Author's Notes: Chapter twenty-five! The Fourth may as well just start dying his hair grey right now. You know--to get it over with.

Thanks to Niana Kuonji for her Lady Luck comment, which I have nipped for Naruto's abusive use.

To Lachwen: No one else will be crossing into the parallel universe, but I do have plans regarding something like that for later. The earthquakes aren't natural, but they are not deliberate, either.

To this story makes my eyes bleed (or I presume that's the name offered): I think you're lying. I think you love this story, otherwise you wouldn't have been so incredibly out of your mind as to waste your time reading all twenty-four chapters before deciding that Naruto was being a baby--you should have seen that and stopped at chapter ten to tell me so if it bothered you that much. Of course it would have cleared up a lot of stuff if he'd told the truth right away . . . assuming that everyone was so blindly trusting as to actually believe him without question, and I don't think ninja are that stupid or they'd all be dead. Would you believe a kid who claimed he came from another universe? Of course not, because people who claim to come from another world are considered crazy and are locked away, which means no getting back home if the person really is telling the truth.

Title: Door Number Two

Author: Reaper Nanashi (Lady Shinigami)

Pairing: None Intended

Word Count: 3, 201

Type: Multi-Chapter (Work In Progress)

Rating: T (bad words, sexual innuendos, blood, violence)

Date Submitted: 3/24/07

Disclaimer: No.

Claimer: Genko, Byako, Shakko, Hotaru, Nyoko, Aya, Hitomi, Shinju, Akane, Takako, Tsukiko, Mimi, and anyone or anything relating to them is mine

Summary: Maybe it's a dream, maybe it's real. Naruto doesn't know how he got there, but he's not sure he wants to go home. Perhaps the little decisions aren't so little after all--one choice can change a life forever . . .

Chapter Twenty-Five - Opinionated

Everywhere Arashi went, he found organized crews composed of both civilians and ninja digging up bodies of the dead and living, reuniting families, and pairing unsupervised children with adults who would look out for them until a parent was found.

"Ah, Hokage-sama!" a senior jounin called, breaking away from a group to speak to him. "We were told you were on your way. How is Lady Hotaru?"

"She's fine, thank you. How are things going here?"

"Very well, sir. I'm happy to report that while injuries are high, serious injuries are few."

"How many are dead?"

"We don't know yet, sir. Naruto-sama told us not to bother with counting the dead until all the living had been saved and we're still pulling people from collapsed buildings."

That was a bit of wisdom he had not expected Naruto to possess. "I suppose he's been handling things in my absence?"

"I haven't seen him for quite a while, but I would say so. Your son is well-trained to be so capable in this kind of situation, Hokage-sama."

Arashi nodded a silent thanks, wishing he could take the credit or that he could say it had been the Third's influence. Yet there was no sign that it was anything other than Naruto's own self-discipline--however he must have stumbled across it in his solo training. He gazed around, wondering if he should add on to or clarify any of Naruto's commands, but was stopped by a tug on his coat. A girl who was not too much older than Nyoko held her arms up to him and he obediently reached down to pick her up. She hugged his neck and he cuddled her briefly--"It'll be okay, sweetheart."--to ease her fearful tension. "Is everything working out well?"

"Like a well-oiled machine, sir."

"Good." He lifted his headset with his free hand. "Keep me updated. I need to find Naruto for another task. And if you can spare anyone to be a messenger, that would be helpful."

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you." He looked at the girl, who blinked back at him blankly. "Well, what am I going to do with you?"

Suddenly, a distant voice called, "Aneko!"

The girl squirmed, so he turned toward the voice to see a woman running toward him with an infant boy in one arm. She stopped beside him, panting, and he asked with a smile, "Are you missing someone?"

"I'm so sorry, Hokage-sama!" she gasped. "We were waiting for my husband and she just wandered off!"

"Yes," he mused, "they tend to do that at the worst possible times. Unfortunately, they never seem to grow out of it. Have you seen my son, perchance?"

"No, Hokage-sama, I haven't. I'm very sorry."

"I have seen him, Hokage-sama," a man who, by the woman's reaction, was her husband said calmly. "Only briefly, though. He saved my niece's life not too long ago."

"Which direction was he headed?"

"Here, I'll take her. He seemed to be going east."

Arashi handed the girl to her father. "Thank you very much."

He bowed. "Thank you, Hokage-sama."

Arashi hurried east, keeping his eyes tuned for a thatch of blond hair or a streak of orange. He did not find either of those, but he did find a mess of silver hair. "Kakashi!"

The jounin turned and waved. "Sensei!"

He came to a stop by his student. "Have you seen Naruto?"

