Itachi Uchiha nodded. By extension, Naruto counted as half a little brother to him too.
"A Missing-nin from the Land of Water joined Akatsuki. Since the Fourth Hokage-sama is on very good terms with the leader of Akatsuki, we were sent to inform the Fourth Mizukage."
Sasuke frowned. "There's no way that kind of thing can be negotiated, right?"
Kakashi said, "Under normal circumstances, of course not. Every ninja village hates Missing-nin who came from their own village."
"But Kirigakure is a special case."
Obito Uchiha put his dried clothes back on. "Because during the Third Mizukage's rule, he was being controlled by someone. You know who I mean, Madara Uchiha, the one we all thought was already dead. That led to a series of policies that later earned Kirigakure the name Village of the Bloody Mist. The ninja raised during that period were ruthless and extremely selfish, so after the Fourth Mizukage became Mizukage, there weren't many people he could truly trust as close aides."
"The previous Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist were kicked half to death by our village's Might Duy. Some died, some were crippled, and among them, Jūzō Biwa was so scared he didn't dare return to Kirigakure and became a Missing-nin. As for the next generation of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist, Fuguki Suikazan lined his own pockets and forced away several subordinates Yagura Karatachi had originally valued highly, including Kisame Hoshigaki."
"Anyway, the causes and consequences are complicated."
He motioned for Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura to escort the client back and continue the mission.
Itachi Uchiha said, "Right now, Kirigakure's ninja blades are no longer complete, and there aren't any people he can fully trust to inherit those blades. The Fourth Mizukage doesn't want the rift between him and Kisame Hoshigaki, Jūzō Biwa, and the others to grow any deeper, so as long as Akatsuki promises not to harm Kirigakure's interests for any reason, he'll turn a blind eye."
"He's probably hoping that once he sets Kirigakure in order one day, those outstanding ninja will be able to return," Kakashi Hatake said. "Every ninja village has problems caused by its own internal issues. So Naruto, you should listen a little more and stop pulling pranks all the time."
"I don't! I haven't pulled any pranks in ages since graduating from the Ninja Academy, dattebayo!"
"All right, all right." Kakashi ruffled Naruto's hair.
Sasuke looked at his brother and Kakashi in confusion. "Aren't you going back to report your mission?"
Obito said, "Minato-sensei already calculated that we'd run into each other, so he arranged for Kakashi and Itachi to travel with us afterward. It also counts as giving those two a bit of a break."
Because of the precedent set by Danzō Shimura, Minato Namikaze was very concerned about the mental health of ANBU members.
It was not just Itachi Uchiha and Kakashi Hatake. After spending a period of time on ANBU missions, all ANBU members would return to being ordinary ninja for a while and experience the emotions that came from interacting with others, to prevent them from becoming Root, which only calculated benefits and rotted away in darkness.
The ones who felt embarrassed instead were Tazuna and his family.
They had only paid the fee for a C-rank mission, yet Konoha had mobilized so many people for them.
"It's fine. Helping others is basically this guy's life philosophy anyway." Kakashi pointed at Obito Uchiha as he teased him.
Without Zabuza and Haku, and without the "Masked Man," his Eye of the Moon Plan, or his revenge against the Village of the Bloody Mist for controlling the Fourth Mizukage, even if Gatō was despicable enough to hire a pack of useless ronin, they would barely be enough practice for Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura, the three Konoha Genin.
After returning home, Naruto told his mom and dad about the entire mission, describing himself as impossibly cool.
Every bit of that warm scene was a precious memory to Kushina.
But...
It was all fake.
In Kurama's memories, Kushina saw the real Naruto.
"If crying could solve anything, then go ahead and keep crying!"
Naruto would not indulge Inari's pessimistic, negative attitude toward life.
Kushina knew Naruto had seen his own childhood in Inari.
"Naruto, Kakashi, Obito, Sasuke."
Minato Namikaze told Inari's family, "The fathers of these four children couldn't be there as they grew up. Some of them even lost their loved ones when they were younger than you, because they were ninja."
Yes. This was the strangest beginning in the Nine-Tails' memories.
