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The war had gone on too long. Konohagakure experienced a ruthless procession of funerals, and sometimes dispatches that explained why there wouldn’t be a funeral, each body sapping more strength from the ninja forces. The village was at the ragged edge, and Minato’s kids were in danger, and instead of helping them he was here, squatting in a hole in the ground with the stench of weeks-old blood in his nostrils. There were four fellow Leaf ninja left, and opposite them a half-century of Stone reinforcements.
It had started as a fun research project intended for after the war. He’d wanted to simplify trade and travel, ease logistics and make a name for himself as a sealing expert. There was a girl he wanted to impress, too. Instead he turned the kunai over in his hand, staring at the seal on it he knew more intimately than his own body. Every mass-market application had been a dead end, and even other ninja were unable to make it work for them. Now Minato had killed his peacetime dreams with his own hands and fashioned their corpse into a weapon.
He was well past any squeamishness at what he was about to do. He moved, and cut, and cut again, and again and again until there was no decision involved, no thoughts or feelings or even acknowledgement of the lives he was taking, just the movement of the arm and the parting of flesh.
Four days later, returning to Konohagakure, he was hailed as the hero of the Leaf Village. The Yellow Flash, they called him, whose bright blond hair heralded only death.
He got the girl, though there was a reason that ninja tended to end up with each other. Kushina was formidable in her own right, and when sometimes at night she moved a little too suddenly and Minato reflexively drew a knife, she knocked it from his hands before he could make the cut. In turn, when bloodlust and pain and fear boiled over and Kushina woke up shrouded in red, he took her somewhere safe and let her vent her wrath on the landscape while his hands healed from where he’d touched her to move her to safety.
Minato considered himself a kind, considered and moderate man. Others did too. He was propelled into a leadership position, then a more senior one, and finally he sat at the top of the Hokage’s Tower, with the hat on his head. He’d dealt with tragedy, same as every other experienced ninja, first with Obito and then with Rin. But he had come out unscathed, relatively speaking. Most of the violence he’d seen had been delivered by his own hand, after all.
It was in the second meeting with the head of the ninja forces that it became apparent that something was wrong.
“The man presents a danger that must be ended,” Danzo repeated, pounding his staff on the floor.
Hiruzen shook his head. “He’s a risk, but a known and manageable one. Taking him down in a way that points to our involvement would be an escalation, and the Mist is not known for ignoring provocations. We can monitor him, and only make the kill if it becomes necessary.”
Between them, Minato sat, his hat on the table before him. “So we agree he’s a problem, and that ideally he’d be removed, but we’re divided on whether the risk of blowback is worth it?” he said, neatly stepping into the argument.
“That’s correct,” Danzo said.
Minato flickered away and reappeared four seconds later, dumping a corpse on the floor. “He was alone and unobserved, and now there’s nothing to tie his disappearance back to us,” he said, looking pleased at how he’d defused the situation.
Hiruzen and Danzo exchanged concerned looks.
“I’m not sure it’s wise that you involve yourself in operations of this level,” Hiruzen murmured. “It’s you that keeps the wolves at bay, and a blind strike like that – even if you had one of your tags planted on the man – is bound to go wrong eventually, if it becomes a habit.”
“That’s a good point,” Minato said. “Arrogance has been the undoing of many a ninja. I’ll stick to only the safest targets, or the highest value ones.”
“We could have questioned him, besides,” Danzo remarked to Hiruzen afterwards. “Death is not something that can be undone, and so it must be carefully considered before it is meted out. ”
“I’d never have expected Minato to give you pause in his bloodlust,” Hiruzen replied. Danzo laughed, but there was no mirth in it.
The next week, a diplomat from Cloud was revealed to be engaging in espionage on the side. A common occurrence, among ninja, and a good opportunity to feed the opposition false reports. It took the combined council fifteen minutes to talk Minato out of killing her.
“If you do, there will be war, and there are better targets to kill in a first strike in that case,” Jiraiya said at last, and that ruthless assessment stayed Minato’s hand where nothing else had.
“You’re right. I’ll wait for a chance to kill the Raikage instead,” he agreed, smiling softly. “I’m glad I have people to help me make the sensible decision.”
Other items on the agenda ran into similar problems. Two researchers had discovered an especially powerful explosive tag, but their security clearances meant they weren’t authorised to know the secret they’d uncovered. Giving them increased clearance was thought unwise. The Hokage had a simple solution to the problem, and this time it was Kakashi that talked him down.
