This fic carries a bit of meaning for me. You see, most of my fics were just fever dreams that wouldn't stop bugging me until I wrote them down. After the first few chapters, they just lose their luster entirely.

THIS fic, on the other hand, has been stewing and growing in my mind for going on two years. It may or may not die out just as fast, but I'm going to give it a shot!

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, Assassin's Creed, One Piece, Final Fantasy VII, Bayonetta, Inception, or any other copyright that I might intrude upon.

Sarutobi Hiruzen felt old. It wasn't that big a surprise. He'd been alive when Konohagakure had been founded. Three wars and four Hokages later, it was wonder that the Sandaime Hokage was even still breathing. Still, he had never really felt his years until this very moment.

Sarutobi was in a hospital. Again, it was not that big a deal. He was the leader of a village full of shinobi, most of who seemed to have forgotten that a ninja was supposed to hide unnoticed in the shadows, not flashily bend the elements of nature right in front of the enemy. The Trauma Ward of the Konoha Hospital received more traffic than the Burn Ward, the Disease Ward, and the Nursery combined. Considering the, ah, natural beauty of the female inhabitants, that should give you an idea of just how many people needed invasive surgery.

The particular ward the elderly Hokage stood in officially did not exist. It was where the elite of Konoha, the ANBU, and certain others that could not be revealed to the public received their medical care. The door was hidden behind a long wall that required both the chakra of one of a handful of approved doctors and a specific set of hidden locks to be opened. Seals built into the walls prevented any sensor-type ninja from detecting the inhabitants. There were no windows or air vents, the air circulated by seals.

At the moment, the room had a single occupant: a six-year old child.

With weary eyes, Sarutobi looked over the boy's form. He was short, even for his age. His skin always seemed to be slightly tanned, no matter the time of year. His hair was a golden-blond that spiked everywhere in cheery chaos.

His chest was a mass of bandages, some of them still stained red. Having memorized the medical report, Sarutobi knew that there were precisely twenty-seven lacerations on the boy's chest, some subcutaneous, the rest managing to reach the organs. In a detached, purely clinical part of Hiruzen's mind, he mused that the boy's entire intestinal system had been pierced, and the lungs had at the very least been nicked.

That wasn't the worst. That wasn't what made the Hokage feel ashamed and hopeless and as frail and ancient as he truly was.

The boy's name was Uzumaki Naruto. His eyes were blue. His eyes had been blue.

Gauze encircled the boy's head, hiding the gaping holes that were the ocular cavities. They were now empty. The madman that had kidnapped Naruto and butchered his chest had also torn his eyes from their sockets. It had happened with a red-hot blade, ensuring that it was both excruciatingly painful and that the ocular nerve and chakra pathways had been cauterized. There was no hope of reinserting them, and not even the possibility of them being regenerated.

See, Naruto wasn't normal. If not unique, his condition was exceedingly rare. He had a demon sealed inside him, one of the legendary Bijuu, thus making him a Jinchuuriki. In fact, the demon was the strongest of the nine, the Kyuubi no Kitsune.

Though the third such Jinchuuriki to reside in Konoha, he was the first whose status had been revealed to the public, following the brief rampage the Kyuubi had gone on shortly after the birth of its third host and before the death of its second . In the aftermath of that disaster, the nigh-unanimous reaction had been one of unadulterated hatred. All the fear, pain, and loss that each citizen had suffered eagerly latched onto that hatred, entrenching it and ensuring that it would remain long after the scars had healed. It remained to this day, clinging like a tick to the collective psyche of the villagers. Whether it was skin-deep or permanently submerged into the subconscious mind, that hatred of the Kyuubi pulsed and burned in the heart of almost every citizen of Konoha.

And it had been the Sandaime who had foolishly allowed that hatred to be born.

Call it senility. Call it an error in judgment. Call it a massive fuck-up. The label didn't matter. What mattered was that Sarutobi had released classified information to the public, information that had led to the death of any chance Naruto had to live a peaceful life. All on basis of a dying man's last words.

There should be laws against that level of stupidity.

A quiet knock snapped Sarutobi out of his self-loathing, causing him to compose himself. He couldn't afford to show weakness. He was the Hokage.

