19 The paranoia of a war hero caused by uncertainty.

**Minato POV**

"Tsunade-sama has entered the village." informed the ninja wearing a dog mask who was kneeling in the room across from me.

'Can I trust him?'

Ha. My paranoia seems to have grown to the point where I'm questioning if I can trust my own student.

"You may leave." I added as I closed my eyes to lean back into my chair while Kakashi shushined away through the window.

Memories of the dreadful night kept playing inside my head, the night were in spite of all my precautions taken I'd lost Kushina.

I looked at the corner of the office where Naruto lay sleeping in his bed, even though he was close to two years old he still had no friends. Mostly my fault. But I didn't know who to trust anymore. Not after what the Third said while I killed him.

I'd read the journals in the hidden library of the Hokage and found what out what the Third and Danzo did to the Senju clan. I'd sent Jiraya-sensei to find and bring Tsunade-sama back as I intended to talk to her about it, but she wouldn't agree to come back, and now for some reason she was here.

I wanted to see if I could trust her since she was the only person I had no direct and open relation to among the various people I knew. Perhaps the only other person who'd lost their family due to betrayal of the village would help me if I asked her to. Maybe if I asked her as a member of the previous Senju clan then she would?

'Should I contact her again then?'

I closed my eyes as I recalled the events of the Kyuubi attack.

A month before the attack Kushina showed me a palm sized paper filled with rudimentary diagrams, a part of which clearly was our family, with me, Kushina and our baby boy, Naruto. Another part of it was clearly the Kyuubi. From the rest the only person we could recognize was Kakashi, or so we assumed since he was the only person we knew to have a sharingan in his left eye. It was given to him by Obito, but the sharingan in the diagram was a Mangekyo sharingan, like the one that Fugaku had.

The Kyuubi and a masked man were on the back of the page and it seemed like the Kyuubi was being controlled by him. While Kakashi was on the same page as my family. There was also my famous three pronged kunai I use for Hirashin jutsu alongside the mangekyo of the weirdly masked man or Obitio who we assumed it was. Perhaps it indicated the powers were similar?

For a minute I thought it was Kushina pranking me like she always does, but one look into her serious eyes told me this wasn't her. So someone clearly knew about what was going to happen and were trying to tell us something.

We decided it be best if we keep this matter to ourselves. I asked Kakashi if he could track the scent on the paper but it'd been too late after Kushina found the paper. Although the scent existed on the paper, the trail had gone cold so Kakashi's summoned dog couldn't track the informant down.

We didn't show the paper to Kakashi thinking it might stress him out, since the information is about his teammate, right before we reached the delivery were we needed all the focus we could get since we now were confused about who our allies and enemies were, because if it was someone who knew us they'd speak to us directly, so perhaps it was someone who we thought was our enemy and couldn't contact us because someone from our friends was stopping them or would know and might finish them off before they could communicate?

We made additional seals to protect Naruto and Kushina during the delivery but did not keep the seals to seal space active. We didn't know what the intruder might do if he couldn't get to Kushina in time, so we planned to seal the space around him after he teleported right into our trap. We wanted to take him out when he was stuck. 

That was the plan me and Kushina had made together, but I made an entirely different plan inside my head so that if there was anyone who could listen in to our plan, wouldn't know about the one inside my head.

As soon as the delivery finished, I teleported Naruto and Kushina in a safe space where I'd left the hirashin mark earlier, a place that even Kushina didn't know about. I then summoned toads using the summoning scroll and asked them to take Kushina and Naruto along with them back to the toad mountain for a while.

I then left to the place where Kushina had her delivery and I prepared to confront the masked man from the drawing.

As soon as the masked man teleported into the room I threw a kunai into his head, which looked like it passed straight through.

I couldn't understand what it was at first but then I remembered the drawing of the man and the my three pronged kunai which was next to him, can he teleport just parts of his body too instead of the whole?

