Authors Note! I dedicate this chapter to a very special person who has graced my life! So to my Nana whose spirit could still be out there. "Thanks Nana Jorgy. I will always remember you!"
Chapter VII
The next morning Vincent followed the child called Naruto into his village's hospital.
It was big enough to attend to the medical needs of half of a sector in Midgar, Vincent noticed as he wondered what the medical facilities where like inside.
Vincent was appalled by what he saw in the staff.
They where rude to the boy and in some cases where down right cruel.
Some people would push the boy as they where moving by Naruto and from what Vincent could see it was not a gentle push either.
As this continued Vincent noticed that though the boy was being mistreated that he continued to brave through the verbal and physical onslaught.
So it was that when the next person he saw 'bump' into the child he grabbed the man's shoulder with his left hand.
The man screamed in agony as Vincent had made sure that the tips of his 'fingers' went into the man's shoulder.
Leaning closer to his screaming captive Vincent realised he now had an audience.
Amongst some of the people watching; was a child about the same age as his mistreated and abused host. This child wore a large trench-coat with the collar up as high as his own cloak sporting a metallic bandana like his fellow ninja's on his forehead. His eye's hidden by sunglasses.
"If catch you mistreating another child like this one again and what I am doing to you now will seem like you won the lottery," Vincent warned the man using his most deadly sounding voice as he squeezed his claw on the man's shoulder.
The man screamed as he nodded his agreement. As the lady called the Hokage came running in.
Vincent let him go and moved his claw into the folds of his cloak.
The child walked over to Naruto asking if he was alright. Naruto however was staring at his house-guest with a look of awe to it.
"Okay I think everyone has spent enough time trying to investigate what is not their concern!" the Gondaime called out to the crowd an air of authority in her voice. "Don't you all have somewhere else you can go to?"
All of the surrounding onlookers quickly left at their Hokage's voice.
Only Vincent, the two children and the Hokage remained.
Vincent turned to face the Hokage; He noted that her face remained angry.
"Do you make it your quest to make things difficult for me?" she fumed at the gunslinger.
Vincent looked at her blankly as if not registering her words.
"Let me put it another way," Tsunade replied to Vincent dangerously. "If I catch you mistreating another member of my village again; I will treat you like an enemy. Do you understand?"
"If I catch another member of this village mistreating this boy again; I will treat them like the monsters that they are!" Vincent replied with a blank face his voice however was of disgust. "No one should be mistreated like an animal or worse."
"Excuse me but what would be worse?" the child with sunglasses asked with no emotion in his voice.
"Like nothing more than an experiment," Vincent replied calmly.
"You really hate experiments don't you?" queried Tsunade.
"Are we done?" Vincent asked abruptly. "Naruto must meet up with his team soon."
"Come with me," Tsunade mentioned towards the far end of a corridor. "You can follow as well if you wish boys."
Both Naruto and friend quickly followed the two adults down the corridor.
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The room that they where finally lead into was spacious and filled with strange instruments.
Some looked almost familiar to Vincent in their design which in turn started to remind him of his time spent in Hojo's lab.
"Vincent," he heard a young voice call out to him.
Looking to his side he noticed Naruto. The child had a look of concern on his face.
"What's wrong?" Tsunade asked quietly making Vincent quickly look at her in alarm.
"Nothing," Vincent said quickly.
"Then would you mind taking off your coat and shirt so that I can check your health?" Tsunade asked quietly her voice gentle.
Taking off his coat slowly, Vincent's figure was revealed to the three onlookers.
He seemed to be too lean and skinny to have all that strength that he was showing before.
His black clothes however, where accented with buckles everywhere.
But the buckles did not stop him from getting the shirt off easily. Even with the metal claw in its way.
Once undressed from the waist up Vincent was soon to see all three of his watchers staring at his upper body.
He knew what they saw, because he saw it every time he had looked into a mirror at a hotel that he and his friends visited on their journey.
All over his body where scars of the most horrific kind. Evidence of what had happened in Hojo's lab.
"Kami-sama!" whispered Tsunade at the sight. "How in the world did you survive all this?"
