Poor Hiruzen
The morning light softened the piles of paperwork in Hiruzen Sarutobi's office, but it did nothing for his patience. He was only halfway through the first page when an ANBU stepped forward and laid a slip of paper on his desk. The agent retreated without a word; the paper did the talking.
Hiruzen frowned and picked it up. "What's this?" he asked.
"Postpaid bill, Hokage-sama. From Ichiraku Ramen," the ANBU replied.
Hiruzen read the figures and felt the air leave his chest. Ten extra-large bowls. In one sitting.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and then—because old habits die hard—muttered, "Burnt beard of the Sage…" His voice cracked halfway through the phrase, more from shock than reverence. "Ten bowls? In one night? By Hashirama's non-existent beard, that child could empty the village granary."
A grin, half-amused and half-worried, creased his tired features. Naruko. The girl who had arrived in the village as a bundle of misfortune and maligned whispers. Recently, she has been… different. Hiruzen's curiosity did what wisdom sometimes couldn't: it pried his attention away from paperwork.
He glanced at the crystal ball on his shelf. It was a modest thing—no fanfare, simply a polished orb used more often for reconnaissance than for gossip. Nothing mystical. Of course, as a good hokage, he will definitely not use that crystal ball to spy on hot springs and bath houses of konoha and he would definitely not peep on the naked kunoichis.
To focus it, he arranged a series of hand seals, the old reflex of a well-trained shinobi; the ball's surface shimmered, clearing into an image of Training Ground 40, after tracking Naruko's chakra.
What he saw made his tea go cold in the cup.
Naruko — small, stubborn, insolent — was moving through the trees with an odd practicality. She gathered discarded kunai here, snagged a broken pole there, and set to fashioning crude spears with the kind of industrious ferocity Hiruzen had not expected from a six-year-old. She tested the balance of a shaft, trimmed a point against a rock, and then, inexplicably, punched a nearby tree.
The bark exploded in a web of cracks.
Hiruzen's pipe peg slipped from his lips and clattered to the desk. "What on earth—" He stopped himself. There were no idle words that fit. He only managed, "Burnt beard of the Sage of Six Paths… that's… Is she really 6 years old ? She is not secretly using Chakra is she ? No, last time I had checked, she still had not unlocked her Chakra. And if she is not using any Chakra…
That raw strength… that's definitely some Hashirama Senju level shit !"
The image shifted. The ground shuddered as a titanic boar smashed through the undergrowth — tusks like scythes, hide like old armor, and a bulk that swallowed the clearing's light. Any sane ranger would have signaled for backup. Naruko narrowed her eyes and smiled like an idiot in love.
Hiruzen leaned so close to the ball his spectacles fogged. He saw her crouch, saw her body coil—and then she charged.
He was not watching ninjutsu. She did not form seals. She did not release a single visible wisp of chakra. It was all raw, physical motion: a leap, a grab, a heave. Naruko slid beneath the boar's belly, planted both palms, and sent the thing flipping end over end as if it were a sack of rice.
"Not using chakra?" he whispered, incredulous. "Not a drop?"
The spectacle only worsened. Naruko baited, struck, cursed at the beast in a string of expletives that would have scandalized the academy instructors, and then, with a final thunderous uppercut, felled the monster.
Hiruzen's mouth hung open. "She defeated that… without channeling chakra. My—"
He mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. He could smell grease on the wind from the image: Naruko building a fire, cutting the belly of the boar with a kunai that had long since lost its edge.
A flash of amusement chased his disbelief. Naruko's appetite is going to be a big problem for village logistics.
He scolded himself for thinking that way. She was a child. Dangerous, yes, but still a child.
And yet—what worry crept behind his amusement? She had strength that did not depend on chakra control, and she had the cunning to hide the full extent of her other abilities. That combination made Hiruzen set his jaw. It made him remember Danzo's cold calculations about power, about preemptive control.
He shut his eyes and imagined the worst: a child with improper discipline, a secret ability that could be misused, Danzo's keen interest sparked by rumor and spectacle. He did not like the picture.
Hiruzen felt something like fondness. He also felt the very adult itch to intervene. Not with indignation, nor with punishment; with guidance. A policy of shepherding rather than corralling. He could hear the small bureaucratic voice in his head — a list of forms, of bright-eyed medical reports, of academy enrollment. But more pressing than paperwork was the sight of a little girl who could punch down trees and kill house-sized boars without even drawing chakra.
He stood and straightened his robe. "Very well," he said to the empty room, to the paper on his desk, to the village that hummed with gossip and risk. "I shall pay Naruko a visit."
On his way from the office, he paused briefly at a clerk's window and scribbled an extra note on a scrap of paper with an indulgent admonition: add Ichiraku's bill to this month's stipend. He could not, in good conscience, let the ramen debt topple the child's appetite. Policy, after all, had a human face. And he was definitely not doing it because he wanted some boar meat. Last time he ate a wild boar, he was working as the personal guard of his sensei, Tobirama Senju.
Remembering those days filled him with nostalgia.
He took a leisurely walk through the village. Mainly because it would take the boar a lot of time to cook completely. He even made a small detour to buy some spices and salt for some extra flavour. He never believed that Naruko could eat the boar all on her own.
Unfortunately his dream shattered the moment he entered the clearing where the smoke was rising from the Fire. The scene in front of him was completely unbelievable. For a moment Hiruzen's brain short circuited and he stood there with his wide open mouth.
…
Next chapter: Jiji, you are the best !