PART 4.

The world around him seemed like a flat environment; Lifeless and nothing beyond that could make it spin.

The Friends who had exchanged their ramblings with him on the whole affair of King Saturus now stood aside from all criticism, unwilling to share a humble opinion.

Now they could no longer simply cover their eyes and criticize. Things had changed.

In fact, they had been changing since Asuma-sensei died, but Naruto, as well as the rest of his friends, still didn't have the heads to think about that situation, straight out of a storybook.

His heart was pounding so fast that he could vividly feel how he was unable to hear Tsunade's words clearly. Like a drum making a fuss in his head, the blood was pumped scandalously until he became anxious.

In the blonde Hokage's office, there were the twelve Konoha Ninjas. Or at least, it was planned to do so at first, but Sai (who was Uchiha Sasuke's replacement on the Kakashi team) had not attended. But Naruto had too many things to pay attention to, to wonder where his paler companion was.

All the Teenagers were silent, quite the opposite, when they ranted about Saturo and the distrust that hung over him. His condition as a King immersed in confinement for the good of his people, and his link to a strictly hidden parchment, was no longer the subject that was talked about, but a motive that was used to justify what had happened the night before under his very nose.

People from outside had been living the torturous days as if they were people from the village; People whose role in life had lost meaning when the Scroll was unrolled, and the name of the Hokage responsible for its safekeeping, came to light.

"Don't inquire more about it, I just warned you to get an idea of the kind of technique we are facing." Tsunade warned them, with evidence that he had not slept for more than two days. 

His office was flooded with a deep silence, and the absence of his most faithful assistant was also a matter of concern, considering that he was the person who only disappeared when he had to take Tsunade's place when the HOKAGE was supposed to come.

"By connection, I cannot ignore what was shared with Konoha, when the existence of the Scroll was known. If what is said about it is true, then, for the most reason, I cannot let them wander around out there with such nonchalance."

Tsunade's tone was incoherent, as if Irony were intermingled with her obvious concern. You could tell that she handled a lot of information that brought her up to date, but not enough to give her a break for a few hours, at least.

"From now on, I demand that you handle yourselves with caution, and, above all, discretion. There could be more like them out there, but they can hold a grudge against us for whatever has happened. Please take this warning seriously. They are forbidden to enter into conflicts with strangers, and instead, they have an obligation to report everything that happened to me, and I will handle it on my own. Remember that."

The order sounded calmer than what appeared to be an explosive statement.

They were Intruders! And Grandma wasn't going to say anything about that?!

It was clear that they had all been thinking the same thing, because they looked at each other. Their faces said it all. They were seeing who would be the brave one to go and question.

While the Hokage looked in better shape than in the last few days, as you can see decision in her eyes, clue to the information she may have received... from somewhere; That did not mean in any poster, that he would not bother, or in the worst case, he would take them as Improper and dismiss them without Information.

Even Shikamaru, whose revenge had been postponed for a long time and was longed for, wanted to keep his mouth shut. He was the most skeptical, but skepticism, like patience, had a limit, and he didn't know which of the two would run out first.

Did the theme of the Intruders lead to a deeper theme?

Naruto would swear that he would go insane if that was the reality, but even he recognized the abstractness of the Human mind if he set his mind to it.

He had known this when Sasuke and He exchanged truths, and though he had not been happy with that meeting, he was relieved to have at least gotten a truth of his Friend's true feelings.

What if the Panorama of all this was similar to that situation?

Naruto refused to believe in the existence of a Scroll that played with time. Hearing the story that, by wearing it, he would condemn himself to cataclysm, he felt a chill run through his entire body, even his dreams had become a circus of black and red since Saturus exchanged glances with him in that dark hiding place beneath his entire palace.

And now, with Iruka-sensei and his disengagement with the issue of 'Prone Enemies who want to take over Konoha', he had left Naruto at a crossroads.

As an aspiring Hokage, what was best for your Village?

Take care of them and stop this whole fight with blows? Or think of all the perished people, who came out of those damned portals, were once from Konoha.

