The first time that Sasuke collapsed, he'd been rushed to the hospital immediately by the ANBU who were still trailing after him then—they were keeping an eye out for any suspicious people or clues as to why his older brother had slaughtered his clan. His body had suddenly crumpled to the pavement like a puppet with its strings cut, prompting a terrified shriek from the owner of the nearest food stall. When the ANBU carefully picked up his body, he'd been breathing slowly and evenly, but it had been impossible to wake him—for all intents and purposes, he'd appeared to be comatose.

From Sasuke's point of view, it had gone like this: he'd noticed something shimmering slightly out of the corner of his eye, and had cautiously gone to investigate. It had been hard to focus on, exactly, but there was a weird bentness to an innocent looking patch of air outside of the dango shop. He doubted that anything actually dangerous would have been left alone by the ANBU following after him—he might not be able to see them, but he knew there were there—so he reached out a hand and passed it casually through the air.

The world tilted—he felt like he'd been flipped upside down and set on his feet again, but looking around he wasn't anywhere that he knew from inside the walls of Konoha. There were trees towering over his head, covered in crimson flowers and filling the air with their cloying scent.

It wasn't until he looked down at his hand and realized that he was clutching a ticket stub that he was able to piece together why the scene felt familiar to him. He'd dreamed the same dream when the man with the green eyes had helped him lock his aniki's secrets away, before he'd woken up in the hospital. It had been weirdly vivid, considering nothing happened—he'd just wandered around until a small black butterfly had flown over to him, seeming to hover in the air and judge him before landing on his arm. He'd woken up immediately after that.

In fact, the same butterfly was winging its way towards him now. He reached out a hand to it, and as it landed, the world dissolved into shadows.

…

He woke up to a concerned doctor and his concerned looking assistants, asking him if he could remember his own name and what he had for breakfast that morning and making sure he could walk across the room. Of course he could, he wasn't an invalid, he'd just…

Apparently passed out in front of the dango shop once he'd touched the shimmer in the air. Interesting.

The doctor insisted that he stay for overnight observation, but Sasuke could wait to investigate until morning. Something strange was happening, and he wanted to figure out what it was (the better not to think about anything else). He asked the doctor if he knew anything about the black butterfly. Yes, he could see the butterfly right now, it was right there.

The doctor decided it might be better to make it two nights observation, instead.

…

When he returned to the shop, the shimmer was a little clearer, and if Sasuke really strained his ears then he thought he might be able to hear something. It was the height of an adult, he was pretty sure, but he couldn't make out details or even a clear shape. Still, when he reached out to touch it this time, he could swear that it reached out to him as well.

The world tilted again, but this time he was expecting it. Staring up at crimson flowers, he waited for the butterfly to find him. It took less time—it seemed to get better at finding him with practice—but he still woke up in the hospital, and this time the doctor was asking pointed, prodding questions about the dango shop. That wouldn't do—Sasuke was pretty sure that they didn't know there was a spot outside their shop that made you dream funny dreams, and it wouldn't be fair for them to get in trouble for it.

He'd stop poking at the shimmer for a while, he decided, and just get dango instead.

…

Conveniently enough, he managed to find another shimmer in the air. This time, though, he could make out a shape, and maybe even a voice? He could tell that the voice was there, but he had no idea what they were saying. He was pretty sure that the shimmers were getting clearer, though—a few more times, and he might even be able to figure out what they were.

…

After the fifth time, his doctor diagnosed him with narcolepsy. It was apparently a condition where you would suddenly fall asleep for no reason, whose cause and cure was unknown. This suited Sasuke just fine—he knew exactly what was causing him to fall asleep, but he didn't want to explain it to anyone because he was already being forced to visit a Yamanaka once every two weeks because they were watching him for emotional trauma.

He didn't want to find out how often he would have to go if he told anyone that he thought he could see ghosts.

…

It took him a while—over a month—to work up the courage to return to his clan compound. The ANBU had retrieved his necessities for him, so there had been no driving reason for him to go back. And although the Uchiha hadn't necessarily been the liveliest of clans, they were still almost all fire natured, and that had appeared as determination and an ambitious drive for life in almost all of his great extended family. Without that energy, the Uchiha compound just felt empty. Haunted, almost. Except Sasuke couldn't find any ghosts there.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that. To see if it would change his feelings, he searched every corner of the compound. Just in case.

…

He sat on the steps of his old house and thought about his life. It hadn't been a very long life, but Sasuke was pretty sure that it was a life worth considering. He was the second-last Uchiha, now, and he was pretty sure nobody was going to talk about the other one, and as the legal heir of the great Uchiha Legacy he probably decide what he wanted to do with his future.

