Some folks asked me to bring this back. I'm not really focused on updating, especially since both source materials kinda jumped the shark. Still, who knows? I may toss an update or two out as inspiration grips me.
Chapter 1: A World of Strife
It had all been too much, he had come to realize. The constant skirmishes with Tobi and his bastardized alliance with Kabuto. The friends he had lost, sometimes to the walking corpses of even more friends. Chouji and Ino lost to Asuma's resurrected body, the chain-smoking jounin weeping as his soul was brought back from death to watch his body kill the kids he had died to protect. Shikamaru had disappeared a week later, never to be seen again. Like he had seemed to have wished in his adolescence, he had simply melted into the forest, never to be bothered again.
The others he had lost to the ravages of time. Thirty years after Tobi's death and the end of the Village Hidden in the Sound, an assault undertaken by he and a few others, Kakashi and the rest of the jounin that had shaped his early life had all fallen prey to their own dwindling lifespans. Kurenai had gone first, the depression of losing Asuma and his students as well as her own son in the war leaving her a shadow of her former self. She had died peacefully in her sleep, joining her son and his father in the afterlife after nearly fifty years of loneliness. Tsunade had stuck around for a while, her mastery of medical ninjutsu battling against a life of booze and filthy hotel rooms, but liver cancer was her final, unyielding opponent. Anko had perished on one of her eccentric training trips, dying in a fight between two of her summons as she had tried to break up the fight despite her growing age. Kakashi himself had actually not been confirmed dead. The silver haired jounin had simply disappeared one day, though reports from the Land of Hot Springs indicated that a man fitting his description still lived there quietly.
But his closest friends, Sakura, Gaara, and Sasuke, had all fallen before his eyes. Sakura had died fighting alongside him, in the final fall of Tobi. The Zetsu clones Tobi had engineered with Kabuto's help had been far more numerous than they had realized. She had urged him to keep going, leaving her to single-handed fight off ten thousand copies of an S-class missing nin. She had managed it wonderfully, beating every last one to a pulp with the super strength she had inherited from her sensei. After he had finished scattering Tobi's molecules to the far corners of the Elemental Nations, he had returned to find her lying in a field of craters and corpses, dead from a fatal case of chakra exhaustion and covered in cuts and bruises.
Gaara had fallen not to the unholy alliance of Kabuto and Tobi, but to a bold move from Iwa, their new Kage rash and boastful in Oonoki's absence. A massive force of Iwa shinobi had assaulted Sunagakure, whose forces were preoccupied with the war on Akatsuki. It had fallen to Gaara and a handful of fresh genin to defend their home. He had culled their ranks, sinking them in quick sand and piercing their bodies with hardened projectiles, but he could not stop the combined attack of all the remaining jounin. When his withered body fell to the earth, the very desert shook with the rage of Sunagakure. Matsuri and Temari, the two leading jounin under Gaara, led a massive counter attack, rallying their troops and slaughtering the remaining Iwa nin. Gaara's sacrifice was immortalized forever, as the sand around his body had crystallized into glass upon his death, entombing him forever in a transparent coffin of solid glass. Iwagakure was later crushed and annexed by Kumogakure, the Tsuchikage's head sent along with a goodwill ambassador to Suna.
Sasuke, as predicted, died of his own ambitions. Never understanding the meaning of justice, he had sought the Fire Council in Konoha, demanding their lives for the mistreatment of Uchiha clan. After being driven back by the Hokage time and again, the avenger had withdrawn to study the secrets of the Mangekyou Sharingan, swearing his revenge upon the village that had slaughtered his kin and demonized his brother. His own experiments cost him his life, when he had summoned the Shinigami itself in an effort to retrieve the Yang portion of the Kyuubi's chakra, in hope of strengthening his eyes with the source of their power. The result had not been pretty. He had shown up just in time to see Sasuke cease to exist, the cruel laughter of the Shinigami echoing across the Valley of the End is it guzzled down yet another screaming soul.
But the one friend he had lost, the one he had never truly called a friend, had been Kurama. The fox had been irritable, miserable, and downright sadistic at the best of times, and yet he wouldn't have traded the demon for anything in the world. Kurama had been there with him since his birth, witnessing the injustices of his childhood and helping him survive his teenage years. Yet, nearly a year after peace had returned to the Elemental Nations, Kurama had ceased to exist. He had continued to mold to Naruto's soul until his identity had faded away, leaving the Rokudaime Hokage with an empty mind and an undying body. It had been the day Naruto had stepped down, allowing Konohamaru to take his grandfather's hat and reign in peace.
And here he was, nearly one hundred years old and looking not a day over twenty and Naruto Namikaze was tired. He now understood the double edged sword of immortality: while he remained forever young, everything he cared about died around him. He now understood how Kakuzu had become the introverted cynic that he had died as. The blonde, perpetual ball of energy that was Naruto had cooled into nearly a carbon copy of his father, from the white, flame-wreathed battle coat to the Hirashin to the way his blonde hair framed his face, two long bangs along each side with spiky hair on top. Unlike his father, however, Naruto had cold blue eyes. Eyes that had seen war, and death, and betrayal. Upon the death of Hinata, his loving, yet unfortunately infertile wife, he had withdrawn from the Hidden Leaf Village altogether, seeking the sanctuary of Mount Myobokou as had his father and his sensei before him. There, he perfected his fuuinjutsu and senjutsu, though he could not see an actual use for them. In the few times strife had interrupted the Golden Age that blanketed the Elemental Nations; it had been resolved before any major military action could be taken. In his quest to fulfill Jiraiya's dream, he had made the shinobi nearly obsolete. As he looked back, maybe that had been the right thing to do: to be rid of a world full of warriors.