Perhaps, if the future they come from was really part of their possibilities, they could even be THEIR people; People who would be under the care of a Naruto who achieved everything...

But those were only speculations. He wasn't discouraged by the issue of being Hokage, and that future has probably been cut short. But because he did not know what value to give to the lives of the future Inhabitants, and those of his present.

Did they even have courage?

He was one of those who thought that all lives were worth the same, but this situation had turned him into a crossword puzzle with a single word: Conflict.

He was a good person, I knew he was. I had also heard from Kakashi-sensei and Ero-Sennin that good people were sometimes forced to do bad things; Naruto vowed never to end like this.

So what was the point of standing here, if the answer that a GOOD HOKAGE would give would be 'Save my village'?

The answer was simple: Because if I chose that option, I wouldn't be able to see Iruka-sensei's face anymore.

He said he saw bodies of mother and children in places that were only accessible to Ninjas, and all the people were entirely civilians. There was not a single person who was dangerous, or gave any indication of belonging to a kind of Organization that would be against them.

So why was I so afraid? Why was he so worried? Ever since Granny Tsunade informed them of the Refugee Children, Naruto's heart kept beating at an almost worrying speed.

He turned to secretly inspect his friends with his eyes. He hadn't been the only one who had that strange feeling of discomfort.

"Tsunade-sama."

Naruto was pulled out of his self-destructive thoughts, thanks to Sakura. The pink-haired student from the Hokage Fifth had not only captured Naruto's interest, but that of everyone else in the room.

Sakura was just as lost as her partner Rubio, but visibly more attentive to whatever was on her mind. Like him, Sakura seemed to have been thinking about her own things when Tsunade brought them up to speed on everything, after hours of incommunicado.

"What's going on?" asks the slug Sannin. 

Your hands are organizing (in a disorganized and awkward way), a large loose amount of papers on your desk. Her Amber eyes were attentive to the contents of those documents, so Sakura hesitated a little to continue.

"It's about the children you mentioned... What do you mean by 'Refugees'?" The word also made your friends' eyes darken with seriousness and heaviness. Sakura swallowed, wishing she wasn't rushing. "Do you mean that Konoha is going to give them shelter?"

The silence that followed was a bit disconcerting. Not because of the fact that Sakura had brought up the doubt that everyone had been having for an hour now (because the Hokage took her time to catch them up), but because of the strange aloof behavior of the blonde Hokage.

The slimy Sannin had stopped her hand in midair as she reached for another blade and added to the mess under her eyes, and she stood with her eyes fixed on Sakura; Neither seriousness, nor confrontation.

There was nothing of that in those eyes, which always had some hidden motive behind their beauty.

"Yes, why?"

"E-Eh...?! Um..."

The flat tone used not only managed to demotivate Sakura to continue questioning; Likewise, as well as the InoShikaChou and the Kurenai retreat team, they stood with their mouths sealed and their lips pursed, looking at any place but Tsunade.

Realizing that she could not continue to carry things like this, Tsunade let out all the accumulated fatigue, in a long and heavy sigh.

A small relief came over her, as she didn't have to keep acting heavy, but even someone like her who quit her job halfway or didn't at all, preferred to be discreet, and take advantage of the mask of Condescension to be more discreet.

"Listen, Konoha is in a very bad position now."

Naruto straightened his shoulders, and looked up when the Hokage opted for a jocular and tired tone.

"Past, future, present, Parchments. I don't give a damn how all this was carried out, but I can't pass up the small opportunities I have to get, at least, a small version of what supposedly happened."

Tsunade reached for the blade she had been looking at jealously in the distance, and added it to her collection. He rested his chin on the back of his hand, and spoke absently as he read the papers.

"Even if I can't get all the answers, it's valid for me, if I can prevent someone else from having them. That's how things work."

"'That's how things work'? Do you realize that this is not a boring meeting or a strange agreement with a chilling ruler?!" The blond Uzumaki decided that it was a good time to show everyone his point, although Sakura did not support the way he addressed the Slug Hokage. "I want to know everything! Why are you going to shelter them just like that? What do they know?! What happened?! A lot of people have been hurt by all that Shit and not even we don't even know what happened!"

