Twenty children were born the night the Nine Tails attacked.
Several of them were premature, their delivery hastened by the stress brought on by the event.
Of course, this meant many of them lost a parent that night, sometimes both. Some to the devastation the Nine Tails caused in its wake, some to childbirth.
Orphans were not a new concept to a ninja village by any stretch, but this new influx so soon after the end of the latest war pushed Konoha's support system to its limit.
Faced with a difficult decision, the Third chose what he felt was the best one, for both the Fourth's son… and the village.
The Nine Tails was gone in a blink, just as he had appeared.
He found Biwako in the cave Kushina was supposed to give birth in, still alive, but the sole survivor of the attack.
In between pained breaths, she recounted the events of that night, of a masked man with a single Sharingan eye.
Despite his worry for his wife, he left his ANBU with her, assured she would pull through and rushed to join the Fourth, hoping he could help.
He, and he alone, came to the place where Minato and his wife had died.
The Nine Tails was nowhere to be seen, and both Minato and Kushina's bodies were still warm.
He pushed past his grief at the death of two people he had loved, and found a wailing newborn tucked between them.
The seal on his belly told him the whole story of what had happened.
And he knew that with a man after the Nine Tails, likely still alive, and several rival Nations who would see this child dead before his first birthday, something drastic needed to be done.
Even then, he hesitated.
"Minato, Kushina… please forgive me."
It would be one of his last acts as Hokage.
The Professor weaved through the twenty one hand-signs the technique required.
He then cut his palm open and used the blood as the catalyst for his jutsu.
He drew the seal on the child's — young Naruto, he knew — forehead, hesitated again… and activated it.
Naruto's hair darkened from bright blond to mousy brown, his whisker marks disappeared, and Sarutobi knew his eyes had turned to dark brown as well.
Like most Sarutobi.
He wrote a short word to his ANBU — who would no doubt follow him here — about pursuing the attacker, hid Naruto in a bundle of cloth and hurried towards the Sarutobi compound under the cover of a camouflage technique.
He would need to hide the Nine Tails presence deeper in the next few days, and make sure to cover his tracks as well.
Biwako was the only witness and she would understand the need to keep some of the events that transpired that night a secret.
The story would go like this.
When the morning came, Namikaze Naruto would be another tragic victim, dying as a hostage to the outsider with the Sharingan eye who summoned the Nine Tails to the village.
To become the unnamed, orphan son of Sarutobi Ren, disgraced chūnin who had survived the Third War only to find death in a bar fight and a prostitute who died in the attack was not was the son of the Fourth deserved, Hiruzen felt.
But it was the only way that would allow him to survive and grow strong, hidden away where no one would bother to look.
When the morning came, Sarutobi Naruto, named in honor of the Fourth's dead son, would be yet another orphan in a ninja village.
When Sarutobi Hiruzen called in an emergency meeting right after the Fourth died, no one batted an eye.
The assembled clan heads found Biwako telling them about Kushina's status as a container — an open secret, at this point — and her and Minato's plan to deliver the baby in a secluded location.
She told them of the masked man with a Sharingan as well.
Danzo looked both vindicated and furious at the same time, and Uchiha Fugaku seemed to become even more tense than he already was.
"I am certain of one thing." She said before either could speak. "The intruder is not anybody from the village. Nor is it anybody whose chakra I ever felt before."
She knew that this foul chakra, fire mixed with something that reminds her of the forest, with a tainted feeling thrown in the mix is not something she would ever forget.
"What makes you so sure?" Tsume, the new head for the Inuzuka clan since Otsuru died in the attack, just hours before, asked.
"I am a sensor." Her tone left no room for discussion. "Besides, there is something more. This man… identified himself as Uchiha Madara."
There was silence in the room.
Then all hell broke loose.
"Is this a joke?" Danzo asked flatly to Hiruzen, after he announced his choice of a successor.
"I assure you, I am entirely serious." The Third replied, just as blunt.
"A man, likely from the Uchiha clan, claims to be Madara, long since dead, releases the Nine Tails from its prison and kills both Namikaze and our Jinchūriki." Danzo, who usually prided himself on his control, was fuming.
He marked a pause, but when he realized Hiruzen was simply waiting for him to continue, went on.
"… And he manages to escape. Now, instead of taking back the reins or nominating someone who can clean up the mess Namikaze and his wife left us… You pick him?!" He stressed the last word, disgust evident.
On the other side of the room, if he hadn't been so surprised himself, Uchiha Fugaku probably would have had some scathing words to throw back at him.
Instead, he just stood there, stunned.
Hiruzen lit his pipe, breathed in and answered slowly.
