Chapter 35: Naruto
"Look. That's him."
Ayame pointed along Konoha's main street.
Tonbo followed her gaze and found a tiny boy with spiky blond hair wandering among the pedestrians. Whenever the child saw a man and woman walking together, he approached them with his arms raised.
Each time, the adults recoiled.
One woman pulled her companion across the road. A shopkeeper who had been smiling at another child abruptly lowered his shutters. Their reactions were so immediate that Naruto had begun approaching people cautiously, as though expecting rejection before it came.
"Hug me," the boy pleaded.
Some hurried away. Others shooed him back before he could touch them. After several attempts, the child stopped in the middle of the street and crouched with his head bowed. Tears rolled down his cheeks.
He was too young to understand why everyone disliked him. He only knew that those same adults embraced other children, yet fled whenever he came near.
A shadow fell across him.
Naruto looked up. One of the two strangers looming above him was a frightening man wrapped in bandages. The young woman beside him wore a gentle smile.
"Dragonfly," Ayame said, "everyone says he's the reincarnation of the Nine-Tailed Fox. Aren't you afraid?"
She knew little about the creature itself. More than a year ago, Tonbo had warned her about the Nine-Tails, and its attack had thrown all of Konoha into chaos. Yet the child before her did not resemble a monster. He looked lonely, tired, and much too young to be wandering the village without a parent.
Tonbo chuckled. "I wasn't afraid of the Nine-Tails when it attacked. Why would I be afraid now? Besides, this boy isn't the Nine-Tails. He's only a little brat."
He crouched until their eyes were level. "Isn't that right, little brother?"
Naruto stared at him. The bandaged man felt different from everyone else—more like the Third Hokage, who sometimes spoke to him without fear.
He stretched out both arms.
"Hug me."
Several ANBU entered the edge of Tonbo's sensory range. He noted their positions and lifted Naruto anyway.
The instant he did, his perception encountered an immense concentration of chakra. A sealing technique concealed and compressed it, muting the pressure, but Tonbo had sensed that chakra before.
The Nine-Tails.
There could be no doubt. Naruto carried the same vast presence Tonbo had felt during the attack, though the seal kept it from spilling freely into the world.
To anyone without Tonbo's sensitivity, the boy would have seemed ordinary. To him, the difference was unmistakable: an ocean of violent chakra confined behind layers of intricate sealing work, distant but never truly absent.
Why was a child this young alone in the street?
The hidden ANBU offered one possible answer. Perhaps Hiruzen had allowed Naruto outside under covert supervision. Otherwise, they would surely have guided him away from the crowded avenue already.
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The operatives tensed when Tonbo picked him up, prepared to intervene. Tonbo shook his head almost imperceptibly.
The Fourth Hokage had sacrificed everything for the village, yet his son had been left to grow up in this environment. Whatever political interference Hiruzen faced, Tonbo could not call this anything but a failure.
Still, he would not turn an accidental meeting into a confrontation. He had encountered Naruto by chance, and holding a lonely child was not a crime.
"He's adorable," Tonbo said. "Ayame, shall we have four children?"
Her face turned scarlet. "If that's what Dragonfly wants."
The answer escaped before she considered how it sounded. On the main street, no less. Ayame wanted to hide her face, but Naruto's delighted expression made that difficult.
She pinched his cheek lightly. "My name is Ayame. You can call me big sister. What's your name?"
"Sister Ayame! I'm Uzumaki Naruto."
His speech was surprisingly clear for his age. Whatever else the village denied him, the boy was alert and quick to understand affection when it was offered.
"And I'm Tobitake Tonbo," Tonbo said. "Remember that I was the one who picked you up."
He passed Naruto to Ayame. The child settled happily into her arms.
Whispers spread around them.
"They touched the Nine-Tails."
"Are they trying to get themselves killed?"
"I still remember that claw destroying my home. How can anyone go near it?"
The surrounding villagers gave them an ever-wider berth. Fear from the attack remained raw, and ignorance had fastened that fear onto the nearest available target.
Naruto heard them. His smile faded.
In the Hokage's office, a cat-masked ANBU knelt before Hiruzen.
"Hokage-sama, someone has picked up the jinchūriki. Should we intervene?"
Hiruzen's expression hardened. "Who? And why was Naruto allowed onto the main street?"
"Tobitake Tonbo. He appears to be off duty today."
The ANBU kept his private confusion behind his mask. The standing orders discouraged excessive contact with the jinchūriki so Naruto would not become dependent on any one caretaker. Yet the Hokage also objected to him reaching a public street. Reconciling those instructions was not simple.
"Has Tonbo done anything suspicious?" Hiruzen asked.
"No. He and a young woman—apparently his fiancée—are playing with the child."
The report itself sounded improbable. Most people who remembered the Nine-Tails' power would never willingly hold its jinchūriki. Someone who did so was either unusually carefree or approaching Naruto with a hidden purpose. That uncertainty was why the ANBU had come directly to Hiruzen.
Before the Hokage answered, an older man entered the office. A scar marked his chin, and his presence made even the masked operative uneasy.
"Hiruzen," Danzō Shimura said, "anyone who approaches the jinchūriki must have an ulterior motive. Give this Tonbo to me. I will extract everything he knows."
"Naruto is not your concern, Danzō." Hiruzen changed the subject without hesitation. "What news do you have of Orochimaru?"
He trusted Tonbo. Few shinobi Hiruzen had observed embodied the Will of Fire so consistently. On the battlefields of the Third Shinobi World War, within the Analysis Team, and now as a captain, Tonbo had repeatedly protected Konoha's people without seeking recognition.
Playing with Naruto in the open fit that history far better than Danzō's suspicion. Tonbo had seen a child being rejected and responded as he would to any other child of the village.
Hiruzen would not allow Danzō to destroy such talent on the strength of suspicion alone.
"Your indecision is why Orochimaru escaped," Danzō said with a cold snort. "He should have been killed immediately."
"A year ago, I believed he had only lost his way. I did not know the extent of what he had done." Regret weighed on Hiruzen's voice. "If the opportunity comes, I will capture him."
Orochimaru's defection had cost Konoha yet another of its strongest shinobi and slowed the village's recovery.
"Our latest information places him in the Land of Bears," Danzō said. "After that, his trail disappears."
"Then do not waste personnel chasing him blindly beyond our borders. Orochimaru is too skilled at hiding."
"There is another matter."
Danzō looked toward the ANBU. The operative understood the dismissal and vanished from the office.
"What is it?" Hiruzen asked.
"The Uchiha clan has been making unusual moves."
The words struck an old wound. Konoha had kept the Uchiha under close surveillance since the Nine-Tails' attack, consuming manpower and feeding the clan's resentment. Some members had already spoken of abandoning the village.
Yet more than a year of investigation had produced no evidence that the clan possessed the means to control the Nine-Tails on the night of the attack.
Moving against an entire founding clan without proof could turn suspicion into the very rebellion Konoha feared. Hiruzen would not authorize such a step merely because Danzō demanded decisive action.
Hiruzen considered the matter for a long moment.
"We will not act against them. Keep our informants in place and continue observing."
Danzō turned toward the door.
"You will regret this, Hiruzen."
He slammed it behind him.