A/N: Hey, a quick preface—new chapters will be out on Thursday every. Single. Week. So please look forward to it, and feel free to message me if you have any questions about the release schedule or the storyline in general (ie; characters, pairings, crossover mumbo-jumbo, etc)
End of preface. Please enjoy!
Chapter 1
"Death and Its Harbour"
The nine-tailed fox roared and thrashed its mighty tails, destroying the world beneath its feet, apathetic toward all life, conscious only of its own pain; burning, cutting, and growing with each and every second.
The beast cursed the man who dealt the pain to him—cursed all the men before him who'd done the same. They were apathetic to It. It was apathetic to them. The cycle of hatred. Something the beast's father spoke of, warned of. But it was an inescapable thing.
Love begets hatred, which begets more hatred. This cycle will never end.
The nine-tailed fox conjured a Bijuu Dama and spit it right at the tall monument the man stood upon, planning to eviscerate the very land the man mantled to protect.
The man vanished, reappearing and disappearing like bright, yellow mirages. He was fast. The beast couldn't keep up. The man caught one of its tails and thrust the beast high in the air. He performed jutsu and conjured a rather large seal, and the beast knew—read the letters, recognized the characters—he planned on sealing it. Again.
It howled at its own inevitable fate. And when it landed, the seal stretched, like fabric, and the ground itself sunk in on itself, as if to cushion the beast's fall. Then, everything went black.
"SHIKI-FŪJIN!" Minato yelled. The seal glowed bright, and then he felt the pain of a thousand rasengans pummel his gut into ground meat. He fought against the pain, bit it back where it came from, attempting to digest it and transform its properties into a strength that he could use to keep on fighting. It worked, and he spat blood, but it worked.
The beast's howls haunted, and Minato could've sworn that when it fell into the seal, the moon vanished for a second—though, it could've just been his imagination, considering his state of consciousness as the impending vessel for what all five great hidden villages considered to be the most powerful tailed beast.
Then, the final step—Minato clenched his jaw and summoned all his will, every ounce of strength left in him, and thrust his hand onto his belly, his fingertips ablaze with finely-tuned chakra. He seared the skin, imbedded himself deeper, then gave a quick twist, dialling his hand in a semi-circle, closing the black void the beast was being fed into and sealing his skin. All that remained was the seal, black as burnt-toast, scalding his skin with its fiery heat, making his skin bleed.
Minato fell to one knee. He bit the inside of his lip, grit his teeth and clenched his fists, huffing deep breaths out and intaking shallowed, shorter breaths. He'd done it. He didn't think it was possible. He sealed the nine-tailed fox whole, into himself; saving Kushina; changing the course of Naruto's destiny. Now he and the beast would die together, no one's curse to bear but his.
He knew deep, down, that the beast was composed of nothing but chakra—and an entity of its size, with its specific power, could never truly be killed. It would return one day; in due time. He bet on it—as much as he bet on the masked man's inevitable return—but until then, it was a waiting game (for him, for the beast itself, and for the masked man and all the five nations lusting after its powers).
Minato felt a deep sleep overwhelm him. His eyelids creeped. His body limp…
TAP.
Minato jolted awake. He felt a hand on his shoulder—felt relief. It was as if the hand had lifted a weight off his shoulders he never knew he carried—the weight of the whole world, and now Minato no longer had to carry that burden upon his shoulders.
He grasped the hand on his shoulder, didn't turn around, didn't need to see. He knew. His time was up. The reaper had come to collect his debt. But he wasn't done with the world yet.
"Not yet," Minato whispered. "Just a little longer…please…"
No one responded, but Minato felt the hand lift off his shoulders and the weight of the world came crashing back down. He grinned and made a one-handed seal, then disappeared in a dazzling flash of yellow.
Ichimaru Gin stared at the hand he put on the man's shoulder, felt a fraction of the immense weight he carried—leftovers of his spirit. He rolled it around in the palm of his hand, brushing it, rubbing it, manipulating its density and size. He wore it like a glove, made of pure reiatsu, then expunged it into thin-air. When he opened his palm, a thousand butterflies fluttered out, flying off into the starlit night.
Minato appeared in the nursery Kushina and him had built for their child, for Naruto. He kneeled by the bedside, watching the two of them sleep so soundly—knowing a different kind of sleep awaited him, too.
He gazed at Kushina. She was alive, even after having the nine-tailed fox extracted from her body, and Minato thanked Kami that her Uzumaki blood didn't let up on her. She was alive and that was enough, it had to be, for Naruto.
He turned to look at Naruto. A day old and already the spitting image of his father. Minato smiled. He wanted to laugh but it hurt so bad. And if they woke up, if Kushina saw him this way, he just couldn't take it. So he prayed in silence, for their safety and security in life, and vowed that he would watch over them from the afterlife.
He let the tears fall, though, he wasn't sure he could've stopped them even if he wanted to. He was overwhelmed by the events of the night, by all of this.
"Kushina…I'm sorry I wasn't able to spend more time with the both of you. Naruto…I'm sorry I won't be able to see you grow up and accomplish all your dreams. I hope you will understand why I did what I did, and I hope that in every lifetime ahead of me, I get to know the both of you. Always. I love you…Kushina…Naruto…"
Minato felt the hand on his shoulder again. Yes. It's time now.
The weight lifted off again. He never turned back to look into the reaper's eyes. He died, a father and a husband, staring at his wife and his first-born child—who he'd known for barely an hour and felt smitten by. He died a proper shinobi. He died…with a smile on his face.
He finally turned around and saw the reaper's face smiling at him, and when he felt his spirit float out of his body, he fell asleep.
Gin lingered outside the Squad 5 barracks—the shinobi named Namikaze Minato slung over his shoulder haphazardly—and he kept clenching his fist where he'd held the weight that the man had carried in his world, pondering a thought that bordered on mutiny—bridged the pathway from loyalty to betrayal—and urged him to question his morals.