Now, he had complex seals that would have made his own father's head spin. He had millions of weapons sealed onto his body, and was proficient with every single one of them, from the bo staff to the katana to the tanto to the tonfa. His signature Hirashin kunai were within reach at all times, ready to use at a moment's notice. He had trained his body to perfection, able to engage Might Gai in a taijutsu match. He would still lose, most likely, but he was confident Gai would have at least activated a few gates before winning. He had mastered every wind jutsu he could get his hands on, something Temari had been certain in pounding into his head.
As he stood upon the carving of his own head atop the Hokage Monument, his precious village far below, he wondered if he had put everything into this experiment. With the way things had turned out, he wondered if he had the capacity to try as hard as he had in his youth. He had achieved his goals, regardless of how empty and hollow they were without his friends. What else did he have to strive for?
Naruto looked down at the intricately carved kunai, his weathered, cold eyes running over the engravings he had carved into the entire weapon meticulously, searching for even the slightest mistake. But as far as he could see, there were no missed arrays, no conflicting seals that would throw off his intended plan.
That plan was to travel to a seal that was placed all the way on the other side of the Elemental Nations, a seal placed at the very top of the mountain where Killer Bee had trained. If it worked, he would have free reign over the entirety of his Golden Age. He could police it with near instant reactions, allowing him to further break down the system he had grown up with. Its departure had wounded him long ago, but he'd had nearly forty years to mourn its passing. After he had abdicated the position of Hokage, the color of the world had been lost to him. The lofty title had been all he'd had of his childhood dreams, with Hinata and the rest gone.
With practiced ease brought on by nearly a century of muscle memory, Naruto threw his experimental kunai out over the setting sun, its tiny shape soon lost to the glare of dusk as the day ended in Konoha. He felt the familiar tug of the Hirashin within his mind, but he resisted. It had to get far away. With his chakra still in touch with the projectile, he activated the first set of seals on the kunai, transporting it to his destination. As it traveled, he activated the second set of seals, the ones that widened the 'passage' that it rode toward its destination long enough to accommodate his mass. The final set of seals, which were mostly the original Hirashin array, activated in tandem with second set and began to pull him toward the kunai as the margin of space became available. He disappeared into his signature flash of yellow, his body being pulled across miles within a few seconds. The turbulence he normally felt during these transitions was nearly nonexistent, but this was a different story. He felt the very fabric of his being pulled and tugged by the forces he put his body under. An unbearable howling filled his ears, forcing him to wince and try to hunch up in a futile effort to dampen the noise. Before him, the stars flew past him at such speeds that they were simply lines of light, and he was soon surrounded in a tunnel of distant galaxies.
Well, this is unprecedented. He thought to himself, hoping against hope that he would survive to account for this new lesson. Since it was a longer distance, he knew it would take even longer to exit the dimension he hurled himself through. All he could do was hold onto the connection and hope his body survived the trial. The sounds of distant explosions faintly pierced the howl of space and time being defied, and he strained his eyes beyond the streams of light in an attempt to see his surroundings, but he was still moving too fast.
If I keep this up, I could end up in empty space. He realized. Quickly weighing the pros and cons of dropping out early, he went for the luck he had carried with him through his life and ended the chakra flowing to his technique. He was instantly snapped out of his teleport, only to find himself in an unfortunate situation: passing through a cloud thousands of feet in the air.
On reflex alone, he issued forth a great burst of air with his Wind Style: Great Breakthrough, acting as a cushion that would slow his descent. As he savored the precious second or two it gave him to look around, he noticed that he did not recognize any of the lands below him. He had traveled the Elemental Nations far and wide, and there were few areas that had not met his gaze. Unfortunately, this was foreign territory for him. He began to fall again, but he let gravity have its way. The howling wind blew into his face, sending his spiky hair everywhere and howling into his ears. He squinted into the oncoming air, and performed another Great Breakthrough, but this time it wasn't enough. He tried again, adding even more chakra, but he seemed to have hit terminal velocity.
"OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIII-" His words were lost to the thin air as he plummeted to the ground. As he neared the surface of the planet, he began to pick out mountains and crevices, dusty and sparse grassland with a few trees and patches of green here and there. He also noticed armored vehicles, not unlike the ones he had encountered in his brief forays outside of the Elemental Nations, firing on what looked like an old fort. He also realized that the fort was his final destination. If he hit the ground at the speed he was going, he would be nothing more than a painted crater when he hit. He channeled chakra into his lungs, preparing for the biggest Grand Great Breakthrough he had ever used. He waited, his patience frayed by the sight of the oncoming ground. He estimated his altitude, still channeling a good bit of his chakra.
