Chapter 375: No Fourth, Only a Father
Minato had long understood one truth. In this world, no one would ever be unconditionally good to you except your own family. Even when someone treated you exceptionally well, there was usually some ulterior motive behind it. And even within a family, relationships could still sour, to the point of hatred.
Minato had seen miserable childhoods before. He had even seen people whose greatest dream, after growing up in that kind of misery, was to personally turn themselves into orphans.
If that could happen even among family, then how much more could it happen between strangers?
But even so, Minato had never expected Amamiya Kenichi to be this insane.
"To be honest, I never thought you were this kind of person," Minato said as he looked at the sky slowly brightening at the horizon. He took a deep breath, then scratched his head.
The world had changed far too quickly.
Just moments ago, he had still been inside the Shinigami's stomach, contemplating life, thinking about Kushina and Naruto, wondering what his son would be like when he grew up.
Then in the very next moment, he had been dragged out of that place and hauled onto a pirate ship.
Yes, a pirate ship.
Minato truly felt that Kenichi's thinking was a little crazy. The things he considered were completely outrageous. At the very least, when Minato had been Kenichi's age, he had only been thinking about how to become an outstanding shinobi. His greatest ambition back then had been whether or not he could become Hokage.
That was all. That had already been the biggest and wildest dream he had dared to entertain.
But Kenichi was different.
He was actually thinking about unifying the entire shinobi world.
The shinobi world had so many countries. The Five Great Nations. The Five Great Hidden Villages. Wanting to conquer and unify all of them was madness. Even the First Hokage, known as the God of Shinobi, had never accomplished such a thing.
"People always change, Big Brother Minato." Kenichi casually poured him another cup of tea.
Now that Minato had already agreed, the next issue was how to revive him properly.
There was no question about the method. At present, there was only one option: Samsara of Heavenly Life Technique. Nothing else would work. But that technique required the soul of a shinobi of comparable strength. It was not something that could be used by casually dragging in some ordinary person.
Otherwise, the Hidden Sand Village would probably have escaped the Land of Wind long ago. They could have just taken their strongest fighters into battle, died together with the enemy, then revived them afterward. The fact that they had never done such a thing proved that the technique had limits.
"...Thank you for taking care of Naruto during this time," Minato said suddenly, breaking the calm before dawn.
Kenichi's hand paused for a moment.
He looked at Minato in surprise. The man was looking at him seriously, and the gratitude in his voice was genuine. That honestly caught Kenichi off guard.
"It's nothing. I like Naruto too. For someone to grow up in that kind of environment and still keep that sort of personality... that's honestly impressive," Kenichi said with a sigh.
He meant it.
If he put himself in Naruto's place and imagined living the life Naruto had lived, then not turning dark and deciding to erase Konoha with a Tailed Beast Bomb would already count as remarkable restraint.
And yet Naruto could still stay optimistic. He could still think about becoming Hokage and earning everyone's acknowledgment.
That really was amazing.
At least, Kenichi knew he could never be that kind of person.
Minato blinked. He wanted to say something, but the words would not come. He held it in for a long while before finally staying silent.
Even he had to admit it. His son's personality was absurdly good.
But if given the choice, he would rather Naruto never have had to endure any of it.
"Your first target being the Hidden Mist is a good choice. But how do you plan to get there? That place is surrounded by sea. You can only go by boat, and that's troublesome," Minato said, changing the subject.
"Times have changed, Big Brother Minato. We have airships now. We can just fly straight there," Kenichi said, raising an eyebrow.
Minato looked blank for a moment.
This was the feeling of suddenly realizing you had been left behind by the times.
After Kenichi explained it for a while, Minato finally understood what new changes had appeared in the shinobi world since his death. He could not help feeling a little strange, as though the world had developed a generation gap without him.
"...Anyway, once the time comes, what needs to be done is quickly seize control of the Hidden Mist and then bestow blessings on all the shinobi there," Kenichi continued, calmly laying out his plan.
The truth was, his plan had a major flaw. Prisoners of war.
What was he supposed to do with them?
The Hidden Mist had a large number of shinobi, along with the Daimyo and all sorts of people with their own agendas. Taking the village by force would be one thing. Ruling it afterward would be the real headache.
Fortunately, he had parasites. Those could bypass a large part of that trouble.
Still, whether parasites would work on every single shinobi was another question entirely. So Kenichi had already planned on a double-layered approach. Parasites as the guarantee, and emotional leverage as the backup. Families, bonds, loved ones.
There was nothing shameful about that.
In his previous life, hostage tactics had been perfectly normal in many eras of history. And besides, Kenichi did not think that alone would always be enough. Some people were ruthless enough that if one son died, they would simply have another. To control such people, it was not enough to grab one relative. Their entire household had to be under control.
Of course, even then, there was always the possibility of meeting someone like Liu Bang, someone ruthless enough to ignore all of it. Kenichi had preparations for that too.
After all, his current strength had already reached the Kage level. If persuasion failed, then he also knew a little bit of hand-to-hand reasoning.
