Naruto X

AN: Well I figured I'm on the train and my muse is working for once so let's keep on rolling and write some more. Sadly no reviews *hint hint* but hey, I'm willing to keep going for a while longer.

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The hokage was in his office doing paperwork when there was a knock on his door. Grunting as he sat upright, he put his pen down and called out "Enter." And in walked Kakashi.

"Lord Hokage, I need to talk to you about Naruto." He began, and Sarutobi simply nodded. "I knew this would come, you might want to take a seat for this." He said and the Cyclops obliged. The hokage was quiet for a small time, deciding his words carefully before finally speaking.

"Kakashi, what happened to that child is nothing short of gruesome. He was attacked and horribly disfigured by an unknown assailant before being rescued by an anonymous civilian." He started, making the jounins eyes widen.

"Taking the child and performing lifesaving surgery on the boy, they modified his body with metallic parts, claiming him to be what is now known as a cyborg. Half human, half machine. I know the idea seems farfetched, but I was watching your test and I'm sure the evidence speaks for itself with the way he was attacking."

Kakashi had reached up and touched his chest at the memory. "Wouldn't it be a good idea to inform me ahead of time? If he had hit any other part of me, he could have killed me." He stated.

"If he would have charged up the attack, he would have." The Hokage said, causing the jounin to double take. "Charge the attack?" he asked in bewilderment. "Indeed. According to the information I have on the boy and his new abilities, is that is his weakest attack and can be charged to different stages. If he had charged even a level higher, you may as well have been fighting naked." He said, making the jounin sit completely back with his arms on the rests of the chair, completely and utterly stupefied.

"The attack uses some energy called plasma. I've never heard of plasma outside of the bloodstream and they assured me it wasn't the same." The hokage said as he pulled out his pipe and began to stuff tobacco into it.

"Who are they?" Kakashi asked, Sarutobi didn't immediately answer as he was lighting his pipe and after making sure it was fully lit, he took a deep breath and let out a huge wisp of smoke. "A man in blue armor called Megaman X, and his associates Zero and Axl. They not only saved Naruto, but are the ones helping him adjust to his new body. There was quite a lot of information they had and even more I'm sure they haven't told me, but quite honestly I will not press them on the matter. Just know that they are not of our world and I will not have them harassed." The older man said, bringing his pipe back to his lips and taking a few quick puffs.

Kakashi could only nod dumbly at this. "And what of his ninja training sir?" he asked, causing the older shinobi to let out a sigh. "To my knowledge, his new body does not fully work with chakra. I don't believe you can teach him anything at the moment. So for the time being, I will allow X to supervise his training while you handle Sasuke and Sakura. Naruto will be around for missions however, so you still have a 3 man squad."

Kakashi let out a small sigh before he stood up. "Thank you lord Hokage. If you'll excuse me." He said, and with a nod from the older man, Kakashi used shunshin to warp out of the room.

Sarutobi let out a sigh as well before he picked up his pen, snuffed out his pipe and resumed his paperwork. He had a feeling the worst was yet to come.

-Back with Naruto-

"So I was thinking…" Naruto said as he walked along with X towards the simulation room. "If I found a speed boost capsule, and you said find a way to survive the attacks…does that mean there's another capsule to find?" he asked. X thought about this question for a bit before finally deciding the information couldn't hurt.

"You are correct. There are a total of four capsules in this level of the simulation. There are also twelve other items hidden around various locations, but it will be up to you to find them and figure out what they are. I wasn't going to tell you anything at first, but knowing that there are other capsules doesn't really benefit you as you still don't know where they are and you already had suspicions about it." X explained as he opened the door to the room and stepped inside. He walked up a set of stairs while Naruto walked out into the green and black room from before.

There was a small flash in the center of the room and the entire place suddenly flickered back to the screen with six faces and two black screens. Naruto stared at the screen for a moment before deciding on a different location than the armadillo. He knew the enemies weakness but he lacked the skill and power to defeat him.

So perhaps he would try his luck in another stage that he never tried before. The area shifted and suddenly Naruto was standing on the beach in front of an ocean. "Alright, let's do this!" he shouted before charging off into the water.

-Ten minutes later-

Naruto panted as he destroyed the worm creature that was swimming around in this basement looking area, grinning in satisfaction as it collided with the ground and exploded as it hit. Walking forward, he saw a nearby room open up and he charged inside…only to see a big empty room with a strange red object sitting in the middle.

