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“What did you say your name was again?” Sakura seems to be the only one in her useless team taking this situation even remotely seriously, and thusly it is up to her to question the hell out of the two sketchy kids (wearing masks like Kakashi-sensei’s) that popped out of thin air in Training Ground 7 and then proceeded to claim to be from the future.
She calls bullshit.
“Minato,” the one with blonde hair, and eyes a dark grey- almost black, but not quite there, informs her cheerfully, unruffled whatsoever by her Gaze of Doom. She’s frankly disappointed.
“Like the Yondaime?” She asks, because that’s the only other blonde Minato she knows.
Minato nods, “I was named after my grandfather, the Yondaime,”
If these two jokers are telling the truth, then they may be looking at the Yondaime’s kin here.
“And you…?” She turns to the other.
“Sakumo,” he says. His arms are crossed over his chest in a very standoffish way, and he eyes her suspiciously. His hair is silver, and his eyes are blue.
She sends him the same look right back.
He rolls his eyes, “Like Hatake Sakumo, legendary White Fang of Konoha?”
Ooh? Someone seems a little miffed about his namesake not being immediately recognisable.
“Hatake?” She asks, only knowing of one other with that name.
“Hatake Sakumo- my father,” Kakashi says, who is idly twirling a kunai around his finger. He sounds utterly unaffected, perhaps even bored by this whole thing. The audacity. This could be a real case of time travel. Something that was previously unheard of, and utterly inconceivable as of ten minutes ago. He leans in to inspect the kid some, “Why were you named after him?”
The kid looks like he might roll his eyes again, but he’s in the presence of someone he respects far too much to do that, “Because my parents have no creativity when it comes to names so they named us based on our hair colour. I have frequently been told that I was only some red hair away from being named Kushina, irrespective of my gender.”
Kakashi gives him a strange look, “Kushina and Minato were married. That would be very weird.”
“I know. I would’ve been named Nagato if Kushina didn’t work out. You know, if he was Sakumo, I could be Kushina, or something like that.”
Sakura decides to take back the control of this conversation, because the strangers are getting a little too comfortable, “So he,” she gestures to Minato, who seems fascinated with a passing butterfly, “was named for…?”
“His blonde hair, yes,” Sakumo agrees.
“Wow,” Sakura snorts, “Your parents were not creative.”
“Oi,” strangely, it’s Minato who responds, granting her a sharp look, “Need I remind you that your parents named you Sakura , and your hair is pink?”
Sakura blushes a little, but doesn’t pursue the argument further.
“So you’re… the grandchildren of the Yondaime?” Sakura asks.
“Yup,”
“Pretty much,”
It’s right about then that Naruto finally decides to stroll into the Training Ground, to create her new jutsu with Kakashi-sensei. The newcomers react in a very unexpected way.
Find out after a short ad break!
Should Sakura be concerned about the small voice in her head that apparently narrates all the going-ons like a soap opera, and has enough power to include commercial breaks? Probably, but she has more important things to worry about currently than petty things such as sanity. Like poking at dead fish and making them glow green.
“Kaa-chan!” Minato (whom Sakura is quickly realising has the equivalent brain cells of a very small, very insignificant, organism) exclaims, launching himself at the unsuspecting girl.
Sakumo looks like drowning himself in the nearby pond is becoming an increasingly attractive option. Sakura kind of relates.
God knows she’d want to do the same if she had to deal with someone like Minato on a daily basis.
“Kaa-chan?” Sakura echoes, putting aside the mental comparison her brain is drawing up between Naruto and Minato for the minute. If they are indeed mother and son, then she certainly sees the resemblance.
Naruto looks very confused by this not-very-small child (13, Sakura guesses) who has suddenly thrown himself at her and then hugged her exuberantly. She doesn’t protest that last part though, she loves hugs. She’d probably hug the Akatsuki members if she could without ending up as a splat on the ground, and with her magical powers that somehow convince even the most heinous villains to switch sides, they’d all probably turn over a new leaf and start a future together as bakery owners on the spot.
“What did I miss?” Naruto asks, smiling bemusedly at Minato, who seems content to curl up against her.
Kakashi sighs.
“The children of the Yondaime?” Naruto asks. Minato is still hugging her, and she doesn’t seem to be complaining. She’s transitioned to patting him on the head distractedly every so often as she wraps her head around Sakura’s story.
