Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Aliens/Predator/AVP.

Kage no Oni:

Requiem of Redemption

Chapter One: Second Chances

"Prove Yourself, My Child."

His eyes snapped open upon hearing the ethereal voice, the words echoing within his head. Looking around, Naruto found himself in a hospital bed, his armor having returned to the seals on his body and his clothes replaced with a patient's hospital smock.

Standing up and grabbing his clothes off the table across the room, Naruto dressed himself before looking in the mirror set in the corner.

Standing at 7'4" and heavily muscled, Naruto knew he would be feared just like he used to be. His black hair was still twisted into dozens of dreadlocks that fell to the middle of his back, his eyes were still pitch black with silver slit pupils, his claws were still black and sharp enough to easily shred steel, his fangs were still long and acutely pointed, and he still had his black barbed Xenomorph tail, the spinal armor plating, and the four dorsal tubes on his back.

He was wearing baggy black pants tucked into black armored knee-high combat boots, a black sleeveless zippered turtleneck top, black fingerless gloves, a black cloth face mask, and a long-sleeve fishnet top under his shirt.

Hearing the door open, Naruto slowly turned away from the mirror and looked at his visitors with lifeless black eyes. He bowed at the waist, seeing just who it was.

"Yondaime Hokage, Lady Kushina. What warrants you visiting a lost soul such as I?" He inquired in a soft, but cold manner. It wasn't out of disrespect or animosity, but out of sorrow. Kushina noticed it, but said nothing.

"I'm going to be blunt with you. Who are you? Why are you here?" Minato questioned a tad coldly, yet a little off-set by the fact this mysterious giant knew them already and how he referred to himself as a 'lost soul'.

"My name…" Naruto whispered softly as he looked away. "My name is Uzumaki-Namikaze Naruto. I am from a parallel universe to this one and I came here to redeem myself for my sins against my home."

"What? Who the hell do you think you are? Coming here and trying to-" Minato's angered rant was cut short as Naruto, moving too fast for either to react, placed his hands on their heads and transferred his memories over to them. All of them, from the moment he was born up until they entered the room. He showed them everything, down to the very sound of his victims screaming in fear and pain to his thoughts of horror before he came here.

"Do you understand now?" Naruto asked as he stepped back and turned his gaze to the floor, letting his arms fall to his sides limply. "I doubt I'll get it, but I seek forgiveness for the horrors I committed to my world. I seek redemption for my sins."

The pair stood there silently, their eyes glazed over still as tears fell from Kushina's emerald eyes. Kushina was the first to move, slowly wrapping her arms around Naruto in a warm hug. Freezing at the foreign contact, Naruto stared down at the much shorter woman in shock before hesitantly reciprocating the kindness Kushina was showing him and slowly wrapped his arms around her.

"If it is alright with you, Minato, I would like to re-join Konoha as a hunter-nin. That way, I do not cause you any-"

"Mom! Dad!" Cried a young teenage girl that was about 5'6" with long red hair and green eyes bearing black slit pupils as she ran into the room. She had on blood red pants, a black tank top, black shinobi sandals, black fingerless gloves, and a black leather jacket while her hitai-ate was wrapped around her neck. "I did it! I graduated from the Academy!"

"That's wonderful, dear!" Kushina exclaimed in joy. Having released Naruto and spun around while quickly wiping away her tears before the young woman came into the room, Kushina hugged her sixteen year old daughter with a beaming smile. When they parted, the girl looked behind her mother.

"Who's the tall guy? And why does he have a tail and weird things sticking out of his back?" She asked curiously, not at all afraid of his unusual appearance. Kushina and Minato turned to look at Naruto, but found no one there.

"How did you see me?" Naruto asked as he deactivated his Yami Ooi, revealing that he was standing right in front of her while leaning down so he was eye-level with her. All she did was give him a big grin and scratched the back of her neck as she shrugged. Then he saw the faint distortion around her eyes…

"Ah, I see…" Naruto whispered as he plucked the normal looking black-framed sunglasses from her face and stood up straight, smiling softly as the girl gave him a look of pure shock and astonishment before pouting childishly.

"So this is how you did it." Naruto held them close enough to his face so he could see through the black lenses. Everything was in infrared. "Did you make this yourself?"

"Yep!" She chirped proudly with that same beaming grin as her mother.

"Excellent work, but they're far from being complete, obviously." Naruto praised the girl as he handed her the unique eyewear, crouching slightly again so he was eye-level with the girl. "What's your name?"

"Uzumaki-Namikaze Asuka." The girl replied.