Although this wasn't quite why he sat down.

Aniki had told him, the last time he trained with him, that he had a habit of rushing into things too fast. Aniki had told him a lot of things the last time he trained, really, like he was planning on unloading several years of brotherly life advice onto Sasuke at once because he wouldn't be able to do it later. This was probably rather accurate. Aniki had smiled a little, the tiny, real smile that he saved for Sasuke, and told him that even if he didn't want to slow down he could at least stop every so often to take a good look at what he'd done, where he was, and where he wanted to go. That was the advice Sasuke was following, because in the universe his brother came first and his mother came second and everyone else came after that, clan included.

It was probably time to face at least one of his problems, decided Sasuke. The doctor had told him that if he had narcolepsy, he couldn't be a shinobi, and may have to withdraw from the Academy. Because he'd fall asleep all the time and that would be Bad. And while he could learn to avoid ghosts, he wasn't absolutely sure he could avoid accidentally falling asleep all the time—he'd had the strangest moment where he'd seen his black butterfly in real life and jolted into the world with the flowering trees and immediately jolted back to find himself on the ground—and he refused to die because of a stupid reason like falling asleep before he could chase down his aniki and figure out what was going on.

Naruto eyed the boy in front of him. Naruto knew that he was normally a rather lucky person—he and Ino had snuck into a casino once while he was still officially suspended (with Harry-sensei's help and approval) and taken shameless advantage of the fact, leaving the gambling district of Tanzaku-Gai with at least fifty times the money they'd started with. Granted, it was fifty times of a child's allowance and so it wasn't really that impressive of a sum compared to the supply budget Harry-sensei usually gave them, but it had still been enough for them to buy some rather nice paper for sealing, five live chickens, and enough catnip to practically flood the Hyuuga compound in cats for a week.

However, Harry-sensei had explained to him the universe's sense of what was either karma or cosmic irony—chances were that if had really good luck most of the time, it would mean that there would be some instances of really really bad luck. Naruto was willing to count this as one of them.

He'd personally come to the Academy today, not a clone, and Ino wasn't with him. In fact, he'd come to the Academy specifically to escape her—he'd pranked her recently by turning the back of her shirt where she couldn't see it into a garish colorful mass of polka dots, stripes, and plaid. She'd been out for revenge for crimes against herself—and fashion, apparently—ever since. Ino in righteous fury mode was scary, and she'd taken to sealing like a duck to water, all of which had seemed like good reasons to stay out of her way for a few hours, but it meant that he couldn't count on her for backup, or take advantage of the careless social grace that all Yamanaka seemed to possess.

Mind readers had it so easy. Harry-sensei had been helping him with a few tricks, though, for sensing people and feeling for their feelings. He'd seemed surprised when Naruto had shown signs of being able to do what Harry-sensei called empathy at first, but Naruto had no idea why.

It's not like Harry was doing magic, or using a bloodline ability, or something like that. So there was no reason for it to be impossible. Impossibility was such a silly idea, anyways.

In this case, however, Harry-sensei had explained to him something more immediately useful than a bit of beginner people-reading. He'd told him—and Ino—about the Uchiha massacre, deciding that they were old enough to notice the Uchiha disappearing and smart enough to be told what had happened. There were things about it that Harry-sensei didn't tell them, but even hearing just the basic version of events had left Naruto feeling queasy and Ino looking much paler than usual, so he didn't really want to ask for details. Still, he kind of found himself wishing that he'd asked Harry-sensei if he was personally involved in any way, because then he might know why Uchiha Sasuke had sought him out the very first day that the other boy returned for a full day of Academy classes and demanded to know how he knew 'the man with the green eyes.'

Naruto was used to this question—most of the time, if someone new approached him it had something to do with Harry-sensei. The people from the hospital seemed particularly interested in his teacher, despite the fact that Harry-sensei had managed to avoid the place entirely in all the years he'd lived in Konoha. Or maybe because of it, now that he thought of it—all ninja, from what he could tell, were curious as cats. He gave his classmate what was now his default answer. "Why do you want to know?"

Sasuke-san opened his mouth to answer, then stopped, his eyebrows creasing in one of the greatest changes of expression that Naruto had ever seen an Uchiha make. He was pretty sure it was a frown. Moments later, the boy's eyes started to slide shut, his body collapsing towards the ground. Naruto lunged forwards to catch him before he fell completely, lowering his classmate gently so that he wouldn't hit his head or get bruises or anything like that. There was panic creeping in at the edges of his brain, but more overwhelmingly there was fond exasperation at his teacher. Sasuke-san had been mentioning him before he apparently fell asleep on the spot, and like everything weird about his life he just knew it had something to do with Harry-sensei.

