"After weighing everything, Minato believes that shifting the cause of the incident onto an external party would have a far better impact than revealing the truth outright."
In a meeting room in the Hokage Building, Kushina Uzumaki, dressed all in black, was giving the Third Hokage and the two Konoha Advisors a detailed account of what had happened the previous night. She then explained Minato Namikaze's proposed way of handling the incident.
"Although this approach will calm things within Konoha and may also inspire some shared hatred of the enemy, it could... very likely cause the war, which was gradually dying down, to flare up again." Mitokado Homura spoke.
And more importantly...
"More importantly, Kushina, you shouldn't have spread news like this before discussing it with us."
Kushina Uzumaki's personality was somewhat similar to Tsunade's. Faced with such an accusation, she replied without the slightest courtesy, "That was the Fourth Hokage's final order."
She then shot the Third Hokage a sidelong glance. The implication was unmistakable: Who do you two old geezers think you are?
The Third Hokage took a few puffs of his pipe before saying, "It's difficult to judge whether classifying last night's incident as an internal or external problem would have worse consequences. However, since Kushina has already made this decision, we can only handle it this way."
As expected, the Third Hokage performed his traditional trick of smoothing things over. Fortunately, Kushina Uzumaki had already established the facts beforehand. Otherwise, no one knew what this matter might have turned into.
"Then, does Minato truly believe that the masked man from last night was Madara Uchiha?" the Third Hokage asked.
"He was familiar with Konoha's barrier, possessed space-time ninjutsu no weaker than Minato's, and had enough ocular power to control the Nine-Tails... Minato believes that person was