TETSU NO KUNI BORDER
The howling wind carried a brutal, freezing bite. Thick, heavy snowflakes tumbled endlessly from a grey sky, blanketing the landscape in a deep, undisturbed white. At the very edge of Tetsu no Kuni, the world felt completely frozen in time.
Standing in the quiet wilderness, grouped closely in front of a massive, ancient bark tree, were three hidden figures.
The man with bright blonde hair was the one bending down directly in front of the wooden tree. He was on his knees in the freezing snow, using a sharp kunai to stubbornly dig into the hard, frozen earth. The ground was like rock, forcing him to put all his strength into every single scrape.
He stopped for a second, wiping a layer of sweat and melted snow from his forehead. Looking up toward the taller man standing right next to him, he let out a heavy breath that instantly turned into a thick cloud of white fog in the air.
"Hey..." he panted, his shoulders heaving. "Huff... huff... Neji, shouldn't you be the... the one doing it?"
Before Neji could even answer, the woman stepped closer, her nose and cheeks flushed bright red from the stinging cold. Every time she spoke, puffs of cold vapor escaped her lips.
"Minato's right, Neji-san..." she said, pausing to rub her gloved hands together for warmth. "Huff... you should be doing something... something so awful as digging. Not the Hokage..."
Neji casually crossed his arms, shifting his weight as he looked here and there across the snowy horizon, completely ignoring the shovel duty. A soft breath of steam rolled past his lips.
"Not a chance—" Neji replied smoothly, his voice calm despite the freezing wind.
Minato let out a small, tired chuckle and went right back to work. Because the flying dirt and ice chunks kept spraying upward, he had to keep one eye tightly squeezed shut while his left eye stayed focused on the shallow hole. He removed another stubborn layer of frozen mud.
"Huff... huff..." Minato breathed heavily, the white fog coming out of his mouth in rapid bursts. "Are you... are you sure it really is here... Neji and Ino?"
Ino's eyes went wide, and she quickly threw her hands up in defense, a nervous puff of air escaping her lips.
"Hey!" Ino exclaimed quickly, her teeth slightly chattering from the cold. "It was... huff... it was Neji-san's idea, not mine! I mean... I do think it is here, but..."
Hearing his name, Neji slowly snapped his head to the left. He narrowed his eyes, giving Ino a sharp, icy glare through the falling snow.
Ino flinched slightly under the stare, quickly correcting herself with a nervous smile as more white fog puffed from her mouth. "I mean... huff... I also think it's exactly where he said!"
Minato drove his kunai down hard into the center of the dark hole one more time.
CLANG!
A sharp, unmistakable sound of metal striking metal echoed loudly through the quiet, snowy woods. Minato's arm vibrated from the heavy impact, and the three ninja instantly froze, their eyes locking onto the dark ground.
Minato's eyes lit up as his kunai struck the solid object under the roots. He threw his weight into it and pried upward.
"I got it...! I got it!" Minato exclaimed, a massive grin breaking through the dirt and snow on his face.
Ino started jumping up and down in pure happiness, her heavy boots splashing into the deep snow as thick puffs of white fog erupted from her mouth.
"Yes, yes, yes!!! The timeline is working!! We are not stuck as the cycle is continuing...Our younger selves will reach the era of Sandaime..."
"AHHHH!"
A sudden, high-pitched scream completely cut Ino's words short.
Minato's foot had completely lost its grip on the frozen mud. With a wild splash, he slipped backward, falling flat onto his backside right into a freezing puddle of melted snow. The dark, icy water instantly soaked through his uniform.
"Ow...!" Minato groaned, sitting miserably in the puddle, his face twitching as the freezing water sank into his clothes. "My pants are totally wet..."
Neji slowly raised his right hand to his face, holding his forehead tightly with his thumb, index, and middle finger in total disbelief. He closed his eyes, letting out a long, slow sigh of pure exhaustion that turned into a cloud of steam.
"You are not less than Naruto—" Neji said, his voice dropping into a dry, flat tone. He opened his eyes to stare down at the soaked Hokage.
"He may be a clan head now, and you may be the Hokage... but of your both idiotness is still exactly the same."
Instead of getting offended, Minato just rubbed the back of his head and laughed shyly. "Ahaha... aha... ha..."
