Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto nor Highschool DxD, and I make no profit writing fanfics about them.
(AN): Lucky you don't have to wait another four months, ne?
White splinters of bone poked up grotesquely through tanned skin, with porous marrow glistening wetly under the sunlight. A single bit of flying rubble had been enough to completely crush Ken's limb, torn arteries pumping out precious blood with every stuttering heartbeat.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! But I have to do it!"
Ken's wail of utter despair spiraled up into an ear-splitting shriek as Yakumo brought his katana down and severed his friend's arm just below the shoulder. "Fucking Sand-nin." He grit out, blinking through the sting of tears in his eyes as he bent to tie a tourniquet around Ken's bleeding stump.
The combination of blood loss and pain was enough to make Ken pass out by the time Yakumo managed to apply enough pressure to keep Ken from bleeding out. It would buy Ken a few minutes while Yakumo tried to find him a med-nin, but any longer than that and the shock would probably kill him.
Not that Yakumo had much hope for that as he heaved Ken's limp body onto his back and began to move through the rubble of Konoha.
How in the hell had Suna managed to get their hands on the Kyuubi? It had vanished years ago when Uzumaki Naruto was assassinated, and it was supposed to take another few decades at least before the beast's chakra gathered enough for it to be reborn.
Fuck, fuck! He'd just wanted to finish his shift, sleep through the day, and hit the town for his weekend off. Now he was just trying to stay alive while the fucking Sand-nin poured in through the broken walls and the new Kyuubi jinchuuriki fought a death match with the Nibi's jinchuuriki right over their heads.
A shockwave threw Yakumo to his knees, grating the skin of his shins and making him shout in shock. Biting his lip as he lurched back to his feet and readjusted Ken's deadweight, Yakumo glanced up at the sky and gaped.
A set of bright orange fists were grasping hold of an azure forearm the length of a skyscraper, chakra flames of different colours sputtering weakly as the enormous Kyuubi pulled. The sudden jerk was enough to yank the Nibi over before throwing the giant two-tailed hellcat into a cluster of buildings with a thunderous crash and a hurricane gust of wind.
"Shit." Yakumo gasped, crouching against the gale as a storm of dust swept over the village. He held strong for a heartbeat before Ken was torn from his back and swept up into the tempest. "Ken!"
Instinctively, Yakumo knew Ken was dead, and with a bitter scream he turned and plunged through the fog in search of some allied unit to give him orders and clarify what the fuck he was supposed to do. He was just a career chuunin pushed into border patrol, he wasn't trained to handle a bijuu invasion!
Another explosion rumbled, and Yakumo stared numbly at the rapidly approaching orange streak falling from the sky. "Gods, have mercy…"
Everything went black.
In the middle of a fight, it was hard to tell when he ended and Kurama began. Naruto and the fox were so mentally melded that sometimes he felt like he was Kurama, with excitement and rage at the bijuu's enslavement pounding through his veins.
Naruto rolled, knocking over half a dozen buildings as he gathered his paws beneath him. Then he shuffled, the dark tip of his nose sighting down the Nibi before firing off a swirling bijuudama.
Not waiting to see if his missile connected, Naruto struck like a bolt of lightning. Orange fur rippled as the giant fox leapt up and over a cluster of streets to land on the Nibi's back, and Naruto bit down.
The azure hellcat gave a hissing wail, bucking frantically and trying to dislodge Naruto's chokehold. Around and around the tangled pair went, rolling through a trio of office buildings before slamming face-first into the former Hokage monument.
Caught between fire and stone, Naruto spat a curse and bit down hard. His nine tails wrapped around his opponent's limbs and pulled. The Nibi was strong, but the Kyuubi had four times as many tails and more power besides. It only took a few minutes of struggle to force down the other jinchuuriki. "Give it up already!"
"Never!" A deep and unmistakably male voice roared back, startling the blond. He'd been expecting Matatabi's new jinchuuriki to be a girl like Yugito. "Now get off leafeater!"
With that the Kumo nin began to fight harder, wailing and flailing until the tangled mass of bijuu rolled back into the village, leaving a bulldozed wasteland behind them.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Naruto shouted, twisting so he could brace his back feet against the broken ground and stop the rampage of destruction. "Are you trying to get blow up the entire fucking village?"
