Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the Naruto or Digimon franchises. Comments/Criticism is fine as long as it isn't just hate or flaming. If you do not like, no one is forcing you to read and you can just leave.
Thank you for reading and please enjoy
The Hybrid Tamer
-Chapter 13-
-Last Time-
The small victory wasn't to last though as the flames around his hand flickered out as he couldn't concentrate on maintaining them. Not even a second after that, something hard and heavy struck him across the face, knocking him off his feet and crashing to the ground where he was promptly dogpiled by the remaining men.
"Who are you people!? Why are you attacking me!?" Naruto demanded as he struggled to get loose. His question remained unanswered though as a blurry figure dressed in white appeared in his view and jabbed something into his neck, making everything go black.
-And Now-
"Hmmm, looks like you guys are competent at something after all." Ramirez Darelight said in a complimentary yet condescending tone. He stood in the main chamber with Mitsou, watching a feed of Naruto's unconscious form being restrained to a study table by a team of scientists and doctors. "Congratulations on a job well done."
Grinding his teeth slightly at being talked down to, Mitsou quietly took a few deep breaths to calm himself down. "Thank you, sir." He said, grimacing slightly as one doctor carefully cut off a quarter sized piece of skin from the blonde's hand.
"With everything we will learn from this thing, no digimon will ever be a threat to our world ever again." Darelight said with a victorious gleam in his eyes.
"Excuse me, if I may," Riley cut in as her chair lowered to the ground. "But how do you expect us to keep him contained?" She asked after unhooking herself, putting extra emphasis on calling Naruto him not it.
"What a preposterous question." The man said with a roll of his eyes. "Just keep it sedated. It can't cause trouble if it's unconscious."
"And how the hell do you expect us to do that, sir?" Riley demanded, causing Darelight to do a double take at her outburst. "It took almost eighty doses of whale tranquilizer and half of our men getting put in the ICU just to knock him out long enough to bring here. At the current rate, either we'll run out of sedatives, they'll stop working altogether, or he'll die from overdose by the morning."
This actually managed to get the man to pause slightly before raising his hand up to his chin in thought. "…You bring up a fair point Ohtori-san, I guess we'll just have to follow the regular procedure then." Darelight said, making Mitsou and Riley (Also Tally who was above them in her chair still) freeze.
Shaking his head slightly in disbelieve, Mitsou lifted his sunglasses to reveal his shocked dark brown eyes. "Sir, you don't actually mean…"
"Collect all the data you can about Anomaly then eliminate the subject." Darelight said calmly before looking towards Mitsou with a raised eyebrow. "What's wrong Yamaki-san? Don't tell me you're getting squeamish, you've done the same at least half a dozen times already."
"On Wild Ones sir. This is a child-"
"WAS a child." Darelight cut him off. "Just look at that thing. Can you honestly say that that… creature is a child anymore?" He asked while sending a sidelong glance at Naruto just as a large needle was stabbed into the boy's back for a spinal tap.
When he was met with silence, he took that as his victory and headed for the exit. "I expect a full report on my desk by Thursday." He said over his shoulder before the door slammed shut behind him.
"…Complete and total asshole." Riley said as soon as she was certain the man was truly gone. "We aren't really going to kill a kid, right?" She asked before glancing at Mitsou when she met with silence, only to see him leaving as well. "Where are you going?"
"To a bar."
"Answer my question first!"
"I already did."
"If you walk out that door then you can say goodbye to your birthday night special!"
*Click*
"That son of a bitch," Riley muttered while heading back to her chair and practically slamming the headset on and typing at her keyboard so harshly that several keys cracked under the pressure. 'That's it, I don't care if I get fired or arrested. I am not going to sit around while an innocent kid gets murdered.'
-Six Hours Later-
'Uhhh… my… everything…' Naruto thought weakly as he slowly returned to the realm of the conscious. His body was aching from head to toe, his head felt like it was about to split open, and when he tried to open his eyes they ended up snapping shut again thanks to the bright glaring light that burned his pupils.
Blinking a few times until his eyes adjusted to the light, the whiskered blonde groggily looked around in confusion as he saw a bunch of unknown men and women in medical gear scrambling around him in apparent panic. He could barely understand anything they were saying due to their overlapping voices and his ears ringing like hell, something about an anomaly and anesthetic failure.
'Wha… what the hell? …Where am i?' He wondered while trying to get up, only to be stopped by the restraints around his head, neck, chest, waist, legs, arms, and hands. Hell, even his fingers and tail were bound, and a bite guard crammed in his mouth. 'What's going on? How did I get here?' The last thing he remembered was taking Jeri home after saving her life.