1,000 meters. The clouds passed completely, allowing him a detailed view of the battle below. He could see helicopters flying over a bank of armored vehicles, narrowly dodging missiles being fired at them.
800 meters. Even though he had little way of altering course, he tried to avoid slamming into the fort itself, instead preferring the relatively soft dirt of the mountains behind it.
600 meters. He finished channeling his chakra and drew in a deep breath, the air forcing itself into his expanding lungs. He had to time it perfectly, or else his remarkable healing ability would be useless in a bubbling pile of red paste and pulverized bone.
300 meters. NOW! He exhaled, his body jerking upward slightly as the enormous amount of wind – and more importantly, energy – issued forth from his mouth, halting his rapid descent. He smiled, proud of his judgment, and readied one of his Hirashin kunai to throw. Unfortunately, he'd forgotten about those helicopters, and had no idea about the tiny chopper labeled TRAFFIC DIVISION until the windscreen slammed into him, knocking his breath out of him and clocking his head against it.
"Oh FUCK!" He faintly heard the pilot curse from the other side before he plummeted to the dirt, too out of it to right himself. Just his luck, he managed to land in a patch of dry grass, immensely preferable to the solid rock beside it. As darkness dimmed his vision, his experimental kunai landed beside him, its carvings alight with a blue tinge as it slowly lost the power from his super Hirashin. He looked over at it, his movement sluggish and eyes unseeing as unconsciousness came for him. His last coherent thoughts were, Not bad for a test run.
Bai Tak really didn't know why he had volunteered for this mission. Kashkur was nowhere near Pesang, his homeland. To be perfectly honest, he'd only volunteered because Boot hadn't pounded that nervous excitement out of him. After dealing with men screaming at him in Tyran, a language he barely understood, and doing exercises that were taxing more on his mind than his body, Bai had left Boot Camp a Rifleman, but that did little to curb his enthusiasm. With his wife taken care of on military bounty, he had no other reason to risk his neck except for the men beside him. And except for Lau En and Cho Ligan, he had no affiliation with them besides being from Pesang. Still, they were his new buddies, and he could already feel that burgeoning sense of companionship found by all Gears in the Coalition of Ordered Governments, or the COG. Although Pesang was not 'officially' a part of the Coalition, it could offer up soldiers to die for them, and so here Bai was.
He looked through the view port that the pilot used, the heavy thrumming of the motors and stink of the engines still new to him, straining to see the garrison that was Anvil Gate. Just as he was about to look away and go back to looking out the door, a loud crash echoed through the cabin as the small helicopter collided with a white and blonde something in midair.
"OH FUCK!" Bai heard the pilot cry out over the noise, a testament to either his fright or Bai Tak's ability to discern voice over noise. Before they could so much as identify their attacker – for now he could see that it was a man of all things – the mystery man plummeted to Sera, about 250 meters below. His blood rushing at the excitement, he nervously fingered the handle on the Lancer at his side, holding onto the barrel to keep it from slinging out the open cargo hold.
The pilot leaned back to focus on them, his voice shouting over the din of his own bird.
"We're coming up on the LZ now, but you guys gotta go check that guy out! We've got no other aircraft in the sky so you guys get to find out why the fuck some weirdo in a coat hit my chopper!" He seemed irritable about the whole ordeal, though whether it was out of worry for his helicopter or because he'd lost his cool in front of a bunch of green newbies, Bai neither knew nor cared. He was just excited to get some real action not to mention sate his curiosity on the guy that managed to tackle a helicopter in mid-flight.
Within seconds, the little chopper had landed, and all six Pesangas were disembarked and on the ground just as the helicopter hurried away, lest it be targeted by the UIR troops to the south. The Union of Independent Republics apparently had an interest in the oil refinery there, though it didn't take a genius to see that they were eyeing the city of Anvegad, and the fort that protected it, with some interest as well.
"Bai!" Cho decided to come over, since Bai was the eldest out of their group of twenty-somethings. "What do you think that was? To hit a chopper in midair?" There was no Pesan word for helicopter, so Cho substituted the Tyran slang for it instead.
"I don't know Cho, but we got orders to check it out. Hey, maybe the Indies learned how to fly without birds, eh?" He said with a cheeky grin. Cho smacked his shoulder in mirth, and once again the six Pesangas fell into total silence. Unlike their Tyran counterparts, the Pesangas were wearing three-quarter armor and modified boots so that their renowned stealth went mostly unhindered. They had orders to meet someone at the LZ, but the man had obviously radioed advance orders to the pilot. So they did what they did best: track their prey.
Bai was the first to come upon what could only be called a crash landing. A sizable crater lay in the middle of a patch of sturdy mountain grass, though it was obvious the dirt beneath was softer than the usual grade of mountain rock that surrounded them. And as he peeked cautiously into the hole, fighting the urge to pull his machete as he would have in his homeland, he found not one but two people in the hole.
One was a blonde man, tan in complexion with some strange markings on his cheeks, like whiskers, and wearing odd clothes. He wore a white coat that had a tall collar and red flames flowing across the bottom. With his back slammed into the ground, the coat had opened to show that the man was wearing a flak jacket of some kind, indicating some form of military, and black pants of unknown make with what looked like holsters of some kind on the sides. His feet were encased in sandals, of all things, black sandals that exposed his toes and heels, and yet his ankles were wrapped in bandages that led up underneath his pants legs.
