The late afternoon sun never quite reached the corners of the Hokage's office.
It tried—its light poured through the tall windows set into the stone wall, washing over the broad desk, the framed mountain view behind it, the neat rows of shelves that bowed under the weight of scrolls and reports and histories. But there were always shadows clinging to the corners of the room, up near the beams where ANBU liked to pretend they were invisible, down under the edges of cabinets where dust gathered and stayed.
Today, even the sunlight felt like it was being careful.
Minato Namikaze sat behind his desk, the Fourth Hokage's hat resting on a nearby stand instead of his head, blond hair a little mussed from dragging his hand through it too many times. Paperwork had overrun the desk, spilling into layered stacks and half-sorted piles, each with a mission code scrawled in Minato's precise handwriting at the top.
One page lay on top, very neat and very quiet and very wrong.
Tsunade's handwriting, not his.
Minato's left hand—his only hand—rested over the edge of that report. The empty right sleeve of his cloak was folded back along his ribs, tied at the end with a small, functional knot. He wasn't thinking about the missing arm. On some level, he never stopped being aware of it; it simply lived in the same space as "I have blue eyes" and "I am married " and "my son will definitely be grounded for life next time he pulls something."
Today, all of those static facts made room for something else.
Five Uchiha in seven months.
Five empty lines on a roster full of names he was supposed to protect.
"The autopsies are the same?" Minato asked.
His voice was level, but it felt like it landed a little too heavily in the room, like a kunai sticking into wood that had already been scarred too many times.
Across from him, Tsunade Senju lounged in her chair with a casualness so exaggerated it was nearly an act. One leg was crossed over the other, her elbows resting in the back of the chair as if it were a barstool instead of official Hokage furniture. Her blond hair was tied back, diamond mark on her forehead smooth, eyes sharp.
She tapped one lacquered nail against the edge of the report she'd brought, the same report under Minato's hand.
"The same," she said. "Down to the chakra residue patterns. If I didn't know better, I'd say the bodies were copies of each other."
"Five Uchiha," Hiruzen Sarutobi murmured.
He stood at Minato's right, a little forward of the desk, reading glasses down on his nose as he scanned a stack of mission logs. His hair was fully grey now; his robes did him no favors in pretending he was anything but old. But there was nothing slow about the way his eyes moved across the page, or the small movements of his fingers as he flipped to the next file.
He had a pipe in one hand, unlit, rolling it between thumb and forefinger. Hiruzen only smoked when he was thinking through something that hurt. Right now, he hadn't even lit the tobacco. The habit of movement was enough.
He plucked a sheet out from the rest and set it atop another pile.
"Different missions. Different teams. Different regions. You assigned them all separately, Minato."
"I know." Minato's brow furrowed deeper. "Kentarō in the Land of Rice. Fukane on the border patrol. Sayo on the escort. They were spread out."
"And all listed as deaths in the line of duty," Hiruzen said. "Accidents. Mishaps. Bandit interference."
Tsunade snorted.
Minato glanced up at her. "Something funny?"
"No," Tsunade said, lips pulling in a humorless smirk. "Just thinking about the word 'accident' being used five times in seven months." She knocked her knuckles lightly against the report. "There's nothing in here that screams external force. No toxins I recognize. No internal organ rupturing that would suggest a secret taijutsu strike. Chakra systems intact. Neural pathways unbroken."
She met Minato's eyes, the joking edge falling away completely.
"They just stopped," she said. "That's what's wrong. It looks like they simply… stopped. Hearts stopped beating. Lungs stopped pulling breath. Chakra ceased moving. No trigger I can identify. No trauma to point at."
A hush settled for a moment.
The usual noise of the village outside—the distant calls of merchants closing stalls, the laughter of children, the rhythmic smack of practice kunai against training posts—seemed to fade under the weight of it.
Minato's gaze drifted past Tsunade to the window behind her, to the sprawl of Konoha beyond. Red roofs, green tree-line, the high curve of the village wall. The faces carved into the stone looked down over all of it: Hashirama, Tobirama, Hiruzen, and—somehow, still always a bit of a shock when he caught his own likeness in the corner of his eye—himself.
For a moment, he imagined five faces missing from the streets below. Five clan symbols never worn again.
"What are the odds," Hiruzen said quietly, "that five Uchiha, all active shinobi, all die in unrelated, inexplicable circumstances within the same year?"
"In the statistical sense?" Tsunade asked. She lifted a brow. "Low. In the 'we live in a cruel, chakra-filled world and people die' sense? It happens."
