A/N: Three updates and three days, what in the hell is wrong with me. Well no matter how you slice it, I am rolling right along, doing it again with yet another update. After this chapter I don't have much of an idea of where I am going to proceed from here, so it is going to take me a few days at least, maybe a few months knowing me, to formulate a new chapter. Also I seriously don't want to catch up to the manga and I want chapters spreading out Akatsuki chapters, because, well… they are quite mean.

One last important note… this, in places, could be considered rather dark. I went to a really vengeful place in my soul when dialing up the conversation between Minato and Sasori. I hope you guys enjoy it.

Chapter title is referring to Minato, for clarification.

Chapter 14: The Legendary Shinobi

Minato sat at his desk, enjoying the last few moments of quiet he would have for quite some time. He knew what was coming, he could feel it in every last inch of his soul. There was bloodshed, and at the center of these conflicts stood the group known as Akatsuki. The plague to the shinobi nations, that was determined to spread like wildfire until everyone burnt to a crisp by its flames. Minato knew everything there was to know about the organization now, and only wished he had known a tenth of this information while he was still alive. It explained almost every great tragedy he had privy to or had even known about. The manipulation and destruction of the five great nations by this group was simply staggering. He had only had these files for a very short time, a few hours even, while he waited for Sasori's spirit to be dragged to him, but during this short time there was now a man he was looking to meet even more than Orochimaru.

Uchiha Madara

He was the reason he was taken from his son, he was the reason his son grew up alone and without anyone to be there for him. He even knew the real reason for the attack. It wasn't revenge or rage, but fear. Madara had feared that if he tried to make a move while Minato was alive he would be put in his place swiftly, and he held no confidence in defeating the Yondaime Hokage in a duel, despite his long lifespan and experience. He had chosen the Kyuubi out of cowardice. In doing so, he had ruined so many lives. The inner shinobi in Minato had to concede though, it worked. As evil and sinister as the plan was, it had worked on every level. Month by month it seemed the group was gathering influence in all nations, using subtle strokes to paint a picture of mass murder that was coming closer and closer to being completed.

And Namikaze Minato could do nothing to stop them.

So he swore, he swore on his very soul, that if – no, check that, when – each of them eventually died, he would be ready with a personalized torture chamber for each member for all of eternity, making their worst fears and nightmares a reality to torment them for the rest of existence.

Somewhere the Shinigami shuddered, and he wondered if it had been a mistake to hand over those files. Pain, torture, merciless psychological torment…

Nope, great decision as always by the Shinigami. He perked up, knowing that this was going to be a rough stretch for Minato, and having a sinking feeling in his cold heart that Minato's smile and laughter would be a distant memory for quite some time.

Minato glanced at the file marked "Uchiha Itachi" and his eyes softened considerably.

Maybe the most loyal of them all… what a cruel mission for him to have to undertake.

In another place

He was late. Really late. This was really bad, his master had finally gotten him a job that could take up a lot of his time and really help people, and he was late for his first day, what an idiot he was! Rounding the corner he saw a big sign that read "Children's ward" and smiled, he had made it. Opening the glass door, he stepped in and the first thing he saw was a very unhappy Uzumaki Kushina.

"Obito, my husband had to talk me into this and this is how you repay his kind words? " Kushina had a frown on her face but her eyes were sparkling with amusement, which did not go unnoticed by the friendly Uchiha. For the record, the phrase "the friendly Uchiha" is only ever going to be applied to Obito, for future reference.

"But Kushina-san, you are so pretty when you are all sweaty and angry and yelling, I could not help but be late!" At this Kushina blushed prettily and slapped Obito on the shoulder as he grinned widely.

"Maybe Minato needs to be worried that he passed on one too many of his charming lines on to you, young man." Obito beamed at the praise before Kushina got a serious look on her face.

"Are you sure you are ready for this job Obito? It is very serious." Kushina knew Obito was a good kid with a good heart, but entrusting him with such a responsibility may have been too much.

"I am ready Kushina-san, I promise I will take this very seriously." Kushina looked him in the eye and then smiled.

"Then let's get to work!"

Ten Minutes Later…

Obito stepped in front of the kids, all who had died under the ages of ten to various diseases, accidents, or more sinister means. Many of them had been killed during the brutal reign of Hanzo in the land of rain. It had been said that the day that Hanzo died the whole afterlife shook at Minato's fury. But back on subject, Obito was standing in front of the kids in a clown costume, pulling his own nose and telling them clichéd jokes that they never got a chance to hear in their life, causing them to laugh with glee and forget their tears. For this was where the souls of lost children went until they could either be reunited with their loved ones or could go to a much better place.

Kushina smiled at the somewhat clumsy man, whose heart was always in the right place.

