Chapter Eight
Tendril Reborn
Naruto Uzumaki was standing before Namikaze Jubei, or at least the Jubei Naruto had pretended to be. They hadn't spoken to each other since Tatsumaki had disappeared, which had happened several minutes ago. During that time Naruto had been looking around desperately for Kurama, hoping the demon king had some answer to his current dilemma.
However Naruto was beginning to piece things together on his own. As a boy he had heard of Shinobi who would go on undercover missions, and end up with split personalities from pretending to be someone else for too long.
"Jubei?" The Namikaze turned to face Naruto, a smile on his face.
"Yes, Naruto?"
"We need to find the Kyubi."
Jubei stared at his 'cousin', confused. He had never heard of the Kyubi, but Naruto was his relative so he had no reason not to trust him.
"Well, alright."
Turning away from the tree swing, the two Namikaze's made their way to the center of Naruto's mind-scape.
Tatsumaki felt the hard concrete of the side-walk slam into his shoulders, the back of his head jolted on impact, and he bit through his tongue. Blood dripping out of his mouth, he rose to face his attacker.
"Uchiha Sasuke, stop."
"Don't do this to me Naruto, not again."
"I'm not Naruto!"
Sasuke roared in frustration and slammed his foot into Tatsumaki's chin, sending him flying into the wall of a nearby building. The Uchiha dashed toward him, throwing a punch toward the Anbu's head.
Tatsumaki barely dodged it, and had to move even quicker to dodge another punch. Sasuke was fighting quick and hard, but not potently. He was toying with Tatsumaki. Batting him around as you would a flashlight that stopped working. He was trying to get the batteries working again.
"Remember damn you!"
Tatsumaki jumped up as Sasuke hesitated, flipping and landing behind him. Tatsumaki sprinted away, leaving Sasuke enraged.
"GET BACK HERE NARUTO!"
"ROAAARRRR!'"
The kyubi's roar echoed throughout Naruto's mind, leading him and Jubei closer to the beast.
"He's here somewhere. We just need to-"
Naruto stopped, before them was a maze of human bones, sharpened to a razor point. A new noise grew louder and louder, and they followed it to it's source. In the center of the maze of bones, a slender man stood sharpening a human fore-arm. As they approached, he turned to greet them.
"Ah, Naruto... I believe we have a score to settle." The man stood up, and twirled his bone hook and sword in his hands, like a deadly windmill, "Oh, hello..."
Turning to face Jubei, the man spoke.
"I don't believe we've been properly introduced."
The man's eyes danced behind his mask.
"My name... is Tendril."
Tatsumaki leapt from building to building, rushing away from the mad-man on his trail.
"Naruto!"
Sasuke slammed into Tatsumaki's back, they both spiraled into the ground, shattering the road beneath them.
"Naruto, why do you protect this village?" Sasuke's grip kept Tatsumaki pinned to the ground.
"My name is Tatsumaki!" Tatsumaki pulled up his fist and slammed it into Sasuke's jaw. Sasuke didn't flinch.
"Naruto! What is your dream?"
"My name is-"
"Naruto who do you fight for!"
"Tatu-"
"Who do you love!"
"Sa...ku-"
Naruto convulsed under Sasuke's grip, pain running up and down his body. Sasuke forced his squirming friend to the ground, and watched as Naruto's eyes began to glow.
"Damn." Sasuke muttered.
"Sasuke, what is going on?!" The Uchiha turned his head to see his pink haired teammate sprinting toward them.
"Sakura stay ba-"
Before he could finish the warning, an explosion of chakra threw them away from Naruto.
Sakura brushed her pants off, and stood up from the ground. Dust from the explosion was hanging in the air. She looked around and quickly spotted Sasuke, standing up several feet from where Naruto once was.
"Naruto!" She called.
She received no answer.
In the distance, Tatsumaki stood up. He stared off into the eye's of Haruno Sakura.
"I..."
Sakura looked back, and shouted to him.
"What!" He couldn't hear her at first, his ears were still ringing from the explosion. She cupped her hands around her mouth and called again,
"Behind you!"
Tatsumaki twirled around to come face to face with Tendril.
