Konohamaru was on patrol.
Not the lame kind where grown-ups told you where to stand and when to breathe.
Real patrol.
He hugged the wall by the Academy steps, back flat, sliding along in what he was pretty sure was stealth mode. His scarf dragged on the stone and caught on a crack, but that just made it look more dramatic. Battle damage.
"Enemy forces sighted," he muttered, mostly for himself. "Multiple suspicious adults… possibly spies… definitely lame."
Down on the street, a cluster of foreign shinobi argued about directions. Wrong hitai-ate, weird clothes, louder than Naruto-nii at lunch.
Suspicious.
He dropped into the crouch Naruto had shown him—low, bouncy, ready to sprint. His knees popped a little. That meant it was working.
From here he could see the Hokage Monument peeking over the roofs. Jiji's face watched the village, calm and stony. Konohamaru's would be up there someday. They'd have to make the mountain taller so his hair fit.
"Konohamaru Sarutobi," he whispered, testing the sound. "Seventh Hokage. No… Eighth. Naruto-nii can have Seventh."
A wind kicked up, rattling the paper notices on the Academy board. The sun was sliding down behind the Monument now, painting everything gold. Evening, not night. Prime patrol time.
"Iruka-sensei says go straight home after class," he informed the air. "Iruka-sensei also says 'no smoke bombs in the classroom.' Iruka-sensei has many wrong opinions."
He checked. No one was looking.
Perfect.
He bolted.
Down the steps, across the little plaza, weaving between legs. A jonin barked something about "no running," but he was already past. He jumped up onto the railing, sprinted along it for three glorious seconds, then leapt off like the hero of a war story.
"Shadow Patrol Technique," he breathed, because naming jutsu made them stronger. Obviously.
He cut behind a dumpling stall and popped back onto the main path that led toward the Monument stairs. From there, all the carved faces looked like they were watching.
He threw them a quick, secret salute, then dropped back to "official business."
He swung around the base of the stairs, doing a lazy loop to "check blind spots," which mostly meant looking for hidden snack stashes.
That's when he hit the wall.
Not a real wall. That would have been better.
This was like running full-speed into a tree trunk wrapped in cloth.
His forehead smacked something just above eye-level. The world bounced. He landed on his butt with an ugly grunt, the kind that did not sound like Future Hokage material.
His goggles slid sideways. He shoved them up, blinking.
He hadn't hit a wall.
He'd hit a leg.
A huge leg, wrapped in a dark, heavy cloak. The fabric was rough, travel-worn, the kind you saw on the scariest missing-nin posters at the missions office.
Konohamaru's gaze climbed.
The man looming over him was all vertical: tall, broad, wrapped in fabric and odd little visible stitches. Bits of dark thread poked out along his neck where the wrappings didn't quite hide them, like someone had taken him apart and sewn him back together in a hurry.
Konohamaru swallowed. His throat forgot how for a second.
"Uh," he managed. "Sorry."
The figure tilted his head just enough that the hood shifted.
One eye came into view.
It wasn't like Iruka's, or Naruto's, or Jiji's. No warmth, no exasperation, no anything.
Just flat. Weird green—not bright, not pretty. Moss on stone that never went away. When that eye met his, something cold spilled down Konohamaru's back in a straight line, like someone had poured river water right into his spine.
He'd been there the night the Nine-Tails attacked. He didn't remember much, not clearly—red sky, roaring, heat—but his body remembered something. Sometimes his legs went tight near the crater. Sometimes his stomach dropped when the Monument's shadow fell just right.
This felt like that.
His heart rabbited in his chest. His feet forgot how to stand up.
He was still trying to make his muscles listen when a hand landed on his shoulder.
Not yanking. Not crushing. Just there.
"Konohamaru."
Iruka's voice slid in from the side, calm on the surface, steel underneath.
The child's forehead hit his thigh with a dull thump.
Kakuzu barely felt it. The street was crowded—civilian clutter, chunin patrols, exam brats swaggering. Background noise.
He glanced down.
