Naruto had absolutely no idea about the massive political drama unfolding outside the Hokage Building. At that very moment, he was casually lounging in his apartment, holding a thick text and reading it with intense focus.
The baseline world view of the shinobi world was fundamentally different from his previous life. Even though he possessed the meta-knowledge of his past existence, he understood the importance of adapting to local customs. The technical knowledge and history of this world still had to be systematically memorized. Consequently, whenever he had a spare moment during the week, he would slip into the village library, quietly borrow a stack of reference books, and bring them back to his apartment to study.
By this period, Naruto had already managed to consciously harness a fraction of his legendary Super Saiyan power. As long as he strictly regulated his emotional state, he could utilize his energy without running the risk of losing consciousness and triggering an uncontrollable rampage.
As for the exact parameters of his current power ceiling, he didn't have a concrete number in his head. After all, he hadn't engaged in a formal, high-stakes battle against a trained combatant yet, making his upper limits difficult to accurately calibrate. However, he was completely certain that his baseline strength was more than sufficient to thoroughly dismantle any standard Genin. As for Chunin and Jonin, he hadn't interacted with them in combat yet, so he refrained from making blind assumptions.
As he flipped to the next page of his book, a faint ripple in the air signaled the sudden materialization of a white-haired Anbu operative wearing a porcelain fox mask right in the center of his living room.
The white-haired mask-wearer didn't waste time on empty pleasantries. Straightening his posture, he looked down at the toddler and stated in a flat, businesslike tone, "Come with me. Lord Hokage requests your immediate presence."
With that, the operative stood rigidly in place, silently expecting Naruto to scramble to his feet and fall in line.
To his mild surprise, Naruto completely ignored the summons. He didn't even bother to raise his eyes, casually turning the page of his book with absolute nonchalance.
A flicker of irritation passed beneath the porcelain fox mask. The operative was Kakashi Hatake. He was a former star pupil of the Fourth Hokage, the son of the legendary White Fang of Konoha, and a battle-hardened veteran. Ever since losing both of his teammates in the Third Great Shinobi War and subsequently losing his revered sensei during the Night of the Nine-Tails, Kakashi had systematically buried his emotions beneath an iron facade, transforming himself into an entirely detached tool for the state.
Kakashi knew perfectly well that the young blonde toddler sitting before him was the sole flesh and blood of his late teacher. But in the grand scheme of things, what did that matter? A shinobi's life is strictly dictated by the success of the mission. If Naruto refused to cooperate voluntarily, Kakashi was fully prepared to use physical enforcement to complete the extraction.
Just as his gloved hand reached out to forcefully grab the boy, Naruto gently placed his book flat onto the wooden table. He slid off his chair, stretching his tiny limbs, and said casually, "Alright, alright. Keep your hands to yourself. I'll come along with you."
Kakashi offered a concise nod. Since the target was choosing to cooperate, it was for the best; he harbored no personal desire to get rough with his sensei's orphan.
Following Kakashi through the shadows of the rooftops toward the Hokage Building, Naruto flashed a curious smile and inquired, "So, do you have any idea why Lord Hokage is suddenly so eager to see me?"
Walking a few paces ahead, Kakashi didn't even bother to turn his head. He replied in a thoroughly indifferent, chilly tone, "You'll find out the absolute second we arrive."
Naruto tapped his chin thoughtfully, reviewing his recent itinerary. To be completely honest, he didn't feel like he had overstepped his bounds lately. Aside from thoroughly brutalizing a pack of absolute bratty children, systematically shattering the bones of their toxic parents, knocking around a couple of low-level ninja who tried to corner him, terrorizing the market vendors who refused to sell him groceries, and intimidating the old men who tried to spit on him in the park... he really hadn't done anything out of the ordinary. Why on earth was Hiruzen Sarutobi frantically summoning him over a few minor civic disturbances?
Shaking off the thought for a moment, he focused his gaze on the silent, white-haired guide leaping before him. With that iconic silver hair, the tilted forehead protector, and the specialized Anbu mask, Naruto had identified him the exact second he breached his apartment window.
During this specific era of Konoha's history, Kakashi's personality was at its absolute coldest—infinitely more detached and reclusive than he had been even before joining Minato Namikaze's squad. Naruto recalled from his past-life knowledge that this guy had briefly served a stint inside Danzo's Root faction around this timeline before ultimately returning to the regular Anbu.
Naruto harbored absolutely zero resentment or expectations toward Kakashi Hatake. The man owed him nothing, and they were essentially strangers; at most, Kakashi had simply been a student under his late, biologically absent father. That specific brand of institutional teacher-student dynamic wasn't a sacred, lifelong master-apprentice bond like the one he would historically share with Jiraiya. Expecting a traumatized teenager to systematically abandon his military duties to coddle his late teacher's child was nothing short of a pathetic moral kidnapping.