Sakura doesn’t miss how Sakumo inches closer to her as well, nearly within hugging distance.
“No, the children of the Yondaime’s child,” Sakura corrects. Although, if they are indeed the Yondaime’s grandchildren, and Naruto is their mother…
“Damn! I missed such cool stuff!” Naruto laments. Simultaneously, Sakumo is added to the group hug session. He pretends to huff about it for all of three seconds before relaxing into Naruto’s side. It’s almost cute.
“See, this is why you should show up to training on time,” Kakashi tells her.
“That’s rich, coming from you,” Naruto returns.
“Can you both take this seriously?!” Sakura scolds them. Gosh, it’s truly a crisis scenario if she’s the voice of reason in all this.
“So, who is the Yondaime’s child?” Sakura asks. She’s hoping Naruto will speak up and save everyone the awkwardness.
She doesn’t.
She hums happily, waiting for an answer from Minato.
“She doesn’t know who she is right now,” Sakumo responds, “But yes, it is Naruto,” he answers.
“Me?!” Naruto exclaims, clearly as shocked as she ought to have been when random kids started throwing themselves at her and calling her their mother.
Sakura feels like slapping herself. She should have seen this sooner. How many other blue-eyed blondes does she know in Konoha? Aside from Ino’s family, but the two are clearly not related.
Naruto was practically the spitting image of her father, for heaven’s sake.
Naruto, meanwhile, looks like she’s about to pass out.
Kakashi, notably, does not seem the least bit surprised.
“Did you know who Naruto’s father was, Kakashi-sensei?” Sakura asks, because the man deserves to be thrown to the wolves every once in awhile for all those hours they collectively wasted waiting on him.
Naruto turns sharply to him, “Did you?” the answer must be written on Kakashi’s face, because she process to stand up- ooh, he’s really done for now, “And you never told me ?!”
“I-” Kakashi says, a truly feeble attempt at saving himself. Unfortunately, that ship has long sailed. Now all he can pray for is to be left with at least a little bit of his dignity intact.
“Senseiiii~” Terror is clear on Kakashi’s face as he begins to back away slowly from the tiny blonde approaching him.
“N-now, Naruto, I’m sure we can talk this out?” He suggests, though the grimace twisting his mask says that he knows as well as Sakura does that talking is no longer an option.
Beside her, Sakumo scoffs, and Minato chuckles. She turns inquisitive eyes to them, and Sakumo nods at the scene, “This is like our typical Tuesday. Heh, he’s dead.”
Well, if any conclusion is to be drawn from this, it is that Naruto certainly didn’t inherit her temperament from her father.
Kakashi attempts to run, the poor thing.
“Get back here! I’m not done with you dattebayo!’
For a good while, the only sounds coming from Training Ground seven are yelps, high-pitched screams, and cries for help, amidst a litany of, “I’m sorry Naruto!”.
The entirety of Konoha hears it, but the source is never discovered. However, Konoha does realise as a whole to maybe be a little more cautious about what they say around Naruto.
After that… intermission, they take Sakumo and Minato to the Hokage’s office.
“So they’re… Naruto’s children from the future?” Tsunade asks, tilting her head at them. Said children are currently poking around her office.
“Apparently,” Naruto responds.
The Hokage groans, “I’m not nearly drunk enough for this.” she says. Kakashi sympathises, and kind of wants to go get himself something strong to drink.
“The Rokudaime really overhauled this place,” Minato comments.
“No, it was the Nanadaime. She told us the story, remember?” Sakumo responds.
Minato grants him a look, and he sighs, “Of course you don’t.” he says, before he scoffs, “The Rokudaime is too lazy to even assign any remodelling jobs, much less take them up himself.”
“Who’s the Rokudaime?” Kakashi asks.
Silence.
“…spoilers.” Sakumo settles for.
“Then who’s the Nanadaime?” Naruto asks.
More silence.
“If we didn’t tell you about one, what makes you think we’ll tell you the other?” Minato says.
“You already told kaa-chan who she was within the first minute of seeing her, what makes you think they have any hope for you?” Sakumo retorts.
Minato reacts predictably.
