9- That’s… completely insane.

He set the bowl on the drying rack.

The original Minato was already one of the most powerful ninjas of his era. But “one of” was not enough. Not against Madara. Not against Zetsu. Not against an organization that did not yet exist but that he could see forming, grain by grain, in the folds of the history he knew.

He needed more. More techniques. More knowledge, especially in fūinjutsu—the domain of Kushina, the one he had only brushed against. More allies. More time.

And time, precisely, was the rarest resource.

He turned off the faucet.

Silence fell again over the kitchen. Water dripped into the sink, the sound regular as a metronome. He finished the dishes and wiped his hands on a towel.

Kushina was sitting in the living room, a book open on her lap. She looked up when he entered.

“You’re all thoughtful.”

He sat beside her.

“I have a lot on my mind.”

She closed her book and turned toward him, resting her head on his shoulder.

“We can talk about it, if you want.”

He put an arm around her.

“Not tonight. Tonight I just want to be here. With you.”

She smiled and nestled a little closer against him.

“All right.”

Night was falling gently over Konoha. The light of the setting sun filtered through the shutters, casting golden patterns on the wooden floor.

Minato looked at the ceiling, fingers absently caressing Kushina’s hair.

He closed his eyes, a smile on his lips.

War awaited him tomorrow.

But tonight, he had a home.

And a family.

And that was already more than he would ever have dared to hope for.

***

The sun had not yet crossed the treetops when Minato crossed the edge of the forest. The air was cooler here, laden with humus and sap, and the noise of the city faded behind him like a memory. He met no one on the path. Only the birds and the wind accompanied him.

It was a place reserved for jōnin, according to the memories of his body. A discreet training ground, away from prying eyes, where shinobi came to refine their techniques without risking injury to passersby or revealing their secrets to overly curious eyes. The trees were tall, their branches forming a thick canopy that filtered the light. A clearing opened at the center, the ground covered in short grass and moss.

He set his bag against a trunk and sat on a root.

The sun had not yet risen when an ANBU member with a cat mask had slipped a sealed envelope through the window of his room. Minato had opened it in silence, thanking the courier with a nod. Inside: the complete files of Kakashi Hatake, Obito Uchiha, and Rin Nohara. The official meeting with Team 7 was scheduled in exactly two days.

He had felt a spark of anticipation while reading those names. An almost childish impatience. But he had forced himself to breathe deeply, to calm the beating of his heart. Enthusiasm was a luxury he could not afford. Not now. Not with what he knew.

He had chosen this forest for a precise reason. He needed to take stock of his skills. To understand exactly what this body—this body that was now his—could accomplish.

He stood, moved away from the trunk, and extended his right hand in front of him.

Chakra answered instantly.

He did not have to think. Did not have to force. Did not have to seek the right concentration. The sensation came as naturally as breathing. A warmth in the palm, a rotation that settled of its own accord. In a fraction of a second, a swirling ball of chakra took form in his hand: small, perfect, stable.

The Rasengan.

He watched it spin, fascinated. Light played on the surface, creating moving reflections. He could feel the pressure of the energy against his skin, the constant vibration rising along his arm.

A smile was born on his lips despite himself.

My God… It’s real. This is truly my reality.

He had assimilated this body so well that he had forgotten the strangeness. The original Minato’s memories were no longer borrowed images; they had become his own. The reflexes, the techniques, the mastery of chakra—everything functioned with perfect fluidity. As if he had always been here. As if he had always been himself.

He made the Rasengan disappear with a gesture.

Then he reformed it.

A second time.

A third.

Each time, the same ease. The same control. He could make it last, make it grow, make it spin faster. It was exhilarating.

But this is only a basic Rasengan. The original Minato could already do this.

He thought for a moment. In the manga, he knew that Naruto had added chakra nature to the Rasengan to increase its power. That was one of the major evolutions of the technique. But only Naruto, with his immense chakra reservoir and his thousands of clones, had been able to withstand the training necessary to achieve it in so little time.

For the rest of the world—for Minato himself—that path was too long, too costly.

But there is something else.

His thoughts drifted toward another Rasengan.

Boruto… the Uzuhiko.

The Rasengan that synchronized with the rotation of the Earth.

Memories flooded in. He recalled the explanations: the technique used the centrifugal force of the planet, its rotational energy. It did not draw on the user’s chakra in the same way as a classic Rasengan.

If I can understand the principle… if I can adapt it to this body…

He closed his eyes and concentrated.

The Rasengan reformed in his palm. He felt it spin, regular, powerful. But it was not enough. He needed more. He needed that rotation to align with something greater.

He imagined the Earth. An immense sphere, turning on itself at a vertiginous speed. The axis. The equator. The centrifugal force that pulled everything outward. He knew that speed—465 meters per second at the equator. A figure from his former life. Knowledge that had nothing to do with the ninja world.

He let that image soak into his mind.

Then he applied it to the Rasengan.

The ball of chakra in his hand began to vibrate.

The rotation changed. Became more fluid. More ample. He felt a connection establish itself—tenuous, fragile, but real—between the small sphere in his palm and something infinitely vaster.

He opened his eyes.

What he saw next left him speechless.

Rings of chakra coiled around one another, forming a compact whirlwind whose center seemed almost motionless.

Blue light mixed with white, projecting luminous filaments in every direction.

It was no longer a simple mass of rotating chakra.

It was a vortex.

A miniature storm confined in the palm of his hand.

Minato remained frozen, breath cut short.

I just mastered it. In an instant?

He could not believe it. Boruto’s technique, the one that had required years of training in the canon—he had just executed it on the first try. Without effort. Without preparation.

He let the Rasengan disappear, then reformed it. The same vibration. The same connection. The same fluidity.

How?

The answer came to him almost immediately. He had imagined the Rasengan spinning at the speed of the Earth. And he knew that speed. Not because he had learned it in the ninja world, but because he remembered his former life. His physics classes. His readings. All that knowledge that had nothing to do with chakra or shinobi techniques.

I can use what I know from the manga. But I can also use what I know from my previous life.

The idea imposed itself on him with striking clarity. He was not merely a Naruto fan transported into this world. He was also a man of the twenty-first century, with years of education, culture, accumulated knowledge. Knowledge that no one in this world possessed.

If I combine the two… if I use everything I know…

He clenched his fist, and the Rasengan disappeared.

He did not have time to exult. He still had much to explore.

He returned to his bag and took out several scrolls of parchment. The leather was worn, the edges frayed. Fūinjutsu seals. Kushina had given them to him a few months earlier, telling him he might need them. The original Minato had already learned a good number of sealing techniques, but he had never truly deepened the subject.

Minato, however, knew how powerful fūinjutsu could be.

He unrolled the first scroll. Complex symbols spread across the surface, traced in black ink with meticulous precision. He recognized them immediately: it was a chakra-amplification seal. A technique that Minato’s body was apparently in the process of learning, but that he had never completed.

Minato narrowed his eyes.

A seal that amplifies chakra. That’s… completely insane.

In the manga, he had never heard of such a technique. Fūinjutsu was used to seal, to contain, to protect—not to amplify. Not directly, at least.

But the more he looked at the seal, the more he recalled something. Tsunade’s Yin Seal. The one that stored chakra for years to release it all at once. It was not exactly the same thing, but the principle was close. An accumulation. An amplification.

And if Tsunade’s seal was a derivative of this one?