A/N: Brace yourselves! More of my origins insanity is coming!

Chapter 10 – Secret's Out: Part Two

She was thankful that they didn't need her to prompt them to continue, because she was having difficulty speaking at this point because of her excitement.

"Anomalies…well, we don't really know what we are. Rather, we don't know our history. Our existence is a mess of complications, and it's never easy especially with what we are able to do."

He looked at her and noted by her expression that he was only making her more and more confused. He sighed in understanding.

"I probably shouldn't have been so vague," he thought, "but then again, everything about us has always been like that."

He shook his head and looked at his son, who was still staring at the sky. He glanced at her for a second and then continued to watching his son.

"Hinata, do you believe in Hell?"

He didn't take his eyes off Naruto, so he wasn't able to see the shock and confusion on her face. Her brows furrowed as she thought of how to answer him.

"Hell? What does that have to do with anything?"

She stared at the Fourth, who was still staring at his son, for a few seconds before she let her gaze drop to the ground. She decided that it has to be important for him to bring it up.

"Do I believe in Hell?"

She didn't know how she felt about the topic. It was one thing to believe in youkais, in demons and spirits, as there are already records about dealings with them. In fact, the mere existence of the Hidden Villages, the foundations of which are closely tied to the birth of the generation of Enigmas, is the only proof anyone would need to prove the existence of such entities. But the existence of Hell is an entirely different matter.

They say that the youkais all came from Hell, while some says that they are the manifestations of man's fears and evil. Unfortunately, because there are no records of their origin that has provided any concrete evidence, both theories are considered mere speculations. She wondered if that was the Hell they were talking about, since they were talking about origins and history earlier. But the way he asked her made her second guess herself, thinking that it may be the spiritual Hell he was referring to that religions always indicate as the destination of souls of the evil after they die.

"They're the same Hell though, I think?"

Either way, she wasn't sure what she believed. She shook her head and decided on her answer, simplifying her thoughts as best she could.

"I-I'm not s-sure I b-believe in H-Hell, b-but I c-can't disprove th-that there isn't a H-Hell either, s-so I d-don't know…"

Her voice trailed off in a whisper as it neared the end, and she hung her head, embarrassed at how unsure her voice sounded. She started questioning herself the way she usually did, but he quickly caught her attention when he spoke.

"Well, I'm not really sure about all the talks about Hell, but it exists."

He looked at her and waited for a reaction, but all he got was a blank stare so he continued.

"There are a lot of things wrong about what is written and what's 'known' about Hell, but one thing is for sure, it's a place for demons, devils, and evil spirits. Simply put, it's a place for youkai. But it's not where most people think it is."

She was staring at him closely, which is why she was able to see the darkness in his face before he caught himself and relaxed into his easy calm. She wanted to ask him if he's been there, but she thought that it would be too rude to do so. Still, when he looked at her, he gave a tired smile that made him look years older, generations even.

"Yes, I've been there. It's thanks to our powers, us Anomalies, that I had the unfortunate chance to visit it. It's a dark place where the air is thick with a miasma so foul, just a whiff is enough to kill a man. The miasma also causes the atmosphere to be thick with youki, empowering the dwellers of that realm. The youkai there are far beyond the level of the youkai we have, the strongest that I felt in my short visit there is about ten times stronger than the kyuubi."

She shivered as she imagined such a place, and such strong beings in it. She wanted what it had to do with them, but she was so captivated by the story that she waited for him to tell more.

"I bet you're thinking what that has to do with Anomalies, right? Well, simple. Remember how we said that the kyuubi was merely a part of why Naruto is 'treated' by the villagers? Well, the main part of it is because of Hell. I'm not sure how much the villagers really know about it, but they know that we can access it."

She noticed how his voice suddenly got a cold edge when he said the word treated, but she felt like it was only proper. She wanted to get angry as well, but she thought to wait until she heard the full story before she would decide on what she would feel.

"B-because y-you are A-Anomalies? H-How can y-you get to th-that place though? And why w-would people th-think that N-Naruto w-would want to go there?"

"Since we're already on that topic, let's answer your question of why they thought that Naruto would want to go there. The answer is actually simple, and with a bit of logic. You see, before this entire mess, people knew and believed the true origins of the jinchuuriki. They knew that the hosts were only being used by the bijuu to get stronger. They also knew that an Anomaly can access Hell, a place where youki is abundant and can make any youkai stronger by just being in that place."

Things clicked into place as she started to see things the way a scared person, Enigma or otherwise, would see it. The bijuu wanted to get stronger so they used humans in the form of a jinchuuriki. So if the jinchuuriki would have access to a place where just breathing would make them stronger beyond anything that they have seen, what's to stop the bijuu from taking over and forcing the host to get them there? Even with the fact that the seal has been made and fixed to work in the best possible way for the host to use, the fear broke the sense of safety that they would get from the seal.

