The door—or what remained of it—hung from a single hinge, swaying gently in the silence that followed the women's departure.
Hiruzen Sarutobi sat motionless behind his desk, staring at nothing.
Then, slowly, as if the strings holding him upright had been cut, he slumped.
His shoulders curved inward. His head dropped. His hands, weathered by decades of war and leadership, trembled against the wood of his desk.
He aged ten years in ten seconds.
The pipe he always carried slipped from nerveless fingers, clattering against the floor unnoticed. His hat—the symbol of his office, the weight of his responsibility—suddenly felt heavier than it ever had before.
"Hokage-sama?" One of the conscious advisors—the ones who hadn't been choked unconscious or traumatized by mental invasion—stepped forward hesitantly. "Should we... should we send ANBU after them? They assaulted council members. Threatened your life. This is—"
"No."
The word was barely a whisper.
"But sir—"
"I said no." Hiruzen's voice cracked on the second word. "Leave me. All of you."
"The unconscious—"
"Take them to medical. Then leave. Now."
The surviving advisors exchanged uncertain glances but complied, gathering their fallen colleagues and retreating from the ruined office with undignified haste.
Only Jiraiya remained.
The Sannin stood amid the scattered weapons Tenten had left behind, his face pale, his legendary composure shattered.
"Sensei..."
"Don't." Hiruzen's hand rose weakly. "Whatever you're going to say, don't."
"They threatened to destroy the village. To kill you. We can't just—"
"Can't what?" The old man's laugh was hollow, broken. "Can't let them get away with it? Can't allow such disrespect to stand?"
He finally raised his head, and Jiraiya flinched at what he saw in those aged eyes.
Despair.
Complete, overwhelming despair.
"Jiraiya. Those women would have killed everyone in this room without hesitation. Without remorse. Without any consideration beyond protecting the boy we broke."
"The boy the village broke," Jiraiya corrected quietly.
"The village I lead." Hiruzen's voice cracked again. "The village I was supposed to protect—including him. Including Minato's son. The child I promised to watch over."
He stared at his trembling hands.
"I failed, Jiraiya. Not partially. Not in ways that can be corrected with apologies and good intentions. I failed completely. Catastrophically. In ways that can never be undone."
Silence stretched through the ruined office.
Outside, the sounds of the village continued—merchants calling their wares, children playing, ninja moving about their duties. Normal sounds. Peaceful sounds.
The sounds of people who had no idea how close they had come to destruction.
"The promotion denial," Jiraiya said slowly. "Was it really about leadership qualities? Or was it..."
"Fear." Hiruzen didn't even try to deny it. "Pure, simple fear. The council looked at what Naruto demonstrated in that arena—the Flying Thunder God, the Gates, power that exceeded most of our jonin—and they panicked."
"So they decided to keep him contained."
"They decided to pretend that genin rank meant something. That bureaucratic restrictions could control a force of nature." The old man's laugh was bitter. "As if rank has ever mattered to someone with that kind of power."
He pushed himself upright with visible effort, moving to the window that Temari's wind had sealed. The glass was cracked now, spider-web fractures spreading from the pressure that had been applied.
"I've been Hokage for most of my life, Jiraiya. I've faced wars, invasions, the Kyuubi attack, Orochimaru's betrayal. I've made difficult decisions. Sacrificed lives for the greater good. Carried burdens that would have crushed lesser men."
He pressed his forehead against the cracked glass.
"None of it prepared me for this."
"For what, exactly?"
"For the consequences of our cruelty." Hiruzen's voice dropped to a whisper. "For what happens when the child you failed decides—or the people devoted to that child decide—that the village's survival is no longer a priority."
Jiraiya moved to stand beside his former teacher, looking out at the village spread below them.
"Those women. They've been transformed by the Kyuubi's chakra. Their devotion isn't natural—it's been artificially enhanced."
"Does that matter?"
"Of course it matters. If we can understand the mechanism, maybe we can—"
"Can what?" Hiruzen turned to face him. "Reverse it? Separate them from Naruto? Return them to who they were before?"
He shook his head slowly.
