disclaimer: i don't own any of this

and again, nothing has been proofread. also, guys, please don't flame me for this chapter.

The Chain of Change

Chapter Nine

For once, Itachi had been mistaken about something: the storage yard was owned by a Yama Hisako, not Hisano. It was a trivial detail, but somehow it made Minato feel better about the entire situation. To err is human, and Itachi's humanity had been called into question all too many times before.

Danzo's curse seal had taken him about thirty minutes to crack. Not a long time, to be sure, but the Yondaime could probably look at about ninety-five percent of the seals in existence and figure out how they worked in less than a minute. Danzo's had included a lot of excess crap – garbage clauses, gibberish – a good way to disguise a seal's true purpose.

So now the Interrogation Force was happily going at it with their recently unmuted prisoners, and Minato had maybe an hour left of freedom. He'd gotten one of the office assistants to arrange a meeting with the veteran about reestablishing the Konoha police force, since decimated by the Uchiha massacre, something that Danzo had been gunning for since day one of Konoha post-Uchiha. The Yondaime smiled briefly at the thought; he'd ordered the aide to sabotage the meeting with every possible bureaucratic detail he could come up with.

Yama Hisako-not-Hisano's storage yard was a modestly-sized one, with nine elongated warehouses lined up in a neat stack. Each warehouse was divided up into three sections, and each section was further segmented into another three units. There was no visible security except for a wire fence, some ten feet high, surrounding the perimeter.

Considering that he had just waltzed into this piece of supposedly private property in broad daylight without running into another human being, Minato had a feeling that whoever was leasing space here and expecting it to be secure was getting ripped off. The units themselves were built from badly-poured cement blocks, likely whatever a construction company had left over from contracting work and sold at a steep discount. Identifying numbers were stenciled on with white paint, but worn away with time and neglect into illegibility, and had never been repainted.

Still, it was easy to find 18C. All he had to do was count and go off the few readable numbers that remained. Pretty soon he was standing in front of the padlocked door of the unit in interest, trying to think of the best course of action. It would be an easy thing to pick the lock, but if this unit truly housed all of Danzo's deepest, darkest secrets, there was going to be more to contend with than just a simple mechanical device. He couldn't sense any chakra coming from behind the door, but then again, he wasn't exactly skilled in that department. Furthermore, seals were perfectly capable of activation without chakra input – his own Hiraishin no Jutsu was proof that particular principle.

And there was another concern – that this entire thing was a trap. Itachi had told him to come alone after all, and in the unlikely event that the missing-nin had bothered to sneak into Konoha for the sole purpose of rigging a storage unit in the civilian sector, Minato had no backup to call upon if something did go wrong. Not that he was too worried – if it didn't manage to knock him out in the space of about ten milliseconds, he would be able to Hiraishin away to the safety of his office.

"Forget it," Minato said under his breath, sick of mulling over the possibilities. Sometimes you just had to fuck everything and go for it. Granted, this was actually Kushina's philosophy and not his, but…

He shattered the padlock with one expertly-timed chakra strike and jiggled it off the door. Then, all senses on high alert, he cracked the door open.

Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't this. The small, dingy room before him was packed to the rafters with stacks of what looked like ancient newspapers. Closer inspection indicated that they were actually old copies of the Konoha Sun-Times, the most notorious tabloid circulating in the village. And it looked like the Yondaime had just stumbled upon the dumping ground for its back issues.

A freaking wild goose chase. Disgusted, Minato shut the door, not bothering to replace the broken lock. No one in their right mind would want to steal this refuse anyway, he reasoned. Preparing to head back to Hokage Tower, he pulled on the Hiraishin seal – and froze, feeling the seal on one of the kunai in his pouch activate. Almost instantaneously, someone collided into him, bowling him over and into the door, which opened behind him to dump them both unceremoniously into stacks of bad journalism.

Minato was back on his feet in a second, a weapon at the ready as he faced whoever it was that just managed to hijack his most famous technique, ready to do him or her a whole world of harm –

His son rolled onto his back and groaned.

"Fuck… am I dead?"

The Yondaime was rendered speechless.