The good ones always die too young, don't they, my love…

With Nick…

Nick was twitching, his mind trying to hold on to its fragile sanity. Never before had he been subjected to such obviously wicked torture. He couldn't take it anymore. He had to use his only remaining leverage to get out of this torture, even though he would miss it dearly.

"Shinigami! Come forth, I have an offer to make you to end my needless suffering." Nick didn't sound like himself, and quite frankly he really didn't care, he just needed this to end, and if pleading got the death god here faster, then so be it. The Shinigami appeared with a pair of shades on, which hid his closed eyes as he refused to look at the ongoing scene going on with Orochimaru and Kabuto. Keeping them on until his back faced the ugly scene, he took them off just in time to hear a quiet whimper of pleasure from Orochimaru. Taking a calming breath, the Shinigami focused his mind away from the horror going on behind him to the little horror in front of him.

"Ah Nick-kun, it seems you are in quite a bad state, if only I cared. What may I do for you?" The Shinigami's ghastly smile appeared on his face, quite pleased with himself.

"I wish to bargain, Shinigami-sama. I have something that I am sure will be of great interest to you. It is a tape that I myself recorded, it has the Yondaime Hokage fighting my former fox-girl, I am sure the tape could bring you great personal amusement, as well as quite a bit of monetary reward if you were to sell it to certain people." The Shinigami mused on the idea for a moment, knowing the traitorous little snot before him had merit in his words.

"So a tape for your sanity, as it were?" Nick nodded.

"So be it." The Shinigami grinned wickedly down at Nick, and he felt like he had just made a deal with the devil.

Until he realized he was the only devil of record in the mortal world that was still around.

Back with Obito

"Ow! Stop it you brat!" Obito was desperately trying to get this kid to stop kicking him, but he seemed very insistent on hurting Obito, just because he didn't think some of his jokes were very funny.

Which they weren't, but you at least got to give credit for effort.

Finally after the eighth kick, Obito had enough, gathering all the mean thoughts he could, he pulled out some thin razor wire and looked the kid straight in the eye.

"Kid, I am a former shinobi, I know how to kill a man two hundred ways with this thin razor wire, and if you don't stop kicking me I am going to use you as my test subject in front of all the other kids, got it?" As soon as he finished talking the kid started crying and ran off. Obito felt rather satisfied with himself until Kushina walked over with a deathly serious look across her features.

"Obito, you didn't happen to know that the young boy you just spoke to had to watch Kisame of the Seven Swordsman slaughter his whole family using nothing but thin razor wire until finally Kisame decided to chop him to bits using it and feeding him to his pet shark while still alive, right?"

Obito paled to the palest shade of white possible.

"Oops?" Kushina merely made contact with her face and her palm at Obito's shamed look.

In the damnable white space

Zabuza strode into Minato's endless office and almost fell on his ass in shock. Minato had a few files on his desk, which was nothing unusual, however behind him were mountains upon mountains of boxes, each stuffed full with files. There had to be millions of files behind Minato, most of them looked like they had been shuffled through recently, like he was reading them…

Zabuza was about to make a joke when he suddenly got hit by an extreme aura of dread that seemed to have seeped into the very air of this room. Deciding to keep his mouth shut he quietly advanced towards Minato's desk and took the seat opposite of him. Minato knew he was there, of this Zabuza was certain, but he gave no outward indication of it. Giving Minato a once over, he could see the tension in every part of the older shinobi's body as he read through multiple files at a time.

"What are you reading, Minato-sama?" Zabuza's voice was careful and respectful, not quite understanding what was going on but aware of the gravity of the situation.

"Victims." Minato's voice was monotone, listless even. His eyes kept scanning the pages in front of him, occasionally flipping them over to continue reading. Zabuza, not feeling he had his question answered quite yet, spoke again.

"What do you mean victims?" At this Minato did look up, and like Chiyo before him, he dearly wish he hadn't. Minato's eyes did not contain their usual warmth or life, they contained nothing. They were the eyes of a killer, a very experienced and a very dangerous killer. Minato blinked and when he opened his eyes the look was gone, replaced with one of sadness.

"I have one million, five-hundred thousand, four-hundred and thirty-one files behind me Zabuza. Each of these files has a person. A real, breathing person, inside of them. Their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their fondest memories. Everything about them stored in these files. All of them are dead Zabuza, for most their life was cut horribly short. Do you know why, Zabuza?" Zabuza shook his head, unwilling to attempt to speak to the obviously grief-struck Hokage.

"Akatsuki. It is all because of that organization. I had an inkling of what they had just from my own paperwork that I had filed, but the scope and the magnitude… I could never have imagined. And for what? For what have all of these lives been ruined? For power, that is all they want, power. The power to destroy, the power to control, the power to kill people just so they can prove their own strength to satisfy their own egos. Do you know what that makes them, Zabuza?" Once more Zabuza just shook his head without saying a word.