Anyways, he'd noticed the ANBU who were following Sasuke-san around, and if they weren't doing anything then he assumed that this wasn't particularly weird. Because he was a nice person and it seemed a bit mean to leave Sasuke-san on the ground in a pile even if he'd been a bit rude, he picked him up so he could lay him down on a nearby bench until he, supposedly, woke up again.

Because apparently the universe just felt like being mean to him, Sasuke-san woke up when he was slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He lashed out almost immediately, and Naruto had to re-adjust him quickly to avoid being hit in the head.

"Put. Me. Down."

There was an impressive amount of venom in Sasuke-san's voice, reflected Naruto. Still, being nice was important even if they were being rude to you, so he complied. Looking down at the boy who was once again in a bit of an undignified sprawl on the ground—apparently he'd been too sleepy to recover and land properly—he suppressed the urge to laugh. After all, laughing wasn't nice. He couldn't prevent the corners of his mouth from spreading into a grin, though. "Okay, sleepy little Sasuke-chan."

Sasuke-san's face morphed into an impressive glower. "Don't call me that, dobe."

Now, that was just unfair. Naruto was only the dead-last in the class because apparently somehow, Shikamaru-san had enough energy to write his name on his test papers. "So many demands, Sasuke-hime," he retorted. "Weren't you asking me for a favour?"

Sasuke-san used an Uchiha death glare and tried to make Naruto's head burst into flames. It was not very effective. "Don't make fun of me, dead-last. Respect your betters."

Naruto shrugged, pretending to glance around. "Don't see any. Unless… I guess if you're a princess, I should be nice to you." His classmate's eye twitched, looking ready to lunge at him in irritation. That was good, Naruto decided—Sasuke-san had been alarmingly broody all day, projecting a prickly aura that made everyone stay away and the class gossips whisper behind their hands. Annoyance might not be the most positive of emotions, but it was probably better than Angst with a capital A, so he'd count it as a step in the right direction. He brightened, a wonderful idea popping into his head. "You can be Sleeping Beauty!"

"…what?" Sasuke-san had picked himself off the ground, and was standing a safe distance away, regarding Naruto distrustfully like he was some strange creature that dropped out of the sky. Naruto took that as a compliment.

"Sleeping Beauty, you know, the story about the princess who was cursed by a fairy and then another fairy was like, 'No way!' and then she grew up and instead of dying she just fell asleep for a really long time and then there was a dragon that was guarding her but a super strong and smart and amazing ninja defeated the dragon and snuck into the castle and then rescued the princess and she fell in love with him," he explained. Honestly, it was pretty much common sense. "I'm going to be Hokage, so I'll be just as amazing as the ninja from Sleeping Beauty and rescue princesses." He looked dubiously at Sasuke-san. "You're not going to just fall asleep somewhere bad and need rescuing, are you?"

Sasuke-san looked vaguely stunned. "You're an idiot," he said.

Naruto just stuck his tongue out at him. Was that the best he could do? Naruto got told that all the time.

"You're green," he continued.

Wait, what? He looked down at himself. He looked pretty normal, in his opinion.

"Aw, you ruined the surprise," came a voice from behind him, giggling lightly. Naruto recognised that voice.

He turned to see Ino walking towards him, a smug smile on her face. "What did you do?" he asked suspiciously.

"There is no way that you're actually this dumb… right?" asked Sasuke-san, still sounding a bit numb.

In front of him now, but addressing Sasuke-san, Ino mimed putting her hands in a tiger seal. "He just needs a bit of practice. After all, genjutsu is a rather youthful skill that we've just been introduced to." She put a strange emphasis on the word 'youthful'.

Naruto hurriedly tried to dig up what Inoichi-san and his academy sensei had told him about genjutsu. "Kai!" he shouted, his hands in a hurried tiger seal, radiating a sloppy burst of chakra for several feet. Looking down at himself, he took stock of the now visible changes. He was covered from neck down in tight green spandex, the only difference in colour being a pair of brightly colored leg warmers. At least they were orange—Naruto loved orange. Actually, now that he looked at it, apart from the skin-tightness the whole outfit wasn't too bad… he did love bright colours. Why was Sasuke-san looking at him with such horror? "It's not bad," he remarked.

Now Ino was looking at him with horror as well. "I knew your fashion sense was bad," she breathed, "but I didn't know it was this bad."