"It is not a suggestion." He breathed smoke out. "With Minato dead, I'm the acting leader of this village. Fugaku has proven to be a more than competent leader many, many times in the last war."
There was no village who hadn't heard of Wicked Eye Fugaku, and if Minato was stronger than him, along with the Sanin, well… They were the only ones.
Danzo can see people mulling it over. To his dismay, some seem to agree.
"Besides…" Hiruzen continued, a bit of amusement seeping in his tone. "I already have the Daimyo's approval."
Fugaku thought. It was a way to bridge the gap that could grow between the village and the Uchiha clan, he knew.
Looking at Sarutobi, he also knew that the man believed him to be their best choice.
Despite himself, he felt a bit moved.
"I accept." Fugaku says, simply.
"It is settled, then." Sarutobi concluded. "From now on, Uchiha Fugaku is the Fifth Hokage of Konoha."
He was the first to bow to him, after handing him the hat.
It felt surreal to Fugaku, seeing the man he had looked up to as the pillar of the village for most of his life bow to him. He wondered if this was how Minato had felt.
Danzo bowed last, and as shortly as propriety allowed.
"I won't forget this." He thought.
Judging by his wary face, Hiruzen knew it too.
Over the course of a bit more than twenty five years, Sarutobi Ren, Naruto's new, dead father had acquired quite a reputation for himself.
A cross between a womanizer and a whoremonger.
A very average ninja, despite being of the famed Sarutobi clan.
An insufferable drunk, who got by coasting on his powerful relatives, who never hesitated to use them to get out of trouble.
Until he didn't.
He died after provoking the wrong person one too many times.
The Sarutobi clan was not particularly sad to hear about it, even though they would not show it publicly.
Nor were they too pleased to hear he managed to reproduce, even though they were not really surprised.
Still, the Sarutobi took care of their own, so they took him in.
In the end, just like Sarutobi Konohamaru would because of his busy ANBU parents three years later, Naruto was mostly raised by Biwako.
She knew who he was, and partly because of this, and partly because she also happened to be a stern matron — as Kushina herself would have attested.
Though she cared about him, she kept distance between the two of them.
He was cared for, well-fed and Biwako taught him how to read early on.
Later on, he'd know that compared to what could have happened, and what did happen to many orphans… He got pretty lucky.
Still, there are moments he couldn't help but want for more.
When Naruto was five, Sarutobi Hiruzen taught him about chakra.
He couldn't afford to show him too much blatant favoritism, and he knew that some clan members were already whispering about him spending too much time with the bastard son of his late nephew.
The kid was lonely though, he saw. There were only a few Sarutobi children around his age, and he was not close to any of them.
Some parents took pity on him, but that was it.
Maybe he would get some friends in the academy, he hoped.
Not that there was any choice, in the end. It might have been sad, but Minato and Kushina's son, and a Jinchūriki to boot, if a secret one, would never live a civilian life.
The old man didn't expect him to learn how to access it right away, especially considering the fact he had needed to tighten the seal more to hide the Nine Tails deeper, but Naruto was a surprisingly fast learner, it seemed.
Two weeks later, he was able to reach for his chakra at will, if in a blunt and unrefined way.
He asked for more from Hiruzen, of course. Which he refused, telling him he would learn everything he needed if he only joined the ninja academy.
Naruto didn't particularly want to join the academy, but he also wanted to learn more about the strange energy.
And he didn't want to disappoint the old man, who was one of the few people he felt didn't want him to be someone else's son.
In his spare time, he read a lot, and reached for his chakra as often as he could.
He was hooked.
The Academy was pretty bland, Naruto felt.
He did not know much about ninjas yet, though he could guess that the kind of "games" they played, such as throwing wooden weapons at a vaguely man shaped target were a hint about what they actually did.
Other than this, he kept on hearing the same mottos about the Will of Fire, and the importance of bonds.
Which he found kind of funny, kind of sad, since his standoffish nature, which he developed after not interacting much with other kids his age meant he was mostly alone.
Nobody was particularly mean to him, but nobody was particularly interested in him either, he thought.
He tried to not take it too personally, but it kinda stung. At first.
As a reaction to this perceived feeling, he started keeping his own distance as well.
Besides, he really did not understand the other children, who were so… emotional, compared to the adults he was more used to.
He had the old man and Biwako, anyway.
Most of the lectures he spent daydreaming, trying to make something happen with his chakra.
At home, he pestered the old man for more guidance. He knew he'd end up accepting, if he kept at it everyday.
He was nothing but stubborn.
Five years after the Nine Tails attacked Konoha, the Fourth Raikage found himself considering his options.
The Fifth Hokage, Wicked Eye Fugaku, had offered a peace treaty. They had stopped fighting directly after the last war, but there were still some border skirmishes going on, with some casualties here and there.