Naruto himself was a man who operated with a highly flexible sense of morality, meaning he had absolutely no interest in imposing moral obligations on others. In this brutal world, a man could only rely on the strength of his own two hands; depending on the hollow sentimentality of outsiders was a fool's errand.
Before long, Kakashi navigated Naruto through a heavily guarded rear entrance of the Hokage Building, twisting through a labyrinth of concrete corridors before arriving at a secluded subterranean vault. Waiting for them in the dim light was the Shadow Clone of Hiruzen Sarutobi.
The second they crossed the threshold, Hiruzen's clone raised a hand, dismissing Kakashi back to his patrol detail. Once the door clicked shut, the old man quickly pulled Naruto into an isolated corner, his face a mask of grandfatherly anxiety as he explained the raging civilian riot currently paralyzing the plaza outside.
Hiruzen sighed heavily, his voice dripping with synthetic sorrow. "My dear little Naruto... listen to me carefully. I am fully aware that the blame for this tragedy does not rest entirely on your shoulders. However, the political reality of the situation dictates that now is not the time to argue over who is right or who is wrong."
He placed a gentle, patronizing hand on the boy's shoulder, leaning down to lock eyes with him. "Heed your old Grandpa Hokage's advice. I need you to step out onto that balcony, look those villagers in the eyes, bow deeply, and offer a sincere public apology. Once you do that, I will personally authorize a substantial sum from the village's financial reserves to compensate the families and quiet the outrage. If we cooperate, this entire disaster will blow over cleanly. What do you say, little Naruto?"
Naruto sneered deep within his thoughts. Compensate them using the village's financial reserves? You mean utilizing a fraction of the massive inheritance and clan property that your administration systematically swallowed up after my parents gave their lives for this dump?
It was thoroughly comical. A pack of worthless, undisciplined children and their toxic parents had launched a violent assault on a toddler, utterly failed to inflict a single scratch, and had now run crying to the supreme executive office to demand "justice." These pathetic adults couldn't even bother to educate their own spawn, yet they believed they possessed the authority to discipline a Saiyan. Did this old politician honestly believe his hollow grandfather routine could permanently suppress him?
Suppressing his internal disgust, Naruto looked up at Hiruzen, his face a flawless mask of childish compliance. "Don't worry about a thing, Lord Hokage! I completely understand. I will ensure this entire matter is resolved beautifully for you, and I promise your administration won't suffer a single ounce of political damage!"
Hiruzen stroked Naruto's blonde hair with immense satisfaction, a warm glow of relief washing over his chest. This child truly is as unnaturally intelligent, perceptive, and cooperative as his father, Minato.
As the clone processed the boy's compliance, Hiruzen's central consciousness began formulating his long-term strategic plans for the asset. Once this riot is settled, it might be the perfect catalyst to permanently induct Naruto into the black ops division for specialized cultivation. I can assign my eldest son, Shinnosuke Sarutobi, to serve as his personal master. Through that dynamic, the boy's loyalty will be completely anchored to the Sarutobi bloodline. In the future, when Shinnosuke inherits the mantle of Hokage, Naruto will serve as the sharpest, most unyielding blade in his executive arsenal.
Amused by his own flawless political calculations, the Hokage manually dispelled the Shadow Clone.
Up on the primary balcony overlooking the town square, the true physical body of Hiruzen Sarutobi instantly absorbed the clone's memories. A subtle, triumphant grin twitched across the corners of his mouth.
A moment later, the heavy oak doors of the balcony swung open, and Naruto Uzumaki stepped out into the blinding sunlight, a smooth, unreadable smile playing across his lips as he marched toward the edge of the railing, facing the thousands of gathered civilians.
The moment the boy's silhouette materialized, the temporarily placated mob erupted into an absolute frenzy of pure vitriol. Shrill screams, curses, and slurs rained down upon the balcony, several radical ringleaders visibly vibrating with the desire to leap over the barricades and tear the "Demon Fox" to bloody shreds.
Seeing the volatile shift in public opinion, Hiruzen instinctively stepped forward, opening his mouth to deliver his prepared diplomatic speech to smooth over the crowd. But before a single syllable could leave his throat, Naruto's expression abruptly inverted into a mask of pure, suffocating malice.
Naruto leaned over the iron railing, his voice channeling a dense spike of raw pressure that thundered across the entire open plaza: "All of you worthless bastards shut your pathetic mouths right now! If a single one of you dares to utter another word against me, I will personally reach down your throats and tear your jawbones clean off your faces!"
The entire plaza plunged into an instant, dead silence.
