Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Third Hokage, listened to countless mission reports every week. Some of them were tragic. Others, uplifting. Many were unremarkable, and most were routine. Very, very few sounded like they'd come straight from the pages of a children's adventure novel.
He'd suspected he might regret letting Naruto loose on the unsuspecting wider world, but the boy had truly surpassed his expectations. Within the space of a single C-rank escort mission, he'd managed to overcome a jōnin, unleash and re-imprison an eldritch horror, win the brewing civil war between Gatō and Wave's soon-to-be-hired mercenaries before it had even begun, and alter Leaf's status in the country's eyes from "favoured trading partner" to "land of invincible heavenly saviours". Hiruzen looked forward to the next time Kurenai complained about her genin going outside mission parameters.
"Thank you, you three. You are dismissed. Naruto, please stay behind."
Kakashi, Sasuke and Sakura bowed and left.
Naruto's expression shifted, no longer the familiar far-off stare of an inattentive boy bored with formalities, but instead something wary and intent.
"What do you want to talk about, old man?"
"Naruto," Hiruzen set Kakashi's papers to one side, mentally clearing space for the coming conversation, "I need you to tell me everything about your experience with the Nine-Brained Demon Fox. Everything. Even the things you didn't tell Kakashi."
"What things I didn't tell..." Naruto trailed off.
"Oh, screw it," he said after a second's thought. "I'm going to make you a deal. I'll tell you everything if you tell me everything."
"What do you mean?"
"About the Demon Fox, and my parents, and what really happened twelve years ago. I think it's long past time I knew."
Hiruzen had wondered when this conversation would take place. Naruto was naturally inquisitive, and no moratorium could protect a village-wide secret from him forever. After reading Mizuki's confession, Hiruzen had spent a long time, perhaps more than he should have, pondering and preparing, striving to anticipate Naruto's questions and find the answers that did the least damage.
"Did it not occur to you," he made the necessary opening move, "that there might be very good reasons for you to remain ignorant of certain matters?"
"Yes, it did. I know I'm young, and only a genin, and between my general ignorance and my low security clearance there's a lot of stuff you feel you can't trust me with. And if I thought this secrecy was your independent judgment, I might even try to respect it."
Naruto took a deep breath.
"But this whole scenario is just too stupid. What kind of idiot puts an indiscriminate, uncontrollable superweapon inside a child and just sort of hopes nobody notices? What kind of idiot then lets everybody and their dog bully that child, eroding his loyalty to the village when he can destroy it in the blink of an eye? And let's not even talk about the security implications of turning a highly valuable yet completely defenceless child into a social pariah whom, forget protecting, half the village would kill if they were prepared to get their own hands dirty and thought they could get away with it. Frankly, it's a miracle I've made it this far without being kidnapped or assassinated by enemy agents, or made to meet with an unfortunate accident by a local.
"They call you the Professor, the most intelligent ninja Leaf's ever known. There is no way you're stupid enough to have set this situation up yourself, which means someone else overruled you."
Hiruzen controlled his expression carefully, while reeling on the inside. Was this truly the same Naruto who spent all his time playing pranks and reading manga? The indefatigable but ultimately somewhat simple boy who took disastrous exam scores almost as badges of pride, and invested all his cunning in surprising people and finding ever new ways to draw attention? Just what had happened to him in Wave, that he should suddenly talk like this, throwing Hiruzen's own failed arguments from twelve years ago right back in his face?
Before Hiruzen could adjust to this, a pattern that completely defied his expectations, Naruto continued.
"You've always been caught in the middle between good and evil, haven't you?" the boy asked rhetorically. "You erased my parents' names from my birth certificate, changed the date, and told me their deaths were part of a mission so secret you weren't even allowed to say who they were. Then you gave me my mother's surname anyway."
Hiruzen nodded mutely. It had been the only thing he'd managed to get a compromise on. If the child had to be hated so much, he'd argued, then no family would consent to him sharing their name. But if he were bestowed with a name that had no other bearers, it would be a clear red flag to someone who knew what to look for. In the event, time had shown that people were perfectly happy to assume the boy some distant relative of Kushina's, taken in as a refugee in much the same way as Kushina herself.
"You let the villagers hate me, but you yourself were always kind to me, even though you should have been too busy and important to ever talk to some random boy. You let the Academy instructors screw up my education, but when you noticed Iruka-sensei treating me like a person, if a very bad one, you talked to him, and whatever it is you said made a huge difference."
