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Chapter 1

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want
to test a man's character, give him power."

As the woman lowered her head and bowed, his lips became dried and inoperable. "The third was killed in action, Hokage-sama."

Flinching like he was struck, Naruto collapsed to his knees, grazing them on the stone rubble beneath without care.

"No. He's not dead."

"..."

"He's not. You're wrong."

"..."

"It's too soon. I-I'm not supposed to be Hokage yet! Maybe in a few years, when I'm older, then he can-" after anger, came bargaining.

"Hokage-sama!"

Her urgent tone broke Naruto out of his reverie, and the sound of explosive tags going off in the distance returned him to the present. Right, the invasion. He had... he had work to do...

Stop the Ichibi. Check.

Stop the summons. Check.

...return to the Hokage for reassignment.

That was... Naruto shuddered, getting back to his feet and facing the bearer of bad news, locking eyes through their mask. "Let's go."

It took less than a minute to reach the make-shift arena where the third had fought, but the thoughts provoking the blond made it feel like far longer. He observed from the perch as his shinobi - which he did not feel comfortable labelling as such - completed the final sweeps of the village, sensor ninja in tow.

...he held in his hands the previous hokage's robes. Naruto refused to look at the corpse yet, but found solace in handling this part of him, which the old man had thrown off as the battle was started. He was very tempted to wear the haori and the scarf, actually. The hat was a bit too big right now, but the haori - which hung around the thirds knees - would fit snugly above his ankles.

Kami, he was going to miss that man. Hiruzen Sarutobi was his adoptive grandfather in everything but name.

The third gave him a place to live, he fed him, he trained him, told him stories about his parents... He gripped the clothes tightly.

'He named me his successor.'

"Too soon," Naruto whispered. "I'm not ready for this, but for jiji... I guess..."

"Hokage-sama!" the last patrol squad assigned to the outer-rim kneeled in front of him, having appeared without his notice. It was a small group of the surviving chunin alongside a Hyuuga clan member. "No enemy presence detected within the village, sir."

He didn't have time for depression, huh? Straight to acceptance then.

"Good job," he said, after staring at them for a moment. He waved them off and they left to spread the news, leaving him alone with his new - but silent - Anbu security detail. Naruto was going to have to get used to that, the whole 'not ever being alone' thing.

"Hey," he gestured to the only one he spotted, one who didn't bother hiding, "so am I meant to learn hand gestures to order you around or something?"

He hadn't been interrupted by anything important yet, everyone had their jobs to do and all of his fancier underlings - whom he scarcely knew - organised the searches, threw out immediately necessary field promotions, released the civilians from their hidey-holes and organised temporary housing for those who lost their homes in the invasion... or at least, that's all he'd noticed anyway.

He wasn't much of a hokage, evidently.

This meant he had the time to be terribly focused on trying to figure out the many different ways to click his fingers, and was also why he was so surprised when somebody came to bother him.

"Yo!"

"Eep!" Naruto scrambled to his feet reflexively with a dumb squeal. "Jesus sensei! Give me some warning!"

"Uh.." Kakashi said, "we could try again?"

"No," Naruto said, rolling his eyes. "What do you need? How's Sakura?"

Kakashi chuckled dryly. "Sakura's fine. Your friends did okay, but Sasuke and Ino are the ones in the hospital. A better question is, I think, how are you Hokage-sama?" The man moved to sit besides Naruto, who'd sat back down at some point on the edge of the roof.

Naruto hesitated. "I-I'm okay. I think."

"That's all?" Kakashi cocked his brow.

"I mean... I don't know. I'm angry that we were invaded, and I'm sad that the old man's dead - if that's what you mean. I-I don't really know what being hokage means yet, so I'm a bit confused by that, but I kinda do know, you know what I mean? Ugh, I'm not explaining this properly, I-"

"I get it," Kakashi murmured, impulsively running a hand through the blond's hair. "What's with the get-up?" he asked, referring to the navy shirt and the pair of navy trousers the blond hadn't been wearing the last time he'd seen him.

"Uh, they had me change when I got here," Naruto said. A light blush dusted his cheeks as he rubbed his face awkwardly. "I was too bloody, y'know?"

