Title: Grayskull
Author: Joshua
Disclaimer: Naruto is Masashi Kishimoto's. He-Man is Mattel's. The following fusion of the two is mine and I don't charge money to let people read it, so don't bother suing me, cause I have no money. Like everybody else.
Summary: Crazy idea. During the Time gap, Naruto comes across an old castle, where he finds an old sword and learns of the Power of Grayskull...
AN: I'm starting this off in my 'Fantasies' to judge how people feel about it. If, heavy heavy heavy HEAVY emphasis on *IF* I take this from 'Fantasies' and make it it's own stand-alone story, it needs to be unbelievably, incredibly, uncannily popular that people are constantly begging me for more and to make it it's own story. And not just the same people either. : ) Otherwise, this and any and all sequels stay in 'Fantasies'. Just wanted to make that clear for any people that have questions like that. Please review or contact me at ..
Story:
Naruto was having a nightmare. Or maybe it was a dream? He couldn't tell, he just knew that there was a lot of fighting going on in his head as he struggled to wake up.
He saw this really old castle, shaped like a human skull with battlements all around it and a drawbridge where the jaw was supposed to be. Then there was a flash, of steel striking steel. Another vantage point of the same skull castle, only now Naruto could tell it was made out of gray stone, not human bone. More flashes, weapons clashing, sounds now to accompany what his mind had already interpreted as a battle. He was right in front of the castle right now, looking up into the empty, dark, soulless windows that looked like eye-sockets. The jaw bridge started to lower...
"NYYEAAAHHHH!" Naruto screamed himself awake. He was getting really tired of waking up to the same dream every night for the past month.
"Kuso!" a middle-aged white-haired man in the bed next to his cursed in his sleep. "Damnit gaki! I thought I told you to stop having that nightmare already!"
"It's not like I can just control my own mind, Ero-sennin!" Naruto shouted back at him.
After about a minute of heavy silence as the older man tried to get back to sleep and the young boy sat in his bed thinking, until finally he asked in a soft voice, "Jiraiya-sensei?"
The old man, Jiraiya of the Sannin, Toad Sage and Spymaster of Konoha, sighed as he realized he wasn't getting back to sleep anytime soon, looked over at his apprentice and asked in a voice just as soft, "Yeah, Naruto?"
"You ever heard of a castle that looks like a human skull? Made out of gray stone?" he asked.
Jiraiya blinked. That wasn't the question he was expecting.
"Yeah, everyone has," he scoffed, adopting his usual manner of knowing everything, or at least acting like it. "There's only one and it's a derelict monument in the Land of Whirlpools. Or rather, the former Whirlpool Country. Castle Grayskull. Used to be a safe haven for bandits and revolutionaries, as it stands on the edge of a bottomless chasm. Plenty of caves to hide in there and it has a reputation for being haunted, so not many people visit it unless they're desperate or just sightseeing for a few minutes. Nobody really stays for longer than an hour. Why?"
"Where... where is it? Whirlpool Country? Castle Gray... skull?"
"Why? Want to go sightseeing and prove your bravery that you can stick around it for more than an hour?" Jiraiya laughed. When his pupil did not immediately respond, he stopped laughing and sat up in his bed.
"Naruto, what is it?"
"I..." the blond's voice cracked and he didn't raise his eyes from staring at his hands in his lap. "I... Never mind. Thanks, Ero-sennin. Sorry I woke you. G'night." With that he lay back down and rolled over and pretended to sleep. Jiraiya stared at his back for a short while, then finally his own exhaustion caught up with him and he had to go back to sleep himself, shrugging the incident off as Naruto having a nightmare about something he probably didn't want to know about.
Land of Whirlpool
October 11, (4 months into Time-skip)
Naruto couldn't believe his luck as he stared over the landscape before him. Yesterday, Ero-sennin, or rather his sensei Jiraiya had gotten a message from one of his contacts during breakfast and whatever was on it had him spitting out everything in his mouth in surprise, if not outright shock. Naruto had tried to find out what was wrong, but rather than answer, his sensei had just rushed through the rest of breakfast and then dropped the bombshell that he had to go to the Land of Ricefields as soon as possible. As in immediately after breakfast.
