As he listened to Sasuke grumble as he pulled on his brand-new Akatsuki cloak, Tobi blinked at the younger Uchiha's last statement, sure that he'd misheard the boy. He'd heard that his cousin had held some strange beliefs regarding the Kyuubi Jinchuriki, but this...
He must've misheard him. Right? There was no way that his cousin could be that dense, right?
"Could you repeat that?" he asked, dreading what he just knew he was going to hear.
"And, everyone going on about Naruto, like he's the second coming of the Yondaime. I don't know why they all think he's his son..." Sasuke obediently repeated.
"Probably because he is." Tobi said, unable to believe his cousin's state of denial.
He and Madara had denied reality as it was but, that didn't mean that they didn't acknowledge its existence. They just denied that it was their reality, and were working to change it into something better. Sasuke however...Sasuke was apparently already living in some other reality despite the fact that he was still walking around in this one.
"Not you too!" Sasuke exclaimed in frustration.
"Not me too what?" he said. "I was there for the birth, and I even held Naruto when he was less than two minutes old. If he isn't the Yondaime's son, his father must be his clone or something because everything he doesn't get from his mother, he got from Mi- him."
Of course, that hadn't gone into the whole issue of why he'd been there, and exactly what he'd been doing at the time he'd been holding Naruto, and how he'd known the Yondaime so well as to be able to spot him under all that Kushina when it came to Naruto. Apart from Rin who would be returning to him soon, his past life was a closed book as far as he was concerned, including the fact that Minato-sensei had only had eyes for one woman, and that woman had only had eyes for Minato-sensei. He'd walked in on the two of them at the wrong moment often enough to know it to be true.
He'd been happily walking through the park watching the stars come out as he sucked on the candy that old lady Hanako had given him as a reward for retrieving her dog from a tree. As to how the small Shih Tzu had gotten up there, he had no idea. As he passed the vacant playground, he heard giggling. Turning to look, he noticed that the playground wasn't quite as empty as he had thought. Minato-sensei and Kushina-san were playing on the swings. On the same swing. Facing each-other. And Kushina's skirt was...
Oh...OH. Yeah, it was long past time to get the hell out of there before he was scarred for life. Again.
Damn. And he'd thought that he'd successfully repressed that. That and the fifty other times he'd...Why oh why had he just had to be the student of a borderline exhibitionist who was dating and later married to a woman for whom the word "Inhibition" was for all intents and purposes missing from her vocabulary.
The only surprise when it came to Naruto's birth as far as he was concerned was that the boy hadn't been conceived years earlier.
Edited 4/2/13.