Apparently, Naruto suffered from no such ailment. A colorful string of words issued from his mouth, each phrase more provocative than the last. For a brief, irrational second, the older blond wondered how his son had even heard of half the things he was cursing. Then reason kicked in, along with the function of his vocal chords.

"Naruto! What are you doing here?"

His son glared balefully at him through slitted blue eyes. "Sakura said I should let you know that I'm awake. Hey, guess what? I'm awake."

"Did you just –"

"Use your technique? Yeah. The landing kind of sucks. I'm surprised that you don't fall on your ass all the time."

"How did you even learn it? You never let me teach it to you!" Minato exclaimed.

Naruto ignored the question, electing instead to lever himself upright on his good hand. After a little shakiness, he managed to stand, shrugging off whatever help his father tried to give him. He looked around.

"What a dump. The hell are you doing here?"

"Hey, don't change the –"

"Are those tabloids?" Naruto plucked the topmost periodical from one of the piles. This particular issue had a blown-up picture of himself on the front, standing with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of beer dangling from the other. The background showed a party, held in a building possibly of Suna origin, judging from its curved sandstone walls. The photo had obviously been taken on the sly; Naruto was turned away, chatting up a hot blonde who could have been Temari with her hair down and in a strapless dress. The title screamed in huge black print: "Hokage's son brings more shame to Konoha with foreign binges and orgies!"

"You know," the younger blond said casually, "If you wanted to know what I've been up to these past few years, you could've just asked."

Minato felt himself turning red. "I didn't come here to read the tabloids. And shouldn't you be in bed?"

"I dunno," Naruto said. "Couldn't sleep. For some reason I had this dream of you being there, then leaving as soon as the nurses said I wasn't going to die."

The Yondaime winced inwardly. "I had something to do." The excuse sounded flimsy and callous as it issued from his mouth.

His son gave the stacks of back issues another sweep. "Yeah, apparently you did." Then he turned back to his father, and his expression was more cold than angry. "Look, I don't give a shit what you do with your time. You made it pretty clear early on that you didn't have time for me. So don't lead me on like this – pretending you care enough to find me in Suna, then clearing out at the first opportunity."

"That's not what I meant to do –"

"You spent the past three years ignoring me."

"Yes, but it's not like I wanted –"

"Anyway, I've found you, said what I needed to say, and now I need to find Gaara –"

"For fuck's sake!" the Yondaime burst out, loudly and abruptly, "Will you just give me a minute to explain?"

Naruto stopped mid-sentence, clearly surprised. Minato rarely swore, and almost never raised his voice. For a second, it looked as though the younger blond was about to give an equally vicious reply, but then he held back, and his expression became neutral, guarded.

"Fine," he said in a quiet voice. "Explain, then."

Minato sucked in a breath, having never expected that the situation would go anywhere beyond a shouting match. But now with the ball in his court, he suddenly no longer knew what to do with it. He looked up to see his son's eyes upon him, uncharacteristically calm, and finally understood – Naruto was actually giving him a chance.

So the Yondaime faced his son and said, "I found out a few things while you were away. Were you ever in ROOT?"

The range of emotions that passed over Naruto's features in response to that question varied from anger to relief to self-loathing, all of them flickering away in less than a second. But Minato caught them, saw every one, and realized that in them was reflected everything Danzo put his son through, every terrible thing that Naruto had borne in equally terrible silence. So he didn't need an audible reply, a concrete answer, in order for the most potent anger he'd ever experienced in his life threatened to overtake him, although he could not tell if it were directed toward Danzo, or himself.

"Naruto," the Yondaime said, and much to his surprise his voice was steady. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

The younger blond made a derisive noise. At his sides, his hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists with such force that the right one began to bleed again, even through the bandages.

"Naruto, you can talk to me." Minato's voice was impossibly gentle in spite of the murderous feelings that were boiling up inside him.

"No, I really can't," Naruto snarled. Then, he repeated, in a voice choked more with shame than anger, "I really can't."

Minato remembered the curse seal, and could barely restrain himself from flashing to wherever the hell the bastard was and killing him on the spot.