While he wasn't particularly worried about Konoha, with Namikaze gone, the village was still one of the strongest — likely the second, right after them, the Fourth had torn his way through Iwa.
This also meant Suna would not try anything foolish.
It was not a bad deal, he mused.
He scanned over the conditions once more, noting with some amusement that the Hokage offered to set up intense trading routes, likely with the intention of reducing the likelihood of conflict down the line.
After all, as long as both of their villages were gaining from it, why ruin a good thing?
This was more along the lines of Sarutobi than Namikaze, the Raikage knew.
The Fourth Hokage had never bothered trading too extensively with his enemies.
It didn't start out by his choice, of course, but as long as he had been alive, no sane village was willing to let anything that could potentially bear his Hiraishin mark inside their walls.
He likely knew this was the reason, so never pushed the issue during his short reign. Whatever solution he would have found, nobody knew.
For a minute, the Raikage considered using this opportunity to get inside Konoha's walls.
There were many bloodlines worth stealing in there, and many ways to get at them, too. Hyūga, Uchiha, Akimichi, just to name a few.
It would be so easy, so tempting and -
He ended up deciding against it.
Maybe if it had been Sarutobi, he'd have tried his luck. He knew the man had become a peace-seeker in his old age. Konoha's Bloody Ape had become known as the Professor, instead.
If Namikaze was still at the helm, well… He would not have signed the paper, likely, their old — one-sided — rivalry demanded as much.
The Fourth Raikage agreed to peace with Konoha.
"Dog… Ram.. Boar..?" Shiba Michio, a second-year student, asked their academy sensei, hesitantly.
"Close. Dog, Boar, then Ram" The teacher stressed the order, kind but firm, while going through the signs himself to make sure the child understood.
From his spot behind a nearby tree, Sarutobi Naruto pretended to be busy reading a comic book during his lunch break.
He went over the signs mentally himself, making sure to visualise them in as much detail as he could.
Dog: Left hand flat on right fist.
Boar: Knuckles facing down, joined together.
Ram: Left thumb on top, hands together vertically.
He still wasn't sure about their purpose, and what about made this specific combination in this specific order allowed one to use the Transformation technique, but he knew he had it memorized.
Now, to practice.
He still wasn't too fond of the idea of becoming a ninja, but had to admit the techniques were pretty nice.
Plus, he figured he could always drop out later.
With this in mind, he reached deep inside himself, let his chakra flow flow from his navel to every part of his body, focused around his body, pictured himself as the old man and -
Found himself stuck to the floor.
"Huh..?" He thought. Was this supposed to happen?
He looked at his hand. Still smooth, unblemished. Probably didn't work then.
He tried to stand up, to no avail.
"This is pretty embarrassing." Naruto thought, as he spent the rest of his lunch break waiting for this new chakra-adherence to fade away.
In the end, he figured out how to turn it off.
"Watch this, Sarutobi-sama." Naruto said, three days later, once his confidence with the Transformation technique grew.
Dog, Boar, then Ram.
"Transformation technique!"
Hiruzen wondered with some amusement what it was that made young ninjas scream the name of the technique they were about to use.
"But…" He couldn't deny being a little impressed. Naruto's transformation was perfect, and in front of him stood his perfect replica.
"Not bad heh? What do you think?" Naruto laughed. It was pretty strange, hearing a child's timbre coming out of his own face.
"This is pretty good. You must have practiced a lot."
"That's right! And I'll be able to do much more when you teach me!"
"Oh?" Hiruzen was amused. "And who said anything about another jutsu?"
Though excited at the non-outright refusal, Naruto kept his face from showing too much enthusiasm.
"Well, nobody, but everybody knows you know a ton of secret techniques." He thought on it, and added. "The teacher said so!"
"Hmm…" Sarutobi pretended to think. "It is true that I know a few… But why should I?"
"Come on, old m-… Sarutobi-sama! You're the best ninja in town, everybody knows!" He tried buttering him up.
Hiruzen wondered what the Fifth would think of this, amused.
"Please, please please!"
He sighed.
"Oh well. I guess one technique couldn't hurt."
Umino Iruka didn't know what to think of Sarutobi Naruto.
He had been tentatively hopeful that the reclusive — but not very shy at all — child would open up to some of his classmates, but so far, in the two years since he had started the Academy, he had mostly kept to himself.
It was a pretty strange attitude to see in a seven-years old, he felt.
Not that there were no fair amount of loners in school, far from it, but they usually were more temperamental.
Sarutobi was perfectly polite, had no particular problem working with others, but seemed more at ease being alone.