How had Naruto known about that, Hiruzen wondered. Indeed, how had he known any of it? This wasn't some sudden transformation. This was something more. Had he—and everyone else—been underestimating the boy all along?
"This is your time to make a choice," Naruto told the older and wiser shinobi. "You can stay stuck in the middle, not evil enough to do what everyone else is doing, but not good enough to do what's right. Or you can help me. There are things I need to know, and the longer I go without knowing them, the more likely things are to go horribly wrong. You've just seen that you can't protect me, least of all from the consequences of my own decisions. And if I am to make the right decisions, I need to base them on the truth."
Hiruzen sighed. Clearly, he had not been the only one to practise a thousand versions of this conversation. Naruto's words bore no trace of spontaneity. They were arguments, supported by emotional manipulation of a grade Hiruzen had never before seen in a genin. And convincing arguments at that.
Emotional manipulation was not a weapon Hiruzen feared. A master of genjutsu could play their victim's mind like a shamisen, and Hiruzen had placed more of those in the ground than Naruto had had hot dinners. (Perhaps a dozen.) He could fight back, using all the power of insight at his disposal to cut through Naruto's reasoning and put the boy back in his place. But the fact remained that somewhere, deep down, he wanted the absolution that came with honesty. That way, one day, he might be able to face Minato's shade with the beginnings of a clear conscience.
"I suppose total containment is out of our reach at this stage anyway," he told Naruto as he made his choice. "Not with Zabuza, Tazuna and this Haku boy all knowing about the Demon Fox." He lit his pipe with a sense of resignation, preparing for twelve years of conspiracy to go up in smoke and needing that extra touch of familiar routine to help ground himself for what was to come.
"Very well," he said. "But first, tell me what happened."
Naruto told him. The facts were simple, but all along, it felt as if Naruto was skirting around the edges of some greater truth, something he refused to put into words lest doing so make it more real.
The Demon Fox. The living nightmare eating away at the heart of the village. A fear in the back of every Hokage's mind that they might be the one to fail, to accidentally slacken the chain and bring the Fox within reach of something to consume. Minato had failed, and the memory of that night would never fade, but in his failure he had also succeeded beyond measure, at last creating a seal that could not be broken from within.
Hiruzen had seen the Demon Fox in its material form. So counter-intuitively small, so innocent-looking… and radiant with the indescribable horror of a thing which did not belong. His mind had refused to explore its image, as if to touch it even with his thoughts was to break quarantine. To this day, he did not know what he had been protected from, or what kind of being Minato must have become in order to be immune during his last few seconds.
Meanwhile, Naruto, an unprepared twelve-year-old boy, had faced the Demon Fox head-on, without even the dubious protection of physical distance. Yet he had found the strength in himself not only to stand his ground but to bargain with the thing. To be sure, Naruto lived and breathed defiance the way fish breathed water. But the mere sight of that abomination had paralysed a Kage. Hiruzen felt a new wave of awe for Minato, whose seal must have suppressed more than just the Demon Fox's power.
Even with that protection, Naruto's account was fragmented, irrational, and in some ways contradictory. Hiruzen was one of the few who could understand why. He could describe the Fox in words. White fur, red eyes, a tail that flicked casually back and forth. Put that way, it sounded almost cute.
It was the same for Naruto. To an outsider, it sounded as if he'd seen a stripped-down version of the mokumokuren, the fairy-tale eyeball spirit that lived in shoji screens and could be banished through basic household repairs. Unnerving, certainly, but what was there to fear? A hundred disapproving glares?
The Demon Fox was its own emotion. Just as it was futile to speak of love to one who had never loved, or to speak of fear to one who had never been afraid, so it was futile to speak of the Demon Fox and expect to be understood through the power of words alone.
And so, Hiruzen simply listened. He did not ask questions Naruto couldn't answer. He did not express either curiosity or disbelief. He simply paid attention, the most important skill of any Kage.
Naruto's account ended.
"I'm sorry you had to experience that, Naruto," Hiruzen said, helplessly aware of how feeble a consolation it was.
"The price paid by a demon host is high," he went on, "and you never asked to pay it. Now lift up your shirt."
"What?" Naruto stared at Hiruzen, his sombre mood successfully disrupted by the non-sequitur.
"Lift up your shirt. I need to see the seal."
Naruto obeyed. Hiruzen placed his hand on the boy's stomach. Immediately, a black pattern rose to the surface, four concentric circles of elaborate intertwined seals around the navel, the outermost slightly paler than the rest.
