Blonding

Chapter 3 : Intruders??!

Another insurmountable period of time passed, before the sun's harsher gaze began to bear down on Minato from behind the paned glass of his sterile red office.

He really needed to do some redecorating. Everything looked to fresh - too new, and too uninviting. The only addition he had made in the last day to his drab workspace was a large round rug that was centered under the small, plain light fixture that fought off the darkness in the corners.

Although this rug was, undoubtedly, special.

He had spent the better part of four hours the previous day with ink-covered hands and arms, frantically scribbling away the formula for his most powerful and long-lasting Hiraishin seal on the bottom of it. If anything were to happen while he was away from the tower - or hell, even the village - he could focus on the seal from a massive distance (much further than with his normal, hastily applied Hiraishin seals) and move to it instantaneously, with little to no difference in chakra draw.

Well, not at that time, at least. He had pumped so much into the seal itself as to offset the costs later that Kushina had found him that morning, in his pajamas, passed out across it in sheer chakra exhaustion. It was... embarrassing, to say the least, but it was certainly worth it. The Hokage Office was now certifiably his main hub - and his most powerful transportation and offensive jutsu had to accommodate for it.

He had thought about placing one in the living room of his home, but for the time being, a ring of four Hiraishin kunai could do the job and then some. Besides, he couldn't simply have four kunai jutting out of the floor of his office, where people would be no doubt flocking for mission assignments, emergency summons, or the like, now could he?

With a sigh and a contented smirk, Minato realized that he was down to the last stack of paperwork on his desk. It was getting easier, that was certain. Now it seemed like he would be going home a mere three hours late, as opposed to the past weeks' six to seven. It was a wonderful change of pace - he'd be able to walk home while the sun was still somewhat up!

That thought alone made Minato's heart soar, and he began to attack the stack of paper with renewed vigor.

That was, of course, until he smelled... something.

Something familiar.

'What are Genma and his team doing now?' Minato frowned, setting his pen down and looking upward.

Ozone.

The smell that his Hiraishin jutsu left behind when pumped with a rather... significant amount of chakra. He remembered his first few attempts to get the hang of the space-time jutsu, and the smell alone still sent his body into Pavlov-induced nausea tremors.

But he had compensated for that by refining the technique significantly - so much so, in fact, that by the time it was used in the Third Shinobi War, there simply was no smell whatsoever.

Completely untraceable, and completely undetectable.

He narrowed his eyes slightly at the rug in his office. 'Is the seal interfering with something that Genma's squad is practicing?'

He knew that his personal guard was working to refine their own performance of the jutsu, but that it was simply not coming along as well as they would have liked.