O1 - Chapter 1

“It’s quite ironic,” a wizened voice noted.

A pair of blue eyes swept over the room, right to left, away from the bundle in his arms, towards old brown orbs with an inquisitive gaze.

“What do you mean?”

The older of the two men chuckled quietly. “There you sit, the greatest champion of a war,wanting nothing other than protection of his family, yet nonetheless fought and won, holding the firstborn son of one of the enemy’s strongest warriors.”

He was sitting in his office with a month-old child that was not his own asleep in his arms, a child, that by right of birth, was the heir to a man that had once attempted to take his life on the battlefields of the Third Shinobi World War. And he had almost succeeded. In the book of Namikaze Minato, Sarutobi Hiruzen’s analysis of the situation was very much correct. The situation was quite ironic.

The younger man chuckled himself. “I suppose you are right.”

“This does beg another question, however,” Hiruzen said, amiable tone quickly slipping into the realms of the serious. The Sandaime Hokage sat himself on the worn couch below the lone window of the office. “I trust your judgement almost implicitly, Minato. It is why I named you Hokage in my stead. While you are doubtlessly a powerful shinobi, your trustworthiness is the reason I chose you over my other students.”

Hiruzen exhaled a sigh. Minato understood the reasoning. Though Jiraiya-sensei had taught him almost everything he knew, the Sandaime had taken him under his wing over Orochimaru. It was a sore point in the upper echelons of Konoha though it was quite possibly simply between himself, the Sannin and the Sandaime that the Snake Sannin held some resentment towards him for ascending to the station of Hokage instead of him.

“My question is this: why?” Hiruzen questioned. “I understand the motivations for acquiring another jinchuuriki out from under another village’s nose, especially that of Iwagakure, but this could throw the entire shinobi world into all kinds of turmoil. If they discover this child and his heritage, it will, without a doubt bring some kind of retaliation, perhaps even another war.”

“I understand, Hiruzen-sama, but I am Hokage now. This is my decision to make, and I am well aware of the potential consequences of my actions,” Minato stated respectfully. He was not a militant man by any stretch of the imagination. The chain of command in Konoha was enough of a mixed bag as it was. Rank meant nothing in comparison to experience, the Sandaime trumping anyone he knew in that regard, but he was not in a mood to be trifled with. His wife was due sometime today, anytime within the next six hours. He was about to become a father, and he was greatly preferential to keeping his relatively jovial mood intact.

The Sandaime nodded his comprehension. “I respect your decision, Minato, and I am not questioning its validity. As you said, you are Hokage and it is well within your power to make such choices. I am simply trying to understand your reasoning.”

“Very well, Hiruzen-sama,” Minato consented, “you may continue.”

The former Hokage cleared his throat before continuing, leaning forward from the couch. “I can’t help but wonder the reason that you accepted the responsibility of this child for. I don’t know if you knew his father well or not, but I cannot imagine a reason other than that for taking charge of the boy.”

Minato shook his head with a wistful sigh. It was a long time ago that he had first told Kushina-chan, and she was the only one he had told. It was an odd story, and not a proud tale by any means, but rather one of defeat.

“I didn’t know the boy’s father well,” Minato admitted, “I only met him once before, out on one of the first skirmishes between us and Iwa in Kusa. I had routed most of the enemy forces with my Hiraishin, but every time I got close to his unit, he would prevent me from getting anywhere near his shinobi with very powerful Doton jutsu. I think he could sense where my kunai ended up, because he would be waiting for me every time I showed up nearby.”

Hiruzen raised an eyebrow. “I don’t recall an event such as this in any of your field reports back then.”

Minato gave the older man a pensive half-smile. “The Hiraishin isn’t exactly well documented, just known about in rumours more than anything, which is exactly the way I would like to keep it. I considered putting in the details at the time, but jotting down any sort of knowledge of a counter for my most advanced technique on paper seemed a little bit counterproductive, don’t you think?”

“Indeed,” the Sandaime agreed with a humorous grin before resuming his expression of deliberation as Minato continued.

“Anyway, it went back and forth for nearly an hour, and he was outlasting me by quite a way. The Hiraishin doesn’t use huge amounts of chakra, but using it dozens of times in quick succession takes its toll.”

Hiruzen nodded. “I can imagine.”

“So, he kept warding me off while retreating, working on getting his men to safety before he actually took me on. And he almost destroyed me that day.”

The former Hokage’s contemplative expression turned into outright surprise. “I would never have thought Iwa had such a powerful warrior, enough to defeat even you with the Hiraishin.”

Minato shook his head. “I didn’t either. It was probably my own fault I lost anyway. I thought he was just a defensive specialist, using elemental ninjutsu for barriers, and it made me kind of cocky back then. I thought as long as I could get within range, I could blow him away if the opportunity presented itself. I was wrong.”