"I'm Naruto, an old…friend of your parents and I'm an inventor myself. I'd love to teach you more about inventing new technologies and help you with anything you're currently building." Then he looked up at Minato and Kushina while standing up. "If your parents will let me, that is."

"Can he, Mom?" Please, please, please?" Asuka begged as she turned to Kushina, who glanced at Minato, who gave a hesitant nod of approval, still shell-shocked from what his…son showed them.

"Sure, honey. He can help you." Kushina responded with a smile. Asuka cheered in excitement before hugging her mother.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" She cried before turning on Naruto and practically tackling him as she wrapped her arms around his neck, having jumped at him. Laughing a little as he lowered the sixteen year old teenage girl the foot or two back down to the ground, Naruto felt as if the weight on his shoulders was a fraction lighter than before.

"Alright, now run along. I'll make sure your father teaches you something new later tonight before dinner." Kushina told her daughter while casting a look at Minato that said 'Do it or die'. As Asuka ran out of the room, smiling the whole way, Kushina looked back at Naruto with a soft motherly smile.

"You may not have come from me personally, but you're still my son." She pointed out, pausing momentarily. "I want you to come live with us, Naruto."

"Kushina, he's-" Minato attempted in cutting in, but Kushina rounded on him with a fierce glare that the blonde had never seen her use on him before.

"He's what, Minato? What were you going to say? A monster? A demon?" She questioned as she backed him up against the wall with tears in her eyes. "He's our son, Minato. He's realized that what he did was wrong and wants to be forgiven. Now you better accept that and help him or I swear, I'll make your life a living hell until the day one of us dies."

"…" Minato stayed silent as he looked away.

"Lady Kushina, I couldn't possibly intrude on your family's personal life." Naruto tried to decline, but Kushina wasn't having it.

"First, don't call me that. I'm your mother so at least just call me 'Kushina' if you aren't going to call me 'mom'. Second, it's not just my family, but our family. Your family, Sochi." Kushina explained to him, desperately trying to get him to open up to her. Naruto looked down at the floor again before looking at his hands; they weren't stained such a dark red anymore, but not by much.

"…" Silently, Naruto looked out the window. Before Kushina or Minato could move to stop him, Naruto bolted through the window in search of solace. He needed time to think, time to organize his thoughts. He was being over-whelmed by the chaotic maelstrom of foreign emotions coursing through his body. He needed to return to his safe haven, if it still existed.

/_\

The next day, Naruto came back. He agreed to live with them, but on the condition he gets to be the jounin sensei for Asuka's team, no matter what anyone else says. Minato agreed to his terms, seeing as it made both his wife and daughter happy. He was then given the guest house for himself on the Uzumaki-Namikaze clan compound and 'adopted' into the family later that day.

Naruto, who had resorted to wearing a trench coat to hide his dorsal tubes- which he kept flat against his back- and tail, sighed softly as he sat down on a bench. The top of the Hokage Mountain was his favorite thinking spot before he became a part of the Hive.

His haven, however, was a small park that sat between the Inuzuka and Aburame clan compounds. It was peaceful, isolated from society. Not many people visited it except for a select few members of the clans flanking the serene park Naruto called heaven.

But that was back in his time line, his world. After quietly sitting there for several hours since around noon, Naruto was pleased to find the park to be almost identical to how he remembered it. Isolated, quiet, serene. The many different breeds and species of insects that filled the park were of a different variety than he remembered, but it was only a small change he could get accustomed to.

He was broken from his nostalgia when a black wasp landed on his hand. Raising it up so he could see it better, Naruto noticed violet colored markings running down its body and its violet colored eyes.

"Truly a thing of wonder. Unremarkably beautiful and yet frighteningly deadly." Naruto noted as he watched the wasp fly off. "Don't you think so, Aburame-san?"

"Hai." The young woman of about 19 or 20 years of age responded as she sat down beside Naruto on the bench. She had long black hair pulled back into a high pony tail that reached down to the middle of her back and cream colored skin. He couldn't tell what color her eyes were due to the sunglasses. She was currently wearing black pants, black steel-toe boots, a grey sleeveless turtleneck pullover, black elbow-length gloves, and a grey hooded trench coat.

"Naruto." He greeted politely as he held his hand out to her. She hesitantly took his hand and shook it, obviously caught off guard that he was being so friendly to her. It was rare for an Aburame to find someone that wasn't afraid of them due to their insect companions.

"Kira." The Aburame answered, her cheeks burning from behind the high collar of her trench coat when Naruto lightly kissed her hand.

