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Naruto's messy apartment settled into silence after he vanished, the faint shimmer of the Darksign fading from the floorboards like the last ember of a dying fire.
It didn't stay silent for long.
A figure shimmered into existence on the ceiling. ANBU Owl had been assigned to Uzumaki Naruto by the Hokage himself less than an hour ago, with a single directive that had seemed straightforward at the time.
Observe. Report. Do not interfere unless the subject's life is in immediate danger.
He had expected a troubled twelve year old to go home, eat something, and cry.
Instead he had watched the subject systematically strip his apartment of every weapon, explosive, and medicinal supply he owned, store all of it using an unknown space time technique, tend to a balcony garden with the focused efficiency of a field medic preparing for a siege, line a jacket with explosive tags, and then stand in the middle of the room and attempt to verbally summon a teleportation.
Owl had been ANBU for six years.
He had seen things that had permanently rearranged his understanding of what was possible.
He updated his report without moving a muscle.
Subject has demonstrated using an unclassified long range space time technique. Technique bears surface resemblance to reverse summoning jutsu but does not match any documented variant in Konoha's classification system. Subject shows no signs of surprise or difficulty during activation, suggesting prior familiarity with the technique.
Unknown summoning clan affiliation cannot be ruled out.
Subject's current location: unknown.
Subject's destination: unknown.
Owl looked at the floorboards and the concentric circles burned into the wood. At the symbols carved between them in a fuinjutsu language he did not recognize and had never seen in any scroll, any briefing, or any classified file he had ever been cleared to read.
This is going to be a very complicated report.
While Owl was in thought, something snaked toward him from the shadows below. He jumped backward and drew his tantō in one motion, slashing through it. The tendril split apart and dissolved into a liquid, leaving only a faint smear of ink on the blade.
What shinobi uses ink for their ninjutsu?
The answer came from the dark in the form of a body moving very fast. The figure that rushed him was young, barely older than Naruto himself if the build was anything to go by. A plain white mask covered his face entirely.
Their blades met with a sharp ring of steel.
Owl held the bind for half a second, reading and assessing the enemy. Whoever this was, they had learned to fight on the field.
He threw a smoke bomb and broke for the window.
Suddenly a foot connected with his chest from outside and drove him back into the room hard enough to rattle the shelving.
Sealing Jutsu: Crouched Tiger Bullet!
Owl turned in time to see an ink illustration of a tiger on the scroll. As the hand signs completed, the drawing peeled itself free of the paper and lunged.
The Anbu went for the swing.
When a kunai took him clean in the hand. And the tantō was on the floor before he had consciously registered getting bit by a three dimensional drawing. The tiger dragged him backward into the scroll, the sealing jutsu folding around him, pinning him flat within the confines of the illustration.
He wasn't going anywhere.
"Excellent work as always."
The voice came from the window.
The young man who dropped into the apartment had auburn hair and amber eyes. A short black jacket with red shoulder straps that Owl recognized immediately and with a particular sinking feeling.
Root.
"Thank you, Fu senpai," the one with the faceless mask said while removing his mask.
A thirteen year old kid with short black hair and dark eyes. Skin pale enough to look like it hadn't quite decided to commit to being a color.
"Agent Sai. Create a report for Lord Danzō regarding the Kyuubi Jinchūriki. Be thorough." Fu crouched beside the pinned ANBU. "While I make this ANBU into my puppet."
Owl wanted to activate his suicide seal.
He couldn't move his chakra.
The sealing jutsu pressed down on his chakra points. That included the specific two points he needed to activate the seal that would have ended this cleanly. He strained against it. And got nothing back.
Fu's fingers pressed to his temple.
Owl understood then, exactly what was about to happen. False reports would reach the Hokage. Konoha's picture of tonight would be built on whatever Fu decided to put in it. And the Hokage would move on that picture, make decisions on it, trust it.
He couldn't stop any of it.
He could only hope Konoha was ready for the storm that was approaching.
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Far away from Konoha, hidden deep within a rugged mountain range, lay a small, secluded temple. From the outside it looked like any ordinary place of worship. Ancient stone pillars standing stoic against the weathered landscape. Moss creeping up the walls in patient increments.
The Fire Zen Temple.
A remote location where banished shinobi who were too dangerous to be left free, yet too valuable to be discarded, were sent to live out their days in carefully managed obscurity.
In a small garden to the east of the main building, a man knelt in the dirt.
He was old and frail in the way a blade left to rust still cuts. Shaggy black hair hung limply around a face marked by an X shaped scar on the chin. He wore a simple white shirt beneath a dark robe that covered him from his feet to just over his right shoulder. And he was pressing pumpkin seeds into the earth with his bare hands, one by one.
Behind him stood two shinobi guards.
The picture they composed was almost convincing.
To the outside world, Shimura Danzō had been broken. Stripped of his influence, exiled to this remote temple, and watched around the clock by loyal Konoha operatives. The War Hawk of Konoha, the boogeyman of the shinobi world, reduced to gardening in isolation while the village he had shaped from the shadows moved on without him.
That was the story Konoha told itself.
The truth was considerably more inconvenient.
Danzō had taken control of Fire Zen Temple within six months of his arrival. The guards behind him were not Konoha's men. The reports filed about his behavior were not accurate. The isolation was a costume he wore with the same ease he wore everything else, as a tool, as a performance, and as a means to an end that nobody outside these walls was yet equipped to see.
A Root ANBU appeared at the garden's edge without sound.
"Speak."
"Danzō sama. A report from our agents in Konoha."
Danzō continued pressing seeds into the earth with the other hand while his eye moved across the page. He had long ago trained himself to read without expression, to let information arrive and settle before allowing it to mean anything.
He reached a specific section and stopped.
Confirmed space time ninjutsu.
Unknown summoning clan.
Subject departed to unconfirmed location via unknown technique.
Hokage has authorized ANBU observation. Intelligence remains incomplete.
He read those last four words again.
Intelligence remains incomplete.
Danzō set the report down in his lap and looked at the garden. The pumpkin seeds he had planted would take weeks to show anything. You pressed them into the earth then you waited. The waiting was where most of the work actually happened, underneath the surface.
"Your command, Danzō sama?"
"Activate all sleeper agents currently embedded within Konoha. Their objective is to keep Konoha from truly understanding Uzumaki Naruto." Danzō pressed the last seed into the earth and smoothed the soil over it with two fingers. "I do not need Konoha blind. I need Konoha working with half a picture."
The Root ANBU bowed without a word.
A shinobi operating on incomplete information does not sit still. Danzō knew this the way he knew everything about Hiruzen Sarutobi, from decades of watching the man govern from a place of love rather than logic. Love made a man predictable. Love made a man fill silences with his worst fears rather than his best intelligence. And fear, applied correctly, was the most reliable weapon in any arsenal.
Hiruzen feared what he couldn't understand.
He feared losing what he loved.
And he feared, above all else, making the same mistake twice.
Let him be afraid of what the boy is becoming, Danzō thought quietly. Let him pour everything he has into understanding abilities he has no framework for. Let him scramble.
His eye moved to the tree line. To the distance where Konoha sat warm and unsuspecting in the dark.
"Search all you like, Sarutobi."
His hand rested briefly on the doorframe, the temple swallowing his shadow as he stepped inside. "By the time you understand what that boy is, he will already be mine. And through him, everything he has become will serve this village."
Danzō let the door close behind him.
"As it always should have."