A series of quiet clicks echoed slightly throughout the room before a portion of the wall opened out, letting two men enter the secret room. The last one in closed the door behind him, less than a second having passed. The maneuver was so practiced that one doctor had once wandered in here in his sleep.

The first man wore the white coat of a doctor and was officially the blandest human being that Hiruzen had ever met in his life. He wasn't tall, wasn't short, wasn't large, wasn't thin, his eyes were an indistinct brown, his hair the same shade, the only exceptional thing about him was that there was nothing exceptional about him.

He was also one of the best Hunter-nin that Konoha had ever produced. The man was so utterly boring that he left absolutely no trail and could literally walk right past his target without them even noticing that he was an ANBU sent to kill them. His kills were always clean and methodical to the point of being ridiculous. There was never any proof that the missing-nin hadn't just taken off. After a few years, he had decided that he'd had enough of quietly arranging heart attacks and strokes before annihilating the evidence. He'd taken his knowledge of the human body and turned it towards the purpose of healing rather than destruction. He didn't have the precise chakra control or ingenuity of Tsunade, but he definitely had the Senju beat when it came to exact knowledge of physiology and how it could be manipulated.

He didn't really have a name. At his own request, all records the village ever had on him were destroyed. Since he only ever worked this particular ward, there was no need to set up an alias. Most had taken to calling him Mouse, due to his quiet nature. He didn't object, and he responded to the name. That was good enough for the Hokage and ANBU.

The second man was more colorful, but no less somber than Mouse. He was a man somewhere in his thirties, with sharp, almost gaunt features. He wore a red coat over standard Jonin garb, and his dirty platinum hair fell in a tail to his mid-back. This was Yamanaka Inoichi, the current commander of the IT division of Konoha's military. His proficiency at his clan's mind-based techniques was without equal, making him ideal for a job that involved getting information out of an unwilling subject.

Mouse silently attended to the various machines attached to Naruto, methodically checking his vitals without a single hint of emotion. Inoichi walked up to a comfortable distance from Sarutobi. The wizened ninja noted how the duller of the two blonds refused to look at the other. His right eye drifted just enough to bring the boy into his peripherals, and it immediately moved in the other direction, accompanied by a minute twitch.

"I have that report, Hokage-sama. Here's all the info I managed to extract about the criminal, as well as a detailed account of the memory."

It would have been invisible to a civilian, but to a Kage the physical minutiae were like a screamed conversation. Inoichi was horrified by how a small boy had mercilessly had his eyes gouged out. He was disgusted with himself for his prior steadfast neutrality regarding the boy. He knew that if he actually saw the terrible damage that had been inflicted on an innocent child, rather than through the lens of a madman's thoughts, he might lose control.

Hiruzen could sympathize wholeheartedly. He'd seen and done unspeakable things in his time, but this was different. Children are the epitome of innocence. They can be complete little monsters at times, but that didn't change the fact that, quite simply, they were young. Untainted. They hadn't been beaten and battered and rendered cynical by a world that at times seemed much, much too dark. Human cruelty is at its darkest and most repulsive when someone with baby teeth is the victim. That was why the Sandaime was such a pacifist. He'd seen children rushed into the battlefield to fill the demands of war, to either come out broken and hollow or not at all. And he'd sworn to never provoke anyone or anything that would lead to him seeing those empty eyes in a child's face.

As he steadily made his way through the harrowing report, Sarutobi became aware of something, something so blindingly obvious that there was no possible way to see it until you'd had your head spun a few degrees.

He was being an idiot.

War was a constant. It was built into the genes of the human race. For some unknowable reason, nature had instilled in mankind one of the most violent set of instincts in existence. The need to prove supremacy, the need to protect the mate and children, to say nothing of the darker temptations that only a being with frontal lobes could even be aware of, let alone be attracted to. Other animals in the kingdom certainly didn't lie, cheat, rape, or kill for a sick thrill. Some persons could be light incarnate and inspire the masses to be a bit better, but the simple, undeniable truth was that people, as a whole, are greedy, hateful, destructive, and all around selfish bastards.

The Sandaime could no more stop war than he could stop the sun from rising. No matter how much he might maneuver, negotiate, beg, or plead, one of the other Kage or the smaller villages would decide that it was time to determine who would be left in some pathetic squabble over what was right.

