A/N: Hey everyone, just a short note thanking you all for taking the time to read a story I've enjoyed writing more than any other I've crafted. This story might not be like many you've read thus far... and I've been told the story really starts to pick up at Chapter 3. The first three chapters are very much a set-up as I know I get frustrated with a story that makes crazy changes without telling us HOW we got them. So please, I just beg your patience until the story gets into swing.

Thanks for sticking with me and it will (hopefully!) be all worth it.

And to you all who love lurking, please, I love reading reviews, even if it's just to say you want me to update faster!

Thanks,

JB

Chapter 1

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."

-C.S. Lewis

This story is told as accurately, or inaccurately as the case may be, as it was related to me. Give it time… you will see. I've always believed that legends are made, rather than born. That choice, the very free will we claim not to have, is what dictates our path.

Legends are made, not born.

This will prove it.

/Nine Years Ago

/Valley of the Nine

/Outside the Village Hidden in the Leaves

Hiruzen

A light drizzle started above the two forms on a rocky hill overlooking large troughs of decimated terrain. Churned earth was seen for miles in eerily-straight lines, like some gargantuan beast the size of the open sky itself had begun tearing at the ground.

That wasn't far from the truth.

The light rain was the precursor to larger storms on the way, a simple gathering of strength for a more significant rainfall later. Sarutobi Hiruzen, Third Hokage of Konohagakure, judged the heavy clouds as a tropical storm, one that the Land of Fire proper had very few due to the fact they were almost entirely inland, minus the coastal regions to the south. The Hokage would know this as they'd had maybe three or four in the seventy years of life he'd lived.

As omens go, it wasn't the worst.

The rain didn't care whether it was or was not a precursor to bad news as it gathered in tiny drops on the Sandaime Hokage's balding head, matting his sparse white hair, and running down his eyes, muddying his vision, yet he never blinked, staring at the land and the long furrows in the once-beautiful forestry. The forestry Hashirama had built and cultivated.

It was all so much ash and broken wood now.

A voice, Shikaku Nara, Hiruzen thought, spoke out beside him.

"I'm so sorry Hiruzen. Biwako is...dead. We're not sure who could have eliminated Kushina's detail and gotten to her. And as for Asuma…"

Pregnant silence.

"There was nothing-"

"Why was he even there, Shikaku? Biwako… Biwako knew what she'd gotten into helping Minato, but Asuma shouldn't have been where he was."

Those were the first words the Hokage had spoken in a half-hour.

The Jonin Commander looked both awkward and relieved to have something to say.

"Shinku Yuuhi tried to stop him at the cordon, but when one of It's tails crashed down onto their position, He and Kakashi slipped out of our reserve blockade with some of the others trying to get to the Fourth. Asuma disappeared in the commotion and we didn't find him until it was too late. Kakashi is still missing, presumed dead. We're assuming he went with Asuma."

Shikaku and Hiruzen stared out over the broken landscape.

This was his first failure.

Downed trees were the largest victims, dozens of acres of broken stubs like toothpicks, shattered and tossed aside as if by a child having a tantrum with toys that were boring. But it was the sounds of death and the tyranny of fading life that were the hardest to ignore. Moans of the dying and screams of those still in the realm of the living drifted up over their position from where triage centers were being efficiently set up by medical ninja-the Hospital was too far to be practical. Dr. Yakushi had really outdone himself in the wake of this tragedy.

It was a brutal dagger in his mind as he wondered if Asuma had sounded like those down there. Those glottal, agonal moans made him think of the wars he'd been in the throats he'd slit, the Genin battalions he'd wholesale wiped from existence with combination elemental ninjutsu. The kind that squads of Jonin stood only a fair chance to stand against-was that what it was like to the Kyubi?

Easy, even trivial to kill humans? Perhaps Asuma had lay there hoping a medic would be along to put him back together like that poor man in the fairytales who'd taken a sorry tumble.

Speaking of a sorry tumble, his mind flayed him again with more of his failures. His second biggest disappointment, Tsunade, surfaced in his mind at the thought of Dr. Yakushi, someone who shouldn't have been head of Konoha General, it should've been her. Every time now, when he thought of that particular wayward student, it wasn't pity and sadness for Nawaki and Dan he felt, more casualties to their system, compassion rising, and clouding his judgment.

Instead of that compassion that characterized his rule for the last fifty years and drove a wedge between him and his best friend Danzo Shimura, instead, he was white-knuckled with rage at the could-have-been and no empathy was forthcoming.

How many could she have saved today?

He wondered where she was, perhaps gambling in a bar somewhere while her people died.

Perhaps she could've saved his boy had she been here. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. If only she'd been here. Asuma and Biwako….

And then there was Naruto to consider as well as the Uchiha… particularly Mikoto. Mikoto and her new…powers. But there had to be a path through all of this forestry of bad luck. Thoughts raced in his aged head, but a clarity settled over him as he focused on the long-troughs and furrows that broke up his beautiful country.

Decisions crystallized in his mind, he decided his first order of business would be to fix his current mistakes. The thoughts stole his grief from him for a minute, they came rushing back as Shikaku spoke again.

