Chapter 29
“Naruto, I’ve summoned you to discuss very… interesting news”, Minato says as Naruto stands in the middle of a U shaped table in the council’s loft.
To his left where the civilians, fuming, to his right, the shinobi, showing mixed reactions, some were surprised, other tired and few angry.
Right in front of him, was Minato with an angry Kushina, now head of the Uzumaki in Konoha standing next to him.
“is this about the fact I’ve got married both a foreigner and Tsunade and didn’t invited any of you or is it because I nearly killed Jiraiya when he tried to strangle me after I ‘stole’ Hime from him?”, Naruto asks, in a deadpan tone, making Tsunade chuckle.
“a little bit of both”, Minato, who himself was still bandaged after Kushina’s beating admits, “I’ll be frank with you, the matter of who you marry is not my problem and polygamy is not illegal as long as both parties are consenting, something our resident Yamanaka…”.
Inoichi raises his hand and nods.
“already confirmed”, Minato says, keeping his spiel, “however, as you can expect, some explanations are needed”.
“about what exactly?”, Naruto asks, narrowing his eye as he smokes.
“to begin with, why didn’t you invited us to your wedding?!”, Kushina explodes, her hair swirling like the tails of Kurama.
“there wasn’t a wedding, we eloped”, Naruto answers, unbothered by the outburst.
“those personal matters can be discussed later, as of right now, this council demands to know how dare you demon…”, a civilian starts speaking but soon is cut by Naruto’s maleficent aura of intimidation.
“I do not enjoy being called things I’m not”, Naruto speaks in a cold tone, “so I suggest you retrain your tongue before you lose it”.
“are you threatening a council man?, another one, a fat man in garnish robes indignantly asks.
“I rarely make threats, but more often than not I give warnings”, Naruto completes.
“Lord Fourth, this council had taken enough of this disrespect, we demand…”, the same fat man, turning red in the face angrily turn to Minato to make demands.
But before he could speak further, he falls and hits his face on the desk, sound asleep.
“you are so damn lucky that I’m not in the mood for murder today”, Naruto says, snapping his fingers and making his pipe appear, taking a deep breath of the pipe weed and blowing some smoke.
“sochi, you are too young to smoke!!”, Kushina exclaims.
“Lady Kushina, in the last mission I killed twenty eight people, if I’m old enough to kill, I’m old enough to smoke”, Naruto answers, blowing some smoke rings.
“twenty eight?!”, Minato takes a second look at the mission report, “it says here in total, forty people died in the mission, are you telling me your killed nearly three quarters of that?”.
“yeah, some thugs tried to fill the power vacuum left by Gato and tough it would be an easy job”, Naruto says, with another chuckle, “they weren’t expecting us and the militia”.
“we are not here to discuss pest control, we are here…”, Homura brings the attention to her.
“to discuss the fact I married the princess of the village”, Naruto says, “what exactly is there to discuss, better yet, can’t we just skip the useless crap and go straight to the main reason I was called here?”.
“the reason you’ve been called here, brat, is to explain yourself”, Homura asks, “what makes you think this council approves of your marriages?”.
“what about the fact this council, more specifically, the civilian side should first pull their heads out of their asses and shut the fuck up”, Naruto retorts, causing Tsume to snicker, “also, by the law of the Fire Daimyo, my marriage to both Tsunade and Haku is officially recognized by the law of the Land of Fire”.
“you dare…”, Koharu was about to bark.
“I dare!!”, Naruto bites back, “I did not broke the law and I refuse to be punished and talked down for doing so!”.
“you are not being punished we simply want the full story”, Chouza says, trying to calm the atmosphere.
“the full story is, I got married to Haku because A, she’s a nice woman and B, to stop you assholes from getting your power hungry grubby hands on her”, Naruto says, sending a threatnin stare at the council, most of which had the decency to look ashamed, “Tsunade saw it, and she herself had grown sick and tired from the pushiness of the council, more specifically, the civilian council for her to marry and rebuild the Senju clan”.
At that, the shinobi side of the council and Minato stare at the civilian side with eyes filled with murder.
“so she approached me with an offer, seeing that we are basically married already why not make things official, I gain another wife and she gains a reason to rub her middle finger on the council’s face”, “Naruto finishes.
“and I regret nothing!!”, Tsunade exclaims, with her arms crossed under her chest.
The whole room, save for Naruto chokes on air, he opted to stare at her with a ‘seriously?’.
“he’s fourteen!!”, Kushina exclaims, scandalized by the fact a woman almost twice her age wasn’t ashamed about being married to a teenager.
“and an adult in the eyes of the law”, Tsunade retorts, “and we were both consenting”.
“I did not consent to this!!”, Kushina exclaims back.
“since when did your consent was required?”, Naruto asks.
“I’m your mother tebbane!!”, Kushina retorts.
“are you now?”, Naruto says, and Kushina cringes hard at the harshness of his words, “last I checked you only have two children and I’m none of them, heck, I’m not even part of the same clan as you!”.
“I don’t care what that paper says, you are my son!!”, Kushina says, as tears start forming in her eyes, her pain sincere.
“it doesn’t matter, I cannot see you as my mother not because a piece of paper, but because you were never a mother to me, you never treated me like your son, in your eyes I was just an extra mouth to feed and that was that”, Naruto quips back, the echoes of the old soul flaring inside him as long held resentment of a ghost existence come to the surface, “one you were more than happy to get rid of”.
Kushina was shaking as the room gets filled with an awkward aura; all the while Naruto takes a deep breath to calm his nerves.
