Chapter Two: Minato is OP

Morning came, and Naruto's parents watched as he took off toward the meet up place without having breakfast. Minato sighed (which really was a lot harder than it sounded when you didn't have lungs to huff air out with), he could just see Naruto strapped to that log already.

Kakashi was late again. Kushina was speculating which bones would make good chopsticks to go with their kneecap bowls. Then went on to wondering how to get said bones out of his body in the most painful way possible without killing him when he held a kunai to the back of Naruto's neck. To be fair, their son had attempted a blatant full frontal attack on a jounin, what had he expected to happen?

It was then that Minato felt it. He wasn't sure what it was, just some little nagging sensation on the edge of his senses. His -as in Minato's- senses, not Naruto's senses. Which was odd, because Minato hadn't had any real senses in twelve years. Like Kushina, he experienced everything outside of their little seal pocket through Naruto's faculties. To suddenly have input from his own senses was a bit of a shock.

'Did... did you feel that?' he asked his wife as the 'feeling' disappeared and he returned his attention to where Kakashi had given the word to begin. Sasuke and Sakura had launched themselves into the trees to hide immediately, while Naruto only leapt a few feet back to shout a challenge at the lackadaisical jounin.

'Feel what?' Kushina grumped back. 'Feel the impending doom of 'tied-to-log'iness that Naruto is no doubt inflicting upon us?'

'No... something-,' Minato was interrupted by his wife's wordless shriek of rage and indignation when Kakashi pulled out a book to read while he fought Naruto. 'Calm down, Kushina, it's just a tactic to get Naruto-''

'HOW CAN HE READ THAT SMUT IN FRONT OF OUR SON?!' she demanded loudly.

Smut? Minato took another look at the book and sighed. 'Icha Icha Paradise' had still been in the editing stage, last he'd remembered, and Jiraiya had asked both Kushina and he to go over it. Kushina had burnt her copy of the manuscript before even finishing the first chapter. Minato had promptly returned his copy to his sensei begging off with some excuse he couldn't remember now less he face the wrath of his wife for reading it. Still, her reaction alone was enough to tell Minato what was in it.

'... Kakashi reads that? In public?' Minato said, voicing his confusion. That... didn't seem like the Kakashi he'd known at all. Such a stickler for rules and foregoing all emotion... what had happened to that boy?

'In front of our son, Minato!'

'Well, it's earlier than I would have liked, yet later than I'd have thought it happening. He'd have been exposed to it eventually through Jiraiya-sensei anyway. I suppose that's one benefit to Jiraiya being missing.'

'Jiraiya...' Kushina growled, spitting out the name like it was her most hated mortal enemy.

'Right, oh look, Naruto is attacking again!' Minato interrupted before she could go off on one of her rants.

She gave him a general sense of 'I know what you just did' but settled down to watch anyway. Naruto was rushing at the jounin again, using his brute force tactics, but without the brute force. It was going about as well as could be expected, and right in the middle of it the... feeling came back again. Minato focused on it as he tried to figure out what it was. It felt almost familiar- ah, it was gone again.

And now Naruto was flying into the river after a very... interesting attack from behind. Seriously, what was wrong with Hatake Kakashi?

'Naruto, this is your mommy speaking! I order you to beat this man to a bloody pulp! Do it for your mother!'

'You know he can't hear us, right?'

Kushina snorted, also a difficult maneuver with no lungs, 'He can so, look, he's doing something!'

Naruto was in fact 'doing something', and his parents watched with a bit of pride as it looked like their son wasn't giving up so easily. Oh, the plan would fail, that was for sure, but it was a plan. Which was better than what Naruto had been doing.

Their son flopped up onto the shore and sputtered some excuse about being caught off guard. Minato couldn't tell if he actually thought that was a valid excuse, or was just using it as a distraction. Probably both. His son wasn't exactly one for subtlety.

The distraction seemed to be working, and Naruto made it even bigger when his kage bunshin came bursting out of the water and charged the jounin. Kakashi must have really been underestimating his sensei's son, because one of Naruto's bunshin managed to catch his teacher from behind.

It was then that little feeling from before exploded into existence firmly in the back of Minato's mind. Hiraishin, that's what it was. Kakashi was carrying one of his three pronged Hiraishin blades; and every time Naruto had gotten close to him, Minato had felt the extension of his senses that came with being in range of any of his seals. Before he hadn't felt it strong enough to use, now though... now it seemed to be a very large glowing sign that said 'teleport here!'.

Unthinkingly, that's exactly what Minato did.

It was by far the strangest Hiraishin teleport he'd ever experienced. It was like he landed in a space just large enough for one person, but there was someone already there. The entity tried to push him out, and when Minato pushed back, it just sort of... popped out of existence. Instantly Minato was flooded by a tsunami of sensory input. He had a body again, and it was far more disorienting than he imagined it would be. By far the worst part was the sudden nausea that came when his spiritual chakra met with a strange, almost-but-not-quite-his, physical chakra. A very large amount of physical chakra.

His new body was currently holding someone, and when that someone shifted at his momentary lapse in bodily control, Minato tightened his grip. After a split second appraisal of his current position, he shifted to a better position. One that involved placing his knees and feet at certain painful pressure points to help keep his larger opponent subdued.

