"I thought the first hokage was more powerful," Anko said as the pressure on them lessened due to the flashes of yellow light, each of which heralded the death of another enemy nin.

"In this type of battle Minato is more effective," Jiraiya explained. "Besides I thought he was going to kill him, not resurrect him. Also, I have only a few hard counters for Minato and all of them take time to set up."

"I don't suppose you'd care to share one with me, for old time's sake," Orochimaru requested as he dodged away from a flash of light and the mook next to him died.

"You don't really think he's going to tell you, do you?" Xander asked amused, as a kunai bounced off his armor.

"Dimensional anchor seal," Jiraiya said. "Takes forever to set up and the scrolls are real finicky. I figure they have an eighty percent chance of working, as being a seal master Minato may have thought of a way around it."

Minato appeared in a flash of light to cut down a trio of nin standing close together, his wind laced kunai cutting them in half. "I did," he said cheerfully before vanishing.

"Never tell the enemy the answer in the middle of battle," Xander complained, "you never know when they have some hidden power that just perfectly fits the situation."

Orochimaru chuckled and blocked a fireball with a stone wall. "The answer while true, was a trap," he explained, "as many of my most effective skills rely on being able to summon in one form or another. If I had a scroll nearby it would reduce my capabilities by nearly a third. You need to teach your apprentice better, this is first year material."

"He's not my apprentice," Jiraiya replied.

"My spies said he was learning seals from you," Orochimaru countered.

"Hold still and die!" Tiamo ordered creating a hail storm of steel and explosions that Orochimaru managed to avoid while the squad of nin around him did not.

"What is your problem?" Orochimaru asked annoyed by the interruption. "You are as… enthusiastic as my wayward apprentice about killing me and she at least has some decent reasons to do so."

"I've got to kill you so I can sign the snake summons," Tiamo replied, fingers automatically attaching exploding seals to kunai as she talked.

"She's making you kill me to sign the contract?" he asked amused.

"I can't exactly get the contract while you're alive, now can I?" Anko asked sarcastically as she copied Tiamo.

"You're the apprentice, it's your job to see to passing it down, like I did to you," Orochimaru said exasperated.

"You never taught me that!" Anko complained.

"I thought it was obvious," he replied, genuinely surprised she hadn't known.

Jiraiya laughed and summoned a car sized toad on top of a group of nin that were standing too close together.

The rain of explosives separated the two forces for a moment as rock and dirt filled the air, before the battle was joined once more.

"Where is he getting all those kunai?" Xander asked as the Yellow Flash flung three pronged kunai about with abandon and teleported all over the place decimating the dwindling enemy nin.

"He has a couple of seals tattooed on his body," Jiraiya said as the first tried to entangle the fourth who vanished before the second's water dungeon could reach him.

"Delay them," Orochimaru ordered as he prepared to flee.

"Remember when I said I could only do it once?" Xander yelled.

"No…" Orochimaru said, freezing in place for a second.

"I lied," Xander said cheerfully calling up half a dozen mana at once and causing the two corpse puppets to turn to ash. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." Xander winced and fell to one knee for a moment, looking a little ashen.

"But that wasn't the same thing at all," a nameless mook said.

"I lied twice," Xander replied with a shrug as he regained his feet.

Without the first and second hokage distracting him the fourth completely obliterated the enemy forces leaving only Danzo and Orochimaru facing them.

"Didn't I kill you?" Xander asked Danzo.

"He's using those eyes in his left arm to turn his body into an illusion," Jiraiya said, "it lets him recover from any injury as if it hadn't occurred."

Danzo opened his mouth to speak but there was a flash of yellow and his throat was cut. One of the eyes closed and the damage reversed itself.

"Has anyone tried dispelling illusions while he does that?" Xander asked.

"A little assistance please," Danzo requested.

"Do I look like I'm in any position to provide help?" Orochimaru asked sarcastically. "Besides, I'm kinda curious about the answer myself."

"Traitor!" Danzo hissed, making Orochimaru laugh.

A kunai embedded itself in Danzo's throat before he could dodge, causing blood to pour down his chest. One of the four remaining open eyes closed and the blood reversed direction.

Several waves of chakra struck Danzo before it could completely reverse the damage and his form wavered and vanished, dropping a single bloody kunai to the ground.

