AN: sorry for the very (very) late update. I was going everywhere with this chapter, like, I can't decide on whose POV I'm going to use to steer this story to a direction to resemble some kind of plot, which sometimes evades my mind, so I lost my way. I wanted to show how Naruto's doing in the play pen with the other clan children and the sand siblings, how the little terror is going to make chibi allies. But then I wanted to show you how the new character, the middle aged old butler cope with our favorite butler. And in the end after I write about a thousand words each I feel like this isn't the best start. So yeah, I hope you enjoy my choice.

Standard disclaimer applied. Un-proof-read.

Chapter 12: To Cross Fire Country in the Fastest Way Possible

There is a reason why he, Grell Sutcliff, a death god extraordinaire, the red headed beauty to die for, pestered William to transfer him to a completely different plane of dimension. Grell is sure of it, but maybe it was a stupid reason, because at this point he didn't know why he asked the transfer in the first place. Fire Country is huge, and he's just a single fine-looking shinigami in this world full of blood bath. And he's just tasked with the death toll on Shinobi, not all of the residents, and from just one country, huge country, but just one none the less, not the entire Elemental Nation. He has a new respect for the single Shinigami managing on his own before Grell swept in and save the Death God in distress.

But then again, maybe Shiro-sama has greater power than him in the first place.

Life as a lone shinigami in this realm was lonely until he met Sebastian, the demon, who's totally his cup of tea, by pure coincidence— it has to be fate. The first time he landed in this strange land, he wandered for a few days trying to locate his new chief, except, instead of finding his new superior, he found Sebby, looking darkly elegant and menacing as always in the middle of a market place—in arguably the most powerful ninja village in the entire elemental nations. That discovery threw his caution in the wind and the rest is history.

Then he has to continue his journey, and finally he met his new chief today; with hair like ivory and eyes like glowing brighter than the sun, completed with soft chiseled feature on marble white skin, he is one of the most beautiful men Grell ever laid eyes on his entire shinigami career, and he's talking about couple hundred years of career here. When he thinks about it he can say that he is blessed. And now the newest member of his collection of handsome men, the strikingly gorgeous Minato-chan, a human soul, trusted into his care by Shiro-sama.

The soul of Minato actually doesn't display his vibrant coloring at all, seeing as he's stuck in semi-transparent for his shinigami eyes. But the red-haired shinigami can imagine and wax poetic about his vibrant blue eyes and his golden hair, just the same exact shade of Naru-chan, his sheepish apologetic smile that still occasionally thrown his way, the perfect stature and perfectly proportioned body, and his lightly tanned skin; just how good he'd look like when he put red on that battle hardened body, something as red as his hair, maybe bathe the human in his own pitiable mortal blood…

Blood trickle down his nose and he pauses his day dreaming and realized that he has slowed down his hurried pace. Damn. He needs to stop and think of a better way to reach Konoha soon, preferably in the next ten hours so he can attend sweet little Naru-chan birthday. Sadly, now that he's officially on duty, he can't ignore his schedule. As a consequence, in the past few hours since he parted with his chief he'd reaped tens of soul, each in different village. On the bright side, all of them didn't stray too far away from the route to Konoha. The odd thing is Minato, still out of his fancy little silver box, didn't ask him anything. Probably realized how busy he is. How considerate.

But Grell doesn't know, at the time, the extent of Minato's exceptionally observation skill and so doesn't have any idea on how much Minato knows about him by now.

In ten hours he has to reap 47 souls, mostly scattered around Konoha, with fifteen of them are in Konoha itself. And it seems like there will a quite bloodbath in the day of Minato-kun's son birthday. He opens his notebook again to check the time table again. Huh, the last one before he has to head to Konoha is Wave Country, that's pretty far away from Konoha.

The problem with new realm like this is that they have yet to build strategic portals from the Death God Realm to commute from and into the Mortal realm. Thus, unlike in this realm, in his previous realm there are various portals; each country have their own special task forces, and each with different portals. Accordingly, there should be no problem on getting in and out to reach the place of occurrence. And even if one location is too far from the previous and the next while pressed on time, they can take shortcut by going back to the death god realm and reach the closest portal by their office.

