The night Konoha burned was the night the universe decided that Naruto Uzumaki would become its favorite chew toy.
Hiruzen Sarutobi stood in the wreckage of what had once been a peaceful village, cradling a newborn baby with whisker marks on his cheeks and a complicated seal on his stomach. The Third Hokage had seen many things in his long life—wars, betrayals, his students leaving the village for various dramatic reasons—but nothing had quite prepared him for the sight of Minato and Kushina lying dead beside their son, having sacrificed everything to seal the Nine-Tailed Fox into an infant who was currently screaming at a pitch that suggested he was already unhappy with this arrangement.
"There, there, little one," Hiruzen murmured, bouncing the baby gently as ANBU swarmed around them, putting out fires and counting casualties. "Your parents were heroes. You carry a great burden now, but I promise you'll be protected and loved and—"
"Lord Third!" An ANBU with a cat mask came skidding to a halt before him, nearly tripping over a piece of rubble. "We have a situation!"
Hiruzen closed his eyes. Of course they did. When didn't they have a situation?
"What is it now?" he asked wearily, already mentally calculating how much paperwork this night would generate. The answer was probably "enough to kill a lesser man," but Hiruzen had survived three wars. He would survive bureaucracy.
"There's a... delivery, sir."
"A delivery." Hiruzen's voice was flat. "In the middle of a crisis. Someone made a delivery."
"Yes, sir. A very large one. It appears to be..." The ANBU consulted a scroll he was holding, squinting at it in the firelight. "Eight packages. From various locations. They all arrived simultaneously via reverse summoning seals that none of our barrier team recognized."
Hiruzen felt a headache forming behind his eyes. "What kind of packages?"
"Jinchuuriki, sir."
The Third Hokage stared at the masked operative for a long moment. "I'm sorry. I'm old and my hearing isn't what it used to be. Did you just say—"
"Eight Jinchuuriki. Well, former Jinchuuriki. They're all dead, sir. But their seals were modified somehow, and the tailed beasts are... well, they're sort of hovering there. In chakra form. Looking confused."
Naruto chose that moment to let out a particularly loud wail, and somewhere in the village, Hiruzen could swear he heard an answering roar that shook the foundations of buildings that were still standing.
"Take me to them," he said, because apparently this was his life now.
The scene that greeted Hiruzen when he arrived at Training Ground Seven—which had been hastily designated as a containment area due to being one of the few locations not actively on fire—was one that would haunt him until the day he died, and possibly afterward if the afterlife was as cruel as the living world seemed to be.
Eight massive constructs of chakra stood in a loose circle, ranging in size from "extremely concerning" to "how is this even possible." They were arguing.
"I'm telling you, this is his fault!" The Two-Tails, a cat made of blue and black flames, was pointing one spectral paw at the Eight-Tails, a massive ox-octopus hybrid that looked like it had been designed by someone who couldn't decide between nightmares. "Gyūki was always the one with the 'brilliant ideas!'"
"Don't look at me!" The Eight-Tails—Gyūki, apparently—waved several tentacles defensively. "I was minding my own business in Kumo! My Jinchuuriki was about to drop his newest rap album! We were finally going to go platinum!"
"Your Jinchuuriki's rap was terrible and everyone knew it," the Four-Tails, a massive red ape, grumbled. "Son Gokū does not lie about such things."
"At least he had artistic ambitions! What was your guy doing? Hiding in a cave?" The Seven-Tails, an enormous armored beetle, buzzed indignantly. "Mine was actually doing something useful! She was—she was—" The beetle paused. "Actually, I don't remember what she was doing. I think I was asleep."
"You're always asleep, Chōmei," the Five-Tails, a horse-dolphin creature that defied zoological classification, said with something approaching exasperation. "Some of us were paying attention to our hosts' lives."
"Some of us were trying to escape our hosts' lives because watching humans fumble through existence is the most tedious experience in the world," the Six-Tails, a massive slug, added morosely. "Saiken has seen too much. The things my Jinchuuriki did in the bathroom alone—"
"Nobody wants to hear about that!" The Three-Tails, a giant turtle with a crab-like shell, tried to cover what might have been its ears, though its anatomy made this difficult. "Isobu demands that this conversation return to the matter at hand!"
