Kumo had attacked. Thanks to Konoha's alliance with Kirigakure, they could not come by water, and instead arrived by land, scattered, impoverished, and lost. Outpost ninja caught them early, and were right now keeping them trapped in a lake surrounded by cliffs on the border of Rice Country.
When he arrived, he noted with a dull sort of horror that over the battlefield of warring ninjas, two stood out in particular: first by the fact that they did not acknowledge the existence of anyone else, second, by one's unnatural appendages bursting out of his back, and the other's incorporeal tail of boiling red energy, and third, that the winged one was the Uchiha boy, and that the blonde one, the boy with her eyes, the youth bearing demonic chakra, was his thirteen years dead son.
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"Gods DAMN, this is NOT the time to go INSANE!" His head hurt worse than anything else he had ever experienced, even worse than the first time he had tried out Hiraishin, and almost everyone knew what kind of a mind trip THAT had put him through, but even now the pain was receding in favor of a pleasantly fuzzy sensation, like a hangover in reverse.
"What the hell are you doing here?!" That was the purple winged monster who was also somehow the Uchiha child. He could see him? He could see... He could interact!
"You… You're supposed to be dead." He thumped the boy on the head. The Uchiha were all traitors to Konoha, after all. The small amount of Senju blood that ran through his veins cried out in excited glee at the violence towards the blood traitor.
The fox-sheathed boy stared down at the unconscious body of the Uchiha, then looked back up at Minato in horror.
"S-Sasuke-teme… You BASTARD!"
"He was going to hurt you," Minato explained. What a curious experience this was. By now, all traces of Konoha and Kumo nin had vanished. A dozen theories flashed through his addled mind, and he picked up the one that seemed most likely. "In my world, that means I saved you. Is it different here?"
The look on his son's face was quite amusing. "But- I was gonna- I promised- who ARE you?"
Still buzzing pleasantly from the experience of what he now thought of as crossing dimensions, Minato giggled at the thought that even though the entire ninja world knew him at first glance, his own son couldn't recognize him. "…You know, that's the first time someone's asked me that in a long time."
The boy stared at him. "You're not going to answer. Fine. Thanks for knocking Sasuke out, I guess." He began to drag the body.
"Where are you going?"
"Konoha."
"Mind if I tag along?"
"Whatever."
"You look morose."
"My best friend just tried to kill me."
"That's a damper."
-----
They made most of the rest of the trip without speaking, only pausing for the boy to punch his companion back into unconsciousness whenever the Uchiha brat began to wake up again. Kakashi caught up with them a few miles before they reentered Konoha, and arrested Minato on the spot. He wasn't particularly surprised by this, and agreed rather amiably to the rights Kakashi read to him as a prisoner, however few though those rights were in number.
"If you tell us everything we want to know, you will not be deliberately harmed. If at the end of interrogation you are deemed a danger to Konoha, you will be dealt with appropriately." Kakashi then spiced up this amazing deal by glaring at Minato with one dark, hate-filled eye and throwing in an insult to boot. "You filthy imposter."
Minato smiled.
Kakashi punched him in the eye.
They continued their trudging walk back to Konoha.
-----
As a suspected spy to Konoha, Minato had been suitably restrained. Chakra suppressing handcuffs and foot manacles, state-approved clothing of cheap off-white canvas, and a variety of restrainers chaining him against the wall in a manner that would not interrupt blood circulation or cause significant discomfort, but were quite impossible to maneuver around. Had Minato resisted these measures, he would have suffered a great deal more than just restraints, and he would have been quite bored if it had not been for Anko.
Not very many people realized that as fellow students of the Sannin, they would be of the same generation. Even fewer knew that they hated each other passionately. Or at least he thought they did.
After a somewhat embarrassing confrontation, where he acted very childishly and called Anko some unsavory names that resulted in a bright red handprint on his face, she admitted that she wished he had never died. Minato gave her a grin so humorless it felt more like baring his teeth than a reassuring facial expression. "You should be glad your wish didn't come true here-I couldn't even keep you away from Orochimaru."
