Hello! It's a me, Phantompenance! Man, that sounds cooler with Mario

Anyway, I'm back and really digging the reviews I got, especially from that mysterious (and no doubt handsome) devil who thought I was great at my hobby, can anybody identify him for me?

Anyway, due to the obvious reports of NarutoxKorra being completely stale, this Naruto pairing has officially become… undecided!

More reviews if you want him to be paired with someone

Anyhoot, Enjoy and Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING.

Chapter 3: Journey Begins when the Lies End

"…..don't know what's going on with him-"

"…been confirmed. A disease, so rare it doesn't even have a name…."

"-They requested Master Katara personally, did not hold any concern for the Avatar's training…"

Voices. So unfamiliar, so….emotional, but for what? For who?

"Out of the way, all of you," It was an elder this time, female by the sound of it.

"M..Master Katara! You shouldn't concern yourself with matters as trivial as this, you should be teaching the Avatar." A younger male voice stumbled.

"Don't worry. Korra refused to train until Naruto was alright, and assuming he's still out of it, I'm assuming he's not alright."

A door opened and closed from behind as heavy footsteps followed.

"You should be training the Avatar, Master Katara. This facility has more than enough healers to handle this….inconvenience." A different voice declared. This one was cloaked with a sense of strict discipline, he felt comfortable being the commander.

"It's nice to see the head of the facility has the ability to leave his office every now and then," Katara's voice was laden with sarcasm, the man did not reply.

"Avatar Korra's training session has not ended yet, a single distraction from her duties can potentially wreck her entire training regimen and stunt her progress to becoming a fully realized Avatar altogether."

"This boy is my student as well, and if you continue to get in my way like this, his progress to becoming a Master waterbender will cease. Permanently." The old lady argued back

"Your concerns for the boy has blinded you from your obligations, Master Katara. The World needs its Avatar as fast as we can manage and the Avatar needs your skills to train her. All other distractions will simply have to be handled by someone else, us."

Katara did not reply at all, rather, she gave an exasperated sigh.

"This is a waste of time arguing. I'm kindly asking you to get out, before I make you get out."

Silence reigned in the room. The supposed unconscious blond could practically taste the unease that had covered all the occupants.

"Master….that is illegal and you know it." The Head Lotus replied slowly

"It's a full moon tonight," Katara replied in a sweet voice, layering the hidden threat, "Do you want to try your luck?"

"…Thirty minutes. Then we handle it."

With that, the door opened again and there was the loud shuffling of feet, a few pairs were quicker than others to leave the room.

The door closed and Katara gave a laugh. "Now I see why Toph loves doing that."

Some time later…

The adopted blonde awoken from his slumber as refreshed as he could ever be, albeit a little sore in his throat. The bed he was in was really soft, too soft to be his own, so he wasn't in his room, probably still at the Lotus compound.

He turned his head sideways as the bones in his neck popped from lack of use, Master Katara and his fa….. adoptive family, that is, were all dozing in chairs.

"What's going on here, ya know?" Tonraq heard the boy speak first since he had the sharpest ears and woke his wife shortly after, though Korra took a little persuading.

When Senna started tearing up, Naruto bristled, she was gonna go on a spill about 'losing her favorite baby boy' and totally embarrass him to the Spirit World!

(let it be known, even though Naruto doesn't consider himself part of the family, the same cannot be said by Senna)

"Nice of you to wake up, my favorite knuckleheaded pupil," Katara chuckled, Naruto was still rubbing his arm after Korra had mercilessly beat it blue when she woke up.

"What happened, Sifu?" The boy asked naturally, "Seems I was wrong about you. You were sick, really sick. It was tricky trying to cure you since waterbending heals wounds, and not all diseases are wounds, especially this one." The lady wisely answered

Naruto nodded thoughtfully, it made sense, but it would pay if learned how to heal in case something like that ever happened to him again, or his precious people.

"Sifu Katara, can we skip to the healing part of my training please? I gotta learn how to defend myself from this stuff."

Everyone in the room closed their mouths and began to stare back and forth at each other, their silence was a bit unnerving to the boy, and that quickly escalated in his brain. Was it something he said? Was skipping through training some type of dishonor to teachers? If so then he could be contempt with just waiting, anything to keep him learning how to bend, to fight.

"What's the matter?" He finally gathered the courage to ask aloud.

Katara sighed, not one of her weary but patient sighs, these were the kind of sighs that were paired with the worst of news, "Your condition…. was far more serious than even I could anticipate."