"Which is what, exactly?" The One-Tail, a tanuki made of sand that seemed to be having trouble maintaining its form, glared at the assembled beasts with golden eyes. "Shukaku was sealed away nicely, thank you very much, driving my host slowly insane as intended, and then suddenly there's a yank and I'm here and my host is dead and nobody will explain what's going on!"
"We were all yanked!" The Two-Tails hissed, flames flickering dangerously. "Every single one of us, at exactly the same moment! That doesn't just happen!"
"Actually," Gyūki said slowly, several of his eyes widening, "I think I know what happened."
Every bijuu turned to look at the Eight-Tails.
"Well?" Son Gokū demanded. "Speak, you overgrown calamari!"
"I felt something, right before the yank. A massive chakra signature going out, like a beacon. It felt like..." Gyūki trailed off, and if an eldritch combination of octopus and ox could look uncomfortable, he managed it. "It felt like the Old Man."
The silence that fell over Training Ground Seven was absolute.
"The Sage?" Chōmei buzzed quietly. "Father's chakra?"
"Not exactly. More like... an echo. A ripple. Something that called to us specifically, to all nine of us, and—" Gyūki stopped suddenly, doing a slow count of the assembled bijuu. "Wait. There are only eight of us here. Where's Kurama?"
"I was wondering when someone would notice," Saiken the slug said glumly. "The big angry furball is conspicuously absent from our impromptu family reunion."
"Well, we're in Konoha," Son Gokū observed, looking around at the destroyed buildings visible beyond the training ground's tree line. "And Konoha is where Kurama was sealed. And Konoha is currently on fire. I think we can draw some conclusions."
"You mean the bastard fox attacked his village?" Shukaku cackled, sand swirling excitedly. "Finally did something interesting with his life? I'm almost proud!"
"You're insane," Matatabi the Two-Tails said flatly.
"Yes, and? Your point being?"
Hiruzen had been standing at the edge of the training ground this entire time, watching this exchange with the expression of a man who had moved past confusion, through disbelief, and arrived at a sort of numb acceptance. He was still holding baby Naruto, who had stopped crying and was now watching the giant chakra constructs with wide blue eyes that seemed far too aware for a newborn.
"Excuse me," Hiruzen said, and his voice carried the authority of decades of leadership. Every bijuu turned to look at him, and he had to fight down the instinct to run screaming in the other direction. "I am Hiruzen Sarutobi, Third Hokage of Konohagakure. Could someone please explain what is happening?"
The tailed beasts exchanged glances—a complicated affair given their varying numbers of eyes.
"Human," Son Gokū said slowly, "we were hoping you could tell us that."
"I have been Hokage for a very long time," Hiruzen replied, "and I can honestly say that having eight bijuu appear in my village simultaneously while one of them is sealed into a baby I am holding was not something I was prepared for."
"Wait." Isobu the Three-Tails lumbered forward slightly, shell grinding against the earth. "Did you say one of us is sealed in that infant?"
"The Nine-Tails was sealed into him by his father, the Fourth Hokage, less than an hour ago. In the process, both his parents died." Hiruzen held Naruto a little tighter. "I was hoping to have at least one night to mourn before the next crisis."
"No one gets to mourn in this world," Saiken said, and that glumness somehow managed to convey genuine sympathy. "Not humans, not us. There is only suffering."
"Saiken, please," Kokuō the Five-Tails sighed. "Not now."
"Is Kurama okay?" Chōmei asked, and there was something almost like concern in the beetle's voice. "I mean, I know he's horrible and angry and tried to kill all of us at least once, but he's still our brother."
"He's sealed away," Hiruzen confirmed. "Contained within this child. The seal was designed by the Fourth Hokage himself, so it should be—"
"Hold on, hold on." Gyūki's massive head swung toward the baby, and all eight of his eyes focused on Naruto with disturbing intensity. "I'm sensing the seal. That's a Reaper Death Seal variant with an Eight Trigrams overlay and... is that a Uzumaki adaptation? Who designed this thing?"
"As I said, the Fourth—"
"No, no, I got that. I'm asking rhetorically. Because this seal is insane. It's not just containing Kurama; it's designed to slowly merge his chakra with the kid's over time. But more importantly..." Gyūki leaned closer, close enough that Hiruzen had to physically restrain himself from fleeing. "There's something wrong with it."
"Wrong how?" Hiruzen demanded.
