Falling Down
Part V
Kushina winced at the sight of the haunter and Naruto's inevitable reaction. Of all the pokémon that could've been inside the great-ball, it just had to be a ghost-type. She certainly hadn't expected to see one; Naruto had a moderate phobia of ghosts. So how did a haunter come to be in his possession?
The ghost flinched at Naruto's almost girlish scream, but was too absorbed in cringing at the bright sunlight to do anything else. Ghost types were naturally nocturnal; it had probably never been exposed to the sun, let alone the effects of a sunny day. Kushina sighed and went over to hug her son and keep him from spiraling into a panic attack.
When he'd been small, she'd made the mistake of letting him watch some horror movies on TV. Even though they had been edited for language and the more graphic bits of violence, they were still very frightening. And most of those movies had involved ghost pokémon preying on humans. No matter how many times she assured him that the ghosts in the movies were just trained actors, and that the blood wasn't real, he was still terrified of them and it had taken a ban on ghost-movies and several months to get him sleeping in his own bed by himself.
Naruto's umbreon immediately put itself between the haunter and its master to protect him. The rest of her son's pokémon closed ranks around him to defend him from the ghost that frightened him. Well, except for the vulpix, who just seemed rather baffled by what was going on.
"Where did you get that?" Sasuke asked, eying the ghost warily.
"Eep!" Sakura squeaked, hiding behind her Uchiha crush and clinging tightly to her bloomed cherrim.
"Make it go away!" Naruto whimpered, clinging on to her arm with a death grip. "It's going to eat my soul!"
"No, it's not going to eat your soul," Kushina said as patiently as she could. "Look at it, it can barely see in the daylight. It won't hurt you."
"It's going to possess me!" Naruto panicked. "Make it leave!"
"Naruto…"
Kushina bit her lip in concentration as she tried to figure out how a ghost pokémon could wind up in one of her son's pokéballs. With his memory still thoroughly blank between his fall and waking up in the hospital, she doubted that he could answer that question. And that left only one person who might know how this happened…
…Crap.
"Alright," she muttered and pulled a pokéball from her belt to release its contents. "Hoshi!"
The large purple starfish appeared in a flash of light and made a strange cooing sound.
"Hoshi, I want you to find me Sunshine," she instructed the psychic starfish. "Lure him with your illuminate ability, chase him with your swift, do whatever you have to, to get him here. Go!"
Hoshi made its strange cry and lifted off the ground with its psychic powers and hovered for a moment. Its faceted gem flashed in an eerie senseless pattern. And then it spun off into the trees in a seemingly random direction without any warning.
"…'Sunshine'?" the Uchiha boy muttered in the silence.
"Who would name their kid that?" the Haruno girl wondered.
Kushina ignored the stupid questions and focused on trying to calm her son down.
"Naruto." She grabbed her face with both hands and forced the boy to look at her instead of staring at the source of his fear. "Relax. That haunter isn't going to do anything to you. It's the middle of the day and ghost pokémon don't like being out in the sun. No one is going to let it touch you. And besides, Shadow is an umbreon now; he can protect you with his dark-type powers. Okay?"
Naruto trembled. "Y-you sure?"
"I'm sure," she said with a firm nod. "Everything's fine. Just relax."
Her son slowly turned to peer at the ghost from the corner of his eye. The haunter had sunk down to only a few inches off the ground and was futilely shading its eyes from the power of sunny day, squinting comically. He shuddered and looked away from it.
"Why do I have that thing?" he asked, still shivering. "I hate ghosts—I'd never catch one!"
"That is what I hope to find out when Hoshi gets back from its errand…"
Minato stared blankly off into space as Kirin walked the winding trails south of Myouboku. There was no way that his rapidash could run as much as he needed her to. If he tried to race her until he finally felt calm, she would've keeled over and died. And there was really no sense in punishing his pokémon for something that they hadn't had anything to do with.
What the hell was she thinking? That if she ignored things, that her problems would just resolve themselves? Or was she thinking at all?
The tangled knot in his chest tightened and he wrung the loose reins in his hands. He wanted to hug her. He wanted to hit her. He never wanted her to leave. He never wanted to see her again. He felt conflicted and it left him almost sick.
Kushina…
Kirin reared suddenly with a cry and Minato nearly tumbled to the ground. "Whoa! Whoa girl! What's wrong?"
The rapidash settled down and Minato found a starmie floating in the middle of the trail, its central gem glowing with an attractive light.
"…Hoshi?"
The starmie's gem pulsed twice.
Minato scowled. "She sent you to fetch me, didn't she?"
Another two light pulses.
"Well…that's too bad. I'm not interested."
