Hidden Leaf Village

"Captain... we found these on the boy." A Leaf ninja handed over the two items they had found while searching the unconscious Hanyu.

One was a bloodstained Forehead Protector. The other was the note Hanyu had treasured so much.

The captain's expression turned grave the moment he saw them. He immediately ordered his subordinates, "Abort the mission. Take the boy and return to the village as fast as you can."

"But, Captain, our mission is..."

"Follow orders. No delays!"

"Yes!"

From the items Hanyu carried, the captain had guessed what might have happened. He immediately called off their current mission and hurried back to the village with Hanyu.

His orders were carried out without question. The ninja squad took just over a day to return from the border to the Hidden Leaf Village, and Hanyu remained unconscious the entire time.

Konoha was a town of considerable size. Though it served as the stronghold of the Land of Fire's ninja, it was nothing like the tightly guarded military encampment one might imagine, with its gates shut fast and entry strictly controlled. Its gates stood openly wide at all times.

Even during wartime, a ninja village still had to take on outside work. It welcomed visitors from all directions, accepted their various commissions, and earned payment by solving their problems. To a considerable extent, this was a source of income for a ninja village.

A short distance from the entrance stood a table, where several ninja sat. They were responsible for communicating with and receiving visitors from outside, as well as screening people entering the village.

That morning, the squad carrying Hanyu rushed into the village at top speed.

"Hey, you!" Their unauthorized entry immediately put the gate guards on alert and roused their hostility. But before the guard could finish his attempt to stop them, the squad had already charged deep into the village.

"Emergency mission!" The captain left them with only that explanation.

The gate guard was furious, but could only leave one person to watch the entrance while the other hurried after them... If they hadn't recognized them as the ninja who had left on a mission two days earlier, they would have attacked outright.

By the time the squad reached the entrance, the news had already been passed along. Not long after finding Hanyu the previous day, the squad had sent word to the village by covert means.

The people in charge of Konoha were now anxiously awaiting their arrival.

"Lord Sarutobi, the squad has reached the village. They'll be here shortly," the messenger reported to the young man before him.

The village's senior officials were gathered in the room. Most prominent among them were Sarutobi Hiruzen, Mitokado Homura, Utatane Koharu, and Shimura Danzō, disciples of the Second. At present, they were the ones who actually controlled the village.

"He's here already? Is he all right?" Sarutobi Hiruzen asked impatiently.

"It seems he's been seriously injured."

"Get a medical ninja here." After hearing the messenger's additional explanation, Sarutobi immediately gave the order.

"Yes." The ninja was just about to turn and leave when someone stopped him.

"Wait. Bring a Yamanaka as well." This order came not from Sarutobi, but from Shimura Danzō, who had remained silent until then.

"...Yes, Lord Danzō."

Sarutobi glanced at Danzō but said nothing. Soon, the people they had summoned arrived, and then Hanyu was brought in as well.

"Can you wake him?"

The medical ninja, who had arrived ahead of time, stepped forward at once. After a round of emergency treatment, Hanyu slowly opened his eyes.

The people around him fell strangely silent.

"Where is this...?" Hanyu asked instinctively. The figures before him were blurred, and he had no idea where he was. Then he remembered the last thing before he'd passed out... Had he ended up in Iwagakure's hands after all?

"The Hidden Leaf Village in the Land of Fire."

The answer was not what Hanyu had expected.

"Konoha?"

He shook his head hard, finally making out the person standing before him. The man looked somewhat familiar, but... far too young.

"One day ago, our ninja found you. They also found these two things on you... Can you tell us how you came by them?" Sarutobi Hiruzen asked Hanyu, pointing to the Second's Forehead Protector and the confidential letter.

Hanyu opened his mouth, then finally said, "I came here to deliver a message to your village, as promised to someone... Two days ago, I met a ninja from Konoha who called himself Senju Tobirama. He asked me to come here and deliver a message to someone named Sarutobi Hiruzen."

His reasoning was clear. From Sarutobi's words, he immediately worked out that he had met the Second two days earlier.

Even this most straightforward explanation, however, revealed information so shocking that the moment Hanyu finished speaking, everyone around him fixed their eyes on him.

Word that the Hokage had gone missing had spread through the village long ago. But who could have imagined that the next news they heard about him would come from an outsider with no connection to the village? The village's own intelligence network had spent the past few days searching everywhere for the Second, yet found nothing... The contrast was absurd, and somehow that very absurdity made the story seem true.

About five days earlier, the Second had taken his disciples to the Land of Lightning to form an alliance with the Raikage of the Cloud Village. But during the ceremony, they were ambushed by Cloud Village rogue ninja, and the Second Raikage was killed on the spot. The Konoha party, led by the Hokage, managed to escape, but faced with pursuit by a large force of elite ninja, they realized they could not all get away safely. The Hokage himself, in an act of self-sacrifice, volunteered to serve as a decoy, buying his subordinates and disciples time to flee... At the same time, he entrusted the village's future to the younger generation.

His disciples managed to escape, but the Hokage himself vanished without a trace. Now, five days later, everyone had prepared for the worst regarding his whereabouts. But when the truth was finally laid before them, it was not something they could easily accept.

The Hokage's disciples were the people standing before Hanyu now: Sarutobi and the others. The Hokage's personal effects were in Sarutobi's hands.

"Young man, don't be nervous. Tell us everything you know about what happened, in detail... I'm the ninja named Sarutobi," Sarutobi Hiruzen said to Hanyu.

Hanyu had expected the imposing reception. He would have to be extremely careful with his explanation, because now that he was in Konoha, his fate was no longer in his own hands.