Inoichi arrived at the scene not long after when Kakashi searched for him and brought him there.
"Tsunade-sama?" Inoichi asked surprised, since Tsunade was still in her younger form right now.
"Inoichi, I have a request for you…" Tsunade started speaking without acknowledging her appearance.
"Yes, Tsunade-sama, what can I do?"
"I need you to read the memories of a child and tell me if he was really taught a few jutsu by the Third Hokage or not." Tsunade said.
Inoichi's eyes widened and he froze for a second. There were too many new things in the sentence that Tsunade had spoken that he was stunlocked.
'The Third Hokage taught someone other than the Sanin?'
'A child at that?'
'And I have to read his memories to verify that claim?'
Inoichi slowly recovered but he didn't immediately reject Tsunade's request.
First of all, he had just abandoned post in front of her to save himself and his daughter, regardless of if his help in the situation was needed or not. And secondly, he felt that there was more to the situation that met the eye.
"If I may ask, why do you want to read the child's memories in the first place, Tsunade-sama?"
Tsunade frowned but gave her reason, "Because the brat claims to have learnt the flying jutsu and the jutsu he used to destroy the meteorite from the Third hokage who actually did teach him for a short period disguised as Kakashi."
Inoichi's eyes widened, "The child was the one that destroyed the meteorite? Not you? How!?"
"That's not the main point." Tsunade shook her head, "What I want to know is if he's telling the truth, since as far as I know, Sensei didn't know any such jutsu, or he would've used it in war or at least taught it to one of us."
Inoichi took a deep breath to calm himself and then spoke gently, "Isn't it possible that the Third Hokage invented the jutsu only after the Third Shinobi World War?"
"Do you really think he had the time to go about inventing a jutsu when the village was at a precarious stage? When it could've been attacked by any of our enemies?" Tsunade countered, causing Inoichi to fall silent.
Inoichi was about to suggest that they consult the ANBU who guarded the Hokage if he had taught the child such things but when he looked at Tsunade's firm gaze, he dropped the idea.
It appeared like if it was not him who did the mind reading, Tsunade would find someone else.
So Inoichi only sighed and nodded, "Alright, Tsunade-sama, where is the child?"
Tsunade turned to Katsuyu who was sitting on the side listening to all of them and ordered, "Katsuyu, release Haruto."
"Yes Lady Tsunade." Katsuyu said before her form started wiggling and ended up spitting out Haruto from her stomach.
As soon as Haruto was spit out of Katsuyu's body, he simply collapsed to the ground and looked unconscious.
"Is he dead?" Jiraiya asked jokingly, he, like the other shinobi present in the area, could feel that Haruto was simply asleep. And coupled with the fact that Tsunade had already examined him earlier, he was probably asleep from exhaustion.
Inoichi however, froze for a second once again, "It's him!"
"Oh? You recognise the child?" Jiraiya asked softly and Inoichi nodded, "Yes, Jiraiya-sama, he's the child that Tsunade-sama brought to my home to discuss a new revolutionary technology."
"Ho? And what is it about?"
Inoichi was about to respond but Tsunade cut them off, "You can discuss that later. First, finish the task at hand."
Inoichi nodded and took a knee to the ground, he placed his hand on Haruto's head before forming single hand seals with his other free hand.
"His mindscape is accessible, Tsunade-sama, what period of his memories do you want me to look at?"
Tsunade looked at Kakashi prompting him to answer, "About two and half months earlier, that's when Hokage-sama took an interest in him and began teaching him."
"I see…" Inoichi said before diving immediately into Haruto's mindscape.
As soon as he did so, Inoichi arrived at a green meadow with low rolling hills. He looked around for a second before noticing the prominently placed computer under the shade of a tall tree.
Inoichi, adapting to the situation, began to move towards the computer.
'What a strange mindscape… it is so peaceful… is this the reward for being a child?'
It almost felt like a sin to enter the mind of such a peaceful child.
But orders were orders.
And so, after about a minute or so of walking inside the mindscape, Inoichi reached the computer.
He operated it like you would a normal computer, moving the mouse around for a second or two, clicking on various folders until he arrived at a folder which contained multiple other folders sorted by date and time.
"Hmm… that surely makes things easier…" Inoichi mumbled to himself, while searching for the appropriate date before clicking on the folder he found.
'Let's begin from here.'
The folder opened to contain a list of videos, and Inoichi forced himself to sit through each one.
He watched as Haruto cooked his meal for the day, had breakfast, then went to the R&D department, worked on his research, then was called by Kakashi to Training Ground Seven where he trained with 'Kakashi'.
The first training video didn't contain any flight jutsu or any large scale explosion jutsu. All it contained was the basic fireball jutsu.
'Hmm…'
Inoichi saw the Third Hokage telling Haruto that they would meet once every week after that and so he began watching those particular videos.
Nothing happened in the next three videos. They discussed the fireball jutsu, with Haruto doing his best to learn its modifications like the super explosive fireball jutsu or the direction controlling fireball jutsu.
'Hmm…' Inoichi frowned, was Tsunade right on the mark? Was Haruto lying about the origin of his jutsu?
Inoichi was about to stop looking at new videos and was about to report the truth to Tsunade since he had already crossed the death day of the Third Hokage when suddenly his attention was dragged to another video, this one much smaller in size than Haruto's usual days.
'Huh? Why is this video so small? Did he fall unconscious or something?'
Inoichi opened the video file and felt surprised.
In the video was Kakashi, demonstrating a flying jutsu and an explosion jutsu which could scale greatly based on the amount of chakra provided to it.
And while he wanted to learn the jutsu along with Haruto and steal them, Inoichi only rubbed his eyes in confusion before he quickly stepped out of Haruto's mindscape and looked at Tsunade with shock and surprise.
"The boy is speaking the truth!" Inoichi quickly said, "He does have a memory of Kakashi teaching him the flying jutsu and an explosion jutsu that can scale exponentially based on the amount of chakra used."
"What!?" Tsunade gasped. "Are you serious!?"
Jiraiya, Kakashi and Shizune all relaxed.
But Inoichi didn't seem to be done yet as he spoke further, "But that's not all, the memory of Kakashi teaching him these two jutsu comes after the date of the Third Hokage-sama's death!"
"What?!" Tsunade gasped again. "Are you serious!?"
Only this time her questions and words resonated with every single person present as they all looked at Inoichi with confusion.
***
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