53Still don't own Naruto, but I do have a Shikamaru bear. ^_^
The late afternoon sun shone down warm upon the earth. The song of the birds and the subtle harmonies of nature joined to form a peaceful symphony of sound. Gentle breezes ruffled the blonde threaded gray hair of the napping figure. He lay sleeping in a green, grassy field dotted with rows of stones.
"Grandpa, wake up! "A young voice cried, as a young child used both hands to roughly shake the figure into awareness. "Grandpa!" The little girl whined, until finally, the wrinkled lids opened to reveal unfocused blue eyes.
"I'm up. I'm up." Minato yawned, carefully raising himself onto his elbows. A tattered brown book, pages dog-eared from many years of use fell from his chest to the ground.
"Were you reading to Grandma Kushina again?"The little red head asked him, eyeing the book.
"She's the only one who will listen to me read this story anymore."
"That's not true! I like it when you read to me." She pouted.
The old man chuckled. With a groan, Minato got to his feet. Small shreds of grass fell from his robes as he brushed himself off.
"Oh, thank you, Mai." He smiled, taking the faded brown book from his granddaughter, and tucking it safely within a pocket.
"Can we go now? Mama said it's almost time for supper, and I'm starving!" Mai grabbed the old man's hand and tried to drag him away.
"Just one minute Mai. I have to say goodbye to your grandmother first. Why don't you wait for me by the gate?"He asked.
"Okay!" Mai agreed, skipping to the gate, red piggy tails bouncing along.
A familiar smile crept across his face, blue eyes crinkling as he watched the energetic child run along.
"Every day, she gets more and more like you, love. I hope you're watching over us, wherever you are. Hinata's probably waiting on us. I'll see you soon, Kushina." The former hokage bent over, and touching his fingers to his lips, left a kiss on the smooth stone with a brush of his fingertips.
A few moments later, he found Mai, sitting in the shade of the wall surrounding the cemetery, making leaves dance around her fingers.
"Now what do we have here? "
Light blue eyes looked up in surprise before the young face beamed with a huge smile.
"Aniki showed me."
"I think I'm going to have a chat with your aniki when we get back." Minato muttered. "It's a long ways to the Hokage tower. Let's do your okaa-san a favor and go fetch your daddy."
"Can we use the Flash?" She begged. Sky blue eyes swiftly changed into the dreaded Puppy-Dog Eyes no Jutsu. Even a kage, retired as he was, couldn't resist that technique.
He conceded defeat with a sigh, gathering her close to him.
"Alright, but hold on tight."
Mai latched on to him like a lifeline, and with a yellow flash, they disappeared.
O0o0o0O
Minato reappeared to the sight of beloved blonde deeply engrossed in a report. Red and white robes clearly denoted his current position as the reigning hokage of Konohagakure. Minato pressed his fingers to his lips, signaling Mai to stay quiet. Giggling silently, she nodded her understanding. The old game was on. They waited quietly, watching Naruto as he read.
Releasing a sigh, he tossed the stack of papers onto his messy desk.
"How long have you been there?" Naruto asked, leaning back into the chair.
"Oh, a few seconds. Maybe you should hand the hat over to Jiraiya already. You're getting dull if you didn't notice us come in." Minato teased his son.
"I'll give him this hat when he stops blowing up the backyard on 'accident'"
"I remember a certain blond boy doing much the same thing not long ago." He continued.
"Really? " Mai exclaimed, eyes alighting on her dad in hero worship. "Did Grandma Kushina get as mad at Daddy as Okaa-san does at Jiraiya-niisan? Mommy doesn't like it when she has to fix the garden after he sparks outside."
"Spars, Mai, not sparks." Naruto corrected.
"Oh, I don't know, he has been sparking a lot lately." Minato laughed.
"True," The blonde Godaime acknowledged with a wry grin. "I still wish I knew where the he…heck he got that lightning affinity. Between my wind and Hinata's water, out jumps Jiraiya."
