Disclaimer: 'Naruto' is the property of Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, Viz Media, TV Tokyo, and other associated parties. I claim no ownership of the franchise, characters or settings, nor am I affiliated with the above parties in any way. The following is a fan-work, written for my amusement, and not for material or monetary gain. Please support the official releases. (I don't own this).
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FastForward
Chapter 3: Between a Rock and a Leafy Place, (Dead Man Walking)
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There is no serenity like the serenity that comes from knowing that you can kick every ass in the room.
- Debra Doyle
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Minato stared up at the man. The man stared back.
"Staying quiet? It's fine. There are plenty of ways to make you talk, eventually. I have time."
The man was looking at him with a bored expression on his face. A few seconds later, he started circling the room. It was then that Minato got a glimpse of where he was being held. It wasn't a large room by any means. No windows to the outside, a small mirror in the wall that no doubt allowed people to look back at him, though he could see nothing but his reflection, and a table to the far right. Minato was facing the door. Righting his gaze so it was fixed to the front again, Minato heard the man's voice from behind him.
"Quite an interesting technique you have there, I must say. It's not a normal henge, we've tried disrupting it already-"
Indeed, Minato could feel the source of his headache throbbing away- it seemed someone had thought hitting him hard enough would dispel whatever they thought he was hiding.
"-and there're no visible signs of surgery. We checked." He gave Minato a speculative look. "Definitely a tricky transformation technique. But it's no bother. We'll be taking that secret from you sooner or later."
Minato didn't quite like the sound of that, Hiraishin or no.
"Just over 179 centimetres tall, 145.7 pounds in weight... You know," the man said, "you'd be a perfect copy of Namikaze Minato if it weren't for the fact you're not a corpse rotting in the ground. He came to a stop in front of Minato, who stared back, eyes impassive.
"Wishful thinking?"
The interrogator's lip curled, and he began pacing again.
"Who are you?"
"Where am I?"
"The hitai-ate isn't enough to tell you?"
"You aren't a shinobi of Konoha."
"Oh?"
"It's not hard to fake a village insignia."
The interrogator threw his head back and laughed. "You'd know all about that, wouldn't you?"
He slowly slipped through Minato's peripheral vision, thud, thud thudding his way behind Minato's back before coming into view again, then heading round to the right to take a seat on the table. Minato ignored him, eyes resolutely kept forward.
"If you're Leaf, I want to talk to the Hokage."
"The Hokage has no time for imposters," the man said shortly.
"Convenient."
"What is your name?"
"Shouldn't you be introducing yourself, first?"
"I'm not one for manners. Now what is your name?"
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
Minato had the feeling the man was heavily trying to refrain from rolling his eyes.
"...Morino Ibiki."
Minato had never heard of him in his life.
"Namikaze Minato."
"Your real name."
"Namikaze Minato."
"What village do you hail from?" Ibiki asked, deciding to move on. By now, his fingers were drumming on the tabletop.
"Isn't it obvious?"
"Humour me."
"Konohagakure."
Ibiki crossed his arms, walking back to the front of the room. "So, Namikaze Minato, do you care to explain yourself? What are you doing in Konoha?"
Minato stared back.
He wasn't being believed.
Truthfully, Minato didn't know why he was alive at this point in time. Not one of the shinobi nations would hesitate to kill him if they had the opportunity to get their hands on him; he had too much blood on his hands to be ignored, and his reputation usually proceeded him. He was regarded as too dangerous to be kept as a prisoner- whoever this was; they had had him unconscious for however long he had been out for, and hadn't taken the opportunity to kill him while he had been helpless. They'd let him wake up. Not that he wasn't grateful for that, but something clearly wasn't right here.
His identity wasn't even being accepted. The lack of recognition would have been liberating, would have made things easier in certain other cases, but here it was just troubling. There weren't asking him for information on the Leaf, or how Hiraishin or Rasengan worked. His identity was their main priority, when it was plainly evident to all who he was. Clearly someone was trying to unbalance him, and truthfully, it was working.
Certainly, it was strange, but ever since that run in on the battlefield, his grasp of the logic of life had long been thrown into disarray.
He'd talk, but he'd only tell the man what he should already know. He had the option of leaving anytime he saw fit- not a way they could stop him- another great asset of the Flying Thunder God technique.
"I returned to Konoha after a mission- I wasn't able to regroup with my team."
"And where were you, that you had to go without your team?"
There was no use in hiding this- the battlefield had been a mess, and as good as shinobi were with secrets, they also loved to talk. That mission had been completed and Leaf weren't even attempting to hide their involvement.
"I was called to assist a battle with a platoon of Iwa nin further north in grass."