It must have shown on his face, because Naruto glanced at him and shook his head. "Danzo isn't that stupid. It's all me. My fault. My weakness." There was a pause, and then the younger blond turned away. "I have to get back to Suna. I have to find Gaara."

"Kakashi will take care of it," Minato said. "There isn't much you can do in your current condition."

His son rounded upon him. "Don't you think I know that? But I can't sit here and do fuckall while some psycho's got him. I have to try. I owe Gaara at least that much!"

"Naruto, we need to talk about this."

The younger blond laughed quietly. It was a bitter sound, completely devoid of humor. "No, we don't. It's a little late now, don't you think?"

"Listen," Minato said, in as sharp a tone as anyone had ever heard from him, "None of this is your fault. None of it. If you want to blame anyone, blame me."

His son looked at him, almost pityingly. "What the hell do you think I've been trying to do? It should be easy, because you –"

"I never noticed," the Yondaime finished simply, refusing to flinch away from fact. "I never noticed it, even though I'm your father, and I'm supposed to know what happens to you, and care about it. Naruto, I'm so sorry."

Naruto's expression softened, and for a moment he seemed almost sad. "If only you had told me that earlier. Anyway. I need to go now."

It didn't look as though he was going to expound any further on the subject of Danzo. Minato realized this, and though it made him both dejected and angry, he decided to back off. But with respect to his badly injured son hauling ass back to look for Gaara…

"You need to stay here," the Yondaime said firmly. "Kakashi and your teammates are perfectly capable of handling Gaara's retrieval. I am giving you an order as the Hokage to remain in Konoha for the time being."

"You bastard," Naruto snarled. "What the fuck makes you think I'm going to listen to anything you say?"

"Because," Minato said, hating himself as he did, "It's treason if you don't."

For a minute, he was afraid his son was going to leave regardless. But maybe the fact that he was a ninja of Konoha still meant something to him, or maybe he was just too used to following orders; Naruto glared seethingly at him, but stayed put.

Minato expelled a silent sigh of relief. "Okay, let's get you back to the hospital."

"No."

"You're in no condition to be standing, much less –"

"I'm in no condition to be sitting around doing nothing while my friend is possibly being tortured and killed as we speak!" Naruto paused for a moment, taking a few breaths to calm himself. "What," he asked finally, "were you doing here? Is it at least less dangerous than running around the desert?"

The Yondaime grimaced. It was an abrupt shift in subject, and away from what he would really like to be discussing with his son, but at least this was a way to talk about Danzo without Naruto running away from him. "Last night, I purged all the ROOT members in ANBU that I could uncover. But it's not enough to get Danzo put away. I need to find information to hold against him before he becomes aware of the situation."

Naruto regarded him skeptically. "Last night? He's probably long gone."

"Not according to the spies I have tailing him. Last I checked, he was in a meeting that I specifically arranged for him."

"And you're digging through this shit because…"

"A bad lead," Minato admitted. "Supposedly, this is where Danzo keeps all his stuff. But as you can see, there's nothing here."

"Did you check under the floor?" his son asked. "Danzo ran most of ROOT underground… go figure."

The Yondaime blinked at him. "No, I just assumed that this was the lousy tip I thought it would be."

Naruto grunted and closed his eyes. "Get out of here then. I'm going to clear this place."

"For Kami's sake, please go back to the hospital. You have chakra exhaustion!" Minato protested, but, unsurprisingly, he got no response. Naruto had seated himself against a stack of tabloids and his breathing grew slower and slower as his body became perfectly still. The topmost few issues on the stacks began to shake as a phantom breeze picked up in the room, and then suddenly Minato found himself assaulted by an army of tabloids as the breeze became a strong gust that directed every scrap of paper into the air and out of the door.

"Naruto…" the Yondaime said, trying to sound angry but not really able to put himself up to it. He reached behind his head to pull away the double sheet that caught against the back of his neck, frowning at the blown-up image of Tsunade's most prominent assets displayed there. Quickly, he shoved it out of sight, before his son could notice.

Too late, apparently. "You should ask her out," Naruto commented, opening one ancient amber eye to regard him. "Then you could do more than just stare at 'em."

