Momentum and Direction
By: Lunaryon Lord of Chaos
Chapter One: Odd Beginnings
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Soul Eater.
Naruto growled, struggling against the slimy tongue that roughly hauled him up to the strange feminine ninja. "I see..." She said around her tongue, a smile upon her face like a child who just spied a new toy in a store window, "It seems that whenever you're emotions are aroused, the yokai of the Nine-tailed Fox is able to seep through the seal." Her tongue reaching down towards Naruto's stomach, Sakura watched, confused by the words she had heard.
'The yokai of the Kyuubi?' Sakura wondered, staring at her struggling team mate. 'Wait... What happened to Naruto?' Staring at her blonde, once blue eyed teammate, she was frightened to see slitted crimson eyes, along with deeper darker whisker marks, making the boy seem almost... Demonic. 'What is going on?'
Slowly Naruto's shirt was pulled up, revealing a seal array more complex then anything she had ever seen or read about. The hands on the Grass ninja lit with purple flames, as she stared at the seal. 'That's a sealing array, at least it looks like one.' Watching in horrified fascination, Sakura's eyes were glued to watching as the Hand slammed into Naruto's stomach.
Suddenly, new markings appeared on the seal on the blonde's stomach, as his crimson eyes lost focus, before sliding back to blue, and finally closing as Naruto succumbed to exhaustion. Staring at the boy her tongue was wrapped around for another moment, the black haired girl seemed to come to a decision, and carelessly chucked the boy behind her, all her attention shifting to Sasuke. Watching the orange clad ninja fly bonelessly through the air, Sakura's eyes widened. 'No! Naruto! There's no way that even he could survive a fall like that! I've got to do something!' Glancing around, Sakura's eyes flicked all around her, then settled on her Kunai pouch. Drawing one of the stylized throwing knives, she quickly threw it with all of her might.
Eyes trained on the flying blade, she smiled and silently cheered as the blade caught the back of her teammate's atrocious orange... Thing, and stopped the boy's fall.
Turning towards her crush, tears rolled down her face. "Sasuke! Naruto may not be like you... He may be an idiot, and he's really annoying, but at the very least he's not a coward. Right?"
Naruto groaned softly, fire spreading outward from his stomach, as if... as if someone poured boiling water on his stomach, and the water was rolling down his sides slowly. "Naruto..." A smooth, velvety soft voice whispered into Naruto's ear. "Naruto... It's time to wake up." Naruto's eyes slowly fluttered open, then flicked back closed. Naruto's eyes flew open, and suddenly the boy was on his feet. Glancing all around, Naruto's face a mask of worry.
"Sakura! Sasuke! Oh shit, they need my help!" Glancing around the room, Naruto paused. "Where the Hell am I?" a moment's pause, "And what kind of drugs was the designer of this building on?" Naruto stood on the center of a circular platform in the center of a room that wouldn't look out of place in an Escher Labyrinth.
The room was made of what appeared to be solid pearl, with hundreds, if not thousands of staircases, and doors, in all kinds of different alignments. Standing straight up and down, on their sides, up-side down, in all manner of tilts, and everything in between. "How the Fuck am I supposed to get out of here? My team is gonna need my help against that snake guy.
"Calm down Naruto." The Velvety voice called out softly, almost as if the words were whispered in Naruto's ear. Blinking twice, Naruto whirled around, trying to find the source of the voice. "Oh, please. you won't find me that easily child, You have to some and find me, which shouldn't be too hard. I'm somewhere in this wondrously Labyrinthine mind of yours."
"This... This is the inside of my head?" Naruto asked, sounding surprised. "What the Hell. And after all the shit I've been through I kinda expected the inside of my head to be some kind of freaky sewer..."
'Foolish little brother, You can't kill me. You don't have nearly enough hate. Your not strong enough, and your life is far too precious to you, so run. Yes, Run and live with the shame of not bein-'
"NO!" Cutting off the memory of his older brother, Sasuke's head rose, the Sharingan staring into the eyes of his serpentine foe. "Not this time. This time I AM STRONG!" The last Uchiha's chakra danced on the edge of perception, almost thick and strong enough to be visible.
'Hmmm... So it's happened at last. The blood of the Uchiha has finally come to a boil.' Sakura was brought out of her thoughts by her crush's yell, and a small smile crossed her face when she saw the strength in Sasuke's eyes.
"That's it Sasuke." Sakura whispered.
