Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Halo, or RWBY.
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Black Steel
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Chapter Seven
"Is this really necessary?" Naruto growled quietly, his eyes narrowed and aimed at the same duo he'd ended up fighting last night. Standing off to the side, Ryan gave a snort as he leaned back against the wall next to the basement doorway with his arms crossed over his chest, his Earth-Breaker hammer resting beside him.
"After the hell you put us through last night? You're damn right it is." The Faunus growled back, only to get elbowed by Naomi as she walked past him and sat down in a chair in front of Naruto. Said blonde titanic teen was restrained in a solid metal chair with metal clamps anchoring his ankles and wrists while a couple chains bound him a little tighter; Ryan's idea.
"What? Can't take a punch?" Naruto retorted, sounding unchartacteristically spiteful. "And here I thought you could actually fight."
"Grr!" Ryan audibly growled as he grabbed hold of his hammer, only for Naomi to stop him with a steely gaze that made it clear she wasn't going to tolerate any misbehaving. From either of the males in the room.
"Who are you?" Naruto suddenly questioned, turning his gaze to Naomi. "Why...How do I know you?"
"I'm Naomi Namikaze." The red-gold haired bearer of the Hoplite's Shield Semblance responded. Her expressionless visage shifted a moment later, however, her lips quirking into a small solemn small. "I'm your little sister..."
"Sister...?" Naruto wrasped out in a whisper, his shock at the revelation left plainly visible. A moment later, his eyes narrowed once more in a sharp manner. "Bullshit."
xXx
"Any sign of him?" Weiss inquired as they regrouped, having only just reached Patch a couple hours prior. Nearby was the Bullhead Naruto had apparently used to reach the island during the night, but there was no sign of him, the pilot still knocked out and tied up in the cargo hold.
"I saw tracks heading North-West." Blake reported calmly as she stalked closer. While seeming just as cool and level headed as usual on the outside, Blake was actually a mess on the inside. Everything Naruto was doing looked more and more like the behavior of someone that considered everyone around them an enemy, as if they couldn't trust anyone. Sadly, she couldn't find any fault in his logic, if that was how he was truly feeling at the moment. While they had all become decent friends, they hadn't done anything to actually earn the blonde haired brute's trust and respect. Blake vowed to change that as soon as she could. "What about you?"
"Nothing." Yang answered with a shake of her head before nervously fussing with her hair, only to stomp her foot irritably a moment later. "Gah! What the hell is he thinking?! Doesn't he know how worried sick about him we are?!"
"That's just it, Yang. He probably doesn't." Blake argued as calmly as she could. "Everything he's doing shows signs of distrust in everyone. He's a loner, relying on himself to get things done. Remember the initiation test?"
"Yeah..." Yang mumbled back in reply, recalling how they had all watched him take down two Alpha-class Grimm on his own in only a couple minutes. She then looked at the others, her eyes portraying just how hurt she was at the thoughts going through her head. "Do you...really think he doesn't trust us?"
"I don't like it any more than you do, Yang, but..." Blake hesitated for a moment, thinking back to the numbers that scarred Naruto's chest. She shook her head slightly. "We need to find him. Ruby?"
"We're not that far from that girl's address." Ruby remarked while staring at her Scroll. Looking over the younger girl's shoulder, Weiss gained a flat look before tapping the screen, causing it to zoom out. "Oh...Ooops. I guess we aren't so close to it. Ehehe..."
"Let's just get going. We've got a lot of ground to cover on foot and not a lot of time to do it." Yang 'ordered'.
"Wait!" Kurama called out, stopping everyone before they could start moving. After being fished out from between Yang's breasts, the AI formed her avatar. "If you check the Bullhead, there should be a spot where I can connect to the computer systems and control it remotely."
"Then let's stop wasting time!" Ruby declared with renewed vigor as she raced towards the Bullhead. "Come on!"
xXx
"Wha...What do you mean?" Naomi stammered, having not expected him to react like he did. Naruto didn't break eye contact or even blink as he shifted however little he could, causing the chains to rattle slightly. Ryan scoffed and rolled his eyes.
"You could have killed us." He spat. "You honestly think we'd take any chances with you?"
"You attacked me first." Naruto growled out quietly, turning his cold stare back to the Faunus. "I was just defending myself."
"You were trespassing on private property." Ryan argued back. He really wasn't liking Naruto all that much.
