A/N: Hi there awesome reader, here's chapter 3 for ya. I've really enjoyed writing the story so far, and I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much too, which would be great to hear. Anyhow as always please leave a review if you can, I appreciate all of them. Enjoy ^_^
Kiba's P.O.V
'I... can't see anything, It's so dark. Where am I?'
'Akamaru?' The lone boy shouted, looking for his companion in the dark abyss he was lost in.
'Mom? Sis?' He still shouted, yet again no response was given...
'Anybody?!'
The Darkness began to recede
Light filled the empty void that he was lost in, sheltering him in its soothing energy.
He thought he saw the brilliant Sun, his savior in his greatest hour of need.
He was half-right. He saw a beautifully divine figure gracefully walk towards the frightened dog-nin.
It was shining like the Sun indeed, but its Cerulean Eyes and brilliant smile was also worth notice.
Was it... Naruto?
He stared in awe at the divine person, wondering why it, if it was Naruto, managed to save him.
But when the being embraced Kiba, holding him and warming his body and soul alike
Kiba felt a buzzing feeling in his soul, something... different.
Kiba arose from his strange yet deep sleep, trying to make sense of what it was about. He checked his digital clock on the Something was up, and Kiba was sure of it.
"W-Why was I in a dark world? And why was it Naruto who rescued me from it..." He said to himself, trying to fit the pieces behind the perplexing yet vivid dream he just woke up from.
He laid there in his bed for around 10 minutes trying to figure out which caused such a mysterious dream. He decided it best to recall the days events to try to see if anything caused it.
And that's when it hit him, he remembered barely anything earlier in the day.
4 Hours before: he remembered waking up normally, eating breakfast and getting dressed as he would do any other morning, no different from before. It was a slightly cloudy day, but nothing out of the ordinary. He traveled to the Hokage tower to see if he could ask a mission from Tsunade. On his way he saw Team Guy with Lee and Tenten and spoke with them for 10 minutes or so. Lee enthusiastically spoke about a new Taijutsu he was learning, along with Tenten who also slightly spoke of hers, but he didn't pay much attention to either one. He passed them and walked down a largely empty street, and then turned right.
But then he remembered nothing. Blank. Not until he was on his knees being supported by Naruto at the training grounds.
"What the hell happened?!" he questioned, completely confused to what happened that caused his memory to lapse. Akamaru came bowling through the bedroom door, alerted by his masters shout.
"Arf, Arf! – What are you shouting about?" Akamaru barked, worried at his master's actions.
"Nothing, just woke up from a nightmare, that's all…" which was partially true; except he didn't want to tell his beloved companion anything until he was sure himself.
"Arf…- I don't think I believe you..." The dog whined, wanting to get answers.
"Whatever, now leave me for a sec I need to be alone for a while..."
The dog simply huffed and walked out the door, leaving his master be. It was unusual for Kiba to send his canine companion away from him, but right now he didn't need the added distraction.
Kiba deliberated on what to do, as he needed to figure out what caused such a big gap in his memory.
"It must be something major if the last thing I remembered was being kneeling on grass... feeling weakened in a completely different place…wait, Naruto was there..."
He came up with a conclusion that didn't need much deliberating; It also may have partly explained his dream and why the person, which could have been Naruto, saved him:
"I need to find Naruto."
Naruto's P.O.V
It was 2pm, and Naruto sat at his favorite ramen bar, Ichiraku's, with Sakura and Sai. They were indulging in general conversation, making the most of their little reunion, mainly from being on missions away from each other recently. Sakura opted for a Chicken & Egg ramen, Sai had decided to bring his own food: plain Tofu, and of course Naruto was enjoying two extra pork miso ramen bowls. It was a relaxing atmosphere with 3 teammates just enjoying a break, but you could always count on Naruto to spice things up.
He was wondering with Kyuubi if it would be best to tell Sakura and Sai of what happened earlier that day.
"Kyu?"