The more the old monkey thought about it, the more he realized stupid and weak he had become. Here he was, Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Sandaime Hokage, the fucking God of Shinobi, and look at him! He spent his days slowly getting carpal tunnel doing paperwork like some kind of executive. He had his hands and feet tied up by a counsel of arrogant civilians, self-concerned clan heads, and two or three old colleagues who all had their own little agenda. And he was incapable of even protecting the son of the greatest leader his village had ever known from a bunch of bigoted fools. The most recent perpetrator, he had just discovered, hadn't even been born in Konoha, or Hi no Kuni for that matter.

Where was 'the Hokage'? Where was the man that was the toughest, darkest, deadliest of a village full to the brim with trained killers that could bend physics to their whim? Where was 'the Professor' that had rendered enemy armies speechless in awe and fear? Where was the fearless leader that had the balls and guts to see to it that his country came out as top dog in not one, but two, count them, two wars?

Certainly not standing here. Not this decrepit old raisin that mishandled every crisis that came his way. But Sarutobi would swear on his deathbed that at that moment, in that epiphany of stunning clarity as he finished off the report, he heard a voice in the back of his head. 'He's right here, ass-licker. He's just waiting for you to get a goddamn clue.'

Sarutobi closed the folder that held the report, locking his eyes on the comatose from of the blinded Naruto. The sight made his insides squirm, awakening some awful creature in his chest that writhed with something ugly, filling him with fire and ice and darkness. He had felt the creature once before, and had fled as far as he could in the other direction.

This time he didn't turn away. He took hold of the beast and let it grow, spreading to fill his whole body with twisting, stinging limbs that took hold and held tight like they planned on growing roots. The Sandaime deliberately filled himself with pain, rage, guilt, and hate, everything that made up the darkness of the soul.

And he planned to fucking use it.

"Inoichi," he said, causing everyone in the room freeze. There was something in the old man's voice that only one person there had heard before. It was a voice of burning steel, of something resolute and dangerous. "Call the Council. I must speak with them." Inoichi nodded, his face perplexed, though he was hiding it well, and left the room. Sarutobi made a gesture with his hand and the heretofore-invisible ANBU bodyguards filed out as well.

Mouse obligingly moved out of the way as Sarutobi stepped forward to lay his palm on the boy's forehead. He stayed there for a single moment, drawing his resolve from this terribly harmed boy, before leaving out the same door. Mouse silently continued to monitor the patient for six minutes.

"'Bout damn time," he muttered to the empty room.

The Council chamber was located within the Hokage Tower. Reasonably large, there were comfortable mats laid out across the floor for the clan heads and civilian representatives to sit on. A raised dais at the back of the room featured three chairs, two of which were currently occupied by Mitokado Homura and Utatane Koharu, the man and woman that had served once upon a time as Team Tobirama alongside Sarutobi Hiruzen.

The room was full of chatter, every person at their designated mat. Given that yelling in a covert chamber was inherently prohibited, most alliances in the village (that didn't involve accomplished Helstromists) were based on one's proximity to other Council members during meetings. Most of the talk in the room carried a grumbling, annoyed tone. Most people didn't like being woken up at 1 AM for a bout of political decision-making. Shocking, really.

The double-doors opened in perfect synchronicity and eerie silence. An unwholesome amount of killing intent flooded the air. The civilians were immediately silent as they choked on the suffocating force, while the clan heads held still in something akin to confused awe: they had felt this much of the stuff before, but never so controlled. Koharu and Homura recognized it instantly and exchanged looks as alarm bells went off in their highly-tuned political senses.

Sarutobi Hiruzen strolled into the room, the unusual quiet highlighting the fact that, despite a lifetime's worth of aches and scars, he still moved without a sound. The intent remained constant as he swiftly made his way up the dais and took his seat. Only then did the 'ice-down-your-spine-walking-over-your-grave' feeling dissipate.

"Good evening," the Hokage said, as if time had turned back twenty years and he had just come off the battlefield with the blood of those he killed still cooling on his armor. The utter authority in those two words had everyone suddenly sitting straighter in their seats.