Hoshi's crystal went dark for a moment, and then the gem glowed white and sprayed glowing stars at the trail, forcing Kirin to leap backwards.
"Damn it!" Minato swore. "Alright! Enough! I'll come!"
The swift attack immediately cut off and the starmie went back to using its illuminate ability on them, drifting off the trail and calling eerily to them.
"Great," Minato muttered sourly and urged Kirin to follow with a twitch of the reins. "She had better have a really good reason for this…"
The starmie led them on a winding path through the trees and up the slope back towards town. Just before reaching the fringes, the starfish turned and traveled around the edge to the east. The little game of follow-the-starmie ended in the high meadow that he used to hang out in a lot as child and read his adventure books.
The first time that Kushina had followed him home to Myouboku, he'd shown it to her before he'd even given her a tour of the town.
But she wasn't alone in the meadow. The boy—Naruto—was with her. And two other children—a boy and girl—that he didn't recognize. And several groups of pokémon as well.
Minato pulled Kirin up short at the edge of the trees as a surge of nerves hit him.
He'd only encountered Naruto twice before. The first time the boy had been hurt and unconscious and he'd had no idea of the boy's significance. The second time he'd slipped into his hospital room after-hours and watched the kid sleep for a while as he tried to come to grips with what he'd learned. Naruto had briefly woken up then, but with his concussion it wasn't likely that he remembered anything. So what exactly would Minato find when he approached?
…I don't know anything about him. And he doesn't know anything about me. He might as well just be another young fan.
Shaking his head, he slipped from Kirin's back and headed over to the cluster of humans and pokémon with his rapidash following after him.
The mystery girl looked vaguely interesting. She had short pink hair, which made him wonder if she was any relation to some of the pink-haired nurses that he tended to see in pokémon centers all over. The girl wore dark bike shorts under a red dress with white rings on it and a vague Chinese flavor to it.
The mystery boy looked to be one of the Uchiha. The red and white uchiwa fan stitched on the back of his blue jacket was a dead giveaway to that. The sullen, arrogant aura that seemed to cling to him only furthered Minato's suspicions of him.
Kushina looked nice…but he pretty much always thought that she looked nice. She was a great deal more put together than she had when she first turned up on his doorstep several days earlier. Her long red hair was done up in a braid with only the shorter locks that framed her face loose. She dressed more femininely than she had when they'd first met, but she still stuck with jeans and sported a leather jacket.
And Naruto…was wearing his old clothes. Minato had dug some of his old clothing out of the attic where his uncle had stashed them to replace the boy's ruined outfit, but he hadn't expected to see Naruto in them quite so soon. It only heightened their close physical resemblance.
Then he noted the pokémon and how they were arranged in the meadow. The two other children's creatures didn't interest him nearly as much as Naruto's did. He recognized the vulpix, pikachu, croagunk, and umbreon from before. The trapinch and gyarados (of course he had a gyarados) were new to him. And the haunter was several yards away, cowering under the brightness of what he suspected to be sunny day.
Strange, he frowned as he approached from behind. The way his pokémon are standing…it's like they're defending him against the haunter. But the haunter isn't being aggressive at all. And…why does he seem so afraid?
…Well, here goes nothing.
"Alright," he sighed when he was directly behind her. "What is it that you want?"
She flinched at his voice and muttered: "Sneaky bastard." Hoshi belatedly drifted through her line of vision. "Thanks for warning me…" Kushina stiffened up and turned around to face him, her jaw clenched, and pointed behind her at the haunter. "Could you explain that?"
Minato scratched at the back of his head while he gathered his thoughts. "Well…"
"Namikaze-sama?" the girl squeaked, her voice barely audible.
"…You call him 'Sunshine'?!" the dark-haired boy sputtered.
"I'd ask you to stop calling me that," Minato sighed wearily. "But I don't think that you can."
Her blue-green eyes flashed and she pointed again towards the haunter. "Explain…or I'll go back to 'Pretty Boy'…or 'Girly'."
"What needs to be explained, exactly?" he asked tensely.
"Why does Naruto have that?" she demanded.
Minato eyed the haunter, which was still being quite docile. "…Is there something wrong with having a haunter?"
She growled and closed the two foot gap between them. "He's terrified of ghost-types!" she hissed into his ear angrily. "He doesn't want one! So why does he have one?"
His irritation with her quickly dissolved into intense awkward embarrassment. "…Oh."
While catching the haunter hadn't been planned, it should've been a good thing. When the hurt boy turned out to be…his son…catching the haunter for him was like a gift. It wasn't the best way to make up for a lifetime of missed birthdays, but it was certainly something. But finding out that Naruto was frightened of ghosts pretty much made his spontaneous gesture backfire.