"It doesn't happen like this," Minato said.
Tsunade looked at him for a long moment, and Minato could see the shift. The woman who had walked in as his friend, grumbling about paperwork and missions and her no-good teammate, settled into place as Tsunade Senju, the one who'd survived the First Great War as a girl, the Second as a hardened medic, the Third as someone who should have already had enough.
"No," she said. "It doesn't."
Hiruzen exhaled, a breath that seemed to carry decades with it. "Does Fugaku suspect?"
Minato's fingers tightened on the edge of the report. "Fugaku suspects all kinds of things," he said, and there was a tired strand of wryness in his tone. "The police force is stretched thin. They're angry about patrol rotations. They're certain the village council is holding something back. They've asked me three times to expand their jurisdiction into intelligence operations."
"And you said no." Tsunade's tone said that arguing was pointless, not that she disagreed.
"I said we could discuss it later. When I had more information," Minato said. "If I go to Fugaku now and tell him I suspect someone is picking off Uchiha, but I can't prove it, all I'll do is fan flames."
"The Uchiha posture when they're scared," Hiruzen said. "Madara was not the only one born with arrogance in his bones. Fear does terrible things when it has pride to cling to."
The name hung there for a heartbeat: Madara.
Minato didn't flinch, but something in his chest tightened reflexively. He had read the histories. He had listened to Hiruzen and Jiraiya and even old scrolls talk about the man. Madara was an old storm whose thunder still echoed in the valley, long after the lightning strike had burned out.
"Has anyone reported suspicious activity around Uchiha patrol routes?" Tsunade asked. "Any sign of missing bodies? Tampered with? I want more than just morgue reports."
Minato shook his head. "If someone's doing this, they're careful. They're hitting solo points. Missions where the team's focus is split. No survivors with memories that suggest interference. Just… gaps."
"That's what bothers you," Hiruzen said. It wasn't a question.
Minato looked at the older man.
"The gaps," he agreed. "If they died in battle, we'd see it. If they were ambushed, someone would have seen something. It's like—"
"They're being plucked out," Tsunade finished. "Cleanly. Quietly. Like pulling threads from a cloak and hoping no one notices until it falls apart."
Hiruzen tapped his pipe against his palm. "The question, then, is whether someone is targeting the Uchiha specifically, or if the clan is simply the most visible casualty of something broader."
"We haven't seen similar deaths in other clans," Tsunade pointed out. "It's not like Aburame bodies are showing up with the same chakra pattern."
"Not yet," Hiruzen murmured.
That was worse. Somehow, that was worse.
Minato slid the report aside, revealing another stack beneath it: mission dossiers, ANBU summaries, a personal note in his own hand about a conversation with Shikaku Nara. It all layered together in his mind: five Uchiha, disappearing. An old clan with old history. A village that had already walked the edge of clan distrust once and nearly bled for it.
He wasn't going to let that happen again.
"We're not prepared to confront the clan with this," Minato said finally. "Not yet. Not without more than suspicion and Tsunade's unease."
"I am more than unease," Tsunade said, but there wasn't much venom in it. "But I agree. You start throwing accusations without proof, you'll fracture trust. Again."
"So what do we do?" Hiruzen asked. "Officially?"
"Officially…" Minato exhaled. "We tighten mission screening for Uchiha teams. I'll require double reviews for any missions that send them out with unfamiliar allies. I'll expand ANBU shadows on their solo assignments—quietly. And we assign Tsunade to review every Uchiha corpse personally."
"'Corpse,' he says," Tsunade muttered, though she nodded. "So optimistic."
"And unofficially?" Hiruzen's gaze was sharper now. The man who had once worn the hat sitting on that stand, still used to holding the village like a fragile thing between his hands.
"Unofficially…" Minato's eyes went to the side wall, where a long, narrow shelf held half a dozen sealed scrolls. Most of them were marked with particular mission codes and storage seals. One, near the center, sat heavier than the rest, the paper aged but strong.
The Scroll of Sealing.
Minato didn't need to look at it directly to feel the weight of its existence in the room. It was like a low hum in the background of his days: a reminder that the village had not always been as safe as they wanted it to be, that the line between "forbidden knowledge" and "desperate necessity" was thinner than most people knew.
But it was only a hum. A background presence.
Just another dangerous tool he'd inherited.
He dragged his focus back to Tsunade and Hiruzen.
