Disclaimer: We do not own anything from the Naruto or Final Fantasy franchises. Comments/Criticism is fine as long as it isn't just hate/flaming.
This story is a collaborative effort between myself and Pain17ification
Final Fantasy XIII: The Maelstrom Paradox
-Chapter 1-
Cocoon, a massive artificial supercontinent that floated high in the sky, a haven for humanity created by the mighty beings known as Fal'cie to protect them from the dangers of the world below. It was to be a safe place for those to who wished to live in peace with their loved ones, without fear of monsters or conflict.
"AHHH!"
"Fire!"
"No! No! Noooo!"
*Ratatatatat*
"Incoming!"
"Suppressing fire!"
"RAAAAGH!"
Yet that would appear nowhere near the truth within the desolate mechanical cityscape of old railways and bridges otherwise known as the Hanging Edge, where what could only be described as a war raged on.
On one side was what appeared to be a rag-tag collection of civilians, most looking absolutely terrified as they held their weapons with trembling hands, whilst on the other were fully armed soldiers who mercilessly gunned down all in their path and cybernetically augmented monsters. On one bridge in particular, a large aircraft was firing on a crowd hiding behind debris whilst a large cannon prepped to fire.
*Phwwwwwh-Boom*
At least they were until a rocket flew in from the side and blasted its engines to pieces, curtesy of a silver-haired woman in a knit-weave Sweaterdress and her rocket launcher, otherwise known as Nora Estheim.
"Ha… I told ya didn't I? Moms are tough," She said in a joking tone while turning to a white-haired man in a trench coat named Snow laying on the ground behind her with a look of surprise, before dropping the weapon in her grasp in favor of offering him a hand. "Come on, we should get-"
*Kraka-BOOM*
The silverette was abruptly cut off mid-sentence as the ship managed to fire off its cannon at the last second, knocking her clean off her feet and tearing through the bridge like wet paper. Within moments the whole thing started to collapse, screams of terror and despair rang out as soldiers and civilians fell.
The woman tumbled along the rapidly slanting ground like a rag doll, severly dazed from the blast and thus unable to stop herself as she slipped closer and closer to the edge.
"I've got you!" Thankfully, Snow managed to catch her hand just as she slid off the bridge, saving her life.
…Unfortunately, it wasn't for much as Snow himself dangled from a piece of rebar, his face grit up in determination and strain as the pair dangled over the abyss. All to soon the inevitable started and his grip started slipping on both, each passing second slowly ticking down to their eventual doom.
Gradually coming back to while this was happening, Nora groggily looked up at her would be savior as he struggled, before a mix of acceptance and determination appeared on her face.
"…Hope…" She murmured out with a mild slur, getting Snow's attention as she stared him in the eye as best as she could. "…get him home…"
With that said the silverette closed her eyes went limp once again, the sudden shift of weight causing her hand to slip free of Snow's grasp and allowing her to plummet into the darkness below.
"NOOO!"
'I guess this is it,' Nora thought with a sad smile as she fell, a solitary tear dripping from her eye as she went with the whims of gravity. 'If anyone is listening, please make sure my baby boy makes it home safe. That's all I as-'
"And gotcha!"
"Hu-hnk!?" A startled yelp turned choking gasp escaped the silverette's lips when something collided with and grabbed onto her mid fall, swiftly followed by a foul-tasting pill of some kind being shoved into her mouth. Swallowing it reflexively, a flood of energy seemed to rush through Nora's body, washing away her exhaustion and numbing the aches running through her body whilst bringing her back to full lucidity as her eyes snapped back open.
To say the sight she was greeted with was equally as shocking would be an understatement of all time…
"That was a close one, huh? It's a good thing for you that I got here when I did or that landing would not have been pleasant." Instead of falling to her inevitable doom, Nora found herself in the arms of a young man with bright blond hair and strange whisker like marks on his cheeks as he ran along the underside of a support column. At the same time, over a dozen completely identical blondes appeared from puffs of smoke and started catching the other falling people before carrying them off discretely just like her.
'Wha… what am I seeing?'
"Hey, you might want to brace yourself." The silverette was brought out of her thoughts when the blond carrying her jumped with so much force it launched them through the air fast enough to make her eyes start to water. And then just as abruptly as it started their impromptu flight ended upon him landing onto an isolated platform, where even more of his duplicates were seen guiding people through a tunnel hidden behind several large chunks of debris.
"Easy, easy now," Carefully setting her down onto her own two feet, the blonde kept a firm grip on her shoulders as she slowly got her bearings. Only once he was sure she was able to stand on her own did he let go while gesturing towards the group. "Follow my clones, they will get you somewhere safe, just keep your head down and don't wander off."
With his piece said, the young man turned away and was about to leap away once more…
"Wait! Take me back!" Nora had other plans however as she grabbed onto his arm, causing her savior to pause before looking back at her with an extremely confused and disbelieving look.
"…Excuse me? You want to go back there?" He asked with a raised brow while jabbing a thumb back the way they'd just come, the sound of gunshots and screams echoing ominously over the distance. "Why?"
