A week later..
Konoha...
Darkness clung to the village like a suffocating shroud.
Minato, dressed in his former Jonin attire beneath his Hokage robe stood at the edge of the street, breath frozen in his lungs. Konoha looked familiar… but wrong. The Hokage Monument loomed overhead, cracked and weathered, his own face etched in stone now shadowed and crumbling. The air was heavy. Silent.
Then he heard it.
A faint sob.
He turned the corner, and his heart stopped.
There, in the muddy alley between two merchant stalls, was a boy. Small, frail, dressed in a threadbare orange jacket stained with grime. Blonde hair matted, whiskers adorned his cheeks that were streaked with tears and dirt. He was curled up, shielding his head as stones pelted him from every direction.
"Monster!"
"Why don't you just die already?!"
"You're not welcome here!"
The voices were shrill, merciless, women clutching their children and pulling them away, men glaring with hate-filled eyes. Even shinobi stood watching, arms crossed, offering no aid. A kunai whizzed past the boy's head and embedded into the wall behind him with a dull thud.
"Naruto…"
Minato whispered his son's name, but his voice was soundless.
He tried to run forward, but his legs wouldn't move. He looked down in horror. His feet were sunken into the earth, like roots twisted into the soil of his own failure. His body trembled, muscles frozen, like time itself refused to let him intervene.
"Why won't they stop?" he cried. "He's just a boy!"
Naruto's small fingers grasped the dirt. He tried to stand.
Laughter erupted.
A child, no older than Naruto, kicked him squarely in the ribs. Naruto gasped and fell over with a grunt. He turned his face, slowly, towards the crowd… hoping, maybe, for a shred of compassion.
None came. Instead, someone spat.
"You're the demon fox," an old woman snarled. "You killed the Fourth."
Minato's heart shattered. He tried to scream, but no sound came.
Naruto's blue eyes, dim with pain, scanned the crowd. Searching. Pleading. Then, he looked up, through the alley, through the darkness, and locked eyes with him.
"Why did you leave me?" The words cut through the air, soft yet piercing. Minato's lips quivered. "I'm sorry—"
But the boy was gone.
The crowd vanished. The village dissolved into swirling smoke. The world collapsed inward. But the boy was gone.
And then...
Through the haze of vanishing streets and voices swallowed by void, Minato saw her.
Standing across from him. Still. Silent. Kushina.
Red hair flowing like embers caught in windless air, her eyes wide, soft, heartbroken. She stood in a place untouched by the nightmare around her, a beacon of aching familiarity. Her lips moved slowly, deliberately. Minato squinted, desperate to understand. She was mouthing something. He stepped forward, trembling. Her mouth moved again. A single word, over and over.
He couldn't hear her.
"…What are you saying?"
Kushina took one step closer. Her expression was pained, desperate. Her fingers reached out as if to touch his cheek.
Then he heard it.
Barely a whisper.
"…He's alone."
And he fell, through void, through time, through guilt deeper than any darkness.
*
Minato sprang up from bed almost immediately, wakizashi in hand, ready to kill. His chest heaved in and out, as he panted, covered in sweat. Regaining his senses, his eyes squinted for a moment, and then he tossed the blade in hand to the side and buried his face in his hands.
'The same nightmare again...Naruto, Kushina, I'm sorry..' The voice in his head was a whisper. He held back the tears that threatened to fall. He thought time would wash away the guilt, the sorrow, but it only got worse. Reaching out, he untied his forehead protector and brought it close to him, staring deep at it, his face reflected in the metallic mirror like surface.
Could he even hate them? That was the question that lingered on his mind. Could he bring himself to hate the people of Konoha for ostracizing his boy? 'I-I can't..' He closed his eyes and ran a hand through his hair, before resting his back against the wall. He could only blame himself, for failing in his duty as a father.
He closed his eyes. Strength. Even he who once stood at the pinnacle of the Shinobi world had lost. If he had shattered his own limits and evolved even further, perhaps he, and Kushina would've been alive to give Naruto the childhood he deserved. Perhaps.
