At the border of the Land of Fire, within a small village.
Bang!
A ninja clad in a green flak jacket crashed through a wooden wall, sent flying outwards.
Naruto, wielding Kusabimaru, slowly walked towards him. From within the room, the sounds of children crying and women sobbing could be heard incessantly.
"I'm very curious. Isn't the duty of Konoha ninjas to protect the Land of Fire?" Naruto asked, looking down at the Konoha ninja beneath him, whose face was contorted in a savage snarl. "Your beastly actions just now—how do they align in any way with the words 'to protect'?"
"Bastard… Konoha won't let you get away with this… won't…"
A flash of a blade sliced through the air, and the ninja's ferocious roar was cut short.
Naruto fumbled around on his body for a moment, then retrieved some paper money from an inner chest lining before turning and walking back into the house. Through the dilapidated wall, a few beams of sunlight streamed in. A woman hastily straightened her disheveled clothes, pulled her son over, and bowed repeatedly.
"Thank you! Thank you so much!"
"You should leave this place as soon as possible," Naruto said with a sigh, placing the money he had just found in front of the woman. Though not much, it would be enough for the mother and son to live on for some time.
"But… where can we go?" the woman asked, tightly clutching her child. Her home was here. Without a man's protection, even if they left, where could they possibly go?
"…Go to Konoha," Naruto said after a moment's silence. "That person was just an exception." Although the scumbag just now had been a Konoha ninja, he had lived in Konoha since childhood and knew better than anyone that such scum were, ultimately, a very small minority. The reason Konoha could stand as the foremost among the Five Great Hidden Villages was due to more than just strength. The moral standards of its villagers were also above average. His own discriminatory treatment back then had been, in the end, an exception.
"Once you get to Konoha and become villagers, your child will have the chance to attend the Ninja Academy and acquire strength." The Second Hokage's Ninja Academy system had laid the foundation for Konoha's victory in the Second Great Ninja War and had also, to a certain extent, torn open the exclusivity of the ninja class.
"Will they accept us?" the woman asked in a low voice.
"They will. War is about to begin," Naruto nodded gently. War meant sacrifice. But war itself would never cease. To win the next war, other hidden villages would nurture new ninjas to fill their vacant ranks, and Konoha, naturally, would do the same. But this kind of vacancy couldn't be filled solely by the birth of newborns; absorbing outsiders thus became the choice that maximized benefits.
"I happen to be going to Konoha as well. I can take you there."
Hearing this, the woman, as if grasping a life-saving straw, nodded eagerly, terrified he might change his mind.
"Shadow Clone Technique!"
After nodding slightly to his shadow clone, Naruto's original body continued towards Konoha, leading the mother and child. The shadow clone, meanwhile, walked over to the corpse, bent down to pick up a shuriken, weighed it in its hand, then entered the house, sat down cross-legged, and closed its eyes.
Two hours later.
Several Konoha ninjas had tightly surrounded the remote wooden house. They had naturally seen their comrade's body on the ground, but it was wartime, and death was unavoidable. Their current task was to prevent such deaths from spreading further.
"Finally here?" From within the house, a somewhat world-weary male voice sounded.
The Naruto shadow clone walked out of the room and looked towards the three o'clock direction. The chakra reaction from that direction posed the greatest threat to him; it was likely the person in charge.
"Let's talk. I believe you all should be able to see what exactly happened here."
All the Konoha ninjas exchanged glances. Although they were ninjas, for whom completing the mission was the highest code of conduct, it didn't mean they had abandoned the most basic human sense of honor and shame. And the corpse on the ground—breaking into a private residence, molesting a woman—even by the lowest moral standards, he was the scum of the scum. The 'murderer,' after killing that beast, hadn't fled but had instead chosen to await their arrival. What he intended to do was self-evident.
"I am Sarutobi Shinnosuke. May I ask who you are, sir?" a ninja wearing a jonin flak jacket stepped forward. He was the source of the chakra that Naruto had sensed as the most threatening.
Naruto looked at his face and was slightly stunned. "What is your relationship with the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi?" Though it was the first time he had met this man, it wasn't the first time he had seen this face. In the future timeline, this face and that of Hiruzen Sarutobi's grandson, Konohamaru Sarutobi, weren't just very similar—they were like they'd been carved from the exact same mold.
"He is my father," Sarutobi Shinnosuke said in a deep voice. Since he dared to state his name, he was already prepared to be recognized.
"Good luck then; someone who can actually talk." Naruto nodded slightly and pointed to the corpse on the ground. "I killed him."
"Then, Mr. Sarutobi Shinnosuke, esteemed son of the Third Hokage, how do you view this matter?" Having said this, he fell silent. He wanted to know how the Konoha ninjas would deal with him next.
"…" Sarutobi Shinnosuke looked at him deeply. An attack on the heart? Or something else? "I am very grateful to you, sir, for preserving Konoha's reputation. But he was, after all, a Konoha ninja. For you, sir, to kill him on the spot without a word—wasn't that going a bit too far?"
So they want to preserve their reputation and also want his life? Naruto inwardly shook his head. From Konoha's perspective, Sarutobi Shinnosuke's proposed solution wasn't flawed. To kill him would make Konoha's moral standards seem questionable; not to kill him, wouldn't that imply that anyone could kill a Konoha ninja as long as they had erred? But unfortunately, he was not a Konoha ninja. This time, he stood on the side of the civilians.
"Then, is it your esteemed opinion that the lives of civilians without chakra are not lives at all?" Naruto questioned.
"Konoha, in order to protect the interests of civilians, has already signed treaties with other hidden villages, guaranteeing that war will not disturb the civilian populace." Sarutobi Shinnosuke chose not to answer directly, instead stating his side's official stance on civilians.
Naruto scoffed inwardly. Who couldn't spout such empty, responsibility-evading officialese? However, from Sarutobi Shinnosuke's words, he also gleaned a piece of information, albeit not exactly intelligence: perhaps in the eyes of most ninjas, civilian lives truly didn't count as lives.
Sarutobi Shinnosuke discreetly gestured. Even without this incident, he couldn't allow a ninja possessing formidable strength to roam around the borderlands. What's more, this ninja was now embroiled in a Konoha scandal. The outcome, in truth, had been decided from the moment the incident occurred.
"Ready to make your move?" Naruto grinned. He hadn't spent all this time altering his appearance just to engage in idle chit-chat about household trifles with these hooligans.
Peng!
A shuriken was thrown by him. Under the dual enhancement of his terrifying arm strength and Wind-natured chakra, the shuriken flew like a cannonball fired from its muzzle.
Sarutobi Shinnosuke's pupils contracted, and he quickly dodged to the side.
Naruto's gaze swiftly locked onto a sword-wielding ninja. Without exposing his Nine-Tails chakra, an armed Naruto and an unarmed Naruto were two completely different scenarios. Among the ninjas surrounding him, many used swords, but the one he had targeted was definitely the weakest.
"That's not how you use a sword!" Naruto sidestepped his opponent's direct slash, his left hand forming a fist that smashed violently into the man's face, while his right hand swiftly snatched the long sword from his grasp.
Weng! Terrifying Wind-natured chakra instantly infused the blade.