"B-but, if th-the b-bijuu went into th-that pl-place to get s-stronger, sh-shouldn't the p-people want th-that to happen s-since it'll mean that…"

"It'll mean that the bijuu will be stuck there?"

He shook his head and gave an exasperated sigh. He reached over the boy and ruffled his hair before he continued to speak.

"Fear is a funny thing. It makes people smart, but at the same time, it makes them brash and stupid. It would've been simple if their line of thought stopped there, but it didn't. They thought, 'what if the host was taken along to Hell?' That would mean that the bijuu would have a means to get back. Still no problem though, right? But they went over even that. 'What if the bijuu returned and became a king of demons or something, and came with an army to enslave humanity?', 'What if the bijuu suddenly decided that it wanted to eat human flesh and came back, stronger than ever before?', 'What if the bijuu decided to test its new powers by destroying our world?'. There were so many what ifs that were formed, and their fear grew."

She nodded slowly, understanding their fears completely. She didn't believe that Naruto would allow such a thing to happen, but the fact remains that the existence of the powerful bijuu and the dark place Hell stirs up unwanted fear. She looked at her loved one, and decided that thinking that way was brought on by knowing too much information on the things that made the boy what he was, but they never bothered with knowing the things that made the boy who he was.

"If only they could see how kind you are, how strong your determination is and how you would always protect those weaker than you…"

She reached for the boy and gently placed her hand over his. He looked at her for a second, gave her a small smile and nod, and then returned to looking up at the sky. At least now she knew why the village people acted the way they did, and she could do her best to help him overcome the negative emotions. But there was one more thing she needed to do. She needed to understand him more.

"S-so, h-how can A-Anomalies g-get to…uhm, th-that place?"

She felt uneasy mentioning Hell now that she understood more of it, giving it more meaning in her world. If either blond noticed, they didn't seem to mind. And even if they did mind, they didn't show it.

"Well, we're back at the beginning. What are Anomalies? At least now, it's a lot simpler to answer. First though, I have a question for you. Where do you think Hell is?"

Yet again, the Hokage managed to shock and confuse her. Where is Hell? She didn't have an answer. She heard that it was supposed to be underground, but he had said earlier that it wasn't where people think it was. So where was it? She shook her head at him, she really didn't know.

"Hell is in an entirely different dimension. It's a world separate from us. The reason why we Anomalies have access to it is because we're beings whose existence is tied with time and space. Either that or we're constructs of time and space itself. But no matter what, we were given the power to bend space and time, so getting into the Hell dimension is possible."

She thought over what he said. And she thought about it some more. Their world, their generation were now expected to be the strongest in history. They learned of the legends of old like the Ten Tails and of the Sage of the Six Paths, both powerful beings that brought about the creation of the bijuu and of all the other beings that would later bring humanity to a whole new level of strength and power. But even then, with the already unbelievable things that they as ninjas or Enigmas know, somehow what the Fourth is telling her seemed too much.

She knew of the origins of man, the theories of researchers as well as preaching of leaders of different religion. She had seen Naruto take an interest in such history that she also immersed herself in the topic, to create a common ground between them. Even though she has yet to approach the boy to engage in the topic, the reading she has done has given her great knowledge and mastery over the topics which should have given her the necessary level of an open mind to accept what the Hokage told her, but she just can't seem to accept it.

She knew that man was either molded from dirt and clay and breathed into life by a god of an older religion, or evolved from the same ancestors of the monkey according to researchers. There was even a small sect that makes a combined theory of evoloution and of a god, where a god from some mountain gave fire to a troop of primates, teaching them of the ways of surviving that no other animal could ever do, giving the primates the ability to evolve into the man of today. There are even more crazy theories of gods and evolution, but they all had a common event: man learned of evil and temptation and brought ruin to the world.

In order to cleanse the world of evil, the Ten Tails was created. It was to absorb all the evil and turn it into an energy that would help with the recovery of nature and the world from man's destruction, but the evil was too great. The Ten Tails was corrupted by the evil, causing it to go mad and enter a destructive fury that almost wiped out all of creation.

In the midst of chaos, a savior rose from the rubble and challenged the beast. The savior was in a form of a man who had extraordinary power. That power was enough to defeat the Ten Tails, but not to destroy it. Instead, the first ever jinchuuriki was made when the savior forcefully sealed the beast's energy and life force into himself. With the new strength to his power, he used the beast's body and turned it into the moon. The savior then worked in rebuilding the world, giving back life to nature and to the earth. The miracles he created were so incredible that people started seeing him as a being that was close to a god, and they named him the Sage of the Six Paths.

