Marvel: Raising — Chapter 140 - The Age of the Ninja Is Over

"Wah!"

Front and back at the same time. Kakashi went down in under a second, badly wounded. Holy shit, he thought, coughing blood. "Naruto... you're serious about this?"

"Do you really hate the Leaf? Despise ninja?"

"Your father. My teacher."

"The Fourth Hokage himself — Lord Minato Namikaze!"

Naruto = Fourth Hokage's son = jinchūriki = natural sacrifice slot, natural martyr position.

In the minds of the Leaf's higher-ups, a pack of functional psychopaths,

this had long been an unspoken consensus. A live-and-let-live, everyone's-happy fact of life.

Who knows who Danzo's Kotoamatsukami was really meant for.

Everyone saw Naruto as the jinchūriki, the demon fox. A matter of course.

But...

it seems no one ever stopped to consider that Naruto might lose control.

Normally speaking.

That shouldn't be possible!

Naruto was barely genin age, how was he this strong?!

"Your father died to protect the village! To uphold the Will of Fire!"

Kakashi shouted.

"Heh. So now you're willing to admit I'm the Fourth Hokage's orphan?"

Naruto sneered. He looked at his father's old subordinate and sighed. "Pops, back then your Yellow Flash wasn't fast enough — and not nearly ruthless enough. That's why it ended like this."

"Sasuke, let's go. Kill the Hokage, kill the daimyo. Seize the throne."

Mangekyō spinning, Sasuke shouldered his rifle, grinning wide. "Should've done this ages ago!"

They left together.

And at that moment.

Sakura stood frozen, completely dumbstruck.

She and Kakashi stared at each other. Then she said, "Kakashi-sensei, promise me. Even if you have to break Sasuke's and Naruto's arms and legs, bring them back."

"If you had eyes," Kakashi said flatly, "you'd see that it's my arms and legs that are broken."

"..." Sakura.

She was quiet for a moment.

Then,

"NARUTO! IS! THE FOURTH HOKAGE'S! SON!"

Sakura roared it at the top of her lungs. It was the only thing she could do.

The sound carried like Pain's call to Naruto across the Leaf, loud enough for the entire village to hear.

"SHHK! SHHK! SHHK!"

That single cry flushed out ninja in droves.

"Naruto is the Fourth Hokage's..."

"Is that true?"

"That can't be right!"

Kurenai, Might Guy, Asuma, the young newly-promoted jōnin went still.

They looked at Kakashi, who nodded once, silently, confirming it.

Then they looked at the 2 calm, powerful figures walking toward the Hokage Tower, dense chakra spilling outward, forming a solid coat around them, a living exoskeleton of force.

Naruto and Sasuke.

And then,

they looked at Konohamaru.

He was the Hokage's grandson. Raised in luxury since birth, surrounded by friends and followers, with private ninjutsu tutors.

And Naruto?

Naruto was the Hokage's son. What kind of life had he lived?

Finally.

Every ninja, every gate guard, their gazes drifted upward, to the highest point, to the revered Hokage Rock.

The First. The Second. The Third. The Fourth.

The last face stood silently above them all, looking down at the Leaf below. Looking down at every single one of them.

That was Minato Namikaze.

And right now, beneath his gaze, Naruto walked toward the Hokage's office. He raised one hand. At his fingertips, golden-red chakra condensed and compressed in a frenzy, like a tailed beast grinding its teeth, hauling back for a roar.

In that moment.

Naruto. Minato Namikaze.

Konohamaru. Hiruzen Sarutobi.

2 completely different lives. 2 completely different treatments. Like 2 weights on opposite ends of a rope, tearing at everyone who had never known.

The ninja with guilty consciences stood frozen where they were, one after another.

"I'm sorry, Naruto. I'm sorry..."

Inside the Hokage's office, it was the only sentence Hiruzen Sarutobi had left.

The words barely left his mouth.

Then the Tailed Beast Ball swallowed him whole.

The assembled old men of the Leaf's upper echelon died with him, buried in fire.

"No need to apologize."

"Old Man Sarutobi, all you have to do is walk your ninja way, and take this foolish ninja system with you into the grave."

"Naruto doesn't speak in riddles. If I'm going to rise, I need your head."

Naruto said it without ceremony. "Farewell."

Meanwhile.

Sasuke was burning Danzo alive.

Ocular jutsu require line of sight to activate. And the Mangekyō's side effects are brutal, use it too much and you go blind, steadily, irreversibly. So historically, Uchiha fought face-to-face, close range, working their ocular jutsu in melee.

Which completely wasted the potential of those eyes.

But right now.

Eye drops. Telescope. Amaterasu.

Sasuke opened at extreme range and just started burning. Danzo screamed.

Danzo charged at him.

Sasuke backed off.

Danzo tried to run.

Sasuke adjusted the telescope's focus, laughing like a maniac as he burned and burned and burned, kekekekekeke.

"Young people have no respect for the ninja way!"