Tsunade walked over to the gunman quietly her hands questing for the answers behind the scars.
"How did you get these scars?" the child asked.
"You got them from that Hojo bastard didn't you?" Naruto asked.
"Yes," the gunman replied quietly.
"You've got something in your system that's not Chakra related in you," the unknown child replied.
"How would you know?" questioned Vincent.
"A small friend told me," he replied holding up his hand and pointing to Vincent's left hand.
"A bug?" Vincent replied curiously as he examined the tiny insect crawling across his metallic arm.
"Shino here is from the Aburame clan," explained Tsunade. "They are known for letting a special type of bug inhabit their bodies."
"Interesting," replied the gunman.
"But enough of that lets get started on this shall we?" Tsunade appealed of the scarred man as she directed him towards the examination table.
Vincent stood by the table in question but did not sit on it.
"Please sit," asked the fifth Hokage kindly.
"No," responded Vincent calmly. "You are going to have to do your examinations without me sitting on this."
"Look it will not hurt you," Tsunade replied her voice starting to get annoyed.
"Um... Tsunade-baba, I think that it was also because of what that Hojo creep did to Vincent," Naruto piped up as if to explain what he thought as to the reason as to why his 'guest' was refusing to sit on the table.
"Oh?" exclaimed Tsunade with surprise written on her face. "Then please sit on the seat over here then."
That Vincent did do calmly, his red eyes carefully surveying the surroundings.
Pulling another chair over towards the black haired gunman, Tsunade started to seriously examine the man's 'claw'.
"Is there any way to get this claw off?" Tsunade asked curiously to the red eye male.
"No, that 'claw' as you are so happy to call it is my arm with an exoskeleton grown over it," Vincent informed her.
Seeming annoyed Tsunade continued to examine the arm. At one point she even moved Vincent over to the x-ray room for a few pictures of the arm. (And while she was there had a full body x-ray done as well.)
After two hours she finally relented and left the arm alone as she had gathered all the information that she could gather. Moving on to the next lot of examinations she kept it short.
She checked his heart beats and any other thing she could think of at the time, which took Vincent's time there to an all time high of four hours.
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"Okay you are free to go," informed Tsunade to Vincent.
"Then I shall bid you good day as I know that Naruto has to get to his team seven meeting right now as he is now two hours late," Vincent told her as he turned to move over to the Genin in question.
"I told you that it's alright, Kakashi sensei is always late anyway," shrugged Naruto with a non-committal gesture. "I'd say that when we get there we wouldn't have to wait very long for him to show up now."
"Then you'd better get going then," smiled Tsunade at the youthful wisdom of the young man.
As she watched the two leave she turned to the long forgotten Shino.
"Did your friends notice anything strange or unique about our strange friend?" she queried.
Shino tilted his head to view the Hokage. "All I know is that what ever he has inside him, it is not chakra and he smells different to my friends."
"How different?"
"Like he has some other people inside him who are somewhat..." Shino fell quiet.
"Somewhat... what?" Tsunade asked confused.
"Evil," the young man replied flatly. "Dark and lonely."
There was a knock at the door which opened to reveal a medical-nin with a folder.
Taking the folder Tsunade opened it to reveal the contents.
They where the x-rays of the mysterious man.
"Thank you for your help Shino," Tsunade smiled at the teenager dismissing him.
As he left Tsunade was sorting through what she had gathered to try and figure out as to how the man felt that he was so alone.
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Vincent quickly moved to follow the boy who was running along the streets of the hidden village to get to his destination.
As he moved he realised that the boy did not seem to realise that he was increasing his speed to an almost near sprint. Oh he could keep up with Naruto but he was curious to wonder if the boy had remembered that he had someone following him.
As soon as the child leapt to a roof to go across the rooftops to his destination, which was also when Vincent realised that the child had indeed forgotten about him.
Raising his eyebrows Vincent flew to catch up with the jumping Naruto. The child he noticed was not huffing as he moved with the grace of an animal, using both his arms and legs to move at a faster pace along the rooftops.
