[Mito Uzumaki[During the first half of the Fourth year]

It has been nearly a year since I agreed to take Minato as my protége and I have yet to regret my decision. He reminds me of Tobi...before Hashi died. He is driven and talented like Tobi and is ambitious enough to not squander his potential but that's where the similarities end.

Tobi had a problem with coming to terms with moral boundaries. He was unable to perceive them,but he tried his best to remain in the boundaries Hashi and I had set up for him. Minato...he has a different yet similar problem. After teaching him for months, he has become somewhat of a family member to me. It doesn't help that he bears a striking resemblance to Tobi personality wise. His problem is...complicated.

Minato struggles to perceive anyone he isn't personally acquainted with as properly human. I have seen him talk with the servants... He treated them as if they didn't even exist. I know for a fact that Minato isn't aware that he does such things. He tries to be polite and respectful but it seems pretty creepy even for an experienced shinobi like me. I have seen unspeakable horrors, insanity,bloodlust but nothing like this.

Minato constantly zones out when talking to people he isn't acquainted with. Admittedly he does that normally as well but it is nowhere as pronounced as during the times he has to talk with people who he doesn't know. He looks past the people as if they don't exist. His eyes get that look...that look a person has when reading about different characters from books.I have mentioned this to Minato. Thankfully, he was pretty frank over the matter. I appreciate his honesty.

He told me that he was trying to see other people as real living beings but there was always a disconnect. He thought that this problem was resolved a few months ago but it has persisted against his best efforts.

To be honest, that bit of trust he showed me,cemented his position as my grandson (even if not a biological one) in my heart. Trusting other people with your issues is uncomfortable when you are naive,much less someone like Minato. It showed his trust in me and I like the fact that he considered me worthy of it.

For more than a month, I have tried to understand the cause of Minato's problem but it has been... difficult to say the least. The only traumatic event Minato has witnessed is his parents' death and that wouldn't cause him to perceive people as characters from a story, would it? This is why I hate going all psychological. It is just not my style...I have picked some nifty tricks over the years but that doesn't mean I have to use them. Well...every ninja has to pick up some things in this career lest they be easily manipulated.

Honestly, I am invested in this issue much more due to my personal fears than my concern for Minato's wellbeing. Tobi became that...thing after losing track of his moral compass(whatever small bit of it he had). I don't blame him for his failings as genius or not, he was falliable. But the monster who would torture small children for an insignificant thing like research, wasn't the brother-in-law I knew and loved.

I don't want Minato to become someone like that. Tobi during his last few years, resembled a machine much more than a human due to his lack of empathy for anything. His only desire was to achieve his twisted sense of 'peace' for Konoha. I don't want Minato to become a twisted being composed only of obsessions and no true feelings.

We shiinobi/kunoichi often like to think of ourselves as deities when we enter our arrogant phase(something almost every ninja goes through). We like to think that our moral compass is the only thing stopping us from becoming gods. That is what most ninja delude themselves into believing. But the reality is often the opposite...Our moral compass is the only thing preventing us from becoming detached,depressed and hollow husks of what we are. Our moral compass is the thing that defines us, our needs and our desires.

The ninja who sacrifice their morality, the ninja who gaze into that pit of darkness,forget that doing so will break them. I have seen many such ninja in my lifetime,but seeing Tobi as one of the ninjas who function barely as a husk of what they were, hit home how much morality mattered. Any ninja who gave up on abiding a set standard of laws in their life, find themselves obsessed with some goal, and will go to any lengths for fulfilling that purpose. It doesn't matter what it is, that goal destroys the person inside out and leaves behind a husk of a person who resembles a machine with an ultimate purpose much more than a man.

This may seem hypocritical coming from someone who earned their living by taking the lives of hundreds, but what we do is for a purpose.Though even for that purpose, you should never lose that shred of morality you have. If you go past that line, it changes you and often, it's for the worst.

Tobi didn't destroy Taki only because it wasn't possible for him to do so,not without severely weakening Konoha. Otherwise, I don't think Taki would have survived his wrath. Tobi still fucked them over by the Nanabi incident though... Now Taki remains in terror of their best weapon constantly. Even though I don't like the fact that a child was sacrificed for that, I felt some small amount of satisfaction when the Nanabi rampaged through Kumo.

I have seen war and have witnessed it breaking many ninja and I know that there is a war on the horizon. Every ninja has faced tragedies in their life. War is a place where the deaths of someone you know is all but confirmed. There is infinitely small chance of Minato and all his friends surviving the war intact but I am not betting on it. I have seen too many deaths to delude myself into believing that every one of those kids would survive the upcoming war. I know that Minato will face some sort of tragedy this upcoming war...That's why I don't want Minato to lose his way and let his life be consumed by revenge. I don't want another member of my family become that hollow and twisted...thing and that is why I am going to knock some sense into Minato's brain.


