Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Metal Gear. If I did then I probably would have understood the storyline after playing through Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty the first time. It took me two playthroughs to get the story together well enough to understand what was happening when the game got to the end, no joke, the end was kind of a mindfuck.
Chapter 3: What You Don't Know
(Ramadi, Al Anbar, Iraq – June 2003 – Naruto: Age 16)
It was weird. Why send them there? They hadn't finished anything in the Philippines at all, even though they always seemed to get assignments in the hottest areas possible, places where they were more or less guaranteed to fight. Naruto didn't really care though… even though he had been shot several times by now.
He would always take a kunai and dig the bullet out even when it was frowned upon by the others and keep on going. What amazed everyone was that no matter where he was hit in his arms, legs, sometimes even in his chest, he would always be right back up in one day or two as if nothing had ever happened. Tests had been run on him and sent to medical facilities all over about the ungodly pace in which his body recovered, how naturally tougher his body in general was, somehow able to stop bullets that would pass clean through a normal man from getting past the muscle and bone that they hit. His injuries never even left him a lasting scar no matter how bad it looked.
Kevlar Kid, Little Jaguar, Baby Joker, The Human Xerox… those were some of the crappier names that Naruto wound up getting for his abilities, overall personality, and battle style. He was very well known with the Filipino forces for being a one-man wrecking crew with unnatural powers. Word spread fast here just like they did in Afghanistan. A kid that could jump ten feet off of the ground, stick to anything, run on water like a deity, break through anything that was in front of him, and could make copies of himself.
He was soon after his arrival in the Philippines dispatched on solo missions that would have endangered the rest of his squad. The terrorist groups he found himself in combat with began to fear his presence because he would often strike when they were left alone and nothing suspicious happened. When everything seemed to be going their way everything would almost be guaranteed to go to hell immediately afterwards within a day or two.
He liked the way that things were in the Philippines. He was used for missions that were right up his alley. Infiltration, extraction, scouting, getting rid of traps that would at times plague the jungles… that was what he was made to do.
Being there confused him. After being in the Philippines for well over a year working to defeat the extremist groups that existed there, he and his unit were suddenly uprooted before they had even finished and directed to head towards the Middle East once more, something that pissed Naruto off supremely as his hatred of the desert and desert-like climates was well noted by now by the rest of his squad having been in Iraq for about three months by now.
Back in desert camouflage, back wearing the helmet, back sweating to death… in the open… as the walking sniper bait he knew he was.
"I hate the damn desert!" Naruto exclaimed as he walked through the large city with his squad, out on routine patrol, "And will someone turn that goddamn song off!" He said this because a hummer that was patrolling nearby was blasting "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey, "I'm sure the civilians are just as pissed off as I am."
"Come on kid." Wes said, walking behind Naruto, "Nobody hates this song."
Naruto rolled his eyes before keeping them peeled for anything strange on what was designated as his side of the street, "It's not the song, it's the fact that we're in the middle of the fucking city on patrol and the song is playing. Loud. If we weren't going to get attacked before this then if I were the insurgents I'd be putting a damn RPG right in the front seat of that hummer." He said, jerking his head in the direction of the hummer behind them.
The song then suddenly stopped in the middle of the last solo, getting D.J. to comment, "There you go Wonderboy, you happy now?"
"Very." Naruto replied before more music started up, this time the song was "Paul Revere" by the Beastie Boys, "Who the fuck brought all of these CD's?" Naruto asked belligerently, shaking his head to ignore the music.
"Someone's grouchy today." Another member of Naruto's squad jibed from the background, "We just got into a shootout yesterday Wonderboy, there aren't going to be any enemies near where we are today. If anything happens it'll go on somewhere deeper in the city, not around the outskirts like where we are."
Naruto grumbled irritably, getting a chuckle out of D.J. who was in the middle of the pack roving down the street on patrol, "Kid we're going to miss you when they take you out of here. I had some representative of that unit FOXHOUND talking to me about you today."
That got Naruto's attention, making him forget his bad mood about the combination of the heat, the monotony of his current body of work, and the music playing all at the same time, "FOXHOUND came to you?" He sounded surprised, "Why didn't I hear anything about it, and what did they want?"
D.J. knew that Naruto liked everything about FOXHOUND, he talked about how he was trained like them all the time, about how his master had trained the best operative they ever had. It really made him see how much of a kid Naruto was when he started getting like that, "What do you think they wanted kid? You do the work they specialize in. The Field Commander himself came knocking for you this morning. I told him you'd be right and ready to see him after patrol was done." The field commander was strange. He had a British accent, fair hair like Naruto did only the man obviously kept up with it better than his younger blonde counterpart did. For some reason he wore an open trench coat and no shirt, but for someone like him who was D.J. to call him on his strange attire in a warzone?
Naruto hadn't had time lately to talk about things that had been going on stateside since he had first been deployed to the Philippines, hell he hadn't had much time to rest before his unit wound up being deployed in Afghanistan. He spent his calls asking Catherine about what was new with her and how her dad was. He hadn't seen Miller or Catherine in almost two years due to how deep in the Philippines he had been while fighting. He knew that she was in Los Angeles with her mother, Miller's ex-wife, in order to start going to high school… but she still wanted him to call her, saying she'd be back during summer and Christmas Break. He did know for a fact that Catherine's mother did not like him one bit due to the few times she had answered the phone in Catherine's place, but he could deal with one person disliking him here. It was better than the majority of a village.
Miller himself had taken to training Inuit scouts for some cash and to keep himself busy. Without Naruto or Catherine around he was getting bored and needed some other way to stay active since training Naruto's head into the ground or keeping up with Catherine were no longer options.
Naruto was broken from his thoughts of home by Wes constantly trying to get his attention, "Naruto. Naruto. Naruto! Stop spacing out kid!"
Naruto blinked and snapped back into reality, "What? What's the matter?"
"I was asking you a question." Wes commented with a laugh, "So are you going to join up? With FOXHOUND I mean. You're always talking about it."