The other man in the hole, this one conscious, was obviously a Gear. He wore the chest plates and the clunky boots that Bai had come to associate with all his comrades, though he was also an odd sight. He had a shock of red hair that stood out against his pale skin, and yet as he scrutinized the man that had fallen out of the air, Bai could see intricate tattoos swirling across his face. According to his limited knowledge of the COG, this man was from one of the South Islands, an archipelago of islands with deep tribal roots.
As the six Pesangas examined both men with equal interest, the Gear finally noticed his observers. He visibly started, though he made no move to draw the sidearm holster on his right thigh.
"Holy shit!" He said loudly, his strange accent and unfamiliar language perturbing Bai. "You lads really are silent, aren't you?" Since he was the unofficial spokesperson of their little group, Bai grinned widely.
"We very quiet, sah. It's what we do." Despite his unofficial title, Bai Tak still struggled at times with the Tyran language. It had so many consonants and syllables that he was unfamiliar with. Nevertheless, the red-headed man in the crater grinned, before grabbing the blonde man's arm.
"I'll bet this cocker scared you lads well enough, then? Your pilot said he slammed right into the chopper." He looked down with something akin to pity, then back up at the Pesangas. "From the looks of him, I'd say he was the one who was run down." He moved to lift the unconscious man up, but noticed that the Pesangas had made no move to help him. Puzzled, he looked back up at them, until he realized that though they were Gears, neither party knew the other. He nearly slapped himself.
"Name's Pad. Private Salton at your service, mates. Now get down here. We have to get you AND these guys to the CO. Odds are this bloody maniac is gonna be more talk than you lads."
Bai got the gist of what he meant, and with a quick iteration of Pesang, three of their number crawled down the crater to help Padrick haul Anvegad's newest prisoner out of his impact crater.
As Victor Hoffman waited with thinly veiled agitation for the field medic to finish dressing the wound on the back of his freshly shaven head, he had all kinds of things running through his mind. The first, and most important, was the Indie asshole that had snuck around behind their lines and let loose a rocket, killing Hoffman's CO and the commander of the Anvegad garrison, Captain Ranald Sander, as well as three of his main gunners. The second was how he was going to explain to their families – Sander's pregnant widow in particular – why they had died from a rear attack.
I can't beat myself up too much about this, but... dammit, these are MY men. He groused, his ire not lost on the med tech checking his wound over.
"You're clear to go, Lieutenant. Just don't slam your head into anything and you'll be fine." She quickly backed off, tending to the other eight men wounded in the attack.
"Oh damn, and I was just going to go do that," The irritable bald man muttered under his breath, knowing full well she couldn't hear him. Even if she had what would she have done; snipe at him with her high-minded wit, hands caked with the blood of his men? He had other things to worry about.
Hoffman exited the medical bay, walking slowly and adjusting his cap, the bandage on the back of his head upsetting the way it usually sat on his head. As he turned the corner, he found himself heading to Sander's office in an unconscious action, knowing he had to come up with what to do next and his automatically leading him to the room where all his administrative decisions had been made up until that very day. Only now, it was his office, he realize with a grim frown. The first thing he did when he reached the office was pick up the phone and order Sam Byrne and Pad Salton to check out the mountains behind the fort, only to realize half way through that Pad was the one assigned to greeting the Pesangas Sander had requested. Against his better judgment, he decided to wait: those little mountain folk would be extremely ideal for handling his pest problem. Now all he could do was hope against hope that no one would-
His door burst open at that moment, startling Hoffman as he began reaching for his sidearm, only to see Padrick Salton panting slightly in his doorway. The Lieutenant mentally berated himself for a reaction like that, and Pvt. Salton began to speak.
"Lt. Hoffman, the Pesangas are here like the Cap'n asked. But they had a bit of an issue with their chopper." Hoffman growled under his breath. Was he about to expend more resources to fix a grounded bird?
"What kind of issue? Spit it out, Private!" He didn't mean to sound overly gruff, but Pad was thick skinned; the extra bite didn't affect him.
"Well sir, they ran over some weird bloke with the chopper," he paused at Hoffman's blank look, "while they were 250 meters in the air." Now that was surprising. Even more so, Hoffman could see four small Pesangas standing guard over a man lying on the ground in the hallway, another two looking around at the people hustling by. Hoffman grumbled at the weirdness of the situation; he missed his enlisted days.
"Give me details, Private. Is he still alive? Is the bird okay?" Pad nodded to both, and began telling Hoffman about the incident. He told the Lieutenant about meeting the chopper, seeing a guy literally floating in midair (a big gust had caught his attention) and then getting run down by the small helicopter that the Pesangas arrived in. He told Hoffman how he and the Pesangas had rendezvoused at the site of the man's collision with the ground, and their surprise when they found him alive, albeit unconscious. He finished his story by holding up an ornately carved knife of an odd design.