"I'm so sorry, my Lord Third."

Hiruzen twitched and breathed out a breath not unlike those down on the battlefield, agonal breaths. He breathed in. He breathed out.

"I'm no Hokage, Shikaku. I'm an old, broken man. How many failures is this now? Especially after today...I don't want to be Hokage. But… I will be damned if my reign ends like this. I have plans, Shikaku. I'll need you."

Shocked silence met his proclamation, but Hiruzen was thinking of all his other failures.

Orochimaru.

The madness that had spilled out of the laboratory when they had caught him experimenting on children still kept him up some nights. Children. His third failure. When his mouth finally moved it didn't look like he was speaking to Shikaku.

"You have a newborn son, yes Shikaku?"

"Yes my Lord, Shikamaru. He was born a few months ago."

"Cherish him. This life is cruel."

"My Lord-"

"Do not call me that."

A pause.

Shikaku shifted, his white cloak, the symbol of his position as Jonin Commander, curling in the wind.

"Forgive me…"

Hiruzen stood, bones creaking.

"No, it is I that must beg your forgiveness I fear. It was an unworthy thought. Today is a tragic loss in all but name and politeness must not be another casualty."

The Third Hokage stood, pulling his darker cloak around him.

"My grief can wait. I fear we have more to do this night. Where is my new apprentice?"

Gravel crunched behind them as a member of the ANBU, the right arm and hand of the Hokage, made itself known, pure white mask a beacon in the simmering, muggy darkness, long black hair flowing down her back visible like a hole in the twilight black surrounding their position.

Hiruzen held Shikaku's gaze, not acknowledging her arrival.

"The cost we all must pay will be, perhaps, more than we can bear, but bear it we must. I know not what the future holds for us, but I fear this is just the beginning of our misfortunes."

The ANBU came to a blurring stop, leaves swirling, and held a small bundle of cloth out to their-whether he wanted to be or not-temporary Hokage. Alert violet eyes, the color of deep glacial melt in twilight, peered up at him from the blanketed form, hands working as though blindly searching for something he knew was there.

Hiruzen grabbed the little chubby hand and held it. He smiled despite himself and it hurt so much because his little boy, Asuma, was dead.

Minato's was not and he would see the boy raised right. Loved, cherished, prepared. He would not see his predecessor's child, burdened beyond belief with an overwhelmingly powerful entity of hate and rage and black emotion, come to any harm. He knew that sharks circled them now; The Seifuku-sha, the Man in Red, who had attacked and killed Biwako, her guard, Kushina, and now… well, if Mikoto hadn't been there and… oh god, Biwako.

No, Naruto needed him now.

He was a failure, but would not be a failure in this task he set himself. His losses would not stop him from doing this last thing before he saw her again.

The light of his life; dear Biwako.

The jagged edges of youthful memory cut as he pictured her smiling at him, hair curling and messy as she looked at him from across their bed. His mind swam back and forth between grief and resolve and ten, twenty emotions through the spectrum of loss.

She and their beautiful children were dead.

It was all Hiruzen could do not to break down right there. Hiruzen held tight to the tiny hand of the last Uzumaki. It steadied him as he let his grief flow through him and it seemed the boy knew his grief as it raged in him because the boy stilled, staring at him, far too alert. How like Minato he was.

Emotions roiled in him and every image in his head was Biwako and Asuma. How would he tell Keiji that his baby brother was dead and his mother murdered by The Seifuku-sha? It would be another nail in the coffin for Keiji in regards to his father. Hiruzen knew his eldest would blame him and it took all his decades of iron-clad control to keep from incinerating everything around him in a fit of rage he hadn't felt in many, many years.

It was as if he was falling down a deep, dark hole that had no end in sight.

He wasn't fit to be Hokage after this, but… luckily he'd found a new candidate. Someone… maybe worthy that he could tell everything to and let them clean up his mess. Bitter didn't begin to cover how he felt.

"Sir?"

Forcibly, the elderly man pushed away the tsunami of dark webs in his mind to focus on this dark purple-eyed, blonde-haired baby. Kushina's eyes in Minato's face and body. All he could see was Minato's face at the end, not long ago, as he pleaded with him to keep the young jinchuriki safe and out of the clutches of those who would harm him. Minato's hands still in the last hand seal of that terribly powerful fuinjutsu; the Dead Demon Consuming Seal would stay with him till the end of his days, the feeling of God, the God of Death, pressing and squeezing his heart and soul.

And then the bijudama of information his Hokage dropped as he breathed his last.

"Please, old man, keep him safe. Take care of our little Naruto. [The man seemed to think, looking grave.] ...and it seems that Uchiha Madara is the one behind this, behind it all. He is the Man in Red. That… Seifuku-sha. Find-."

And then the Fourth had died, his wife behind him with a bloody, mangled hole through her, beautiful red hair splayed around her like blood, those amazing fuin-chakra chains of hers disappearing, disappearing, gone.

He would protect Minato's son where he'd failed to protect his Hokage.