"I was looking for answers." Naruto countered. Before things got any worse between them, Naomi got up and started undoing the chains holding her brother in the chair.
"Naomi!" Ryan exclaimed in shock. "You can't seriously-"
"He's my brother, Ryan!" Naomi snapped back at him fiercely. "This was your idea! Not mine!"
Naruto stayed silent as he watched Naomi with a sharp, questioning look in his eyes. Waiting until the last of the bindings were undone, Naruto stood up and rubbed his wrists slightly, still having yet to take his eyes off Naomi. He blatantly ignored how Ryan kept one hand on his weapon as he watched him like a hawk, making sure he didn't try anything foolish. Of all the things he suspected of happening, Naomi's first move was not one of them...
"You're back..." She whispered softly before suddenly hugging her slightly taller brother as tight as she could, burying her face against his shoulder. Caught completely off guard, Naruto simply stared down at the girl, unsure of what to do or say. Things didn't get any better when she started shaking slightly, trying to stop herself from crying. "Y-You're a-alive..."
"...What do you mean?" Naruto asked quietly without moving, not even to politely return the embrace. Sniffling slightly, Naomi stepped back and dried her eyes before looking back at him with a confused look on her face. "Why do you make it sound as if I were dead?"
"You...really don't remember? Do you?" She muttered quietly.
"Remember what?" Naruto demanded, though he kept his tone as calm as he could manage, which wasn't much. Unfortunately, his patience was wearing thin after dealing with his dream memories, getting hit by a car, waking up hand-cuffed to a hospital bed, and getting in a fight with his supposed sister and her friend. "What don't I remember?!"
"Come on." Naomi urged softly as she gently took one of his hands into her own, lightly tugging on his arm in order to get him to follow her. The pained look in her eyes, though, made him pause. "I'll show you..."
He stayed silent as the girl that claimed to be his sister led him to a door set off to the side that he hadn't noticed earlier. Opening it, Naomi stepped aside to let Naruto enter first. When he got inside, it looked like a normal storage room at first glance, but that was when he noticed something along the back of the room. Recognizing them from his dreams, Naruto slowly took a couple hesitant steps forward, reaching out with one hand to brush his gloved finger tips against the tough glass that boxed in the two sets of armor.
One, a sleek suit of red and black armor that bore gaping tears in the body suit and dented sections of armor plating; his mother's Copperhead suit. The other, his father's Helljumper suit, the cracked helmet's visor smashed out and most of the left leg, both the bodysuit and armor, missing from the display. Set in front of either suit was a small plaque stating the names, birth and death dates, and their most famous quotes with a picture to go with them.
His mother, Kushina, had vibrant red hair, fair skin, and violet eyes. She had only been nearing her fourties when the accident had happened. In the picture, she had such a warm and loving smile on her face. Staring at her plaque with wide eyes, Naruto remained unaware of the two tears that fell from his eyes, which slowly panned over to the other one. Minato. His father. Suddenly, Naruto retracted his hand from the glass as if he had been burned, taking a step back.
"You mean...the dreams...the memories..." Naruto whispered quietly enough that Naomi could barely hear him, his eyes never leaving his parents' pictures. He started shaking slightly, his hands twitching more noticably than anything else. "They were...They were real..."
The dream memories, the foreign ones; they were real? How? How could they be real if he had never lived them? It couldn't be true, though! His mother and father had died in the line of duty during the war with the Covenant! There was no way...but everything said otherwise. His fingers slowly curled into tight fists as the shaking in his arms grew worse, his PTSD sneaking up on him once again as the urge to break something in his over-stressed state rushed to the forefront of his subconsciousness. He barely managed to suppress the instinctual urge to drive his fist through the glass in front of him out of sheer frustration, confusion, and...fear.
"Go, Spartan! Get out of here!" Shouted the UNSC marine as he and a dozen others fired from behind cover all throughout the warehouse-like building, the Covenant splinter forces barely being held back by their slowly dwindling suppressive fire. Sierra-419 hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to do; stay and fight with not even a one percent chance of any of them surviving the conflict? Or escape, leaving the soldiers to die for the sake of the mission? "This base is lost! We know that! But we can't afford to lose YOU! We'll hold them off! Ain't that right, men?!"
