Chapter 222 - Time Travel 101
A short while later, a deep sigh escaped Minato's mouth. He had thought about what he was supposed to do with the time travelers for a while now and had trouble coming to a conclusion. But after having interacted with them for a while and seeing their combat strength, he finally made a decision.
He felt like the Kakashi and Naru2 pair wouldn't bring him much trouble.
Naru2 would be easy to fool, while Kakashi might be hard to fool but probably wouldn't mind pretending.
Yuna, Hinata, and Naruto, however, were a completely different stories. All three of them were strong and held themselves with confidence. Additionally, all three of them pretty much instantly understood that time travel was somehow involved in their meeting with him.
He didn't know the consequences of people from different time periods meeting, but he didn't think it was something good. If it were just Kakashi and Naru2, he would just pretend to be a normal Konoha shinobi on a mission, but with the trio revealing his identity, that was no longer possible.
Another critical factor was that Yuna clearly enjoyed creating chaotic situations. Minato only got to know her for a short time, but she already succeeded in multiple cases where she tried to mess with other people.
Worst of all, he couldn't get a read on her at all. Every shinobi who has reached a certain level of strength is skilled at reading body language while at the same time concealing their own, but he couldn't get anything out of Yuna. Even Kakashi, who appeared to be his age or even older, couldn't wholly conceal his body language from him, so he was naturally on guard against someone who didn't appear to be above the age of fifteen.
As if she could hear his thoughts, a smirk appeared on Yuna's face as her eyes met Minato's.
"Ohh? It seems like you have finally decided to show some of your cards. About time."
The moment Yuna's deep, purple eyes met Minato's, a shiver went through his whole body.
'Dangerous. Incredibly dangerous. Those are not the eyes of a young shinobi.'
The moment Yuna's words left her mouth, Hinata and Naruto's eyes zeroed in on Minato like they were just waiting for this to happen. Yet again, Minato's eyes widened in surprise as he made another discovery.
'They were waiting for this? How did they know about that? Did Yuna figure it out somehow? Even if that was the case, how did she inform the other two?'
Seeing Minato getting more and more agitated, a wide smile appeared on Yuna's face. To her, there were very few things more enjoyable than messing with stoic people who lost their composure, after all.
After taking a good look at Minato's current condition, his current state of mind, and his body language, Yuna could more or less guess his current thoughts.
A calm, calculating smile appeared on Yuna's face, like everything that happened so far was exactly like she predicted it to be.
"Yes, I figured out that you knew more about the current situation the moment I met you."
Seeing the expression of surprise and terror on Minato's face, Yuna did an internal fist pump due to correctly guessing his thoughts.
'Hehe, gotcha!'
After Minato saw Yuna's calm expression twist into a smirk, he could only groan in annoyance.
'*Urgh* She actually tricked me. Damnit. Whatever, since I wanted to tell them what I know anyway, it doesn't really matter.'
"*Sigh* Anyway, I might as well tell you what I know about the current situation. It is very likely that your two groups aren't the only ones that came here due to time travel. Around six years ago, a person named Mukade came h…"
"MUKADA!? That's the guy we were supposed to capture! He was swallowed by the same light that got us here!"
Yuna nodded her head to Naru2's words.
"It was the same for us, but we killed him before we were transported."
Although Minato was slightly annoyed that Naru2 interrupted him, he still nodded in acknowledgment and continued speaking.
"Apparently, he changed his name to Anrokuzan after coming here and is currently functioning as the minister of this country. We got secret intel that he was the one responsible for the death of the last queen, so my team was sent here to capture him while protecting the new queen from him."
When Minato said the word "queen", Hinata stepped next to Yuna and grabbed her arm as if she was trying to prevent her from running off.
Yuna couldn't help but chuckle a little when she noticed Hinata's behavior but didn't say anything about it.
"The reason why I haven't said anything about this yet, is because I'm honestly not sure what will happen if people from multiple different timelines met while being aware that they are time travelers. Since all measures I tried to take were crushed instantly by Yuna's group revealing what was going on, I decided to just tell you what I know now."
Everyone nodded in acknowledgment when they heard Minato's words except for Yuna, who simply shrugged her shoulders.
"If that is why you didn't want to tell us anything, you don't need to worry about the consequences. Our three groups are from entirely different timelines, and we can only influence each other's timelines by actively traveling to them. Right now, we can only change the things in your timeline, Minato. Even if we were to kill you here and now, Naruto and I wouldn't suddenly stop existing.
Additionally, let's not forget that I couldn't have killed you if we were to stop existing. Would that mean I would start existing again? And as the consequence of that, would it mean I would have killed you again?
No, that's not how it works. There isn't just one timeline; there are multiple ones that exist parallel to each other. While we are here, the time in our world keeps flowing forward as well. That means that if we stay here for three days, then these three days will have passed in our world as well. Was that understandable?"
The moment Yuna finished speaking, the sound of steam shooting out of something could be heard. Yuna glanced around and noticed that Naru2's eyes were swiveling around in confusion while steam was escaping his ears.
'Well, at least one person didn't understand my explanation.'
After Minato pondered Yuna's words for a while, he resumed speaking.
"Okay, I understand your explanation, but how do you know that?"
"Well, I know because I know, but I assume that explanation isn't enough for you. Although I can't give you any concrete proof right now, I think Kakashi's presence here is a good indicator."
The moment his name was called, the adult Kakashi looked up from his book towards Yuna, while his younger version didn't even twitch and continued reading.
"Me?"
"Yes, you. Do you remember ever going on this mission with Minato and meeting me? Or maybe even more important, do you remember ever reading that book in your hand?"
When Yuna finished speaking, she pointed her finger at the young Kakashi, resulting in Minato and Kakashi's eyes shining in understanding.
'I see. Is that why she gave that book to Kakashi? She wanted to test her theory about time travel. If we could influence each other's timeline indirectly, then Kakashi should either know about the book from the start or get knowledge about it the moment he received it, but since none of these things happened, Yuna could make sure that her theory is correct. I wasn't expecting that such a silly action could have such a deep meaning behind it. Truly Impressive.'
Minato was, naturally, completely wrong. Yuna wanted to swap books with Kakashi so she could mess with Jiraiya, and the reason she knew about time travel was because she dealt with it in her previous life.
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