Legend

Chapter 6

This experience would stay with Naruto for the rest of his life. The Third was certain of it. The old man left his thoughts and sadly looked at Kushina.

"Naruto, can you hear me?" Kushina asked warmly, her hands over Naruto. The boy didn't respond. His unblinking eyes just continued staring at the empty space in front of him.

"Minato," the Sandaime said in a stern tone. "Let us leave Kushina. Naruto is not in mortal danger. For now, we are not needed here. We need to solve this matter now..."

It was a pain to the old man to even be saying something like that given the situation, but with Naruto not in danger, Minato was needed somewhere. There were other matters that needed to be handled. If the boy had been in mortal danger, he would be more than willing to allow the parents to deal with it while he saw to the village. But there was no danger and Minato was needed to make strong decisions for the village.

Kushina snapped towards the Sandaime. "I want the bastard who tried to harm my son. I will be responsible for administering punishment."

Minato smiled nervously. Kushina hadn't been told that the man was already dead. She didn't know that Naruto had actually killed someone. She was just briefed of a few details. Not that she had listened to anything further as she stopped listening when she was informed that her son was in the hospital.

"I will do what I can," Minato said before disappearing along with the Sandaime Hokage.

They appeared in the office were they were welcomed by Fugaku and three Anbu. "Tell me what is going on," the Sandaime demanded as Minato took his seat behind his desk, looking worn out as if he'd been doing some heavy physicals.

"That man belonged to Iwagakure. At least that is what his headband tells us. We don't know anything further than that, but we can confirm that he was alone. We did a clean sweep with the Anbu and found nothing. Inoichi is busy with his head to find out more details..." Fugaku said.

The Uchiha wasn't overly disappointed that something like this had happened. He had no doubt that Naruto would survive. The redhead was strong after all and this would only strengthen his resolve to train harder and grow stronger.

The Sandaime frowned. "I doubt that this was something that Onoki authorized."

"Likely," one of the Anbu said. "The shinobi wasn't that strong; might have been Chunnin or high Chunnin at best. Given that he was alone, I can agree with that thought. It's likely that he acted on his own or was being manipulated by someone with knowledge about certain things."

"I suspect the latter to be the likely scenario," the Third said calmly.

"This will be treated as an S-rank secret. And Naruto will be taken away from the hospital by morning. We can't have the villagers knowing about this. If they find out, they will demand action," Minato said calmly. "How was he even able to know where Naruto trained?"

"That is something I was wondering about myself," The Sandaime said. "Someone high ranked must have leaked the information to a nobody because he/she didn't want Naruto hurt, but to provoke an action from us." The Third said.

If he had still been Hokage, his former teammates would have been all over him demanding that he take immediate action against Iwagakure. The fact that the man had been wearing an Iwa's headband meant that Onoki was responsible for his actions because he was his subordinate. Demands would be forced to be made, but the Third hoped things would go smoothly this time. He didn't want anything to provoke war, not when they still had the wounds of the previous war.

Three Shinobi world wars were enough for one old man. He had seen enough. He couldn't survive the forth. Konoha had just gone through a rampage from the Kyuubi, wasn't it enough?