Kakashi nodded, saying nothing.

"I'm serious!" Naruto said, pouting. "A-anyway. What did Sasuke do?"

"And not Ino?" Kakashi asked, then proceeding to ignore Naruto as he rolled his eyes, "the usual Sasuke stuff. Took a hit for Sakura, he's okay though."

Naruto nodded, easily seeing something like that happening again. The Uchiha had done the same for him, after all.

"Ino lost her arms and l-"

"WHAT?!" he jumped to his feet, "how did-"

"I'm joking," Kakashi said, "she got poisoned a little bit."

Naruto growled, sitting back down with a plop. "You're just making fun of me."

Kakashi shrugged, staring below at the herds of shinobi and civilians alike as they recovered and rebuilt as much as they immediately could. He shifted his gaze to his new superior. "You have to care for everyone now, Naruto. This," he waved his arm across the rooftops and the semi-intact village wall over the horizon. "You have to take care of it. Everything you can see from this perch, everything the light touches is your responsibility now, and that which remains dark is even more so. It doesn't matter if it's Sakura, Sasuke, a craftsman or a stray dog; it's your job to nurture and protect them, even if you're a bit younger than anyone in your position has right to be."

"So I do look too young."

"The youngest," Kakashi confirmed, with a shrug. Naruto was quick to bite, but Kakashi knew he was eating the rest up too.

"...The third said something just like that once."

"Oh? I'm not surprised."

"Yeah..." Naruto muttered. "Say, can you help me figure out how this scarf thing works? Do I put it on before, or after the haori?"

Kakashi rolled his eye, but stood up with the blond to help him figure out the flimsy thing. His tone belied that he'd been meaning to ask for a while now, which was somewhat amusing to picture.

"You know, you'd make a good hoka-"

"No thanks."

The meeting room was far too small for how loud the occupants were. Naruto muttered obscenities under his breath as he rubbed his hands against his ears helplessly. After most of the civilians and shinobi finally began turning in for the night, the politics had started. Naruto was extremely willing to discuss what to do with the invaders, he mostly wanted to annihilate the sand, since Orochimaru had been dealt with already and that meant the dissolution of the sound, but it seemed that even that much was too complicated.

They had pulled Naruto away from his dilly-dallying by the third's corpse - he'd finally looked at the man, and he was infinitely proud by the smile he died with. They were urgent, something about there being little time to waste.

But upon looking around, none of the speakers - except maybe the other blond one, Ino-something - seemed much in a hurry to leave. The room was occupied solely by Naruto, his Anbu guard detail, and the prominent clan-heads. As far as Naruto was aware - and he was certain about this - he had final say. Final say in everything.

The entire point of this nonsense was to make sure he didn't accidentally disown a clan or something, since they could technically leave, and that obviously wasn't a good thing to happen. Well, that was the point of it, but that wasn't what was happening, because he was being completely ignored and they were shouting at each other.

"Can we not, please?" Naruto asked, interrupting whatever tangent the Inuzuka clan head had found herself on.

The Hyuuga head scoffed. "Have respect for your-"

"-hokage," Naruto finished. "I've heard nothing but bickering - I'm only twelve years old, but even I know that we should just go ahead and finish off the sand, since - y'know - they're nothing now. No kazekage, no good ninja, nothing! What is there to even argue about?"

"There's logistics issues present with an undertaking even half that size," the Nara clan head answered. "Regardless even of that, the daimyo of Kaze no Kuni presents a hindrance to annexation - never mind the weakening of our patrol structure and the over-extension of our forces and capital if we are to assume we did as such. The lands under the perusal of Sunagakure are far too vast for us to add to our own without increasing our own risks of being invaded unfavourably."

"I respectfully disagree," the Sarutobi clan head said, this speaker Naruto recognized as Asuma Sarutobi, the son of the late hokage. "We can permanently spare more men for securing Kaze no Kuni than Sunagakure has left - there's seriously no question about it, it might take a lot of manpower to handle another country, but we are Konoha! We have manpower in spades!"