“Well, obviously he didn’t kill you. Otherwise, this conversation could have never taken place,” the Sandaime observed conjecturally.

“How very perceptive of you, Hiruzen-sama,” Minato commented with a sly smirk.

He chuckled as the older man muttered something about sarcastic young upstarts before continuing.

“Well, nothing I tried worked. It wasn’t that I couldn’t hit him or anything; I just couldn’t get past the defense. He used Doton jutsu to stop projectiles, along with some kind of lava manipulation to stop taijutsu and close-range ninjutsu from working as well, simply because I couldn’t get close enough to him without burning myself half to death. Add that kind of impenetrable defense to very powerful ranged ninjutsu and crushing taijutsu, and that’s a deadly mix. By the end of that hour, the only thing to do was to dodge.”

The Sandaime folded his hands beneath his chin in consideration.

“It just went downhill from the outset. I couldn’t fight him close-quarters, I was running out of chakra, and he wasn’t running out of anything. In the last few moments of the fight, he hit me directly just once, and that was enough to break a few ribs. I managed to stab him in the side when he hit, but it didn’t actually do anything. He just pulled it out and the wound healed. I kind of only realized how screwed I was in that moment.”

“Then what happened?” the Sandaime inquired.

“Nothing at all,” Minato replied bluntly, “literally nothing. He didn’t attack me, didn’t finish me off or blow me away. Nothing like that in the slightest. He just looked at me for a few moments, asked for my name and left when I gave it to him.”

“How strange,” Hiruzen remarked. “It is a rare thing to find a shinobi with power of the magnitude to defeat the Hiraishin, but to find such a shinobi with a sense of mercy is even rarer still.”

“I don’t think it was mercy,” Minato divulged. At the time, he hadn’t really considered the implications of being left alive by such a powerful enemy. He had just been thankful to be alive, to have crawled out of the wasteland they had turned that corner of the majestic grasslands of Kusa into with his limbs still attached. That in and of itself was one of the greatest blessings he had received the others being Kushina and the conception of their first, but certainly not their last, child. But, at its core, the whole event struck him as bizarre.

The Sandaime gave him a puzzled look from the couch. “What do you mean?”

Minato lean back into his chair slightly, considering. Iwa shinobi were highly militant, almost to the point of marching to their deaths if they were ordered to. Even back then, he had been known to them as a high-class threat, eventually enough to warrant a standing flee-on-sight order, but at the time it had been kill-on-sight. The one who had managed to defeat his Hiraishin with defense alone disobeyed orders when he had the chance to fulfill them. He had stared at the chance to turn the tide of not only the Third Shinobi World War, but to shift the entire balance of power in the Elemental Nations altogether. Yet he had not taken the chance.

Minato didn’t like to think of his role in the war as essential, but Jiraiya-sensei and the Sandaime both considered his role instrumental to Konoha’s survival. He was loath to think he was so vital to the war effort back in the day, but in reflection, he could understand the thinking of his teachers: without him, the war could have gone very differently. So why had he been allowed to live that day?

“I think he just wanted a challenge,” Minato completed his thought.

He didn’t wait for the Sandaime to pursue the conversation, continuing anyway. “I was fighting against an opponent easily on the level of the Kage. He was no pushover, and ordinary ninja couldn’t hope to stand up to him, even a small army of them. He was one of those few shinobi in a generation with just the right mix of skills that they could decimate an enemy force in an instant, knock their defenses wide open and pave the way for the troops to clean up. He fit the bill for someone bored with fighting battles against lesser opponents and wanting a challenge, so I guess he just wanted someone he could fight with on an even playing field.”

“And that was enough for him to entrust you with his only child?” Hiruzen asked.

The Yondaime Hokage looked down to the sleeping boy in his arms. He was a peaceful little thing, content to merely exist and rest within the world. The innocence of a child was a precious thing, so fleeting in the world they lived in. So very fragile and so easily stolen, it could never last. They all had to grow up eventually.

“He said something to me before the sealing ritual,” Minato said, eyes unmoving from the child. “He said that Iwa wasn’t safe anymore, that Konoha was better for him than their home.”

He could practically hear the older man’s brow furrow. “He had an entire clan back in Iwa, its founders. Why would he not trust his own family to take care of his child?”

“I don’t know,” Minato answered uncertainly. “Whatever the reason, it was enough to drive him to hand his son over to the greatest enemy of his village. That should tell us enough as it is.”

The Sandaime stroked his greying beard, mind obviously at work. “The man was wounded when you arrived, correct?”

“Mortally, yes, but that day he wasn’t alone there was a woman in his arms covered entirely into blood ” Minato confirmed.

