My note: I don't own the characters or concepts. I just enjoy 'em lots. And this is how we enter the second part of the story. I'd thought about renaming it Ultimate Ninja, to go along with the crossover universe. That's a little trivia for you, folks! Please forgive me in advance for the use of strong language.

New York Ninja 2

Part 1

"Are we close?" Rogue demanded shortly. She spared Sabertooth a cool glance. They'd been out here for days already, traipsing through the undergrowth. The two of them had been tracking Ninja for the last two weeks, just as quickly as Rogue could drag Sabertooth away from the Brotherhood to force him to help her (a task made much easier by the fact that she was now super-strong).

Rogue's fists clenched unconsciously, her knuckles going white, at the thought of that little blond demon and what he'd done to Juggernaut. Juggernaut had always been one of the toughest people she'd known, even able to go toe-to-toe with the quickly-healing Sabertooth, but Ninja...? She could never have imagined he'd be able to do something like that... To tear through Juggernaut like that...

"We're close," Sabertooth said quietly, sniffing the air.

They made their way quickly and quietly through the forest, Sabertooth stopping every now and then to sniff the air. He couldn't track Ninja cross-country, but one of the Brotherhood psychics was sympathetic and had been able to provide Rogue with a general location. Ninja had fled to Yellowstone National Park. God only knew what he wanted there. Rogue didn't really care.

After what felt like hours, they arrived at a small clearing. There was a small campsite in the clearing just beyond the tree-line. Ninja obviously knew what he was doing when he'd set it up. He had access to everything he'd need to survive. There was stream running nearby, a minor tributary feeding into some lager river Rogue didn't care about. It was just wide enough to provide fish, which, from the smell, was what Ninja was surviving on.

And there he was, sitting with his back to them. He hadn't changed much, from what Rogue could see. His clothes were different. He was wearing bright orange. He wasn't even trying to blend in. Some ninja...

Rogue shared a look with Sabertooth. He gave her a feral grin and crept from the cover of the trees. For as long as Rogue had known him, Sabertooth had loved to kill. He was good at it. He crossed the distance between them and Ninja quickly and soundlessly, with Rogue close behind him.

Ninja noticed too late, half-turning. Sabertooth caught him with his claws, sending the boy to the ground. Where he exploded in a cloud of white smoke.

"Shit! One of his freakin' clones!" Rogue glared at Sabertooth. "Can't you tell the difference?"

"You want to end up like the moron you killed?" Sabertooth snarled, turning on Rogue. He took a step towards her. Rogue raised her fists. Sabertooth was a killer, but she was no slouch herself and she had Juggernaut's powers now too. He stopped abruptly, sniffing the air. Sabertooth turned and looked up.

Ninja was hanging upside down from a tree branch, watching them. How the hell was he doing that? Rogue's face twisted in a mask of anger, she wrenched a nearby rock from the earth and hurled it at him.

Ninja just leaned out of the way. "Your aim sucks!" He laughed.

Growling, Sabertooth launched himself at the tree, cutting it down with just a few swipes of his claws. Ninja ran along the underside of the falling tree, jumping at the last moment to land on another tree. He was keeping his distance. Sabertooth lunged at the tree he was in then, but Ninja just jumped away.

"How the hell is he doing that?" Rogue muttered.

"I've been training! I'm not the same push-over you bullied back at Weapon X. If you think you're going to drag me back there, you got another thing coming!" Ninja said, getting serious now.

"We're here to kill you for what you did!" Rogue shouted, hurling another rock at him with all of her might. "We ain't here to bring you back there!"

"What'd I do?" Ninja asked, sliding neatly out of the way.

"You murdered Juggernaut, you bastard!" Rogue snarled.

"That wasn't me!" Ninja shouted back, almost angrily.

"I fucking saw you!" Rogue said. "I saw you rip right through him."

"Enough talk!" Ninja jumped, surprised, as Sabertooth appeared behind him. He'd used Ninja's distraction to climb the tree. Ninja barely dodged a swing of Sabertooth's razor-sharp claws in time. He used his smaller frame to slide around Sabertooth. He grabbed Sabertooth by the shoulders, put his left foot in the small of Sabertooth's back, and used his momentum to throw them both from the tree.

Ninja landed on top of Sabertooth, driving the air from Sabertooth's lungs. He had to quickly dodge out of the way as Rogue came charging in. Ninja was finally within reach. She could pound his face in!