"It's not like we can do nothing," Ino-something interjected, "leaving Sunagakure as it is wastes a valuable opportunity we will not see again, but as Shikaku said-"

"Why is the daimyo a problem?" Naruto asked, deciding he'd gotten as much information listening to the heads argue as he was ever going to get.

"He has his own military, for one," Ino-something answered. "It doesn't matter as much as his dominion over the land. Control of the towns, the cities, the taxes..."

"It's difficult to remove the control a daimyo holds over his subjects," the Hyuuga head said. "Bereft of a master, servants naturally aspire towards anarchy."

"But none of that makes it impossible, right?" Naruto asked. He was clearly out of his element, but he only needed to understand what was happening enough to make the decision that he wanted to make. Naruto wouldn't be the one handling the logistics, and that was fine by him.

A small pause, alien to the blond, as the clan heads looked amongst themselves, waiting for dissenters.

"No," the Nara head said distastefully. "I suppose not."

"Then that's what we're doing."

"Just because we can, does not mean we should," the Nara head said.

Naruto sighed, grumpily running a hand through his hair. "Look, I seriously don't care right now. I was just a genin this morning, and I'm totally out of my element here - but we're going to get them back. Those fucking sand ninja came to our home, they attacked and killed our family, and I'm not just going to stand here and let them get away with murdering our hokage! I wasn't fucking ready for this, and they won't be fucking ready either!"

Someone opened their mouth to speak, but Naruto wasn't having it. "That's final, got it?" No comment. "Cool. You guys can just stay here and do what you do, but since I'm just some stupid angry kid, I'm just going to go and calm down, and maybe make sure my friends are still alive. Bye."

Naruto got out of his chair and left the room. The silence left in his wake didn't leave himself feeling any better about his outburst, but if he was going to have to deal with being hokage, then everyone else was going to have to deal with the fact their hokage was a child.

"The second door on the right, Hokage-sama."

"Uh, right. Thanks," Naruto said, awkwardly walking past the bowing nurse. Plenty of people - mostly civilians - didn't know he was the godaime yet, but enough people greeted him as such when he'd walked through the street towards the hospital that there would only be so much time until it had circulated.

When he'd originally been named as the third's successor (it was more of a proof-of-concept thing, just making his apprenticeship official rather than expecting it to actually happen any time soon) only the jounin had been informed and it had stayed that way. Obviously, whatever filter had existed disappeared the moment he had actually become hokage, if even the occasional nurse knew.

Naruto creaked open the door that'd been pointed out to him, and glanced inside.

Sakura had evidently made it before him, as she was asleep in a chair besides the bed. There was no reason for him to enter, then - Sasuke was dead-asleep and he didn't want to wake either of them up. As long as he'd seen them alive with his own eyes that was enough for him. He closed the door.

"Ah," Naruto quickly turned back to look for the nurse. "Excuse me, miss - do you know which room Ino Yamanaka would be in?" She kindly pointed it out, it was in the same hallway, and Naruto thanked her.

Just as last time, he gently creaked the door open and glanced inside.

"Hey, who's there?"

"Uh, it's me, Naruto. I came to visit Sasuke, but... y'know, he's sleeping. Are you okay?" Naruto asked, walking in and closing the door. He didn't really visit with a plan in mind, he'd originally just wanted to blow off steam, and he felt a bit guilty after the talk with Kakashi.

She snorted. "I'm super bored. You're my only visitor," she gave him an odd look, "we don't really talk, huh? I thought maybe dad would visit, but I guess he's busy. He is a clan head, after all!" Ino's haughty look really suited her, Naruto noticed.

"Uh-huh."

"Sit." Ino rolled her eyes. He did. "So uh, what's it like?"

Naruto blinked. "What's what like?"

"Don't be dumb," she snarked, "what's it like having the kyuubi inside of you?"

Oooh, right. After everything that'd happened that day Naruto had totally forgotten that he'd (well, it was mostly the Ichibi) released that secret. "It's interesting, in a way," Naruto said. "The fox is a big ol' idiot. Always yelling at me, being angry, that kind of thing."

"You can talk to it?" she asked, sitting up and adjusting her pillow.

