II

Sensei went quiet then violent,
We sparred until we both grew tired,
Nothing mattered.

- Frank Ocean, Pink Matter

Still here?

Good- because I'm starting to think that I might not entirely be.

After my not-so-productive talk with the evil being in my stomach- fuck you, Kyuubi- I woke up to my bedding in complete disarray.

My blankets were in various states of being: some were torn up, others were tossed on the floor, stained with blood- and in some super lucky cases, all of the above.

Toss in the wretched smell of throw-up, tufts of my hair sprawled all over the floor like my bedroom's some sort of animal pen, and my morning, no, my day was effectively off to one of the worst starts ever.

Top-five, at the very least. Excluding Minato's memories, that is. I still wasn't used to having two sets of memories in one head, and by the great Sage, it wasn't getting easier on Day Two. If anything, it felt like it was getting harder.

Well, I guess calling it two sets of memories might be overstating it just a little bit. It's more like one set of memories and some change right now. Aside from the weird glimpses I got last night and a few more concrete ones this morning, most of Minato's life is still largely a mystery to me.

Not that I'm complaining. I mean, yeah, the guy's my hero and apparently my dad, but...

Some of the stuff I saw in my nightmares last night made me question my own sanity- more so than I'd already been doing in the previous twenty-four hours, anyway.

A lot of people, myself included, hailed the Fourth as some sort of godly being. To us, he was the perfect shinobi: ruthless and cold, strong and fast, but also honorable and kind. The golden standard of shinobi. Somehow, he was simultaneously the kind of guy who could take out whole armies and make you cinnamon rolls the morning after. It was mind-boggling.

Well, let me tell you: that sort of stuff is nothing but smoke and mirrors. I'm sure Minato was a good guy and stuff, but seeing your golden standard massacre a group of ninja in under ten seconds with nothing but a dulled kunai is a real Kami-forsaken wake-up call.

That man was a monster.

I'm telling you; if you somehow projected one of Minato's missions into the real world and made a bunch of genin watch, they'd quit their ninja aspirations on the spot, no questions asked.

All your future jonin and Anbu hopefuls- gone.

Konoha's supply of viable gate-watchers would skyrocket, though. And I'm sure the civilian sector would love all the able-bodied construction workers. And bakers. Teachers. Pretty much every non-combative role in the village would see unprecedented growth.

Oh well- enough mucking about. I needed to get a move on, or the state of my deteriorating apartment was about to get even worse.

Offhandedly, I made a dozen clones and barked out orders to clean my mess of a bedroom while I slipped out to the bathroom and started splashing cold water on my face.

I scrubbed the blood off my temples, trying to map out my next move. In the past, I would've been more than willing to go about my day as usual.

You know, eat some ramen, train for a bit, harass the citizens of Konoha.

Something was stopping me, though. And no, it wasn't just because I'd gotten an influx of memories from my father of all people last night- though that part did factor into it- or the fact that I'd just gotten back from a mission.

No, the only reason I didn't go about my day, as usual, came about when I reached for my toothbrush. My fingers curled around it, then my seal glowed brightly, and boom!

Static crackled between my fingers, and eviscerated the poor toothbrush so quickly, that all that was left in my hands before I could even blink or cut off my chakra flow was ash.

"Great. Just…great," I sighed, cleaning the ash off my hands and wiping it off on my boxers.

Maybe if I'd been a little less frazzled that morning, I would've had the presence of mind to look- and I mean really look at my reflection. Granted, that surprise was on its way anyway, so no use in spoiling it now.

After pulling on a cream-colored long sleeve I found deep in my closet and a pair of black pants, I tied my headband around my forehead and took off, skipping across Konoha as fast as I could.

Again, traversing using chakra had already become a piece of cake. Sure, tree-walking kind of kicked my ass earlier, but now it felt just a little bit awkward- kind of like I was relearning how to do it.

Which I guess I kind of was. Everything felt, for lack of a better term: just weird. A week ago, I was a stupid, genin-hopeful brat who had just underachieved for the third year in a row and was bailed out by an extraordinary stroke of luck.

Now? Well, the specifics of it were still blurry.

Was I the Fourth Hokage, regaining consciousness inside his adolescent son? Maybe it was the inverse: maybe I was still Naruto, still me, but I just had a whole bunch of information dumped in my head.

Truth be told: as of right now, I have no clue. In fact, it's easier to take a step back and just think of myself as some third person. I'm me, yeah, and I have memories of Naruto and Minato. That's the only way I can wade through the unknown without losing my grip on reality.