Orochimaru smirked when everyone turned their attention to him. "I used the chakra pulse to cover switching myself with an enhanced clone I had prepared in advance. I can't be told from the real thing and I'm miles from here at this point and getting further by the second!" He laughed gaily. "I win yet again."

"Are we just going to buy that?" Xander asked as everyone complained or groaned.

"When you get to be our level you don't lie about things like that," Jiraiya said.

"Fine," Xander said with a heavy sigh, "if it's actually a clone it won't mind shaking my hand." Xander walked over to 'it'.

"Sure," 'it' said, "but for what purpose?"

"Because you should be real enough for me to create copies of to help with research," Xander replied, shaking the 'clones' hand. "Thanks."

"And shaking my hand allows this?" the 'clone' asked curiously.

"What do you know about crystal growth?" Xander asked.

"Tons," the 'clone' replied.

"Excellent," Xander said, "then my explanation will make perfect sense to you. Let me create a table and chairs and writing instruments so we can pick each other's brains."

Two hours later

"I feel like I should have known this all along," the 'clone' complained as they discussed the nature of chakra and the land that produced it. "By drawing from swamps as a primary source of sage chakra I tend towards domination and destruction while if I want to create anything lasting, I am going to have to find a way to filter that connection."

"Then shouldn't he be using green mana?" Minato asked gesturing towards Jiraiya with a grin.

"Red mana is the mana of explorers and designers, it inflames passions in general rather than just reproduction the way green does, but since his passion is… well, passion, you really can't tell the difference," Xander explained.

"I have to hunt down my original self and convince him to change his ways," the 'clone' said. "It's been an experience and I hope I've helped you as much as you've helped me."

"Pretty sure I can raise undead minions now and your knowledge of artificing and healing wasn't bad either," Xander said. "Hope you find him."

"Thanks."

Anko and Tiamo continued to work on her summoning, introducing her to the various snakes while the other three nin went over the notes from their discussion before putting them away.

"If we're through here I really should get home and check on Naruto," Minato said.

"You may want to wait until I send a message," Jiraiya said, "I can't imagine people coming back from the dead is an everyday event for sensei so he's probably going to have to invent some new forms at the very least."

"You mean I will," Minato said with a sigh.

"Planning on taking up the mantle again?"

"Once a hokage always a hokage," Minato said. "Any messages you want me to take back with me?"

"Danzo's dead, root's been cut, and sound's silenced," Jiraiya replied. "We'll be back in two to three weeks, call if you need us."

"Will do," Minato said, before flashing around the field of corpses and collecting all his kunai, which he used a quick water jutsu to clean before he resealed them and vanished one last time.

"Looting all these corpses and disposing of them is going to take forever," Jiraiya said, as he looked over the battlefield with a grin.

"Joan could grow some trees and I could use them to summon some Dryads," Xander suggested. "I'd try and raise some zombies, but I only have one black mana left and I've ear marked that in case Anko needs to use her seal."

"Dryads?" Jiraiya asked eyes lighting up.

"I wouldn't mind seeing some of those myself," Joan admitted.

"Better than zombies," Anko offered.

"Probably smell better too," Tiamo added.

"Dryads it is then," Joan said calling up her sage chakra and just lightly touching the mana of her land causing a small copse of trees to grow in the center of the battlefield.

Jiraiya called up a water dragon, sucking the moisture from the air and let it disperse among the roots, speeding their growth.

Xander called up a single green mana and channeled it into the ground causing the plantlife to swell and spread. "Wild Growth."

"And now we're in a forest," Anko noted with a grin as a corpse fell out of a tree that had sprouted under it.

"May have overdone it a bit," Xander admitted, walking up to one of the larger trees and infusing it with green mana before moving onto the next.

Jiraiya and Joan leaned forward eagerly as the bark seemed to ripple and a naked figure stepped forth.

"Not exactly how I pictured a dryad," the toad sage said, disappointed.

"Looks good to me," Joan disagreed as she examined the muscular man made of wood with hair the color of the tree leaves.

"Not all trees are female," Xander replied as a female dryad stepped out of a tree and he moved on to a third.

"That's a very good point," Jiraiya said turning to Joan. "It's always female spirits in the stories but a male one every now and again could really spice things up."

"I'll say," Joan agreed. "Nice work on that one."