This new accessible realm though, still only has one portal, one that had land him on the vacant part Fire Country. William said that more portals are being built and more shinigami will be deployed. But the flirtatious shinigami is sure that it won't be anytime soon, so he's stuck in the plebian way, walking, running, and whatsoever.

He gritted his teeth, silently seething in frustration. That's until his new companion catch his attention. The mortal soul is hovering behind his shoulder, peeking into his notebook, and Grell catches his expressions, from surprise to understanding, and finally hopeful.

"Are we going to Konoha?" The blond haired ex-hokage asks with little something Gell can't quite catch in his voice.

"Yes, eventually, but see here, Minato-chan, before Konoha, we have to go to Wave first and that's at least few hours even with my top speed. I don't think we can make it to Naru-chan birthday," Grell answers in defeated tone.

"I think I can help you with that," the soul offers.

"Spill."

Then the Yondaime explains to Grell his Hiarissin seal he left in his previous home. And how seeing as he can hurt Grell with his technique, it means that he can still use chakra (somewhat) and that he can take Grell to Konoha at lightning speed; like a Thunder God, Grell mind supplies. Minato looks so eager to try; his face looks so alive even when he's already dead. Grell is swept by the brilliance that is Minato and can only nod with heart in his eyes.

And so, they resume their pace, well, Grell resumes, Minato can just float behind him, letting Grell to pull him. It was grueling ten hours; Grell has never been this tired since his training days. When he finally he reaps the last soul in Wave, died by loss of blood, a merchant, Minato's face is blank, and the red head doesn't bother to guess. Mortal in this realm is far more hardened than any he's ever met.

"Well, shall we?" Minato inquires, his lips finally twitching.

"Yes, yes, take me!" Grell exclaim, throwing his body into Minato's with his stretched arms aiming for the blonde's neck, but Minato side-steps and offers his arm in exchange. Mollified, Grell takes it, hugging the lean muscular arm to his chest, rubbing his cheek into that shoulder; inside, his fan-girl persona is screaming its head off in excitement.

Minato takes it to stride; not even batting an eye, he's not unfamiliar with fan girls, well fan boy, given that he had his own gaggle of them back when he's still alive. He just hopes Grell can handle his stomach after the jutsu.

Grell cannot.

The red headed death god pukes his gut out the moment they arrived, and death gods don't need real food, so, it is a painful process, not to mention humiliating, in Grell's opinion anyway. He didn't really expect it to be so stomach churning. One moment he's happily hugging The Fourth arm then the next he's hunching forward trying to get his stomach and dizziness under control. He's not very successful so far. In the background he can hear Minato sincere apologies, he mumbles something like 'I'm fine' but he's not sure it sounds right.

Few woozy minutes later, Grell can stand without feeling like he is about to keel over. He glares at the sheepish blond head.

"A warning would be appreciated, Minato-chan. How are you treating a lady this way? Now I have no dignity to face your handsome visage!" Grell wails. Then he realized that they're still outside the gate of the village. The red head then realize Minato brings him here so he can collect himself first before he met anyone else, how thoughtful of him. And instantly, he's not angry with Minato anymore.

They make their way to the gate until two ANBU guards appear in front of the red head, halting his advance.

"What is the meaning of this? I have come from the front gate just like Tora-taicho-chan said. Don't get in the way of a Lady and her Cute Naruto-chan! Move it, or I'll paint red on your body!" Grell threatens, his hand inching for his death scythe in its hidden pocket.

"Uzumaki-san—

Minato's eyes widens, Grell ignores it.

—we need to confirm that you're really Uzumaki Grell and that you're not being followed," they answers with no emotion on their voice, just stating a standard procedure. They shouldn't have to do this, but there's traitor(s) in the village that get the key of their new ward and letting enemies enter and up till now they have yet to identify the traitor; hence the closer inspection.

"Well then, gentlemen, do your job," Grell says easily, one of his main agenda here is to reap those intruders, so he's not in real hurry. He calmly follows their instruction, flare some chakra in your finger and put it on this seal, swipe some blood into the other, answer this question, bla bla bla, yada yada.

Fifteen minutes later, they let him into the village.

Swiftly, he pick up his pace to head to the Namikaze Manor, he side eyes his spirit companion. "Ask your questions, dear Minato-chan, I promise I won't bite, hard," Grell says with a shark-ish grin.

