"Fascinating…"

Naruto tried not to squirm under the inquisitive gaze of the blue-haired teen who reminded him a little too much of Kabuto. Information about him he didn't even know (and for sanity's sake probably didn't want to know) sprouted out of the electrodes hooked all over his body and flashed by the reflections in the scientist's glasses.

He tried looking elsewhere- anywhere around the unfriendly and dimly-lit room that wasn't filled with glowing computer screens and incessantly clacking keyboards that were like a woodpecker to his brain.

Cringing, he wished he hadn't.

The room's only other occupants were far less curious about the newcomer and far more open with their hostile tendencies. To be fair, he had been a little short-tempered with them when he finally arrived on this planet, the long journey not conducive to his patience so long as he was forced to wear that mortifying outfit. So he supposed he could indulge their animosity for a bit.

After all, it wasn't like he wasn't used to it.

What he wasn't used to, and frankly couldn't fathom was the way the living garment's previous owner stared at him from her shaded corner at the back of the room. He could only bring himself to look at her for snippets at a time, but even in those dark flashes could read the emotive teen's face like an open book. And yet, the story may as well have been in a foreign language, its magic realism trying to drown him with unshed tears.

While the 'dog' reminded him of Kabuto, this so named 'Matoi Ryῡko' harkened a combination of Sakura at that 'time of the month', but also strangely enough, her polar opposite Hinata. The minute quiver in her eyes was as unreadable to him as the crimson blush on the Hy ga princess's cheeks. Both indicating an impossibility. An emotion he only ever knew from introspection.

She was looking at him with love, bitter and nostalgic.

No, not him. Senketsu.

That garment he still wore meant more to her than perhaps all Naruto's companions did combine. How could he not see it?

"S-Sentketsu?! Is that really you?"

"Hai." Naruto felt the cloth vibrate around his tensed muscles like a massage chair, but knew the sentient cloth was on the verge of tears, if such creatures could actually cry. "It's… been a while."

Humans, Naruto knew, had no such disabilities. And yet Ryῡko held her own sorrow behind a clenched fist, the fabled scissor blade quivering in her hand like a gauge needle about to burst.

"Yeah… it really has, hasn't it?" She gave a laugh which was halfway to a choked sob. "So, what made you come back? You think I'd still wear you after all this time?"

"You've grown, Ryῡko." Naruto squirmed under the awkward feeling of listening to something he shouldn't (but also the awkward feeling of being the center of attention in such a skimpy outfit). "But I'm sure you could lose enough weight to fit me again…"

While trying respectfully to ignore the reunion, Naruto froze at that seemingly offhanded remark. His previous vindictive strength which caused him to barge in on their ceremony fled in the face of a scorned woman who was showing all the signs of being one second away from ridding herself from the source of her ire. He was tempted to run and cower under a rock somewhere on the many islands he had seen from space, if only the obstinate and oblivious outfit hadn't refused to move from the most dangerous spot in the Academic city, if not the entire world.

"Baka…" He did the only thing he could do, and gulped as he swore he heard the legendarily unbreakable weapons groan under the strain.

"DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I MISSED YOU?!"

"I'M SO SORRY, RYŪKO! I NEVER MEANT TO LEAVE YOU!"

Naruto was less than happy. Sure, he did indeed find out that yes, the living costume could indeed cry, and in fact cascade a waterfall of the salty liquid from its functional lapels. It wasn't made any better by the young woman who was busy trying to drown him with her own waterworks while she embraced her long-lost friend with all her strength to prevent the cosmic forces from tearing them apart again.

And yes, he did survive. But despite what one may think, he did not enjoy this otherwise enviable position for the simple fact that not enough blood could circulate through his body to form a coherent thought. Everything from the waist down being constricted by the two arms groping around his midsection. And he was now very much certain he had heard something break, though with everything in excruciating pain he had a hard time telling what, exactly.

Though she did let go before he passed out, he was given no reprieve from misfortune as she then began trying to forcibly remove the protesting suit from his body, using his head, stomach and other sensitive areas as footholds while trying to wrench the seams free from his flesh.

And the thing was, he couldn't fault her. He even tried helping.

While Satsuki dearly loved her recently reunited sibling and was in fact overjoyed at the return of that dear comrade and friend, there were times when the childish nature of the delinquent girl tested her patience.

"Satsuki-sama?" Her pink-haired subordinate inquired hesitantly, the rest of the abbreviated four on her coattails. "Um… what, if anything, should we be doing?"

Jakuzure flinched back as she saw her friend and leader's distinguished eyebrows twitch in restrained fury.

"Gamagōri…" She all but whispered to the confusion of the other three who clearly saw the large man go flying.