"Blessings?" Minato asked, looking at Kenichi curiously.
He always felt Kenichi was hiding something behind that word.
Kenichi only smiled and said nothing.
There was no way he was going to tell Minato that the so-called blessings were actually parasites, and that anyone infected by them would obey him without hesitation. At least for now, it was effectively absolute. If he told someone to die, they would die.
Seen from that angle, it really was terrifying.
"I'll help when the time comes. But my current body can't bring out much power..." Minato said.
"I'll find a way to revive you properly," Kenichi replied.
He was not too worried about that part. He had already thought it through. The only real issue was how to handle the cost.
Minato was a Kage-level powerhouse. But then again, what exactly counted as Kage level?
Far beyond jōnin, certainly. But ultimately, there was no fixed chakra benchmark that automatically made someone Kage class. It was more about combat capability.
Might Guy in ordinary conditions was at best an elite jōnin, maybe just a jōnin. But once he opened the Eight Gates, he could instantly become something that surpassed the Kage tier altogether.
The shinobi world had too many variables. That made combat strength difficult to measure under ordinary standards.
So Kenichi felt there were only two realistic options. Either find a Kage, parasitize them, and then use Samsara of Heavenly Life Technique to revive Minato, or somehow solve the problem himself through further research and use Minato as a way to test the actual threshold of the technique.
"Can... can Kushina be revived too?" Minato asked, somewhat awkwardly.
He knew he was asking a lot. Reviving the dead was never an easy matter, and Minato knew that better than anyone.
Truthfully, he had never been especially attached to the idea of being revived. Otherwise, he never would have chosen to sacrifice himself that night. But after seeing how Naruto had lived all these years, regret had taken root in his heart.
He wanted to remain by Naruto's side.
He wanted to make up for the years he had missed.
The Third Hokage, no matter what, was not Naruto's blood relative. He could never care for Naruto the way Minato and Kushina could.
"Of course." Kenichi did not mind the question at all. If he was already going to revive Minato, then reviving Kushina alongside him was no problem.
Minato had been the Hokage. Kushina had been a jinchūriki. Her exact level of strength was unclear, but she should have at least been jōnin level, and her sealing techniques were extremely powerful.
If not for the fact that she had just gone through childbirth and had been ambushed by Obito that night, even with the Nine-Tails going berserk, it probably would not have escaped her restraint so easily.
"I'll do my best to help you," Minato said seriously.
To him, Kenichi was now a benefactor to their entire family.
He had seen the light in Naruto's life. There had been only a handful of people who gave that child warmth, and among them, Kenichi had left the deepest mark. After all, Kenichi had become Naruto's teacher, and he had also been the one to tell Naruto who his parents were.
The next one was the ramen shop owner.
Then there were the children of the Ino-Shika-Cho families.
And finally, the Third Hokage.
But after that night, after Naruto had woken up, his feelings toward the Third Hokage had clearly changed for the worse. That was the reason Naruto had been so willing to leave Konoha with Kenichi. The Third Hokage had frightened him badly.
"Then I'll be relying on you, Big Brother Minato," Kenichi said with a smile.
With Minato on his side, dealing with the Hidden Mist would become much easier.
And now, what needed to be done was clear. Revive Minato and Kushina properly. Then complete the Mangekyō Sharingan awakening for the jōnin from the Land of Snow. Once a jōnin awakened the Mangekyō, the next steps should become much smoother.
Kenichi felt that an elite jōnin with Mangekyō Sharingan should be enough to count as a suitable sacrifice for reviving Minato. And if even that was still not enough, then maybe the only option left would be to kidnap the Third Hokage from Konoha and have him pay the price personally.
Was that plan feasible?
Almost not at all.
The Third Hokage was troublesome. He had concerns and attachments, yes, but precisely because of those concerns, he was not easy to deal with.
For example, one could use the entire village to morally pressure him. An old and aging Third Hokage in exchange for a young and restored Fourth Hokage. Kenichi felt the Third Hokage might actually accept that trade.
But if Kenichi himself were the one proposing it directly, it would not work.
The Third Hokage would definitely hesitate.
Unless Kenichi somehow managed to persuade him with his own rhetoric. But would the old man listen? If it were that easy, then there would be no need to bother with weapons research or developing new jutsu. He could just rely on talk-no-jutsu to unify the whole shinobi world and be done with it.
"Big Brother Minato, I'll be heading off to continue my experiments. As for Naruto... you can take care of him yourself," Kenichi said after hearing the rustle of clothing from the room behind him.
He smiled at Minato, then turned and left.
That left Minato standing alone, looking toward the room behind him, at a complete loss, until he saw the sleepy blond child crawl out of bed and rub his eyes.
At that moment, dawn spread over the entire land.
Warm light fell across the Land of Snow.
It landed on Minato, and it also let Naruto clearly see the man standing by the window.
Naruto looked up and saw a blond man with cracked skin on his face, staring at him in a daze.
"Naruto..." he said softly.
At that moment, there was no Fourth Hokage.
There was only a father.
.....
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