Place to Try

by SpinLord

To forget is to let go of one's past. When Uzumaki Naruto makes up his mind, the path he chooses leads him to the Afterlife; a purgatorial realm created to appease those with regrets in their lives. Sounds nice, doesn't it? It would've, if only there isn't a group of people waging a rebellion against God. [New Chapter] series, 'Amnesia route' {Currently being rewritten}

2. Chapter 1: Accidental First Contact

Daaaamn the idea just keeps on flowing! I don't know why, but I can't keep my mind off this fic; not even once! It seems that the plot bunnies have really done a good number on my train of thought.

Oh, great, now I'm getting too eager to do this.

Well, without further ado, let's start with the disclaimer! Who's on today's list, I wonder? (grabs a long piece of paper and reads it) AHAH! It seems luck's on my side! Now, Hinata, get your ass over here!

Hinata: E-Eh? H-Hai, I'm c-coming…

Me: …er, Hinata, I didn't call for you.

Hinata: Eh? B-But you clearly said my name…d-didn't you?

Me: Oh, come on Hinata, who in their right and sane mind would call out to you like that? I mean, seriously, a princess such as you deserves a more elegant calling. Like, for instance, "Hinata-ojousama, may I request for your presence in this time and place?"

Hinata: O-Oh…you don't have to call me like t-that. But if it's not m-me that you called for, than who e-exactly?

Me: There's only one person that I would call out to in such a bastardized manner. And that is…the other Hinata.

Hinata: Eh?

Me: You swine…how dare you trick pretty little Hinata into this misunderstanding? I don't care if that's your surname, you scrawny-ass. It's still not right to trick the maiden of the pure heart! Now come here, because you're reading the disclaimer RIGHT NOW! Ninpou: Kuchiyose no Jutsu, Hinata Hideki!

Hideki: (appears in a puff of smoke) OOF! Oh, uh, heheh, I guess you found me…?

Me: Shut up and read the disclaimer, pretty boy. You've caused enough trouble for having the same name as Hinata, even though it's just your surname. Now, before you read that thing, apologize to her!

Hideki: EH?! But it's not my fault that my name's like this!

Me: Like hell I care! Now read the disclaimer and repent, or else!

Hideki: All right, all right. Sheesh, so much trouble for reading something like this…

Disclaimer: ahem, uh, SpinLord doesn't own me, Hinata-chan, or any characters from the Naruto and Angel Beats franchises. Unless you want to be considered the local psycho, you'll do well to understand this. Oh, and, uh, sorry for the trouble, Hinata-chan!

Hinata: Eh? Ah, um, no, i-it's really all right.

Me: …well, that went better than I thought. You got lucky this time, Hideki.

Also, note for readers. If any of you are wondering why I'm referring to the blue-haired idiot here as Hideki rather than Hinata as he was often referred to in the anime series, it's because I want to avoid misunderstandings such as the one I had earlier. I mean, come on! How could you compare Hyuuga Hinata with Hinata Hideki? It's like comparing a cup of strawberry sundae to a bowl of vinegar. Thus, I'll refer to him as Hideki throughout the story; even though other characters may call him "Hinata" regardless of what I just said -_-

"normal speech"
'thoughts'
"inhuman/in-mind entity talking"
'inhuman/in-mind entity thinking'
"words spoken in English" (mainly TK's speaking)

Extra Note: THANK GOD! I've finally found out the way to make formal line breaks (horizontal lines which I haven't realized were put in the Document Editor application of the Doc Manager) I've replaced it for this chapter, and will do keep doing it for future chaps. Probably going to replace the "xoxoxo" line breaks in the previous chapter, too. I'm keeping the "-xo-" line breaks, though.

-xo-

Soundtrack listing: Aoi Eir – Innocence; Toshiro Masuda – Keisei Gyakuten (Battle Theme)

-Chapter 1-

Accidental First Contact

A blurring sight, the sudden lost of balance, the sudden pull of gravity, and of course the inexplicable pain.

On several occasions, Naruto could've fathom the pain and, in turn, adjust himself to the other handicaps. At the moment, however, his body refused to comply and even entered the state of unconsciousness. The pain was gone, but he still couldn't control his body to get rid of the other problems. Worse, even though his body was temporarily shut down, his mind wasn't. His mind was currently running at hyper-drive, trying to comprehend what was going on. But no matter how strong his will was, no matter how hard he focused, he didn't understand any of the things happening to him. Instead of succeeding in overriding his body, he started to hear voices in his head.

"Brat! Oi, Naruto, can you hear me?"

Ah…that familiar voice again. 'Kurama?' Naruto thought to himself, 'How come I can hear you in my head again? Wait…I can't speak. What the hell?'

"You're unconscious, brat. At least your real body is; your mind is still awake, that's why we can talk like this." Kurama explained, "Now get your mind to wake up. We need to talk."

The fox didn't need to explain how Naruto had to do a thing such as waking his mind, but not his body. The blond had done it countless times before when he was still in his world. Focusing on his mind, Naruto—in his mental form—slowly opened his eyes, letting them adjust to what little lighting he would receive. When he opened them completely, his skin registered the cold feeling of water. He jerked awake with goose bumps of surprise rising on the back of his neck, making a splashing sound as his hands slammed down to the surface of the water. That settled it; he was in his mindscape.

"What? This place again?" he said as his eyes took notice of his surroundings, "I thought we're already over this."

"Apparently we're not." Kurama's voice boomed throughout the area. Naruto tilted his head upwards, trying to search for Kurama. Then, out of the shadows, he caught a glimpse of a pair of big red eyes with slits in the middle of them. "Hm…so you're back in your fox form, huh? It's still cool and all, but I think I favor your human form over your fox one."

Kurama snorted arrogantly, "Please. Even if I cared about your opinion in the matter, I wouldn't have wanted to turn back to my pitiful form as a human." He spited rudely. Confused by Kurama's response, Naruto stared up at the giant fox with questioning squinted eyes and flat lips, "…hm. I think all of your previous niceties and the 'I don't hate humans' attitude disappeared along with your human form. Tch, and just when I thought you'd really act human for once…"

"Changes of myself aside, brat," Kurama interjected, paying no attention to Naruto's comment, "do you remember what happened to you before you blacked out?"

"Eh? Hrm…" As he took on a thinking pose—he folded his arms and pouted his lips upwards—his mind tried hard to remember what exactly happened. He remembered Frederica and her timeless realm; that much he remembered. How he ended up back in the sewers that was his mindscape was still a mystery to him. "I don't really remember that much. All I remember is Rika-chan showing us a new world, and went on an agonizingly long explanation about it. But, other than that, it's null and void for me."

Kurama stared at the blond, silently taking in the information he gave. Moments later, the nine-tailed fox sighed, "Is that so? Darn it. I should've known that the resealing process should take away some of your memories. Thank goodness it's not that much either."

"What are you talking about, furball?" Naruto asked aloud, demanding an answer. When all the answer Kurama gave was a blank stare, the blond Jinchûriki gasped when the realization hit him hard on the head. "Wait… Resealing process? So, in other words, you're sealed inside me again?"

"Glad to know that your brain still works as well as any normal human being."

"Ah, well, I take pride in my intellect." Naruto said, shrugging his shoulders, "I was wondering why you end up behind bars again; bars that I distinctly remembered being ravaged just some time ago. I guess that explains it." Out of mild curiosity, Naruto zipped his jacket down and held up his t-shirt to expose his abdomen. He frowned in confusion as he saw the familiar array of seals painted where it was, "Hakke Fuuin…someone placed the same seal that Dad on me. I guess that explains why you're here again, but…"

Naruto hesitated. Noticing his host's weird behavior, Kurama raised a questioning eyebrow and, letting his curiosity take over him, he asked, "Something wrong, brat?"

"N-Nah, it's nothing." Naruto answered, silently cursing for the stutter in his speech. He was confused; of the fact that Kurama was once again inside him, but even more so of the apparent question of who actually did it. "By the way, do you know who repaired the seal? I was sure that no one was around that came from our world when we were in Frederica's realm, so I'm not sure who did it." Naruto lightly pinched his jaw between his thumb and index finger in effort to think, "Then again, it might be you since you still had a mountain equality of chakra, even in your human form. Did you…?"

"As much as I'm both flattered and strangely amused that you would think that I repaired your seal, I didn't do it." Kurama answered; a strange look on his face which was a mixture of mild interest and amusement, "I have not learned of the many hand seals that you humans learned, which is needed if one intends to create such a complex seal as the Hakke Fuuin. That being said, even if I have the sufficient amount of chakra to do it, I do not understand the method needed to do it."

Naruto's eyes were squinted again; it was clear that he was trying to keep up with Kurama's long and hearty explanation, but due to his short-term attention span (which nearly made him an ADHD patient) he had successfully tuned out several bits of information Kurama gave him. "O…kay. So, if it wasn't you, then who did it?" he asked with a strained face.

"Who do you think?" Kurama asked back, rolling his eyes, "Try to think logically. Out of the three people present in Frederica's realm, one was a Bijuu trapped in human form, the other was a Jinchûriki with no chakra at all, and the last one was a saint with inexplicable powers. From there on, I think you can do the math."

For a while, Naruto seemed lost. In all honesty, his lost expression was so priceless Kurama wished he had a camera. After a while, Naruto looked like he finally caught on to what Kurama said to him, and then Kurama was having a hard time deciding whether his deer-in-the-headlights look was more priceless than his previous one or not.

"Y-You don't mean… It was Rika-chan's doing?!" He let out in disbelief.

"Jackpot," Kurama said, grinning widely, "It seems she hid a lot of things from us; her ability to learn what she had seen in countless worlds included."

"B-But that…that sounds…!"

"Impossible?" Kurama suggested. He shrugged his shoulders before Naruto had the chance to answer, "That was the first thing that I thought, too. But we ARE talking about the Saint of Time and Space; impossible things are bound to happen."

"…you are being suspiciously easy-going about this." Naruto said as a sweat-drop appeared on the back of his head.

"We Bijuu are gifted with minds capable of turning ourselves into the most insane beings or the most logical existence by our whim. Right now, I'm sure I'm crazy enough to accept just anything." Kurama stated with a blank face.

"Uh huh…I'll pretend that I didn't hear the 'you-being-crazy' part." It was bad enough that the most illogical thing just happened to Naruto, but to have a gigantic, demonic (and perhaps bordering lunatic) fox inside him was more than a little disconcerting given his current situation. If he were to list the strange things that had happened to him, then he could already picture an elongated shopping list.