This was not going to be his fourth failure.

And what was he to make of the phrase, 'it was Uchiha Madara?'

It was utter nonsense.

Impossible.

The utterances of a man suffering from extreme blood loss and even more acute chakra-loss.

Uchiha Madara was one of the Founders of Konohagakure itself. He was immensely powerful, on par with Hashirama-sensei...but he died fifty years now. It bore thought, though, as Hiruzen had seen some unbelievable things in his time as Hokage. it couldn't be possible, could it? His student, Orochimaru, one of his greatest mistakes, had been searching for immortality his entire adult life. It was what had driven him, among other things, from Konoha.

Madara was so powerful compared to today's level of shinobi that they were as children before his skill and might. Hashirama-sensei, the only possessor of the famed Wood Release, the very ability that raised the white-birch Cloudtouched skyscrapers of Konohagakure proper, blurred the line between God and man. Madara had been only slightly below equal. Their final battle had reshaped the landscape in the Valley of the End for a hundred miles.

Madara would be a problem, he'd warn his successor, if the Fourth's words were even true, but the Man in Red, if he was Madara, had been all but fatally wounded in his exchange with Minato. He'd seen the horrible stomach wound with his own eyes trapped behind Kushina's barrier with Mikoto.

So that was a problem for later.

First order of business was to fix one of his longest-running mistakes. Hiruzen smiled. The pun with his student wasn't funny, but he had to smile anyway. The eldest surviving Sarutobi vowed that he would bring her home from where she'd been...lost.

"Shikaku, fetch my councilors and Jiraiya-"

The Jonin Commander slapped a fist to his chest and retreated swiftly. But, even as the Third Hokage watched and cradled Naruto, eyeing Shikaku's retreating form, he knew there would be an ever-spiraling path from here, infinite branches in a tree.

"-and Danzo. Alert them despite the hour."

Tsunade would answer for her absence by replacing him while he trained her real successor because if she did not, there was nothing to stop Danzo from taking the reins. But that was a distant fear, as there was nothing she could say or do that would deny him this and if the last Senju thought she had surpassed her master she would quickly find he hadn't lost his edge. If anything, he'd become more savage. Hiruzen Sarutobi, a man the people called the God of Shinobi, had very little he cared about left to lose.

After all, a blade cracked and pitted with age made grievous wounds. Biwako…

He'd finally learned his lesson.

By hook or by crook, he would put the hat on that obstinate girl himself, the alternative was unthinkable.

The smiling face of their sacrificial lamb, the Jinchuuriki of the Nine Tails, smiled up at him at last and gurgled his apparent happiness and the former Third Hokage could feel the ghost of a smile crossed his face despite the horrific reality of the Dead Demon Consuming Seal staring up at him from the baby's stomach, permanently etched-and it was deeply cut grooves-in ink-that-wasn't-really-ink.

The seal was one of the most complex and intertwined works of fuin he'd ever seen, crawling into every single part of the baby's complex chakra network and spiralling out to rest on all three-hundred and sixty-five tenketsu points.

Naruto needed protection, that much was certain. A level of protection he could not get in Konohagakure, could not get anywhere, not with Danzo ensconced here and clamoring for the weaponization of Orochimaru's unsettlingly effective prototype Cursed Seals.

Perhaps they should send him away from this place? The old man shook his head. This was to be tabled until urgent matters were dealt with.

Hiruzen, looked up calling after the retreating Nara.

"Gather my guard, Shikaku. We go to fetch a Senju."

Four Days Post-Nine-tailed Attack

Sarutobi Clan Compound

Hiruzen sat at a desk in his office at his house, a dark-paneled depressing sort of hole in the wall within the largely empty compound, and watched his crystal ball in his nightclothes, not viewing anything in particular, simply sweeping across Konohagakure. The city has not stopped inspiring awe at its beauty and majesty.

Naruto, all of a month old, sounded like he was sawing on a knot in the corner of the room as he slept. The kid, as Hiruzen had found out, was a voracious eater and sleeper. The temporary Hokage had found that the kid very much enjoyed running around and if Sarutobi had learned anything from two kids it was that he was above-average in his gross motor skills. Already he was climbing things that made the ex-Hokage want to pull his remaining hair off his head.

Weren't children supposed to crawl before they ran?

He remembered Kushina as a kid and prayed that the boy took more after his father...though from what he remembered, Minato was a bit of an idiot as well. In battle, he was a sublime tactician and impeccable fighter, outside…

Holy kami was he clueless.

Not in village matters, there he was a shrewd politician and he knew people and believed in them in a way that Sarutobi in his jaded age couldn't begin to match. Minato was… well, he was naive. Kushina had been the more grounded of the two in terms of their worldviews. She'd lived through the destruction of Uzushiogakure after all. Death on a grand scale and a betrayal to match. Hiruzen still considered that betrayal to be one of his greatest failings.

Above even Orochimaru.

Half of his mind was on the toddler, while the other half was consumed with recent events, having been prompted by his thinking of his three students. In his mind's eye, he could still see Tsunade's tears mixing with the spring rains as they stood in a standoff. He was sitting in his office in his compound, but the smell and sounds and memory was overwhelming.