"Yes." Kakashi pointed across the wreckage of the house they stood by. "I was with him up until just now, when he went after the Uchiha boy claiming he could hear the wood giving out. He ended up getting himself dropped into the house and even though we told him to come back he said he was going after Sakura. None of us are small enough to chase him, so we've been waiting for him to come back out."

"The house hasn't shifted, has it?"

"Not since he first fell, no. Believe me, if it had I wouldn't be standing here."

Sasuke's relieved shout drew their attention. "Sakura!"

Sakura, filthy but otherwise looking little the worse for wear, cleared the edge of the hole, fell happily into Sasuke's arms, and started to cry. Sasuke held and comforted her, but some of his attention remained on the hole. There was a rather gentle tremor, but the house still shifted and collapsed a bit more, raising a cloud of dust.

Then, naturally, it began to rain.

Hard.

"Naruto-sama!" Sasuke cried, leaning over the hole worriedly.

Arashi was there almost instantly, trying to peer through the dust. "Naruto?!"

By the time the dust had mostly cleared, Itachi and Fugaku had gotten Sasuke and Sakura into the relative safety of the street. Arashi and Kakashi were still bent over the hole, unable to see where anything had fallen until the dust was completely gone. Its absence revealed a patch of sunny blond at the bottom.

"Naruto!" Arashi leaped into the hole without a second thought, landing a short distance away. A split-second survey of the situation told him that Naruto was being pinned to the ground by his shoulders--the house was crushing him slowly; it was a miracle he had survived it at all. Arashi briefly considered using a rasengan to cut through the wood and relieve the pressure, but that was tempered by the thought that doing such a thing would potentially destabilize the entire portion of the house and cause it to collapse on Naruto all at once, which would definitely have a survival rating of zero.

Stupid as it seemed, the only other idea he had was to lift everything altogether.

"Sensei! What are you doing?!"

"Just stay there, Kakashi! I might need your help in a minute!" That was a lie--he was not planning to drag Kakashi into the ordeal unless he had to. He knelt by Naruto and listened to the boy's weak, pained wheezes. "Naruto? You conscious?"

"Dad . . ." An arm stretched out slowly and Arashi took hold of it reassuringly. "I . . . can't breathe . . ."

"I know. I'm going to get you out of here. It'll probably hurt, but hang on just a little longer, okay?"

"'Kay."

Arashi kissed his son's forehead gently and then got to his feet, looking over the tangle of beams again. There was a beam a short distance above the one that lay across Naruto, so Arashi fit his shoulders under it, applied as much chakra as he could, and lifted. The dust beneath his feet had gotten wet and turned to mud, not allowing him decent footing; he must have twisted both ankles in the effort, but he was not about to let Naruto die. His child's weakening breaths could, somehow, be heard over the patter of the rain and the sound tore at him.

Naruto, upon feeling the beam leave his shoulders, began to scrabble at the ground and drag himself out of the way even though the rush of oxygen to his brain had blinded him. He sank to the ground once he decided he had cleared the beam and coughed until his chest hurt. There was a soft bang, then shaking hands touched his back. It should have been considerably more difficult than that even with the aid of chakra, but neither blond was going to complain.

The house was probably on the verge of falling apart--half of the buildings in the village are so old and worn that one would expect a good stiff breeze to knock them down. The rest are much newer and mostly genin-proof. Naruto sighed to himself. I'm such a lucky fuck . . .

Arashi began to examine him. "You okay, Naruto?" Cracked scapulae, fractured clavicle, splintered ribs . . . It's a wonder his lungs weren't punctured.

"Yeah," he coughed and looked up dazedly. "Are you hurt?"

"It's just adrenalin. Come on."

Naruto was shaking as much as Arashi was, though for a different reason entirely. Arashi knew Naruto would have a hard time climbing when his muscles undoubtedly ached from being forced to move without the proper amount of oxygen, so climbing up himself was out of the question. With his own ankles injured, though, he would need both his arms to climb. After several minutes of deliberation, Arashi finally knelt and instructed, "Piggyback." Naruto obediently hopped into place and he hefted his son's weight, then reached for the wall of beams. Arashi began to climb slowly, his ankles protesting the demand for support of an extra ninety-odd pounds though Naruto was doing his best to help by being as still as possible, even when he began to slide lower. Eventually, Arashi paused and reached back with one arm to offer some support as he said, "Readjust."

Naruto complied. The shift of weight, however, caused an already overstressed right ankle to slip completely off the rain-slickened wood. Hot pain lanced through both of Arashi's ankles as the one bent upward sharply and the other, suddenly burdened with all the weight, simply gave out. He tried to twist so as to not fall on Naruto and expected to hit the ground face-first, but in the next moment felt a sharp pain in his arm and shoulder.