Strange thing number one: His world was destroyed, yet he found out that it was only a parallel world that was fated to be ended anyway.

Strange thing number two: He met a saint, who was surprisingly just a little girl! Well, okay, a little girl that could paralyze him with a glare, but that's beside the point.

Strange thing number three: He was apparently one of the few people that were granted a second chance to live again, reincarnated. The fact that he could reincarnate was something he classified as sub-strange thing number three.

Strange thing number four: He was given an unexpected choice. When he chose to forget about his past life, he didn't have the chance to ask what kind of world he would be sent to. The only piece of information Rika-chan gave him was that it was technologically more advanced than his, whatever that means. Go figure; he couldn't even picture the worst case scenario.

And the last one, strange thing number five: Kurama, once a Bijuu sealed in him and separated from him in death, was once again inside him sealed by the same seal that the Fourth Hokage (his father) used; courtesy of one Frederica Bernkastel.

God, and just when he thought he'd seen enough mind-blowing occurrences in his life.

Naruto sighed. He wasn't even awake yet, and he was already feeling the headache from thinking too much. "Huh…wild things are happening to me without me asking for it. I guess I can't use the term impossible anymore now." He said, giving up on understanding the whole matter. "Hey, now that I think about it, that means we're Jinchûriki and Bijuu again, huh?"

"That's right." Kurama said, his grin turning into a cocky smirk as he chuckled, "Heh, I never thought I'd say this, but… Aaah, it's good to be back."

"Back in that cage, you mean?" Naruto asked with a raised eyebrow, "Last time I checked you never liked it. Wasn't that why we agreed to let you out every once in a while ever since I could open the seal?"

"Well, yes, this place gets insufficient for me more often than not. But a fox could never be that far from his den; no matter what the circumstances are." Kurama answered, coming up with a metaphor that was obviously improvised. Naruto noticed that fact, and he rolled his eyes in annoyance, "So my stomach is your den now? Oh, sure, that works. I have no qualms on the possession rights, which by the way doesn't sound so wrong at all." He said, going full throttle with his sarcasm.

"Quit with the complaints, brat. You know you miss my presence here."

'Well, it's not that I'm gonna argue with that…' The thought passed Naruto's mind, all the while making Naruto regret how right Kurama was. Oh, the embarrassment of having to admit that to Kurama! Oh, SHAME! Shaking his head, Naruto immediately picked a topic that completely derived from the matter at hand; like, whether or not Kurama knew about what was happening outside his mind. "Hey, Kurama, do you know what's happening outside? I can't wake up now, for some kind of reason. Maybe it's because of my chakra or whatever…"

"Hm… Nice question." Kurama said in the manner that made Naruto suspicious of what he actually meant. The fox couldn't really have a tally-ho on his real intention for changing their topic…could he? Kurama, not noticing that the blond had begun to sweat a little, continued, "I know about that; in fact, I can see it for myself right now. But…there's not really much to see." As he said that, the fox closed his eyes and entered what Naruto thought to be a meditative state. In actuality, though, it wasn't that far from his expectation. Only, rather than meditation, Kurama was actually trying to force-open Naruto's eyes from his mind.

It worked. Outside of Naruto's mind, his body began to react to Kurama's control. Not a moment later, the unconscious blonde's eyes opened to reveal a pair of red eyes with slits as their pupil. The eyes themselves looked frighteningly dead even though it was moving round to see. The sight that Kurama saw from Naruto's eyes…well, like he said before, there wasn't really much to see. "It's dark out. Judging by the looks of it, I don't think we've even arrived at the world Frederica sent us to. We're probably still in some kind of dimensional tunnel. At least, it looks like it."

"Heeeh…I want to see what it's like, too!" Naruto whined.

"Then wake the hell up, idiot. It's not like I'm holding you back from taking a look for yourself."

"I would have if I know how…" Naruto grumbled, an unhappy pout forming on his face, "Freaking chakra depletion bites me in the ass at the inappropriate time."

Kurama shrugged as he tuned out Naruto's rant. He had already come up with a hypothesis for Naruto's condition; to be precise, why he actually felt chakra-depleted. The only explanation he came up with was the fact that dead people lacked chakra. In theory, since Naruto was dead, both his physical and spiritual body shouldn't have chakra inside them.

It was a clear understanding that chakra is the amalgam of physical and spiritual energy. When someone dies, their body and soul are merely separated. Thus, when someone dies, the chakra that that person built up crumbles and becomes nonexistent because the two ingredients needed to make it is separated.

Now, while that was a troublesome condition, it wasn't what kept Naruto unconscious. Naruto was unconscious because his body—in this case, his spiritual body (because he's dead, after all)—was readjusting to Kurama once again after having separated for quite some time. They were lucky that all Naruto was having is a bout of unconsciousness.

Of course, the hypothesis Kurama came up also brought an unhappy frown to his face. He believed that Naruto didn't have any chakra left because he was already dead. While that was true, what Naruto had said to him before confused him to no end.

"-Then again, it might be you since you still had a mountain equality of chakra, even in your human form.-"

Naruto said that Kurama still had a lot of chakra in him. Kurama trusted Naruto's senses; the blond had became aware of his innate chakra that belonged to Kurama since a long time, and as time passes it made him able to recognize the Nine-Tailed Fox's chakra offhandedly. Instead of the blonde's awareness, the fact that Kurama still had chakra in him was what confused him the most. After all, wasn't he—for a lack of a better word—dead as his Jinchûriki is?

"…rama. Oi, KURAMA! You hearing me, man?"

Hearing the call, Kurama broke off his thoughts and shook his head. He opened his eyes and gave Naruto a glare for yelling at him, "I can hear you loud and clear. And I'm not kidding about the loud part."

"That can't be true. You were ignoring me for a whole five minutes!"

"Whatever, brat. Was there something you wanted to say before you decided to be a smartass?"

Naruto growled at the giant fox, not caring if challenging the beast was disadvantageous to him or not. A few growling moments later, he reverted back to pouting, "Hmph! If I didn't need you to look outside for me, you wouldn't be so cocky. Now listen, I don't like it myself, but keep me posted on what's happening outside. Not knowing what's happening to the real me makes me very uncomfortable."

"Well, that's good and all…" Kurama quirked an eyebrow as Naruto sat down cross-legged while forming his hand into a ram hand seal, "What are you doing now?"

"I'm trying to gather my chakra and see if I can use it to wake myself up. I can't stay asleep forever, even if the idea sounds delightful in and of itself." Naruto said, his eyes closed and his brows furrowed in concentration. Kurama opened his mouth to tell the blond about the hypothesis he came up with, only to shut it before he even voiced out his thoughts. In contrast to what he initially tried to do, he shrugged, 'Meh, he'll realize about his chakra-less state sooner than later. I'll leave that for him to find out himself. In the meantime, I guess I'll monitor the outside world again.'

Kurama then turned his attention away from the mental apparition of his jailor, closing his eyes again to look at the world outside. However, after a second of seeing, Kurama snapped his eyes open and glanced at Naruto with a troubled expression. "Uh…Naruto?" he called out.

"What is it? Can't you see I'm damn trying to concentrate?!"

"Well, um…for all the things that we've been through, you know that I won't do anything that will disadvantage the both of us, right?"

"If you ignore all those times in which you tried to control my body, hurting my precious people and the like, then yeah, possibly. Why?"

"Urm…" It was discomforting to see Kurama so hesitant like this, all because it was too out of character for him to actually be like that. With an uncharacteristic sigh, Kurama continued, "Well, just don't hate me for the rude wake-up call."

"Huh?"

And, just like that, it all seemed to repeat.

A blurring sight, the sudden lost of balance, the sudden pull of gravity, and the inexplicable pain. Only, this time, the pain Naruto was feeling felt like Sakura had risen up from the dead and given him a chakra-filled wallop on the head. By reaction, Naruto raised both of his hands to his head and proceeded to grab it in pain. "I-I-ITTAAAIII!" he exclaimed loudly, writhing around on the ground…in pain.

May it be noted that when people used to say that Naruto's skull might be the thickest alloy next to carbon steel, they weren't exactly joking about it. Thus, it was quite the impact to the head for the blond to actually feel pain from it.

"FUCKING PIECES OF CRAP-EATING SHIT! That fucking HURT!" It was also a notable detail that Naruto wasn't the kind to swear so much. Unless, of course, he was pushed off to his limits, then he'd turn into a lean, mean, swearing machine in a matter of seconds. "Eh? Oh, wait, I can talk again." Naruto said as the realization dawned on him, "Ah, screw that! Where's the bastard Kurama?!"

"I told you not to hate me for this." Naruto heard the fox's voice from the innermost part of his head, sounding sincerely apologetic that it made Naruto cringe.

"Screw that, you should've told me what's coming beforehand!" Naruto yelled out, forgoing the fact that Kurama would've heard his words loud and clear even if he would just thought out the words. Growling in frustration, Naruto closed his eyes and sighed loudly, "AAH, whatever. Things won't get better with me lying down like a cripple making a sitting duck of a target out of his own ass, wherever we are now."

Taking in his surroundings, Naruto had a very good reason for voicing out his worry like that. He noted the whitish brick walls and floors, several dumps of dirt, some fireplace-like entrances that were covered by the aforementioned dirt, and some chimney-like red pipes protruding from those fireplaces. Wherever he was, Naruto couldn't help but feel uncomfortable. He was alone; thank God the lights were on, or it would've been much scarier. That settled it; he needed to find some people (or at least some kind of life forms).

Getting up became one of the task that Naruto had to do. After a few minutes of trying to get up (or, more precisely, flailing his limbs around like a madman reaching for the stars), he realized that this was more of a chore rather than a task. Groaning, he rolled to his stomach and tried to put his feet under him. He succeeded, but he reached his limit only when he just got up into a crouching position. "Hah…hah…whew, don't know why that felt so tiring, but…" he muttered tiredly. The blond pushed his arms to his knees as an attempt to fully rise up to his feet. But the effort was wasted when said knees gave in and made him fall forward, almost making him face-plant himself on the ground.

"Wha…what…? I…ugh, I can't stand up!" he exclaimed. Once again, he tried to push himself up, only to find himself toppling forward again before he hit his head on a brick wall. "Ow! Damn it, nature's all against me!"