The boy sprawled at his feet was all too-long scarf and oversized goggles, knees and elbows and righteous indignation. Brown hair stuck up like it was trying to escape. He glared up, halfway between mortified and offended.
Familiar, in a way.
Kakuzu's gaze moved over the kid's face, cataloguing. The nose. The jaw. The way the mouth tried to hold a brave line and almost managed it.
He'd seen that face on stone.
At the edge of the village, carved huge into the mountain: Sarutobi Hiruzen, Third Hokage. He'd seen it older, smaller, smeared with battlefield dirt, barking orders while the air tasted like blood and woodsmoke.
He'd seen another version in the valley where two idiots thought themselves gods.
Sarutobi. Hokage's line.
Kakuzu let his eyes wander past the boy, up to the Monument looming over the rooftops.
Hashirama's grin at the top, Tobirama's sharp lines, Sarutobi's tired smile, Minato's softer features. Faces stacked like coins. Leaders piled up in stone because flesh didn't last.
He'd once been sent to kill the man whose face sat at the very top.
Back then, his hands had been young, his village full of talk about "necessary sacrifice" and "protecting Takigakure's future." They'd handed him a mission scroll and a half-truth and expected him to throw his life away on one of the strongest men to ever walk the earth.
It had been…predictable when he failed.
More predictable when they tried to kill him for it.
He'd cut them down. He'd left Takigakure behind. He'd learned something important in the process:
Villages were temporary. Debt was not.
At his feet, the brat shivered.
Not from temperature. From instinct. Some primitive corner of him, the part that remembered red sky and a fox monster the size of a building, saw predator and froze.
Kakuzu felt nothing in particular about the child.
Not hatred. Not affection. Just quick math.
"Hokage's grandson," he thought. "No bounty attached. Yet."
Chakra pricked at the edge of his awareness.
A chunin descended the steps like he'd been waiting at the top. Scar across his nose, flak jacket slightly crooked, hair tied back. Arms full of papers, eyes sharper than they had any right to be at the end of the day.
The man's chakra was steady and unremarkable on the surface—middle-of-the-road strength, honed by repetition and routine. The kind that graded tests, ran drills, kept supply chains from collapsing.
Underneath, there was a grain of something else. Worn-down wariness. The kind that came from not dying when a lot of people around you had.
Interesting.
The chunin's hand dropped onto the boy's shoulder, fingers squeezing once. Grounding. Protective.
"Konohamaru," he said, voice light in a way his shoulders weren't. "You're supposed to be home. You have tests tomorrow."
He stepped partially in front of the kid as he spoke, body angling without fuss, turning himself into the easiest thing to hit if a strike came.
Then he bowed.
"Sorry," he added, tone polite but not apologetic. "He should be home by now. I'll take him."
Kakuzu watched him.
The man's eyes skipped over the stitches, the cloak, the hood, and then came back, just for a second. His pupils tightened. The skin at the corner of his jaw ticked.
He feels it, Kakuzu noted. No name. No file. Just…threat.
The brat opened his mouth, reflexive apology already on his tongue.
"Apologize, Konohamaru," the chunin prompted anyway.
"S–sorry!" the boy blurted, bowing so fast his goggles nearly flew off. "I didn't see you. I was…training."
Of course he was.
Kakuzu did a quick, neat calculation.
He could reach down, twist, and break the boy's neck before either of them processed the movement. The body would hit the stone with a sound the whole street would remember. Civilians would scream. Shinobi would converge.
The Hokage's grandson dead at the foot of the Monument.
Konoha would slam into lockdown. ANBU everywhere. Danzō's quiet little contract with "outside operatives" would become worthless in under an hour. No one moved money in a panic like that. No one paid bounties.
Akatsuki's timetable would stagger. Leader would be…displeased.
Killing a child for symbolism was sentimental.
Kakuzu did not get paid for sentiment.
"Watch where you're going," he said finally.
His voice came out low, rough from disuse. The boy flinched anyway.
The chunin's fingers tightened on the small shoulder under his hand.
"Come on," the man said. "Home. Now."