"Catch!" Tendril brought up his fore-arm sword, slashing Tatsumaki across the chest.
The Anbu stared at the man, confused.
"You aren't really Naruto right now are you, no, it'll take some real heavy, emotional trauma to knock your senses back!" Tendril pointed off in the direction of Sakura.
Tatsumaki did nothing.
"I think her death might be enough to bring the real you out of hiding." Tendril walked off in the direction of Sakura, twirling his viscous hook.
Tatsumaki extended his arm, grabbing Tendril and throwing him back. Tendril jumped to his feet, licking his lips and spinning his sword in his hand.
"You can do it Naruto!" The love of his life cheered. Naruto turned in the direction of Sakura, and nodded.
"Believe it."
Naruto began to pace in a circle around Tendril. He didn't know how he left his mind-scape, and he had no idea how he got to this part of the village. One thing was certain in his mind. This monster that stood before him needed to be stopped, and he was the only one who could do it.
All the while one thing troubled him. Naruto knew that he killed Tendril, he could still remember the man's last breath leaving him, and the kiss that Tendril had given him.
He shuddered.
"How?" Naruto brought his hand to where his sword should have been, but he had no weapon, he couldn't recall where the ninjato was, and the hospital garb he was wearing did nothing to jog his memory.
"Ah, you wish to know how I have returned from the 'dead'?" Tendril smiled at Naruto, a devilish smile, "Well it's a long story... but what the hell? After all, neither of us are going anywhere anytime soon."
"Now... where should I start... ah!" Tendril's voice was full of pride, "During our fight, I quickly realized how much potential you possessed! Wasted on the good deeds you do, but, potential nonetheless. Your chakra amazed me, never before had I seen such velocity and power. I could not go on living without it... at that moment, I realized you were my destiny."
Naruto was visibly disgusted by Tendril's statement.
"I needed to have you, or else I would never feel truly complete. Using in ancient forbidden technique, I infused my mind, all my memories, skills, knowledge, and emotions into a single ball of energy in my throat, ready for transfer at my will."
Sakura and Sasuke stood in the distance, hearing every word.
"You didn't think I kissed you because I liked you, did you? Don't get me wrong, you're very good looking, I'm just not interested in you that way." Tendril chuckled, "I transferred my very being into you. There I lay dormant while I regained my strength for our battle."
"Wait, you live inside me!? Like the Kyubi!?" Naruto gritted his teeth, holding back his emotions.
Tendril shook his head, laughing.
"No! My dear boy, I did not seal myself inside you, I molded a new you in my image!"
"What?! I-I don't understand!"
"Think about it!" Tendril cleared his throat, "You know you already have multiple personalities, I just added a new one to the mix!"
Naruto's eyes widened in shock and revelation.
"You-You mean-"
"Exactly my boy!" Tendril removed his skull mask, revealing a perfect duplicate of Naruto's face, "I'm you!"
"No-that-no! How can I be in two places at once! You can't be me! I'm right here!"
"Naruto, I simply made a shadow clone in the image of my personality, so I could confront you in the real world... you can fight me all you want, but you will never win. If you defeat me, I'll vanish in a puff of smoke. If I win, then my personality will take over your mind in its weakened state."
"This is impossible!" Naruto couldn't fathom that he shared a mind with this cold-blooded psychopath.
"Now now, Naruto! We should know more than anyone, nothing is impossible!"
Charging at Naruto, Tendril swung his hook like a reaper, Naruto barely dodged the hook, only to have to parry a swing from Tendril's sword with his fore-arm, penetrating his skin and slicing into his bone.
Sakura was awe-struck, watching the horror unfold before her. There was no denying Tendril, whoever he once was, had now become a part of Naruto. She turned to Sasuke, and they nodded to each other.
Running into the fray, Sasuke formed a chidori in his left hand, and with his right grabbed Sakura by the hand.
"Naruto!" She called
Naruto and his doppelganger both turned toward Sakura. Seeing what she was planning, the Uzumaki grabbed Tendril by the the arms, forcing him to face the charging shinobi.
"NO!"
