The Hokage slammed his head against his desk as the tenth report came in. Now, he knew that it really had been like Danzo had repeatedly warned him. Of course he'd been stupid enough to brush off all of his old friend and rival's warnings, wanting to believe the best in the villagers as he had done Orochimaru until the man's crimes could no longer be ignored. It was now becoming clear that he had been far too soft on the people of Konoha for far too long though. He didn't want to crack down on them in a draconian manner the way Danzo had been recommending for years, but if that was what it took...

It was his fault it got to be this way. He hadn't had the ninja try very hard to get the people standing at the gates to stop turning away their allies because he hadn't believed that Konoha could survive if there was fighting both inside and outside the village at the same time time back when a bunch of idiots had decided to block the Uzu refugees on the grounds that there weren't enough resources and there was no guarantee that everyone streaming in was actually from Uzushiogakure. In order to maintain the peace for the sake of Konoha's survival, he'd held his tongue and looked the other way back then.

He'd looked the other way far too often over the years. If he'd come down hard on Fugaku when the first rumors of the coup had been substantiated rather than try negotiating with the man for the sake of avoiding social disharmony, the Uchiha Clan would still be there filling out Konoha's forces, and each would be doing the work of two or three ordinary shinobi with Itachi doing the work of ten. If he'd stomped Danzo down early on, he wouldn't have to deal with the massive headache that ROOT had become during the intervening decades. ROOT was another thing he still turned a blind eye to, since he'd been too gentle to allow his forces to undergo the trauma of completing some of the "messier" missions, and more underhanded dealings that were necessary to keep a Shinobi village running. If he'd not signed anything that was set before him without looking at it on the first anniversary of Biwako's death, Naruto would have had Sato, Ao, and Kushina's savings to fall back on now instead of having had them almost completely depleted over the last twelve years as they payed for his upkeep since some bastard had found a loophole that would keep Naruto from ever receiving money from the Orphan Fund, and he'd signed off on it.

Hell, if he'd just done his job rather than sitting there mourning the dead and rubber stamping everything in the months following the Kyuubi attack, Naruto's situation wouldn't be nearly half as bad as it had been. If he'd actually been thinking, he would have concealed Naruto's identity as the Jinchuriki from those who didn't need to know, the way it had been with Kushina. He'd seen how Mito-sama had been treated by some people, and that had been without the Kyuubi having rampaged within Konoha's city limits.

Even though it was probably too late, he was going to finally put his foot down like he should have done a long time ago. It was time for him to become the Hokage he should have been from the start, an Iron fist in a velvet glove. Just like the Shodai and Nidaime Hokage's had been.

"Bring me a list of the names of every shinobi who has pulled the spiral from their vests." he ordered his secretary, knowing it would be a long day.

"What's this about the Uzumaki?" Tsunade drunkenly asked the person who had been sitting next to her in the gambling den and whispering to his friend loudly enough that she'd been able to overhear parts of the conversation despite the fact that she'd been trying to tune it out.

"Konoha's turning them away." the man said. "An armed mob tried to evict the Clan Head and his family when they settled there, believing that Konoha would keep the agreements that they had made with their clan."

"What?" she yelled. "Clan Head? Last I heard, the clan had split up and scattered to the four corners of the earth."

"The new Head, someone named Naruto, was trying to get the clan back together in the village that was their closest ally, but..." the man said.

"Excuse me, but I think I'll fold now." Tsunade said almost sweetly.

"Why?" the others at the table asked, stunned that the Legendary Sucker was packing it in so early and when she'd been holding what looked like a winning hand to boot.

"I need to get back to Konoha to kick some asses." Tsunade replied in a tone that was equal parts sweetness and venom.

"Why?" a group of surprised people who'd heard from just about everyone that the Legendary Sucker had sworn never to return to Konoha asked as she got up from the table.

"Because, my grandfather was the Shodai Hokage, and my grandmother was an Uzumaki." she called back. "Any bastards who think they can tarnish my family's honor like that and chase my relatives off will be getting thrown out of my family's village, even if I have to toss them and their crap over the wall myself."