During the Land of Waves mission, Naruto actually ran into Team Minato on their way to the Kannabi Bridge mission?! Obito had not awakened his Sharingan yet, and Kakashi had not lost his original left eye.
After that, the mission scroll became the most unbelievable progress bar for Team Minato and Team Kakashi.
Watching the mission scroll make Kakashi read Icha Icha Paradise and make Obito impersonate the Fourth Mizukage to talk with Zabuza, Kushina laughed so hard at first that she clutched her stomach and couldn't stop.
But after Obito's first failed attempt at playing Yagura Karatachi, Kushina seemed to notice something was off, and her expression gradually became serious.
Because she already knew that Obito Uchiha was the Masked Man.
She sharply realized something.
The mission scroll was actually revealing information to them little by little in the form of "pranks," as if it were deliberately trying to make them suspicious so they could prepare themselves mentally.
It was telling them that the person controlling the Fourth Mizukage was Obito Uchiha from Naruto's world!!
It was feeding the truth to them bit by bit, so they wouldn't be completely overwhelmed when they learned everything at once.
Kushina was far too familiar with that kind of prank.
It was exactly the sort of thing she, Kushina Uzumaki, loved to do!
It triggered the famous scene, Pure White Snow.
They successfully prevented Haku and Zabuza's deaths and completed the mission without shedding blood.
They even brought the two Missing-nin back to Kakashi's old family home and used Wood Release to build a new house beside it.
After more people gradually moved in, everyone jokingly called it the Missing-nin Guesthouse.
They traveled back to the era of the Nine-Tails Incident and dealt with the Masked Man of that world.
Kushina watched Naruto learn that he was the son of the Fourth Hokage. She watched his first meeting with his mother happen as her life rapidly drained away after the Tailed Beast was extracted. Seeing Naruto finally hurt, grieve, and cry like an ordinary child made Kushina Uzumaki's heart ache so badly it nearly broke, and she wanted nothing more than to hold him tightly.
A name on the Memorial Stone was scratched out, as if it were fate. The name scratched out was Obito Uchiha, and the one who scratched it out was Young Obito.
It made the teenage Obito Uchiha personally deny the existence of the Masked Man!
They traveled to before Naruto was born. After experiencing the previous world, everyone hated the Masked Man to the bone, yet still did not know who he was.
After that, they traveled to the era when Konoha was founded and changed that world's cause and effect. While still so young, Naruto also signed contracts with The Three Great Sage Regions, not only gaining powerful summoned beasts, but also laying the foundation for learning Senjutsu in the future.
The Chūnin Exams.
They were far more exciting than the Chūnin Exams Naruto and the others had participated in within Kushina's false memories.
Even the Fifth Kazekage from the future had traveled back in time!
And the difference between the 32-year-old Gaara and the 12-year-old Gaara was just too huge!!
Kushina only remembered the 12-year-old Gaara she had seen in her own memories. Because that child had always been deceived by his father, his emotions had clearly been unstable, and she and Minato had been very worried about him. Thankfully, they later asked the Fourth Kazekage about the truth, mediated between them, and found a way to tell that child the truth.
The attention that 32-year-old Gaara paid to Naruto also left Kushina somewhat amazed. It would not be an exaggeration to say that, in the Fifth Kazekage's eyes, Naruto was his "one and only."
It even made her a little curious about what had happened in the other worlds.
It was also after the second Chūnin Exams that the mystery was finally revealed...
Watching Young Obito from Kannabi Bridge unable to accept this reality, to the point that he awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan, Kushina could not put her feelings into words.
She still hated Adult Obito and could not forgive what he had done. Yet because she knew what kind of person Obito Uchiha had been as a teenager, and because she knew he once had the same dream as her and Minato, all she could do was sigh.
In the Nine-Tails' memories, she saw Young Obito from Kannabi Bridge sink into despair for a very long time because of this truth. He even felt too ashamed to face Naruto and Sasuke, much less Minato-sensei and his teammates, Kakashi and Rin.