"I would rather destroy this whole village than let Konoha take it back." Where before the younger jinchuuriki had been all venom and passion, his voice fell to grim icy determination. Then the blue flames that made up Matatabi's hide began to shift and burn.
"Naruto you need to move!"
"What?"
"He's going to explode and take us all with him!"
Heat seared against the skin of Naruto's face, burning away spots of skin and leaving red blisters that Kurama's chakra rushed to heal. Damn it, was this kid that proud? There must be thousands of his own allies still fighting, not to mention the civilians and the combined Sand-Leaf shinobi. He'd wipe out the whole village because he couldn't deal with losing?
Or maybe it wasn't arrogance. Maybe it was fanaticism. The Kyuubi being in the hands of the Leaf again would have the Cloud and Stone pissing themselves. Throwing his own life away and the lives of his comrades might seem like a fair price to pay to get rid of that kind of 'superweapon'.
Fuck.
"Naruto!"
"Die, Uzumaki Naruto!"
The blond took a steadying breath against the shock of being addressed by name, clenched his jaw, and made a choice.
Sasuke wasn't delusional enough to expect Konoha to look exactly the same. No city could go through a war without rebuilding into something different. But in of all his vague suppositions of how the village might have changed since he'd last seen it, the Uchiha had never imagined it looking like a nuclear wasteland.
Black glass stretched as far as his Sharingan eyes could see, breaking into sharp edges and sudden dark gaps that tunneled into the earth. It was an utterly lifeless scene, with not even the Hokage monument spared from the blast. There was a huge crack splitting the plateau down the portion where the Yondaime's head had once been.
What the hell did Naruto do?
Waving off his so-called allies, Sasuke stepped out into the apocalyptic landscape. Ash puffed under his heels as he wandered over the ebony hills, drawn northwest like the needle of a compass. Maybe his state of undeath made him more aware of the bonds tugging at his soul, or maybe his Rinnegan just enhanced his chakra sensing ability. Either way, he knew exactly where to find Naruto.
When he finally settled his gaze on the blond, Sasuke exhaled a sharp gust of displeasure. "You still alive there, dobe?" he prodded, getting a wordless groan in reply.
To put it bluntly, Naruto looked like shit warmed over. The jinchuuriki's sunshine strands had grown to a waist length tangle, stained with white streaks any toothless granny would be proud of. The whiskered skin of Naruto's face was lined with faint wrinkles. Ropy red scars crisscrossed over the naked flesh of his left arm and chest, while Naruto's right arm was simply gone just below the shoulder.
Gritting his teeth so hard that they cracked and healed anew, Sasuke bent down to scoop up his heavily wounded friend. "I'd break your skull over my knee for your reckless stupidity, but someohow I don't think the message would sink in." The threat was half-hearted, and when Naruto coughed a fine mist of blood Sasuke found himself protectively pulling the blond tighter against his chest.
Another person would have been bursting with questions about how Naruto had gotten to be in such a horrific condition, but Sasuke knew the man well enough that he didn't need to ask. Everything could be inferred from sight and his knowledge of Naruto alone. Kumo or Iwa had deployed some sort of weapon of mass destruction, and Naruto had tried to be a self-sacrificing fool and contain the blast with his own body. Unfortunately it hadn't worked all that well, seeing as how real life wasn't like the movies.
Turning on his heel, Sasuke began hopping back towards the remnants of the southern walls. The idiot needed medical attention, and when he woke up Naruto would find his body in a very different state than what he'd left it in. The rapid wounding and healing cycle the blond went through to survive the explosion had probably aged him twenty years, and there was no telling what other scars had formed internally during the blast.
"Moron." He muttered lowly, blowing the hair out of his eyes. No doubt he'd have to sit on Naruto to make him stay in bed long enough to heal up from this latest bout of moralism. The Kyuubi gave Naruto a powerful healing factor, but it wasn't perfect. A body could only take so much abuse before giving out, and Naruto wasn't allowed to die before they managed to fix the shitshow they'd come back to.
