A/N: Alright ladies and gentlemen, I'm alive! I've been better given all the problems I've been going through, but I'm still breathing. Still kicking. I've been on a Mass Effect craze as of late as I'm sure you all noticed; its just my way of coping with life atm. Not only has my stupid heart failed on me again, but I've been suffering through the loss of several family members. Add to that the state of my joblessness and the school bills that keep racking up, and I'm in a bit of a tight spot at the moment. Yet here I am, fighting this damned depression, not giving into despair. To all my readers/reviewers who have encourage me in this time, I say this:
Thank you all for you support, and here's hoping I make it through the rough road ahead of me! *Raises glass in a toast* Long live Fanfiction! And in case my health goes south...Love ya'll! Expect an update for Bring Down the Sky to be coming soon! Remember, I own nothing! And prepare for a shocker! And of course, a fair bit of humor! But in this chapter there is a great deal of action-not to mention a shocking revelation for poor Naruto regarding the reapers, one. that may just send our favorite blond over the edge...
ALSO! My computer is down! BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH! I literally woke up this morning and it wouldn't work-whereas it was just FINE LAST NIGHT!? Anywho, I'm writing this from my stepdad's computer, so updates might be sporadic for a bit! Grrrrr...so angry right now! But hey, this is a nice looooong chapter, and we cover a lot of ground here! Also, I'm not going to tolerate any flames unless they're constructive criticism. So, fair warning! If you've nothing nice to say, please, don't say it.
So this is my first forray into the TMNT genre as a whole. Not that I don't appreciate the classic show, but I find the new one far more amusing complex, and even sad given the latest episode. The possibilities are endless, really. So, I'll say this now. This Naruto is broken. Not in terms of ability or anything like that, but mentally. He's lived a LOOONG time and during that time he's suffered a fair bit of loss and pain. It might take awhile for him to become that happy-go-lucky guy again, if at all...
Well...here ya go! =D Enjoy the humor! Also! There's a ton of violence in this chapter. Fair warning!
"Control is an illusion. It can be even more blinding than the inability to see. It can...send you over the edge."
~Splinter.
Aberration
New York City.
A metropolitan forest. A concrete jungle where skyscrapers are the trees, sewers are the water, and cement is the earth. All pretty words, each of them meaning nothing. It was the absolute furthest thing from a jungle or a forest or any real semblance of nature, and every step he took here sickened him to his core. Yet here he was, a shinobi-a sage-a being who communed with nature itself, walking where there was virtually none to be found. High or low, there was only the asphalt, the concrete, the buildings. It might've made one laugh.
Uzumaki Naruto rarely laughed anymore. Part of him wondered why.
Dozens, hundreds, thousands of years, and he'd never really laughed. Not really. Not like he'd used to.
For the first century or so he'd taken to using henge just to amuse himself, ending a war here, started a rebellion there. He'd even posed as a few God in Greece just to end the conflict there. After alls, if they wouldn't listen to a boy, then surely they'd listen a deity, right? And it had worked beautifully for awhile. Until they started slaughtering one another in the names of their so-called gods.
It was...difficult to be taken seriously when you were trapped at the eternal age of seventeen. Eternal youth and pseudo-immortality might be the high life for some. Not him. He'd walked the earth countless times since killing his best friend. Since he'd taken his hands, wrapped them around that throat, and strangled Uchiha Sasuke to death. Perhaps, that was where it all started. With coldblooded murder. Justification was alll well and good, but it didn't change the fact that he'd broken his promise.
For all his talk of ending the "Brother's Feud" he hadn't been able to back up his words. All bark and no bite, as the saying went. Ha! He'd tried so hard, gotten so far, but in the end it didn't matter. Sasuke wouldn't be swayed. It was live or die. Him, or the Uchiha. Despite all his pretty syllables, in the end, he'd valued his life for than that of the Uchiha's. He still remembered thrashing about and around in the mud, gasping for air as the last Uchiha tried to drown him in the waters of the Valley of the End. He remembered that stone, that strange, sharp, shiny stone, just within his grasp. Grabbing it.
Ramming it into one of those ugly pale arms. Watching the blood fly. Feeling the hands slacken as he bucked and shoved the Uchiha off. Leaping after him. The rest was a blur. At some point between stabbing Sasuke with that rock and writhing out from underneath him, there had been a struggle, and that struggle ended with him squeezing the life out of his friend. By the time he'd come to it was already too late. Nothing could be done to revive him. Edo Tensei wasn't an option, either. After that debacle, things had just, well...fallen apart.
Naruto didn't realize he was immortal until everyone else had gray hair and he'd yet to so much as grow a beard. By that time, he'd realized something else.
He was broken.