[Some days later]

"No no! Are you an idiot,you stupid brat? You can't draw parallel lines in explosive tags. That's like one of the stupidest things you can ever do. Why the hell do you think it's a good idea? It will make the seal configuration explode..."

For the life of me, I sometimes can't figure out why Minato, my genius protége,suddenly decided to do one of the things I have taught him NOT to do when making seals. He made parallel lines on an explosive tag and chucked the tag into the sky. Thank Kami, it detonated after it reached some height.

Minato turns to face me with his now signature zoned out face. Then, after thinking about Kami knows what for 2-3 seconds, he catches his breath and tries to explain why he was being stupider than a ninja challenging an adult Akemichi to a food contest.

"Um... Okay so it looks like I am doing something stupid but I am not... Maybe? Ok, ok I know that I don't inspire much confidence in you when I myself am not sure of what I am about to do...I am digging the hole deeper, aren't I? Cool down! Cool down Minato."

I raise my eyebrow and show my decidedly unamused face to him. Still, I wait for him to cool down and explain the situation to me as I know that he's excited by whatever he tested and excitement is a emotion rarely seen on Minato's face. Oh... It doesn't mean that Minato doesn't feel excited over things, quite the opposite actually. It means that he feels excited for so many things that his reaction comes off as very bland but him showing this reaction on his face means that it's bound to be something big.

He finally cools down a little and speaks very excitedly," So, the parallel lines cause explosions during seal making,right? I have checked and double checked the notes I have available for explosive tags, but nowhere do they mention using parallel lines on an already made explosive tag as an activation medium. What if instead of making the tags explode after specific time or by triggering them though force, we explode the tags by adding parallel lines on their design.

That way, we could have explosive tags stored in storage seals and explode them just after releasing them. I could just carve a parallel line without filling it with any ink and just as the explosive tag is released, the ink is released along with it as well. Imagine storing hundreds of explosive tags in a single storage scroll and as soon as the scroll opens- BOOM!"

That is certainly... interesting. From Minato's perspective, Seal masters must be idiots to have not thought about such obvious things but reality isn't that simple. I won't dim Minato's excitement by deriding his idea but honestly, not drawing a parallel line was the norm because of the deaths of so many upcoming seal masters. These small things are what cost the lives of novice sealing candidates. It was forbidden for a reason after all.

Explosive tags which are based on timers are pretty popular amongst genins and Chunins but they become redundant once you reach a level. Time based explosive tags are much more complex than the normal ones and therefore to make them work, their firepower is reduced. This may not matter much to a genin or a chunnin but this matters to special Jonins and above. Of course, another problem with time based explosive tags is that the outcome of an A class battle can be determined in seconds and relying on time based tags is basically signing your death warrant.

From what I observed, the gap between pouring the ink on the carving and the actual explosion was about 3 seconds. That is enough for chucking the tag into a storage seal. Storage seals remain temporally locked for a period of time depending on the skill of the maker of the seal. The traditional explosive tags can't be stored due to them being off set by feeding them external chakra which messes with the storage seal's function. These seals would detonate from internal malfunction thus allowing for their storage. Using tens of such explosive tags would provide pretty good firepower.

Still, Minato's thought process is quite different from the usual ninja trying to learn Fuinjutsu and that is the thing required for reaching never seen heights in our profession. But that doesn't mean that Minato doesn't need disciplining.

I offer Minato a sweet smile and say," That's ingenious...but can you inform me first before trying dangerous ideas? You know that cross checking your ideas with a seal master is usually an intelligent decision,right?"

Minato is sweating profusely and asks in a terrified voice," Please have mercy..."

Oh... He looks adorable. I might even have forgiven him if the experiments were not so damn dangerous. Therefore, "No mercy for you!"

Minato is currently sleeping resting after being throughly beaten by me. It's not like Minato fears the beating. He has pretty good pain tolerance to be honest. Instead, it is the feeling of helplessness he doesn't like. Whenever I get angry at him, the next match between us consists of me beating him and him trying to dodge unsuccessfully.

Normally being beaten by a ninja wouldn't frustrate the kid this much but after so many fighting sessions, he sort of hopes to at least make me a little tired after fighting him,which to be honest is not going to happen till I am alive. I may be retired but I still have my pride. Like hell I would be tired after fighting a brat however prodigious the brat may be...

Therefore, being beaten without even able to do anything is so frustrating for him. It is an apt punishment for the brat.