He stared at it before picking it up and suddenly he noticed his life reserves grow. He blinked in shock, it was a tiny growth, but X's words made sense now. There were twelve hidden objects that he wouldn't explain and he just found one of them. Naturally there were a lot of them and it would make his life reserves grow exponentially higher he reasoned and he set out once more, making his way back above only to get into a fight with another giant snake thing.

-Five minutes later-

Naruto let out a sigh as he reappeared in the hallway. He didn't have high hopes of winning this fight since he went in with only a single hit but the information was handy since he started to notice that this Launch Octopus character seemed to fight in a pattern.

Upon entering the room, he immediately dashed forward as the octopus jumped directly over him. However, Naruto didn't expect him to stop in mid jump and begin spinning, making a whirlpool to try and pull him in.

After that failed, Naruto turned and blasted him, but Launch Octopus countered by firing a huge volley of missiles towards Naruto. The blonde panicked for a second, not knowing how to counter this and did the first thing that popped into mind, and that was jump over them. Which worked, but then the octopus jumped forward and launched more missiles and Naruto got hit with this batch because he wasn't expecting it.

Once both of them landed, Naruto began to charge his buster and he fired a shot which hit, but again didn't seem to faze his opponent and he immediately jumped into the center of the room and began the whirlpool attack again.

Outside of the room, X watched as Naruto fought Launch Octopus. Honestly, he was a bit impressed with how fast the boy was learning to deal with this opponent, and he wasn't even attempting to use his other weapons.

It was as if the boy finally seemed to comprehend the information told to him yesterday and it had boosted his survivability, as shown by him actually reacting and making an effort to dodge attacks.

X smiled a little however when he noticed Naruto was in mid fall and the missiles were coming towards him, so he improvised and shot the missiles instead of trying to dodge them. The boy was coming along better than yesterday as he only died once so far and was actually taking the maverick down with his base weapon.

X's smile grew when Naruto finally managed to take down Launch Octopus and acquired his new weapon. The boy managed to survive the fight with half of his energy, a huge improvement to barely scraping by. Spark Mandrill didn't count as his weakness made him too vulnerable.

Once Naruto made it back to the screen selection, he spoke over the intercom. "Good job. You're improving a lot faster than anticipated. Keep up the good work and we might just clear this level of the simulation before the end of the day." He said, causing Naruto to grin widely.

-Two hours later-

Naruto let out a cry as he was destroyed by Storm Eagle. X let out a sigh as he leaned back in his chair. "Maybe I spoke too soon." Naruto reappeared at the selection screen and frowned. Aside from having that new attack, nothing had changed. He couldn't find any other items or capsules and figuring that he wasn't getting anywhere until he did, he decided to try his hand at a stage he already went to.

Upon entering the jungle, Naruto was surprised to find the level had flooded with water. He was confused but pushed that aside as he continued on his way through the stage. However, after making his way through a good portion of the area, he noticed two things. One was he could probably reach the cliff overhead and the drop before him was suddenly filled with water.

That made no sense to him, so he figured he'd jump directly overhead first and he barely managed to catch the cliff and climb up. Once he was up there however, he noticed that it was just a dead end. He walked forward a bit more and suddenly a series of boulders fell behind him and formed a wall.

While his back was turned, he heard another sound behind him and when he turned, he was greeted to the sight of a big green robot with clamps for hands. He quickly fired and the thing moved its arms in front and completely blocked the shot before swinging its arms out. Naruto was caught off guard and grabbed by one of the clamps before the robot swung back and swung back forward, smashing Naruto into the wall.

It let go after the attack, but that still hurt and Naruto frowned as he started to charge up his attack and instead of firing at the body, he jumped and shot at its head. The robot didn't react to the new trajectory and the blast hit it, causing it to recoil slightly.

The robot leapt across towards Naruto, who ran underneath it to the other side and quickly did another shot to the robots head. The thing had a simple pattern of jumping and swinging its clamps, so Naruto had little trouble staying away from it and picking it off from a distance.