"This meeting of the Konoha Council is now in session. I'll cut to the chase. Approximately six hours ago, one of our greatest military assets was sabotaged by a deep-cover spy from Iwa. We have the spy in custody; however, the situation demands immediate and decisive action."

The Council absorbed this information: there was a moment of shocked silence before the civilians exploded, giving the ninja time to plan their response.

"This is a clear act of aggression. I say we take the fight to Iwa and pay them back for this insult. We had them on the ropes during the last war; I say we take this chance to finish what we started!" This shouted cry from the Haruno member provoked similarly loud proclamations from the rest of the civilian half.

"Fools! Do you have any idea what a war would cost us?" Inuzuka Tsume yelled, slamming her fist on the floor as her wolf companion, Kuromaru, growled his agreement. Being both the most outspoken and easily angered clan head, she was generally the one to diffuse the first dumb suggestions from the civilians. "Iwa has forces on a similar scale as our own, and the mountains surrounding them make any invasion suicide. We'd be crushed by manufactured rockslides before we made it halfway there. To say nothing of how the other villages would react if we moved the majority of our forces out of the country! You're all acting like spoiled pups!"

Nara Shikaku widened his eyes from half-closed to unfocused, indicating his rise from his constant state of half-napping to contribute the latest insight from his razor-sharp mind. "A war would be extremely troublesome at this point. Our numbers still haven't recovered from the event six years ago, and Iwa has been paranoid about an attack ever since the end of the war. Our latest reports indicate that Kumo has been stockpiling weapons as well. The scenarios are troublesome any way you look at it: anything but full mobilization would lead to the full defeat of any force that might be sent to Iwa, and if we do that, then what forces that survive would come back to find the village on fire, our skeleton guard dead in the streets. Direct confrontation is definitely not the right choice." So saying, he returned to his mini-coma.

The other two members of the infamous Ino-Shika-Cho trio submitted their own opinions about war, reasoning with all but the most stubborn civilians. It should be noted that Inoichi was particularly vehement. The Sandaime remained silent, well aware and expecting someone to eventually call him out. His expectations were answered when the stoic head of the Hyuuga, Hiashi, spoke up, his smooth baritone reaching the far corners of the room.

"Hokage-sama, if you would clarify, which asset exactly has been so critically damaged by an Iwa agent? The extent of the damage could factor into how intensely Konoha should respond."

Hiruzen didn't even bother answering, coolly ignoring the various stares that were sent his way as the rest of the Council became aware of how vague the supposed offense was. Instead, he turned to face his rival. Shimura Danzo met his gaze calmly and without malice, though it was hard to tell considering that one eye, much like his right arm, was hidden by bandages while the other and the rest of the former Hokage candidate's face was hidden by the creases of scars and old age.

"It was the Uzumaki boy, was it not," the cripple stated rather than asked with the barest trace of smugness in his voice. His words had an immediate effect on the Council, changing most faces from expressions of indignance and righteous anger to indifference, contempt, and in some cases outright hatred. The old Sarutobi would have sighed, knowing he had just lost any support he might have just had.

The new one took it in stride.

"Indeed, Danzo-san. The spy from Iwa lured Uzumaki Naruto to his home, where he knocked the boy out before torturing and blinding the boy upon his return to consciousness. The damage to his eyes was done in such a way that the Kyuubi cannot regenerate them. Luckily, an ANBU managed to hear the boy's screams and thus apprehend the spy upon his discovery."

"Unlucky is what he means," muttered one of the merchant representatives.

"What goes around comes around," said the residential chief of the village with a cruel little smirk on his face.

"Forget war, we should think of sending Iwa a thank-you," murmured Haruno Tsutsuji, completely contradicting her earlier call for retribution. Her jade eyes glimmered with a sadistic satisfaction that most would have expected on a certain albino snake summoner.

Such comments continued to pick up steam as Koharu decided to speak up. "It may be that you are overeating, Hokage-sama. The breach in our security is somewhat troubling, but it is definitely not in our best interests to provoke action from Iwa merely because a single youth-!"