As time went on, the world was rebuilt and life has returned. Though the Sage was revered as someone who was close to a god, people finally saw him as a mortal that was merely blessed by a god when his body broke down. The power of the beast proved to be too strong for his body to take, and the years of abuse it had endured in rebuilding the world was too much. Fearing that the beast might be released with his passing, he divided it into what came to be known as the Tailed Beasts, the bijuu.

Even with the release of the energy and the life force of the Ten Tails, the strain had already done its worst. His body then broke apart into millions of pieces. Those pieces contained fragments of the Sage's powers, and somehow manifested themselves into separate beings. That was the history of the first ever youkai and hannyou, which then passed on their abilities over the years until the birth of Enigmas.

Her head was now swimming as more and more information surfaced, trying to fit themselves into the missing puzzle piece that would allow her to see into the world that the Fourth was talking about.

"Was the Sage capable of bending space and time?"

Legends spoke of his ability to warp reality and bring into life his thoughts from nothing, and even though it was beyond anything that the world has ever known, it was still part of their world. It wasn't something so separate from their world that it dealt with other dimensions and of different times. And if the Sage really had powers over time and space, did his body also bring about the Anomalies? Or had the Anomalies been around even before the time of Sage? If so, what was their purpose, and why didn't they intervene with any of the events of the world?

"Or…did they have a hand in the events that history did not know about?"

The more she thought about them, the more questions she had. She would have to accept what the Fourth is saying as the truth about them. She looked at his eyes and saw an understanding in them, and that's when she realized it.

= Flashback =

"Anomalies…well, we don't really know what we are. Rather, we don't know our history. Our existence is a mess of complications, and it's never easy especially with what we are able to do."

= Flashback End =

He had mentioned how even they didn't know their history, which meant that they probably had as many questions about themselves as she had. Even worse for them, was that they would have started to question themselves at an earlier time, and it would haunt them for the rest of their lives until they found an answer. She wanted to know, but she never meant to ask the question she was thinking.

"Y-you don't kn-know anything a-about your h-history? No f-family records?"

He gave a shake of his head before he answered.

"We have family records, but like I said, nothing is ever simple with Anomalies, and everything is complicated."

He let another tired sigh and gave her a small smile. He held out his hands in front of him, watching them as his fingers curled and flexed.

"Our family records, they aren't passed down from one generation to the next in the form of writing or stories. They're passed on in death."

He buried his face into his hands, elbows resting on his knees. He gave another sigh and she knew that they were nearing a difficult topic.

"When an Anomaly dies, the memories, knowledge, experiences, power and strength that were gained are turned into an essence that is then received by the next oldest living Anomaly. Unfortunately, over the years, less and less of us would die."

"A-are you i-immortal?!"

He looked at her with eyes wide in shock at her outburst. He didn't blame her though; after all, even the Sage was proven to be mortal. He chuckled when he got over his shock.

"In a way, yes, we are immortal of sorts. But that immortality comes at a price. It comes with a terrible price."

This time, the pain in his eyes and sadness on his face told her that they had come to the difficult topic. He was looking sadly at Naruto, and it was heart breaking for her.

"Those who don't die and become immortal turned out that way not because they wanted to. They become like me, or, I've become like them."

He tore his gaze from his son and onto her, but she saw that he wasn't really looking at her. His eyes had a distant look, and he spoke as if he was recalling a sad memory.

"We don't die because we lose our place here, and our powers take over. We become timeless, and we become Drifters."

A/N: Soooo, just a heads up. The next chapter will be having a few flashbacks and more conversations of their history. I want to get these out of the way so that it would become easier for the story to flow on later, hopefully no longer needing any explanation for Naruto and allowing more time to focus on other characters. :D

Also, I hope you like my take on their history. I know it kind of is maybe a little weird having reconstructed their legends in such a way, and how it was all forced into this chapter (which makes it a bit messy, I know. I'm sorry -.-), but I had to write it down else my mind will be consumed by those thoughts.

One more thing: I'm not usually stupid, but when it happens… *sigh* I only just recently discovered how to reply to reviews. Good news though is I'll be able to reply to reviews now. I'll still be answering them via author notes, just so that anyone else who is curious would be able to see them, but I'll be making a more detailed reply to the reviewer. :)

And so with that, hope you guys liked the mess I made, and you stay tune until next time. :D

JOHNXgambit: Glad to see you're still with me. :p

charmedprincess101: Hey there! Glad you like this work of mine, hope you stick around too. :)

To answer your question, I don't really have much time on working on this but the thing is…writing the story is sort of my stress reliever after work and school.

The time for me to come up with this? Unfortunately, my imagination works even when I don't need or want it. Imagine, the plot of this story plus all the other stories that hasn't been written up yet or that hasn't even been started on yet, running around your head as you try to work or try to finish your thesis? The only way for me to get rid of those thoughts is to write the story down, so see how much of a stress reliever writing for me is? :D