Tsunade collapses into her desk. The future seems to have gone to shit, if Kakashi and Naruto are who she’s entrusting the seat to. Of course, in her mind, there had never been any doubt about Kakashi being her successor. And knowing Kakashi, Naruto will most likely be the seventh.
“So,” Sakura speaks up, from the corner she somehow found in a round room, “Are we just going to ignore the elephant in the room here?”
“What elephant?” Naruto asks, watching the time travellers casually threaten each other with bodily harm.
Twins, she supposes.
“The fact that one of Naruto’s future time-travelling kids looks exactly like Kakashi-Sensei.”
“He looks more like my father actually,”
“That’s not helping.”
“Gee,” Sakumo says, “I wonder why,”
Tsunade stands up abruptly, her chair screeching as she does, muttering something about needing a drink. She swiftly exits the room, and Sakura honestly wants to leave with her.
“I don’t get it. What’s going on?” Naruto asks.
Kakashi slinks away into another corner. How they keep finding these corners is beyond the scope of this story.
“That guy is supposedly your kid from the future.” She indicates Sakumo, and Naruto nods to show she’s following along so far, “Have you not noticed a resemblance between him and a certain idiot Sensei who’s currently trying to phase through the wall?”
Kakashi freezes guiltily, and Naruto blinks at her. Once, twice, and then her eyes go wide.
“EHH?!”
Sakura massages her temples tiredly. She kind of sees what Tsunade does in drinking. She needs a drink too.
The part that makes it all worth it, however, is when Naruto outright faints a few seconds later, and Kakashi is miraculously behind her to catch her in his arms like some trashy rom-com she might have loved a few years ago.
The scene is disgustingly adorable.
Minato ‘aww’s, and Sakumo makes an exaggerated gagging motion.
Yes, she sees the resemblance with the parents already.
When Naruto finally wakes up, Sakura is in the middle of encouraging Minato to pull down his mask.
Kakashi seems to have assumed the Hokage’s seat, as arguably the most important figure in this room.
Ton-ton sits beside him on the desk, as the actual most important figure in this room.
Sakumo has found himself a third corner to go sulk in.
She’s not sure she particularly wants to join any of these groups.
Minato finally yields to Sakura’s pestering, tugging down his mask. Naruto would like to see this too, actually. As if any more proof was needed about him being Naruto’s child, on his cheeks sit twin whisker-marks, similar to Naruto’s.
Naruto turns to Sakumo, “Do you have those too?”
In response, Sakumo quietly pulls down his mask to reveal the same markings. Now that Naruto can see both their faces fully, the differences are very apparent. Minato’s face is much sharper- his cheekbones a little higher, his jaw a little more angular, his nose straighter. Sakumo’s face is a little softer, his cheeks and nose more rounded, though still well-defined.
“Ne, if you two really are my time travelling kids from the future,” Naruto speaks, curling her arms around her drawn-up knees, “Surely I would have taught you the Rasengan ? Ero-sennin said that only two people currently alive know it, so if you also know it, then one of us must have taught it to you.”
“Three,” Sakumo says.
“Huh?”
“Three,” he says, again, “I’m correcting your misinformation,” he seems to miss the way Kakashi is desperately gesturing at him to shut up, hand slicing across his throat, “Currently, three people know the Rasengan .”
“Not counting you?” Naruto asks.
“Not counting us,” Minato confirms. “Besides, that would make it four people, and not three. If you count us, five people know it right now.”
“So, who is-”
They simultaneously point at something, and Naruto follows their gaze to see Kakashi, who has slumped over onto the desk, preparing for his fate.
By the end of this, he’s sure his bruises will have bruises.
“Sensei! This is not fair!!” Naruto leaps to her feet, pointing an accusing finger at the man, “Did you copy it from me?!”
Kakashi sighs long-sufferingly, “My genin teacher was the Yondaime, also known as the man who created the Rasengan . Where do you think I learned it?”
Naruto looks suspiciously at Minato, as if he can confirm the story. The boy raises his arms in a gesture that resembles surrender, “It’s true! Tou-chan told us that his Raikiri was the result of a failed attempt at combining his chakra nature with the Rasengan .”
Naruto lowers her arm, “Don’t remind me! I apparently have to get married to this piece of trash!” She gestures to Kakashi, who currently very much resembles the piece of trash she is comparing him to.