It had taken him the better part of two days to reach the location in the western wastelands of Tsuchi no Kuni, out in what was almost entirely uncharted territory, save for a handful of old fortresses in the area built almost two centuries ago. He had arrived to the marker to find the man and a woman slowly dying, wasting away from grievous injuries. That was the reason for the sealing in the first place. He didn’t have much practice in the sealing of such huge quantities of energy, but his knowledge of the art of fuinjutsu was enough to see him through. He had transferred the bijuu from mother to son at the cost of the mother and father’s life.

“That man was hugging his wife while they both died”…At that moment i made a friend hiruzen sama; a very powerful yet a kind friend, who knows love better than anyone

The former Hokage continued stroking his beard as he began to speak his thoughts. “As you said, whatever drove him to seek us out was dangerous; more likely than not, it was the same reason for which he was wounded. From this, we can assume he thought his child, a jinchuuriki, would be safest with his enemy.”

The Sandaime stood, looking out through the window and down towards the village. It was a clear, picturesque afternoon. The sun was beginning its descent from its place in the sky, rays of light occasionally dimmed by the passing of a lonely white cloud. The hustle and bustle of the village streets was tapering off from the midday influx, but would soon peak again as night approached. The shadows were growing longer, and the noon heat was fading away. The day was comfortable, and he was comfortable along with it, content with his situation, but Minato could see from the older man’s increasingly rigid posture, from the tightening of the hands clasped firmly behind his back, that he would have a reason to be uncomfortable.

“The jinchuuriki is the key,” Hiruzen concluded.

“You mean, the reason he gave his son to us, was to keep him safe from someone who wants the bijuu?” Minato filled in the blanks with the words left unsaid.

The Sandaime sighed. “I believe so.”

The Yondaime leaned further back into his chair, almost slumping. It was his long years of training and even longer years of self-discipline that stopped him from slouching completely. This was not good.

“I would be careful in the coming days, Minato,” Hiruzen cautioned, still facing the expansive view of the village. “Whatever has begun is not yet over.”

“Agreed,” Minato stated simply.

A knock at the door of his office interrupted the sudden fog of melancholy that set over them.

“Come in,” both men said in unison.

Minato looked at Hiruzen oddly.

“Force of habit,” the older man chuckled with a rub of his neck.

An ANBU agent clad in a mask he wasn’t quite familiar with and the standard grey uniform entered. The agent kneeled quickly. “Hokage-sama, Kushina-sama and Biwako-sama request your presence at the prepared location.”

Minato was pleasantly surprised. “Already?”

“Hai, Hokage-sama,” the agent confirmed succinctly.

Minato nodded. “Dismissed.”

The agent flickered away in a chakra-enhanced blur of motion, disappearing in less than a second.

He shifted his gaze back to Hiruzen. “It seems that time is upon us already.”

“Do not worry about the child, Minato. I will look after him until you get back,” the Sandaime assured.

With a smile, the Yondaime handed the child to the Sandaime and opened his window, stepping onto the sill out of recently-acquired habit.

“Will any of us ever use the door, I wonder,” Hiruzen observed. Minato chuckled in agreement and prepared to flash out of view.

“Oh, you never mentioned the child’s name,” the Sarutobi remembered.

“Oh, yeah, I didn’t,” Minato recalled. “His name is Koan.”

As the Yondaime Hokage disappeared in a flash of yellow, the Sandaime Hokage could not help the sense of dread festering in the pit of his stomach.

—————————————————————————————

Death is odd, Minato thought absentmindedly. Given the varying descriptions of what death was actually like, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Some said it was like falling and landing in something supremely soft, while others said it was just a sudden rush of heat followed by deathly cold. Others said it was like the embrace of a lover after an exhausting day, and some said it was just a consuming feeling of nothingness. In other words, he really didn’t have a clue of what it was going to be like. There were just too many differing accounts, too many unknowns to truly understand what death was like.

But he had a pretty grasp of the concept now.

He coughed up a little blood he couldn’t quite taste as he readjusted his failing body slightly, the massive claw of the struggling Kyuubi digging through his torso, and through Kushina’s. He kept a gentle, loving grip on his wife’s sides as tears made their way down her beautiful face and soft sobs escaped her mouth for what was undoubtedly the last time.

She cried for their newborn son, for Naruto. On the same day that they brought a new life into the world, life was taken away. She cried for Naruto, and Minato cried for their son and for the village.

While his son was the most important thing in his fading mind, the village and its people had a place in his worries all the same. He was the Yondaime Hokage. He cared for his people, for his village, like they were family, and many members of his family died when the Kyuubi attacked the village. He had stopped its incensed rampage, but even the loss of a single life, a single injury, was too grave a price to pay.

