Chapter 1
A young girl barged into the meeting chambers in the Royal Castle of the Kingdom of Edolas. With every step she took, the pair of large floppy dog-like ears that hung down from her green hat bounced behind her.
She seemed to be unable to run in a straight line, instead moving along a curvy path that ensured that she had practically stepped everywhere that she possibly could between the door and the table where the meeting was taking place. She even ran around the table completely, as if she had not attracted the attention of the occupants in the room already. She finally came to a stop at the foot of it, facing the King of Edolas, Faust.
Giving a sharp salute to the King, and without a hint of fear after interrupting a meeting that she knew was not to be interrupted, she spoke clearly and loudly. "Your Majesty, sorry for the interruption, but the Magical Research and Development Department has an urgent message to report."
Faust eyed the girl critically with clear annoyance visible in his expression. That was to be expected though. After all, he had specifically asked not to be disturbed during such the current meeting. They had just been discussing the new measure to outlaw guilds and mages in the Kingdom. The wizened man raised a brow at her before he spoke, "For what reason do you interrupt a meeting which I had specifically ordered not to be disturbed," he asked in a tone that would have made the average man want to flee. "And who are you?"
She did not even look disturbed as she ran around the table once again, small clouds of dust trailing after her. She stopped at the exact spot she had stood previously.
"I'm Coco, a messenger from the Communications department, your Magesty," she answered. "The Magical Research and Development Department's Anima division has reported an abnormality regarding the magical activity of the interdimensional gate." She paused, appearing uncertain. "Chief Byro mentioned that the abnormality was related to a series of events that last happened sixteen years ago."
As if on cue, Byro, the Chief of Staff to the King, hobbled inside the council room. The bald, stocky goblin-like man looked uncharacteristically happy, which made him look quite disturbing. He locked eyes with Faust. "It is confirmed," he said with a hint of glee. "We have found it again, and this time it lasted long enough for us to lock onto the target."
Faust's eyes widened in shock at that. He immediately looked at the men that he had been meeting with and uttered a single word. "Leave."
One of the captains of the Royal Army, Sugarboy, was displeased with the sudden interruption and interjected, "Your Majesty, what about-"
Faust looked around the table at this point and decided to cut off all conversation. "The basis of the new law has been laid out. We will show the people of Edolas that we will not tolerate the existence of guilds and mages outside of the Royal Army. The eradication of dark guilds that dare to threaten the peace of our Kingdom will begin as planned. If they refuse, they will have to face the full power of our might. That is all."
No one decided to object after that point.
King Faust watched as Byro closed the door to the council room after the last of the council members had trailed out.
"Is it true?" he asked impatiently. "Has the source been located?"
"The magical technicians have been able to pinpoint the origins of the source that we detected sixteen years ago," he answered. "As we discovered at that time, it is not exactly magical power that we are detecting, but it is a similar type of energy that we should be able to adapt. Until we know for certain how potent it is, I fear we cannot estimate how much power it is. If it was magical power, however, this one source would grant us power for the next ten years. Now that we have been able to lock onto this new world, this would just be the beginning too."
Fause slumped back in his seat, taking deep breaths as he tried to process what the end results of this new discovery could mean. "An entirely new dimension," he breathed, absently massaging his chest. "Is it possible?"
Byro nodded in response. "One must never underestimate the will of magic, your Majesty. It is logical to assume that with this new discovery that there could be hundreds, even thousands of parallel dimensions other than what we've discovered. The possibilities are endless."
Faust suddenly stiffened. "And what of the Anima? Is it compatible to be used with this new dimension?"
Byro's grin faltered for a moment at that question. "We are not sure. It is not a parallel dimension to Edolas, so the only way to know for certain is to attempt it. Our technicians are in the process of charging the machine as we speak. The preparations will be coming to a close within the hour, so it won't be long before we know for certain, your Majesty."
"Very good," Faust stated as he sat up. "I will trust you to see to the extraction from this new world. And if it fails, you will simply have to find out how to adjust the Anima so that it does not fail again. It would not do to focus entirely on this new dimension though. We still have Earthland to contend with, after all. Now, go and make sure that it is going smoothly."