Aizen—Squad 5 taicho—had given him explicit instructions: go out and explore other worlds—other terrains of existence—where people, alike, yet different exist, and collect me a few samples, won't you, Gin…?
Gin reflected on his afterlife and his motives. He leaned on his past-self—a child drenched in the blood of others and his own tears—and asked it what to do. But the child never stopped crying, the blood making its way down to his toes, pooling around him the way a puddle does in a torrential rainstorm.
The child's eyes were electric-blue. And when it spoke, Gin heard it, perhaps, for the very first time. It didn't speak with words. Gin finally understood.
He nodded to his past-self and smiled. You were always right, kid. I just never learned how to listen, did I?
His decision made, Gin about-faced and hotfooted it to the outskirts of the Squad 1 barracks—specifically, the front porch of the Sou-taicho's living quarters—and upon arriving, set the man off his shoulders and onto the wooden floor. He left him there, sleeping soundly, silently thanking him for helping him realize his true goal in life, his dream.
Gin opened his eyes that night, and he smiled as he watched Rangiku fuss herself to sleep on an uncomfortable-looking couch in her living quarters.
"I promise I will protect you," he whispered. She turned her head, as if sensing his presence, but he was already gone.
Seireitei bustled with souls, Shinigami and otherwise. The sunrise was pink (light shines differently upon the Heavens) and the breeze was cool. It was a beautiful day. So when Genryūsai Yamamoto—the Sou-taicho of the Gotei 13—decided to adjourn himself to the openness of the outdoors to better enjoy it, he was more than a little bit surprised to find that there was a stranger lying asleep in his foyer.
He stabbed his cane harshly, a mere inch away from the stranger's ear, startling the young man awake.
He frantically felt himself all over, as if searching for some non-existent item that was supposed to be on his person. It was common with fresh passovers. The expectation is that what was shall remain, but in the afterlife, everything is renewed, everything is different.
Perhaps the man was unaware that he was doing it purely out of a delayed subconscious misfiring, since, in the afterlife, most often the life that was lived is forgotten—though, it wasn't unheard of for a soul with high levels of spirit-energy to recall either bits-and-pieces, or even the entire summation of their past-lives.
Yamamoto observed as the man transitioned seamlessly from panic, to calm and collective. He was clearly a fresh passover, as he had presumed. Human, judging by his appearance, but for the life of him, he couldn't place his finger on what a dead human was doing on the floor in his quarters.
"What is your name?" Yamamoto asked, earning the young man's attention.
He seemed to ponder for a moment, then said, "Minato."
Yamamoto hmm'd. Not uncommon to forget one's surname, either. "Do you know where you are, Minato?" he said. Minato shook his head. "Do you remember what happened the moment before you arrived here?"
Minato stared, dumbfounded at his lack of memory, and shook his head at the elderly man. "Weird," he said. "Can't remember anything. Just my name when you asked for it."
Yamamoto nodded. "Do not fret, Minato. It's not uncommon."
Minato nodded. He eyeballed his attire—a pure-white shihakusho. He reacquainted himself with his physicality, feeling his hair, its unruliness; feeling the lightness in his body, almost as if he was weightless.
Then, he saw the ink-black marking on his abdomen, peaking out through the folds of his open shihakusho, and he felt pain like he'd never felt before in his entire life, like the fires of hell surged through him.
Yamamoto saw it too. He'd never seen anything like it before. It unnerved him—though, prior to this moment, he hadn't sensed any ill intentions coming from the young man. And now, it was as if there wasn't a single pure thought within him. His eyes flashed blood-red, his pupils dilating, then constricting, repeatedly, spasming, as if he was experiencing some sort of demonic-possession/seizure.
Yamamoto wasted no time. His cane transformed, became a blade. He gripped the tightly-knit tsuka—
It was gone. The evil. The fire. The apparent possession/seizure. It came and went without a moments notice. Yamamoto fish-eyed Minato and his immediate surroundings. His eyes widened a hair at the sight of chains binding him around his mid-section—arms and all, withholding his use of them—as if to contain the evil from getting out.
Yamamoto followed the length of the chains with his eyes, roving around Minato. He was surprised to find that they were connected to a pair of katanas lying limply on the wooden floorboards beside him—and then it hit him that they weren't katanas at all…
They were Zanpakutos.
In all the history of Seireitei, Yamamoto thought. Just who is this boy?
Minato startled at the clinking of chains, snapping to the sight of broad cuffs clasped tightly around both his wrists. He tried to stand up but found he couldn't, not without the help of his chain-bound arms.
Yamamoto examined the cuffs closely. There was another marking, etched into the metal itself. It read, SEAL. Yamamoto couldn't explain any of it, but he knew; it was evident. All the signs pointed to a single explanation: Minato was reborn into this world a Shinigami.
For what purpose, he did not know. But he had to act on this information. The evil he felt and now the appearance of the Zanpakutos. None of it made sense, though, none of it foreboded good things either, therefore he knew he had no other choice but to induct him into their sacred order.
Yamamoto nodded, mostly to himself, resolute about his next move, and said, "Come along, Minato. You must have questions." Minato nodded. "I will answer them. In exchange, you will be my Shinigami."
Minato didn't understand any of it. It didn't matter. He had no choice in the matter. He simply said, "HAI."
A/N: Hey everyone, this is a rewrite of my story, "NAMIKAZE," which was beginning to feel rushed—and since it's corona-time, I figured now was the best time to provide my fellow quarantined friends with some material to pass the time—heck, I might even come out of this a better writer. One can hope, huh?
Anyways, please leave a review and let me know your thoughts about the new direction I'm taking, and I'll see you next week!