I Just Want to Punch You

On the border of the Land of Fire, in a small village.

Bang!

A ninja wearing a green flak jacket crashed through a wooden wall and flew backward.

Naruto held Kusabimaru as he slowly approached him. Inside the room, the cries of children and the sobs of women were endless.

"I'm curious. Isn't Konoha's duty to protect the Land of Fire?"

Naruto bent down and looked at the Konoha ninja beneath him, whose face was twisted in ferocity.

"How did what you just did have anything to do with the word 'protect'?"

"Bastard! Konoha won't let you go! It won't—"

A flash of steel swept past, abruptly cutting off the ninja's vicious roar.

Naruto searched his body for a moment, pulled several banknotes from inside his chest lining, then turned and walked into the house.

Several beams of sunlight shone through the broken wall. A woman hurriedly straightened her disheveled clothes, pulled her son close, and bowed repeatedly.

"Thank you! Thank you!"

"Leave this place as soon as you can," Naruto sighed, placing the money he had found before the woman.

It was not much, but it was enough for the mother and son to live on for a while.

"Where... where can we go?" The woman hugged her child tightly.

Her home was here. Without a man's protection, even if they left, where could they go?

"...Go to Konoha," Naruto said after a moment of silence. "That man was just an exception."

Although the scum from earlier had been a Konoha ninja, Naruto had grown up in Konoha. More than anyone else, he knew that such scum was ultimately a rare minority.

The reason Konoha could become the foremost of the Five Great Shinobi Villages was not merely its strength.

The moral standards of its villagers were also above average.

The discrimination he had suffered back then had ultimately been an exception.

"Once you reach Konoha and become a resident there, your child will have the chance to study at the Ninja Academy and gain strength."

The Ninja Academy system established by the Second Hokage had laid the foundation for Konoha's victory in the Second Great Ninja War. To a certain extent, it had also torn open the closed-off nature of the shinobi class.

"Will they accept us?" the woman asked softly.

"They will. War is about to begin," Naruto said with a gentle nod.

War meant sacrifice.

Yet war would never truly stop. To win the next war, other shinobi villages would train new ninja to fill their losses, and Konoha would naturally do the same.

But those vacancies could not be filled merely by waiting for newborns to grow up. Taking in outsiders from other villages was the most profitable choice.

"I happen to be heading to Konoha too. I can take you there."

Hearing this, the woman seemed to have grasped a lifeline. She nodded hurriedly, afraid he might change his mind.

Shadow Clone Jutsu!

Naruto nodded slightly toward his Shadow Clone, then his real body continued toward Konoha with the mother and son.

The Shadow Clone walked over to the corpse, bent down to pick up a Shuriken, weighed it in his hand, then entered the house and sat cross-legged with his eyes closed.

Two hours later.

Several Konoha ninja tightly surrounded the isolated wooden house.

They naturally saw their companion's corpse on the ground, but it was wartime. Death was unavoidable.

What they needed to do now was prevent that death from spreading further.

"You've finally come?" A somewhat weathered male voice came from inside the house.

Naruto's Shadow Clone walked out of the room and looked toward the three o'clock direction. The chakra signature in that direction posed the greatest threat to him and was likely the one in charge.

"Let's talk. I think you can see what happened here."

The Konoha ninja all exchanged looks. They were ninja, and completing missions was their highest code of conduct, but that did not mean they had abandoned the most basic sense of honor and shame as human beings.

The corpse on the ground had broken into a civilian home and molested a woman. Even by the lowest moral standards, he was scum among scum.

After killing that beast, the "murderer" had not left but had chosen to remain and wait for their arrival. What he wanted was already obvious.

"I am Sarutobi Shin'nosuke. May I ask who you are?" A ninja in a jonin flak jacket stepped forward. He was the source of chakra Naruto had sensed as the greatest threat.

Naruto looked at his face, momentarily stunned. "What is your relationship with the Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi?"

Though it was his first time meeting this man, his face was not unfamiliar.

In the future, this face and the face of Hiruzen Sarutobi's grandson, Konohamaru Sarutobi, could not merely be called similar. They looked as if they had been cast from the same mold.

"He is my father," Sarutobi Shin'nosuke said gravely. Since he had dared reveal his name, he had already prepared to be recognized.

"Not bad luck. At least you're someone I can talk to," Naruto said with a slight nod, pointing at the corpse on the ground.

"I killed him."

"So, Mr. Sarutobi Shin'nosuke, son of the Third Hokage, how do you view this matter?"

After saying that, he fell silent. He wanted to know how the Konoha ninja would deal with him next.

"..." Sarutobi Shin'nosuke gave him a deep look. Was this an attempt to condemn him morally, or something else?

"I am grateful that you preserved Konoha's reputation, but he was still a Konoha ninja. Wasn't it excessive for you to kill him on the spot without a word?"

They wanted their reputation, but they also wanted his life?

Naruto inwardly shook his head. From Konoha's perspective, Sarutobi Shin'nosuke's solution was not inappropriate.

Killing Naruto would make Konoha's moral standards seem questionable. Not killing him would mean that any Konoha ninja who made a mistake could be killed by anyone.

But unfortunately, he was not a Konoha ninja.

This time, he stood on the side of the civilians.

"So what you mean is that the lives of civilians without chakra are not lives?" Naruto demanded.

"To protect civilian interests, Konoha has already signed agreements with the other shinobi villages, ensuring that war will not affect civilians."

Sarutobi Shin'nosuke did not answer directly, instead stating his side's stance toward civilians.

Naruto sneered. Anyone could spout such empty official nonsense that required no responsibility.

Still, Sarutobi Shin'nosuke's words gave him a piece of information that barely counted as intelligence.

Perhaps, in the eyes of most ninja, civilian lives truly did not count as lives.

Sarutobi Shin'nosuke made a subtle hand signal. Even without this incident, he could not allow a ninja with such powerful combat ability to wander around the border.

Moreover, this ninja carried Konoha's scandal on his back.

The outcome had been decided from the moment the incident occurred.

"Are we fighting now?" Naruto grinned. Good. He had spent so much time changing his appearance not to waste breath chatting about domestic nonsense with this bunch of thugs.

Bang!

He threw out a Shuriken. Empowered by his terrifying arm strength and Wind Release Chakra, the Shuriken was like a cannonball fired from its barrel.

Sarutobi Shin'nosuke's pupils shrank as he hurriedly dodged to the side.

Naruto's gaze swiftly locked onto a sword-wielding ninja. Without exposing the Nine-Tails' chakra, there was a world of difference between him with a sword and him without one.

Among the ninja surrounding him, quite a few used swords. But the one Naruto had targeted was undoubtedly the weakest.

"A sword isn't used like that!" Naruto sidestepped the man's downward slash, drove his left fist viciously into his face, and swiftly seized the long sword from his hand with his right.

Buzz!

Terrifying Wind Release Chakra instantly poured into the blade.