“Are you willing to set a precedent that any research project which is too successful is fatal? That’s what this will be doing,” he pointed out.
Minato frowned. “And if this is put under the Hokage’s seal, and anyone leaking it will receive the appropriate punishment?”
“How many rare and talented, and loyal, people would you be willing to kill for exercising a modicum of self-preservation?” Kakashi shot back. “And how many others will you alienate in the process? You cannot be a village of one.”
“It won’t come to that, but if it would put that much pressure on you, how can I go ahead?” Minato asked. “We’ll find another way.”
And on it went, as the advisors around the Hokage talked him out of a dozen different kills. He wasn’t bloodthirsty, he didn’t revel in the idea of taking lives, but there was a sickness in his eyes. Death was ever the first option his fingers found when he reached for a solution.
The people of Konohagakure loved their new Hokage, and why wouldn’t they? He was a decorated war hero, feared across the continent, and he cut a dashing figure with his golden hair atop a long white coat.
Most of the ninja loved him too, in their own way. Under Minato’s leadership, mission deaths went down, desertions fell, and the few who did try to turn their coats were swiftly dealt with. Only the very paranoid followed this to its logical conclusion, and slept poorly for it.
What did it mean, that the Hokage could be at the side of any of his own ninja in an instant, and ready to kill?
Minato loved the village in turn. When he sent his ninja out on the most dangerous missions, he would visit as he had the time. If the situation was getting out of control, he stepped in. Invariably, blood followed.
“Something must be done,” Kakashi said to Genma, and Genma to Raidō and Iwashi, and they to the rest of the Hokage’s inner guard. “He is working himself to the bone, and it’s never enough.”
“He finds it too easy to start killing, and too hard to stop,” Hiruzen confided in Asuma. “It’s not his fault, but it’s a burden the village is beginning to creak under. Information gathering, theft, seduction, kidnapping, protection, smuggling, these are the missions that bring in almost all of our wealth. Assassinations are rare and pay less, in many cases, than more subtle interventions. We are getting a reputation, and it’s not one that pays in the long term.”
“I’ve already heard the whispers,” Asuma agreed. “‘If you hire the Leaf, dig a grave first.’ The Higurawashi merchant family have started hiring Sand ninja for corporate espionage instead, after Minato killed his way through the Rukirishis.”
“Something must be done,” those closest to the Hokage agreed. Minato wasn’t of the same mind, though.
“I am doing everything that’s needed to keep this village safe,” he insisted, and disappeared. Later they found that a Leaf chunin team, contracted to bring a narcotics shipment past a border post and into Rain, had been discovered. Rather than bribe or threaten their way out, or use an illusion to smooth things over, they had been ‘rescued’ by the Hokage. The border post was levelled. Three months on, that particular smuggling route was closed for good. The aftermath of the slaughter brought too many guards and too much attention.
Minato had a smile on his face as he spoke of the rescue of the chunin.
“If danger comes of it,” he declared, “the Leaf will triumph, and triumph again, as many times as it takes.”
“He will drown the world in blood,” Danzo spoke in the dark to his Root. “And the Leaf will be broken by it.”
Step by step, loyal ninja of the Leaf did what they must to keep the village and its leader safe. Those engaged on missions which were most sensitive to unplanned bloodshed had their mission details creatively filed, or outright lost. Information was only entered once they returned home lest the Hokage appear to ‘help’ them. The Hokage’s advisors directed him, subtly, towards the safest and least complex interventions. There was little coordination, and nothing explicit. Under a certain light, what they were doing could be seen as treason, after all. And yet it must be done, and so it was.
Ninja were drawn to plots; it was in their nature.
“Like ants to honey,” Hiruzen said wearily as he watched a thousand conspiracies bloom.
Danzo shook his head. “Like flies to shit,” he corrected.
When the Kyubi broke free, Minato did what needed doing. For once, no-one stood in his way. And when the smoke cleared and the dust settled, Hiruzen looked at the village he’d once ruled and thought about the last time he’d trusted another with it.
The jounin gathered to elect a new leader and Hiruzen stood at their head, the hat already on his head. From there it was inevitable.
“It had to be done,” Danzo told him afterwards, in the dark. “Another Minato would have finished us off. You cannot rest yet, old friend.”
“Our hands are no cleaner than his were,” Hiruzen replied. “Are we really better stewards of the village’s future?”
It was a rhetorical question, and they both knew it.