The heavy iron door groaned as Hiruzen Sarutobi stepped forward, his long robes sweeping silently against the damp stone floor.
"Stand down, Cat," Hiruzen said quietly, his voice carrying the calm authority of a man accustomed to being obeyed. "Wait outside the corridor. All of you."
"Lord Hokage—" the kneeling guard began, hesitating.
"Outside."
The three ANBU vanished in a silent flicker of shunshin, leaving only the Third Hokage alone with the nine-year-old prisoner.
Hiruzen pulled a small wooden stool from the corner of the room, set it down beside the boy, and sat with a soft sigh. He rested his forearms on his knees, looking less like the Hokage and more like an old man settling into a chair at the end of a very long day.
He studied the child carefully. Kisuke was seated on the floor, his back pressed against the cold stone wall, his wrists and ankles bound in heavy iron cuffs laced with glowing blue sealing formulas. His small frame was dwarfed by the heavy chains, but his dark eyes were bright, watchful, and utterly devoid of fear. Replaced instead by a sharp, prickling hostility.
"You're actually him," Kisuke muttered, squirming slightly against the wall to relieve the pressure on his lower back. "The old guy from the portraits. Wow. I gotta say, the real thing has a lot more wrinkles."
Hiruzen let out a quiet chuckle, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "So I've been told. And you are Uzumaki Kisuke."
"That's me. Kisuke the Dangerous," the boy said, rattling his wrist bindings against the stone with a dull clang. "Master of getting jumped in the woods by grown men wearing animal masks. Seriously, is this really necessary? I'm nine. Do you guys put four-year-olds in chakra-draining straitjackets, or do you save the iron fetters for when they start losing their baby teeth?"
"When a nine-year-old evades a triple-team capture attempt from veteran operatives and carries enough chakra to alarm every sensor who examined him, precaution becomes a matter of security, Kisuke-kun," Hiruzen replied mildly.
"I evaded them because three grown men tried to grab me from behind!" Kisuke snapped, his chest heaving, though his eyes never left the Hokage. "One put a kunai to my throat, another slapped a sleep jutsu on my brain, and now I'm chained to a wall in a basement! If this is how Konoha welcomes guests, I'd hate to see how you treat people you actually dislike."
"You were not brought here as a guest, Kisuke-kun. You were brought here as an unidentified variable," Hiruzen said softly. "Tell me where you were born, who raised you, and why an unregistered Uzumaki was living completely unmonitored."
Kisuke leaned his head back against the stone with an exaggerated groan. "Fine. Examine the dangerous criminal. My name is Kisuke. I'm nine. I don't know where I was born. I barely remember anything before Grandpa found me. I was living in a run-down hut deep in the Land of Fire, far from any road sensible people used, because I liked having a roof that didn't leak when it rained."
"And who raised you?" Hiruzen pressed gently. "Who taught you to shape your chakra?"
Kisuke's banter faltered. His jaw tightened, the playful, obnoxious bravado slipping just enough to reveal the raw, jagged edge beneath.
"An old man," Kisuke said, his voice dropping into a quiet, flat cadence. "Just an old guy."
"Did this old man have a name? A village affiliation?"
"If he did, he didn't give it to me, and I didn't care enough to ask," Kisuke lied, his eyes locking onto Hiruzen's with stubborn defiance. "He was a deserter. An old Konoha shinobi who ran away from a war years ago because he was terrified of dying. He abandoned his team, panicked, and spent the rest of his life hiding in the dirt."
Hiruzen's eyes narrowed slightly. "A deserter?"
"Yeah. A coward," Kisuke gritted out, his knuckles turning white. "He didn't have a secret jutsu scroll. He didn't have a stolen mountain of treasure or some grand master plan to destroy the world. He was just a scared old guy who found a starving red-haired kid wandering too close to his land four years ago and decided not to leave him there."
"And your chakra?" Hiruzen asked quietly. "Did he train you?"
"Not really," Kisuke muttered, glaring down at his knees. "He showed me just enough so I wouldn't blow holes in dinner. Most of the rest I figured out myself."
Hiruzen remained silent, listening not just to the boy's words, but to the crack in his voice. He had spent decades interviewing spies, assassins, and rogue shinobi. Spies spoke in rehearsed scripts designed to divert suspicion.
Kisuke wasn't giving a script. He was bleeding truth wrapped in defensive hostility. He was a deeply grieving, fiercely independent child whose very first interaction with the Leaf Village was being treated like an invasive threat.
'Keep treating him like an enemy,' Hiruzen thought heavily, 'and eventually he may start acting like one.'
"How did he die?" Hiruzen asked softly.
"He was sick," Kisuke muttered, looking away toward the iron bars. "Really sick. He died earlier today. I buried him behind the hut, and then your team showed up."
"Minato, Kushina, and Shikaku," Hiruzen corrected.
"Right. The golden boy, the red-haired lunatic who threatened to hit me because apparently tomatoes are a sensitive topic, and the guy who looks like he hasn't slept since the First Shinobi War," Kisuke snorted, forcing the sarcasm back into his tone like armor. "They showed up, argued me into honoring Grandpa's last wish to come to Konoha, and then your masked welcoming committee jumped us halfway back."
Hiruzen reached into his robe, pulled out a small pipe, and lit it with a striking match. He took a slow drag, letting the sweet smoke drift into the damp air of the cell.
"You possess a staggeringly vast quantity of chakra, Kisuke-kun," Hiruzen said through the gray haze. "And your sensory awareness is exceptional. An untrained child does not simply detect ANBU operatives before they strike."
"I sense chakra," Kisuke retorted, squirming against his bindings. "People, movement, bad intentions. It's like having a giant radar dish stuck in my skull, except the radar gives me headaches! You think I want to feel every depressing, tense emotion from those masked guys standing in the hallway right now?"
Hiruzen's pipe paused halfway to his mouth. 'Instinctive sensory talent of extraordinary range,' he recognized. 'And completely unguided.'
The boy carried tremendous potential, a direct Uzumaki bloodline, and a personal connection to Kushina. To treat him as an enemy prisoner was a disastrous mistake.
"Kisuke-kun," Hiruzen said, leaning forward slightly, his tone shifting into something warm and measured. "I apologize for the severity of your containment. The world outside is at war, and Konoha must be cautious. But you are not here to be punished. Until we establish your background fully, I intend to see that you are treated as a child under Konoha's protection."
Kisuke stared at him, his dark eyes narrowing into suspicious, distrustful slits. "Yeah, right. Protection comes with iron cuffs and stone floors. I shudder to think what you give your actual enemies."
Before Hiruzen could answer, a loud, echoing CRACK reverberated down the stone corridor outside the holding cell.
The iron bars shuddered as a heavy muffled thud rattled the sub-basement walls, followed immediately by the startled, raised voices of the ANBU guards.
"Kushina-sama! You cannot enter! The Hokage strictly ordered—"
"Get your hands off me, ya know!" a furious female voice roared through the heavy door. "He's nine years old! You put chakra-suppression cuffs on him!? Move out of my way before I tear this whole floor apart!"
Another heavy thud hit the corridor door, accompanied by the frantic scraping of boots across stone.
Inside the cell, Kisuke blinked, looking up at the dust flakes raining down from the ceiling. He looked back at the Third Hokage, who was currently rubbing his temples with a long, heavy sigh.
"So," Kisuke said, a slow, ridiculously sarcastic grin spreading across his face as he rattled his iron chains. "Is that the warm protection I was supposed to be waiting for?"