“Oh, and what about me?” The aforementioned trash raises his head, “I’d probably go bankrupt buying you ramen!”
“Well, I bet you’re a really lazy husband who won’t do your share of the work!”
“Yeah? Well, I bet you’re gonna leave the house in a mess all the time!”
“Oh, well, I don’t even think you can cook, can you?!”
Sakura rolls her eyes. Not even dating yet and they’ve reached the hypothetical old-married-couple stage.
“Aren’t you concerned that your future parents are fighting?” She asks Sakumo.
“No, not really. It’s happened before. Soon enough, they’ll go right back to being disgusting.” he answers.
“-ly cute,” Minato amends.
“Who wins?” Sakura asks, just out of curiosity.
“Kaa-chan, of course. Tou-chan always gives up and then begs for her forgiveness.” Sakumo says.
Sure enough, Kakashi is seen not even minutes later bowing profusely to an irate Naruto.
Sakura ships it.
“By the way, can you actually do the Rasengan ?” She asks, and Naruto stops twisting Kakashi’s ear long enough to pay attention. She doesn’t let go of it, though. That kind of looks painful, and Sakura sympathises with him, but not nearly enough to get between him and an angry Naruto.
“We both can,” Minato says, “But he uses it a lot more than I do,” here he gestures to Sakumo, who obligingly turns his palm up and proceeds to form a perfect blue sphere. Naruto oohs .
He dissipates the jutsu after a few seconds.
“I rely on tou-chan’s jutsus more,” Minato supplies.
“Well,” Sakura says, “I guess we’ve more than confirmed their identities. Still, it’s a crazy story. I mean, is no one else surprised by the whole Yondaime revelation?”
“I am. Nobody informed me of this.” Naruto says, sharply turning back to Kakashi to torture him some more over this fact as well. Kakashi shoots her a dour look for reminding Naruto, managing to look both insanely afraid and insanely attracted at the same time as he is bodily dragged away.
Huh. Who knew he was a masochist?
When Kakashi and Naruto return, he is strangely in one piece. Well, he looks like a stiff breeze might cause him to keel over entirely, but that’s neither here nor there.
“So, how did you guys get here anyway?” Sakura asks.
Minato and Sakumo look up from their game of Tic-Tac-Toe, which had ended in a tie for eighteen consecutive rounds. Kakashi and Naruto stopped trying to get Ton-Ton to roll over for long enough to listen.
“Well, it’s not really a magnificent story or anything,” Minato says.
“Indeed, the entire thing is his fault,” Sakumo jabs a thumb at his twin.
“Excuse you? I feel like the blame should be 50-50!”
“The idea was yours,” Sakumo returns, crossing his arms and turning his head away.
“You encouraged it!”
“How did it happen, though?” Sakura reiterates, feeling like the twins are seriously losing the point here.
“Right, so, it all started with this seal kaa-chan brought home because it was too dangerous to leave in the Hokage Office,” Minato begins.
Sakumo picks up for him, “She told us not to even go near the seal, and not to touch or activate it under any circumstances. Her words were: ‘You two are idiots, so I’ll spell it out for you. That right there is theoretically a time travel seal, but it still needs to be tested, so do not go near it,’. We were curious, as you can imagine.”
Minato continues, “So, of course, we had to try it out.”
Sakura is giving him a look that sort of implies there is nothing obvious about the conclusion he has drawn, so he shrugs, “What? What would you have done with a potential time-travel seal in your house ?”
“Left well enough alone,” Sakura says.
“I would have used it,” Naruto says at the same time.
Minato looks betrayed, “Kaa-chan, you traitor. You would’ve done the same thing, wouldn’t you?!”
Sakumo gives Naruto judging eyes, so she glares back at him.
“Already setting a bad example for the kids,” Kakashi sighs, shaking his head.
“What was that?”
“N-nothing,”
“That’s what I thought,”
“Anyway,” Sakumo interrupts them, “It was Minato’s idea,”
Minato elbows him harshly in the ribs.
“Ow! Okay, so maybe I was also a little curious.”
“So we used the seal and now we’re here!” Minato concludes the story.
Even more silence.
“Frankly I was expecting something more dramatic,” Naruto says, finally, after the metaphorical crickets have concluded their encore.
Ton-Ton oinks in agreement.