"We found this right next to him, glowing blue and right odd, sir. We checked his holsters, and I think it's a throwing knife, sir. It's all he had on him. A bunch of knives and some tattoos. I think he's Special Forces of some kind, but I gotta tell you, sir..." Pad shook his head incredulously. "The Pesangas chopper was the only one in the air for miles. Unless he fell right out of space, I have no bloody idea how he got here."
Suddenly, Hoffman had an overwhelming urge to defy the orders of the med tech and slam his head into his desk until he either lost consciousness or this shit started making sense. The Indies blocking the road and putting up anti-aircraft ordnance was enough of a choke on his resources. The Special Forces that were in the mountain behind the fort were also a nuisance, and now they had a guy that got run over by a helicopter at 250 meters in the air and was still alive.
"Alright, send our mystery space walker to the medical bay and have some Gears posted to guard him in case he's hostile. I want you and Sgt. Byrne to take these Pesangas and search out the mountains behind the fort. Whoever the asshole that launched that rocket is, he's holed up in there, and I need you to find him and eliminate him. Search and destroy. You got that, Private?" Pad nodded quickly and turned to relay those orders while Hoffman bent over Sander's – no, his – desk.
At this rate, he'd go crazy long before the Indies came close to taking the fort. He looked down at the desk, which sported the last scribbling of his deceased superior. He absently updated the map, rendering obsolete the writings of a man he had once looked up to. With the armored line approaching, he'd have to pull more ammunition from the stores set deep in the rock under Anvegad. Things were about to get interesting.
When Naruto awoke, if the morphine-induced haze where he barely opened his eyes could be considered wakefulness, he found himself restrained and under guard, if the two looming shadows to either side of him were any indication. With his vision blurry and his head pounding, he still reserved the peace of mind to feign unconsciousness, though the fuzzy numbness of the painkillers threatened to actually put him out. His mind felt sluggish, and he couldn't sense his chakra at all. That was most likely due to the morphine; shinobi had been known to be bereft of chakra control when their body did not fully respond to their commands. It irritated him slightly, but for now he settled to wait and observe.
As his eyesight cleared slightly, his metabolism creating energy faster than the morphine could numb him, he noticed someone in a white lab coat walk into the room. The two lunks on either side of him visibly stiffened, each saluting and barking out a stiff, "Ma'am!" The words weren't his native language, and Naruto felt like smacking himself had he any feeling in his arms. Obviously, he had jumped too far, as he was nowhere near the Elemental Nations. All of the shinobi hidden villages, not to mention the countries they protected, spoke the same language. If you wanted to deal with shinobi (i.e. hire them, sell or buy things from them, etc.) you had to know the language. Considering he could now recognize firearms, he had no doubt in his mind that these guys hadn't seen a ninja before.
If things go sour, at least I have the element of surprise. These guys would probably freak at a transformation jutsu. Not to mention be fooled by one.
The new arrival, a woman by her stride and proportions, walked over to the medical equipment hooked up to Naruto, her eyes running over the beeping machines with expert attention. She then looked down at him and smiled, though whether it was a genuine smile or a show of teeth, he had no way of knowing in his drugged state. Her hair was short and brown, framing her face nicely. Her face was unblemished by freckles, scars, or any other imperfections, signifying that she hadn't seen many close range engagements. She was support, a noncombatant were it not for the military air she carried herself with.
"Well well, sleeping beauty is finally awake. Considering how far you fell and the chemicals you're on, I would have thought you'd be out for several days." His brow furrowed in confusion, though whether it was because he didn't understand the language or because he was still fuzzy in the head from his recent brush with death, she didn't know.
"My name is Chief Warrant Officer Rosa, I'm a medic. Can you understand me?" His eyes lit up with some recognition, though she couldn't guarantee that he'd fully understood her.
"Medic... ohayo hime." He tried to flirt, falling back on one of his first sensei's tricks. If it did anything, it conveyed that he understood the word medic... and little else. She sighed at this, and he could see she grasped the language barrier. She patted him on the shoulder and stood, the guards moving a little closer to him as she came back with a large syringe full of a clear liquid. He tensed slightly as she approached, causing his guard to tense as well. He relaxed slightly when the needle lowered to his intravenous tube as opposed to his bare skin. The guards backed off as Rosa did, and suddenly the room began to spin. He could feel a creeping numbness spreading from his arm to the rest of his body, putting him back to sleep. Just before he lost to unconsciousness, he heard Rosa pull one of the guards closer.
"I want Sheraya Olencu down here when she gets a chance. I know she's an interpreter between the Kashkuri and the COG, but an interpreter could probably still be able to communicate with him."
"Didn't you hear, Chief? She and Byrne are tying the knot. They even have a baby on the way." The guard returned. Before he could listen to any more, the drugs finally dragged Naruto down into a heavy sleep, his eyes closing as he emitted a light snore.
Sheraya Byrne stared down at her simple golden wedding band, still in relative shock that it had happened so quickly. Despite having known Samuel for being the resourceful little bastard he was, she was still baffled that he'd been able to find a wedding ring on such short notice. It was a little large for her, but for someone who had eyeballed it, Sam had done a very good job.
She was snapped out of her reverie when a knock on the door heralded a visitor. She stood from her meager office and opened the door quickly, hoping that it would be Samuel. She tried not to look too disappointed when it was one of his comrades, a guard from the medical wing.