Sakura hurled Sasuke at Tendril, sending him flying into the two Narutos with lightning velocity. The blue waves of chakra crackled against the wind as the smell of burning flesh filled the air. As the Tendril Naruto disappeared in a cloud of smoke, Sasuke dropped his hand, leaving the real Naruto with only minor burns on his chest.
"Guys... I think I need to take a nap." Naruto smiled at his friends, then collapsed. Everything that had happened that day finally surmounted him, and he lay asleep from mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion.
Naruto was asleep, but he wasn't dreaming. He was in his mind-scape, lying down beneath the shade of the single tree. There was no sky above him, only an endless expanse of foggy whiteness. He felt an emptiness in the pit of his stomach, and he realized,
"Kurama is still missing."
He sat up with a start, and peered around his boundless mind, quickly spotting his three doubles. His fractured identities. Tendril smiled wide at him.
"Well look who has come to join the party!" Naruto's fist collided with the jaw of Tendril's bone mask.
"Shut up."
"We don't have time for this Naruto!" Tendril pulled off his mask, and wiped the blood from his lower lip. It was like looking into a mirror, only the mirror was dark, and twisted... and dressed differently. He spat blood and saliva and spoke, "The Demon King is missing. I think when I was hired, the court slipped an infiltrator onto me. He could've entered your body at any time during our altercation. If he's in here, we need to find him. I will not lose the power of the Kyubi."
Naruto, for the most part, agreed with Tendril. If a demon had somehow infiltrated his mind, they would need to remove him quickly, before Kurama could be freed.
"Once the Kyubi is freed, there's nothing stopping the infiltrator from destroying us, from the inside out." Jubei surmised.
"I can sense his chakra somewhere in your body," Tatsumaki began, "Faint, but still strong enough for me to pick up. I could lead the way."
"Do." Naruto said, grimly, allowing the Anbu to begin the search.
He led them quickly to an old iron door, slightly ajar. It had seemed to materialize from nothing. No one but the real Naruto was surprised by its existence.
"What is this? Where did it come from?" He asked them all, opening the door further. They just stood there, awkwardly, as if they were afraid to answer him. Even Tendril shied away.
"Guys? Have you looked in here? You all seem to know it's here, why haven't we looked in here?"
Still, silence.
"Somebody answer me. Now." His voice was surprisingly steady, and the others seemed forced to answer him.
"Dark things lurk in there." Jubei said, his demonic looking armor betraying his appearance of vulnerability.
Naruto chuckled. "That's it?"
"Dark things, really?" He continued to laugh. None of the others joined in.
"It's our mind, guys. I think we can handle it." He said, opening the door all the way. A sudden gust of wind sprang from within, and a howling screech accompanied it. Naruto's resolve was shaken.
Tendril cleared his throat, and stepped forward, as if the fear Naruto was stricken with only increased his strength.
"I'm scarier than anything will meet in there. Compared to me, Uzumaki, you have the mind of a teddy bear." He passed the boy and stepped forward, into the darkness that beckoned him, "A pink one."
Naruto ignored his quip and followed him into the blackness, leaving Tatsumaki and Jubei alone outside the door.
"Well, I'm going with them." Tatsumaki spoke, following the others. Alone and confused, Jubei shut the door behind them.
"Now what do I do?" He asked aloud, as suddenly the mind-scape began to dematerialize around him. His world turned white, then dissolved away. He found himself on a hospital bed in a small room, Haruno Sakura was sitting some feet away from him.
"Hello, Sakura-chan." He said, charmingly enough.
"Oh, you're awake... Naruto?" She stared at him, her face skewed by confusion. He leaned his face across the bed, closer to hers.
"...yes?"
"Oh, nothing, it's just I thought you might be one of your- well I haven't really had time to explain this yet, buy your-"
"My mind has been fragmented, yes I know. The real me figured it out while we were waiting."
"Waiting?" Sakura blinked, still confused, "The real you? Aren't you the real Naruto?"
"Waiting for Tatsumaki to return, looking for Kurama, finding Tendril, we were doing a lot of things in there-"
"In where?" Sakura's confusion was only rising.
Naruto pointed to his head.