A grin came to Naruto's face, his first one of the day in fact, a rarity were days when Naruto didn't have some sort of positive energetic look on his face, "Of course I'm joining up, if that's what the guy is here for then why wouldn't I?" He said with a grin before something hit him in the head, making a loud ricochet noise as he fell to the ground.
"Ambush!" D.J. shouted as uniformed enemy troops wearing brown and black camouflage, all sporting balaclava masks over their faces, began coming into sight. Some were shooting at them from ground floor windows, but most were littering the streets, firing from vehicle cover, "Uzumaki you dead?" He asked the young blonde that he had dragged behind cover the second everything kicked off.
"No…" Naruto muttered as his helmet had been knocked from his head. The impact from the bullet didn't penetrate his cranial protection but it forced a flesh wound on his head that would heal within an hour or two, "Who are these guys?" The uniforms didn't look anything like what they were used to facing on the battlefield. These guys were a completely different force altogether, "Who picks a fight with the U.S. Army?"
D.J. gave Naruto a deadpan look and was about to rattle off a list dozens of names long before the sounds of bullets ricocheting off of their vehicular cover rang out, "Doesn't matter who they are, just start shooting!" He said as he began returning fire with his assault rifle.
Naruto heard the rattle of the enemy's guns as he made sure his MP5K was ready for combat, "Those sound like AK's."
D.J. gave a smartass scoff, "Way to go kid, that narrows down the search of who we're fighting to over 80% of the rogue fighting forces in the world."
"Not AK-47's!" Naruto snapped irritably as if he didn't know that stating an enemy had an AK-47 didn't mean a thing. He had heard that gun fire tons of times in the Philippines, he knew what an AK-47 sounded like, "The guns are more recent than that. Like they're not as strong. They're like…" He popped his head from cover and took a quick shot at one of the enemies scrambling between cover, gunning him down, "…AKS-74u's." He deduced after getting a good look at the gun as it fell from the dead man's hands.
D.J.'s eyes widened, "These guys are Russian. What the fuck are Russian soldiers doing here?"
Naruto put his hand on D.J.'s shoulder and took a deep breath, "I'm about to go find out." He made a Kage Bunshin, mentally ordering it to stay and help D.J. and follow his orders, "Take care of my clone and take these! You'll need 'em more than me!" Naruto told D.J, dropping his supply of grenades for his use. As he ran from behind their cover and dodged bullets as he reached an alley that led him away from the fire.
D.J. watched Naruto scale a wall in the alley and take to the roofs, "Wait kid get your ass back here! You insubordinate little punk!" He turned to Naruto's clone who was obediently firing on the enemy, "Damn it!" He grabbed the clone by the front of its gear, "You're with me, we're hooking with the others and we're going call in for reinforcements! It's time to coordinate this clusterfuck!" The clone covered D.J. as he went to meet up with the rest of the squad, the sergeant hoped that they were doing better than Naruto probably was at the moment.
XxX
Naruto managed to reach the three-story building that a lot of the gunfire originated from and said a small prayer to whatever deity was out there in Japanese. Naruto needed more concentrated firepower for what he was about to do… or maybe he just needed to use some shock tactics and hope he was fast enough to get the job done.
Yeah the second one seemed more up his alley.
He took off his ballistic vest and his desert camo shirt, putting the former back on for protection in case he wound up being shot and so that he could use his throwing knives from his special sleeve if the situation called for it. Naruto pulled out a flashbang grenade and kissed it before pulling the pin and throwing it into the window beneath him, 'Twelve shots…' Naruto thought as he drew his SOCOM pistol for more precise shooting.
Naruto rolled over the side of the building, holding onto the ledge with one hand to swing himself through the open window right after the flashbang grenade went off, giving Naruto the advantage over the blinded and deafened victims that had taken the damage. Naruto quickly put three rounds into two men in the office building looking setup with a block of desks in the center of the large room, all covered by cubicle walls making a large piece of cover in the middle of the room.
With nine shots left, Naruto hit another man with a shot to the back as he stumbled by a doorway, yelling in Russian. The man fell through the doorway and down a flight of stairs leaving four more men on the same floor as Naruto. Naruto quickly formed a Kage Bunshin that sprinted over to the stairway, using its MP5K instead of its SOCOM.
As the original decided to fire his pistol with his right arm and pelt his remaining enemies with his throwing knives using his left hand, the clone Naruto wound up mowing down a group of soldiers that were making to go upstairs to check the ruckus. Emptying its entire 30 round magazine into five soldiers that clustered together, the clone pulled out an extra clip to reload. That was when it met its end.
The original Naruto let out a deep gasp of pain and clutched his chest tightly, feeling as if he had just been stabbed right through his breastbone. What a way for his clone to go. He could hardly breathe, "Sometimes I swear I miss my old clones…" He stood back up, trying to put the pain of being stabbed in the chest in the back of his mind, "The dude that stabbed my clone was fast…" Naruto said to himself as he whipped around towards the doorway his clone was killed in, SOCOM ready to fire. Naruto kept his eyes on the doorway as he moved behind a cubicle wall for cover.
"Typical man…" Naruto heard a female voice say in a Russian accent, "He thinks that anyone that shows skill in combat must be a man. Sorry to disappoint you."
Naruto's eyes never left that doorway, waiting for any hint of movement to come through it so that he could shoot it down, "That's not why I thought you were a guy just because you're good." Naruto asserted, "Not a whole lot of girls I've known that fight would run up to someone and stab them."
"I don't waste bullets on weaklings." The girl said again in that particular Russian brogue, "But you're not weak so I guess I'll be getting serious." With that a flashbang grenade flew into the room, forcing Naruto to turn around, shut his eyes, and take cover behind the cubicle wall while he held his ears as well to keep from going deaf.
Naruto remembered from his clone's death that this girl liked to move when opponents were off-guard and it was a good thing he was able to dredge up that particular memory because he was forced to roll out of the way just as a knife implanted itself in the cubicle wall where his throat had been. She then ducked back out of Naruto's sight as he fired three shots that missed.
