"Excuse me, are you really the Fourth Hokage?"
After the disappearance of the Reanimated Four Kages, Gaara instructed Temari to gather the injured, then he finally approached Minato.
"I am the Fourth Hokage of Konoha. You must be Gaara~ Haha, my son probably gave you a lot of trouble, right?"
Minato knew Gaara was a friend of his son, so he spoke a bit casually.
"Your son is?"
Gaara was a bit stunned. After becoming the Kazekage, he had seriously studied the knowledge of the major ninja villages.
Included in that was information about the Hokages of Konoha and their families.
But in the records, under the Fourth Hokage's family, only his wife Uzumaki Kushina was mentioned—there was no information about their son.
Gaara really didn't know who Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki's son was.
Wait, Uzumaki?
Thinking of this, Gaara glanced again at the Fourth Hokage's hair.
Suddenly, he had a guess in his mind.
"Your son wouldn't happen to be Uzumaki Naruto, right?"
"Haha, that's exactly him."
Minato laughed heartily and confirmed Gaara's guess.
"This…"
Gaara's eyes widened.
Even though he had guessed, he was still shocked to learn Naruto was the Fourth Hokage's son.
But thinking carefully, there wasn't really anything surprising.
Naruto was the son of the Fourth Hokage, just as Gaara was the son of the Fourth Kazekage.
There was just one thing he still couldn't figure out. Since Naruto's identity was so special, why would Konoha hide it?
Could there be some secret that can't be revealed?
As Naruto's friend, Gaara knew a bit about Naruto's childhood hardships. Now, he asked with a bit of anger, "If Uncle and Auntie weren't dead, then why did Naruto suffer so much when he was little?"
"Well, this matter is complicated. It's not something I can explain in just a few words."
Minato and Kushina looked a little embarrassed.
They already knew what the Third Hokage was thinking. After being revived, they had checked into it.
But these things couldn't be told to outsiders, even if it were their son's friends.
"If Uncle and Auntie don't mind, we can keep it short."
"."
Looking at Gaara's serious face, Minato sighed lightly, "I can only say that Kushina and I are not from this timeline."
"Not from this timeline? What does that mean?"
"If you see Naruto, you can tell him. He should understand."
When Minato was young, he once went on a mission to Roran.
There, he met an older Naruto.
Back then, he didn't know about parallel timelines. He was worried that telling others might affect the future badly.
But now, it didn't matter anymore.
He believed Naruto, who also traveled through time using the Dragon Vein, would understand what he meant.
Even if his silly son didn't get it, there was always Kakashi.
"Alright, Gaara, our time's up. We have to go now."
"Go back? Go where?"
Before Gaara could figure out the last question, he heard the Fourth Hokage say they were leaving.
Before he could finish speaking, Minato, Kushina, and another white-haired man disappeared from his sight.
"???"
Allied Forces Headquarters.
With White Zetsu's retreat and the collapse of the Edo Tensei army, the Allied Forces won their first battle quite impressively.
Compared to the original story, not only did fewer ninja die, but they also sealed the Fourth Kazekage and the Second Mizukage earlier than expected.
Tsunade and the others of the Fifth Hokage's generation didn't know much about the original story, but they clearly saw that the enemy's Edo Tensei army had fewer strong ninja, which greatly reduced the pressure on the Allied Forces in the upcoming battles.
"Hokage, can you finally tell us what's going on with your reinforcements?"
With the first day's battle over, Raikage A and Onoki finally had the time and energy to ask Tsunade.
"What do you mean, what's going on?"
The Fifth Hokage didn't want to tell them that Orochimaru and the others were from another timeline.
Right now, everyone was united against the enemy, and it seemed like a happy alliance, but what about after the war?
The existence of the light screen was her secret, a secret of Konoha.
As Hokage, she had to be responsible for the village.
"Don't play dumb, Hokage. Why did the dead Orochimaru, Jiraiya, Minato Namikaze, and others show up here? And that other you that even the Raikage and I couldn't tell was fake—aren't you going to properly explain that to us? Could it be that Konoha is messing around with some evil forbidden jutsu again?"
Konoha's research on forbidden jutsu was quite famous in the ninja world.
No need to go far back, just recently—
Wasn't the Edo Tensei technique invented by Konoha?
If that forbidden jutsu didn't exist, this war wouldn't have been so dangerous.
To be blunt, Konoha was mostly responsible for how intense the Fourth Great Ninja War became.
Hmm... They still didn't know that the masked man was also born in Konoha.
If they found out, Konoha wouldn't just bear most of the blame, but all of it.
Think about it, the masked man who started the Ninja War used to be from Konoha.
The Reanimation Jutsu is also a forbidden technique from Konoha.
And the person who used this forbidden jutsu is also someone who used to be from Konoha.
Wow, so the Fourth Great Ninja War was actually an internal war of Konoha, huh.
That's just ridiculous.
"Don't worry, ever since Orochimaru defected, Konoha has given up on researching forbidden jutsu."
Hearing this, Onoki didn't reply to Tsunade but instead asked Raikage A, "Raikage, do you believe that?"
Raikage A shook his head, "I don't believe it."
"Funny, I don't believe it either."
Then the two stared hard at Tsunade, like saying, if you don't talk, we'll just keep staring at you.
Tsunade had a headache.
Seeing how determined they were, if she didn't reveal some information, they definitely wouldn't let it go.
No choice, Tsunade had to pretend to accept fate and said, "Alright, alright, I'm really scared of you guys. Minato, Orochimaru, those dead people, and another me, they actually aren't from this timeline, but from another timeline. As for the details, don't ask, even if you ask, I won't say. Those who understand, understand."
Raikage A and Onoki looked at each other, totally confused.
"Hokage, I'm a reckless guy, not an idiot, don't say things I can't understand to trick me."
"Yeah, Hokage, no one here is stupid. Don't think you can just bluff your way through."
"Heh, I'm telling the truth. Believe it or not, that's up to you."
Seeing the two still looked doubtful, Tsunade stopped wasting words with them.
She took out a big stack of paper seals from her ninja tools bag and placed them on the table:
"These were left to me by Orochimaru before he left. They say these can detect White Zetsu's possession and lurking."
"Possession and lurking?"
Once it got to the serious matter, Raikage A and Onoki stopped holding on to that small issue.
In the face of war, everything else is secondary.
They can ask about it again after they win this war.
*********
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