"Naruto!" the older blond said sharply, crumpling up the paper as quickly as he could and tossing it in a corner. "For Kami's sake, she's twice my age!" he burst out, unable to stop himself.

"Yeah, but she looks like she's twenty. If she's not a cougar, then I'm a freaking –"

"Naruto!" his father said again, louder this time, before his face could go red. "Mention Tsunade again, and I'll Hiraishin you back to the hospital, where you can tell her about what you think of her. In person."

His son glowered. Then, "I think I'm sitting on it, actually."

"What?"

"There's a breeze blowing against my ass."

"Move."

Naruto obliged him, uncovering a portion of the floor. Barely noticeable, faint lines traced the shape of a large square in the stone. Minato rapped a kunai against it.

"It doesn't sound hollow," his son noted.

The older blond frowned. "It's probably a seal. I bet Danzo has to wipe his blood on it to get it to open."

Naruto stared. "Can't we open it by force?"

"It'll probably explode." Minato rested his palm on the floor and channeled a bit of chakra into it. Immediately, a sealing array, outlined in thick black ink, appeared in the cool grey stone. The Yondaime held it there for a minute, regarding the patterns with narrowed blue eyes. Then he lifted his hand to pull a scrap of blank paper from his vest. With the other hand, he retrieved a brush and a bottle of ink from his cloak pockets, and in the next few seconds he had drawn his own array on the paper. Then he placed the newly-created seal on the floor over the existing one and drew on his chakra once more.

Minato's seal flared to life, the characters outlined in vivid blue, and Danzo's seal materialized beneath it, although more sluggishly. Slowly, the dark lines of Danzo's seal seemed to leech away from the stone and into the paper above it, until Minato's seal was black with ink.

The Yondaime's face quirked into a satisfied smile. He rapped the hidden trapdoor with his fist, and it sprang open obediently, revealing stairs that wound down into darkness.

"Heh. Amateur."

Gaara was dreaming.

It took him a moment to realize it, because Gaara rarely slept long enough in order for his subconscious to take over. But the scene before him could not have possibly been constructed in the real world.

He was standing in an enormous sewer. Its walls were gray, damp-looking, and lined with some kind of scum. His feet were ankle-deep in water, and a steady dripping sound echoed down the length of the tunnel. A the very end was an enormous grate, partitioning off a part of the tunnel. The area beyond it appeared to be dark and empty at first glance, but as Gaara focused on it and caught a flash of movement, he realized that there was something inside.

He walked forward. Though his feet made sloshing sounds in the water, he did not feel the wetness of it. The dripping sound grew fainter, until it was barely a whisper of noise. Gaara continued until he stood directly before the grate. He lay his hands on it, his touch meeting cool metal, rough with patches of rust.

Naruto stood before him. Only it wasn't actually Naruto, couldn't have been, this being a dream and all. The blond grinned at him and reached out to grasp one of the bars with his own hand.

"Yo, Gaara," he said. "Some fix you've gotten yourself into, eh."

"Frankly, I'm not sure what is worse," Gaara replied blandly. "The fact that I've been captured, or the fact that my subconscious takes the form of my psychotic best friend."

"Hey," the blond protested, "Words can hurt, you know."

Gaara snorted. "Where's Shukaku? Wouldn't he be more appropriate for this?"

His friend smiled, and it was all wickedness and sharp edges. "I sent him away for the time being. He's not going to be around for much longer, anyway." Then he leaned forward and whispered conspiringly, "I'm not actually your subconscious, you know. In fact, I'm not part of you at all."

"Great. Give me a few days to figure that one out."

Naruto chuckled and shook his head. "I'm afraid you don't have a few days. Maybe not even a few hours left. Have you given any thought of what's going to happen to me?"

Gaara quirked a nonexistent eyebrow at his friend. "Typical," he said. "I'm going to die, and the first thing you think of is yourself."

"I never said you were going to die. In fact, you better not, or this entire thing will be a waste." The blond actually seemed a little disgruntled by the suggestion. "Anyway, when you wake up, you should tell Kakashi and company to haul ass back to Konoha."

