Everyone stared at the title in confusion.
IF route?
What did that even mean?
A hypothetical route?
They quickly opened the diary.
The same suffocating pressure of the Nine-Tails filled the screen. Boundless Chakra boiled like a storm. The massive beast strained against the Adamantine Sealing Chains, its enormous claw plunging down toward the infant Naruto below.
Every single person's eyes widened.
They had seen this scene before.
Last time, the Fourth Hokage and Kushina were pierced through by that claw. In his final moments, Minato sealed the Nine-Tails. Half of it was taken by the Shinigami along with him. The other half was sealed into Uzumaki Naruto.
But this time was different.
That devastating strike was kicked aside by someone's bare leg.
"With your body alone…?"
The Nine-Tails' huge, feral eyes locked onto the figure below.
Minato and Kushina, who had already prepared themselves for death, finally had a chance to look at the one who saved them.
The man wore a Hokage cloak.
On the back were the words: Seventh Hokage.
The couple both thought they were hallucinating.
Seventh Hokage?
Konoha had only reached the Fourth Hokage.
Where did a Seventh come from?
Was this some kind of joke?
The Hokage cloak fluttered in the wind.
"How did he pass through the barrier? Who exactly are you…?"
Minato stared at him, shock written across his face.
Even the Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen, was currently outside the barrier, unable to enter.
"May I ask… who are you?" Minato said cautiously.
He didn't relax just because the man had saved them.
Appearing inside the barrier without a sound reminded him too much of the masked man he had just driven away.
And there was something else.
There was no Seventh Hokage.
Not yet.
He had to remain wary.
The man turned around.
"I am the Seventh Hokage."
He stepped beside Minato.
In that instant, there was a single heartbeat-like thrum.
Minato's condition returned to its peak.
The Shinigami summoned by the Dead Demon Consuming Seal vanished, retreating back into its own realm.
"This power… what is this?"
Minato could feel a strange force coursing through his body.
But the man did not answer.
He moved to Kushina.
"Leave this to me. Please don't move. Trust me."
He touched her lightly.
Kushina, who had been on the brink of death, her life force nearly exhausted, recovered to full strength in an instant. The barrier and the Adamantine Sealing Chains returned to her body.
He then looked down at the infant version of himself.
His expression was complicated.
There was sorrow in his eyes.
"That's Naruto. That's definitely Naruto."
Hatake Kakashi reacted first.
Even with the mask, the voice and presence were unmistakable.
It was his student, Uzumaki Naruto.
So that was the meaning of IF route.
A hypothetical path.
He didn't know how or why Naruto, now the Seventh Hokage, had come back to this moment to face the Nine-Tails alone.
The Nine-Tails' terror had just been demonstrated.
Without Kushina's Adamantine Sealing Chains, it would have been nearly impossible to restrain it.
Even with the Dead Demon Consuming Seal, it wasn't as though the Nine-Tails would obediently wait to be sealed.
You couldn't even die properly if it didn't cooperate.
"That brat… so he really did become Hokage in the future."
Tsunade clicked her tongue, sounding dismissive, yet a faint smile tugged at her lips.
When she first saw him in earlier footage, he had been a reckless kid.
Now, in the blink of an eye, he stood as Konoha's Seventh Hokage.
By then, she would probably be long retired.
"Minato… Naruto…"
Jiraiya wiped his eyes again.
Even if it was just a hypothetical scenario, letting his young disciple see the glory of his son's future was enough.
"As expected. He became the Seventh Hokage."
Uchiha Itachi nodded, a small smile forming.
It matched his earlier deduction.
If Hatake Kakashi was likely the Sixth Hokage, then the Seventh would naturally be Uzumaki Naruto.
At that moment, he also understood something else.
Why future Uchiha Sasuke had been able to remain in the village, marry, and have a family instead of being hunted down as a Missing-nin.
Naruto must have played a huge role.
He was Hokage's teammate.
Hokage's brother.
Would such a person be pursued?
