A/N: Been browsing through the NarutoxWitchblade crossovers...and to be frank, I'm a little surprised. Most of the fics there haven't been touched for awhile, and the only good one, Naruto of the Blades, has yet to be updated in a long time. So I got to thinking...we know that every cloneblade sister eventually suffers a breakdown and tries to devour the host, yes? Wel, what if there were a way to sustain them? Not that state, mind you, but the cloneblades themselves? To help them? Heal them? Possibly even cure them altogether. Now, I'm not sure of how that might come about so this is entirely a shot in the dark here; merely something to brighten the sad universe of Witchblade.

Now...

...onto Blade of the Kitsune ! Warning! Gore and violence and extreme angst present in this chapter!

"I like my women deadly...but this is ridiculous!"

~Naruto.

Cleaner

"Bloody hell, that was a long day."

The key turned in the lock, the door giving way to a statuesque, whiskered blond, her voluptuous body wrapped in a black cocktail dress, over which she wore a pristine white lab coat. She took in her apartment with a percursory glance, kicking off her high heels the moment she was inside. Too long! She wanted to scream

Careful to lock the door behind her upon entering, the woman flung her purse down upon floor and flung herself into the nearest chair, sinking back amongst the cushions with a heavenly sigh. Blue eyes the color of the endless oceans drifted shut, fluttering open mere moments later. She inhaled sharply, shoulders sagging as though a great weight had been placed upon them. Slowly, ever so slowly, she intertwined her hands in place,

"Kai." She muttered aloud, crossing her fingers. A faint plume of smoke poofed through the air and devoured the voluptuous woman, revealing instead the chiseled features of a young man to the world, wrapped in the like of slick black jeans and a faded orange tee. Well, he wasn't exactly young. Not anymore. He'd been around for quite awhile now. A great deal longer than he would've liked, actually.

Naruto, "Cleaner" Uzumaki, stretched his arms and sighed. Ugh, he was seriously getting stiff in that body! He'd been forced to hold that henge for nearly four days now! Four days of parading around in those hellish high heels, looking over endless reports, making countless adjustments...and that was merely in addition to the work he already performed!

He was tasked with tending to the sisters whenever their Cloneblades began to break, charged with apprehending them whenever they ran out of control. Which was a good deal more often than he would have liked, thank you very much! Thanks in part to his own unique cells, he held an ability similiar to that of the Witchblade itself. He could rewrite the very fabric of life, DNA. Which wasn't nearly as easy as they made it sound, given the intense concentration required. The slightest miscalculation could be deady, fatal even. Idiots, did they have any idea just how hard it was to rewrite a gene sequence, huh?! And he'd thought missions back in Konoha were hard...

"Admit, it you just can't bear to leave those girls alone, can you?"

'Hello to you too, Kurama.' Naruto sighed to himself, he was becoming far too accustomed to the kitsune's voice in his head. 'You're right about that, though. Furumizu-teme, he's probably just using these girls for his own means. But most of them see him as "father" so going public really won't do much.' He sifted through the papers on his desk and pulled up a file, leafing through the contents. 'In fact, we'd probably damage what little standing we already have. No, I don't want to do that. They've lived their whole lives like this. I can't just shake everything up so suddenly.'

"You've really thought this through, haven't you?" the fox mused. "I almost admire your persistence."

'I'll take that as a compliment.'

"Well, we have been around awhile...

Unlocking the seal had...done something to Naruto. He didn't age in a coventional sense. Oh, he had his share of scars and scares as time marched on without him, when he realized his friends and family were growing old around him while he remained trapped in his twenties. At first it had seemed a blessing; he was the hero of the Fourth Shinobi War and the Rokudaime hokage, and he'd live an awful long time until someone finallly managed to kill him. But joy soon turned to terror as he began to outlive his wives, outlive his children, and their children and then, their granchildren's children. When his great-great grandaughter suffered an untimely end at the age of seven, he'd sworn off having children altogether. He would never again know the pain of losing another loved one.

He'd taken on missions regardless afterwards, preserved the peace, kept the village safe, done his job. And then shinobi became obsolete. The world was changing they told him. He was a relic, a thing of the past, and, despite all the good he had done, he was being left behind. It was time for him to move on, they said. Time to find peace. But Naruto didn't want peace. He knew only how to fight. How to kill. He'd hired himsef off as a mercenary at first, fighting for a noble cause in the beginning, then, whomever was willing to hire. When that work began to dry up, when the world wars ended, he was finally forced to settle down. To return.

Not to a life as mortal-there was no going back to that, not now-but a life as something in between.

He could still be wounded mind you; could still be killed, but left alone, his body, simply wouldn't diie. A shinobi of his calibre wasn't exactly easy to kill, either. And so, much to his eternal charign, time passed. Friends and acquaintances came and went, technology advanced, civilazations rose and fell. Eventuallly he found himself in Japan once more, returning to his stomping ground of years past. Only to find the familiar concept of fighting was forever lost to him as well.

Battles were no longer fought in secret and shadow, assasinations no longer legitimized. Wars were no longer fought over land, but over stocks and prices. Now...they fought in boardrooms, not with kunai, and shuriken and jutsu, but with sharp words and power plays and double dealllings. The armor of choice was no longer a drab flak jacket, but finely tailored suits. If Obito Uchiha could've lived to see this world, this future, he would have gouged his eyes out. It had taken Naruto no less than a century to adapt, to learn the ins and outs of boardroom politics and buisiness, the "tricks of the trade" as they were called.