"You didn't see their eyes, Jiraiya. Didn't hear their voices. That devotion isn't a corruption of who they are—it's an enhancement of feelings that already existed. They loved him before the transformation. They simply love him more absolutely now."
"That doesn't mean—"
"It means that 'fixing' them would feel like murder to them. Would feel like having their hearts torn out. Would feel like dying, except worse, because they would still exist without the one thing that gives their existence meaning."
Hiruzen returned his gaze to the window.
"We cannot undo what has been done. We can only... adapt."
"Adapt how? You heard them. They'll destroy the village if they think it's necessary to protect him."
"Then we ensure they never think it's necessary." The old man's voice carried exhaustion beyond physical tiredness. "We give Naruto what he deserves. Respect. Acknowledgment. Opportunities. Everything the village should have given him from the beginning."
"And if it's too late for that?"
Silence.
"Then Konoha falls. And we will have deserved it."
Jiraiya stared at his former teacher with something approaching horror.
"You can't mean that."
"Can't I?" Hiruzen's smile was sad. "I've spent twelve years telling myself that Naruto was fine. That the ANBU reports were exaggerated. That the villagers' hatred was understandable given their losses. That he would grow up strong and prove everyone wrong."
His hands clenched at his sides.
"I told myself stories, Jiraiya. Comfortable lies that let me sleep at night. And while I was sleeping, while I was believing my own delusions, that boy was being systematically destroyed."
"You didn't know—"
"I KNEW."
The word exploded from him with force that made Jiraiya step back.
"I knew exactly what was happening. I read the reports. I heard the whispers. I saw the bruises when he came to visit, and I chose to believe his lies about training accidents because the truth was too painful to face."
Tears—actual tears—began streaming down the old man's weathered face.
"I am the God of Shinobi. The Professor. The longest-serving Hokage in Konoha's history. And I let a child—the son of my successor, the legacy of Minato and Kushina—be beaten and starved and broken because addressing it properly was too difficult."
He sank into his chair, no longer trying to maintain any pretense of composure.
"Those women are right to hate us. Right to threaten us. Right to prioritize his wellbeing over our survival. Because we have done nothing—NOTHING—to earn his loyalty or their mercy."
Jiraiya stood in silence, watching his teacher weep.
He wanted to offer comfort. Wanted to say something that would ease the old man's burden.
But there was nothing to say.
Because Hiruzen was right.
They had failed Naruto. Failed him completely, catastrophically, in ways that could never be fully corrected. And now they were facing the consequences of that failure—not in some distant future, but right now, in the form of seven transformed women who would burn the world for a boy who couldn't even feel gratitude for their devotion.
"What do we do?" Jiraiya asked finally.
"We survive. If we can." Hiruzen wiped his eyes with a trembling hand. "We give Naruto everything he wants, everything he needs, everything he deserves. And we pray—pray to whatever gods might still be listening—that it's enough to keep those women from deciding we're more trouble than we're worth."
"That's not a strategy. That's surrender."
"Yes." The old man's voice carried no shame. "It is. Because we have nothing else. No leverage, no control, no options that don't end in catastrophe."
He looked up at his former student with eyes that had seen too much and understood too late.
"We created a monster, Jiraiya. Not the Kyuubi—we created something far more dangerous. We created a human being with unlimited power and no reason to care whether we live or die."
His head dropped again.
"And now we get to experience what that means."
In the corridor outside, an ANBU operative pressed against the wall, having heard everything through the ruined doorway.
She was one of Danzo's agents—a ROOT operative embedded in the Hokage's guard. Her orders were to report everything of significance to her true master.
This definitely qualified.
She slipped away silently, mind racing with the implications of what she had witnessed.
The devoted women. The threat to the village. The Hokage's despair and capitulation.
Danzo would want to know all of it.
And he would almost certainly want to take action.
The question was whether any action he could take would matter against the force that had just been revealed.
Seven women, transformed by demon chakra, devoted absolutely to a boy with the power of a god.
Even ROOT might not be enough.
But Danzo would try anyway.
Because that was what Danzo did.
And if he failed—when he failed—the consequences would be beyond anything Konoha had ever faced.
The shadow war was coming.
And Konoha had already lost before it began.