"Only when I use its power," Naruto answered. "Sometimes when I'm sleeping it pulls me in to my head, too. It's fun though, he acts all big and tough but he can't hurt me, so the fox is a bit of a joke."

"...uh-huh."

"What happened to you?" Naruto asked.

"I think I'm lucky to be alive," Ino said. "Unlike apparently everyone else, I didn't know there was going to be an invasion, so I wasn't even wearing my gear. I can understand you and Sasuke wearing it, but Sakura? Chouji? Hell, even Lee had on his tights - and he was injured! Do none of you relax at all? Sheesh..." Naruto snickered.

Naruto awkwardly tapped his knee. Socializing late at night with someone he really didn't know wasn't really his thing, even if she was actually pretty nice.

"Well, I should probably go-" Naruto began to get up.

"Nope!" Ino said, reaching over and grabbing his arm.

Shadows around the room seemed to flicker and Naruto hastily clicked his fingers as he was pulled back down to his seat.

"Why'd you do that?" Ino asked, eyebrow cocked.

"N-no reason," Naruto said, "habit."

"Say, that haori looks awfully familiar..." Ino said.

"It was a gift." Naruto shrugged defensively.

"Are you okay, Naruto? I mean - I was poisoned, so I'm in the hospital - and isn't that just so weak, by the way? A tiny little needle hit me in the arm, and bam - life threatening! I'll be totally fine by tomorrow, but you know how it is, gotta stay in the hospital and let them make sure, whatever."

Naruto nodded. "I hate hospitals."

Ino laughed, "me too!"

The door to the room burst open and a large blond man made his way in, only pausing when he laid his eyes on Naruto. Embarrassed by his earlier outburst, Naruto wasn't terribly happy to see him.

"Errhh, Ho-" Naruto glared, "Naruto-san! What would you be doing here at this hour, I wonder?" he looked pointedly at Ino.

"Daaad! It's not like that, sheesh. Where have you been all day, huh?!"

"I'm just gonna..."

"No you don't!" Both Yamanaka's paused, blinked and glanced at the other.

"Like father like daughter, I guess," Naruto joked, slowly sitting back down.

"How do you two know each other?"

"Dad, I know Naruto from the academy, remember? We were in the same class, and I definitely said his name at least onc-"

"Why were you talking about me?!" Naruto asked.

"Shhhh! That doesn't matter!" Ino said, curling her hands into her sheets.

"I think it matters," the elder Yamanaka interjected. Naruto nodded. "Anyway, I shouldn't have held you up, Uzumaki-san. I need to talk to my daughter, so if you would..."

"Of course, Yamanaka-san. Bye Ino," he gave a short wave as he eagerly left his chair, itching to get some me-time.

"You should visit sometime, Naruto!" she suggested, drooping slightly as he left.

"Maybe." Naruto said, leaving the room. He could hear conversation starting as he closed the door, but he wasn't going to eavesdrop. The door across the hall opened - the one Naruto remembered Sasuke being behind - and Sakura with her unmistakable pink mop of hair closed the door gently from the outside.

"Err, hey," Naruto greeted awkwardly.

She blinked, rubbing her tired eyes. "Oh, hi Naruto. I'm just getting Sasuke a glass of water."

"Don't mind me," Naruto said, "I was just leaving." Sakura didn't press for conversation, and just left to do as she said.

Compared to the short conversation he'd just had with Ino, that was a bit... lacklustre.

"So, Cat..." he patiently waited the split-second it took for the female, purple-haired Anbu to appear in front of him, kneeling. "Jeez, be at ease," she stood. "Is there anything else I actually have to do today, or can I just go to bed?"

She cocked her head.

"Do I have to sleep in the mansion?"

She nodded.

"Fine, but shunshin me please."

In a flash of movement that almost left him tumbling to the floor - and he would have if he wasn't caught - she did so. "Thanks."

The bed was large though unfamiliar, and the room was filled with all the little trinkets he'd had in his apartment. His little frog-wallet in particular caught his eye, situated on the bedside drawers. Someone had evidently gone through and moved everything for him, and presumably - moved everything that used to be here out. That was a somber thought.