"HOO-RAH!" Cried the remaining soldiers with such an unbreakable conviction that shocked Sierra-419. These men, these soldiers...Even in the face of certain death, their spirit would not be broken. They would not die in vain...
Was it all a lie? A dream? Being a part of the UNSC? Being a Spartan? Was it all a fabrication of his own mind to protect him from the trauma of what actually happened? Or was he still dreaming?
"How do you feel, son? Any discomfort or pain?" Minato, his father, asked from beside the hospital-esque bed he was currently lying on. Naruto simply laid there, staring up at the ceiling in silence for a few moments as he slowly regained full consciousness and awareness. After a second, he wordlessly shook his head in response. "That's good. The new neural interface should make the synchronization between your nervous system and your suit feel more natural and seamless. Also, until you fully link-up with your suit, you'll have a sort of 'phantom longing', not unlike an amputee suffering from phantom limb; it's normal. Once you get suited up, it'll go away."
"I feel..." Naruto paused for a moment before sitting up in the bed, clad in only his usual black and grey camo pants. Lightly touching the back of his head where the quarter-sized plate of exposed metal from the neural interface was located, Naruto closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Even though he felt that longing his father mentioned, he could almost...feel where his suit was. Along with something else, but he couldn't quite pin-point it just yet. Shaking it off, Naruto opened his eyes and looked up at his father with a blank, unreadable expression on his face; his usual expression. "I feel better than ever."
"I'm glad to hear that." Minato returned with a grin as he clapped a hand down on his son's shoulder. "Now get dressed and meet me in the armory. I've got a little surprise for you."
'What...What the fuck is happening to me?' Naruto mentally stammered out numbly, his eyes unfocused as he stared blankly at the ruined visage of his deceased father's helmet. Panic started to set in, making it even harder to hold back the violent storm of emotions spiraling out of control within his head. 'I can't even tell what's real and what's not anymore! WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!'
"Naruto." Naomi spoke up softly while reaching out to gently touch her brother's arm, but that proved to be the wrong move as it shattered what little restraint he still had. Whipping around, Naruto pushed her aside more forcefully than intended as he rushed out the door, knocking Naomi to the floor. Hearing a crash outside, Naomi scrambled back to her feet to find Ryan slumped over in the corner of the basement, most likely from trying to stop Naruto from running before getting thrown aside as if he were weightless. Another noise met her ears, prompting her to sprint for the front door, only to find it forced open and still left ajar from Naruto's hasty escape. "NARUTO!"
"FIRE!" Howled the commanding officer of the mobile artillery detachment he had been assigned to. A moment later, the deafening booms of heavy cannons firing thundered throughout the area, but it didn't bother him in the slightest. Nearly four dozen Scorpion tanks fired their main cannons alongside a half dozen Mammoths, their rounds pounding into the flank of a Covenant frigate that hovered over the ruins of what had once been a UNSC city-base. With the second salvo, the frigate's shields fell while several squadrons of Banshees flew straight towards them along with a large number of troop carriers. They knew they were there...and they were not happy. "All forces! Engage!"
Sierra-419 double-checked his SAW and made sure he was fully supplied with ammunition for the light machine gun, the rocket launcher mounted on his back, the Hydra set horizontally along his lower back, and the pistol on the side of his thigh. Putting it behind his right shoulder, the SPARTAN-VI hefted the turret that had previously been mounted on the back of a Warthog prior to being wrecked in the battle they just won. It had not been an easy fight getting to their position for one of the biggest fights they would have in their attempt to retake Reach from the Covenant invasion. It would not be an easy fight ahead of them, either...
The blonde didn't go far, charging the nearest tree in sight. Pouring all of his pain into it, Naruto smashed his fist into the tree trunk, unaware of the flickering blue-white whisps of Aura gushing out of his body as he did so. Instantly, a six foot section of the tree trunk was reduced to splinters and mulch in a single explosive moment...but Naruto wasn't done. Before the tree could topple, Naruto had grabbed hold of it with his free arm, only to swing it around and smash three more down with another bellowing cry. All the while, his Aura poured out of his body in whispy sapphire flames, driven out of his body by his own pain and frustration.
"Naruto, I'd like you to meet your new partner...Kurama. Say hello." Minato remarked as he and Naruto stood in the middle of the elder blonde's private workshop. If Naruto was surprised to see a scarlet holographic image of a woman appear from a projector pad on the desk, he didn't show it.
