The Guardian
Summary: Uzumaki Kushina passed on her clan's legacy on baby Naruto before she 'died'. When Naruto was mad enough to access Kyuubi's chakra during the battle for wave's bridge her own fail-safe kicked in, instead gathering the Kyuubi's chakra into another power-source and turning Naruto into whirlpool's guardian, a kamen rider. KamenRider!Naruto. NarutoxFemHakuxHinatax? Kamen Rider 555 Elements X Naruto.
Chapter 1: Henshin
Uzumaki Naruto looked down on his teammate and rival's corpse, riddled with senbon, as the chilly atmosphere inside the dome made out of ice mirrors filled the air with a howl, similar to a funeral dirge. He looked upon the reflections of his somewhat friend's killer, the slits of a Kirigakure Oi-nin mask hiding the the cold and calculating eyes of Momochi Zabuza's accomplice, who is now currently deadlocked with his sensei in a game of cat and mouse.
"He never would have died if he didn't block the killing blow that was meant for you. You do know that, right? He died like a true shinobi, protecting his precious people." The hunter-nin looked down on the prone body of Uchiha Sasuke, as Naruto's head bent down, and snorted.
"What do you know about him? And what do you know about me to have the right to say those things?" the hunter-nin was taken aback as the blonde looked at his teammate's body, and turned his attention to the one who killed his rival, gazing at him with hate filled eyes.
"There's only one thing I know right now…"He paused as an unfamiliar feeling welled up from the pit of his stomach, clawing, burning up through his stomach and attempting to surround his body and senses with bloodlust, a need to kill, a need to spill blood, to maim.
"I…"He bulled through as the feelings intensified, while wisps of malevolent, crimson chakra tried to take him over, to revel in the release and finality of being freed.
"Will…"The bloodlust was nearly overwhelming him, telling him to break the human in front of him to pieces, to spill its lifeblood, to ravage it and rend the body in twain, before the bloodlust was driven away with another light, and he felt himself being pulled in…
He was suddenly aware of standing in the doorway of a cozy room, a brilliant white light shined behind him from an open door, while he heard the sounds of a lullaby being sung by a very feminine voice, and as he stepped in, the light from behind him died down as the door closed. He then heard the voice, a mere whisper, invite him in to the center of the room, and without any hesitation, he obeyed, as he stepped into the warm atmosphere of what he recognized to be a nursery in the final stages of completion.
"Well now, I've been expecting you to use the fur-ball's chakra, but not this soon…" His musings interrupted suddenly, he slowly turned to the direction of the feminine voice, which had now stopped it's singing, and saw a female form that was silhouetted in darkness, while sitting in a rocking chair placed in a corner of the room.
As if on cue, the darkness was driven away from the silhouette, and revealed a woman in her middle twenties. Rich, vibrant, and long red hair framed her face, one of her bangs was held back by a single hair pin on the left side of her head. She had the slightly rounded and healthy face of a woman in pregnancy, dressed in maternity clothes of fine cotton and contrasting colors of black and white. She was looking at him intently, her green-eyed gaze taking in all of his features as she beckoned for him to approach her. Naruto didn't understand what he was feeling, as he walked to her, and let him be embraced by her warm arms, as if he had finally come home.
Then, realization dawned on him, and he now knew the woman who was embracing him, as it hit him like a ton of bricks.
"…Okaa-san?" He asked hesitantly, while the woman nodded, and smiled as tears filled her eyes, which Naruto mirrored in his own cerulean orbs. He then hesitantly asked a question, which might break his heart.
"Is all of this real?" He asked with all the hope he suppressed in his very eventful childhood, and was devastated when she shook her head.
"Unfortunately, all that you see right now, even me, is an illusion, a memory recently unlocked inside your mind, but that is neither here, nor there. I have something very important to tell you, so just suck it up like a true Uzumaki, and listen to me for a moment. Can you at least do that for your mother?" Naruto nodded as he found a chair and sat beside his mother, as he was now too big for her to carry, and impossible with her as pregnant as she is.
As he settled down, his mother took a deep breath, and began to speak. "Well, as you have discovered, I am your mother, Naruto, and my name is Uzumaki Kushina. What you are seeing and feeling right now is a memory I that I have recorded in a seal, and if I know you as I know myself, you're practically bursting at the seams with questions right now, but please hold off on them until I finish." Naruto pouted at her mother, whom he had accepted as being real, as right now he can't picture her as a piece of memory or something else.
Kushina smiled at him for a second, and then her gaze narrowed as he felt himself sweat for the first time in his life for an action that he had not put much thought into, after he had done said action. As he nervously rubbed the back of his head, his mother softened her look, and switched it for something that made him feel even worse: a look of disappointment and reproach.
