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Dinner was quiet, just the way Inoichi Yamanaka liked it. His daughter, Ino Yamanaka, sat across from him, a fair skinned teen with average height, her long platinum blonde hair framing the right side of her face. Her green eyes were glued to one of those cheesy romance novels she was always reading, and he tried to ignore the irritation building up as she skimmed through the pages rather than her food.
Today, Inoichi had made sure to include a few high calorie dishes. Things she wouldn't notice were meant to keep her from getting too skinny with that damn diet of hers. He knew she wouldn't appreciate the extra calories, but as her father, he had to make sure she stayed healthy enough to be a proper shinobi in the field.
"Ino chan, let's try something different today. Imagine you're walking through a dense forest. As you walk deeper, you come across a house. It looks familiar, but you've never seen it before. You step inside. What do you see?"
Ino's mind snapped to attention as she considered the question. Her father always made sure to ask her one psychological question every night before bed to keep her mind sharp.
A ninja's greatest weapon was their mind, after all.
Ino chewed thoughtfully on her food. "The house is cozy, old but well kept. There's a warm fireplace and the walls are lined with books." She paused, a slow smile spreading across her face. "And obviously my dream guy would be waiting for me there, tall and handsome."
"This is about Sasuke again, huh?"
"Of course! He'd be there, probably with a cup of tea already made for me. It's romantic."
Inoichi couldn't fault her for this, not yet anyway.
She was a young girl at the start of puberty.
Let her have her fantasies.
The crush was innocent enough, but Ino was now a genin. Life as a shinobi was anything but a romantic novel. Maybe that's why Inoichi let her indulge in these little daydreams. For now, her innocence was fleeting, and he knew it would be stripped away in time.
But even as he told himself that, his gaze drifted toward the picture of her mother, his late wife, who had died during the Kyuubi attack.
Don't worry, my love, he thought. As long as I'm breathing, nothing will harm our daughter. I just have to make sure that she is ready for the real world.
"Interesting answer. You know, how you interpret that house reveals a lot about how you see your inner self."
"My inner self?"
"The house represents your subconscious mind. What you see inside is a reflection of how you view yourself, your strengths, comfort zones, and even your desires."
"So, you're saying my mind is a cozy cabin?"
Inoichi smiled. "More or less. It suggests you value comfort, warmth, and intellect. But the fact that you brought your dream guy into the picture indicates something else."
Ino blushed slightly. "What does it mean?"
"It means that, subconsciously, you believe someone like Sasuke is important to completing your vision of happiness," Inoichi explained. "It's natural to want connection, Ino, but you should also be mindful that relying too much on others to create your inner peace can lead to disappointment."
She sat quietly for a moment, processing the information. Then, with a sly smile, she said, "Well, Sasuke can be part of my cozy cabin if he wants. I'm not kicking him out."
"Just don't let your cabin rely on someone else's presence. Make sure it stands on its own, with or without him."
"Yeah, yeah, I know."
Suddenly, Inoichi was on guard as an ANBU agent appeared before them. "The Hokage has requested a meeting, Inoichi sama."
Inoichi nodded, his mask already switching from father to shinobi.
"Dad, can you maybe bribe the Hokage to make sure I end up on Sasuke's team?!"
"I'll try, my lemon," Inoichi said, using the nickname she pretended to hate. She stuck her tongue out at him, a playful glint in her eyes.
"Remember the routine: all leftovers go in the fridge, and make sure Choji gets them tomorrow."
"Especially the seaweed chips!"
"Those are for you."
"Fine… whatever."
Inoichi smiled softly at the exchange, savoring the moment. "Goodbye."
"Just go already!" Ino said, waving him off like he was an embarrassment.
Inoichi glanced at the ANBU agent, and with a final nod to his daughter, the two of them vanished with a body flicker.
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The moment Inoichi stepped into the Hokage's office, he knew something was wrong. Hiruzen looked more stressed than Inoichi had ever seen him. It was as if the announcement of the Fourth Shinobi World War had dropped on his desk.
A knot formed in Inoichi's stomach.
Please, anything but that.
The thought of war sent a chill down his spine. Not only did he fear war himself, but he could not bear the thought of his daughter experiencing the horrors that came with it.
"Hokage-sama," Inoichi greeted, his voice steady, yet his mind was racing through worst case scenarios.
Hiruzen seemed to sense his growing unease and offered Inoichi his smoking pipe.
"Thank you, Hokage-sama, but I'd like to live long enough to see my daughter marry a bastard that doesn't deserve her," Inoichi said with a small smile, though the humor did little to settle the tension gnawing at him.
"Don't worry, Inoichi. I need your mind."
My mind?
