AN: So this isn't too relevant yet, but I haven't read the Quincy Blood War or Fourth Shinobi War arcs. Unless one of the trustworthier characters explicitly states otherwise, it's probably a safe bet to just pretend none of the information revealed in those arcs is canon to this story, including things like backstories/flashbacks, lore, abilities, and extra characters.

Tenchou just means shopkeeper. Geta-boushi literally translates to Clogs-hat; I think the official translation has it as Hat-and-Clogs.


Naruto knew how to tell when someone was lying. Case in point: he hadn't heard Tenchou-san string more than two true words together at any point, and those two words had been his name.

He'd lied through omission and misleading statements, though, not outright falsehoods. There was a difference. He expected Ichigo-oniisan to see through him at some point, and didn't want him to hate or mistrust him when that time came.

Despite his caginess, the man meant well. Or, at least, he genuinely did want to see Ichigo-oniisan alive, for a given value of alive. He wasn't lying to hurt anyone. Going by what information he had been omitting, he was trying to keep oniisan away from whatever ill relationship he'd kindled with Soul Society.

That Soul Society had kindled with him—there had been echoes of grief in his words when he'd spoken of the laws he'd broken.

The man who Haku had chosen to go with had become a missing-nin and been forced to leave Water Country, but he'd never quite left. When the pardon had come from Yagura-san's successor to the position of the Hidden Mist's Kage, he hadn't hesitated to cut what shallow ties he'd forged on the mainland. Ringo-san and Kakashi gave off the same impression (although, now that he thought of it, the Mizukage should have called Ringo-san back too), and Sasuke's brother, and some of those Naruto had helped move on and others who he had glimpsed in passing. Tenchou-san fit too well in that list.

Down in the pit, Ichigo-oniisan landed on his back again. He'd tried once to climb with his mouth substituting for his hands, but an in-depth exploration of the taste of dirt had been the only result of that experiment, and his attempt to gouge out better footholds had come with the discovery that ghosts couldn't affect the physical world. Since then, he'd stuck to trying to wall-walk without chakra, which worked as well as it sounded.

His body had been moved a little distance from the ladder. Ururu-chan had set it up with a futon and a parasol to keep the sun off. Otherwise, it had been left alone. Naruto kept glancing back to check that it was breathing. He was used to bodies without souls lasting three hours at the most before chakra exhaustion crept in and their organs shut down, but the people here didn't need chakra to survive. It was something he had to get used to.

The link at the end of Ichigo-oniisan's chain grew mouths and began to devour itself. Naruto flinched at his scream.

"It was bound to happen at some point," Tails-san said, looking up from the book she was reading. It wasn't written in the same language as the street signs outside. "Karakura is situated on what's called the jureichi, the highest concentration of spiritual energy in the living world. It's frequented by plenty of people from both sides of the afterlife. If it wasn't you, it would have been a hollow, or a less altruistic death god."

Ichigo-oniisan stood shakily. "Naruto!" he shouted, and if there was a tremor in his voice, Naruto wasn't going to be the one to point it out. "What did you do to become a death god?"

Behind the snapped and twisted bars of the great cell, Chikai's slumbering form flicked an ear, and the corner of her lip peeled back in a grimace. His performance with the first hollow yesterday had given her some satisfaction, but everything afterwards had angered her enough that by Ichigo-oniisan's second class that morning she had gone to sleep rather than keep watching. Which suited Naruto just fine. Usually he couldn't stand her silence, but Ichigo-oniisan's efforts filled the area around the pit with enough sound that he could almost ignore the empty space in his thoughts that her vitriol should have occupied.

Every once in a while, though, usually during a fight, he caught a flash of a dream; for an instant then, when he heard oniisan's words, he smelled rot and sterilizing chemicals. He remembered starkly what he had done. He wouldn't wish it on anything.

"You c'n figure it out, oniisan!" He pumped a fist. "Believe it!"

"Yoruichi-san?"

"Can't help you, kid. My circumstances were completely different."

Ichigo-oniisan cursed under his breath as he readied himself for another assault on the wall. Several more fruitless attempts later, he caught their attention again. "How exactly are death gods different from normal ghosts?"

Naruto exchanged a glance with Tails-san. Her existence still confused him, but she did mean it when she called herself a death god. "Do you want to take this?" she asked.

"Tails-san c'n do it." He wasn't used to talking about himself with the expectation that the person listening could learn to do the same things he could. He hadn't fully wrapped his mind yet around the fact that he wasn't alone.