"Uchiha Sasuke. Do you care to explain this latest idiocy?"
A startled blink.
"You."
Naruto woke to red shards of agony threading through every cell of his body. It felt like he'd run an Olympic marathon before fighting a war and then going to sleep underneath an elephant. Every breath was a pained struggle against a suffocating weight, crowned with the sensation of broken glass in his lungs.
It felt like it took more effort to open his eyes than he'd had to spend fighting Kaguya.
The dimly lit sight of a canvas medical tent greeted him, weather stains dizzily drawing his confused stare before Naruto forced himself to shake off the last dregs of unconsciousness. "Hello?" he rasped with the note of gravel over pavement.
"Do you make a habit of being suicidally reckless, Uzumaki Naruto?" A grey gaze set in a face wreathed in black hair taking up half of Naruto's view. "Because if so I believe I will have to reconsider your worth as my soldier."
"Ophis?"
"At least part of your brain seems to be working." Amber glittered as someone else leaned over the confused jinchuuriki. "Though that's not saying much though, considering it's you." In contrast to the cool words a warm hand briefly touched over the stump of Naruto's right arm.
"Koneko?"
A wordless hum was the only answer the nekomata gave before she withdrew to let a teary-eyed Valerie monopolize the blond's attention.
"How are you feeling? Do you want me to get you a glass of water? Fluff your pillow? Another blanket? Some pain medication?" The dhampir rambled on with concern, visibly rattled even as Ophis snorted and also pulled away.
Footsteps padded away as the two girls slipped out of the tent, leaving Naruto alone with Valerie.
Naruto licked his cracked lips with a tongue that felt like sandpaper, coughing faintly before shaking his head. Even that tiny motion felt like his skull was rotating on a rusted spike. "Why are you here? How are you here?" he demanded, gaze sharpening as his scattered wits turned away from the sheer discomfort he was in to refocus on his Bishop.
Valerie quirked her mouth up into an awkward grin, crimson eyes shifting away before skittering back to meet Naruto's expectant look. "Ah, well, Ophis decided that someone needed to cross over here. She said she didn't know how long you'd need to be here, and since she couldn't spend all her time watching you, that a couple of us needed to be here to summon her when you and Sasuke were finished."
To Naruto's displeasure, the blonde girl was obviously lying. Or perhaps not lying, but she was certainly leaving out some things that he would want to know. "I see, and what else is Rias up to?"
Shrugging lightly, Valerie fisted her hands in her lap while struggling against the urge to look away. "She's not doing a whole lot. Mostly she's just been spending her time lying to everyone and pretending that both peerages are on a vacation. Nothing too difficult."
The frustration that churned in his chest was foreign. Naruto couldn't remember any time where he'd honestly been frustrated with Valerie. His Bishop was easy going, kind, and more than a little easy on the eyes. She'd never tried to hide anything from him before, and the fact she was trying to now put him on edge.
Still, maybe Naruto would have better luck getting whatever it was out of her when he wasn't stuck in a bed. So with a drawn out sigh the jinchuuriki dropped it, relaxing back into his pillow and considering Valerie with a half-lidded stare. "So, is it just you and Koneko that came over?"
"Yep." Now that Naruto's hospital bed interrogation was over, Valerie found herself studying the little stump that was left of Naruto's right arm. It horrified the blonde to see her savior so badly hurt, but she comforted herself with the knowledge that once they returned home Naruto would be back in his whole and healthy devil body.
Squirming a bit at Valerie's concerned hangdog expression, Naruto twisted his head and frowned off to the side. "It's not that bad." He mumbled. Sure, it had hurt like a motherfucker getting blown off, but it wasn't something he hadn't lived through before.
Naruto didn't want anyone's pity. It made him feel weak.
"Naruto…"
Cloth rustled as the tent flap drew back and Sasuke stepped inside, the Uchiha's sudden appearance cutting off Valerie's stutter. "Finally awake are you, knucklehead?"
"Bastard."
The corner of Sasuke's porcelain mouth curved, gravedirt crackling and reforming at the motion as he passed Naruto a glass of water. "So I see you're up to speed on our unique situation. Ophis and I spoke and we decided the smartest thing to do would be to keep the girls out of sight and out of mind, as best we can. None of the grunts are going to question us, but you can be damn sure Sakura will if she finds out about them, and that would add… complications."
