NOTE: This is a re-upload, not an adoption! After this note, everything including the author notes are the result of Reain's efforts. Only reason the ANs aren't being removed, is because I'm a lazy bastard.
Author's note: Three things before you begin the story. There are no pairings, this is half-crack, and I've altered the DxD world a bit so a few things are different. Also you can pretty much call this an AU as it doesn't follow canon. That's it! Enjoy everyone!
I don't own either show.
There would always be a price to pay, regardless of the outcome — good or bad.
Power saved lives and could elevate people to new heights but it also corrupted them. Money granted prosperity but often lead to unfinished business.
Every decision made by anyone who has ever lived came with its own share of consequences and rather hefty burdens. There was no such thing as a perfect choice or outcome in this or any other world. It did not matter how prepared you were, or how strong or smart. The costs would always outweigh the glory.
Just as there would always be something that needed to be given up in order for one to gain.
Such was the nature of living.
When he was unceremoniously thrown through time and space, his body being very painfully pulled apart with every second that passed, he really thought it was the end.
Then he woke up here in this new world.
Alive, but different.
He vaguely understood it was still him underneath all of the freshly formed skin and that at the same time — it wasn't.
Memories that weren't his own — at least he didn't think they were — ran through his head. Urges previously never experienced now beckoned to him. Places he could not remember ever seeing before but felt as if he had already visited flashed before his very eyes. Dozens upon dozens of different faces and people, some familiar, too familiar really, and others completely unknown to him.
Even then he still felt as if he knew them well.
It was a rather surreal experience to say the least. Like remembering a past life.
Then he realized he had horns, and that no longer did the multitude of voices that once occupied his mind chat to each other from within the deeper parts of his psyche.
It was strangely quiet in his own head now and that honestly saddened him a bit.
He remembered the war.
From nine different perspectives.
He remembered the sage, both meeting him for the first time and calling the deity like man father...from nine different perspectives.
He remembered years passing. Hundreds of them in fact. A far cry away from the seventeen years of life he had originally experienced.
And then suddenly as if all at once it made sense to him, and despite knowing that he should have felt saddened — crushed even — by the knowledge that all nine of the tailed beasts were now gone. Never to return. Having sacrificed all they ever were and would be so that he could survive...
He didn't.
Whatever remained of them was apart of him now, and that included their final thoughts in those last chaotic moments. To allow himself to wallow would have been an insult of the highest order. They gave him another chance at life, a gift he didn't think he'd ever be able to repay even if he had the chance to do so.
They willingly gave their lives for him.
He shouldn't have felt guilty at all. At least not with this kind of understanding.
It was more than just surprise and sheer grief that slowed him down in the beginning however. For the first couple of months upon his arrival in this new world he struggled with a lot of different things, survivors guilt among the top of the list. What truly manged to bother him the most however was that he was not even sure who or what he was anymore...
Was he really Naruto Uzumaki?
Or was he just the scattered remains of a bunch of different personalities? All hastily meshed together with his own in a last ditch effort to avoid certain death?
"Through you we will live."
"Thank you for acknowledging us as something more than beasts."
"We hope you find happiness."
Naruto Uzumaki was still there on the outside. He still had his fathers hair and eyes. He still had the marks on his cheeks that would forever link him as Kurama's partner and container.
All in all, take away the newly sprouted horns and he was pretty much the same person in terms of appearance.
Now power wise... there was the major difference.
Where his chakra was comparable to an ocean before, now it felt almost bottomless.
It was a bit off putting at first were he to be honest. The sheer power he could feel lurking underneath his skin was unbelievable!
All of the tailed beast's collective skill and knowledge was apart of him now. What's more, is the fact that it felt so natural.
Just like Shukaku he could bend sand to his will. Like Son Goku, he could warp his body into an armor of pure magma and create volcanic eruptions on a whim. He could sprout wings and tails and run faster than ever before. Hell, when he first attempted to channel a regular Rasengan it blew his entire arm clean off! A testimony to just how potent his chakra had become.
Seconds later and he was flexing his newly sprouted appendage with something akin to astonishment while watching his old arm dissolve away into nothing.
The greatest change undergone wasn't in his strength or appearance though. No, the greatest change was in his mental state.
With nine different personalities fusing with his own all at once...
Yes, unfortunately...
...there would always be a price to pay.