'Stupid idiot…Always choosing to do new and different things at the wrong moment…' Naruto mentally berated himself as he gently released the woman's hand, feeling a little awkward at the moment. For nearly three hours, the two sat in silence.

Then, the silence was broken…

"Would you like to get something to eat?" Kira inquired without looking at the obscenely tall man sitting beside her. Naruto glanced at her out of the corner of his eye before looking forward again, enjoying the sight of a few brightly colored butterflies dance over the surface of a small crystal clear pond a short distance away.

"That sounds fine. Was there any place in particular you wanted to go to?" Naruto asked in return, looking down at a small emerald green spider crawling across his hand with a black dot in the center of its back.

"How does smoked fish sound to you?" Kira asked, finally looking at Naruto as said person glanced up at the sky. The sun was already starting to disappear below the horizon. He was hungry, after all…

/_\

As Kira walked home later that evening, she found Naruto to be an enigma, a mystery that kept gnawing at the back of her mind like how a termite would eat away at wood in preparation for its colony. While gentle, she could feel an immense ocean of power rippling just beneath his skin, controlled and yet chaotic at the same time. While quiet, she could tell there was much he wanted to say, but wouldn't.

She sighed softly, remembering the tail she spotted and the four odd ridges running down his back, barely visible through the fabric of his trench coat. Then she remembered his strange black eyes and silvery white slit pupils, his sharp claws and his long fangs, the strange way he seemed to hiss nervously at one point when he started getting strange looks from others as they walked down the street.

'Kind of like me…' Kira thought sadly, thinking about how she and her clan were practically ostracized by the civilians and some shinobi because of the fact they work with insects of all kinds, some of which using their very bodies as hives and colonies, and think with logic instead of instinct. 'If only I knew more about you, Naruto-san…'

/_\

Silently climbing up a large tree just outside of the compound walls, Naruto slowly crept along a long branch that nearly reached the edge of the roof on the guest house's second floor. Tensing his muscles, he leapt from the branch and clung to the wall, crawling along it until he reached the window to his room. After climbing in and taking his boots off, Naruto tossed his new trench coat over the back of a couch he kept in his room in place of a bed before jumping up and grabbing the rafter he had installed in the room.

Crawling on top of it and lying down on his stomach, Naruto wrapped his tail around the wooden beam and, for the first time in years, he let himself relax. He had taken to sleeping high off the ground at the age of seven, not long after joining the Hive, when he kept getting stepped on by the once-larger Xenomorphs as they patrolled through the tunnels of the Hive.

It was odd, seeing as he hadn't slept like this since he took over Konoha all those years ago and yet here he was, practically glued to a rafter in his own home. His home. His home. His home. It still sounded foreign to him. He was still used to saying Hive, not home.

Shaking his head to clear away such thoughts, Naruto felt something in his pocket. Taking it out, he discovered it to be one of the paint pellets left over from his and Skittles last pranking spree just a week before the world was destroyed by his own mechanics. Squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to force back the tears, Naruto let the pellet fall from his hand.

He missed that mischievous little bastard…

Now, it was just him, hive-less, alone in a world full of people again. Just like it used to be. Sure, he had family now, but that didn't mean much to him when they weren't the ones that actually conceived him or raised him from a child. He'd try to accept them over time, but until then, he still couldn't fathom the idea of having a family…

Dispelling such thoughts from his head, Naruto rolled over onto his back as his tail remained coiled around the rafter beneath him. He had a week to prepare before he began his new job as a jounin sensei for not only his little sister, but two other genin of similar age.

What the hell was he thinking, asking to be a sensei? He didn't know how to deal with greenhorn genin fresh out of the Academy and teach them. Then it hit him. Maybe he didn't need to actually teach them anything, but really just guide them to the right path.

'Too few even know how to interpret the Long Hunt or the meaning of its name…' Naruto thought to himself as he slowly slunk from the rafter and crawled over to his desk, grabbing several thick journals and a pen. Staring down at the plain black leather cover of the journal, Naruto felt it needed something on it.

'The Long Hunt sounds perfect. Straight to the point and crystal clear.' Naruto mused, satisfied with his choice as he summoned a touch of chakra to the tip of his right index finger and carved the symbol for it into the cover before taking a little bit of silver pain the found earlier that day and applied it to the engraved characters on the cover.

'The Five Virtues of the Hunter…' Naruto thought as he opened the book and started writing down everything he could think of about how a Predator, a Hunter, behaves both in society and on a hunt…