Okay, it had been a while since he had been in a one-on-one fight. As a matter of fact he hadn't trained for one-on-one battles since he had stopped dueling with Master Miller. He was so used to fighting as a team against teams that he hoped he wasn't rusty lest it come back to bite him in the ass.
Still, he had gotten a good look at his attacker when he had taken his shots at her. She wore camouflage pants in the same pattern as the men of whatever unit Naruto had been fighting, and had short silver hair. She wore full brown gloves, a tight black and white striped shirt with brown suspenders, and in her other hand he swore he saw a pistol that looked just like his, except hers had no silencer.
"You're a very young soldier." He heard the girl say from the other side of the room. Both were at a stalemate at the moment, neither trying to stick their head out lest it get taken off. Naruto took this time to eject the magazine from his pistol and reload it with a new full one, "Are you even old enough to vote in your country?" She asked in a taunting way.
Naruto was so sick of people talking about him because of his age. There was a good reason he was there, if he wasn't good enough that his age didn't matter then he would never have been allowed on the battlefield, "Whatever, I'm 16, you couldn't be much older than me. I'd say three years max." He tried to call her out again so he could judge where she was by the sound of her voice while he made a Kage Bunshin, "You don't look like any Iraqi insurgent I've ever shot at. Why are you even here?"
He heard the girl let out a chuckle in response, "Well I'm 18 just so you know. And don't judge me by your own standards, I've grown up around nothing but combat in my life." It was as if he could feel the smirk she had on her face as she answered his next question, "And insurgents can get mercenary contracts set up as well. They've already paid us for the year."
"I knew it was mercenaries! Russian mercenaries!" Naruto exclaimed as he had managed to pinpoint the girl's position by now at the direct opposite end at the block of cubicles. Freelance military work had been pretty huge since the 70's as Miller had told Naruto of his times as a free roaming gun-for-hire. It was actually how he met Big Boss. Mercenaries were the entire driving force behind the Outer Heaven Uprising and the Zanzibar Land Incident that wound up holding the world as a nuclear hostage in 1995 and 1999. It wasn't that surprising to find them fighting here as well.
Naruto and his clone moved on both sides of the block in an attempted pincer move. Naruto was forced to duck into a cubicle space to avoid two shots from her pistol. The girl went to the other side and met Naruto's clone just as it turned the corner to pursue her, sticking the barrel of the gun in the clone's shoulder and firing she managed to dispel it just as she took a punch that hit her in the cheek, sending her stumbling back until she was able to steady herself.
The pain of the gunshot injury to his clone felt like a bullet had imbedded itself into his shoulder. It forced Naruto to bite down on his left hand hard enough to draw blood in order to keep from letting out a cry of pain while the girl marveled over actually seeing another Naruto that she had killed/critically injured disappear in front of her eyes.
She rubbed her bruised cheek and began to speculate, "A young soldier that can make copies of himself, able to fight alongside him as indistinguishable replications." She then remembered Naruto's spiky blonde hair and distinct whisker-marks were also a part of the description she received for this particularly dangerous U.S. soldier, "You are Naruto Uzumaki aren't you? My father's unit has been warned about you by our clients. The famed, 'Golden Weed of the West'."
Hearing such a nickname, Naruto forgot all about his pain for the time being, "And who in the hell came up with that stupid-ass nickname?" He asked in a perturbed tone of voice. He was getting sick of all of these loser epithets for him. When was someone going to call him something cool like the 'Yellow Flash' had in his home village of Konoha?
He heard the girl's laughter again and frowned. Even in this world girls laughed at him, "The Iraqi insurgents came up with it. They call you that because of your hair color, hair style, your powers of replication, and the fact that supposedly you're damn hard to kill for good."
"Baby you've got no idea!" Naruto shouted as he stood up on the desk in the cubicle, giving him the chance to look over all of the cubicle walls. He saw the Russian girl and took five shots at her, missing each time as she ran and dove behind a desk near the doorway she had originally appeared through. Naruto growled at not seeing anything behind the desk worth shooting at, being forced to duck back down and sit on the desk against the cubicle wall when she started blindfiring in his direction, 'Man this girl is good! I can't get close without making myself a sitting duck! I only have one grenade on me too, I left the rest with D.J. because he would have needed them more!' Damn him and his nature to try protecting his friends.
"Don't call me 'baby' American." He heard the girl call out to him, sounding rather upset at what he had labeled her as, "My name is Olga Gurlukovich, remember it because it will be the last name you ever hear."
"Whatever… I'm not American bitch." Naruto replied, still sitting on the desk against the cubicle wall. He leaned to the side and grabbed the nearby heavy office chair that was with him, "Hear this." He then picked up the chair and stood back up as he hurled it across the room behind the desk where Olga was taking cover. A crash and a shriek of shock/pain told him that it had hit home, forcing a mischievous laugh from him as he got off the desk and ran from behind cover just in time to see Olga stand up holding her head that had a nasty bruise on it, "Count the shells sweetie!" Naruto then opened fire with four shots.
Olga dodged all four of them due to Naruto's firing pattern with his SOCOM, although one grazed her shoulder. The bullet grazing her shoulder threw off her own aim when she took three shots at Naruto. Forcing him into a side roll to avoid getting properly caught in her gun's sights.
Olga grit her teeth and fired at Naruto repeatedly, taking this chance at getting the real Naruto in the open to try and put him down for good. This made her realize the real difference between Naruto and the clones he sent at her before. The real one had all of the craftiness and snap-decision ability. The clones would just follow his will, unable to freestyle any kind of attack pattern or come up with any combat variable. The clones had all of his abilities and physical traits, but none of the mind to use it. They were generally soulless bodies.