"He wrought well," Hiruzen commented. "It's as flawless as the day it was made. The greatest danger—the Demon Fox breaking through of its own will—remains at bay."
"Good. Now I believe you have some answers for me."
"Yes," Hiruzen said wearily, "I suppose I do. Your mother, as it seems you know, was Uzumaki Kushina, a refugee from the Village Hidden in the Whirling Tides. She was also the previous host for the Nine-Brained Demon Fox."
"And my father?"
Hiruzen braced himself. After exploring every possible pattern for this conversation, this was the part he'd looked forward to least. "Your father... was Namikaze Minato, the Fourth Hokage."
He looked up, expecting shouting, slamming of hands on tables, or at least a flat "what". He would even have tolerated a small amount of violence being inflicted upon his person, though it was important for the sake of discipline that some lines remain uncrossed. Instead, Naruto was completely silent.
"My father... was the Fourth Hokage."
"Yes."
Naruto started at Hiruzen blankly, as if told to calculate the n-dimensional pathway of the secondary matrix of the Flying Thunder God Technique. His expression suggested that he not only didn't know how to respond, but could not in fact process the meaning of the words.
"I know this is a great deal to take in, Naruto. Don't try to figure it all out at once," Hiruzen advised him. He was beginning to update his perspective on Naruto, who was clearly much more intelligent, and much less... uncomplicated than he'd appeared to be. Suddenly, Hiruzen could see Naruto's parents in him in a way he never could before, however hard he'd tried. Minato's razor-edged intelligence, so sharp he had a tendency to cut himself, and Kushina's undeflectable angry passion... Naruto wasn't his parents, but thinking of them helped the old man know how to deal with him.
"I'm going to tell you the story in order. It should answer many of your questions. The rest we can talk about at the end."
Naruto nodded.
"Your parents met when they were young, not much older than you. Their relationship was... unique, in many ways. Your mother was strong-willed, short-tempered, fiery. She told me once, much later on, that keeping that unfaltering fire burning inside her was what helped her cope with the strain of containing the Demon Fox—if her thoughts and feelings were rapid, intense, moving in straight lines, it was that much more difficult for them to be influenced or corrupted. You have to understand, her seal was very different from yours. She only had limited protection from the Demon Fox's corrosive influence."
Naruto opened his mouth, but restrained himself from interrupting.
A mischievous thought crossed Hiruzen's mind as he looked at the boy who so enjoyed manipulating people's emotions.
"As for your father... have you ever heard the term 'yamato nadeshiko'?"
"What."
That was more like it. Some part of this conversation had to go according to Hiruzen's expectations.
"You're telling me the Fourth Hokage, my father, was the epitome of traditional feminine beauty," Naruto stated in the same flat, disbelieving voice.
"In a manner of speaking," Hiruzen smiled. "If Kushina was like fire, then he was like flowing water. He was soft, gentle, quick to laugh or to forgive, patient and slow to anger. He always looked out for others, and had a deep sense of responsibility. And at the same time, he had an inner core of steel, a courage and strength that allowed him to fight for the village and ultimately become its greatest protector."
Naruto looked dazed. Somewhere inside his head, he was likely attempting to reconcile the image of his mystery father, doubtless built up to impossible idealised heights in his imagination, and of the Fourth Hokage, a mighty warrior whose position at those heights was fully earned, with that of the kimono-wearing perfect housewife, delicate yet dauntless. Naruto opened his mouth several times, but no words emerged.
Perhaps, Hiruzen reflected, there was something to this pranking business after all.
"Their relationship was complicated," he continued. "They were friends, rivals, enemies and just about everything else before they became lovers. Always, though, they seemed to complete each other in a way no one else could, water to keep the flames from roaring out of control, and fire to light the way through mist and fog."
Hiruzen watched Naruto's face and adjusted his choice of words as he went. The knowledge would fill a place inside the boy that had been empty far too long, and it made Hiruzen strangely proud to be the one to give that gift (for all that he had been part of the conspiracy to withhold it). Yet at the same time, what would it be like to finally learn what you'd been missing, to reach out for this beautiful jewel hanging before you, only to remember that you were twelve years too late?
Hiruzen could not heal that wound, only tear it open wider. He could not give Naruto back the family he'd lost. Even his best attempt had been vanquished by the unpredictability of human nature. All he could offer was the truth, painful and useless but, in its own way, holy.