Inoichi narrowed his focus on those words. If Hiruzen needed strategic advice, he would have called Shikaku. The Nara clan head was a genius when it came to battle plans and strategy.
But this was not about strategy. Hiruzen needed him for psychological insight.
"What can I do for you?"
"It's Naruto."
Inoichi's mind slammed to a halt.
Naruto?
Uzumaki Naruto? The prankster of Konoha? The orphaned son of the Fourth Hokage? The current container for the Kyuubi no Yoko, the very being that had ravaged their village twelve years ago and killed his wife?
Inoichi had never blamed the boy for what happened. He knew the difference between Naruto and the Kyuubi. But the very idea of the Kyuubi was enough to make him take this seriously.
His mind raced through everything he knew about Naruto.
From the rumors around the village to the comments Ino had made about him.
"Is this about his failed graduation?"
Perhaps Naruto was angry about failing, or maybe he had a violent outburst. It was not impossible that the Kyuubi's chakra had been released in a moment of anger. The boy dreamed of becoming Hokage, and Inoichi could imagine the frustration building inside him after failing to become a genin.
"If only it were that simple," Hiruzen said, rubbing his head before revealing everything that had happened with Naruto.
Inoichi listened quietly as he tried very hard to ignore the seemingly impossible things Naruto could suddenly do. Any shinobi worth their salt would analyze these abilities. But Inoichi's mind went to the boy.
"What do you know about Uzumaki Naruto?"
Hiruzen found the question odd at first. Then he remembered who was asking it, and it became another issue entirely.
He answered carefully.
"What do you know about Uzumaki Naruto personally?"
The guilt arrived quietly, the way it always did when it was deserved. Hiruzen answered what he could. The boy had a fondness for ramen. A penchant for pranks. He was loud, boisterous, and wanted nothing more than to become Hokage.
"What else?"
What else?
Well...
That is...
The Third Hokage of Konoha felt his lips press into a thin, sad line.
That was, as a matter of fact, all he knew.
Had this been anyone other than Yamanaka Inoichi, Hiruzen might have dismissed the line of questioning as paranoia, or worse, some hidden bias against the boy. But Inoichi had known, worked, and fought beside Minato.
Beyond that, Inoichi had known Kushina. Had known her well enough that certain things didn't need to be said out loud. Whatever complicated feelings a younger Inoichi had quietly carried for Kushina Uzumaki, they had never translated into anything, and time had a way of filing those edges down. But they had left the particular tenderness a person holds for someone they once wanted to protect and never got the chance to.
He would not hold the sins of this village against her son.
"I do not see how this relates to our current problem, Inoichi."
"The problem, Hokage-sama, is that we are human beings. Not one dimensional cardboard cutouts." Inoichi's voice was measured. "It is impossible for a person to have only three features that make him memorable. Only three aspects to his personality and character."
He shook his head slowly.
"To put this into perspective. What does Uzumaki Naruto do when he is neither pranking people, nor eating ramen, nor declaring his intention to steal your hat? Where does he go? How does he spend his time when he is not performing for an audience? What does he do at the end of a long and exhausting day, when there is no one left to perform for?"
The answers to all three questions were equally unknown.
The weight of that settled over Hiruzen slowly, the way a verdict does. He had watched over this boy. Had told himself that watching was enough. Had convinced himself that proximity was the same as presence.
It wasn't.
"There is a concept that we use in psychological evaluation. We call it the social self. It is the version of a person that exists in relation to others. The face that forms in response to how the world treats you, what it rewards, punishes, and refuses to acknowledge entirely."
He paused.
"When a child learns that who they are is not wanted, they do one of two things. They collapse inward and disappear entirely. Or they build a version of themselves that is loud enough to be noticed, simple enough to be understood, and harmless enough to be tolerated." Inoichi's voice didn't rise, but something in it sharpened. "Naruto chose the second. He found the things that got a reaction, and he repeated them. Because any response, even a negative one, was proof that he existed."
Hiruzen said nothing.
"The boy we knew was not wearing a mask. That implies awareness, calculation, and sustained effort over time. No child maintains that for twelve years without cracks slipping through."
Inoichi's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes did.
"And that is where it becomes complicated. Because that kind of construction works both ways. It keeps the world out. But it also keeps the person in. Over time, even they begin to lose track of where the performance ends and the self begins. The loud boy stops being something Naruto chose to be. He becomes the only Naruto that Naruto himself knows how to access."
He let that settle for a moment before continuing.
"This is why what you saw tonight concerns me far more than any jutsu." Inoichi's gaze was steady. "Whatever Naruto experienced out there, it reached past years of layered reflex and pulled someone else to the surface." He paused. "In psychology, we call this a dissociative break. When the constructed self can no longer contain what is underneath it, the pressure finds another way out."
