The archive was dark and cold and smelled of old paper. The same shelves. The same locked cabinets. The same particular silence of a place where information went to be forgotten. Naruto moved through it without sound, his feet finding the gaps between the floorboards that creaked, his breath controlled and shallow.
He had been here before. He knew the guard rotation. He knew the blind spots. He knew exactly where the restricted files were kept.
Tonight he was looking for something specific. Kakashi Hatake. His new sensei. The man with the mask and the book and the eye that did not match the rest of him. Naruto did not trust him. He did not trust anyone. But trust was not the point. Information was the point. Knowledge was the point. He would learn everything there was to learn about the man who was supposed to lead him.
The file was in the fourth cabinet from the wall, third drawer down, behind a seal that his hands opened without conscious instruction. He pulled it out. It was thick. Thicker than he had expected. Decades of mission reports. Psychological evaluations. Combat assessments. The man had been a shinobi since before Naruto was born.
Naruto sat down at the table in the corner of the archive. He opened the file. He began to read.
The problem became apparent immediately. The file was too dense. Too much information. Reading it normally would take hours. He did not have hours. The guard would circle back. The night would end. He needed a faster way.
He created a shadow clone.
The clone appeared beside him in a puff of smoke. Naruto handed it a stack of papers. "Take the far table. Read everything. When I call you, tell me what you found."
The clone nodded. It took the papers and walked to the other side of the room.
Naruto returned to his own stack. He read. The clone read. The archive was silent except for the sound of turning pages.
Then footsteps. Heavy boots on the corridor floor. A guard was coming.
The clone looked up. It looked at the door. It looked at Naruto. It made a decision. Before the guard could enter, the clone dispersed. The smoke dissipated. The papers fell to the floor in a quiet cascade.
Naruto felt it.
The memory hit him like a wave. He was sitting at the table. He had always been sitting at the table. But he also remembered sitting at the far table. He remembered holding the papers. He remembered reading the words. The texture of the page under his fingers. The flicker of the lantern light. The sound of his own breathing in the quiet.
He had not been there. But he remembered being there.
The guard passed. The footsteps faded. The archive was silent again.
Naruto sat very still. He thought about what had just happened. The clone had dispersed. The clone's experiences had transferred to him. Not as a report. Not as a summary. As a memory. As if he had lived them himself.
He created another clone. A small one. A single copy. He sent it to the far side of the room. "Touch that shelf. Then disperse."
The clone walked to the shelf. It touched the wood. It dispersed.
Naruto remembered touching the shelf. The cool grain beneath his fingertips. The slight give of the old wood. He had never left his chair.
He created another clone. He sent it out of the archive. Down the corridor. Around the corner. "Touch the third window. Then disperse."
The clone moved through the dark hallway. Naruto tracked it through the shared awareness that existed between them, a thin thread of connection that he had never thought to examine before. The clone touched the window. The glass was cold. The moon was visible through it. Then the clone dispersed.
Naruto remembered the corridor. The carpet under his feet. The cold glass. The moon. He had been sitting in the archive the entire time.
He created three clones at once. He sent each to a different corner of the room. Each touched a different object. A bookshelf. A scroll case. The leg of the table. They dispersed simultaneously.
Three memories arrived at the same moment. He remembered touching the bookshelf. The rough wood. He remembered touching the scroll case. The smooth leather. He remembered touching the table leg. The carved ridges where someone had marked it with a knife years ago. He had been in one place. He had experienced three places.
He leaned back in his chair. His eyes were wide. A small smile crossed his face. The cold, narrow smile.
"Shadow clones. They are not just for fighting."
He understood now. The technique did not just create copies. It created extensions of himself. And when those extensions returned to him, they brought everything back. Every experience. Every observation. Every moment of learning. He could be in multiple places at once. He could learn at ten times the speed. He could gather intelligence without moving.
He created ten clones.
Each clone took a section of Kakashi's file. Each clone moved to a different corner of the archive. Each clone sat down and began to read.
Naruto waited. The minutes passed. The lantern flickered. The shadows on the walls shifted.
One by one, the clones finished their sections. One by one, they dispersed. The memories came in waves. Ten different reading experiences. Ten different perspectives on the same man. The information did not just enter his mind. It embedded itself. He remembered reading every page. He remembered the weight of the paper. The smell of the ink. The faint crackle of the old binding as he turned each sheet.
When the last clone dispersed, Naruto closed his eyes and let the memories settle.
He knew Kakashi Hatake now.
The man was a prodigy. That was the word the file used. Prodigy. He had graduated the academy at age five. Younger than anyone in the history of the village. He had become a chuunin at age six. A jonin at age twelve. The same age Naruto was now.
His nickname was the Copy Ninja. He had copied over a thousand jutsu using his Sharingan. The Sharingan was a kekkei genkai, a bloodline limit, native to the Uchiha clan. Kakashi was not an Uchiha. He was the only non Uchiha in history to possess the eye.
