Minato left the house that morning with Kushina yelling after him to invite his kiddos over for a New Year's dinner. Minato was quick to agree, flashing to the training fields before Kushina could shove a grocery list in his hands.

He had known it was coming and he could already picture Kushina's furious look when she stomped out of the front door, only to realize that he wasn't anywhere in sight. Good thing his students would be there to serve as a buffer tonight.

Training proceeded in the normal manner. Individual training in the morning followed by a team lunch, then group training in the afternoon. It was one of those rare days that Minato had a day off and judging by Kakashi's eagerness to spar with him, his student knew it too. And he wanted to make the most of his sensei's free time.

Minato would gladly train with Kakashi anytime he asked. A prodigy in his own right, Kakashi always kept Minato on his toes, lest he pulled another trick from out of nowhere. Minato wasn't sure how he was learning all these jutsus on his own, but he learned to not underestimate the chunin after the genjutsu stunt Kakashi had pulled on him last time.

For a chunin, Kakashi was certainly impressive and Minato was certain that he would make it to jonin soon.

However, Minato had two other students to train as well. He couldn't exactly pick favorites, even though everyone else around him would tell him that it was painfully obvious who his favorite was. In Minato's defense, it only seemed like that because he had been training Kakashi for much longer than the other two.

At least that's what Minato told himself.

While Rin never said anything about it, Obito didn't hesitate to make his frustrations known.

Following the second individual spar with Kakashi, Obito stomped over to him, with Rin following closely behind him. She tugged on his arm, trying to calm his rage, but Obito's thoughts were too clouded with fury to process anything she was saying.

"Sensei!" Obito shouted, pointing an accusing finger at the duo. "When are you going to spar with me? You told me it would be my turn after the last spar!"

Minato chuckled lightly, rubbing the back of his neck. "Ah sorry Obito, guess we got a bit carried away."

"Sure, sure," Obito responded. "But it's my turn now."

Kakashi shrugged, moving to step out of the way. On his way to the sidelines, his shoulder brushed against Obito's, head turning and eyes locking on to Obito's gaze.

"Good luck lasting five minutes against Sensei."

Obito sputtered, whirling around with his fist raised ready to clock the arrogant prodigy, but Kakashi was already out of reach. He stood next to Rin, an eyebrow raised at him, almost like he was taunting him to come after him. With a vicious glare, Obito dropped his fist back to his side and walked towards Minato.

Just watch and see, Bakakashi, Obito thought angrily. One day, I'll become an even better shinobi than you'll ever be!

Obito lost the match, but that was to be expected. Even the oh so arrogant prodigy had never gotten the bells from Minato. As Obito walked to rejoin Rin on the sidelines, he traded a glare with Kakashi. As usual, Kakashi decided to ignore him.

"Who was the one who said I couldn't last five minutes?"

Besides him, Rin let out a long sigh. They were going to go at it again. There wouldn't be a single day of peace on Team Minato with these two around.

"He was obviously going easy on you, idiot," Kakashi retorted.

"You say that like he wasn't going easy on you either, Bakakashi! Stop acting like you're-"

"Hey, hey," Minato interjected. "Both of you did really well today. Can the two of you stop fighting for one day? Just one? It's the last day of the year, so please, give us a break." Minato made eye contact with Rin, who vigorously nodded at Minato's request.

Kakashi and Obito exchanged glances for a brief second before they turned their heads away in the opposite direction. Minato sighed, at least they weren't arguing. He'd supposed that he should just take what he could get.

"Kushina invited all of you over for dinner."

Rin was the first to politely decline, citing that she had already promised her parents that she would be home for dinner. Minato accepted her excuse.

Obito was the second to open his mouth, but Minato cut him off before any words could leave his mouth. "You and Kakashi don't have any excuses. The two of you will be coming to dinner."

"But Sensei!" Obito whined. "I don't want to spend even more time with that jerk over there." His finger was pointed in Kakashi's direction. The boy in question turned around, shooting him a glare.

Kakashi scoffed. "Like I want to either."

Minato smiled. "Then the two of you can personally go explain to Kushina why you can't make it to dinner. If she agrees, then I don't have a problem with it."

Obito gulped at the mention of the fierce kunoichi. Kakashi hmphed but didn't dare to say anything back. The two of them had learned their lesson long ago about incurring Kushina's wrath. If there was one thing that both of them agreed on, it was that.

The smile on Minato's face grew wider. "Perfect! Training is dismissed. I have to run an errand at the Hokage tower before I go home, so the two of you will come with me to make sure you don't get any ideas about skipping dinner. Rin, see you tomorrow."

All the plans to get out of dinner that Kakashi had begun to form in his mind immediately dissipated upon hearing Minato's words. There was no way that he would be able to escape under Minato's watch, prodigy or not. A look of displeasure formed on his face as Kakashi inwardly resigned himself to another annoying dinner.

Undoubtedly, Obito would say something to irritate him, so Kakashi would be compelled to respond back. Kushina would yell at both of them for arguing over the dinner table, smacking them on the head with the nearest objects. Once it had been a ladle, the other time was her set of chopsticks. Kakashi had the foresight to dodge the second time, but that only incited Kushina's wrath even further.