Byro bowed low and verbally agreed to his request, not wanting to say that he had already planned to do so beforehand. The Chief of Staff gave the customary respectful greeting to the King and left.
Naruto Uzumaki was standing across from Konan, watching as she covered Nagato in sheets of paper that formed a cocoon-like shell around him.
He was not sure what to say after her friend had given his life to resurrect all of the people that had died when he attacked the Hidden Leaf Village. He could not honestly apologize since he would have preferred Nagato's death over the deaths of his comrades.
His eyes widened in surprise as she began to cover Nagato's Deva Path's body in the same shell of paper.
"You're taking him too?" Naruto asked. He had to assume that she was taking those bodies with her when she left. It was the only reason he could see for her wrapping them in a material that she had complete control over.
"Deva Path was created from Yahiko's corpse," Konan said as she looked at the young shinobi. "He was very special to us. It would not be right for me to leave him."
"That's Yahiko?" Naruto asked in surprise, though he managed to keep his voice low. He definitely knew who Yahiko was after hearing Nagato's story about his past. In that context, he understood why Konan would take his body with her.
"Yes," Konan said solemnly as she finished forming the shell around the corpse. "He was Nagato's first path."
The pair stayed quiet for a moment after that, but Naruto had a big question that he needed to ask.
"What do you plan to do?" Naruto asked as he stared at the Akatsuki member. "I don't think you're going to return to Akatsuki after this. It just doesn't seem like something you'd do. You followed Nagato because he was your friend, didn't you?"
Konan nodded before she spoke. "I am through with Akatsuki. You misunderstand how close we were. It was not as though we were merely friends. They were everything to me, much like your village is everything to you."
Naruto considered that for a moment. He could not imagine losing everything that meant anything to him. It was simply unthinkable.
"Yahiko's dream… Nagato's dream… they have been entrusted to you. Just as Nagato believed in you, I will believe in you as well. To that end, the Hidden Rain will help you make that dream come true," Konan said with a hint of determination in her voice.
"I also have our sensei's dream to fulfill, and I won't let any of them down. That's what my master and my fellow pupil have given me-" Naruto began, but he stopped suddenly.
"What's that?" he asked as he looked up.
Konan's eyes shot up as well, and she could not help but be shocked as well.
Above them, the clouds seemed to be spiraling around what looked like a hole in the sky.
"This feeling," Naruto muttered as he felt himself being drawn up.
"What could this be?" Konan asked as she too felt herself being drawn up. She did not hesitate as she began to manipulate the paper surrounding her old friends and started to move.
Only a couple of seconds later, Naruto felt the power of Anima.
There was nothing quite like the sensation that he felt as he was literally sucked up into the vortex in the sky. It was only moderately painful, though his definition of moderately painful was what had most people screaming that they wanted to die. But if he was ever to describe the sensation again, he would describe it as having his entirely body stretched as though he was being pulled from both ends, while being lifted into the air and spinning around and around. The only good thing about the sensation was that it only lasted about fifteen seconds.
"What's going on?" Gamabunta asked as he looked into the crystal ball that he had been watching Naruto's fight with the Elder Sage Toad through. "I've never seen a vortex like that in the air.
"This is not good," the Elder Sage Toad said with a grimace. "I am not sure what it can do, Bunta, but I do know this… the future of the shinobi world will become clouded even to me if he is swallowed up by that.
"I need to act fast then," Gamabunta said as he watched Naruto begin to be sucked through the vortex in the sky. He only had one idea of how to save the last toad summoner. He could perform a Reverse Summoning Jutsu.
"Stop," the Elder Sage Toad said grimly. "He has already been brought thought the vortex, and we have no idea how it will affect the vortex. I see nothing but devastation if we attempt to reverse summon him now. We can attempt to reverse summon him later, when it is unlikely that he is still in the vortex."
Gamabunta looked down. Though the Elder Sage Toad offered hope, he simply found it hard to believe that such a thing would end up working.
And he was right.