Naruto smiled at her reaction. "In fact, I think I like it!" he announced.

"SUCH MIGHTY WORDS OF PRAISE! SUCH A YOUTHFUL APPEARANCE MUST BE A SIGN OF YOUR DEDICATION TO THE WAYS OF HARD WORK!" A green blur, distant at first but rapidly approaching, boomed the words at a volume that all three of them could hear, triggering birds to fly off of nearby rooftops in a flurry of wings. The blur resolved itself into a tall, well-built man wearing the same outfit Ino had somehow managed to trick him into, with a shining bowl cut and pair of eyebrows. "What is your name, epitome of youth?"

Never one to waste a chance to introduce himself, Naruto patted his chest proudly. "Uzumaki Naruto! Future Hokage!"

The strange man looked at him with wide, teary eyes. "This is a beautiful dream! I am certain that with hard work and determination, you will achieve your goals! I am Maito Gai, Konoha's Beautiful Green Beast! To celebrate this auspicious meeting, let us train together! "

He looked so excited, a fist clenched with determination in front of his face, that Naruto didn't have the heart to refuse him. Anyways, training was good, and Ino was still scary. "Okay!"

"Follow me!" yelled Maito Gai, then made off at a more reasonable pace than the blur that had approached them.

Grinning, Naruto followed.

The soft chime of the shop door's bell prompted Harry to look up from where he was creating lesson plans for his students at the counter. And by creating lesson plans, he might mean daydreaming prank ideas while staring into space.

Potato, potato.

"Good afternoon, Ino-chan," he greeted. "I see that you have brought your Uchiha classmate with you."

Her Uchiha classmate did not respond, as he seemed to be asleep and draped in a fireman's carry over Ino's shoulder. "He was asking Naruto about you," she explained. "I was bringing him here, but he fell asleep outside. He seems fine, so I was going to bring him to the house until he woke up again."

Harry smirked. "Judging by the fact that Naruto-kun isn't with you, I presume you were successful?"

She hesitated. "I… guess? It's more like he made friends with Maito-san and ran off with him, and I think I heard something about training. As far as revenge goes, it was a bit disappointing."

He waved a hand. "If he's training with Maito Gai, then that's probably revenge enough—that man is an impressive sort of crazy. I've seen him use fifty laps around Konoha on his hands as a warmup."

Ino winced. "Ouch. Well, at least this way he'll stop looking so nervous when he's near me." To Harry's great amusement, Naruto had been regarding Ino with caution more appropriate to an extremely venomous snake ever since he'd pranked her, waiting for retaliation. Ino had decided to take it as an opportunity to practice psychological warfare. "We have to iron out a few details for this week's project, and it's hard enough to check on the Aburame without him jumping at shadows."

"Careful," he cautioned, only half-teasing, "the ANBU might hear about your evil plans." He could feel one outside the flower shop, most likely tasked with keeping an eye on the only survivor of the Uchiha massacre.

Ino stuck her nose in the air. "I don't know what you're talking about," she claimed. "The most exciting thing me and Naruto get up to is skipping class, and we don't even do it that often. Just ask our teacher."

Harry raised a skeptical eyebrow at her. She responded with her most innocent, wide-eyed expression.

"Oh!" she started, breaking their short stare-down as she remembered something, "I wanted to tell you that the illusion seal worked! It was too complicated working the details of the illusion into the seal itself, so it's more like anchor to keep it in place until Naruto finds the seal and destroys it. But it survived one of his super-strong chakra bursts, so it's pretty sturdy."

"Good work," he praised her, smiling proudly. "But I hope you put that seal somewhere secure."

Ino reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of rolled up paper with an intricate design inked onto it. It hummed faintly to Harry's senses, telling him that it was an active seal and not just a pretty piece of art. "Apparently it works from far away," she explained, smiling deviously. "The possibilities, sensei. There's probably limits on distance, but from what I've seen, most people expect seals to be right next to their effects. It'll take Naruto forever to find and destroy this one, because he won't know where to look!"

What promised to be an interesting plotting session was stopped in its tracks by Ino re-adjusting Sasuke's position on her shoulder. The boy wasn't twitching or snoring, the only signs that he was among the living his even breaths and heartbeat. Well, that his body was among the living, anyways—Harry has the distinct suspicion that the boy's soul was somewhere else. Flitting about the air in the vicinity of the boy's left knee was the Hell Butterfly he'd tasked with retrieving Sasuke's soul when he'd kind of maybe accidentally almost killed him. Evidently, it was still on the job—it took about ten years for the creatures' lifespans to run out, practically the blink of an eye for some gods but more than enough time for most mortals.