Hiruzen's jaw tightened.
"We have no idea what Uzumaki Naruto has been through. We have no idea who or what shaped that part of him." Inoichi's voice was quiet, but the weight behind it was not. "And that, Hokage-sama, is the real problem. Not the jutsu, the weapons, or the killer intent. The problem is that somewhere, in the life of a child this village was supposed to protect, someone reached him before we did. And whoever it was, it left marks we are only now beginning to see."
The office was very quiet.
His age was rapidly catching up to him. He knew and believed that he had tried to do his best for not only the village, but also for the son of his successor.
Everyone Minato knew that was capable of taking care of Naruto was not available. Kakashi Hatake was a mess, psychologically speaking. After the loss of his teammates, he retreated into ANBU and took only the toughest of missions of the S rank caliber, and it was clear that he possessed some sort of death wish.
He clearly could not leave the upbringing of a child to him.
Jiraiya was far too busy maintaining Konoha's spy networks, or at least, as his job did include him travelling from place to place drinking in bars and taverns and peeping on women in hot springs. Of course, even if he was not basically a wanderer, the Third could not in good conscience leave Jiraiya all alone to raise a child.
Tsunade would have been perfect, but she was now an alcoholic gambling addict lost to her own grief, and he would not want her raising an impressionable young child either.
Mikoto Uchiha had once offered, but the clan politics were against such a thing. As the Uchiha clan had just been suspected of the ones masterminding the Kyuubi's attack in the first place, it would be tremendously bad if one of their own had then decided to adopt the boy.
The Hyuga were out of the question, and part of his village they might be, but Hiruzen had never appreciated or favored a clan that could and would so callously brand their own family members as slaves in the name of preserving and protecting a bloodline. Such a place was not where he wanted Naruto to grow up, believing that such practices were the norm.
The Aburame once again offered, but it was likewise impossible as at the time, the Kyuubi's chakra and presence made their Kikaichu bugs scared and wary. And of course, there was the issue of Naruto eventually growing up to feel like an outsider, as he vastly contrasted the majority of the Aburame.
The ideal clans would have either been the Nara, the Yamanaka, the Akimichi, or the Inuzuka.
However, there was once again the question of allowing a single clan that much power. It was not viewed as a clan attempting to train and foster the son of their hero. Rather, as a clan potentially raising and shifting the loyalty of a Jinchuriki away from the village and into their own hands.
And so Naruto had grown up unloved and uncared for, and Hiruzen had told himself that watching from a distance was the same as protecting him.
It wasn't.
"Hokage-sama?"
He surfaced from his deep thoughts slowly. "Forgive me."
"What should we do?"
"Observe him for now," Inoichi said. "If we move too quickly or too obviously, we risk pushing him further away than he already is. But there is something more important than understanding his abilities right now."
"Oh?"
"We need to give him a reason to stay." Inoichi's voice was quiet but certain. "Not the Will of Fire. Not duty or obligation or the memory of his parents. Something that belongs to him and not to this village's idea of what he should be." He met Hiruzen's eyes. "Konoha failed that boy for years. If we want him to stand with us, we have to earn it. And we have to start now, before whatever is happening to him pulls him somewhere we cannot follow."
Hiruzen nodded slowly.
"And the abilities themselves? We still don't understand where they came from."
"No, we don't."
Hiruzen's mouth curved faintly, tired humor finding its way through. "It would all be considerably simpler if Naruto weren't the Kyuubi's Jinchuriki. Under normal circumstances, I'd authorize your department to conduct a memory reading on a suspect and have answers before morning."
"Yes. Unfortunately, sending a Yamanaka into the mindscape of a child housing the Nine Tailed Fox is considerably above the threshold of acceptable risk."
"Indeed. So we observe, plan, and find another way in."
"What did you have in mind, Hokage-sama?"
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Author's Note I hope you guys enjoyed what I've set up so far.
Now let's get into a short Q and A section where I answer some questions I think you might have, clear up a bit of Dark Souls lore, and explain some of my creative decisions.
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Q. Why is Ino's mother dead? Isn't she alive in canon?
Well, in canon she's barely a character. Making her dead in this story adds more weight to Inoichi's character. He's a single dad dealing with the grief of losing his wife, running T and I, and raising his daughter, who he still has a strong bond with. Without even much explanation, it gives him a lot more depth than canon ever did.
Wouldn't you agree?
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That's It… For Now.
I want to thank you all for taking the time to read, comment, and follow along with this story. Your feedback means more than you know, and it helps push me to make each chapter bigger, sharper, and more true to the worlds of Naruto and Dark Souls.
Until next time,
Praise the Sun.
\-Adam-/