I Don't Want to Become Hokage

Before dawn had broken, Iruka opened his eyes.

He stared at the grain of the ceiling wood, two Narutos fighting in his mind.

One was the foolish boy who used every clumsy prank he could think of just to earn even a second of someone else's attention.

The other was the executioner from last night, with icy eyes and no regard for human life.

The two figures tore at each other all night until his eyes were bloodshot.

He abruptly sat up, unable to lie there any longer.

When he stepped outside and the cold wind hit him, he finally cleared his head somewhat. Then he turned and headed for the store.

"Hey, Iruka-sensei, up this early?" The shop owner yawned, looking at him through sleepy eyes. "Buying for Naruto? Is that kid growing lately? His appetite's gotten huge."

Iruka looked at the instant noodles and snacks he had unconsciously cleared from the shelves and piled onto the counter. His throat went dry, and he could only nod vaguely.

The heavy plastic bags carved Kurenai welts into his fingers, burning with pain.

Perhaps Naruto had not been the one in the wrong.

It was the whole village. All of them had personally pushed that child off a cliff with their cold, indifferent stares.

And as his teacher, he deserved to die a thousand deaths.

Standing before that familiar peeling door, Iruka raised his hand, then lowered it.

After repeating that several times, he finally made up his mind and knocked on the door.

Knock, knock-knock.

No one answered.

The room was deathly silent, with only the hollow echo of his knocking.

Iruka's heart sank bit by bit. He knocked several more times, harder this time.

"Stop knocking. That kid left before dawn."

The door across the hall opened a crack, and a sleepy old woman poked her head out. She gave him an impatient glance, then looked at the bags in his hands in surprise.

"He left? Do you know where he went?" Iruka asked urgently.

"Who knows?" The old woman curled her lip. "That kid was strange today, full of killing intent. I thought he was going to fight someone to the death. Oh, right, he seemed to be heading toward Training Ground Seven."

Before she had even finished speaking, Iruka had already turned and rushed away.

Clutching the bag of snacks, he sprinted through the deserted streets. The plastic bags swung wildly behind him, rustling loudly.

But he had come up empty-handed again.

Training Ground Seven was vast and quiet, with only the morning breeze rustling through the leaves.

Iruka's gaze eventually settled on a wooden Root in the middle of the field.

That Root, meant for Genin practice, could no longer be called a "post."

It was covered in dense craters and fist marks. Large chunks of wood had been gouged out by force, and the edges were littered with exploded splinters, as though countless savage beasts had frantically gnawed at it.

Iruka slowly walked over and reached out, his fingertips touching a deep fist mark.

He could practically imagine the rage and agony Naruto had felt as he pummeled this place into such a state, one punch after another.

This was not something that dead-last idiot could possibly have done.

"Are you looking for Naruto?"

A cold voice suddenly sounded behind him without warning.

Iruka's entire body stiffened. He whirled around to find an ANBU in a raccoon mask standing behind him like a ghost, though he had no idea when the man had appeared.

The ANBU ignored his shock and continued in a completely emotionless tone.

"There is no need to look for him."

"Lord Hokage summoned him personally."

Inside the Hokage's Office, the air was as stagnant as iron.

Hiruzen Sarutobi sat behind his desk. The tobacco in the ashtray before him had already piled into a small mountain.

He tried to begin the conversation in the gentlest tone an elder could manage.

"Naruto, about last night..."

"A post-operation report."

Naruto interrupted him and placed a sheet of paper on the desk, the handwriting as neat as print.

"Mission name: Classified Scroll Recovery. Mission objective: Recover the Scroll of Seals and eliminate rogue ninja Mizuki. Mission result..."

Hiruzen Sarutobi looked at the report. Every word conveyed an inhuman precision and coldness.

He pushed the report aside.

"That is not what I want."

"Then what do you need? A belated moral judgment? Or a pointless inquiry into my personal state of mind?"

Naruto's retort was like a sharp blade tempered in ice.

Hiruzen Sarutobi's breath caught.

"You have changed too much, Naruto. Your way of thinking... is dangerous."

"Dangerous?"

Naruto repeated the word, his ice-blue eyes devoid of ripples.

"The principle of protecting humanity's homeland will never be dangerous."

"Humanity's homeland?"

Hiruzen Sarutobi frowned. The term felt unfamiliar to him.

"Konoha is the homeland of humanity that I acknowledge on this planet. Any threat to our homeland must be purged completely."

"Purged..."

Hiruzen Sarutobi savored those unfamiliar words, tinged with the scent of rust. A sense of unease born from the unknown spread through his aged heart.

"Who taught you these things?"

"Truth."

Naruto answered calmly.

"The only truth humanity bought with the blood and bones of billions in the endless darkness of the universe."

Hiruzen Sarutobi fell silent.

He felt as though he was not speaking with a twelve-year-old boy, but confronting a phantom of war that had emerged from mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

He decided to change the subject to one he could control more easily.

"What do you think of the village's current situation?"

"It is riddled with holes, decayed, and inefficient. Like a ship with a passable structure whose insides have long been eaten hollow by worms."