Xander had not known Dryads could blush, but apparently they could as the male dryad walked through a bush and came out with a leafy green kilt.

He stopped after the fifth one, a second male, stepped out of a tree. "Loot the bodies, feed the remains to the forest, and pile everything on the table," Xander ordered before going back to the stone table.

"Myths and legends," Jiraiya said, "it's a good time to be alive."

"It's always a good time for that," Joan agreed, "now help me plot out a storyline. A man spurned for a dryad who unintentionally ends up courting the dryad's daughter."

"The daughter who had watched him futilely try and cut down her father's tree one winter, but unable to do more than cause some surface damage due to its massive size," Jiraiya said getting into it. "Are we going to use animated vines for some bondage scenes?"

"Be a waste of a dryad not to," she replied with a snort.

"Once we've collected everything what are you going to do with the dryads?" Anko asked.

"Nothing," Xander replied, "dryads just need sun and rain to be happy. I should probably add some squirrels to help the forest spread quicker, but really that's all I need to do."

"Sounds good," Anko said, dismissing the matter from her mind. "There are some swamps in the area you'll want to collect and after that it's off to Wave. That should take care of your blue mana."

Xander created a dozen squirrels and set them scampering off. "Good, life is a lot easier with a good variety of mana handy and I am starved for blue and black."

"Blue is the mental one, right?" Anko asked as a couple of dryads dropped a load of bloody and damaged clothes and equipment on the table.

"Logic and technology, improvement through intelligent actions," Xander replied. "If Orochimaru had been mainlining blue mana he'd have been more dangerous but less of a dick. I'm not making a copy of him until I have some blue handy."

"So, you can make a copy of someone just from scanning their clone," Joan said thoughtfully.

"Nope," Xander replied.

The nins all stopped what they were doing and turned to Xander.

"That couldn't have been the real Orochimaru," Anko said, "he was much too reasonable and… sane."

"He'd exhausted his sage chakra," Xander replied, "so it wasn't affecting his thoughts. You guys filter your chakra to a degree, which is why it take you time to call it up, he somehow managed to tap it like a planeswalker, but without our immunity."

"You told me it was him and I dismissed it," Jiraiya said shaking his head. "If you'd said it was the real thing, I'd have just said it was a really good clone."

"Getting off the black mana should remove him making problems for the Leaf," Joan said, "no more urge to destroy and dominate everything."

"I hope so," Jiraiya said, "he's been a giant pain in my ass for far too long."

Joan smirked. "You should have used lube."

Jiraiya chuckled. "Remind me to tell you about the time we had to infiltrate a whore house and he forgot to tell me he was replacing one of the gals."

"I'd still like to kill him," Anko said with a sigh. "The fact that he didn't finish my summons training properly makes me wonder what else he forgot."

The dryads dropped more gear on the table and Anko and Tiamo started sorting through it.

"With Minato back as Hokage, Sarutobi will have some free time," Jiraiya said, "he can go over your training and see what Rochi missed."

"Really?" Anko asked hopefully.

"Definitely," Jiraiya assured her, "he's wanted to get involved with training Xander but has been too busy running Konoha. This will give him a good excuse."

"Excellent," Anko said with a grin.

"We should hunt down Tsunade while we're out and about," Jiraiya said thoughtfully, "just so you can collect both my teammates. Besides she's the best med nin in the world and we could really use a couple more of those."

"Sounds like a plan," Xander said, thinking adding a few healers to the group was a great idea.

OoOoOoOoOo

Minato casually flashed around the tower, knocking out a full dozen ANBU. "Not exactly the welcome I'd been expecting."

"How?" Sarutobi asked, surprised but already suspecting what the answer would be.

"Orochimaru summoned me back from the dead into some form of strange half-life, and then Jiraiya' s apprentice Xander resurrected me," Minato explained.

"Close to what I was expecting," Sarutobi admitted. "I assume you'd like to see Naruto."

"Where is he?"

"Come on, I'll take you to him," Sarutobi said getting his hat.

The recovering ANBU looked to Sarutobi for orders and he signed for them to stand down.

"What can you tell me?" Minato asked anxiously, ignoring the civilians who fainted on seeing him.

"Loves orange, ramen, a bit of a prankster, and swears he's going to be hokage someday," Sarutobi said as the chaos of seeing the fourth hokage alive and well spread around them.

