Rewriting History by VFSNAKE

Chapter 8

At the same time, word soon reached Fugaku about the attack, and had to stop his march to Uzu in order to head back and reinforce the defenses within Konoha. After all, if three minor villages could come together, and attack his village when it was sporting minimum number of Shinobi defending it, who was to was say one of the major powers might try their hand? Of course, the Yondaime's pride as a man, Hokage, and Uchiha were in direct conflict with one another. Part of him wanted to continue heading to Uzu, confident they could attack them, win, and come back to Konoha with the spoils from the victory to help in making the village the superior one out of all the others. At the same time, the voice of reason, which was a tiny voice, if not a whispery thing, told Fugaku that leaving Konoha in its weakened state without returning to properly defend it from further attacks would leave the village open to further attacks by the minor village or one of the major powers.

Surprisingly, the tiny voice of reason won out. Barely, but it still won.

And because of this, Fugaku had no choice, but to call off his campaign to attack Uzu until the village was strong enough to defend itself when trying again. So for the next few years, Konoha was stewing with anger, and resentment over what they believed was a betrayal on Minato's part with his wife along with those who followed him. There was also open resentment against Uzu for allowing all the people that left Konoha to go to their village to start anew. As supposed allies, Uzu should not only have denied the traitors sanctuary, but helped Konoha capture, and detain them until Konoha could take them back for..."reeducation purposes". As far as Konoha was concerned, Uzu had been conspiring with the traitors to get them to relocate, and were just as guilty as Minato's group.

It was actually the perfect smear campaign and something that Konoha had no problem trying to use it to make sure clients Uzu would normally get would stay away from them and go to Konoha. Unfortunately, Uzu had anticipated this, and countered with the reason so many left Konoha for Uzu in the first place. Even going so far as to reveal the secret conspiracy done by Konoha to betray the Uzumaki Clan during the Second Shinobi War during the early years of the Sandaime Hokage ruling over Konoha.

And thanks to the Uzumaki Clan's own spy network, which had absorbed Jiraiya's own, and improved upon after the man was killed, the world knew of Konoha's sins. It had made a lot of people not want to do business with Konoha and go elsewhere. Why should they hire a village to assist them when Konoha would gladly or possibly betray them in the future once receiving payment? It also didn't help that information about Root being used to raid wealthy caravans inside and outside of Fire Country were being made known to the public thanks to Uzu's spy network.

Eventually, the Fire Daimyo in his elderly years showed his displeasure with Konoha and moved to cut the village's budget for the next few years as punishment. To counter this, Danzo had secretly ordered Root to assassinate the Daimyo and make it seem like Uzu or at the very least one of the other Shinobi villages had done it. This move was also done to help the eldest of the Feudal Lord's sons become the new Daimyo so the new leader of Fire Country could be manipulated properly to give them plenty of funding for their future war with Uzu.

The plan had ultimately been a mix of both success and failure. Success because the Fire Daimyo had been killed, but failure in terms of getting the one who Danzo thought would eventually succeed him sitting on the throne, and planting undisputed evidence pinning it on Uzu. After the incident following Hiashi and Hizashi battling it out in Gentle Fist, the now late Fire Daimyo decided to have his youngest son be his successor to the throne. It had come as a shock to many the Fire Daimyo named his youngest of his two sons to rule upon his death instead of the eldest since that just didn't happen. But considering how the youngest was clearly the most competent and sharpest of the two, it was showing the late Daimyo of Fire Country was thinking what was best for everyone in the long run.