Startled, he looked up and found his right hand grasped tightly in both of Naruto's. The boy was hanging upside-down, his knees locked around a vertical beam. How the hell . . . ? Confused, he asked, ". . . Naruto?"

"Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto shouted urgently.

"Already here," Kakashi answered calmly from beside them.

"Get Dad!"

Arashi would have protested this, except he had no argument. Naruto could not be moved unless he was moved first. He draped his arms over Kakashi's shoulders and held on, finding a viable protest when Naruto was left behind. "Don't leave him there!"

"I'll be okay, Dad," Naruto assured him, righting himself and then climbing after them slowly and with pain.

Naruto collapsed gratefully into his father's arms when he cleared the edge of the hole and closed his eyes. Things just went so utterly wrong, as they tend to do in my presence, thanks to Lady Luck and her fucking Hammer of Doom. One day I'm going to kill that psychotic bitch. And why the hell didn't you do anything, lazy Fox-bastard?

Kyuubi snorted. For your information, boy, since you obviously haven't thought about this, it's very dangerous for either of us to use my chakra in this body. Even if it weren't, blowing up part of the house to get free would only have resulted in more of the house falling on us. I'm not going to let you die, but I'm not going to take an unnecessary risk, either.

Ready to ask what that was supposed to mean, Naruto was interrupted by his father. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, but you aren't."

"It's minor."

Naruto really did not want to argue about what a major issue barely being able to walk was, so he let it go.

"Would you like me to help, Hokage-sama?" Hinata asked.

"Oh, hello, Hinata," Arashi greeted with rather inappropriate cheer for the situation. "Yes, help would be most appreciated, thank you."

"You should go home," Kakashi advised. "We can take care of the rest here."

"No, it's okay. I'll take Naruto back to Hotaru and then return to supervise rescue efforts and cleanup."

"You really should stay off your feet, Hokage-sama," Hinata told him as she finished healing his right ankle and moved to his left. "I can heal the damage, but the tenderness will still be there. I don't suppose that it really matters if you don't mind limping about the village, but it might frighten and distract others."

"Go home," Kakashi stage-whispered.

Annoyed, Arashi pushed his student's face away. "If you're all going to be like this, then I'll go home. Gods, it's not like I'm crippled."

"No, you're not," Hinata agreed. "You'll be just fine by tomorrow afternoon, or perhaps sooner than that, if you take it easy today."

"You sound like Rin."

The ground trembled, but it was far, far weaker than it had been any time before. Naruto still clutched at Arashi's arm and Arashi held him close. "It's okay," he murmured soothingly into the short, muddy blond hair. "It's okay now."

Naruto was not scared--only startled--but all the same did not protest the gentle cosseting. At that point, he wanted merely to go to bed and sleep for the next three months. Seriously, why does bad shit happen to me all the time?

You're just that fortunate, Kyuubi snickered

He growled in exhaustion. "That was uncalled for."

"What, Naruto?" Arashi asked, leaning down.

"Nothing, Dad. Just talking to myself." And my obnoxious asshole of a tenant.

Look at it this way, Kyuubi pointed out. It's quite likely this little infant would be dead by now if it weren't for us. His body is privileged by our presences. The fox paused, then decided with gleeful sadism, Or by mine, anyway.

Maybe . . . except that the other me is clearly too chickenshit to ever do things like this, so whether or not he's that privileged is a matter of opinion.

True--and my opinion is worth far more than yours.

Any opinion from anyone is nothing more than pretty words until it's backed up with hard facts, jackass--you know that. So prove both of your opinions, because even if you consider your presence a privilege, I don't, and I don't think your opinion is worth two shits, either.

As if I care about your opinion of my opinion?

Circular argument, Naruto warned, knowing that the fox hated them--not that he had any lost love for them himself--and that they would get into an incredible screaming fit if they went on, which was not what he needed people to be witness to at that point. Not worth discussing.

Hotaru was doing quite well, they discovered upon returning home. She had been moved into a large tent with multiple 'rooms' and mesh windows. Hitomi sat close to keep her company and Nyoko played quietly nearby while Aya directed the other girls in performing various tasks. When the motherly cook saw them, she shouted, "Takako, draw up a hot bath!"

"Are you two all right?!" Hotaru cried.

They nodded and Arashi said, "Naruto's had a pretty bad day, but we're fine."

"Off to the bath with you!" Aya commanded, appearing from nowhere and herding them away. "Look at how filthy you both are! Neither of you are setting foot in that tent until you get yourselves cleaned up!"

The water was very hot, even after sitting while they washed all the dirt away, and found sore spots Naruto had not been aware he had. ". . . Ow . . ."

Arashi chuckled. "Ditto."