Back to the chakra stuff!

It was like, well, riding a bike after a while. Sure, you feel a bit stiff at first, and your muscles reflect that by either over or under-compensating at specific intervals, but the second you get your bearings, you go tearing down that street like you never even left.

And tear I did. Aside from the occasional slip, I reached the academy in record time. I had full faith that if I did that old Academy obstacle course now, I could blow my old time out of the water.

You don't care about that though. I know, I know. You must be wondering: why go to the academy?

See, I originally thought I'd go to Kakashi- I mean, by all rights, he is the one I should go to for stuff like this. He's my jonin-sensei, knows a thousand jutsu- yeah. Yeah, I know. I get it. Maybe later.

The thing is, though- I can still remember the look of curiosity he gave me yesterday.

I couldn't shake the feeling that if I went to him now and gave him any reason to think I was continuing the pattern of strange behavior he'd seen yesterday, I'd find myself strapped down to an interrogation chair while Konoha's premier seal specialists poked and prodded at my stomach like I was some kind of puzzle for them to fix.

Instead, I opted to take the faster and safer route- hitting up one of my other teachers: Iruka-sensei, to be exact.

Iruka would be way more receptive to helping me; not only did he and Naruto have a pretty adorable relationship, but it'd been so long since we'd seen each other, that he probably wouldn't care too much about a wandering question here or there.

Besides, I had the memories of the Fourth in my head- that had to count for something. I mean, the man was hailed as one of the strongest men alive!

If my little stint yesterday was any indication, all I'd need from him would be a little primer- one little spark to set off the bonfire of information somewhere deep in the reaches of my unconscious mind.

And, as luck would have it, I caught my former teacher at a good time. Good time for me, anyway, since no one was around.

Bad time for him since it was around twelve- if my memory served me correctly, this was about the time of day he left a clone to watch the younger kids and stepped out of the academy to "recharge" for a while.

His poison today was food; as the clone version of him droned on through the window, the real Iruka slurped a bowl of noodles under the shade of a gigantic tree, book in hand and tobacco pipe burning.

"Iruka-sensei!" I greeted him as I landed on the tree branch above him with a small thunk. "How's it going?"

"Naruto," Iruka replied, a little miffed as he put down his noodles. Closing his eyes, he gently raised his pipe to his lips and took a long inhale. A moment later, he puffed out some smoke, and asked, "What are you doing up there?"

I gave him a cheeky smile, "Ah, just thought I'd come and drop in on my favorite sensei!"

The expression on his face didn't change as I jumped down next to him, "Uh-huh. Right. You expect me to believe that you- the brat who would and did take any excuse to avoid the academy when he was an actual student there- are now making house calls to old instructors."

I scratched the back of my head, "Heh. Yes?"

"Huh. Here I was, worrying that giving you that headband would change you into a completely different person. Looks like you're still the same Naruto that used to sneak paint bombs into the teacher's lounge," Iruka said, giving me a defeated smile. I returned his smile with one of my own- a genuine one. "What do you need, Naruto?"

I scratched the back of my head again, trying to infuse as much innocence as I could into my next sentence, "Well, you see…Kakashi taught us–"

"Kakashi-sensei."

"Right. Kakashi-sensei taught us the basics of Chakra Control the other day- tree-walking, specifically. Um…it's been cool and all, but I just keep running into this problem, though, where my chakra kinda just goes haywire randomly."

"Your chakra goes haywire," Iruka repeated, almost incredulously. "Naruto, are you sure that's what's happening? Visible chakra, well, I'd expect you to know this, but it isn't normal. Chakra, in its base form, is ordinarily not visible to the unaided eye unless it is highly concentrated or manifested in large amounts."

I nodded, "Yeah, but, I know what I saw this morning. My toothbrush literally turned into ash."

Iruka paused for a moment, deep in thought. He abruptly reached back for his noodles and held them between the both of us, "Okay. I have an idea. Naruto, could you remind me how chakra works?"

"Well, uh, you've got your spiritual and physical parts of it, and you combine those two in a sort of equation to get chakra, which you then use to fuel abilities."

"Yes. Good explanation," If he was surprised, he didn't show it, which I appreciated. Iruka was one of the few teachers I had who didn't try to put me down all the time. "That's almost completely right. When a ninja converts stamina to chakra, they don't just combine those two energies together all willy-nilly; they unconsciously swirl them around inside them as they mix them together."