Suffering against the biting cold, Minato pushed himself up from the freezing puddle. He shook the ice water from his wet pants and bent back down over the hole, reaching his bare hands inside to pull out the heavy metal object that had made the loud clinging sound.
The moment his fingers clamped around the freezing object, his eyes went wide.
"Cold, cold, cold!" Minato shrieked, his tough ninja reflexes completely vanishing as the frozen metal bit into his skin.
CLATTER!
He instantly dropped it right back into the snow, shaking his hands wildly to get the blood flowing again.
Neji stood perfectly still, staring at the jumping Hokage with a deadpan expression and said, "With respect Yondaime... They are our identities back in our time.."
Minato caught Neji's look and just laughed nervously again, "Ahahah... sorry, sorry..."
While the two men were distracted, Ino knelt down by the edge of the pit, her sharp eyes catching a glimpse of something sticking out from the dark, frozen mud.
It was a small bundle wrapped tightly in a wet, filthy cloth. Despite the layers of dirt and ice, the original color of the fabric was still visible.
It was a faded, dirty lavender cloth.
Ino's breath hitched in her throat, a tiny puff of white fog escaping her lips as her hands began to tremble. "It's... it's from Hinata's coat..." she whispered, her voice cracking with sudden, overwhelming emotion.
She looked up at Minato and Neji, her eyes bright with tears of pure shock. "We did it!"
Ino quickly scrambled forward, completely ignoring the freezing mud as she tore open the wet lavender fabric. As the cloth fell away, a chilling glint of silver reflected the dim winter light.
Wrapped tightly inside the cloth were seven heavy, ice-cold pieces of metal.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. They weren't just random pieces of metal.
They were none other than the forehead protectors they had left behind when they were just young, twelve-year-old kids, right before they had crossed the border to enter Tetsu no Kuni all those years ago.
Ino carefully pulled them out into the open air. There, lined up side by side in the snow, were exactly seven forehead protectors—each one proudly bearing the carved, unmistakable mark of Konohagakure.
Konoha's symbol scratched in the steel, frozen in time, proving that their impossible journey into the past had actually left a mark.
Minato stared down at the frozen ground, his blue eyes suddenly narrowing as he counted the headbands again. The excitement in his chest cooled into sharp confusion.
"But... why not eight?" Minato asked, his voice echoing in the quiet, snowing woods. He looked up at the two future ninja. "I mean, you guys told me that Karin was an orphan who joined your group and Izuna was just a kid... so why not eight? Why are there only seven?"
Ino and Neji didn't look worried at all. In fact, Ino looked over at Neji, and both of them suddenly let out a soft, knowing laugh.
Minato just gave a warm, puzzled smile, shrugging his damp shoulders. "Am I missing something...?"
"Right..." Ino giggled, a bright cloud of fog escaping her lips as she shook her head. "You know that idiot Naruto... he was so incredibly obsessed with his forehead protector. To him, it was his only true identity as a Konoha shinobi. Without the whole group even noticing, he secretly dug it right back out of the dirt! When we finally got back to the hotel, he hid it deep inside his bag and..."
Neji continued seamlessly, a rare, amused smirk playing on his calm face. "We were supposed to run immediately after that because the samurai found out we were the intruders. In all that chaos, that idiot Naruto left his bag behind and forgot the headband anyway."
Minato burst out laughing, the deep sound cutting through the freezing air. "Ahaha! I never knew Naruto loved his forehead protector that much... well." He shrugged his shoulders, a soft, proud look in his eyes as he thought of his son who was a teammate and more than just a friend about his age.
"I guess it can't be helped. Really, who would have thought that you guys would get your headbands—your true identity—back once again but in a 'New Konoha'?"
As the words 'identity once again' left Minato's lips, the playful atmosphere vanished.
The heavy weight of their reality suddenly crashed down on Ino. Her smile trembled and completely faded. She stared down at the dirty lavender cloth resting in the freezing mud, and her eyes instantly filled with thick, hot tears.
"It was... it was such a hard time..." Ino choked out, her voice cracking heavily as she began to cry. She didn't even care that the freezing wind was biting at her wet cheeks.
"Those five months... I mean, like, after escaping from the destruction of this era of Yondaime Hokage... running through those terrifying jungles, and navigating that foolish Land of Tea... it was so, so tough."
She paused, a sob catching in her throat as she looked at the symbols of Konoha. The true, painful weight of their time-travel journey flooded her mind.