"And?"
"There were complications, but... mission successful."
"The shinobi?"
"Dead."
"And your team?"
Minato said nothing.
Ibiki smiled, the scars on his face growing taut. "That's quite the story." He leaned forward. "Now how about the truth?"
Minato's gaze was impassive.
"You know," Ibiki started, "that mission is on the books. Your team's mission was to destroy Kannabi bridge, was it not?" The flash in the eyes of an otherwise composed face made Ibiki smirk.
"They failed." He straightened up. "Of course, this means nothing to you." He got to his feet, turning to the door. "When you feel like talking, I'll be back."
"What happened to my team?" Minato asked Ibiki's retreating form. His eyes sparked electric as he glared at the man's back.
"To your team? I have no idea, imposter. Namikaze Minato's team, though," he chuckled, shaking his head. "That's none of your business."
The door clicked shut.
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Mitarashi Anko raised an eyebrow at the sight of her mentor finally emerging from the room. She'd been watching from the small window that allowed fellow personnel to look in and observe, but when Ibiki was in the torture and interrogation room, most stayed away. He had a reputation, after all.
"Well?"
Ibiki shrugged, easing the stiffness of his neck. "He believes he's telling the truth. Or he's good enough a liar to make me believe he believes it. I can't quite tell yet."
"But that's impossible; he can't be telling the truth."
"Of course not."
"But then there's the rumours of what happened in Kusa..."
"Probably Iwa trying to start something, again. It wouldn't be the first time." The two began walking down the hall, Ibiki nodding to a passing ANBU to return watch on the room.
"You can't deny what we found in his holster wasn't interesting, though."
"A few standard issue kunai with tags wrapped around them, and a tri-pronged kunai, Anko, I know. But one tri-pronged kunai Namikaze Minato does not make. By all rights, Namikaze is dead. Or if he did survive, he'd certainly be older. This kid doesn't look a day older than twenty-one."
"Stranger things have happened," Anko muttered. "But it's still quite the odd occurrence." They rounded a corner.
"And where exactly do you think he was over the past nineteen years? How did he get here? Time-travel?" Ibiki snorted. "I know you're batshit at times, Anko, but this is a whole new level for you."
He deserved the punch in the shoulder for that one. "I didn't mean it like that. You said it scar-face, not m-"
An ANBU body-flicked into their path. "You're needed back at holding cell one."
Ibiki raised an eyebrow, and the ANBU shifted under the gaze. "Elaborate."
"The holding cell," the ANBU said, "- it's empty."
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Minato stood on the Sandaime's head on the Hokage's monument, gazing down at the village below. He'd often use the tag there if he needed to think- no doubt it worked just as well as an escape route. His eyes roving across the village, the slight sting of his wrists from the rope-burn was lost in the gulf of what he was seeing. The things he was seeing... they weren't even big changes. A new building where there had been a training field before. An area of the village that looked shabbier than the last time he'd seen it. Another place that had been completely refurbished. The Hokage's tower looked as good as ever, but the village wasn't faring better for it.
Then came the biggest change of all. He gazed to his left. Instead of the Sandaime's head being the last carved on the monument, there were now a solid five engraved into the rock. In the dim moonlight, he wasn't able to quite make out who the additional two were, but they were definitely there.
In hindsight, it was probably the biggest change he'd come across, one that couldn't be written off as some strange isolated occurrence. He most likely would have noticed it straight off had the sun been shining in the sky and he been looking for it- the Hokage monument was visible from just about everywhere in the village. But he hadn't been looking, and the mountain had been a misshapen mass in the dark, even if he'd glanced at it.
Kushina's house hadn't been where he'd left it, (as ridiculous as that sounded), landmarks had changed. Most of the tags he'd made before that accident weren't working, and Konoha was different. The Hokage monument had changed. It wasn't an illusion, and Konoha had not been compromised. The few tags that were active were proof of that- no-one knew, nor could have forced that information out of him.
A figure stepped up onto the Sandaime's head, behind him. Hokage's robes flapped in the night breeze, and Minato tensed. With his chakra as low as it was, and with no weapons at hand, he wasn't in a good position. The Hokage was alone.
The figure removed his hat with one hand, and held out a paper to Minato with the other.
"We took a DNA sample while you were unconscious. It matched directly to those on the records for Namikaze Minato."
His identity was finally being recognised, then. His shoulders loosened up slightly, and Minato's gaze fell back to the village.
"My name is Shimura Danzo," the man said. Indeed, as the moonlight alighted his features, Minato could remember seeing the man around from time to time. He'd been a teammate of the Sandaime's.
"I am the Godaime Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves. Come, Namikaze Minato, we have much to discuss."
