With a huge smile on his face, Naruto dropped his nap sack to the floor before kicking off his shoes and falling face first onto his bed, his glorious bed. He had done survival training with his team where they would spend the night camping and stuff before and each time he had had to sleep on the ground, call him soft but he preferred a bed. A glorious bed. He inhaled the scent of his sheets deeply ad immediately regretted it as his face screwed up at the disgusting smell, definitely time to change his sheets. He rolled over on to his back and un-zipped his jacket before shrugging out of it.

The mission to the Land of Waves had been longer than expected, but at least he gained some valuable insight to the world of shinobi. A ninja was a tool in human form, he of course had known this from his days in academy but until he met Haku he had never really grasped the idea. But he had decided after they had buried Haku that he would change that. When he became Hokage, he would show the world just how human he was, he wasn't a tool, he wasn't a demon he was Naruto Uzumaki!

With a grunt he rolled back off his bed and stripped himself of his cloths on his way to the shower. A good shower always did wonders for stiff and sore muscles. After his shower he had every intention of going to sleep and not waking up until next week. Yeah that would totally work.

XxX

Truth be told Minato had been going crazy while Naruto was away on mission, as far as he knew this was the first time he had even left the village. He knew he really shouldn't have worried, after all this was peace time and an ambush from enemy ninja would be extremely rare. As it turned out they were ambushed, the C-Rank mission was actually an A-Rank mission that Kakashi had decided to follow through with. So Minato spent the majority of the three weeks Naruto was gone pulling out his hair and haunting the Hokage Tower. He had resisted the urge to follow Naruto home and instead followed Kakashi so he could get all the juicy details of how truly awesome his son was.

Oh how the mighty have fallen, if only Kushina could see him now.

He stood off to the side of the Thirds desk so he could properly see the two. The third was reading the written report that Kakashi had undoubtedly written at the last minute, he had noticed that his student had taken on many of the personality traits of Obito Uchiha, probably in tribute to the teammate he couldn't save. Kakashi just stood there and every now and then he would glance over to the wall that held the portraits of the Hokage.

Finally the Third lay down the report and took a puff of his pipe. "Well that was most unexpected but you and Team Seven handled it well." he said. "How did they do?"

Kakashi let out a long sigh. "Sakura," he paused for a moment and rolled his one visible eye up to the ceiling. "Did everything she learned in the academy to do, I'm afraid she's too obsessed with Sasuke to really learn anything new right now. Sasuke went above what you would have expected from a rookie genin when dealing with Haku and the demon brothers, he even managed to push aside his superiority and work with Naruto long enough to free me from Zabuza's water prison jutsu.

"Naruto, however, was truly surprising. Did you know he already knows the tree walking exercise? Said he found a scroll on it in the area of the woods he trains in, he said sometimes he finds scrolls there and in his home to help him train. You wouldn't know who's been secretly training him would you?" Kakashi asked.

The Third bowed his head and blew out a puff of smoke; Minato swore he could see a small smile gracing his lips. "For the past few years now, I've had reason to believe that Minato has been watching over his legacy."

Kakashi didn't so much as blink. "You think Minato-sensei is a ghost and trying to train Naruto?" he asked dryly. The thirds only response was a hearty chuckle. "Anyway, there's something else that came up, part of the unofficial report." He said and the Hokage perked up.

"During the battle on the bridge, when I was separated from Naruto and Sasuke because of the hidden mist technique, I felt a glimmer of the fox's chakra leak out of Naruto. Do you think the seal is weakening?"

"No, the way Minato designed the seal was so that Naruto would be able to access it and eventually use it. You know as well as I do that he never would have placed the Kyuubi in Naruto without building failsafe's into it, even if Naruto wasn't his son." Minato would have blushed had he had blood to do so with, they both held him in such high regard when he deserved nothing but disgust for locking a demon within his son to start with.

"You're right but maybe we could get a hold of Master Jiraiya and he could take a look at the seal, just to be sure, after all Sensei left the key to the seal with him." Kakashi said. Finally, after years of haunting the Hokage's office, he was finally starting to hear details about what had happened during the nine-tails attack.

"I already have three teams of ANBU scouring all the countries for him, but it's for another matter entirely." The Third said, making it clear that he wouldn't go into detail.

But Minato knew why, Orochimaru had been too quiet lately and Jiraiya hadn't sent any more intel on his fellow Sannin. From what he could gather, about three months before he took office as the Fourth Hokage, Orochimaru had been found experimenting on humans to create new jutsu's. His sensei's teammate had always given him this weird feeling that said to stay away. He remembered one time he had found Orochimaru leading Obito down the street and had the overwhelming urge to grab his young charge and run as far away from the other man as he could. Instead he had politely intervened and reminded Obito of a non-existent training session he was late for; the fake smile the older man wore was something that nearly made his blood turns to ice.

After a few more minutes discussing the mission details Kakashi was dismissed and Minato left to go see Naruto. When he finally reached his little apartment the boy was fast asleep, half hanging off his bed with his mouth wide open. He smiled fondly down at his son, even now it was hard to grasp that he actually had a son. This boy was here because he and Kushina had made him together, he was all that was left of them in this world. He sometimes wondered if maybe someone had hand-picked the traits between them and split them up evenly in Naruto?

He bent down to one knee and brushed a few stray strands of hair out of Naruto's sleeping face when his eyes opened. Minato pulled back his hand like it had been burned but otherwise remained frozen to the spot. Naruto blearily gazed up at his face and blinked a few times, closed his eyes and rubbed the sleep out of them before blinking a few more times. And then he screamed and fell off the other side of the bed.

XxX

A/N

Okay I really don't know if I want them to talk yet or not. That part after Naruto defeats Pain and Kakashi asks what else the Fourth said, saying that fathers sometimes like to tell their sons stuff was just so heartwarming. Nearly made me cry. So I'm not sure if I want Minato to continue helping from the shadows for a little while longer or not, so please review and tell me your opinions. And yes I know this is short.