Ninja was quick, quicker than she gave him credit for. He dropped, caught her wrist, and drover his elbow into her solar plexus. Rogue barely even felt it with Juggernaut's invulnerability. The way Ninja reacted though, it had to have felt like he just ploughed his elbow into a concrete wall. His arm looked broken. The shock cost him. Rogue picked Ninja up effortlessly, holding him over her head. She hurled him at a large nearby tree.

Ninja righted himself mid-air, landing with his legs bent against the tree trunk to absorb the impact. He ran up the tree, jumped, and landed on another. He circled around, looking for some advantage. His arm hung uselessly at his side, probably broken.

That's when he spotted Sabertooth, trying to sneak up on him again. Rogue tried to call out a warning, but Ninja had already dropped down on top of him.

"Hey big guy! I need to borrow your power!" Ninja said, grabbing Sabertooth's face. Sabertooth shook, trying to dislodge Ninja, then toppled over, unconscious. Ninja straightened up, the bones in his arm visibly mending themselves.

"How did you-" Rogue started.

"You should know," Ninja said, fixing her with a look. "It's your powers those bastards gave me."

Rogue was too shocked to act for a moment. "W-what?"

Ninja frowned. He looked confused and surprised. "You really didn't know?"

"W-why would they..." Rogue started.

Ninja put some distance between them. "I don't know," he said, shrugging his shoulders. He watched her for a moment. She felt lost in this. "I'm sorry. About dome-face, I mean."

"That ain't gonna bring him back!" Rogue snapped. "Juggernaut loved me and you took that away."

"I didn't," Ninja said. "The fox did."

"What are you talking about?" Rogue demanded. She tried to hold onto her anger, but it was hard... so hard... when he was in the same predicament that she was. Juggernaut had loved her, even though her powers meant she'd never be able to have a meaningful relationship. Now Ninja had the same problem. He would never be able to touch someone or hug someone or kiss someone... ever again... It was hard to stay angry, when she understood that...

"The nine-tailed fox," Ninja said after a long moment. "It's a demon. It's been sealed inside me, probably since I was born. My body is its prison. I'm not in a hurry to die. I don't know what would happen. It might break out and I don't think there's anything in this world that could actually stop it."

Rogue stopped.

Sabertooth groaned, and tried to sit up. Ninja leapt through the air, landing hard on Sabertooth's head. Sabertooth slammed back down into the ground, his head smashing into a hard rock. "Stay down," Ninja muttered. He glanced back up at Rogue. He had changed. He was still the same boy from five minutes ago, but there was something really very different about him, about the way he now carried himself. "So now you know. Don't follow me."

Ninja turned and disappeared into the woods. Rogue sighed, and glanced down at Sabertooth. His skull was plated with adamantium too, so he wouldn't have sustained any lasting injuries, but boy he was going to be pissed when he woke up. Rogue decided she didn't want to hang around for when that happened...

The smouldering ruins of the village hidden in tree leaves could be seen through gaps in the massive wall that encircled what many considered the most powerful shinobi village. The damage of the recent invasion was extensive, but the villagers were resilient. They would rebuild. They were so busy that nobody would have noticed the two figures standing atop the wall, gazing down.

"They've escaped complete annihilation," the first man said. He was the taller of the two. Like his partner, he was dressed in a long black robe with a red cloud print. He wore a wide straw hat and was distinguished by the massive object he carried, wrapped in bandages and strapped to his back. A closer look revealed he had almost blue skin and strangely shark-like features. "But it looks like they've suffered heavy losses."

The shark-man seemed to think that was funny somehow.

"For such a prosperous village..." the other man said. "It's pathetic."

This man could've been called handsome, if not for the utter lack of emotion on his face and in his eyes. He had long black hair and strange red eyes that marked him as a doujutsu-user. "Even with Lady Tsunade as Hokage, they were still unable to avoid this fate."

"Heh. That's unlike you..." The shark-man said, grinning. His teeth were sharpened into points. "Do you still have lingering affection towards your homeland? Has it changed so much?"

"Sarutobi's replacement as Hokage or the circumstances of his removal..." The doujutsu-user said. "Changes nothing."

"If you say so," the shark-man chuckled.

The hidden leaf village had done a good job smothering the rumours, but people still talked. A year ago, the village's forbidden scroll of seals had been stolen. The rumours varied wildly about the culprit, from missing ninjas to an infiltration team from the village hidden in the clouds.

The fallout from that incident had cost the elderly Third Hokage his position. Despite lobbying from one of the more powerful council members, Danzo, the feudal lord had decided on Jiraiya as Sarutobi's replacement. Jiraiya had refused, substituting Tsunade instead. No-one knew what he'd said or done to convince the Legendary Sucker to come back.