"Monsters. That is what they are, monsters in the cloak of humans. Today is a most fortunate day though, because one has died in battle. They have been almost unstoppable in life, I am going to make sure every last one of them never feels that way again, starting with Sasori of the Red Sand." Zabuza did not doubt for a moment that Minato was going to back up his words fully. Zabuza had been to hell several times and never had he seen a more frightening look on a face than at this very moment.

Akatsuki… pray that each of you live forever, because if you don't I have a feeling even I won't be able to stomach what this man is going to do to you.

All of a sudden the queue button lit up, signifying that someone was waiting to be let into the white space. Minato looked at Zabuza and Zabuza nodded at the obvious dismissal, leaving Minato alone with the glowing button.

Minato looked at the button for a moment before pressing it.

Sasori of the Red Sand was perhaps not mighty in stature, but his presence was undeniable. He strode forward confidently and with little care of the surrounding area, his signature black cloak with red clouds flapping slightly as he moved. His eyes revealed nothing as he looked upon who was there to greet him, until he scoffed.

"The Yondaime Hokage is the best they could do? Honestly, I expected someone much more regal to greet me to death, this is the best? I think I'll pass." He was amused when he saw a golden spark flash through the Yondaime's eyes for a brief moment, before it was gone again.

Hokage are truly too easy to goad, it is a wonder how that village has not collapsed onto itself by now.

Turning around to leave Minato's voice stopped him.

"I am the judge of all souls, I am afraid I am the best you are going to get anytime soon, Sasori-san, let's go for a walk and have a chat about your life, how about it?" Minato stood up and began to walk, as he did a door appeared in front of him and opened without any prompting from the blonde haired man allowing him to walk through.

Sasori took a good look at his surroundings, and finding nothing but an endless white space aside from the door that the Yondaime Hokage just stepped through, it found no reason to just sit around doing nothing. Getting up, he straightened out his cloak and walked through the door, which slammed shut behind him.

In a place unknown

Sasori was immediately bombarded by a sea of photographs lining the narrow hallway he had just entered. Some he recognized from his life, others held no meaning to him. Judging from how far the hallway seemed to extend, there had to be thousands upon thousands of portraits on the walls.

"Do you know how many days, when I was not busy, I had to comfort the grieving parents who wished so sorely to be able to hold their child again, but could not, because their lives had been taken away from them?" Sasori's face did not move, nor did his cold heart.

"Why should I care about my victims? I see what you are trying to do here, have a quick heart to heart and make me feel real bad about my choices. I am afraid your leaf like sentiment is not welcomed, you stupid idiot. Is it any wonder you didn't even make twenty-five?" Sasori smiled lightly, intentionally pushing Minato's buttons. Surprisingly, the blonde just chuckled.

"Oh what a fool you are, Sasori. I was not talking about your victims, but of your own parents." With that said he turned away from Sasori and began to casually walk down the nearly endless hallway. Although he would never admit it, the Hokage's words had managed to rattle Sasori, having long buried his emotions, but every child likes to believe their parents are watching over them after they die, even if it is gone entirely unsaid. Sasori approached it like an old pro, of course.

"My parents? Do you believe invoking them will somehow open my heart?" Sasori's eyebrow quirked in honest wonderment.

Minato kept walking a few paces ahead of Sasori's own sudden movement, an unconscious movement on Sasori's part.

"They cried for the man you never became, you know. They saw the things you did and begged me to do anything, anything at all, to stop you. They always blamed themselves for what you became." Sasori felt the anger rising in him and fought to keep his calm, which he expertly managed to do.

"Why should I care? They barely knew me, and they only had a fraction of my power, they could not understand, nor do I care if they ever could." Sasori's mind was a storm however, despite his well crafted lines of dismissal.

"They asked me dozens of times to find a way to kill you, just so you could be stopped. They wept every time that I could do nothing to stop the monster that you had become. They mourned the death of their precious child many years ago, it is why you will never see them Sasori, and you are lost to them and the rest of the afterlife for all of time." Sasori was quite shaken at this, and could no longer hide it any more. For all of the bravado and cold hearted talk he managed to summon so easily, this revelation was quite shocking to him. His parents had decided that he was no longer their son? How could they?

Without even being aware of it, Sasori had been walking at an almost unimaginable pace, keeping up with Minato's own long strides despite his adolescent body. When he looked up after a few moments of silence they were at the end of the hall way. Instead of a door, there hung one last photograph. It was of the one tailed container they had killed, Gaara. His last victim.