Well, Harry did promise to take care of the kid. "Ino-chan, would you mind taking over for a while? I'll get Sasuke-kun settled in the house and see if I can figure out why he was looking for me." She agreed, passing her passenger to Harry with a minimum of jostling and hopping onto the stool behind the counter. Watching her, Harry was reminded of how fast children grew up—it was a much shorter climb for her to get to the counter than it had been just a few years ago.

Harry carried the child to the house neighbouring the flower shop, part of the Yamanaka's official unofficial clan district and the beginning of the area where residential and commercial buildings were mixed. Letting himself into Inoichi's house—the man had given him permission a while ago to come and go as he pleased—he set Sasuke down on a couch in the living room. It was a very comfortable couch, the sort that made you want to lie down, relax, and talk to people. Harry suspected that Inoichi had stolen it from some therapist's office.

Harry conjured a sign that read, in helpful, professional font, "The doctor is IN," and set it down next to Sasuke. He inspected the scene that it made. Satisfied that it looked peaceful and confusing enough to ensure that the young Uchiha wouldn't be bothered, he addressed the butterfly. It would have probably flown off to fetch the boy's soul already, but he guessed that something about being so close to the Master of Death was throwing it off—he hadn't bothered to fully suppress his magical signature because he sincerely doubted there was anyone in the world that could sense it. It was tamped down to reasonable levels to keep people around him from fainting, of course, but he found it took much less concentration to let a tiny fraction of his power free than to try and contain every last scrap of it.

"Right," he said imperiously, holding out an expectant hand. Moments later, Sasuke's butterfly landed on it. "You, mister, are going to go find him. And once you find him, you're going to bring him to my office and wait with him there. Capiche? "

Inoichi's wife, Hikari, poked her head in the doorway of the living room at the sound of his voice. "I'm sorry, Harry-san, I didn't realize that you were here. Would you like some tea?"

He almost considered it—she truly did make some excellent tea—but the fact was that he probably shouldn't let Sasuke's body hang around without a soul for too long. Harry smiled at her sheepishly. "No, thank you. Just passing through right now."

"Oh," she said, sounding disappointed. "Do you think the boy there like some tea?"

He looked over at the body on the couch. He was pretty sure that unconscious people did not want tea. "Probably not, Hikari-san. I'm not sure how long it will be until he wakes up, and it would be a shame for him to wake up to a pot of cold tea."

She nodded her head in agreement. "Don't let me stop you from talking to your hand, then. Let me know if you need anything."

Harry looked down at his palm, where the butterfly resting there helpfully fluttered its wings at him, and contemplated the fact that he was probably the only one in the world (give or take a few on-the-clock shinigami) who could see it.

"Mortals," he muttered with amusement. "Cheeky little things, the lot of you."

"Mi-kun! Put this on!"

Minato's boss blew into his office like a human-sized hurricane. He meant this quite literally, as Harry had arrived with swirling winds and his own personal rain cloud on top of him, tearing up the floor of the office as he charged in.

Unwilling to bet on the fact that he would stop before he got close enough to wreck his desk, Minato folded his hands into a set of handseals. Leaning forward to avoid upsetting his papers himself, he exhaled a great gust of wind, travelling fast enough to leave a vacuum behind it and cancel out most of his boss' portable storm. The rain cloud cleared to reveal Harry dripping wet, holding a bowler hat and what appeared to be a set of thick glasses with an attached nose and moustache.

"Hurry up, he'll be here any second," insisted Harry, tossing the items to him. Bemused, and feeling more than a little ridiculous (as usual for when Harry visited), he complied. And waited.

And waited.

Several minutes later, he broke the expectant silence. "Boss, who will be here any second?"

"Shhhh," hissed Harry. "Just let me have this." He positioned himself in front of the window behind Minato's desk so that he was facing it, his back to the room and the fake sunlight illuminating his outline. Minato decided that it probably wasn't worth arguing, and tried to go for another sheet of the ever-increasing paperwork. Harry smacked his hand away.

Bored, Minato resigned himself to waiting for whoever it was Harry was expecting.

A few more minutes, and a small figure materialized in the doorway. It was a small boy with distinctly Uchiha (read: pretty) features, a black butterfly almost camouflaged into his dark hair. Minato assumed that this was the boy they were talking about when Harry had bustled into the office weeks ago worried about killing someone he was supposed to be keeping alive.

"Uchiha Sasuke," Harry said to the window, before turning around slowly and dramatically. "I've been expecting you."