Lone rays of sunshine shone through his window onto his face. Minato took a deep breath. His eyes fluttered open with a profound look. He needed strength. Would it be possible to traverse space and time to go be with Naruto? To finally get the chance to apologize to his son, for abandoning him. He didn't know. But there was only one way to find out .
Grabbing the wakizashi, he tossed on his recently laundered jacket that he had awoken in this world with and walked onto the courtyard, determined. Standing in the centre, he closed his eyes for a moment. He was going to go above and beyond. And there, he felt it. A slight thrum from the blade in his hand. As if it was trying to communicate something..
Minato examined it for a moment there and closed his eyes. With a sharp exhale, a concentrated aura of pure yellow burst out of his body. He still hasn't figured out the nature of the blade in his hand. Hoping his Reiatsu was the bridge between himself and the blade he poured it out, only to be met with silence.
"Sigh. Why won't you let me in?" After a while, he just had to give up, cutting a frustrated look. No matter how much of his Reiatsu he fed the blade, it just wouldn't respond. Maybe the secret to communicate wasn't Reiatsu based, time will tell. That didn't make sense, as all cursed tools followed a principle. They bonded with the user through a means. Most at times the means was just sharing energy with it, blood, flesh.. it always has to be something. He just needed to find what it was that triggered it..
Sheathing it onto his lower back, he took a step back and formed the hand seal of confrontation. Incredible Reiatsu exploded from his body, dyeing tnt Surroundings yellow. After the old man had explained everything to him, it was only a matter of time before he figured it all out.
Getting the Reiryoku to flow through from the Hakusui to the Saketsu and then to the vents on the underside of his arms had been relatively simple, considering Minato had always had an affinity for chakra and energy itself, in this case Reiryoku. But that didn't mean he had automatically returned to his peak.
Harnessing Reiatsu was just the first step. Now he had to find a way to incorporate it's energy base into his Jutsus. All Shinobi Jutsus used different and complex chakra circulations to achieve their effects. That's why hand seals were necessary in the use of Jutsus. They concentrated the chakra from the core of the user and ensured a better flow and circulation.
Now he needed to figure out, how Reiryoku was going to react with the complex Jutsus and the circulatory paths and flows in order to use his attacks. This was more of Orochimaru's field than his, but Minato was sure he could deduce and form circulatory pathways for his Reiryoku in order to use his Jutsus, after all, he had created the Rasengan in such a manner. He had already figured out how to use basic Jutsus without interruption.
Namely, the four basic Jutsu taught to every genin at the base of their Shinobi careers. Substitution Jutsu, the Body Flicker, Transformation and the Clone Jutsu. These were relatively easy to replicate considering their simple and easy energy circulation process.
He took a step forward and then faster than an ordinary eye could blink, he disappeared in a quick flash of yellow light. He was like a golden shadow, flickering to and fro the courtyard faster than almost anybody could react to. Flickering onto the wall of his courtyard, he crouched low, standing on the side of the wall as if it were a horizontal floor , his body parallel to the ground.
He smiled. 'The nostalgia..' Minato shook his head. This was one of the Jutsus from which he got his moniker, the Yellow Flash, from. The other was the Flying Thunder God. Minato felt a strange sensation in his chest when mentioned it, but he shrugged and corkscrewed onto the ground, landing silently.
Forming the hand seal of confrontation, he moulded his Reiatsu and then in the next moment, poof, an identical clone formed beside him in a puff of smoke. He looked at the clone, examining it for a while with his hand on his chin..
'The energy holding up the clone would disperse with the least damage. I need to master the Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu as fast as I can..'
He scratched his head. It wasn't much, but would do for the moment. The basic shadow Clone Jutsu wasn't actually a clone formation Jutsu. Moulding chakra, one would bend light around then to create a realistic image of themselves to confuse enemies. The more control one had over their chakra, the more they'd be able to control this image.
"Minato!! Wake up sleepy head, we have a big day today!" It was sudden, but the old man's head popped out through his window and his eyes rolled back into his sockets, seeing Minato and his clone staring at him in flabbergast..
A/N: Wasn't able to post yesterday. I'll throw in an extra chapter.