The two boys were silent while they followed Minato to the Hokage Tower. Minato hid his amusement; it was weirdly entertaining watching the two boys brood and pout about their current predicament. At least they were in it together, so maybe they'll finally use teamwork to get out of it.

Minato could hope, but he knew the chances were slim to none. They'd much rather suffer in silence than to acknowledge each other.

Minato stopped in front of the Hokage archives. Technically, two chunins didn't have the clearance to enter the archives, but he also didn't trust them to stay outside and not make a run for it. It looked like he had no choice to let them in.

"Don't touch anything in here," Minato warned, especially to Obito as he knew Kakashi was a stickler for rules. At least Kakashi would be there to keep Obito in check. "I'll be right back." Minato headed off to the next aisles, always keeping a tab on both of their chakra signatures.

Kakashi found his gaze fixated on a particular spot on the ceiling while Obito's eyes widened as he took in the titles of the scrolls. There were so many cool sounding jutsus that Obito wished he could take so he could learn them.

And once he did, Obito could finally show Kakashi who was superior between the two of them.

Kakashi's eyes flickered briefly to Obito, who had moved away from him as he continued to scan the shelf. He ignored him; Obito wasn't violating the rules, yet.

"Oi Kakashi," Obito whispered-yelled.

Kakashi's gaze snapped to him. "What?"

"Is time travel real?"

"Of course not," Kakashi shot back. "Only idiots believe in that kind of stuff."

"Then why is there a scroll labelled time travel?" Obito made a move to grab the scroll, standing on his tiptoes to reach it. Kakashi hurried over to Obito's side, reaching to snatch the scroll out of his hands, but Obito moved it out of his reach.

"Sensei said not to touch anything in here," Kakashi hissed. "Now give me the scroll."

"Don't be so uptight Kakashi. Besides, aren't you curious what the scroll contains? Time travel! Maybe we can see what we look like in the future!"

Well when Obito put it that way, Kakashi couldn't help but admit that he was slightly curious. Maybe if they saw that Obito didn't become Hokage in the future, the boy would shut up about his dream and Kakashi would have something to hold over his head.

Perhaps that was the part of the reason that Kakashi didn't stop Obito from opening the scroll. Reading the contents of it wouldn't hurt, would it?

Upon activation of the scroll, the user will be taken to someone close to the user in the future. If the user has no ties in the future, the user will die upon activation. The user will have no control over the passage or sequence of time. Once activated, the user cannot undo the jutsu, the future will run its course until it is finished.

"Wow," Obito said. "Time travel is real. I can see what I'm like in the future."

Kakashi grabbed Obito's wrist, stopping him from putting his hand on the scroll. "You don't know if this is legit or not. Besides, we're not supposed to touch anything. You're already breaking the rules by reading the scroll."

Obito frowned. "It's all about rules, rules, rules for you. Why can't you just lay off for once?" He wrestled his hand out of Kakashi's grasp.

"Listen, I don't care what you think. I'm going to do this, with or without your support."

Minato had just located the scroll that he was looking for. Tucking it into the back of his weapons pouch, he began to make his way towards the entrance, when he began to hear his two students conversing in an agitated manner. He needed to hurry before another argument broke out.

As Minato rounded the corner, he saw Obito sitting in front of a scroll. His eyes widened considerably; all of the scrolls in the archives were forbidden for a reason, Obito could get hurt.

But it was too late. Obito had slammed his palm down onto the scroll, channeling his chakra into the sealing formula. Kakashi was shouting something at him. Minato lamented the fact that Hiruzen was actually going to kill him this time, if Kushina didn't get to him first.

A flash of white light appeared, knocking all three of them off of their feet.

Then everything went dark.

A/N: Hello!

I'm sure this is like the one thousandth time travel story that you've seen, but I recently got on an addiction with reading Team Minato time travel stories and I'm pretty sure I've scoured through them all. Sadly, most of them are unfinished so I figured I would try my hand at doing one even if it may be lackluster in comparison to the others. And since I basically set the premise up so that I can end the story at any time (see scroll contents), no worries about it being unfinished when I get tired of writing this!

It's going to be a short story because I have enough of writing full length novels for a while (cues the two stories that I wrote back to back). I'd say maybe 10k? 20k max depending on how much inspiration I get.

So here's my vision: it's a time viewing story, but rather than to stick with the usual events, I went for more obscure events (some made up, but it sticks to the premise of canon - you'll see in the next chapter). So if you have any scenes that you would like to see, please let me know but just know the typical events will be disregarded (ie Obito's death, Rin's death, Minato's death). I have a hard time regurgitating canon, which is why I'm going to stay away from canon events where I can't have any creative freedom.

What I've done so far: Hokage Kakashi, Depressed Kakashi right after Rin's death, and Anbu Kakashi vs Tenzo

This one probably won't stick with my Friday schedules (maybe), I'll try to post as I finish writing an arc until the finale so I don't run out of content and make you wait too long. That said, no promises because I am easily distracted and work on multiple stories at the same time to keep myself from being too bored. Thanks for reading!

-MM