"Unofficially," he said, "we keep looking. Shikaku's running broad pattern models on mission casualties. I want to see if these deaths are isolated, or if there's something we're not connecting yet."
"He's going to need more data," Hiruzen said.
"Then we give it to him," Minato replied. "Starting tonight."
The room breathed with him, a shared exhale.
Tsunade leaned forward at last, elbows on her knees, some of the hardness in her shoulders easing. "Alright. I'll continue watching the bodies." A grim little smile twisted her mouth. "You know, in my youth, I dreamed of a career where I didn't spend most of my time elbow-deep in dead Uchiha."
Hiruzen's mouth twitched. "You dreamed of gambling, as I recall."
"Details," she said.
The tension in Minato's chest loosened by a fraction at the familiar banter. That was the thing about these two: between them, they'd seen the village built, bled, and rebuilt again. If they were worried, he knew he wasn't imagining things. If they could still trade barbs, he knew the sky wasn't falling yet.
He was about to reach for the next file when the door crashed open without even the pretense of a knock.
"Daaaad!!"
The chakra signature arrived a heartbeat before the sound: bright, hot, quick, like a handful of sparklers thrown into a summer night.
Minato barely had time to turn his head before something golden and grinning launched itself across the room.
Minako Namikaze slammed into him with the full, unashamed momentum of someone who had never once been scared of their father.
He caught her automatically, one arm wrapping around her waist as she half-tackled him in his chair. His elbow bumped a stack of papers; a few sheets slid to the floor in a soft waterfall.
"Minako—" he started.
She planted a quick kiss on his cheek. "Hi!"
Tsunade raised a brow. "Here comes the storm."
Hiruzen hid a smile behind his knuckles.
Minako twisted on his lap with practiced ease, turning until she was facing him, knees tucked to either side of his hips, her balance perfect even in what should have been an unsteady position. Her hair—his hair, the same bright yellow that looked like captured sunlight—was pulled into a high ponytail. A jōnin vest sat open over a dark undershirt, her hitai-ate pulled snug around her forehead.
Her eyes—his eyes, blue and bright and full of mischief—locked onto his.
"Dad," she said, in a tone that was warm, affectionate, and dangerous.
Minato steeled himself. "Minako."
"I need something."
"Of course you do."
She smiled, slow and devastating. "Let me lead an S-rank mission."
"No," Minato said.
Tsunade barked out a laugh. Hiruzen let his pipe rest between his fingers, amused.
Minako pouted. It was a good pout. Weaponized, even. "You didn't even hear my reasoning."
"This is the part where she tells you she's invincible," Tsunade stage-whispered.
Minako shot her a look. "I'm not invincible. I'm prepared."
She shifted again, leaning forward until her forehead bumped lightly against her father's. Up close, Minato could see the faint smudge of soot at her jawline that she'd missed in the mirror that morning, the tiny scratch near her ear where a training kunai had come too close. The details of a life that was already, at seventeen, too full of danger.
"Dad," she said softly. And that, right there—that tone—cut through more than any argument. "I'm ready. You know I am."
He held her gaze. "Being ready isn't the same as being invulnerable."
"No one is invulnerable," she said. "But there are people you send anyway."
He didn't have a good answer to that. There were shinobi younger than her on S-ranked missions. There were shinobi less skilled. Less disciplined. Less loyal.
And they weren't his daughter.
He sighed. "Minako…"
She straightened, scooting back just enough to look him in the eye without their noses almost touching. "I've completed nine A-rank missions. Nine. I've been on three S-rank support assignments already. I've held the line against two jōnin from Kumo. I've tracked missing-nin into the Land of Rivers." Her voice stayed level even as she listed things that could have filled a retirement speech. "If I were anyone else, you'd have signed off already."
"That's true," Hiruzen said mildly.
Minato shot him a betrayed look.
Tsunade lifted two fingers. "I'll second that. If she wasn't your kid, she'd be top of the queue."
Minako's grin flashed, triumphant. "See?"
"Traitors," Minato muttered.
"Realists," Tsunade corrected.
Minako wasn't done. "And I'm not asking to go alone. I already have a team in mind. I've thought this through."
Minato narrowed his eyes. "You—what?"
"I want Kakashi as my second," she said without missing a beat.
From the open window to Minato's left, a lazy voice drifted in.
"I suppose I should be flattered."
Kakashi Hatake was leaning against the outer sill, half his body still outside the building, one foot hooked on the frame to keep his balance. His hitai-ate covered one eye. The other, a mismatched dark grey, was focused on the orange book in his hand.