"Stupid... Teme." Naruto mumbled, "Took 'im long enough." But his unconscious words were noted by no one.
'I think I might play with him a little, it'll be good to learn the full extent of his powers...' Without a word, the Kusa nin banished the giant, injured, summon beneath him. Using the smoke as cover to move to the high ground.
'I refuse to let it happen again. Never again will someone I care for die because I am weak!' Sasuke roared within the recesses of his mind, 'I lost my family because I wasn't strong enough! I won't lose my team!' Staring at the enemy Genin, Sasuke quickly snatched a Kunai and gripped it in his mouth. 'Thank you, Naruto, Sakura. You two have cleared my head. How would I be able to save my clan from Limbo if I died here today?' Concentrating, Sasuke sent out a pulse of chakra, shattering the wood beneath his feet to little more then dust, sending the Last Uchiha flying towards his opponent. Flipping forward, Sasuke delivered a brutal, but easily blocked Axe Kick to the grass nin.
The force of Sasuke using the genin as a spring board, combined with her pushing him off of her gave Sasuke the height to quickly spin in the air, releasing a deluge of Kunai. As he landed on the side of one of the many trees within the forest of death, he watched as the grass genin moved with an almost serpentine grace to avoid the flying pieces of metal. 'It seems I really was being nothing more then a coward. How could someone that cannot even risk his life to protect those how are precious to him ever even earn the right to fight HIM?' Leaping off of the branch, Sasuke quickly flipped over, and struck out twice at the amused black haired woman.
She blocked both strikes with ease, smirking as he flipped over her, and then continued to block with ease, not even turning towards her opponent. Leaping back, Sasuke kicks off the moment he touches ground, as the Kusa nin does the same, meeting at the point between them to start a dance, as beautiful as it is deadly.
Sakura watched the flowing dance of fists and feet, of attack and defense. A dance where both contestants knew that a single missed step would have to face a dire punishment, maybe the end of the battle, and possibly even death. The pinkette watched as a smile lit upon her crush's face, his crimson tomoe'd eyes positively glowing with fury, joy, excitement, and a thousand other emotions.
'I can see her, that means that I can sto-' Suddenly lashing out with an unexpected sweep kick, the frightening woman leaps over him, vanishing before he turns around. 'Where? Shit!' Glancing around, the Last Uchiha suddenly turns, following a dark blur. 'Ah! I CAN see her!' The woman fires forward, slamming into the wood where Sasuke had been mere milliseconds before with enough force to send cracks dancing on the other side of the ten foot thick branch.
As Sasuke lands, his hands are already dashing through the hand signs for his favorite, and signature technique. Reaching out with a hand, Sasuke breathes fire into the pit that his opponent had created, and after the first breath, decides to abondon the limiter hand, simply allowing the flames to pour forth from core. The flames combine, forming a pillar of golden red flames, charring the crater and surrounding wood.
As the flames begin to die away, Sasuke catches a faint glimpse of the ninja pulling off hand seals of her own, before diving into the wood. shooting towards the Uchiha, her trajectory aligned with the shattered layer of wood where she had travelled, she leapt from the wood, her fingernails trailing along the bottom of the Uchiha's ninja sandals. 'Intriguing. He's pretty good, for a genin.' The woman thought, 'He's able to predict my movements, and react accordingly. If he were a little faster, I might actually have to try.'
Landing, the Last Uchiha exhaled, before leaping forward, drawing another Kunai, before leaping into the air. Tumbling, he slams into his opponent with another axe kick, before quickly kicking twice more at the seemingly unbreakable guard that the genin had. glaring at his opponent, Sasuke barely noticed the slight itching feel of another Tomoe forming in his right eye, completing that eye.
Naruto stared blankly at the floor high above him. 'How the Hell am I supposed to find someone in this place?' Naruto wondered staring at the two large staircases in front of him. Glancing between the two, Naruto growls, then runs up the left hand staircase, pulling open the door, and rushing down the left hand staircase. Ending up right where he started. 'What? How did... ARGH!' Closing his eyes Naruto sat down between the stairs. 'How am I supposed to find whoever that voice belongs to? Navigating this place is impossible.' Naruto's eyes opened at the thought. 'Wait. Why am I trying to Navigate? I shouldn't be TRYING to find the source of the voice. I simply need to find the person.' Leaping to his feet, Naruto smiled. "Fucking Maze! You can't stop me!" Turning, Naruto glanced around. "Ah." Leaping, Naruto twisted and fell up, landing back at the center of the Labyrinth where he had started. 'Now. I'm heading towards the voice... So that means...' Closing his eyes, Naruto simply turned towards one of the many staircases and doors, and moved, acting more on instinct then on any real decision. Twisting and turning, going up stairs, and down hallways. Naruto continued on and on, even though he had crossed over where he had already gone more then once, he could feel that this was the path that he had to follow, and even once he turned a fake direction, and walked an unreal path. Finally though, Naruto found himself standing before a set of large obsidian arrow shaped doors.
