note: when you see three spaces between paragraphs, that is a sign of a transition between scenes (as opposed to the double-spacing between the normal paragraphs of the same scene). This was inspired by the bitching I received from readers in a forum.

Chapter 19 - Part 2

"What?" Asked Naruto. "Bug off, this isn't the time for your silly antics."

The voice kept nagging him, "But it's not like I'm gonna do anything."

Naruto was growing weary of the deep voice, and it was starting to distract him from his fight with Kiba. "I said no, and go away."

"Come on, I need to move around a bit."

Naruto just barely managed to keep his throat from being sliced off and impaled to a wall five meters away. He was getting annoyed. He had just realized that he wouldn't have this problem if he had a split mind like Kiyoshi's.

His realization didn't improve his situation much, because Kiba was still shooting pointy objects at him, and the voice was still distracting him from properly evading those pointy objects.

"I said go away!" Naruto accidentally exclaimed out loud.

Kiba stopped throwing his constant stream of needle-like fur and froze in a mid-throw.

Moments passed and nothing happened. The two teens just stared at each other until Naruto accidentally grinned and said "heh," which resulted in Kiba resuming the assault of dog-fur.

The deep voice wouldn't leave the boy alone, "Come on," it said, "I'm claustrophobic."

"No you're not! You've been living inside me for almost eighteen years!" replied Naruto, which made him realize, with no consequence to the situation, that his birthday was coming up.

"The walls are closing in on me..." whined the voice.

"No they're not!" replied Naruto and jumped out of the way of Akamaru's snapping jaw.

Naruto tumbled across the ground and into a wall. He sat up against it and gave off a deep sigh. He looked up at the clouds and knew what Shikamaru felt like.

Kiyoshi's arms were no longer operational. They limply hung, yet still clenched his two blades like the jaws of a guard dog clenching the mailman's sorry ass.

He just barely managed to fling himself backwards to get out of the way of the blob's shape-shifting attack. It has occured to him, that his enemy was way out of his league. He flew into a wall and fell to the ground, knocking out whatever little breath remained. He coughed, then looked up.

The morphing monstrosity had stopped attacking him, and was now only assaulting Hikari. Kiyoshi was very sure that the thing was still as focused on him as it was on his dead girlfriend.

Until that point Kiyoshi hadn't felt fear towards the opponent, but when it morphed into the form of a beast that he had encountered on several occasions, his gut wrenched enough to make a normal man vomit.

He stared at the slick reptilian body in horror, as the blob was molding into the monster that he had only met in his nightmares and verges of death.

"What are you doing here?" asked the boy in a hushed voice.

If the multi-fanged reptile could smile, it was now smiling at Kiyoshi. "Time's up, Kiddo," It hissed.

Kiyoshi was panic-stricken, "What time? Time for what?"

"We're coming for you, 'Kiyoshi'"

"What are you?"

The beast looked amused, "I'm one who they call Zaiaku."

Kiyoshi started to slowly stand up, "Who calls you that? And why are you here?"

"I'm nothing more than a messenger," replied the spirit.

"Zaiaku? As in Sin?"

A crazed giggle could be heard coming through the hiss. This made Kiyoshi feel a shivering sensation whose only match could be some crazy combination of a jack-hammer and a washing machine that runs on jet fuel.

"Sharp one, you are." The beast looked in Hikari's direction, then back to Kiyoshi, "So this is the crazy broad that's been keeping you alive?"

Kiyoshi snapped out of whatever world it was that had been holding him back, and made a move that sent the creature flying through the wall. Luckily the creature was just a spirit without any physical form, so Kiyoshi wouldn't have to pay for the damages that the wall could've suffered.

Unluckily, two-thirds of a moment later he burst his way through the wall, fulfilling the wall's full potential of being a pile of rubble. He rushed after the black lizard, having nothing in mind other than to unclog the invisible scaly clogs from the beasts hide.

The creature made a one-eighty degree turn whilst skidding across the road on all fours. Kiyoshi dashed at it, blindly flying into the enemy's defense and attempted counter-attack.

The beast's tongue darted out and pierced through Kiyoshi's shoulder when he was just several feet away. The tongue hooked around the shoulder-blade and started pulling the kid into a sharp row of teeth.

Kiyoshi kicked off the ground and flew over the beast, using the tongue as a means of swinging around onto the back.