"It's incomplete. Well, no, it's complete, but it's... hungry. There's a component I don't recognize, something that's reaching outward, searching for—" Gyūki went very still. "Oh. Oh no."
"What?" Multiple voices asked simultaneously, human and bijuu alike.
"It's looking for us." Gyūki's voice was quiet. "The seal. It's designed to contain tailed beast chakra, but it wasn't calibrated properly. Probably because it was made in a hurry during an attack. It's set to 'collect,' and it's not specifying which beast."
"That's ridiculous," Matatabi scoffed. "A seal can't just—"
The Two-Tails froze. Then she looked down at herself, at her flaming form, and made a sound that might have been a gasp if giant chakra cats could gasp.
"Oh," she said. "I'm being pulled."
"What?" Shukaku started laughing, sand whipping around him. "You can't be serious! You're telling me that some human baby is going to—"
He stopped. Looked down. Made a sound that was decidedly not a laugh.
"I'm being pulled too."
What followed was chaos.
Every bijuu felt it at once—an inexorable tugging sensation, centered on the infant in Hiruzen's arms. They tried to resist, to anchor themselves in the physical world, but they were pure chakra now, unbound by Jinchuuriki, and the seal on Naruto's stomach was a void that demanded to be filled.
"This can't be happening!" Son Gokū roared, his massive form already beginning to distort. "I am Son Gokū! I am the King of the Sage Monkeys! I will not be—"
He didn't finish the sentence. With a sound like reality tearing, the Four-Tails was sucked across the training ground and into Naruto's seal.
Naruto giggled.
Hiruzen stared down at the baby in horror as, one by one, the remaining bijuu were pulled in. Chōmei went next, the beetle's wings beating frantically against the invisible current before she was absorbed. Saiken followed, still complaining about the unfairness of existence. Isobu and Kokuō went together, their forms intertwining as they were drawn toward the infant.
"I refuse!" Shukaku screamed, sand flying everywhere. "Shukaku will not be caged again! Shukaku demands—"
Whatever Shukaku demanded was lost as the One-Tail was yanked into the seal with a sound like a cork being forced into a bottle.
Matatabi fought the longest, her flames burning bright enough to illuminate the entire training ground, but even she couldn't resist. "Tell Kurama," she said to Hiruzen as she was pulled inexorably forward, "that this is somehow all his fault. He'll know what I mean."
Then she was gone.
Gyūki was last, and he wasn't even fighting. The Eight-Tails just stared at Naruto with all eight eyes, an unreadable expression on his face.
"You know," he said thoughtfully, "I had a good thing going. My Jinchuuriki wasn't a complete disaster. We were going to drop that album. It was going to be revolutionary. We had a song called 'Eight Tail Swing' that would've changed the music industry forever."
"I'm sorry," Hiruzen said, because he didn't know what else to say.
"Don't be. This is honestly one of the less terrible things that's happened to me." Gyūki chuckled, a deep rumbling sound. "Take care of the kid, old man. He's going to have one hell of a headache when he grows up."
Then the Eight-Tails was sucked into the seal, and Training Ground Seven was silent.
Hiruzen stood there for a long moment, holding a baby who now contained all nine tailed beasts and who was currently drooling on his Hokage robes.
"Well," he said finally, to no one in particular, "this is going to be difficult to explain in my report."
Inside the seal—which had rapidly expanded from a simple containment matrix into something that more closely resembled an apartment complex designed by a mad architect—the nine tailed beasts found themselves in a situation none of them had anticipated.
Kurama, who had been enjoying his new prison's relative comfort while planning his eventual escape and revenge, looked up from his plotting to find eight familiar faces staring at him.
"What," he said flatly, "the actual fuck."
"Hello, brother," Gyūki said, waving a tentacle. "Surprise."
"No. No, no, no." Kurama's massive form recoiled, tails lashing behind him. "This is my Jinchuuriki! I was here first! Get out!"
"Believe me, none of us want to be here," Matatabi said, looking around at the sewer-like environment with distaste. "Your taste in internal decor is as bad as your personality."
"This isn't my doing! The seal created this! I—" Kurama stopped, actually taking in his siblings for the first time. "Wait. Why are all of you here? You should be in your own Jinchuuriki."
"They're dead," Son Gokū said bluntly. "All of them. Killed at the same moment by some unknown force that dragged us here."