"It's comfortable at least," he said, testing the mattress. "I could just... imagine..." despite the apparent cheesiness of the act, his eyes forcefully shut of their own volition as his head hit the pillow, still dressed and above the covers. In his defense, and he would definitely defend himself, it had been a seriously long and eventful day.

The watching Anbu merely took their places in the comfortable shadows of the room, and if one paid close attention - they may have heard a snicker or two.

"Urghhhhghh..what?!" Naruto bolted upright, rather abruptly woken up due to the freakishly loud alarms playing besides- "oh, you asshole."

The male boar-masked Anbu bowed in faux apology, stowing away the dozen alarm clocks into one of the bedside drawers.

"Why would you do that? Seriously?" Naruto made some frustrated noises and struggled to make his back comfortable on the pillow. Strangely, he didn't remember taking off his haori, or getting under the covers - but there he was. "I didn't actually see the time," he muttered.

The man responded by pulling one of the clocks back out from the drawer and presenting it to the blond. "It's six. Why do I need to be up at six?"

Boar cocked his head.

"You are all such great conversationalists," Naruto said. He glanced towards the bedroom door as it swung open, and another Anbu walked in carefully with a breakfast tray.

"...I get breakfast in bed?"

"Do I have to?" Naruto muttered, glancing outside at the far-too-large crowd below. "Can't you just, I don't know, tell them that I'm hokage now and be done with it? You know that they know I'm hokage anyway, right?"

"You're not going to war before you've even had your coronation."

Naruto groaned. "C'mon Shikaku, I'll give you a promotion..?"

"What could you possibly promote me to?"

Naruto shrugged. "I'm sure you could think of something."

The Nara squinted. "Be that as it may... it's for the best if we get this over and done with quickly. If nothing else, you need to release knowledge of your heritage - it will work towards appeasing those that are less than happy with your appointment, and that can only benefit us."

"Alright, fine."

"Good."

Naruto frowned. "...what am I supposed to say again?"

"...your speech. You do have a speech, right?"

The blond twitched. "U-uh, yeah."

"...Hokage-sama, listen."

"I'm glad they cleared me in time," Ino said, rubbing her sore arm and wandering through the crowd with her teammate, who'd picked her up from the hospital. "Who do you think the new hokage is?"

Shikamaru - her lazy, Nara teammate - shrugged. "I don't know, but they were picked awfully quickly. Now, Chouji should be just... hey, Chouji!"

"Shikamaru, Ino!" Chouji greeted, waving one arm with the other armed with a bag of potato chips. Team 7, sans Naruto, were beside him.

"Kakashi-sensei," Ino and Shikamaru nodded respectfully, "Sakura, Sasuke." Kakashi greeted them with a short wave.

"Hey," Sakura greeted. Sasuke grunted in their direction vaguely, his left arm in a sling. "Have either of you seen Naruto?"

They each shook their heads. "Not today, no," Ino answered.

"Oh," Sakura muttered. "Congratulations on the promotion, Shikamaru." Sakura eyed the vest tastefully, it did look quite good on him. Sasuke grunted again.

"Thanks, Shino was promoted too I believe," Shikamaru said. The other genin perked up.

"Really?" Chouji asked, "nice. He deserved it."

"Yeah," Ino nodded. "Shino's cool."

A short silence, the genin torn between waiting patiently and striking up a conversation.

"So..." Sakura said, "who do you think the new hokage is? I would've guessed sensei here, but..."

"I wouldn't want it anyway," Kakashi said, giving a brief chuckle. "Maybe it's Naruto? You all know how much he says he'll be hokage."

Everyone made their own unique noise of dismissal.

"Not that I'm any better, but Naruto's twelve, Kakashi-sensei," Sakura said, dismissing the idea. The glint in Kakashi's eye seemed rather amused.

"Could it be one of the clan heads?" Ino asked.

"Could be," Shikamaru answered. "The third was the head of the Sarutobi clan, after all. It would explain why Asuma-sensei isn't here..."