Before he could start to get his thoughts together however, he spotted a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye and a plain looking man wearing a black suit walked in front of him holding a AR-15 assault rifle.
Quickly realizing what the man intended to do once he pointed the weapon at him, Naruto started to struggle against his restraints, tears forming at his eyes as various parts of his body erupted in agony.
"Hasta la vista you freak of nature." The man said in a cold tone, his finger hovering just centimeters over the trigger. Just before he could fill this particular protagonist's guts with lead however, the lights suddenly went out, bathing the room in complete darkness. "What the hell!? What just-" *Crack* *Thud*
The sound of the man's body falling to the floor echoed trough the room as Naruto went completely still. As his eyes rapidly adjusted to the darkness, he started to make out an unknown figure standing over his would-be executioner with a large object in their arms that they dropped while walking towards him.
Once they were right in front of him, the emergency lighting kicked on and Naruto's eyes widened in shock as he easily recognized the face of the person who was now undoing his bindings. "Pahh! HOTSPRING LADY?!" He exclaimed as soon as the bite guard was pulled out of his mouth.
"Yep, names Riley by the way." Riley said, a small giggle slipping past her lips at the nickname he'd called her.
"Why are you here?! Where is here?! Yow! Why does everything hurt so much!?" Naruto demanded, his voice hitching as pain through his chest as the bar there was removed.
"It's a long story, I'll explain after I get you out of here." Riley said after finishing with the legs, grabbing a nearby scalpel and using it to cut through the straps holding his hands and fingers in place.
As soon as the last one was undone, Naruto sat up from the table with a grimace and stood up on badly wobbling legs. Taking a few shaky steps forward, he stumbled a bit before squawking indignantly when Riley grabbed the scruff of his shirt and hoisted him into her arms. "Oi! Put me down!"
"No, we'll go faster this way and we only have about five minutes before the power turns back on. Besides, they cut out a chunk of your left femur while you were out."
"My what?"
"Your upper leg bone, didn't you ever take biology class in school?"
"Bio-what?"
"…Nevermind." Riley said with a sigh, setting Naruto on her back piggyback-style before taking off running. Using every shortcut she knew of, it only took the chief computer operator a minute and a half to reach the nearest staircase while avoiding her confused and panicking coworkers. It took another three minutes to run down the stairs all the way to ground floor, and one to reach a side exit that led to the employee parking zone.
"Oh man… I need to hit the gym more," Riley huffed out while rushing across the lot to her car, the sweat on her forehead glistening in the rays of the early sunlight as she set Naruto on the hood and reached into her back pocket…
…before freezing when she found nothing but lint. "Oh shit."
"What? What's wrong?" Naruto asked in concern.
"I forgot my keys in my locker." Riley said while punching the top of her car.
"Then let's go on foot." Naruto said, only for the redhead to shake her head.
"No point, the powers going back on any second and when it does so do-"
*Bweeeeeee* *Bweeeeee*
"The alarms." Riley finished in a dull tone as the lights of the Hypnos building popped back on and the air was filled with wailing. "Fuck."
"Now can we run?" Naruto asked.
Riley opened her mouth to point out the futility of that, but was cut off when a black Camaro with tinted windows pulled up in front of them. Both tensed up ready to bolt, but Riley quickly relaxed as the driver door opened and Tally's head peeked out. "C-come on!" She squeaked before ducking back in.
Smiling widely, Riley quickly grabbed Naruto and squeezed into the passenger side with him on her lap. "Tally, I could kiss you right now." She said, causing the brunette to blush lightly in embarrassment. "Now what are you waiting for, floor it!" Tally didn't need to be told twice as her foot slammed the gas pedal all the way down and her car shot off like a bat out of hell.
"Okay, now can someone tell me what the hell just happened?" Naruto asked once the car settled into regular traffic, doing his best to ignore the pair of breasts currently squishing against the back of his head.
"You know all those Wild O… digimon that are running around?" Riley asked, correcting herself midsentence since Naruto wouldn't know what Wild One meant.
"Uh yeah, I'm pretty sure we've been acquainted." Naruto said dully while raising his hand with the digivice embedded in it.
"Right, dumb question." Riley rubbed the back of her head sheepishly before clearing her throat. "Well, you see me and Tally work for, well worked for now, that place we just busted you out of. Our job was to track down and prevent digimon from bio-emerging into the real world."
"You've been doing a lovely job then." Naruto said sarcastically, before flinching when Riley gently flicked one of his ears.