Now... why was he suddenly grappling with an opponent almost twice his size?

Also, did he really have that many Hiraishin seals still intact around Konoha? They lit up his senses like stars. The now-broken perimeter around the village, the few Hiraishin-access-only safe houses located at various remote locations, and a select few in key strategic locations throughout the village itself. There were fewer of those last ones left than any of the others, and none at all remained of the ones he'd placed around the hokage's office and home, not that he'd expected any.

Oh hey, it was Kakashi he was clinging to, if the head of spiky silver hair in front of him was anything to go by. His arms were also covered in a very familiar orange jacket. So... he'd somehow teleported his spirit into one of Naruto's Kage Bunshin and was controlling it?

Wow. Just... wow. The strategic possibilities of such a maneuver were staggering! A genin that could summon an S-rank clone? He'd always be able to protect his son! Well, so long as there was a Hiraishin seal in close proximity to the clone... huh. He'd have to do something about that.

Fortunately one of his Hiraishin blades was conveniently on the very person he was holding. He doubted he had the finesse to pickpocket it from Kakashi while he was twelve years out of practice and in an unfamiliar child body. Especially not while attempting to grapple him. So, time for option B.

He could feel the Jounin begin to mold chakra that would get him free, but Minato was already molding his own. Ignoring the nausea that came with using his son's chakra, he reached out to one of his seals and pulled himself, along with Kakashi, to its location. The underside of Minato's own face on the hokage monument.

Taking along a passenger took more chakra than just himself, but if there was one thing Naruto's clone had, it was a ton of chakra. Seriously, this was probably at least twice as much as Minato had ever had in his life; and this was just a kage bunshin! Granted, he couldn't control this foreign chakra nearly as well as his own, but with practice, it showed a lot of potential.

He must have caught Kakashi completely off guard, because the jounin failed to get chakra under his feet and they started to fall. Sighing in exasperation (Oh, how much easier that was with lungs!), Minato muttered into his captive's ear. "Slower than I remember, Kakashi. Let's try that again, shall we?"

The silver-haired shinobi tensed in surprise, and probably in a reflexive reaction to Naruto's clone doing very un-Naruto like things, now that Minato was thinking about it, but the yondaime was already using Hiraishin. This time when they landed, Kakashi had chakra ready and stuck himself to the underside of the ex-hokage's stone chin.

Minato leapt clear of the man to find his own shaky perch before Kakashi could strike out at him and disperse the clone. The jounin's kunai just barely missed his neck in a lightning quick move that Minato knew he wouldn't have been able to dodge without having predicted it.

Minato held up his hands in a gesture for peace. "Whoa, Kakashi! Calm down! I am not an enemy!"

"You're not Naruto. Who are you?" Hatake demanded. His one visible eye narrowed dangerously as he shifted the grip on his kunai to be ready for another attack.

"Who else can use Hiraishin?" the possessed bunshin demanded, raising an eyebrow before reconsidering. "No wait, that's actually a good question. Can anyone else currently use Hiraishin like me? Well, even if there were, they wouldn't be able to teleport to my seals. Not unless they managed to somehow steal a bit of my chakra and manage to manipulate it without altering it to-" Minato cut off as he was forced to teleport again at Kakashi's ever-so-slight shift in weight.

"Stop that!" Minato ordered, appearing right behind the jounin only to jump away to a safe distance again. He couldn't do that again, Kakashi would predict it and he was not fast enough in this body yet to survive a melee with the copy-cat ninja. "You're right though, I was rambling. Twelve years in confinement has that effect. I don't know how much time I have before Naruto dispels his clone jutsu, and I have important information to tell you. Just listen and you can kill me after, alright?"

Kakashi didn't answer, and Minato took that as a sign to continue. "Okay, believe it or not, I am Minato. Twelve years ago Kushina and I sealed a bit of ourselves into Naruto's seal before dying. I was not aware I could use Hiraishin to possess Naruto's kage bunshin until just a few moments ago, but I can't do it without a Hiraishin seal near the clone. So if you would please give a son one of his father's old possessions as a good luck charm to keep with him, that would really help me out."

There was a long stretch of silence where the two watched each other for the slightest movement. Unfortunately for Minato, Kakashi was much faster than he'd predicted. One moment the jounin was standing tense and motionless, the next he was right in front of the yondaime, a kunai already embedded in his stomach.

He had one brief fraction of a second to worry how he was going to get his spirit back to Naruto, before his clone body dispersed in a noisy puff of smoke. Naruto's chakra was still melded to his own, and it pulled Minato with it as it returned to Naruto's body. All at once he found himself inside the seal with a very upset Kushina.

A/N - Alright, there you have it. Chapter two, and how Minato life-hacks. Er... good idea? Bad idea? I thought it was a pretty neat myself. XD

Anyway, I finished chapter four! So there are at least that many chapters to be uploaded. I'm terrible at writing fight scenes, but hopefully this fic will help me get over that because so far there's been a lot of fighting. Hmm... guess that's what happens in a Naruto fic? XD

It's monday and I'm going to be at work full time over the week so the next chapter is probably going to be a while. I promise there will be more Kushina in the next couple chapters though, so stay tuned for the fiery red-head of awesome!

Reviews make me want to write more, but I love all my readers anyway. :3

-Py