Intervention
Hiruzen Sarutobi sat with his pipe between his fingers, the council chamber thick with deliberation. Danzo had just finished outlining his proposal: Naruto should be placed under Root's custody, trained into a tool Konoha could wholly command.
On paper, Danzo's argument was coldly efficient. A jinchūriki was a weapon; emotions rendered a weapon unreliable. Jinchūriki throughout the lands endured prejudice. If Naruto developed attachments or resentment, he might one day flee—perhaps even join his mother. If Root trained him, Danzo argued, Naruto would be stripped of sentiment and forged into a dependable asset. Root's methods were brutal and systematic; its shinobi were taught to suppress feeling. Only Root, Danzo claimed, could accomplish that.
Hiruzen felt the weight of the idea but could not accept it easily.
He thought of Minato Namikaze. He had supported Minato's rise to Hokage to prevent Orochimaru from taking the post; Minato had been Jiraiya's student, and Jiraiya had been faithful to Konoha. Minato's tenure, though short, had been competent and principled. Hiruzen had expected to hand the village over to him in time. Instead, the Nine-Tails disaster had left Minato comatose, and the village's future had turned fragile.
Minato had given his life to seal the Nine-Tails into his son. To hand that child over to Root—to make of him a weapon without ties—sickened Hiruzen. If Jiraiya learned of such a decision, their bond might fracture as it did with Orochimaru. Of the three students Hiruzen had trained, only Jiraiya remained reliably at his side; Tsunade had descended into grief and wanderings, and Orochimaru was distant and dangerous. Chi Yu had behaved more cautiously lately and had spent time with Kushina, which placated Hiruzen somewhat. Still, the prospect of losing Naruto's humanity for the sake of security gnawed at him.
Danzo recognized Hiruzen's hesitation and pressed harder. "Hiruzen," he said, "now is not the time for sentiment. You are Hokage. You cannot be indecisive. This is the gravest crisis since the Third Shinobi War. You do not know if Miyuki Uzumaki will attempt to reclaim Naruto. If she does, to whom will Naruto's loyalties bend—his mother or Konoha? Remove his attachments and you remove that risk. The Nine-Tails will remain Konoha's."
Utatane Koharu and Homura Mitokado, swayed by Danzo's logic, urged the same course: hand Naruto to Root for his protection and for Konoha's security.
Chi Yu, watching from the shadows beyond the chamber, let out a dry breath. "They really are a pack of obstinate elders," he muttered under his breath.
Under the combined pressure, Hiruzen's resolve wavered. He was, above all, the village's steward; every decision had to weigh Konoha's survival first. Minato's sacrifice had been for Konoha, and perhaps—Hiruzen told himself—if Minato ever awoke, he would understand the extreme measures taken to preserve the village that his family loved.
As Hiruzen opened his mouth to concede, a knock sounded on the heavy office door. The messenger's arrival surprised him—this meeting had been explicitly closed. Hiruzen called, "Enter."
A nervous shinobi announced, "Third Hokage—Chi Yu has come to the Hokage Building. He insists on seeing you."
At the news, every face in the room tightened. To many present, Chi Yu was the most plausible suspect in Miyuki's disappearance; it struck them as strange that he would come to the office now, voluntarily.
Hiruzen nodded. "Send him in."
Chi Yu walked into the chamber with deliberate calm. Seeing Danzo, Koharu, and Mitokado gathered, he feigned casual surprise. "Ah—everyone's here. Third Hokage, is everything all right?"
Hiruzen fixed him with an appraising stare. "Chi Yu, what brings you here at this hour?"
Chi Yu replied smoothly, "Kushina left something at Miyuki's house. I went to retrieve it, but found signs of forced entry. Miyuki and Naruto were absent. I used a sensing technique—Naruto seemed to be at the ANBU safehouse, but there was no trace of Miyuki, so I came straight to you."
Hiruzen inhaled smoke and exhaled slowly. He doubted Chi Yu's account. The coincidence—Chi Yu arriving to fetch an item the very night Miyuki vanished—seemed too convenient. He kept his voice measured. "Chi Yu, Miyuki Uzumaki has indeed left Konoha under suspicious circumstances."
Chi Yu's expression shifted into a show of shock. "She left? Miyuki—she's the Fourth Hokage's wife. I can't believe she would—defect."
Hiruzen kept his face impassive and pressed on. "As her friends, did you or Kushina notice anything unusual in Miyuki's behavior before this?"
Chi Yu paused, as if thinking, then adopted the righteous tone of an offended villager. "Unusual? There's been a lot of gossip recently. I imagine you know of it, Third Hokage. Because of those rumors, Miyuki barely dared to take Naruto out. It's disgraceful—how they speak ill of people who've sacrificed for Konoha. If it were up to me, I would find the ones spreading slander and deal with them. We cannot allow this defamation."
He fixed Hiruzen with steady eyes.
Visit patreon.com/Akeyno to get 30+ chapters