DISCLAIMER: I do not claim to be the creator of the Naruto manga or anime series. I had absolutely no part in any creation of the series, and I'm just a dedicated fan of this series who has taken my time to create this fanfiction.

Author Notes: This is a semi-self-insert fiction of what I think would happen if Minato had two teammates who would not only challenge him to do better but could keep up. The semi will be self-explanatory within this first chapter, I hope you enjoy it. This is rated M, because of possible language, and violence. At no time will there be a pairing between any of the three teammates. Not that there won't be pairings outside their team, just not inside it.

I am trying to pull most of my resources on timeline from the manga, but I am only human so if any of my readers have any insight that I have missed on the timeline do drop me a message.

"Speech"

"Inner thoughts and speech"

"INNER YELLING"

I will add more if/when they become needed

Chapter 1 - Unexpected Beginnings

-STORY BEGINS-

What is the nature of the self? Until the end, I never really had thought about it. I just lived life as anyone did, day by day. To be honest, my end could have been foreseen, but really, I doubt I would've lived my life any differently. Now that it's over, I fully expected to go on to heaven, or to purgatory, or whatever the afterlife was. See, what happened was I was at a Boy Scout outing, trying to teach a bunch of newbie Scouts about water safety. Well, that didn't turn out well. I ended up dying. Kinda the opposite of water safety! Talk about ironic. Not that it was the Scouts' fault, it was an accident. I doubt even the driver of the boat that we were pulled behind could have guessed that a raft could swing out that far. Last thing I remembered was seeing the metal boat dock coming up quickly. I shoved the scouts to the far side of the raft as I dove between them and the dock. I looked up again, saw the gleam of the metal siding, then everything went black.

Imagine my surprise when I opened my eyes again. I blinked sleep and sluggishness from my eyes, trying to shake my head. I couldn't move it. Unsurprising. My vision started to clear, my instincts searching for some recognizable sight. White or overhead lights, the smell of disinfectant. Something that would tell me where I was. What I didn't expect to see was a face that was way too large to be human. Huge, looming, leaning over me. The features were feminine and Asian, and as my eyes moved around to look at my surroundings, I noticed the woman seemed to be wearing some sort of medical coat. My immediate thought was "Hey maybe I am not dead, maybe they were able to bring me back." I opened my mouth, but instead of words, a high-pitched screaming cry escaped from me. The sound itself shocked me into silence. I must be really awful if all I could do was scream. The woman started to wrap me up in a huge, bright pink blanket. It was so warm and comforting, I couldn't help falling back asleep as she tucked the edges underneath me. The questions that flooded my mind could wait. Things would make more sense after I woke up.

When I woke up, it was dark out. I realized that I was on my back, facing the ceiling. I tried to move my arms, my fingers, even a toe, but it seemed that I had been paralyzed by that accident. Not even a toe could twitch. I tried to talk again, but that wordless screaming cry was all that came out. "This is starting to annoy me." As I tried to make a list of what I saw or what I could do, I felt my eyes start to close again. "How can I be tired again?!" But no matter how hard I fought the feeling, sleep overcame me and I passed out again.

The next few "day(s)" were very boring. My time was spent lying there on my back, or being carried by these huge women around an unbelievably large room. I slept most of the time. There was some crying each time I attempted to talk to those women, which usually resulted being flipped about in their arms to be draped over one of their shoulders, and thumped on the center of my back. But the most embarrassing part of those days, more so than the carrying or the crying, was the first time they fed me. They held this bottle over me that looked like a baby bottle. "What kind of hospital is this?" They must have seen the something on my face, as they looked quizzically between the bottle and me a few times, but what the hell? I was so hungry that I swallowed my pride and sucked on the bottle.

After those few days, I was awoken by a new person picking me up. A giant of a man smiled gently at me as he hefted me into his arms. He rocked me gently as he began to walk with me. He had black hair, dark and kind eyes, and wore a headband with a shiny metal plate with a weird symbol on it. His olive green vest was rough when it brushed against my cheek, but as he was doing his best to hold me properly and to support my head. (After being carried these last few days I found that yeah muscle control was out of the question. My head rolled around, my arms were practically useless, and my legs could only twitch when I tried to move them. It seemed that the only thing I could do was eat, sleep, cry, oh, and the nasty thing that happens when one partakes of food.) I was, oddly enough, taken from my white room by this man and the women all waved us goodbye. I was confused, but I was in no state to argue. Except for a pathetic screaming cry which did nothing to deter him.

As we exited the building, I realized that we were in (what I would call) a large town or a small city that had to have built by hand. The dirt road he was walking down was like what I had seen in those old wild west films and the shops and buildings were equally constructed but with a more eastern look. The one thing I could say was this place was busy, it must have been a town that probably needed to have some massive renovation but it was all well kept. After a several minutes of him walking with me in his arms, he stopped to talk to someone else. He even moved me off his shoulder to a cradle hold, which was even more embarrassing, to what I could tell was show me off to this person. This man he was showing me off to was also wearing a olive green vest and a copy of that headband. If I had to have made a guess they had to be related, because beyond some facial features, they could have been twins. It was a bit disconcerting.

After a few minutes, he continued on his walk, past a wall, through an archway that had a different symbol on it, this one was like a, well, pokè ball with a tail downwards with the red on the top and white on the bottom. I was thoroughly confused at this point and reflexively cried out. The man moved me back to a shoulder carry and patted my back, saying something in a language I couldn't understand at all, though sounded vaguely familiar. He carried me to a house and from what I could hear knocked on the door. After a few seconds the door was clearly opened as he moved forward into the house.

The man handed me off to a woman, who also had that raven black hair. God, she was beautiful. I envied this man to have someone like that to come home to every day. She carried me to a small room, cooing and smiling down at me. She then laid me down, and at that point I noticed I was in a crib. It was very clearly a crib. Realization is a hard wall to run into. Almost as hard as a metal dock. "OH GOD, I AM A BABY! REINCARNATION IS A THING?!"

Hope everyone enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I also wish to give thanks to frodoschick on co-writing specifically with the grammar and conversation writing.