"Dad!"
Gohan walked through the forests of Mt. Paozu looking for his father. It was only recently that his mother let him roam around the area on his own and the small child felt a sense of pride in gaining her trust.
"HAAA!"
A stream of blue energy soared through the sky. Amazement was plastered across the child's face as he watched it dissipate.
Gohan continued forward and eventually found his father cupping his hands.
"Dad!" he cried.
Goku curiously turned around and waved. "Yo!"
"Dad, what was that stream just now?"
"Stream? Oh, you mean the Kamehameha."
"What's a Kamehameha?"
"Well, it's basically an attack where you draw you ki together into a single point and then shooting out as a powerful energy beam."
Goku cupped his hands together and drew them at his side. "Like this. You concentrate your ki between your hands."
A blue, almost spherical energy formed in Goku's hand. "Ka-me-ha-me… Then when you're fully charged, you thrust your hands forwards and let loose."
Goku thrust his arms towards the sky.
"HA!" another beam of energy shot out of his hands.
"Wow," Gohan's eyes sparkled with admiration. "Where did you learn how to do that?"
"I learned it by watching Master Roshi. He's this old guy I used to train under. He may look feeble, but he's actually pretty strong. My Grandpa Gohan also knew how to do it and Krillin and Yamcha learned how to do it too."
It was at that moment when Goku got an idea.
"Hey, wanna learn it too?"
"I-I don't think so…" Gohan anxiously shook his head. "I don't really think I could do it. Plus, Mom wouldn't like me learning how to do something like that."
"Oh right…" Goku didn't bother to hide his disappointment.
"Gohan."
"Huh?" Gohan glanced around, searching for the source of that familiar voice.
"Gohan!"
Blinking twice, Gohan found the faces of Naruto and Chrome looming over him. Their faces were covered in bruises.
"What happened?" he asked.
Naruto glared at Chrome. "She tried to wake you up by summoning zombie hands to tickle you!"
"You two had to fight zombie hands?" Gohan asked.
"No, we had to fight a zombie tree."
Naruto pointed to a nearby tree. It was wilted and littered with fist shaped holes.
"I didn't even know you could reanimate trees. An excited, somewhat mad smile filled Chrome's face. "I can't wait to see how I can apply this fact to future subjects!"
Naruto blankly stared at the small succubus. "You've been doing this necro-zombie stuff for a while right?"
"Yeah."
"…How are you still alive?"
Before anything else could be said, a force unlike any other assaulted to their very being. It felt as if the entire earth, no, all of existence was shaking.
They looked up and were shocked to find cracks appearing. But they soon disappeared as quickly as they appeared.
Rendered speechless by what he just saw, Naruto slowly turned towards Chrome.
"I can't do stuff like that!" she frantically denied. "Unless I reanimated a corpse that had the power to do that…"
Naruto's eyes narrowed with suspicion.
"I didn't do that!"
Gohan had a different reaction what he just saw though. I've seen some weird things ever since starting this journey. And it's still only beginning…
He wasn't really sure whether to laugh or cry.
"Anyway, we better get moving. My subject is getting further and further away the more time we waste here," Chrome nonchalantly said as she adjusted the strap to her bag.
Naruto opened his mouth to reply. But nothing ever came out. Deep down, he kind of agreed with her approach. "Alright. Gohan?"
"Yeah." The monkey-tailed child jumped on his feet. "We shouldn't be too far from the next town. Once we're there we can find a boat."
"Then let's go so we can find the next shard!" Naruto excitedly declared.
A fiery aura surrounded him before taking off.
One hour later…
"We're here!" Naruto loudly announced. "Where do we go from here, Gohan?"
"Um… I guess we just ask around. I just really hope they allow kids to buy their own tickets. "
Naruto looked around. Despite being a somewhat large town, there weren't many citizens wandering around. Not only that, but there was claw marks scattered across the various buildings.
"Yeesh, this place has seen better days," he noted.
"Actually, it looks like the abandoned village we just passed through," Gohan replied. "What do you think, Chrome?
His question was met with silence.
The boys looked around, but Chrome was nowhere in sight.
"Guess she thinks temporary party thing is over," Naruto shrugged and started walking.
The two journeyed to the docks. There was a plethora of ships of different shapes and sizes. But despite the large number of boats that surely need maintenance, no one was around.
Confused, Naruto cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled. "RAISE THE SAILS, WE'RE READY TO GO!"
