Naruto: The Kage of Kages

Leaving Shiki to his devices, Mito began to move and like a hungry predator reawakening from hibernation, a ruthless glint was reflected in her eyes.

With no further delay and without altering a single soul, Mito vanished from her mansion and waded through the village's night scenery like a ghost, undetectable by even the greatest of sensor type shinobi.

She veered off the beaten path into one of the many forested regions inside Konohagakure, the reason for its name of Village Hidden in The Leaves.

After a short while, the redhead arrived at a deserted but well maintained building on the village outskirts, the Uzumaki Noh Mask Hall.

In the original timeline, it would fall into disrepair and its external structure would collapse even though it survived Pain's assault but at this moment in time, it was still periodically maintained on Mito's orders.

Entering the relatively small building showed that there was only one big central room with a somewhat podium-like wall with a total of twenty seven fierce looking painted wooden masks.

'Sometimes, acting like something is unimportant is the best way to keep it safe.' The redhead thought to herself.

These ritual masks had power for those who knew how to use them but left here with no one watching over them in a temple on the outskirts of the village made it all be forgotten, even those aware of the temple did not know of its significance.

Only one of these masks was given use in main series, the one that allowed the user to call upon the Shinigami of the Reaper Death Seal to possess them with its use being shown as the only way to undo the jutsu though whether that is true, only the Uzumaki would know.

However, another secret laid hidden in that place.

Lowering herself to one knee, Mito gently laid her right hand on the floor, activating a hidden sealing jutsu formula engraved into the foundations of the building.

First, with a creaking sound, a large wooden panel on the floor sunk and slid out of place. Then, the noise of two stone surfaces rubbing against each other sounded out, revealing a hidden passage that led underground.

Descending the stony steps, small flames lit up on both side walls as the redhead passed by, snuffing themselves out after she moved two or three steps beyond them and at the end, a small octagonal stone chamber.

Unlike the path, the chamber was already lit by eight eerie blueish ghost-like flames that needed neither oxygen nor any kind of fuel. They occupied each of the eight corners and from them, a similarly colored glow spread out through intricate carvings across the whole chamber.

In the center was a large pillar extending from ground to ceiling, with a meter of diameter, that was similarly covered by engravings. It was all a part of an extremely powerful seal that relied on Nature Energy to maintain itself.

Standing in front of the pillar, Mito sighed with a complex expression.

'Is this really the route I should take?' The Uzumaki matriarch internally questioned herself.

'Am I truly willing to break such a long standing rule of the clan and unseal these forbidden jutsu outlawed for over ten generations?' She once more questioned her actions.

These were Uzumaki generations, far longer than regular people's and there were extremely good reasons such a rule was maintained for that long of a time.

Despite only one individual in each generation of the Uzumaki main line learning about this secret, in all the wars the clan fought, its inheritance was never broken.

No matter how many tragedies occurred, no holder of the secret bent to temptation and undid the seal to claim the forbidden knowledge and power within.

As its, now only, holder, Mito took it with her to Konoha during the village's founding and, taking into consideration her husband's dreams and hopes for the future of the village and the world, the redhead intended to take the secret to her grave.

It was a sinful creation meant to be forgotten, the Uzumaki matriarch thought as much all her life, her marriage and new life outside of her clan only solidified this belief further.

'Yet here I am now . . .' The redhead looked down at her feet.

But after a period of hesitation, Mito placed her right hand over her heart and asked herself.

'Maybe this is not what I should do . . . Maybe this is what I must not do . . . But is this truly what I want to do?'

Raising her face with a now resolute look across it and a ruthless glint in her black eyes, the redhead weaved a complex sequence of 100 hand seals with the 101st being a clap of the hands.

As she finished, the whole chamber lit up with its pale bluish light becoming crimson red, giving off a wicked and macabre feeling.

Then, with a momentous rumbling the upper and lower halves of the central pillar started spinning in opposite directions, retracting themselves to reveal a central container housing a single large dark crimson scroll with black swirling patterns all over it, bound with black rope.

It was long with over a meter in length and quite thick.

No longer hesitating, Mito took the scroll and with a single hand, hand seal, transformed it into a regular sized scroll for ease of carrying.

Turning her back on the pillar, the sealing formation lost all of its power, losing its glow and self-destructing as the redhead left.

When she reached the Mask Hall once more, the entire passage collapsed before the wooden floor slid back into place.

Quickly, the Uzumaki matriarch took out a storage scroll she had prepared and removed from it several wooden masks, replicas with no power to replace the real masks she proceeded to swiftly seal into the now empty scroll.

Her business done, Mito left the hall without so much as a backwards look and, already having broken such a major taboo, she had no reservations about making a few more questionable moves.

As a jinchuriki, Mito was forbidden from leaving the village and, while nobody could really stop her were she determined to do so, it would give rise to a lot of problems.

Sneaking out was a no go as well due to the simple fact that there were security measures in place to make sure alerts were issued in case the jinchuriki ever left the village boundaries, even if the Konoha Barrier failed to detect her crossing.

But Mito had her means.

From her robes, she pulled out a folded paper figure in the shape of a person, it was a paper effigy packed with complex sealing script.

The materials required to make the paper and ink were so rare and the techniques so difficult, the Uzumaki clan actively avoided making these if there was no particular need for it.

Special trees for making the paper were grown in Uzushio but they were few and took a long time to mature while the refining process means very little paper actually came out. It was mainly to not consume all of these trees that production was severely limited.

This was called a Four Symbol Paper Effigy and was the key component for several special Uzumaki jutsu, one of them being called the Four Symbol Puppet Clone.

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