Iruka had tried nudging a few of his classmates to interact more with him, but the child seemed to have a knack for shutting conversations down.
And disappearing after class.
He sighed. He couldn't exactly force the kid to make friends, could he?
Besides, he was doing fine, staying somewhere near the top of the class. Who was he to say anything?
The "jutsu" Sarutobi-sama ended up teaching him was not much of one yet, Naruto thought.
He had just given him some vague instructions about trying to "mold his chakra in the shape of a tool and project it outside his body".
When Naruto asked for something more specific, Hiruzen had just looked away, told him something like "chains, swords, whatever. Anything you feel any affinity towards should work, really."
Naruto had the feeling the old man was being vague on purpose.
And that once he'd manage to do it, he'd just give him this annoying, knowing look that told Naruto that this was exactly what he had expected.
Which is how he had spent the better part of the last two years trying to create some tools out of chakra.
Worst part was, anytime he had asked other people about it, they just seemed skeptical about the whole thing.
"Sounds more like a bloodline thing to me, kid."
"You're wasting your time. Go back to school."
"Summoning weapons? Like, from a scroll?"
He'd read of a few people from the now-gone Uzumaki clan that had the ability to project chakra chains, but this had apparently been attributed to their special clan abilities.
Really, if it weren't for Sarutobi-sama insisting that for some mysterious reason, he was likely to have an ability for it, he would have moved on to something else a long time ago.
"-tobi."
He tried to picture a weapon in his mind.
The first thing that came to him was a sword, naturally. Why naturally?
Well, as mature as he tried to be, Naruto was still a child. Nothing really seemed to represent a ninja tool more than an elegant, shiny sword.
First came the scabba-
"SARUTOBI!"
"Yes, sensei!"
His class was looking at him expectantly. He looked around.
An Uchiha — Sasuke, or maybe Toru, he wasn't sure which one was who — was standing in the middle of the arena, waiting. Iruka stood with his hands on his hips, his nostrils flared.
"Oh, it's my turn already?" Naruto thought.
He had mostly forgotten about the Taijutsu practice, lost as he was in thought.
He stepped in the ring hurriedly, bowed and joined his fingers in the seal of Reconciliation with his soon-to-be opponent.
They both stepped back and circled each other.
They were both looking for an opening.
Sasuke — Toru? — moved first.
He was fast, likely faster than Naruto. His left hand came out, a fist aimed at Naruto's face, which he deviated with his right hand.
He retaliated with a spinning kick, and Sasuke jumped over it. The next second, he threw a swift kick at Naruto's ribs.
He choked on his breath and threw some distance between them.
God. Why did he want to become a ninja, again? This sucked.
Naruto ran back towards Sasuke, and threw a haymaker at him, which he dodged.
He also flipped over his following roundhouse kick, using his shoulders as a spring. Frustrated, Naruto managed to elbow him in the face.
Sasuke fell in a heap, without much of his usual grace.
"That's not fair! You fight dirty!" He shouted.
Naruto didn't say anything, opting to try to kick him in the belly instead. Sasuke rolled away from him.
Then kicked him in the shin. Naruto yelped and tried to pull his hair.
Iruka slapped a hand over his face. What was the point of teaching them katas if they just reverted to brawling whenever they got frustrated?
"This is taijutsu practice, boys!"
"He started it!""It's his fault, sensei!" They shouted simultaneously.
"I don't care, keep it together or it's scrubbing floorboards for both of you!"
Sasuke seemed to remember where he was and reverted to his usual Uchiha taijutsu style. He came at Naruto.
A fist was blocked. A palm slapped away his left leg.
Punch from the left.
Haymaker.
A knee aimed to Naruto's face.
Another flip followed by a kick.
Somehow, Naruto was starting to see a rhythm to this. And some part of him was enjoying it, even.
He threw a kick that Sasuke parried.
The dance resumed.
After almost a minute of this, they were both panting.
Sasuke — he was pretty sure it was his name — was faster, for sure, but Naruto seemed to have more stamina, overall. Which meant that at this point of the fight, the speed advantage was pretty much negligible.
When he came running at him, fist cocked back, Naruto did the same, aiming at his face.
He planned to wait until the last moment, and then duck under Sasuke's punch, catching him with a rising kick. It would look very impressive, he was sure.
One step. He heard his own heavy breathing.
Two steps.
Three steps. Anytime now.
Four steps. Was he imagining the outline of a man standing behind Sasuke?
Five steps. Naruto met Sasuke's eyes.
A voice boomed in his head, jubilant and full of resentment at the same time. He saw Sasuke's eyes widen at the same time as his own did.
"I finally found you, Asura!"
Six steps. Sasuke's punch connected, and Naruto saw stars.