"Naruto! Stop!"
Hiruzen suddenly called out, his voice cracking with feigned desperation, halting Naruto in his tracks.
"Third Hokage... you are still conscious?" Naruto asked, momentarily stunned, skidding to a halt in the dirt.
"Orochimaru's only controls our physical bodies, not our minds. I don't have much time before he suppresses my personality. Before he realizes what is happening, I must tell you this..."
"Uzumaki Naruto! Use the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique to buy time and withstand my assault!"
After Hiruzen spoke his dramatic lines, Tobirama threw down a final cold command.
He grabbed Jiraiya by the collar from the ground and used the Flying Thunder God to instantly teleport away, taking both the Toad Sage and Enma's staff with him.
"Pervy Sage!" Naruto cried out, his voice filled with pure panic as his mentor vanished into thin air.
Hiruzen, fully committed to his theatrical act, reached back to retrieve his staff, only to feign shock at finding it gone.
Having no other choice, he threw a physical punch at the charging teenager.
The heavy blow sent Naruto flying backward.
Remembering the Third Hokage's earlier warning, Naruto crossed his fingers and summoned a massive army of Shadow Clones mid-air.
"Third Hokage..."
"What do you..."
"Hurry up and tell us!"
The horde of Shadow Clones surged toward Hiruzen like a tidal wave.
Each one exploded into smoke with every punch and kick the Hokage delivered, managing to utter only a few words before being destroyed.
"Naruto, listen to me carefully," Hiruzen grunted, parrying and countering the relentless barrage of clones while addressing the nearest real-looking one.
"Orochimaru has completely deceived us all. The true reason he sealed Jiraiya's penis was because he sought ultimate immortality. After using the Living Corpse Reincarnation to permanently transform into a woman, Orochimaru's entire psychological mindset shifted, and he now views Jiraiya as his personal romantic possession!"
"His obsession with obtaining the Uchiha Sharingan stems purely from his sick plan to permanently hypnotize Jiraiya into loving him."
"When he failed to acquire the Sharingan, he began obsessively researching genetic cloning technology—all to create a perfect, compliant clone of Jiraiya for his own twisted pleasure!"
"Therefore, you must master all your power and defeat Orochimaru before his cloning technology matures!"
"Otherwise, once Orochimaru possesses an endless supply of Jiraiya clones to exploit, he will murder the original Jiraiya!"
"NANIIIII?!" Naruto exclaimed, absolutely horrified by the deeply cursed revelation.
The Pervy Sage is going to die because Orochimaru wants to date his clones?!
Initially, Naruto had pestered Jiraiya to help him train, but Jiraiya had stubbornly refused.
Later, when Jiraiya was sealed by Orochimaru, Naruto had to constantly urge his lazy mentor to train diligently in order to break the seal.
But recently, it was Naruto who had been slacking off again.
As Tobirama had correctly assessed, for those lacking internal self-discipline, they needed a massive, external, compelling reason to push themselves forward.
To Naruto, Jiraiya's dick being sealed away was not a big deal—in fact, he secretly saw it as a good thing since it kept the old pervert out of trouble.
So he was not in any hurry to train.
But now, everything had fundamentally changed.
Hearing the news, Naruto was frantic.
His Shadow Clones froze in place in sheer shock, allowing several of them to be instantly destroyed by Hiruzen's sweeping kicks.
"It is not just Jiraiya," Hiruzen said, continuing his relentless physical assault to keep the pressure on.
"Sasuke is also waiting for you to save him."
"Sasuke? Wait, he said he was just going to become Orochimaru's apprentice. Does that mean...?" Naruto suddenly realized the terrifying implication.
"Exactly, Naruto. Do you remember Orochimaru's original sick goal for Sasuke?" Hiruzen asked grimly.
"To take Sasuke's body!" Naruto exclaimed in shock.
"Correct!" Hiruzen shouted over the din of popping clones. "Naruto, you must be diligent in your training before Orochimaru and Sasuke have a child together. Only then can you rescue Sasuke. Once the child is born, Sasuke will be biologically bound to Orochimaru, with absolutely no hope of him returning here."
"That damn Orochimaru!!!" Naruto roared, clenching his fists as rage flooded his system.
"There is more."
"MORE?!"
The furious Naruto froze completely.
'Who else could it possibly be? Sasuke... and the Pervy Sage. Could Sakura have been captured while I was running out here?!'
"And your mother."
"Huh?"
"That's right, Naruto. Orochimaru has secretly resurrected and controlled your mother, Kushina, using the Edo Tensei. He is currently conducting a sinister resurrection experiment on her body."