Naruto read about how he got it. The file was vague. Most of it was classified, redacted, blacked out by censors who had decided that certain information was too dangerous for the archives. But fragments remained.
The Third Shinobi World War. Kakashi's squad was ambushed. His teammate, Obito Uchiha, was thought to be dead. Before he died, he gave Kakashi his left eye as a gift. The Sharingan awakened fully in Kakashi's socket. He has worn it behind his headband ever since.
Another teammate. Rin Nohara. A kunoichi. The file mentioned her in passing, almost as an afterthought. Late in the war, she was captured. Enemy forces sealed the Three Tailed Beast inside her body. They intended to release her back into Konoha, where the beast would break free and destroy the village.
Rin knew what would happen. She chose to die. She threw herself in front of Kakashi's Chidori. He killed her with his own hand. It was the only way to stop the beast.
She was twelve years old.
Naruto set down the scroll. His face was blank. His hands were steady. But something moved behind his eyes. A coldness that was not new but had found fresh fuel.
Twelve years old. The same age as him. She had given everything. Her life. Her future. Her name. And the file mentioned her like a footnote. Like a mission detail. Like something that happened and was then filed away and forgotten.
He read on.
Rin Nohara was not mentioned again.
"This world needs correcting," he said. The words were quiet. They landed in the silence of the archive like stones dropped into deep water. No one heard them. No one ever heard him.
He kept reading.
Kakashi's father. Sakumo Hatake. The White Fang of Konoha. A shinobi so legendary.The file was almost reverent when it described his combat abilities. His speed. His strength. His reputation across the shinobi world.
Then the mission.
Sakumo was sent on a critical operation. The success or failure of the mission would affect the entire war effort. But during the operation, his comrades were trapped. Surrounded. Dying. Sakumo made a choice. He abandoned the mission to save them.
The mission failed. The war effort suffered. The village needed someone to blame.
They blamed Sakumo.
The people he saved turned on him. His fellow shinobi whispered behind his back. The civilians looked at him with disgust. His honor was stripped away. His friends abandoned him. The village that had celebrated him as a hero decided that he was worse than a failure. He was a disgrace.
Sakumo killed himself. He could not live with the shame. Kakashi was seven years old.
Naruto read the words. He read them again. He set the scroll down on the table.
His hands were still steady. His face was still blank. But the coldness behind his eyes had spread. It filled his chest. His stomach. His throat.
"First my father. Then myself. Then a girl my own age who gave everything and was forgotten. Now a man who should have been a hero."
He stood up. He closed the file. He returned it to the cabinet and resealed the lock.
"This fucking place sickens me the more I learn about it."
He left the archive before he did something stupid. Something that would get him caught. Something that would ruin the plans that were still forming in the back of his mind.
The village was dark. The streets were empty. The moon was high and white and cold. Naruto walked without thinking, his feet carrying him through the familiar roads, past the closed shops and the dark windows and the houses where people slept without knowing that the monster they feared was walking past their doors.
He arrived at the Third Training Ground. The same clearing from the bell test. The scorch marks were still visible on the trees. The grass was still flattened where the clones had stood. The air was cold and damp and smelled of smoke and earth.
He walked to the stone monument.
The Memorial Stone stood at the edge of the clearing, black and polished, catching the moonlight in a way that made the carved names look like they were glowing. Naruto had seen this stone before. He had walked past it a hundred times without stopping. He had never had a reason to stop.
He had a reason now.
He ran his fingers over the surface. The stone was cold. The letters were sharp beneath his fingertips. Rin Nohara. Her name was there. Small. Unremarkable. Buried between names he did not recognize and names he would never remember.
Obito Uchiha. His name was there too. Close to Rin's. Close enough that they might have been carved by the same hand on the same day.
An Uchiha. Just like Sasuke. A boy who died giving his eye to his friend. A boy whose name was carved in stone while his clan's compound sat empty and cold. Naruto looked at the name for a long moment. He felt nothing. Or he told himself he felt nothing. The boy was dead. His clan was dead. Sasuke was the last one. That was simply a fact. The same way Rin was dead. The same way Sakumo was dead. The same way Minato was dead.
The world was full of dead people. The stone proved it.
He stepped back from the monument. He sat down on the grass. He crossed his legs. He placed his hands on his knees. The lotus position. The same one he had used that morning while waiting for Kakashi. The same one he used when he needed to be still and think and feel nothing.
The stars were out. The moon was bright. The clearing was silent except for the wind in the trees and the distant sound of the village settling into sleep.
He closed his eyes.
"I cannot afford to be weak."
The words were quiet. They were meant for no one. They were meant for himself. For the thing inside him that had been sleeping for twelve years.
"I think it is about time we meet, Nine Tails."
He said it aloud. The words left his mouth and disappeared into the night air. No one heard them. No one ever heard him.
He closed his eyes.
And went inward.
Next Time: The Nine Tails