Naruto Uzumaki squinted at the page in front of him like it had just personally insulted him.
The textbook was thick, heavy, and painfully dull, a relic of the ninja academy days he’d barely scraped through the first time.
The title—Advanced Shinobi Governance and Legal Frameworks—made his eyes glaze over before he even hit the table of contents.
“Iruka-sensei,” he groaned under his breath, “why are you doing this to me…”
He leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking beneath his weight, and flexed the bandaged synthetic arm that rested awkwardly across his lap.
A strange hybrid of chakra engineering and old-school medical ninjutsu, the thing was both a marvel and a burden.
Granny Tsunade and Sakura had done their best—poured in hours of work, intricate seals, and chakra thread—until what had once been a gory stump was now something… usable.
But it wasn’t the same.
He remembered waking up in the hospital after the Valley of the End battle, groggy and aching from chakra exhaustion, his body a mess of burns and bruises.
What he remembered most though, was the emptiness—he’d reached for ramen with both hands and realized only one moved.
Sasuke had been lying next to him, silent as stone, stubborn as hell.
They’d both lost an arm that day, but Sasuke had refused the offer of a prosthetic outright.
Said it was her burden to bear.
Some poetic, guilt-drenched crap like that.
Naruto hadn’t taken no for an answer.
It took a week to drag Sasuke to the medical compound.
She kicked, punched, cursed, and at one point, bit him hard enough to break skin—but he didn’t let go.
“I’m not letting you walk around half a person when you can be whole,” he’d shouted through a black eye and a split lip.
“We didn’t survive everything just so you could wallow in self-hate, you idiot!”
In the end, Sakura drugged her.
Granny Tsunade strapped her down.
Naruto watched over the whole damn thing, bleeding and smiling like an idiot.
Now, Sasuke was in a dungeon—technically.
More like a very fancy, chakra-sealed underground suite beneath the Hokage Tower.
Her Sharingan eyes sealed with a special genjutsu-lock developed by the Yamanaka clan, her arms bound in high-grade chakra restraints, layers of protective seals wrapped around her like bandages.
Some called it overkill.
Others called it mercy.
Naruto just called it temporary.
She was still an international criminal, after all.
Couldn’t exactly sweep the whole “tried to kill the Five Kage” thing under the rug, no matter how much goodwill Naruto had stored up from saving the damn world.
Her last stand in the Land of Iron had been nothing short of a catastrophe.
She’d arrived like a storm, spouting some nonsense about centralized power and shinobi unity under a single ruler.
After Kaguya and Madara, she’d become convinced the old system was broken beyond repair—and she wanted to burn it all down and rebuild.
With herself on top.
She’d fought like a demon, every strike precise, brutal.
The Raikage had nearly lost a leg.
The Tsuchikage still had nightmares.
Mei Terumi’s hair had caught fire—she hadn’t forgiven that.
Only Gaara, quiet, calm Gaara, had hesitated—had looked at Naruto with something like a question in his eyes and stepped back.
The Daimyōs were rattled.
The council was screaming for blood.
Execution was on the table.
It had taken everything Kakashi had—everything Naruto could bargain, threaten, and beg for—to stop it.
He’d stared down angry Kage and stubborn nobles with that same stupid grin and said, “You want to punish her? Fine. But not with death. Not with erasing someone who chose to come back.”
And yeah, maybe it was unfair.
Maybe it was favoritism.
But it was Sasuke.
Sasuke, who once protected him with her life.
Sasuke, who had cried alone in the dark for a family torn apart.
Sasuke, who had tried to shoulder the world’s hatred just so no one else had to.
Who had gone too far.
Done too much.
Burned too many bridges.
But Naruto had always been in the water, waiting on the other side, hand outstretched.
Still, all that wasn’t going to get him out of studying.
He looked back at the book with a sigh and forced himself to read the same sentence for the third time.
Something about shinobi jurisdiction and land-specific tax policies.
Ugh.
His stomach growled.
His brain itched.
His arm ached.
“Being Hokage sucks,” he muttered.
He imagined Kakashi-sensei lounging somewhere in the Hokage office, flipping through one of those orange books with a lazy smile.
That masked bastard had practically handed Naruto a to-do list a mile long and vanished behind bureaucratic smoke bombs.
Naruto scratched his head, eyes drifting to the window.
Outside, Konoha buzzed.
Vendors shouted.
Kids played ninja in the street.
The Village Hidden in the Leaves had never looked more peaceful.
And underneath it all, in the belly of the Tower, his best friend waited.
They hadn’t let him see her since the surgery.
Said it was for his own good.
Said she needed isolation, evaluation.
Naruto had pushed, but not hard enough.
Not yet.
But the ache was building.
Every day without her face, her voice, even her dumb scowl, made it worse.
Still, he kept his head down.
Because if he wanted to protect her—really protect her—he had to be more than just a hero.
He had to be a leader.
A man the world listened to.
The Hokage.
So he picked up the book, clenched his jaw, and started reading aloud.
“Chapter Three: The Shinobi Council and Legislative Authority in Post-War Konoha…”
One step at a time.