Nindō: Dominion

"You look like you're having fun," Naruto spoke as he walked through the large garden of the Senju mansion. At the end of the path, Tsunade Senju was half asleep, relaxing on a beach chair. Dressed in her usual green calf-length pants and gray sleeveless top, she didn't seem like she was planning to get a tan and was just relaxing under the sun and enjoying the morning breeze.

"Yeah? Wait for another hour or so. You'll see some douchebag with a pretentious hairdo and expensive clothes walk in like he owns the place and hand me a suitcase of money. Then he will order me to support him in the next council meeting and put forward his proposal. The best ones are those who arrogantly offer to gamble with me in exchange for my support. Prompting your clone to throw them out. How many of them do have monitoring me, anyway?"

"And you'll take all of their money with a smile before refusing to do whatever they want you to do," Naruto said, ignoring Tsunade's words about his clones monitoring her. "It's the perfect solution to reduce corruption."

"You're late," she said, finally opening her eyes. "You were supposed to heal me two days ago."

"I was in the Land of Hot Water."

"That didn't stop your clones from ruining my peace."

"Don't worry so much, Granny," Naruto said, glancing at the black pendant on her necklace. "A few days don't make a difference."

"You sent a clone to do it the last time. What changed between now and then?" She narrowed her eyes. "This smells fishy."

"You wouldn't get it," Naruto said. "Techniques related to divinity are complicated, and clones can't process them very well."

"You are hiding something. Yin-Yang Release doesn't require anything special. It isn't shinjutsu."

"Do you want your healing session or not?" Naruto asked.

"I have my eye on you."

"Get up, or I'll have to grab your chest," Naruto said casually as he stood beside her.

"How many more sessions do you think I need?" Tsunade asked him. "I examined myself after that last session, and you roughly added around two years to my vitality."

"It's not that simple," Naruto said as he placed his palm over her forehead and invoked Yin-Yang release to revitalize her. "Right now, we are trying to heal the damage that you've done to yourself in the past by over-drafting your vitality in the Second War. You're what, in your late seventies now? We need to make sure that under that transformation jutsu, you look like a seventy-year-old Senju woman and not the husk of one who is twice that number in age."

"I'm going to kill you." Tsunade punched Naruto.

"This is getting old, Granny." Naruto didn't even flinch as a golden chakra projection blocked her fist, negating her technique completely. "As I was saying, once your real self starts to look like you're a Senju in their late seventies, then we shall move on to actually improving your vitality with your current transformation as the template. You said it yourself: You receive two years or so worth of vitality with every session. That means a little over a year and a half before we start improving your health."

"As long as I don't die by then …"

"The moment you delivered yourself back to Konoha, Granny, your demise was postponed indefinitely," Naruto chuckled. "Since you don't want to revitalize the Senju clan, I'm going to work you to the bones until you decide that enough is enough and sire an heir to take over your now hereditary position in the council."

"Keep deluding yourself," Tsunade growled at him before pausing. "Hereditary?"

"There are two seats for Honored Elders in the Council. One of them will be assigned to the Head of the Senju Clan, and the other will be reserved for the Head of the Uchiha Clan. The Hokage is separate from them," Naruto said. "I am going to finalize the details before talking with the daimyo and finalizing it as a bill. Only a Senju may sit in your seat. No matter what. As for the other, that would be given to Sasuke, but he's still considered a rogue-nin, which leaves Sarada as the only viable candidate for now. If she doesn't become the Hokage, that is."

Tsunade was left silent as she thought of the ramifications of what Naruto had just told her.

"She's going to have a default vote of an Honored Elder if she becomes the Hokage," she said. "You really want to pave the way to make her tenure the most successful in terms of management, don't you?"

"Naturally," Naruto said. "Don't feel offended, but neither you nor Kakashi-sensei really live up to the legacy of the Hokage. The Hokage is supposed to be an indefatigable, invincible hero, a support pillar of the village who has absolute obedience and respect from his subordinates. Since the third's death, that infallible image has slowly crumbled as both you and Kakashi-sensei caved under politics. That gave people like Koharu and Homura more power than they deserved. The Hokage is the face of the greatest military force of the Land of Fire — the strongest country in the elemental nations. Logically, my authority is second only to the Daimyo in the country."

