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Konohamaru clung to Naruto's back, laughing between gasps for air. With the little kid tired, Naruto walked them toward the Sarutobi clan house.
"Boss… what's your dream?"
Naruto pretended to lawn. He clearly didn't want to talk about it. But little kids weren't the type to let things go. "I heard some say your dream was to become the greatest Hokage."
"...Yeah."
"Well, sorry, Boss," Konohamaru said, his proud tone returning. "But I'm gonna be the greatest Hokage. You're just gonna have to settle for second place."
Naruto huffed out a laugh. "It's not that easy, dumbass. The title of Hokage isn't something you just decide to take. It's something you earn. Everyone has to acknowledge you first. Do you think that's easy? I've had a hard enough time just getting one person to acknowledge me."
"So, what do I do?"
"Prepare yourself. There aren't any shortcuts to becoming Hokage."
The boy thought about it until the grand Sarutobi clan gates came into view. Standing in front of the gates was Hiruzen Sarutobi himself.
"Konohamaru, do you even know what time it is, young man?"
Konohamaru slid off Naruto's back, standing sheepishly in front of his grandfather. "Sorry, Gramps. I was hanging out with Boss so he could teach me how to beat you."
"Uh… he's not wrong."
"I'll overlook this sort of mischief because everyone is tired. Konohamaru, tomorrow is your first day at the academy.:
"And my first step to becoming Hokage!"
Hiruzen chuckled softly. "We'll see about that." He turned to Naruto. "Thank you for bringing him home, Naruto-kun. I hope Ebisu didn't trouble you too much."
"Nah, that guy's fine. Probably just… lying low right now."
"Lying low" was one way to describe it. Ebisu was unceremoniously hurled into a dumpster by one of Naruto's clones. Inside the rank, dark space, he groaned, shoving a banana peel off his head.
Ebisu sat up slowly, glaring at the walls of the dumpster like it had personally insulted him. "Damn brat," he muttered weakly, trying to summon whatever dignity he had left. Just as the dumpster's lid creaked open, a stray cat peered down at him.
The cat let out a judgmental mrrrow, then leaped in, landing squarely on his face.
"GAH!" Ebisu yelped, flailing as the cat bolted, knocking over a bag of garbage that promptly spilled onto his lap. A carton of spoiled milk popped open, drenching him as he slumped back against the dumpster wall, utterly defeated.
"One day," he wheezed, peeling a wet noodle off his cheek, "one day I will have my revenge…"
Naruto's clone peeked over the rim of the dumpster, snickering. "You good in there, or should I find a second dumpster for backup?"
Ebisu let out a strangled groan, raising one trembling fist. "Damn… brat…" he muttered before slumping fully into the trash pile, his pride officially dead.
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Back at the compound, Hiruzen gave Naruto a puzzled look but let it go. "Good night, Naruto-kun. Konohamaru, inside. Now."
"Go to bed, dumbass," Naruto said, nudging him gently.
Konohamaru looked up, scrunching his nose. "Blah, stop acting like you know everything, Boss…" His voice slurred as he rubbed his eyes. "I'm not letting you be my boss anymore…"
"Okay?"
"Yeah!" Konohamaru blinked sleepily but still managed to grin. "From now on… we're rivals!"
Naruto reached into his pocket, taking his green goggles from his inventory without drawing attention. "These are my favorite goggles," he said as he handed them to Konohamaru.. "When the day comes that we're fighting for the Hokage title, I want them back."
Konohamaru's face lit up as he slipped off his helmet and put the goggles on. "Then you'll never win them back, Boss!"
"Looking forward to it, Konohamaru."
The boy bumped his fist against Naruto's before turning and running inside.
Hiruzen's voice broke the quiet. "I am glad, Konohamaru has you to look upto."
Naruto nodded ready to leave, but Hiruzen's voice stopped him. "Wait, Naruto."
"Yeah?"
"I need to talk to you about something," Hiruzen said. He gestured toward the wooden bench near the compound's entrance. "Would you mind sitting for a moment?"
"I'm fine standing," the young teen said, his voice colder than usual.
Hiruzen didn't push the matter at first, letting the silence settle between them. "Congratulations on passing the bell test."