The roaring civilians, who had been bursting with revolutionary arrogance a millisecond prior, staggered backward, their eyes frantically darting away the exact instant Naruto's cold glare swept across the crowd. It was a pathetic display. For all their loud, public posturing, these civilian sheep were nothing but empty husks; the absolute second they were confronted by an entity that refused to play by their rules, their fragile courage shattered into dust.
Up on the balcony, Hiruzen Sarutobi's face turned an apocalyptic shade of crimson. His veins pulsed against his temples. Hadn't the boy explicitly promised his clone that he would deliver a submissive public apology? What on earth was this arrogant, borderline dictatorial display?
Furthermore, Naruto's blatant insubordination in a public forum was an absolute, direct insult to the supreme majesty of the Hokage office. Standing directly beside the toddler, Hiruzen dropped his paternal facade, his face darkening into an absolute mask of authority as he barked, "Naruto! How dare you display such unmitigated rudeness in my presence! Lower your head this instant and—"
Naruto didn't even bother to let him finish, snapping his head around to cut the Hokage off with a savage sneer: "You decrepit old fossil, shut your useless mouth and sit your ass down! This dispute has absolutely nothing to do with your administration. Keep your nose out of my business, stand quietly in the corner, and listen—unless you're actively begging to be humiliated in front of your own taxpayers!"
Hiruzen stood utterly paralyzed, his mind completely blanking out under the sheer audacity of the insult. In his entire storied life, even during his childhood under the strict, legendary tutelage of the First and Second Hokage, absolutely no one had ever dared to address him with such profound, unbridled disrespect. He stood frozen on the balcony, his pipe trembling between his fingers, entirely at a loss for words.
Behind him, the elite Anbu guards broke out into a cold sweat, their hands instinctively dropping to the hilts of their ninjato, preparing to execute the toddler for high treason. But before they could draw an inch of steel, Hiruzen raised a rigid, trembling hand, signaling them to hold their positions. Despite his mounting fury, his political mind was frantically weighing the strategic fallout of a public execution amidst a civilian riot.
Naruto didn't grant any of them a single microsecond to recover their wits. He whipped his body back toward the silent, trembling crowd below, extending a finger to point directly at the core group of hospitalized parents.
"You sniveling hypocrites!" Naruto roared, his voice dripping with pure, unadulterated disdain. "You all marched up to this building screaming bloody murder because I thrashed your useless offspring. But let me ask you a simple question: when your worthless, parasitic children were actively gathering jagged stones to pelt at a defenseless toddler, where exactly was your vaunted sense of justice then?!"
"You refuse to educate your own rotten spawn, yet you possess the audacity to come here and preach to me? Are you people even worthy?!" Naruto's voice thundered, slicing through the heavy silence of the plaza.
He leaned further over the concrete balustrade, his slitted gaze locking onto the trembling crowd. "Let me make this crystal clear to every single one of you: march your pathetic asses back home and teach your children some damn manners. Because if I ever catch them crawling out of their holes to bully someone again, I will break them. I'll beat them the first time I see them, I'll beat them ten times harder the next, and if you adults try to step in, I will happily beat you right along with them. Do you understand me?!"
As the final words tore from his throat, a sharp, localized spike of murderous intent rippled outward from Naruto's tiny frame. Objectively speaking, this aura was incredibly weak—any hardened Anbu operative standing on the balcony could casually manifest a killing intent ten times denser and heavier than the boy's.
Yet, when that faint, razor-sharp pressure washed over the civilian population, it struck them with the force of an iron mallet. The thousands of gathered Konoha villagers were instantly frozen into a suffocating, terrified silence. One by one, their heads dropped low, their lips trembling violently as they stood paralyzed, completely lacking the vocabulary to alleviate their profound psychological humiliation.
The oppressive silence stretched for what felt like an eternity. Finally, one of the civilian fathers who had been screaming for a blood debt just minutes prior swallowed hard, clearing his dry throat.
"U-Um... it's getting late. I need to head back and cook dinner for my kid," he muttered in a pathetic, shaky whisper. Without waiting for a response, he pivoted on his heel and vanished down a side street in a desperate puff of smoke.
Seeing the primary ringleader break formation, the psychological dam collapsed. The remaining villagers immediately followed suit, muttering frantic, incoherent excuses under their breath as they fractured in all directions, scattering away like a ruined market stall in a downpour.
Watching the massive, revolutionary mob dissolve into absolutely nothing in a matter of seconds, Naruto casually turned back around and shrugged nonchalantly at the supreme leader of the village. "See that, Lord Hokage? Didn't I explicitly promise your clone that I could resolve this little civic disturbance beautifully? Tell me plain and simple: was that execution not absolutely magnificent?"
He didn't even wait for the old man to recover his speech. "If there's nothing else on your administrative agenda, I'm heading back to my apartment to finish my reading."
