Sarutobi Hiruzen had realized it. The reason Namikaze Minato had chosen to seal away his own memories was probably tied to the intel they had received back then, the part that said Mukade was a shinobi from the future. Minato must have been worried that once everything was handled, carrying memories of a "future person" could bend the course of history.
You couldn't call that decision wrong.
But it created a problem. In Konoha, only Hiruzen and a tiny handful of others even knew that a mission to Roran had ever happened. And among those few, only Sarutobi Hiruzen knew the full picture.
After that, he still sent people year after year to check whether the seal remained intact, but those shinobi only knew one thing at most, that the Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato, had once left a seal there. Beyond that, they knew nothing.
Now it was time to send another team.
A mission like this, at minimum, required a jonin-level shinobi to lead it. They would be slipping into the Land of Wind's desert, and there was always risk. It had to be someone strong enough to keep the team alive if things went sideways.
Kaede Kitahara's squad, on paper, did not qualify at all. They were only a Chunin team.
One Chunin with two genin was the kind of lineup that counted as cannon fodder in wartime.
But according to Kakashi's mission logs, Kaede's strength was already comparable to many elite jonin. As for his two teammates, even if their rank was still genin, their actual ability was likely around Chunin level.
So in practice, it was one jonin with two Chunin.
That was enough.
And hiring a jonin versus hiring a Chunin was not the same price.
I really am a money-saving genius, Hiruzen thought dryly.
"Yes," Kaede said, accepting the mission.
He still had plenty of questions, but at least he could tell this was probably not a ripple from his own butterfly effect.
This was not the mission he remembered from three years later, when the Fifth Hokage, Tsunade, would send Uzumaki Naruto. It was a simpler inspection mission, checking the state of the Dragon Vein's seal. That was why it was only rated B-rank. If everything went smoothly, the only difficulty would be the travel time. They would not have to clash with Sunagakure at all.
From what Kaede remembered of The Lost Tower's plot, the Third Hokage was aware of the "future person" angle. That meant Hiruzen knew Mukade came from the future, even if no one knew where that information had come from.
And the reason he kept checking the Dragon Vein over the years was probably to guard against Mukade's eventual appearance. The problem was that he likely did not know Mukade's exact arrival point in time, so he could not set up an interception.
All he could do was send patrols at regular intervals.
Maybe, unlike Namikaze Minato, who had sealed his memories to avoid interfering with the future, Sarutobi Hiruzen had even considered the opposite. If Mukade could be eliminated ahead of time, then maybe the tragedy could be prevented.
But history had already locked itself into a closed loop.
And the time Mukade tried to jump to was during Tsunade's administration three years from now, not during Hiruzen's. So in the end, all of these precautions never got a chance to matter.
"You leave tomorrow," Sarutobi Hiruzen said.
"Yes."
Kaede and the others bowed again, then withdrew.
Hiruzen watched Kaede's back as he left and let out a quiet sigh. His thoughts drifted to the Uchiha blood running through Kaede's veins.
The investigation into where that bloodline came from was still ongoing, and there were still no reliable answers.
From everything they could trace so far, there was no clear source. Kaede's ancestors had joined Konoha back when the village was first founded. Across every generation of the Kitahara family that could be found in the records, not a single one had ever awakened a Sharingan-related Kekkei Genkai.
So the investigation had widened, reaching back through the maternal lines as well, searching for any hint of a connection to the Uchiha Clan.
No matter what, though, one thing was undeniable. Kaede carried Uchiha blood. He had neither the means nor the opportunity to transplant a Sharingan.
In a way, that was good. The Sharingan could continue to exist in Konoha in a different form.
What happened to the Uchiha Clan, the path that led to a massacre, was not something Hiruzen had ever wanted to see. The caution, even the suspicion he and the others held toward the Uchiha had mostly been planted by their teacher, Senju Tobirama, the Second Hokage.
Tobirama had been restrained, at least. He had taken Uchiha Kagami as a disciple. He had been wary, he had applied pressure, but he had not treated the Uchiha as an enemy that had to be eradicated.
Shimura Danzo was another story entirely.
Danzo's hostility had twisted into something extreme, and in the end, it became one of the forces that pushed the Uchiha toward destruction.
Hiruzen sighed again.
His thinking had always been closer to Senju Tobirama's…
Outside the Hokage building, Kaede spoke as they walked.