"Well, some people are inclined to spin them clockwise," He took his chopsticks and gently twirled some noodles around them, shifting the bowl from left to right. "And others spin them counter-clockwise. My best guess? You're still unconsciously pumping out chakra without realizing it. A common problem for those who are new…"

Realization bloomed in my mind, just as the pulling-between-the-eyes sensation from earlier returned, full force. I swayed for a moment, almost slipping off the tree and ruining my old sensei's lunch.

"Naruto?" Iruka said a moment later, though his voice sounded far away. "Naruto, are you okay?"

"Fine," I ground out, getting up again, "Thanks for the help, Iruka-sensei. I'll see you around."

Ignoring his yell, I hopped up the tree and started shooting across the village, trying my damn hardest to get out of the public eye as some of Minato's memories bubbled up in my head.

I only made it about halfway to the closest training ground when Minato's voice echoed through my voice again:

"Can anyone tell me the secret to chakra control?"

Black spots danced in my vision. My heart began beating harder and harder, forcing my legs to buckle.

"Oh! Me! Me!"

"Yes, Rin?"

"Okay, so…chakra is this thing inside of us. And, um, we can bring it out and use it to do all kinds of things."

"Well, sort of."

I slipped off the rooftops and slinked down into a training ground, just as the memory changed.

"The pinnacle of chakra control, power, and rotation. I got it from studying the Bijūdama."

I growled again, grabbing my head and falling to my knees. Flashes of memories flew by again. Minato, in front of a tall man with white hair, holding a piece of crinkled paper. Minato, standing in front of the girl from before, some kid with goggles, and…Kakakshi?

"Urgh," I cried out again, the images becoming clearer. I tried looking around, but the world around me was fading- fading fast, "Kami…damn it!"

The sounds of birds and animals disappeared from around me. The sharp smell of ozone crackled in the air, and suddenly, I wasn't alone.

An Iwa shinobi was standing in front of me, his sword drawn. The din of battle was so loud, so encompassing, that I couldn't even hear what he was saying- not that it mattered.

I felt chakra explode in my hand. I looked down, and my hand was covered in the same flash of the blue I'd seen last night- only this time, it was a spherical shape, with dozens of smaller spheres dribbling inside of it, like bubbles waiting to pop.

SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I slammed the ball into the Iwa shinobi's face. It exploded on impact, carving out half his face and shearing into his body like a razor saw. The other, smaller balls spilled out, whittling into his body like pieces of superpowered shrapnel.

"I need to work on my chakra control," I heard myself grumble, forming another blue ball.

And then- I was back in the training ground.

I slumped onto the ground, my heart hammering as I stared up at the blue sky. That particularly gory memory triggered a small waterfall of information, information that barreled into my brain, uninvited.

When I threw the trigger of chakra control into the void of memories in my head, I must've inadvertently pulled out his most recent memory of it first.

I sat up, taking deep breaths and trying to work through the mess of memories in my head.

For now, I could recover enough of Minato's memories around the subject to piece together a clear picture. A picture that would hopefully help me get a handle on my chakra problem. And, luckily, since Minato had been a jonin-sensei before he was Hokage, he was used to dumbing down concepts.

For him, chakra control was about making these things he called molds.

Molds were...well, they were kind of like mental benchmarks. He'd poke around and find a comfortable amount of chakra for an ability- even if it wasn't efficient- and then he'd practice using that exact amount of chakra each time.

Now, he always cautioned his students about the same thing: this process was dangerous, and only provided adequate control for ninjutsu, but most times, that's all he really needed. The process provided stability and an easy foundation to grow from.

I was all set on the danger part- most of the risk from the method came from the chance that you'd use too much chakra and suffer from chakra exhaustion, but that wasn't really in the realm of possibility for me.

Anyway. Minato's mold-making formula was as follows:

Actually, wait. I should mention something. Or, well, a few things. You see, unlike other people, Minato didn't care about conserving his chakra or anything like that.

He wanted to adjust the speed at which he harnessed it.

Now, as any wet-behind-the-ears chunin will tell you, tenketsu are nodes from which chakra can be released. If you wanted to get a bit more in-depth, you can find a medic-nin, and they'd probably elaborate that the human body has 361 tenketsu, each of which is located along the chakra pathway system.

And, well, back in the day, no one taught Minato how to effectively use his. He'd routinely get his ass kicked around in the academy.

As a clanless orphan, Minato didn't have any special benefits to fall back on. His chakra reserves were average, his speed was average, and the library only had so much to draw from. Sure, he could've waited for a sensei to come along and teach it to him, but he wasn't going to sit around and wait for that.