"It's nothing to do with nature, Naruto." Kurama's voice interjected in his mind, "I think it's because I was just sealed in you barely an hour ago. Your body is still adjusting to my presence, so that might explain why you can't move around too much."

"Ukh…damn it all." Naruto cursed. He groaned as his hands rose up to meet the brick wall and pushed himself off of it, only to find himself unbalanced and basically dropping on his butt. "Ow. Tch… How long do you think it'll take for me to adjust?"

"I can't say… I doubt it'd be too long, but I don't know how long. It shouldn't be more than an hour, since this is the second time I'm sealed in you. So your body should've recognized me naturally." Kurama surmised. Hearing Kurama's answer made Naruto groan out more just to show how annoyed he had become. Nevertheless, even annoyed, Naruto knew better than to push himself further than this and risk his body failing on him. So, while he wanted to do something else, he settled on crawling to the brick wall he walked up into and sat down, his back leaning to the wall.

"I hate to say this…but Rika-chan really did a number on me." Naruto suddenly said, "Dimensional mumbo-jumbo aside, she didn't really tell me HOW I would arrive in this world. Not only that, but I didn't exactly remember her telling that my chakra would disappear all of the sudden."

"You're right, Frederica didn't tell any of us that your chakra would be gone." Kurama conceded, nodding his head, "But maybe that's because she didn't really see the point of telling us that."

"Why would she think that giving a little bit of warning is pointless?" Naruto asked aloud, "I know her better than that. *sigh* Well, okay, technically I just met her after my death, but we both know that she doesn't mean for anything bad to happen to us, right?"

"I'm not accusing her of anything, if that is what you're implying. It's just that maybe she thought that she really didn't have to explain something that YOU should've known from the start."

"Eh? What should have I known from the start?"

"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps something trivial like DEAD PEOPLE DOESN'T HAVE CHAKRA?"

"EEEEEEH!?"

To the people that might've been the witness of Naruto's conversation with his nine-tailed tenant they might as well think that the blond was a lunatic who was talking with a ghost. While that wasn't too far off the point, it didn't get rid of the fact that it was fortunate that no one was around, lest they'd be served with this kind of crazy humor. Now, back to the blond subject in hand…

"So you're telling me that I CAN'T USE CHAKRA?! How fucked-up is that?!"

"Hey, don't look at ME when you're having that problem! You were supposed to realize that AGES ago! Don't they teach you anything in your puny little village?"

"WELL, APPARENTLY NOT!" Naruto retorted angrily, resorting to imagining the wall besides the one he was leaning on as Kurama, and proceeded to rain it with spit and curses.

Moments of pointless arguing later, Naruto had finally wasted the last of his energy and slumped back to the wall behind him. He sighed tiredly, wondering how all of these troublesome problems actually began. "Well that's just great…" he muttered, "I'm a ninja with no chakra. What else can go wrong?"

"Correction: you're a dead ninja with no chakra, so it actually makes sense. And, well, to answer your question…you're in a new dangerous world, particularly in an unknown part of it, right now." Kurama added, hoping that that answered Naruto's question. It seemed that wasn't the case, though, because Naruto responded to that with a scowling face, "You're not helping, Kurama."

"You're welcome, brat." Said the equally scowling Kurama, who rolled his eyes out of pure annoyance. The fox shook his head lightly, reminding himself that arguing with his Jinchûriki wouldn't get them anywhere. Even if it did, Kurama doubted it would be somewhere that both of them preferred to be. "Tch, never mind that. So what's your plan now? Assuming, of course, you have one."

Now that got the blond thinking. For once, the Number One Hyperactive and Most Unpredictable Ninja of Konoha didn't have a way out of their current problem. Not now, anyways. And that was exactly the problem; Naruto's plans were usually a spur-of-the-moment kind of plans, which he often came up in the heat of the moment. Moments where he had to sit down and think it over didn't really exist when he was alive; he doubted that it would happen even in his death. However, considering the dilemma that he and Kurama were facing, he probably had to take a leaf out of Shikamaru's book; or cigarettes, depending on what the lazy-ass used to slip between his books.

"I guess I'll…sit and think."

"Heavens, this world is going to end."

And so, as the blond Jinchûriki sat down and began thinking, the fox inside him resorted to doing the same thing. Needless to say, this was the best choice of actions they had right now. Little did they know, however, that they wouldn't be sitting down for long. And they have barely an idea that, in the kind of place they were, passivity wasn't an option. The place had a name.

The place was called the Guild.

---

Meanwhile, a good distance away from Naruto…

Beyond the rows of brick walls that expanded from Naruto's current location, in a humongous cave fit for a dragon, a battle was imminent.

The participants of said battle hadn't gathered completely. On one side, stood a mere teenage girl whose mid-back length hair was the most exquisite shade of purple, framing her face while being held in place by a black bandanna with a light green bow decorating the right side. Her wide eyes, sea-green orbs that seemed to shine as it reflected the light of the lamp above her, were shaded by her fringes and bangs that her bandanna failed to hold back; though the failure wasn't a minus point as the hair framed her face beautifully. The girl was clad in a long-sleeved sailor-fuku uniform for female high school students; complete with a purple tie and thigh-length skirt. If there was any factor that differentiated the uniform than most sailor-fuku uniforms, it would be the logo of a shield-shaped crest sewed to her left sleeve; three S letters imprinted over that crest. She also wore black leather stockings that covered her legs up to her thighs, and a pair of black shoes.

Oh, and to note, she held a metallic-silver Berreta 92 pistol in her right hand, while her left hand was on her hips.

She was casually waiting for something, it seemed, as her eyes were set to a cloud of smoke arising dead ahead of her. Whatever she was waiting for, it was clear that she wasn't going to let her guard down even for a second as the determination and focus was as clear on her face as clouds are in the sunny skies.

A sound caught her attention, though it didn't necessarily turn her eyes away from where she was looking. Even so, she knew where the shuffling sound came from. There was a shaft behind her that she had climbed out of to get where she was, so there was no doubt that whoever was coming they were coming through that same shaft. As the person came to her peripheral view, it was clear that she was right.

"Oh, you came?" asked the girl, "Aren't you scared?" It wasn't that she was saying that he was; rather, she was implying that he should feel at least a tidzy-bit scared.

"There's nothing for me to do down there anyway." The person answered, holding a black Glock 17 pistol in his hands.

The person was a teenage boy—a tall one, at that—whose neck-length, reddish-orange hair was styled so that the fringes covered his forehead and nearly covered his eyes as well. His burgundy eyes were set to the same direction as the girl beside him, eyeing the smoke with caution. Just like his female companion, he too wore a school uniform; his was consisted of a white shirt under a light brown, long-sleeved blazer that was left unbuttoned and a blue tie. His brown trousers were standard-issue, so there wasn't anything special about it, and so were his black shoes. Like the girl's uniform, his blazer also had the shield crest with the triple S emblazoned on the left sleeve.

Back to the matter at hand, the two waited until the smoke in front of them cleared away. When it did, it revealed yet another figure walking towards them at a normal pace. At first glance, the figure was just a simple, harmless-looking girl with her long silver hair and wide golden eyes adorning her innocent yet expressionless face. On further notice, she was also clad in a school uniform—consisting of a buttoned light brown blazer that was paler in comparison to the earlier two people, a white shirt underneath with a bowtie adorning the collar, a dark brown skirt, and black shoes with long white socks—thus making her look very out of place coming out of the smoke. It would probably be confusing too that she was being targeted by the earlier handgun-wielding duo.

However, as she had a one-foot blade coming out of the sleeves of her blazers on both arms, she appeared much more dangerous than her appearance let on.

Tightening her grip on her handgun, the purple-haired girl darted forward. "Let's go!" She exclaimed. The boy followed closely behind her, his own handgun held in standby. It was only after a few steps later that the girl skidded to halt and crouched, lining up her pistol towards the silver-haired girl ahead of her and shot. The bullet immediately found its target; the silver-haired girl fell to one knee as the bullet wound up in her thigh. As painful as it should be, though, her face betrayed that supposed pain. No grimace; she didn't even flinch after taking the shot. Instead, she mouthed some words passively with a voice that sounded strangely robotic, "Guard Skill: Distortion."

The tall boy from the gun-wielding duo also opened fire; he began to shoot rapidly along with his female companion. Bullets after bullets flew towards their target. Yet, unlike the single bullet that the purple-haired girl shot earlier, they all bounced off a seemingly invisible wall which rippled in contact with the bullet (though it didn't let any pierce through). Now, as she was protected by the shield she created, the silver-haired girl relaxed and let her body heal from the bullet wound. Magically, the bullet embedded in her thigh was pushed out while her skin closed, effectively stopping her bleeding.

By the time, both the purple-haired girl and the orange-haired boy ceased their firing, seeing that it didn't do any damage. They looked at their opponent in shock as the purple-haired girl shouted, "She's responding too quickly!" And she was right. The silver-haired girl stood up again; her surprisingly fast healing factor rendering the earlier damage insignificant. Her hair flipped around at the sudden jerk, waving a bit before settling down again. Again, her expressionless face glowered with intimidation.

As any cornered person would, the orange-haired boy that her angelic eyes were set on raised his gun again. Of course, the boy knew now that once the invisible shield was activated, bullets wouldn't affect the girl. But if he could just slow her down…

Before he could pull the trigger, the girl beside him already took off in a sprint towards the other girl, pulling out a combat knife from her back. With a grunt, she stabbed her knife to the shorter girl in front of her, only to hit air as the silver-haired girl twirled to the side to avoid the attack. However, the bandana-wearing girl was already determined to be relentless and jumped back to stab again. Like before, her target proved to be too quick for her and dodged the attack again; this time by stepping to the side. Skidding to a stop, the knife-wielding girl prepared a sideways slash. She attacked, but was jerked back as her attack was blocked by left-hand blade that protruded from the silver-haired girl's sleeves.

The blade-on-blade exchange continued, leaving the sound of steel smashing steel ringing through the air. Left behind was the tall boy, who eyed the battle in awe. He almost didn't blink as he watched the battle rage on. "Amazing…" he said to himself, "She can hold her own in close combat?"

He didn't say that without a reason. The fact that they carried a gun in a fight against a mere girl proved that said girl was highly dangerous. And yet, while only armed with a combat knife, the purple-haired girl was toe to toe against that dangerous (though harmless-looking) girl.