"Mrs. Byrne? We need your translating skills in the ICU. We captured a guy that doesn't know a lick of Kashkuri or Tyran." The man said gruffly, hand on the sling of his Lancer that rested on his back. The title 'Mrs. Byrne' shocked her back into her little dream world. I'll have to get used to that. It didn't sound bad, though, and she cocked her head in confusion.
"If he doesn't speak either of the languages that I do, how can I help?" Logic was always her strong suit, but apparently Rosa had told her messenger to anticipate this question.
"Chief figured you'd say that. She said to 'get off your pregnant ass and get over here', her words not mine," The guard explained, emphasizing Rosa's choice of words with finger quotes. "She figured that as someone who has already learned a second language, you'd be best at deciphering this guy's speech." Sheraya frowned slightly; she and Rosa weren't exactly close friends, but they'd sat around the medical lounge joking and laughing long enough for Sheraya to get used to the Chief's gruff words.
"Tell the esteemed Chief Warrant Officer that as soon as I'm done with my ice cream and mood swings, I'll be there. Expect me at three, in other words." She smirked as the man slouched slightly at being the messenger boy between two sarcastic females.
"Alright, I'll tell- wait, did you say ice cream?" Sheraya closed the door abruptly, answering his question quite brashly. She knew he wouldn't be too offended; you don't operate within the same country as Victor Hoffman without developing thick skin. She sighed and looked down at her new ring again, adjusting it so it wouldn't fall off her finger. She gathered together a few linguistics books and a tape recorder so that she could examine the man's speech more closely later. With the deadline she had given the guard, she had roughly an hour to prepare, so she decided to leaf through a book on Pesan, since she knew there were Pesangas on the base now as well.
Oh Sam, why didn't you wait until we left? She blushed and looked down at her not-yet-showing stomach. Oh, right. THAT.
Before she knew it, an hour had passed. She paused halfway through the reference book she had been reading and decided to bring it along as well. Her office was on the other side of the market place from the main garrison building, so it took her a few minutes to navigate the wooden stalls of the rural town of Anvegad before she reached the old fort entrance. A few months ago, she would have been required to divulge her reason for entry, and all her possessions would be searched. Now, she breezed right through with a little wave to the guards. These days, she was both welcome in the fort, and everyone knew that Sgt. Byrne would crush the genitals of anyone dumb enough to search his wife.
Within five minutes, she had swept through the ancient hallways that had been converted into a modern command center and found herself in the whitewashed corridor that led to the ICU. She passed into the only room with armed guards, one of which the poor messenger she had ice cream snubbed earlier. She grinned at him, and he mock pouted, before letting her inside with a cheeky grin.
"Sheraya, I really need help here. I've got questions pouring out of my ears to ask this guy, and all he does is speak gibberish." The newly minted Mrs. Byrne rolled her eyes as Chief Warrant Officer Malory Rosa turned the corner, griping and worrying about her latest curiosity.
"You know, there are these things that keep questions inside your head. They're called brains." Sheraya couldn't resist a little byplay, and Rosa's narrowed eyes showed that Sheraya had won this round.
"Details, details. You don't need those floppy things in the army, anyway. Now I want to show you something before you get in there." Rosa hurried over to a table that held a few test records, Sheraya right behind.
"So, what's the deal with this guy?" Sheraya asked, trying to at least get some background on the person she would be examining. Rosa didn't bother to look up, but the incredulous tone in her voice was all too clear.
"I can't really explain it, so I'll just tell you what they told me: he was run over in mid-air by a helicopter at 200+ meters above the ground." Sheraya's eyes widened; he had been floating in midair and was hit by a chopper?!
"How on Sera is he still alive?" Sheraya demanded. The fact that he had been floating in midair was hard enough to believe, but that he survived a collision with both a helicopter and the ground after falling from that height was unbelievable.
"That's what I'm trying to show you," The doctor hissed gruffly. "I know that bone shot is in here somewhere." As Rosa rifled through the papers in search of what she had in mind, Sheraya used the lull to set down her books and pull up a chair. Seconds later, Rosa shoved an x-ray into her face.
"Look here, at his C6 and C7 vertebrae. This x-ray was taken twelve hours ago, when he was brought in. You can see that these vertebrae, the ones inferior to the skull that control nerves and muscle movement, are damn near shattered from his impact with the ground." Before Sheraya could absorb the foreign information, another x-ray was placed before her.
"This one was taken three hours ago. I talked to him long enough to make sure that he was not dead, and then knocked him out to see the extension of the damage." She placed another plastic reading in front of Sheraya, her fingers on the spinal joints she had pointed out earlier. To the interpreter's shock, there was no obvious sign of any injury ever occurring.
"I've got a guy who suffers an injury that would put a normal man on a ventilator, and within the same day it is completely healed. I have no medical explanation for this." Her finger jumped from the neck of the second scan to the cranium of the first.
"Here, we can see the signs of a minor hemorrhage within the brain cavity, something that is usually fatal. The cerebral spinal fluid here is low, indicating a tear in the membrane. On the second one," She moved her finger back to the second scan, "there are hardly any signs of hemorrhaging at all, and his cerebral spinal fluid is at normal levels."