After traveling back to Kannabi Bridge and obtaining Wood Release and White Zetsu components, and after later learning everything Adult Obito had gone through, Young Obito Uchiha made a wish.
[May the "Masked Man" have one chance to start over.]
Kushina's instincts told her that all the illusions appearing in her memories, as well as the fact that she was still alive, were connected to the mission scroll and that wish.
The Nine-Tails' memories were very long...
Kushina also saw Naruto and the others travel back to the Second Shinobi World War and save Tsunade-sama's younger brother and lover.
She saw them and the Masked Man travel to the future, to the scene of Pain attacking Konoha.
Kushina watched this part of the memory with emotions so complicated they were almost impossible to describe.
All of Konoha had been crushed. Sixteen-year-old Naruto stood there in all his heroic splendor, wearing a red short-sleeved Divine Robe, his golden Senjutsu Frog Eyes visible the moment he appeared. As his mother, Kushina felt the blood in her veins surge wildly at the sight.
That Naruto looked so much like Minato when he wore the Divine Robe.
He always showed an almost all-powerful side wherever he was needed, as if with him there, even saving the world was no impossible task.
Wind Release: Rasenshuriken. Using Shadow Clones to maintain Senjutsu Mode without interruption. Even then, he was still no match for Deva Path Pain, who had been made from Yahiko's corpse. Watching Hinata Hyūga and Iruka collapse one after another, watching Naruto erupt with Nine-Tails chakra, he was so powerful it was frightening, yet so tragic it felt like a knife had stabbed into the softest part of her heart.
Naruto, nearly fully transformed into the Nine-Tails, attacked Pain like a beast fighting on instinct.
That frenzied battle carried an unbearable grief.
At that moment, Naruto was finally crushed by the last weight of pain.
Other than despair, Kushina could no longer see anything else in Naruto's heart.
Until the mission scroll once again turned the tide and restored Naruto's consciousness with Jiraiya's dying words!
They learned Jiraiya's final words!!
The frog at the bottom of the well eventually drifts into the great ocean.
What should I name the new book?
Right. Let's call it The Tale of Naruto Uzumaki!
The chakra Minato had sealed away was finally able to appear.
In the end, that world did not become the worst version of itself.
So that was how it was.
Across countless parallel worlds, there were still so many Narutos going through things that were heartbreaking and despairing.
He had finally gained Sasuke's acknowledgment, but he had not been able to keep him from pursuing revenge. He had finally gained a mentor in Jiraiya-sama, yet could not beg his enemy to spare that mentor's life. He was praised as a hero and called the Seventh Hokage, but behind him, there would forever be one tall figure missing, one who had always watched over him.
When they traveled to the night of the Uchiha massacre, Naruto entered the life Minato called the "main timeline" with the help of the Nine-Tails' chakra and lived through an entire lifetime.
Naturally, the Nine-Tails saw it all clearly too.
When Kushina Uzumaki returned to herself from those long memories, she was still overwhelmed by that life, which had been filled with regrets yet had never once forgotten courage.
The Nine-Tails' memories were like countless portraits, all pouring into Kushina's mind.
Sasuke and Naruto's prank kiss. Naruto's belief that he would never abandon his comrades even if it killed him. His vow to Tsunade that he would never die before becoming Hokage, redeeming Tsunade from her hemophobia. And hadn't that also saved Jiraiya, whose two disciples before and after, both treated by him as Children of the Prophecy, had died tragic deaths?!
From being bullied by the entire village and crying in silence, to becoming the hero of the whole village and the faith of the entire Ninja World.
For that most special friend, he had a resolve that would not waver even if he was beaten, forced to kneel, hyperventilating, or even if they had to die together.
Naruto's life...
The ninja way he upheld...
His farewell to Minato, and the words he wanted passed on to her.
In the depths of the mind, it felt as though a century had passed, while outside, only an instant had gone by.
Minato Namikaze from Kannabi Bridge looked at Kushina Uzumaki and the others.
"What I'm about to say next may be hard to understand. It doesn't matter how much of it you can follow. Just know this: after we return to the world of the mission scroll, something will happen that overturns everything you thought you knew..."