"We spent five brutal months surviving in the wild, constantly moving forward just to find a safe place," Ino wept, her shoulders shaking.
"But we never actually made it back to our own time. We went through all that horror as kids just to land back then... straight into the era of the Sandaime, when you were still just a kid yourself, Minato. Everyone completely gave up hope of ever finding a way out of that past era... except Sasuke-kun."
The mention of Sasuke's absolute, stubborn determination to protect what was left of them hung heavily in the freezing air, bringing a wave of deep emotion to the snowy forest.
Minato's expression softened with immense warmth, sorrow, and respect. He stepped forward into the deep snow and gently patted her shoulder, his hand steady and comforting.
"It's okay. I know you lost your original world... but you made a home here in a time more previous than this[1] one. That dark, hopeless time is gone now. But seriously... But seriously— who would have thought that Naruto would be tired in five months only?"
Ino let out a wet, emotional laugh, rubbing her red nose with the back of her glove. She looked up through her tears into the grey sky, her face softening. "Yeah... Naruto also."
Minato huffed a soft breath of steam, his face turning serious as his tactical instincts kicked right back in. He looked over at Neji.
"Speaking of Sasuke," Minato said, his voice dropping into a focused, low tone. "I think I will look and see what he is doing right now."
Ino's tear-filled eyes went wide in pure realization. "What? I mean... ooooo! You marked him?!"
"Yes, I did!" Minato replied with a confident, cheeky grin. He raised his hand up in front of his chest, his index finger straight up, with his thumb crossed, while keeping his other fingers curled down, ready to trigger his Hirashin no Jutsu.
"If you guys have to check anything else around the border, please do. I will be back in fifteen minutes."
Neji didn't even look up, his arms still crossed against the cold. "Make it ten."
Minato cracked a smile, his blue eyes flashing with excitement. "Ok, ten minutes only. See you down the road!!!"
SHIING!
With a flash of yellow light, the Hokage vanished into thin air, leaving absolutely no trace behind in the snow.
Neji stood in the quiet forest for a second, staring at the empty space where Minato had just been standing. He let out a long, dramatic sigh, picking up a stray kunai from the ground.
He bent down and began using the steel blade to quickly cover up the hole they had dug, shaking his head in fond disbelief.
"Seriously, that man..." Neji muttered under his breath, his voice dripping with playful annoyance.
"He is a complete idiot..."
The snow continued to fall heavily over the hidden Konoha headbands, burying the tragic secrets of a lost timeline as Minato flashed straight into the unknown darkness where Sasuke was fighting.
KONOHA
Thick, suffocating dust hung heavily in the air, turning the narrow street outside the ruined dango shop into a dim, ghostly gray. The wooden storefronts along the row were cracked and shattered, and a terrifying silence gripped the area.
Sprawled across the broken pieces of wood right on the pavement were the bodies of the Konoha police officers who had rushed to the scene. They had been taken down with brutal, terrifying precision.
Every single one of them had been killed instantly, their throats struck cleanly right in the middle with sharp kunais. There had been no time for a struggle—the attack had been swift, cold, and lethal.
Through the thick haze of dust inside the broken shop, the sound of heavy, ragged huffing echoed from the center of the battlefield.
"Sasuke...!" a furious voice suddenly shattered the quiet, screaming in absolute rage. "You bastard... let me go! Or else I will give you a very hurtful death!"
Standing a few meters away, Sasuke braced his weight against the broken floorboards. His breathing was dangerously shallow, and a thick trail of fresh blood ran down from his left eye, staining his pale cheek. His eyes were bloodshot and pulsing with intense strain.
'Damn it...' Sasuke thought, his mind racing as a wave of acute exhaustion hit his body. 'I'm at the brink of my chakra. My reserves are completely finished... I've gotta end this fast!'
Despite the crushing pain in his head, Sasuke forced a cold, mocking smirk onto his face. He looked directly toward his opponent, his voice dripping with pure defiance.
"Hmph... Hikaru, if you really wanted to kill me, you would have done it a long time ago."
Hikaru's face twisted in pure fury, his veins bulging as he screamed, "You...!"
"Don't waste your energy..." Sasuke interrupted sharply, his tone cutting through Hikaru's anger like a blade. "Just tell me honestly that you can't control your visual powers anymore."
The explosive rage on Hikaru's face suddenly vanished, instantly resetting into a chilling, deadpan calm. The raw anger was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating focus that made the atmosphere in the dusty room turn completely freezing.