Meanwhile, Naruto was sick of getting shot at and rolled himself into a cubicle, bumping his head on a desk for his trouble. The shooting stopped and Naruto heard footsteps before silence reigned. Naruto wasn't stupid however, and he could see Olga's shadow on the floor on the other side of the cubicle wall leading to the open space. Naruto rolled his eyes and kicked the wall of the cubicle as hard as he could, knocking her off of the wall she had been leaning against.
Olga had to admit, Naruto did not fight like anyone normal, 'Who in the world trained someone to fight like this?' He used anything in his environment he could see that might be able to help him, even the environment itself.
She left the cubicle that Naruto effortlessly discovered her in only to find Naruto swinging from his own cubicle aiming a kick at her. Olga backrolled out of the way, scared of the speed at which he was moving. Naruto tried low kicks and stomps to stop her, but Olga kept rolling, eventually ending up on her back, sliding on the linoleum floor aiming her pistol at Naruto.
Three shots caught a surprised looking Naruto in the chest until he disappeared in smoke, an office chair riddled with bullet holes falling to the ground in his place, 'What in God's name?' She thought to herself, picking herself back up to her feet as Naruto aimed his gun over the wall of the nearest cubicle and fired at her.
She dodged as none of the shots were on point and rushed him directly, sick of fighting him and just sick of his face in general. Just as she made it to the cubicle wall she had to get by to get to Naruto himself he came flying around the corner with the same kind of finish in mind.
The two froze as they stood out in the open directly in front of one another. Naruto had his gun barrel set right against Olga's left eye while her own was pressed right against the side of his head at his ear, "Well how about that?" Naruto said, slightly out of breath. The two were frozen in place lest the slightest move set off the other to bring this to a bloody mutual conclusion.
"Da." Olga said sweating bullets, no pun intended, "So what do we do now?" She asked Naruto, becoming slightly unnerved as a grin took shape on his face, 'Who would possibly be amused by a situation like this?' She asked herself mentally.
"That's a good question." Naruto said with a lift in his voice before his grin turned to a soft smile as he was able to get a good look at Olga up close now that all of the running and shooting had stopped. Despite the tomboy haircut she was actually quite cute, "Heh, you know you're really pretty." He said, completely changing the subject.
"Pig."
"I'm not a pig." Naruto said with a deadpan look on his face, "I'm 16 years old and the only decent conversation I've had with a girl is with one two years younger than me that is currently thousands of miles away from here. I can't say you're pretty when you have a gun to my head? It might keep me alive here." Catching a bullet with his skull was not on Naruto's list of things to do before he kicked the bucket because it would probably be the reason he kicked the bucket in the first place, "You could say that I'm a handsome devil. I can guarantee that I'd think twice about shooting you if you did."
Olga just glared at him hotly, "How can someone so skilled be such a… such a…" She let out a grunt of annoyance before muttering curses in Russian, not knowing what to say, "I don't even know what to call you! You fight so well and yet your attitude is so careless!"
"It doesn't matter how seriously I take things." Naruto replied, "Being all stone cold and uptight isn't going to stop someone from wanting to pull a bullet in my head." His eyes drifted towards the gun pointed at him, "Like right now."
"Well we can't just sit here all day." Olga snapped at him. She had come to this building with twelve of her father's men, all of whom Naruto killed in a matter of moments. The squad outside pressing the close range attack could help her, but they were in a firefight with the U.S. soldiers they had been meant to engage in the first place. This lone American soldier came to the heart of the ambush and put a stop to the most dangerous portion of the attack. She had to get out before her father's men decided to cut loose and retreat, because she would more than likely be left behind were that the case.
Naruto let out a chuckle and licked his lips… God he hated how dry the damn desert was, "Well to be quite honest with you in our little shootout just now I kind of lost track of how many times I fired at you over the wall. I think you did too when you were shooting me in the open and when you were running away from my kicks." Good on her to dodge him for as long as she did. He didn't think normal people got that fast. She was just as fast as Master Miller was, but he guessed that dodging bullets for a living gave you some kind of latent ability to do so.
"So?" Olga urged him to get to the point.
"I don't know how many bullets I have, and neither do you." Her eye not covered by his gun widened at what he was suggesting, "One of us could be holding a gun with an empty clip… I think you know where I'm going with this."
"You're insane!" She shouted at him.
Ignoring her questioning of his sanity, Naruto kept talking, "On the count of three we both fire our guns. Whoever walks away walks away."
Olga held back a nervous gulp as her finger shook on the trigger, "And if neither of us walk away?"
Naruto shrugged, "If you kill me then at least I'll have the sight something pleasant in my mind when you splatter it all over the floor. So you ready?" He asked, his grin coming back to the forefront, "Help me count. One…"
"Two…" Olga said, the gun against Naruto's head shaking intensely.
"Three!" Both of them shouted simultaneously.
CLICK!
Both Naruto and Olga stood in place after both pulling the trigger on their guns and getting nothing out of it. They stared into each other's eyes for a moment before slowly backing away from each other. Olga put her pistol away and drew a knife while Naruto put his away and pulled out one of his kunai, both still backing away from each other tentatively.
Naruto looked down at his pistol and held back a twitch in his eyebrow as the slide of the pistol was back, letting him know that there were no bullets left. Looking up at Olga, he saw that she had found the same problem with her pistol, 'Wow... this is embarrassing.'
Olga then put one hand in the air as a disarming gesture and Naruto did the same. When she flipped her knife so that she was holding it by the blade he did the same with his kunai, smiling at her as it seemed that they'd both walk away from this fight. He thought that right up until she smirked and suddenly pushed a button on the handle of her knife that shot a bullet through the bottom of it at him.
Naruto saw the bullet coming in slow motion seemingly as he moved his weapon arm in front of him, as if he could block the bullet with the kunai in his hand. This was not to be however as the shot deposited itself through Naruto's vest right into his chest. Almost as a reflex he stepped forward, closing the short distance between himself and Olga and let go with one slash of his kunai.