"So, you want me to ask this guy why he isn't dead?" Sheraya reeled at the medical observation, wondering whether or not she would actually be talking to a human being. Rosa smirked and nodded.
"I wouldn't have put it that way, but I'm mighty curious. His bones are thicker than your average male, and his muscles are five times denser. He could probably bench press Hoffman in full armor WITH the twenty milligrams of Haldol we have running through his system." They had administered Haldol to keep him out of it, but even with four times the normal dosage, he was still sitting up straight, talking gibberish at his sole remaining guard, though he did yawn at times. Sheraya regarded the mysterious man with wide eyes. Suddenly, the lone guard in the room didn't seem so formidable, even with his Lancer at the ready.
"And I have to go 'interrogate' a guy who can break me apart like a toothpick?" Suddenly, she wished Sam hadn't been called out with Pad to do some scouting. Luckily, Rosa was quick to reassure her.
"Oh, don't worry. He's been doped up for the past hour; the most violent he's gonna get is having an argument with the chair. So far, the guards have only been able to determine one thing: he's really high right now." Rosa smirked at that, and then pointed over to an observation window. The ICU had once been an interrogation room, but out of all the changes, the single view mirror had stayed. Through it, they could see their mystery guest balancing stools and other objects of increasing bulk on top of his head, the guard chortling with laughter. His defined muscles and broad form well concealed by his outlandish coat. If she hadn't heard about his muscle density, she would have thought the guard could beat him with little difficulty. As she watched him juggle small glass containers, she knew that drugged or not, he had the upper hand.
"Alright, I'll have a go at him." Before Rosa could offer some perverted retort, Sheraya had rounded the corner and knocked on the door. Her friend did not follow, preferring instead the observation window. Sheraya could feel her pulse quicken slightly, but she calmed herself. It was just a linguistics job.
As Naruto continued to entertain his 'guard', he felt his initial curiosity of this strange place ebbing. He'd thought that he would at least get to explore a bit before the nearest authority caught him. As it stood, though, he could tell from his first few minutes in this new land that it was rife with war. Even from within the white walls of his impromptu cell, he could faintly hear the sounds of battle, though it was obviously far away. He had considered sealing the IV drip, though he knew that they would simply replace it with another. He had grudgingly decided to leave it in, his meditative experience and otherworldly metabolism keeping the mind-numbing drugs at bay.
Just before he was going to try balancing by one hand on a stool the door opened inward, and another woman, this one not the 'Warrant Officer' he had met earlier. The new arrival had extremely tan skin, her dark hair shortened to where it did not go lower than her neck. It still fell down naturally, and her brown eyes finished the exotic look. She was small, but she had little hesitation in her step, something he admired somewhat. She was either uninformed, or confident that he wouldn't snap her neck. Either way, it mattered little to him; he was a few hours from escaping anyway. He had figured out the guard rotations, and the drugs they were using were gradually losing their potency; they weren't affecting him quite like they had at first as his body became used to them. When the next shift changed, he'd be out with no one the wiser and the only sign of his absence would be the embarrassed guards that let him go.
He smiled good-naturedly at the new arrival, his grin hiding his escape plan. He had no doubt that they'd detect any hint of deceit. She returned his smile amiably, setting her books down on a table near the door as she closed it. He examined her closely, though a nagging feeling he'd had since waking up was getting ever closer to being confirmed. He was no Hyuuga, but he'd been around. And he detected absolutely no chakra within the people in the room with him. They were literally devoid of chakra. Such a phenomenon took him by surprise, and irritated him somewhat. That means I won't be able to use Genjutsu. Ah well, I never got the hang of it anyway. He motioned toward the chair he'd been balancing earlier, and she took her seat gracefully.
"Alright, let's get this started." Sheraya said with a smile. "I'm Sheraya Byrne, and I'll be your interpreter." His vacant look confirmed her suspicions; he couldn't understand a word she had said. She decided to take a different route.
"Sheraya." She said with greater emphasis, pointing to herself. Naruto nodded, and pointed to himself as well.
"Naruto." His name came as no small surprise; with odd clothes and an unknown language, he was bound to have an unorthodox name. She smiled at his quick comprehension. At least he wasn't a moron. She tried to go a little further, since she was supposed to be examining his language. She decided to ask about his whisker marks.
"How did you get those," she asked, pointing at his cheeks and using her most obvious questioning tone, "were you born with them?"
He responded with a quick string of flowing words, so tightly packed that she couldn't tell where one word ended and the other began. He caught on to her confusion and repeated what he said, albeit this time more slowly. She jotted down the enunciation on her clipboard for later analysis, though her recorder was also on. When he realized she still couldn't understand him, he grimaced and held up a hand at his head, then lowered it to roughly half a meter off the ground. He was telling her he'd had them since he was small. Whether it was since birth – which would be even odder – or when he was very young, she had no way of knowing.
"Uh, alright. Now next I wanted to ask-" He tapped the bed he sat on impatiently, cutting her off.
"Sheraya-san." He said with a mischievous smile, before pointing at her new wedding ring. She frowned at first, before realizing his game. He wanted to trade questions.