The old woman was silenced as enough killing intent to make his opening entrance seem like a muffled hiccup radiated out from the Sandaime, none of it leaving the room and becoming all the more potent for that. The civilians broke out into cold sweats as their pupils dilated with fear, their minds filled with countless visions of their own deaths at the hands of their supposed pacifist of a leader within the space of a second. The ninja reacted in more subtle ways: Shikaku woke up fully; a faint buzzing sound began to emanate from Aburame Shibi; Tsume began growling almost sub-audibly in the back of her throat; Uchiha Fugaku activated his bloodline. The two companions to the eye of the storm sat frozen in shock, completely caught off guard by this uncharacteristic display of force. Danzo alone seemed unaffected, though the modicum of hubris vanished.

'Hmm… it seems he's finally grown a back-bone. A pity that the timing couldn't be any more off. I'll have to reconsider my plans carefully.'

"It is apparent that I was unclear with my words," said the Sandaime, his voice of steel and simmering flame no different than it was at the start. "A ninja from Iwa, whom has been present and quietly siphoning off information from the village since shortly before the end of the war, tore the eyes out of the sockets of a 5-year old child, who had the potential to become one of our strongest shinobi. In what way do we owe Iwa gratitude?"

It was clear to even the most pigheaded councilors that any answer would result in their immediate death. The room remained as cold and silent as a crypt.

Sarutobi smiled, and it sent ice down the spines of everyone there. "Let me clarify a few points that I have let sit for six years in the hope that not everyone in this chamber is a bigoted, self-serving asshole. Firstly, the seal in place to keep the Kyuubi within Naruto is flawless. Jiraiya himself was surprised at the level of complexity and layers of safeguards that Minato managed to apply in so short a time frame. The Kyuubi might as well be a single kunai held within a giant storage seal for all it can do to the outside world. The Kyuubi is never getting out of that seal on its own.

"Secondly," continued the old war leader, the pressure in the room intensifying further, if that were even possible. "That is not to say that it can't be released. The seal is tied inextricably to Naruto's own psyche. Should the boy undergo extreme and excessive amounts of mental trauma and anguish, the seal will correspondingly weaken, allowing the Kyuubi to gain influence over the boy. Push him too hard, and Naruto might very well remove the seal out of sheer despair." His eyes might as well have been diamond-sharp spikes as he pinned the civilian council with his gaze. "There are no loopholes, exceptions, or concessions in what I am about to say: you are idiots. You neglect, abuse, and outright harm the boy in the belief that 'the Kyuubi must pay' or 'the demon must fear us', when in reality, you are making it more and more likely that the very monster you are all so afraid of will reappear."

In another setting, his words might have made a few councilors uncomfortable, but the majority would brush it off as senile foolishness. Held at figurative knifepoint by a semi-unstable assassin lord, the impact was much more effective. Many councilors gulped as they suffered a BFO on a scale so massive that it could outshine the sun. Of course a few die-hards were already applying some industrial strength denial, but those were only the true fanatics.

"Thirdly, and I feel this to be painfully obvious, the boy is human." His gaze flicked from Danzo to his teammates to Fugaku and Hiashi before settling on the civilians again, a fact that did not go unnoticed by the clan heads despite how unnerved they were. "He is not the Kyuubi made flesh. He is not some tool or weapon to mold and point. He is a human being. A person with his own distinct personality, dreams, and desires. Had a fraction of the cruelties he has already suffered in his short life been inflicted on any other person, the public would probably lynch those responsible in outrage. But no, this is not so with Naruto. Not only is most of the village guilty of his suffering, but apparently it's not the same. He's a Jinchuuriki, so cruel and unusual punishment isn't seen the same way." The bite of the sarcasm in the last few words literally hurt Kuromaru and his more instinct-sensitive ears.

"And fourthly," the Hokage said, ceasing to project the killing intent that had been going on the whole time. In its absence, the sheer presence of Sarutobi could be felt, the air that surrounds any dangerous born leader.

"I. Am. Hokage. My word is the law of Konoha. I have shown my worth in blood, both my own and that of those I have killed. The people of Konoha rest on my protection as I draw strength from their numbers. I command an army from the shadows as I alter the world around me. I am led as I lead, and I serve as I am served. I am Hokage. And this Council has forgotten its place."

Uchiha Fugaku was not a man who responded well to being talked down to, no matter the circumstances. The arrogance his clan was infamous for seemed etched into his very bones. The stick up his ass was easily the size of the trunk of a tree from the Forest of Death. It was a common joke in the shinobi bars that "if Fugaku's head were any bigger, he'd float instead of walk."