Olga let out a scream of pain as Naruto's kunai cut her diagonally, starting from over her right eye across the bridge of her nose and down her cheek stopping on the left side of her mouth. She stumbled back, tasting her own blood yet grateful that he didn't get either of her eyes, "You bastard!"
"You bitch!" Naruto spat back venomously as he held his chest. He could feel where the bullet was and the blood seeping down his torso. Getting screwed over by a fucking pretty face, he should have known better, but in his defense he didn't even know that weapons like that were out there. How ninja-like of her to have a weapon like that on her, "Okay, I'm not dead, you're not dead. You shot me… I probably scarred you for life. Can we just call it even and be done already?"
Olga saw nothing but red, literally and figuratively, "I'll kill you!" She then came directly at him with her knife, stabbing at him with intent to disembowel while Naruto held his kunai in his usual reverse grip for versatility. He tried to find an opening to stab her, but she seemed to get faster and more reckless, making it hard to pick his spot. All he could do was backstep and wait. She'd screw up eventually, fighting the way she was.
That was what he thought until after one ill-attempted stab from Olga, her knife got close enough to get at his belt, more specifically the grenade on his belt… even more specific than that the pin of the grenade on his belt. She knocked the grenade free while pulling the pin out.
Both of them stared in horror as the pinless grenade fell to the office floor. Taking a nanosecond to lock eyes, both Naruto and Olga had the same idea and dove, jumping out of the open windows to their side just in time to be blown further away from the building as they flew out of the third story. Olga's lighter body flew across the street, landing on the roof of a car, caving it in slightly with the force of her body.
Naruto was not so lucky.
He also flew most of the most of the way across the street, but unlike Olga his body hit the ground and rolled harshly and helplessly until it hit an iron gate on the other side of the street, an iron gate with points jutting out along the lower portion, thus Naruto wound up impaling himself through the back with these iron points, slumping over lifelessly as his MP5K came unhooked from his back and flew through the bars of the gate away from him.
Olga was the first to move. Rolling off of the roof of the car she landed on, she held her ribs, feeling that she had injured more than a few from how gingerly she had to walk. She looked over at Naruto and saw the blood pooling under him from his seated position, also taking notes of the points on the fence he was against. She was about to smirk, believing she had won when she saw his arms start to move as he slowly pushed himself off of the points that had impaled him, falling face-first onto the dusty ground.
'How is he still alive after that?' She wondered in amazement when she saw him lift his head and give her a smirk with blood trailing from his lips. Seeing the still smiling look on his face she wanted to go over and finish him, but she lost her knife in the explosion and her gun had no bullets. She had left her pack with most of her magazines inside the building they had been fighting in and she used all the ones on her person during the battle.
Naruto pulled himself to his feet with the support of a nearby car holding him up as he started walking slowly towards her, "I'm not that easy to kill…" He said, spitting his own blood on the ground.
What was she to do now? If she tried to fight him with her hands he still had his knife on him, he would kill her... especially since that blue ball of light in his other hand that had formed out nothing didn't look too inviting either. But he was so injured, running away from him as he was would kill her pride.
There were more important things at the moment though, as Olga could hear shouting for Naruto's name getting ever closer, "You're lucky Uzumaki. You win today." She said before retreating from the area before she was captured. She would reconvene with the rest of the Gurlukovich Mercenaries currently deployed at a safehouse in town, she could make it that far.
"Yeah… real lucky." Came the sarcastic reply, "Come back and try me again anytime beautiful…dattebayo." Naruto said as he simply watched her go, not able to chase her or even aim that kunai in his hand straight as he was. The Rasengan he had formed was mostly bluster since after getting shot in the chest he wasn't sure he could raise either arm high enough to do anything.
Between the bits of shrapnel in his backside from the grenade, the thirty foot fall to the hard ground, the concussive damage of the grenade itself, the bullet in his chest, and the puncture wounds in his torso he wasn't in any shape to throw a Frisbee, let alone chase down an enemy.
Naruto saw familiar camouflage and stuck his hand up in a thumbs up gesture before sliding to the ground against the car, showing the soldiers just how hurt he was.
"Kid!" Naruto heard D.J.'s voice faintly say as he saw a blurry figure rush over to him, "Don't worry kid you're going home. Someone get the kid some help!" Naruto heard last before his vision went dark.
XxX
Naruto was placed in a helicopter while a man with long blonde hair and an open coat with nothing underneath watched, shaking his head, "And to think I was about to ask the boy if he wished to join FOXHOUND with me today. A shame. His abilities would have been very valuable to us. His replication abilities, his strength, speed, agility, his skill… everything he could do was confirmed by the men here who have seen it firsthand. He would have fit right in." He turned to the man standing next to him, "What do you think Ocelot?"
Next to him was a man looking just like a cowboy from a spaghetti western. He had a grey mustache and long grey hair that was beginning to show signs of balding. His duster, gloves, clothing, right down to his boots and spurs, even his choice of weapon that he spun around on his finger; a Colt Single Action Army Revolver, they all screamed cowboy, "I'd say don't count the kid out just because of a few bumps and bruises. Wounds heal Boss. I wouldn't let him go so easily. He would still be useful… especially to them." He finished, saying 'them' with disgust.
"What makes you think that's not where he's going right now?" The man Ocelot referred to as 'Boss' said in his British accent. He let out a sigh, "He's the only soldier that was wounded badly enough here today to be medevaced out of here. He's definitely gone for good. Out of my hands." He then began to walk away, "Oh, and don't call me 'Boss' Ocelot. At least not yet… I haven't earned that title yet. Use my codename."
A small laugh came from the cowboy-looking Ocelot as he followed behind, "Whatever you say Liquid." With their prime reason for even being there in Iraq gone, the two members of FOXHOUND made to leave the area of operations.
XxX
Naruto's eyes opened, not inside of a medical tent, not even inside of a medical facility. It was outside, with him laying in shallow water, staring up at a smoky sky, with burning trees surrounding him.
Fuck.