Hmm... Come to think of it, I haven't discussed about the possibility of death with him. Knowing that people you know, can die is important after all. Ninja who are caught unaware by the death of their loved ones are the ruined by the deaths. I wasn't present in Tsunade's life too much due to me trying to keep her as far as I could from Tobi's influence, therefore I couldn't give her this lesson and Hiruzen is too soft to have actually prepared his team for the fact. This was why Tsunade broke down so quickly after Nawaki's death. She had seen death and destruction but she never expected death to come for anyone she knew.

I can't make that mistake with Minato. Wait... Is that it? Suddenly it all clicked, thinking of people as characters and that obsession with his friends. The brat is trying to deny that people close to him can die. That's why he tries to subconsciously deny the fact that death is real... Kami sama... That's some intense bullshit and that's the kind of bullshit Jonins have to deal with in nearly every mission. Thank Kami I left the job. There's a reason why T I isn't a popular department,even for sadists. The pyschological shit they have to deal with is insane.

Still, thankfully I caught that problem in its infancy. Now the only thing left is talking to the brat about it. After all, this was the hard part. How hard can helping him be?

"No no... You clearly don't understand Granny! I am trying to become powerful to protect all my friends. There is no way they can die. It just can't happen. Also they all have been training extensively as well. There is no chance of anyone dying at all. The only ones who die in the wars are... civie born ninjas or ninjas with shinobi parents... Clan heirs don't just get killed in wars. I refuse to believe that a clan won't protect it's heir when a fucking war is going on."

One of my hands is on my head. I didn't expect Minato to be this... confrontational. Now that I think about it, something similar happened a year ago as well, didn't it? From what I know about the 'Inoichi fiasco' as Minato and Kushina term it, Minato was quite shaken during the 'fiasco'. Even though he is usually the picture of calmness, he started hyperventilating during that time just because of a small realisation of his mistakes... I didn't give it much thought before,but Minato seems to be the type of person who is easily shaken and who become distraught when their beliefs are challenged. This...is going to be tough but that's what I am here for, aren't I?

I place both my hands on Minato's shoulders and establish eye contact with him. He tenses and is ready to shrug me off but I hold him in his place.

"Please kid... I am trying to help you. Try to understand that death is inevitable. It will come for you, for me and for everyone else. Hell it came for Hashi and we believed that he was essentially immortal. I am not saying that you don't try your best to survive and make your friends survive every challenge you are faced against but I want you to understand that...your friends can die.

If you choose to deny this then the day someone close to you dies is the day you break. I am not telling you to shrug off any deaths you see. Instead I am telling you to not destroy yourself in your grief. You have to accept that people can die and then only can you learn to live for the people who are still alive and not die for the people who died.

I...have seen many deaths. I have seen my father and brothers die in the battlefield, my son and daughter-in-law die to fucking diseases and seen my husband leave me behind but I still try to enjoy life to honor their deaths and to live for people I love...like you,my grandchild. So please...let me help you"

I see Minato zoning off again but this time he is tense...There is a conflict going on in his mind. I can roughly guess both sides of his internal conflict. On one hand, he wants to accept my help and on the other hand, he doesn't want to accept that his friends can die. I know it is a hard step for him, so I stay still for some moments before the kid comes to a decision.

He looks at me in the eye and says,"I will...try to accept what you are telling me,but don't expect me to give up on saving you and saving my friends from the stupid thing you people call death. Why the fuck does it even exist if you have to go to the Pure World after it? It's pure stupidity... stupidity I tell you. Did I tell you..."

Minato continues to chatter on and on about different topics but I pick up on the conflict in his eyes. I gently lay him on my lap and brush his spiky hair. After sometime, he stops his inane talks and falls asleep. Seeing him so peacefully sleeping brings a smile on my face. He has given me a chance and that's all I need to fix that stupidity... I won't let another member of my family be broken...not again... definitely not again.


A/N: Okay so I have realised that I was trying to rush this section and that's why the chapters were becoming a little awkward. So I have decided to take it slow(the uploading speed will be the same) and develop my characters a bit more. I was planning to reach the war arc by the 100k mark,but now I expect this arc and the next one to be extended a bit so please bear with me.

Hope you all enjoy this chapter. I tried to explore the dynamics between Minato and Mito's relationship.Also I tried to give an explanation as to why Ninjas just don't bombard S class shinobi with explosive tags. It is tough remotely activating explosive tags and even my method would require throwing an open storage scroll at a very fast speed if you want to get away from the blast radius.

If you spot any bullshit plotholes, point them out and I will try to fix them. Link of the discord server: discord. gg /72vandfbmG

Goodbye and stay tuned for the next chapter.