"The main difference," Tails-san called down, "is that death gods have zanpakuto. They're a special type of weapon that's a manifestation of the innermost parts of a death god's soul." Naruto usually tried not to dwell on what it said about him that his reflection was Chikai. "You've seen Naruto-chan's kunai."

"Right, kunai. I kept calling it a trowel in my head..."

Naruto blinked at his knife. Weren't trowels for painting houses? Beside him, Tails-san's whiskers trembled. "How do you recognize a trowel but not a kunai?" she asked.

"I remember it now!" His ears were red to go with the cheeks that had gone pink with exertion. "So it's a part of his soul? Is that what Geta-boushi meant about a death god's power?"

"Geta-boushi!" When she stopped wheezing, she said, "Yes, that's right. Also, be aware that they'll have a name. You don't need to know what it is, but remember that they have one."

"You name your weapons?"

"I'm stopping that right there," Tails-san cut in. "Zanpakuto aren't just sharp bits of metal to swing around. They have their own wills and personalities, and, yes, they do have names. The regular souls in Soul Society mock death gods for calling their weapons by name, and even some of the weaker death gods, the ones who can't hear their zanpakuto's names, do the same, but there's a significant gulf in ability between a death god who knows their weapon's name and one who doesn't. You're starting off handicapped already with a short time limit. If you can't accept your own power, you'll only be able to go hollow."

He still looked skeptical, but nodded and got back to work.

"Tails-san, how're you talking? Cat throats can't make human sounds naturally."

Tails-san stretched out with a yawn and sat up. "Right now, it's because Kisuke made this body to allow for speech. Outside of this body, turning into a cat is my zanpakuto's ability, so things like physical impossibility don't have a place in the picture."

Naruto startled. "Tenchou-san made your body?"

"It's a false body called a gigai. They're common tools for death gods who get injured in the living world, since staying in a physical body slightly dampens reiatsu presence and speeds up a soul's healing process. Kisuke's something of a specialist at making them." Her tail slid across the ground. "I'm sure he could make one for you. You're small enough that it wouldn't even need that much material."

A common tool.

Tails-san slipped out of her body as easily as an otter into water, padded over, and set her front paws on Naruto's thigh, prodding his hand with her nose until he got the hint and lifted it. She fit her head under his hand, letting his fingers rest the soft fur behind her ears. He'd never touched an animal before other than Akamaru and the odd bug. That had been nearly half a lifetime ago.

She climbed into his lap, a warm, tangible weight, and curled up. Bunching into a tight ball like that couldn't have been comfortable for her. "I'll get him on it when he comes back," she said. "He's off right now looking for hollows who might know something about the place you're from."

"Mmkay," he rasped, mouth suddenly dry.

"You haven't seen much of this world, have you? This sleepy little town's not much to look at. If you aren't in a rush to return, I've been thinking about dropping by Japan's capital again. You feel like coming with?"

Naruto didn't need to breathe except to talk, but he did then to ground himself, to pull his thoughts back to reality. Physical objects couldn't go through a garganta. If he... did get a body, he would have to leave it behind.

And he did have to go back soon. Gaara-kun was vastly improved from when Naruto had first found him three months ago, but considering what he had been like in the beginning, that wasn't saying as much as it should have. If he thought Naruto had abandoned him, there was a good chance he would regress. His dad wasn't helping matters. The Kazekage had started scouting him out recently, prodding for the limits of his unexplained change in temperament.

Gaara was alive. His life was a precious thing, but no one had ever given him a chance to learn what that meant. If Naruto didn't go back soon, it might be that no one ever would. Oh, there was Shukaku-san, but the old raccoon dog was a whole other tangled nest of issues all his own. He was almost as toxic an influence as Gaara-kun's dad.

"Rain check?" It ached a little to smile. He'd been to so many small towns that they'd begun to bleed together, and Karakura definitely wasn't a small town, no matter what anyone called it. He really wanted to see what kind of city would count as a capital in this world. To go there with a physical body. To know that the people around him would know he was there, to pretend for a short while that he mattered.

"Do what you need to. I'll still be here." Tails-san flicked an ear. "Well, maybe not, but Kisuke's certainly not going anywhere. He can find me. Sometimes. When I let him."

They were quiet for a while. Then Tails-san said, "Naruto-chan, when you have a gigai, you shouldn't bring it out—"

"—'round oniisan," Naruto finished.

"That's right," she said, amused. "Whatever the state of his soul, he's very much still alive as long as he keeps a hold of his heart. None of us wants to drag him into our mess." She raised her head to look him in the eye. "About you, now. What have you figured out?"

"Short version?"

She paused. "Short version."