Everyone was tense, standing in a circle.

The expedition to retrieve the last Senju was stuck in the awful hole of an area outside of Otafuku Gai called Shibumi Gai. Basically a huge ghetto. Why she was here Hiruzen never would know.

This expedition was a position he never wanted, never could have imagined before the Attack, a metaphorical blade to the throat of his student and her apprentice.

Shizune, all of ten years of age, in that lanky middle stage of teenagedom, was also crying, sniffling with a ninja behind her, a hand on her shoulder. He could still see the mud on her knees where she was slumped on the ground.

Hiruzen and his guard had caught the two of them in a ravine on the outskirts of Fire Country, bordering Ame. Tsunade hadn't bothered running. She'd known who it was chasing her and why. Her beautiful face was a study in conflicting emotions as she set herself.

It was a fighting stance.

The sight enraged him.

She dared? After all that happened?

She should've been grateful that he hadn't labelled her a missing-nin and killed her!

Enma emerged into existence from the staff in his hands. A staff he hadn't remembered summoning. The large hairy paw of his oldest friend clamped onto his shoulder as the old Hokage shook, his seemingly frail body, still corded with muscles even after seventy years, at the mercy of emotion-a leaf on the wind.

Biwako and Asuma were all he could see.

Enma spoke in a rumble.

"Steady now old friend. The little princess is hurting, same as you."

He quieted the ghosts of Biwako and Asuma in his mind, listening to his friend. He ignored Enma and directed his question at his brashest student.

"Asuma and Biwako are dead. Did you hear?"

She nodded stiffly.

"I heard sensei. I'm so sorry. You know I would understand, of all people."

"Would you, I wonder?"

They stared at each other, dark eyes meeting dark eyes. Tsunade looked away.

"I honor Biwako by doing my best to make her death mean something. She was a healer, a gentle soul, like yourself. Yet, you wallow here and there, gambling, dishonoring your family by abusing your privilege, and above it all pulling Dan's niece from her rightful place in Konoha, her true family and yours."

She grew visibly annoyed, then enraged at his words, hurt.

Cut.

Good.

"I question if you do understand what I'm feeling, Tsunade."

"You chase me here? Corner me like an animal? Capture Shizune like a criminal?"

She spat and scoffed, the sound echoing in the crevasse. He stared at her. Trying to see inside her head.

Her question didn't register.

"You don't consider yourselves missing-nin Tsunade?"

She started to answer, startled.

He cut her off, not wanting to hear her rationalizations.

"Do you know why I'm here Tsunade?"

"I can guess, old man. And the answer is no. Even more so now."

She locked eyes with him, eyes wide. Beseeching. As if she wanted him to understand and she didn't look away this time.

"I can't go back! I can barely stand the sight of blood or the sight of those rocks carved with the faces of people who believed in a sham. They were tools, same as everyone else. Tools to a system that doesn't give a shit that almost seven thousand people are dead from the Nine-tails alone. Dan and Nawaki are faceless marks on a stupid memorial wall. I refuse to be a part of that."

The shinobi arrayed around her shifted in response to the honesty. No doubt they considered it weakness. What she was saying was sacrilege to someone who believed, as Hiruzen did, in the Will of Fire.

"Dan...and Nawaki...I just...ca-can't see more pain, Sarutobi-sensei. Deal with more bullshit. I'm not fit to be a shinobi right now...maybe not ever again."

Hiruzen was quiet for a second.

Rain pelted down like senbon, as it seemed to always do these past few days. The first word, first name came out of his mouth like an accusation, growing in sound as he went, like a boulder rolling downhill to some inevitable stop.

"Minato is dead. Kushina is dead. Biwako is dead. Asuma is dead. Dan is dead. Nawaki is dead. Do you know who isn't dead Tsunade?"

Every word a slap, she rocked back. The Third Hokage motioned and a shinobi stepped forward, revealing he carried an infant in a covered basket. The shock of blonde hair, identical to Minato's wild locks, stuck out.

Hiruzen continued, drilling home with his words.

"Naruto isn't dead. And neither is Shizune. I'm reminded of the idea that the Will of Fire is more than just a creed to maintain the bond between one other, but to build a better world for those we leave behind. From pain, growth. Life before Death, as all shinobi must agree. We walk with Death every day and think deeply about our Life."

She looked pained as each word hit her.

"Do you agree?"

Tsunade shifted uncomfortably.

"And there is always someone to be left behind, isn't there? Unless we make it better?"

Sniffles emerged from the normally apathetic woman.

"Someday, we will be gone and we'll be left to be judged by the kami; and we'll be asked whether we did enough while we lived. I for one, will not rest until Naruto is taken care of, till the Leaf is taken care of, and everyone's future is secured."
Hiruzen's voice hardened like steel being forged.

He'd messed up, badly. But he wouldn't fail this time.

