Aftermath

8 years later

Over the past eight years, the village had recovered immensely. With Minato at the head of the recovery efforts, the other nations were still very aware that the Village Hidden in the Leaves (Konoha) was still the strongest village, if for no other reason that the yellow flash was still Hokage. In that time, a few major changes happened to the village.

The first is that Danzo was declared a traitor after the identification of his arm being covered in multiple stolen sharingan. Although he tried to escape, he could never escape Minato due to being marked with his famous teleportation technique, the flying thunder god. He simply didn't have enough sealing knowledge to detect and get rid of it. Therefore, he was tracked to his compound with the majority of his root ninja and assassinated. All three village elders stood down from their positions as a response, including the previous Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi. He had let a lot of this happen beneath his notice and decided to own up to this by resigning from his position of leadership. The other two elders were executed for complicit actions discovered during the event. Those two had benefitted a lot from the deception. Therefore, the position of advisor was left vacant.

The civilian council was dismissed from their regular meetings and was required to set up a separate council to discuss purely non-military matters with one of the Hokage's shadow clones and a set of Anbu in the room; members of the shinobi council were also invited to all the meetings. This was done in response to factors suggesting willful cooperation with root. A lot of these council members were very lucky that they were still needed for the reconstruction efforts. That said, most of them were assassinated in secret when the immediate economic concerns were dealt with. It was their penance.

It was also hidden from the shinobi forces that half of the nine-tails had disappeared. It was just announced that it was sealed back into its previous container along with a public explanation of how the tailed beast system worked in hidden villages. It was deemed inappropriate to keep that a secret any longer. The official explanation was that the current container was a member of the Anbu, which would be true if his wife was actually the current container. There was still resentment in the village, but with Minato still alive and root being expunged, the hatred could be handled and controlled over time. It's not like Naruto could access the chakra until he was a genin anyways. Minato kept the seal completely locked away and would loosen it once Naruto became a ninja; this would give him time to learn chakra control. Since he was still alive, it made more sense than his earlier plan.

The village's medical staff also managed to save Kushina due to her strong Uzumaki lineage. Her life force was strong enough to overcome the strain on her chakra system. However, it took five years to get back to her previous condition; she had been bedridden for two of them.

The biggest change to this situation was the Uchiha Clan. They were brought back into the village to settle in their old compound and their police force duties were taken and distributed amongst the clans. In exchange, they were integrated into the Torture and Interrogation Division with the Yamanaka Clan to make better use of their Sharingan. Due to Fugaku being the hero that 'defeated' the nine-tails, the Uchiha Clan was able to gain recognition in the eyes of the common villagers and reintegrate into the shinobi force. From the Uchiha's perspective, they were finally being recognized and their clan head reminded them that they were still a part of the village. The only odd part of the whole situation was that the matriarch of the clan and the Hokage gained joint custody of his daughter, but considering the parties involved didn't seem to have a problem with it, any concerns were quickly crushed. Although it was never outright confirmed, most of the clans assumed that the daughter was the new container due to this oddity. Due to Fugaku's last wish, Minato wouldn't be letting them know the full truth any time soon.

Mikoto Uchiha, the new head of the clan had been busy implementing the new changes to the clan and getting herself back into the swing of things. She had helped raid Danzo's bases and secured a plethora of lost sharingan that had been stolen. From there, she worked to conduct joint exercises with the other village clans to remind the Uchiha that they too had strong trump cards. It helped that less than five members in their clan had access to the mangekyou sharingan. Without that, their eyes were just better than average tools that let them copy and predict their opponent's techniques in addition to enhanced hypnotism.

Over the years she had been getting closer and closer to Minato; Kushina had even offered to bring her into the marriage due to their extremely close friendship and the allowance of the act due to clan culture. It was actually a very common practice in the Uzumaki clan due to their higher population of females and excessive stamina for both sexes. It would also give the Uchiha clan another tie to the Hokage, which helped them politically. From a practical standpoint, it made sense to keep the miracle child's mother in the family. Who knows if another one will be born; it was best to keep her with the Hokage where the potential power can be managed appropriately.

The marriage arrangement seemed like it would make sense considering the couple had joint custody over one of her kids. That situation had been a nightmare; it was actually how Minato found out that she had the mangekyou. After he told her of her husband's death, she merely sighed. It had been a political marriage for the most part. She had grown to be fond of his duteous spirit, but it wasn't love in the way her and Kushina had dreamed of as kids. The part that angered her was the attempt at turning their daughter into a weapon and signing custody over without her knowledge or consent. To placate all parties, they agreed to share custody over Kamui. Over the years though, she began to spend more time with the Namikaze couple and even slept with them a time or two, though that happened in the seventh year. Honestly, they were just waiting for Itachi, her eldest son, to challenge her for the position of clan head so she could move on and be free to marry Minato and Kushina; yes, she would marry both of them at Kushina's demand. As for Kamui, she had been an interesting child.

The first thing to note about her was her appearance change. Over the years her appearance shifted quite a bit. Aside from the obvious growing up, her Uchiha black hair turned to a silvery-white that seemed to glow in the darkness; this process happened over the course of the first five years of her life. Then there were her eyes, they awakened to a two tomoe set of sharingans with the same amethyst coloration as her original eyes. They had done tests on her blood, but were unable to find the reason why. For all intents and purposes, it should be a normal red sharingan. When they checked her chakra though, the found the interesting component.

When she awakened it, it turned out to be a silvery white color with bits of seven other colors mixed in; it had a calm and steady feel to it that had traces of a ferocity that shouldn't be present in a child. The Hokage's private doctors couldn't figure out what caused the strange chakra, but they did know that it couldn't be implanted. It would always kill the recipient; their bodies couldn't take the chakra. They also tried it with samples of the first Hokage's cells that they had pulled from one of Danzou's seized facilities and the same result happened. Their conclusion was that she developed a chakra mutation that gave her unique properties, but was unique to her. The problem was that it would likely prevent her from carrying children. There just wasn't a possibility that her chakra saturated eggs could be inseminated by sperm. It would be corroded and denatured before it could take root. Although that was all theory at this point, it was the joint consensus of the highest-level medical officials in the village. That part really disappointed the shinobi council and the Uchiha clan. If this mutation proved to be beneficial, they would have loved to reproduce it; it didn't seem possible though.

Minato also started to realize where her portion of the nine-tailed fox was. It took him a little more than seven years to reach the level to barely piece together the answer. It was dead. It was absorbed by a barely detectable chakra mass inside of her body. The problem was that they didn't know anything about this new mass. They would need her to interact with it to see what the changes would be and even then, they would need to find some way to restrain it if it became a problem. It was so intricately tied to her chakra that they couldn't really seal it and allow her to interact with it. The mass was basically an extension of her own chakra. He needed his sensei back soon to get his input. Unfortunately, it would likely be fruitless. His sensei wasn't nearly at the level that he was concerning the perception of natural energy and spatial forces, the forces necessary to sense it. Although his sensei was considered the second strongest living member of the village, he still hadn't completed the training to become a perfect sage.

On another note, Kamui had turned out to be unnaturally gifted. She seemed to be able to manipulate her chakra like an arm. Her constantly calm demeanor would prove useful in the shinobi profession. Today, they would be moving onto the next stage where she would be trying to replicate the basic fire ball jutsu. It'll certainly be interesting to see how she does.