"If obtaining these powers truly does require slaying one's kin, then I expect the most likely role Obito could have played is as their victim. But even that is not a likely occurrence by my eyes; there were many Uchiha that were softer targets than the students of Minato Namikaze, and no shortage of them died in combat during the wars. To kill a ninja, even one of a notable clan, is not the sort of thing that requires a master plan, only power and ruthlessness and a modicum of subtlety. I will have your request relayed to Hatake Kakashi, but he is a loyal Jonin in good standing, so it will be up to him if he decides to answer."

Privately, Hiruizen strongly suspects the response will be no, but perhaps an excuse to meet with Naruto that doesn't touch on the obligations Kakashi feels like he failed will work where others have not. The young man has surprised him before.

"...I just want to talk with him, for a bit.  The...  I'm calling it an experiment because I came up with the idea by thinking about what didn't make sense about some of the things that were claimed, but it's not...

"I don't want to poke his eyes with a stick or anything.  I just...

"Hope I can find a constructive channel for his grief.  It's - I swear it's like I can feel it, like this... impossibly dark lodestone of self-loathing."

"...Anyway.  Uh, what else was there that I wanted to speak to you about...

"...Oh, right.  The Academy.  There was a recruiter who came by the orphanage, and - well, I don't want to be a hired killer, but it's not like there's other ways to learn how to shape chakra that the village will let me pursue, unless there's a lot in those few books on Theravāda meditation practices that I missed the implications of.  ...Well, no, I'm almost certain there is, because none other than the Kyuubi - by complete coincidence of word choice; I asked him what he believed chakra was for and he said it was for, oh, what was it, I'm sure I wrote it down, it was something about communication and transcending the need for violence through enlightenment - well, it corroborates the idea that that sect actually learned from the Sage as they claim, but anyway if there is such a thing I haven't found it.  So given that, I do think it would be my best chance of learning what I actually want to know, if I attended.  But I don't really...

"I don't think it would be a good idea for me to attend the Academy as Uzumaki Naruto, no matter what my future plans are.  So I kind of want to not attend as him."

"You want to attend in disguise? Hmm. That would be a rather difficult task, since you're known to be of the right age and not trained in infiltration; there's no way it would fool everyone. But perhaps with some calculated rumors about you being trained in black ops instead, maybe even pretend we've reopened Root, and combine it with a crash course in infiltration training... it might be possible to fool enough people, at least if you were a late transfer. That would be no easy task, though, and if you told anyone who you really were it would blow the whole thing wide open - worse than nothing, even, since it would be a red flag that you had something to hide."

"...Hokage-sama, everyone already knows the thing I'm supposedly hiding."

She flicks a finger at where the seal lies.

"And I've grown up having to deal with the consequences of that being an open secret.  They're not good consequences.

"If you think I haven't learned how to hide in plain sight, I really think you should think again about how Konoha has treated me.  I may not be attacked by random passers-by, but Uzumaki Naruto is not going to contribute to a calm learning environment when everyone has been told to fear the demon.  As if they're not making a self-fulfilling prediction..."

"...Still, if that's the sort of cover story you're thinking of...

"I couldn't do that.  I'm not sure how you could.  The Will of Fire is not fond of even pretending to send children to war, is it not?"

"Ah, I suppose it's not surprising that kids your age wouldn't have heard of Root. It was a program established by the Nidaime, after he had noted some of the problems with ANBU's effectiveness. Because ANBU recruited from prominent ninja in the regular forces, many of their identities were essentially open secrets with their strengths and weaknesses known by other villages. This made them both less effective at covert operations and that when they clashed with other ninja forces, said ninja had an easier time knowing what to expect. It also meant that lots of the time ANBU had spent time training skills that weren't useful in their new role, and missed or lacked emphasis on important fundamentals. The idea behind Root was to make a parallel training system to the academy and Genin squads, where we put candidates through a decade of specialized instruction and end up with a more skilled and less casualty prone ANBU corps. I ended up disbanding it after the problems started mounting and it failed to live up to its promises, but when it existed it was sufficiently similar to how other villages train their jinchuriki that if we clamped down on rumors we spread about it as you left the public eye it might fool Kumo and Iwa."

"...On the one hand some of that does make sense if you look at it from the right direction of sideways.  On the other hand...

"This I know about Konoha: It was founded because both the Senju and Uchiha had gotten fed up with the idea of children raised for war.

"I can't understand how we still justify spitting on that resolve.

"If the Academy is failing to train the appropriate skills in its genin-candidates, then the solution is to change the Academy, or do some sort of periodic retraining, not...

"Do whatever that is."

"...I'm not against the idea of a story where I'm receiving some sort of specialized training as a cover, maybe I've been sent to the Fire Temple or something, but...

"That sort of training, I can't..."

She feels like she's going to be sick.

"That's how other villages treat the people they've attempted to cage what they believe to be monsters within?  Shoving them down a dark hole - don't lie to me that this wasn't so secret that they probably didn't even get proper names - and...  I don't even want to know?  And they're still alive?  Villages like those continue to wage atrocity upon atrocity because they call it strength?

"I can't...

"If I ever..."

She pauses, and huffs out a shaky breath.

"Oh, kami.  You have just done more to convince me that ninja and the hidden village system are an abomination unto the Sage that must be stopped than the Kyuubi ever could have."