He then stuck his ear out towards the ships, waiting for a response.
There was nothing but the sound of the waves.
Naruto's confusion grew as he shifted his gaze to his companion. "What kind of ship town doesn't have people working on the ships?"
"It may have something to do with the state of the town. Maybe we should ask around?" Gohan suggested.
"And I know just the place: The local pub."
"Aren't we too young to go in there?"
"I think this place has bigger problems than two kids going to a bar."
Though he wasn't entirely sure if Naruto was right, Gohan still followed him around until they entered the local pub.
They had expected a bunch of rough and tough drunkards, but there were only a few and-
"Chrome?" Naruto marveled at the small succubus casually eating pudding at a nearby table.
"Hey," Chrome waved her free hand. "Did you get us a boat?"
Naruto and Gohan blankly stared at her. Was she trying to get out of paying?
"Haven't you noticed something weird going on, Chrome?" Naruto asked.
"Yeah. The town is empty and yet there aren't any fresh corpses around like the village we passed through last night. Meaning that someone is kidnapping people," Chrome succinctly explained.
"That's very likely," Gohan nodded his head in agreement. "But the question is why and if that shadow creature has something to do with it."
"Considering that it tried to drag you away, it probably does. But the real question is what's happening to them."
"You don't think its forced labor, do you?"
"Or perhaps scientific curiosity."
A deranged smile crossed the small succubus' face, greatly disturbing Naruto.
"So, the point is that someone's kidnapping people, right? Naruto trust his right fist into the palm of his left hand. "Then we need to find out where these people are at?"
"I have the perfect tool for the job," Chrome giggled as she dug into her bag.
She pulled a syringe filled with a strange glowing liquid and dramatically thrust it above her head.
"What's that?" Gohan asked.
"It's a special formula I mixed together. With it any creatures are given a zombie's superior vision," Chrome proudly explained.
"I don't think zombies have anything that's better than someone who's alive…" Naruto argued.
"A zombie crafted by an Artiste does and with this mixture so can anyone else."
Clear doubt was plastered across Naruto's face.
"…How many times has it worked?"
"What?"
"How many times has it worked?"
"Well…" Chrome nervously chuckled as she averted her gaze. "I had a few a breakthroughs and the life spans of the guinea pigs are better every time."
"Have you ever had a trial that had no side effects?" Gohan awkwardly asked.
"Well, I just need a few more guinea pigs and…"
"Dang it, Chrome! We're not you're guinea pigs!" Naruto snapped.
"You're guaranteed to survive. But in case you don't, I'll be sure to revive you as first-class zombies."
"That's not very reassuring…" Gohan said.
"Excuse me, youngsters."
The three turned around as an elderly man approached them. "Did I hear that you kids were looking for kidnapped people?"
"Yeah," Naruto nodded his head. "Do you know where they're at, gramps?"
"Well, I wasn't going to let some evildoer come to our village and have their way, so I followed one of the taken down a path made of what I can assume villagers trying to grab whatever they can to save themselves and found a mysterious looking hatch on the ground.
I'm sure that if you find that hatch, you find those villagers."
"Really? Thanks, gramps," a confident smile stretched across Naruto's face as he turned towards his small party. "Let's go guys."
…
The evening sun started to set on the horizon, but the three had yet to find the hatch the elder referred too.
Despite running around for who knows how long, Naruto displayed no signs of fatigue.
"He would make a great zombie," Chrome noted.
"I don't think stamina and zombie go together…" Gohan weakly argued.
Naruto continued to run back and forth, but still found no hatch. "Guys, have you found anything yet?"
"Maybe you try my zombie vision enhancer?" Chrome proposed.
"We're not your guinea pigs, Chrome!"
Naruto stomped his foot to emphasize his point before suddenly disappearing into the ground.
His companions quickly rushed to where he was standing and found an open hatch and ladder.
"Naruto!" Gohan called out for his friend.
"Guys, you got see this!"
The two climbed down the ladder. Once at the bottom, they were left awestruck at what they saw. The white walls that surrounded them were clean and pristine and there several doorways that lined them.
"What is this place?" Naruto wondered aloud.
Gohan slowly walked ahead and peaked through one of the doors. On the other side were tall piles of papers and several computer screens.
"I think we're in some type of laboratory," Gohan said.
"You mean one of those places sciencey people work in? Why would someone that works her kidn-?"
Naruto glanced at Chrome and immediately received his answer. "Never mind. Let's just find the villagers and get out of this creepy place."