“How are you planning on getting home?” Sakura asks, ignoring them. This is a very valid question, and also one they should have asked hours ago.
“Kaa-chan and tou-chan will come to get us, of course!” Minato says, as if this is an absolute fact. For once, Sakumo simply nods in agreement.
Naruto tears up a little at the faith her family has in her. Kakashi smiles.
“Should we, I dunno, show them around Konoha or something?”
“Naruto,” Sakura intones, exasperated, “They literally live here. What makes you think they need any more tours?”
“To be fair,” Minato pipes in, “They did overhaul the entire village between now and our time, so a tour wouldn’t be totally awful.”
“They did what now?” Kakashi asks.
“Not by choice, of course! The village was totally wiped off the map, so we re-built!” Minato informs him cheerfully.
Kakashi blinks at him, “That doesn’t make it better!”
Sakumo rolls his eyes, “Idiot,”
“Hey! Kaa-chan and tou-chan clearly don’t remember any of this or we would have gotten a don’t-touch-strange-seals-talk along with the don't-talk-to-strangers talk, so I figured it would be okay to tell them this. Besides, it’s not like they can do much about it with kaa-chan at Myobokuzan with the toads and tou-chan having a heart-to-heart with his dad.” Minato says.
“None of this is making this better,” Kakashi says flatly, a bit worried that the prospect of his own death being casually discussed by his two time-travelling sons from the future whom he had with Naruto of all people isn’t fazing him just a bit more. The Naruto Effect, he supposes. Nothing surprises him anymore.
“Oh, please. All you had to do was have an emotional revelation. Besides, you clearly came back to life, since you had to have had us sometime after, as disgusting of a prospect as that is to consider.” Sakumo says.
“Come back to life, right. I did that,” Kakashi chokes out. He’s not sure how he did such a miraculous thing, but he’s sure as hell not complaining.
“100 ryo says Naruto had something to do with it,” Sakura tells Sakumo, who scoffs.
“No deal. I don’t want to lose all my money, thanks.”
“So I’m right then?”
“Of course you’re right. When doesn’t Naruto have something to do with it?”
“So, what summons do you guys have?“ Kakashi asks.
“Well, we decided one of us should take the tracker summons, and the other the battle summons.” Sakumo says, “So I signed the frog summoning contract and Minato signed the dogs’,”
Kakashi nodded, “Good idea. You’re a good team in and of yourselves.” He approves.
“At first it was going to be the other way around,” Minato reveals, “because Sakumo is a mega Uzumaki-Hatake Kakashi fanboy-”
“I am not ,” Sakumo interrupts tersely. Kakashi’s more concerned about the Uzumaki-Hatake bit than the rest of it, though. He’d kind of assumed Naruto would take his last name, because Uzumaki Kakashi did not sound good. Granted, neither did the alternative. The combination might be the best one.
“-but then people were getting too confused with the previous generation of Sakumo and Minato and us.” Minato says, “We almost ran with it too, just for the chaos.”
“You mean you ran with it,” Sakumo corrects, crossing his arms.
“Need I remind you it was your idea? You may never admit it, but I know how much you wanted- sorry, want to be just like tou-chan .” Minato says.
Sakumo looks away, but notably does not respond.
“Tou-chan probably knows it too,” Minato says, and his twin’s (who really looks nothing like him at all) head turns toward him so fast Kakashi winces on his behalf.
“He what?! No, he doesn’t!”
“Well, if he didn’t, he certainly does now,”
Sakumo’s head turns audibly for the second time in as many minutes.
“Well, I’m flattered, really. It’s always been a goal of mine… to have a kid who… wanted to be… just like me?” Kakashi says it like it’s a question, and indeed it is.
Sakumo sighs, “That was completely useless, but thanks anyway.”
Naruto only cackles.
“Hey, where is Sasuke-jiisan?” Minato asks.
Sakura disappears to sulk over that, Kakashi glances away, and Naruto’s expression turns sour.
Clearly their kids haven’t been informed of what exactly Sasuke had been up to in his youth. They silently reach a consensus to not be the ones to drop the news.
On the bright side, at least this means they succeed eventually?
“Sasuke, huh?” she says. Kakashi clicks his tongue, steepling his fingers on the desk in a motion very reminiscent of his Hokage attitude.