Naruto offered no tact whatsoever in his assessment.

"The greatest threat comes from within. A rogue ninja named Orochimaru, once a 'comrade.'"

Hiruzen Sarutobi's pupils suddenly contracted.

Naruto continued in that flat, unchanging tone.

"He covets the village's forbidden techniques, covets the Sharingan, and even more, he covets... a suitable vessel. His Otogakure is merely a weapon of war prepared to overthrow Konoha. Based on my projections, the most likely time for him to act will be during the Chunin Ninja Exams."

Every sentence was a heavy hammer blow crashing into Hiruzen Sarutobi's heart.

This should have been Konoha's highest-level secret, intelligence that ANBU agents had risked their lives to obtain. How did this child know?

"You... what do you intend to do?"

Hiruzen Sarutobi's voice was somewhat hoarse.

"The optimal solution: form a small elite assassination force, infiltrate Otogakure, and subject him to a purge judgment. Before he launches his plot, erase both him and his nest from the map."

"The secondary plan: the instant he enters the borders of the Land of Fire, activate the highest-level elimination protocol. Spare no cost, mobilize every available force, and kill him on the spot."

"The worst choice: wait for him to enter the village and fight him inside our 'homeland.' That would result in enormous, unnecessary civilian and ninja casualties. It would be the stupidest and most efficient way to turn our own assets into liabilities."

"Purge... erase... kill..."

Hiruzen Sarutobi leaned back in his chair, overwhelmed by a profound sense of helplessness.

Every plan Naruto proposed was bloody and cruel, entirely discarding political, diplomatic, and humanitarian concerns.

"Orochimaru... he was once my student!"

"And so, your emotions once again become noise in the decision-making process."

Naruto's answer was cold and direct.

"Your 'love' allowed him to defect, allowed him to build forces that threaten us, and may allow him to kill hundreds or thousands of villagers you swore to protect. Your 'love' is Konoha's most fragile line of defense."

"Enough!"

Hiruzen Sarutobi slammed his palm on the desk and rose to his feet, the bearing of a Hokage erupting from him.

"Konoha was built on love and trust! The core of the Will of Fire is protecting comrades and treating the village as one great family! Not the cold laws of slaughter you speak of!"

He tried to use the Will of Fire to awaken this lost lamb before him.

"The Fourth Hokage also sacrificed himself to protect the village and those he loved! He..."

"He was a great warrior who used his life to buy time for his homeland. His sacrifice deserves to be remembered, but that does not mean his tactical choice was the optimal solution."

Naruto calmly endured the Hokage's rage, his body utterly unmoving.

"Lord Hokage, put away that ridiculous 'love and peace' of yours."

"In the face of true brutality, love cannot forge armor, and prayers for peace cannot stop a butcher's blade."

"The Will of Fire you treasure can still be spoken of gently here only because countless nameless people have built high walls of iron and blood in darkness you cannot see."

"All I have done is make those walls higher and harder."

The pressure in the office seemed to drop to freezing point.

Before Naruto's words, Hiruzen Sarutobi's imposing presence was like waves crashing against an unyielding rock, quietly receding.

He slumped back into his chair and picked up his pipe again, only to find that his hands were shaking so badly that Root could not light it.

He could find no flaw in the child's logic that he could break through.

More terrifying still, Naruto's words carried a warped yet irrefutable loyalty.

This child truly was protecting Konoha in his own way.

It was simply a way that chilled Hiruzen Sarutobi to the bone.

"What... exactly do you want to become?"

Hiruzen Sarutobi finally asked the question that had been circling in his mind for so long.

"A monster? A butcher?"

Naruto slowly shook his head.

"I have no interest in the hat on your head. A Hokage needs emotion, balance, and must deal with too much meaningless internal attrition. My energy should not be wasted on such things."

He paused, then gave his answer.

"I want to become Konoha's political commissar."

"Political commissar?"

Another new term.

"A supervisor, an enforcer, a corrective mechanism that ensures every gear turns toward the single goal of 'protecting our homeland.'"

"I will be the ideological line of defense and the touchstone of loyalty. I will expose every heretic and eliminate every threat, whether it comes from outside or... within."

"I will be the sharpest sword hanging above the heads of all potential traitors."

Hiruzen Sarutobi was utterly speechless.

After talking for so long, he felt he could infer some things.

Yet Naruto before him had only become more inscrutable.

He did not want to become Hokage. He wanted to become something purer and more terrifying than the Hokage.

After a long while, Hiruzen Sarutobi waved his hand, his face full of exhaustion.

"I understand. You... go handle your own affairs for now."

He neither approved nor refuted it.

He decided to temporarily accept this incomprehensible existence. Therefore, he had to find a way to put the shackles called "Konoha" back on this runaway jinchuriki.

Naruto said nothing more.

He gave an immaculate military salute, the movement as precise as a textbook illustration.

Then he turned around.

With steps as precise as though measured by a ruler, he left the office.

He left Hiruzen Sarutobi alone amid curling smoke, staring at the village he had protected all his life outside the window, feeling an unprecedented confusion for the first time.