The party began their search. They looked through every door they passed by, but all they found was more computer screens and scattered papers.
Disbelief swelled in Naruto as he continued to find more of the same things. "How many of these things does a person need?"
"Maybe a lot of people work here?" Gohan noted.
The search continued until Naruto and Gohan walked into a room with strange machines lined on the walls.
But that wasn't what grabbed their attention. What grabbed their attention was the fact there were people floating inside a green liquid.
"What the heck?!" Naruto exclaimed.
Gohan agreed with that sentiment. He couldn't fathom why someone would kidnap and stick people into these strange capsules.
"Hey, Gohan, check this out!" Naruto called.
Gohan approached the capsule Naruto was standing in front of. To his surprise, there was a strange blue creature in it.
"What is that?" Naruto wondered.
"It looks like's it's some sort of animal," Gohan observed the creature closer. "Judging by its quills, it may be a hedgehog."
"A hedgehog wearing gloves and red shoes? Whoever owns this place gotta be like Chrome."
The two continued to stare at the creature, unaware of Naruto's shadow slowly rising from the ground.
"So, how do we get everyone out of here?" Naruto asked.
"Um…" Gohan glanced to his right and noticed a computer station nearby. "The controls are probably on that computer."
"You know how to use computers?"
"Well, I never actually used one before… But I read up on how they work."
"Good enough for me. Give it a shot."
Gohan cautiously approached the computer station. Though he read on how to use a computer, he still wasn't sure how much he could apply to the real thing.
Even scarier was that this model was much more advanced than what he did study.
"Um…"
The shadowy figure finally pulled itself from the ground and raised its palm towards Naruto. Enlarging in size, the shadow's hand shot at Naruto and trapped him in its grip.
"What th-?!" before he could finish his sentence, the child was thrown into a nearby wall. Naruto immediately glanced up, shocked to find his own shadow moving on its own. "Since when do shadows come to life?"
The shadow then turned its attention to Gohan, sending a sharp shiver down his spine. It slowly approached him until Naruto jumped on the shadow's back.
"Gohan, find a way to get the capsules open!" he ordered.
"R-Right…" Gohan anxiously nodded his head and returned to the console.
The shadow raged around the room, trying to get Naruto off its back. It smashed the child against everything in the room from file cabinets to desks to the capsule housing the hedgehog. Continuous run-ins with the capsule cracked the glass and the vibrations of the battle caused the creature to stir.
The hedgehog's eyes slowly opened, allowing him to catch the battle in front of him. Though confused, the blue creature was determined to join the action. He soon curled into a ball and started to spin in place. The moment he built enough speed, he flew out of the capsule and into the shadow, knocking it away from Naruto.
The hedgehog then stretched his arms and legs and yawned. "Not the best place to take a nap."
"Wh-? You can talk?!" Naruto marveled.
"Hm? Of course, I can talk. What you'd expect?"
"Yep, definitely another mad scientist's experiment."
"Hey, I'm not an experiment," the blue hedgehog grinned as he pointed to himself. "The name's Sonic. Sonic the Hedgehog."
"Wow…"
The child's confusion was quickly swept away by admiration. There was something about the hedgehog in front of him that was inheritably cool.
But that moment didn't last as two giant shadowy hands grabbed the two and slammed them into another wall.
"Alright, he's asking for it now!"
Fires of determination burned in Naruto and Sonic's eyes as they charged at their opponent.
…
Chrome peeked into one of the many rooms and found a mound made of fresh corpse.
"Though I sensed raw material," she said as she approached the dead.
Upon closer inspection, the small succubus noted how they were all men who had been stripped of their clothes. But more important than that was why someone was keeping these corpses around instead of disposing them.
From the corner of her eye, Chrome noticed a note tapped to a nearby file cabinet. She reached for the note and read it aloud.
"Here are some materials for you in case you need them. I doubt they'd be any use for you but they're here."
The word "material" caught Chrome's eye. To her, it implied necromancy was at play here. But who were they for?
A solemn expression filled her face. "Could it be…?"
A loud crashing sound quickly derailed that train of thought.
Naruto must be going at it with someone.
She then turned towards the corpses, a deranged smile crossing her face. Chrome pulled a book out of her bag and opened it.
Her left hand began to glow with a dark blue light as she started her incantation.
…
Naruto's fist flew through his shadowy's double's head. He threw more and more punches, but none of landed due to the shadow constantly changing its shape and volume.