So, Naruto was left on his own again, as Jiraiya refused to tell him what was going on and reassured him over and over that it was nothing before telling him to meet him at a safe house in Tea Country, although he called it a motel, Naruto had long ago learned what that really meant.
He left a scroll with a training regimen for Naruto to follow daily as well as three times as much money as he would need to get to the safe house and stay there for a week. Which took Naruto the entire morning to figure out that it meant Jiraiya would probably be gone for more than a week and the extra money was meant to keep Naruto occupied until he finally did get to the meeting point.
Naruto had spent the rest of the day at that Inn until it was check-out time, the next morning. Then he packed up all his stuff and immediately went to the port. However, instead of taking the ferry to Tea Country, he asked about a ship going to the former Whirlpool Country. None were, so he took the next best thing, a ship going to Water Country, and from there he spent three days working on a fishing boat as payment for passage to the Land of Whirlpools. It was practically on the other side of the ocean almost, protected by mountains and dangerous whirlpools in the sea.
The fishing boat dropped him off on the shore nearest to where he wanted to go, but unfortunately the closest they could get was several miles down shore from the whirlpools, and in the end he had an entire mountain range between him and the abandoned Whirlpool Country. After a night camping out under the stars, with his shadow clones to keep watch, he had the same dream again, but it was different too.
He kept seeing the castle again and again, but this time, he saw a sword. It was beautiful, but still functional, just a solid double-edged blade with a simple hilt and grip. He also could hear more fighting and felt like there was a battle raging all around him. When he woke up, screaming of course, he knew without doubt that he had to cross the mountains to reach his destination.
It never really occurred to Naruto, even has he trekked across the mountain range somehow knowing where to go and yet not at the same time, that he was essentially on his own with no back up, no support, and no one really knew where he was nor where he was going. He was truly on his own for the first time in his life, and he felt like he was just on another mission for Konoha. He'd bought plenty of rations and caught a decent amount of fish while on the fishing boat, and Jiraiya had taught him how to hunt and gather food and then prepare it in the wilderness. It was hardly a three-course meal, but it kept him alive and he had no one to complain to about it anyway.
Two weeks after leaving Jiraiya and following his dreams to the Land of Whirlpools, he arrived at his destination, leading him to where he stood now, standing on the edge of a mountain cliff, looking out over a wide plain that merged with a dark forest. On the other side of that forest was his goal and destination, the image that had been haunting his dreams for over a month now. Castle Grayskull.
Best estimate, he judged, looking down the cliff-side and across the forested valley between him and the derelict castle, about a days journey left, maybe two if he rested for the night at the base of the mountain. He wanted to rush and just jump off the cliff right now and run all the way there in just a few hours, but something inside told him that he would need all his strength when he did finally get there, and it was better to be fully rested and alert than exhausted and tired.
So, taking one last look at the scenery, he sighed, and then smoothly walked off the cliff.
Thirty feet down, he rolled his body as he came close to the cliff face and angled it so that his feet landed along the rocky wall. Using the first chakra control exercise Kakashi-sensei had ever taught him... well the only chakra control exercise Kakashi had ever taught him, he kept his footing and began to run straight down the mountainside, keeping up the momentum of his fall so he made good speed when finally it sloped down to join the flat ground and turned it into a fast run as he raced across the plain.
By nightfall, he'd reached the edge of the forest, and he knew that he would be stopping for the night here. He could resume in the morning at first light. Plus, there was something about the dark forest that warned him of danger. At night he wouldn't see it coming, and at least in the daylight he could find the path of least resistance to the castle.
He quickly set up camp, only going a few meters into the forest to gather firewood and cooking himself a meal and unsealing a few necessities that he'd collected during his journey, such as sleeping back, Port-A-Loo, tent, and ready-made traps to discourage predators.
