Well, funny story about this.. well.. story. First off, I was up all night playing D&D with a few friends of mine. Yes, I'm a nerd, but you're reading my fic, you must be one yourself, even if you don't want to admit it. I got back in around 7:30 this morning and realized that I had to help repaint my church's parking lot. When I got home, I was physically and mentally exhausted, so I hopped in bed and promptly fell asleep. I think my muse took my dreams over, because I watched this entire chapter in my dream, knew it would fit, and promptly began to type it all up. Now onto the names of who is and isn't in the harem so far.

Sakura-not in. Sorry Sakura fans, but her adoration for our blond hero is going to simmer down into a family type of love instead of being lovers. Besides, in my story Sasgay may not be such an asshole.

Ayame-I just love how the girl is a clean slate. I can give her just the right personality. Definitely in.

Yugito-A strong, willful match for Naruto? Heh, he needs somebody who won't just melt into his arms. She's in.

Hinata-I would never ignore the most beautiful Naruto pairing ever. The two are meant for each other.

There are still a few slots open for Naruto characters, and I'm accepting Bleach characters into the harem as well. I will tell you this though, Orihime is for Ichigo alone!

Well, that was a long A/N. See you at the bottom for more. Say it Nenacu!

'sigh' "The author of this story does not own Naruto or Bleach. He does own me however, so please, do not steal me."

Good boy.


Chapter 3: An awakening of the Soul.

Naruto felt the blood run cold in his veins as his eyes locked onto the two ninja he had marked as Gaara's killers. Gone was the mercy and deep emotions they once held, replaced by a slitted, hard gaze, a look that sent a chill of fear down the spines of the two powerful ninja. His eyes contained something they had never seen before, a righteous golden flame that promised death.

"Everybody, stand back." Naruto's voice had dropped an octive in his rage. The pitch frightened even his friends who all took his advice by taking several leaps away. Too fast for most eyes to see, Naruto whipped a kunai at the figure sitting on the body of his dead 'brother'. He wasn't at all surprised when the blond man snatched the deadly blade out of the air. In fact, he had wanted it to happen. He poured his chakra into the heavy knuckles of his gloves while blurring through a set of one handed seals before vanishing completely.

The other two ninja couldn't react fast enough. As soon as the blond caught the curious three pronged kunai, he was thrown further into the cave by a vicious kick while the other seemed to shatter from the chakra enhanced punch. (A/N more like the Choji punch than the Sakura/Tsunade style.)

Naruto retrieved his kunai from the ground where it had dropped as the golden glow around his body diminished slightly. He lifted the body of his fallen friend onto his shoulder and turned to leav

e. He was too taken by his grief, however, to notice the large clay bird that tore Gaara's body from his grasp until it was too late. Riding on the back of the bird was the blond, clutching his side where several ribs had snapped from Naruto's previous assault.

"Sasori-sama, I'll leave the rest to you. Let me take care of the other jinchuuriki." To answer him, a boyish figure emerged from the shattered remains of what had been a puppet. "Greedy as always. Just don't keep me waiting Deidara"

Naruto turned to give chase to Deidara, almost without thought. Hoping that, if he could get his body, somehow Gaara would come back. He passed his team with a flash of speed that seemed almost impossible.

Kakashi, knowing that Naruto wasn't in full control of himself, gave chase. He was the only one with the speed to keep up. What he saw when he caught up was hard to believe. Instead of the red fox cloak that he had been warned about by Jiraiya, Naruto was encased in a thin layer of swirling blue and red chakra. His body seemed to be absorbing the chakra almost as fast as it was expelled, strengthening his muscles exponentially.

"Kit! Calm down! You've got to keep yourself in check." Naruto blinked and was standing in front of Kyuubi's cage. The seal on the bars was near completely torn off. "I know kyuubi. I don't know that I can handle this though. He was barely fazed by an attack that should have killed him outright." Kyuubi chuckled darkly, turning his gaze down onto Naruto. "Kit, I think it's time to finish our merger. Tear the rest of the seal off now and our very souls will merge and all of my limitless chakra will be yours. There will be changes to your body as well, but you'll learn those as you go." Naruto nodded, knowing that there were no ulterior motives behind this request, and ripped the last of the seal from the bars.

Kakashi's eyes widened as he saw the physical effect of the merge as kyuubi burst free from his cage, merging perfectly with Naruto's soul. The chakra surrounding Naruto twisted together suddenly, changing color to a burning gold.


In a dark room elsewhere, illuminated only by several glowing screens, a loud alarm broke the silence, sending several black clothed people into a busy frenzy of work, notifying their captain of the alarm. That white and black faced captain then grudgingly notified his own bald, long bearded superior, moaning about the loss of a good 'research subject'.