"Excuse me for the mistake, the room was prepared a little in advance and there has been a mistake, this one is alive again thanks to the sacrifice of your grandmother, Chiyo-san. Even after giving his life for his village, he lives on." At this Minato turned to Sasori and gave him a bright smile at the thought, while Sasori's mind was reeling. Minato's expression turned dark however as he continued.

"It is amazing, isn't it? How a person tortured, abused, beaten, and treated about as badly as possible grows up and through example wants to protect his village with his considerable might. You and him share so much in common, yet your weakness, your inability to cope with human emotions, lead you down a traitor's path, a murderer's path, and a wicked path for which there is no redemption." As his point went on, his voice got angrier and angrier, until at the very end he was shouting as he picked up Sasori and forced him to be within an inch of the picture of Gaara, his hands behind his back in a position which allowed no freedom of movement. Minato continued.

"You tried to extinguish hope, sacrifice, and goodness. You would have succeeded in crushing Suna if not for the sacrifice of your grandmother. And for what? Nothing. Nothing at all truly benefited you from the actions you chose to take, you did it just because you could. This boy has more strength than you could ever have if you lived for centuries!" Upon the last word, he slammed Sasori into the wall, only to have him go through it, entering a dark and cold room, with very little lighting.

Sasori was very worried at this point, this man was not like he had read on reports. He knew he was skilled and deadly, but had come off as soft when the going got tough, he did not expect something like this.

Mother….father… I was truly a monster?

Minato looked down upon the crumpled heap of a man and looked disgusted.

"It is interesting to note, that many traits of our lives carry over to the afterlife. Many ninja, for instance, are able to take great amounts of pain because they endured so much in their life. You, on the other hand, never did so. You removed your body and have not felt the sensation of bodily pain for years." To illustrate his point, he poked Sasori in the arm sharply causing him to wince slightly.

"So I have decided I know what I am going to do with you. You might have heard of a technique I am rather famous for, it is called the Rasengan. This technique takes chakra, molds it into a torrent, tightens into a perfect sphere, and can shred anything it comes into contact with." He stopped for a moment and formed a rasengan in his right hand, the glowing ball of blue chakra appeared to be begging to touch Sasori.

"I am going to use this on your arm now." Minato said simply.

"W-wait. What about my parents? Can you tell me more about them?" Sasori voice indicated the pleading he never before would have let show before. However Minato's well crafted speech had woven itself into Sasori's psyche expertly, and with good reason. Minato had been reading over his file, combing it for weaknesses, ways to punish the man. He had done his job well, as he always did.

"Oh, I am sorry, I actually never met them, and I was lying about everything I said. I figured for such a great shinobi as you are, you would be able to look underneath the underneath, my mistake for overestimating you, Sasori-san." The touch of mocking was almost lost on Sasori, whose entire mind more or less shattered and he lost himself to his own demented self-loathing thoughts. For such a great shinobi, he had shown weakness and had pleaded with a man who was certainly his enemy. His pride and strength gone, he was less than nothing

And that was before the chakra ball started to shred his arm.

Minato pressed more, causing the blood and skin (entirely meta-physical as it was, it still felt real) to spew everything, the bone being ground to dust. Sasori screamed in utter agony as he saw the ball of chakra come into contact with his shoulder, and the last thing he knew the ball was shredding his face off, muting his screams.

"Sasori, wake up."

Sasori awoke to Minato staring over him. Glancing at Minato's hand, he saw a rasengan there, swirling calmly.

"I am afraid that wasn't quite what I had in mind for your torture, let's try it again." And so he shoved the ball into the same arm again, with mostly the same results. He would continue doing so until he got it just right.

He never would.

"Minato, what did you do to him?" The Shinigami was confused to walk in on Minato and Sasori sitting opposite of each other, with Sasori slumped over and trembling, all the while Minato simply was looking impassively at the man.

Minato looked at the Shinigami with a smile on his face and sadistic glee in his eyes.

"A simple genjutsu, nothing too impressive. He will be like that for all of eternity, so find a good pit and throw him in it, he won't be around to bother anyone again, I assure you, Shinigami-sama." The Shinigami grinned wickedly, loving it when Minato put effort into his projects.

A/N: Another one done, three chapters, three days! A NEW RECORD. Hope you guys enjoyed this more serious take on Minato and the ways of shinobi, have no fear, next chapter I envision to be much lighter. Including: More Obito antics, the fight tape is revealed, and Minato laughs a little.

Also of note, the scene with Sasori where his arm gets shredded at the very end was inspired heavily by a scene in Gaereth's "Will of Fire", which as soon as I read it I knew I had to try it for my own. I won't say exactly what I mean, as it spoils it a bit, but if you love the Yondaime as much as I do, you should check out his story, it is fantastic.

See you guys another day, which probably won't be tomorrow!

- Chris