At one point, the purple-haired girl was beginning to push her opponent back with relentless stabs; though those stabs were dodged time after time. In the middle of dodging the offending blade, the silver-haired girl uttered some words with her robotic voice again, "Guard Skill: Delay." Then, in an instant, the girl's speed increased as she seemingly dashed to her right, leaving a blurry-white afterimage in her wake. The move took the purple-haired girl by surprise, and in turn, she was caught off-guard. Seeing the opening, the silver-haired girl launched an attack using her right hand-blade.

Luckily, the purple-haired girl managed to spin out of the attack line, though it was more out of instinct rather than a thought-out movement. The girl moved in to counterattack, but the silver-haired girl once again disappeared in a burst of speed. This time, the speeding girl found another opening at the purple-haired girl's back.

Still shaken by the other girl's quick move, the purple-haired girl barely managed to block the attack; she even got pushed back by the blow. A significant range was created between the two. The silver one noticed this and used it to her advantage; she began to spin around and let her dual hand-blade dance wildly following her movements. Right at that instant, her movements were all a blur to the purple-haired combatant, and the two blades were moving at near untraceable speed. As it was, the blades began making countless hits at its designated target, cutting the purple-haired girl at numerous places. Said girl could only take the hits helplessly.

Only…if one were to look closely, no slash wounds were made. Strange…

The pain was still evident, though. The purple-haired girl's grunts were proof of that.

By the time, the orange-haired teenage boy had already raised his gun. However, as the two deadly females were moving too fast for him, he couldn't bring himself to take a shot lest he would accidentally make friendly fire. "Damnit!" he cursed aloud. His hands were trembling just to show how tense he was.

Then, after one upwards strike of the silver-haired girl's blade, the combat knife was thrown away from the purple-haired girl's grasp. Realizing her vulnerability without a weapon in hand, her sea-green eyes widened. The girl didn't know it, but as the silver-haired girl thrusted her right hand forward, the hand-blade's image reflected off her eyes. The prospect of dying shocked her too much to pay any attention to it (not that she could've seen it if she did).

Again, luck was on her side. Her male compatriot managed to dash in before the silver-haired girl managed to strike, knocking her away with a shoulder tackle. The momentum at which he was carrying himself with led him to fall down just as hard. The purple-haired girl that he saved didn't even have the time to sigh in relief. If she had, she didn't use it and instead voiced out her concern for her comrade, "Otonashi-kun!"

Before she could reach out to grab him, another voice interrupted her. "Move it, you two!"

Startled by the sudden voice, the girl turned around and saw something that wasn't exactly comforting. The shaft that she had climbed out of before had opened wider, it seemed, letting a giant red cannon go through it via a large elevator with several mechanics standing beside and behind it. Those people were on her side, but the sight a cannon which was more befitting for a battleship was enough to make her jaw slightly drop. She laughed lightly, "Looks like you guys can pull through if you try! That doesn't look like it's easy to make."

And it wasn't, honestly. Those mechanics were pure geniuses for being able to even make a blueprint out of it.

Knowing what those guys were up to, the purple-haired girl turned back to her male comrade, "Otonashi-kun, this way!" she said. The boy, whom she referred to as Otonashi, was looking at the cannon in both fear and awe before she called him. They then began to run and take cover in one of the entrance tunnel lining up on the sides of the huge cavern they were in. Once the cannon fire, it was obvious that it would make a huge explosion. Knowing better than to partake in such a dangerous predicament, they did what was logical.

One of the more enthusiastic mechanics then shouted out, anxious to test out their newly-crafted cannon, "Here we go!"

---

"Hm?" Naruto snapped out of his trance as he heard a loud rumbling sound. The sound itself wasn't that ear-piercing, but the vibration it brought on was enough to shake the whole place he was in. "What was that? An earthquake?"

"I don't know. It's too weak to be an earthquake." Kurama voiced out in the blonde's mind. "Whatever that was, it isn't something natural."

"You think someone's causing this?"

"Perhaps. Though, I can't quite figure out how someone can make the earth itself tremble."

"Guess we'll find out then." Naruto said, rising up to his feet. Well, rising up to his feet as far as his body would allow him to, at least. He couldn't even stand upright at the moment; he could only lay support on his bent knees. He trembled and groaned, but he was doing better than before. At least this time, he wasn't going to face-fault anytime soon.

"Brat, stop it. Your body hasn't fully adjusted yet. You should give it more time." Kurama warned. He had been monitoring Naruto's body since they both decided to sit down before, and while it was on its way to full recovery it was still miles away from finishing. Naruto should not move right now. He needed to stay still and rest his body while it recuperates from the resealing process.

"We won't have time for that if whatever created that sound turns out to be hostile." Naruto reasoned; his breath was shallow as he tried to control it, "After all, if we actually find someone, it'll help us too. Maybe they have shelter or something; I was freezing my ass off sitting on that floor."

"And I'm telling you that it's not worth it! Listen, you have to rest up and let your body heal for a while. If you do otherwise, it would only harm yourself!" Kurama chided. His host was too headstrong for his liking; so much that it gave him headaches at time. Hell, none of his previous Jinchûriki even matched up to his thick-headedness. His mom cut close, but it was either Minato's genes being headstrong too or developing thickness of the skull was an evolution unique only to the Uzumaki clan.

He'd blame Minato, of course.

Nothing personal, just to show how much Kurama hated that person.

…okay, so it's personal.

Of course, with his current level of skull thickness, Naruto ignored Kurama's warnings with a smirk and pushed himself to walk into a tunnel entrance, albeit a little limply. Inside, Kurama just sighed and palmed his face, wondering why none of the people that became his Jinchûriki ever hear him out. He wasn't a know-it-all saint, he knew, but the least they could do was to hear him out at times when he was actually concerned for their pitiful existence. It was not as if he was such a vengeful creature hell-bent on making their lives miserable.

Though there were those times…

Yeah, okay, so he was a vengeful creature, hell-bent on making their lives miserable. So sue him, this time he was actually concerned.

"Hah…hah…ha, hey, what is this place anyway?" Naruto asked all of the sudden. "This place is huge, but I haven't seen any sunlight ever since we got here. Are we in some kind of building?"

"Possibly," Kurama answered, crossing his arms in front of his chest, "though from the tremble that shook the whole place before, I surmise that we're underground. Otherwise that little quake wouldn't be able to make it look like the whole place was coming down."

"Makes sense…*sigh* I wonder what we'll find on the other side…"

"…you do realize that you just made a horrible pun don't you?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know, by saying 'the other side' while clearly being dead…right?"

"Kurama, I don't know if that was supposed to be a joke, but your sense of humor sucks."

"Well, tough luck brat, being ancient in terms of age tends to eat away your humor."

Naruto snickered at Kurama's visible discontent. He might be saying that, but to be honest, the blond was kind of glad that the fox was able to joke (or make an attempt at it). It meant that he was opening up. Well, opening up as much as a cranky old fox demon could, unfortunately. Sometimes Naruto hoped that Kurama still retain his human form; he seemed a bit more likeable as so, and more open to human emotions. Beggars can't be choosers; he told himself that, that's why Naruto opted to make lemonade out of the lemon the world had given him.

'But, in this case, shouldn't it be Rika-chan who gave me the lemon?' Naruto mused, once again using his intellect for pointless details, 'Hmm…'

As he amused himself with his musing, while Kurama resumed his face-palming as he could hear every words his gullible Jinchûriki was thinking, Naruto failed to realize that he had walked quite a long distance from where he started off from. He realized that only when he saw light coming out from the other side of the tunnel. Blinking, he picked up his pace, limping quickly to the exit. Eventually, he came upon a clearing; one so large that he had to take time to realize that he was actually in a cave.

(Activate Soundtrack: Aoi Eir – Innocence)

"Whoa…wicked awesome! Is this a cave? It's really big!" he exclaimed. Being the loud, obnoxious boy he was Naruto had failed to contain his excitement. Of course, it wasn't as if he wanted to contain it anyway. He looked around, still in awe of the humongous cave he was in. He hadn't seen any cave this big, unless that sand grotto in the Land of Wind's desert counts. On closer inspection, though, the supposed 'cave' didn't look all that natural. Judging by the curved uprising that was the walls of the cave, it looked more like a big-ass tunnel.

'You think that somebody's here, Kurama?' Naruto mentally asked to his tenant.

"It's hard to say anything as it is now. I don't see any signs of life around here."

'Me neither, but still…wait, what the hell is…?' Naruto nearly blanched at the sight that he accidentally came upon. A good distance ahead of him, there was a girl; her long silver hair reaching her waist, while a bit of it was tied into a single ponytail. The short girl's strange choice of hairstyle wasn't as strange as her choice of clothing, which Naruto saw consisted of a skirt and a long-sleeved something. There was a pair of blades protruding from her sleeves, which Naruto stared at with a blank face. All he could surmise was that the girl was a ninja (the logical answer for all oddities in his life). However, that wasn't what made him fear-stricken all of the sudden.

It was because dead ahead of the girl was a huge-ass cannon aimed at her.

"What the FUCK is she doing, standing there like an idiot?! That cannon's gonna fire!" Naruto gritted his teeth. Forgoing the dull pain in his body, he pushed himself forward and dashed towards the girl, screaming his throat hoarse in attempt to get her moving, "Oi! Get moving, that thing's gonna blow!"

The girl seemed to notice his voice; proven as she turned around the moment she heard him and faced the blond with the strangest shade of golden eyes that he had ever seen. They weren't hideous; quite the contrary, to be honest. They seem too angelic to be human. Shaking his head while keeping his speed constant, he yelled out again, "Don't you hear me?! I said get the hell outta here!"

The girl's response was to merely tilt her head in confusion, her wide eyes regarding Naruto with untold curiosity. Naruto cursed under his breath, "Fucking great… Is she deaf or something?"

"If she was deaf, she wouldn't turn around when you called her." Kurama answered the blonde's question.

'True enough. That means she's either playing with me or that cannon isn't really going to fire at her.' Naruto thought back.

"All hands, take cover!" Said a male voice loudly.

'DAMN, they really are gonna shoot at her!' Naruto was still a good twenty steps away from the girl, which was bad considering that whoever was operating the cannon they were preparing to shoot already. "HEY, I SAID GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE, IDIOT!"

"Brat, stop! You can't go there; that cannon blast will tear you to shreds!"

'I have to try, Kurama. I have to try SOMETHING at least!'