"However," he said, "there is a fundamental law that binds female demon hosts specifically. The first time a host gives birth to a child, the process temporarily weakens the seal. This is an incomparably perfect time for any enemy of the village to strike, attempting to steal or at least release the Demon Beast. Thus, every precaution is taken to keep the childbirth secret. Even the relationship itself is usually concealed until the first child is born and the danger is past. If no one has any reason to expect a pregnancy, it is that much easier to conceal it. Kushina knew this, and kept her relationship with Minato away from the public eye.
"Unfortunately, it would seem that in this case it wasn't enough. We still do not know what happened, because of course those who could tell us did not survive, but something or someone struck at the moment of childbirth and unleashed the Demon Fox on Leaf."
Naruto's eyes widened.
Yes, the reaction was obvious. Inevitable. How would any strong-willed child react on hearing that his parents had effectively been murdered, and that the killer was still at large? What kind of seeds was Hiruzen sowing?
"The destruction was unimaginable," he continued. "The old village was wiped off the map. Countless people died. The Leaf you know is the result of rebuilding, slowly and painstakingly, to take advantage of the natural concealment and defence offered by the crater the Demon Fox's attack left behind. And your parents were the only reason its onslaught stopped at all."
"What do you mean?"
"Even before the Night of Tragedy, Minato had been conducting sealcrafting research in order to develop a superior seal to contain the Demon Fox. He was a prodigy, and the latest in a line of great shinobi to attempt the task.
"The work was tremendously important, because a human being is not inherently capable of fighting a free Demon Beast. Their intelligence is simply on a different level, capable of performing what we would consider miracles of prediction and calculation. Our only salvation is that it is also somewhat alien in nature—they are not creative the way we would expect a human of such genius to be creative, and just as they can accomplish feats far beyond human comprehension, there are times when they appear to make mistakes a human in their position would not.
"Unfortunately, when the Fourth Hokage faced the Demon Fox, his work was not yet complete. Nor could he seal it away as the First Hokage had done before him, through the power of a Bloodline Limit. Instead, he was forced to resort to one of the most advanced forbidden techniques, the Moment of Clarity."
Hiruzen paused to refill his pipe. The tobacco was unusually bitter tonight.
"The Moment of Clarity temporarily unlocks a human being's complete mental potential, enough to enable them to function on the same level as one of the Demon Beasts. We believe that he used it to instantly complete his research, and apply it to seal the Demon Fox into you. We call his work the Perfect Seal, and after twelve years we still barely understand what it is he did."
"What happened then?"
"He perished," Hiruzen told him. "The human body cannot operate at that level of function for more than a few seconds—that is why it's a forbidden technique. I'm afraid we still don't know exactly what happened to your mother—we speculate that her sacrifice was part of the power source that allowed him to create the Perfect Seal in the first place."
Naruto's eyes were glistening. Hiruzen, whose memories of his own children were mostly limited to Academy events and carefully-scheduled dinners, wasn't certain what to do. Was Naruto a shinobi, whose pride would be badly wounded if he cried in front of his superior officer? Or was he a child, in need of catharsis followed by consolation?
"Why me?" Naruto asked the obvious question in a slightly choked but clear voice.
"I don't know," Hiruzen admitted. "Only they could tell you that. But it isn't difficult to understand. Minato was about to die. Kushina could not accept a new seal on top of her recently broken one. You were their son, and they believed that you could accept that power and wield it for the greater good. Perhaps they even thought it would protect you."
"Protect me?" Naruto echoed incredulously.
Hiruzen looked down in shame, and his eyes fell on the seal of approval standing on his desk. A piece of the Hokage's sacred regalia, with the power to save lives or destroy them merely by touching paper—a power which the people of Leaf could collectively withdraw at any time, even if most of them didn't realise it.
Minato and Kushina hadn't known that he would fail them the way he did. They could not have anticipated the scale of the power shift. With his protégé gone and his credibility as protector of the village at an all-time low, the Third Hokage had been all but powerless before his rivals in the aftermath of the Night of Tragedy.
"I know. It did the exact opposite. And you are correct—I am to blame for that. Others insisted that we needed to keep your identity secret to prevent enemies of the village from coming after you while you were young and defenceless. I told them that it was better for you to be known as the child of heroes, to have the loyalty and support of everyone in the village, but they argued..."
He stopped. He could see fate branching out in two different directions before him, depending on whether he told the full truth or the partial truth. The partial truth would probably have been better, for Naruto and for the world... but the old man couldn't do it. He'd had twelve years of concealing the truth, trying to soften it, even for himself. The chance to finally let go, to confess and accept judgment, was too much for him to resist.