It was clearly taking damage as the more Naruto shot it in the upper part of its body, the more smoke began to pour out of its body. Another charged shot to the head and it finally exploded. Naruto stared in confusion as nothing was happening when suddenly a capsule emerged from the ground. The ecstatic boy quickly ran over and climbed into the capsule. After a bit of a light show, the capsule opened and when Naruto emerged, he was wearing much more defined armor and the system log told him that this would reduce all damage he took by fifty percent.

Thinking it didn't get any better than this, the rocks exploded and cleared the path and he immediately leapt down into the water below. Not seeing anything noteworthy, he slid along the wall and grabbed it, noticing it crumble from his grip. He then began to tear apart the wall and noticed that there was room behind it. After he tore his way inside, he noticed a dead drop, but in the distance, there was a ledge with another red item on it.

He stepped back against the wall as far as he could before he took a running leap, barely grabbing onto the ledge and climbing up to grab the item and his energy grew again. That was two down. Then he turned around and frowned. "Oh boy…"

-Two hours later-

There had been little improvement since Naruto found the two surprises inside the forest. He hadn't actually made it to fight any of the mavericks since then and he spent the majority of his time exploring what he could of the stages.

Unfortunately his searching didn't yield much. He went back into the mining stage and instead of trying to run away from the driller, he climbed back up and waited for it to run ahead of him.

Once that was done, he went into the cave where it was parked and found a strange canister looking object. Picking it up, he didn't notice anything out of the ordinary happen, so he shrugged and went on his way. However, after walking a short ways, he saw a hole in the ceiling and found that he couldn't reach it. Frowning, he walked over to the first spike pit he could find and eliminated himself.

When he got back to this spot, he quickly ran ahead of the driller and seeing the hole this time, he immediately scrambled up it and upon climbing inside, he found one of the red objects up here. Please with himself, he waited for the driller to pass before hopping down.

-Five minutes later-

Naruto was down to a single hit. Armored Armadillo was down to a single hit. He quickly rolled into a ball and began to spin in place before taking off in a straight line which Naruto jumped over.

Armadillo climbed the wall and then the ceiling and down the wall again before picking up speed and repeating this action repeatedly. Once he came to a stop, Naruto fired his buster gun and the maverick flew back and began to explode.

Naruto gave out a cheer as he absorbed the energy, acquiring his new power and the room faded back to the screen selection. The room faded back to the green and black outlines from before, leaving Naruto confused before looking up where X was seated. "That's enough for today Naruto. You need to get some rest for tomorrow." The maverick hunter said, causing the blonde to let out a groan.

"Aw man, and I was starting to get on a roll. At least I'm ending on a good note." He said as the two of them walked out of the room.

-The next day-

Team 7 was sitting at their training grounds waiting for Kakashi to show up. The man was once again, two hours late and running. Sakura and Sasuke were doing their usual thing, one trying to get the others attention and one brooding. Naruto was once again deep in thought over his recent simulation training and how he could possibly improve. He had barely beaten Armored Armadillo and while he did improve to the point that he could dodge some of the mavericks' attacks, it was still barely enough to win that fight. Honestly the only reason he even made it was thanks to the, what he later found out were called, heart containers and the body armor.

He wasn't happy with these results honestly. He wanted to get strong enough to not have any close calls like the ones he had been having. Just as he was thinking there had to be something he was missing he heard a voice. "Naruto."

The blonde looked up to see Sasuke standing in front of him. "Fight me." He demanded. Naruto blinked, this was new. "Why?" he asked and Sasuke looked annoyed at the question. "I need to know where our powers are. I want you to fight me." He said, making the blonde raise an eyebrow and Sakura to look annoyed. "Sasuke, you don't need to fight Naruto. You already know you're stronger than him."

Before anyone could even argue this point, Kakashi had shown up. "Alright everyone, today we're going to go on our first mission." He stated, making everyone look up at him expectantly. "So what are we going to do? An escort mission? Deliver a package? Go after a target?" Naruto asked, causing the jounin to smile.

"Not exactly." He said and the three genins smiles dropped into confusion.

-Five minute timeskip-

"This isn't a mission. This is a chore." Naruto deadpanned as he stared at the fence in front of him along with the paint cans. "When did the ninja career get outsourced to the civilians?" He asked, making the jounin rub the back of his head. "Well the point of these D rank missions is to improve your teamwork before you actually go on a dangerous mission. We don't want you to be incompatible on a high priority job and have someone die." He said, making the blonde give a small nod.