Tears made their way down his face in silence as he held an internal memorial for those lost on the night of Naruto’s birth. Silently, he composed a speech he would’ve given to the grieving if he had had the chance to survive with his wife and son.

Friends, families, we are gathered here on this day to commemorate the lives of those who fell in the Kyuubi no Youko’s unprovoked attack on the village, he began. The cost of that night was high, and it was a price that should not have been paid. So many friends were lost in a conflict that never should have occurred, and so many families were torn apart by the loss of so many proud shinobi and upstanding civilians of this village in a single night.

He paused for a moment to let his words sink into an imagined crowd of tearful men and women, even children. For those stricken with grief, all of Konoha grieves with you. For those who have lost a husband, a wife, a son, a daughter, a brother or sister, all of Konoha knows your pain. For those who have had their homes destroyed and their land flattened, all of Konoha feels your burden. But, while we take time to mourn all that we have lost and grieve for the fallen, take solace in how they fell: they fell so we could live.

After another sinking pause, he continued. All of them, every single one of those fine men and women, gave their lives in the hopes that we might continue living, and that we would live to see the morning they could not share with us. Not only did they sacrifice themselves to protect the village and everyone in it, but they died with hope in their hearts, a hope that could not be extinguished by their deaths. All of their hopes and dreams still live on in us, and they live on the Will of Fire they cherished so deeply.

He paused again, and an appreciative collective gasp of realization from the crowd reached his ears. Today, our Wills of Fire may be dampened. They may be dwindling for some. They may be all but snuffed out for those who have lost so much. But, people of Konohagakure no Sato, our Fire cannot be dampened, it cannot be dwindling and it cannot be snuffed out. Our Fire cannot be any of those things, because our Will of Fire still burns. As long it burns, it will never be dim and dying. As long as it burns, it will never be dwindling or fading. As long as it burns, it will never be snuffed out.

Friends and families, Minato announced once more to the crowd, the Will of Fire is fuelled by hope. As long as there is hope, even the tiniest ember of hope that drifts on the winds of ever-mounting change, there will be a Fire that burns. And it burns in us.

Minato’s silent tears turned to the tiniest of laughs. He always did enjoy the chance for some semi-decent oration.

“Giving an internal monologue again, Minato-kun?” His wife knew him so well, even at the end.

He couldn’t help but give a pained smile. “You know me too well, my love.”

“I’ve had my turn now, Minato-kun,” Kushina whispered to him. “Tell your son what you want him to hear.”

He looked at the little bundle of joy below him, the pudgy, little bundle with a little bit of blond hair like his that threatened to burst into tears at any moment as he gazed upon the world with bright blue eyes. He didn’t want to see his wonderful son, less than a day old, cry like the world was ending. How he wished he could hold his little boy and whisper reassuring words to him as a father should. How he wished he could see his little boy grow up into a man. How he wished he could give his son words of fatherly advice when he needed it most. How he wished he could do all of those things a father and son got to do together. How he wished things could’ve been different.

“There’s not much to say that your mother hasn’t already, Naruto,” he said quietly. “Grow up safe. Be strong. Believe in yourself and in the Will of Fire.”

Tears threatened to reappear at his next words. “I’m sorry, son. I’m so, so sorry. I failed you so quickly, because I had to go and sacrifice the life me and your mother could’ve given you, all for the village’s sake. Please forgive me for putting them ahead of you, and for forcing such a heavy burden on you.”

There was one more thing he needed to tell him. “You can do it, Naruto. You can carry this burden. I believe in you. We believe in you. One day, the whole village… no, the whole world will believe in you. You can change this. All of this.”

He finally let the tears fall freely as he imparted the last parts of his and Kushina’s chakra to the seal on Naruto’s belly, and the unsealed half of the Kyuubi was absorbed into the seal as the summoned Shinigami did what it was called for.

He felt the talon in his belly disappear, and he and his beautiful wife collapsed to the ground in front of their crying child. It was nearly over.

“Hush, Naruto,” he whispered. “It will be alright.”

His son’s heartbreaking bawling became a quiet, sad sob.

“You won’t always be alone, Naruto. One day, you’ll find someone like you. He’ll be a good friend, someone who understands the burden you carry, because he has one just like yours,” Kushina soothed their son.

Minato smiled a little. His Kushina always was surprising. He hadn’t told her about the jinchuuriki child he had received that morning, nor had he divulged his plans to adopt him and raise him as their own. And yet Kushina somehow knew. One of the mysteries of life, he supposed.

But that would have to wait. Death was taking him now.

As hands of darkness grasped him gently, and he felt Kushina slip away from his touch, he realised that death was cold, but somewhat reassuring. Even in death, there was still hope out there. Somewhere.

Naruto, Koan… please, live well.

His hope went with them.