The boy looked uncertain. Harry conjured a chair in front of Minato's desk for the boy, and gestured for him to have a seat. Pushing Minato absentmindedly out of the way, he conjured a slightly grander seat for himself and settled down so that he and the Uchiha were at eye level with each other.

"You have questions for me," Minato's boss started.

The boy's eyes flickered towards Minato and his ridiculous (but apparently effective) disguise.

"Ignore him," Harry said dismissively. "He's not important. What is important is that you're in danger of being forced from the Academy, when you don't want to be. Narcolepsy, correct?"

Sasuke nodded.

Hurricane Harry barely paused to note his agreement that before slapping a piece of paper onto the desk. "Narcolepsy is one of the words that doctors use for things that they don't understand," he scoffed. "What you have—what you have is a choice. To go through life with your eyes open, or to close your eyes and live on as you did before—never knowing, always wondering. What will you choose, child?"

"What will happen if I choose the second option?" Sasuke asked.

Harry leaned back in his chair and shrugged lazily. "Nothing changes."

"And the first?"

"You'll have to choose in order to find out. But I can only offer you this choice once."

Sasuke's eyes glinted with determination. "The first option."

Harry stood up and walked over to the other side of the desk. "Are you sure?"

Sasuke nodded.

"SAY IT," barked Harry. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Sasuke growled back.

"Any doubts?"

"None," the boy snapped.

"Then sign here," Harry pointed, "and here, and here, and here."

Sasuke blinked dumbly for a moment, then obliged.

"Now put the date here… and your thumbprint here. No, your other thumb."

A few minutes of paper shuffling and exactly three milliliters of blood later, Harry was able to tuck the forms away and looked seriously at the child in front of him. "Do you trust me?"

Sasuke's voice was soft as he answered, although the reply came immediately. "Yes," he said.

In a smooth movement, Harry reached into the air and twisted,a glittering sword with a ruby the size of an egg coalescing into existence in his hand. In the same motion, he ran the boy through with it. Minato twitched—the sheer nonchalance with which his boss had just stabbed a child was a bit of an uncomfortable reminder that the being that he worked for wasn't, no matter how much he looked it, quite human. He kept his silence until Sasuke had faded completely—Harry murmured something to him that he didn't quite catch—until he couldn't hold it in anymore.

The fake moustache had been scratching uncomfortably at his nose for ages. He sneezed.

Harry snickered. "You can take that off now, you know," he said.

Minato removed them gladly, folding them neatly and setting them in a corner of his desk. "Was that really necessary?"

"Well," said Harry defensively, "I couldn't exactly have him recognizing you, could I? I have to keep some secrets to myself."

"I meant the stabbing," elaborated Minato. He really didn't care all that much about the nose glasses—Harry had done stranger, more embarrassing things in the past.

Harry made a noise of realization. "Ahhhh. Yes, actually, it was—ancient death god ritual, you see, requires complete trust and a willingness to sacrifice yourself. Or in this case, an extensive waiver and a stabbing. It's a bit flexible, that way. It actually used to be a secret of one of the Soul Society's noble families, until one of their members used it on Kurosaki-taichou and, well… now everybody knows."

Minato frowned—he knew that story. "Did you just turn that boy into a Shinigami?"

Harry was suddenly and noticeably not meeting Minato's gaze. "Not exactly."

"Boss," said Minato firmly.

"He's not really a real Shinigami. Just because he can do the same things they can doesn't really make him one. Like a substitute teacher isn't really a teacher—a teacher has responsibilities." Harry shuddered to make it clear what, exactly, he thought of responsibilities. "Speaking of responsibilities," he continued in an abrupt change of tone and topic, "You should take better care of yourself."

"What?" asked Minato.

"When's the last time you got a full night's sleep? You're looking a bit tired. Are those under-eye circles?" Harry leaned towards him and poked repeatedly at his face.

"Stop that," protested Minato, batting his boss's finger away. "I don't sleep." There was a saying about death being the final rest—apparently, it was because there was no such thing as sleep in the afterlife.

"That can't be healthy," Harry frowned.

"I'm dead," deadpanned Minato.

"So am I," said Harry.

"Do you sleep?" asked Minato pointedly.

"Well, no. But I'm used to it."

"So am I! I've been doing this for years now, you know" Minato defended.

"Sounds like it's about time you took a break, then." Harry looked at him incredulously. "You do know you're arguing to do more work, right?"

Minato raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm not too sure what you're thinking of as an alternative, so I'd really rather not risk it."