'What is it kit?'
"Should I tell these guys? I mean I don't know if I should or not" he inwardly admitted, worried that telling them could manage to make things more complicated.
'We need all the help we can get Kit, the pink banshee could perhaps research into any cases of people being possessed, while Sai could go to The Foundation and access a whole bank of knowledge there.' Kyuubi said with almost certainty.
Naruto smiled to himself "You're right, I can trust them to help!" his smile turned into a grin, gaining a few raised eyebrows from his team. Sakura especially was slightly taken back by Naruto's neurotic grinning.
"Are you OK Naruto?"
"Well, kind of..." he said, trying to lure his team into helping him.
"What's wrong old chum?" Sai chirped in; his awful social skills rearing its ugly head.
"Sakura, Sai, I need you guys to help me with something, and it's important" the blonde said with a hint desperation.
"I knew you were bothered about something, whats up?" Sakura asked.
Naruto was ready to do a lot of explaining to his team "OK, listen to me carefully 'cause I'm NOT repeating the whole thing!"
...
After 10 minutes of explanation, hand gestures and a bout of shouting: Naruto told them about Kiba's apparent possession and the nature of the chakra, much to the surprise and shock of his teammates. However they were both somewhat happy that Naruto told them though, as the blonde's trust issues usually stopped anything like that happening.
"God Naruto... thank Kami you had Kyuubi to tell you of his possession, or you wouldn't have released him from the Jutsu in time!" Sakura exclaimed, thankful to Kyuubi in helping Naruto out so well.
"Hey, I'm the great Naruto Uzumaki! I knew he was possessed from the start!" he pouted, lying in a bid to try to keep his pride.
'What?!' Kyuubi erupted with huge amounts of chakra, causing inner Naruto to almost cower with fright.
'You little dobe tell them the truth!' the fox roared, in a blind rage that she herself couldn't tell them the truth.
"OK OK she helped!" the blonde cried out, trying to appease the furious fox.
However all that Sakura and Sai saw was his face turn from proud to terrified in a matter of seconds, already giving them the impression that Kyuubi wasn't happy.
"Well... I'll leave you to have a deep talk with the nine-tails then Naruto, I'll stop by the Hospital tomorrow to check the files as I got a mission tonight, so I guess I'll see you guys later!" Sakura waved goodbye to Naruto and Sai after paying her bill.
"Well I really do hope you and nine' have a profound, meaningful conversation then Naru, my loving companion!" Sai beamed with his sickly sweet smile, while terribly overdoing the complements as always.
He continued, "I'll go to the ANBU Research Center right away, I'll find you if I get anything on mind-controlling Genjutsu's! Good bye Naru!"
"It's Naruto! *sigh* yeah see you Sai." The blonde somberly replied, his new nickname draining him already.
The blonde ordered another bowl of Ramen so he could try to fill his bottomless pit of a stomach, whilst trying to find leads on who controlled Kiba by himself for once. Kyuubi kept intruding on his thoughts but Naruto told her to leave him be for a while, much to the already angered-fox's annoyance.
Another person entered the Ramen bar whilst he was still deep in thought. He didn't bother looking to see who it was as he was already trying to fit some pieces, however little they were, of the situation together in his head. It usually takes a lot to normally break Naruto out of this "deep thinking" mode, but certain circumstances can cause it to happen far lot faster than usual. A hand touched Naruto's right shoulder and at first he still didn't respond, but once he heard the gruff voice of a familiar and handsome person, he snapped back into reality straight away.
"Naruto, what the hell happened earlier."
Naruto's eyes shot open and he turned towards Kiba, who looked tired and disturbed to say the least.
"K-Kiba? What are you doing here?" The blonde allowed Kyuubi back into his conscience, namely so she could snap him out of 'Hinata Syndrome' if needed.
"I need you to give me answers Naruto, what the hell happened earlier?" The brunette sounded pretty desperate for Naruto to tell him what happened, did he already know something was off?