He lowered his head slightly, his Mangekyo spinning in a slow, elegant, and dangerous rhythm.
"You have really done it..." Hikaru whispered, his voice dangerously soft, dripping with deep psychological malice. He casually rested his hand on the hilt of his weapon.
"Any last words before dying? Maybe a message to your dear wife... our former teammate?"
Sasuke didn't step back an inch. Instead, a dark, dangerous laugh escaped his lips.
"Let's see..." Sasuke chuckled coldly.
In a fraction of a second, the playful banter completely ended.
The tension reached a breaking point. Both Uchiha gripped their swords with absolute force, the steel glinting through the thick dust.
Locking their eyes onto each other, they exploded forward at the exact same time, charging into a final, lethal clash where a single strike would decide everything!
Both Uchiha put all their power into their legs, sprinting forward to deliver a final, killing blow. The air screamed as their blades sliced through the thick dust. It was a race against death.
WOOSHH!
A sudden, violent gust of wind cut through the space between them, and a blinding flash of light erupted out of nowhere.
Instantly, everything stopped. The entire battlefield froze in absolute silence.
Neither sword had hit its intended target. Sasuke's sharp katana was pressed tightly against the throat of a completely different man who had suddenly appeared right in front of him.
At the exact same time, Hikaru's blade was stopped short, its sharp edge pressing directly into that same man's shoulder blade from behind.
A single strand of bright blonde hair caught the wind, blowing gently between the two shocked Uchiha.
A calm, playful voice broke the heavy silence. "Wooo... easy with those katanas!"
Sasuke's eyes went wide, his pulsing Sharingan shrinking in pure shock as he stared at the face of the man standing between their blades.
"Minato...?!!"
Hikaru let out a dark, amused laugh, his eyes flashing with malicious delight as he realized who had just intercepted them. "Yondaime... what a surprise."
Instead of pulling his weapon back, Hikaru bared his teeth and leaned his body forward, intentionally pushing his sharp steel blade even deeper into Minato's shoulder!
Hikaru leaned his weight forward, a twisted grin breaking across his face. "How was my present?"
Sasuke tightly grit his teeth, slowly pulling his katana back to break the three-way standoff.
Minato, keeping his composure despite the cold steel biting into his skin, calmly raised his hands in surrender.
He let out a small sigh, his voice surprisingly casual. "Well... I guess mine and your choice of presents really differ."
Hikaru let out a sharp laugh and finally pulled his blade away, letting go of the pressure.
Minato adjusted his collar, looking directly at Hikaru with a slight shake of his head. "I mean, seriously... because of that little incident, my Hokage position was almost at stake."
Suddenly, Hikaru snapped his arm high into the air.
Sasuke's pulsing red eyes went wide in shock. 'Is he attacking?!' he thought, his body instantly ready to move to shield Minato.
But Hikaru didn't swing.
With a smooth, mocking flourish, he simply slid his katana back into the sheath resting on his shoulder, giving them a cold, cocky smirk.
Minato took a slow step back, his eyes moving away from the Uchiha to look around here and there. The moment his gaze landed on the pavement outside the dango shop, seeing the dead bodies of the Konoha police officers, his face completely changed.
His brow furrowed into an angry, hard line, a flash of pure Hokage authority crossing his features.
But within a second, he masked it, looking back at Hikaru and Sasuke with a sigh. "You guys had a pretty good fight. I mean... the Hokage of this era is going to have to spend a lot of money to pay for all this damage."
He turned his head slightly toward Sasuke, a small sparkle of excitement returning to his blue eyes. "Well... can I fight too?"
"No way!" Hikaru shouted instantly, crossing his arms with an annoyed glare. "That's totally biased! You should be thankful I stopped myself from killing you just now. You came right in the middle of our clash with your guard completely down!"
Minato just laughed, rubbing the back of his neck playfully. "Then how about you bring another ally of yours? Then it will be perfectly equal."
Right at that moment, Sasuke didn't say a word. He raised his Kusanagi sword, and with a sudden VROOM, the blade blazed with the pitch-black flames of Amaterasu.
With a sharp, powerful swing, he sliced through the free air, opening a dark, swirling space-time portal right beside them.
Minato looked at the portal, then back at Hikaru, clapping his hands together with a totally fake expression of realization. "Oh! Sorry, I forgot..."