He was there again? There's no way he died. He didn't feel like he was going to die. He didn't even feel like his life was in too much jeopardy even though he hadn't been hurt that bad in almost two years of combat. He still hadn't been as hurt as he had been during his fight with Sasuke, his ultimate measure for the amount of damage he had ever taken in one go.
"I am not dead again." Naruto muttered disbelievingly, sitting up to come face to face with the same ghostly man he had seen the last time he had been in this plane of existence, "Hey Sorrow." Naruto said in a basically casual greeting. If he was dead then there was no need to piss off the warden so to speak.
The man grinned right back as if expecting that reaction, "Hello little Naruto. I've been watching you… though you aren't so little anymore are you?"
Naruto shrugged his shoulders as he continued to sit in his shallow water, "I know I didn't die… I know what almost dying feels like because I almost died twice. That wasn't it."
"Correct you are neither dead nor dying like the last time we met face to face." The Sorrow revealed to Naruto, seeming to take amusement in the young man not knowing just what his reason for being there, "Now that you have had a true taste of battle, now that your hands have been stained with blood, how do you feel about war? About yourself?"
That question took a moment of thinking. He had actually fought full-scale battles, he had actually ended lives. He had felt his heart leap out of his chest in fear of death and he had seen others do the same. He tried to defeat his opponents and leave them alive when he could, but like had just been reaffirmed in his mind with Olga, that kind of thinking in the wrong situations will get you hurt or killed, "Well I don't know. I feel bad when I sit back and think about it. I killed people, how am I supposed to feel, happy? But it was either them or me, there was no other option most of the time. It's kind of hard to take people alive when they're shooting at you from 50 yards away."
Naruto took prisoners when he could. In the Philippines he was probably the most merciful of his squad, choosing to knock out enemies when he had the opportunity to get close enough to do so. As a matter of fact, Olga was the very first person he had ever fought in what could be considered close quarters that he couldn't just knock out with ease; gun or knife on her person or not. Naruto let out a bitter chuckle and held the places in his back where he knew he had been punctured by the iron gate, "I guess if I'm going to keep fighting the way I do I'd better be ready to get hurt a lot more often huh?" He then looked up and focused on The Sorrow, "When I have the choice I won't kill anyone. I'm better than that." He pointed his thumb up to the metal plate on his headband, "I won't ever take the easy way out. I don't back down."
"That is a rather large boast." The Sorrow floated back down in front of Naruto again, "See that you don't… and I don't want you to have to see me again so don't go dying in battle." He lifted his hand the way he did when he sent Naruto to that world in the first place, remembering how it had felt like The Sorrow stopped his heart when he touched his shoulder, "I will still be watching you. Don't disappoint me." Instead of grabbing Naruto's shoulder he flicked him in the forehead and once again Naruto saw black.
XxX
(Unknown Location – Late Summer/Early Fall 2003 – Naruto: Age 16)
When he regained self awareness he couldn't see and his head was swimming. He could make out words however, just barely though.
"…Discovering the origin of the subject's unique abilities and traits has been a slow process. Despite finding that the healing, the reinforced physical condition that allows him to survive horrible combat conditions, and the stronger physical frame that makes him seem structurally denser than normal people are all genetic features we have been unable to discover the genes that allow his ability to form doppelgangers, stick to surfaces, or channel a kinetic source of energy for exterior purposes."
Naruto soon wished he had never awoken once he found himself on a lab table, held in place by literally having been bolted down. It was strange that he wasn't feeling any pain at first until he heard a garbling older woman's voice as he returned to consciousness, "The subject is awakening. The sedatives have worn off prematurely once again, another testament to his abnormal and incredible physiology."
Oh. That explained it. He was fighting off the sedatives. That made sense.
Wait, why the hell was he on sedatives? He felt like he had just woken up from a coma. If he had been in a coma from the wounds he suffered in his battle with the Gurlukovich Mercenaries then wouldn't sedatives keep him from ever waking up? Unless that was the point. Wait, did whoever was speaking just call him a subject? As in a test subject?
And as he came to, Naruto found himself looking directly at a woman in a lab coat with red hair that had streaks of grey in it. He could see the age on her face and her eyes were extremely cold, looking at him as if he were subhuman, as if he were only good by way of an analysis purpose. He had seen eyes like that before. He had seen Orochimaru look at him much in the same way the few times he had been close to the man, only now there was nothing he could do as this woman looked at him, "Who are you? What do you want? Where am I?" Naruto said in a raspy voice. His throat was extremely dry and he was naked. That second one was not a good sign of his current status.
"Well I guess I can tell you that." The woman said in a matter-of-factly tone. As she walked towards a table full of medical instruments Naruto noticed that he was in a laboratory. He was in a laboratory, and he couldn't move. That told him right there that things were not going to be going his way today. As the woman picked up a syringe and filled it with some kind of liquid she spoke again, "My name is Dr. Clark."
For being in front of a doctor he didn't feel very safe. This woman reminded him of the strange doctors that oversaw his physical tests during his initial army training. As a matter of fact the way she scrutinized his every feature it reminded him of that exact situation. Like they weren't seeing him as the person he was, like they weren't even seeing him for the body he represented, but for what they could take from him and use later. As if he were a dispenser of some kind, meant to be used for whatever he had inside that was worthwhile.
Naruto started breathing more erratically, his inability to move was getting to him, and the sedatives really were wearing off, because he could feel where he was bolted to the table and the places didn't exactly tickle, "You didn't answer my other questions." He said, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. He knew he was screwed.
"Where you are isn't important." Dr. Clark said as she reached out a grabbed a hold of Naruto's face, studying his features, "You're supposed to be of Japanese descent… I don't see it." She said, sounding disappointed in this. Naruto bared his teeth at her and cursed in Japanese, he could swear her lips turned to a smile under her surgical mask, "That's much better. Now as to what I want. I've already taken your blood samples after seeing the limits of your impressive healing ability. By the way feel grateful that you were not awake for those experiments. But I'm in luck as this one actually required you to be awake."