"Kyu, should I tell him everything now?!" Naruto inwardly panicked, as he didn't know if telling Kiba he was possessed and could still be at risk of it again would go down particularly well with the Inuzuka.
"Go for it Kit, he'll find out sooner or later. But the sooner we can find a way to protect him from any more possessions, the better!" The fox encouraged.
Naruto took a deep sigh to compose himself. Kiba took note of the blondes body language and instantly had negative thoughts in his mind from then on,
'at least I'm ready for the worse' the brunette thought, trying to comfort himself.
"I... don't quite now how to say this Kiba but." the blonde paused. "You were possessed... and... heh..."
"y-you kinda, almost tried to kill me." Naruto looked Kiba in the eyes to try to get the message across; that this was serious and had to be dealt with.
"W-Wait.. what?!" Kiba almost yelled, earning a few concerned looks by customers in the bar.
"We shouldn't really talk here, people will hear us and that's the last thing we need to add to our problems." Naruto said in a professional way, thanks to Kyuubi repeating 'Repel Hinata'.
Kiba hesitated for a moment while holding back the urge to demand Naruto for information on the spot, as he wasn't known for being a patient and quiet teen. He eventually nodded to Naruto who then stood up from the bar, paid his bill and said goodbye to Old man Teuchi. Naruto led Kiba towards the center of town where he planned on going to a certain place of knowledge, thanks to Kyuubi pointing it out.
"Are you going to tell me whats going on Naruto? This better not be some stupid joke!" the brunette accused.
"No it's not a joke! We're going to the Jutsu archives." Naruto replied, seeing as there was no point in giving a detailed account as it was pretty self-explanatory - they were going to try to find mind-controlling Jutsu.
"But what if it wasn't an ordinary Jutsu?!" The brunette burst out, "I doubt they're going to publish a scroll of a mind-controlling Jutsu for public use!"
"We could just check the restricted section then silly." the blonde unwittingly winked at Kiba. The Inuzuka looked confused by it, which made Naruto realise he must have acted pretty flirtatious. He mentally scolded himself for doing that, as he didn't wanna scare the brunette away.
'Kit, save the flirting for later!'
'I-I weren't flirting! My eye just... twitched."
'Hmm, right...'
Whilst Naruto argued with Kyuubi, Kiba however felt a weird feeling again in his stomach.
'This is just like how it felt in the dream... how strange.'
Kiba however shook it off and attributed it to hunger, as he didn't get to eat any lunch as Naruto dragged him away from Ichiraku's. He saw Naruto was blushing and looked away, not willing to look Kiba in the eye for some reason. At first he found it odd, but shook that off too.
"Is everything Ok Nar?"
"Y-Yeah, I'm fine. The archive is that way."
Naruto turned right and followed a stone path for 5 minutes with Kiba following closely behind, they saw the Jutsu Archive building: a huge brick landmark which looked prestigious too match, and entered through the grandeur entrance. They both began to walk on the marble floors of the archives to the other end of it, which they assumed was where the restricted section was. It took around 5-10 minutes due to the extensive collection of Jutsu and aisles that stretched seemingly on for miles. They eventually saw a metal clad door at the far-back wall of the archives, reinforced with various steel chains apparently leading to their desired destination.
RESTRICTED SECTION
"Um, we didn't really think about the possibility of the restricted section actually being restricted, did we? hehehe..." Naruto scratched the back of his head as his nervous laugh was clearly showing.
"Don't say "we" as this was your idea moron, you just told me to follow you!" Kiba rolled his eyes as he realized his blonde friend was called a Knucklehead for a reason at times.
"OK, let's just both focus and think of how we can solve this!" Naruto calmly yet confidently replied, realizing that getting flustered would only serve to make things harder.
Kiba grunted in reply, as he couldn't dispute what Naruto said.