Slowly pushing the doors open, Naruto entered into a room unlike anything else he had seen within his mind. The blonde's first thought about the room was the fact that it was huge. The ceiling was easily thirty stories up, high arches with windows of stained glass. Naruto paused, staring at the windows. Each window showed a moment in time of his life, frozen forever in place, almost- almost as if the room was some kind of place of worship. The entire room was made of a dusty red stone, strangely warm to the touch, and it seemed to almost throb with power.
"Took you long enough to get here." The same velvety voice that had awoken Naruto said, "Did you get lost?" Naruto glared over at the source of the voice, before blinking. 'What? Is she the Kyuubi?' Naruto wondered, instantly on guard. Standing at the other end of the room, leaning against a podium was a tall woman with short oddly spiked dirty blonde hair, bright golden eyes simmering with mischief, and wearing the oddest outfit that Naruto had ever seen. She was wearing a sleeveless hoodie, the hood down, a symbol not unlike an eye across the front split by the shirt's zipper. She wore tight black pants that ended mid-calf, and she was barefoot. On each arm, she had a tattoo of what looked somewhat like a serpent, and somewhat like a trail of dots, entwined are her arms, starting at her wrists, with what could only be described at the head on each shoulder.
Naruto stared at the woman suspiciously, hand creeping slowly towards his weapons pouch. "Who the Hell are you? And what did you mean by this crazy place being my mind?"
The woman paused, seemingly deep in thought. "Who am I?" She repeated, then sighed. "I... I'm not. Would be the best way to answer that."
Blinking, Naruto couldn't stop the words from escaping his lips. "Wha?"
"I'm not a person... I'm an image that represents your bloodline. At least, I think it's a bloodline." She said, before a smirk appeared on her face. "But you can call me Medusa, from my understanding that's who this image is based off of."
"The... Person you're based off of?" Naruto asked, unsure what Medusa meant. The golden eyed woman nodded, running a hand through her hair. "And what do you mean by a bloodline. I don't have a bloodline."
"It's hard to explain... There's a lot I don't know, things I can only speculate about, and have been speculating about since I first awoke here in this Cathedral nearly thirteen years ago." With a sigh, Medusa ran a hand through her hair again. "I'm based off of someone named Medusa, who from what I understand doesn't exist. Never Existed, at least, not in this world. What I do know for certain is that this is your 'Inner World', a... Construct of your mind that is far beyond me. You'd have to find people who specialize in this kind of stuff to get a solid answer." Blinking, Medusa glanced back at Naruto, "What was your last question again?"
"You said I had a bloodline." Naruto said, and Medusa's eyes lit up, a smile crossing her face.
"Right." After a moment of silence, she glanced at him, "That's not a question." The blonde jinchuriki sighed, "Oh. You want to know what it does, don't you?" Naruto smiled, and nodded. "I don't really know all the much about it, I just know that the Original Medusa used it, and that after this Your Chakra is Black. But what that means and what you're going to be able to do with it , I have no ideas. Sorry." Suddenly starting, Medusa glanced up. "I think you should go and meet the other being sealed within you... I wonder if I can do that..."
Naruto blinked, recognizing a dismissal when her heard one. He watched as Medusa turned away, striding confidently towards a door hidden in the shadows of a small alcove. Sighing, he turned away. 'Then again... She has a valid point. I should meet the furball...' Exiting the cathedral, Naruto wondered aimlessly, allowing his mind to wander as he realized that as long as he had no solid destination, all paths would eventually lead to the platform that he had first awoken on.
I'm back. After so long, I am back. Sorry for being gone so long, Real Life has been kicking me around. I'm now a college student for any of you that are interested. Just so you know, in case Medusa's explanation was not enough, she will be completely and totally OOC, but then again, that's not Medusa.
I mentioned a False Direction in this chapter, which is a reference to a Naruto x A series that begins with F. First four people to send in the right answer will get a special prize that will be revealed at the beginning of the next chapter.