Uzumaki Naruto's father was the Fourth Hokage.
Dead-last had a background like that?
Uchiha Sasuke had never even considered it. Back in their class, Naruto was the loudmouth loser who lagged behind everyone else. Sasuke had always assumed Naruto was just another orphan.
Konoha had plenty of those. It was nothing unusual.
Hell, Sasuke was one too.
The only difference was that Sasuke had gotten a few years of warmth before everything was torn away.
"This can't be real," he said, the words almost scraping out of his throat. "If he's the Fourth Hokage's kid, why was he treated like that?"
It did not make sense. In Sasuke's mind, someone like the Fourth Hokage, a man who had done so much for the village and held a position that high, should have left behind a child who lived like royalty. Protected. Taken care of. Treated as precious.
Instead, Naruto had been spat on and avoided.
Sasuke had heard the whispers. He had seen it himself more than once, villagers glaring at Naruto like he was something filthy. Back then, he had not felt much, because he thought Naruto was just some random orphan.
But Naruto was the Fourth Hokage's son.
That single fact cracked his entire worldview.
By all logic, Naruto should have been one of the village's "higher-ups' kids," living the kind of life Sasuke used to associate with heirs. So how had Naruto ended up alone in a cheap apartment, hated by adults who should have been honoring his father?
He could not understand it.
Then something else surfaced in his head.
In Kaede Kitahara's diary, in that video of Uchiha Itachi returning through the morning mist, Itachi had said he came to Konoha for the Fourth Hokage's inheritance.
Sasuke had assumed that "inheritance" meant the monster sealed inside Uzumaki Naruto.
Now he was not so sure.
What if the inheritance Itachi meant was not the Nine-Tails at all?
What if it meant the Fourth Hokage's son?
As for "Fifth Hokage Tsunade"… Sasuke had never even heard that name.
That was one of the uglier consequences of the Uchiha Clan's destruction. With his background, someone should have explained things to him. Even if Tsunade, Orochimaru, and Jiraiya were not in the village, he should have grown up hearing about the Legendary Sannin.
Instead, he was barely better informed than a civilian-born shinobi.
Still, he understood the basic shape of the future. If the timeline followed its usual course, then after the Third Hokage died, they would choose a Fifth Hokage.
Someone named Tsunade.
But the moment he read that diary entry, something sharp flared in his chest.
Jealousy.
Naruto would get to go back twenty years and see his father.
And Sasuke?
He would never get that chance.
Maybe, someday, if he learned Impure World Reincarnation, he could see his family again. Maybe.
Other than that, there was nothing.
For the first time, he felt real envy toward Uzumaki Naruto, even if it only lasted a heartbeat.
He wanted to return to that carefree past too. If he could go back, he would grab his father and warn him.
Be careful of Uchiha Itachi.
Be careful of that demon.
"…So it's true."
Uchiha Itachi's voice was low, almost a whisper to himself.
Naruto's identity was something he had suspected for a long time.
Back then, Uchiha Fugaku and his wife had been on good terms with Namikaze Minato and his wife. Both sides had wanted to improve relations, and they had grown close quickly.
Itachi had been young, but he still remembered enough.
So when he learned that Uzumaki Naruto was the Nine-Tails' Jinchuriki, the pieces had started to line up in his mind. Sasuke was slightly older than Naruto. Sasuke had already been born at the time, while the Hokage's child had not been born yet, but the age matched.
It had only been a guess, though. He had no hard intel to back it up.
Now his suspicion had been confirmed.
Then a line from Kaede Kitahara's earlier diary entries resurfaced, clear as ink on paper.
The Hokage's son would still become Hokage. The scapegoat's son would still be a scapegoat.
From what was known so far about "five and a half" Hokage, the First Hokage and Second Hokage were too far back in history. Even if they had children, those lines were long gone. The Third Hokage had two sons. His eldest had died early, and rumor said he left behind a son.
His younger son was Sarutobi Asuma, the one who, according to Kaede's diary, would fight Itachi someday.
From everything revealed so far, after Namikaze Minato came Tsunade as the Fifth Hokage, then a "five-and-a-half" Hokage in Shimura Danzo, and after that, the true Sixth Hokage…
Based on Konoha's current candidates, Itachi's guess was Hatake Kakashi.
In their generation, there was probably no one more outstanding. Sarutobi Asuma was not comparable, not in reputation and not in strength. Among the younger shinobi, Hatake Kakashi stood at the top.