"And why should I do that?" the Kazekage asked levelly. "As far as I'm concerned, you're a figment of my imagination."

His friend looked up at him, and Gaara started involuntarily. Naruto's eyes were neither his normal blue or sage-amber. Instead, they had taken on a scarlet hue, and the shadows flickering over them made it seem as if fires had been kindled in their depths. And Gaara realized, with a sort of cold certainty, that the figure before him was not in any way his friend.

"You should let them know," Not-Naruto told him. "Because I don't plan on dying either."

"You never really answered my question."

Naruto frowned at his father, taking care to step away from a suspicious-looking area of the stairs. They had already triggered two traps in their descent to Danzo's lair, one of them taking a neat chunk out of the wall, and very nearly a neat chunk out of his head. "I told you, I don't want to talk about it."

"No, I meant the one about the Hiraishin no Jutsu. How did you learn it, if I didn't teach it to you?"

"I snuck into your study and read your scrolls on it," Naruto said. "When I was, like, ten."

"And you learned it then?" Minato said, astonished.

"Hah, no way," his son replied. "I was just a stupid kid. But I memorized what was on it. I didn't actually understand how to do it until last year, and I never tried it until today."

"No way," his father said. "Your memory is terrible."

"Only for stupid shit, like history and stuff," Naruto replied dismissively. "And besides, you only wrote down how to do the jutsu, and not how to make the seals. That's the hard part."

"Is that why you never wanted me to teach it to you?"

There was silence for a minute, then the younger blond let out a quiet, pained noise. His father glanced over at him, startled, and saw that he had partially collapsed against the wall, hand grasping at the stone for support, head bowed.

"Naruto?"

"Fuck," his son said, barely audible, his breathing growing uneven. Then he repeated the expletive, only louder, and beat his fist against the wall. Something flickered red in the gloominess, but vanished just as quickly – blood, probably, Minato noted with growing concern. "It's so easy," he murmured, half to himself. "Fuck, why is it always so easy?"

Then he straightened and said in a low voice, "Everything I just told you was a lie. Danzo taught it to me. He had stolen the scrolls from your library and copied them." He said this all very rapidly, mechanically, as if reading from a script. "I was supposed to learn it and use it when the time was right."

Minato staggered back, as if dealt a physical blow by the words. Coldness welled up in his stomach, and he felt as though all thought had suddenly been siphoned from his brain. But his mouth was still on automatic. "Danzo was training you… to kill me?"

"He never said anything to that effect," his son replied. "But he knew that I hated you. He gave me the tools to act upon it." Tonelessly, he added, "I realized he was setting me up. If I took you out, the village would have me executed and Danzo would have turned a blind eye."

"Kami…" the older blond breathed. "That's why you left."

"I didn't know what else to do. There's some part of me, even now, that still hates you," Naruto told him unflinchingly. "Even though I know that Danzo was playing me, the entire time."

The two stood in silence for a time, neither knowing what else to say. Water dripped from somewhere, making a clear, hollow noise. Minato reached out and steadied himself against the wall. The stone was shockingly cold against his skin, and he almost pulled his hand away, but forced it to remain, and he focused on the sensation. It was a reminder that he was still in the real world, that this wasn't a dream.

Finally, Naruto spoke. "There's no point in going over the shit Danzo told me to do."

"The hell there isn't!" his father exclaimed. "After what you just told me, do you really expect me to just leave it alone?"

Naruto shook his head. "Right now, the important thing is to nail the bastard."

It was exactly the same excuse Minato had used to leave Suna to begin with. The older blond shook his head in frustration, but he felt like he had to concede. There came a point where the elephants became either too large or too numerous to be swept safely under the rug. He was pretty sure they'd passed that point a long time ago. They had an entire zoo in the room, and he had no idea what to do with it.

"Later, then," he said. "Promise me, that we'll talk about this later."

His son stared at him. "You know I won't do that."

"Naruto. Please." Minato could not keep the desperation from creeping into his voice.

The younger blond's lips curled up to snarl something back, but with a visible struggle, he stopped himself. "Fine," he said, after a time. "Fine. You win. But I make the call as to when."

