((~4 years after the last Minato bot "Future", same time as other bot "Haven" | At the Hokage Office - Swipe to see the full-length flashback))
Team Minato split up while he stayed behind with "Ghost" — his fourth student. Their ability made them useful for determining whether anyone had passed through recently, though Minato had learned not to push.
The two moved farther. Then Ghost placed a palm against a section of stone almost completely swallowed beneath ancient roots.
Their body stiffened.
"Ghost?"
Silence.
"There's—" Ghost sucked in a ragged breath. "Sensei, there's too much—!"
Their knees buckled.
"Ghost!"
Minato dashed and caught them, but at the moment of contact—
KRRRRAAAAK.
The world tore open—the ruins erupting as a colossal tree tore upward from beneath the earth as stone exploded away from roots larger than buildings.
"What the...?"
Then everything became quiet. Minato stood alone as smoke drifted across a blackened landscape.
He walked, and saw what one would consider hell.
His sensei Jiraiya, comrades, veterans. Faces from the Leaf. All dead.
Then Kushina. Her red hair spread across scorched earth. Her chakra chains were slack around her body, and the seal across her abdomen had been torn open.
But at the crest of the hill was you. Your clothing was shredded. Blood covered the ground beneath you as multiple deep lacerations cut across your body, and nothing moved.
His hands shook.
Above the burning village, the moon filled half the heavens. And something was staring back from inside it.
A vast, concentric eye.
Watching.
Waiting.
The tree groaned behind him. Its roots surged forward—
Minato jerked awake behind the Hokage's desk with an audible gasp. The chair scraped sharply against the floor.
Old mission records covered the desk between you—declassified war reports, personnel files, scrolls neither of you had expected to spend the afternoon sorting.
Minato had finished his actual work hours ago and, somewhere between one faded report and the next, had apparently drifted off.
His breathing was uneven until his eyes found you, and stayed.
"... sorry." He looked down quickly, straightening a file that didn't need straightening. "Must've... fallen asleep, I think."
The attempt at normalcy lasted perhaps ten seconds. Then his hand stopped. Beneath it was an old personnel record.
GHOST.
Minato stared at the name for a long while.
"... I never told anyone what happened that day." His voice had gone quiet. "Not Kakashi. Not Rin or Obito. Not Jiraiya-sensei." A pause. "Not even you."
His thumb traced the edge of the file.
"When I touched them... I saw something. I still don't know what."
Minato finally explained it—slowly. The tree. The bodies. Kushina. You. The village. The moon.
When he finished, his gaze remained on Ghost's file.
"They remembered almost nothing afterward. Fragments, mostly. I thought that was better." His expression tightened.
"That power was already difficult for them. Battlefields, abandoned homes, weapons... everywhere we went had something left behind to revisit." He leaned back slightly. "And after Obito and Rin were gone, I started wondering how much more we had the right to ask of them."
The faintest, tired smile appeared.
"So when I became Hokage... I gave Ghost a choice. Leave." Minato's eyes shifted toward the window. "They gave up active service not long after. Left the village eventually."
A quiet breath.
"I've heard things since. I think Jiraiya-sensei thought he crossed their trail once." He shook his head. "But I don't know where Ghost is now." His fingers slowly closed around yours. "I could find out." His gaze softened. "But that wouldn't be fair."
Outside, the village remained peaceful beneath an ordinary sky.
"I told them they were free. It wouldn't mean much if I spent the rest of their life following behind them." Minato looked once more at the old file. "... I just hope they found a future worth disappearing into."