"My time as Hokage is ended, I know this because I've made many bad decisions that will haunt me for the rest of my life and this is the end of that road. You still have a chance to set the course of our history. Fix my mistakes. Make a better system for Shizune, Naruto, and the next Nawaki's of the world. To heal what has been torn."

Hiruzen stepped forward, chakra flexing subtly as he went.

"Be Hokage. Fulfill Dan and Nawaki's wish. Help me protect Naruto and raise Shizune in a real village, strong with the Will of Fire, and people to help you. Rebuild the hospital. Form the iryounin corp. Restore the greatness of our nation. Become what I know you can be with but a slight push."

His voice was pleading.

Tsunade's head was down as she listened, crying silently.

"Stop running Tsunade, it's time to come home. If you don't ...it will be Danzo, or The Seifuku-sha, or that madman calling himself a god in Ame, or Onoki the Fence-sitter, or god forbid that savage warmonger Ay from Kumo dictating the kind of world we live in, and I will have to do everything in my power to prevent them from getting their hands on Minato's child. I only need you as Hokage until I've properly trained your successor. I need your help Tsunade. Please."

But Hiruzen knew he'd lost her. He didn't know where, but something he'd said had lost this battle for him.

It was a full two minutes before Tsunade moved.

Slowly at first, she stood spine undulating as she attained full height. She was angry, her fists clenched. Her voice was measured and slow, dangerous. Irrational. The eldest Sarutobi knew his men sensed it as they slid into stances. Hiruzen had to hand it to his student, she'd become more powerful, not less, despite her weaknesses. The pressure of her anger manifested in the feel of her chakra, like all strong ninja, a palpable thing.

"If you think that words will undo what I've lost, will help me forget...then you're more foolish than I gave you credit for old man. Dan believed in the possibility of the world you speak so wistfully of, so did Nawaki… and so did Minato. Now they're dead. I won't be taken for a fool! The world… is broken beyond repair!"

Hiruzen sighed, right hand working on his cloak clasp.

Within his tenketsu, his chakra surged with precision priming his body for movement; the first, second, and third gates were primed for opening. It had been some time since he'd had to use them, to open them together, but he was familiar with their usage.

He continued to work and the cloak fell away after a second, taken by the breeze. Clad in his traditional battle robes and armor a dull matte black underneath, Enma collapsed back to his regular size, six feet of diamond hard metal with a last admonition, "Go easy on her you foolish man."

Hiruzen just shook his head, twirling the staff. Tsunade glared from opposite him, fists clenched.

"You want me to come home? You want me to be the whipping girl for Konoha and listen to old fogies argue-be a tool for state-sanctioned death and rape and destruction? To fix a broken world?"

Hiruzen nodded.

"It's the only place you can change things. But I suspect you'll need incentive to understand the stakes. Do you get it yet Slug Princess? This isn't about you, this isn't about any one person, not anymore. For a true Hokage, it is never about the individual. That is leadership. We accept ownership of the responsibilities of power. You never understood it properly. Orochimaru did though and that is ridiculous enough in itself to haunt me for all my days."

She sneered.

He looked away.

"You'll get what you need to make your first step. But I suspect you won't like it."

It all happened in an instant.

Tsunade reacted, the genjutsu so subtle she barely noticed it, dispelled internally with a rotation of chakra. Just in time as she barely avoided a house-sized conflagration of white fire, done with no hand seals, water and earth techniques following it, following her, flowing, shearing through the ground like a razor, splitting it open like so much rotten fruit, the water jets pushing up out of the ground powerful enough to drill through solid bedrock narrowly missing her face.

The greatest medical ninja in the world jumped and slid back, whirling, using every technique in her arsenal to avoid the massive chakra constructions as the world fell away into reality, revealing an empty clearing.

No fire.

No water.

No shorn rock.

She crowed, triumphant.

"Those tricks are beneath you, Sarutobi-sensei."

Tsunade dropped into a deep crouch, stunned.

"What-"

Where Shizune had been kneeling, Sarutobi and Shizune appeared, hostage, a bloody kunai held rock steady in his grip. At the sight of the blood, she froze. Sarutobi smiled coldly. There was a cut on his liver-spotted arm still corded with tight muscles after all these years.

"Incentive. You spoke of this earlier. Danzo always accused me of being too kind, too unwilling to be a tool of my people as all shinobi must inevitably be. Well, he'd be so proud of his old teammate now."

Hiruzen drew the knife across the girls carotid artery slow, viscera parting under the well-honed blade. Blood arched through the air, painting the side of Tsunade's face.

"Wouldn't he?"

Shizune gasped, choking.

The life-giving liquid emptying down the front of her clothes as Hiruzen kept her upright with a hand on the side of her neck. Tsunade vomited, crying out, a hand outstretched.

She couldn't believe what was happening.

Her mind almost refused to process the scene, but go through it piece by piece it certainly did. The Slug Summoner had mere milliseconds to understand the life of her ward, her niece, the most important piece of a life she'd left behind was slowly draining. Every pump of blood meant she was further and further from being saved. But the blood...it...she….

"Shizune!"

