"Alright."
Naruto was up at the crack of dawn and running on all cylinders.
"Good morning!"
He was the last to arrive in the dining room. Tazuna's daughter Tsunami had already set out breakfast, and Kakashi, Hanabi, and Sasuke were all at the table.
"Good timing, Naruto—I'll go over the assignments now." Kakashi waved him over. "Going forward: I'll escort Tazuna-san to the bridge construction site. Hanabi will handle intelligence gathering across the Land of Waves."
"What about me, what about me?!" Naruto jabbed a finger at himself.
"You and Sasuke stay here. Guard Tsunami-san and Inari."
Naruto bristled immediately.
Kakashi hadn't originally planned it this way—but Hanabi had flagged it before the assignments were finalized, and he'd realized she was right. Tazuna's family was also at risk. Until he had confirmation about where things stood between Zabuza and Gatō, taking chances wasn't an option.
"Guarding that little brat?!"
"Naruto." Hanabi spoke. "You want to be a hero, don't you? A real hero—one who can be someone's example."
"Heroes don't exist!" Inari exploded without warning. "Gatō is going to kill all of us!"
"Inari!" Tsunami stepped forward sharply.
Hanabi only smiled and crouched to meet the boy's level. "A hero is someone who sees the world as it really is—all its cruelty, all its ugliness—and chooses to love it anyway. Don't let yourself hate this world. Try to love it. That person—he was smiling at you at the end, wasn't he."
Inari froze. "How—how do you know—"
Because I've read the script, obviously.
"I don't know what happened," Hanabi said gently. "But I know that if he was truly a hero, he never bent. He fought to the very last."
Inari's stepfather Kaiza had come to the Land of Waves as a young man chasing a dream. He'd become the town's protector—its hero. And then he'd been captured and executed for standing against Gatō.
After Kaiza died, the Land of Waves lost its hero.
Hanabi's words seemed to reach further than Inari. Because at that precise moment, the broadcast cut to a swell of sentimental background music—and the camera found Naruto deep in memory.
After the flashback, Naruto suddenly launched into Talk-no-Jutsu.
"A hero… When I came to the Land of Waves, I made a decision. I was going to be a real shinobi. A real hero. No matter how big the obstacle—no matter what anyone says about me—I'll make them acknowledge me!"
"Talking big won't change anything!" Inari snapped. "Say it again after Gatō kills one of your own family!"
"Inari!" Tsunami moved immediately.
And then Inari ran.
Tsunami bowed quickly and chased after him.
Hanabi looked at Naruto.
He'd been fired up. Now he just looked stuck.
[That's brutal…]
[Brat, just get it over with and die already]
[Did none of you notice the photo on the wall?]
[I thought this was going to be the usual pep-talk scene—turns out it was a dud]
[That's it?? That's IT??]
Naruto's first attempt at Talk-no-Jutsu had ended in total failure. He'd walked straight into that volley and got shut down cold.
Hanabi turned to Tazuna. "Tazuna-san—the photo on the wall has a corner torn away. That's why Inari is like this, isn't it? Would you tell us who that person was?"
Tazuna exhaled slowly, and began.
He told them about Kaiza—the young man who'd arrived from somewhere else, who'd found his way into the family, who'd become a hero to the people of this country, and who had died rather than bow to Gatō.
The audience's reaction to the story itself was restrained—twenty years of accumulated anime had put everyone through enough "fallen hero" arcs that the shape of this one was familiar. But the moment the flashback hit the detail that Inari had nearly drowned while his peers ran off chasing a dog, and Kaiza had been the one to pull him out—
The comments lit up.
[bro those kids 💀]
[This country earned every miserable thing that happened to it]
[How did Gatō not just dispose of those specific children??]
[mod note: please keep it civil]
[chat got so much quieter after that]
[Watch the show, don't relate it to real life]
[Props to the mods honestly]
The comment volume dropped off sharply after that. The moderation team had clearly been spooked and locked some permissions down—apparently viewers had started drawing comparisons to real-world situations that weren't going to fly.
"Kakashi-sensei," Hanabi said, "leave the house to me today. It'd be good practical fieldwork for Naruto and Sasuke—let them try some real intelligence gathering."
"Mm." Kakashi nodded.
For Naruto and Sasuke, both having lost their parents, that scene had landed hard in different ways. Sasuke had gone quiet too—he'd been minding his own business and caught some kind of unexplained AOE. A bit of movement would do them both good.
"Intelligence gathering"—realistically, it was just an excuse to get them out of their heads for a while. Life had to go on.
"Inari-san~"
Hanabi had gotten the location from Tsunami-san, tracked the boy down, and walked up behind him to tap lightly on his shoulder.
He was sitting at the water's edge, staring out at the sea.
"Heroes… die. Gatō kills them." Inari's voice was barely there.
He was guilty and grieving and couldn't find a way out from under Gatō's shadow.
[The way he acts completely differently with Hanabi vs. Naruto tho]
[Obviously—one's a hyperactive loudmouth, the other is a gentle older sister type]
[Hanabi—she could be my mother]
[Trust me, Naruto should've shown up as a twin-tails girl. The Talk-no-Jutsu would've landed fine then]
"Naruto's parents were both gone before he was born."
Inari looked up. "…What?"
"And for reasons outside his control, Naruto was shut out by the people around him from the time he was small. He had very few friends."
Inari went still.
He thought about his own past.
"But Naruto has never used any of that to ask for anyone's sympathy. He carries it quietly, and he never stopped moving forward. No matter how beaten up he got—he stayed cheerful. He never gave up."
Hanabi's voice was soft. "I don't know what heroes look like to you. But I know this: some things only happen because someone decides to make them happen. Gatō won't change on his own. If no one ever pushes back, he stays up there like a dark cloud hanging overhead—but if everyone moved together, he might turn out to be nothing more than a paper tiger."
"But—"
Hanabi pulled a lollipop from somewhere and tucked it into his mouth before he could finish.
"I already know you're a kind kid. The reason you told us how dangerous Gatō is—it's because you didn't want us to get hurt too, isn't it?"
[Joke of the day: Gatō killing us]
[This arc really is about what separates shinobi from ordinary people, isn't it]
[The whole first arc feels like a thesis on what it means to be a shinobi]
The moderators had apparently cleaned house, because the comment section was significantly more civil now.
"If you want to be a hero—I'll praise you for it. If you endure in silence, that too is a way to live. And if you want to turn and run, I'll wish you a fresh start and mean every word."
"What matters is that you know who went ahead of you. Who built a home for everyone. Those people—they at least deserve your respect, your blessings."
"Heroes may die. Heroes may be sacrificed. But the marks they leave are real."
Inari slowly raised his eyes. "The marks they leave…?"
"Yes." Hanabi's smile caught the morning light—bright and unhesitating. She pressed one finger lightly to the center of his chest. "They're right here."