Chapter Text
It takes him a few moments to wrangle his emotions into something that lets him breathe again once the memory dissolves around them and reveals the office space from before – for all the breathing a dead person can do anyway –, and he only looks at the god – who still has his back turned – when they’re back under control. If not for the lack of contact with the basin – which is what he figures allows them to visualize the memory – Minato might have assumed the being was still watching, for how still he is.
“Shi-sama?” He calls, just in case.
A low sniffle, a hand brought up to the being’s face, and the god turns around with slightly reddened eyes, having obviously just wiped away tears. Minato can’t help his confusion even as death in the shape of a teen speaks again, “Y’know, Namikaze-san,” his voice is slightly tremulous, much like the clenched fists Minato notices tightly held to his sides. “I’m really tired of prophecies making orphans out of babies who never asked for it.” He sounds upset, which is surprising for an amortal entity who should probably not care this much about a single happening in the life of a person he never knew from a world he’d never even looked at before.
Minato can only stare, having no idea what that means.
Shi-sama takes a deep breath, followed by a long sigh, and calmly walks back to his seat behind the desk before unceremoniously dropping into it like a puppet with its strings cut. “Alright,” the god declares, voice firmer this time. “We’re figuring out a way to bring you back to life.”
This time he can’t help but openly gape, “I- you can do that?” he stammers out, trying valiantly to stamp down the ember of hope suddenly sparking inside his chest.
Shi-sama frowns slightly before shrugging, “I dunno, never tried it,” the admission is followed by a pensive look, and Minato hurries to take a seat before his legs decide to give out on him from sheer shock. “I mean, there’s probably rules… somewhere,” the being casts a look around the many bookshelves spread through the office, “the job didn’t exactly come with a manual, so It’s been a bit of a make-it-up-as-I-go situation so far.”
“The… job?” He asks tentatively, feeling wrong-footed at the being's behavior. He doesn’t sound like the eternal personification of death, more like… a disgruntled teenager. It should make him less nervous, he’s used to dealing with those after all, but it’s still unsettling when he remembers the echo of the feeling of death currently being suppressed by the god.
Shi-sama blinks as if only realizing he’d said it out loud, “Yeah. Master of Death,” he explains like it should be obvious. “More like Manager of Death, really. It’s infinite paperwork and few benefits so far, and I’ve yet to find some book of rules and regulations. I mean, if the other guy wanted me to do the job properly, he should’ve stuck around to teach me.”
“Other guy?” He prompts, still having a hard time wrapping his mind around the surreality of the situation. Being death is apparently a job, one that can be somehow forced upon someone, which means that the being in front of him might not be as amortal as Minato first assumed.
In fact, he’s starting to seem pretty damn young.
“Uh huh,” Shi-sama hums in response, “Old guy in a suit, told me I got the job and just… poofed.” The explanation is followed by an illustrative hand motion. “I think I’ve got the hang of it by now, but it’s been a hard few months.”
Months, Minato considers in the privacy of his thoughts before voicing a final question. “Shi-sama… how old are you?”
It takes a moment for the being to answer, and when he does there’s a visible dusting of red on his pale cheeks, “Uh- nineteen-ish?” He doesn’t sound too sure. “Time’s a bit weird here. And can- uh, could you just call me Harry? I’m not actually death, I don’t think someone can be a- concept? I just… run the office. And the whole ‘sama’ thing is a bit much.”
Minato takes a moment of silence to mourn the fact that the entirety of the afterlife is apparently in the hands of an untrained teenager – because what possible reason would there even be for the being to lie? – before sighing and offering the dubiously nineteen-year-old with the looks of a fifteen-year-old and the ability to maybe bring him back to life a small nod. “If you prefer it, Hari-san. You may call me Minato, then.”
Being on a first-name basis with the teenage Master of Death can only be a good thing, right?