"My son is still out there somewhere, I have to make sure he's alright." The silverette's eyes flickered in the same direction when a particularly large explosion rang out as she was speaking, whilst the blonde nodded in understanding.
"I'll keep an eye out for him but you need to-"
"No! I will not leave him behind like that." She cut him off adamantly while staring the blonde right in the eye.
"It's too dangerous lady, you'll only succeed in getting yourself killed."
"Maybe, but I'd rather die knowing I tried than live knowing I ran, now either you take me back or I'll find a way to do it myself."
"And what exactly do you plan to do against the hundreds of armed soldiers crawling all over the place?"
"I'll come up with something."
"…There is no reasoning with you, is there?"
"Absolutely none."
"Dammit… alright fine I'll take you, if just to make sure you don't get killed, hop on," The young man conceded reluctantly as he jabbed a thumb towards his back, which the woman wasted no time climbing onto piggyback style. "You are as stubborn as my Baa-chan, you know that lady?"
"I have no idea what a Baa-chan is, but I'll take that as a compliment. And the name is Nora by the way, Nora Estheim." Nora stated with a victorious smirk as she looped her arms around his neck.
"Naruto Uzumaki at your service," The now named Naruto replied, hooking his arms under her legs to make sure she stayed up. "I suggest you hold on tight, this is not gonna be a smooth trip."
"I'll be fine, as I say, moms are toOOUGH!" Was all Nora managed to get out before her 'ride' shot into the air at high speed, soaring across the desolate cityscape until he landed on a nearby bridge and bolted towards the fighting. Clinging even tighter to the blonde carrying her reflexively, the silverette was forced to squint as her eyes started to water again from the wind. "A little warning would've been nice!"
"I did tell you to hang on tight." Naruto retorted with a cheeky grin while hopping onto a support cable that led up to a half-destroyed transit station and making his way up at a noticeably slowly pace.
"Wiseass," His passenger grumbled as she wiped her eyes clear just in time to watch her whiskered companion effortlessly transition from running on the cable to alongside the building wall and then the underside of a train rail. The rapid change of orientation made Nora's vision swirl more than a little as she struggled to keep track of which way up and down actually were. "So you're a L'Cie, right?"
L'Cie were humans (and occasionally animals) that were branded by a Fal'Cie thus granting them heightened strength and the ability to naturally use magic, albeit with the cost of a fate worse than death if they failed to complete a specific task known as a Focus. It was the only answer that made sense to her though, as there was simply no other way that she could think of on how this young man was doing all these things.
"Nope, no parasitic tramp stamps on this guy." So you could imagine her surprise when Naruto shook his head negatively while jumping onto the actual top side of a bridge and ducked behind a pile of rubble, just in time to avoid being spotted by a passing patrol of Velocycles.
"But then how-"
"Keep it down," The blonde cut her off quietly with a 'shush it' motion as he peered out cautiously, darting in and out of cover to avoid both more patrols and the foot soldiers starting to appear all over. "This isn't exactly the best time for this chat."
"Fair enough." Nora whispered back, instinctually ducking her head when a cybernetic dog creature ran by just twenty feet away from their most recent hiding spot.
For several more minutes this went one, with it getting increasingly harder and harder for Naruto to keep them both hidden from the sheer number of troops that were all over the place. Eventually though, the pair arrived at a particularly large intersection unscathed where dozens of civilians, mostly children by the looks of it, had gathered together for safety.
Peering down at them from above via a broken support beam, Naruto's gaze flickered across the various people before Nora gasped and pointed towards a quartet that were currently trading fire with several troops. There was a large muscular man with short spiker red/blonde hair taking the lead while a raven-haired woman and a blue-haired young man shortly behind and a scruffy blonde boy with goggles covered them from the back.
"My son was with them when we were separated."
"Seriously?" Naruto asked with a raised brow before chuckling lightly when she nodded, much to the silverette's confusion until he explained further. "Well talk about a small world, I was looking for those guys anyway."
"Then what are we waiting for? Let's go."
"Alright, brace yourself, this is gonna be bumpy." The whiskered blonde whispered while letting go of Nora's thighs in favor of pulling out several kunai, waiting for only a moment so the silverette could adjust to the lack of support…
And then they plummeted.
"Keep firing! Don't let up for even a moment!" A PSICOM Enforcer called out as he and his platoon fired upon the four civilians, forcing them all to stay behind cover as they gradually got closer and closer. "We're almost-" *CRACK*
Whatever else he was gonna say was violently cut short when Naruto smashed feet first into his back, smashing the man several inches into the steel ground with a sickening crunch of bone and armor. Stunned by the blonde's abrupt, and quite gruesome, arrival, the other soldiers on the bridge could do nothing but stare at him in shock.
It was the same on the other end of the bridge, only that you could see the bug-eyed looks on
""Naruto!?"" Both the flame haired man and the goggle headed teen shouted out in shock whilst the blue haired guy simply stared with a dropped jaw and the sole woman of the group blinked in shock.