"I got this from my husband, Samuel. He's a soldier here." She said, holding her hand up so that he could scrutinize it. His blue eyes ran over the gold band, appraising its shine and shape. He could tell it had been made recently, though could also see it was a little big for her.
"Sam-el." He tried the name, its foreign syllables difficult to him. He wanted to examine the ring more closely, in case there were names inscribed on it.
"Sam-U-el." Sheraya repeated, emphasizing the missing syllable. She marveled at how easy it was, chastising herself for assuming he hadn't been bright. She was so caught up in his intelligence; she didn't notice the weight leave her finger until she saw her gold ring in his hand, his eyes running over the interior with great interest.
"Hey!" Apparently the guard hadn't seen it either, as he quickly advanced on the two. Sheraya held up a hand as Naruto's head whipped around to focus on the guard, before he grinned nervously. Sheraya held out her other hand, and he dropped her wedding ring into it with an apologetic shrug. She secured it upon her left hand once more, and then refocused on the startlingly fast man before her. Her gaze scolded him, though he could tell that she was at least slightly amused, though amazement seemed the more prominent emotion he sensed in her. Maybe that was crossing the line, he thought regretfully. Still, she was interested in learning about him, and she was someone to talk to, albeit with some difficulty.
"Alright thief, next question..." Sheraya said, her eyes narrowed slightly as Naruto had the decency to blush.
Sheraya left the room thirty minutes later, slightly exasperated but overall in a good mood. She'd gotten a good feel for how his language was structured, though it'd probably take her a few days to get down any coherent understanding. Naruto, however, seemed to be learning as well.
She was about to bid goodbye to Malory when the Chief grabbed her shoulder roughly, visibly agitated.
"Malory," Sheraya said hesitantly, "what's wrong with you?" The Chief just shook her head and held up a video disk, labeled 'CLASSIFIED'.
"You are not going to believe this." Malory said with wide eyes. With no other response, she turned and headed for the computer in the observation room, Sheraya right behind her with a worried expression. Had they discovered something about Naruto?
"I had security send me the footage of the first twenty minutes while I was waiting. I started screening it to see what bits to send to Hoffman later, and then I found this." Malory inserted the disk and waited impatiently for the computer to boot. Once it had, an image of Sheraya sitting across from Naruto popped up on the screen. Malory chose the time 15:08:07.57, which was roughly where Naruto had stolen her ring. In fact, Sheraya realized, it was the exact moment he had done it. She was looked down slightly, focused on her paper with her hand still slightly raised from where Naruto had been looking at her ring. The guard was staring off into space, visibly bored, and Naruto's eyes were still on the ring.
"Now I move it to one one-hundredths of a second later..." Malory did so by punching something into the computer. The next image showed Naruto no longer sitting on the bed, but leaning forward towards Sheraya, his fingers wrapped around her ring. Sheraya gasped in shock, then looked at the timer. Sure enough, time had lapsed just as Malory had said.
"That can't be right." She said, shaking her head at both the image and Malory's incredulous expression. The Chief rolled her eyes and sighed, then skipped to another one one-hundredths of a second. In this frame, her hand was still slightly raised, and the guard was still daydreaming, but Naruto was sitting where he had been, examining her ring as if he had never moved. He was fast.
"We have got to show Victor this." Sheraya said seriously. Suddenly, she didn't feel so comfortable about the blonde man she'd spent the last half hour analyzing. Malory nodded enthusiastically.
"Yeah, I'll send this to him tonight. You go home and see if you can figure out his gibberish; the sooner we can understand him, the better." Sheraya shivered at that.
"He's learning to understand us more quickly than I can translate." She said with a frown. "He's already got my name and Sam's down flawlessly, though at first he placed Byrne before our first names. I think, in his culture, they say the family name first. He also used honorifics, though I only picked up one." She was about to go into more detail, but Malory had gone back to typing onto the computer, having lost interest past the name placement. Sheraya huffed and headed for the door, waving with her free hand while she toted her things.
"I'll let you know if the Lieutenant wants to see you." Malory called after her. Sheraya waved again, but was out the door before anything more could be said. The Chief chuckled and went back to examining the footage, looking for any more faster-than-visible movements.
In the other room, Naruto watched through the tiny window on the door as Sheraya left, her shoulders a lot stiffer than when she had left his room. He shrugged; they'd probably caught his little prank on camera and were freaking out about it. He rifled through the words she'd used, trying to associate them with their meanings. He could tell they had grown up differently, with no clan focus and no honorifics, which meant the Coalition wasn't an old concept. I think it may be more interesting to stick around. He thought to himself as his guard threw back the wad of paper they had been tossing back and forth. He caught it on his elbow, rolled it along his shoulders, and flicked it back with little effort, his mind still wandering.
"Sheraya-san." He said experimentally. The foreign name wasn't too difficult to pronounce, but he had to remember that they didn't use honorifics. That meant to him he'd be referring to her, at least in his culture, in a familiar manner. It wasn't much of an adjustment, but he still made sure to memorize every word she'd used, trying to pick the names out from the words. It was a delightful quandary, something to keep his mind engaged in this white room. Soon enough, he'd have enough passable Tyran to understand what the people around him said. All he had to do was wait.