After finishing their secret discussion in the bathroom, Naruto left the Daimyō's residence with the blood-written edict, while the Daimyō himself emerged from the restroom looking thoroughly relieved.
Unfortunately for both of them—
Just when they thought everything had gone perfectly, a tiny toad suddenly poked its head out of the toilet.
It croaked twice in a low voice, opened its mouth, and a human hand emerged from inside.
A moment later, an entire person crawled out of the little toad's mouth.
Using the exact same method Jiraiya had once used to infiltrate Amegakure—
Namikaze Minato appeared.
Minato stood by the bathroom window and watched Naruto disappear into the distance, his expression complicated.
He really hadn't expected Naruto to be so easily persuaded.
The boy had barely been tempted at all before betraying Kushina.
Such an overwhelming sense of justice almost made him seem less like the Nine-Tails' child and more like one of those naturally kindhearted Uchiha.
Minato's presence here was pure coincidence.
Kushina hadn't sent him.
The Minato of the real shinobi world was a genius, and although the Engraved Tsukuyomi version was far more questionable, he was still every bit as talented.
Naruto had discovered that sewage was an excellent counter to space-time ninjutsu.
Minato had reached the same conclusion.
The real-world Minato might still have possessed enough dignity not to use a method like that.
This Minato absolutely did not.
And so, for the sake of gathering future "ammunition," Minato had begun traveling around with Flying Raijin: Guiding Thunder, repeatedly teleporting enormous quantities of material to Mount Myōboku for storage.
That way, whenever he needed it later, he could simply summon it directly.
Most places in the Land of Fire strictly controlled this sort of waste because it was useful as agricultural fertilizer.
Kushina might have been authoritarian, but she hadn't abolished the Daimyō system or launched the kind of reforms seen in the real shinobi world, so the Land of Fire was still a country with relatively backward productive capacity.
In that environment, only wealthy merchants and high-ranking officials could afford to treat such things as worthless filth.
But ordinary rich households didn't produce enough to satisfy Minato's needs.
The Daimyō's estate was different.
It had countless servants.
Naturally, it produced far more.
And the Daimyō himself certainly didn't care whether any of it should be hauled away to fertilize farmland.
That was why Minato had infiltrated the Daimyō's residence in the first place.
He had come to become the legendary Grand Waste Thief.
By sheer coincidence, he overheard Naruto and the Daimyō plotting together during the infiltration.
Apparently even private bathroom conspiracies had started spawning dedicated eavesdropping characters now.
Minato had originally planned to finish stealing what he needed and leave.
But after stumbling onto something this serious, he had no choice but to leave a Flying Raijin mark behind before departing.
Once that was done, Minato teleported straight back to Konoha.
Then, without the slightest hesitation, he sold Naruto out.
He explained the entire conspiracy to Kushina from beginning to end.
This family was beyond saving.
Father and son loved each other dearly.
Husband and wife respected one another deeply.
"I understand."
Kushina waved impatiently.
"Now get lost."
Minato obediently left the Hokage building.
The moment he stepped outside, however, a smug, delighted grin appeared on his face.
As mentioned before, Minato was a genius.
Naruto had discovered certain mechanics of this world.
So had Minato.
Naruto had discovered that sewage countered space-time ninjutsu.
Minato had discovered it too.
Naruto had discovered that sewage could also counter the Will of Bullying.
Minato had realized that as well.
And that gave him another reason for becoming the Grand Waste Thief.
As long as he smelled awful enough—Kushina wouldn't beat him.
Just like what had happened moments ago.
Normally, if Kushina discovered that Minato had acted on his own without permission, even if the result benefited her in the end, she would still beat him to set an example.
But this time?
She had simply told him to get lost.
Perfect.
Meanwhile, Kushina was genuinely heartbroken after learning that Naruto had joined a group actively rebelling against her.
As for why Minato had been obsessively gathering filth and researching counters to space-time ninjutsu, Kushina knew that too.
The classified archives didn't contain that particular piece of information.
Which meant Naruto, despite all his snooping through the records, had never learned it.
It concerned this world's version of the Night of the Nine-Tails.
Kushina formed a hand seal and pressed her palm against the desk.
A sealed scroll emerged from the Hokage's desk.
Inside were the true records of the Nine-Tails incident—
Along with years of continuously updated intelligence concerning the mastermind behind it.
Because in this world, Kushina hadn't been the one who gave birth.
Namikaze Minato had.
And strictly speaking, the child had actually belonged to the Nine-Tails; Minato had merely carried it.
So the incident hadn't ended with the entire family dying the way it nearly had in the real shinobi world.
Even so, the appearance of the mysterious masked man had still caused enormous damage.
The Nine-Tails attacked the village.
And during that battle, Minato had suffered a particularly unfortunate injury after being caught by the masked man's brand of "warming-pad" explosive tags.
According to the report, the masked man had originally intended to place the tag on newborn Naruto.
Unfortunately, he misjudged the angle.
So it ended up somewhere else entirely.
Apparently, the masked man had genuinely meant to pull out an actual warming pad.
He had simply grabbed the wrong thing.
…
At that exact moment, somewhere else—
Konan, meeting Makoto for the first time, casually threw out a pile of warming pads and plastered them all over his body.
…
Shortly after giving birth, the severely weakened Minato fought the masked man.
Despite his poor physical condition and accumulated injuries, he still managed to defeat him.
However, unlike in the real world, Minato failed to leave a Flying Raijin mark on the masked man.
That became the root of his obsession with revenge.
If the mark had been there, all Minato would have needed to do was survive, recover, and then occasionally teleport over to stab the masked man whenever he felt like it.
Unfortunately—
There were no second chances.
That failure was precisely why Minato later began devising increasingly absurd methods for dealing with an enemy who possessed space-time ninjutsu.
Hence—
The Grand Waste Thief.
What Minato didn't know, however, was that Kushina had already discovered the masked man's identity long ago.
The masked man was none other than Minato's former student and subordinate—
Uchiha Obito.
Kushina didn't blame Minato for failing to recognize him.
After all, that subordinate had never behaved remotely like a proper Uchiha.
The other Uchiha were supposedly born kindhearted.
Obito, on the other hand, used to go around kicking old ladies who were trying to cross the street and placing passing cats and dogs on top of utility poles.
No one knew exactly what happened later.
But according to intelligence reports, Obito eventually received Uchiha Madara's guidance and successfully reformed himself.
He abandoned evil.
He became a genuinely kindhearted Uchiha.
Even his attack on Konoha as the masked man supposedly hadn't been intended to kill anyone.
According to the records, during the Night of the Nine-Tails, Obito released the Nine-Tails from Minato's body, then used the Sharingan to control it and distribute its chakra throughout Konoha.
The Nine-Tails' chakra healed the villagers' injuries and illnesses.
Kushina had suppressed that information afterward.
After all, many of those injuries and illnesses existed because she had overworked the villagers for years and forced them through endless missions.
From her perspective, the masked man's actions were clearly an attempt to undermine her rule.
Afterward, the masked man traveled to Amegakure.
Not long after that—
An organization known as Akatsuki appeared there.