#minaa-munch

So Minato stood very still instead. The ground around them had been broken open by Madara’s power and by the desperate force of Gai’s final charge. Stone had split. Dust hung in the air. The scent of scorched earth and blood and chakra was everywhere, thick enough that even a dead man remembered how to taste it.

A little distance away, Maito Gai lay where Naruto had left him, no longer burning, no longer being consumed by that terrible red heat, but changed by it. Saved, somehow. Impossible, impossibly saved.

Minato went to him. He knelt carefully beside him, because there were wounds one did not approach loudly, and because Gai had earned more gentleness than the battlefield knew how to give. For a few seconds, Minato could only look at him. The years had altered Gai’s face, carved age and command and grief into the boy he remembered, but not enough to hide him. Not enough to bury that fierce, ridiculous, incandescent heart that had once thrown itself down training fields in pursuit of impossible standards, impossible rivals, impossible dreams.

Minato remembered him younger - he remembered a green-clad Chūnin sprinting through Konoha with the dawn at his back, shouting about youth as if volume alone could bully the world into becoming kinder. He remembered Gai trying to catch him on village roads, on training grounds, across rooftops where Minato had been careless enough, only to hear Gai’s outraged, delighted vow chasing after him a heartbeat later that he'd beat his speed one day.

He never had. Of course he never had. Minato had been the Yellow Flash. Distance had belonged to him. Battlefields had bent around the space between one breath and the next. Men had feared him because he could cross the impossible before they had time to understand they were already dead.

And yet.

And yet Minato had never crossed what Gai had crossed.

He had never taken his own life in both hands, set it alight, and run into certain death because that was the only road left between his comrades and the end of the world. He had never turned weakness into discipline so absolute it could make a god bleed. He had never stood before Uchiha Madara with no bloodline limit, no bijū, no inherited eye, no ancient destiny curled around his name, and forced the battlefield itself to witness him.

Minato looked at Gai, and pride rose in him so sharply it hurt despite the body that could no longer feel pain properly.

“You know,” he said softly, the words nearly lost beneath the distant thunder of the fight Naruto and Sasuke had gone to finish, “I seem to remember someone spending a very long time trying to catch me.”

His smile came slowly, tired at the edges, but real.

The battlefield was too ruined for gentleness, too loud with history, too heavy with the dead and the nearly dead. Still, for that one moment, Minato let himself speak as if they were back in Konoha under the morning sun, as if the dust around them were only training field dirt, as if the boy in green had skidded to a stop in front of him with scraped knees, shining eyes, and another vow burning bright enough to embarrass every cynic in the village.

Minato reached down and rested his hand lightly beside Gai, close enough to be present, careful enough not to presume.

“Looks like you went past me this time, Gai kun,” he said, voice warm with wonder and grief and something very like laughter. “Far past me.”

For a moment, the war seemed to draw back from them.

Only a moment.

But Minato held it anyway.

[I'm sorry, I couldn't resist -- also I referenced one of your earliest asks - if you remember!

War is not unfamiliar to Gai. This is a man who had spent a good part of his childhood racing down supply routes, his still-skinny legs pumping for hours at a time to take him from base to base with a backpack loaded with as much as they could pile on him. He’d seen older soldiers let go of life’s hand before death had even begun stretching out its own, and the destruction that men were willing to endure before they could call a battle won or lost, though it seemed to him that losing was all they ever did.

Note: Detective AU Drabble. Response to THIS drabble from CI. Here you go - seemed like the right day to post it. Ironic, ne? Ahem. @minaa-munch

“Reservation for four adults.”

Tsunade balances the phone against her shoulder as she reaches for the cup Jiraiya offers her. Her fingers are cold—numb enough that the heat from the hot chocolate bites when it seeps into her palms. January wind scrapes her cheeks raw, sharp and unkind, carrying the smell of exhaust and sugar and something faintly metallic she doesn’t register yet.

“Don’t forget to tell them about a seat for Naruto,” Jiraiya says around a sip of his drink. “You know Kushina. She’ll riot.”

The neon sign above them flickers, bathing the street in red. It paints the wet pavement like a warning. Like a bruise.

“Four adults and a baby,” Tsunade says into the phone, already tired. “Yes. A baby. That does change the number, doesn’t it?” Her jaw tightens. “Yes, we’ll be there by seven.”

She ends the call before the idiot on the other end can keep talking and shoves the phone into her coat pocket.