“He’s currently out of village,” Kakashi says.
“On a mission?” Sakumo asks.
“He is… maa, I guess you could say he is on a solo mission. He chose it specifically for himself,” Kakashi says carefully.
“When will he come back?” Minato asks.
“Well, that depends on him, really.”
“And me!” Naruto exclaims, “And Sakura-chan, and that creepy Sai guy, and Yamato-taicho, and you too!” Here she gives Kakashi an aggressively cheerful smile, and he wonders for a second how he got her to stop focusing on Sasuke long enough to realise his existence.
Sakumo raises a brow, “That’s… a very extensive list for a solo mission,”
“Well, at least now we know he’ll return somewhere in the next... nineteen?" Assuming she had Sakumo and Minato somewhere around the age of twenty-two, "years,” Naruto says, and then pauses to register that, “That’s not very encouraging.”
“No, no, he’ll return much before that,” Minato says, and it’s probably meant to be encouraging, “Him and Sakura-obaasan have to get married, after all.”
“ Obaa-san ?!” Sakura screeches, emerging from her despair. Then, “MARRIED?!” And that is screeched in a very different tone.
Naruto belatedly covers her ears, but nothing more comes, as Sakura’s soul seems to have temporarily separated from her body. She purses her lips in an effort not to laugh.
“Is she okay?” Minato asks her in a whisper.
“Fine, fine. She’s just trying to wrap her head around the idea of Sasuke loving her back.” Naruto tells him.
“Loving her back?” Sakumo and Minato echo, eerily cocking their heads in tandem, before glancing at each other, “I always thought it would be the other way around,” Sakumo says.
“Yeah, Sasuke-ojiisan is probably the more smitten of the two, even if he is too emotionally constipated to show it,” Minato agrees.
Kakashi raises a brow at them, “Really? Huh, who’d have predicted that.”
“Not me,” Naruto says, even though it had been a rhetorical question.
Sakura very anti-climactically collapses into a dead faint, but unfortunately nobody catches her. Oh well, she can just suffer the migraine. She’s probably the one doing all the catching and being capable in their relationship anyway.
They’re playing the most uneventful game of Go! Ninja ever (a game that apparently exists in the future, that Naruto does not understand the rules of, Kakashi does not care to understand the rules of, and Sakura is getting scarily competitive about) when it happens.
It being the vortex that shows up in the office and spits out two people. Belatedly, a very pretty blonde woman and some old guy- oh, wait, that’s Kakashi. The blonde woman’s expression is one of instant relief at seeing the boys standing in the middle of the office.
Kakashi the younger looks up from his book, “Oh, hi,” he says, as if this is an everyday occurrence for him.
“Yo,” the older acknowledges, but Naruto the older pays him no mind, marching right to where her sons are standing.
Rather than slapping them a few times, which is what her face (now rather leaning towards anger) suggests she might do, she pulls them both towards her and hugs them fiercely.
“You… absolute idiots!” she cries, and Naruto the younger kind of agrees. They deserve to have their circulation cut off for a bit for worrying her future self.
“K-Kaa-chan, can’t… breathe,” Minato tries.
Naruto Senior ignores that completely, “Never! Never again will you do something like that! Do you even realise how lucky you both are that you ended up here and not… I don’t know, with Hashirama or something?! I would never have found you!” she hugs them to her even tighter, and they physically saw the moment when Sakumo and Minato’s faces soften.
They do get those hits eventually. From their father, who shows up behind them, and bops them each firmly, before laying his hands on their heads, “You really worried your mother, you know.” he says, softly.
“ Just their mother ?” Naruto the older asks, raising an eyebrow in a move that is entirely too intimidating, “You were freaking out too.”
“I was not,” Kakashi the older says stiffly, and Naruto (the younger) kind of sees where Sakumo gets his attitude from.
“Not the problem right now, Kakashi.” his wife says, and Naruto (the younger… is anyone else beginning to get confused?) winces at the drop of honorific. Well, she’d been expecting it, because who realistically calls their husband sensei ?
…Don’t answer that one.
Back to the point. She’d been expecting it, but she clearly hadn’t been quite fully prepared.
Sakura edges closer to her, “Is that really you in the future?” she whispers, a little bit in awe.
Indeed, Naruto can scarcely believe it herself.