He turned, guiding Konohamaru with him. Not backing away. Not rushing. Just walking. Leaving his back to Kakuzu without actually relaxing, head angled so one eye still caught the space behind them.
If an attack came, it would hit him first.
They moved around Kakuzu like water around a rock.
He watched them go.
The brat's scarf trailed like a banner. The teacher's posture never quite lost that coiled line.
Gut instinct like that wouldn't save the man from everything, but it would buy seconds other people didn't get.
Kakuzu filed both faces away—not for his ledger, not yet. For context.
He adjusted the strap of his pack and stepped back into the flow of exam-season traffic.
More Hokage would rise and fall. More Sarutobi brats would be born under big stone faces. Villages would act like they were permanent.
In the end, only the numbers mattered.
Debt. Blood. Profit.
Sooner or later, Konoha would find its way onto his balance sheet.
Iruka's heart didn't start pounding until after he turned the corner.
Before that, his body just moved.
He'd stepped out of the Academy with a stack of graded tests under his arm and a dull, familiar headache behind his eyes. Chūnin Exams meant extra forms, extra checklists, extra parents asking, "My child isn't actually going into that forest, right?"
He loved his job. He loved his students.
He hated exam season.
He'd paused at the top of the steps to roll his shoulders, watching the courtyard breathe. The light was orange and soft. Dust hung in the air, catching it. Someone laughed near the playground. A genin team argued about lunch.
He spotted Konohamaru almost immediately. It was hard not to.
The boy was plastered dramatically to a wall, "sneaking" along with all the subtlety of a neon sign. Iruka watched him for a second, the corner of his mouth twitching.
He could have called out. He didn't.
Five minutes, he decided. Let him play. Then walk him home, have a quiet word with the Sandaime about bedtime and responsibility.
Konohamaru vanished around the base of the Monument stairs.
A few moments later, there was a thud.
Not the hollow smack of a kid tripping on the steps. A heavier, flatter sound: soft body into something that didn't move.
Iruka didn't think. His feet were already going.
Down the steps, around the corner, tests forgotten under his arm.
He saw them in one sharp slice of a moment:
Konohamaru on the ground, goggles askew, looking up.
A tall cloaked figure above him, hooded, stitches visible at the neck.
The man's chakra hit Iruka's senses sideways. Heavy. Old. Threaded with a kind of killing intent that didn't flare, didn't shout. It simply existed, like a cliff existed at the edge of a long drop.
His vision doubled for a heartbeat.
The courtyard blurred into a different night.
He was six again. Heat on his face, air full of ash. The sky wrong—red instead of blue, pulsing with a huge chakra that made his teeth ache. Someone had shoved him behind a cart. "Don't move," a voice had said, and then there had been screaming, and he had moved anyway.
The Nine-Tails' chakra had been like standing next to the ocean during a storm—each roar a wave big enough to crush a house.
This wasn't that.
But it pressed against the same scar.
Danger.
Iruka's fingers tightened on the pile of papers. His other hand reached Konohamaru's shoulder before his brain caught up.
"Konohamaru," he said, keeping his voice level. "You're supposed to be home. You have tests tomorrow."
The boy whipped his head around, relief flashing across his face so openly it hurt to look at.
"Iruka-sensei!"
Iruka stepped between him and the cloaked man without making it too obvious. His body turned just enough to block, his weight shifting so he could move sideways fast if he had to.
He bowed, because this was Konoha, and they were civil, even when their guts were screaming.
"Sorry," he said. "He should be home by now. I'll take him."
The stranger looked at him.
Iruka caught a glimpse of an eye under the hood. Green and unnatural. Flat, like nothing surprised it anymore. Stitches along the jawline. Skin that looked like someone else's.
Chakra pulsed again, not flaring so much as…checking.
Iruka wanted his hand on a kunai. He wanted ANBU on the roofs. He wanted this man very far away from any child with the Sarutobi name.
He smiled instead. The polite, brittle one he'd perfected for parent-teacher conferences with war veterans.
"Apologize, Konohamaru," he said, not looking away from that hood.
