Mostly Human II
- The Chip on Your Shoulder
The day that Uzumaki Naruto died ended like this.
From the window, one could see the blood-red sky, the brightest it had been in weeks. Hellhounds snapped saliva dripping jaws at the heels of their masters on the ice-paved streets, and Naruto was gibbering in his new dorm bed.
"How is he?" Something like a very small plane or a very large fly alighted on the open window, shaking out its wings and stepping into the room.
"Hello, Ino. He'ss been like thiss ssince he came to sschool."
An annoyed mutter, then, "Thanks for watching him, Hinata. I'll take over now."
"Okay."
"..."
"Hinata?"
"Yess?"
"Kiba was looking for you."
"Oh! Of coursse. Thank you."
The door open and shut as Hinata left blushing, and a disembodied voice remarked, "You'll 'ave a 'ard time wit' 'im, blondie."
"Really? You think so?"
"The girl was tryin' ta wake 'im afore."
"Well. Hinata is no Yamanaka Ino." Knuckles cracked, and the door laughed.
"Good luck."
"Thank you. I won't need it.
"UZUMAKI NARUTO!"
Naruto yelped as hands grabbed his shoulders and flipped him over. He found himself staring into a pair of way-too-close-for-comfort blue eyes and wondered wildly if it were a mirror.
"You wish." A girl's voice. Naruto coloured rapidly, and turned pale twice as quickly. This girl, pretty as she was with her long blond ponytail slipping over her bare shoulder, and certainly more normal looking than the Alligator creature he'd seen in the classroom, was definitely not human. Eerie blue veins crawled lazily over all visible parts of her skin, and huge leathery wings were folded tightly to her back. She tapped a long, lethal looking nail to his forehead and he winced, flinching back.
"You're such a wimp," she snapped, stepping back and grabbing his wrists when he tried to edge away, "Reacting like this to your Chip. You're luckily I wasn't there when you fainted, of all things, and at the sight of sweet old Mizuki-sensei, or I would've--"
Mind reeling with the speed that the girl talked, Naruto latched onto word 'chip' like it was a lifeline. "My chip?" he stammered, "Y-you mean like, Doritos?"
"No I don't mean like Doritos! Gods above, Naruto, I never knew you were this slow!" She yanked him from the bed and dragged him to the rickety old chair by the desk in the corner.
"I- Don't call me stupid!"
She gave him an exasperated look. "Whatever. Let me see it." She grabbed his chin with her fingers and tiled his head up, exposing his throat and the black ribbon that he still wore. Naruto flinched at the press of her sharp nails on his skin, but her grip was... gentle.
"We have so much work to do," she muttered finally, releasing him. Naruto shuffled back slightly, and watched as she stepped back and sat on the bed.
"...?"
"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" Naruto demanded, when it finally came to him that their silent conversation was going nowhere fast.
She regarded him for a moment, and then a familiar looking grin slipped onto her face. "My name is Yamanaka Ino."
Naruto nodded, beaming. Introductions, he could deal with that. He declared, "Well, I'm the great--"
"I know exactly who you are, Naruto."
"Huh? How--?"
"I'm your Chip, I'm supposed to. And before you ask, you're in hell."
"Hell?" Naruto said blankly, and then burst out laughing, "AHAHAHAHAHAHA yeah right! C'mon, you can't be serious. Hey, hey, where's the camera? This is a joke, right?"
Ino huffed, and something smacked Naruto upside the head.
"Ow!" Rubbing his head, Naruto looked around wildly. "What hit me?"
"A Chip, or Customary Intruder and Introverted Personality," Ino recited, ignoring his question completely, "is a facet of an individual's personality, commonly the hidden or suppressed parts. Here, a Chip is also a student's supervisor and personal manager, responsible for the student's well being and ensuring that the student is well on their way to Rising."
"So, a conscience," Naruto summarized correctly, "But what's the last bit mean?"
Ino glowered at being upstaged. At the presence of naivete she impressed from his mind, she finally relented and said resignedly, "If you want to put it that way. Anyway, I'm here to make sure you go to Heaven."
"...But I'm not dead," Naruto pointed out desperately.
"Yes you are."