"Musuko, it was a very stupid move to almost let the Kyuubi's chakra take over you, not knowing the consequences of letting him take over your mind and body like that. He could have completely overwhelmed you, and you wouldn't have even remembered what you did until after your father's seal stopped its chakra." As she spoke, he felt like a heel for letting his emotions get the best of him, and then felt the horror of realizing what would have happened to everyone on the bridge if he had truly let go of his control over the seal, especially the fate of his teammates. He looked back up at his mother, sorrow and remorse on his face as his mother embraced him, shivers and sobs wracking his body.
As his sobs became sniffles and his shivers stopped, he looked up at his mother with eyes full of emotion and deep regret, the emotions in his eyes telling her that he was sorry for what he almost did. Kushina wiped his flowing eyes with her hands and kissed his forehead, telling him that all was forgiven, while Naruto looked on in wonderment at receiving this kind of affection.
Kushina smiled at him and resumed speaking. "As it didn't happen, I forgive you Naruto-kun, but you'll have to apologize to your sensei and teammates for endangering their lives, if you had lost control to the Kyuubi." Naruto nodded sadly and silently told her that he'll apologize after the battle was over. Kushina nodded and glanced around the room to gather her thoughts. Her first words were a question to her son.
"Do you know about whirlpool country and the legacy of its guardians?" Naruto shook his head. Kushina's face was marred with a frown, while she instinctively stroked her son's head. "When you return to Konoha, go to the Third's office and demand that he hand over my legacy and techniques, they'll be quite useful to you once you practice them." Naruto nodded his assent, as his mother continued her tale.
"Uzu no Kuni was a small country. Located near Iwagakure, we were always weary about invasions and the sort coming from them. But they and other people, who wished to subdue us, dared not attack, because our clan, the Uzumaki Clan, besides being a fearsome lot, had a legacy that has stretched out for hundreds of years. That, my son, is the legacy of the Kamen Riders."
"It is a legend that has been passed down from generations, that there are three suits of power armor worn by the Uzumaki Clan, which has driven away raiding parties and lords threatening to conquer Uzu no kuni. Time and again, the country has relied on the armors to defend them from attack…" Kushina paused as she looked at her son, who gave her his undivided attention. She chuckled as she continued her tale, all the while pulling her son in closer to her warm embrace.
"The legends are true, but only to a minor extent. The Uzumaki clan does have these suits of power armor, but they have only been used to drive back invaders once or thrice, and that the real power of Uzu no kuni came from its very skilled ninja, who were trained to be skillful from the earliest time they can hold a weapon and mold their chakra. Their real purpose is to prevent another race of evolved humans from completely taking over the world, although their plans and moves are always being thwarted because of the power of shinobi and chakra, which they don't understand. These evolved humans are called Orphnochs, and we Uzumaki are descended from a branch of them, so we do have Orphnoch DNA, but we do not transform into evolved orphnoch forms. It is this dna that we use to wield the Rider Gears, to protect humanity from any threat, human, orphnoch, or otherwise.
"A month before the kyuubi made its way to konoha, I was informed that Uzu no kuni had been lost to the sea, due to the kyuubi's powers creating a localized earthquake near it, the earthquake in turn, created a tsunami, which struck whirlpool in a one-two blow. I knew then that the power of the rider gears had been lost, as its power base had been inside the clan compound.
"But before you were to be born three weeks before I made this memory, I received a package from my uncle, the last surviving member of the Uzumaki clan. The package's contents were an interesting discovery, if you can call possessing one of the de-powered gears and its weapons interesting enough." Kushina let out a snort of laughter, as she grinned at her son, who smiled back at her.
"I inscribed a seal to house this memory in your mind while you were still in my womb. After a while, I also made a simple seal array to bind the rider gear that I received to your body. I did this so that when the time came, it will be so settled in your body that it will become a part of you after the three weeks were up. As your father's wife I was only mildly interested in the sealing arts, but he taught me enough to be good at reading seals and making them, making me a certified sealing adept. After receiving news that the kyuubi was on its way, I simply added a final seal after you were born, so that the excess parts of kyuubi's chakra that didn't filter through the seal will be redirected through my sealing array and into the rider gear. This seal combination in turn created a fail-safe, but not a critical fail-safe. I have to tell you, son, your father was a genius seal master and ninja, but he was sometimes short-sighted, and never focused on the initial details." Kushina paused for a moment as she remembered Minato's memory. She then turned her gaze back to her now grown son.
"Why did I do all of this, you ask? I don't know if I survived or not, but I did this so that you would not be tempted to use your bijuu's power, and as you have the most powerful bijuu inside you, I had no choice but to do this in order to keep you safe; as I know the moment you were born and when the kyuubi was attacking, that minato will sacrifice you for some noble cause that you can't squirm you way out of, as you are a son of a Kage. Minato Namikaze, the Yondaime Hokage-sama of Konohagakure no Sato was your father, Naruto-kun…" Naruto's eyes bugged out as he gasped in revelation of his father's name and what he meant to the people of Konoha. Kushina only nodded as a teardrop made its way from her eyes in remembrance of her lost love, which Naruto wiped in a reversal of gestures not a moment ago. Mother and son spoke no words, but the love in their eyes told them enough to understand each other.