"Hello, Naruto. I am Kurama." The image responded, a small light on the computer beside her flickering in tune with her voice. "Do you know what I am?"
"You're...an artificial intelligence program. One made by my father. Right?" Naruto answered slowly with a touch of uncertainty. Kurama smiled slightly and nodded. Naruto then leaned closer to the six inch tall hologram, his eyes narrowed slightly as he scrutinized the bright red figure. "No. You're not...You're more than that."
"Good eye. You're right." Minato commented from behind his son, leaning back against a work bench cluttered with computer pieces and various bits of machinery. His slight smirk became a small frown as he continued, however. "The surgery...didn't quite go as planned. The neural interface was implanted without a problem, but shortly afterwards, your brain activity sky rocketed. Almost to a point that your brain would fried itself. That's when I remembered an old theory I had a long time ago, one that I deemed too dangerous to attempt to actually create back then. To make an AI like Kurama, it requires a digital replication of someone's brain and neural structuring, but the process has a ninety-four percent risk of causing brain damage to the participant..."
"Except with my brain over-clocking itself, so to speak, it cut out the risk of brain damage." Naruto interrupted, still having yet to take his eyes off the holographic image in front of him, which was now smiling at him as if they were proud of him and yet as if they had already known he would figure it out. After a few seconds of silence, Naruto straightened his back and glanced over his shoulder at his father. "Right?"
"Y-Yes, actually...How did you know?" Minato questioned, his surprise clearly displayed on his face. Naruto didn't answer. He simply looked back at the hologram in front of him. He didn't answer him because he himself did not know the answer to that question...
What the hell was real anymore?! He was a soldier of the UNSC, a Spartan! He was fighting a war against the Covenant! But...in this world, he wasn't! He had a family? A sister? Things just weren't adding up right! None of this should have been possible! Even as he started feeling detached from everything around him, a small part of his mind that retained rational thought watched as he demonlished another tree. Where was this strength coming from? Even with Olympus, he hadn't been able to so effortlessly destroy something without using some kind of weapon. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, the power was gone...
"NARUTO! Calm down!" Kushina, his mother called out to him as they stood fully outfitted in their respective armor suits. They had been sparring to help him familiarize himself with his suit's newest enhancements and changes when his Aura surged without warning, nearly sending him into an almost berserk state. Fortunately, he seemed to be focusing on the ground, his fists hammering away at the dense metal flooring of their family's underground training room. She couldn't get near him, lest his now instinctually driven mind register her as a threat and focus that power on her; even as strong as she was, Kushina knew better. Her son's blood was thicker than even her's and Minato's. He was the closest in strength to their originating ancestors than other bearer of the Hoplite's Shield she had ever heard of. "Minato! Get the Armor Lock! He's unlocked the Hoplite's Might!"
"Naruto!" He heard someone cry out from behind him just as his fist impacted another tree, but his Aura was tapped out, leaving only a fist-sized dent in the thick wood. Before he could turn to see who it was that had called out his name, Naruto felt his vision blur and darken as consciousness left him once again, too heavily drained of his Aura to remain conscious. His last thought was a hopeful wish that he wouldn't be tormented by the dream memories again as he lost consciousness fully, his body colliding with the ground moments later.
His wish would go unfulfilled...
xXx
"PTSD?" Naomi parroted in shock. "That...That would explain his strange behavior, especially with his amnesia added into the mix."
"Yeah. It's been a crazy couple days." Yang murmured from beside the towering red and gold haired young woman, her arms crossed under her large chest as she stared into the room they stood just outside of. The door was open so they could keep an eye on Naruto while Blake sat beside the bed in a chair, reading one of her books even though she spent more time staring at the unconscious blonde than she did the pages to her novel. It didn't take a genius to know what, or rather who, the dark haired girl was thinking about. "I still can't get over him getting hit by a car and still being able to just up and run like this..."
"Wait, he was hit by a car before he got here?!" Naomi nearly demanded out of worry, having not been aware of that fact; then again, it would explain some of the bruising on his face and the healing cut on his forehead that he'd had prior to their little brawl last night. That's when her shock turned to a small humorless smirk as she lightly shook her head. "And he was still able to fight me and Ryan off at the same time...If he had been at full strength, I have no doubt in my mind that he just might have been able to beat the both of us no matter what we tried to do."
