Summary: In a world filled with spirits, beasts, and demons, a battle rages for the souls of men. Naruto must find his place in it, but it's a bit difficult when he's got a secret that could get him killed.

Notes: AU. Gen.

Prologue -

A Flash of Death

"Everyone, throw these kunai at the enemy together. I'll handle it after that."

Those were the words he spoke when he first started using Hiraishin no Jutsu in the war. His fellow Konoha shinobi had been incredulous at first, but they had obeyed his orders because at the time he had outranked them and they had been outnumbered ten to one. But after that battle no one had ever questioned him again, and he'd gotten his moniker, "Yellow Flash of Konoha." It was probably because of the hair.

The aftermath of that first battle still haunts him to this day. Honestly, it was a spur-of-the-moment plan, born from a desperate situation. He had scribbled as many seals as he could and attached them haphazardly to his kunai—like one would attach an exploding tag—and had his team chuck them at the enemy to distract them while he teleported over. He had hoped to buy some time, maybe enough to let his team get away, and then teleport out of there himself. The enemy shinobi hadn't even been able to react, and when it was over he stood panting amidst a field of corpses, covered from head to foot in blood. He'd dropped his kunai and almost collapsed.

That was when he first saw them.

While one of the chuunin under his command patched him up and he tried to wipe as much of the gore off of himself as he could, he'd seen a flash, just out of the corner of his eye, and felt an otherworldly chill crawl across his skin. He'd jumped to his feet and scared the poor chuunin witless, but there had been nothing more. No one else saw what he saw or felt what he felt, and he could find nothing else around them but death.

And death seemed to follow him.

The second time he used the Hiraishin, he had been much more prepared. He'd ordered heavier, tri-pronged kunai that wouldn't easily be dislodged and wrapped each handle with seals beforehand, and he'd covered the woods in them. Afterwards, he'd had to go back and pick them up. His special kunai were expensive, and leaving them behind would be wasteful. Plus, he didn't particularly want the enemy to pick his jutsu apart.

It was then that he saw it again. A flash of black, just outside of the clearing he'd fought in, among the shadows under the trees. He'd thought it was an enemy back-up, but when he'd teleported over, ready to fight, he had found no one. Just a heavy stillness that lingered in the air.

As the war went on, he used the Hiraishin more and more frequently. The higher-ups had realized how effective he was in large scale battles. If he had enough anchoring points littered around, he could single-handedly destroy an entire army in seconds. And he did so, over and over. His fame spread rapidly to the other countries. His name was listed in every Bingo Book. Iwa issued a flee-on-sight order against him. Through it all he killed his emotions and his enemies like a good shinobi should, slitting throat after throat and staining his hands with more and more blood.

He didn't always see them, but the chances seemed to increase with the number of people he killed. At first, it was only brief flashes and vague shapes, but over time they became more and more distinct. Once, after a particularly bloody fight, he saw two dark figures gliding like phantoms among the bodies, but when he got close, they vanished into thin air.

Jiraiya was worried, and he couldn't blame him. It occurred to himself that he was slowly going insane. The Third wanted to pull him off the field for a while, but the others out-voted him. He understood. He was too important of an asset, too useful a tool, never mind that tools break if not taken care of. Well, he supposed that if he could help end the war a little sooner, what was a bit of his sanity? After all, every decent shinobi he'd ever met were all a little cracked.

It never occurred to him that they might be real.

It was just after Obito died. He'd been on a string of solo missions because he finally couldn't take it anymore and demanded to be taken off the front lines. Of course, they wouldn't actually give him a vacation because every man was needed, but at least he didn't have to kill by the hundreds on a daily basis. The looks on their faces had been a bit funny actually, like they thought he'd really gone off the deep end. Well, he didn't really know if he had, but his mind was still sharp enough to keep him alive and his missions successful. At least, that was what he thought.

On a recon mission to Iwagakure, he'd found his source exposed and killed, his cover blown, and a furious Tsuchikage waiting for him in a trap. Looking back, he really should have seen it coming, but he supposed that Obito's death and the subsequent dissolution of his team had really taken a toll on him. He'd managed to get away after killing five Iwa jounin and wounding Onoki, but his chakra was shot and his shoulder had nearly been obliterated by Onoki's jinton. After teleporting to safety and using some rudimentary medical ninjutsu to make sure he wouldn't bleed to death, he had passed out.

He'd woken up to find them.

"…Hozuki, wait. This one's not dead yet."

The voice startled him to awareness, and he instinctively threw his kunai at the source before falling over in pain. He heard laughter.

"What did I say? Come on. Let's leave him be. We need to hurry to the other site."

There was a sigh, and a second voice spoke. "How many is it today? I swear, this human war is so troublesome. At this rate, we'll be overwhelmed."

The voices were muffled, as if he heard them from under water, and they were moving away. He pulled himself up to see two black figures retreating.

"Wait…wait!" he called with as much strength as he could muster. He'd felt that same feeling, that same sense of heaviness. If he wasn't just hallucinating the whole thing, he wanted to have some damn answers. He was tired of chasing after shadows.

They paused, and suddenly they were right in front of him. He saw no movement, no displacement of air, and he blinked in surprise. It was like the shunshin, but not. They looked like two ordinary men, but they were dressed in all black robes and carried katana like the samurai, and…he couldn't make out their faces. They were hazy, and the edges of their figures were blurry like out-of-focus images.

"This one sees us," the second voice muttered. "Yashamaru, is that normal?"

"Of course not," replied the first voice. "Well? What is it you want, human?"

He struggled back to an upright position. "Who…who are you? What are you? I've been seeing you all over. Why do you follow me around?"

The first voice scoffed. "Follow you around? Don't kid yourself. We don't find humans important enough to follow around."

"What are you?" he asked vehemently.

"We're Shinigami. If you see us all over, you've probably seen a lot of death," the hazy figure circled around him as he followed it warily with his eyes. "Hmm…your soul is particularly strong. That might be why you can see us in the first place."

"Shinigami are real?" Maybe he really had gone nuts, because this is crazy, even for him.

"Doesn't matter if you believe it or not, unless you're dead." The figure stopped as it completed a full circle. The other one seemed restless.

"Yashamaru, we really should go."

"Aa. Well, nice to meet ya, but we've got to get back to our jobs. You know about us now, but you really don't need to worry about what it is we do. Until you die, that is," said the first figure. "Oh and…if you happen to be fighting in that war, we'd appreciate it if you can get it over with. Enough people die already without you killing more. It really adds a lot of work."

And just like that, they were gone.

After he got back to Konoha, he'd only ever told Jiraiya-sensei. He didn't need to give the Third any more reasons to doubt his sanity, and he still wasn't sure if he'd imagined the whole thing. He hadn't stopped seeing them, though. They flitted about the battlefields like ghostly butterflies and sometimes appeared among the shinobi camps. Once, he thought he saw a black figure wave a hand at him before disappearing.

He supposed he should get used to seeing them, since the Hiraishin lets him leave behind death with a flash wherever he went. He tried to make it quick and painless. It wasn't hard with his speed, and it was the least he could do.

After all, he was Namikaze Minato, Konoha's Yellow Flash.

Author's Note:

Minato thought he was used to seeing death. Or maybe he'd just gone looney.

This was originally a one-shot that I wrote as a crossover of Naruto with elements of Bleach, then it sort of spawned its own universe.