Naruto eyed the syringe in her hand as it got ever closer to his throat, "Experiments?"
"Yes." Dr. Clark said as if she were discussing the weather, "I'm going to see if your body can actually dull the senses of pain by intentionally provoking the pain receptors of your brain and your nerve endings. It's to be incorporated in my gene study research. We've been watching you for a while and your soldier genes are incredible, we've never seen anything like them before. Your natural abilities mixed with those of Big Boss or any other great soldier would be a terrifying combination. I can't wait to compound my research, but I can't until I discover how to duplicate your unique combat abilities such as your replication." She then blinked and let out an embarrassed laugh, "Oh I guess I was rambling again, here we go." She said injecting the needle directly into the immobilized Naruto's neck.
"What kind of doctor are you?" Naruto growled once the syringe left his throat.
"The best." Dr. Clark said, raising an eyebrow, "I've been doing this for decades… but why aren't you-?" At that moment, Naruto let out a horrible scream of pain, "Oh there it is. I thought the sedatives were blocking the pain for a second." She said to herself as if Naruto's continuous yells didn't bother her, "The pain will not subside until you lose consciousness I'm afraid. Though it seems that you share the same propensity for pain as everyone else does."
Naruto screamed at the top of his lungs, unable to budge an inch despite his entire body feeling as if a blade were being raked across him, "You sadistic bitch! You can't do this to people! This is illegal!"
"Oh dear." Dr. Clark said as she walked towards the door to leave the room, "The law? The laws are in the hands of the Patriots. You don't have any rights here." She said as she pulled down her surgical mask with a smirk, "I need to check something with my main guinea pig, his reaction to being injected with your healing genes. I don't need to be here for all of this screaming. I'll just watch back the videotape of your reaction to the serum and compound my information from there… possibly with the sound off. You're very noisy."
"GO FUCK YOURSELF WITH A MACHETE!" Naruto screeched horribly as Dr. Clark left the room shutting an iron automatic door behind her, leaving him alone. His mind couldn't work like this, it wasn't like he was injured and feeling pain like this, it was just sheer pain. There was nothing he could do to relieve it from his system. He had never been this helpless before in his entire life.
"Such a vulgar little soldier boy." He heard her say from outside but he couldn't care less about any retorts from her. Getting under her skin was not going to get rid of this feeling under his.
'Who is this bitch?' Naruto thought to himself as he continued to convulse in pain. With each jolt of pain his vision flittered back to scenes of him being examined by groups of doctors again and again, and he always remembered seeing those eyes there, 'H-Has she been watching me the entire time? But how did she get to me? D.J. was there! I saw him, I heard him! How the hell did I get captured?' This was something akin to what his last teacher when he was a ninja, Jiraiya, told him about the man Orochimaru, doing things like this to others. The Dr. Clark woman had a similar look in her eyes.
Where in the world was he? Where could he possibly be where something like this was allowed to happen to him? He was an enlisted soldier, he had been seen by his own squad before he woke up here. People had to know where he was. Someone had to be aware of his lack of presence anywhere. And then he realized… outside of his unit that was probably still in Iraq there were only two people who knew enough about him to care that he was missing, and in this case they wouldn't have been told he had been wounded in battle if he was on the right train of thought because then they would have wanted to hear from him.
Wherever he was it was somewhere that no one would be coming for him. He had known of the testing and experiments and everything like that from his training with Miller informing him of such. Was there someone in with the U.S. government with enough pull to get him for themselves? He didn't understand.
His screams echoed throughout the room and probably out into the hall outside for as loud as he was. There was nothing he could do, he couldn't budge his arms or legs whatsoever. He didn't know how long he stayed yelling, be it minutes or hours, but his anger and desperation started to grow as he bit down on his lip, easily drawing blood with his sharpened canines.
'I need to get out! I need to get out of here!' An orange aura began to cover his body, but quickly grew to be red and bubbling as it took the form of a one-tailed fox around his body, 'I'm not going to die here! I'm nobody's test subject! I don't belong to anyone!' He started gruesomely pulling his arms free of the bolts. Painful? Of course, but when your entire body is already suffering do you really care about inflicting what could be perceived as less pain in order to try and alleviate what you're already feeling?
The thick screws holding him to the table stuck fast though, and Naruto found himself getting angrier and drawing on more power. Naruto's physical features began to change rapidly. The color of his eyes turned from blue to blood red, his whisker marks grew deeper and darker, his nails elongated to claws, and he began to writhe angrily about, not accepting his fate of being captured for a moment, growling angrily almost like an animal.
The bolts stuck in his arms and legs began to creak and give way as a contingent of armed soldiers entered the room, and stared at the living embodiment of a demon, "What the hell?"
One of the soldiers began to choke on the air in the room as if it were stinging not only just his throat but his entire body and it seemed to be emanating from Naruto. He took aim at the demonic teenage boy, preparing to fire, but was prevented from doing so, "You can't kill the subject! He's important to the continuation of Dr. Clark's research!"
He should have let him shoot… it might have given them a chance to get lucky and hit him in the eye to kill him.
Naruto eventually pulled himself free and landed on the floor, crouching on all fours like a beast as he snarled at the men in front of him.
"Switch to non-lethal methods! Detain the subject!"
The non-lethal sentiment was not reciprocated by the 'subject', as the three tails made of chakra around Naruto's body lashed out and knocked two of the four men in the room away while holding another two in place as Naruto shoved a pair of hands in a knife-hand motion through the captured men's throats as if his claws were made of iron. Out in the hall the two men sitting on the ground against the wall where Naruto batted them picked up their automatic weapons and took aim, but before anything could be done two of Naruto's red chakra tails stabbed them directly through the torso, cracking the wall behind them as they had been impaled.