"You have no chakra in your dead body, boy! Be mindful of that! Whatever you're going to do, you won't be able to do it without your chakra!"

Naruto knew that Kurama was right. Up to that moment, he was still thinking of doing things that would require chakra to do. Now he realized that he couldn't do any of it. "Damn it…move it, you idiot!"

No matter how hard Naruto urged the girl to move out of the cannon's line of fire, she wasn't budging an inch. His eyes widened, realizing the cold fact about the silver-haired girl. She was a lost cause. He couldn't save her, no matter what he'd do. 'It's no use…I can't save her. Damnit! The first person I met in this crazy world and I can't even save her from being blasted apart!' He was tired, damn it! He was tired of all of this; exhausted, even! He continued being helpless, no matter what world he was in. Why can't he do anything?

Right then, it was as if time stopped for Naruto. Whoever stopped his time, he was sure that they were mocking him by doing this; mocking him by burning the image of the girl right before her untimely death as cannon fodder, reminding him that nothing had changed. He couldn't save his world then, he couldn't save that girl now—

'NO!' Naruto roared in his mind, his azure eyes set ablaze with raw, undeterred will. 'I WILL save that girl. I won't let her, or anyone die as long as I'm here! I won't fail, I won't fail, I WON'T FAIL!' Memories of his old world rushed into his mind; memories of how he fell, how he failed to protect it, and how he selfishly wished for it to end…never more.

Once again, after a very long time, his will of fire lit up in a fiery explosion.

I'm tired of failing!, his will seemed to roar along with Naruto's own thoughts.

"This world," Naruto muttered; his right hand outstretched beside him as light began to envelop it, "will LIVE!"

"NARUTO!" Kurama bellowed in the Naruto's mind, desperately trying to stop the blonde's advance. His desperate cries were ceased, however, when he noticed strange energy lighting up in Naruto's body. He narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out where the energy was coming from. Whatever the energy is, it was streaming throughout Naruto's body in a miniscule but steady flow. Kurama let his heightened senses guide him in his search for the strange energy's source. What he found surprised him so much he choked in a gasp. "This…this isn't chakra...but why is it coming from inside his body? What is this?!"

The light began to grow brighter, expanding and lightening the area surrounding it. It began to get so bright that everyone in the vicinity had to be blind not to notice a speeding light coming from the silver-haired girl's front that was facing that light. The previous gun-wielding duo that were currently hiding in an entranceway tunnel together with a bearded, older-looking male also noticed this and the purple-haired girl of the group peeked from her spot. "What…is that light?"

Her companion, whom she earlier called Otonashi, looked on with jaws completely agape. "Yuri…is that Angel's doing?"

The girl, Yuri, shook her head, "I think the light is coming from behind her. It's not her…" she said as she narrowed her eyes in thought. As a thought entered her mind, her eyes widened all at once, "Don't tell me that's…God?"

"What!?" Otonashi exclaimed in disbelief.

Naruto was close to the girl right now. To his shock and confusion, she hadn't made move yet. All she did was to peer curiously at him with her wide golden eyes. Naruto had to hand it to her, the girl was fearless. Though, it seemed as though she was a tad bit too expressionless instead. Strange girl, indeed.

"FIRE!" The dreaded voice of the mechanics behind the cannon came.

"Not on my watch." Naruto uttered under his breath. The light in his right hand spun around, taking a form. It whirred like a spinning top on Naruto's outstretched hand, spinning in its place like a whirlwind of light. The light compressed, turning into a more obvious shape of a giant orb.

"That…can't…it can't be!" Kurama let out in disbelief, "This isn't chakra he's using, but this move…!"

As he reached the silver-haired girl, Naruto took a brief glance at her. Her eyes were still on him, locked on him and tracking his every movement. It was as if she was cautious of him, but didn't act to that suspicion otherwise. Azure blue eyes broke its contact with the golden eyes as Naruto dashed lunged forward with a forceful kick to the ground, whipping the air around him. The girl's silver hair waved around wildly at the wind's blow.

This time, Naruto attention was on the cannon. It had just exploded as it set off a shot on its way. The cannonball advanced, bringing a cloud of dust along in its wake. Naruto gritted his teeth as he pulled his arm back before thrusting his arm along with the giant ball of whirling light forward to meet the cannonball with a loud battle cry.

"OODAMA RASENGAN!"

The Oodama Rasengan clashed with something inside the dust cloud. As it did, a destructive explosion erupted, cracking the ground beneath him and around him. He was managing to hold out against the massive momentum that the cannonball had gathered, but the strange energy of his—whatever the energy was—wouldn't last forever. Naruto knew that; even though the energy felt alien to him, he knew enough that it wasn't as durable as his chakra once was. So, he resorted to the next thing he had in mind.

The Oodama Rasengan took a lot of focus for it to condense into an orb. If someone who used it loses that focus, it would go out in a bang.

And that was exactly what Naruto was aiming.

As he let his focus break, so did the Oodama Rasengan as it exploded in a ray of light, flinging the cannonball away from him while throwing him away from the forceful explosion. The blonde rolled numerous times before stopping with his face down, unmoving. He fell unconscious after exerting so much power from his being so suddenly. Kurama was working his tails off trying to figure out how to stabilize his jailor's body. It wasn't helping that the energy from before was gone, leaving a huge gap in Naruto's unused chakra network. That gap was hungry for energy.

(Deactivate soundtrack)

Meanwhile, the people who were on the opposite side were trying to take it all in, while trying to figure out what the hell just happened. Yuri, who was now already standing up from her hiding place, looked flabbergasted after seeing what she thought she had seen. The cannon blast was stopped by a person who wielded light in his hand. At first, she thought that it was God who came in rushing like that. However, that was just her being irrational. Now that she thought about it, all she saw was a spiky-haired blonde teenager.

"That's a person…" she muttered, still unable to belief her eyes. "How did he get here?!"

Not far from her, the mechanics were groaning as they lay on their backs, a pained smile on their faces. "The cannon…" one of them said.

"It was stopped, just like that…"

"Not to mention it's nothing more than scrap metal now."

"Tch…I guess we can't just put together stuff we don't remember…"

Yuri felt a sudden urge to slam her elbows into the last person that said that; an urge that was quenched when Otonashi darted from his place towards the unconscious blond in the center of the whole mess. "Otonashi-kun, what are you doing?! Get back here!"

"We need to get that guy out of here!" Otonashi shouted his response, not slowing down on his advance.

"No! That's dangerous!" Yuri shouted again, watching as the red-haired boy disappeared into the new cloud of dust that had arisen. Cursing, she turned away from the cloud of dust and faced the other person she was hiding with; an older-looking male with long, jagged brown hair that hid the left side of his face who wore a pair of goggles on his head. The man was wearing a mechanic suit, not unlike the ones worn by the other mechanics who operated the cannon. A beard trailed down his jaw line, ending in a sharp triangular shape on his cheeks.

"Chaa-san, hold off the explosion for 20 seconds. I'm going in to get Otonashi-kun. If I'm not back in that 20 seconds, just blow this place up!" she ordered. Strangely enough, even though Chaa looked older than Yuri, he didn't have a problem in nodding in agreement to her order. However, a concerned frown made its way up his face, "Are you sure that's enough time for you to get back?"

"Well, it's not like I'll die if it's not anyway." Yuri replied carelessly with a shrug before charging in the dust cloud. Back in the entranceway tunnel, Chaa sighed tiredly. "Damn right…" he muttered.

In the dust cloud, Otonashi was trying his best to search for the downed blond while shielding his eyes from any offending dusts. "Damn, where is he?!" he mused aloud. As his eyes squinted to catch the littlest glimpse of a figure, he caught sight of one. Bad news was that figure was standing. Worse news was that figure was too short to be the blond that he saw before. When the dust and smoke cleared around the figure, his fear was proven correct.

"Angel…"

The silver-haired girl, known simply as 'Angel', didn't even react to Otonashi's presence. It was as if she knew that he was there all along. Otonashi was different in that regard; he hurriedly pulled out his gun and held it ready in front of him, standing-by for any sudden attack that the harmless-looking girl might execute. Her hand-blades did nothing to calm him down.

To his utter surprise, instead of lunging in and stabbing those hand-blades to his chest like she did when they first met, she made them disappear; multiple array of bright light accompanying the blades' vanishing in what could be described as flying data manuscripts. Then, as she raised her bladeless hand to her side, Angel pointed to a certain direction. "He's over there." She said passively.

"Eh?" Otonashi let out dumbly. For a moment, he let Angel's words hang in the air, wondering who she was referring to. Then he remembered why he was there in the first place. That blond kid…was Angel showing him where he is?

Following Angel's gesture, Otonashi found himself staring at the prone form of the aforementioned blond kid. Without wasting any time, he ran up to the unconscious blond and slid to a crouch at his side. Seeing as the blond was lying on his stomach, Otonashi flipped him to the side, wondering if the boy was okay. He was relieved when he saw that the blond was breathing slowly; the red-haired teenager would've missed it if it weren't for the adrenaline rushing in his body heightening his senses.

'His breathing is normal. That's a relief… His pulses are normal, and his pupils…wait a minute, what the hell am I doing right now?' Otonashi's train of thought crashed as that one question entered his mind. How he could take note of all the things that were classified as 'normal' on an unconscious person was beyond him; not to mention he felt like he knew what he was doing.

His gut told him that this oddity had a connection with his amnesia. Whether that was true or not, he surmised that it wasn't the right time to find out. Right now, he needed to get the kid out of here. Yet again, the strange feeling struck him. Why was it that he felt he needed to get the blond kid to safety? Why did he feel such a strong urge to save strangers?

'To hell with it, I don't have time to think about it now!' Otonashi thought furiously. He began to pick the blonde's arm up and slung it over his shoulders, but stopped midway through his work as he saw Angel standing in front of him. He tensed, thinking that she was going to attack. However, he couldn't help but notice that she wasn't exactly doing anything at all. Rather, she was eyeing the two of them with a curious look on her face.

"What do you want?" Otonashi asked, cautiously watching the silver-haired girl's behavior. The girl merely tilted her head, further accentuating her curious look. She was silent for not more than a second before she answered Otonashi's question, "I'm a little…confused."