"Don't sass my work little man, it isn't easy." Riley said with a frown, "Anyway, our job was to monitor, block, and/or capture these digimon, or Wild Ones as we call them. Then you showed up."
"What's that supposed to meAN?!" Naruto yelped as the redhead he was sitting on suddenly grabbed the end of his tail. Yanking the fluffy appendage out of her grasp, he sent her what would have been a powerful glare if his face wasn't as red as a tomato. "Don't touch that!"
Giggling at the admittedly cute expression, Riley held her hands up in a placating manner. "Sorry, sorry, couldn't resist, I was just curious what it felt like."
"Just get back to the explanation," He grumbled while pointedly wrapping his tail around his waist like a belt, causing Riley to giggle again before frowning.
"To put simply, you showing up caused my boss's boss to act like a dumbass and order your capture last night so you could be studied thoroughly." She said, practically spitting out the last words.
"Well, that would explain why my everything hurts." Naruto said while glancing back down at the various bandaged sections of his mostly nude form.
…
'…wait a second.' Snapping his head back down, Naruto's face invented a new shade of red once he realized that the only thing he was wearing was a pair of black boxer briefs.
"Finally noticed, huh?" Riley asked with chuckle as Naruto sent her an annoyed glare. "Back to the subject on hand, I didn't like what the higher ups were planning to do with you, so I decided to bust you out. My friend here was a bit of an unexpected but very thankful surprise. Speaking of which, how did you know where to find us?" The redhead asked her friend/coworker.
"You left your terminal on." Tally said quietly, causing Riley to pause for a second before palming her face with a loud *Smack*.
"Hey, do either of you have a phone I can use?" Naruto asked out of the blue.
-Meanwhile, Nonaka Residence-
"Where is that boy?" Seiko muttered, her fingers tapping against the table in a steady rhythm.
"I'm sure he's fine mother, Naruto has shown that he is capable of taking care of himself." Rumiko said in an assuring tone as she ate a bowl cereal, though the mild shaking of her hand belied her true concern.
"He's also shown that he attracts trouble more than a magnet does metal." Seiko said back to her daughter with a sigh.
"Naruto's probably just helping that girl from yesterday still." Renamon said after taking a bite of her own breakfast, which consisted of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a glass of orange juice. Her tamer sat beside her eating the same, an annoyed look in her eyes as she stared at her perfectly manicured and baby blue painted nails. Not only that, her skin now had a healthy glow to it and her hair smooth as silk.
"That does sound like something he would do." Rumiko agreed with a nod, her and her mother having been told of the incident at the school by the foxy digimon last night. "I do hope that the poor girl is okay, what she went through must have been pretty traumatizing."
"Speaking of traumatizing events, Rika, how have you been doing since… their arrival." Seiko said, pausing slightly as she glanced towards Renamon who didn't even so much as blink at the comment as she continued to eat her sandwich.
"I'm fine grandma," Rika muttered, stuffing the last bite into her mouth before starting chugging down her orange juice. Of course, this would have been more convincing if the hand holding her glass wasn't trembling just like her mother's.
Sighing at the blatant denial, Seiko backed off for the moment since she knew if she tried pushing her granddaughter for answers now, Rika would just shut her out. As a tense was beginning to settle over them however, the sound of the phone ringing filled the air. "I'll get it."
"That's probably Naruto now." Renamon stated while sipping at her OJ as the elderly woman left to answer the phone.
"Yeah right, that idiot barely knows how to turn the TV on, let alone operate a phone." Rika said while plopping her now empty glass down.
"Twenty bucks says otherwise."
"You don't even have twenty bucks."
"I will when I win."
"Oh that's it, you're on."
…
…
…
"YOU WERE WHAT!?"
"Dang it," Rika groaned while pulling out her wallet.
-End Chapter-
AN: Sorry for the short chapter, been rather busy recently with job hunting and family matters. Despite this I do hope you all enjoyed this one. I know most of you are probably let down by the lack of 'Ka-frickin-boom' but don't worry, Darelight will get his comeuppance soon. Now, in the last AN I put up the option of Naruto and Jeri becoming partners and while the majority of you voted yes, some of you voiced arguments about this, saying he should be the Tamer not the partner.
To clarify, Naruto is actually capable of being both and even more unique in that he can 'switch' partners and/or Tamers at will, meaning he could become Renamon's tamer or become Henry's partner. This vote is mostly for his 'preferred' partner, since this would leave him able to focus on the fights while Jeri dealt with support.