"I suppose that makes sense." He said, still sounding unsure. "Well there's also the fact that every mission we complete, be it low ranked or high ranked, brings in money that our village uses. The more missions we do, the better our economy." The jounin explained. By this point Naruto had resumed painting and all three of them were nearly done with the job.

"So how long do we need to stay on D ranks until we can go onto something higher?" Naruto asked as they put their paint cans away and washed off the brushes. Kakashi seemed to be in thought. "Well, so far you're all showing decent ability to work together and get a job done. So I think after you complete, say, twenty five more I'll see about getting you all a C rank." He stated, causing the three genin to smile.

And so it continued this way for the next five days. Team 7 would do five D rank missions before Kakashi would train them in various activities. With Sakura, he was having her study basic genjutsu and Sasuke was training in taijutsu. Since he couldn't teach Naruto in the traditional sense, he decided to take Naruto and expand the boys knowledge by having him read and study. Laws, strategy, keeping calm in panic situations, logical and rational thinking, debating and learning to control ones temper, as Kakashi found out once that the boy, though he put on a mask of calm, actually had a short temper and would lash out if angered.

When team 7 was done training for the day, Naruto would go back and train in the simulator. He had made some good leaps, defeating six of the eight mavericks and having found at least five of the heart containers and two of the backpack items called Sub Tanks. He also found another capsule that improved the armor in his helmet, but sadly he could not find the fourth capsule that X told him about.

The only mavericks left to defeat were Sting Chameleon and Boomerang Kuwanger. The first had the invisibility trick that kept doing Naruto in and the other one he just never attempted to fight yet.

After they had turned in their last D rank, Kakashi had gone to the hokage and gotten them a C rank as promised. Once he returned, he told them to pack and prepare for a mission outside of the village for at least two months' time. As they left, Naruto went back to see X at the command center.

"I've come to tell you about my mission. I'll be going outside of the village for at least two months." Naruto said and X gave a nod. "That's good to know, but this isn't going to interfere with your training." At Naruto's confused stare, X let out a small sigh. "You can instantly warp here thanks to your body. You never needed the satellite to get here to begin with. That was only for Iruka and your Hokage. However, neither of them has ever actually come up here and you might not think it, but you've been using your teleport method to travel, not the satellite." X explained, causing the boys eyes to widen.

"So even if you were to go to the complete other side of the world, you can still warp back here. As such, when you have free time, you'll be coming back here to resume your training. It might seem menial but you need to finish this as soon as possible. You'll understand once you get to the end of the course." X stated. The boy let out a small sigh before nodding. "I understand. But it seems odd that you'd keep my training going while I'm out doing a potentially risky mission." He said.

X gave a small nod. "You are being monitored constantly to make sure nothing happens to you, not just problems from your body, but Sigma is still out there. You are the first cyborg we've ever actually created so there is no telling what kind of effects our tech will have on your body and if you'll have any in the long run. After all, you're a kid and you're still growing, you will most likely outgrow your current body at some point and need replacement parts."

Naruto blinked at this, he never thought about that at all. "And I really didn't want to tell you this but this simulation you are doing is just the first one." At this, the blonde recoiled in shock. "You mean I have to fight more mavericks?!" he asked in shock, which X responded to by nodding.

"As you get stronger…well, I'll leave it at that. You will be doing other training simulations once you are ready for them." Naruto nodded before he got ready to warp back. "Hey, who is monitoring me?" he asked, causing the maverick hunter to look back at him. "Tomorrow Alia will be monitoring you." He said and walked away, Naruto simply said "Huh." Before warping back to Konoha and packing his stuff.

Once Naruto was packed, he quickly ran to the gates and there he saw Kakashi and some other guy with a straw hat who reeked of alcohol. The man looked at Naruto and grunted. "This brat is going to be protecting me? I thought I hired ninja, not children."

Kakashi placed a hand on the older mans' shoulder. "I can assure you, you are in the best of hands. You have nothing to worry about." He said, the man only gave out a humph. Once Sasuke and Sakura arrived, Kakashi stepped forward. "This man is called Tazuna. It's our job to protect him on his way back to the land of waves."

AN: That's all for this chapter. At first I was going to have Naruto completely fly through the training in the simulation but I felt that would have been way too fast paced for what I have in mind.