"Everything." Her tail swatted his sleeve, and he grinned. "'ere's another person who works at the shop. You, him—her? Him. Him, Tails-san, and Tenchou-san're from Soul Society. The— death gods," it sounded strange to call anyone other than the Shinigami that, "there did something ya disagreed with— not you, at first. Tenchou-san, and maybe the other person. The other person for sure. You came in later. Plus some more people? Right. It weren't everyone there that disagreed, jus' a few, but everyone else agreed with them and not you. They— thought Tenchou-san and the other person did something when they didn't, an' they had to leave. You went with them 'cause Tenchou-san's your friend, but I dunno why the other people— The thing they think Tenchou-san and the other person did, they think they did it ta those other people, and what happened to those other people was bad enough that they had to leave too even though they were the victims. It made them dangerous? Soul Society thinks it made them dangerous."

Tails-san was looking at him as if she'd never seen him before, her mouth hanging slightly open.

"Soul Society's trying not to know where you are 'cause it inn't worth it to come after you but what they think you did was too big for them to ignore, so they're really trying really hard, even though Tenchou-san's not making it easy what with the openly selling afterlife merchandise and that big sign out front with his name written all 'cross it. He's a lot angrier 'bout what happened 'an Tails-san. I mean you're not happy about it, but you weren't the one personally targeted either. Ya think the ones who framed you are going ta do something else so you're planning something too to go up against them with.

"Also, Tenchou-san wants to give you something. It's not ready yet so he's trying to keep you here 'til it is without letting ya know."

"I knew that," she croaked. "Where did the rest come from?"

"How much was right?"

"I'm not telling you," she said. "Has anyone ever let you know that you're never allowed to be a spy when you grow up?"

A Cloud chuunin had told Naruto once that his village's Torture and Interrogation department would cheerfully sacrifice any five of their personnel to some weird Hot Water-based god of sadism in exchange for him. "Yup."

"Good. Remember those wise words. I mean it, where did you get all that from?"

He scratched the back of his head. "The way you talk, the things you do. 's mostly just that I have a lot of practice from talking ninja ghosts down. It's like trying to walk through a hurricane without getting wet, 'cept the raindrops're primed 'splosive tags. There aren't second chances, 'ttebayo. I couldn't afford not ta learn."

"No worries, then. You learned alright," said Tails-san. "Talking ghosts down?"

"Wait, but then— How d'you send 'em to the afterlife then?"

She glanced at Chikai. "I thought it was strange that your zanpakuto's hilt has a rounded end. Death gods here perform konsou, which entails pressing the bottom of a zanpakuto's grip to a ghost's forehead to send them to Soul Society."

"You don't help them find peace first?"

Tails-san wrinkled her nose a little. "That would go over well. No, there are too many ghosts and not enough death gods to walk each of them through their problems. And basic diplomacy isn't a part of many death gods' skill sets either. Konsou is efficient." She added at a mutter, "Although maybe they should start trying it your way if it gives you that kind of insight. That was the short version. What is the long one supposed to be?"

"Tails-san was a daimyo before—"

"That was rhetorical!" Her fur started to drift back down to lie against her skin after a few seconds. She buried her head under a foreleg.

"Would it help 'f I explained how?"

Her voice came out muffled. "Can you?"

"No, but I think it's called cold reading?"

A lot of it wasn't conscious anymore, and the rest he didn't know how to talk about properly. Tails-san wasn't the first to cotton on to him knowing more than he'd been told. The other two who had and asked for the information bomb treatment weren't able to follow most of his explanation afterwards. Baito-jii, the Hidden Cloud chuunin, had been convinced he was a Yamanaka trying to cover up for using a mind-reading technique, a belief Naruto hadn't been able to talk him out of. Tails-san looked upset, though, so he'd thought he should at least make the offer.

"If that was cold reading, I'm a poodle." She moved her leg off her face and settled her chin on his thigh. "Cold reading is about saying things that are vague enough to apply to anyone, which makes it seem like you know what you're talking about. That's not what you did at all. What do you do back home?"

"Travel. Help who I can," he said. There wasn't much else for a ghost.

"How long have you been at that for?"

He tilted his head. It was March, and… last March he had been in… Fire, at first, to visit Kakashi and check on Sasuke, and Kakashi had been on a mission so he'd waited for him to get back before visiting Iron, and then from there he'd headed out to Rice to clean up after Orochimaru's messes. The March before that—he held out fingers to count—had been Earth and Hidden Rock, with Kenmaru and Akasuki-nee, plus running into Nii-neesan again, and the one before that had been Haku except for the incident with the Uchiha. And then the one before that had been Haku, and before that he'd been in Leaf because he was alive. That was almost his whole hand, so… "Four."