“She’s so pretty,” Naruto agrees.
Naruto the older, who has undoubtedly heard them, does not comment. Instead, she continues to berate her sons.
Naruto the younger feels a small sense of satisfaction, right up there with all the sympathy she currently has for the two boys. Contrary to popular belief, she is not unaware that her temper can be a bit… volatile, shall we say?
“…and after I explicitly told you both not to touch the seal, what do you go and do? You decide it’s a good idea to experiment! Because obviously an untested seal can’t possibly be dangerous-”
“In all fairness, you needed to test it anyway. And clearly, it works!” Minato says.
Everyone in the room, including Minato himself, and excluding his mother, grimaces.
Kakashi the older takes a few steps back. Son or no, he had some sense of self-preservation left in him, which dictated firmly for him to be as far away from the blast zone as possible.
Kakashi the younger contemplates ducking beneath the Hokage desk, but thinks that’s a bit cowardly.
“ On an apple ! I was going to test the seal on an apple, not on my sons, you absolute custard for brains, useless-”
Naruto the younger winces a bit at the very colourful and very strong choice of vocabulary her older self employs. She even picks up a few new ones along the way, and let it never be said that she is not creative with her insults because wow, that poor kid is getting torn in half.
(While this is going on, she also takes a second to glance a few or maybe several times at the older Kakashi because goddamn, the man ages like fine wine. She says this purely objectively, of course, and seeing as she’ll eventually be marrying him she thinks she gets the privileges to do so.
Kakashi the older notices her stare, and grants her a wink. Naruto does not blush.
Kakashi the younger not-so-subtly turns the older Kakashi’s head in the direction of his wife with what can only be describes as a scowl on his masked face. She finds it adorable).
When Naruto (still the older) is done raging, she settles into the recently vacated Hokage chair with a huff.
Kakashi (the younger) almost protests, but seems to think better of it. Wise man.
“It’s my chair, I can sit in it if I want to.” she says, as if any of them really have the guts to protest.
Naruto (the younger) gasps at this newfound knowledge, before proceeding to squeal like a broken tea kettle that’s been brewing steroids for a full few minutes, and then turns betrayed eyes on her future sons.
“I’m the Hokage?!” she demands of them, “And you never told me?!”
“S-sorry? If it helps, tou-chan is the Rokudaime,” Minato says. Kakashi (the younger, because we may assume the older knows of the multiple years he spent as Hokage) gasps, and then retreats to where the other Kakashi has taken up temporary residence, presumably to interrogate him.
“That’s not helping.” Naruto (the younger) tells him.
(“You look old,” Kakashi the younger sniffs at his counterpart.
The older turns amused eyes at him, “I am nearing forty-five, yes. Your point?”
“Nothing. Just that you’re old,”
“Well, thank you for pointing that out.”
“Just out of curiosity, when did you start dating Naruto?” the younger asks, for reasons completely unrelated to his person, of course.
“Maa, I could tell you,”
Kakashi (the younger) knows there’s a but coming, “But?” he prompts.
“But…” the older drags out the word, “I won’t.”
“Then what are you good for?” He decides to answer his own question, “Nothing,”
“When do you think I started dating Naruto?” the older asks, helpfully.
‘Oh, are we playing twenty questions now?’ the younger thinks, spitefully. “Not before she was at least eighteen, I hope.” he says.
“Is that when you plan on asking her out?” There’s a knowing twinkle in his eye that the younger decides he doesn’t like, and in retaliation to that he turns a mortifying shade of red. Yes, good revenge, well done. Surely he repents what he said now.
“N-no! I have nothing to do with this,”
“I was under the assumption that we are one and the same person, and therefore you do, in fact, have something to do with this,”
“Shut up!” the younger drifts away from him, “I’m going to go find better company.”
“Ah, yes,” the older says to himself, once the younger can no longer hear him, “All my self-love at it’s finest.”).
“How did you find us anyway?” Sakumo asks the older Naruto, “I thought all your memories were wiped,”
“Mm, yes, they were,” Naruto (obviously the older) agrees, “I brought the seal for that with me, found it in tou-chan’s old book of seals,” and the younger is jarringly reminded of who “tou-chan” actually is.