In a few short years the few friends he'd made were long dead. A few more decades, and their children, his children, completely forgot who he was. Add another century or two, and the Hidden Villages were nothing more than a memory. Still, he survived and he persisted, fighting in wars. Losing his sanity had been a slow thing after that. It startled going in slow increments, tiny things. He'd forget a name here and there, have trouble recalling the number of his kills, or an event. Until, one day, he woke to find that he couldn't even remember what his friends looked like. He killed because it amused him but that soft, gentle side of him had all but vanished under the frothing seas of his insanity.
He liked to think he kept the monster, the aberration under wraps. Most of the time.
"Whoa, there buddy."
Until now.
Naruto slowed his stride and raised his gaze, cerulean eyes coldly regarding the one who had just spoken. Or rather, several someones. His eyes took them in at a glance, his brain swiftly switching from calm civilian to a cold shinobi. In that instant, his emotions as he knew them simply ceased to be. He turned them off. It was just like flicking a switch, something he'd been able to do ever since his first psychotic break. Compartment all the anger and hate inside him, let it out when it was appropriate here in New York. And one he used now, contemplating the sordid scene unfolding before him with a ruthless dispassion.
Five people. All male. Three yards out. Crowding him into the nearby alley. Threatening. Aware of his prescence. Standing semicircle around him, numbers to their advantage. He felt his lips curl in disdain. Only an hour back in New York after these last few months and things were already...
...unpleasant.
Naruto's visage creased in a slight frown as he recognized their tattoos.
Purple Dragons.
In the time it took for the rest to take those few steps forward and seal off his escape...he'd already contemplated their deaths. Jugular. Lungs. Heart. Skull. Spine. Stomach. So many ways to kill these imbeciles -human bodies were oh soo very fragile- it was almost enough to make his blood boil in its vein. In meandering around his old stomping grounds he'd sensed some form of ill intent but had been too lost in his own thoughts to realized it was directed at him. They thought this teenager in an orange shirt and blue-black jeans was an easy mark. Probably wanted what was in his backpack. They couldn't have been more wrong.
"Lookie here boys, a walking ATM. Hows about we make a withdrawal?"
The blond vented a short laugh through his nose, shaking his head. Not a real laugh, just an expression of his scorn. "Three seconds." he said.
The thug blinked. "Huh?"
"That's how long you have before I ventilate your throats."
A ripple of confusion passed through the Dragons. No one took his threat seriously. Pity.
"Nah, I don't think so." Clearly they didn't believe him, because a knife flicked open in the leader's hand. "C'mon now; wallet, watch, shoes. Hand 'em over before you get hurt." For a moment, Naruto actually considered the option; but only for a moment. Was it really worth getting riled up just for the sake of some punk ass kids? A lifetime ago, he would've said no. But now...now was different. At length he sighed and shook the backpack from his shoulders, the imperceptible motion sending his chin-length bangs sweeping from side to side.
"Time's up." he muttered, reaching up to loosen his tie with a hand. "Would you kindly die?"
"What're you-urk!"
Those words ended in a strangled gurgle and grunt as the blond stepped forward, grabbed the nearest dragon by the sleeve, and slammed into his skull into a nearby piece of pipe jutting from the brick wall, embedding itself to the hilt. He was dead before he'd even hit the ground, lifeblood pooling fruitlessly at his feet, wasted so much like his life. The former shinobi said nothing, offered no words as the fool's corpse struck the ground. The muffled thud, being the only sound to indicate his passing. One of his comrades-if they could even be called such, roared in rage and drew a bead on him with his pistol, hands trembling with barely controlled rage.
"Bastard...!"
For the jinchuuriki, it was like watching one of those an old movie reel, events unfolding panel by panel. He heard the thug squeeze the trigger, saw the bullet leave the chamber, stood by stoically as it crawling through the air towards him, moving as though it were mired in quicksand. There were any number of ways he could've dodged it, wreaked havoc upon the buffoon's body, and moved back into place before the shot so much as neared him. But that wouldn't have been any fun. Call it saddistic, but he liked it when his foes realized they were outmatched. It was one of the few pleasures he enjoyed in life.
That and these goons had dared to touch him.
They would suffer for that.
Naruto's hand snapped back from the sheer velocity behind the handgun, fingers locking down firmly against the shot that would've -should have!- pierced clean through his mouth and opened up his skull. A thin line of smoke snaked between the clenched digits, making those glowing red eyes all the more disconcerting, that shit-eating grin thrice as intimidating.
"Hmm?" he sighed placing the still smoking projectile against his thumb and forefinger, mouth still curling into the mad rictus of a smile. "Is that it?" Twisting his head aside, he took aim and flicked, sending the casing roaring back to its owner. Thunk. Right between the eyes. He collapsed like a house of cards. The blond chuckled; it was a deep, throaty sound. "See, I just don't understand what's wrong with this generation. No skill, no talent whatsoever. Yet, when you put a pistol in their hands, they suddenly think they're the big man on campus. Stick them in a large enough group and they'll think they can do whatever they want and get away with it." Suddenly, his scarlet sight narrowed.
