Chapter 13: Taking the first steps

I quickly organized my mind about what to say and what to leave out since being too informed will be suspicious , so I started explaining by stating the obvious " first of all, the fact that we were banished to the outskirts of the village has a very clear meaning , Konoha's council and even the Hokage do not trust us , and according to the information I gathered, the situation was similar.

Even before the nine tails incident , but they used the incident as a leverage to corner our clan without even a proof of our involvement in it and removed whatever authority we had left except for the police force which I will discuss in a moment.

Now, if we rely on history alone, tension between our clan and the village started because of Madara Uchiha defecting or so how the village would like to make it seem , but there was no reason for further conflict yet somehow it never stopped.

I thought hard about this, at first I thought it was the Senju clan's doing but that poor clan which was the main founder along with our Uchiha clan is already exterminated with only Tsunade Senju still alive somewhere since she left the village , so I wondered how is it possible for a clan as strong as the Senju famous for their vitality die out like this even though their clan members were married to many other families in the village , it's impossible to happen naturally , so it's obvious someone was behind it , and there is only three possible culprits that had enough power at that time to do this.

First the third Hokage , second the elders council , and third is our clan , but I know it's not our clan so that leaves either the third Hokage or the elders council , whoever it was it's impossible for the third Hokage to not know so that guy is very shady to me , as for from the elders council, I think the biggest suspect is Danzo with his root organization plus I am sure they killed a lot of people legally by throwing them in the frontlines at the second and third ninja wars like they did to us , as for the motivation to eliminate us , there are two possibilities , one they are after our bloodlines and second is to have all the power in the village ,and either way they will try to exterminate us , that's what I know".

Mikoto and Fugaku's faces kept changing, starting from curious to dumbfounded, to shock and lastly horror realizing that whatever hope they had for the village was pointless and they stayed silent for a long time before Mikoto asked worriedly " b-Bakorio-kun what do you think we should do?" and at this moment Fugaku too raised his head from his contemplation and looked at me hoping I have solution to this predicament since I could think about the situation this well.

I looked at her thoughtfully and said " right now we should first fix our reputation in the village , and this brings me to the situation of our police force , it's causing more harm than good to us , especially with how some of their members use their authority to bully villagers , I don't know if Sasuke told you this or not but , yesterday , I took both Sasuke and Naruto to the orphanage and on the way there we came across a member from the police hitting orphan kids just because they accidently bumped into him , and under the watch of many people at that , people like this should be dealt with properly or they will drag the whole clan down"

Both Mikoto and Fugaku looked very angry after I explained yesterday's incident and I continued saying while this time I looked at Fugaku deeply "and remember this, having a strong enemy is way better than having an unreliable friend".

Fugaku's eyes flickered sadly for a moment before he calmed down 'well I guess you got my meaning' I thought and Fugaku said coldly " after getting banished to the outskirts, the other elders of our clan became lenient and ignored these kind of incidents but we can't afford to tolerate this behavior anymore and give our enemy a reason to deal with us so I will make sure to fix it no matter what".

I looked at him with a smile and said " good and don't worry, I also have other plans to raise the clan's reputation".

The silent Mikoto looked at me curiously and said "how do you plan to do so Bakorio-kun".

"I plan to open new branches for my pastry shop and even other kinds of food shops and select people from our clan with good temperament to work there , I will raise their pay depending on how good the feedback from their customers is, this way it will push them to act better with people without us ordering them and no one will suspect that our real purpose is to raise our reputation since even our workers won't know but you shouldn't tell anyone not even Sasuke or Itachi , what do you think?" I said and I could see both their eyes light up.

Mikoto looked at me excitedly and said "Bakorio-kun you are amazing, can you please let me help in this project?"

I nodded with a smile "of course, you will make my job easier managing different shops." and she smiled happily at my agreement.

While Mikoto thought this was a good solution, Fugaku was thinking deeper 'does he not trust the clan? do we have spies? He's being too cautious but I think this is for the better' for some reason it made him think about his eldest son Itachi but he tried to dismiss those thoughts for now.

We discussed some more , and reached an agreement on how many shops we should buy and who to hire as workers and only stopped when Sasuke came in with a serious look saying " I am back" before it quickly turned to happiness when I called him like a certain scorpion " Yo Sasuke, come over here ".

"Bakorio, how are you feeling right now" he asked worriedly.

"Don't worry, I was just taking a nap" I responded with a smile.

"You call being in a coma for the whole day a nap!?" he said with some anger making him look cute.

"Oh man you should see me when I sleep, I hibernate for entire seasons "I said with a grin making him even more annoyed by my teasing.

"Let's train together later okay?" I said and ruffled his hair until I felt a chill down my back and saw Mikoto smiling at me in a very sadistic way.

"Bakorio-kun, what do you mean train later?" she said.

I weakly smiled at her and said " I meant train our eating and sleeping skills of course" she smiled satisfied with my answer before she left to prepare us some lunch while Fugaku went out to prepare what we planed and so I found myself alone with Sasuke so I asked him "how's Naruto doing?"

Sasuke snorted and said "Hmph he's doing fine, he was worried about you and wanted to come with me to our clan but we met the Hokage on our way and he took Naruto with him".

I nodded at him while inside I thought with a grin ' your good cop bad cop attitude won't work anymore Hiruzen, Minato and Kushina are able to communicate with Naruto at any time, they will make sure that you will get no information'