Pein sighed as he looked at the tattered and worn spiral that had once graced his family home. It had been the only thing he had salvaged when he had fled after the deaths of his parents and the Konoha ninja who'd killed them. His mother had been born in Uzushiogakure, and had met, fell in love with, and married his father who had been something of a wandering minstrel at the time. They had settled in Ame, and his father had gotten a steady job when his mother was expecting him, putting a permanent end to their wandering ways. Eventually, they had amassed enough money to purchase the small house in which they had happily lived for such a short time before the war came calling.

With the war came ninja from Konoha. Ninja that his mother had said were their allies right up until the day she had been killed by one of them. Another ninja of Kohnoha had trained him and got him to start trusting again, which was a mistake on his part for letting him. When he started thinking he could trust the man, and that not all ninja from Konoha were bad, the man had abandoned him, Yahiko, and Konan, leaving them to fend for themselves against Hanzo.

To compound Konoha's crimes, the last three hosts for the Kyuubi had been Uzumaki. Instead of using one of their own, they'd used the Shodai Hokage's wife, persuaded Uzushiogakure to hand over the one member of their clan with the greatest potential, and stole her son from her as she was dying. They had raised the new host of the Kyuubi to be a "Loyal citizen of Konoha", while mistreating the child the entire time. When the child tried to get the Clan back together after he had started finding relatives on his first trip outside of the village, they had tried to chase his family away.

Konoha most definitely was not the sort of place for his family to live in, no matter how distant the relatives were. Madara was right about how the bastards there would turn on you in a heartbeat.

Feeling slightly guilty over what would be happening to the Clan Head should he accept his offer, Pein started writing a letter inviting the Uzumaki to move to Amegakure. Naruto would by dying anyway, but there was a chance that their clan would survive if they did move. Konoha had sanctioned the extermination of one of its founding clans after all, so what was one that only merely had blood ties to the other?

After he had finished his letter, he had signed it using a name he hadn't used in a long time, Nagato.

Haruno Meibuki sighed as her husband spoke to the Uzumaki clan head in that rapidfire manner that seemed to be an Uzumaki trait. The boy had been sitting there and staring at them with the stupidest expression she'd ever seen throughout the entire conversation that she and her husband and later just her husband had had with the boy. Since she was technically the clan head of the Haruno whose name her husband had taken since it was more prestigious than his family name, she'd been the one who'd agreed to place the Haruno clan under the Uzumaki Clan's protection in order to shut her husband up. It wasn't as if relations between her and the neighbors could get any worse since the revelation that Kizashi was "an Uzumaki" and the fallout that came with it thanks to a vicious bitch from up the street.

Konoha wasn't really as divided over the issue of the Uzumaki as it seemed. There were the Uzumaki supporters, and those who were against the Uzumaki, mainly because the majority of the ones currently residing in Konoha had come from Iwa, or because of the young clan head. Most of the people of Konoha however didn't really care about the Uzumaki either way, were tired of hearing about them every damn hour of every damn day, and just wanted to get on with their lives like she did. Unfortunately for Konoha's reputation however, those who were against the Uzumaki were the loudest, and were being heard most often by people from other countries who were starting to ask questions about what happened to Konoha's "staunchest ally", amongst other things.

Her husband had become a staunch Uzumaki supporter after it had been his mother's family that was being maligned as well, rather than just the Kyuubi brat. It had been he who had demanded that the Haruno become protected by the Uzumaki after one of the neighbors' clans that was down to one family unit with a rather henpecked husband who did everything his wife had told him to had booted them out from under protection that had been in place for more than a century. Her cousin and protector, whom she was going to deny being related to if anyone ever asked, had been rather apologetic when he'd booted her and her husband out from under his protection. But, he'd still booted them out in order to preserve marital harmony nonetheless.

Fortunately, the Uzumaki boy hadn't made any unreasonable demands of her or her family. All of the demands he did make could be met with little to no hardship on the part of her clan, unlike the demands being made on those under the protection of the Uchiha by the Uchiha boy who was becoming increasingly erratic lately and had run off for a month long "training trip". Another bonus was that the Demon child didn't seem half as interested in her daughter after it was revealed that they were "related".

All in all, the situation wasn't half as bad as it could be, and there was hope for the future. Either the Kyuubi brat would learn to become a proper Head of a ninja clan in the future, or the his successor would be better. It was difficult to deal with now however...

Edited 2-27-17