She meets his eyes, and despite her age, there is a solemn, aching grief in them, borne from this sudden knife to the back.

"If Konoha has herself raised children as deniable assets, stopping only because it was not effective -"

She cuts herself off, and resumes, picking through the words she says like they're a minefield - "...I am concerned, Sarutobi Hiruzen, that the Will of Fire you once told me of, is, was, or has become...  nothing but political genjutsu.  Some pleasant illusion, all while the knife in the dark of necessary sacrifice slits our throats.  I don't want to find out what I'd do, if it was.  ...I haven't met him, but...  I refuse to become Uchiha Itachi, refuse to let what remains of my childhood be sacrificed to the shinobi world's demand for weaponry.  I've already lost so much more than I should have, to exactly that.

"Sage's breath, Hokage-sama.  I don't understand how you could think this is okay."

"Of course they have names. The goal was to prevent Konoha's enemies from having an information advantage against our most loyal ninja, not to throw their lives away. ANBU is an elite force filled with some of our finest ninja, not a dumping ground for people sent to die. The difference is that there are vast differences in what you need to know to make a good impression on clients, reassure people that you're there protecting them from attacks, intimidate foes away from costly conflicts where our clients might get hurt, and so forth, when compared to what is needed to hunt down spies and assassins trying to infiltrate the village."

Her rhetoric is very concerning, though at least for all his manipulations the beast hasn't been subtle. He should have known it was a mistake to give a demon unmonitored access to a child's mind; hopefully his student will have a solution.

"...Hokage-sama.  Deniable assets that do black ops, are not remotely the same specialization as counterintelligence."

She buries her face in her hands for a moment, clearly frustrated-exhausted.

"Maybe this is all just some massive miscommunication, but can you honestly tell me that I'm wrong about the sorts of things I fear Root operatives were trained to do?  Or the other villages, who believe that Root's training is equivalent to their programs for jinchuuriki?  Lies are often tempered with truths, and I know you know I know that.  So if you're planning to lie with that...  What truths could it possibly be playing upon, that aren't horrifying?"

A good minute passes before she speaks again.

"...I can't think of a collection of possible truths about those programs that don't make that comparison look horrible, Hokage-sama, unless I start by assuming that Konohagakure isn't especially good at ethics compared to other villages.  And that, itself, is concerning."

"...Also, stop looking at me like that.  The idea that because I occasionally speak with the Kyuubi, that all my opinions are therefore his manipulations, is stupid.  I might be a child but that doesn't mean I can't think for myself, and the Kyuubi barely gives me the time of day when I try talking with him.  Sure, I get the impression that he despises me marginally less than most humans, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't believe I'm at best an idealistic fool in my own right, if not another of the shinobi he despises in the making.  My opinions about the Kyuubi are based on actual research of the few things he lets slip, but then you're presuming that he's the sort of mastermind you just told me most often isn't real if you expect that he's really calculating everything he does to that degree.  He may be as old as the Sage, but really, do you actually believe that he's this mastermind when all the stories we have agree that he mostly just smacks stuff until it stops bothering him?"

"...Frankly, though, for all his high-minded words, the Kyuubi-no-Kitsune is an utter hypocrite, repaying blood with blood as he has tried to.  Self-defense is one thing, but preemptive eradication is about as bad as the ninja he claims to despise.  Even if we don't consider the things he did under genjutsu to be his own actions."

"...This whole, absurd, thing, came about because I want to prove his bitter outlook wrong, though, you know?"  Her voice has...  Softened.  Like she is trying to tread gently around an open wound.  "I...  I want to do enough good with chakra, that he will have to consider me."

"I would not count on being able to force consideration from someone who doesn't want to give it."

The fact that Naruto didn't seem completely blind to its faults yet was better than he feared, but still something that would need dealing with. If he was less busy, perhaps he could try himself, but as things stood if he went that route he'd be better off just tightening the seal straight off and dealing with the consequences. But did he even have anyone who he could trust to do better?

"...I know, Hokage-sama.  But what else can I possibly do but try?  It's -

"It's the Will of Fire.  It's the next step on the path that Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara set out upon when they founded Konohagakure and ended the Senju-Uchiha feud with it.  It's hoping for peace."

"...I'm gonna let you think about that for a bit.  I need to go think about - all this - myself.  Hokage-sensei."

She...

She needs to talk to somebody.

Kyuubi-sama.  Mikoto-sama.  Even Jiraiya - not that he's around.  The Hokage's very own Will of Fire, the things he tried to teach her - his Fire is all but ash.  The foundations of her world are shaking beneath her.  She looks positively ill - pale, shellshocked - as she slips out of the restaurant.  She doesn't understand anymore.  She doesn't know what to do.

She can't run.  She can't break Sasuke-kun's heart, her first earnest friend, or betray Mikoto-sama's trust.  But the Hokage has broken her trust today, and this she knows: he will never have it again.  Certainly never so unconditionally as he did.

She walks.

«I'm sorry, Kyuubi-san.  I really did think he'd be better,» she says, from the surface of her mind.

«I should have known.  He clearly didn't care to pull his friend out of the darkness, if what you said about the eugenics is true.  And if that's true, then what else will he stand aside and let happen because it's easier?»

Her feet meander towards the Uchiha compound, independent of her conscious attention.  Her heart aches, and this is - perhaps the only place she has found someone who truly cared to soothe its pains because they hurt her.