Minato hadn't heard him arrive. Then again, he rarely did. Kakashi and gravity had a very casual understanding.
"I didn't say you were my first choice," Minako called over her shoulder. "Just my best one."
Kakashi flipped a page. "That's even worse. You've clearly settled, then."
She made a face at him.
Minato pressed his lips together, torn between exasperation and affection. "You two are not making this easier."
Kakashi finally lifted his gaze from the book, eye curving in an unmistakable arc of a smile behind the mask.
"She's right, you know," he said calmly. "She's more than capable. If you don't give her an S-rank, she's going to invent one herself, and that will be much harder to supervise."
Minako pointed at him. "Exactly. Let me cause trouble officially."
"No one should say those words," Minato muttered.
Tsunade smirked. "I like her."
Minato gave up on glaring at all of them individually and sighed up at the ceiling beams instead. An ANBU shifted slightly in the shadows above, a barely-there movement. Even they felt the tension between Hokage and father.
Minako reached up and straightened the collar of his cloak with unnecessary care, smoothing a wrinkle that didn't exist.
"I'll take Kakashi," she said more seriously now. "And Tsunami. We've already talked about it. She'll be our field medic and support. I'll handle the front line, Kakashi will take tactical and long-range."
"Will I?" Kakashi asked mildly. "And here I thought I was just there to carry your scrolls."
"You're there to look pretty," Minako said. "It's a hard job. Someone has to do it."
Tsunade made an appreciative sound. "The girl has taste."
Minato looked over Minako's shoulder, past the window, in the general direction of Jiraiya, wherever he was that day in the village or outside it. Somewhere, he was sure, the toad sage had just sneezed and had no idea why.
"As your mother," another voice said, "I am obligated to say that I object to this entirely."
The door slid open again.
Kushina Uzumaki strode in with the kind of energy that made the air move around her. Her red hair was pulled back in a loose braid, a streak of flour dusting one cheek. She had on a simple blouse and skirt, an apron still around her waist like she'd run here straight from the kitchen.
She probably had.
Two small figures scampered in behind her. The twins were miniature storm systems of their own.
Akito, the louder of the two, had his mother's hair and his father's eyes, both turned up with excitement as he clutched a wooden kunai like it was a legendary blade.
Aiko, the quieter one, tucked against Kushina's leg with a frog plush toy under her arm, her blue eyes taking in the room with a serious intensity that never failed to remind Minato of himself and Kushina both.
The twins spotted Minako immediately.
"Mina-nee!" Akito barreled forward.
Aiko was only half a beat behind. "Nee-chan!"
Minako brightened and opened her arms. "Hey, you two!"
They crashed into her legs like affectionate missiles. Minako wobbled on Minato's lap but stayed balanced, hooking one arm around Akito's shoulders and pressing a kiss into Aiko's hair.
Kushina stopped at the edge of the desk, hand on her hip, eyes flicking from Minato to Minako to Tsunade to Hiruzen, and finally to Kakashi still loitering at the window.
"This looks suspicious," she said.
"It is," Tsunade supplied.
"I resent that," Minato said.
"You would," Hiruzen murmured.
"Dad won't let me have an S-rank," Minako announced, clearly deciding offense was the best defense.
Kushina's gaze snapped to Minato like a kunai locking onto target.
"Minato," she said.
He held up a hand. "Kushina, we are not having this argument in front of—"
"Minako is seventeen," Kushina said over him. "She's been a jōnin for over a year. She fought off two Kumo jōnin three months ago with a broken wrist. She can outpace almost any chūnin in the village. She can seal halfway decently—"
"I can seal better than halfway," Minako protested.
"—and she is not stupid," Kushina finished. "Which is more than I can say for certain blondes in this room who once tried to take on an entire army with no backup."
"I heard that," Minato said.
"I meant you to," Kushina shot back.
Hiruzen cleared his throat, bringing a measure of calm back. "Kushina… as her teacher in her Academy years, and as someone who watched her grow, I agree she is ready to face what an S-rank entails. The question is not readiness, but whether the village can afford to risk one of its best in a leadership role on such missions. That is the Hokage's burden."
Kushina's expression softened a fraction. She looked at Minato again, this time not as a wife annoyed with her husband, but as someone who had watched him stare out windows like this one, worrying over names on paper.
She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder—the side where there was still a shoulder.
