Akira pointed toward Roran, his gaze sharpening.
"Catching up ends here. We need to kill the bastard trying to tear that future apart."
"With the Dragon Vein's power, I should be able to return to my own time and set this twisted stretch of history back where it belongs."
Minato's eyes narrowed. He drew one of his special kunai.
"Then we move together. For the sake of that future."
Four figures became streaks of wind, racing toward the ancient city whose towers looked strangely futuristic against the desert sky.
As he looked at the city that was doomed to vanish, Akira spoke almost to himself.
"In a few years, this place will be nothing but ruins. All this life, all this brilliance, buried under sand."
Minato kept pace beside him and answered quietly, "That's why peace matters so much. Hearing that the future is peaceful... that means more than you know."
"Yeah. At least in my era, people aren't fighting another bloody ninja war every few years."
Minato smiled, and this time the smile came easily.
Even after learning he was fated to die young, even after hearing that future pain still waited ahead, knowing there was hope at the end of it clearly meant everything to him. Akira had not told him the full truth of the Uchiha tragedy, only that Minato had tried to guide things toward reconciliation, but even that was enough.
Minato was the kind of man who kept burning for a future he knew he would never live to see.
A faint, complicated smile touched Akira's mouth as he glanced at the blond man beside him.
"To be honest, before I got dragged through time, the future ninja world was already coming apart at the seams."
"A shadowy organization is hunting Tailed Beasts all over the map. They already hit Sunagakure. If the Hokage at the time hadn't acted immediately and sent support, even their Kazekage might have died."
Minato's blue eyes flickered with surprise. Clearly, he had not expected things to be that bad.
Akira folded his arms, though his tone softened slightly. "Still, don't worry too much. The Kazekage over there is Naruto's closest friend."
"He used to be a problem himself. Naruto beat some sense into him, then talked him back from the edge. That's how he learned to rein in the monster inside him and eventually took the title of Kazekage."
At that, Akira clicked his tongue, seemingly remembering some grinning blond idiot.
"That kid really does have a strange pull to him. People just end up gravitating toward him."
"In my time, Sunagakure and Konoha are so close they might as well share blood. That Kazekage is the One-Tail's jinchuriki, and the alliance between the two villages is rock solid."
"This mission only happened because the Kazekage personally asked Konoha for help, and Tsunade-hime sent me."
Beside them, Choza and Shibi traded looks of open disbelief.
"The relationship between villages can get that strong?" Choza muttered. "Strong enough that they'll loan out someone like you, a walking strategic weapon?"
Akira shrugged as if it were obvious. "I said they were close allies. Add in the Kazekage's personal connection to Naruto, and of course Sunagakure comes to Konoha first when things go bad."
"This is actually the second time Tsunade-hime has sent me over there to clean up one of their disasters."
Choza and Shibi swallowed hard.
In an age defined by war and suspicion, that kind of relationship between villages sounded almost impossible.
Minato's warm smile returned. "Hearing that the future reaches that kind of peace... it's encouraging. That's the era every ninja wants."
Then his expression turned serious. "But that organization you mentioned, the one collecting Tailed Beasts. What exactly are they?"
Akira's amusement vanished. A cold edge entered his voice.
"The Akatsuki. A group of very dangerous people."
"It's basically a shelter for rogue-nin. Pick any member at random and you'll find someone with blood all over their hands. The floor for joining seems to be elite jonin."
"Most of their core members are genuine Kage-level fighters. They're monsters."
"And their leader is even worse. He's already operating beyond the level of an ordinary Kage."
"When your enemy is built like that, no single village can easily stop them from carrying out targeted strikes."
Akira took a slow breath, his tone growing heavier. "That's exactly why I want Naruto to grow stronger as fast as possible."
"He's improved a lot training under Jiraiya-sama, but it's not enough."
"Until he fully masters the Nine-Tails' power, he won't have the right to stand across from the Akatsuki. Not really. Not if he wants to survive, let alone fight back."
Minato's brows knit together. At last he understood the kind of suffocating pressure waiting for Konoha in the future.
A threat hidden in the shadows like that could be even worse than an open ninja war.
In wars, armies moved in force. A rare individual like Minato, someone who could turn a battlefield by himself, was exactly that—rare. Most Kage stayed behind the lines and only intervened at key moments.
The Akatsuki were different.
They were all top-tier threats.
The Third Raikage, for example, had not fallen because an enemy army overpowered him head-on. He had been lured into a trap and ground down inside an encirclement by Iwagakure.
It was not so different from what had happened to the Second Hokage, who had also been overwhelmed by a carefully timed assault from monsters like Kinkaku and Ginkaku.
In straight combat, the Third Raikage had stood near the very summit of the ninja world, wielding both the strongest spear and the strongest shield.
And yet even a man like that had died a humiliating death once he was outmaneuvered.
That was the problem with Kage-level fighters. Killing them by ordinary means was nearly impossible. Historically, the ones who died young usually did so because of elaborate assassination attempts or perfect ambushes.
Unless someone had power on the level of Hashirama Senju or Madara Uchiha, or unless they were the kind of impossible existence Akira himself had become, killing a Kage-level ninja was almost a fantasy.
After hearing all of that, and especially after learning Naruto had become Jiraiya's student too, Minato could not help laughing.
"I never would have guessed it. My son and I, apprenticed to the same teacher. That's a strange kind of fate."
Akira laughed as well. "Strictly speaking, Naruto's first real teacher was Kakashi. He was his jonin captain after graduation."
"And it gets better. Kakashi and I were on the same team too."
Minato lifted a brow in surprise. "You and Kakashi were teammates too? It really is a small world."
"Right. But later Naruto left with Jiraiya-sama to travel and train. Kakashi's a genius, but there are things he just couldn't teach Naruto."
"Kakashi's style and Naruto's way of fighting don't line up at all."
"Though to be fair, Naruto got absurdly good at forming Rasengan."
"Rasengan?" Minato blinked, clearly caught off guard that the A-rank jutsu he had developed had been passed on to his son.