"Oh."
"And I am the real me, but I know that, Ringo knows that, and you know that. No one else does. They all think I'm-"
"Namikaze Jubei."
"Right." He winked at her, then grinned devilishly. Only me and you, he thought to himself, and Ringo.
"Naruto, everyone knows your Jubei now."
"I don't."
"What? You aren't making any sense."
"I... I don't understand how to make myself any clearer."
Then, Sakura understood everything. Poor Jubei was tormented. Unlike Tatsumaki, who existed as Naruto's Anbu alter ego before the events of his exile, Jubei was created while Naruto was trying to hide himself. Because the Namikaze was created almost in the moment, without any development of back story by Naruto, he remained a shell when their mind was fractured. A disguise, programmed only to pretend he isn't who he really is.
She pitied him.
"How about I take you for some ramen?"
Jubei went from looking like a kicked puppy, to beaming like a child.
"I'd like that very much."
"Hmmm."
The dark filfth of the walls of the chasm dripped down onto the heads of our heroes as they made their way through the seemingly endless tunnel. They had been traveling for what seemed like hours, and they had yet to confront anything but unearthly noises and piles of unidentifiable remains. They strode onward, prepared for what doom awaited them at the end of their journey.
Feeling uneasy under the tense silence, Naruto began to hum to himself. The song was strangely familiar to him, yet he had no recollection of hearing it before. He didn't have to try to hum it, the rhythm came naturally to him.
"Naruto..." Naruto ignored Tendril, not wishing to speak to the psychopath, "Naruto!"
"WHAT!"
"Do you know what you are humming?"
"No... why?"
Tendril cleared his throat.
"When I was younger, several centuries ago, I lived amongst a nomadic tribe of assassins. They told tales around the fire at night, playing drums and flutes while weaving stories of terror and mystery."
Tatsumaki and Naruto stopped and turned toward Tendril.
"One tale I remember especially for the horror of it. It centered around a small village on the outskirts of the fire country. They were ordinary farmers, but the leader of the village had a dark secret. Years before he had made a deal with the demon court to guarantee a good harvest every season. At the beginning of each year they would sacrifice a virgin-like you Uzumaki- to the demon court, and the demons would use dark magic to protect the crops."
Naruto tried to argue against Tendril's insult, but he had nothing to protest except for the attitude of the statement. Tendril continued,
"One day the sacrifices used to appease the demons, stopped. They came to the village, and slaughtered all but one. This man they made their slave. He would be a symbol of their arrival to other villages, a flute player who signalled the coming of the Demon Court. Having no other souls to feed off of in that part of the world, they pressed on, sending their flute-player ahead of them, as a dark omen."
"Why would they give away their secrecy by announcing their arrival?" Tatsumaki asked, ever the tactician.
"No one could stop them, so it mattered little. I think they took some humor in the reactions mortals had to prophecy and premonition."
"Oh." The Anbu fell back into silence.
"The storyteller finished his tale by announcing that he was the messenger, and that by tomorrow we would all be worse than dead, our souls consumed by the Demon Court. We all assumed it was one of those theatrical scary endings to a scary story, but I still couldn't sleep a wink that night. Fortunately for me, my insomnia saved my life. Around midnight the beat of a drum echoed through the camp. I murdered the boy I shared a tent with, hoping his blood would draw the demons off my trail. I sprinted away, and just made it over a hill before I saw a band of demons enter our camp. I sprinted until my legs were on fire, and I sprinted even more. I passed out just as the sun was rising, but by then, I was long gone."
"That afternoon, when I was sure the demons would have finished their feast, I returned to the camp and found everyone slaughtered."
Naruto scoffed.
"Good story, but what does it have to do with anything?"
"That song was the song you were humming."
"So?" Naruto scoffed again.
"Our mind is fractured, I have all of my memories, and you have none. Why would you recall a song that only I have heard?"
Naruto's eyes widened in realization, and he unsheathed his sword.
"They're here Naruto, and they're playing their song in your head." Tendril pulled his hook and fore-arm sword from their holsters on his back, and Tatsumaki brandished his ninjato, "They're coming."
MORE TO COME.