"Go home and get ready today. Tomorrow morning, meet at the village gate at the usual time."
His teammates nodded, and the three of them split up.
Kaede did not go back to training. He headed home instead and told his mother, Fangko Kitahara, that he would be leaving on a mission.
Fangko was used to it by now. She only reminded him to be careful, then, as always, prepared a generous dinner for him.
After he ate and cleaned up, Kaede went upstairs to his room and started organizing the tools he would need tomorrow. He paid special attention to the kunai marked with Flying Thunder God formulas, checking each one carefully before setting it aside.
Those were his last-resort lifeline.
As he took on different missions, he often buried Flying Thunder God kunai along the route in different regions, so if he ever needed it, he could make an instant jump.
Flying Thunder God was not just terrifying in a fight. It was just as valuable for escaping, or for covering distance fast.
Of course, those special kunai were expensive. If he had not made a fortune off Gato, Kaede would never have been able to support the constant burn of replacing and restocking Flying Thunder God kunai.
Once he was sure everything was in order, and after maintaining the rest of his ninja tools, he packed away the Sword of the Thunder God as well.
Only then did he open his diary.
[Haku got excited. I thought this was going to be a mission connected to The Lost Tower, but looking closer, it's just an inspection, checking whether the seal the Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato, left behind is still solid.
Of course it's still solid, because it isn't time for it to be opened yet. The real The Lost Tower mission won't start until three years from now, when the Fifth Hokage, Tsunade, sends Uzumaki Naruto, Sakura, Sai, and Yamato to chase down Mukade, the Sunagakure missing-nin. Naruto will follow Mukade and fall into the Dragon Vein's chakra, dropping into the past and meeting a young Namikaze Minato twenty years earlier.
Man, I looked forward to that part for so long, but it was over in a blink. By the time Naruto's dense self realized the Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato, was his dad and wanted to say more, there just wasn't time.]
The moment the diary updated, outside a bathhouse in Konoha, Jiraiya sensed it.
He reluctantly lowered the spyglass in his hands, opened the diary, and started reading.
The content made him blink in confusion, then straighten as excitement hit him.
Kaede's new mission was connected to a mission his student Namikaze Minato had once taken.
Jiraiya, of course, had never known about that mission. What made his pulse jump was something else entirely.
Kaede had written that three years from now, the Fifth Hokage would be Tsunade.
"So I was right," Jiraiya said, grinning wide. "No one's more suited to be the next Hokage than her."
Then he jabbed a thumb toward the Hokage tower as if Sarutobi Hiruzen could hear him. "Old man, you should retire already. Hand over the seat."
But then his eyes caught the next part.
Uzumaki Naruto would go back twenty years and meet his father.
Yet Namikaze Minato had never mentioned anything like that to him.
Something that huge, Minato would have told his own teacher, wouldn't he?
Jiraiya frowned and forced himself to think it through. If he were in Minato's position back then, what would he do?
The answer clicked into place almost immediately.
If you did not want what you learned to affect the future, there was only one solution. Seal your own memories. Make it so you did not remember anything about the future at all.
That explained why Minato had never told him.
Minato from twenty years ago…
No, from the perspective of the present, it would have been sixteen years ago, maybe seventeen.
Back then, Minato had just made a name for himself on the battlefield. He had been promoted to command, already standing on the same level as the Legendary Sannin. Not long after that, he became Hokage.
He had been brilliant. Untouchable.
And yet no one had imagined that it would end the way it did. That night, his prodigy of a student, a shinobi so talented it felt unfair, had died to the Nine-Tails.
All he left behind was a posthumous child.
The thought that, someday, Naruto would have a chance to meet Minato through that sealed point in time filled Jiraiya with a quiet, aching relief.
Because under normal circumstances, Uzumaki Naruto might never see his father even once.
If they could meet in this way, even briefly, it was something.
Then, a moment later, the relief turned sour.
Jiraiya's chest tightened with guilt. After the Fourth Hokage and his wife died, he had done almost nothing for Naruto. If he ever did meet Minato again, how could he face him without shame?
And Naruto…
If there was not enough time to say more back then, Naruto must have been devastated.
A stunned voice blurted out nearby.
"Wait, the Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato, is that dead-last's father?"
[A/N: Enjoying the story? You can read more chapters early and support me here:patreon.com/Aeroscissors]