"Tch… such a massive amount left over."
Namikaze Raimon stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the mountain-sized remains of Manda draped over the Konoha foothills. A profound sense of culinary wastefulness gnawed at him. This was sage-level ingredient! Top-tier, chakra-infused protein! To let it spoil was an insult to the very concept of cooking.
"If only I had a walk-in freezer the size of a training ground…" he mused aloud, imagining a pristine, frozen locker where he could store this bounty until his own eventual, proper resurrection. The fantasy was beautiful. The reality was a logistical nightmare.
And then there was the head. The colossal, horned skull of the great serpent, larger than a three-story mansion. The centerpiece for his ultimate snake-wine infusion. "What kind of vat do you even use for something this big? You'd need a modified water tower!"
"A giant freezer… a titanic brewing barrel…" He briefly considered just teleporting it all to some remote, frozen tundra in the far north. But the risk! What if some wandering ninja or opportunistic summon beast stumbled upon it? The very thought of someone else defiling his prize with inferior culinary skills made him shudder. Unthinkable.
"Ice… I need a massive, permanent source of ice…" His mind, ever resourceful, made the connection. "Ah! Zabuza's little sidekick!" The boy with the Hyōton, the Ice Release Kekkei Genkai, who had appeared during the Wave mission—Haku. A perfect, walking refrigeration unit.
The problem was location. He had no idea where Momochi Zabuza and Haku were buried. To find their graves, he'd likely need Kakashi, who was still languishing in the Konoha hospital. The copy-nin had finally woken from the coma induced by Uchiha Itachi's Tsukuyomi over twenty days ago, but his mind was still fragile, his thoughts scattered like leaves in a storm. Not exactly reliable for grave-hunting.
A more immediate solution presented itself. He turned to Orochimaru, who was still meticulously picking the last morsels of grilled Manda from a skewer with his long tongue.
"Orochimaru. Do you still have the materials on hand for the Edo Tensei?"
Orochimaru paused, his golden eyes glinting with intellectual curiosity. "Of course. The basic preparations are always maintained. Who is it you wish to return to this world?"
"Hmm… a few, actually."
"A few?" Orochimaru's lips curved into a smug, superior smile. He patted his chest—or rather, the chest of his current vessel. "A 'few' is child's play. If I so desired, I could raise you legions. Dozens of armies await my call."
"Yes, yes, you're amazing, you're incredible," Raimon droned, utterly unimpressed by the posturing. He cut to the chase. "What about Minato and Kushina? Are their souls… retrievable?"
The smugness vanished from Orochimaru's face instantly.
"…Uhm." He was rendered speechless. Why must he immediately present the most vexing theoretical problem? His attempt to Edo Tensei the Sandaime, Sarutobi Hiruzen, had failed spectacularly due to the Shinigami's seal. Yondaime's soul was similarly locked away. "That… presents a unique complication."
"Fine, I'll explain the workaround to you later," Raimon said, already planning to offload the 'Shinigami mask' gambit from the original timeline onto the snake sannin's capable shoulders. "But first, we need ice. The meat will spoil. We're reviving Haku."
"Orochimaru… Nawaki…" Tsunade's voice was soft, laced with a vulnerability she rarely showed. She looked at her former teammate with a mix of hope and old grief.
Orochimaru recovered his composure, adopting a haughty tone. "Hmph. Senju Nawaki? I could reincarnate that boy now if I wished. But the Edo Tensei as it stands is… crude. I believe it can be perfected further."
In truth, he'd had the capability for years but had never seen a reason to act on it. Some experiments were more interesting in theory.
"See, Tsunade-hime? Leave it to him," Raimon said, wrapping his arms around Tsunade from behind in a comforting—and slightly possessive—hug.
"Mmm…" Tsunade nodded, a blush creeping up her neck. They weren't exactly alone, and Raimon's hands had settled with familiar ease on her hips. It was… scandalous. And utterly typical of him.
In the end, Orochimaru was assigned to his research lab, and the monumental pile of documents in the Hokage's office remained squarely in Jiraiya's territory.
"I've truly had enough!" Jiraiya lamented, glaring at his paperwork. Even the delicious aftertaste of Manda meat had turned to ashes in his mouth.
***
The Next Day, Hokage's Office.
A scene of profound injustice unfolded. Tsunade sat comfortably on Raimon's lap, her head resting on his shoulder as they watched—no, supervised—Jiraiya toiling away at the Hokage's desk, buried under scrolls and ledgers.
"You two! Couldn't you at least pretend to look at some documents?!" Jiraiya snapped, a vein throbbing on his forehead. The endless overtime, the sheer volume of bureaucratic nonsense… it was extinguishing his creative spark! "I'm working overtime every single day! At this rate, I should be Hokage!"
He glared at the cozy couple, the very picture of domestic bliss amidst his administrative hellscape. A murderous intent, faint but genuine, flickered in his heart.
"Hmm?" Raimon's head tilted, a mischievous glint in his Byakugan eyes. "You want to be Hokage? Alright then! You said it yourself!"
"Cough! Cough-cough!" Jiraiya choked on his own spit, the fantasy colliding with harsh reality. If he were Hokage, caught sneaking into bathhouses for 'research material'… Tsunade wouldn't just break his legs. She'd crack his skull open and remove the walnut-sized brain he used for such ideas. "M-Misheard! You misheard me entirely!"
"Alright, alright, calm down," Raimon relented, taking pity on the aging pervert. Jiraiya did look like he was on the verge of a paperwork-induced breakdown. "I'll give you a vacation. A mission outside the village."