"Why they don't know you're a death god? Are you really an Uzumaki? How do you know my son?" Minato asks.

"Hmm, that's going to take some time to explain, but oh well, it was a beautiful day when I found my lost love…"

It is quite a tale in Minato's opinion. How Grell can romanticize a kick to the face from this Sebby, he's slightly alarmed with the information that Kyuubi's out of the seal roaming about around his village, his son. The kidnapping attempt from Kumo and Kakashi's not so cold attitude, he takes it in stride. Not really surprised there, maybe it's like mother like son. Then there's Kakashi, he thought that the boy will only make minimal contact with his son, what with the pain he must have felt whenever he see Naruto, but it's good to be wrong this time, maybe Kakashi is not too far gone in the dark side of the shinobi life, even after his death.

He can't wait to see his son.

But then he's greeted by the worst image possible. Enemies have reached the party, the adult engaged in deadly dance, but the enemy is greatly outnumbered it only matter of time until they're defeated, Grell then turned into his stealth mode so no one would see him clearly what he's doing and reap the souls of the downed ninja, it was always looks unpleasant whenever he sees Grell works, however that's not the most horrible thing in this picture; it is his son in the middle of being gutted by masked ninja. Where the hell is the Sandaime?

Minato feels his world shattered with the spray of precious blood, until his Naruto turns into poof of smoke.

And as suddenly as it comes, he deflates in pure relief, this is a setting, a trap for the assassins, his son is somewhere safe. He's safe. Naruto is alive, his son is alive.

He then sees the other children turn into smoke, probably by enemy; and he feels anger and disgust, why are they targeting the children, as it's not an era of war anymore.

Looking away, he then try to feel his connection to kyuubi and his other half, because he's bound to be around Naruto, so if he can find Kyuubi's other half, then he can find his son, and confirm for his own peace of mind that his little Naruto-chan is safe and sound.

He makes his way to follow the feeling of Kyuubi's chakra out of the manor. It leads him to a familiar ramen stand; it's really like mother like son, Minato let out a chuckle, remembering Kushina's previous birthdays.

He enters the humble ramen stand and is quite surprised at what he finds insides. Firstly, the size, it's somehow way bigger than he assume from the front. Gaggle of children running about, spilling ramen soup and leaving cake trails everywhere. He can see two rambunctious Inuzukas children, two Hyuugas, an Aburame, a Yamanaka, a Nara—if the sleeping child is any indication, an Akimichi in the middle of devouring a cake in his body weight, an Uchiha trying valiantly to hide behind his mother, Mikoto, from the curious Yamanaka girl, there are also three children of Rasa, eating their cake with awed expression directed to the Akimichi child.

And finally there's his son, adorable and bubbly Naruto, sitting on his predecessor lap, trying to feed a slice of cake into Sandaime's mouth, but instead just smears more chocolate into the old Hokage's face, his hokage robes and his hair. But they're all smiling and it warmed Minato's heart immensely.

He's so lost in the picture that he missed Naruto curious stare, but when he notice he gasps some unneeded air. Tears trickle down his cheeks, at the motion of Naruto makes towards him, like he wishes Minato to hold him, his baby. But he put his finger in front of his mouth and smile.

Naruto falters, disappointed but he nods, and go back to smear some more chocolate into Sandaime's face.

Minato laughs are wet, he is happy and he is sad for all the things he missed. But now he's here and his son is here and that's the most important thing right now.

-to be continued-

Additional AN: I hope you don't have issue with Grell and his fascination to beautiful men, because he cannot be Grell otherwise.

And don't worry about Minato, he's great.

In addition, when you review please suggest name (British, German, American, Japanese, or Russian—or make up, its okay) for the next death gods to help Grell with his Job, because I suck at naming.

Another note, please don't ask for update, as you can see, I love this story too, Thanks for reading!

update 24/2/2017- I'm not saying don't ask for updates to discourage you from reviewing, I just want to say that I will finish this story, however long it would take. and apparently my mind is too fast for my hand to type it that it got lost until I remember to put this here.

and about the name, I will only ask for a name. I guess a personality based on the name only. So if you have a character in mind, make sure the name can do them justice.

Please ConCrits are always appreciated.

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