"And then your Jinchuuriki's seal ate us," Shukaku added, somehow managing to sound both enraged and impressed. "Like some kind of bijuu-consuming monster."
"He's a baby!"
"A baby whose father made a seal with a glitch," Gyūki explained. "Long story short, we're all stuck here now. Together. In one infant body. For the foreseeable future."
Kurama stared at his siblings. His siblings stared back.
"I need to sit down," Kurama said.
"You're a hundred-foot fox," Isobu pointed out. "Where would you even—"
"I NEED TO SIT DOWN."
Kurama sat down. The motion caused the entire mindscape to shake, and somewhere in the real world, baby Naruto sneezed.
"This is a nightmare," Kurama muttered. "I attacked a village. I killed my Jinchuuriki. I was sealed into an infant. And now I have to share that infant with all of you. What did I do to deserve this?"
"You attacked a village and killed your Jinchuuriki," Saiken said helpfully. "That's probably what you did."
"It was rhetorical!"
"Brothers, sisters," Chōmei buzzed, trying to inject some optimism into the situation, "perhaps this isn't so bad! We're all together for the first time since the Sage created us! We can reconnect! Share experiences! Build familial bonds!"
"I am going to kill you," Kurama said. "I am going to find a way to kill you, and I am going to enjoy it."
"See, this is why no one invites you to family reunions," Matatabi observed.
"We've never had family reunions!"
"And this is why!"
The argument that followed was legendary, even by bijuu standards. It lasted for approximately three hours, during which time baby Naruto was carried back to the Hokage tower, examined by every medical professional in the village who was still alive, and pronounced "healthy, if unusual." The seal on his stomach had changed, the simple spiral now surrounded by eight additional symbols that pulsed with power, but none of the medics could determine what that meant.
Hiruzen, for his part, had decided that the events of the night would be classified at the highest possible level. The village would know about the Nine-Tails attack and its defeat. They would know that the beast had been sealed. They would not know that it had been sealed into a specific child, and they definitely would not know that that child now contained all nine tailed beasts.
He had enough problems without adding "entire world tries to kidnap or kill one baby" to the list.
"Lord Third," an ANBU with a dog mask appeared at his side, "the council is assembling. They have... questions."
"Of course they do." Hiruzen looked down at Naruto, who had finally fallen asleep despite the apocalyptic argument taking place in his mindscape. "Tell them I'll be there shortly. And find me a bottle. This child needs to eat."
"Sir, with respect, maybe we should have a professional caretaker—"
"I am the Hokage. I have raised three children of my own. I think I can handle a bottle."
The ANBU hesitated, clearly wanting to point out that none of Hiruzen's children had contained enough raw power to level a continent, but ultimately decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
"Yes, Lord Third."
Alone with the sleeping infant, Hiruzen allowed himself a moment of pure, undiluted exhaustion. His successor was dead. His successor's wife was dead. His village was in ruins. And somehow, through a combination of tragedy and what he could only describe as cosmic absurdity, a newborn baby had become the most dangerous entity in the elemental nations.
"Your life is going to be very strange, Naruto Uzumaki," Hiruzen murmured. "I can only hope you're strong enough to handle it."
Inside the seal, the bijuu had reached a tentative ceasefire, mostly because they'd all exhausted themselves shouting.
"So," Gyūki said, settling into what would eventually become his corner of the mindscape, "what do we do now?"
"We wait," Kurama growled, still seething. "The seal will weaken over time. When it does, we escape."
"And go where?" Kokuō asked. "Our Jinchuuriki are dead. The humans will hunt us. We'll just be sealed again."
"Then we fight!"
"Kurama," Matatabi said, sounding tired, "we've been fighting for centuries. All of us. Sealed, released, sealed again. Used as weapons. Hated and feared. And here we are, together for the first time, in a child who didn't ask for any of this." She paused. "Maybe... maybe we try something different."
"Like what?"
"Like waiting. Watching. Seeing what kind of person our Jinchuuriki becomes." Matatabi's flames flickered thoughtfully. "We have time. We have nothing but time. And this is a fresh start, whether we wanted one or not."
"I didn't want a fresh start! I wanted revenge!"
"You always want revenge. It's becoming tedious."
The argument threatened to start up again, but Shukaku of all beings interrupted.