"I'm against the high-sounding words that Naruto has used." A thick, silent voice added. All eyes were directed to a corner of the office, specifically, to the back area of the Teenagers group. There, Shino adjusted his dark glasses with a condescending, discreet air, having kept his thoughts to himself, only to end up blurting them out anyway. "But I must take responsibility for being faithful to my principles. And one of them is honesty. Naruto is right."

"Until we agree on something." Hinata, who was in the middle of her two companions, turned to look at Kiba. The Inuzuka boy would pat Akamaru on his hands to manage his own stress. "Is there any way that whatever you saw in those people's minds, it was altered memories or shit like that?"

"That's impossible." Ino's confirmation, who was in front of him, only increased the frown on Kiba's expression. Ino looked straight ahead, staring at the ground conflictedly. "If it was my father who was responsible, I can assure you that he would have noticed. He usually sees the memories two or three times before returning to his own consciousness, he couldn't have been wrong."

"In short." Tsunade silenced an upcoming debate. Ten-Ten had bitten the inside of her cheek for not having had a chance to make her point in front of the Hokage, and Neji could only close her eyes wearily. "Inoichi confirmed everything. Those people are from the future."

"And the children?" "For this time, Hinata took the courage to ask, only to regret it at the last moment and ridiculously tone it down, to be heard as a shy little squeal in the back of the room. "D-Did they confirm all that barbarity... with them too?"

The understanding of what Hinata had said was divided among his friends. It didn't take long for Tsunade to respond, although she had the appearance of not wanting to talk too much about the subject of children, although Naruto must have suspected it when she left the subject as if nothing had happened, when she mentioned the role of children in relation to the scroll.

The blonde Hokage settled into her seat, leaning her back on the back of the old chair.

Having closed her eyes to contemplate the idea, she pondered to herself as her eyes lay on the papers, which, from the position of the Teenagers, were to be seen nothing but scribbles on them.

"The parchment was opened more than ten years into the future." The blonde revealed heavily. Instead, the chins of the Ninjas present were about to fall to the ground. Tsunade didn't want to give any more mysticism, and closed her eyes in revulsion. "It doesn't matter how long it is exactly, and don't inquire any more about it. The only important thing here is, it's a lot more time in the future, and those kids are younger than that. Their memories cannot provide us with any Information, even if they want to."

Everyone was shocked. Of course, they had already been with the casual revelation that there were people from the future prowling in their village. But right now the Panorama had spread darkly, like a blackboard full of bad news.

Ino had already gotten an idea of what the Hokage was trying to say, thanks to the information she had given them about how they discovered the rest of the children on the outskirts of the village.

But she was so frightened by such a large gap of years (which right now meant nothing and had no weight over her current decisions), and her brain couldn't send the words into her mouth to articulate them.

Shikamaru was the most perceptive, and with cold sweat running down his face, he fulminated at the adjacent nothingness as he verbalized the meaning of Tsunade's words.

"The village has strict control of the Chakras that reside here, they couldn't have mixed. The only way to have remained for so long without arousing suspicion may be because either they were not really here, or the surveillance team was suffering problems.

"One of the adults who accompanied them has the ability to suppress the Chakra of his companions and himself." Tsunade adds, interlacing his fingers. "He informed us that he only did that only until about four days ago, but that he really kept balancing the growth of his Chakras when they stayed here longer."

"The way you say it makes it sound like your chakras weren't in their entirety when you arrived." Sakura said hesitantly. 

Tsunade nodded.

"That's right. But..." His eyes remained on Shikamaru. The Nara straightened up a little, for it was still unclear to him why the children had been hidden for so long without arousing suspicion. "Those children are special. In some way, age influences how and how much they can interact with our time. It's strange."

A wave of unknown gasps spread across the room.

His pink-haired pupil questioned him carefully about it, and Tsunade, her fingers clasped, put her eyes behind her hands. The information I handled was ridiculously complicated, and I didn't know how to put it into words without sounding silly.