Harry waved a hand casually through the air. "You'll be fine," he claimed. He looked down at his palm, where it looked like a pile of fine grains had coalesced into existence. "I don't suppose Konohagakure has stories about the Sandman?" he asked.

The fourth Hokage shook his head. The only thing he could think about was the Sand ninja from the Land of Wind, but he had the feeling that that wasn't what the other man was talking about.

"Gainel does tend to stay around European countries, I suppose." Harry sighed. "This would make so much more sense in context." He raised his hands, and dusted the grains from his hands onto Minato's hair.

Minato meant to ask what, exactly he was doing, and if he understood how annoying it was to get sand from hair when bodily attached to office furniture, but his eyelids were feeling curiously heavy in a way they hadn't in years, so he got halfway through blinking and decided that continuing wasn't worth the effort.

Minato slept, and dreamed.

He was sitting at a ramen stand, an Ichiraku Miso Pork Ramen Deluxe sitting in front of him. He tried to take a bite, but when he went for his chopsticks they slipped through his fingers like they were intangible and he had no choice but to look sadly at the uneaten ramen instead.

Looking sadly at uneaten ramen was boring and disappointing so he stood up and walked out of the ramen stand, into a bustling marketplace full of people and sunshine. A man walked through him to sit down and start eating the bowl of noodles Minato had been staring at. Realizing he—not the chopsticks—were intangible, he wondered how he was managing to stand on the ground.

He started to sink.

Closing his eyes, Minato rearranged his perception of his realities and his priorities until the ground seemed solid again. Rearranging your own personal reality was a valuable death skill, and a useful addition to all the valuable life skills he'd picked up when he still needed to breathe. When he opened his eyes again, his own face stared back at him.

It wasn't physically his own face, but it was rather recognisable nonetheless—when a ninja village decided to put your face up on a mountain, you could be pretty damn sure that your face would end up on that mountain. It was a view he'd seen many times before from his office window, but there was something different about it.

For one thing, he didn't remember his face on the Hokage monument wearing orange eyeliner. Not like his totally cool orange sage mode coloring, either—this was just a mess.

He could hear a commotion off to his left, slowly growing louder as it grew closer. Civilians were moving out of the way to the sides of the street, even as a small figure darted its way through them. Soon, a boy emerged from the crowd, heading straight for Minato.

Minato didn't bother to move. He was intangible, anyways.

To his surprise, the boy changed his course to avoid him, jumped onto a nearby stool, and aimed for a roof. Even if it looked like he was going to make it, Minato, trained by years of being hopelessly in love with an incorrigible prankster, instinctively gave him a hand. The boy took it, scrambled onto the roof, nodded his thanks and ran out of sight.

Minato blinked after him. The boy had been the Uchiha from the office, and Uchiha were generally not inclined to mad races through the village marketplace. Curious, he started ambling after him.

"Hey!" yelled a childish voice slightly above him. "Sasuke-hime!"

Minato turned to look. Racing over the rooftops was a child with blond hair and blue eyes, six whisker marks decorating his face. He didn't need Harry's stories or photos to recognise who it was—the child had the same shade of hair that Minato saw out of the corner of his eye every day, and the same face as the young redheaded girl that had stormed into his class one day declaring that she'd be Hokage.

This was his son.

Naruto jumped forward, catching the Uchiha—Sasuke, Minato thought his name was—by the sleeve and dragging him off the roof behind the building with him. Scant seconds later, Inoichi-san's little girl—he recognised her from pictures—caught up to them, somersaulting off the roof to join vaulted himself up to the rooftop to watch, doing his best to stay out of the Uchiha child's line of vision.

"Why'd you stop me?" Sasuke-kun demanded in a harsh whisper. "They'll catch up to us."

"Because you're being way too obvious," accused Naruto. "We can't outrun ANBU yet, so we have to be sneakier. Running straight through the marketplace isn't sneaky—everyone will be able to tell them which way you went."

"And it makes you look guilty," added Ino-chan. "People who are running like you were have something they're running from, and that makes people suspicious."

"Newbie," coughed Naruto, failing completely to disguise the word as clearing his throat.

"And what's your grand plan, then?" Sasuke-kun asked Naruto, wheeling on him.

Naruto reached into his sleeve and pulled out three pieces of paper with a flourish, inscribed with curling Celestial. "Disguise seals!"

"Disguise seals?" asked Sasuke-kun. "Are seals your answer to everything?"

"Yes," chimed Ino-chan and Naruto in unison. Minato approved. Clearly, they were good for each other, and someday they'd give him adorable little blonde grandchildren.