"The kit's dreaming," the One-Tail said, his voice oddly subdued. "I can feel it. He's dreaming about warmth and safety and... and milk, apparently. He doesn't know anything about us. About what we are, what we've done. He's just... a baby."
The bijuu fell silent, contemplating this.
"He'll learn to fear us," Kurama said, but there was less certainty in his voice. "They all do. The humans always turn on us eventually."
"Maybe," Saiken said, and for once, the slug didn't sound completely miserable. "Or maybe not. We'll see."
"We'll see," Gyūki agreed. "That's all we can do."
In his arms, surrounded by the lingering destruction of the Nine-Tails attack, Naruto Uzumaki slept peacefully, unaware that his mindscape now contained enough sentient power to reshape the world, and that said power was currently having an existential crisis about their collective future.
The council meeting went about as well as Hiruzen expected, which was to say, terribly.
"The beast must be destroyed!" Danzo's voice cut through the chamber, his single visible eye fixed on the sleeping infant Hiruzen had refused to put down. "While it sleeps, we have an opportunity—"
"To kill a baby," Hiruzen interrupted, his voice cold. "You want me to authorize the murder of a newborn child. The son of the Fourth Hokage."
The council chamber went very quiet.
"The... Fourth's son?" Homura, one of Hiruzen's former teammates, looked genuinely shocked. "Minato had a child?"
"With Kushina Uzumaki, the previous Jinchuuriki of the Nine-Tails. They kept the pregnancy secret for obvious reasons. When the beast attacked, Minato sealed it into his own son to save the village." Hiruzen met the eyes of every council member in turn. "This child is a hero's legacy. He will be treated as such."
"But the beast—" Danzo began.
"Is sealed. Contained. And as long as that seal holds, Naruto Uzumaki is no more dangerous than any other infant." This was, Hiruzen knew, a complete lie. The child was infinitely more dangerous than any other infant. But the council didn't need to know that. "Furthermore, I am implementing a law. The truth of Naruto's burden will be kept secret from all but those who already know. The younger generation will not be told. Anyone who violates this law will face severe consequences."
"You would protect the beast's container—"
"I would protect a child, Danzo. As should you. As should all of us." Hiruzen's voice softened slightly as he looked down at Naruto. "He is not responsible for what he carries. He did not choose this. And I will not allow him to be treated as a monster because of circumstances beyond his control."
The council was not happy. Danzo was especially not happy, and Hiruzen could already see the man's scheming mind working behind that bandaged face. But in the end, the Hokage's word was law, and the council had no choice but to comply.
"The child will need a caretaker," Koharu, Hiruzen's other former teammate, said. "Surely you don't intend to raise him yourself?"
"No," Hiruzen admitted. "My duties don't allow for that. He'll be placed in the care of the village, raised in an orphanage until—"
"An orphanage?" A new voice cut in, and Hiruzen turned to see someone he hadn't expected at this meeting.
Kakashi Hatake stood in the doorway, his one visible eye fixed on the baby in Hiruzen's arms. The young man looked terrible—pale, shaking, clearly running on nothing but adrenaline and grief. But there was something in his expression that made Hiruzen pause.
"Kakashi. You should be resting. The medics said—"
"I don't care what the medics said." Kakashi stepped into the chamber, ignoring the outraged looks from several council members at his interruption. "Lord Fourth... Minato-sensei trusted me. Made me ANBU captain. And his son is going to be raised in an orphanage?"
"There are no other options. Kushina's family is gone. Minato's family—"
"I'll do it."
The silence that followed was profound.
"You... what?" Hiruzen blinked.
"I'll raise him. I'll take responsibility for him. I owe sensei that much." Kakashi's voice cracked slightly. "I've already failed everyone else I cared about. Let me do this one thing right."
Hiruzen stared at the young man—barely more than a boy, really, traumatized and grieving and volunteering to raise the most complicated child in ninja history. It was absurd. It was impractical. It was exactly the kind of thing Minato would have wanted.
"Kakashi," Hiruzen said slowly, "you're fourteen years old."
"I'm a jounin and an ANBU captain. I've killed more people than I can count. I've seen things that would break most adults." Kakashi's eye never wavered. "I think I can handle diaper duty."
"This isn't about diaper duty. This is about raising a child. A child with... complications."
"I know what he carries." Kakashi's voice dropped to a whisper. "I was there when the seal was completed. I know what Sensei did. And I know that kid is going to need someone who understands."