"I'm scared," she admitted quietly. The word didn't come easily from her. "She's our baby."
"I'm not a baby," Minako said reflexively, even as she leaned into Kushina's touch.
"But," Kushina continued, "I'd rather her be where her skills matter, with people she trusts, than on the sidelines getting bored and doing something really stupid."
"Hey," Minako said. "I only did that thing with the fireworks once."
"She lit the training field on fire," Kakashi offered.
"It was a small fire."
"It burned the sand pit."
"We put it out!"
"With water from the spa," Tsunade said dryly. "While naked chūnin fled down the street wrapped in towels."
Hiruzen coughed something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
Minato pinched the bridge of his nose. "I've had this job for twelve years. I have faced the Nine-Tails, three Kage, and an entire invading force. Nothing has prepared me for parenting three Uzumaki."
"Four," Kushina corrected.
He blinked. "Four?"
She jerked her chin toward the window. "Kakashi counts at this point."
Kakashi raised his hand. "I object."
"No," three voices said in unison.
Minako wriggled on his lap, turning back to face him fully. Her hands slid up along his shoulders until her palms framed his face, thumbs resting just below his eyes.
"Dad," she said again, softer this time. Less Hokage-to-jōnin, more father-to-daughter. "I know why you're hesitating. I do. But I'm going to be out there anyway. You know I'm going to be out there anyway. Doing missions that are almost S-rank and pretending they're not."
"Almost," he said.
"Let me go," she continued. "Let me go with Kakashi. With Tsunami. With a proper team. Let me go with your blessing, instead of your blind eye."
The office went quieter. Even the clock on the side wall seemed to hold its ticking for a beat.
Minato searched her face. He saw traces there of the girl who had once wrapped her arms around his leg and declared that she, too, would be a Hokage someday. He saw the teenager who'd dragged Naruto home by his ear after catching him about to vandalize the monument. He saw the kunoichi who'd stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Kakashi in a border skirmish and refused to let him take the brunt of anything.
"You've thought this through," he said.
"Yes," she said simply.
"You'll have Kakashi as second."
"Yes."
"Tsunami for medical support."
"Yes."
He glanced toward Tsunami. She met his gaze steadily, hands clasped behind her back, setting her shoulders as if bracing for judgment.
"You're confident you can keep up with Minako and Kakashi's pace?" Minato asked.
Tsunami didn't flinch. "Yes, Lord Hokage. I've trained with both of them for the last six months. I can match their movements enough to stay within immediate healing range when needed, and my ninjutsu arsenal can hold off jōnin-level threats while I stabilize injuries."
"You're also my child," Tsunade cut in, one brow lifting. "Which means if you die, I will bring you back just to kill you again."
Tsunami's lips twitched. "Understood, Mother."
Kushina huffed a laugh.
Akito, who had been quietly climbing up the side of Minato's desk, peered over a stack of files. "Is Mina-nee going far away?"
"For a little while," Minako said, reaching over to ruffle his hair. "But I'll come back. I always come back, right?"
Aiko slid her frog plush up onto the edge of the desk, making its button eyes peer over the paperwork. "Will you bring souvenirs?"
Minako's smile softened. "I will absolutely bring souvenirs."
"Bribes," Tsunade said under her breath. "She's learning."
Minato exhaled. The weight in his chest was complicated: pride, fear, love, the ever-present awareness of the village pressing in around them. The equation of Hokage and father had never balanced neatly. He suspected it never would.
But he also remembered being not much older than Minako, standing in front of Hiruzen, being told he'd be leading a battle unit. He remembered the way it felt to be trusted. To be seen as capable. To be burdened and lifted in the same breath.
He looked at Hiruzen now.
The older man met his eyes and inclined his head, a small, solemn nod that said, This is your call—but I see her too.
Minato closed his eyes once, brief, then opened them.
"You will have one S-rank mission," he said to Minako. "As leader. Under the following conditions: detailed pre-mission briefing with me and Tsunade. Full intel support from Nara Shikaku. Kakashi as second, Tsunami as medic. Additional oversight from ANBU as needed—assigned by me, not you."
Minako's breath hitched, just enough that he saw the crack in the polished jōnin composure. Pride flared in her eyes like chakra catching light.
"Yes, sir," she said, voice a little rough.
"And." He tightened his hand at her hip, not enough to hurt, just enough to ground them both. "You come back."
She laughed, the sound bright and sharp. "I always do."