"They cannot."
"Wha-
The blonde's backpack, forgotten until this very moment, descended mercilessly. One strike. That was all it took and the gunman's head...simply ceased to exist. One moment it had been there; the next it vanished in a spray of red as the chakra-infused leather projectile swung forward, separated his head from his shoulders, in a single swing. His partner didn't even have tiime to blink before the demonized blond was well and truly on him, twisting him around to drag a hand across his throat. Naruto flicked his hand and willed a touch of demonic chakra into his fingers, sharpening them into deadly claws as they passed by mankind's second most vulnerable area in a brutal swipe. The fool went down with a gurgle of surprise and blood, nothing more, nothing less.
"Next."
"Oh, s-shit!" the last of them tried to scramble away, but to no avail. Naruto reached down, fingers closring around his face in a brutal vice, hauling the larger man off his feet, then hoisting him into the air. Despite the inescapablle hold the shinobi had on him, he still had the gall to speak, to struggle at the forces cruyshing him. "C'mon, man! We give! We'lll give you whatever you want! J-Just let me live! Please! PLEASE!" Already he could feel those fingers beginning to sear into his face, his skin beginning to bristle and crack as the moisture evaporated beneath. Had he the strength to move his eyes, he would've realized his body literally mummifying while he still drew breath. The burning only drove him into further panic, his legs thrashing feebly at the chest of his killer.
"Please!" He was screaming now, wailing as those fingers burned into his flesh. "STOP!"
"As you wish."
"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank-
A jerk of his wrist snapped the grunt's neck and sent him screaming down to Hades with the others. Or was it hell? He'd come up with so many different terms for the eternal torment his victims probably suffered that it really didn't bother him anymore. He took a moment to observe the chaos, his ears detecting the distinct sound of sirens in the distance. Time to leave, then. His apartment beckoned. Reaching down, he bent to a knee and retrieved his backpack-
Naruto almost died.
In the instant that he bent to grab the pack, cold steel flashed in his peripheals. He twisted out of the way, a thin slice opening on his whiskered cheek as he rolled aside. He came up swinging, a kunai shooting from his sleeve, arrowing toward his as-of-yet unseen attacker as he leapt away. The harsh clang of steel striking steel told him he'd been deflected from his mark. By then, he'd found his footing. Clamoring to his feet, he found himself face to face with his attacker. A young girl.
Dark brown eyes regarded him with equal parts surprise and bemusement. Her red, painted eyes narrowed as he rose-watching him like a hawk might its prey. Pieces of light, metal armor adjourned her black bodysuit strategically, ebon tresses shifting slightly as her hearts-haped face turned to regard him. Blue orbs narrowed at the sight of the weapon in her hands. A tanto. And from the way she held it in he rhands, she looked like she knew how to wield it. The realization struck him like a thunderbolt.
He was looking at a kunoichi.
"That was some impressive work just now." she said, tapping her shortsword on her shoulder. Her dark eyes shifted to the mummified corpse of the purple dragon, noting its cracked and withered skin, before sliding to him once more. "You're not a mutant, are you? Don't look like one of those Krang, either." Naruto listened to her and was mute.
For a moment, just a moment, the blond couldn't find his voice. It simply wasn't there. Because he was looking at a fellow ninja. He hadn't been to Japan in centuries. Going back had just been too painful. The idea that they'd restarted the ninja enterprise at some point in his abscence filled him with simultaneous loathing and joy. Mostly the former. His hand slipped toward his boot, considering whether he should draw the weapons he had hidden there. In the end, he decided against it. A kunai wouldn't be of much use here. Besides, this one hadn't done anything to irk him...yet.
"I don't have time for you, little girl." he decided at last, grabbing his backpack and slinging it over an arm. "Go home."
Without another word he turned, preparing to leap away.
"Hey!" she called at his back. "We're not finished yet!"
"Finished?" he scoffed. "We never even star-
His hand was already moving however, rose behind his back even as she swiped at him. A nodachi whispered into existence in his palm, rising from the pack-actually a disguied storage scroll-batting her blade down and aside. Sparks skittered as steel struck the floor. The girl smirked, straining against him despite the considerable effort pressing down against her arms. Naruto simply exerted a touch of his strength and it pushed her to the starting point once more, leaving her weapon trapped beneath his.
"Not bad-you might actually be a challenge."
"For you?" He snorted. A yank and his weapon was gone. Then his boot descended, a sharp stomp shattering the tanto like so many shards of glass. "More than that."
"We'll see!"
Karai struck at him and he dissolved into shadows. Darkness floods her vision.