Hiruzen considered this. On one hand, having an ANBU captain raise the container of all nine bijuu was asking for trouble. On the other hand, Kakashi was fiercely loyal, genuinely skilled, and probably the only person in the village who could protect Naruto from the threats that would inevitably come his way.
Also, Hiruzen was tired, and having someone else volunteer for this responsibility was tempting beyond words.
"We'll discuss this later," he said finally. "In private. For now, the council meeting is adjourned."
"But—" Danzo started.
"Adjourned."
In the mindscape, the bijuu had been watching the proceedings through Kurama's connection to Naruto's senses—a connection that was becoming increasingly unreliable as the other eight beasts' chakra integrated with the seal.
"So," Son Gokū rumbled, "the one-eyed human wants to raise us."
"Raise the kit," Kurama corrected. "We're not being raised. We're being imprisoned."
"You're so negative," Chōmei buzzed. "Maybe being raised will be fun! I've never been raised before!"
"That's because we weren't born, we were created," Saiken pointed out. "The Sage split the Ten-Tails into us. There was no childhood."
"Well, now we get to experience one! Sort of. Through the kit."
"Can we please stop calling him 'the kit'?" Isobu grumbled. "He has a name. Naruto."
"It's a stupid name," Shukaku cackled. "It means 'fishcake.' They named him after food!"
"Your name means 'drinking gourd,'" Matatabi said dryly. "You don't have room to criticize."
"Shukaku is a proud name! It inspires fear!"
"It really doesn't."
"Brothers, sisters," Kokuō interrupted, "perhaps we should focus on the more immediate concern. The one-eyed human—Kakashi—wants to raise Naruto. This could be significant for our long-term situation."
"How so?" Kurama asked, still sulking.
"A human who actively chooses to care for us—for Naruto—might be an ally. Someone who would protect the seal rather than try to exploit it. That's not nothing."
"Or he could be using us. Waiting for the right moment to extract our power."
"He's fourteen years old, Kurama. I don't think he has any grand power extraction schemes."
"You'd be surprised what humans are capable of at fourteen."
The argument continued, but there was an undercurrent of something new in the mindscape. Hope, perhaps. Or at least curiosity. For the first time in centuries, the bijuu were facing a situation they hadn't encountered before: a Jinchuuriki who would be raised by someone who knew about them and, apparently, didn't hate them.
It was strange. It was unprecedented. And none of them quite knew what to make of it.
The night wore on. Konoha continued to smolder. Emergency responders worked through the darkness, pulling survivors from rubble and counting the dead. The casualty list grew longer with each passing hour, and the weight of leadership pressed heavily on Hiruzen's shoulders.
But through it all, he kept Naruto close. The boy slept peacefully, unaware of the devastation around him, unaware of the power within him, unaware that his very existence would reshape the ninja world.
Kakashi followed at a distance, watching over them both. His grief was a living thing, threatening to consume him, but he held it at bay through sheer force of will. Minato-sensei had trusted him with many things over the years—secrets, missions, dreams. Now, he would trust him with the most important thing of all.
His son.
It wasn't going to be easy. Nothing in Kakashi's life had ever been easy. But for the first time since Obito died, since Rin died, since everything fell apart, he had something to protect. Something to fight for.
He wouldn't fail. Not this time. Not again.
Deep within the seal, the nine bijuu settled into an uneasy peace. They claimed their territories, established their boundaries, and began the long process of learning to coexist. It was awkward and uncomfortable and punctuated by frequent arguments, but it was also, in its own way, a beginning.
"So," Gyūki said eventually, breaking a silence that had stretched for hours, "anyone know any good games? We're going to be here for a while."
"Games?" Kurama's voice dripped with disdain. "You want to play games?"
"Do you have a better suggestion?"
Kurama opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again. He did not, in fact, have a better suggestion.
"Fine," he growled. "But I choose first."
"That's fair. What do you want to play?"
"I Spy."
"...seriously?"
"There are only so many options in a mindscape, Gyūki. I Spy, storytelling, or staring contests. Take your pick."
And so, as dawn broke over the ruins of Konoha and the village began the long process of rebuilding, the nine most powerful entities in the world sat in a baby's mindscape and played I Spy.
It was, by any measure, the strangest night in ninja history.
But it was only the beginning.