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"How long?"
Danzo stared at the man in front of him with a contemplative gaze.
Namikaze had quashed any hesitance at stepping into the office again, and the unflappable exterior of the young man was still firmly in place, but the burning of that tiny, tiny spark in his eyes was a whole other thing entirely.
His blue eyes had taken in the office with a curious look, gaze wandering over the seals engraved into the walls, etched into the area by the window and above the door. A Hokage who had more than a passing acquaintance with Fuinjutsu, then. Comprehension had dawned, along with a small smile of bemusement before his mind was back to the topic at hand.
"Twenty years." For now he'd allow Namikaze his questions.
Minato took it in his stride.
"My team?"
"Their last mission was a failure, Kannabi bridge remained standing. Obito Uchiha was killed in action, Kakashi Hatake was killed in action, Iwa gained possession of a Sharingan eye."
The spasm in Namikaze's hand and the slight flare of his nostrils was enough to give him away.
"Rin?"
"A Jounin instructor."
Minato nodded.
"Jiraiya-Sensei? Uzumaki Kushina?"
"Jiraiya is stationed away from the village. Uzumaki was killed in the attack of the Kyuubi no Yoko about sixteen years ago."
Minato's breath froze in his lungs. The Kyuubi? Kushina. Kushina?
"The war?" if Danzo heard the thrum of emotion in Minato's voice, he didn't comment.
"With your disappearance and the failure of the mission, Konoha lost their foothold over Kusagakure. The war fell out of our favour." The Godaime's voice had gone cold.
Minato's mind drifted back to the aftermath of the Jutsu. The noise, the Iwa shinobi, the rush-
"There'll be more time for your questions later, Namikaze. Tell me," Danzo said, "how exactly did this situation come about?"
Danzo sounded as inflectionless as he had throughout the whole of the conversation, though through the haze of his mind, Minato belatedly realised the gleam in his eye.
Time-travel, his mind churned over. A weapon that could be used to cause unimaginable damage if one could control it...
Space/Time Jutsu were feared enough, as it was. The limits to which Jutsu were progressing was amazing, but a time-travel Jutsu was in a league above them all. A master of such a technique could end war with such a threat- the threat that they would be able to go back before an enemy became strong enough to become an enemy, and wipe them out while they were defenceless. The threat that an enemy would be able to go forward and know the outcomes of battles and wars before they took place. The master of such a technique would have the shinobi world in the palm of their hands...
...Until, of course, the world was done being held hostage, and decided to take that power back by force.
Minato shook his head. He needed to focus. "I don't know, exactly. The Flying Thunder God Jutsu reacted negatively to whatever Jutsu the Iwa Jounin was performing. I couldn't tell exactly what it was, but my gut says it was probably another Space/Time technique."
"Iwa hasn't been known for their Space/Time techniques... Kumo have been gaining progression in that area since they gained possession of the Nidaime's body with that blasted Kinkaku Force, but not Iwa. Not that we knew of, regardless. Do you have any information on the Jounin?" The Godaime had pulled out a brush, an inkpot and a scroll, and was lathering characters on to it in firm, deliberate stokes.
"If I identified him correctly from my bingo book," Minato started, "then his name was Takeshi Raiden. There wasn't much information about him, however. A Jounin from a small clan, but gaining recognition on the Iwa line for his battle prowess. Some information on the Earth techniques he'd been spotted using, collected by Konoha's intelligence, but nothing too substantial."
"And yet you think he was using Space/Time techniques?"
"I don't imagine another Jutsu type having that same effect on Hiraishin," Minato repeated quietly, voice wary. Danzo's head tilted a fraction in assent, his hand still flowing over the scroll.
"Continue."
Minato almost frowned at that, but carried on. "After the clash, I felt disorientated, but was transported to another battlefield. I was surrounded by Iwa shinobi, and they were on the attack, so I retaliated."
Danzo had stopped writing. His attention was solely back on Minato, now. "Where did the Jutsu accident deposit you?"
"Somewhere still in northern Kusa, I don't know the area name."
Danzo's eyes were boring into Minato, now. "The Red Fields?"
"I'm not aware of the name."
"Of course you aren't," Danzo said. "The Red Fields were named after your disappearance. Where the very grasses were dyed red by the blood that was spilled during the battle; where Iwa claimed your defeat." Danzo leaned back in his chair.
"You wouldn't be aware of this, but Iwa sent a team here earlier today."
Minato's brow was creasing.
"They demanded to know why we sabotaged their annual parade, the parade in which they celebrate their defeat of Konoha. They wanted to know who assassinated the granddaughter of their Kage. The attacker was, in their words, a man who was impersonating their impersonator of you."