"HAI! HOW MAY I BE OF SERVICE LADY SATSUKI?!"

The rest were nearly bowled over as the very devil flashed next to them, seemingly worse for the wear but also clearly intending to show that duty superseded personal discomfort. For her part, Satsuki took the sudden appearance in her usual, cool stride.

"I need someone to continue the ceremony. It seems like the rest of us will have our hands full dealing with our guest…."

As if sensing he was being talked about, Naruto briefly stopped flailing about, trying to rid himself of the clingy garment, and placed a forceful hand on the female parasite's face to prevent her from doing the same.

"OI! WHAT ARE ALL YOU GUYS STANDING AROUND FOR? HELP US GET THIS THING OFF!"

"So have you figured out why what's-his-face can't remove Senketsu?" The green-haired wanabe samurai leaned over the computer geek's shoulder to inspect him with his curiously sharp eyes.

"I have a name, you know!"

Although in all fairness he had not bothered to remember their introductions either, the only ones he could pick out of a lineup being Ryῡko and her friend, that Mako girl, because Senketsu jabbered on endlessly about them.

"Hmm… I'm rather more surprised he could even put a Kamui on, let alone have problems taking it off." Glasses stated distractedly as his eyes flittered back and forth absorbing information in at an exponential rate. "Unlike Ryῡko, Uzumaki-san does not posses any life-fibers in his body. However…"

"What is it, Inumuta?" Ryῡko's sister, the one in the white military-esque garb commanded while making it sound like a question.

He actually did manage remember Satsuki's name, if only because he couldn't bother to come up with another obvious nickname, 'Bushy-Brows' still being in use.

"I'm not quite sure…" The techie eschewed while he clacked a few more keys that were meaningful only to him. "…but I don't think he's quite human. Are you, Uzumaki-san?"

Naruto smirked in anticipation of the bombshell he was about to drop on these schoolkids.

"Nah, not really. At least, not by your standards."

"I see. Could you elaborate?" Despite the dissecting vibe he got from glasses, he actually liked how the guy indulged him, either intentionally or by accident.

"Well, I guess in your guys's perspective I'm an alien."

The room went silent with that revelation, and not even the snide little girl with the pink hair who could be Sakura's little sister had anything to say. He was just waiting for the thought to be fully processed into all of their heads before he would sit back and watch them explode-

"And?"

He blinked.

"Seriously? Not even a raised eyebrow?" Once again, the glasses-wearing dog catered to his childish whim whilst everyone else gazed stoically at him like he'd given a wrong answer on a verbal exam.

"I take it then, that you do not know about Life-Fibers." Inumuta stated as he pushed his glasses further up on his face and gazed down at Senketsu who was silently watching the whole interrogation with mute interest.

"Kinda," Naruto looked away, telling himself that his chagrin was due to the intense scrutiny of his scantily-clad body and not his obvious ignorance. "Senketsu did try to tell me about them-well, him."

"You can talk to Senketsu?" Ryῡko spoke up for the first time since trying to molest/kill him.

She had been extremely taciturn ever since, a behavior that Naruto could infer from the people around her which was not characteristic of the girl. He tried to find empathy for what she must be going through, but the situation was just too different for him to understand what must be playing through her head.

And he wasn't talking about world-dominating alien threads and talking sailor suits, either.

He didn't want to dislike her, and maybe in another life they could have been friends.

"Hai." Naruto nodded directly at the dark patch where two toothy eyes drilling through him from the darkness.

"Well, you not being from this world would explain quite a bit." Inumuta shattered the glass tunnel which had bridged across them for that brief moment, shifting the conversation off his own ignorance to the impossible data he was receiving. "I'm afraid that you're going to need to tell us a little more about yourself, as your biology is quite different than what I am used to."

Naruto nodded in acquiescence, though caught how the every-stern Satsuki (seriously, she could be Sasuke's long-lost sister or cousin or something!) narrowed her eyes with her underling's admission. Her slit eyes hiding the worried calculations and conspiracies which promised him nothing but trouble.

When telling his past, he didn't know what to expect after their nonplussed attitude the first time around. He himself had seen his fair share of weird shit, and so it was easy enough to accept that these similarly-aged individuals had as well. With only one or two interruptions by the ever-curious Inumuta, and a few disbelieving looks by Satsuki (but with her sternness, it was hard to tell much of a change anyway), they accepted his life story easily enough.

Tactfully edited, of course.

He could tell they weren't sharing everything with him, and even though he was all but naked in front of them (seriously, why couldn't they give him like a hospital gown or something?) he didn't feel like revealing all his secrets just yet.

"So…" Naruto drawled, glancing around the room at people settled into arm chairs, couches and other, more informal roosts, before finally settling his gaze back on the information-whore who was still on the edge of his seat. "Any ideas?"