Naruto and Kiba both went into their respective thinking modes, with Naruto turning almost comatose and blocking out the outside world, and Kiba made growling and mumbling noises to himself while closing his eyes hard to try to block out any distractions. They worked out that the door responded to visual data, as a camera was placed at the center of the door that recognized authorized Shinobi and their chakra, or at least they assumed it did.
It took about a minute before they both shot open their eyes and discovered the easiest way to access it was-
"Transformation!"-"TRANSFORMATION!"
"Hey I said it first!"
"No you didn't, I did!"
"Like hell you did!-"
'Oh Kami here we go, their childish rivalry again...' Kyuubi groaned with the will to live draining out of her.
After 5 minutes of childish arguing they both finally tried to figure out who they had to transform into to gain access through the door.
"Hmmm..."
"Ummmm..."
They hummed ideas to themselves for a few seconds, until Kiba had a good yet obvious one to discuss:
"Hey, can't you just turn into Lady Tsunade?" He mentioned to the other thinking teen, trying not to imagine it going wrong as they used to in the academy; as Naruto never had a real knack for transformation.
"Like hell I will, you do it!" The blonde exploded, not wanting to turn into "baa-chan" ever in his life.
"Naruto you've spent far more time with Lady Tsunade then I have, and I can only transform into a man-beast clones."
"There must be some other way..."
"You can also get Kyuubi to mimic people's chakra for a short duration right?"
"Kinda..."
"And the only probable way through the door is by looking like her and imitating her chakra, I can't do one of those things but you can do both, right Nar?" Kiba exclaimed, knowing by now he won the argument by a long stretch.
The blonde would have usually kept on arguing for the rest of eternity, but since it was Kiba who was asking, and his life was probably at stake on finding this Jutsu, he gave in with a submissive nod and began to initiate the Jutsu. A loud explosion of smoke echoed through the hallway, momentarily blinding Kiba and obscuring the hallway with a smoke screen, who was waiting anxiously to most probably see a hideous monster appear from the fog with a wig that imitates Tsunade's hair.
Surprisingly, It looked like a perfect transformation. It had life-like hair, the clothes were exactly like her's and... She was holding something.
"Haha very realistic Naruto! I don't think you needed to hold a clone of yourself th..." Kiba stopped talking as he slowly began to realize that the "clone" that she was holding was in fact a very scared Naruto who was dropping bricks, and the "Transformation" was in fact the real deal.
A PISSED-OFF TSUNADE.
"So boys, what the hell do you think you're doing here!?" She screamed, shaking Naruto in the air causing Kyuubi and Naruto to almost faint with fright.
"Please baa-chan, have mercy!" Naruto cried, literally fearing for his life with the Herculean woman being thoughts away from pulverizing him.
"Please, Lady Tsunade, hear us out!" Kiba pleaded, literally dropping to the ground on his knees in sheer terror of the Sannin.
There was a pause, the atmosphere so tense you could cut it with a Kunai. Then unexpectedly they heard laughter emerge from the previously terrifying scene, as Tsunade was just engaging in her sick way of 'pulling their legs' after all, and quite literally in Naruto's case.
"I'm just kidding around sheeeesh take a *hic* joke you kids!" The now clearly drunken Tsunade said. She dropped Naruto and he scurried away as far as he could. It now made more sense to him why she acted so horrifically before; she likes to indulge in terrifying others when she's had a little too much Sake.
"Baa-Chan!" Naruto yelled, pissed off that she thought seeing him nearly crap himself was the most hilarious thing in the world.
"Oh ssshut it foxy!" Tsunade hissed, slightly slurring her words while struggling to engage in a proper conversation.
Naruto sighed at her drunkenness, but knew there were more pressing matters, "Anyway we need to get into there!" Naruto pleaded while pointing at the iron-clad door, "Its important Baa-chan!" desperation lining his tone.
"What makes you think I *hic* would let you in there? It's restricted for a reason baaaka!"
