Uchiha Fugaku was deeply shaken. The physical strength of the child in front of him far exceeded anything he could have imagined. Initially, he had assumed that because Naruto was just a three-year-old toddler, even a Jinchuriki rampage wouldn't possess much destructive force.
However, the devastating punch he had just blocked completely shattered his complacency. Fugaku realized with grim certainty that if he didn't unleash his Mangekyou Sharingan, it would be nearly impossible to defeat this child using standard, conventional combat skills.
Meanwhile, Naruto—who had failed to knock Fugaku down with his first blow—flashed an excited, predatory smile. The aura of ki radiating from his body flared even stronger, causing Fugaku's scalp to go completely numb under the pressure. The momentum was suffocating; Naruto was undeniably the most terrifying Jinchuriki Fugaku had ever encountered.
As Naruto lunged forward again, Fugaku abandoned all hesitation regarding the Mangekyou. Throwing caution to the wind, he prepared himself to engage in an all-out battle.
But just as Naruto was about to reach him—and just as Fugaku's Sharingan began to spin violently, ready to merge into the Mangekyou pattern—the bright blue pupils suddenly snapped back into existence within Naruto's stark white eyes.
Naruto's forward charge came to an abrupt, violent halt. The sudden brake caused his momentum to trip him up, sending him tumbling across the ground for a considerable distance before he finally stopped.
The three-tomoe Sharingan in Fugaku's eyes gradually slowed its frantic spinning. He stared warily at the child. "Naruto Uzumaki... have you regained your senses?"
Naruto didn't say a word. He simply climbed to his knees, shook his head to clear it, and let out a casual sigh. "Ugh..."
Fugaku exhaled a long, heavy breath of relief. It was a massive stroke of luck that the Jinchuriki had regained consciousness on his own; at the very least, Fugaku hadn't been forced to expose his hidden Mangekyou Sharingan in the open courtyard.
Behind him, the tense, rigid postures of the surviving Uchiha ninjas gradually relaxed. This boy's raw power had truly terrified them to their core. They had never imagined a scenario where their valued Sharingan would be so utterly useless against an enemy.
But as the initial panic faded, a burning sense of humiliation began to crawl into their hearts. Tonight was an absolute disgrace for the Military Police Force. Over twenty elite Uchiha ninjas had been brutally slaughtered by a literal toddler. If word of this disaster leaked out, where would the Uchiha clan hide their faces?
By now, the murderous rage consuming Naruto had fully subsided. Having regained his sanity, he remembered every single detail of what he had done during his rampage.
To be completely honest, slaughtering those people had felt incredibly therapeutic. Watching those arrogant Uchiha ninjas—who usually walked around with their noses in the air—scurrying around like panicked little mice had brought an immense sense of satisfaction to his heart.
At that moment, Fugaku's stern voice cut through the silence. "Naruto Uzumaki, do you even realize what you have just done?"
Naruto turned his head slowly, his face completely expressionless as he locked eyes with the clan leader. "Then do you know what your precious Police Force did first?"
His tone was ice-cold. "Your men didn't care when I went to the market to buy groceries and got pelted with stones by the villagers. But the moment I defended myself, your department rushed to arrest me while letting the actual instigators walk free. With a corrupt, pathetic approach to law enforcement like that, your people deserved to be slaughtered by me!"
With that, Naruto turned on his heel, preparing to walk away. Fugaku ground his teeth in a fit of silent rage. It was infuriating that this brat could butcher Uchiha clan members and still remain so impossibly arrogant.
Yet, he couldn't deny that the child's strength was terrifying. Furthermore, Naruto was the village's Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, and the Police Force had indeed overstepped its bounds by arresting him without a valid reason. But that brought up a glaring question: Where on earth were the Anbu who were supposed to be monitoring him?
If the Hokage's guard had been present, they would have stepped in the moment the police tried to detain Naruto, and this entire bloodbath would have been avoided. What exactly was going on? Why was the Third Hokage so incredibly lax when it came to monitoring the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki? And even if Lord Hokage had grown complacent, that man—Danzo—should have never let his guard down!
As Fugaku stood lost in thought, furious shouting suddenly erupted from the Uchiha ninjas behind him.
