Konoha, Sarutobi Clan Grounds.
Retirement for Hiruzen Sarutobi meant fishing, calligraphy, and occasionally peeking into... no, observing Konoha's bathhouse culture.
But today, his crystal ball was pitch-black.
"Stop knocking, old man. I blocked the signal."
Naruto's figure abruptly appeared in the shadows of the tea room, a bag of high-calorie doughnuts he had just swiped from the First Arsenal in his hand. He unapologetically dragged out a chair and sat down, tossing the doughnuts onto the table hard enough to make the teacups jump.
"Naruto..." The Third Hokage put down the brush in his hand and sighed. He looked at the boy before him with a complicated expression. The boy had completely slipped from his control. "The way you make your entrances is looking more and more like that masked man who claims to be Madara Uchiha. Don't treat an old man like this. I have a heart condition."
"Don't compare me to that lunatic. I have an official position." Naruto took a bite of doughnut and said indistinctly, "I came to ask you something important. When Tobirama Senju developed Impure World Reincarnation, did he leave behind any backdoors or instruction manuals?"
Hiruzen Sarutobi's hand jerked violently. Ink dripped onto the rice paper, bleeding into a black blot.
"You encountered that technique?" The old man's voice instantly turned grave. Two sharp beams of light shot from his originally cloudy eyes. "Who was it? Orochimaru?"
"Worse than Orochimaru. Orochimaru only wanted to kill you. These people are mass-producing cannon fodder." Naruto swallowed his food and wiped his hands. "Gari of Iwagakure has been dead for more than a decade, yet Kakashi-sensei just cemented him into a specimen at the Land of Grass border. But I sensed it just now, and that nauseating chakra fluctuation is still growing."
Hiruzen Sarutobi muttered, "What