"And this comes from the one who confuses me the most." Otonashi said, a sweat-drop forming on his forehead. He was astounded by how the girl could maintain a plain face even with confusion she claimed to have, though that must be why the others called her 'Angel'. And, just to remind himself, he was probably more confused than Angel is. For this single moment, the greatest enemy that the Shinda Sekai Sensen (Afterlife Battlefront) had didn't show any hostility to its member. Granted, Otonashi was new to the Battlefront, but he was a member no less and he was clearly not on Angel's side.

Yet, unlike times before, Angel didn't attack him (well, not him in particular), simply because the appearance of an enigmatic blond confused the hell out of her. If he didn't know better, Otonashi would've called this a miracle. As he knew better, he knew that he was just in luck.

"Otonashi-kun! Where are you?! Come on, Chaa-san is gonna blow this whole place up!" Yuri's voice permeated the relatively silent air. Otonashi perked up at the call and managed to pinpoint where the voice came from. Standing up to his feet, he made another cautious glance at Angel out of pure worry. Realizing that she wasn't attacking, he began to jog quickly away from the place. He stopped for a while, glancing behind his left shoulder towards the silver-haired girl.

Once again, that strange urge to save someone struck him. Knowing that he would be wasting time trying to figure out where it came from, the red-haired teen just said, "You better get out of here, too. This place is gonna…well, you know."

Inside, he was banging his head on an imaginative wall, 'Stupid me! Why am I warning her about it? This whole thing was set up to stop her, so telling her about it would mess the whole plan!' He hated thinking like a villain like that. However, as it was his brigade captain Yuri's plan to stop Angel's advance on the Guild, he needed to go with it. Or so he thought, of course, before that messiah complex of him kicked in.

Angel nodded at him. She turned on her heels and left shortly without saying anything else.

Otonashi sighed, 'Well, at least she didn't reach the Guild like Yuri said she would...' he thought optimistically. Adjusting his hold on the unconscious blond kid, he then ran towards the last place he heard Yuri's voice coming from. Well, ran as he might, it was pretty hard to do it while carrying a knocked out person whose feet were dragging along the ground. A few seconds later, he bumped into Yuri who was running to his opposite direction.

"Ouch!" Darn it, she had a hard head.

"Ugh, that hurt. What in the WORLD do you think you were doing?! That was really an idiotic move, darn it. Angel's still out there, you know." Yuri chided angrily, glaring daggers into Otonashi's eyes. He flinched under the girl's angry glare, but walked past her with a confident stride. "We don't have time to discuss this right now." He said to her.

"Oh, so NOW we don't?" Yuri muttered under her breath as a tick mark appeared on her temple. She was mature enough not to press the matter further, though, and followed Otonashi out of the dust cloud.

As they finally got out of the smokes and regrouped back with Chaa—who was actually disobeying Yuri's order by patiently waiting for them for over twenty seconds—in the tunnel. The older-looking male's hand gripped the handle of a dynamite detonator in front of him; the dynamite themselves had been distributed throughout the Guild's whole area. He glanced at Yuri, "Are we good to go?"

"The 20 seconds are up, isn't it?" Yuri asked back.

Not expecting such an answer, Chaa shrugged his shoulders and pushed the handle down forcefully. On cue, the dynamites under the ground they were standing began to set off one by one; explosions after explosions shaking the very foundation of the Guild. "Well, that does it. Let's get out of here!" Chaa yelled out, already feeling anxious of escaping from the broken place. It seemed Yuri agreed to his suggestion as she nodded and turned around to go further into the tunnel. Otonashi followed shortly, but he had trouble carrying the mysterious blond kid on his side. Noticing the red-haired boy's difficulty, Chaa went back and slung the blond's other arm over his shoulder to help.

Surprised but thankful nonetheless, Otonashi managed a smile and nodded gratefully; two actions which Chaa mirrored in acknowledgement. With the present difficulty set aside, they caught up to Yuri who was waiting for them just a bit ahead of them. Not a moment later, all signs of life left the Guild's vicinity, leaving behind a crumbling cavern soon to be history.

---

A new path has been carved
Retreat is not an option
Not anymore

---

And time passed…

After what had to be their most vital operation yet, the Afterlife Battlefront members had actually earned their rest.

However, as of the moment, 'rest' was something considered as the last thing on the members' minds; even though they practically exhausted themselves just by completing the 'Guild Descent' operation. Just as they reached back to their Anti-Angel Headquarters (which happened to be the school principal's office), Yuri had seized everyone in the room and called upon a meeting to be started. Their commander wasn't exactly the most tolerable person in the world, and they had got that figured a long time ago. Unlike her usual hyped self, though, it seemed that the matter they were discussing was serious.

As in, business-serious.

The kind of serious you wouldn't want to kid with.

And the reason for the lack of resting time was a newcomer who had—according to Yuri and Otonashi—came out of nowhere. Not only that, but Yuri had briefed them all on the fact that this 'new kid' wasn't entirely normal.

"Did he tell you who he was?" an indigo-haired, bespectacled teenager asked Yuri. He was standing up and was leaning to a wall next to the office door, pushing his glasses closer to his face with his index and middle finger. He thought that it made him somewhat cool. People would say that it was just Takamatsu being an idiot; one who pushed his glasses every time before speaking up. To be described, he looked like an average teen; perhaps as tall as Otonashi, slight wave to his mid-length hair, and a lean physique covered with the SSS uniform.

Yuri was seated on what was supposed to be the principal's chair, improperly putting her feet on the desk in front of her. While it gave her the mean, bossy-boss look as she did so, she might not be as aware about that. That being said, none of the people present seemed to be aware that she was unintentionally showing her long, stocking-covered legs. It may be the lack of tact, or it may be the supreme overload of it; either one of the two contradicting possibilities. "He passed out shortly after he used some kind of strange power to deflect a blast from the cannon that the Guild guys made." She finally answered after a moment of silence, "We didn't even get to talk to him."

"Deflecting a cannon blast, huh?" another teen wondered aloud; this one had a striking blue hair which was long enough for the bangs to cover his forehead and royal blue eyes. He was garbed in the same SSS uniform as most of the other male members there was using. "And I thought Angel was crazy-strong. How does he look like, Yurippe? Most of us haven't really met him."

"Find that out yourself. I don't have time to discuss his appearance right now."

"Ugh…that's rude, Yurippe." The boy whined.

"Anyway," Yuri interjected before he could get on her nerves. Classic Hinata Hideki, she probably should've figured; he wouldn't stop nagging you for the things he was curious of, even if you had already given him clear signs of annoyance. "We'll have to think about what we're going to do with our strange guest. Whoever he is, I don't think we should be careless on handling him. From what I figured from his behavior, he might have connections with Angel in some sort of way."

Another boy—one who had spiky dark purple hair, dilated pupils of the same color, tanned skin and a large, axe-like halberd propped between his left arm and shoulder—perked up at Yuri's explanation, "Connections with Angel? You mean he's her ally?" He growled at the prospect, brandishing the halberd he was holding. "If he turns out to be the enemy as well, I'll just hack him to pieces."

'Calm yourself, Yuri.' The girl thought with ire, 'It's just Noda being his typical self, completely forgetting the fact that he'll just waste his time killing someone who can't die. Take a deep breath…'

"I can't say anything about him being Angel's ally, yet. However, the fact remains that he practically saved her from being hit by the cannon blast. Right now, it's better to be doubtful without taking any unnecessary actions." Yuri answered flatly. She didn't want to assume anything right now, not without solid proof. So, as it was, she needed her subordinates to relax, but at the same time be vigilant and cautious of the blond enigma they had come across. She sighed, "At the worst possible outcome, we might alert Angel if we do anything out of the ordinary to him; considering, of course, his possible relation with Angel."

"Guh…I don't get why we're being so nervous about this kind of thing. Why don't we just lock him up somewhere, just to be safe?" Suggested a male teen whose short black hair shielded his squinty eyes under its fringes. He looked…kind of like your everyday punk/gangster except for the shirasaya he was wielding (shirasaya is basically a katana with no guard; it looks like a normal bokuto when sheathed). "That way we can keep him away from Angel!"

"And where do you suppose that kind of place would be?" Yuri countered, "Angel has already found out about Guild, which was supposed to be our secret factory. If you can name another place that can be more secretive than that, I'm all ears, Fujimaki-kun."

The young man, named Fujimaki, bristled under the statement before turning away muttering profanities. Yuri sighed, wondering what other useless ideas that her subordinates might conjure. Tired of logically reasoning with them for their every suggestion, Yuri decided to finalize it, "For now, we'll let him be. Doing something careless will not work to our advantage, so we'll just let it flow naturally until he's conscious enough to answer our questions."

Despite her slightly ambiguous answer, the others left it at that and put that particular problem of discerning which side the blond was on hold. However, being the overly-cautious person he was, Otonashi couldn't help but start up another topic, "So…what do you want us to do with him right now?"

Yuri fell silent and crossed her arms—formerly rested on the chair's hand-rest—in front of her chest. A contemplative look was etched on her face as she tried to think of the next strategy she should take. Contrary to what she implied to her subordinates, she herself couldn't help but be a little restless at the whole outcome. She clearly didn't expect some stranger popping up in the Guild with no apparent reason. After all, from her experience, every newcomer to this world should've appeared above the ground rather than under it in some place like the Guild. She might be wrong in that regard, though, so she didn't trust her instincts on that.

Then there was the unexpected power he generated when he took on the blast from the cannon. That light…she still couldn't figure out what that was all about, but even she could feel the power radiating from it. Whatever that was, it wasn't normal. Speaking of normal, Angel's powers weren't normal either. That was one connection that the silver-haired girl had with the blond-haired boy.

She couldn't neglect the worried feeling in her gut that told her the boy wasn't merely anyone, either. The fact that he helped Angel with powers similar to hers, risking his life by doing so, led her to believe in one thing. The boy did NOT appear without any apparent reason, and that reason was there because the timing felt too perfect to be just coincidence. Maybe he suddenly appeared because he was called. Maybe it was Angel that called him, or sent a signal of distress.

"Maybe…he really is the God that we've been all searching for.' Yuri wondered to herself, planting her cheek on her right hand, held high supported by the elbow placed on the desk. The thought made her frown in confusion. 'Or…is he?'

Well, there wasn't enough progress that she would do if she wasted her time on thinking about it herself. Right now, all she could do was to interrogate that enigmatic blond and hopefully get some answers out of him. She knew enough that, if the possibility of him being God was taken out, then he was just another person who died and was sent here for some other reason; not unlike the members of the Afterlife Battlefront themselves. If that proved to be the truth, then she would need to do what she always did to lost souls like that.