Here, being the central park of Konoha. It was set directly behind the hokage tower, with a large stone podium a dozen heads high stretching a small distance from the tower exterior. There was a window besides the door from the tower to the podium, but it was simply too difficult to make out any of the figures moving within. The park was big enough that almost the all of Konoha's inhabitants had fit comfortably within it - that being tens of thousands of individuals - only missing those recently sent on patrol and those building and guarding the reconstruction of the village walls.

"Of course," Shikamaru corrected, "sensei is more likely merely here with someone else."

"Like Kurenai-sensei?" Ino asked, hiding a smirk with her hand.

"Like Kurenai-sensei." Team 10 shared a laugh.

"Good luck, Hokage-sama."

"Thanks, Shikaku." Naruto slowly placed his hand on the door, and after a slight hesitation, pushed. The bickering of the crowds ceased all at once as they spied the door opening, and Naruto - clad in his navy clothing, with the third's haori and scarf, stepped out.

He didn't immediately speak, instead he walked further down the platform, until he could easily see each and every individual... okay, there was a lot of people. He gulped.

"Alright," he muttered, "one chance to get this right." He tapped the stone with his foot and seals all over the platform fluttered into existence for just a moment.

"Hello." His voice boomed across the crowd.

"..." Their stares intensified.

Well, that was troubling. What was he meant to talk about? Was he meant to introduce himself?

...Shikaku literally just now gave him some tips, and he'd already blanked them. Whoops.

He gulped, frowned when he could somewhat hear his own gulp off the reverb, and gave himself a moment to calm his beating heart. Focus.

"My name is Naruto Uzumaki. I've chased the position of Hokage for years, and was once apprenticed to the third hokage. That apprenticeship lasted less than a year, but he named me his successor shortly before his death."

He expected the crowd's initial reactions. There was an evident lack of support. The citizens immediately yelled unsanitary remarks and began making a mess of things, shoving one another aside, and generally being pissed off. The shinobi he could see were not so aggressive, but plainly stated, there was a general consensus of unhappy.

"...There was a reason for this."

The crowd quietened just enough for him to speak, interest piqued, even if they were not pleased with the appointment. He could spy his team and his closer friends huddled together amidst the crowds, just enough to measure their expressions of utter shock and confusion. 'Come on now,' Naruto mused, 'I told you this would happen from the beginning.'

"As many of you found out during the invasion, and many more of you knew since my birth, I am the jinchuuriki of the kyuubi. Within me I contain the full, dangerous might of the nine-tailed fox. For this reason, the third hokage adopted me as a child..." he paused, to allow the mutterings to quiet down. When they didn't, he coughed into his closed fist and raised his voice. "WHAT YOU MAY NOT KNOW, is the reason the kyuubi was sealed into me!"

He saw the widened eyes of his sensei down below, and sent the man the best smirk he could. "Only an Uzumaki can contain the kyuubi, for its power is too great, too concentrated, too corrosive for any human but one of greater constitution. It is a great boon, then, that the fourth hokage's child, born the same night as the attack of the kyuubi, was an Uzumaki!"

For a long, drawn out moment, Naruto regretted speaking so plainly. The chatter that he'd grown used to having to deal with quietened to nothing, and he had far too many pairs of eyes drawn to him in a silence too eerie to be comfortable.

When the yelling started, he accepted the complaints with a sprinkling of salt, after all; many of these people had grown to blame him for the loss of their friends and family for the last twelve years. He hadn't even said anything to dissuade their notion that he was at fault, he merely laid out the facts. He'd accept their words, their hate, and carry it with him, so that they did not need to. He didn't need to be mature or intelligent to do that.

He clicked his fingers, and one of his guard appeared kneeling in front of him, carrying the real symbol of his position delicately within his arms.

"Thank you, Squirrel," Naruto murmured, taking the hokage's hat reverently and placing it on his head.

"In two days," he said, just loud enough to be heard over the complaints, the swears, and the confusion. "We go to war with Suna."

He turned, haori billowing in a sudden breeze, and he left his people to their thoughts.

AN:

Review, favorite, follow, all that. Rewriting and replacing the humor with plot and hints to the future is very satisfying, as the quality is improving very noticeably. This is all thanks to criticism, so lend me some.