"His life could be depending on it!" he pointed over to the silent brunette, "I've lost enough people who are important to me in life. From my parents to Pervy-sage, Neji..." his words became more saturated with emotions the more he continued on with the dread list. He regained composure slightly and looked to Tsunade with determination:
"Kiba's my friend... so I won't lose him!"
Both Tsunade and Kiba were surprised at Naruto's ferocity and loyalty to his friends, to Kiba himself.
'This... weird feeling again, what is it that you're doing that's making me feel this way Naruto?'
Whilst Kiba was still trying to figure out the strange feelings Naruto had given him, Tsunade looked into Naruto's Cerulean eyes, seeing an Ocean of loyalty, determination and something else... something which Naruto may experience in the future, and something he is continually fighting for, whether he knows it or not.
"Hm." Tsunade grunted while taking all she just heard and seen from Naruto into account. She may have been intoxicated by her usual binge-drinking of Sake, but she could be serious when she had to: it is her role as Hokage after all, no matter when or where.
"I know a liar when I see one... you really need this Jutsu, don't you?" It was largely a rhetorical question on her part, but Naruto still nodded to reaffirm his commitment to entering the room ahead.
"Go on in!" she barked.
"R-Really granny?!"
"I know something is up with you two, and you're definitely hiding it from me. But I'll trust you this once, so don't abuse your chance brat!"
"Thanks Baa-chan!" Naruto excitedly beamed, While Kiba respectively bowed "T-Thank you Lady Tsunade."
"But!" Tsunade thundered, "When all of this is over, you're gonna have to repay me somehow!"
Kiba's imagination kicked in and sorrow quickly consumed his senses, he was already thinking of escape routes that second.
"*sigh* Fine I'll save up some Ryo and put it to your gambling budget..." Naruto somberly replied, knowing that she would of wanted a favor in return.
"That'a Boy!" Tsunade laughed.
"Now go find that Jutsssuu." She slurred after sipping some more of her Sake she held in her other hand. Thankfully she somehow managed to sober up during the conversation, as It would have been beyond awkward if she didn't. Tsunade took the unorthodox approach of letting them through by breaking the heavily reinforced door down with her Heavenly Kick Of Pain; the teens ran through the annihilated door and finally found themselves in the Restricted Section.
They climbed down seemingly endless flights of stairs and walked into another, albeit far larger room. It was massive. No one ever would of thought there could be such an array of Jutsu in one place, let alone mostly forbidden ones. Kiba and Naruto cautiously crept through the aisles, feeling almost quite vulnerable and not particularly safe.
"Hey, I think It would be best if we split up, there's like over 10 aisles just for Genjutsu..." Kiba exasperated, still shocked at how many Jutsu there must be, and how long it could take for them to search.
"Got it." The blonde replied determinedly.
They both took opposite sides of the Genjutsu Section to the left of the colossal room and moved one aisle closer to the middle with each one they finished. Each aisle was easily at least 30 meters long, brimming with dusty tomes and scrolls of old Jutsu that had sealing formula's inscribed and even some booby traps too; they had a tough search ahead of them.
At least that's what Naruto thought. He was moving on to his second aisle when he could hear Kiba hollering for him, "Naruto, over here!."
Naruto speedily dashed towards Kiba's voice, but he found it difficult due to the overall Section having dim lighting, so even if he was at the other end of the same aisle from Kiba he still probably wouldn't be able to see him well. Naruto focused chakra into his eardrums, something which usually only people with acute chakra control can carry out, but in Naruto's case he had Kyuubi to help him.
Naruto pinpointed Kiba's location and ran towards him, towards his third aisle. He saw Kiba was holding a relatively small scroll with a purplish brown hue. It had a cream-colored center like most other scrolls too.
"So what did you find?" The blonde said anxiously, hoping they've found out what could be the jutsu used on Kiba earlier.
"You're gonna want to read this."
A/N: Well there it is! Let me know how you're finding the story; it's my first, so I'm completely open to any critique :)