It sounded cruel, but the reality was simple.
Danzo had committed countless unforgivable acts, yet he nearly became the Sixth Hokage.
That kind of privilege only existed within the Hokage's inner circle.
In Konoha, true power lay with the Hokage lineage.
If you weren't part of it, even loyalty didn't shield you from hardship.
From the moment Sasuke became Kakashi's student, he had already entered that circle.
If Itachi's guess was right, Kakashi would become Sixth Hokage.
Above Kakashi stood Minato.
Above Minato stood Jiraiya.
Above Jiraiya stood the Third Hokage.
Then the Second.
Then the First.
Sasuke's fate had shifted the day he became Kakashi's student.
It was something Itachi and Uchiha Shisui could only have dreamed of.
From that generation onward, with the Hokage lineage marking him, Sasuke's ceiling in Konoha was fundamentally different.
That was why, even after defecting, he could return.
As Seventh Hokage, Naruto would have the authority to decide who was a sinner and who was a hero.
"That was the right move."
Itachi felt lighter than he had in years.
The moment he saw Naruto in the Seventh Hokage's cloak, he knew.
Sasuke's future was secure.
Truly secure.
"He… really became Hokage?"
Uchiha Sasuke stared at the screen.
The idiot who used to shout "I'll be Hokage!" at every turn had actually done it.
The small spark of pride he had felt upon seeing White Robe Sasuke and his future Mangekyo Sharingan crumbled in that instant.
Naruto was the Hokage's son.
And he became Hokage himself.
A line from Kaede Kitahara's diary suddenly echoed in his mind.
"The Hokage's son becomes Hokage."
Was that what it meant?
Before they could think further, the scene shifted.
With Kushina withdrawing the Adamantine Sealing Chains, the Nine-Tails roared in unrestrained fury.
"You insolent brats!"
Then something even more shocking happened.
Inside Uzumaki Naruto, another Nine-Tails lay curled.
This one was just as powerful, but unlike the feral beast from twelve years ago, this Nine-Tails seemed… human.
It even sounded amused.
"Naruto, you can handle this yourself, right? I can't give you too much Chakra right now," the Nine-Tails drawled lazily.
Naruto grinned.
"Yeah. That's exactly what I was thinking."
"What? Naruto and the Nine-Tails can get along like that?"
Jiraiya's jaw dropped.
"Wait… the Nine-Tails can act like that?"
This was completely different from the Tailed Beast and Jinchuriki dynamic he understood.
"It's kind of like Kumogakure's perfect Jinchuriki…"
A memory surfaced.
Kumogakure ranked second among the great ninja villages. They were aggressive and rarely provoked, in large part because they possessed two perfect Jinchuriki.
A perfect Jinchuriki could fully utilize their Tailed Beast's power.
That made an enormous difference.
The Nine-Tails was vastly stronger than most Tailed Beasts. Ordinarily, it far exceeded what a normal Kage Level shinobi could handle.
Yet when sealed within a Jinchuriki, it often only manifested at a stable Kage Level.
Why?
Because the human and the Tailed Beast weren't in sync.
Even when borrowing its power, the Jinchuriki had to devote part of their strength to suppressing it.
But now, the Nine-Tails inside Naruto looked calm.
Conversational.
Tsunade stared, stunned.
She had grown up beside her grandmother, Uzumaki Mito, the first Nine-Tails Jinchuriki.
She had firsthand experience with the relationship between Jinchuriki and Tailed Beast.
Mito's relationship with the Nine-Tails had not been harmonious.
There were frequent disturbances. Even Tsunade had occasionally sensed the Nine-Tails' Chakra leaking out before Mito suppressed it again.
Mito had been the princess of a flourishing Uzumaki Clan and the wife of the God of Shinobi.
Compared to Kushina, whose homeland was destroyed, or Naruto, who lost his entire family, Mito's circumstances had been far stronger.
Yet even she had not reached this level of mutual understanding.
And here Naruto stood, laughing alongside the Nine-Tails as equals.