Chapter 2

Two hours later, Namikaze Residence

Still cradling the baby Naruto in my arms, I made my way into his mother's room. I set down the baby on the desk, before removing the second drawer down on the right. Reaching under the desk, I held down the concealed button on the bottom of it, before waiting three seconds and pressing another concealed button in the spot the drawer was removed from. A small click was heard, and a small wooden item fell into my waiting right hand.

I examined the small box, turning it over in my hand a few times, before again pushing multiple hidden switches upon its surface. As soon as I had pressed them in the proper order, the box itself sprang open. Reaching inside, I withdrew a brass key coated in seals that seemed somehow to move across the metal of the key.

I then went to the picture on the wall of the now-deceased husband and wife, sliding it to the side on smooth tracks recessed into the wall and concealed with a genjutsu seal. This revealed a safe in the wall, which I opened with the combination I knew from my time inside Kushina's body.

Behind the door of the safe was another, slightly smaller door with a small, ornately carved keyhole in the middle. This door, too, was crawling with seals, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to know that the key I had obtained from the desk went with that lock. I inserted the key and, taking a deep breath, I turned the key first a quarter turn counter-clockwise, before turning it another 450 degrees clockwise, back to where it had started.

The door glided silently open on well-oiled hinges, revealing two items within the safe: a single scroll bearing the kanji for "seal" on it, and a highly-polished crystal, about the size and shape of a goose egg.

Now, this crystal was a sight to behold. It had been formed when four separate crystals had grown together, resulting in a strange, but not at all unpleasing, swirling combination of red, blue, lavender, and yellow, scattered throughout with flecks of gold. And within its depths, the crystal seemed to hold a small spark of light; not very bright, though not at all dim, either. I knew it to be a wedding gift from Minato's young students that they had somehow obtained without his knowledge during a diplomatic mission to Iwa during the early stages of the war. An attempt to form a peace treaty before things got out of hand, if I recalled correctly.

Of course, with the full outbreak of war, the wedding was postponed. As the war ran its course, Obito was crushed under a bridge, and Rin was kidnapped and almost killed by a man out for revenge against the Hatake family shortly thereafter.

Obito, of course, died, although not before gifting both Kakashi and Rin each with one of his Sharingan eyes, telling them through intermittent coughs of blood, "Go out there and see the world, guys! This way, I'll still get to see the things I wanted to with my best friends and comrades instead of as a disembodied voice!"

After he died, he was brought back to Konoha, and interred in the Cemetery of Heroes, the place where all ninja killed in service to the village are buried, if their bodies are recovered. Unsurprisingly, since most bodies don't make it back, the cemetery is very small, with a memorial stone at the entrance for all of those whose bodies could not be retrieved.

Rin, although mentally traumatized by her ordeal, and unable to forget it due to her newly-implanted Sharingan, left her kidnapping experience relatively unharmed otherwise. Later, she entered therapy to help herself cope with it. For all I knew, she could still be in therapy with Inoichi. However, that was unlikely, as he was an extremely good psychiatrist as well as a high-level jounin, and she'd already been having therapy sessions once every two months for almost a year and a half before I had disappeared for three months.

Kakashi, on the other hand, landed himself in the hospital in a full body cast with severe chakra exhaustion for the better part of three months as a result of the combined strain of both attempts to save his teammates and the implantation of Obito's eye.

The bottom line was that, even though the three of them couldn't all make it, they still had an amazing gift for their sensei when he finally did have his wedding, and it doubled as a congratulatory gift for Minato becoming Hokage. I sighed wistfully; those were the days.

My reminiscing over, I pocketed the scroll and gem, and then disappeared from the room with Naruto in my arms again.

Five years later

"See, nee-chan? I told you I could do it!"

I slowly gazed up into the branches of the tree and saw Naruto hanging by the soles of his feet from the underside of the lowest branch. "Meh, it's pretty good, Naruto, but that's only the first branch. You didn't climb the whole tree yet."

"But nee-chan…" came the whining reply.

I quickly scaled the tree in the same fashion that Naruto had, perching myself lightly on the crown of the tree. "No 'buts,' Naruto," I called down. "I want you to be able to climb all the way up here using just your feet in under a minute by the end of the week—" I chuckled evilly to myself "—or no Ichiraku for a week!"

"What! It's already Saturday!" Naruto shouted up at me.

"Well, you'd better hurry up then if you don't want your ramen taken away!"

I jumped down out of the tree and landed softly at the base, before leaning back against the tree to take a nap. I woke up a couple hours later, at about a quarter to six. 'Just enough time to prepare dinner… well, if I cheat a little.'

I looked up into the tree and saw a near-exhausted Naruto about two thirds of the way up the tree, stopped on a branch to catch his breath.

"Oi! Naruto! You've only got six hours left to be able to make it to the top in less than a minute before your ramen privileges are suspended!"

I turned towards the house, and stepped inside to see myself just finishing cooking dinner. I looked at myself and said, "Well, it seems that I did what I thought I was going to do."

"Funny thing," the other me replied, "I said the same thing an hour ago… well, just now… never mind, you get the idea."

I chuckled at my antics, before gathering my chakra around me and forcing myself back in time by an hour.