"Hope you don't mind me dropping in." Naruto said with a cheeky grin while tossing his kunai, effortlessly pegging half a dozen soldiers right between the eyes, before kicking up one of the dropped rifles into his hands and opening fire on the remaining troops. This snapped both sides out of their dazes as the fighting resumed, although much more one-sidedly as the remaining PSICOM Enforcers.
With basically no cover to hide behind and firing coming in from both sides the poor bastards had no chance to fight back as they were mercilessly mowed down in mere moments. Once the last one fell dead, Naruto tossed his gun aside and crouched slightly so that Nora could climb off as the quartet rushed over to them. "Hey Gadot, still having to bail your ass out like usual huh?"
"Pfft, please I totally had it handled," The muscular man, now known as Gadot, said with a playful scoff before clapping Naruto on the back. "But it's good to see ya man, was starting to worry that those bastards had gotten ya when you disappeared all of a sudden like that."
"Nah, just had a few things to take care of, plus I may have gotten a bit sidetracked here and there." As the whiskered teen spoke his gaze flickered towards Nora, which didn't go unnoticed.
"Trying to pick up a new lady friend, huh?" The shorter blonde asked in a teasing tone, making Naruto roll his eyes whilst his silver-haired companion giggled in amusement at what he was implying. "Might want to be careful about that or you'll make Lebreau jeal-OW OW OW!"
The goggled teen was cut off when Lebreau, the ravenette, started pulling on his ear with an exasperated glare. "Don't even start Maqui."
"Ack! Yuj, help!"
"You certainly know how to make one hell of an entrance," Yuj, the blue haired teen, blatantly ignored his friend's cries for help while grimacing slightly when he glanced at the splattered soldier that had the unfortunate luck of being Naruto's landing pad. "I guess Snow really wasn't pulling our legs after all with that magic ninja junk he was talking about."
Coughing awkwardly, Naruto rubbed the back of head sheepishly whilst Nora noticeably perked up in interest. "Ah… he told you guys about that?"
"He gave us a summary," Lebreau stated while letting go of Maqui's ear, smiling softly as she added. "Mostly on what you've been trying to do for Serah."
"Yeah, real sweet of ya trying to help out the big man's lady like that." Gadot with a smirk as he ruffled the blonde's hair.
"Where the hell is Snow anyway?" The whiskered blonde asked while glancing at the palm of his hand, revealing a strange runic marking surrounding the Kanji for 'Contain' which was gradually crumbling away. "We need to get going right now, Serah's running out of time."
"You just missed him, Snow just left for the Vestige a few minutes ago." Yuj stated before pointing towards behind Naruto, more specifically at a titanic cross-shaped structure that was being airlifted away via an equally massive airship.
"…Should have figured as much, well I better not keep him waiting then," Naruto said with an amused chuckle before making a familiar cross sign with his hands, causing several clones to pop into existence much to the quartet's shock. Then, before any of them could react, the blonde duplicates started making their way amongst the equally surprised civilians hiding out on the platform, helping with the wounded and such. "These guys will help get everyone out of here safely, there's an isolated sub city not far away that PSYCOM is practically ignoring. It should be safe enough to bunker down for a while until we can figure out a more permanent solution, at least as long as you guys can behave yourselves while I'm gone that is."
Shaking off his surprise fastest, Yuj smirked once more as he readied the gun in his hands. "Alright, but just make sure you come back with the lovely couple. I'm gonna be the best man for the wedding after all."
"Like hell you are, I called it first." Maqui stated with a glare as the blue-haired teen chuckled and patted the goggled teen's head.
"Too bad little man, but that's not how it works."
"Hey! Who are you calli-"
"And that's my cue to leave," Naruto cut in dully before the pair could start squabbling as he turned to leave, only pausing to point at Nora. "Before I forget, can one of you help her find her kid? She apparently left him with you guys."
"Oh yeah, I remember you now, you went with Snow and me help fight, "Gadot said with a nod before coughing awkwardly as he added. "Snow told me that you… that you didn't make it."
"I almost didn't," The silverette stated softly, a shiver running down as the memories of her extremely close near death experience played through her mind, barely even noticing when Naruto rested a hand on her shoulder comfortingly. "Which is all the more reason I need to find my son as soon as possible, he's probably worried sick right now. Do you know where he is?"
Nora pulled out what looked like a metal straw as she spoke and flicked it open, allowing two holographic screen to appear, on the topmost of which showed a photo of her with a young boy that looked very similar to herself. However, much to her concern, the instant the photo came into view Gadot flinched and averted his gaze.
"Oh yeah, I know exactly where that kid is."
"…Where?" The mother asked worriedly, a sense of dread settling into her gut.
A feeling that was made ten times worse when instead of answering verbally, the muscular fighter opted for pointing straight at the Vestige once more, causing all the color to drain from her face whilst Naruto palmed his face.
"Son of a bitch, why can't anything ever be simple?"
-End Chapter-