In his office in the Royal Castle of Edolas, Byro had a noticeable twitch in his right eye. His attention was transfixed on the messenger in front of him. "What does this mean?"
"It's j-just as I reported, sir. T-the Anima malfunctioned," the hooded messenger repeated nervously as he handed a report to Byro. "It appears the Anima was able to enter the new dimension and began to bring something back, but on the reverse trip, it seems to have broken completely apart. Nothing returned here, and the Anima machine broke."
Byro angrily snatched the report away from the messenger and flipped through it. "Get me the technicians!" he snarled, fingers clenched tightly as he crumpled the report with a satisfying crunch.
The messenger remained rooted to the ground. "Sir?"
"You heard me, you fool! Get me the technicians now!" Byro screamed angrily.
"Yes, sir!" The messenger saluted to his superior before he dashed out of the office, getting as far away from the incensed Chief of Staff as possible.
Byro slammed the report on his desk and glared at it.
He had never considered that the Anima would fail. It was a risk, of course. But it was not a risk that he had ever expected.
And to make things worse, it turned out that the Anima machine was unable to handle being used in dimensions that were not parallel to Edolas. This meant that it would have to be fixed, or rebuilt if the damage was severe enough, before it could even be used in Earthland. They would then need to work on strengthening the Anima so that it could handle being used in the new world. Getting it just right would take years at the very least.
The major issue with the situation, however, was that they had managed to lock onto the target that Faust had desired most. Given that the Anima had broken apart before reaching Edolas, that meant that the target was almost certainly lost between dimensions.
Byro gulped nervously, thinking of what awaited him when he explained the situation to Faust.
Thirty years ago, they had discovered a source of nearly unimaginable power in a new dimension, but they had failed to lock in on it due to how underdeveloped the Anima was at the time.
Sixteen years ago, they had discovered a similar source of power that was even more bountiful than the previous one. However, that discovery had occurred in the middle of the night, and the only members of the Anima division that had been present lacked the knowledge as to how to operate the Anima.
Ever since the last incident it had consumed both of their thoughts. Such power would greatly benefit Edolas, after all.
Once Faust learned that it had failed and the primary target was forever out of their reach, he would surely face punishment, the likes of which he would never forget. After all, Faust was not a man to be displeased.
Unfortunately, he could not even stall the information from reaching Faust. The only think that he hated worse than bad news was bad news that had been delayed from reaching his ears.
Once the technicians arrived, he would need to make sure that they had not made a mistake during the process. If they simply made a mistake, then the news would not be as bad.
Unfortunately for him, he would not be able to find anything to blame on anyone else.
Anima was not something intended for transport between dimensions that were not parallel to each other. That was a simple fact that had been accepted by the man who had created it. Unfortunately, Faust had him executed after he created the Anima machine and handed the blueprints for it over to the King of Edolas.
If he had still be around, he could have predicted what would happen if such a thing was attempted. With the quality of the current Anima machine, the Anima would break apart into three or four pieces as it neared Edolas. No one noticed one piece of it appeared in the sky above Edolas, which might have offered answers to the technicians that worked on the Anima machine. The other three pieces, however, actually appeared in the sky above Earthland.
In the sky above the road that ran from Crocus to Magnolia, one of the pieces of the Anima appeared. It was from that broken piece of the Anima that Naruto found himself falling from.
The sensation of free-falling from about three hundred feet in the air was actually a thrilling experience in Naruto's opinion. It was the knowledge that certain death stood at the bottom of that distance that unnerved him.
His first instinct was to pull out Sage Mode since it would enable him to simply destroy what he hit without causing serious harm to himself.
Unfortunately, he was free-falling. A toad might have been able to stay still on the shoulder of a moving person, but Naruto was the only thing moving up there. Absorbing Natural Energy while he was falling was simply not a possibility.
He also thought about drawing on the Kyubi's chakra since it made him quite durable.
Unfortunately, he had gone into his eight tailed state against Pain and did not feel like he could handle drawing on enough of its chakra to form a cloak. If he did not draw on enough to even form a cloak, then it would be pointless though.