"During grandfather's time, even the Daimyo bowed respectfully when they met," she said with a nostalgic tone. "Everyone bowed in front of him and Uchiha Madara. As they should to you, who has greater strength than both of them in their prime … You shouldn't have to play politics."

"Exactly. That is the importance of military might and personal strength. If I had become the Hokage right after the war, we would have seen a similar attitude from the higher-ups. Unfortunately, Kakashi-sensei only used my war merit to bring the five nations to a stalemate while the internal authorities of the village and the nation all made deals under his nose. Even that peace was paper-thin, requiring me to spend the first year of my tenure dealing with border tensions between all of the nations."

"I told him that it would be better to make you Hokage right after the war, but he said you weren't ready yet. I believe he didn't want to repeat Minato's example. He felt that the Fourth was made Hokage too young and should've had some time to mature."

"Honestly," Naruto sighed in disappointment. "I respect that man to death, but he truly was a shit choice for the seat. He let his past trauma dictate his choices in life and got played by more experienced men in trying to please everyone."

"Why don't you bring him back as well? Maybe not the best Hokage, but he was a remarkable field officer."

"Nah, let him enjoy his retirement," Naruto refused. "I don't really need competent field officers anyway. What I really need are true high-tier combatants, people comparable to me, to Sasuke. The Anbu, Sai, Yamato-sensei, and the rest are only necessary for domestic stuff. To call him out of retirement for that would be meaninglessly making his life difficult."

"So you do realize that canceling someone's retirement is meaninglessly making their life difficult?" Tsunade's tone suddenly turned sharp.

"There is a very big difference. Your presence isn't meaningless. I need you here to make things easier for me. That's not even mentioning your medical ninjutsu, which Sakura herself admits is superior to hers even after all these years."

"I still don't see what made you so adamant to bring me back," she said. "You could've chosen anyone else."

"Yes. I could've chosen anyone, but I went with you because I felt that the benefits of bringing back the Senju clan's position would be the most helpful for me," Naruto said. "As a plus point, I get to have some beautiful eye candy for those boring-ass council meetings."

Just as Naruto readied himself to block a punch, Tsunade sighed.

"At least you don't hit on underage kids like Jiraya and ask them to transform into naked women."

"Is that a compliment?" Naruto asked. "I think it would have felt better if you just punched me."

"What's the point? You keep negating the force of my chakra," Tsunade said. "Are we done?"

"This isn't some basic healing session. The first session was more than two hours long. You didn't realize it because you fell asleep just as it started."

"Fucking hell … I'm going to lie back down."

"Then shift a little and let me sit beside you. I can't keep leaning over you for the entire duration."

Without responding, Tsunade shifted to the side and fell back on the chair while Naruto sat on the freed-up space. He kept his hand on her forehead, maintaining the Yin-Yang Release technique to heal her.

[I didn't notice it yesterday, but you are refraining from using clones for these matters. You used a clone to mark your disciple, but for Ino, you stayed with your real body. What's going on?]

[It's nothing. I'm just erring on the side of caution. I did some analyzing of the clones that I sent back to Konoha during that trip. You saw the way my more competent clones act. It seems that the ones who are given more mental strength and thinking capacity possess autonomy beyond my commands. I need to run some tests to find the optimal threshold between the clones trying to circumvent my orders by finding loopholes and the clones who follow my orders faithfully.]

[The Shadow Clone Jutsu wasn't made for someone with the kind of mental strength that you possess …]

[Bingo. Since the start, I've been controlling the mental strength of the clones, making sure not to let them get too much insight into my full memories and true self. That changes when divinity or things like the Dominion Mark come into play. They require a greater level of autonomy and mental strength. Not to mention that there might be a reaction behind the scenes with divinity that I don't notice, giving them a sense of autonomy beyond their assigned tasks.]

[Do you think that the use of these abilities enhances the mental strength of these clones?]

[Maybe. But that's what I need to test before one of my clones goes rogue and causes trouble for everyone. I have enough trouble with another variant of myself on the horizon. Fuck …]

[What?]

[I forgot to ask Ino about the Ōtsutsuki presence in that other reality.]

[How did you get to that conclusion?]

[Spare me the sarcasm.]

***

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