Harry can’t help but smile slightly with some relief at the concession. “Thanks,” he mutters, still fighting down the embarrassment surely turning his face red due to having to think about how old he was. It’s not his fault that time, as a concept created by living beings, doesn’t seem to pass the same way in the realm of death. He needed to do some calculating, that’s all! Still, not knowing his own age for sure feels a bit dumb. “Anyway,” he clears his throat, trying to change the subject from himself. “I think we need to start with the fox. You said it was controlled, right? By some sort of eye power?”
Minato looks reluctant to entertain the subject but still explains. “It’s a dōjutsu , a kekkei genkai of the Uchiha clan. It can take control of someone if they will it.”
“Bloodline limit?” He repeats the words curiously, wondering if it means what it sounds like.
“An ability passed down genetically, usually within clans,” the blond obligingly elaborates. “It allows someone to perform unique jutsu.”
Huh.
“Interesting,” Harry absently comments, getting the gist of it even if the words are somewhat unfamiliar. “We’ve got something like that in my world too, but there’s no name for it, just for the specific skills.” Like parseltongue or metamorphmagic, he privately recalls. Turning his thoughts back to the main issue, he continues. “Can this Sharingan control animals or just people?”
“I- can’t really say,” Minato admits. “Information about it is closely guarded by the clan, like all other bloodline limits,” a slight frown mars the blond’s forehead for a moment before he adds, “but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it used to control an animal.”
So the people with built-in imperius either can’t control animals or aren’t psychopaths, Harry decides, which opens up a whole other can of worms. “Then what you’re saying is you decided to seal away a sentient, intelligent being, into your son, after it was used to attack you.”
At least the Horcrux was a complete accident.
“The village needs a Jinchūriki,” Minato insists, defensiveness trickling into his tone. “To leave it without one would upset the balance between the Shinobi Godaikoku. All of them have their own Jinchūriki, they’re a symbol of the balance of power, to lose our tailed beast- it would invite war into my son’s home.”
“Wait, all of the tailed beasts have been sealed inside of people?” Harry asks for the sake of being thorough, frowning when the blond nods. He’d seen the fox’s power – even under control, it could easily annihilate the whole village in a matter of minutes – and if its siblings are anything similar… “a nuclear deterrent,” he mutters in realization. At Minato’s inquisitive expression, he elaborates. “I don’t know about your world, but mine has things called nuclear weapons. It-” he flounders for a simple way to explain it, “they’re essentially super explosives that cause devastating damage, so pretty much every country has one as a threat to the others, making sure no one actually uses theirs since it would mean mutually assured destruction.”
“We don’t have such weapons, but that is an accurate comparison,” Minato says, not sounding too happy with that fact. “As long as every great nation has its own Jinchūriki, they won’t be used against another village.”
Harry really wants to ask whose great idea it was to imprison sentient energy constructs and scatter them around their nations like it’s no big deal, but they’ve strayed from the point of the conversation. “Right,” he makes an effort to get back on track, “my initial point was that an intelligent being can be reasoned with, so if we remove the fox-”
“We can’t remove it,” the blond tells him, tensing as if waiting for Harry to do just that even against his will. “It can’t be reasoned with, even when- when Kushina was its Jinchūriki, all she got from it was rage and howling.”
Harry sighs, fighting the urge to bang his head against the desk, “It would have been too easy,” he admits, earning a questioning look. “If your seal made a deal between you and Keimu, breaking it – removing the fox – would render it null, which should let me bring you back.”
Minato seems to think for a moment before correcting the assumption. “That’s- not exactly what it does,” he states with some caution. “I mean, it gives me the ability to seal away another’s spiritual energy, it wasn’t specially designed for the Nine-Tails.” Harry frowns slightly, not liking the sound of that one bit. It means that whatever this seal is, it wasn’t invented by the blond for this specific occasion, but taught to him and maybe even used before. “It lets me call on the Shinigami and use my chakra to seal away an equivalent amount of another person’s soul into its belly, which usually means death, at least to most people, but with the fox… it can survive without its spiritual energy, since it’s entirely made of chakra.”