In an instant, the medical nin, an S-class shinobi that had few equals in the world, went from frozen in fear to enraged hypermotion. The ground for twenty feet in either direction of her sandaled feet cracked and split as she launched herself into the fastest shunshin she'd ever achieved.

There was no way she'd let this happen.

No way.

"Katsuya!"

The summon didn't come.

Hiruzen, Shizune, Katsuya, and the gathered group of shinobi-a small group of elite shinobi handpicked by the ex-Hokage specifically for this mission-watched as one of the legendary Three, a name given by Hanzo the Salamander in their youth, a powerful ninja they'd looked up to and admired, fought shadows and light under the influence of a basic, albeit deeply-layered genjutsu. What it showed was believable enough that Tsunade dove in headfirst and wrapped herself up in gossamer strands of deadly lies.

Shizune, standing next to the Sandaime completely unharmed, was crying as she watched her aunt, closer than a mother to her, spiral into madness.

Hiruzen looked down at her, turning Shizune's cheek to face him. Blotches of color stained her cheeks and it was obvious she was in pain. He couldn't tell whether it was from the trauma of the situation, although she couldn't see what he was projecting onto the Slug Summoner, or that her heart was breaking for her mentor.

"Shizune. Pay attention. This is what happens when one loses sight of what is important in our lives. The world becomes a dark forest from which we cannot see the moon to guide our way."

Shizune, her face covered in snot and eyes reddened, reminded him of Asuma in his youth, crying after being beaten by his older brother Keichi in a taijutsu spar. Hiruzen felt a pain in his heart that wasn't physical. The old Hokage cupped Shizune's face and turned her towards what was going on. They all had to face reality.

"In this way, we must look underneath the underneath to find our own moon. Our own guide to light on our path."

He nodded to the Sannin with his chin.

"Tsunade has lost sight of why she became a shinobi in the first place and she wallows in pain, runs away, instead of taking responsibility. Her not choosing… well, that is a choice and she doesn't understand that. All ninja must choose. To not choose is to choose. The Will of Fire means we face our problems, we face them with our comrades by our sides."

He smiled at her, ruffling her hair, then sobered.

"Don't look away, okay?"

The girl nodded solemnly.

Sarutobi followed the thread of his genjutsu and the reality he'd created, launching himself forward in a blindingly fast Body Flicker technique, appearing next to her in the perfect position, seamlessly translating his movement with that of what Tsunade saw in his made-up reality, as she reacted to his genjutsu, latching on to her speeding, dangerous fist by adhering himself to her wrist with perfect chakra control.

With his hand stuck to the back of her hand like a limpet, he pivoted, sending her ungodly powerful fist down to the ground with a simple wrist-flick while channeling elemental chakra.

To her, he was sure she thought he'd teleported like Minato. But the amount of lightning chakra he was channeling into her body via the minute contact was enough to disable a Tailed Beast for an hour. Her fist detonated from the feedback of the enhanced blow mixing with his lightning chakra.

Simultaneously, he flipped an internal switch on the second Inner Gate. These were the limiters on human strength and power. Only the most dedicated shinobi in the taijutsu arts could open even one of them. Three was bordering on insanity. Gai could open all eight, but had been taught by his father.

Sarutobi was self-taught and could only manage three.

Three would barely be enough to put her down as crippled as she was, but it was what he had.

Gate of Healing, release!

All at once, his body gained phenomenal strength, he could feel it coursing through his veins intoxicating and ready. Bones and muscles creaked with renewed power.

Enma was also waiting, ready for the perfect moment.

In one go, he swung the Adamantine Staff whilst channeling Earth chakra through his feet, anchoring him for his swing, alongside the lightning (a feat of which he was mostly sure only he could do), empowering his muscles as well, in a perfect downward arc, body primed, all culminating in a textbook blow straight to Tsunade's temple.

Staff connected, snapping her head to the side as she looked up at him in startled disbelief. Overbalanced, overextended and attacking something that wasn't there, Tsuande had been set up and she now knew it. The fact he even landed that was a testament to how messed up she was that she couldn't recognize a basic, though skillfully layered, genjutsu. Normally, she could disable the Lightning chakra as well as recover from the concussive blow.

Normally.

Today, a day of emotional turmoil, it would be enough to knock her out for six hours at best. The second swing, a spinning backhanded strike, connected a second time and with the solid sound of metal connecting with flesh, she hit the ground. Nobody moved. Blood mixed with rain.

Grimly, he turned and walked away.

She would either learn her lesson or fall further down a dark hole. He hoped it was the former. The shinobi around him were stunned and simply stared, Shizune included, crying forgotten, as he motioned to his guard. They leapt to obey, forming up around him.

The rain had stopped, but Hiruzen picked his cloak up from where he'd dropped it and fastened it again, flicking the mud off with a simple water technique that scoured it clean. The jutsu was a mind-boggling display of power and control. Nobody even looked twice.

The Third Hokage paused, turning to speak to Shizune again. He gestured off-hand to Riza, a chunin Yamanaka.