He wished that were a promise anyone could really make, but he nodded anyway. "Then we'll begin planning tomorrow."
Kushina let out a breath that sounded like she'd been holding it since Minako said "S-rank." She stepped forward and wrapped one arm around Minako and Minato both, pulling them into a clumsy, fierce, family tangle.
Akito took that as his cue to leap fully onto the desk and join the hug.
Aiko carefully placed her frog plush on top of the stack of reports, as if it could keep them all safe, then leaned in too.
Tsunade watched them with a look that was both fond and faintly pained, something old flickering behind her eyes. Tsunami moved closer to her, their shoulders almost touching.
Kakashi, at the window, flipped a page in his book, but his visible eye was soft.
Hiruzen smiled around the unlit pipe, the lines at the corners of his eyes deepening in a way that had nothing to do with age and everything to do with history. He took in the scene—the Hokage and his family, the Sannin, the students of legacies that refused to stay buried—and for a brief moment, the office felt less like the focal point of a possible storm and more like the center of a stubborn, burning light.
It didn't last.
It never did.
But it was there.
For a heartbeat. For two.
And then—
A subtle ripple passed through the room.
Soft. Almost gentle. A chakra disturbance so light it might have been missed entirely if there were fewer shinobi present.
Minato felt it settle over his skin like a warm veil. Kushina stiffened just enough that he noticed. Minako's hand twitched toward a kunai. Even the ANBU in the ceiling shifted minutely.
Chakra brushed against his mind, trying to coax his senses into sluggishness.
A genjutsu.
A very basic, very clumsy genjutsu.
Tsunade's mouth pulled into an incredulous line. "Is he serious?"
Kakashi's eye smiled. "He's trying."
Hiruzen's lips twitched.
Minato met Hiruzen's gaze.
Hiruzen nodded.
Without a word, Minato slumped forward over his desk, cheek hitting the wood with a soft thump.
Tsunade flung herself backward in her chair with a loud, theatrical snore.
Hiruzen let his knees unlock and slid down the wall in a completely undignified heap.
Kushina let out a long, exaggerated sigh and toppled sideways onto the couch, one arm draped dramatically over her eyes.
Akito blinked once, then flopped backward with all the enthusiasm of a child being told to play dead.
Aiko very carefully lay down on the floor and closed her eyes, hugging her frog to her chest.
Minako gasped in mock alarm and tipped herself off Minato's lap in a faint that would have impressed any Academy drama club.
Tsunami sighed and sat down cross-legged where she stood, closing her eyes with the resigned patience of someone who had been through this before.
Kakashi let himself roll sideways out of view, an elbow catching the sill at the last second so that he could dangle there as if snoring.
From above, two ANBU let go of their perches and dropped to the floor with soft, controlled thuds that looked, to an untrained eye, like bodies giving in to sleep.
Silence fell.
The door creaked.
A mop of unruly blond hair edged into view, followed by wide blue eyes full of caution and too much curiosity.
Naruto Uzumaki peered into the office.
Everyone was "asleep."
He waited.
Nothing moved.
He took one cautious step inside.
"Uh… hello?" he whispered.
No response.
He straightened a little, shoulders squaring, a grin slowly stretching his face. The genjutsu he'd cast had been one of the sleep techniques he'd seen in a book—nothing big, just a little trick, but still. It had worked. On Dad. On Mom. On Grandma Tsunade. On Jiji. On everyone.
"Hehehe…" He clapped a hand over his mouth to smother the noise, but his eyes were bright with triumph. "Too easy."
He tiptoed past Tsunade's sprawled form, nearly tripped over an ANBU's leg, caught himself on the edge of the desk, froze as Minato's head lolled to the side—
Then grinned even wider.
On the shelf behind the desk, where it always sat, the Scroll of Sealing rested in its cradle.
Naruto's heart thumped.
He darted forward, grabbed the scroll—it was heavier than it looked; he huffed, adjusting his grip—and hugged it to his chest. For a heartbeat, he glanced back at his father's sleeping face, some small thread of guilt pulling at him.
Then excitement steamrolled it.
"I'm gonna blow everyone's minds," he whispered to himself. "Rookie of the year for sure. Right in Sasuke's smug face."
He scrambled up onto the windowsill—the same window Kakashi was half-hanging from, though Naruto somehow missed the jōnin entirely—and squeezed himself through, scroll bumping against the frame.
A moment later, he was gone, blond blur streaking across the rooftops outside.
The office stayed silent for a beat.
Then Hiruzen opened one eye.
