Chapter 208: A Dispute Among the Leadership
Eventually Jiraiya found the others.
Notable detail: the only person in the group without so much as a scratch was Minato.
His body hadn't responded in time — that was true. But in the fraction of a second before impact with the first tree, his brain had caught up enough to deploy a technique. He'd steered himself clear of everything that would have caused serious damage. What remained was dishevelled clothing, nothing more.
The fastest reflexes in the group. Possibly the fastest in the village. The most fragile physical constitution among those present — and yet he'd come through it unmarked.
Infuriatingly graceful positioning. It was simply how Minato worked.
Hiruzen, on the other hand, was working his shoulder carefully. He'd broken through several boulders on the way out, and the interior of his torso was reporting some displeasure about that. His shoulder, back, and knees were likely developing a comprehensive bruise collection about now.
He didn't know how far he'd flown. A long way. Far enough that he'd lost count.
He was the one to break the silence.
"Our approach was wrong. We misjudged his temperament — or rather, we should never have tried to predict his temperament at all. He's not predictable in the way we assumed."
A pause.
"Whether that was his true maximum or only what he chose to show us — we can't know. Only he knows. But if that strike had landed in the village centre, the outcome would be apparent to everyone here."
He looked at the landscape. The assessment wasn't pleasant.
"My recommendation: leave that young man alone. What I'm about to say is not a compliment, but it is accurate. The current Konoha, in aggregate, is probably not his equal. His strength is at the level of the First Hokage — perhaps that tier, perhaps above it."
If Hiruzen himself were to fight that young man — he didn't know if he could last ten minutes. Possibly not five. This was power beyond what a Tailed Beast represented. The ability to hold the entire shinobi world down, individually.
Why was he this certain?
He had stood at the top of the shinobi world for most of his career. The breadth of that experience told him — clearly, without room for argument — that no living individual he knew of could match what he'd just witnessed. The only being who might have qualified was already long gone, beyond reach.
A cold voice cut in.
"Sarutobi. You should be clear — an existence like this, continuing to remain in Konoha, represents a threat to the village several times greater than the Nine-Tails. If the day comes when he turns that against us, who stops him? My position is that we cannot allow this risk to persist. No one can afford what happens if we're wrong."
Jiraiya picked his nose, looked at the speaker.
Danzō.
Jiraiya's opinion of this man had never been warm. His methods, over the years, had consistently landed on the wrong side of Jiraiya's moral calibration.
"The problem," Jiraiya said, "is who exactly is going to make him leave? And personally I think Ryū-kun is fundamentally a good person. If he wanted to become Hokage, Minato wouldn't have had a chance — that position would have been his years ago."
Minato: "…Ahem. Jiraiya-sensei, do you have to say it quite like that?"
He felt the comment sink into his ribs like something pointed.
He knew, objectively, that he couldn't beat Ryū in a fight. That knowledge lived in him without being comfortable. But having it stated aloud, in front of everyone, in the context of the Hokage appointment, was a different kind of discomfort.
Still — and he recognised this clearly — Minato didn't actually believe Ryū was a threat to the village. His contact with Ryū was limited, but his read of the man didn't produce any of the threat signals he'd expect from someone genuinely dangerous to Konoha. Even regarding Danzō, who was a much more knowable risk — Ryū wasn't inclined to act on things that weren't his problem. He'd stated his terms plainly: don't give him a reason and there's no reason.
Minato's assessment was right, as it happened. Ryū had no interest in Konoha's internal politics. The Hokage title, if offered, would have been refused. The governance of a shinobi village compared unfavourably with running the Dimensional Chat Group — a position that gave him access to every world, all of history, an unlimited horizon of strange and interesting things.
The Hokage was a regional administrative post.
The Chat Group Admin was something else entirely.
The comparison wasn't close.
Danzō's expression had settled into something harder. "You've all seen his power. Are you genuinely certain an existence like this won't become a threat? My own preference is clear — I would take the Nine-Tails over him remaining in this village."
Minato's voice came out calm, with an edge under the calm.
"Danzō-senpai. I'm the Hokage. And I know Ryū-kun better than you do. I trust him."
The look in his eyes when he said it had changed from anything Hiruzen was used to seeing there. The Orochimaru incident had done something to Minato's relationship with Danzō. Being kept uninformed, having the outcome shaped around him — the deference that might have existed before wasn't there anymore.
He was young. Twenty-something, in his first year of the position. But a year of carrying the Hokage mantle wasn't nothing.
Minato's firmness, when he chose to show it, didn't bend.
With Minato holding that position, and Hiruzen then quietly reaffirming it — "Danzō. Minato is right. He is the Hokage." — the room for opposition had narrowed to nothing.
Danzō turned his face away and produced a sound from somewhere in his throat that didn't constitute words.
Continuing to argue would have only made him look smaller.
None of this reached Ryū.
He didn't know they'd nearly argued over him. He didn't know the conclusion they'd reached. He'd been back inside Konoha for several minutes by the time any of this was being said.
He was standing in front of his house.
Looking at it.
Still standing.
He let out a slow, quiet breath.
"House is fine."
He'd passed several collapsed structures on the way back — the shockwave had done meaningful damage to buildings at this range — but his own foundation had held. His Observation Haki had also registered no casualties en route, which was the more important piece of information.
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