"Four years," she clarified. "How old are you?"

"Eleven." No, that was in October, and October came after March. Eleven minus one was… "Nine?"

"Hm." After a moment, she said, "So, after twenty minutes of listening to Kisuke lie his tongue blue, a nine- or eleven-year old came closer to what actually happened than Soul Society's managed in a century."

He blinked. "Your hair's super dark for a granny."

"A century's not old, Naruto-chan. The only old death god is Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni. He predates the modern calendar, which starts two thousand years ago."

That was definitely old. He didn't know much about history, but he wasn't sure it went back that far.

"It's one of the many reasons death gods have a tendency to stagnate," she went on. "Too much time to spend and too many outdated practices and beliefs to cling to. The ones like Kisuke, and the ones like you, don't come by often."

He didn't know what she meant by Tenchou-san, but the other qualifier caught his attention first. "The ones like me?"

"In four years, without any help or support, without even knowing what you are or what abilities you should have access to, you figured out shikai, shunpo, reiatsu manipulation, and whatever that psychic thing you can do is."

"It's not psychic," said Naruto patiently. Nobody else could figure it out, but he knew what he was doing, mostly. It was a mixture of attention to detail, reasoning, and gut feeling. He was sure he'd know if he could read thoughts.

"Either you're psychic or you're from the future. Take your pick," she said dryly. "Even ignoring that, you can't deny that your learning curve is absurd."

"'s not like I figured it all out completely from scratch. Like, with shun...po? There's a shinobi technique called shunshin I copied, and what I have is slower 'an shunshin, 'ttebayo."

"That's because you're substituting brute force for technique. What you're doing is expelling uncontrolled reiatsu from the entire sole of your foot. You're not taking into account vectors or resistance from different—" Tails-san stopped and sighed. "I'll put it this way: you're using more reiatsu than you need to and getting less of a result for it."

"That makes sense."

"It's fine for weaker hollows, but if you come up against a prolonged fight you'll run out of reiatsu that much more quickly," said Tails-san. "Also, it's painful to watch." She stepped onto the ground, lay back into her body, and shook the dust out of her fur. The bare air was cold on Naruto's hand. "Here, I'm curious what you'll be able to do when you know the actual technique. I'll teach you the right way to perform shunpo later," Naruto startled, "but I haven't eaten since this morning and I'm hungry. What do you want?"

"I'm a ghost," he said, a little numb. He was getting a teacher?

She stared at him. "But you eat, don't you?" Her eyes narrowed. "No, spirit particles come from the afterlife, and you said you can't access your afterlife... Still, you can't not eat. Tell me you don't get your food from Hueco Mundo."

"Ghosts can eat?" He'd never needed to. In the beginning, he had tried a few times, but it was difficult when he couldn't touch anything, and he'd gotten over the loss since.

Her tail lashed once. "That's settled, I'm getting you something. Any preference for your first meal in four years?"

What food had he liked? Taste was a distant memory, but he thought he remembered a lot of cup ramen. He must have been fond of it if he'd had so much. "Ramen?"

"Flavor?"

"Um, miso."

She nodded. "Ichigo! It's five o'clock. I'm going to go grab food. What type of ramen do you want?"

"Is that instant ramen?"

"The real thing, obviously. I'm not cheap."

"Tsukemen, I guess."

"Don't go hollow while I'm gone!" She looked back to Naruto. "Do you want to catch a nap before I get back? I know you haven't slept in at least two days. Or is that one of the things you don't need either?"

"I only sleep once in a week," said Naruto. "'m fine right now."

"Yoruichi-san, is there a phone around here I can use?"

"To call your family, right? There's no need. Kisuke let them know you'd be away for a few days."

A pause. "Did he?"

She put her head out over the pit. "He didn't tell them anything he didn't think you'd want them knowing. Just the truth—a beautiful woman dropped by the school, you didn't feel well, you slipped out with her wearing her accessories and need to stay in the basement of her questionably criminal friend's business enterprise until things settle down. Your father sounded like he said something about respecting your privacy. It was hard to hear through the sobbing." Her whiskers didn't even twitch.

Naruto peeked over the edge to get a glimpse of his expression—part disbelief, part abject mortification—then hurriedly pulled back. He didn't object to her trying to make Ichigo-oniisan dislike her group, but he wished… ah, well. It was for a good cause. Oniisan was too nice. Unless the shop burned all their bridges with him during the constructions, he might try to help them if he found out about their situation.

"He seemed like an interesting character." She turned around and headed for the ladder. "Keep trying at it! I'll be back."