"Affinity isn't necessarily hereditary, son. Chakra mixes spiritual and physical energy. A person's affinity would reflect, in part, any outstanding aspects in their personality. It's also why most shinobi don't develop secondary and tertiary affinities until they reach jounin rank. Their maturation allows for a more complex personality and exploration of their own selves. In fact, according to Housei's Theoretical Discussion of Spiritual Chakra…"
Minato's monologue was interrupted by a loud growl. Looking down, he saw Mai grinning sheepishly.
"I told you I was hungry."
Minato and Naruto laughed.
"We better get you something to eat then, ladybug." Naruto announced, getting up from his chair and grabbing his hat, and scooping up his daughter in his arms. "Grab on, Dad. No arguments." Naruto cut off his father before he could protest. "You used Hiraishin to get here in the first place, and I know that takes a lot out of you these days."
"I may be getting on years, but that doesn't mean I'm helpless!" Minato retorted.
"Dad, if nothing else, do it to help quiet the tiger that Mai swallowed." Giggles exploded from her as Naruto tickled her stomach. "Hinata-chan won't let us eat until everyone's there. Please?"
Minato could clearly see where his granddaughter had learned her devastating technique.
"Fine." Minato laid a hand on his son's shoulder, and once again, the room was emptied in the blink of an eye.
O0o0o0O
"Dad?"
The retired Yondaime was pulled from his thoughts. Looking up, he caught the worried eyes of his son and daughter-in-law.
"Hm?"
"Are you okay? We've been trying to get your attention for a bit."
"I'm fine. Just the tired thoughts of an old man." He smiled softly. "When you get to be my age, all that's left for you are years of memories and a good bottle of sake."
"That's not true, Minato. You've got Naruto and I, and the kids. They still love to listen to your stories, even if you are an 'old man'" Hinata reminded him as she hugged him from behind, before grabbing his namesake before he could reach the stack of dishes on the table. Minato watched his grandson try to wriggle from his mother's grasp fondly as the events of this afternoon came back to him.
"Oh, Naruto, you might want to have a chat with Jiraiya about what he shares with his siblings. I caught Mai manipulating leaves around her fingers this afternoon while she waited for me at the gate to the cemetery. Come to think of it, you should probably talk to her too. If she's starting to use chakra already, she'll need to be grounded in the rules before she kills herself from exhaustion." He said.
Naruto arched a golden eyebrow at what his father was telling him. "Manipulation at her age, with her only training from a genin. Don't care who you are, that is impressive. I wouldn't be worried about exhaustion though, if she's anything like me, or her grandmother," He acknowledged with a nod of his head, "she'll have monster reserves."
"You and your mother had….extenuating circumstances. It's true the Uzumaki clan had particularly large reserves by nature, but I'd still feel better if there was someone watching her. Who knows what else she'll learn from Jiraiya-kun. I hear Hinata's had to hire a genin team a time or two to put the yard back in order." Minato teased the younger man.
"Don't remind me." Naruto groaned. "I've talked to him time and time again about experimenting with jutsus in the back yard, but he won't listen. I'm the freaking hokage and he won't listen to me."
"Son, you should know by now that when it comes to your children, they see you as father first, hokage second. Consider it payback for your own ill-conceived ideas."Minato replied mischievously.
"You're having way too much fun watching me go through hell with him." Naruto accused.
"Kami knows raising kids isn't easy, teenagers especially, but the joy of seeing your child grow into a respectable young man is a blessing you can't beat. All joking aside, you're doing a good job with him, with all of them. Jiraiya, Mai, and even little Minato." Naruto shared a smile with his father as they sat in companionable silence, listening to everything settle as evening grew on.
A wide yawn split Minato's face, forcing him to recognize his fatigue.
"I should head to bed. This 'old man' will see you in the morning." Minato announced, rising from his place by the table.
"I should go help Hinata with the little terror." He laughed softly. "Good Night, Dad. Love you." Naruto told him.
"I love you too, son." Minato replied with a loving smile.
After finishing his nightly routine, he slipped under the covers and minutes later, was soundly asleep.
O0o0o0O
Minato awoke to moonlight illuminating his small bedroom. As if moving in his sleep, he flung his arm over the side of the bed to brush the ground, and found no chakra signatures outside those of his son and his family. Letting out a tense breath, he rolled onto his back to stare at the full moon through his window. Another restless night.
