Naruto - Mokuton Root Agent

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Mokuton Root Agent 

Chapter 1

Hashirama Senju. Also known as the God of Shinobi

The first shinobi ever to gain that title.

The strongest, baddest ninja to exist in his time period.

No one but one could come even close to his power.

It was none other than the Ghost of the Uchiha, Madara Uchiha.

The last known wielder of the vaunted Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan, the peak of the doujutsu that can be wielded by the prestigious Uchiha Clan.

Together, they brought about an end to the warring clan's era and built the first-ever shinobi village, Konoha (The Hidden Leaf Village).

But tragedy struck soon after, Uchiha Madara fell into the Uchiha clan's curse of madness and betrayed Konoha.

At that time, the only ones who could barely match him were Sasuke Sarutobi and Uzumaki Ashina, with Hashirama being the only shinobi known to be able to soundly defeat him.

Hashirama took it upon himself to bring his best friend, the only one who ever truly understood his dream, to heel.

Then, after a battle of titanic proportions, which ended up creating the valley known as The Valley of the End, Hashirama finally killed his best friend with his own hands.

It is said that that event was the single biggest battle that Hashirama ever had to do and he was bedridden for weeks afterward, as a direct consequence of their massive unbridled battle.

Soon afterward, for reasons unknown, Hashirama passed away.

It was a shock to the shinobi world.

After all, he was very much middle-aged and he was known to heal from even the most critical wounds without the application of medical Ninjutsu, all by himself.

The repercussions of this death could be felt throughout the shinobi world.

The Second Hokage, Tobirama Senju, took charge of the Village Hidden in the leaves and with his tactical genius, catapulted it to be the strongest ninja village.

Hashirama Senju's death and his brother's rise to the role of Hokage came with bad tidings for the village.

The beginning of the first shinobi war.

The bloodiest war to ever happen, eclipsing any ninja conflict before it, including all the battles that happened during the clan wars.

In a way, Hashirama Senju failed to bring about his desired changes.

He brought about a respite of peace with his overwhelming strength but any such gains were swiftly wiped out when the first shinobi war began.

All of the villages were involved in the first shinobi war, damaging all of them critically.

Many Kages lost their lives during the First Shinobi War, including Tobirama Senju.

In the end, the villages signed an armistice to stop the war that was haemorrhaging all the village's resources and had gone on long enough that almost all of them were assured to come out of this as losers rather than winners.

The only thing was that some villages came out with fewer losses than the other villages.

Konoha being one of them, as Tobirama Senju, in his last act, managed to send away his subordinates safely and named Hiruzen Sarutobi as the Third Hokage.

As is the norm, exceptional ninjas manage to shine during times of extreme duress. That described the initial situation of Hiruzen Sarutobi accurately.

Thrust into the position of Hokage in his teenage years while all his contemporaries were old fossils with decades of experience under their belts.

Despite his precarious situation, The Third Hokage, with the help of his fellow ninjas, managed to weather the storms that were the Second and Third Great Shinobi Wars.

Of course, no one is without flaws and Hiruzen was certainly not without them.

He had made many mistakes, as was expected, in his role as the Hokage for the decades that he led Konoha.

One such mistake was the free hand he gave to his dear friend Danzo.

That one mistake could be said to have been the reason for both, a lot of losses to Konoha and also the reason for a lot of progress in Konoha.

Danzo committed many crimes, the latest in which was the series of human experiments he did on the subject of Kekkei Genkais in conjunction with Orochimaru.

Having lived through all three of the great ninja wars, the perspectives of Danzo and Hiruzen had been warped considerably from when they were students of Tobirama Senju.

Hiruzen had grown considerably softer in his dealings, having grown weary of back to back wars.

Danzo had grown all the more darker for it. Having lived through the first shinobi war and then contributing heavily to Konoha's war-machine in the second and third ones, his worldview was even more warped.

He began to view shinobis as just tools.

Mere tools to complete his goals.

Expendable for the greater good.

The greater good was the reason that Danzo gave to Hiruzen when he was justifying the darker deeds he committed in the name of helping Konoha.

The same reason he gave to himself when he started helping Orochimaru conduct human experiments to give someone the Kekkei Genkai of the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju.

The Kekke Genkai had been consistently absent in the Senju line ever since Hashirama passed away.

Orochimaru's fascination with the Kekkei Genkais was also due to the death and destruction he had seen in the shinobi wars.

Deep down, he was just someone who wanted to run away from the inevitable, their eventual death.

So he dove into the human experimentation route to find out a way to become immortal, to learn all the jutsus of the shinobi world.

A foolish but commendable goal.

When confronted with the possibility of capture, Orochimaru instead chose to defect from the village and Danzo, seized the opportunity to blame all the blame for the human experimentations on Orochimaru, thus, clearing his own name.

Watching innocent people getting involved in wars was always sad for the Sage of the Six Paths, Hagoromo Otsutsuki.

Watching innocent children needly dying in a vain attempt to recreate the power that can only be harnessed by one of his son's reincarnations was even more saddening.

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Outside time and space

–Hagoromo Otsutsuki–

Watching over the shinobi world and seeing what his teachings had amounted to in the end was always saddening.

Not as heartbreaking as watching his children getting sealed in ninjas and being used as just weapons of war, bringing about death and destruction on a level he had never foreseen.

Oh, how they must hate him for giving the humans the ability to use chakra.

Equally heartbreaking was seeing what Indra and Asura had done after his passing away. It made him want to curse himself for not setting Indra and Asura straight after I had seen the signs of their conflicting ideologies turning violent.

Sure, at that age, discipling them would have hastened his inevitable death but it might have saved thousands more from dying till today.

Nowadays, he watches over the shinobi world as a mere spectre more as a form of penance rather than with the hope that a savior, the child of prophecy, comes and helps save the world.

Watching the Senju clan disappear slowly and seeing it getting whittled down by threats from both inside and outside the village was very much disheartening.

How Hashirama would weep at its state.

The Uchiha clan was no better. Seeing their current position in the Village Hidden in the Leaves had made one thing very much clear to him. He might not have the future-seeing capabilities that some of his mother's clansmen might have, but he could predict the same fate that had befallen the Senju with the Uchihas, complete and utter destruction.

Their name becomes dust in the wind, a mere footnote in the history of the Shinobi world.

However, watching young Tenzo run around the rooftops on the homes of Konoha gave him some hope that the Senju clan could be revived one day, that is if he could survive till adulthood.

Young Tenzo was the latest victim in the long list of people who are the victims of war crimes.

Crimes that the villages and their heads committed to come out on top in the next war, to increase their overall prowess before the next inevitable war breaks out.

The best way to increase the combat power was through the use of Kekkei Genkai and what better Kekkei Genkai than the one used by the man who managed to make the old warring clans submit?

The person who made the warring clans stop fighting and come together to create a village in fear of him.

Mokuton.

That was the best Kekkei Genkai that Konoha had access to.

They disturbed the slumber of their First Hokage and used his tissues to experiment on people.

When it became clear that people with fully developed chakra networks were incompatible with the process of implanting Kekkei Genkai, they detestably moved on to kids.

71

That was the number of kids they killed in the name of the greater good before Orochimaru was found out and stopped by the Yellow Flash of Konoha, Namikaze Minato.

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To be continued….

Word Count - 1534