She left directly after that, no doubt to recover from the shattered hero worship thing, but the woman came straight back the next day. With tales.
"Do you know, he came up with his first original technique when he was twelve? You must be so proud-he calls it his Sexy no jutsu. He uses Henge to turn himself into a naked girl, and tries to make perverts nosebleed."
"Oh, yeah, he's got PLENTY of friends. He spends all night chatting and laughing with them. I've never seen such green leaves before-I guess talking to plants really is good for them."
"Poor little fellow got last place in his class, but he managed to graduate by beating one of his instructors half to death."
Minato bore this verbal torture with a permanent rictus of a smile and occasionally with a short bark of a laugh, but inside he made plans… Oh yes, the first thing he would do when he got out of his place would be to hug his son to death. Then, he would pound the idiot into the ground. When would this examination end?
-----
The majority of the conversations with the faceless interviewers went something like this:
"What is your name and where are you from?"
"My name is Namikaze Minato and I come from a different Konoha. When can I see my son?"
"You are not Namikaze Minato. You are a spy and/or suffering from identity crisis."
And so on, repeated in fifty different ways over the course of the last month. He supposed he should be thankful. If he were in the current Hokage's position, he wouldn't have wasted time on such a troublesome prisoner, instead letting such a person be killed in their cell a few days after their imprisonment. Minato blinked, and would have shook his head if the restraints allowed it. He really should be thankful.
-----
Between Anko's sporadic visits, he was questioned about the other reality and his own childhood, as the rulers of the city attempted to ascertain that Minato was not in fact an enemy spy, and more importantly, that he really was who he said he was. Although one reason why the process took so long WAS his fault, or at least fault could be attributed to him; when a Yamanaka had been brought in to perform one of those mind rape techniques, Minato smiled in greeting.
"Hey, Inoichi, how's it going?"
Yamanaka Inoichi ran away from the Interrogation Compound screaming.
Gods above, but he wished they would stop their questions and just let him meet his son.
It was that thought that kept him sane. When Anko was not regaling him with tidbits of the boy's life she had learned while serving her time in ANBU watching over him, Minato drew back on his sparse memories of when this entire world was still a phantom, and he could glimpse bits and pieces of his son's day-to-day life.
These things, Minato knew: The boy liked ramen.
He had a rivalry with the Uchiha scion.
He used Kage Bunshin extensively, and somehow had not yet been driven insane-probably.
He had the King of the Tailed Demons sealed into his gut.
Much like his mother, he was unhealthily obsessed with that particular shade of kill-me neon orange. And that was it, really.
The kid seemed fairly content without any real father, and the mistakes he was making were perfectly ordinary flaws that would be sorted out with time and maturity. This world really was better off without Minato. Damn that Sarutobi for dying off before his time.
Speaking of which…
"Oy, Anko-chan, where's the old professor? I know the old codger's around here somewhere, I saw him talking with…" His son. Why couldn't he remember the name of his son?
"He's dead."
"What? No, he can't-"
"I don't mean years ago, he died a few months before you popped out of nowhere. Tsunade's the Godaime now. The brat and the ero-sennin brought her back, if you're interested to know."
"E-ero-sennin?"
"A nickname your kid started for your old teacher, and well, it was so appropriate, people just picked up on it."
"How did Sarutobi die, though? In my time, it took the King of the Demons and his own skewed sense of sacrifice to take him down."
There was a cold, frigid silence.
"He died trying to seal away Orochimaru the same way you had sealed the Kyuubi." Anko collapsed on her seat, the weight of her past decisions heavy on her head. "If he were here, it would make clearing your name so much easier…" She left after that, and now the only visitors Minato saw were trying to prove that he either was a spy or mentally deranged. At least, until one night…
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Explanation for why mindreading didn't work out edited in.