Where to begin? Underneath that blue mop of hair, synapses were cracking like fireworks, and the dog was overwhelmed with the all stimuli bombarding him from every angle. It was… information overload.

"Oi!"

Naruto had to dive out of his chair in order to catch the catatonic young man before he toppled over into his lap. The others lazily stirred from their own reclines and marveled at his reaction speed, watching as he tipped Inumuta back in his seat like an antique vase.

"Come on! You can't fall asleep on me! You're supposed to be the guy that can help me out!"

"I don't think we're going to get much more use out of the puppy today." Bubble-gum snarked, and he could tell she was laughing at the both of their misfortunes.

"But-but-but-but-!"

"The Garden-snake's right." Samurai-punk ignored the facetious look of shock on her face due to him agreeing with her, as he plucked the blue-haired boy from his seat and carried him under his arm like a briefcase. "Just give his brain some time to chew on this for a little bit. You've given us quite a bit to think about as well, and while I'm sure Lady-Satsuki will come up with something it'll still take time. After all, Tokyo wasn't built in a day."

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?!" Naruto yelled in exasperation before turning to everyone else in the room in turn with a pleading (deranged) expression on his face.

He couldn't understand why everyone whose gaze he held looked at him with such indifference. How could they resist his dreaded Puppy-Eye-no-Jutsu?! Sure, he didn't expect much from Satsuki, or Pinkie, for that matter. Inumuta was unavailable and the Jolly-Green-Samurai already had his back turned. But surely Ryῡko-

She paused in the doorway next to her sister, only to look back at his hangdog act with the first expression he couldn't begin to disassemble. Her eyes, those strange mechanical chemistries grinding past his outstretched arms and into the immutable pattern of Senketsu. She looked like she wanted to say something, mouth cracked and hymnal versus ready to flow freely.

But then it snapped shut like a guillotine, and those unflinching eyes steam-rolled over him with ridges and runnels masticating his every attempt at reason.

"I swear…" Her voice was gritty and laced with such pain that he was tempted to feel sorry for her in spite of his own circumstance. "I will get Senketsu back from you. Even if I have to rip him off of your corpse."

He had nothing to say, nor feel, about that.

"You'll stay here tonight." Satsuki informed him with unfeeling eyes as Ryῡko turned on her heel and disappeared past the portal. "It was good that you were so forthright with us, and allowed us to run our tests without trouble. However, you are still very much a potential danger to not only this school, but the population in general. So I'm afraid that I cannot in good conscience let you roam free while still in possession of such a dangerous weapon."

She said this with the most callous voice Naruto had every heard, as if she had practiced this very speech from when she was still in diapers. The only sign of regret he could even guess that she possessed was when she referred to Senketsu as a 'weapon'. It was clear she held more respect for the garment than that, and far more for it, than him.

Nothing more said on either side, the door slammed shut with a cold clunk and the nautical bulkhead sealed down tight with a heavy squeal from without.

And Naruto was left alone in the darkness.

Well, not quite.

"I am sorry, Naruto-kun. I did not think that it would go like this."

The young man sighed but did not otherwise respond as he carefully propped himself up against the cool, coarse cement wall and crossed his arms and legs. He shivered as he stared absently at the ground, the revealing garment doing nothing to retain his otherwise abundant body heat. And not for the first time, he cursed his fickle luck.

But then let it go.

After all, it wasn't like he wasn't used to it.

…

So, um yeah…

I get the feeling that some of you guys out there like it so far. While I appreciate that greatly, this recent update is more because I found the inspiration (and free time) rather than out of a sense of duty. I'm trying a new schedule of writing called "whenever I feel like it" as opposed to the previous deadlines I set myself.

Now I know what some of you may be thinking… 'oh no, that basically means that he's just going to up and quit halfway through like everyone else'. But let me assure you, that's not who I am. For those of you who have followed me from before, you must know by now that I follow through on my promises no matter how long it takes. And so far, I think I've done a fairly good just at doing just that.

So, like you, I too know the pain of having an author abandon something just when it gets good, and I will do whatever is in my power to not do that here. I cannot deny that I have taken my inspiration from some of the few other stories in this category, but at the very least I hope to deliver some substance along with an interesting premise.

All in all, just know not to expect such quick turn around as the norm. I sear this is a one-time thing.

I think.

Oh, and just a little shoutout to all my guest reviewers from both here and other fics. I love you guys very much, but I still wish you would review with you profile so I can answer your reviews directly instead of relying on my memory when it comes down to the AN. Yeah, I know that's just me being lazy, but it's the same for you guys too. And I think author lazy trumps reader lazy.

But seriously, you guys still rock.

~Mañana