"There is a town less than a mile from here. Take her there with Riza's help. Ask for Hizatchi at the Resting Dragon. He should be able to take care of her till she wakes. It won't be long. Hopefully, she'll have the headache to end all headaches to remind her she has a long way to go to surpass me."

Hiruzen looked sad for a second.

Shizune could see it in the set of his eyebrows and the wrinkles on his face. It was a face built for smiles, but there were none now. The look she thought she'd seen was gone in the next instant. Her mouth opens involuntarily.

"What should I...how should I ...what do I say?"

"We need her. Hokage or not. We need her with us. Tell her that. Despite her reticence, she can do all that I've said. I know she can."

He turned to go.

"Goodbye Shizune, hopefully we meet again under better circumstances."

The last parting memory with Shizune dissolved with a knock on his study door. A wave of his hand dispelled his Crystal Farsight technique.

Back creaking as he got up, Hiruzen had an idea of who it might be as he opened the door and smiled gently at the silhouette standing in the threshold.

"You don't know how happy I am to see you...Tsunade."

This was a very different person than when he last saw her.

The next Hokage, the soon to be Godaime Hokage of Konohagakure, stepped into the light scowling slightly, but it softened as she heard the snoring of the toddler. Little Naruto sounded like he was sawing on a log.

Shizune, dark hair in a tight bob and looking considerably happier than the last time they'd spoken, bounded around past the two of them and ran up to the crib slash daybed Hiruzen had put up and made cooing noises at the child within. Adults completely forgotten in favor of the cute baby with whisker marks. The two of them didn't speak and both simply watched Shizune and Naruto.

"We...do it for them, don't we old man? That's what you said?"

Hiruzen simply nodded. The last Senju let out a deep rattling sigh. She looked stronger, resolved as she met his gaze. No bruise where he'd struck her. That had probably healed a half an hour past when he'd given it to her.

Perhaps it was the set of her shoulders, her straight posture. But she looked every inch a Hokage.

Ready.

She'd need it.

Danzo was complaining about the Uchiha. Shisui and Itachi, prodigies that they were, were caught up in something big and they'd have to act quickly. Knowing Danzo as he did, he was no longer willing to countenance any breach of authority. He needed Tsunade to be ready. Fugaku and Danzo together were not someone they could fight separately.

She spoke quietly, moving closer to the sleeping Naruto.

"I cannot take the hat from you old man, not really."

His hopes froze. The ideal world he pictured in his head fractured with that one statement like glass landing on the ground from a great height.

He was quiet for a time, simply puffing on his pipe he processed her statement.

"Konoha is a primed exploding tag. I need-"

She snorted.

"I'm aware. I haven't seen a single Uchiha. There are Hyuga wearing Police Force uniforms. What part of this doesn't seem fucking off? I know you need me."

The recent septuagenarian snorted at the last statement.

"True. But I want you to know that, as usual, I tried my best and as usual no good deed goes unpunished. You need to know everything to put a stop to whatever is coming. But you must take the hat in order to help my plan come to fruition."

"I can't! I want to...but I can't. I'm still not over my haemophilia...I'm a mess and I know it. You never should've beaten me and I think we both know that. "

Hiruzen didn't say anything because she was right. He was slowing down in his old age and couldn't fight extended battles anymore.

Tsunade practically growled the last part.

Despite her hostility, Sarutobi stared at her, thinking. She was right. He shouldn't have beaten her. Tsunade in fighting form would've seen through every facade and trick he'd pulled. The Slug Princess was easily as strong as his first three Gates, had access to numerous techniques that would've countered any move he could've pulled. Yet he beat her. Shizune looked back at her, concerned, so the greatest med-nin in the world lowered her voice.

"What do we do?"

Hiruzen simply looked at her, helpless.

Another voice spoke from the darkness.

"Sensei, I've returned."

The beauty of Mikoto Uchiha was that of a marble statue sculpted by a master artisan to suggest the warmth of life, yet entirely lacked her typical humanity; today, here, she was coldly perfect, all sharp lines and angles that, instead of suggesting the femininity she'd been known for her entire life, screamed iron strength in lithe, powerful muscles.

She hadn't always been that way… but the last few years had taken a toll on all of them. Mikoto the most out of them all.

She melted out from the shadows on the wall and handed a scroll to Hiruzen as she spoke. It was low, controlled-all emotion scrubbed from her voice. As if the imminent possible destruction of her family and entire clan meant nothing. Mikoto had told him herself that the only thing that mattered to her now was the village, Itachi, Sasuke, and Satsuki.

Fugaku could hang… and he would.

"Report."

"They're gone. All of them. Clan compound is deserted."

Hiruzen was stunned, still reading the scroll. How could this be?

"To where? Dead?"

"No, I wish. To Ame. The God 'Pein' and this infamous Man in Red, welcomed them with open arms."

Tsunade and the Sandaime stared speechless. Who the hell was Pein? The Man in Red….

Last words Minato ever spoke pertained entirely to the identity of The Man in Red, or the Seifuku-sha as the continent was starting to know him by his nom de guerre; The Conqueror.