Two of the most recent-in his eyes-were the Douji Group and the NSWF. The latter having secured his services for a modest fee six years before the Great Quake ravaged Japan. Naruto could've easily charged miilllions for his services after that, but really, what need did he have of money? It wasn't like he lacked for anything. Modest apartment, modest needs. For the time being, he had everything he wanted. And he'd taken greats pangs to keep it that way. After all, with a near-limitless lifespan, what else was there for him to do but maintain his identity?

But it wouldn't do for anyone to see him as his true self, an ancient shinobi with near god-like power. So Uzumaki Naruto took it upon himself to reinvent...well, himself. Literally. He recreated himself, cooking up a new identity, a new faux-persona every fifty years or so. Sometimes dying his hair, making himself taller or shorter, any random variance of features that would throw anyone off his trail. His current persona? Naruko. After all these years, he still found it amusing that he could turn heads when disguised as a woman. And not just those of men, either. After all, this body was essentially his sexy jutsu technique, albeit clothed in lab attire. A tad tiresome ruse at times, given that men hit on him-bleh!-but a necessary one nonetheless.

His most recent exploits revolved around the observation of one Shiori Tsuzuki, documenting the rapid breakdown of her cloneblade. Honestly, the woman was batshit crazy to begin with! It certainly didn't help that she was a lesbian. He'd been forced to fend of numerous advances from her in his female form when things had become...unpleasant. Perhaps he should consider approaching her in his male fom...well, it ought to keep her from trying to rape him, at least.

"Admit it, you love the crazy ones." Kurama goaded.

'Perhaps, but this is pushing the envelope a little, even for me.' Naruto sighed. 'It's not like I'm looking for a relationship here. Shiori probably is...

"So? What're you going to do?"

'Isn't it obvious? I'm going to-

The phone at his desk rang, silencing his thoughts.

'Hold that thought.'

Reaching for the receiver, the blond stifled a sigh and made a single sign with his free hand. Abruptly, Uzumaki Naruto was gone and Namikaze Naruko sat in his place; the only sign of his passing the faintest whisps of shadow and smoke. "Hai?" She asked, twirling a finger through her hair, listening intently to the voice on the other end. The voice of Tatsuoki Furumizu, head of the NWSF, was there to greet her. Known as "Father" to the neo-genes, Naruto had a different nickname for him altogether. Of course, he couldn't very well say it while he was on the phone.

"We have a situation." The director continued. "Tszuki Shiori's condition has become critical. Retrieve her at once."

"So its Shiori this time, huh?" the blond mused, bringing up the file with a low whistle. If there was one person who could calm that one down it was Reina, but seeing as her secretary had fled from her in the first place it was unlikely she'd seek her out. Reina...now that was a cold woman. It was almost as if she didn't have any emotion altogether...

"Intact, I assume?"

"In whatever condition possible." Furumizu ended their conversation curtly.

"Hai hai," the blond snapped off a lazy salute to no one in particular. "Whatever you say, boss man."

The moment Tatsuoki Furumizu cut the call, Naruko vanished, leaving Naruto's face twisted in disgust. Damnit, that guy really pissed him the hell off! He didn't care one bit for the neo-gene girls; in his eyes they were merely tools to be used; their emotions, their feelings didn't matter. If they suffered, he didn't care. Just as Shiori was suffering now. So long as he achieved his twisted goal, he didn't care what happened to them, no, he didn't mind if they were bent or broken; so long as they served hi purprose.

"I take it we're taking on the job?" Kurama ventured of his host as Naruto rose from his seat, revealing the thin bracelt upon his arm. The jewel within pulsated in responsed to his anger, glowing a bright mandarin orange as he slipped on a pair of open-toed sandals. He could already feel its power creeping through him alongside that of his tenant; warping and changing his body, sheathing him in ethereal armor not made by man nor beast. Even as the transfiguration took place he was a whirlwind; sweeping through the apartment, retrieving what he needed.

"Is that a yes?" The kitsune pressed.

"As if I would do this for a sychophantic asshole like him." Naruto growled, gathering up his belongings into a travel bag, alongside the equiptment he'd be needing. "I'm doing this for them...

Saffron crawled across the remainder of his body, sheathing him in golden light so bright that the mere sight of it scorched one's retinas. And then he was gone, out the door in a swirl of leaves.

...not for you, ya cheeky dickwaffle."

A/N: And there you have it. Naruto is essentially a cleaner, though not in the conventional sense. Replacing infected cells overtaken by the cloneblades, repairing them with his own genes, his dna in essence, thereby making them his gils. Will Naruto save Shiori? He just might. Will he meet Masane? He just might. Will he have a relationship...with Reina? He just might. Will there be extreme amounts of sexiness in this story as there is in the anime? THERE WILL! And speaking of the anime, I was really pissed at the ending for Masane, I mean why did that have to happen to her after all she'd done?! She didn't deserve an ending like that! I won't spoil it for anyone who has yet to watch, but you really ought to, its such a touching story...

If anyone caught the TFS reference at the very end, good for you! =D

So, in the immortal words of Altas...

...review, would you kindly? Aaaand enjoy the preview!

(Preview)

"Papa!"

Naruto grunted as a girl with multi-colored hair all but tackled him, flinging both arms around his neck. He reached around to pat the youth on the head, mussing her hair with all the tenderness and affection of a loving parent. He was grateful he'd come as himself today. This girl though she'd yet to don a cloneblade was one of the strongest neo-gene's ever to be born. Although she bore the body of a young woman, her mind had yet to catch up with her body; she was essentially a thirteen year old lass underneath it all. And she saw him as her father. Go figure.

"Hello to you too, Maria." Naruto sighed.

"Moh, why are you always like that, papa?" the girl pouted.

R&R! =D