"You think you can just pat your dust off and walk away after slaughtering so many of our people?! You're dreaming!"
"That's right! This requires a blood debt! This brat must be executed to appease the souls of the Uchiha!"
Fugaku turned his head, noting with grim irony that the very police officers who had been too paralyzed by fear to speak a moment ago were now roaring with indignation.
"Even if he is the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, we can't just let him off the hook! We need to take this straight to the Third Hokage and demand an official explanation!"
"Exactly! Clan Leader, arrest this brat immediately and bring him to the Hokage! The Third Hokage must give the Uchiha clan justice tonight. This matter cannot be swept under the rug!"
Fugaku's expression turned incredibly grim. He knew they needed an explanation from Hiruzen, but because this involved the delicate politics of a Jinchuriki, the Third Hokage would likely just offer some perfunctory apologies and a sum of compensation money to quiet them down.
Moreover, if one looked at the fine details, the Uchiha had brought this disaster upon themselves. Fugaku had already investigated the catalyst for the conflict on his way to the scene. It was entirely caused by Uchiha Eichetsu indiscriminately arresting a toddler. It was only natural for a Jinchuriki to push back when backed into a corner.
While Fugaku was caught in his internal dilemma, Naruto suddenly stopped. He turned around and locked his gaze directly onto the shouting ninjas of the Uchiha Police Force.
Then, step by step, he began to walk back toward them.
Because his body was so small, it took him roughly three small strides to equal the distance of a single adult step. His pace was slow, deliberate, and quiet as he closed the distance.
Yet, despite his snail-like speed, his approach made the Uchiha ninjas' scalps tingle with renewed horror. Cold sweat poured down their foreheads. What is this Jinchuriki doing? Is he about to snap and go on a rampage again?
With every single step Naruto took forward, their hearts hammered violently against their ribs. As the physical distance between them shrank, the Uchiha ninjas grew increasingly terrified. Looking down at Naruto's hands—which were still heavily stained and dripping with the fresh blood of their fallen comrades—none of the ninjas rushed forward to enact the "blood debt" they had just been screaming about. Instead, they involuntarily stumbled backward.
Naruto remained completely expressionless, offering no verbal threats. He simply kept his head down, matching their gaze with a quiet, concentrated intensity. This silent, psychological oppression felt infinitely more terrifying than his mindless, berserk state from before.
The moment Naruto stepped within five meters of their line, the pressure became too much to bear. An Uchiha ninja standing right at the front line broke completely, spinning around and fleeing in absolute terror.
That single ninja's cowardice acted like a burning fuse. In an instant, the remaining Uchiha scattered in all directions like a flock of startled birds, trampling over each other to escape. It was a thoroughly pathetic and comical sight.
Watching the fleeing elites, Naruto burst into a mocking, cynical laugh.
"Look at you all. This is the great Uchiha clan. When it's time to bark, you shout louder than anyone. But when it's time to fight, you run faster than anyone else." Naruto sneered, his voice dripping with pure disdain. "I am back to my normal state now. At most, I'm just a physically strong three-year-old child—yet you adults are terrified out of your wits by me. What a pathetic bunch of trash."
Leaving them with those parting words, Naruto turned around and walked away without looking back a second time.
Fugaku stared at Naruto's departing figure, his brow furrowed in deep thought. He, of course, knew Naruto's true lineage. In fact, Naruto's parents—Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki—had been his personal friends. Kushina and Fugaku's own wife, Mikoto, had been incredibly close friends who grew up together well before the tragedy of the Nine-Tails night.
However, in the three years following that disaster, the Uchiha clan had been forced to move to the compound near the Naka River—isolated far from the center of the village to prevent political suspicion. For the past three years, Fugaku had only ever heard distant rumors about Naruto. This was their very first face-to-face meeting.
He had never expected the boy to develop such a cold, cynical personality. It seemed Naruto was growing in the exact opposite direction of the gentle Minato and the passionate Kushina.
Thinking up to this point, Fugaku let out a heavy, weary sigh. The Uchiha clan's political standing within Konoha was becoming more precarious and embarrassing by the day. They could barely protect themselves from the village higher-ups; they were in no position to look after the abandoned son of their late friends.