This man, in turn, notified two people of this alarm and the ramifications along with a mission for one of them. One of these men was a tall, charismatic spiky haired blond. He carried a katana at his hip that was all black save for the golden Konoha symbol that served as the hand guard. He wore a white hakama above the black uniform that had a rhombus with the kanji for 9 on the back. The other man had long white hair, tied back in a low ponytail. He wore the same garb as his friend save for the kanji for 14 between his shoulders.

Nenacu looked at his friend beside him with a grin that could have only been learned from Naruto himself. "Well Minato, it looks like your son is ready long before I thought." He turned to the bald man and saluted. "I'll have him here as soon as possible Genryuusa-Taicho. You have my word"


Naruto snapped his concentration back into focus, forcing his rage deep down to make use of his sharp mind. He turned to look at Kakashi who was gaping at him. "Kakashi-sensei, there will be time to explain later. For now, we've got an enemy to face. Do you have a plan?"

Kakashi shook himself free of his shock and nodded, pulling his hitai-ate away from his sharingan eye to reveal the tri-bladed eye of the mangekyo sharingan. "Yes, fall back and wait. I'm going to try to use my new sharingan."


Sakrua was kneeling on the ground, panting from the physical exhertion of the battle thus far. She had just knocked away several objects made from the heavy iron sand and destroyed the puppet with the help of Chiyo, who had been controlling Sakura's movements as if she were a puppet as well.

Sasori produced a large scroll and, upon opening it, released 100 puppets, connecting to all of them with chakra strings to bring them against the pair. Chiyo countered this by producing ten of her own puppets, releasing her control of Sakura.

As the puppets battled fiercely with Sakura in the middle of everything, destroying Sasori's puppets left and right with her powerful strikes, Chiyo finally found the opening she had been looking for. She summoned yet another puppet that looked like a large demon head and sent it into Sasori, trapping him against the wall of the cave. This caused Sasori's remaining puppets to fall to the ground, lifeless.

Thinking that the battle was over, the two dropped their guard, moving towards the trapped Sasori. They found something strange though, part of his body was missing. The cylindrical tube that held his heart was nowhere to be found.

They heard a rustling behind them and turned to see one of the puppets rising from the ground with the tube lodged into it's chest. Thinking quickly, Chiyo grabbed control of Sasori's original puppets, the two he made to look like his mother and father, and used their weapons to pierce the man's heart.

Sasori chuckled darkly to himself and looked up at Sakura. "Before this all started, you wanted to know about Orochimaru correct? I have one of my underlings spying on him. I was supposed to meet him at the Heaven and Earth bridge in ten days time. It looks like I'll be making him wait thought.. damn..." With those final words, the life left what was left of Suna's former puppet master and genius.


Kakashi was drawing chakra into his eye while concentrating on the flying figure above them, willing the fabric of space to rip open under his gaze. This was made harder by the logs set into the canyon they were chasing Deidara through breaking his line of sight and Deidara himself. He had been throwing bomb spiders down in an attempt to separate Kakashi. As a result, he could only catch Deidara's remaining arm in the rip, tearing it off at the elbow.

Naruto saw his chance and leaped from one of the logs, breaking it from the force of his jump, and drew his blade. He focused a vast amount of wind chakra into the edge of his blade and swung it through the air in a wide arc, sending a visible distortion though the air that cut through both the bird and the rider. He quickly summoned several kage bunshin to catch the head of the bird before it fell to the ground.

With Gaara's body recovered finally, Naruto turned to where he knew what was left of Deidara had landed. "Kakashi-sensei, stay back. I'd rather you not see what will happen to this piece of filth." His voice was menacing, yet clearly only meant for his enemies.

Kakashi only nodded and Naruto vanished and seconds later, tortured screams ripped through the forest from the crippled Akatsuki member. After several minutes of drawn out torture there was finally silence and Naruto returned with the ring his victim had worn. He tossed it to Kakashi who stored it in his kunai pouch. "That's the proof that he's dead. Someday all of them will suffer the same fate."

Team Gai caught up at this point. Neji had seen a bright chakra, but it had disappeared now. Where they had seen it, they found blood splattered across several trees in the area along with the mutilated, still bleeding corpse of Deidara. It looked as if he had been skinned alive and then thrown against the trees to break every last bone in his body. The group had trouble keeping their stomachs from turning and quickly passed the scene to find Naruto and Kakashi.

Sakura and Chiyo caught up to them a few minutes later to find Kakashi attempting to read his book while Naruto just leaned against a tree in complete silence. Team Gai was duscussing something, but all Sakura could hear of it was the word youth every few sentences. Naruto was in his mindscape, sitting beside Kyuubi's cage with the fox, now the size of a doberman, stretching and shaking his mane. "Kit, there was nothing we could do for him. You know that right?" "Yeah, I know.. But if I can't even protect one person, than what was the point of our training?" "The point? To make you strong enough to take out those Akatsuki bastards. You did that quite well too. We didn't get here in time because we hadn't gotten the information early enough."