He smirked, totally ragebaiting him. "...You have absolutely no allies over here."
Hikaru's face instantly twisted in pure, explosive anger. The mockery bit deep.
"Minato...!" Hikaru whispered, his voice trembling with fury as his eyes locked onto the Hokage.
"Don't anger me up, or else Sasuke will be killed in a much worse way!"
Before Hikaru could even finish his threat, Sasuke's patience completely ran out. He had no time for Minato's teasing while his own chakra was running on empty.
Without warning, Sasuke suddenly reached out, tightly grabbed Minato's shoulder, and pushed him backward with immense force.
"Whoa—!" Minato gasped, completely caught off guard as he lost his balance.
He fell backward straight into the swirling portal that Sasuke had just opened with his Kagutsuchi: Totsuka. Before the Hokage could even react, the dark rift swallowed him whole.
Sasuke stood firm, his bloodshot eye glaring toward Hikaru as the portal snapped shut behind him.
"You are in the way—"
---
╔═══━━━─── • ───━━━═══╗
✦ AUTHOR'S NOTE. ✦
╚═══━━━─── • ───━━━═══╝
A MESSAGE TO THE READERS 📢📢
Alright everyone, first of all, sorry for posting this absolutely magnificent chapter a little late 😭🙏
Your Author was busy fighting real-life side quests.
Now then...
🕵️♂️ My dear detectives...
Are those investigation hats on already?
Because Chapter 40 quietly dropped one of the biggest reveals from the early volumes 👀
Yes, the reason that future Minato, Neji and Ino were able to recover those forehead protectors is because Sasuke, Sakura, Naruto, Lee, Neji, Tenten, Ino, and Hinata had buried them before entering Tetsu no Kuni.
And no, this wasn't something invented recently 😌✨
If you go all the way back to Volume II, Chapter 75:
📖 "A FOREHEAD PROTECTOR... FROM KONOHA"
you'll find this line:
"We were most careful! We dug a hole and buried our Konoha protectors deep in the forest before we entered the village's gate!"
👀
The clue was sitting there all along.
There was also another detail...
Naruto was supposed to go back and retrieve his forehead protector.
But before that could happen...
💥 CHAOS.
💥 FIGHTS.
💥 PEOPLE TRYING TO KILL EACH OTHER.
You know, the usual.
As a result, Naruto's group and Sasuke's group never properly crossed paths till now😭😭😭
Now...
Let's talk about a certain suspicious little name.
✨ IZUNA ✨
Yes, yes.
I can already hear the comments.
"AUTHOR WHO IS IZUNA?!"
"AUTHOR EXPLAIN."
"AUTHOR STOP RUNNING."
No 😌
All I will say is... This name has already been revealed in previous chapter.
The dots already exist.
Some of you have already connected them.
Some of you are very close.
And some of you are currently staring at a wall wondering if you've missed 700 chapters.
For those people...
Volume IV is waiting 😏
For now?
✨ CLASSIFIED ✨
And for the people who noticed certain bold lines...😚😉 Good.
Keep noticing them.
Because I ain't explaining a thing.
Now...
Let's talk about something even more suspicious.
🌙 "New Konoha."
Such an innocent name. Such a harmless name. Surely nothing strange is hiding behind it.
Surely.
🙂
All I will say is this:
Sometimes a timeline doesn't end.
Sometimes it changes.
Sometimes it becomes something else entirely.
And when that happens...
The name of the village may remain familiar.
But the story behind it?
That is a mystery for another day. ✨
⚡NEXT CHAPTER⚡
A bowl of ramen.
A single question.
And a Fourth Hokage who may have arrived somewhere he never expected.
As confusion spreads and the situation becomes stranger by the second, Minato finds himself caught in a conversation that refuses to go the way he planned.
Meanwhile... Some people are far less calm than they appear.Meanwhile... Some people are far less calm than they appear.
👉 Chapter 41: Unexpected Destination
SNEAK PEEK LINES 💬
"...He really didn't have to throw me straight into a space-time portal for that...'
"Yes! I am completely sure! It was just an accident!"
---
—With love, one forehead poke away from collapse,
Sakura Shinomiya 💫
---
[1] Note: 'This' in this line refers to the era in which they originally are, the era of 'Yondaime Hokage' not the one standing in front of Ino but the one shown in the village having clan meetings.