“Done,” she mutters. “You could’ve called instead, you know.”

She lifts the cup.

Doesn’t get to drink.

“Minato—!”

The name rips out of her as he barrels past them, coat flaring, steps urgent and wrong and fast. He doesn’t slow. Doesn’t glance back.

Minato never ignores her.

Ever.

Something cold and vicious hooks into her chest.

The cup slips from her fingers. Hot chocolate splashes across the pavement, steam rising like a ghost. She doesn’t notice the burn. Doesn’t notice anything except the way her heart starts hammering, too loud, too fast, like it’s trying to outrun her body.

“Minato!” she shouts again.

He’s already halfway down the block.

Panic seizes her hard enough to steal her breath. She’s moving before the thought finishes forming—boots slipping, coat snapping in the wind, his name tearing itself raw on her lips.

Why is he running?

Why won’t he stop?

Fear floods her, thick and suffocating, as she chases after him, heart pounding out a warning her brain is too slow to understand.

Fate has already made its decision.

Tsunade just hasn’t caught up to it yet.

The pediatrician’s office squats at the end of the street, brick walls bruised, neon sign flickering like it’s struggling to stay conscious. Cartoon decals peel from the windows—giraffes, clouds, smiling suns warped by age and heat.

Why here?

Why would he—

Her pace falters.

No.

No, no—

She spots Kushina under the streetlamp.

Red hair blazing, unmistakable. Naruto is tucked into her chest, swaddled tight, blanket pulled under his chin.

Alive.

Safe.

Relief almost lands—

Minato moves.

The tension snaps through his body so suddenly Tsunade feels it in her own. His head turns. His mouth opens.

Too fast.

The night explodes.

A sound like the world breaking its own rules. A flash in her peripheral vision.

Gunshot.

Her brain stutters.

Refuses to understand.

Then Minato jerks.

Once—

again—

Blood erupts.

It’s sudden—too bright, too much—spraying across Kushina’s cheek, her hands, blooming through Naruto’s blanket in a way Tsunade’s brain refuses to label as blood for half a second too long. It looks unreal. Like paint. Like something that can still be wiped away.

“No—”

The sound tears out of Tsunade before she knows she’s making it.

Minato moves.

Not back. Not away.

Forward.

Her eyes struggle to keep up—his body already committing, already in motion before sense can catch him. He doesn’t dodge. He doesn’t slow. He throws himself at them, and Tsunade sees it all in broken pieces: the violent snap of his shoulders, the way his chest arches as the impact hits, the awful, intimate certainty of bullets finding him instead.

His breath leaves him in a sound that isn’t human.

“Kushin—”

The name shatters in his throat.

He hits Kushina and they go down together, hard. He twists as they fall, curls around them, folding himself over Kushina and the baby with shaking arms, like his body is still something solid. Like instinct might outweigh physics. Like he can still decide how this ends.

Another crack splits the air.

Tsunade sees his body jerk—sharp, wrong, helpless.

His body jerks violently.

Too sharp. Too final.

Blood spills faster now, darker, pooling beneath them, spreading across the pavement in obscene, creeping lines.

Tsunade is running again—stumbling, slipping, lungs on fire.

“Minato—Minato—”

She hits the ground beside them on her knees, hard enough to jar her teeth. Her hands are suddenly red. Slick. Too warm. The smell of iron floods her nose, tangling with antiseptic and neon and terror until she can’t tell one from the other.

Kushina makes a sound beneath him. Not a scream. Not a word.

“Mina—”

Just breath. Just disbelief shaped like his name.

Her eyes are too wide. As if the world tilted and never bothered to right itself.

Another gunshot echoes somewhere distant.

Minato jerks again, a helpless, ugly motion. He presses closer anyway, forehead knocking against Kushina’s shoulder, arms shaking violently as he tries to pull them tighter, tighter—

As if proximity could undo damage.

Tsunade’s hands move on instinct. Pressure. Angles. Stop the bleeding. Except there’s too much of it. Her fingers sink into warmth that should not exist, sliding no matter how hard she presses.

“Look at me,” she says, voice breaking apart. “Minato—look at me—stay—stay—”

His eyes flick toward her.

Focused.

Apologetic.

Still there.

The look nearly ruins her.

Like he’s sorry. Like he knows exactly what this costs. Like he’s already letting go of something she refuses to name.