Gleefully gulping down the blessedly cool water, Naruto mulled over the implication that Sakura couldn't be trusted. Twenty years ago he'd have answered that kind of suggestion with his fists. Team Seven had seemed so unbreakable back then.
But the Sakura he'd seen bits of pieces of since his resurrection was a very different woman.
A woman he no longer knew.
Besides, was it really any of their business anyway? Kaguya had proven there were different worlds, so it wasn't like they were keeping a huge secret from her. A new life in a new world was basically the same thing as wandering around in the afterlife; functionally anyway. Gehenna and Konoha didn't touch, except for a rare alignment of secret stars, and perhaps they never would again.
"Yeah, yeah." Naruto grimaced, shoving his empty cup back at Sasuke. "I'll keep my mouth shut. What other news do ya got for me?" With the dust washed away from the inside of his mouth and throat, Naruto's mind felt clean and revitalized.
Folding his arms behind his back in an idle military posture that Naruto assumed he'd picked up on the frontlines in Gehenna, Sasuke began. "You were out for five days, so by now we expect everyone from here to Yuki no Kuni to have heard that the war is back on and Konoha is fielding a Kyuubi jinchuuriki. We're hoping they assume it's a new one rather than realize that Sakura pulled us out of the grave."
Naruto sent a quick smile towards his Bishop, reassuring the blonde girl as she uncertainly made to leave. "You don't have to go." Then he returned his focus to Sasuke. "No, they probably know its us. Jiraiya-sensei told me that if I died with the seal intact Kurama would disperse for fifty years or so. It's only because I'm alive again that his chakra all gathered back together. Kurama said something about his mind, the nexus, and the seal or whatever. I didn't really get it, but they might. So they're probably going to know. And there was that kid…"
"What kid?" Sasuke demanded sharply.
"The guy they sealed Matatabi into. He called me by name, so he definitely knew it was me. So either Kumo and Iwa already know all about jinchuuriki revivals, or Matatabi told him when we were fighting." Naruto didn't want to believe the second one, but he knew it was the more logical option. No one had ever revived a jinchuuriki that hadn't gone through an extraction before dying as far as he knew, so some random kid from Kumo knowing about seal theory that he barely knew about was pretty farfetched.
Matatabi had been his friend, but she still seemed willing enough to lend her power to his opponent and bring the fight to him. Willing to go to the point of a suicide strike even. Had she really been his friend at all? Maybe she'd just been amused by the little mortal monkey spouting ideals at her.
Thinking of the hellcat brought a very important question to Naruto's mind, and he gave Sasuke a steely look. "What about the village? I know after five days we've probably got some reinforcements and a decent base camp set up, but how bad is the damage? Kurama and I tried to contain the blast."
Tense silence hung in the air.
"Sasuke."
"When we got here the place looked like someone had dropped a nuke." Sasuke hesitated before shaking his head. "There were no survivors."
Naruto pressed his hand to his leaking eyes. "Of course there weren't." And then he began to bitterly laugh.
(AN): 3000 more. I decided to shift gears here. Originally I planned for a chapter long bijuu battle, but then I spoke to several readers and looked through the reviews. The general sentiment in regards to Paradox Aeternum is 'Not bad, but it feels like a sideshow'. That's fair. The arc is maybe half a year long and exists solely to develop Naruto.
Naruto and Sasuke are so OP that there's only a few people that could make them break a sweat, and even then they'd still win. So instead of throwing thousands of words down the hole to write fights I doubt people really care about anyway (including me), I'm going to do this quick and dirty so we can get back to the DxD I'm sure you guys actually want to read.
So expect the fights to get glossed over in favour of the personal development, and a final word count of maybe 70,000 words.
Matatabi – I think this goes for most bijuu. They're ancient beings, so Naruto might have impressed them but all he really was is some idealistic kid they spoke to a couple of times. Kurama and Naruto would have real friendship because they're basically 'roommates', but I think the idea that Matatabi would have some enduring loyalty to him because they met once is questionable.