Enlist him to the only battlefront that went against God.

Finally, Yuri came up with a plan. "I'll need some people to keep watch on him. Hinata-kun, Noda-kun, you two go to the infirmary and see if he's awake. If he's not, then guard him until he does. There's a slight possibility that Angel could be looking for him, and who knows what'll happen if she finds her 'ally', so to speak."

"EEEH? Why me?!" The blue-haired boy, referred by Yuri as Hinata (might the author remind you, however, that he prefers to call him Hideki for obvious reasons), asked loudly as he sounded completely against the idea.

"Well, you said it yourself that you want to see how he looks like, didn't you?" Yuri stated with a suspiciously-sweet tone in her voice, "And remember why you're even here in the first place."

"You sound like I'm not supposed to be here…" the boy muttered before standing up and thumbed his chest proudly, yet made him look like a narcissist, "Like it or not, I'm also one of the SSS's founding members like you! So I'm not really out of picture just by being here."

"Really? I thought you were here to be my inconspicuous lab rat." Yuri remarked, not actually caring what her narcissistic battlefront member had to say. It wasn't that what he said was wrong; he WAS one of the founding members of the Afterlife Battlefront, which made him its co-founder. However, as stated before, she didn't really care about that. "Just shut up and do it, already. It doesn't really matter what you do in the meantime; just keep an eye on him, and that's all."

"Sounds good to me, Yurippe." Noda said before dragging Hideki by the collar and went through the office's double door entrance, "Come on, slowpoke; because Yuri said so."

"WHY DON'T I EVER HAVE A SAY IN THINGS LIKE THIIIIS?!" Hideki yelled as Noda proceeded to drag him further away from the office, leaving the room silent with all of its inhabitants staring at the doorway with individually different expressions.

Otonashi with his lips pursed into a flat line as were his eyes, added with a sweat-drop materializing on the back of his head.

The gigantic teen that was Matsushita (Matsushita 5th Dan to others, simply Matsu if the author feels lazy)—a brunette of huge stature—making the same facial expression, but that was only because that was how his face usually was.

Yuri was simply being Yuri with her flat expression, apparently not really affected by the scene before her.

The silent, raven-haired Shiina—a teen girl of little to no words at all—ducking the lower part of her face into her dark blue scarf, muttering "How shallow-minded…" as she always did.

Takamatsu was being Takamatsu, pushing his glasses up his nose while appearing to be uneasy.

Fujimaki looked perplexed at the scene, but otherwise did nothing but stare at the doorway with his squinty glaring eyes.

A short, dark reddish-haired boy—who looked even more misplaced than Otonashi did—known as Ooyama, laughed nervously at the awkward atmosphere. Seriously, he could probably even be described as a tulip in a field of roses, just to refine how out of place he looked in that group of crazies. What, with those light green eyes and baby-faced look, you'd think that he was more suited to live in a normal, non-crazy life.

Unfortunately, he was dead.

Bummer.

And TK (short for I-have-no-freaking-idea-since-it-was-how-they-call-him) being the easy-going, tactless blond he was, danced a little while saying, "God save my king." There was an absolute aura of idiocy when TK went all 'dancing like a Jagger' like that. It didn't matter that the red headband that covered his forehead down to his eyes made him look cool; he STILL looked like an idiot. In other words, he was a cool idiot, no matter how much that reference made no sense.

It was also still a mystery how—out of all the other SSS members—TK was the only one prone to spouting English nonsense at the most unexpected times.

"All right, now that that is dealt with," Yuri started, her voice demanding attention from her subordinates, "our next step is to figure out a way to keep that strange kid from Angel. Though, I don't really know what we have to do, considering that we don't even know how we should handle him."

"Ano…do we really have to think so thoroughly about it? We're kind of being overcautious now, I think…" Ooyama commented, discomfort clearly written on his face. "He might be someone like us. Maybe he also died and went here like all of us."

"I know that. But, on the off-chance that the probability of him being Angel's ally being a reality, we have to prepare ourselves with something." Yuri shot back. She stood up slowly, making the chair she sat on wheel back in response. "Going against Angel means that we have a high probability to disappear as she intended. 'Overcautious' is just what we have to be."

Takamatsu nodded in agreement, "Good point."

Otonashi, for his part, wasn't particularly keen on taking sides. He knew Yuri was right; caution was the key, no matter what they were going to do. But his conscience told him that the blond—whoever he actually was—couldn't be that far off from Ooyama's depiction. And somehow…

Somehow he just knew that Yuri's plan wouldn't proceed so easily.

---

When Hideki and Noda reached the infirmary, they'd already thought that the task given to them would be the most troublesome one they had upheld. And honestly, they hadn't changed their minds about it.

Sure, their charge was still peacefully sleeping (or not) clad in his strange black-and-orange outfit and that gangster-like headband. But that sleeping blond wasn't so much of the cause of their discomfort as the task of babysitting him was.

For Hideki, while Yuri was just simply being her usual tormenting self, he was sure that she gave this one specific torment especially for him. Be it because her bottomless annoyance towards him or whatever, he just knew so. Truthfully, sitting on a chair beside an unconscious blond boy while literally babysitting his sleeping ass out was more than he could—and would—handle. Add to the fact that 'Squinty-Eyes' Noda (a nickname given only to two people of the Battlefront, including Fujimaki) was standing across of him on the other side of the bed; halberd in hand and glares being shot throughout the whole room.

Despite himself, the blue-haired teen sighed, "Hey, loosen up, Noda. It's not like Angel's going to appear out of nowhere and attack the both of us."

"Are you kidding?! Of course Angel would try something like that!" Noda countered the remark, "We'll have to be ready for her WHEN she comes; there's not an 'if' in the matter. After all, this guy…he helped Angel, you know? So, like I said, it's in Angel's nature to do something crazy!"

'On what basis do you think you're stating that from?' Hideki thought, giving the purple-haired, halberd-wielding teen a critical eye. He sighed, raking his hands through his shiny blue hair, "I'm just saying, getting tense over nothing would make this whole guarding duty a lot more boring. Maybe if you would just relax and think of something up to help pass the time, we'd be out of here in no time at all."

"Hmm..." Noda's eyes rose to the ceilings, his face scrunched up in thought. "That IS a good idea. However, I doubt that you would be able to keep up with me in a suburi contest." He said with a smug smirk.

"Who the hell said anything about a CONTEST?! I meant games, darn it! Poker, chess…hell, I'll even play Battleship if that's what you have in mind!" Hideki yelled aloud. He obviously had no fear of waking their unconscious charge up, judging by the way he reacted. Noda didn't do so different as well; raising his voice as he yelled back at Hideki, "You think I would just sit and play freaking BOARD games with you?! That'll be even more boring than sitting here doing nothing at all!"

For most people, incompatibilities between them and other people usually appear when they have more than a few different preferences. Considering the fact that Hideki and Noda could easily be classified as 'most people' (because, really, they were) that rule applied to them, too. Suffice to say, they had too many differences between the two of them. (For now, the author's words are going to contain potential spoilers. But, meh, great power comes with great possibilities)

Hideki was a baseball player—a catcher, to be precise—of his time (he could've probably been one of the best if he didn't die back then). In other words, he was a boy with sunlit road.

Noda was actually a hikikomori; a loner who stayed in home most of the times, playing online games and whatnot. In divergence to Hideki, his road was probably as shadowed as his room—the one he owned when he was alive—was.

So, yeah, you don't actually put these two in the same room for too long. Even though both were idiots (which might be why Yuri sent the two of them rather than anybody else), they were incompatible idiots.

"That's why I'm telling you! Just a normal game would be fine! Not every game has to be played with muscles without using your brain, you know." Hideki remarked, only to find the spearhead of Noda's unique halberd pointing closely to his neck. The holder of said halberd was glaring at the blue-haired teen *cough*idiot*cough* with what one would call icy, capable-of-countering-Amaterasu glare.

"Bastard… Are you saying that I don't have brains?"

"Uh…that wasn't what I was saying, actually."

"But you implied so."

"Um…I wasn't exactly implying anything, so…"

"SHADDAP! I know what you were saying, and I damn know what you implied," Noda shouted, inching his halberd closer to Hideki's neck, "so if you don't want to lose your neck I advice that you take that back!"

Hideki was scared, to be honest. One should be if they were held at gunpoint...er, halberd-point by an idiot who clearly misunderstood what that person said. When compared to something that could equalize the intensity of the situation, it would be wise to say that anyone in that position would feel like they were being pointed with a Gundam Suit's beam cannon.

Not to exaggerate, but anyone would feel so.

However, fear is but an emotion which constantly shifts in terms of what causes it. If something more frightening—with malice that overpowered the former fear factor—ever appeared after the first one, it would pull that fear to them like magnet. In this case, as much as Hideki feared Noda's halberd for its owner's tendencies to slam or stab it to the nearest annoying living being, he couldn't help but fear the hand that suddenly enclosed itself on the shaft while effectively pulling it away from his neck.

And neither could he brave the sight of the blond, who that hand belonged to, glaring daggers at Noda with narrowed eyes.

"What the FUCK do you think you're doing!?"

---

Naruto didn't expect to be unconscious.

Really, he didn't. Although he did use up all that chakra (though Kurama had told him that it was another kind of energy entirely), he hadn't thought that a single Oodama Rasengan would take so much out of him. Back when he was alive, he could generate hundreds of them with ease!

Well, okay, not hundreds. Simply fifty of it might make him sweat, though it still wouldn't tire him out.

Without anything else to do to wait for his body to wake up, Naruto had ended up talking to Kurama for the sake of boredom-killing. While he hadn't really paid any attention to the fox's long and complicated explanation of the strange energy Naruto had apparently awaken, he was curious to why Kurama seemed to be more than mildly wary of it. Truthfully, the blond hadn't felt any different than usual.

After dismissing Kurama's suspicion as plain paranoia, Naruto had finally gained enough strength to wake up. And as he did so, he hadn't expect to be in some place he didn't remember being in before. He remembered being in a huge underground cave; now he saw creamy white ceilings and a faint smell of medicine. He didn't find it shocking that he ended up in an infirmary; he had a feeling that he would.

He found it shocking, however, that the first thing he saw after waking up was a purple-haired teen holding a spearheaded-halberd to another blue-haired teen's neck.

And in that instant, his ninja reflexes jumped into high gear.

