Two months later, the good news was that Koharu and Homura had stopped their jabs and criticisms toward Jun. Hiruzen didn't know if it was his yelling that had had this effect, or simply the fact that they had found better things to do with their time, but in any case, he was relieved.

The bad news was that the idea of ​​natural cloning had been studied and approved. It was an S-rank secret, and therefore relatively protected… Even though many people in Jun’s entourage knew about it, the Hokage ordered them to secrecy. Regardless, a small Uchiha clone was going to be created.

Jun had refused that the DNA samples come from Sasuke. The poor kid was already traumatized enough without having to be the parent of the next generation. No, Jun had donated a selection of hair strands for DNA recovery. Three female and one male DNA. Hiruzen was pretty sure that one of the DNA belonged to Jun’s mother Hazuki, who was an Uchiha even though she had never awakened the Sharingan… But he didn't know where the others came from. And he tried not to find it too alarming that Jun kept a good handful of hair belonging to strangers in his house.

In any case, harvesting the DNA wasn’t difficult. Science was advanced in Konoha, partly due to Orochimaru's experiments. Even though not all of his work had been…legal…he had given their labs a leap forward. He demanded the best equipment, created more precise tools, implemented a whole variety of procedures, and invented new techniques to manipulate the infinitely small. Ah, how he would have laughed seeing that his ideas still served Konoha.

Orochimaru had been obsessed with the idea of ​​cloning the Shodaime, the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju. There were over fifty corpses of babies buried in a mass grave that attested to this, and that was only the ones the ANBU had found.

But what Konoha wanted now wasn't Senju, it was Uchiha. The oocytes had been collected in the greatest secrecy from volunteers. Anko Mitarashi had been one of them. Koharu had tried to remove her file from the list of candidates, but Jun had looked her straight in the eye and put the file back at the top of the pile. He had such a ferocious look that no one dared to change it anymore.

There had been a phase of experimentation. At first, it didn't work. The manipulation was too delicate, the insertion of the DNA was not enough to transform the oocyte into an egg cell, and the ovum remained inert… In total, of the sixty-eight tests carried out, sixty-seven had been unsuccessful.

But the sixty-eighth had made it possible to develop an embryo.

Judging by Jun's face when he got the report, he hadn't expected it to go so fast at all. Or even that it works at all, in fact.

Now a surrogate mother was needed. Someone who is close enough to the Uchiha that Jun can justify his interest in the child, discreet enough that the baby doesn't become a target, and competent enough to defend herself when needed. Also, one of Jun’s demands was that the mother would have to raise the child alone. The teenager already had many kids under his supervision and felt he didn’t have the time or the energy to raise a newborn. The other reason was that they would keep the child’s true origin a secret as they monitor his or her growth. Therefore, the mother would have to raise the child alone with ample financial support, naturally.

Koharu, Homura, and Hiruzen had all offered female candidates. Many were from the ANBU, but that was just a coincidence.

Jun had refused all their proposals as if he didn't trust them. It was a project of the Uchiha clan, but it had been financed by the village, so they had a say in it, didn't they? In any case, it was unthinkable that the project should be entrusted to a surrogate mother who is unaware of its importance!

Jun suggested one of his friends who already knew about the whole thing, Anko Mitarashi.

Koharu and Homura had practically passed out. And Hiruzen…

The thing was, Hiruzen knew no man wanted to land with Orochimaru's old apprentice. And being a single mother when you're kunoichi was almost impossible. You couldn't combine the missions with a pregnancy and then the care of a newborn. Konoha paid pensions but did not encourage young mothers to return to active duty after giving birth. You had to be ready to retire if you didn't have a backup system such as a clan, a family…

He also knew that Anko had undergone several experiments from Orochimaru to the point that she was not even sure of being fertile. She had not undergone a medical examination to verify that as she was afraid to find out the answer. … At least, not before throwing herself into this project. And now she was devoted body and soul to it, and Hiruzen understood why. In Konoha, with the dishonor of her sensei clinging to her like a ball and chain, Anko would probably never have a family of her own.

So Hiruzen understood why Anko was willing, and why she would fight tooth and nail for this chance. And he knew that Jun knew it too, and that was why he was supporting her candidacy. No one would protect the kid as fiercely as Anko. And then… If Jun gave Anko the opportunity to realize her dream… He would earn her eternal loyalty.

But Hiruzen also noticed the fact that Anko sometimes spent the night at the Uchiha residence, the way they whispered leaning towards each other, the carnivorous smiles they exchanged after a stupid joke, and he wondered if Jun didn't already have that undying loyalty.

So the Sandaime agreed. He was tired of fighting Jun on the matter.