“I want to make it clear, I bear no ill will against you or your family, but it is in the better interest of everyone involved that we keep our current relationship as it is”, Naruto says, calmer, “can we go back to the main topic?”.
“just to put this matter to rest”, Hiruzen says also taking a deep drag from his pipe, “I would like to say, I’m happy for you, as inappropriate as it may sound, a good woman can bring the best out of a man, the same way a good man can bring the best out of a woman. What I believe is where the concern of my fellow council members lays is with the matters of succession of the Senju clan, as it is tradition for the wife to be integrated into the husband’s clan”.
“twenty minutes of useless back and forth and you could just had asked if Tsunade being married with means the Senju had finally gone extinct”, Naruto lets out a annoyed groan, “kami above, if this is why you called me here so this meeting could have been letter for fucks sake!!”.
The whole shinobi side of the council, the Hokage and the ANBU all agree.
“as for the actual answer, it’s no, despite our decision of elopement being a heat of the moment thing, we discussed things thoroughly and came to a decision that I would take in the Senju name, but in name only Tsunade still the head of the clan and I hold no official power”.
“that’s reassuring for sure”, Haiashi says, “does anyone else knows about this… arrangement?”.
“my teammates and Lady Mito”, Naruto recalls, “ and before any of you ask, I moved my place of residency to the Senju compound, so are we done with this matter?”.
“sure”, Minato says, as he tries to calm Kushina down, “I apologize for the inconvenience, this meeting wasn’t called to discuss your marital status. We discovered some… sensitive information we would like some clearing”.
“what kind of information?”, Naruto asks, he wasn’t dumb, he knew they would either ask about the end of the world or about aether, most likely both.
“master Jiraiya, presented to us what he found out about aether”, Minato says, while Naruto lets out a ‘called it!!’ mentally, “he made some very bold statements regarding this aether, could you show some light in the matter?”.
“what exactly did he told you?”, Naruto asks.
Minato presents a transcript of what Jiraiya found out, since the man was still in the hospital.
Naruto gives it a quick read and then gives the scroll back to Minato.
“yeah, this is a little choppy and overall incomplete but not wrong”, Naruto says, blowing more smoke rings.
“so the whole thing about having godly powers…”, Shikaku asks, eyes wide.
“it’s truth, no exaggerations there”, Naruto says with a smile, “I tough the fact that I’ve brought jiji back to life would be enough indicative of that”.
“you know shinobi, we wouldn’t believe the sky is blue if we don’t see it with our own eyes”, Hiruzen says with a chuckle.
“you tell me that”, Naruto says.
“Naruto”, Minato says, his expression getting serious, “I already know the answer, but I’ll have to ask anyway, is this… magic, something you can teach other?”.
“even if I could, I wouldn’t”, Naruto says and truth to his word, Minato reacted like he already knew the answer, “let’s ignore the fact that I don’t particularly don’t like most of you and straight up hate some others. Your kin is not attuned to neither mana nor aether, the spells may run on chakra, but considering the difference in the potency of aether to chakra, you would die of chakra exhaustion if you tried even the most basic spell, key word being try”.
“just to be clear, can we be attuned to aether?”, Fugaku asks, narrowing his eyes at Naruto, who simple puffs some smoke.
“long story short, no”, Naruto says dryly, “longer version, attunement is not something you acquire, is something you are born with, and even that, you are born with mana attunement, only after a certain threshold is crossed you gain aether attunement”.
“so it’s like a kekkei genkai”, Inoichi points.
“exactly”, Naruto says.
The room falls silent again.
“I believe we have discussed everything”, Minato says, “I call this meeting…”.
“Lord Fourth”, Koharu speaks, “I believe it is in the best interest of Konoha that we put Naruto under the CRA”.
“you what?!”, Minato, Kushina, Naruto, Hiruzen and Tsunade exclaim at the same time.
“we all saw the destructive power that a single, spell as he calls it, caused”, the elder continues selling the point and unfortunately the majority was buying it, “and as he said himself, he’s now a Senju, which means he also falls under the requirements for Lord Tobirama’s law the village will benefit greatly from having more Senju with his blood”.
“I see your point, however I cannot in good conscience allow for such a thing to happen”, Minato says firmly.
“I understand, however, this is not up to only you lord fourth”, Homura says, pulling out an old scroll and reading from it, “regarding the CRA it is stated by the law that if the council deems it worthy I can be enacted regardless of the Hokage’s decision”
“so, you want to call a vote?”, Minato says, narrowing his eyes he was sincerely displeased, “all right them, who’s in favor?”.
Haiashi, Chouza, Tsume and Shibi raises their hands, together with the six representatives of the civilian council and the elders.
“and who’s against it?”, he asks, raising his own hand.
Naruto, Hiruzen, Kushina and Tsunade follow suite.
Shikaku remains neutral, that was too troublesome for him to put his two cents in.
“well, it is decided then, the council had agreed upon putting Naruto on the CRA”, Homura says, looking at the blond who was giving him a murderous glare, “I believe you are aware of what that entails”.
“this is bullshit!!”, Tsunade exclaim nearly shattering the desk when she hits it with her fist.
“I have to agree with my student”, Hiruzen says, equally angry, “this madness!!”.
“madness that will benefit Konoha in the long run”, Homura says, “as soon as he turns chuunin, he’ll have to take on four wives, good thing he already has two”.
Before the room turned into a massacre site, Minato call the meeting adjourned.