"S–sorry!" Konohamaru blurted. He bowed hard enough that his goggles nearly flew off. "I didn't see you, I was… training."
Iruka felt the man's chakra shift, a ripple of…amusement? Annoyance? Hard to tell.
"Watch where you're going," the stranger grated.
Konohamaru flinched and then scowled, halfway to puffing himself up, because of course he would.
Iruka's hand tightened on his shoulder.
"Home," he repeated quietly. "Now."
Konohamaru shut his mouth. For once.
Iruka turned, steering the boy away. He didn't hurry. He didn't run. Shinobi ran from very few things in their own village, and panic was contagious.
He kept his head angled so one eye still tracked the space behind them. If an attack came, it would come now, at their backs.
His nerves waited for that razor-thin spike of killing intent, for the sound of cloth whispering through the air, for pain.
The stranger didn't move.
They took the corner. The cloaked figure vanished from sight.
Iruka only let his shoulders drop a fraction then. His heart, which had been ticking hard and precise like a mission clock, started to settle.
Konohamaru tugged at his hand, already regaining his usual volume.
"Iruka-sensei, I was on patrol—"
"Protecting the village," Iruka said. "Yes. I saw."
The boy blinked. "…You did?"
Iruka nodded. They walked past a dango shop; someone inside laughed too loudly. Exam kids clustered at a table, headbands flashing.
"There are already patrols," Iruka said. "Real ones. With actual orders. You don't need to run around alone to help right now."
"I'm strong," Konohamaru insisted automatically. "I can handle myself."
"You're twelve," Iruka said, gentle but firm. "Your job is to get stronger so when it really is your turn, you're ready. That means listening when people tell you when it's safe and when it isn't."
The boy opened his mouth to invoke the sacred name.
"But Naruto-nii—"
"—is also an idiot who runs around alone," Iruka cut in. "And I yell at him for it too."
Konohamaru's eyes widened. "…You do?"
"Constantly."
That seemed to take some of the fight out of him. He scuffed his sandal against the road, thinking about it.
"Who was that guy?" he asked after a moment. "He felt…weird."
Iruka kept his face neutral.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "Probably just another foreign shinobi here for the Exams. There are a lot of visitors."
The words were plausible. His gut called them a half-truth.
Konohamaru made a face. "He was creepy."
Iruka's mouth twitched. "Trust that," he said. "If someone makes you feel like that, you don't bump into them. You go the other way. Preferably toward a trusted adult. Preferably one with a flak jacket."
Konohamaru huffed. "…Fine."
They walked the rest of the way in silence, the noise of the village rising around them like usual. Vendors shouting, kids laughing, someone yelling about dango.
Iruka saw the Sarutobi compound come into view and stopped.
"From here," he said, "I can see you get home. Got it?"
Konohamaru hesitated, then nodded. For a second, he looked smaller than his scarf.
"Got it."
"Good." Iruka squeezed his shoulder one last time and let go.
The boy jogged ahead, then turned and waved. Iruka lifted a hand back. Only when Konohamaru vanished through the gate did he turn away.
He didn't go straight home.
His feet took him back toward the Monument almost without asking.
He stopped at the base and looked up at the huge carved faces, shadows stretching long in the falling light.
Hashirama. Tobirama. Hiruzen. Minato.
Legends in stone. Men in memory.
Behind the mountain, out beyond the walls, the Forest of Death swallowed the last of the sun. His current students were out there somewhere, running, fighting, terrified, excited.
Inside the walls, something ugly had just walked under the Hokage's eyes and kept going.
Iruka rubbed a hand over his face and snorted softly at himself.
"You're jumping at shadows," he muttered. "Exam season's getting to you."
The feeling in his gut didn't agree.
He turned back toward the Academy, toward lesson plans and attendance sheets and kids who still believed adults could fix things.
As he walked, he mentally added one more line to the long, private list he kept:
One more strange foreigner in exam season. Cloak. Stitches. Old killing chakra.
Probably nothing.
He knew better than anyone how often "probably nothing" turned into the story people told after the damage was done.