Hiruzen thought quickly. If Minato was right about Uchiha Madara being this Red Man then whatever they wanted with a disillusioned army of Sharingan users could not be a good thing. A clan that betrayed it's village deserved death.

Hiruzen had to ensure he gave it to them.

"Do you know what this means Mikoto? If Tsunade refuses to take the hat, now this makes it harder to make a case for you as my current student."

The woman merely nodded.

"I understand. I'm prepared to do anything required to succeed."

Hiruzen sighed, turning to Tsunade.

"Are you sure-"

"No. I'm sorry… I can't do it. I'll stay and help safeguard Konoha, but I can't take the hat. And wait- sensei?"

Hiruzen rolled his eyes.

"I agreed to take Mikoto on since ...well," he paused, considering, "...her status and abilities are her secret to tell. Suffice to say I'm the best one to be able to teach her to control her new abilities since the Nine-tailed Attack."

Tsunade looked disgruntled, but her face smoothed as she stared at Mikoto's blank expression. Clearly no one was going to be forthcoming about this big secret.

"Very well."

The ex-Hokage drew himself up looking every inch his almost eighty years of age.

"Danzo will become Hokage, I might delay him a year or two. I cannot stop him. In fact, I think it is best that I ensure he takes my hat. I will bargain with him to ensure Naruto's anonymity as a container. We must make him believe that Naruto is a regular orphan and not Minato and Kushina's only son nor his status as an Uzumaki. The clever will put two-and-two and make four."

Hiruzen paced.

"He is to be 'just' the container for the Nine-tails. There are three powerful secrets wrapped up in one boy; the Uzumaki heritage will see him dead by itself. Minato's heritage will put him in a grave as sure as summoning the Shinigami. But the Nine-tails… that will make them hesitate. All three? It will make him the greatest threat to Danzo's continued rule, or his greatest tool. We cannot allow that by any means necessary."

He looked at both of them in turn: one impassive, the other visibly struggling.

"Minato will understand that we have to do what is right for the Village."

Tsunade spoke up, thoughtful yet still unsure.

"Danzo won't want to give up a powerful weapon like a Tailed Beast container. But knowing he's the Fourth's son and an Uzumaki to boot? I think sending him away is the best we can do, anything else will draw attention."

Mikoto moved forward to stare off into the side room where Shizune played with Naruto, booping his nose and making cooing noises. The Uchiha spoke without looking at them, no doubt thinking of her daughter and eldest son.

"I was able to decipher, finally, with the tablet in our clan secret rooms with this," she vaguely motioned to a dark eye, a dark eye with long lashes.

"A prophecy on the tablet spoke of the Samsara eye of legend. That a 'descendant' of the Sage would awaken it. Gamamaru, Jiraiya said, spoke of it either destroying the world or saving it, from what he didn't say, nor did he indicate which outcome he thought more likely. Fugaku has the same sort of access to the Eye that I do… he's hoping Sasuke will awaken it. There is a rumor that Amegakure has a Rinnegan-wielder. I suspect it is part of the reason for the split and why Fugaku went to the Land of Rain. That, and the general unhappiness that has plagued the Uchiha for so long. There is… debate on whether descendant refers to spiritual or physical. Uchiha or Senju and we know it's not Senju."

Tsunade and Hiruzen looked at each other, considering what to say.

Prophecy?

Prophecy was usually rubbish, but this was Mikoto who continued on another tack, speaking of Naruto.

"Minato and Kushina both spoke to me of prophecy and I dismissed it… but now I believe there is far more at work in our world than we've ever credited. I am reluctant to give up any tools at our disposal, even my own sons and daughter, such use that they'll be at a later date. But we do what we must."

She nodded to Hiruzen.

"You taught me that sensei."

Hiruzen sat back in his chair, crossing the room. Mikoto leaned into the desk, palms down, speaking.

"Die his hair black like an Uchiha's. Place him at Suzikawa's. I'll have my new minions watch over Naruto for you until a better solution appears."

Sarutobi slowly shook his head.

Mikoto frowned, obviously thinking quickly. Tsunade looked pained.

"Is there no other way sensei? Can't you take him?"

But the old man was already firmly shaking his head.

"No. There will be too much to do and so, so little time. Anonymity must be his armor. Suzikawa's it is, that much we agree on. As Orochimaru, Akatsuki, and Danzo comes first, then this mysterious Man in Red. When Jiraiya is back in the village and I deem it safe and Danzo has...agreed to my terms, then we will see what our options are for Naruto."

Mikoto frowned.

"That will be too late, sensei. I have a better idea, one that will… Well, it will be best for Naruto I think. Kushina and Minato would have understood."

Hiruzen frowned. Tsunade looked troubled.

Mikoto drew a deep breath.

"Dyeing his hair, for a long duration, is a start. That bright blonde is too distinctive. But longer-term…"

The Uchiha matron eyed Hiruzen's wall-sized decorative cartographers' copy of the known world, indicating a tiny stretch of land between Iwa and Kumo. Those were two of Konoha's biggest enemies.

"What do either of you know of Iron Country and a man named Mifune?"