As he walked out into the hall Naruto faintly, with what little comprehension and rational thought he had left, recognized a loud siren going off throughout the entire facility of wherever he was. As he saw soldiers charging down the length of the hall at him the only thing he could think of was killing the Dr. Clark bitch… it was as if it was all that drove him. Naruto unleashed a terrible roar that fired a shockwave, hitting the incoming soldiers and tearing up the walls due to the power of it.
Naruto then took off running through the halls, trying to find some way out or someone to get in his way so that he could cut them down as well. Getting out or running into whoever did this to him… either of those two things would be delightful in the half-feral mind of Naruto.
"What's causing all of this mess?" Naruto's head snapped around behind himself as he heard more boots hitting the ground running towards him, as well as another soldier's voice, "Is it one of Dr. Clark's damn gene therapy experiments, the one that looks like a damn robot ninja? She's been injecting her main subject with all kinds of new stuff these days!"
"No, I think that one got away. His damn drugs wore off… the bitch gave him a cybernetic exoskeleton to boot. Forget about her she's dead anyway." Another soldier's voice spoke up from the same place. Dr. Clark was dead… good. He hoped it hurt her as much as she hurt him. In the meantime Naruto's new targets were located, "The source of the fucked up experiment's new genes broke out too. He shouldn't be that-. Whoa." He heard the voice say in shock as he continued to bear down on them. Getting closer now, just a little bit further.
"What kind of monster did all of this?" One voice said fearfully, and then the sight of uniforms came into Naruto's view… and they didn't see him coming at all. Good. Naruto let out one loud roar and saw the fear in their eyes as they turned to face him. It was intoxicating. This was what even more of the Kyuubi's power could do for him? It terrified him that he was so vicious but at the moment he couldn't care. They captured him. They used him in their stupid experiments. They had this coming… or so the voice in his head kept telling him.
As he began to rip into them mercilessly he scoffed at their desperate attempts to hold onto their weapons. He didn't need a weapon like this. His hands were his weapons.
XxX
(Naruto's Mindscape)
It continued on and on. Naruto kept cutting through the enemy with his strange chakra, most of the time before they could even fight off their fear of him to take aim. He found his way outside of the base and tore into the woods after killing dozens of the fools that had tried to stop him. It was like a drug to the source of Naruto's bloodlust and heightened power, the reason for his power overload and mindset.
Sitting and waiting in Naruto's body, it allowed Naruto to gain knowledge of all of the powerful things in this world that would have put much of the shinobi world to shame. It allowed Naruto to get the experience of just what could be done with these weapons. The skills of the humans in this world, while physically lacking for the most part was made up in the technology they employed. Even the almighty Kyuubi no Yoko could be brought down… perhaps yoked to the will of these humans the way that it had been in its original world. It simply did not know.
As long as this stupid human that it was imprisoned within could fight though, then it would remain safe until it could be freed. By the time that occurred it would have come up with a way to clear this world of its powerful weapons for itself. Without the weapons that this world possessed there was no one or nothing that could stop it like the shinobi of the Elemental Nations. There wouldn't be anything that would stop it.
Even this strange group that could override the U.S. government and get a hold of Naruto for experiments right under their nose was a threat. If they had that much influence already then there was a chance that they already had the power to capture it. It had to be destroyed as well. All the Kyuubi had to do was keep Naruto alive until the perfect opportunity presented itself.
"Yes Naruto…" The 'voice' in Naruto's head said as he could feel the slaughter going on outside in the real world, "I am the only weapon you need. And in this world with its terrible nuclear arms and weapons of mass destruction you do need me." Behind a set of prison bars a vulpine grin made itself seen, "Deep down you know that you do."
XxX
(Forest at the U.S./Canadian Border)
Atop a cliff, a figure wearing a sleek, cybernetic exoskeleton suit that completely covered their body, covering the parts of the body that were fully machine in place of real human parts. The front of the helmet opened to reveal a very human male face with white/blonde hair. He looked down at the scene of destruction that had befallen what had once been their place of captivity, "What kind of weapon could have done something like this?" He asked in a gruff voice.
With his enhanced sight, the cybernetic man saw a red outline of a fox with three tails stalking away from the lab they had both been trapped in, walking shakily through the forest until the red outline went away and the young man it had originated from dropped face-first on the ground. He supposed there was some twisted humor in what he was about to do, since he felt no reason to assist the man other than the fact that he had obviously been subjected to Dr. Clark's experiments as well. He was satisfied when he escaped and ended that woman's life.
The figure honed in on Naruto and couldn't see any signs of life coming anywhere near or around him and let out a gravelly chuckle, "It's some kind of cosmic joke… A 'Gray Fox' like me helping out this strange red fox."
That had clearly been the thing that had kept the main force's attention while he slipped out of the base unseen after killing Dr. Clark. A boy that was one-third of his age had killed all of those men and destroyed the base. Almost similar to how he had fought in 1970, except instead of killing with cold efficiency this boy killed with hot anger and rage.
He then thought about how young Naruto seemed to look and thought about his own life as a child soldier, "I'll give you the same chance to keep living that Big Boss gave me little fox. Maybe you can find your own reason to keep fighting the way I did." With that, he vanished from sight with the use of stealth camouflage and decided to head over to Naruto and take him to civilization before continuing on with his own tasks. He had to get him out of there before a cleanup crew arrived to run damage control on what was done.
Naruto truly learns just what one-on-one fights are all about in this world for probably the first time. He learns that his ideal choice of a special force unit has an interest in him. A shadowy organization targeting Naruto for his unique abilities as they try to duplicate the results? Naruto finds out that things are just as shady in this world as they are in his own, and that his station as a soldier doesn't make him as secure as he thought he was. But this is just the beginning.
What has befallen Naruto after his Kyuubi assisted escape from… wherever he was? How will he recover from his episode? What happens next? You probably don't know but I damn sure do.
For those of you that are reading this that don't know anything about the Metal Gear universe… you would find it prudent to go to the Metal Gear Wiki and at least get a crash course on stuff if you're into reading this further. It would work for you.
Anyway, I'm done for now. Kenchi out people. I'm going to go update something different right quick.