He ripped the tongue out, breaking his shoulder in the process, and wrapped the sticky muscle around the beast's neck. The beast twisted and crashed into a wall to try and knock Kiyoshi off its back. Failing to do so resulted in a screech.

Hikari appeared on the ground beside the two figures and started making seals, some of which were not the traditional Japanese symbols. Her wrist region started glowing and the ground started to flash with lightning, ripping the footwork apart and making cracks in the road. Before long the cracks were wide enough for anyone to stick a head in, for whatever reason they wished to stick their head into a fissure.

The cracks in the ground widened, eventually the ground in between the cracks fell and left a big dark hole that led nowhere.

"I'm done, it's your turn, Kiyoshi."

"Take over for me," Said Kiyoshi, keeping his grip tight around the reptile's spined neck.

Naruto spun around and mad a backward roundhouse kick. This move was what it took to finally knock Kiba off his fanged stallion.

In that comfortable moment when Naruto had to go under Akamaru's counter-attack, the Kyubi started to once again bother Naruto.

"Come on..." whined the fox, "Let's be friends."

Naruto's concentration broke and Akamaru managed to wrap his fangs around the boy's right upper arm. Naruto flinched.

"Sorry," apologized the nine-tails, "I hate to say it, but I told you so."

Naruto stuck an explosive tag into Akamaru's mouth using his left hand, and headbutted his nose to lessen the jaw's grip enough to slide out and jump away.

Kiba shot a kunai at Akamaru. The kunai flew through the gaps in the teeth, caught the tag and flew out the other side of the jaw moments before the explosion took place.

Kiba then jumped onto Akamaru's back, returning the situation back to the way it had originally started out. The only difference was that Naruto was now injured.

Naruto tied a piece of black cloth around the wound to stop the blood flow. He wondered why he had the cloth in his pocket, but didn't dwell on it. He had more important tasks at hand.

"It's all your fault!" exclaimed Kiba.

This surprised Naruto. He changed his wondering from the cloth to Kiba's comment. "What's my fault? All I wanted was to talk to you about something and you start running away."

"Don't give me that crap! You would try to kill me when my back would be turned!"

Naruto was now wondering about the last time he was so confused about anything. "What are you talking about?"

"It's not fair," said Kiba in a voice that would send chills down a snake's spine. "You didn't notice her at all. I was the one who had to keep her together. I was on her team, I was the closer friend."

"H...H...Hinata? You're talking about Hinata?" The blond boy found himself paralyzed. "Kiba... I didn't..."

Kiba burst out, "You didn't what? Do you have any idea what this feeling is like?"

Naruto felt sick at this point. He needed time to formulate a proper response to give to Kiba. However there was no time to think, because Kiba had once again started attacking.

Hikari was struggling to keep the beast occupied while Kiyoshi was working on his portion of the jutsu.

Kiyoshi took off his gloves and cracked his fingers before pulling out a hair from his head, placing it on his palm, then slamming it into the ground beside the fissure. Then, before the dust could settle, he rushed through countless hand-seals that would look very nice in the dark and holding onto a couple of glowsticks.

He held out his middle and index fingers of his left hand in front of his face and started mumbling something obscenely fast and senseless. His right hand was feeling the ground around him, as if searching for something.

He sharply opened his eyes and slammed both hands into the ground where his right hand had at last stopped.

A hot air current started flowing from the fissure, and was soon starting to illuminate a bright orange from something that was deep down inside.

The beast had thrown Hikari off, and was holding her by the neck. The sharp claws were digging in.

"Get away from her!" exclaimed Kiyoshi, "You want me dead? Here I am!"

The beast chuckled, "Who said I wanted you dead?"

"I did!" replied Kiyoshi, "The moment I called the hellgate upon you!"

The beast froze. There was a deadly silence, somewhere behind Kiyoshi something was starting to bubble and shake the ground.

"Bad move, kid," hissed Zaiaku, "I'll leave her alone, because she's already dead and I can't kill her. But you're going to hell with me!"

"I'd like to say it's about time," replied Kiyoshi, "Unfortunately I've been told that phrase many times in the past, and it seems that it only comes from liars."

The beast crouched on all fours, "You pesky kid, you don't know who you're dealing with."

"Since you don't want to tell me, I'll assume that you're some sort of overgrown gecko without eyes."