“At first I thought we’d have to go year by year and check every single day until we found you. There was really no way to narrow down exactly what time you’d reached.” Naruto says, oddly casually for the task she is discussing, “But then we found out that there was one person who never lost his memories to begin with. We couldn’t wipe them, meaning he knew exactly where you both were.”
“Who?” Minato asks.
“Kurama,” Naruto says, and the younger wonders if she’s the only one confused right now. Nope, Sakura also seems to have no clue what’s going on. Kakashi (the younger) always looks like he knows everything and nothing at the same time, so not much can be gleaned from his face. Plus, the mask. Need she say more?
She also feels this strange boiling warmth in her gut, and a headache coming on. Eh, she must be hungry or something.
“That’s why I said you were both really lucky that a) You chose a specific date when I was actually in Konoha for an extended period of time, and not when I was either not here or not born at all, and b) It was specifically you two that attempted this, and then interacted so heavily with me.” Naruto says.
“Who’s Kurama?” Sakura asks.
“The kyuubi , of course,” the older answers. ‘Of course’, she says, like it’s obvious.
“Is that his name?” Naruto, the younger, asks.
“Yes.” the older says, “You’ll find this out in some time. Give it a year or so. Right, now I need anybody who talked to them,” she jerks a thumb at her sons, “for enough time to find out who they are and where they’re from to be gathered in this room. I have to wipe your memories of this whole thing.”
Sakura hunts down Tsunade (who is predictably at a nearby bar, and not nearly sober enough to protest being dragged away with any sort of coherence) and brings her back to the gathered crowd in her office.
"Well, this is it, I suppose," Naruto (the younger) says to her future sons. Despite spending so little time with them, she knows she will miss them when they leave.
"I'm glad we got to meet this version of you. Sometimes it gets a little intimidating having the hero of the Shinobi World and the reputed Nanadaime Hokage as your mother, you know?" Minato says, "So much to live up to."
"The what."
Minato chuckles nervously, "And I think that's my cue to leave."
Naruto pulls him into a hug, "I'll see you soon," she says.
"Actually you'll see us in six years-" Sakumo corrects, but is cut off.
Naruto shushes him, hugging him also. "Don't do anything stupid, okay?"
"No promises," Minato winks.
Kakashi (the younger) ruffles their hair as a form of goodbye.
Naruto (the older) smiles, "Is everyone ready?" she asks, opening a scroll.
She receives nods in response.
“Okay, on three, then. Kashi, get the portal ready,” Naruto the older says. ‘Kashi’ nods, and then fiddles with the other seal a bit. “Guys, I’m going to erase all your memories of today, so this might be a bit jarring at first, please bear with me.”
“One…”
A whirr picks up somewhere, probably the other seal. Tsunade stumbles a bit, and Sakura moves to steady her. Minato and Sakumo retreat to their mother’s side.
“Two…”
The portal appears with a magnificent whoosh, and a dramatic wind somehow gets into the office despite the windows being closed. Naruto (the younger) swallows.
“Three.” Naruto (the older) channels her chakra into the seal.
…
A blinding light is suddenly all they can see, considering that it’s literally blinding them. Naruto feels an odd sense of detachment, like she’s losing something, but she’s not sure what. That damn light is still there too, what the heck is going on?
Suddenly it vanishes, along with any and all memories of it, and three very dazed people. The fourth passed out a few theatric flashes ago.
“Tsunade-sama! Were you day-drinking again?!” Sakura gawps, shaking her mentor violently. Possibly not the best idea considering the woman currently can’t tell the floor from the ceiling and the world seems to be spinning enough as is without the added incentive.
“Whazzat? Who’s it?” The Godaime Hokage, the world’s best medical ninja, respected member of the Sannin, struggles to acquaint herself with gravity and falls over once more.
“What’re you all doing here?” The question is significantly more slurred than that, but I have taken the liberty of translating it for the readers’ benefit.
Good question, Naruto doesn’t know what she’s doing here either.
“Kakashi-sensei! You promised to help me make my jutsu!” she points at the man accusingly, as if this is all his fault.
“So I did,” he seems puzzled, “I could have sworn we agreed to meet in training ground 7. What are we doing here?”
“Who cares dattebayo? Let’s go create my new jutsu! It’s going to be awesome!”
Sitting in his cage, Kurama sighs. What a troublesome human he’s landed himself with. He needs a good, long nap.