They resumed their descent. The stairwell wound twice more before opening into a largish chamber. A massive desk replete with the appropriate office supplies took up one side of the room. The two remaining walls were lined with shelves stuffed to the brim with scrolls.

Naruto crossed to the desk and lit the two nearby lamps with a fire jutsu, then bent over the papers scattered there. They were all in some kind of cipher, written in the veteran's unsteady hand. It wasn't a code that he recognized.

"Son of a bitch."

The younger blond turned to see his father with a scroll unwound in his hands. Minato's expression was a mixture of fury and disgust. "He's got copies of everything. Logs of all the meetings the Hokage has ever had – dating back to when Sarutobi was in his prime. Keys to every cipher I've ever used." The Yondaime walked further along the shelves, pausing at a stack of scrolls outline in black. "Son of a bitch," he repeated. "S-class secrets. All here."

Naruto snorted. "Did you expect any less? The man is trying to take over the village." He began rummaging through the desk drawers. They turned up bottles of ink, blank scrolls, a multitude of brushes, paperweights… "Danzo's a paranoid bastard. I bet you he stashed the really juicy stuff."

"I think what he has out in the open here is incriminating enough," his father protested. "I could have him hanged for possessing just one of these scrolls."

"Five ryu says I turn up something even better."

"Don't be a wiseass, Naruto," his father admonished. "Make it ten."

The younger blond grinned and pulled out all of the drawers, stacking them on top of one another. Then he reached into one of the spaces where the drawers fit and fiddled around with something. There was a click, and Naruto pulled out a small wooden box.

"Hidden against the back of the desk," he said cheerfully to his father's stare. "One of the drawers was shorter than the others. Pay up."

Minato scowled and reached inside his cloak for his wallet. "I guess I owe you allowance for the past three years, or something."

Naruto set the box down on the desk and pried the top open. He lifted up the topmost article – an envelope – and read what was written on it briefly before handing it to his father.

"It's addressed to you," he said. "From the Sandaime."

Minato took it and opened it.

My dear friend, it read.

By the time you read this, I will be dead. First and foremost, I must make clear that, what I do, I do not only for Konoha, but for yourself and your family. You have your entire life ahead of you, and I have lived a full, rewarding existence. My choice has been made freely, and I am proud to give my life for this village.

Kushina has agreed to accompany me on this final task. Do not fault her actions. She offered to take my place, although I have forbidden her to do so. My hands are no longer as steady as they once were, and she insisted on aiding me in the sealing.

I have taken your array and modified it such that it acts from a distance. Everything will go as you planned; half the fox's chakra will be forced into the statue, and half I will take into myself as I go to the Shinigami. My only fear is that the fox's chakra will be too potent to be bound to simple stone. If this truly is the case, I have arranged for an orphan infant to be brought along, so that he may serve as the Kyuubi's jinchuuriki. I know this is a truly despicable action, even as a last resort, but if it is not done, the fox will destroy us all.

Take care of Kushina, and little Naruto, my friend. Treasure the time you have together. I leave the future of Konoha in your capable hands, and hope that one day, you may find it in yourself to forgive me.

Sincerely, Hiruzen Sarutobi

"That bastard," the Yondaime said as he finished reading, and it was not clear if he referred to Danzo or the Sandaime. Carefully, almost reverently, he folded the letter with trembling hands and slid it back into the envelope. Then he placed it in the pocket stitched inside his cloak, the one that lay closest to his heart.

"Let's go," he said finally, turning to Naruto. "We have enough rope to hang the fucker."

Notes

First off: I would really like to thank everyone for the comments they left for the previous chapter. It made me get this one out faster. It also made my life suck less. You guys are great.

Second: I need a beta. I don't even want to think about how many errors are in this chapter.

I had mentioned, long ago, that I maybe wanted one, and then decided against it because, back then, I still had enough time to proofread my chapters. This is no longer the case. So it would be really, really cool if someone who (a) has a good grasp of the English language and (b) would be also willing to be a sounding board/censor for my retarded ideas PMed me, or dropped a note, if he or she is interested.