"Orochimaru plans to gradually replace her reincarnated ash body with cultivated stem cells, achieving true, biological resurrection."
"Once your mother is fully revived in the flesh, the vile Orochimaru will force her to bear more children, artificially creating a brand new generation of the Uzumaki Clan to serve as disposable Jinchūriki batteries to seal the remaining Tailed Beasts!"
"AAAAAAAH! OROCHIMARU!"
The Nine-Tails' red, boiling chakra violently erupted from Naruto's body, vaporizing the surrounding clones.
This triple blow of cursed psychological warfare was entirely too much for a teenager to bear.
"Naruto, you must calm down! Only by perfectly mastering both Sage Mode and the Nine-Tails' power can you even hope to confront Orochimaru and rescue your family..."
As Hiruzen delivered his final, dramatic line, Tobirama returned with another flash of the Flying Thunder God.
Without a word, Tobirama began rapidly scattering Exploding Tags all around the clearing.
"Uzumaki Naruto! Do you know the Summoning Technique?! Use Reverse Summoning to escape immediately! These are my Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags—you will be vaporized if you stay here!" Tobirama shouted, acting as the ruthless villain as he continued to scatter the endless tags.
"Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags?!"
Surrounded by hundreds of hissing Exploding Tags, Naruto panicked.
He quickly bit his thumb, drawing blood and slammed his hand into the dirt.
Poof.
"Naruto, why the hell did you summon me out here?! .... Uzumaki Naruto YOU FUCKER!"
The moment the giant toad Gamabunta appeared in a cloud of smoke, he saw the Second and Third Hokage, and the surrounding ocean of ignited Exploding Tags.
He immediately erupted into a string of violent curses.
POOF!
Gamabunta, not wanting to be blown to bits by a legendary kinjutsu, quickly swallowed Naruto whole and vanished back to Mount Myōboku with a massive poof.
As Naruto disappeared, his remaining Shadow Clones rapidly dispersed into smoke.
With their target gone, the Second and Third Hokage immediately ceased their attacks.
Tobirama calmly deactivated the dummy tags.
"Sensei, was pushing the boy this hard not a bit much?" Hiruzen asked, wiping sweat from his brow, his voice tinged with genuine worry.
"What if he becomes utterly obsessed with power and goes down a dark vengeful path like Orochimaru?"
"What nonsense are you talking about?" Tobirama sneered, waving his hand dismissively.
"As the literal reincarnation of Asura's chakra, he physically cannot 'turn evil' unless he completely alters the fabric of his fate. Even if he somehow snapped and murdered your useless disciple Jiraiya, it would not change his underlying morality."
"It is precisely because of this unique, idiot-proof nature that I chose to psychologically provoke him in this extreme manner."
Tobirama then placed his hand firmly on Hiruzen's shoulder, instantly teleporting him to the Hidden Rain Village headquarters as well.
As the "Professor" and a master of all Five Basic Elements, leaving Hiruzen in Konoha to simply review Tsunade's daily administrative paperwork was a complete waste of resources.
It would be far better for him to join Tobirama and Orochimaru in the Hidden Rain labs to actively research and develop new anti-alien technologies.
...
With the sudden arrival of the Second and Third Hokage, as well as a highly confused Jiraiya, Makoto naturally learned of Tobirama's elaborate, psychological warfare plan and his ruthless execution.
"This approach is indeed highly viable," Makoto affirmed, nodding in approval.
He had previously read numerous speculative theories where characters would stage elaborate, traumatic scenarios for Sasuke, hoping to artificially awaken his Mangekyō Sharingan.
But after hearing Tobirama's deadpan explanation, Makoto realized that staging such a cursed, soap-opera performance for Naruto was actually the optimal strategy for this timeline.
There was absolutely no need to worry about Naruto turning to the dark side or straying down a dangerous path in pursuit of revenge.
The Asura Chakra acted like a permanent, spiritual "posture corrector," constantly and forcefully aligning Naruto's personality back to the light.
There was an old theory that Kakashi had intentionally blocked Pain's attack to save Iruka, arguing that letting Iruka die would drive Naruto to complete darkness.
This theory aimed to highlight Iruka's profound psychological significance to Naruto.
While the sentiment was emotionally correct—Iruka truly held immense importance as Naruto's first father figure—the underlying logic was fundamentally flawed.
Even if Iruka were brutally killed in front of him, Naruto would never succumb to true darkness.
His genetics simply would not allow it!