"They let you lock down an illusion unless the seal is overpowered or destroyed," explained Ino. "But they don't give off chakra all the time like a ninja doing a henge so they're harder to detect. All you have to watch out for," she withdrew a seal with a sleight of her hand, "is this!"

She ripped the seal in half. The boys looked around, trying to determine what had changed. Naruto noticed it first. "My orange!" he wailed, pointing at the Hokage monument, "It's ruined!"

Sasuke-kun elbowed him. "Be quiet, dobe," he chided, almost at the same volume. "Weren't you the one telling me to be sneaky?"

"But— she turned it purple!"

"Technically," Ino-chan pointed out, "It was purple in the first place. I just made you think it was orange."

Sasuke-kun closed his eyes for a moment, looking impressively exasperated for a child less than ten years old, and then changed the topic.

"Do you need a different seal for different henges?" he asked.

Naruto brightened. "Nope!" he enthused. "You'd probably need a different one for different types of genjutsu, if we tried using it for that (which we totally should, Ino, remind me to do that later), but all henges use the same seal. You have to link it when you're in the middle of the jutsu which is a bit tricky, but it's not too hard. In fact," he reached into his jacket and pulled out a seal identical to the ones in his hand. "See? Exactly the same seal."

Ino glanced sideways at him. "Naruto, what illusion is that seal for?"

Minato's son shrugged. "It's just me, but wearing clean clothes."

The girl looked like she was considering edging away from him. "Why do you need a disguise to look like you're wearing clean clothes."

"Eheheh..."

"But you are wearing clothes, right?" she pressed, looking genuinely concerned.

The look on Sasuke's face at that question made Minato's quiet amusement evolve into full-blown laughter. The Uchiha child glared over at him.

"Sasuke-kun?" asked Ino.

"Ghost business," he answered simply, gesturing Minato to come down from the roof. The other children looked at Sasuke, then looked in the direction he was gesturing as if trying to see something. Their eyes skipped right over Minato, though, running along the edge of the roof and looking at the sky beyond him.

Curious about what the boy was doing, he complied.

Sasuke-kun took a deep breath, a tangible air of focusing around him. The air behind him shimmered, before solidifying into a sheathed katana with a purple wrapped hilt. The child drew the sword and looked up to him.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said. "I just need to tap your forehead with this," he gestured with the sword, "to help you move on."

Minato wondered if the main reason that he was getting an explanation was that Sasuke-kun was physically too short to reach his forehead without Minato bending down. From the stories he'd heard in the office, he knew that an explanation, though probably appreciated, didn't always happen.

"What if I have unfinished business?" asked Minato, mostly to test him.

"Do you?" responded Sasuke-kun.

"Well, no," Minato replied honestly, though he couldn't keep his eyes from drifting towards his son. Naruto, fully and wonderfully alive, had no idea that Minato was there other than inferring from Sasuke-kun's actions. Dutifully, he bent forward so that the young Uchiha could reach.

He hadn't really gone through to the afterlife the normal way, before, so it was interesting to know that the whole 'seeing the light' thing was actually accurate. As brightness started to obscure his view of the trio, he saw Sasuke-kun turn back to the other two, then do a double take and turn back to Minato.

"Wait a moment," Minato heard as he faded away, "You..."

A hand shook his shoulder and he was instantly awake, instincts—disused, but not forgotten—prompting him to grab the closest sharp object and throw it at his assailant, while pushing himself backwards to gain some working room.

The result of this was a quiet, completely still figure in a Shinigami captain's robes, holding up a folder with a paperweight embedded into it. Shaped like a long, crumpled horn, the paperweight quivered slightly before falling to the carpet with a sheepish thud. Meanwhile, Minato's chain had caught on one of his desk drawers, pulling it out and spilling its contents even as it caused his chair to tip at an uncomfortable angle.

"I thought I'd wake you up," she said calmly, "Seeing as you've been asleep for several months by now, and your backlog is starting to block the doorway."

And then she smiled, a terrifying, serene thing that promised a slow and painful death, of which he'd be healed with equal pain before beginning the process all over again. "Namikaze-san, please remember that not everyone has reflexes as fast as you do, and do be more careful in the future. It would be very unfortunate if one of my squad members came in my place and you'd injured them, don't you agree?"

Minato felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise in alarm. "I definitely agree, Unohana-taichou."

"Excellent." And just like that, her smile was back to normal. "I shall let you get back to work then," she told him, and stepped aside, allowing him to see the piles of paper that were stacked up behind her.

Minato groaned.