"How was he treated?" Minato asked.

"About how you'd expect, unfortunately," Sarutobi admitted with a heavy sigh, "but he didn't let it get him down."

Various nin spied on the two from a distance, a few using methods to dispel illusions to make sure what they were seeing was real.

"That's good to hear," Minato said. He'd hoped for better but had been braced for much worse. "Why are we at Kakashi's?"

"Due to your son actually killing the fox and stealing its power, I felt he needed someone more responsible to watch him," the third said pulsing his chakra to let Kakashi know he was there.

"He did what?" Minato asked, sure he hadn't heard what he'd though he'd heard.

"The being who resurrected you was creating a powerful artifact for the village when Naruto somehow snuck in and bonded it to himself. It drained the fox to power itself," Sarutobi explained as the door opened.

Kakashi stared in shock for a moment before turning to the third hokage. "I don't know how Naruto did it, I swear he's been here the entire time."

"Xander with a little assistance of Orochimaru, resurrected Minato," Sarutobi explained.

"Ah," Kakashi said, "well come in, I'm just about to break out the sake."

"I'd say it's a little early for drinking, but we're probably going to need some," Sarutobi admitted as they entered.

"You resurrected my mom to spite me?" Sasuke asked Naruto, neither of them noticing the people entering the room.

"No, I did it because I didn't like seeing you sad when you got half the village kissing your but while they insult and ignore me," Naruto argued.

"Yah, spite," Sasuke said cheerfully.

Naruto groaned.

Mikoto laughed.

"My son resurrected his godmother?" Minato asked surprised.

"Son?!" Naruto exclaimed, turning and seeing Minato. He immediately focused on his face seeing the man he'd just recently met in his dreams. "Dad?" He leapt at him.

"Your father is the fourth hokage?" Sasuke asked in disbelief.

"Yes, he is," Sarutobi said brightly, whipping off his hat and putting it on the fourth's head.

Minato had easily caught his son in a hug. "It's good to see you," he said. "I know I have a lot to explain-"

"Nah, you already told me last night with Mom when I was asleep. Don't you remember?" Naruto asked.

It took less than a second for Minato to figure out what must have happened. With the fox gone their shadow clones had no reason to wait to speak with him. "That was my shadow clone," Minato explained, "Me and your Mother left them there, so we'd be there if you ever really needed us."

"All you have to do is resurrect my Dad and your Mom and we'll have the whole set," Sasuke said. His face hurt, but he couldn't stop grinning.

"Unfortunately, Uzumaki funeral rites include cremation," Minato explained. "Your mother's ashes were to be scattered in her home village."

"And Itachi… cremated your father," Mikoto said gently, laying a hand on Sasuke's shoulder.

Sasuke shrugged. "I've got mom back, I'm not greedy. A lot of people don't even have one parent." He found he was actually a little relieved his father couldn't be resurrected and decided not to think about why.

"Remember when Kushina made me swear to marry you if our spouses died, because she didn't think you could take care of yourself and run the village?" Mikoto asked with a laugh.

"Remember? She made me sign in blood, claimed it was an Uzumaki family seal…" Minato paled.

"I thought she was joking," Mikoto said wide eyed.

"Uzumaki's are at their most dangerous when they're joking," Kakashi said helpfully.

"No, I'm sure she wasn't serious-" Minato stopped in mid-sentence as a shadow clone popped and a wisp of chakra leaked out of Naruto. "She said to tell you that not only was she serious she expects at least two children in the next three years or the contract will begin to enforce itself."

"The shadow clone of Kushina just popped your shadow clone in the seal, didn't she?" Sarutobi asked, already knowing the answer.

"Yes," Minato admitted.

Sasuke smiled. He'd not only gotten his mom back he'd just gotten the fourth hokage as a father!

"Will you quit smiling, it's creeping me out!" Naruto complained.

Typing by: fyrewolf5

AN: Always read the fine print when signing something handed to you by an Uzumaki!

TN: Now how long will it take Naruto and Sasuke to realize that means they're going to be brothers, and what will their reaction be? Also, how is the village and any classmates who snubbed Naruto going to start acting when they find out who his father is, and that said father is back from the dead. I think the village is going to have plenty of building material shortly because bricks will be shat all over the village in the coming days.