After a quick dinner of fish and instant ramen, he went to bed and sleep came quickly, if not quietly. He had the dream he'd had ever since he'd left Konoha and begun his training journey with Jiraiya, the same dream that had started him on this solo mission in the first place. Castle Grayskull was before him, the same point of view he'd seen when he'd gotten his first glimpse of it today on top of the cliff. Then there was a flash, of steel striking steel. Another vantage point of the castle, from the air, he realized. More flashes, weapons clashing, sounds now to accompany what his mind had already interpreted as a battle. He was right in front of the castle right now, looking up into the empty, dark, soulless windows that looked like eye-sockets. The jaw bridge started to lower... and this time, Naruto saw something in the darkness.
A sword! A gleaming sword, the same color of kunai and shuriken, just over four feet long from hilt to tip, double-edged with no ornaments decorating it, showing that it was made to be used. It had a double-handed grip and a flat, dull guard around the hilt and a small red and silver symbol that looked like two red vertical arches crossed by a flat horizontal line intersecting both of them. He'd never seen anything like it before.
Naruto's eyes snapped open as he awoke, almost surprised that it was now morning and the night went by so quickly. He didn't spend much time wasting the morning, gathering and cleaning up his campsite and turning to the jungle before the sun had fully cleared the mountains on the horizon. He leapt into the trees, using his chakra to bring him up to the branches and launch him between them as fast as he could stand to go.
There were a number of close calls, from either predators patrolling the jungle, to vicious plants that were just as, if not more dangerous than the animal predators. It wasn't long until he finally came through the jungle though, and shortly after noon he was walking up to the edge of the cliff where Castle Grayskull stood tall. By the middle of the afternoon, he stood at the exact spot where his dream usually ended, right in front of where Grayskull's jaw-bridge would open, looking up at the ancient building, just as awe-inspiring as it must have been the hundreds if not thousands of years ago when it was first built.
For a couple of minutes, he just stood there, staring. Then, suddenly and without warning, the jaw-bridge began to lower. It wasn't like it was old and falling apart from age, nor breaking down either. If anything, it looked well-used and cared for, though the clanking chains were rather loud and it landed heavily on the ground before him with an echoing boom, kicking up a cloud of dust.
The eerie blackness of the inner keep was foreboding, but Naruto felt an undeniable urge to enter the castle. He did not immediately run inside, however. His experience as a ninja had at least tempered some patience into him, and this entire adventure had been very out of the ordinary for the young and reckless ninja. He waited until his curiosity got the better of him, and then stepped up onto the bridge, then waited to see if anything would happen, ready to summon up an army of shadow clones or switch out with a log from the forest as needed.
No traps were sprung. No weapons came flying out at him. No enemies attacked him, and no guardians came charging out of the castle to repel him. Glancing back only once at the way he'd come from, to confirm there were no enemies about to attack him in the back, Naruto stepped forward and walked across the bridge.
It was not until he was on the other side and taking the step from the wooden jaw-bridge to the stone floor of the inside of the castle, crossing the threshold, that he felt a shock run through him. He paused, one foot inside, one foot outside, wondering what it was he'd just felt. He waited only a couple more seconds, still trying to figure out what he'd felt, then finally just shrugged to himself, figuring it for static electricity or something. He stepped fully into the castle and started exploring.
Several hours later, Naruto had discovered that the inside of the castle was made up of the same gray stone that the outside was. It was also much, much, much bigger on the inside than it looks like it is on the outside. There was this one corridor where he fell under a genjutsu, or some other kind of illusion of a winged demon attacking him, then another where the floor just fell away into a bottomless abyss. It was like an ultra weird fun house that could teach Orochimaru a few things about traps and security.
When it was getting close to sunset, judging by how long he'd been exploring the castle, he finally found a room that looked like it was as big as the castle itself, or at least the skull portion. There was also a giant dais, in the shape of a pyramid with steps going up to an ornate throne. There was someone sitting on that throne.
"Hello, Uzumaki Naruto," the woman greeted him. She was dressed in decorative bird-motif attire, had vivid green eyes and held a staff as tall as she is with a bird at the top. "I have been expecting you."
TBC...?