"Yeah. He's something else..." Yang mumbled with an almost whistful sounding undertone to her words, still having yet to take her eyes off the black-suited giant slumbering in the room. Taking note of how Yang spoke and the look on the blonde girl's face, Naomi couldn't help smiling faintly; it seemed her brother had found some of the best friends he could ever have. The one in white, the Schnee, was in the room, standing in a corner and leaning back against the wall without once taking her eyes off Naruto. It was obvious she was just as worried about the titan that was her older brother as everyone else, but she tried to maintain her composure; still, her concern was quite obvious if one were to look into the Schnee's icy blue eyes. The group's apparent leader, the youngest of the rag-tag team with the red cloak, was doing her best to stay positive, but it was obvious that she was struggling to keep up such bravado in the face of everything that had happened to their team mate over the past fourty-eight hours; not even the many games on her Scroll helped keep a smile on her face...
"You really do care about him, don't you. You all do." It wasn't a question. Yang could tell that much, but...there's was a knowing tone to Naomi's words that kind of confused the buxom blonde. "He's always been able to take on an army of Grimm single-handedly, but...he needs someone to look after him still, you know? Especially right now."
"Don't worry about him. He's in capable hands." Yang reassured with her usual confident grin as she half-heartedly pumped a fist, cupping her bicep with her other hand as she did so. Naomi couldn't help smiling a little at Yang's confidence, the feeling being a little infectious. "We'll take good care of him for you."
"Thanks..." Naomi answered softly as she leaned back against the wall a little, lightly crossing her arms over her middle.
xXx
Shouldering his way through the door in front of him, Naruto found himself standing in the middle of a large circular room made of metal. Looking behind him, what had originally been a simple wooden door that led into the house his family lived in was now a pair of massive metal blast doors, the twin meter-thick barriers of dense armor-metal sealed shut. Hearing an all-too familiar muted-metallic thud, Naruto turned back around to find his original MJOLNIR Mark-VII '445 Super Wide' suit, the one he used to wear back in the UNSC, standing before him while he himself was clad in only his black bodysuit, black and grey camo cargo pants, and his combat boots. The suit had his magnum mounted to the side of its right leg and his combat knife mounted to its left shoulder like always even though he himself had both items set behind his waist at the moment. Hearing the sound of booted feet off to the side, Naruto's eyes went wide; standing there was a copy of himself, dressed similarly to himself, except in a white tank top instead of his bodysuit and they didn't have his facial scar. They, too, bore Anastasia and his combat knife along their lower back.
"What is this?" He growled out quietly, his confusion and aggitation slowly burning away at his patience. His unarmored copy simply smirked with a single breath of quiet laughter as he shook his head, his armored copy merely crossing his bulky metal-encased arms over his broad chest.
"Figures you'd react that way. It isn't every day someone experiences something like this." His unarmored copy answered with a mildly sarcastic tone to their words, but it wasn't in a condescending manner. Locking eyes with Naruto, the unarmored copy's smirk grew a little as they stuffed their hands in their pocket. "We...are you."
"What?" Naruto grunted out, his tone portraying his intent; if he didn't get any straight-forward answers, he was going to force them out of the pair. No matter what. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
"Okay, let me clarify. I am the you from this world, from Remnant." 'Remnant Naruto' answered while putting a hand on his chest before gesturing towards the armored copy with the same hand a moment later. "Talk, dark, and scary over there is the you from the world you originally came from. In other words? You're currently having an identity crisis right now."
"How can I be having an identity crisis?" Naruto snapped, his fingers curling into tight fists as his temper started warming up. 'UNSC Naruto' uncrossed his arms and anchored his stance a little, his body subtly tensing up as he recognized the slowly growing threat of a physical confrontation. "I know who I am!"
"Yes, yes...but do you know WHICH one you are?" Remnant Naruto countered, his smirk vanishing and his gaze hardening as his tone became sharp and biting with the same ferocity as his own temper. Naruto gave a slight start in response, his eyes widening slightly. "Are you Naruto, the Huntsman of Vale, or are you Sierra-419, the UNSC Spartan?!"
"I...I'm..." Naruto stammered quietly, his stuttered words coming out in a dry-throated whisper as panic tried to creep into his veins. Closing his eyes and giving his head a quick shake, Naruto steeled his resolve. "I don't understand what you are saying! There's only one of me!"