With only an instant flash of white, the kunoichi's chest was struck by an invisible hammer, wielded by an invisible titan. Her breast-plate shattered. Nothing in all her years of training had ever hit Karai so hard. The impact blasted her backward off her feet and drove her flying into the vast brick wall of the alleyway. Then he was on her like a silent wraith -swatting the hilt away out of her hands- pummeling her into its face with the flast of his blades. Pinned to bricks, blinking her incomprehension at the startling speed of her aggressor, Karai fought to breathe. A blade pressed against her unprotected stomach. Fear unstrung her legs. Never since sparring with her father had she been so humiliated.
She gulped.
"My name is Uzumaki Naruto." Dark, rippling eyes-the Rinnegan-leered down at her with contempt as the corded muscles of his arm pressed into her throat. "Unlike you, I know what it truly means to be ninja."
"Karai." she supplied weakly.
"A good name. But the name of an ant." Just like that, the arm fell away. The kunoich crumpled to the ground with a gasp, grasping at her throat. His hand waves and the sword is gone, vanishing back into the pack. A nameless dread stole over her. She tries to speak, but nothing comes.
"You...you're not human."
"You say that likes it's a bad thing," Naruto said, looking out at the sky. "Let me tell you something important here, Karai. Humans are like ants. They populate this world in great numbers, thriving regardless of the circumstances or conditions and are incredibly resilient. However, unlike ants, humans are greedy, selfish, backstabbing liars who would sooner kill you than help you-especially if they thought doing so would benefit them. What does it matter if I kill a few hundred, or even a few million of their kind? Why should I care?" his arms spread, as though he could bear the universe itself, with them. "They'll grow back soon enough. But I feel merficul today." His hand flahsed out, blinding her with smoke. "You'll live."
Blinded, she sputtered and scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, struggling to see where there was nothing to be seen. When her vision finally recovered, when she turned to look again, he was gone. A cold, chilly breeze wafted over her, echoing with dark laughter.
"Maybe we'll meet again...little ant. Do try and entertain me more, next time."
Karai shivered and clutched at herself. Uzumaki Naruto. Soulless eyes, hard and unflinching. A master swordsman. Agile warrior. And completely insane. She'd seen the look in those haunting blue orbs, recognized that same single-minded focus that also drove her father to seek out and destroy Splinter. But, what she'd seen in those eyes was different. It was matchless. Had no depth. And that genuinely terrified her. Uzumaki Naruto he'd called himself.
She would remember that name.
A/N: There we have it! A savage, vigilante Naruto who offers no quarter to those he meets...but whose side is he on? Shredder? The Turtles? Or does he represent some other, new faction? Who knows? This takes place shortly before the whole Technodrome incident for the record, just so we have an established timeline here folks. This story could really go either way; Naruto could turn down the path he's currently on and find some redemption for himself, or, he might continue as is and become god knows what. Hell, he might even wind up mutated. Now wouldn't that be one hell of a trip?
See the scary thing here is, EVERYONE wants him. The Krang want his blood for their own purposes, just as they want April. Shredder sees him as a potential ally, ruthless and cruel. Splinter isn't sure what to make of him, but first impressions are often a lasting one. But this Naruto is the current one from the manga, scary strong, but now unhinged as hell. Who knows what might happen? Pairing will probably be NarutoxKarai-I can't bear to take April away from Donnie-but how we reach that point, isn't up to me.
YOU DECIDE!
So...In the Immortal words of Altas...
...Review, Would You Kindly? And of course, enjoy the preview!
(Preview)
The harsh click of a loaded pulse rifle filled his ears as he rose from his pointed crouch. Spinning, he found himself face to face with nearly two dozen of the very Krang droids he'd been trying to evade. Unfeeling eyes turned towards him and away from the turtled, weapons were raised. Naruto hissed. Damnnit, Murphy! And wait...were those turtles?
"Oh, fuck me."
"Krang! " One of the droids cried! "It is the one called Naruto! Capture him for Krang!"
That was all he had time to hear before the air boiled with plasma.
"Wrong!" The blond barked out a laugh, weaving forwards amidst the spattering fire. "The one who is called Naruto will be doing the destroying the ones called...ah, fuck it! Just die already!" He flung a hand out, their shots spattering harmlessly against an unseen shield. And then he spoke. Two words. Two simple words, and yet they destroyed an entire city block. Blue eyes flashed an ungodly purple.
"Shinra Tensei!"
The subsuquent explosion of force didn't so much push as it did vaporize; boiling over the metallic bodies, weakening before slamming into the quartet of turtles only a few feet further and toss them away. Untethered from their bindings, a few pieces of the dilapidated mall complex came crashing down around them.
Mikey poked his head out of the rubble and gawped. "Dude...what the shell?"
Naruto lowered his arm, eye twitching. "Alright, what the fuck? Talking turtles? Have I lost my mind here?"
R&R! =D