Poor Danzo. A body full of forbidden jutsu, a stash of Sharingan, and practical combat experience that should have completely outclassed a genin. But under Sasuke's kite-flying and tech-enhanced assault, all he could do was burn to death and resurrect, burn to death and resurrect, until he finally sealed one last bridge, and never even got the chance to use Kotoamatsukami.

"SHHK!"

Hokage down. Danzo down. The upper echelon wiped out.

Naruto moved through Body Flicker and Flying Thunder God and arrived at the Fire Country daimyo's estate.

He walked straight through the front entrance. Ten steps, one kill. His bloodstained kunai came to rest at the daimyo's throat.

"How do you govern your people?" Naruto asked. "What's your plan for the future?"

"Govern?"

The pig-fat daimyo laughed. Laughed like it was the most natural response in the world. "Why would I govern anyone?"

"It's you lowlifes, you lowly ninja, who should be figuring out how to serve me!"

"Raising your hand against a superior — what kind of Leaf ninja are you?"

"I'll have you punished!"

The daimyo kept shouting.

Then his head hit the floor.

"This kind of feeble creature controls the ninja villages in a world of superhumans?"

"The Ninja Wars. The Tailed Beast rampages. None of it ever touches them?"

"On what grounds?"

Naruto laughed, and there was no humor in it.

He grabbed the daimyo's head and, with a SHHK, flashed back to the Leaf. Landed on top of the Hokage Rock.

Looked down at the Fourth Hokage's face.

Naruto shook his head. He found Iruka in the crowd below, took aim, and tossed the head over.

"Thank you for looking out for me, Iruka-sensei."

"I mean that."

"But I'm sorry," Naruto said. "You'll be out of a job soon. No longer an Academy instructor. No longer a ninja."

"Because the daimyo is dead."

"Not just here in the Land of Fire."

"Every other daimyo will be brought under my control — or killed."

"The age of the ninja is over."

Information travels slowly in the ninja world.

After speaking, Naruto was already moving. Body Flicker, Flying Thunder God, nation after nation, he swept through them all and hauled every daimyo back with him.

The Hidden Mist, the Hidden Cloud, the Hidden Sand, the Hidden Stone. Every village erupted in fury. Under their daimyos' orders, they mobilized and marched on the Leaf.

When the forces were halfway there, Naruto released the daimyo back home, each one now branded with a Flying Thunder God seal.

Under orders of "everyone get back here and protect me," the armies turned around.

Just as they were almost back to their own villages,

Naruto kidnapped the daimyo again. Dragged them away and left behind fresh orders: "save meeeee."

The soldiers had barely walked through the gate. No time to drink water. Back on the road.

...

This went on for half a month.

The ninja couldn't take it anymore.

"Liger Bomb!"

When the daimyo was released home yet again, the Raikage hit his absolute limit. Rage maxed out, he delivered a full-force elbow strike with 4-point momentum behind it. The impact was devastating.

The daimyo died on the spot.

Like he'd been hit by a locomotive. His body just split open.

The same scene played out in the Hidden Stone, the Hidden Sand, even the Hidden Mist, where Yagura and the Obito pulling his strings behind the curtain were completely thrown off by the sheer lunacy of this strategy. They never had a chance to respond.

Zabuza led the Seven Ninja Swordsmen and Haku in a coup. Took out the daimyo. Seized power.

The good-natured Kisame and his girlfriend held hands.

And young Mei Terumī made her debut in the chaos.

They'd killed their daimyo. That still needed a public justification.

But just as nearly every village was rallying under "avenge the daimyo" and "crusade against Naruto" and preparing to march on the Leaf,

Naruto used Flying Thunder God to drop flyers across the entire ninja world.

[GREAT NEWS!]

[Shadow Clone Farming Jutsu and Sharingan Cultivation Research have achieved a breakthrough (mainly by acquiring some modern seeds from the farm)!]

[Crop yield per acre: XXX.]

[Seed catalogue: XXX.]

[External exploration report: XXX.]

[Order now while supplies last!]

[Note: No transactions with ninja.]

Along with the flyers came seed samples, and introductions to fertilizer and pesticide.

After ninjutsu-accelerated growth trials,

everyone was stunned. The yields were real. They genuinely surpassed anything the era had seen, world-shaking, staggering numbers.

What did this mean?

It meant production freedom. Food freedom.

No longer at the mercy of limited crops. No longer at the mercy of the daimyo.

In that light, whether the daimyo died or not... didn't really seem so important anymore.

If anything, it was overdue.

"The daimyo tripped and died on his own."

Zabuza looked at Haku, looked straight into his own heart, and made his call without hesitation. "The Hidden Mist Ninja Village, disbanded. From now on, we are people. Not tools."

He reached up and pulled off the forehead protector that bore the Hidden Mist's mark.

And like tossing out trash, he swept it into the dustbin of history.

➤ Next: All Have Dreams? Send Them to the Company!