"Am not!" He argued loudly, "I know for sure I wasn't hit by that truck!"
"That's true," Ino admitted, "Or else you'd be bleeding all over the place. Lucy likes to leave everyone in their 'original states in order to give a sense of realism despite the other worldly horrors', but we all know he just likes scaring the newbies."
"Who's Lucy?"
"Lucifer, as known as Satan. His form changes every once in a while, but at the moment I heard he's some kind of an animal."
"..." Naruto face twisted in thought, before he shook his head and dove right back into his I'm-not-dead argument, "But hey, hey, if I wasn't hit by the truck then obviously I'm not dead so this was all a horrible mistake so let's just forget about it, I'm sure we'll look back and laugh some day so let me back to Earth now!"
"You weren't hit by the truck, but you're still dead."
"...How'd I die?" Naruto asked gingerly.
To his surprise, Ino bit her lip and buried her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably.
"Um. Are you...okay?" Taken aback, Naruto edged towards the bed and sat next to Ino carefully, like she might be a bomb about to go off.
In response, she shivered and shook her head mutely. Choked, muffled sounds could be heard from between her hands.
"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Naruto offered. His brow creased, worried. In what gruesome way did he die, if she had such a big reaction to it? He patted himself down, feeling for abnormalities. She had said that peoples' bodies stayed the same...
Naruto bolted upright and ran to the open door he guessed led to the washroom. He looked to the wall above the sink, heart racing, tense and anticipating a vision of himself as a grotesque and bleeding mess with parts falling off--
"...Ino," Naruto called, puzzled, "Don't people in hell put mirrors above their sinks?"
"'f course they do. Not speaking, 'f course, fer a certain fish demon."
"Who said that!?" Naruto turned at the strange voice, looked back into the room, but there was only Ino, wiping at her eyes.
"Over 'ere, kiddo. Th' door." There was a giggle.
Naruto stared at the bright designed painted on the door. Now that he was looking again, it did oddly resemble a pair of lips... "You talk?"
There was a silence that seemed be a shrug. "Stranger thin's, righ'?"
"...I guess so," Naruto mumbled. "But hey, hey! This mirror's broken or something, cuz that definitely isn't me!" He pointed to the image above the sink.
"Much too bad for you that it is," Ino said, looking fully recovered. She leaned on the doorway to the bathroom and said cheerfully, "You came to hell because you had demon blood."
Naruto stared from her to the door, and then whirled to the mirror and leaned as close as he could without smushing his face into it. His hair had been bleached before, but now it appeared entirely natural (he decided he could check, later), and stood up in gravity-defying spikes, amidst which there was a pair of large ears. They twitched when he poked them too hard with his newly clawed hands. His eyes were bluer even than Ino's, their pupils slit. He opened his mouth and tongued his fangs as his two tails curled apprehensively around his legs.
The mirror flashed, like a wink. A girl's voice, not Ino's, cooed appreciatively, "Not bad, cutie"
"Hey, hey!" Naruto found his new body lighter, easier to handle. It was like a brand new, really expensive sports car that was manual instead of automatic. Confusing at first, and hard to get used to, but a shiny new toy that was hard not to like. He caught up easily to Ino, who fluttered a foot or two above the ground and hadn't bothered waiting for him to gather the guts to jump over the Pits (as far as he could gather, they were something like Eternal Damnation/Detention, and that falling into one was Not A Good Thing). "Where are we going?"
"After your little fainting episode," Ino said, and gave him a disapproving look, "Headmaster-sama suggested that you can have today off, but don't even think about ditching class. I'm taking you to meet him."
"It's not like I meant to," Naruto grumbled, somewhat upset that his plans to ditch class had been disrupted so early on. He recovered quickly, and asked curiously, "What's the Headmaster like?"
Ino stopped so abruptly that Naruto nearly crashed into her-- not a smart thing to do, considering that at the height Ino was flying at, Naruto would find his face first somewhere in the vicinity of her backside, and quickly afterwards in the vicinity of the Pits.
"...He's like you," Ino said finally, before completely refusing to explain any further. She continued on their way, speeding up enough that Naruto had to jog to catch up. He paced a few steps behind her for a while, squirming in the odd silence.