Despite the political upheaval, or perhaps because of it, the village had seen better day. They had been caught completely unprepared for an assault by the hidden sand and the hidden sound, during the Chuunin Selection Exams. They had driven the enemy off, but it had cost them dearly, including the life of their former leader, Sarutobi.

The shorter man dismissed that line of thought. They weren't here to sight-see. "Let's go." The shark-man just chuckled and followed the doujutsu-user down the wall and into the village.

Fourteen-year-old Naruto glanced back one last time at the national park where he'd spent the last couple of months. He'd had a lot of fun here, camping out and training. It was almost like being back in the hidden leaf village again, like he was back to training to become an awesome ninja.

His time here brought up a bunch of strange, conflicting emotions inside him, and it helped him realise something. The hidden leaf village wasn't his home. Not anymore.

Naruto couldn't be sure what choice he would make, if he ever found a way to go back to the leaf village. He had imagined it before, over and over again. He'd played the whole scenario out in his head. They would be so impressed with his cool new bloodline. They'd automatically accept him back and acknowledge him for the ninja he was. The past animosity would be forgotten completely.

Naruto could laugh at that now. Even as he imagined these wonderful, fictional realities where he came back to the leaf village as some kind of emotionless badass, he couldn't help thoughts of Jean, of Rogue, of all the people here, in this world, that he would miss.

The truth that he had come to was that the leaf village wasn't his home anymore and he could accept that now. He had people in this world, precious people, that he loved, though he couldn't understand it, that acknowledged him, though he'd done bad things.

That was home.

That was something he'd protect with his life. Naruto grinned at the thought, glancing back down at the worn newspaper he'd picked up before he'd left, at the faded picture of Spider-Man. He'd figured out just the way to protect them...

They had searched for two fruitless hours for any sign of the nine-tails. The boy obviously wasn't in the village. They'd been made anyway. The two men made their way out via one of the small canals that fed the village water. They stopped abruptly.

There were two leaf village shinobi standing in their way, a man and a woman. Both held jounin rank.

"You're not from this village," Sarutobi Asuma said. This man was the son of the deceased former-Hokage. He had dark eyes and dark hair and he had a scruffy black beard. A soggy cigarette hung loosely from his lips. He wore the standard uniform for a jounin of the hidden leaf, his hair covered by a black bandanna. "What's your business here?"

"It's been a while," the shorter of the two strangers said. "Asuma. Kurenai."

"You could only know our names if you were a shinobi of this village," Kurenai said. Kurenai was only recently promoted to jounin rank. She had long dark hair and strange crimson eyes. She chose not to wear the standard uniform, instead opting for a white and red outfit.

The shorter man raised the brim of his hat to make eye contact with the both of them.

"Y-you're-" Kurenai stammered.

"There's no mistake," Asuma grouched. "Uchiha Itachi."

The shark-man grinned. He removed his hat, tossing it aside. The shark-man wore a forehead protector from the hidden mist village, though he'd scratched through the village symbol. "Are they acquaintances of yours, Itachi? I suppose... I should introduce myself as well. I am Hoshigaki Kisame. Pleased to meet you, and hope to get to know you later."

"There's no later," Asuma said, pulling his trench knives. "I'm gonna take you down right now!"

"It seems they don't like you much in your home village, Itachi," Kisame said, still grinning, like this situation was the biggest joke he'd ever heard.

"I've heard of you... Hoshigaki Kisame, a former Kirigakure shinobi... an outlaw shinobi currently being sought by the land of water for charges such as assassination and subversive machinations against the state," Kurenai said, her face slipping into a grim mask as she readied herself for a major fight. "You two are major felons."

"Itachi..." Asuma said. "You've got guts to come back here again after what you did..."

"Asuma. Kurenai," Itachi said. "Please do not interfere. I don't want to kill you."

"For someone who's committed parricide, that's an odd thing to say," Asuma said. He'd already started channelling chakra through his trench knives. "Besides, there's no way you would just show up nonchalantly for absolutely no reason. So what are you after?"

Kisame drew his sword, bringing it down heavily on the concrete. The ground splintered with the casual force of the impact. "He bothers me. Shall I kill him?"

Itachi seemed to consider it. "Well, it doesn't seem like we'll be able to just walk out of the village without a fight. Just try not to overdo it. Your moves tend to attract attention."

Kisame's grin became broader. "Understood."