Jiraiya's eyes instantly shone with the light of a thousand hot springs. "R-Really?!" He'd almost forgotten the feel of a notebook in his hand, the sound of surprised feminine yelps…
"Really. I need you to find something." Raimon leaned forward, his tone shifting to mission-serious. "A specific artifact of the Uzumaki clan. A mask depicting the Shinigami. It's the key to retrieving souls from its stomach."
It was the perfect mission for Jiraiya—a combination of historical research, clan lore (tied to his own student, Kushina), and the requirement to travel to obscure, potentially interesting locations.
Jiraiya, renowned wanderer and intelligence gatherer of the ninja world, was indeed the perfect laborer for the job.
"Consider it done!" Jiraiya vowed, the stack of documents already forgotten in his mind's eye, replaced by maps and the promise of adventure (and ancillary research).
***
Sunagakure, Land of Wind.
Elder Chiyo winced as a familiar, dull ache throbbed deep in her side. She was convinced—convinced—that a few lingering kidney stones from Namikaze Raimon's heinous technique were still rattling around in there. Every trip to the restroom was an exercise in paranoid anxiety.
"I'm old… so terribly old," she groaned, not just from physical pain but from the weight of regret. Trusting Shimura Danzō had been Suna's greatest folly in recent memory.
The village's strength was at a historic low. The failed joint invasion with Otogakure had cost them dearly. They had sent their elites, many of whom had fallen victim to Raimon's 'Urinary Tract Stone' ninjutsu. The aftermath had been… medically catastrophic. A significant number of strong, young shinobi, in desperation and agony, had taken drastic, irreversible measures to relieve the blockage.
Many of those men were unmarried, leaving no children. Sunagakure's next generation was facing a literal demographic crisis.
After lengthy, grim deliberations with her brother Ebizō, Chiyo reached the only logical conclusion. They needed a Kazekage, and they needed one now to steer the village through this disaster and handle the exorbitant war reparations to Konoha.
The pool of candidates, however, was shallow.
"Let Gaara be the Kazekage," Chiyo stated flatly. Among the younger generation, the jinchūriki of the One-Tail was undeniably the strongest. "We can't very well appoint a Kage who is… incomplete," she added with a pained sigh. The scandal and ridicule would be endless.
Gaara was summoned before the council. The air was heavy with sand and despair.
"Gaara! The future of Sunagakure rests on your shoulders now!" Chiyo intoned, her voice grave. With ceremony, she handed him two things: the official letter of appointment as the Godaime Kazekage, and the detailed invoice for Konoha's reparations.
Gaara's teal eyes scanned the document. The number of zeros was staggering, stretching across the page like a line of ants. For a moment, he wondered if he'd accidentally ingested some of Kankurō's poisonous mushrooms.
"Is it… too late to refuse?" he asked, his voice dry.
"It is too late. You have already accepted the appointment," Chiyo said swiftly, and with a speed belying her age, she shuffled out of the chamber, eager to be anywhere else. Her job—the hard part—was done.
"…Hah." A dry, humorless laugh escaped Gaara. Suna's bill was astronomically higher than other villages'—a penalty for participating in two failed invasions of Konoha without a single victory.
He rubbed his temples, a headache blooming. "Just how much gold sand is left in the desert?" The Land of Wind's daimyō was already notoriously stingy with funding. Generations of Kazekage had already scraped the desert clean of its most easily accessible gold. To pay this debt, he'd have to have the entire village sifting sand day and night for a decade.
"Naruto… I've become a Kage," Gaara whispered to the empty room, a single, sandy tear tracing a path down his cheek. "But this… feels worse than being alone."
****a
Konoha, Namikaze Residence.
"It's been about a month, hasn't it?" Raimon mused, remembering the late Sandaime's outstanding gambling debt. The repayment date was imminent. He could pay a visit to the Sarutobi compound tomorrow.
He arrived home to find Naruto sitting in the middle of the yard, arms crossed tightly, a storm cloud of sulkiness practically visible over his spiky blond head.
"Oh? What's got our little Naruto all pouted up?" Raimon asked, amused. Shouldn't the boy be off training with Sasuke-kun or causing some other kind of mischief?
"Oji-san!" Naruto burst out, unable to contain himself. "That Gaara! He actually went and became the Kazekage!"
Ah. So that was it. A classic case of juvenile rivalry. The moment Naruto said it, Raimon understood completely.
"What's this? You want to be a Kage too?"
"Of course!" Naruto sprang to his feet, striking a proud pose, his finger pointed dramatically at the sky. "I'm going to be Hokage! Believe it!"
A bead of invisible sweat rolled down the back of Raimon's Edo Tensei head. 'Wasn't that… my brother's line?' he thought wryly.
"Naruto… being Hokage isn't that simple," Raimon said, his tone softening into one of mentorship. He pictured the future Naruto from the original timeline, perpetually buried in paperwork, bags under his eyes, his vitality drained by endless meetings. "It's not just about being the strongest. It's about endless responsibility. Without a loyal, capable team to support you, it's a shortcut to an early grave."
"I don't care!" Naruto shouted, his blue eyes burning with an unwavering, stubborn fire. He wasn't processing the complexities. All he saw was a peer, a rival, achieving the title he coveted. If Gaara could do it, why couldn't he? He took a determined step forward, his gaze locking onto Raimon's with absolute seriousness.
"Oji-san. I want to be Hokage." He declared, his voice leaving no room for doubt. "I want to be Hokage… now!"