“No,” she breathes. “No, don’t—don’t you dare—”

Sirens wail somewhere far off. Too far. Warped. Useless.

Naruto makes a small, confused sound, alive and warm, fist curled in a blanket soaked with his father’s blood.

This isn’t happening.

This can’t be—

Partners don’t fall like this.

Brothers don’t bleed out under flickering neon and broken cartoons.

Tsunade presses harder, hands slipping, heart pounding so violently it feels like it might fracture her from the inside. Her vision blurs, edges tunneling.

Bleary blue, dragging themselves upward with effort that makes her chest ache. They find hers and lock. Hazel to blue. He doesn’t look anywhere else. Won’t let himself.

No.

No, don’t look at me like that—

“Minato,” she says, but it comes out wrong. Too thin. Too tight. Like the word is being strangled on its way out.

His mouth moves.

“Na…ru-to—”

The name hits her like a physical blow. Her hands slip in his blood as she lunges closer, pressure forgotten, instinct screaming over training.

“No,” she says again, louder now. “No, you’re not—don’t—Minato, stay with me—”

“Ku…shi-na…”

Each syllable costs him. She sees it in the way his chest stutters, the way his body fights for air that refuses to come. Terror blooms, hot and blinding, until it drowns out everything she knows how to do.

“Please,” she chokes. The word tears out of her, raw and undignified. “Please don’t. Don’t leave me. You promised—do you hear me? You promised we’d do this together. We’d find Nawaki’s killer together. We—”

His eyes flutter. Blur. Sharpen again, still locked on her, still tethered.

“Take…ca—”

The sound collapses into a wet, coppery rasp that makes her whole body jolt. Something inside him gives, and Tsunade feels it like a fault line cracking open beneath her ribs.

“No—no—no—no—”

She shakes her head violently, like denial might physically hold him in place. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to leave me like this. Not now. Not you.”

Tears spill freely now, hot and unstoppable, streaking down her face and dripping onto his. She doesn’t wipe them away. She can’t spare the hands.

“Stay,” she sobs. “Please, Minato, stay with me. I can fix this. I fix things. That’s what I do. Just—just stay long enough, okay?”

His fingers twitch weakly against the pavement, blood-slick and trembling.

Her breath hitches so hard it hurts.

“That’s it,” she whispers desperately. “You see? You’re still here. You’re still here with me.”

His gaze wavers. Hazels blur, refocus, blur again—but they don’t leave her. They won’t leave her.

A shudder runs through him.

Not a breath.

Something smaller.

Something final.

“Minato—” Her voice caves completely. She folds closer, forehead nearly touching his, like proximity might stitch him back together. “Please. Don’t make me do this without you. You said—remember? You said we’d see it through. Together. Always together.”

His chest jerks once more. A thin, useless pull of air that barely qualifies as breathing.

Her world fractures with it.

“No,” she whimpers. “No, no, no—please—please—”

His mouth opens, but nothing comes.

The urgency is still there in his eyes—love, apology, unfinished promises—but the strength behind it drains away, spilling out beneath her hands, soaking into the street, into nowhere.

Then his gaze softens.

Slackens.

Unhooks.

For half a heartbeat, the world holds its breath with her.

And then—

Her phone vibrates.

The sound is small. Polite. Obscene.

A bright, cheerful chime slices through the silence like a blade wrapped in ribbon. Tsunade doesn’t look at it. Can’t. It keeps buzzing against her hip, insistent, mindless.

Reservation confirmed. 7:00 p.m. Table for four adults. And a baby.

The words burn themselves into the back of her skull without ever touching her eyes.

Somewhere behind her, Jiraiya is talking.

She knows he is. She can see his mouth moving in her peripheral vision, hands gesturing, face pale, wild, trying to make sense of a night that has snapped clean in half. His voice reaches her like it’s traveling through water—warped, distant, syllables dissolving before they can mean anything.

“Tsunade—Tsunade, listen to me—hey, hey—ambulance is on the way, they said—”

She doesn’t answer.

She can’t feel her hands anymore.

Only the heat.

Only the wet.

A strange hush settles over the street, thick and wrong, as if even the city has realized it’s intruded on something sacred and doesn’t know how to apologize.

That’s when the snow starts to fall.

At first, she thinks it’s ash.

Tiny white flecks drift down, slow and lazy, catching in Minato’s hair, melting against the blood on Kushina’s hands, disappearing as soon as they touch the dark, spreading pool beneath them.