Minato sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. "Whoops."
"Eh?" Kushina arched a red eyebrow. "You got that thing for him?"
"Accidentally," he muttered.
"…How can you capture a pokémon on accident?!"
"Um…" Minato jammed his hands in his pockets and stared uncomfortably at the grass.
The sunny day finally waned, making the noon sky seem oddly dark despite the fact that there was barely a cloud in the sky.
Kushina crossed her arms over his chest and started tapping her foot. "Well?"
Gathering his nerve, he related the scene that he had encountered that night. He told her what the ghosts had been doing. And he described the spur-of-the-moment capture.
She listened without interruption, her face unreadable…which made him very uneasy.
"Naruto almost got eaten by ghosts?!" the pink-haired girl yelped, abruptly reminding Minato that there was an audience made up of more than pokémon.
"…Let me get this straight," Kushina said slowly. "You didn't just catch him a haunter, you caught him a human-aggressive one?!"
Minato flinched at her sharp tone. "It's a bad idea to release pokémon like that back into the wild. If Naruto wasn't so afraid of them, it wouldn't be as much of a problem. But since he is, I'll just arrange to trade with him."
"Alright," she sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of her nose. "That…that could work. Naruto what do you… Naruto?"
Glancing around the meadow, Minato frowned at not seeing the blonde boy. He'd caught glimpses of the kid from the corners of his eyes as he'd talked. He'd seen the wide-eyed awe and felt at a loss as how to respond to it. He dealt with starry-eyed fans all the time, but his own son…who didn't know who his father was? Unsure of how to deal with that, he ignored the boy until he could determine a good way to approach him.
But at some point during his conversation with Kushina, Naruto had slipped away. Not even his pokémon had noticed his departure and now they were milling around in disarray. It was like the kid was part ninja.
"Where'd he go?" the dark-haired boy wondered.
"The haunter," the girl said. "…It's gone."
Sure enough, now that it wasn't blinded by the light of sunny day, the poisonous ghost had vanished.
"Hoshi!" Kushina called out. "Find Naru-chan! Now!"
Naruto couldn't really run; it hurt his ribs. So he just walked away as quickly as he could. He didn't stop until he found a large flat rock out in the woods where he sat down and rested.
Shadow had evolved…but he'd missed it. Watching a pokémon evolve was a special event. And he'd been looking forward to watching his eevee change form, no matter which one it was. Shadow had evolved somehow, but he had no idea when or how.
He had a haunter now. A ghost pokémon had been only feet away from him, not behind a TV screen. It was terrifying. And it was embarrassing. Sasuke and Sakura had seen how afraid he was—how much of a baby he still was. And Minato Namikaze…
Minato-sama, the coolest pokémon trainer, had been even closer to him than the haunter. He'd seen the League Champion of Hi no Kuni in the flesh. And that man had seen him being a huge chicken. Naruto was sure that he looked like the biggest loser the famous trainer had ever seen.
And his mother, she'd spoken to Minato-sama as if she knew him. She wasn't afraid of him (when was she ever afraid of anything?) or in awe of him. She'd yelled at him and threatened to label him with embarrassing nicknames. Hoshi had known him too, to have fetched him. And Minato-sama seemed to know her very well…
It was all like some dream-nightmare hybrid. It didn't feel real, and yet he knew he was awake and he'd watched everything unfold before his own eyes. So all of it had to be real.
When Minato-sama had admitted to getting the haunter in Naruto's great-ball, the boy just had to leave and try to work everything out before some other crazy revelation made his head spin even more.
Nothing makes sense anymore…
There was a tinkling sound, and then Demon hopped up onto the rock in front of him.
"What do you want?" Naruto muttered dully.
The vulpix simply stared up at him curiously.
"Why did you follow me, huh? You never care what I do."
The little fire fox didn't answer—he couldn't—he just kept staring.
And then eerie laughter drifted through the dense trees.
The hairs on the back of Naruto's neck stood on end as his blue eyes rapidly darted around at the shadowy and suddenly threatening forest. This always happened in the movies. The ghost would appear from the shadows or from thin air. It would eat the human, drink their blood; or it would possess them and make them kill their friends and family while they were helpless to stop it. The fear made him cold, made him sweat, made it hard to breathe.
The haunter drifted out of a solid tree trunk, its floating hands reaching towards him and tongue lolling out of its mouth hungrily.
Naruto froze, terrified but unable to move as the ghost floated closer and closer.
The vulpix snarled and spat an eerily bluish fire-orb with a hazy tail at the ghost. The will-o-wisp wobbled in an unpredictable zigzag pattern before it struck the haunter on the hand. The ghost pokémon shrieked in pain as its ethereal body was burned and its eyes got all teary as the burn continued to cause it pain.