"It was still bad, but I guessed you had at least a week without proper treatment, but I didn't think how fast it would progress when my bending hastened it. Soon, a week turned to days, then that turned to a hour at most. You weren't just sick, you were dying."

Those words were like a hammer! Dying? Him? He was too young to almost die, hadn't seen that much, and definitely accomplished less….

Dying?

"We had to work fast, we did everything we could to try to stabilize you, but we didn't have much and time was running out. Finally, I found the source of the problem." She declared.

"The disease wasn't as physical as I thought, but rather Spiritual. Your energy was mixing with some... some foreign substance I had never seen before. And it was draining you out."

"That's why I've felt so tired all the time!" Naruto exclaimed in realization, his master nodded.

"So the Lotus and I theorized that separating this substance with your energy would save your life, but even that was difficult. Holing up the substance would be an instant death for you, we had to revive you to learn that, so we did the second best thing and… isolated your energy."

Naruto blinked once, blinked twice, then grabbed his hair, "Stop using big words, I don't understand!"

Katara forced a grim smile, it would be as hilarious as always if the situation wasn't so grim.

"Your energy is the source of your bending, remember Avatar Aang took Fire Lord Ozai's energy so he couldn't bend anymore? Your energy is sealed away so that it doesn't mix with the other stuff and kill you again. You can't access your energy, therefore, you… can't bend."

Oh.

"I'm so sorry there wasn't another way….." at that point, Naruto's former Sifu was only wasting her words

Many months later….

Summer had left and winter took its place. Then spring, summer, and winter again. Weddings were hosted, new friends were made, school was over then begun anew, time had taken place.

Naruto's sixth birthday had gone and passed, the boy found himself thinking in the cold snow, he did that a lot since-ya know- he wasn't really good for anything else. His inability to bend the element that surrounded him made him feel hollow and broken, incomplete.

The realization would hit him like cold water, the realization that he couldn't stop that water anymore, and he would look ridiculous trying to.

He was crippled, all his favorite past times were taken from him, his pranking ability was ripped from him, without waterbending, the world got all dark and scary for the boy, and his school mates weren't tired of reminding him about it.

He'd constantly get teased on how he was too weak to keep his precious bending, there was a reason why Tonraq and Senna were called for his fighting behavior.

Korra was just swell. She said she was sorry and he did truly believe her, but then she returned to learning all four bending with her usual eagerness. She was goading him, he knew it!

Since the boy's brooding nature was taking a startling increase, he had seen several shrinks and they all told him the same thing: go get a hobby. So that was what he did, he learned how to properly wield a knife amongst other weaponry.

He was small for his size, and pair that with speed and agility, he could be a force to reckon with for non-benders.

Besides fighting, he took the hobby of thinking by himself, he was surprised of how many personal issues he thought about. This thinking led him to doubting everything close to him, questioning if it was really his or pretending to be his. Like his adoptive parents.

They claimed to love him, and they probably believed it themselves, but their door was not sound proof. He heard every word they said, about how he reminded them of his parents, and how they wished they could save them like his parents did to them several years back.

So was that all he was, salve to their guilty conscience? Would they helped him as they have if they had never met his parents!?

OR were they pitying him, of his misfortune? Could he be so dependent upon them, that he was nothing without his adoptive parents and his Avatar sister?

Sadly, these questions were not paired with answers, the answers were the type that needed to be found from the furthest corners of the world, in the dark and tight spaces of the deep.

That is why he would find them, that is why he was sneaking onboard the supplies ship from the famous Republic City.

He will get answers, but they did not hide in the safety of his bed.

Third Chapter Completed!

That was some deep stuff! I'll do my usual, but first, let me explain myself. Naruto's condition is not permanent, just a part of my beautiful, insidious, master plan.

Reason why Katara had never seen chakra was because she's never dealt with it on that deep of a level. I've blended the concept of chakra between Naruto and Avatar. In Avatar, chakra was the gates that energy flowed through (like Lee and Gai!), my chakra will just be the liquid form of that.

Also, Katara threatening the Lotus with some blood bending. Personally, I think she could do it. Yeah, it's illegal, but seriously, how good is Katara with rules?

Anyway, sit tight my fans, the action is coming next chapter! I had to get through the back story and psychological stuff first, and I'm trying to decide how I'm gonna write a bending fight scene, that's kinda hard.

Quick Spoilers ahead: Naruto meets the Sato family, joins the Triple Threat, and meets a mentor in the form of a Naruto character! ALSO RAMEN NEXT!

As Jedi Master Gai would say: May the youth be with you, always