In the end, after an hour of leaving the hospital, Minato found himself in possession of all the rumors about the rising star of iryojutsu and fuinjutsu, at the cost of severe brain damage from the amount of pink snot the chatterbox had spewed at him about the object of his worship.
Considering the fact that not half of the rumors looked delusional even to the unsophisticated eyes of a thirteen-year-old boy, the reliability of the information received was questionable. In the end, Minato found himself firmly convinced of only one fact - Ryo Nara had a great ass.
It was only a few days later that Minato was able to come to his senses enough (the cessation of nightmares involving a tall, sturdy, red-haired, masked man had played an important role in that) to begin to calculate hard facts among the streams of fiction and nonsense using the methods taught at the academy, though he doubted that next time he would be able to look the red-haired shinobi in the eye without shuddering, but for very different reasons from those of the other strong assassins in the village's service.
Namikaze went to his sensei, who was a thirty-year-old clanless tokubetsu jonin, but trained his students to the best of his ability, teaching them to think instead of waiting for someone to put the necessary knowledge in their mouths.
Minato had gotten the few basics of fuinjutsu from him that he hadn't learned from Kushina. And that was why the idea of asking the man about a rival for the red-haired beauty's attention had been pushed to the back of the queue, despite the fact that the shinobi was surprisingly knowledgeable about many aspects of Konoha life.
It was from him that Minato was able to find out (having first laid out everything he could dig up on the target) that sixteen-year-old Nara was not only a talented second-degree iryo-nin and the only available master of fuinjutsu in Konoha, but also a candidate for the head of his clan, should anything happen to his cousin, and the strongest Nara fighter.
The search book provided by sensei with his page was also a shock. In the end, the difference between them was only three or four years, but the achievements... Despite the title of genius, received at the academy, the guy was quite dejected, having found a real gap in strength and capabilities between himself and his opponent.
Even the news that his team would soon be taken over by the Hokage's apprentice, who had recently returned to Konoha, did little to lift his spirits. Catching up with a clan genius with far more extensive resources at his disposal in knowledge and money was going to be very difficult.
The only thing Minato could compete with him in at the moment was Kushina's attitude. And that was something he was not going to give up under any circumstances!
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