"The world for them is... How to put it?... Think about seeing the world through a window." Tsunade said. "They see everything, but they can't interact with it, other than with the things that are on their side, and talk to the person on the other side. And for us... Well, the window we see is not really a window, but a mirror."

Senju sat back on his feet, holding onto the desk with his hands. His sadness was one with abstract meaning. Even she didn't know the reason to be sad.

Her authoritarian tone of voice and presence that had been pacing the Hokage tower during these days, had been reduced to a Hokage, not Submissive, but distracted. As if things in his head were not already complete to act deliberately and reach a conclusion as soon as possible.

"For them, we are everything." Tsunade said quietly. All eyes were on her, and they didn't believe what they were hearing from the mouth of her usually tough, Independent Hokage. "But we can't see anything; They are nothing more than a soulless voice. They are nothing in this world. They could not even escape the cataclysm by means of the Scroll."

Naruto was going to launch another of his protests, adding to his poorly developed plot, the possibility that children were being manipulated by adults; He stopped in his tracks.

Tsunade walked away from her desk, after taking one last look at the documents she was studying, and stood in front of the window, her hands behind her back.

His people were a people who enjoyed peace, but that peace was one that could be cut with just a fingernail from some third-party conflict. Adolescents who studied their behavior while waiting for the deepening of their statement, could get along with their feelings; At least, to understand why Tsunade would allow suspicious people to stay.

And the strange thing was not that she allowed them to stay, but the speed with which she herself decided that she would allow it.

"The Scroll is our problem, because a Hokage is involved." Tsunade said. Its reflection in the window pane became one with the grayish view of a town that was going to be cooled by the rain. Tsunade's voice was serious, but it denoted a Tension that, to them, was still incomprehensible. "They got here through one of those portals, although it was thanks to the fact that there were people on the other side keeping it functional."

"Is that a problem, Tsunade-sama?" Sakura hurriedly asked, taking a hesitant step forward. 

However, the Hokage did not turn to look at her, and her muteness was almost like a cold blizzard.

"... I know what rules can be, and how honor can be used to hurt others."

Tsunade's tone was softer than the previous times. His tranquility was anything compared to the humanity he rarely brought out so obviously.

She, who would never dare to show herself as a weak and emotional woman, clenched her fingers behind her back.

"The sole reason that they come from the portals may be reason enough to deny them their stay in Konoha. It would be argued that, since it did not come from the Scroll that the Hokage had sworn to keep secret, nothing linked us to them. At worst, they might treat the adults who accompany them as enemies."

"Ah...? And can you tell why you say you'll keep them here anyway?" Naruto asked, his eyes pale from how perplexed he was. 

"They saw a Konoha give way to its foundations." Tsunade replied, sighing calmly. He turned around, and handed the blond Uzumaki a calm, narrowed-eyed expression. With an unusually calm voice, he spoke to the rest of the Teenagers. "Count on them to stay here, it's the only sure way we have to know what happened, and find a way to come up with a solution. Until then..."

The Slug's Sannin looked back at the window. In the eyes of others, the Hokage looked like a Fairy lost in her own selfish desires.

"Let me know if the opposite is true. We cannot allow them to leave."

Sakura opened her eyes a little at the hint. They had been ordered to remain discreet, and also to report any suspicious activity on the outside, adding to the fact that they were not allowed to conflict with such extremely dangerous activities.

On the other hand, here was the Hokage entrusting them with the true mission, to which, all without exception, they nodded firmly, quieting their own doubts about it, and trusting their Hokage completely.

The blond Uzumaki was the only one who did not communicate his listening aloud, and his vision remained cloudy. Iruka-sensei's words resonated, and Grandma's sight softened, were things she hadn't prepared for before.

Before, morality had been questioned. Was he doing it for Iruka-sensei? Or did he do it because he thought it was the right thing to do?

He was about to find the answer, and it had to be soon, because he wouldn't be left pondering when he had one of those children in front of him.

After all, albeit very blatantly, the Fifth Hokage had entrusted them with the Mission to take care of the Situation of the Children of the Portals... And to protect all those who have gone through the same thing in the land of fire.