How you use it. If it can be reproduced." His Mangekyō whirled slowly, dissecting me with inhuman precision. "If it's hurting you." The last point carried a distinct protective growl. "And everything else."

The savage smile returned, fiercer now under the glow of his unique eyes. It should have been frightening. It was frightening, in an abstract, awe-inspiring way. But looking at that fierce grin, feeling the collective gaze of my clan, protective, curious, fiercely proud, pressing against me like physical force, I felt no fear.

Only a strange, exhilarating sense of anticipation. Challenge.

This wasn't an interrogation. It was an unveiling. A clan examining a new facet of its own power, ready to understand, to nurture, to wield.

Arashi Uchiha, Clan Chief, bearer of the Mangekyō, took a final step closer. His shadow fell over me, not oppressive, but encompassing. His voice, when he spoke again, was a command wrapped in absolute certainty, echoing slightly in the ancient hall:

"Show and tell us everything, little nephew."

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Failed rolls:

* Battle with a True Hero [600 - Undertale] Being a Royal Guard means you serve a higher purpose. You protect the lives of innocent people. You protect their hopes and dreams. In the end, you're not just a fighter- You're a Protector. A Hero. And when you're on the verge of defeat, and everything's on the line... Even if you're a monster, you're just as Determined to win. Once per jump, you can activate a super-mode powered by Determination, but there are two conditions- You must already be on the edge of defeat, and there has to be more than the lives of you and your companions on the line if you fail - The lives of a small nation of innocent people are the bare minimum stakes. However, the super mode itself is extremely powerful- Upon activating it, not only do you instantly heal all of your wounds, but you become much stronger, move much faster, and can take more punishment than ever before. Your magical attacks become much more potent, and you can take hits to your face with a grin. After the fight, though, you'll be crippled- at the very least, you won't fight again for the rest of the jump. But isn't that a fair price to pay for innocent lives

* Magical Boomerang [400 - The Legend of Zelda] This enchanted Boomerang will always return to you wherever you throw it, and what’s more it can retrieve items when you do so. It’s strong enough to kill weak enemies such as Octoroks and stun larger ones, when they are hit by it.