"I was interested in hidden world history when I was your age son, and the lives of the other jinchuuriki that I have read of always ended in a gruesome demise, because they were tempted and coerced by their bijuu to use their power, and in time, it corrupted their minds so that they always used their bijuu's power to even out the odds that they found themselves in. I didn't want you to live that kind of life, so I placed this fail-safe seal/barrier and memory between you and the kyuubi, and bound you to the rider gear, so that you have an alternative way of saving the people that you love. That is the essence of whirlpool's guardian: to protect, to fight, and guard what you know is justice. That is a Kamen Rider.
"As I've told you before, this is the memory I placed inside your mind, which would join the seal your father created, to create an initial fail-safe in case you used the Kyuubi's chakra, it was also intended to siphon the chakra that Kyuubi let out and into the rider gear that will greatly help you in your ninja career-"
Suddenly, her thoughts were interrupted by a digitized beeping, and another noise, which ended in a digitized voice saying "Ready". Kushina let out a cheer, as a red glow enveloped the corner on the other side of the room. Standing up from her rocking chair, she held Naruto's hand as they walked (in her case waddled, as she was almost nine months pregnant in the memory) to the source of the glow. Naruto noticed that aside from the red glowing humanoid figure, it was also joined by two other figures which were not moving and glowing. Finally, Naruto reached the corner of the room with Kushina, and noticed that the figure, which he was now looking at directly, had red lines all over its body. The humanoid also had large, bright yellow and glowing eyes. He was mesmerized by the figure in front of him, when Kushina had interrupted his musings with a clearing of her throat.
"Well, it seems that my gamble has paid off! Naruto-kun, meet your new alter-ego, and partner-in-crime in the business of saving Konoha, or possibly the world for that matter. This is your power suit of armor: Kamen Rider 555, or Faiz." Kushina spread her hands as if she was showing off a new weapon or a new technique, as the figure, now known as Faiz, looked at Naruto and nodded, extending out his gloved hand with a metal-like material at the tips of its fingers. Naruto was about to grasp Faiz' hand, when Kushina interrupted him.
"Before you shake his hand, son, there are a few more things that I need to tell you, and that because my fail-safe has been tripped, it will stay active, and you can simply will yourself to this memory, if you ever need me to ask further questions about anything that my memory knows." Kushina paused, as Naruto realized that he'll be leaving this memory-scape when he shook the hand of Faiz.
"Will I ever see you alive in the real world?" Naruto asked hopefully at the memory of his mother. Kushina sighed and hugged her son.
"I don't know what the future holds, but always know that Minato and I, wherever our souls may be at this moment, have loved you from the moment we found out that I was pregnant with you. You were always showered with love by us and our extended family. And if we had lived, or in the case of your father, had he lived, you would have never suffered as you have in your life." Kushina sniffled as he held off another bout of tears. Naruto however was stunned at the knowledge that the memory of her mother somehow 'knew' his life.
"If I wasn't happy by carrying you in my womb for nine months, I'd have quickly gotten this pregnancy over with! Damn hormones! Now off with you!" Kushina laughed as Naruto had a few tearful hiccups of his own. The mother-son duo had another tearful hug and farewell, as they would be seeing each other more often. Then, with one last look at his mother, he nodded at Faiz, and shook his hand.
As before, a bright, hazy, and fast light enveloped him, before he realized that he was still standing in the same position before, but now he felt something new, yet strangely familiar in his right hand, and that another thing, heavy, metallic, and also felt familiar was strapped to his waist.
From her vantage point in the mirrors, Haku was initially overwhelmed by the bloodlust and the wisps of crimson chakra coming from her opponent. But the bloodlust was suddenly sucked inside her adversary's stomach, and a bright light engulfed him. As the light faded, the boy was still there, having never changed position.
There was something different about him, however…
Naruto instinctively opened up the device in his right hand, and looked at the display on the top part. Having recognized it as the Faiz Phone, he quickly dialed the henshin code: pressing 5, 5, 5 and the Enter Button on the Faiz Phone. The phone recognized the code, and said in a digitized voice:
"Standing By…"
Naruto then closed the phone as a sound, which he recognized as the waiting sound for the henshin sequence, played in the background. He then raised the phone instinctively, as he held it up in the air, and said:
"Henshin!"
He then docked the Faiz phone in its docking cradle on the faiz driver, a click sounded, and he placed the phone horizontally on the driver itself, and the buckle was completed. The digitized voice acknowledged the docking of the phone to the driver, which said.
"COMPLETE"
Chapter End.
A/N: Let me know what you think. Further A/N's next chapter.