"In one universe, yes! But you crossed dimensions, you fucking idiot!" Remnant Naruto barked out, stomping a half-step forward out of aggitation while UNSC Naruto tensed up a little more in reaction to the sudden aggressive movement. "That Forerunner portal wasn't a teleportation device! It didn't just cross through Time and Space! It crossed through the Multi-verse! By going through that portal, you crossed over into a parallel universe! I was tossed through that same portal when you came out! In FAR more ways than you could possibly imagine, we've traded places! And now, we all stand at a crossroad!"
"Multi-verse? Trading places? A crossroads?!" Naruto snarled back, his confusion and ignorance of what was happening wearing down on his patience even more. "What the fuck is all of that supposed to mean?! That I'm becoming you?!"
"Pfft! Please! You could NEVER be ME!" Remnant Naruto fired back while jabbing his thumb into his chest, only to stab a finger at the armor-clad Spartan off to the side. "You're not even him anymore! You've crossed over cosmic boundaries! You've done the one thing that wasn't supposed to ever happen!"
"...What?" This time, Naruto wasn't as angry as before. He was actually caught between fear...and relief. But why? Glancing between them, Naruto struggled to wrap his head around everything. Seeing as he was calming down, if only slightly and for the moment, Remnant Naruto took a deep breath to calm himself down.
"You still don't get it, do you? The memories? The subtle signs and symptoms of PTSD?" Remnant Naruto listed, stepping closer to Naruto as the bodysuit-clad blonde turned his gaze down to the ground, his brain working hard to rationalize everything that was going on before he had a mental breakdown. "You've been getting MY memories and HIS memories. The three of us, we're all one and the same at our cores, but the rest of us individually are different. Take our pistols for example; they're all the same model and design, but they're still different. Mine was made with the technology of Remnant. His was made with the technology of the UNSC. Yours...is a culmination of both. Originally of UNSC design, but reforged with the technology of Remnant. Just like your armor...Remember when you replaced the power supply? How it felt as if you had done it before even though you hadn't?"
"That...That was your memory...wasn't it?" Naruto wrasped out, his eyes jumping up to Remnant Naruto. "I'm...neither one of you...yet still just like you."
"Now you're getting it...Yes, that's right. You USED to be him, but because you went through that portal, we traded places. Because we traded places, we are also trading our memories, our experiences. Even as we speak, I'm going through the same kind of problems you are, only in reverse. I'm getting his memories while you are getting mine." Remnant Naruto went on to explain while UNSC Naruto, ever silent, hesitantly let himself relax as the possibility of a fight breaking out gradually dwindled away. "You can no longer go back to being him, I can no longer go back to the way I used to be, and he will essentially no longer exist in either of our dimensions. Now, You've got to choose. Will you be Naruto, the Spartan? Will you become Naruto, the Huntsman? Or will you become something else entirely?"
"I...I don't...I don't know..." Naruto whispered as he slowly sunk down to his knees, his gaze focusing on nothing as his mind tried to process everything. If he couldn't go back to his home world or go back to being the Spartan he once was, then how could he go back to being a Spartan? If he was not from Remnant, how could he be a Huntsman like his apparent counter-part? If he couldn't be either of them, how...how could he become either of them?
He was broken. At his very core, he was broken beyond repair, but not in the sense most others would assume. Like a sword, he was shattered...but he could be reforged. Like his M6H2 Magnum...
Slowly drawing the pistol from its holster with numb fingers, Naruto stared down at the sidearm with a blank and unreadable expression while Sierra-419 instantly tensed up again, his right hand hovering over his own sidearm in preparation to draw it at a moment's notice. Remnant Naruto, however, remained absolutely calm as he watched Naruto with a cold, but patient look in his eyes. Using his other hand, Naruto slowly pulled the slide back to find a single live round in the firearm's chamber, but it wasn't the same as the singular bullets chambered in either UNSC Naruto's or Remnant Naruto's sidearms.
Remnant Naruto's bullet was purely of Remnant design, made with Dust for a propellent and metals native to his homeland. UNSC Naruto's bullet was purely of UNSC design, made with gunpowder for a propellent and metals native to their home world. His, however, was a cross between them. A hybrid. The round was made almost exactly like that of the UNSC's, only with Dust for a propellent. He could no longer be a Spartan and he would never truly be a Huntsman, so...what was he?