In the hospital, in the greatest secrecy, Anko had a female embryo implanted and accepted a ten-year S-rank mission to give birth and raise an Uchiha child until the child entered the clan. In compensation, she would receive a considerable amount of money each year… and Jun himself signed a clause according to which her status as the child's mother would never be questioned, even after the kid entered the Uchiha clan. That was what really motivated Anko.

Homura and Koharu left the hospital, unhappy but eager to see the project grow. They were no doubt already thinking of a way to repopulate the clans that had disappeared from the village. The Hokage lingered behind the door. Anko was getting dressed, and he heard Jun pacing behind the screen.

“It will be difficult,” he said nervously. “When it was my mom, and she was pregnant with Kazuma, people were obnoxious, and she was my mom, the sweetest person ever. For you…”

“Am I not adorable?” Anko's smirking voice came to him.

There was an amused snort, and Hiruzen could easily imagine Jun's mocking smile when he replied:

“You’re more of an acquired taste. Not everyone would like what you have to offer.”

“Really?” Anko insisted in a ribald tone. “I'm glad you have special tastes then, my pretty…”

And that was it for Hiruzen who couldn’t listen anymore. Fortunately, Anko had regained her seriousness, and said gravely:

“I know it will be hard. But once the kid, is old enough, when she's an Uchiha, and we can tell everyone it was a top-secret project…”

“An artificial insemination project,” Jun hastened to add. “I don't want to push the Sandaime into the grave by revealing that it was cloning…”

It was a little late for that, Hiruzen thought with a touch of exasperation. But at least Jun was aware of the danger this secret posed, which was good.

“Nevermind,” Anko blurted out. “Once that's done, all the stigma will go away. People will be too busy bowing down to her Sharingan and the great sacrifice I made.”

There was a short silence. When Jun spoke again, his voice was lower, softer.

“It's a huge sacrifice indeed. I mean… A baby is a big deal. We were at least eight people raising Kazuma and it was… exhausting.”

“Because you were a bunch of distraught kids,” Anko retorted abruptly. “And you spent as much time panicking about Hazuki's health as caring for Kazuma. It will be different for me. I'm fine; I’m in perfect health. And you know how much I dreamed of that. In fact, it is rather you who is making a sacrifice. You hate kids.”

“I don't hate them!” Jun protested.

Anko sneered.

“You don't want to have kids. You're already overwhelmed raising so many kids on your own…”

"They're pretty big now," Jun protested weakly. “They practically raise themselves at this point.”

“Just shut up. You don't want to raise a baby. You don't want a baby at all. But you're ready to adopt one anyway, and I know it's not just because of those old idiots, and the pressure they put on you because you don't care about their opinion. It's because your kids want a big family and you're thinking about their future. And it's also because you know that I... I…”

“I would have had this idea even if you hadn't told me about it,” Jun interrupted in a hesitant voice.

“Perhaps,” Anko said. “But would you have seen it through to the end?”

Jun remained silent. Anko let out a short laugh.

“I could never thank you enough.”

"She'll be your daughter," Jun muttered. “Not mine. It's not like I proposed to you either.”

“Don't you dare… I know I'm hot, but marriage isn’t for me. I like my freedom too much for that.”

Hiruzen mentally gave himself a point for guessing their relationship. Yes, he hadn't been sure, but at least he had suspected something was going on. He was sure no one else in the village knew. Anko could be surprisingly discreet when she wanted to be.

“Relax,” Jun snorted amusedly. “You will remain a single mother. I'll be the cool uncle, and you'll be the boring and responsible mom.”

“I will be the most interesting and responsible mother in the village,” Anko swore. “This kid is going to be perfect, you'll see. As adorable as your little brother.”

"Not my little sister?"

“Hell no. Your sister is a medic. They all have issues.”

Jun laughed.

“I guess you’ll be relieved to know that it was an egg from Yugao that was used for this embryo. By the way, she doesn’t know that the successful trial came from one of her eggs.”

“Yugao, damn. That means all of the tests with my eggs failed… What about the core DNA? That's what matters. Where is it from?”

Hiruzen listened attentively. Jun hesitated for a split second before answering.

“My grandmother, Nao Uchiha.”

"Do I want to know why you had a handful of your grandmother's perfectly preserved hair at home?"

“No, not really.”

Hiruzen was relieved. Having his grandmother's hair wasn't too weird. Hiruzen would have been much more alarmed if it had been Itachi's or Fugaku's hair for example. Still, it was… a bit suspicious. Especially since Jun and her grandparents hadn't been close. There was probably a reasonable explanation. Hiruzen decided it was likely a gesture of mourning to save a few locks of a loved one and decided to forget the rest. It wasn't like Jun kept the corpse in his basement, for example.

Anko sneered and their footsteps approached the door. Deciding that he had heard enough, Hiruzen stormed off silently. With a bit of luck, he could take advantage of a little quiet in his office to escape the migraine that rose in his head every time he thought about this cursed cloning project.