"Stop squirming so much!" Naruto shouted in frustration.
The shadow was then knocked away by a flying kick from Sonic.
"Not so tough when you get snuck up on, huh?" the blue hedgehog taunted.
Seemingly responding to those words, the shadow melded into the ground and swam towards them. Once it was beneath them, it shot up with enlarged hands and once again trapped the two in its giant hands.
In seconds, a blue spinning ball burst through one of the hands. Sonic uncurled himself near Gohan and looked up at him.
"Hey, what's your thing in all of this?" the hedgehog asked.
"I'm trying to find a way to free all of these people using this station," Gohan explained.
"Oh. Keep it up."
Sonic flashed him an encouraging grin before once again curling himself into a spinning ball. He launched himself forward and flew through the shadow's other hand, freeing Naruto.
At the same time, several moans echoed through the room. To the surprise of everyone in the room, several corpses grabbed the shadow and pinned it to the ground.
"…Are those zombies?" Sonic asked.
"Artiste brand zombies!"
They heard a sinister giggle slipped through Chrome's lips as she approached the shadow.
"Chrome? Where'd you find these dead guys?" Naruto questioned.
"Found them left behind in a nearby room."
Anger and frustration was all Naruto felt at that moment. Chrome, meanwhile, pulled a syringe out of her bag and thrust it into the shadow.
In no time at all, the shadow's physical formed slowly liquefied and seeped into the ground as nothing more than a black puddle.
"What just happened?" Naruto wondered aloud.
"I had to deal with a few shadow creatures before, so I made something that could disable them!" Chrome proudly replied.
Naruto was impressed by what she had just done, but at the same time, this just seemed to further justify not taking her "vision enhancer".
"Hey, Gohan, you find out how to free everyone, yet?" Naruto asked.
"I think this… is… it?"
After entering a series of increasingly complex commands, Gohan turned around and watched the capsules open.
The kidnapped victims fell out of their futuristic cells.
"I… I did it," Gohan couldn't hide his surprise and amazement over what he had just done.
"Nice work, Gohan," Sonic congratulated him with a thumbs-up.
Gohan awkwardly scratched the back of his head and chuckled.
But that moment of levity didn't last long as an artificial sounding voice spoke up. "Self-Destruct sequence activated! All personal has 5 minutes to evacuate!"
"WHAT?!" Naruto exclaimed.
He frantically darted across the room, trying to figure out what they could do.
"How do we get everyone out of here in 5 minutes?!"
"Simple," a proud, somewhat haughty smile filled Chrome's face. She dramatically pointed towards the kidnapped and declared. "Go my zombies and save everyone here."
Her dramatic order was only met with silence.
"Um, you do know that we're not your servants right?" one of them pointed out.
"Eh? But I brought you back as art and you just followed my command to restrain the shadow."
"That was for our own revenge," another one answered.
"Hey…" Naruto shot an annoyed look at the group of zombies as he approached them. "You do realize that as your arguing ownership… EVERYONE YOU CARE ABOUT AND MORE INNOCENTS ARE ABOUT TO BLOW UP!"
Those words cut deep into the corpses' non-functioning hearts.
"You guys done arguing yet?" their attention was soon drawn to Sonic, who had already ran a few people out.
"Everyone grab someone and run!" Naruto commanded.
Following the orders they were given, the group grabbed whoever they could and rushed towards the exit.
Sprinting as hard as they could, they reached the ladder leading to their escape with one minute to spare. The zombies jumped through the top hatch while the others climbed out with the ladder.
Once they were out, they watched a blue blur speed back and forth past them, dropping off more and more people before Sonic slammed the hatch closed.
One second later, the ground violently shook.
Sonic let out a sigh of relief."Why do mad scientists always got to blow up their base when they're plans fail?"
Unsure how to answer that, Naruto turned to Chrome.
"I can't believe you actually did something necrotechy related that didn't blow up in our face," he said.
"What'd you expect from an Artise?" a proud smile formed on her lips as she replied.
Naruto then shifted his focus towards the reanimated corpses and asked, "So, what are you guys going to do now that your zombies?"
"I guess we can-"
The corpses suddenly collapsed on the ground. Any signs of life they displayed vanished in the blink of an eye.
"Did- Are they dead again?" Naruto gasped.
"Well, I didn't have enough time to work to keep them around for long…" Chrome nervously chuckled.
An awkward silence filled the air as everyone just stared at the men who were whisked away by death once more.