"...they argued that an isolated, broken child would make for a better tool, easier to control when the time finally came."
And that was it. The argument Hiruzen hadn't fought against hard enough, the betrayal of all his beliefs that he had allowed to happen because... because he hadn't had the influence to challenge his opponents directly? Because he'd been staggered by the loss of so much that he had loved, and could not bear to endanger what was left by provoking a major conflict while the village was so vulnerable? Because his liberal, humanist teachings had failed to protect the village in its hour of need, and he could no longer trust that his way was right? They were excuses, one and all, and he had spent twelve years asking himself whether he'd just been a coward, afraid to risk everything simply to do what was right.
He came out of his thoughts to realise that Naruto was still silent. Eerily silent. Silent as if time itself had stopped, frozen and ready to shatter. Silent to the point where Hiruzen felt the need to fill the silence no matter what.
"But they were wrong about you. You were Minato and Kushina's son, and I watched you defy your destiny, over and over again. I know it may not seem like much, but I did what I could to help you. I kept you independent, and out of the hands of those who would shape your upbringing as they did with many of the orphans of that night. I saw the proof of your unbreakable spirit in your pranks, and shielded you from the worst of the consequences. I had you protected from danger as best I could when others demanded that you be taught to sink or swim—"
"Who are they?" Naruto interrupted in an ice-cold voice. "Who made those decisions about me?"
Hiruzen shook his head. "I can't tell you that. Even if such information were not deeply confidential... you have to understand, Naruto. There are some enemies you cannot fight. Enemies you shouldn't even have to fight. You are twelve years old."
Naruto's eyes flared. Hiruzen instantly knew he'd said the wrong thing.
"Am I too young to have feelings? Too young to be hurt? Too young to seek revenge?"
"Yes!" Hiruzen snapped.
Naruto shrank back as if finally realising that he was talking to one of the most powerful shinobi in the world.
"Listen, Naruto," Hiruzen said, his voice stern. "I have seen many fine shinobi ruined by the path of vengeance. It is a vice greater and more dangerous than alcohol, or money, or lust. It will throw you against enemies too powerful for you to fight, and force you to sacrifice everything you hold dear for the tiniest chance at victory. And even if you do emerge victorious, all you will be left with is the taste of ashes. I am not saying this to you as an authority figure preaching morality. I am saying it as an old man who has seen countless mistakes, and made countless mistakes, and knows what it looks like when somebody is about to make a truly terrible one."
Naruto didn't say anything for some time.
"You understand that I can't just let this go, don't you?" he finally asked. "I can't know that everything I've been through in my life is the result of someone's deliberate decision, and just forgive those people or forget they exist. Even if my own vengeance didn't matter, the kind of people who would break a child to turn them into a better tool aren't people I can allow to live in the same world as me."
Hiruzen sighed once more. "I understand. And this side, the side that does not break children, is not so overflowing with champions that it can afford to turn one away. But it is not time yet. No matter whether you seek justice or vengeance, you are not ready yet to fight these battles without losing either your life or your humanity. Please believe me as one who has seen too much loss of both."
"...I understand."
Hiruzen doubted it. But understanding came with maturity, and he had a feeling this boy would mature fast. Right now, he was prepared to make do with acceptance.
"Just one more thing," Naruto added. "What about Raijin? Did he really die on a secret mission, or did he 'die on a secret mission' like my parents did?"
Hiruzen felt the question stab him. Out of all the mysteries that did not need revealing...
"I'm sorry," he said with deliberate evenness. "I can't answer that question."
"What? Why not?"
"Or that one." This was a piece of shinobi common sense Naruto would learn soon enough. When a piece of information was beyond your clearance, often the reason why was also beyond your clearance. It was maddening, but a necessary evil in the quest for watertight security.
"I know it's frustrating, Naruto," Hiruzen said apologetically, "and I know you deserve better, but I really have told you everything I can for now." And he was already beginning to question whether he had just doomed Leaf Village or even the world by giving the volatile pre-teen wielder of the world's single greatest destructive force information that could only make him more volatile still.
"I think I've heard enough," Naruto told Hiruzen in a voice that held far too little emotion. "I need to go."
As Naruto stood up and opened the door, Hiruzen spoke to him one last time.
"Naruto... I'm sorry."
Naruto nodded, softly and without compassion. "I know."