Almost automatically, Naruto's gaze slowly rose to stare at UNSC Naruto, his dark violet-sapphire eyes scanning the Spartan's armor, every single detail mirroring his exact memory of his old suit. But it wasn't the same as the one he now had. The differences were subtle and in varying degrees between minor and major, depending on the part or design, but it was still his old armor. However, that wasn't what he was thinking about. For some inexplicable reason, it made him think of what the marines used to call him...
The Black Mountain...
"I'm...not him anymore...and I'll never be you..." Naruto slowly whispered, but although his words were barely audible, they echoed through the wide-open room just loud enough for his two copies to hear perfectly. Turning his gae back down to the gun in his hand, Naruto tightened his grip on the sidearm as his resolve hardened, his mind made up and will reinforced. "I...I am Naruto. Originally forged in the fires of war...and then reforged by the waters of a world that is not my own. I am not a Spartan nor a Huntsman..."
"Then who are you?" Remnant Naruto questioned, though it was intended to be rhetorical. Even still, he was answered as Naruto closed his eyes and tilted his head back slightly, the cold metal of the barrel going unnoticed as it was lightly pressed to his skin just under his chin.
"I am Naruto, son of Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina..." He answered softly, his finger slowly tensing as he applied pressure to the trigger, but not even to fire it. "I am Naruto, the Black Mountain."
As a flash of white blinded his mind's eye and the resonating explosion of sound silenced all other 'noise' within his mind, Naruto's eyes snapped open, his heart thundering in his chest like an over-revved engine beating to the rhythm of a war drum and chest heaving with deep, quickened breaths. After taking a moment to calm back down, Naruto slowly became aware of his surroundings. Wearing the same attire he'd been wearing in his...dream, Naruto was lying in a bed that he knew was once owned by his counter-parts and was now his, the same concerning the room he currently resided in. It was dark, being the middle of the night, but his eyes kept him from being blinded by the encompassing shadows. It was silent, but...he could still hear something in the room, something that let him know that he wasn't alone in the room.
Looking to the side, he found the person sharing the room with him. Sitting in a chair beside the bed was Weiss Schnee, surprisingly. The heiress was slouched to the side, sound asleep, with her Scroll resting in one of her hands. Quietly getting out of the bed, Naruto gently pulled the device from her slumbering grasp, accidentally turning it back on in the process. As the screen lit up, catching his attention, Naruto paused in his primary objective to look at it. Displayed on it was a picture of their team, something Ruby had insisted on them doing shortly after they all met up to attend the fundraiser the other day.
Looking at the image of himself, Naruto frowned slightly when he noticed just how...cold and distant he looked. Especially in comparison to the spectrum of emotions his team mates displayed. Ruby and Yang were grinning like a couple of lunatics, Blake herself had a small smile on her face even though she was far more reserved than the others, and Weiss...He paused for a moment to glance at the heiress in question for a moment before finally allowing a faint, almost invisible smile to tug at the corners of his lips. Setting the device down on the nightstand, Naruto was careful not to disturb the snowy haired young woman as he gently lifted her from the chair.
Cradled in his arms, the petite girl subconsciously noticed the shift in gravity's pull on her body and stirred slightly, but did nothing more than quietly groan in her sleep and nuzzle her cheek against Naruto's chest before going still once more. It was that very moment when Naruto realized just how tiny Weiss was in comparison to him. He really must seem like a mountain to her and the others with how tall and broad his physique was. Dismissing the thought, Naruto gently laid Weiss down in the bed before pulling the covers over her to keep her warm. Almost immediately, Weiss let out another quiet groan in her sleep as she got comfortable.
Spotting Kurama's DC Chip next to Weiss's Scroll on the nightstand, Naruto picked up the metal-encased card-like item before slipping it into the pouch on his left arm. Taking one last look at the picture on Weiss's Scroll, Naruto let his faint smile grow just a fraction more as he turned and quietly left the room. In the picture, Weiss was standing a little off to the side of the group with her arms stubbornly crossed over her chest and staring off to the side as if refusing to partake, but the almost unnoticable smile on her face and the way she was watching the others out of the corner of her eye showed that she was at least enjoying herself a little bit...
"Mm...Naru...to..." Weiss mumbled out in her sleep as she nuzzled the pillow, unknowingly breathing in his scent as her hand pawed at the bed for a moment, almost as if she were reaching out for something...
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