It never snows in Konoha.

Not like this.

Not ever.

The flakes grow thicker, heavier, turning the neon light into a soft, blurred halo. White against red. Clean against ruin. Each one lands and vanishes, erased the moment it touches what’s been spilled.

The street begins to look like it’s trying to forget.

Tsunade’s phone vibrates again.

Reminder: Reservation for seven. Table for four adults. And a baby.

Her breath finally breaks.

The sound that leaves her isn’t a word. It isn’t even a sob at first—just a raw, animal noise ripped straight from somewhere deep and unguarded, echoing off brick and glass and flickering signs. She folds over Minato’s body, forehead pressing into his shoulder, into the place where warmth is already draining away.

Naruto cries.

High and thin and confused, a baby's wail cutting through the falling snow, through the sirens now screaming closer, through Jiraiya’s frantic, broken voice.

The two sounds tangle together—hers and the baby’s.

Grief and life.

Loss and need.

A harmony so wrong and so perfect it feels like the night itself is splitting under the weight of it.

Snow gathers on Minato’s lashes.

On Kushina’s hair.

On Tsunade’s shoulders as she clutches him, rocking slightly, like the motion might undo what the world has already decided.

“Stay,” she whispers into his collar, voice shredded. “Just stay. Please. I’m right here. I’m right here.”

The flakes keep falling.

White over red.

Silent over screams.

And somewhere beneath the snow, beneath the blood, beneath the echo of her sobs and Naruto’s cries and Jiraiya’s fading, desperate words—

The reservation stands.

A table for four adults.

And a baby.

Minato learns this slowly, in the dark beneath the Death God’s ribs, with half of Kurama sealed against his soul and the god’s beads hanging cold around his throat like a second sentence.

He should not be able to reach the living. He is dead. Sealed. Devoured. The Yondaime Hokage reduced to a sacrifice Konoha will polish into legend.

But chakra remembers itself, and Minato, always a sensor, has always been good at following threads.

One night, or one year, or one breath after his death, he finds a familiar current in the dark. His own chakra, younger and brighter, moving somewhere far beyond the Shinigami’s stomach. Still alive. Still unbroken. Still sleeping beneath a sky Minato can no longer reach.

He follows it.

The dream opens around him like a wound.

Adult Minato steps into it bruised, bloodied, and barefoot, his torn Hokage cloak hanging from his shoulders in ruined white and red. The sealwork on his hands is still black with the night he died. Across his chest, the memory of Kurama’s claw has not closed. Around his neck rest the Death God’s beads, heavy and pale, each one clicking softly when he breathes.

He knows what he must look like; a dead man wearing the face of someone who has not yet learned what Konoha will ask of him.

Minato does not waste the dream on comfort. He has too little time, and death has made honesty feel sharper than mercy.

So he looks at the boy he used to be, the bright thread of his own chakra trembling beneath everything the future will demand, and asks the question that has been rotting inside him since the night he sealed his son’s fate with his own hands.

“When they call you a hero for leaving your son behind,” Minato begins softly, “will you believe them?”

Minato Namikaze, genin of Konoha, did not dream, as a rule. He had no great opinion on this; some shinobi dreamed peaceful dreams, some fought their most terrifying battles every night. Jiraya-sensei disliked sleeping near his genin team when they went on missions away from the village, though that had - in Minato’s estimation - less to do with the quality of his sleep and more the quantity.

Still, tonight Minato dreams. He was back in his family’s shrine, which in reality he’d last visited perhaps six years ago, fully half a lifetime. It was big enough for four people to kneel uncomfortably in meditation, but tonight - and it was night in the dream, though Minato had only ever seen this place in the sun - he was here alone.

Something felt off, however, like the very air was charged with ominous anticipation. Minato took a moment to simply sit, relaxing in this familiar-unfamiliar setting, before taking stock. He was in his civilian clothes - a mesh shirt, white jacket with the black piping, black trousers. He’d picked up some scrapes and bruises in the last mission which had yet to fade, but they had not made it to the dreamscape with him. 

I’m more lucid than I should be in a dream. 

Something was stabilising his consciousness. There were seals one could use, chakra constructions built around one’s brain that let one dream lucidly. Minato had looked into them, then dismissed them. The risks were great and the rewards marginal at best. Likewise, there were various pills that floated from hand to hand in the Konoha Military that could alter one’s dreamstate. Minato had needed even less investigation to dismiss those out of hand.