"Legend says that the Rikudo Sennin sealed the Juubi's body up there."
Minato turned his head to see the source of the strange voice, only to feel ice water flood through his veins.
"N-Naruto?" He whispered. He rubbed his eyes, and still he saw Naruto, yet not the Naruto that was sleeping a few doors down. This Naruto was garbed in the standard ANBU uniform with a Fox mask hanging from a loop on his belt.
"I would say 'in the flesh' but that seems rather inappropriate, now doesn't it?" The spirit joked.
"You're dead. I saw your body thirty-nine years ago." Minato spoke, as his brain tried to rationalize what his eyes were reporting to it.
"It's been that long already? I guess time passes differently in the afterlife." The ANBU mused.
"Wait. How can you still exist? There can't be one soul in two bodies. It would be impossible." Minato questioned, his wrinkles more pronounced than before.
"I'm not sure to tell the truth. I wasn't sure what would happen when I traveled back, but I've had plenty of time on my hands to think. The best I can come up with is this. Each person is shaped by their experiences. The moment I appeared in this timeline, I changed everything, thus changing Naruto. I'm not an exact duplicate of this world's Naruto anymore. I can guarantee that. He's never had to wonder whether his parents loved him or not, or whether they abandoned him. He's never had the undeserved scorn of an entire village heaped upon him. " Naruto paused. "I don't want to make you feel bad," Naruto assured him, seeing the hurt in Minato's eyes, "That's just how I grew up. It made me into who I was, so I'm not going to dwell on it. I'm just using that as an example. We may have started out with the same potential, but with those and many other differences in our experiences during our lifetimes, our souls diverged into completely different people. We may share similar tastes, like the shared love of ramen, right?" Naruto pinned the old man with a glare. Feeling the spiritual equivalent to killing intent, he swiftly nodded.
"Good." The younger replied with a smile, as if nothing had happened. "But yeah, essentially you have two sons named Naruto in this world."
"I see." The elder Namikaze replied slowly. "What are you doing here now? I thought the Shiki Fuuin sent your soul to the shinigami's stomach?"
"Apparently performing a potentially suicidal time travel jutsu to go back in time to save not only your parents, but also hundreds of thousands of lives before they were ever endangered was something Kami deemed worthy of waiving the penalty for the seal. The shinigami wasn't entirely happy per se, but even he can't argue with Kami." He scratched the back of his head awkwardly as he ended his explanation, a little embarrassed at what he just said.
"I was also offered the chance to be your guide." He finished.
"Guide?"
"To the afterlife. You did what I had asked of you, and have had a long, happy life. Now it's time to go." His ghostly son smiled sadly, holding out a hand to his father.
Minato grasped his hand, feeling a cold ripple move down his body as his soul left his earthly shell. With one last look at his now still body, he turned to Naruto.
"I'm ready." He said firmly.
"Good. Mom's been bugging me since I showed up there if I knew when you would be joining us. Something about wanting help to hunt down Ero-sennin."
"Ero-sennin?" He quirked a ghostly eyebrow in puzzlement.
"Jiraiya. I told mom how he had helped me unlock Kyuubi's power the first time around, and she's been waiting for you ever since to get her revenge on him." The whiskered young man laughed.
"Do I want to know?"
And with that, Namikaze Minato, Yondaime Hokage of Konohagakure no Sato, husband, father, and grandfather, passed into the afterlife, leaving a lifetime filled with the love of his family, many friends, and his people.
-O0o0o0O-
A/N: Hi everyone. I know I said this was a oneshot, but I made a deal with Tora-Hime that if I got 15 alerts I would add a second chapter bookending things, so here it is.
This chapter is dedicated most of all to my lovely friends: Mokimo, Tora-Hime-Melody, and Spiffy. It is also dedicated to the memory of a very dear family friend who passed from this life to eternal life this last week.
Same old rules apply. Please leave any comments, questions, general impressions, but only negative criticism if you offer helpful advice. It's not productive to rip people to shreds if you can't help them make something better from the rags left behind.
P.S. I have no more ideas, so this is the absolute end this time :P
Adios muchachos
Edit: as of 9/22/2011, there is a side story with what happened when Kushina passed over, if you're interested.