Zaiaku growled, "I hoped I'd be the one to tell you, but I know quite well that there's no escaping the hellgate."

Kiyoshi looked at the black bony lizard. It was beginning to illuminate from the fissure's rising lava. "Tell me what?"

"What we are," replied Zaiaku, "What you are."

That being said, the beast lunged at Kiyoshi and dug its claws deep into both of his arms. Kiyoshi's bones broke and muscles ripped, but he kept a cold stare into the place where he assumed the creature's eyes were supposed to be; they weren't there, there was just a smooth surface. The creature's smooth leather reflected Kiyoshi, and he was able to see, along with his own reflection, a reflection of the fissure behind him.

The hellhate was rising from the fissure's bubbling lava. It was a horrid sight of bones, flesh, and dark spirits; they were all warped and ruptured into something that looked painful.

Kiyoshi was glad that he was merely looking at the reflection of the gate, because a single glance would petrify him and he would be unable to get out of Zaiaku's grasp.

He placed his knees between himself and the creature's chest. He then, slowly and painfully, got his feet up on the beast's shoulder-bones. He Pushed and twisted himself off Zaiaku's claws that were acting as meat-hooks.

Before he could catch proper footing, the beast spun around and whipped Kiyoshi in the chest-plate with its bony tail. Kiyoshi flew across the street and found certain pains to be signs of broken ribs.

Zaiaku looked at the hellgate, then rushed over to Kiyoshi. "I have twenty or so seconds left before I go, so here's my final present to you."

Twenty seconds later Zaiaku was nowhere on earth in physical form nor spiritual. He was being feasted upon by foul oversized ringworms in the deepest pits of hell.

After those same twenty seconds Kiba lost his conscience and fell off Akamaru. This surprised Naruto because he hadn't done anything to Kiba, yet Naruto's confusion couldn't match Akamaru's when Kiba fell off his back.

Naruto dropped to his knees. He wanted a shower, something to eat, and go to sleep. He was disappointed by the knowledge that he wouldn't have time for any of those. What he had to do was go to the hospital to treat his wound, then go back to the office because another pile of paperwork was probably formed.

He closed his eyes and didn't open them for a while. He just sat there, feeling spiritually tired from his 'to do' list.

"Naruto!" came a distant voice.

"Naruto!" it came again, this time a bit closer and more pleasant.

Naruto didn't open his eyes or move, but simply smiled. The voice was familiar and soft. It was Hinata's.

"Naruto!" called out Hinata again, running up to the battle-stern street.

"I'm here," replied Naruto. This startled Hinata because she didn't notice him due to his stillness.

"I'm here too," said an annoying deep voice from the mouth of the blond boy, and Naruto started radiating in burning hot red chakra.

A/N: Well, once again I took a while. Saying sorry doesn't seem to nullify my guilt so I'll try something different. I'll take my mind off it by thinking about something else. This was probably a short chapter, which is excused because of the fact that it's the second part to a single chapter, and I still can't get microsoft word to work, so you know the drill.

Here's a weak rationalization that's a result of too much thinking and being utterly paranoid. That being said, I think it's obvious that this comes from my point of view.

Hard to say, but sometimes people from group A say things to patronize the people in group B. Then the people in group B are very thick and get confused whether the people in group A know what they're talking about or are just trying patronize them.

Where as people in group C avoid the whole ordeal altogether by not making fanfiction accounts and not replying.

And the people in group D surf from fanfic to fanfic pointing out mistakes and things people in group B can improve on. Unfortunately the people of group D are a rare breed, and can't give their help to everyone. Also the people in group D can't genuinely enjoy a fanfic because they're torn between the fantasy world, and the literary world.

Then there are people from group E who don't give a damn about anything, and go around flaming as many people as they can get their hands on. They are often confused for people in group D, because most people in group B are incompetent and arrogant self-obsessed pigs, and consequentially are given bad reviews by people in group D.

What it all comes down to is this: do I prefer people from group A, who genuinely enjoy my fanfiction, but confuse the hell out of me. Or do I prefer people from group D, who give me solid facts, but are nothing more than hitch-hikers. Or perhaps by some arbitrary reason I prefer the flamers from group E.

In the end, it doesn't matter what I prefer, because I get what I get, and I'm glad I have you guys reading this.