After Kakashi, the one who would rise next was Uzumaki Naruto, and he could become the Seventh Hokage. That fit the line about the Hokage's son becoming Hokage.
Kaede's diary also implied Sasuke's strength would not be inferior to Naruto's in the future, but Uchiha Fugaku had never been Hokage, so the "Hokage's son" rule did not apply.
Itachi did not find anything strange about that. Like Sasuke, he carried the shinobi world's ingrained sense of hierarchy.
The Uchiha Clan head's son becoming the next clan head was treated as natural. So why would the Hokage's son becoming the next Hokage be any different?
In the shinobi world, bloodlines passed down more than techniques. They passed down status itself. People accepted that as normal.
And Naruto fit both sides of it.
His strength, according to Kaede Kitahara, would become one of the two great pillars of the future shinobi world. His identity also matched, the Hokage's son.
"Sixth Hokage… or Seventh?"
Itachi began scribbling on a sheet of paper.
"Let's line up the timeline. In half a year, during the Chunin Exams, the Hokage will die at Orochimaru's hands. After that, Tsunade takes over as Fifth Hokage. Then, based on when Sasuke goes after Shimura Danzo, that point is at most a little over three years later, probably around three to four years."
"That means Tsunade's time governing Konoha is roughly two and a half to three and a half years. Then I have to leave space for Danzo's 'five-and-a-half' term, but it shouldn't last long, which is why it won't be recognized as a proper Hokage tenure."
"And Tsunade probably dies around then, so Konoha needs a Sixth Hokage. At that time, Uzumaki Naruto is still too young, fifteen or sixteen. None of the other villages' Kage became Kage at that age. So if Naruto becomes Hokage in the future, it's most likely as Seventh Hokage. That makes Kakashi-senpai as Sixth Hokage very plausible."
Once the timeline felt clearer, Itachi's thoughts settled into something sharper.
He was mapping the Hokage succession for one reason, to estimate when Pain, the leader of Akatsuki, would attack Konoha.
That scene had shaken him to the bone. A single strike wiping out a village was a level of power that crushed any sense of proportion.
Itachi had already suspected the Akatsuki leader would be terrifying. No one ruled over that many S-rank criminals without overwhelming strength.
But that was beyond terrifying. It was absurd.
Based on what the video showed, Itachi had measured his own limits. Even if he fought using Susanoo in the heart of Konoha, even if he burned both Mangekyo Sharingan to blindness, he could not completely destroy the village.
The gap was obvious.
And why did Konoha, after welcoming a Fifth Hokage, suddenly have a "five-and-a-half" Hokage?
If Itachi had to guess, the most likely explanation was that the Fifth Hokage died during Pain's assault.
It fit. That one technique leveled all of Konoha. With destruction on that scale, how many could have survived?
Itachi needed the exact timing of Pain's attack.
More than that, if possible, he needed to learn whether Pain had any weakness. If there was even a small chance, he wanted to kill Pain before Akatsuki's leader decided to move against Konoha.
The odds were slim. His mission was to stay inside Akatsuki, to feed the village intelligence.
But if Konoha was destroyed…
What would his infiltration even mean?
"Meeting sensei from back then…"
Hatake Kakashi let the thought drift through him for a moment.
He did not remember any mission like that at all. Mukade, Roran, any of it. He had never heard those names.
Still, Konoha had countless missions. It was normal not to know every detail.
What caught him was the other part.
Twenty years ago.
If he could see his teacher again, would he have a chance to see them too?
Obito, still young and loud and alive.
Rin, smiling like the world was not broken yet.
They were the ones that lived in the softest place of his heart, the kind of memory that never faded. Whether that "white moonlight" was Rin or Uchiha Obito was hard to say.
Maybe it had always been both.
But he knew that kind of opportunity was almost nonexistent, maybe outright impossible. The spark of longing flickered, then he smothered it.
He was not like Sasuke. Sasuke still dreamed about using Impure World Reincarnation to drag his family back from the dead.
Kakashi was old enough to understand what those kinds of techniques cost.
Any jutsu had a price.
And the price for pulling the dead back into the world would be something he could never accept.
Using other people's lives to fill his own emptiness was not something he could do.
"…Still," Kakashi murmured, returning to the practical detail. "So the future Fifth Hokage is Tsunade-sama."
He nodded once.
It fit.
Konoha was not the overflowing pool of talent it used to be. Right now, the village's choices were limited.
When it came down to it, the candidates were basically just Jiraiya or Tsunade.
[A/N: Enjoying the story? You can read more chapters early and support me here:patreon.com/Aeroscissors]