Seeing the ghost hurt broke the paralyzing spell that trapped Naruto. In the movies, the ghosts only were hurt by sunlight, if they could be hurt at all. Ghosts weren't afraid of anything and they loved being terrifying and cruel. They didn't cry when they were burned.
"H-hey," Naruto squeaked.
The haunter paused in its whimpers and sniffles to glance at him and Demon warily.
"Y-you sh-shouldn't scare people like that," Naruto gulped. "It's not nice."
It was stupid to be afraid of ghost pokémon. They were just like any other monster that could be captured and tamed. He was a pokémon trainer now, and too big to still be such a baby. And besides, Minato-sama had had a hand in this haunter's capture. That made it special, and he shouldn't be afraid of it.
"I…I think I'll c-call you Spooky…because…you know…you're a spooky ghost," Naruto babbled, rubbing his sweaty palms on his pant legs.
The ghost narrowed its eyes at him and cradled its injured hand close to its body.
"I…I don't have m-my bag…or I'd give you s-something for your burn." He glanced down at Demon. "Hey, could you find a rawst berry?"
Demon snorted at him.
"Well, it was a thought. It w-would be a nice thing to do, r-right? Because we're all f-friends here," he said with a weak grin. "Right?"
The haunter—Spooky—just kept staring at him like it couldn't believe what he was saying.
"Yeah, we'll be good friends!" Naruto decided, doing his best to inject as much enthusiasm as he could into his voice. "…Someday."
Spooky frowned and slowly drifted closer again.
Hoshi appeared then, placing itself between Naruto and the ghost. Bare seconds later, Typhoon lunged through the foliage, curling his serpentine body around Naruto in a defensive posture, his intimidate making Spooky pull back with a nervous whine. Shadow arrived next, bursting from the shadows with Sandy riding on his back (there was just no way that the trapinch could run over a good stretch of distance with such stubby legs). Bolt and Gamakichi rounded out his team as they skidded onto the scene. All his pokémon circled in around the haunter, making the burned ghost hiss out of nervousness.
"Naruto!" his mother called as she ran up to him with Uzu-chan at her heels. "Naruto! Are you okay?"
The boy blinked, surprised. "Yeah, I'm okay."
She ran up to him and started frantically checking him over. "Are you sure? It didn't get too close to you, did it?"
"I'm okay," Naruto repeated. Sure he was kind of sweaty and shaky, but he wasn't hurt. "Mom, I'm fine." He turned to his pokémon. "You guys don't have to do that; I'm okay."
"Really?" Sasuke asked as he and his charmeleon caught up. "You seemed pretty scared earlier."
"Shut up," Naruto muttered with a pout.
"You guys…run too fast!" Sakura panted as she stumbled into view, still holding her cherrim, which had faded back into its un-bloomed state with the sunny day over.
"Are you sure you're okay, Naru-chan?" his mother asked worriedly.
"Yeah, Mom—don't call me that!" Naruto shrugged off her hands and tugged the musty-smelling white hoodie on tighter. "I'm not a baby anymore."
"Are you sure?" Sasuke jabbed.
"Teme!" Naruto growled.
The haunter suddenly materialized behind the Uchiha and poked the boy with its un-burned hand. Sasuke let out an undignified squawk and ducked away from the ghost, nearly stepping on his charmeleon's tail in the process. Naruto broke out in a fit of (slightly hysterical) giggles.
Heh, who's the baby now?!
The ghost seemed pleased with Sasuke's reaction, but winced in pain from its burn. Naruto managed to get his giggles under control and took his new (lame) bag from his mother's shoulder. As he was trying to get to where he stored his berries to find a rawst berry, Spooky got curious and drew closer, making Naruto's hands tremble and all his other pokémon grow defensive.
"I-I'm o-okay," he squeaked. The air…it feels cold… "I just-I need—"
A hand offered him a rawst berry and he took it, giving up on trying to grip the zipper. Swallowing hard, he held the blue strawberry-like bit of fruit towards the ghost. Spooky extended a hand, snatched the berry, and devoured it in one gulp. The purple creature marveled as the pain of its burn eased, and the wound itself faded.
"There." Naruto let out a shaky sigh. "All better…"
"Not bad," a man's voice said. "Not everyone is so willing to face what frightens them, Naruto."
The blonde boy turned around to see who was speaking…and nearly had a heart attack.
Minato-sama had come to find him, too. Even though he was wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt instead of his iconic white buttoned shirt with red flames, there was no mistaking him. He looked super awesome with his magnificent rapidash standing by his side.
Ah, when did he get behind me? What is he—a ninja?!
And then something hit him.
…He knows my name?