“Mom, is the Lord Hokage going to come out soon, maybe?”
Her small hand clutched the hem of the skirt fluttering next to her face.
“I’m sure he will. We’ll be able to see him soon,” the mother said gently, turning her gaze toward the sacred site at the top of the hill.
Inside of the humble sandstone shrine, the Seventh Hokage himself was meeting with the daimyo of the Land of Kizahashi. A large crowd had gathered below to get a glimpse of the hero on his first visit since his appointment as Hokage.
The air along the smooth diagonal of the slope was rippling with excitement, and smoke arose from orange flames. However, no one was burning anything. This hill had been aflame for more than its four thousand years of recorded history. The inextinguishable fire was seen as both a blessing of the gods and the curse of a demon. And it had been the subject of worship and fear since ancient times.
When the Fourth Great Ninja War ended and a pact among the Five Great Nations brought peace to the world, news of the mysterious, eternally burning fire reached the Sixth Hokage, Kakashi, and a survey team was dispatched to investigate. Using both science and ninjutsu, a vast pocket of natural gas was discovered to be seeping out from beneath the hill, which was ignited by the surface heat, creating the eternal flame.
The eternal bonfire moved the air, creating a breeze that constantly rustled the dark grasses and the neat petals of the gently blooming violets.
The Seventh Hokage and the daimyo of the Land of Kizahashi emerged from the shrine exactly on time. The conference had ended without incident.
“Hokage!”
“Lord Seventh! Over here!”
“Do the Rasengan!”
Cheers rang out from the crowd gathered at the foot of the stairs.
In response, the Seventh Hokage raised his arms as if to actually produce the Rasengan, and the Konoha guard behind him hurriedly pushed them back down.
“Lord Hokage, please don’t use the Rasengan like that! This is a matter of national defense!”
“Come on. It’s fine. Just let me,” the Seventh Hokage said sulkily, and then reluctantly lowered his arms.
Uzumaki Naruto.
He was top shinobi of Konohagakure, the young leader appointed to the position of guardian of the Land of Fire, the Seventh Hokage. His bright golden hair flashed like lightning, his clear blues eyes were reminiscent of ramune soda in summer. He was in his mid-thirties, but there was a boyish innocence in his unaffected manner.
It was established fact that he was the Jinchuriki of the Nine-Tailed Fox, but his face was less fox and more tanuki. Not only were his eyes, nose, and mouth large, but his face was very expressive—every part of it seemed to be in constant motion. It wasn’t just his face either; his every move was exaggerated, drawing people’s eyes to him. He was a charismatic leader with a personal magnetism that attracted everyone to him, and the way he was beloved transcended everything else.
Accompanied by several guards, the Seventh Hokage slowly began to descend the stairs built into the diagonal slope of the hill. The red carpet at his feet had been a special order especially for this day, and it extended the entire distance to the entrance of the airship parked near the base of the hill.
Naruto stopped abruptly halfway down the carpet, squinted his eyes as though the sun’s glare was too strong, and looked off into the distance. He could no doubt see the far-off skyscrapers piercing the clouds. The faded field at the foot of the hill ended abruptly at the border of the capital city, where the sharp, inorganic elements of the urban landscape took shape.
The Land of Kizahashi had developed rapidly once it began exporting its gas to the Five Great Nations, which used it as fuel for their large transport vessels. The GDP had increased seventeen-fold over a decade, new infrastructure was created, and there almost seemed to be too many social services—the average life span of its citizens had increased by twenty years.
The land was swimming in money. What it lacked was legends and lore. Stories of heroes.
“Lord Hokage, how did you find your stay in the Land of Kizahashi?”
Reporters surrounded the Seventh Hokage, shoving microphones in his face, when he finished descending the stairs.
“I’m glad I got to experience the development of the Land of Kizahashi firsthand. I came before as a guard with the survey team that was dispatched by the previous Hokage. Just seeing the development of the Land of Kizahashi since then made the trip worth it.”
Shrieks of “Please come again!” greeted the Hokage’s comments.
“Ha ha! Well, find me another reason to!” the Hokage replied, laughing, and the crowd broke out into applause.
The people of the Land of Kizahashi adored the leaders of the storied ninja villages. They especially revered the leader of Konohagakure, the Hokage. At a time when smithing was the main industry and most people still lived hand-to-mouth, the financial assistance from Madoka Ikkyu, the Land of Fire’s daimyo, and the Sixth Hokage, Hatake Kakashi, was a lifeline that lifted them out of a depressed economy and into a new industry of refining Kizahashi gas. Not long after, the economic growth of the Land of Kizahashi had surpassed that of the Land of Fire, and the grateful citizens had never forgotten the country that had once uplifted them in their years of poverty.