“Chakra?” he asks, not recognizing the word, though it could just be another word for energy. The question earns him a skeptical look before the blond seems to remember that Harry doesn’t know anything about his world. To be fair, he doesn’t know much about many worlds, especially the ones that don’t cause him problems and an excess of paperwork, so it’s sort of a positive thing about the man’s world already.
“It’s a form of life energy that all individuals produce to some degree,” Minato explains, sounding a little like Hermione when she’s quoting something a teacher said in class. “Chakra is created when two more primal energies – physical energy and spiritual energy – are molded together. It circulates throughout the body in a network and certain groups have learned to generate more chakra and release it outside their bodies to perform jutsu, like the ones you saw in my memories.”
It sounds sort of like magic to him – with jutsu being the spells –, except he doesn’t remember anything about a body network from Magical Theory classes, and when Harry thinks about the explanation of the seal in conjunction with the definition of chakra- “Wait,” he sits up straighter on his chair, hoping he’s wrong about his hunch. “You used soul and spiritual energy like they’re the same thing in your explanation of the seal,” Harry points out.
“Well, spiritual energy is derived from the mind's consciousness,” the blond all but confirms.
“Bloody hell,” he lets himself curse – in English so the blond won’t understand – before taking a deep, calming breath and trying to process that there’s a whole world of people running around doing the equivalent of soul magic. “And every jutsu uses both of these energies?”
“Pretty much,” Minato nods, looking a little confused at his questions.
Harry stares, blinks, then stares a little longer.
Really. What the fuck. No wonder the first issue in this world is a bloody Horcrux-like seal.
“So-” he pauses with a slight frown, mentally backtracks, and asks a different question. “Is there some jutsu on those knives of yours?”
“Kni- oh, the kunai,” the blond reaches into one of the jacket’s pockets and pulls out three of the same knife Harry had seen in his hand earlier. “Huh, I only have my hiraishin ones. The teleportation jutsu,” Minato clarifies, though Harry does remember the brief explanation of his marker-based apparition. “Fūinjutsu isn’t an exception, so yes.”
“That’s one explanation out of the way then,” Harry declares with some relief. “If they were touched by your soul and in contact with you upon your death, it makes sense that they came along even inside a pocket,” he gives the knives a considering look, “You wouldn’t happen to be able to just… teleport back to your world, would you?”
“Chakra is made by molding together spiritual and physical energy,” Minato deadpans. At Harry’s expectant look, the blond sighs. “I happen to not have a physical body at the moment, so no. I can’t just teleport.”
He looks down slightly in embarrassment for not following along with that logic, but in his defense, he’s not exactly adept in soul magic, not in any subject unrelated to Horcrux extermination. “Eh- right, yeah. Better not, anyway. You’d be a ghost if you did.” A ghost parent would be preferred to no parent at all, but Harry hopes to do better than that. “Okay, no shortcuts then,” his cursed luck wouldn’t have allowed it anyway. “Can you talk me through the contract formed by the seal? Is there a specific wording? Or any counter-measures you know of?” He asks instead. “Just- tell me all you know about it.”
Minato agrees with a nod and starts talking, but it doesn’t take long for Harry to get lost in terminology he’s completely unfamiliar with. He listens for another moment before throwing his head back with a frustrated groan. Sitting through the explanation feels like his first transfiguration class all over again, or the first time he picked up a book on advanced warding and had to buy a runes dictionary – and then a dictionary for that dictionary. “Okay,” he takes a fortifying breath and makes a decision. “I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere if I keep getting lost on what you’re talking about, so… teach me.”
“What?” Minato asks in surprise. Harry feels like that’s the word the blond has used the most in his presence so far, which is sort of amusing.