"Did he…?"
"Yes," Minato said into the desk.
Kakashi's head reappeared in the window frame, upside down. "He did."
Tsunade swung her legs off the arm of the chair and sat up, stretching. "Are you going to stop him?"
Minato pushed himself upright, rubbing his temple. "In a minute."
Kushina sat up on the couch, hair slightly mussed. "Or we could watch first."
Hiruzen's expression slid toward something both fond and exasperated. "I have the crystal ready."
He brought his hands together in a smooth, practiced seal, chakra flowing with a familiarity that spoke of long use. An orb of shimmering crystal formed in the air above his palms, surface cloudy for a moment before clearing to reveal a moving image.
Naruto, feet pounding against dirt now instead of rooftops, scroll on his back, grin stretched across his face, heading straight for the training grounds.
Minako pushed herself up from the floor, crossing the space to stand beside the former Hokage, eyes already focused on the sphere. Tsunami moved to stand on the other side. Tsunade came to lean an elbow on Minato's desk, peering over. Kakashi slid fully into the room and took up a position near the window, arms folded.
Kushina found herself hovering close to Minato's chair, fingers curling loosely around the back of it.
In the crystal, Naruto stumbled once, catching himself with a hand on a tree trunk. The image flickered closer, adjusting, as Hiruzen narrowed his focus.
A flash of red marked a scrape on Naruto's palm. He shook his hand, wiped it absently on his shirt, and kept going.
"He cut himself," Tsunami noted quietly.
"Nothing deep," Tsunade said after a heartbeat. Her eyes flicked over the angle of his wrist, the blood pattern. "Superficial. He'll whine if we pour alcohol on it later, but that's all."
In the sphere, Naruto broke into a clearing—the one often used for late-night training. It was empty at this hour, bathed in a softer light as the sun dipped toward the horizon, casting long shadows across the grass.
He dropped the scroll to the ground, panting, hands on his knees.
"Made it," he huffed, more to himself than anything.
He flopped down in front of the scroll and began unrolling it with reverent clumsiness. The dense black ink spirals and kanji of forbidden jutsu spilled across the grass, reaching out in long, curling lines.
"Don't you dare use anything too big," Kushina muttered under her breath.
Minato's lips pressed together at the same time Hiruzen's shoulders rose in a quiet sigh.
Naruto's eyes glittered as he scanned the first few entries. His mouth moved as he read, whispering the names.
"Multiple Shadow Clone… got that."
Tsunade's head snapped a little toward Minato. "He what?"
"Later," Minato said.
"Flying Thunder—absolutely not," Naruto muttered to himself, eyes widening as he skipped that one. "Dad would murder me. Mom would resurrect me just to murder me again."
"That's accurate," Kushina said.
In the crystal, Naruto continued down the scroll, flipping a section further, scanning.
"Eh. No. Too long. Too complicated. Don't even know what that word means…"
He stopped.
The view in the orb tightened, focusing not on Naruto's face, but on the section of scroll his fingers hovered over.
It was a seal.
Not like the Konoha standard storage glyphs, or even the more complex techniques used for summoning or sealing chakra beasts. This was denser. Layered in a way that made the eye want to slide off of it. It wound inward and outward simultaneously, circles built into lines built into spirals.
Old.
"Kuso…" Tsunade breathed. "What is that?"
Minato leaned forward slightly. "I've never…"
Hiruzen's eyes narrowed, the old sharpness rising like a blade. "That… shouldn't be there."
"You recognize it?" Minato asked.
"No," Hiruzen said. "That's the problem."
In the clearing, Naruto frowned. "Huh…"
He reached out, the fingers of his right hand hovering over the strange seal. His palm twinged, a sting that made him wince. The cut he'd gotten earlier had opened a little wider, the run having pulled at the skin.
A thin, bright bead of blood swelled at the edge of the wound.
"Don't touch it," Minato said softly, to a boy too far away to hear.
Naruto hesitated. For once in his life, some small instinct told him this was different. This wasn't a flashy technique or something cool to show off. This felt… heavy.
He began to lean closer, intending just to look, to maybe memorize the structure so he could ask Mom or Dad about it later.
He didn't get a chance.
Because a rustle in the trees at the edge of the clearing broke the moment apart.
Mizuki dropped from the branches with a smile that did not reach his eyes.
Naruto jolted, eyes widening, hand jerking slightly in surprise.