I immediately changed my strategy to react faster than him and threw my three pronged kunai which similarly passed through his head but then teleported right behind him and sliced his head off with a kunai before he could do anything.

I relaxed as soon as I killed the enemy since the hard part was done and Kushina was safe, or so I thought.

As soon as the man's head hit the ground a loud roar thundered through the village blanketing it with thick killing intent which drew my full attention to the gigantic nine tailed fox that was rampaging through the village.

As soon as it launched a biju bomb towards the Hokage face rock I teleported in front of it and teleported the bomb away and then went back to where Kushina was. I found her with her stomach slit open bleeding out beside the dead toad that was supposed to take them back using reverse summoning.

I bent over Kushina, my heart beating, my hands shaking, my world crumbling but I held on to my sanity in hopes that I could do something, Kushina after all was an Uzumaki who were known for their vitality like the Senju. Maybe Kushina could be saved, somehow.

I barely felt Kushina breathing.

I rushed to use a sealing scroll that Kushina had been working on for situations like this to seal her into it, it was a unique scroll that allowed living beings of very low amounts of life force to be sealed away by sealing their chakra in their last moments which allowed the anchor between the soul and the body to be protected so that if the body was restored back to perfect condition the soul could find its way back after the chakra was somehow fed back into their chakra circulatory system. Kushina had made it after having studied the Reaper Death Seal of the Uzumaki clan.

Right before I sealed her in with her cooperation, Kushina mustered up her last few breaths and spoke in a raspy voice.

"Hiruze..n, kill."

For a second I was stunned as if the rug underneath my feet had been swept away but then fury and rage started to boil inside me for the first time ever, I didn't think I could get that angry.

Hiruzen had been the man I'd looked up to, someone I'd always wanted to be, kind to whoever was in front of him, even if it was the enemy.

But it seemed like all of it was a lie. He'd been hiding his true colours after all.

I sealed the space around Naruto so that he couldn't even be moved from where he was by anyone other than me and then subdued the Kyuubi and brought it back to be sealed inside of Naruto using the Seal Kushina had prepared and handed over to me incase something like this happened after we'd read the drawing.

Hiruzen then arrived right as I finished sealing the Kyuubi inside of Naruto, he'd arrived along with a group of ANBU members who he had never handed over to me telling me that since I was supposed to be a new Hokage and had to be taught how to handle the ropes that he'd handle them for now.

It happened before I could even consider what I was doing. My instincts from the war took over and I slaughtered everyone present using Rasen Flash Super Round Dance Howl Stage Three.

I sealed away the dead bodies of all the ANBU present and walked over to Hiruzen who I had disabled enough so that he couldn't move or do any Jutsu.

"Why? Why did you do this?"

His eyes widened for a second when he saw me and then he whispered as he chocked on his own blood, "How?! *ghkha...cough* Are you alive!? *ghkha...cough cough* They said you were going to die." after which he started to choke on his blood and couldn't even speak.

I then pushed a kunai through his head for good measure and sealed his corpse away as well.

Having taken care of all threats I went back to take the body of the maked man who had the Mangekyo Sharingan but I couldn't find him anywhere.

Did someone take his body? Or where there seals that dissolved his body upon death to prevent the leakage of secrets? If someone did take him then who? His dress was pretty peculiar, black robe with red clouds? And the man didn't look anywhere close to Obito's age, his chakra pool was also much denser and larger that a person Obito's age. And I remember he was about to use chains to attack me, which Obito did not know how to use.

*Sigh*

I opened my eyes with a sigh and looked back at Naruto, the only thing keeping my insanity in check. The only weak link between everything and the only way information about the location of Kushina and Naruto could have gotten leaked would be through the toads? But why would they do anything like this? So was it some other sensory ninja who could keep track of my position throughout the village? And he or she revealed my position so they guessed Kushina's location and released the Kyuubi?