Naruto's steps echoed in the empty halls. He peered periodically into the windows of classrooms, and was amazed by what he saw in nearly every room. Creatures he'd though were only mythical, creatures that could never be imagined, ones that looked almost entirely human-- the hard part wasn't accepting the reality before his eyes, but figuring out which were the students and which just... weren't.
"But hey, you never told me what this is for. " Naruto said, when he couldn't take the quiet anymore. He pointed to the black ribbon around his neck. He hadn't tried, but he had a feeling it wouldn't come off.
"You would be right," Ino answered his thoughts again. "And yes, I always know what you're thinking. This is the Humanities Wing," She gestured vaguely down a hallway as they passed it. Naruto peeked into a classroom and spotted several 'students' crowded around a tiny dragon who was barfing cotton candy. "The black ribbon is a system developed to track a student's Demonic and Angelic aura--"
"What're they supposed to be learning?" He interrupted. As Ino stopped to wave over a dark haired girl, Naruto stood on tiptoe to look into another class. Everyone was crowded around the figure of a shapely girl, who appeared to be singing. Naruto strained his now more sensitive ears to hear something that seemed beautiful, captivating, like a siren-song...
A sharp smack brought his back to his senses. He rubbed his head pittifully, turning his pained expression to Ino's flushed one. "Never you mind, you'll find out if you take the class." Ino took the arm of the other girl as she approached. "Now, Naruto, this is Hinata."
The pale girl bowed shyly. She peeked up at him and 'eep'ed, blushing and looking down when she met Naruto's gaze.
Was he really that scary looking? Naruto wondered. Some of the other students he'd seen were definitely weirder looking than him-- even this Hinata. White protrusions-- her ribs?- poked out from her back in x-shapes, spanning the line of her spine and leading to a pair of short knives, criss-crossed in their sheathes just below the small of her back. She didn't have any pupils, and her eyes were entirely white. Naruto didn't know how he knew where she was looking, but he did.
"Uh, hey, Hinata-chan!" Naruto greeted. He hesitated and stuck out a hand, "It's nice to meet you."
It shouldn't have been possible to turn any redder, but Hinata managed it, and Naruto felt something like a cool, miniscule breeze on his fingertips. He realized that it had been her hand in his when Ino coughed meaningfully, and retracted his hand sheepishly.
"Hinata's family are descendants of the White Bone Spirit in the Monkey King legend," Ino introduced. "She was watching over you when you were in bed."
"Oh!" Naruto smiled, hopefully friendily, "Thanks, Hinata-chan!"
"...n..nn..." Hinata's blush grew exponentially with every millisecond that Naruto kept his eyes on her; it crept down her neck, up to the tips of her ears, down past the wide collar of her fur rimmed jacket. It contrasted kind of weirdly with her bleach-white bones, he thought nervously. It was also really creepy.
Naruto blinked.
"...Where did she go?" he asked blankly.
"She's... shy," Ino sighed, prodding at Naruto with her foot, "She'll be in one of your classes, so you can try to thank her again later. Do not tell her that she looks creepy. You won't live to regret it."
He was never going to get used to that. "Hey, don't read my mind whenever you feel like it--"
"Hurry up now," Ino carried on, as if Naruto hadn't spoken, "We can't be late to meet the Headmaster."
As it turned out, the Headmaster's office was only down the hall and around the corner from where they'd run into Hinata. There was a tall, imposing door, brass, with statues on top and to the sides of it. A figure on the top, angled in a strange, comtemplative-looking pose, flickered it's eyes open to focus on Naruto and Ino.
"One moment, please," it said simply. Its eyes closed briefly, and then it boomed somehow politely, "The Headmaster will see you now."
Another weird secretary, Naruto thought, suddenly breathless as the door crept open. Somehow, he was dizzy from lack of air that he didn't need, everything having rushed out of him all at once. The pure unadulterated feeling that flooded him shook his very being. It wasn't anticipation, or anger, or hatred, or love, or any other of those placid, cruel emotions.
It was cold, hard fear, smoldering down his throat and into his stomach, freezing his lungs, his blood, and his heart.
A/N: I gave Hinata a hiss
And I promise this is the last time I will use the "the day Naruto died" line. Probably.
Review?