"Good job, Naruto," Mizuki said, landing lightly a few meters away. The evening light caught the edge of the man's headband, the Konoha symbol gleaming. His smile sharpened. "You really outdid yourself."
"Mizuki-sensei?" Naruto straightened a little. "You—how did you—"
"You managed to steal the Scroll of Sealing right from under the Hokage's nose," Mizuki continued, walking forward slowly. "All by yourself. That's impressive. You'd definitely have been Rookie of the Year."
Naruto's chest puffed a little, confusion warring with pride. "R-Really?"
Mizuki's smile twisted. "If you lived long enough to see it."
Before those words even fully registered, he moved.
Fast.
Kunai flashing in his hand, killing intent spiking like a blade driven into the clearing.
Naruto's heart lurched. The suddenness of it, the betrayal, the wrongness of a familiar face turning into a weapon—it all hit at once. His body moved backward before his brain caught up, heel catching on the edge of the unrolled scroll.
He went down hard.
His hand—his cut, bleeding hand—slammed onto the strange seal.
Three things happened at once.
Naruto's breath left him in a grunt.
The bead of blood smeared across the center of the ancient design.
And the seal woke up.
The ink lines flared, not with light, but with presence, as if something deep within them recognized the signature laid upon it. For the smallest fraction of a second, everything seemed to hold its breath.
Then the world exploded.
The Scroll of Sealing bucked like something alive. A shockwave of chakra slammed outward, flattening the grass in every direction, rippling the air. A column of thick, dark smoke burst upward with a roar, swallowing Naruto, Mizuki, and the entire center of the clearing.
In the Hokage's office, the crystal ball flared white, the image fracturing.
Minato didn't think.
He moved.
One hand came up, fingers brushing the Flying Thunder God formula he'd tied onto Naruto's clothing months ago. Chakra flared, precise and instantaneous.
Space folded.
He vanished.
Minako felt the surge of his chakra before the light around him fully shifted. She moved on instinct, hand snapping out, fingers closing around the edge of his cloak the instant it blurred.
She did not intend to miss this.
"Minako—!"
Kushina's shout chased the flash of gold that swallowed them both.
And then they were gone.
The office hummed, the vacuum of their abrupt absence making the air feel too still for a heartbeat.
In the crackling light of the crystal ball, the image fought to steady itself, static clearing just enough to show the edge of the clearing, the violent storm of smoke churning at its heart.
Tsunade's jaw clenched.
Kushina's hands were fists.
Kakashi's eye narrowed.
Hiruzen's pipe slipped from his fingers, falling to the floor with a sharp, ceramic crack.
The chakra that rippled through the sphere, through the village, through the bones of every shinobi who had been alive long enough to know the difference between ordinary killing intent and something older—
It was like standing on the edge of a cliff and feeling the ocean rise to meet you.
Heavy.
Dense.
Ancient.
For a heartbeat, the Hidden Leaf remembered that it had been built on the ashes of gods and monsters long before anyone had carved faces into stone.
Hiruzen stared at the crystal, and memories he had outrun for decades roared up to meet him.
"This chakra…" he whispered.
He didn't finish the sentence.
He turned and went through the window.
He didn't bother with the frame.
Glass rattled in its casing as he passed. The old man moved with a speed that should have been impossible for someone his age, propelled less by muscle and more by urgency carved into his bones.
Tsunade was right behind him, heels already leaving the floor, chakra gathering in her legs as she leapt.
Kushina didn't even pause to look at Minato's empty chair. She darted for the door, red hair streaming behind her like a comet's tail.
Kakashi blurred, disappearing in a flicker of movement.
Tsunami's hand went instinctively to the pouch at her hip where her medical tools rested. She spared one glance at the twins—Akito and Aiko—who were staring at the crystal in wide-eyed confusion and fear.
Two ANBU dropped from the ceiling.
"Stay with them," Kushina snapped, already halfway into the hall.
"Yes, ma'am," one said, moving to stand between the children and the window.
The other took position by the door.
Tsunami hesitated only a heartbeat, then followed Tsunade and Hiruzen out, the air of the office rushing to fill the space their bodies had occupied.
The crystal ball hung in the center of the room for a long, trembling moment, showing smoke and chakra and the vaguest silhouettes within.
Then it, too, flickered, the connection straining under the weight of whatever had just been dragged screaming back into the light.
Far away, in a clearing that had never seen a legend rise before, Minato and Minako stood in the collapsing eye of the storm with Naruto between them—
And something woke up in the smoke.