After the graduation exam results were announced, the Academy no longer had anything for Hagoromo and the others to do. Everyone went their separate ways.
Before he could go home, though, he had to walk Guy back first. Guy kept insisting he was perfectly fine. Hagoromo kept feeling guilty anyway. The two facts coexisted without resolving each other.
Hagoromo's house sat on the outer edge of Konoha, one district away from the famous Uchiha compound—which operated, for all practical purposes, as its own sovereign territory within the village walls.
Living next to a group of red-eyed neighbors made him cautious. He carried too many secrets to be otherwise.
During the day, Konoha didn't feel much like a village at war. But once night fell, the tension became obvious. Few pedestrians on the streets. Squads of ninja moving in plain sight and out of it, running defense rotations around the clock.
Hagoromo looked up at the Hokage Rock. Three faces carved into the stone—the First, the Second, the Third. The Third was still in his prime. The Fourth hadn't taken office yet. Right now he was still out there on various battlefields, operating under the name Yellow Flash, a one-man deterrent to anyone foolish enough to engage.
He got home soon enough. This place had originally been the Kamishiro family residence. Now only Hagoromo lived there. He'd long since gotten used to it.
He had no frame of reference for Naruto's tiny apartment. If he did, he'd realize his own living situation was practically protagonist-tier by comparison.
Both parents gone, he'd been raised by Konoha's childcare institutions until five. After that, the village issued war orphans a small living stipend and expected them to manage independently from there. At seven he enrolled in the Academy. Three years later, he was ten.
In his original world, a ten-year-old on a battlefield was a punchline. In the Naruto world, it was just called reality. Underage children on active front lines were everywhere. Even Konoha—relatively humane compared to other villages—had no choice but to send its fresh graduates to war. Strong as it was, Konoha spent every major conflict getting jumped from all four directions simultaneously. Manpower shortages were the permanent state of affairs.
He was still turning all this over in his head as he pushed open his front door and started cooking dinner on autopilot.
He had absolutely no idea that a conspiracy targeting him was quietly taking shape somewhere in Konoha's upper ranks.
—Cough. Don't panic. The author isn't doing conspiracy thriller. That's a bit of an overstatement. Keep reading and it'll make sense.
Once upon a time, Konoha had a legendary troublemaker. A genuine demon king. She had three hobbies:
Gambling.
Gambling.
And gambling.
Her technique was atrocious. She lost basically every time. Under normal circumstances, someone this dedicated to corrupting public morals would be shut down by the police, or whoever passed for local enforcement around here. But this particular troublemaker had a very special identity. Nobody dared touch her. She'd set the Third Hokage's beard on fire once, just because she felt like it.
That was Tsunade. First Hokage's granddaughter. Third Hokage's student. Princess of the Senju and of Konoha itself.
Eventually Tsunade grew up. Still gambled like a professional at losing, but she stopped actively terrorizing the village. Peace at last.
...Right?
Obviously not.
Tsunade had graduated from wanton destruction. The problem was that Demon King Number Two had already descended upon Konoha. Her background wasn't quite as absurd as Tsunade's, but practically nobody dared provoke her either. And in terms of raw destructive capacity and general disregard for order, she made her predecessor look tame.
Her name was Uzumaki Kushina. Nine-Tails Jinchūriki. Known to the general public as the Red Hot Habanero.
And right now the Habanero was running at full heat. She walked around the village with an invisible sign over her head that said DON'T. TOUCH. ME. The red-eyed rabbits of the Uchiha clan got beaten up on sight if they looked at her wrong.
What could anyone do about it, really?
She was the Nine-Tails Jinchūriki. Her boyfriend was functionally invincible in one-on-one combat and didn't fear group situations either. Her boyfriend's teacher was Jiraiya, one of the Legendary Three. She was personally close with Tsunade. In theory, she could probably burn the Hokage's beard too.
Even during wartime Kushina refused to sit still. She caused disturbances constantly. Some were harmless. Others gave the Hokage splitting headaches. And here was the core problem: as the Nine-Tails Jinchūriki, she had to remain inside Konoha under the Hokage's protection at all times. Not one step outside the barrier. Policy. Security. Non-negotiable.
Her mild hyperactivity had clearly never been treated. Staying put wasn't in her nature. She'd filed repeated requests for front-line deployment—denied every time. She'd attempted to sneak out of the village—caught every time, dragged back by the Hokage personally.
If she actually reached the battlefield, the Yellow Flash Namikaze Minato plus at least one of the Legendary Three would have to drop everything and become her full-time escort. That was not a viable use of resources.
The Hokage explained this to her patiently, again and again, like a disappointed parent who'd given the same lecture too many times. The Habanero remained unmoved.
So he changed tactics and started giving her actual tasks. Things that required attention and energy.
That still wasn't enough. She needed a toy. Something fun. Something durable. Something that would hold her interest.
The Hokage would have to choose carefully.
Namikaze Minato had a student named Kakashi. Young. Absurdly talented. Already operating well above his age. Kushina had always been jealous of that. She'd long wanted to take on a student of her own—but Minato had set an inconvenient standard, and she refused to field someone who'd lose to his student. Quality was non-negotiable. At minimum, her student couldn't be worse than Kakashi.
This gave the Hokage grey hairs. Talents like Kakashi didn't grow on trees.
He'd been quietly scouting the Academy for a while now. And gradually, one student had caught his attention.
So. Take a guess.
Who's the clever one? The talented one? The one with actual combat ability? Which lucky soul is about to inherit the glorious mission of keeping Kushina entertained?
Hmm. Genuinely hard to say.
Our protagonist, meanwhile, had absolutely no idea his future had already been decided. He was busy planning what to pack for the front lines. How to fight. How to survive.
It would never occur to him that while every single one of his classmates shipped out to war, he—the one who considered himself genuinely competent in real combat—wouldn't see a battlefield for the foreseeable future.
He'd be staying right here in Konoha. Whether he liked it or not.