With that, Naruto turned on his heel and strolled off the balcony, marching down the grand corridors of the Hokage Building with a smug, arrogant swagger that practically screamed he didn't care if he had a single living relative left on earth. As he eventually exited the front doors and walked down the main avenues of Konoha, the passing citizens frantically averted their eyes, physically recoiling away from his path out of pure, unadulterated terror that the "Demon Fox" might randomly snap and beat them into a hospital bed next.
Left standing on the windy balcony, staring at the empty space where the child had just been, the Third Hokage felt an overwhelming exhaustion settle into his ancient bones. He stood in absolute silence, completely at a loss for words. Finally, he let out a long, defeated sigh, turning his head to issue a sharp directive to the Anbu detail assigned to shadow the boy.
"Double the surveillance grid," Hiruzen commanded grimly. "If any civilian elements try to corner the child in the future, disperse the crowd immediately. Do not grant him a single opportunity to incite a public spectacle ever again."
Retreating from the balcony, Hiruzen dragged his tired limbs back into his primary office. The moment the heavy oak doors swung shut, his eyes narrowed into a dark scowl. Standing directly in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, bathed in the afternoon shadows, was Danzo Shimura.
The exact millisecond Hiruzen recalled how this treacherous old vulture had deliberately hidden the intelligence regarding the Nine-Tails' resurrection to claim the prize for himself, a volcano of absolute fury erupted within his chest.
He opened his mouth, fully prepared to unleash an executive torrent of rage upon his old teammate—but before a single syllable could pass his lips, Danzo spoke first, his cold voice cutting through the tension.
"That little brat... is a flawless candidate for the Foundation."
Danzo didn't even bother to turn around, staring out at the village streets below. "Ruthless, thick-skinned, entirely detached from emotional relations, and unburdened by a single moral scruple. He possesses a complete and total disregard for the opinions of the masses. He is, by every metric of the word, the perfect template for a Root operative."
Turning his head slightly, the old vulture locked his single exposed eye onto the Hokage. "Hiruzen... before all of this chaos transpired, you explicitly promised that you would eventually hand the boy over to my custody. Do those executive words still carry weight?"
Danzo raised his uncovered left hand, his voice dipping into a tone of absolute certainty. "I give you my solemn guarantee: if you release him into my sector tomorrow, I will personally forge that child into the sharpest, most unyielding weapon Konoha has ever seen."
Hiruzen fell into a deep, calculating silence.
Just a few hours prior, his overarching strategic vision had been to systematically groom Naruto to serve as the absolute right-hand blade for his eldest son, Shinnosuke Sarutobi, thereby anchoring the weapon to his family's lineage. But after witnessing Naruto's unbridled, borderline dictatorial arrogance on the balcony, he realized that specific plan was an administrative pipe dream. The boy's personality was far too volatile to be managed by a conventional mentor.
He cast a cold, appraising glance over Danzo. In the grand scheme of things, transferring the asset to the Foundation wasn't a terrible alternative. If anyone in this village possessed the brutal, dehumanizing methodology required to permanently erase Naruto's insubordinate ego and break him into a compliant tool, it was Danzo.
In reality, Hiruzen was currently operating under a massive, catastrophic miscalculation regarding Naruto's true combat ceiling.
In the Hokage's mind, Naruto's raw power was certainly formidable for a toddler, but his baseline metrics placed him roughly around the tier of an Elite Jonin—a respectable asset, but a force that fell infinitely short of the existential, catastrophic threat of a true Tailed Beast.
The analytical yardstick Hiruzen had utilized to establish this baseline was Uchiha Fugaku. When the clan leader had initially debriefed him regarding their clash at the precinct, Fugaku had stated that Naruto's rampaging physical power was roughly on par with his own operational capacity. Because Hiruzen believed Fugaku was merely a highly skilled, standard Elite Jonin, he naturally deduced that Naruto's upper limit capped out at that exact level.
What the aging Hokage never could have anticipated was that Uchiha Fugaku had been running a massive deception of his own. The clan leader wasn't a standard Jonin at all—he was a fully realized, master-level Kage-tier powerhouse hiding his true depth from the administration. Furthermore, during that specific precinct clash, Naruto had only briefly tapped into the shallowest layer of his Super Saiyan state before consciously pulling himself back, meaning he hadn't displayed even a fraction of his true biological capability.
Blinded by this massive intelligence failure, Hiruzen Sarutobi genuinely believed that while the boy was an unusual anomaly, his power parameters were safely manageable. There was absolutely zero executive risk in transferring a mid-tier asset into the hands of the Foundation.
Steeling his expression, Hiruzen offered a cold, final nod of approval.
"Very well, Danzo. Tomorrow morning, I will officially authorize the transport detail to deliver the boy into the lower sectors of the Root. But let me make one thing absolutely clear: do not play games with my scheduling like you did last time. Do not fail me."