As such, the fates decreed that he would be the first example of just how much the Sandaime meant business.

"With respect Hokage, I must say you are speaking from arrogance," said the cruel schemer, unaware and uncaring that the level of hypocrisy he had just exhibited was on an order of magnitude equivalent to a thermonuclear explosion. "The Hokage is a powerful figure, but no one is infallible. The foundations of Konoha deserve a voice in what happens in village affairs, and without being to blunt, you are getting on in years and your judgment isn't what it once was."

Hiruzen slowly turned his head to fully stare at Fugaku in a movement worthy of any zombie film worth the name. A grim smile of satisfaction slashed the old man's face, setting off klaxons, fog horns, and all manner of loud warnings in the Uchiha's head. "Very true, Uchiha-san. However, you seem to have forgotten one crucial fact. When Hashirama-sensei first established the Konoha Charter, he outright stated that the village would be a military dictatorship. If the civilians and clans weren't willing to accept that, they shouldn't have signed on." Fugaku could only gape at this abrupt slap. It was like he was an unruly child being reprimanded by an adult. Such disrespect could not be tolerated!

But the Hokage was not done. "I'll let you all in on a little secret. Tobirama-sensei formed the council during the Second War because, and I quote, "if those pansies are going to bitch and whine about having no say, they might as well do it to my face where everyone can hear them." It seems he underestimated just how childish and megalomaniacal the Council would be."

Everyone was gaping. Bad-ass entrance, warranted fear of death, and major hole-reaming aside, this was about when the Council actually processed that the weak, meek, bitch of an old man they once had to deal with had left the building. In his place was a harsh, fierce warrior-king who had decided that now was the time to come out of retirement. If it weren't for the fact that everyone there had at the very least vague memories of a time when he acted similar during the wars, they might have been convinced they were looking at a very convincing Henge. Since it wasn't, proven by a dozen subtle (not that Sarutobi didn't notice and catalog each one) attempted 'Kai' release techniques, it became painfully clear that they were indeed in the presence of a beast whose peaceful slumber they had mistaken for death.

"As much as it pains me to admit it, it would seem that this attack on Naruto will be very beneficial to the village as a whole. It reveals that our ninja are so complacent and oblivious that the spy managed to put down roots without anyone the wiser. All of your various reactions has made it clear that it is long overdue to clean house in regards to the power structure. And I am finally awake." That last statement was anything but cryptic: it was clear as day that the old persona of Hiruzen was alive and well after years of inactivity.

A plume of smoke appeared on the small desk in front of Sarutobi's chair on the dais. A child-sized monkey with smoky-grey fur wearing the general attire of a Yakuza enforcer appeared in front of Sarutobi. The simian wordlessly handed the Sandaime a letter before dismissing itself, returning to the Summoning realm.

Sarutobi cracked the official-looking seal with practiced ease and slid out a few inches of a letter written on very thick, expensive paper. A small pleased grin split the old man's lift. Looking up to face all the Council except his teammates, everyone in the room got a good look of the man's eyes. Eyes that burned with a determination and strength that blazed like a bonfire that had burned for decades and would burn for decades more.

"When the forest has grown diseased and corrupt, a cleansing brushfire comes to sweep the debris away as ashes and let the tree grow once more. It would seem that the fire has arrived. I have just received the confirmation from the Daimyo for my request to institute a state of martial law. It seems my reasoning proved satisfactory." No one could respond. It was too much to take in at once.

"Until such a time as I or any of my successors deem it necessary to be reestablished, I, Sarutobi Hiruzen, Sandaime Hokage of Konohagakure no Sato, do declare this Council disbanded!"

Well, you like? This is the first taste. I assure you that it will thicken into a feast that you will never forget. While, yes, I will be borrowing concepts, powers, and even lines from various sources, I assure you all that the heart of the characters will remain completely true and original, even when I mercilessly mold and mutate them. It should be fun!

To all OP fans who just jumped at the author alert, I promise that I won't forget TBWH, it's just that this now takes priority.

Have a Happy Spring Break, to all those who live in the DC Metropolitan area. To all others, sucks to be you! Ja ne!