If it has anything to do with the toads I knew I couldn't trust Jiraya, and so I sent him away to find Tsunade under the pretense of asking her to attend the funeral for the third and discussing if the Senju clan funds could be used to help rebuild the village, I'd left it half built leaving the unimportant areas on the outskirts still damaged so that people would think that we needed a lot of money which allowed me to send away most ninjas in the village on missions, I didn't want to revel information about Kushina to anyone after all. 

Now there's no one else I trust at the moment. Who controlled the Kyuubi if I was fighting the "Obito"? Was it the Uchiha clan? But reports from everyone else corroborates for the position of all the members of the Uchiha clan who could've done such a thing, all of them were at the emergency shelter during the Kyuubi's raid.

When I asked them why they didn't help protect the civilians during the council meeting Fugaku said he had received orders during his night at the police station to not interfere with the Kyuubi even though he could put an early end to it, tracking the chain of command back from the messenger we found the chain was a dead end, the ninja who had delivered the report had conveniently died during the attack.

It was obvious who was responsible for this, it was Danzo, its just that there was no evidence and I had no official reason to barge into the ROOT headquarters to break open and take out any remaining evidences that might connect Danzo to his crimes if they even existed.

Pulling out the Journal of the team mate of a Senju clan member I began to re read the diary entry of the soldier during the war about how several ninjas from the Senju clan had started becoming delirious after taking a break for a few days after which they usually volunteered for suicidal missions and then died shortly after failing the mission, usually draging their own team along with them to their deaths.

Even with this I couldn't do much since there was no guarantee that by the time I found evidence in Danzo's root it wouldn't already have been erased. And Danzo never seems to leave his underground den ever since he's found out that I have started reading the journals sealed in the Hokage office, which I also found thanks to him kindly sending a root personal disguised as an Iwa Ninja who escaped before I got to him as I was taking a rare walk with Naruto around the village.

As if an Iwa ninja could get so far into the village with our sealing barrier around the village without notifying anyone.

I didn't even have the required expertise in barrier sealing methods to upgrade and tighten the security of the village, they'd remained the same since the time Mito-sama had died, they were practically an open secret to everyone in the higher levels by now.

It was Kushina among us both who knew all about sealing and I just learnt the parts necessary for Hirashin or a few extra things like the Reaper Death sealing jutsu and I just coulnd't bring myself to trust Jiraya-sensei even though he was my teacher since he is related to the Toads. Jirayra-sensei was still stuck searching for the prophecy which showed how much he believed in the Toads and I wasn't sure he'd be alright with me suspecting them even if he wasn't involved in anything they did.

The biggest enigma was the person who'd sent Kushina the piece of paper that predicted or perhaps orchestrated all of this, is he an insider or an outsider? Not that it matters much at this point when I constantly feel like I'm in enemy territory and have a hard time letting my guard down.

Nothing seemed to be going well for me but still Naruto is the one who's been hit hardest in all of this. I watch him as he often looks out of the window from the Hokage office into the parks where children are often playing with their friends and family. How he longingly asks when he'll meet mother and how he has a few sparks of hope ignite in his eyes each time I tell him it'll be soon.

'I hope where ever you are Kushina, I just hope you can come back to us when we fix your body. I hope your experiments work. I didn't know I'd ever be saying such a thing but at this point I'm quite ready to have nothing but ramen for all meals for my entire life if it meant I'd get to have you by my side once again along with Naruto.'

I picked up piece of paper and began to ink out a letter that I'd have delivered to Tsunade-sama myself by using a water clone changed to look like a cat. I chose a cat because Naruto on one of our walks had picked up a few kittens that were seeking shelter in the rain after it seemed like they had lost their mother. So people often found cats lounging around the Hokage building, these cats kept Naruto company most of the time.

*BANG*

I jumped in my seat almost drawing out my kunai and activating the seals in and around the entire office before I stopped myself from doing so when I recognized who was at the door.

Just the person I wanted to see right now.

"Tsunade-sama, you've come at the right time." I said controlling my voice to show as little emotion as possible so that I could successfully test her before I trust her.

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