A parade? The noise, the rush, the hiss.
"Scum!"
"Konoha filth!"
"Give the bastard everything he deserves!"
The weapons being flung in his direction.
...What kind of shinobi used soft projectiles?
"Their defeat of Konoha?"
"Konoha and Iwa have not been at war for years. Not officially."
Though that may not be the case for much longer.
What had he done?
"I-"
"Continue."
Ashamed, eyes unable to hold the Hokage's any longer, Minato's gaze dropped to the desk between them. "After I escaped the battle, I was going to regroup with my team, but I couldn't sense the tag on the kunai I'd given to Kakashi-"
-He had been unable to sense the tag he gave to Kakashi- strange, as he was meant to be alerted when it had been thrown. The only possible reason he couldn't sense it would be because the seal on the kunai had been destroyed somehow. That, or Kakashi had yet to use it because his mission had gone off without a hitch- but that was unlikely. His cell must have run into some trouble while he had been incapacitated -
-Obito Uchiha was killed in action, Kakashi Hatake was killed in action, Iwa gained possession of a Sharingan eye-
"-and most of the tags that I'd previously laid down were also inactive. So I created a new set and decided to return to Konoha in order to be assigned a new mission. I thought to travel through Takigakure, because there was a lesser chance of encountering Rock nin. I noticed some things out of the ordinary, but I wasn't in an illusion, and I attributed it partly to the disorientation and partly to the effect of the war on the landscape."
One didn't jump to time-travel as their first conclusion, after all. Or their second or third conclusion, either.
"I settled down to rest, but encountered some Konoha missing nin not too much later. Uchiha missing nin. Uchiha Itachi and one other-"
"-Did you kill them?"
Minato looked back up at the Hokage. "No. We battled," he said, gesturing to his injured leg, "but they escaped. Itachi's accomplice had a strange chakra ability- I wasn't able to analyse it well. Just note that it created some visible tail-like appendages from chakra- increased his speed somewhat, but not much more than that. I didn't battle him. Who were they?"
Danzo resumed writing. "You were an acquaintance of Uchiha Fugaku's?"
Minato nodded.
"They were his sons."
-He'd have to ask Fugaku when he was back in the village. His wife had given birth a few months prior, anyway, and Kushina had wanted to visit her-
Fugaku must have been heartbroken. That, or taken it as an insult to himself, and the pride of his clan, and sworn to bring them in himself for the insult they'd brought to the clan's honour.
As Kushina had pointed out on more than one occasion, Fugaku had a tendency to be more than a little stuffy. It was the sort of thing he'd do. If he had been feeling a little more jolly, Minato would even have made a joke out of it to lighten the situation up. Or not. Kushina was just better in that department.
But Kushina was dead.
A sharp rap on the door interrupted both the men from their thoughts.
"Enter."
The door swung open, a purple-haired woman striding in. There was a look of frustration on her face, but it was quickly smoothed over with a leer when she saw the Hokage's guest.
"I take it you found our guest, Hokage-sama... want us to take him off your hands? Ibiki's not happy."
"That won't be necessary, Anko."
"Aw, but Ibiki was looking forward to breaking him." Anko smirked.
"He's no enemy of Konoha, Anko. Get someone to retrieve his effects. He'll be reinstated soon."
Anko raised an eyebrow. "Reinstated, you say? He was who he said he was, then?"
"That's classified."
The girl gave a mock salute, and the door swung shut as she went to do as she was ordered.
"You realise that the situation is volatile," Danzo said, rolling up the scroll on his desk. "We need to keep your identity from the outside for as long as possible. Your rash actions have made things difficult for the village."
Minato swallowed. "I want to fix this."
"You'll be assigned to a team tomorrow. The receptionist at the front desk will assign you to a temporary apartment- you can move elsewhere when you have the means. What you decide to make of your story to the citizens of Konoha, I'll leave to your own discretion. You're dismissed."
Minato couldn't imagine Sarutobi Hiruzen addressing his shinobi in such a way. The Third would have let him talk, and ask questions for as long as he was able. The Godaime was the furthest from the Sandaime's manner as he could get.
...Then again, Minato had never given the Sandaime reason to be angry with him. Minato had never caused such disruption, never brought the threat of war down on Konoha when the Sandaime had been in power. He supposed the Godaime's brashness was deserved.
Getting to his feet, Minato gave a short bow, and then walked from the room.
He was exhausted, but he had much to dwell on. His mind was reeling, coldness slipping through the crevices of his brain as it tinkered to try to make the world make sense once again. It was failing dismally.
Whatever happened, he doubted he would be getting any sleep that night.
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