Taking a deep breath, he formed his signature hand sign.
"Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu," he said, creating around one hundred shadow clones in front of him.
"Grab onto each other!" Naruto shouted. Before he even spoke, they made their move though. They formed a large wall of clones in front of him by locking their arms and legs together.
Angling himself carefully, Naruto sped to the wall of clones and did a flip mid-air. That allowed him to land on the wall of clones, standing.
As they neared the ground, he used a chakra enhanced jump, allowing him to neutralize a great deal of his momentum and ensuring that the ground was softened by his clones' landing when he reached it.
He still hit the ground hard when he came down from his jump, but if he had just fallen, he would have most likely resembled a pancake instead of simply being sore.
"Where am I?" he asked as he looked around.
"I am not sure."
Naruto's eyes widened as he heard the voice come from the neck of his coat. Glancing down, he saw a small slug climbing out of his coat. He had forgotten that he had a small part of Katsuyu with him.
"Any idea what happened?" he asked.
"I have a suspicion. Please try to summon Gamabunta. If you can, put more than enough chakra into it to summon him," Katsuyu said.
Nodding, Naruto attempted to summon Gamabunta, though he found that he lacked the chakra to put too much into it. Still, he should have easily been able to summon the massive toad.
Instead, he summoned a tadpole that only lasted about ten seconds before it dispelled.
"It is as I thought," Katsuyu said in a tone that conveyed disappointment. "That vortex that you were caught by seems to have sent us to another dimension. It is not something I expected to happen, but it is possible. It is the only thing that can explain my inability to communicate with my other divisions mentally, along with your inability to summon anything bigger than a tadpole. Interdimensional summoning is not something can be done easily."
"Hang on a second," Naruto said with his eyes widening in alarm. "I'm in another dimension? You've got to be kidding me. And where's Konan? She was standing near me, so why isn't she here?"
"I am serious, though I do not know where she is. It is possible that she moved out of its range when she saw the vortex in the sky. My attention was not on her," Katsuyu said patiently. "I will inform Lady Tsunade of what happened once I run out of chakra though. Summons always return to their home when they run out of chakra, so being in another dimension won't stop me from being able to return home. Getting a message to you after I return will not be easy by any means though. I am not sure how we would go about it."
"So in other words, I'm screwed until you guys can find a way to get me back home?" Naruto asked with a frown.
"It might be a good idea for you to try to find a way back as well. If nothing else, it should alleviate some boredom," Katsuyu replied. "Oh, and it might be a good idea if you removed your forehead protector. We do not know anything about this world. Until you do, I would suggest that you do not have any marks of allegiance on you."
"Right," Naruto grumbled as he removed his forehead protector and put it in his hip pouch. "How long do you have until you disappear?"
"I have around an hour," she answered.
"In that case, I'm going to go Sage Mode so I can find out if anyone's around," Naruto said as he sat down. "By the way, do you know anything about what happened when I was fighting Pain?"
"If you are wondering if anyone was harmed when lost control, then the answer is no. To my knowledge, Pain's final act restored everyone to life as well, so even if you had harmed someone when you lost control, they would still have been alive when the vortex caught us," Katsuyu answered.
"That's good to hear," Naruto said before he took a deep breath and began to meditate.
After only a minute, he opened his eyes and rose to his feet in Sage Mode.
"It's time to head to the nearest town. I sense a lot of people not far from here," Naruto said as he began to run.
"Do try to be careful. It would not do for anyone to learn that we are not from this world," Katsuyu said.
"Right," Naruto said with a nervous chuckle. He had actually failed to consider how that might be a big deal to some of the natives.
A/N- This is just an idea that popped into my head when reading great Naruto/Fairy Tail crossovers where Naruto relies solely on his ninja skills. I wanted to see if I could write a decent story like this, so it's kind of experimental for me at the moment. I'm not thinking about a specific pairing right now, but I do have a fairly well thought out plan for it. I'm always open to questions and suggestions though.
Anyways, I have one more chapter already written out. It's about the same length, and I'll post it later.
Hope you liked the chapter, and thanks for giving it a chance.