At that exact moment, a large squad of masked Anbu arrived at the chaotic scene, led by the Third Hokage of Konoha, Hiruzen Sarutobi.
The second his feet touched the ground, Hiruzen looked over the carnage and questioned Uchiha Fugaku. "Fugaku, what on earth happened here?"
He purposefully didn't direct any questions toward Naruto, because in his heart, he instinctively believed this crisis had absolutely nothing to do with a Tailed Beast.
Being questioned like this gave Fugaku the perfect opportunity to vent his simmering resentment. He turned a furious gaze upon the Hokage and demanded, "I was actually about to ask you the exact same thing, Lord Hokage! Why on earth was there no Anbu protection detail stationed around Naruto?!"
Fugaku kept his wording somewhat guarded. Although the entire ninja world practically assumed that Naruto was the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, no one dared to openly state it in public.
Hiruzen's jaw dropped. This matter actually had something to do with Naruto? How could that even be possible?
Realizing the gravity of the situation, the Hokage raised a hand to dismiss the surrounding Anbu. He then pulled Fugaku away to an isolated, quiet corner of the courtyard and urged, "Fugaku, tell me everything. Exactly what happened?"
Fugaku laid out the entire sequence of events to Hiruzen. To conclude, he pressed the Hokage, "Lord Hokage, the Jinchuriki ran amok tonight and brutally butchered members of our Uchiha clan. This entire tragedy occurred because you failed to deploy Anbu to monitor and protect the Jinchuriki. The village absolutely must give the Uchiha clan a proper explanation for this."
Fugaku stood waiting for a response, but by this point, Hiruzen was completely shell-shocked by the information he had just received.
The fake Jinchuriki went on a rampage?! A completely hollow, fake Jinchuriki somehow lost control and slaughtered over twenty elite Uchiha ninjas?!
We only set up this boy as a decoy to fool the hidden villages! Naruto, you took the acting way too damn far!
Faced with Fugaku's aggressive questioning, Hiruzen was entirely at a loss for words. It wasn't as if he could just tell the Uchiha clan leader, "Look, Naruto Uzumaki is just a dummy decoy. It's physically impossible for him to suffer a Tailed Beast rampage, which is why we didn't waste resources putting an Anbu surveillance detail on him."
Even if Hiruzen grabbed a megaphone and shouted that truth across the rooftops of Konoha, absolutely no one would believe him now. If a fake Jinchuriki could launch a bloodbath like this, who was he trying to fool?
Ultimately, he had no choice but to lower his head and concede. He promised Fugaku that the village would provide full financial compensation to the Uchiha clan and guaranteed that strict, around-the-clock protection would be placed on Naruto to ensure he never "lost control" again.
In that deeply humbling moment, Hiruzen found himself desperately missing Danzo Shimura. If Danzo were standing right by his side, his old friend would have already turned the tables on Fugaku. Danzo would have shamelessly slandered the Uchiha, accusing them of trying to kidnap the Jinchuriki and forcibly manipulate the Nine-Tails with their Sharingan, thereby triggering the rampage. Through that malicious framing, the village wouldn't have had to pay the Uchiha a single ryo in compensation.
Unfortunately, Hiruzen wasn't as brazenly thick-skinned as Danzo. Hiruzen preferred to do his dirty work behind closed doors in the shadows; he had never been comfortable being openly shameless in public, so he couldn't bring himself to play such underhanded tactics here.
Having secured a satisfactory resolution, Fugaku turned back to manage the grim cleanup operation at the Police Force Headquarters.
True to his word, Hiruzen immediately dispatched an elite squad of Anbu to monitor Naruto's every single move. From this moment onward, he began treating Naruto with the exact heavy-handed security protocols reserved for an actual, world-threatening Jinchuriki.
Yet, even as he gave the orders, Hiruzen still couldn't wrap his head around it. Why had Naruto run amok? He had personally examined the boy's body multiple times and verified that there wasn't a single trace of Nine-Tails chakra inside him.
Why on earth would an ordinary, three-year-old toddler suddenly transform into a rampaging monster?