So, he decided he'd take an approach no one had yet.

He called it the Regulation-Velocity theorem.

Imagine two runners running a four-lap race, with the exact same physical attributes. You know, identical stamina reserves, the same leg length, the same stride. The first runner is running the race efficiently, using exactly one-fourth of his stamina each lap, whereas the second runner is using a disproportionate amount of stamina to keep a lead over the first one.

Now, almost intuitively, you'd think that the first runner would win- and well, you'd be right. If the race went on for the whole duration, that is.

But, what if it didn't? What if, at the midpoint of the race, right as the second runner was tiring, the race ended? What if, after the first lap, the first runner was tackled by a fan and incapacitated for the rest of the race?

Then, the second runner would win. Obviously, you're probably saying. Obviously, the second runner would win if the first left due to some unforeseen circumstance.

Minato's point, as far as I can tell, with that example was that if you assumed every fight, every battle with a ninja was like a race, there existed some point of chakra usage you could reach to win the fight while still burning excessive chakra.

Like, if you used 40% of your chakra while the opponent used 30% of theirs, even if you were being inefficient compared to them, you could kill them before they could kill you, and that's what really mattered.

Let's say Sakura and I fight right now. Even if she paced herself and controlled her chakra as well as she possibly could, it wouldn't mean a thing if I crammed a Rasengan down her throat.

Sure, I would have lost more chakra and used an uneven amount, but the objective of the fight was to win, not to save more chakra than her.

Basically, his point was that you could and should end the race, or battle, rather, early. Not only was it an easier way to approach the chakra-conversion conundrum, but it was also a way to grow your reserves, as the constant pressure would force your stores to grow like any other muscle.

Well, okay, you're probably thinking. What's that have to do with you, Naruto? How do you even understand half of this?

To answer your second question first: I don't know. I'm not complaining, and I'm not going to go out of my way to find out.

As for the first part: the more molds you have, the easier it is to draw chakra out. With enough practice, certain jutsu can become like second nature, like breathing or blinking.

Back to Minato, when he was a genin, he found a way to represent chakra itself as a force- kind of like gravity, or electromagnetic force, for example.

For example, assuming C was your chakra output, it could further be represented through its physical and spiritual components.

I grabbed a stick and started drawing in the dirt: C = (P, S)

For any given C you wanted to output, you just had to find the right combination of P and S and once you did, you were home free.

I scratched my chin, regarding the equation on the ground with a bit of amazement. I'd heard stories before, legends about how the Fourth had been a prodigy amongst prodigies but actually seeing it in action was a whole other animal.

Besides, even though he'd had no way of knowing this, his theorem was actually perfect for someone like me- because of the stupid fox trapped in my gut, I had more chakra than I knew what to do with.

For all intents and purposes, I could keep chakra flowing through my tenketsu at all times- I could make and maintain molds faster than any other ninja would ever be able to.

I could take the Fourth's teachings and methodologies- his intellect, and apply them to my freakish physical capabilities. I could take his teachings to a whole new level.

Not that it would be easy. No, even if I just wanted to master his Regulation-Velocity theorem, his most basic concept, I'd have to work my ass off.

While Minato didn't care about efficiency as much as people thought he did, the reason he was able to maintain that illusion was that his speed was so blindingly fast it didn't even matter.

I'd have to get physically faster. Mentally faster. My hand seals would need to be perfect, and I'd need to get used to pulling chakra out of my body faster than ever before.

My dream of becoming Hokage felt closer than ever. What seemed like a pipe dream before was now somewhat within reach.

I mean think about it: I had all the knowledge I could possibly need- it was locked away in my head somewhere. I just had to get strong enough to use it.

Nodding to myself slightly, I stood back up and took a deep breath. It was time to get to work.

AN: Wow! I was really impressed/touched by all of the support already. I didn't plan on getting another chapter for this one out so soon, but it's actually just so much fun to write. Thanks to Corvus Black for pointing out some of my grammatical errors, I've gone back and fixed them.

As for pairings, yeah, I agree with most of what everyone's said so far. He won't get with anyone until a bit later, and I'm not going to consider anyone too far outside of Konoha because Minato definitely wouldn't have. This version of Minato, well...yeah. You'll find out.

So, that really only leaves a few options, like Anko, Kurenai, Temari...anyway! Let me know what you thought of the chapter. See you next time!

- Maroon