Naruto nodded in understanding and flashed back to reality to see Sakura watching him with concern. He turned to her and flashed his trademark grin, though his eyes betrayed his emotions. "We got him back at least. I take it you two killed that other one?" Sakura nodded and turned her head to look at Gaara, only to be surprised at what she saw. Chiyo, the elder who no longer cared for the village, was attempting to heal Gaara.

"Chiyo-sama.. there's nothing we can do for him. He's dead..." Sakura moved closer and noticed something strange about her technique. Chiyo wasn't trying to heal Gaara, she was transferring her life into the boy. Naruto noticed this as well as the fact that she didn't have nearly enough chakra left to do it right. He knelt beside Gaara and placed his hands on top of hers, giving her all the energy she could ever need.

Finally, Gaara's eyes opened and Chiyo fell into the deep sleep of death. They had done it. They had retrieved Gaara, but at the loss of one of their own.

Naruto helped Gaara sit up as several ninja from Suna arrived, gathering around their Kazekage with pride. Gaara, who had nobody but his siblings, now had the love and respect of his entire village. Naruto grinned and walked off, reaching behind his back for the small leather bag he had tied there. He dropped the rings of the two recently deceased Akatsuki in with two others. "Looks like I saved another one of our 'family' Yugito. I wonder how you're doing lately?"

Flashback no Jutsu!

It was during his training with Kyuubi that he met another blond jinchuuriki. He could tell because of the suffering he could see in her eyes that nearly mirrored his own. Wanting to get closer, possibly help somebody he could relate to, he had followed her. When he had found that she was running from the Akatsuki, he was furious.

It had taken some doing, but he finally gained her trust through battle with the organization and, with her help, managed to take the two of them out. One by severing his chakra system with his rasenshurken, and the other by lopping his head off and burying it several miles seperate from his body.

The two had travelled together for about a month afterwards and finally parted with a vow. They would track down Akatsuki and kill every one of them. They would keep their rings as proof. All with the goal of saving their family as she said it. Their destinies were so intertwined that they may as well be family.

Flashback no Jutsu Kai!

Naruto smiled to tying the pouch behind his back again before rejoining the group on their way back home. He supported Gaara with Kankuro on the way back, seeing as he was still stiff from his death. When they arrived, they saw the rest of the village standing on the lookout cliffs, cheering as their leader came back alive.

A day later, the group from Konoha left for home, Gai carrying Kakashi on his back comically while the rest of the group loaded their bags on Lee who, for whatever reason, wanted to race Gai back to the gates.

Back at the Hokage tower, the group had just finished making their report. Tsunade had immediately told Naruto and Sakura that they would be going on a mission to the Heaven and Earth bridge to get information on Orochimaru and possibly find Sauske. "But, you'll have three new members going with you. Two of my choosing and one of his." Tsunade glared angrily at the man who had just entered the room. He wore an odd robe that covered his entire body and his head was wrapped in bandages that covered one of his eyes. The man's name was Danzo.

"So who are the new three?" Sakura turned to look around the room as if they would just pop out.

"Well, two of them aren't around right now, but the third should be a fimilliar face to you, Naruto." Tsunade wore a small smirk at this and a man with long white hair came into the room, putting his hand on Naruto's shoulder.

"What's up kid? Looks like I'm going on this mission with you. I needed to take you for training anyway, so this will work out just fine." Nenacu chuckled, watching Naruto's face turn from surprise to excitement.

"More training from you sensei? I've got to say, I'm looking forward to it." Naruto flashed his grin to Nenacu who smiled, walking out of the room. "Just be sure you don't show up late tomorrow. Until then, it looks like you've got the day off." With a wave, Nenacu disappeared around the corner of the hallway outside of Tsunade's room.


Well, that's it for this chapter. A little shorter than I wanted, but this was a good place to stop. I'm none to good at recreating fight scenes either, so look for those to get better when I can have free rein over them. Expect the chapters to get longer from here. I'm sure you noticed earlier, but now I'm really going to start taking liberties with the story line. Also, keep in mind that this is after the seireitei invasion arc in Bleach. And yes, I did indeed add a new squad, and yes, Nenacu is the captain of said squad. You'll find out what they specialize in in the next chapter. Also, Naruto's day off is in the next chapter, so expect a wee bit of fluff. Maybe more than a wee bit, but it's time to get into the harem, starting off with the lovely Hyuuga. Until then my friends, R&R. Your reviews, they feed me.