Minato was still considering all this when space silently rent itself in two behind him. He felt the chakra, felt the air go cold, and was on his feet reaching for a kunai that in reality would be at his belt but in the dream was clearly not-

“Dad?” Minato voiced the first thought that came into his head, shinobi discretion having instantly fled. “No, that can’t be it, Dad…”

Didn’t look like he’d been in a fistfight with a death spirit.

The question caught him off guard, not least because this apparition had ignored him.

It  would  be  rude  to  refuse  a  drink  from  the  Hokage.   The  glass  was  sweating  in  his  palm;  he  usually  didn't  allow  himself  to  partake.   Dulls  the  senses.   Baki  always  preferred  all  his  cognitive  abilities  to  be  sharp.     “Thank  you,  Lord  @minaa-munch.  It's  an  honor  to  be  asked  here,”  he  said,  with  a  swift  dip  of  his  chin.   He  was  among  the  other     …  Kages,  though  he  lacked  the  proper  title—he  was  all  Suna  had  to  offer  up,  at  least  for  now.   Mingling  was  never  his  strong  point;  people  were  never  his  strong  point.     Feeling      …    improper,  he  chose  to  linger  against  the  wall,  feeling  like  some  green,  too-tall  teenager  again.   

It  wouldn't  make  any  difference;  if  he  did  make  any  connections  here,  they'd  be  lost  to  the  wind  as  soon  as  he  was  replaced.   Baki  wasn't  bitter  about  that;  he  knew  how  badly  Gaara  wanted  to  be  Kazekage—how  much  it  really  meant  to  him.    He  was  more  than  happy  to  step  down.   If  anyone  deserved  the  role  and  the  love  from  the  village,  it  was  Gaara. 

“Though,  I'm  sorry  to  say  I've  never  been  properly  accosted  for  these  types  of  parties.” 

Send “💭” For A Thought My Muse Had of Yours!

I wonder if my dad had a lot of friends growing up. Did he train a lot with them? I wonder if he ever got into trouble. I bet he was a really good kid. I bet he helped other kids when they struggled. He probably ate his veggies and did chores and stuff like good kids do. I bet my dad was the greatest.....

Mun dear! I’m glad to see you’re back!!

Things have been difficult ngl, but right now things are pretty good :D. I hope you’re well too 💖

And me too! Our converstions about Minato’s psyche were the best u.u. We should definitely pick them up sometime!!

Take care, Mun (and a quick Minato sketch for you ~ <3)

I thought about it over lunch, so here are my brand new headcanons:

Tobirama is a slavemaster. He won’t tolerate any result below perfection. Hiruzen, Homura and Koharu learnt this very early through endless repetitions of every single thing they were practicing. Every time they talk back earned them more exercises, though, so they quickly learned the art of diplomacy.

Tobirama grew up in an era of constant warfare. He has no way to know what the future will be like for Konoha’s ninja, so when in doubt, he exceeds, and trains his students with the same rigor he was trained himself. 

Teaching is something Tobirama loves, but it also frustrates him. Things that are perfectly logical for him are not for other people, and he always has to come up with new ways to explain concepts or moves that are very easy for him. He does get frustrated when, no matter what he says or does, his students just don’t get it, but he prides himself on his selfcontrol, and he never took it out on his students. When he’s at his limit, he takes a break to calm himself down rather than say something he’ll regret later. Kids are not at fault, he is.

Even if he was harshly reprimanded for it, Tobirama made sure his students’ first kill wasn’t on a battlefield, but in a controlled situation. He took his students to the prison and had them execute three people who were already slated for capital punishment. His students hated him for that, but that made sure that they knew what killing another person was like, and none of them froze the first time they killed in a fight, probably saving their lives.

Tobirama is an understanding teacher, and he never punishes them for asking questions. Nothing is taboo. 

Koharu was the first of the trio to discover that Tobirama allows himself to be bribed with sushi. 

[OOC:] Ano... For fear of stating the obvious and rather overdone Lycantrope idea ('cause really the Inuzuka Clan actually owns this) I'd say a Warlock, based primarily on the Old Norse derivation of the word varð-lokkur, which means "caller of spirits" or "summoner". In young Kakashi's case, said spirits would mostly take on the shape of tail-wagging, pup spirits or over the top, Water Dragons. Interesting enough the word also means "Oath-breaker" in Anglo-saxon (which ya know--awkward cough).