"Hmm."
"Kakashi tells me you were the one who figured out the real lesson."
"Kakashi dropped a hint," Naruto said flatly. "I just listened."
"The ability to act on information quickly and decisively is what separates an average shinobi from an elite one." Hiruzen paused. "I also heard you gave your bell to Sakura."
"Yeah."
"Why?"
Naruto was quiet for a moment. The honest answer was simple. He had wanted to help her. It had felt wrong to leave someone behind and so he hadn't. But currentlt he was tired in a way that made the honest answer feel too exposed to hand to someone he was no longer sure deserved it.
"It didn't matter if I went back," he said. "I'm always the sacrificial lamb anyway. Might as well lean into it."
"Naruto, that's not—"
"Jinchuriki literally means Power of Human Sacrifice." The bitterness in his voice was quiet clear. "So let's not pretend otherwise."
Hiruzen was still.
"I'm not saying that's why I gave Sakura the bell," Naruto continued. "It's not. I gave it to her because leaving her behind felt wrong. Because a team that leaves someone behind isn't a team." He looked at the old man. "But after everything, it's hard to separate the two. The village has been treating me like a resource since the day I was born. Why would the bell test be any different?"
"Because it was," Hiruzen said. "And the fact that you gave that bell away without hesitation proves it."
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Use the good things I do to make yourself feel better about the bad things that were done to me." Naruto's voice didn't rise. "Those are separate things. They don't cancel each other out."
The night held them both in silence.
"I'm sorry," Hiruzen said. And then, before Naruto could deflect it, he bowed.
A full bow.
"Why?"
"Do you even need to ask?"
"Yeah. I do. Sorry for what, specifically. Because if you can't name it then it doesn't mean anything."
Hiruzen straightened. "For what you carried that you shouldn't have had to carry. For the decisions I made in the name of the village that cost you things no child should lose. For telling myself I'd address it later and never finding the later. An apology doesn't repair what's broken. But it still has to be said."
"So it's for your guilt?"
"Partly," Hiruzen admitted. "I won't pretend otherwise. But I also mean it."
Naruto looked at him for a long moment.
"Old man. What does being Hokage mean to you?"
Hiruzen paused, recognizing the weight behind the question. "The Hokage embodies the Will of Fire. The belief that this village is a family. That we protect each other, care for each other, and pass the fire from one generation to the next so it doesn't go out."
"Right," Naruto said quietly. "The Will of Fire."
"The Hokage carries the village's burden. Guides it. Ensures what we believe in... outlasts any one person."
"So, has Konoha failed me? Or has the Hokage failed me?"
Hiruzen's breath caught.
"I don't think I ever felt that warmth," Naruto said with steady voice. "Not when I cried myself to sleep. Not when I watched everyone in a room decide they'd rather be somewhere else. Not when I worked for years just to be seen as something other than a monster."
"..."
"You talk about family. You talk about protection. I'm asking you directly. Where was it? Where was the Will of Fire when the child who needed it most was sitting alone in an apartment wondering what he did wrong?"
Hiruzen said nothing.
"That hat." Naruto gestured vaguely. "I used to care about it. Used to think that if I could just get there, then I'd finally matter. Then the village would have to see me as a person." He didn't stop the tears that came. He was too tired to manage them tonight. "I don't feel that anymore. You want to know what changed?"
"...yes."
"Someone told me something before they died to live for myself. Not to prove something to someone else. Not to earn what should have always been mine. The world is mine. I won't keep looking for permission to exist in it."
Hiruzen was very still.
"I spent years chasing that hat to prove something to people who had already decided what I was," Naruto said. "I don't want to prove anything to them anymore. That's not a dream. That's a performance. And I'm done performing."
"Naruto, the dream of becoming Hokage, wanting to protect this village, those aren't meaningless things just because—"
"They are if the reason behind them is meaningless," Naruto said. "And mine was. I wanted people to acknowledge me. I wanted the village to look at me and finally see something worth seeing. That's not the Will of Fire. That's a child begging for basic human decency from people who should have given it freely." He paused. "The Hokage's hat doesn't mean what it used to mean to me. That's not something I can take back. It's just true."
Hiruzen stood with that.