Oh Vincent could still keep up easily, his smile hidden by the folds of his cape. He had to raise his blood rate just a touch to keep up with his running companion who seemed to have no desire to slow down.
He started to feel his almost unused blood start to move. The pain was that off the feeling of what he could remember his old companions back in his world would call 'pins and needles' which was something he could easily dismiss.
As they neared a bridge he noticed a pink hair girl waiting for something and looking somewhat bored plus angry.
Naruto stopped at the bridge in front of the girl and smiled at her.
Unfortunately Vincent realised that the girl was not going to wait for an apology from Naruto as had actually moved to hit him.
Grabbing the females hand just before she moved to hit Naruto he held her back.
"I don't think that is a suitable behaviour for a child do you?" queried Vincent as he placed himself in between the two.
"Hey, I'm not a child!" screeched the pink haired child. "My name is Sakura and I am Naruto's team mate so if I want to teach him a lesson on manners I can!"
"Then do so without injury child," Vincent told her calmly as he moved beside Naruto.
Naruto throughout the entire exchange seemed to be shocked at the attention that he was getting off from Vincent. It made him feel strange and as to what ever it was making him feel was kinda of important.
Standing on the side lines watching quietly Kakashi watched as he patiently waited for the three to sort out their differences and hoping like mad that Sakura would finally get over her self important arrogance.
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Bonus Omake!
(In other words…Fun time!)
"Yarghhh!!!"
Confused Vincent turned around to view an upset Naruto running towards him.
"Vincent! Please you've gotta help me before Sakura-chan find's out that I spilt all of her black powder!" Naruto implored of the clawed warrior. "If she finds it gone she is so gonna kill me!"
"Black powder?" Vincent mentioned before pulling out his gun to the terrified ninja. "Yes I have some black powder you can have."
"You do!" Naruto replied with relief in his voice. "Where is it?"
Snapping open his gun, Vincent removed a bullet from the gun barrel.
Naruto then watched as Vincent sliced off the top of the bullet with care to reveal the 'contents' of said bullet.
"Black powder! Vincent! You rock!!!" crowed Naruto as he snatched the open bullet shell with the inclosed powder and ran off.
Watching the retreating form of the young ninja Vincent was left with just a single question.
'I hope that he realises that it is highly explosive,' he thought as he moved back to what he was doing.
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Later on that day...
The door to the flat was banged open as quickly as it was shut. Vincent quickly moved to intercept the 'intruder' which turned out to be a hurt Naruto.
"What happened?" Vincent asked. "You didn't put that gunpowder near anything flammable did you?"
"You could say that!" Naruto whimpered. "I only wanted to replace that black powder that she uses for her eyes that I spilt while she was yelling at Ino."
"NARUTO, I'M SOOO GONNA KILL YOU!" Sakura's voice was heard from somewhere outside of Naruto's home.
"But Sakura, it really makes your forehead seem even bigger than before without your eyebrows," Ino's voice could be heard nearby with a laugh.
END
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Authors Notes… (Again)
Hello everyone! Sorry for the late chapter... But as I have been busy. And it is gonna get even worse! (At least until after Easter... Hopefully.)
I thought that I would start this chapter with a difference as you may have noticed. Yes I dedicated this chapter to my beloved 'Nana'.
To those who are wondering… Her birthday was on St Patricks day. (17th March) And she was a really wonderful lady who used to always worry about her family, (And people she classified as 'extra family members' aka… friends of the family.) She taught me and other members of the family to always look to the bright side and enjoy life when ever you can.
But to leave that sad note behind, I do however apologise for the lateness of this chapter. But as a quick warning! I am going to try and get another chapter out when I can, but just remember that I have a second story to write as well and with what has been going on lately I might be awhile. So please be patient.
I've also got to attend two conventions which are only a week apart! Both Go3, (It's an Electronics fair that wants my Anime Club to attend) and Swan-Con. (Which is our local 'big' convention which has no specific fandom focus. Hey it is all the fandom's all rolled into one BIG Convention! It is really a great time to witness and enjoy!)
But for now I'd better wrap it up now so sorry again for the late delay, and if I'm not able to write again before the first week of April…
Happy Easter Everyone!