The more people loved the Seventh Hokage, the more influence he possessed, and ultimately the more enemies he inevitably had. No doubt the person who commissioned the assassination of Uzumaki Naruto was one of those enemies.
Staring intently at Naruto as he spoke with the media, Aze Yanaru narrowed his eyes. A rogue ninja and expert assassin, he had changed his appearance with the Art of Transformation and gotten quite close to the Hokage.
A basic principle of assassination is to kill when the target is alone, but Yanaru often chose to work among crowds. He liked a surprise attack surrounded by an indeterminate number of eyes, a feat made possible thanks to a four-person cell that took full advantage of the art of Multiple Shadow Doppelgangers.
His Kekkei Genkai allowed Yanaru not only to gain the accumulated memories of any doppelganger who disappeared, but also to share those same memories with the remaining avatars. During an assassination, the very nature of which was unpredictable, being able to secretly exchange information like this was a huge advantage.
His doppelgangers—A, B, and C—were already in place and locked onto the Hokage. Meanwhile, there were only three bodyguards around the Hokage.
The promised payoff was enormous. If he could pull off this job, he, his children, and even his children’s children would spend the rest of their days in leisure.
Yanaru looked around at the crowd at the foot of the hill and exhaled his tension.
The Seventh Hokage’s life meant money. Way more than that Kizahashi gas.
Yanaru’s doppelganger A was hiding in the thick branches of a tree and looking down on the Seventh Hokage.
The luxurious goat hair carpet upon which the Hokage walked was extravagantly dyed with sappanwood. Not only was his pathway blatantly obvious, but the area surrounding him was completely wide open. The exposed fields with essentially no blind spots practically screamed, “Go ahead, kill me.” The Hokage’s right hand, Nara Shikamaru, had no doubt argued vehemently against such a route, but the Kizahashi side had pushed it through, saying something about how this hill was the most sacred place in their country.
Doppelganger A touched the rifle in his hand and reminded himself of how it worked.
The cutting-edge photon gun supplied by their employer was designed to attack from a distance with a forty-thousand-watt excimer laser beam. Because the heat of the laser was instantaneously transmitted from cell to cell, even if the beam only grazed the tip of a hair, the target’s body temperature would shoot up uncontrollably within minutes, and the target would internally combust.
Doppelganger A readjusted his hands on the grip and lifted his face to find the media peppering the Seventh Hokage with questions.
“The Land of Fire also imports gas from the Land of Wind, yes? I know they’ve long had a strong relationship with the Land of Fire, but some people are saying that the two countries favor each other and are trying to lock Kizahashi gas out of the market. What do you think about that?”
“Whaaaat? Who’s saying that? No way,” the Hokage replied firmly. “The Kazekage’s an old friend, but we set that aside for any country-level negotiations.”
“Then you’re saying there’s no favoritism?” the reporter persisted.
“Nope, none. We import tons of gas, but that Gaara guy won’t even give his pal a discount,” Naruto riffed.
Laughter rose up from the media crowded around the visitor. The Seventh Hokage deftly evaded the pushy questions, whether through his own natural personality or careful calculation.
Doppelganger A glanced down at his watch. Ten minutes had been allotted for this press conference. The Hokage would soon start down the carpet that had been made specifically for him and move toward his airship, leaving himself wide open.
That’s when A would make his move. He impatiently tightened his grip on the photon gun and licked his dry lips.
Hyooo! A slice of wind grazed his cheek.
“Hm?”
He looked to the side as the air squealed, and a dagger plunged into the trunk of the tree.
Stunned, A moved around to a position behind the trunk and crouched down.
He was here to take out the Hokage from a safe distance, but for some reason, he was the one now under attack.
When and how had he been found out? Who threw that dagger? Where were they?
His mind reeling, he shoved a hand into his jacket to counterattack.
The leaves above his head rustled and one dropped onto his knees. A gloved hand grabbed A’s neck from behind while he gripped the photon gun.
“Huh?”
He lifted his face and met sleepy eyes, like those of a mountain goat. He saw the face of a lazy-looking man, half covered by a cloth. He’d more than seen this face before. This man was …
“Hatake Kaka—”
A kunai sank into A’s throat before he could finish saying the name. The tip of the twisting blade severed bone and flesh, and droplets of blood spurted up and spattered the foliage.
Poof!
Wrapped in smoke, A disappeared without a trace.
As A disappeared, his memories flowed into the heads of the original Yanaru and his two remaining doppelgangers B and C.
The last sight A had seen was the worst possible thing imaginable.