"I don't hate you," Naruto said. His voice had gone somewhere beneath anger, somewhere quieter and more final. "I've tried. It doesn't fit. What I feel is worse. It's disappointment. Because you specifically were someone I trusted. And you had more chances... more power than anyone to do the right thing."
Naruto turned away without waiting to see what it did to the old man's face.
Hiruzen thought about calling out. Nothing came. His mouth stayed closed. The great Hokage, the Professor, and the man who had guided a village through wars, crises and losses that would have broken lesser men, felt completely powerless in front of a twelve year old walking away from him in the dark.
It wasn't a new feeling, but that only made it worse.
The same powerlessness that had plagued him when his son left. The powerlessness that gnawed at him whenever he thought of Tsunade. How he had failed to guide her through her grief and let her leave carrying her pain alone. The same powerlessness that weighed on him every time he remembered Orochimaru. The student he'd let fall into darkness because he couldn't bring himself to act decisively when it mattered most.
And now… now it was going to be Naruto.
This was his great flaw, the one that defined his many regrets: his inability to repair the bonds that should have mattered most to him. Time and again, he had let the people who needed him slip through his fingers. He always told himself it was for the greater good. That his duty to the village outweighed his personal relationships. But in truth, he simply didn't know how to fix what was broken.
The boy stopped mid-step.
"Can you tell me the truth?"
"The truth?"
"Who I am? Who my parents were? What my legacy is?"
A pause.
"Do you know?"
"NO." The word came out stripped of everything except what was underneath it. "That's why I'm asking you. If you couldn't do everything perfectly. If you couldn't protect me the way you should have. If you couldn't give me what I deserved when I deserved it, then at least give me this. At least just tell me the truth." His voice cracked on the last word and steadied again. "Don't I deserve that much?"
Hiruzen opened his mouth to confess.
But when he looked at Naruto's face.
He didn't see the boy he had known for a decade. He didn't see the loud bright child who had grown up in the corners of his peripheral vision. He saw someone he didn't fully recognize. Older in the eyes. Drenched in mysteries that didn't fit any framework he currently had. Carrying something heavy, foreign and real that Hiruzen couldn't name or begin to address tonight.
And in a moment he would spend a very long time regretting, he said, "I'm sorry. You aren't ready."
Naruto went completely still.
The tears came down his face slowly and without sound. He stood there for a moment with his back still half turned, and then he began to walk.
"Naruto..."
He didn't stop.
"If I'm not ready to receive the truth," Naruto said, his voice perfectly level, "then you aren't ready to receive my forgiveness."
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Author's Note: Q&A Time.
Q: Doesn't the Zweihander not actually weigh that much in real life?
Yes.
In real life, large two-handed swords like the Zweihander were not the crushing behemoths that Hollywood sold us. A historical Zweihander typically weighed somewhere between three and seven pounds. In practical terms an excessively heavy sword slows your swing, compromises recovery time, telegraphs your movements and destroys your stamina. Professional soldiers understood this. Hollywood did not.
The Zweihander was designed to be used by Doppelsöldner, and their effectiveness came from reach and skill rather than raw mass.
So why did I go with a heavy Zweihander?
Because I'm writing a story built around a video game, and in that video game the Zweihander is famous for one thing: the deeply satisfying experience of watching it absolutely flatten whatever you hit with it. FromSoftware wanted to sell the feeling of commitment, destruction and consequence. Every swing costs you something. Every hit means something.
I'm doing exactly the same thing with the same weapon for the same reason.
Now I love real martial arts and historical combat. That's why I'll be blending real-world HEMA techniques into the fight choreography throughout this fic.
But more than any of that, I want the Zweihander to be what it was for me on my first playthrough. Wheb every fog gate I walked through with it felt like a statement. And I want Naruto to have that same experience with it. The weight, the commitment, and the absolute refusal to be subtle about what it does to whatever it hits.
Hope that explains the heavy greatsword.
That's It… For Now.
I want to thank you all for taking the time to read, comment, and follow along with this story. Your feedback means more than you know, and it helps push me to make each chapter bigger, sharper, and more true to the worlds of Naruto and Dark Souls.
Until next time,
Praise the Sun.
\-Adam-/