It did start to feel pretty good, though, and Naruto rested his chin on the edge of the bath and closed his eyes. The next thing he knew, his throat and chin were impacting the water and the surface tension caused the tender skin to sting. For a moment he thrashed and dunked his face beneath the water, but finally he came up and groaned.

Arashi laughed tiredly. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Did I fall asleep?"

"You must have. I know I had until you made so much noise."

He groaned again.

Arashi splashed the water beside him lightly. "Come here--you can lean on me so you won't fall in again."

Somehow, Arashi had submerged himself until the water was up to just beneath his chin. Naruto shook his head. "No thanks."

"I know it looks unsteady, but it's not."

He really did not want a repeat of what had just happened, but he did not want to get out of the water yet. ". . . If I drown, I'll haunt you until you die."

Arashi looked sick at the thought. "I won't let you drown, Naruto."

Naruto crawled over and started to settle next to Arashi, but was stopped at the last instant for an examination. He tried to not appear impatient. Didn't he do this earlier, when I was in perfectly good condition then, too?

If you would think more, you wouldn't be such a moron, Kyuubi said, but offered no further explanation.

Arashi frowned. I know his scapulae were cracked--I know they were . . . And his clavicle and ribs had more damage than this . . . ". . . Naruto?"

"Yeap," Naruto answered vacantly, not even bothering to make it a question.

Arashi studied his face. He doesn't know. He can't know--he doesn't have the experience. A genin doesn't do enough life-threatening things to know how quickly the body does or doesn't heal. What the hell is it? ". . . Never mind. Lie down."

Note to self: Don't mention self dying in front of Dad--induces need for him to be Mommy instead. Naruto eased into the water, resting his head on his father's muscular shoulder. He kind of missed seeing that same strength when he looked in the mirror, since in this body he still had a layer or two of baby fat that had yet to be worn away and that for the time being did much to conceal how toned his body was. It was more an aesthetic thing, though; he could just monitor his muscle mass better if he could see more of it.

He sighed and closed his eyes again.

"Up, boys!" Aya barked almost immediately. "The water's not going to be doing you any good much longer!"

Naruto flinched at the volume of her voice, wondering what she meant, when he realized the water was lukewarm and not hot. Blinking sleepily, he looked around to see that it was nearly night. He yawned and sat up, rubbing one eye and twitching in surprise when a towel appeared in front of his face. "Oh, thanks . . . Shinju!"

"Yes?"

He pointed. "The cat!"

She looked at the kitten she cradled in one arm. "Mister Kakashi found her wandering around by the apartment building. It collapsed, Naruto-sa---Naruto."

She still occasionally attempted to tack '-sama' to his name, though she had progressed to calling his father Arashi-sama. She was allowed to do it only because she was comfortable that way and she was slowly getting better about leaving the '-sama' off. "Crap. All my weapons are still in there."

"Mister Kakashi said that he would get them for you once all of the villagers had been accounted for."

Naruto nodded. "I'll help more tomorrow." He yawned again and, while Shinju turned herself away, wrapped the towel around his waist as he stood. He climbed out of the bath and let Shinju direct him over to a little changing area that had been set up, where he pulled on some fresh clothes and discovered upon returning that Shinju was having a very hard time waking his father, who snoozed on obliviously.

"Should I get some cold water?" she asked.

He shook his head in answer. "No. Throwing cold water on someone only shocks the nervous system and causes the heart and brain to panic. It's not healthy no matter how old or young the victim is." He paused for a moment, thinking that concept through. "On the other hand, yes, get me a bucket of cold water."

To Be Continued . . .

Answers To Questions You Didn't Even Know You Wanted To Ask:

Yes, a person can survive a house falling on them. It's not likely, but it's possible if the crushing weight has decent distribution (in the same way a person would lie on thin ice rather than stand on it). In South Korea, people survived having five stories and hundreds of thousands of tons of steel and concrete fall on them. One woman survived for a week, buried in it.

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For those not as scientifically inclined, scapulae are your shoulder blades and the clavicle is your collarbone. I figure that ninja, especially if they know medical techniques, would know and use the scientific names of the body's parts.

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Do not throw cold water on someone who's sleeping. Or even someone who's awake, really. Use warm or lukewarm water if you must, but not cold or freezing, and definitely never on the face. It's an incredible shock. When the face of any mammal is suddenly submerged in water or caught in a freezing environment, every one of the body's major systems slows nearly to a halt, which minimizes the need for oxygen and increases the chances of surviving an underwater emergency. Such a reaction to dousing is what's called the "mammalian diving reflex", which will alarm a person/body and causes the extremities to become virtually useless in a swimming situation. This reflex can be taken advantage of by divers, but only through training--the average person will panic physiologically, and if that person has health problems it could exacerbate them.

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Reviews are very much appreciated, thank you.

--RN (LS)