“You heard me,” He tells the spirit. “I should probably learn how your world works if I wanna try to send you back to it, shouldn’t I? So, teach me,” he realizes his mistake and adds a sheepish, “please?” at the end, because he may be the Master of Death but he should still be polite.
“...alright,” the blond agrees after a moment. “Why not?”
As far as avoiding mental breakdowns goes, Minato figures Hari-san is an effective distraction from wondering about the state of his village, what may have become of his child, or thinking about his death – now with a bonus third-person point of view – and Kushina’s. Instead, he throws himself into explaining the very basics of chakra theory and some beginner-level Fūinjutsu to the teenager saddled with the mantle of managing the afterlife. He also avoids thinking about the latter fact, since if he stops to consider it then things start making even less sense than they already do.
“And you really die if you run out of it?” Hari-san asks for the second time, seemingly unable to accept that such a thing as chakra depletion exists, even if it’s not a common death outside of extenuating circumstances. Minato nods, not about to repeat his explanation. “Is it like- as if they had a heart attack? Or do they just drop dead? How does your body even let you use enough chakra to run out of soul?”
Minato holds back a sigh and repeats once again that chakra theory is not, in fact, his main subject of knowledge. “Why is this so hard to accept, exactly?” He enquires curiously.
“It sort of sounds like magic,” Minato doesn’t exactly get the comparison, not seeing how civilians’ sleight-of-hand tricks can compare to jutsu. Hari-san raises a hand as if asking him to wait, only for something to zoom straight into it. What? “What my world calls magic, I mean. Except we don’t really get any sort of- magical exhaustion or anything like that. It’s just… there. Always. ”
That’s not terrifying at all, he thinks sarcastically but swallows the comment in favor of asking, “And you all have- magic?” Minato wonders what the raven-haired teen would look like under the byakugan, especially since he’s already any sensor’s worst nightmare.
“Not really,” Hari-san replies, thinking for a moment before explaining, “Something like point zero one percent, I think?”
“That’s not a lot,” Minato notices. And not like chakra, which is present in everyone even though some don’t have developed enough pathways to perform ninjutsu, or are simply born and raised as a civilian – as most are outside of shinobi villages – and receive no training on how to mold their chakra and utilize their pathways, leading to the same result of not being able to perform jutsu.
“I guess,” the teen shrugs. “Six hundred thousand is a lot but compared to the mug- non-magical people, we’re definitely the minority.”
He almost chokes at that, “S-six hundred thousand? That would make a population of- six billion?” The thought of so many people coexisting on the same planet is mind-boggling. How is there enough land for so many humans to occupy? Is their planet larger?
Hari-san tilts his head slightly in confusion, eerily reminiscent of a bird. “Yes? How many people are there in your world?”
Minato has to stop and think about it, not entirely sure if he can offer accurate information regarding the current world population. He knows the daimyō orders a census every five years, and he’s had a look at the census of many other nations, but even pooling them all together and leaving a large margin of error… “I’m not sure we even reach one billion,” he admits.
“Hn,” is Hari-san’s response to that, looking as puzzled as Minato feels about the other’s world population. It throws some light on the many differences between them, excluding the ability to manipulate energy – whether it be chakra or what the teen calls magic. “So, can you put a limit to how much chakra the seal takes?”
“The people experienced enough to use them know how much is enough,” Minato explains, a little amused at having to go back to the basics and wondering if this is what the academy teachers feel like. “People don’t drop dead from overcharging a seal- well, not unless it’s something explosive I guess, but they don’t run out of chakra due to Fūinjutsu of all things. I just said it was possible, not common.”
“... but can you?” the teenage entity insists, strangely bright eyes full of curiosity. “Because there’s this rune-”
Listening to the animated explanation about something that sure seems like Fūinjutsu but uses completely different symbols and rules, Minato finds yet another thing in common between their worlds and realizes that maybe – just maybe – he can allow that small ember of hope to ignite. That the possibility of being able to go back to his son isn’t entirely null.