One would find it shocking that the reflexes he had when he was alive were still intact. Apparently, those two did. And as rage welled up inside Naruto for the young man who dared to threaten another person, all that he meant to ask came out as a growl, "What the FUCK do you think you're doing!?"

"Wha—?" Noda let out, shock overriding his body and freezing him in his spot, "You're awake?!"

"Get the hell away from him." Naruto ordered, continuing as if Noda's question were meaningless to him. The blonde's grip on the purple-haired teen's halberd tightened as his eyes narrowed in conjunction. He went to pull the halberd away from Noda, only to find himself struggling to do so. Even so, he managed to line the halberd away from its blue-haired target. Glaring at the halberd's owner, he growled once again.

"Ha?" Noda let out, his own eyes narrowed dangerously as he glared back at Naruto, "What's with that tone, brat? You looking for a fight?"

Hideki, for his part, cringed and moved away from the two when he realized that things were getting out of hand. "O-Oi, Noda…" he stammered out, "We're supposed to guard him, right? Challenging him to a fight isn't really on our to-do list."

At this, Naruto had to blink in surprise. For a moment, he was caught off-guard and his attention diverted to the blue-haired teen to his right, "Wait, you're supposed to guard me? What does that suppose to—" When Naruto realized that he was losing the feeling of a shaft between his fingers and palm, he cursed. He made to grab hold of the halberd once again.

Too late.

Just as Naruto's grip on the halberd slackened, Noda had already pulled away and strained his arms to take a swing at the blonde. The moment he released all of the pent up power, Noda's halberd became all but a blur as it came over to Naruto in a matter of seconds. Eyes widening, Naruto let out another curse, "Holy-!" which, by the way, was only spoken halfway done. No, it wasn't because he was already halved by that halberd. It was because the blonde had already taken a quick jump backwards and crashed into a window.

*CRASH!*

As the window broke into a million pieces, the black-orange blur that was Naruto shot through it and continued the flight towards the ground below. The blonde skidded into a halt, thanking whoever was smart enough to not remove his sandals. He was sure if he didn't have them on, he would've skinned his feet. He raised his face, peering into the hole he'd just made to search for his halberd-wielding assailant. As expected, that purple-haired guy was there, standing on the edges of the broken windowsill with his halberd sustained over his shoulders.

"Crap…" Naruto swore to himself, "Guess the resident people here aren't as friendly as I thought."

"Huh…you think you can run away from me?" Noda asked aloud; his voice loud enough to reach Naruto's ears. The taller teen smirked maliciously at his opponent, "Then you have another thing coming, you gutless coward!"

'It's not as if I'm afraid of you, bastard…' Naruto thought angrily, turning around in preparation to escape, 'But fighting in an infirmary would only endanger other people. If we're fighting, then I'll kick your ass someplace else.' With that in thought, Naruto sped off in search for a vacant place to fight, disappearing in a burst of shadow-blur maneuver. Noda, of course, took this as an act of cowardice and bristled.

"Why that little…he's running away?!" Noda yelled.

Hideki sighed and nearly face-palmed himself at Noda's idiocy. He gave Noda a withering look, looking almost disappointed in him, "No, you idiot, you chased him away! And judging by his position, I would've done the same!"

"Heh! Then you're just as much of a chicken as that strange kid is!" Noda declared arrogantly, hefting his halberd as he geared back for a jump. "Whatever, right now I'm gonna chase that guy down!" Not a second later, Noda ran towards the vacant bed—previously the place where the blonde laid down—and jumped onto it before lunging towards the broken window. Hideki nearly clawed his hair out and screamed, "AND I'M TELLING YOU THAT YOU'RE JUST SCARING HIM AWAY!"

Noda paid no heed to Hideki's words. Not that it his words mattered to him, but Noda was adamant that he had to track down that blonde stranger. He knew something was off about him; that he wasn't just 'any' person. A normal person wouldn't have been able to hold his halberd and made it practically immovable just by grabbing it. Hell, even if he didn't want to admit it aloud, Noda had trouble moving his halberd back then. And from the way that the whisker-marked (yeah, he thought that they were strange), strangely-dressed teen moved when he broke through the window, it just proved that the blonde wasn't your everyday kind of guy.

Whoever he was, if what Yuri suspect turned out to be true—that the blonde was Angel's acquaintance—then Noda had to take him out immediately.

Meanwhile, Naruto was still running; his eyes darting back and forth to find a suitable place for a fight. He didn't want to take hostile actions such as fighting that guy from before, but he wasn't going to be an idiot either. Out of fear of bringing innocent people into his fight with that halberd-wielding guy, he chose not to seek place to hide. A part of him had a hunch that he would just be found out if he did. He stopped, scanning his surroundings for any place wide enough for him to fight. He found none, and cursed aloud.

"Damn it! Isn't there any place open enough for a fight?!" he exclaimed in frustration, "That guy is hot on my trail, and if I don't find a place soon he'll fight me regardless of where we are!" Panicked blue eyes went back and forth in desperate search of some place empty of people.

A field came to his line of sight. It was wide enough, wider than he'd actually planned to find. The weird white linings on the grounds confused him—unsettled him, even—but he didn't have time to act on that confusion. All he knew was that he found what he needed, and he better be quick to get there. Otherwise, that halberd-wielding brute would start a fight then and there. Leaping towards and over several small trees (they were smaller than the big ones back in Konoha), he proceeded to make huge leaps and bounds towards that open field.

Once again, Naruto skidded into a halt as he reached the field. Once again, his sandals bit into the ground to slow his advance. His eyes scanned his surroundings, letting him familiarize himself with the area. It was then that he noticed that the field was perhaps too open, too vacant for a battle. 'Okay, I admit the lack of innocent bystanders is reassuring, but…there's no place for drastic maneuvers! Heck, I don't even see anything I could use for a Kawarimi no Jutsu (Substitution Jutsu)!'

"HAH! Found you!"

Naruto cursed for the umpteenth time that day, "Damn it." That purple-haired guy was faster than he thought. Naruto hadn't even passed a full minute of being there! Was that guy really on his heels the entire time?

Despite his current confusion, Naruto focused himself at the closing figure that was his opponent. He couldn't afford being caught off-guard by someone who had that kind of weapon in his hands. Though the worst that could happen was Naruto sustaining substantial damage, it wasn't really that preferable either. He had to be prepared for anything.

Noda jumped from his higher perch, bounding over the many staircases with exactly three leaps before landing in a crouch. His halberd's blade glistened under the sun's light, looking as if bearing its metallic fangs in preparation for battle. Its owner had a smirk carved on his face, "What, finished running around?"

"If that's how you see it…" Naruto answered, his sapphire eyes held Noda's gaze unwaveringly, "Honestly, I just don't want to fight against a barbarian who might hurt innocent bystanders."

A tick of a nerve appeared on Noda's temple as he grounded his teeth in anger. However, not being one to lose in a badmouthing contest, he shot a remark back at the blonde, "HAH! The way I see it, you're just afraid of being seen LOSING in front of everybody!"

"You can see it the way you like to. It doesn't change the fact that you won't be able to hurt anyone while we're here." Naruto stated. Noda had a large grin on his face as he twirled his halberd around in the air; though appearing to be showboating, it was actually his way to prepare to enter his battle stance. He cackled before yelling aloud, "If there's anyone getting hurt right now, it's gonna be YOU!"

Even though Naruto was intimidated by the sight of the evil-looking halberd, his focus didn't waver. Instead, he dropped into his own battle stance; left leg bent on his front, right leg behind it, and his muscles tensing ready to give him the needed burst of speed at the first command. His right hand dropped to his side, trailing down his leg in search of something that he hoped he still had. Then, his right hand felt something like a pocket strapped on his right thigh by a bandage that went around it. He smiled, 'Gotcha.' His fingers quickly pulled the lid open and dived into the pocket, fingering its way until he pulled it out again to reveal a knife.

However, it wasn't just any knife. The weapon he pulled out was a short, double-edged blade with a pointed tip; the blade part looked like something fit for a spearhead. That black blade was attached to its hilt, bound for countless times by a white bandage that completely covered the hilt save for the ring-like protrusion on the end of the hilt that his fingers were pulling it out with.
Rather than an ordinary knife, the weapon Naruto had pulled out was a kunai.

(Activate soundtrack: Toshiro Masuda – Keisei Gyakuten (Battle Theme))

"I'll make sure you don't kill anyone." Naruto muttered quietly, barely hearable by anyone else but him.

With a show of skill, Naruto twirled the kunai on his fingers before he gripped it in a reverse grip. A frown was set on his face, making him look almost unsure about what he was about to do. Truth to be told, he actually was. As much as possible, he would prefer not to fight against anyone in this new world. He'd given up fighting in his last one; there was no reason to start again when all he was looking for is a fresh start.

Noda noticed the kunai Naruto held out. He looked at it funnily, before he let out a taunting laughter. "Hah! What can you do with a small knife like that?" He asked loudly, "You don't really think something like that will be enough to fight me, do you?"

"Let me make myself clear to you." Naruto said clearly, intending to let his words reach out to his opponent, "I don't wanna fight you."

The context which Naruto was talking about was the word 'fight'. He certainly did NOT want to fight; not when he had just arrived in whatever world this was. Fighting someone was the last thing on his mind, and it was partly because he didn't want to hurt anybody. However, Noda—who unfortunately was an idiot—who became Naruto's opponent was more interested in the subjective part of the blonde's statement. "So you ADMIT that you don't want to fight me? Is that cowardice I'm sensing?"

That did it.

One thing you just DON'T do to Naruto was to belittle him, talk down to him as if he was inferior to you. Countless people tried that, and those people…well, they didn't know what they had coming.

Naruto's eyes narrowed. A familiar heat arose around his abdomen, which travelled around his body in an unexpected burst. Contrary to that internal heat, his sapphire eyes glared icily at Noda, making him flinch under the strong gaze. "I'm not afraid of you!" Naruto exclaimed suddenly, "If it's a fight you want, then I'll kick your ass a thousand times in three minutes!"

Noda appeared to have gotten around Naruto's glare. After a moment of adjusting himself with the rise of an unknown pressure around his person, Noda shot another taunt at Naruto with the intent of riling him up more, "What's that? Kick my ass? With that little knife!? That thing isn't even sharp enough to shave your own pubic hair!"

It was for but a short moment. No, it was more likely to happen in an instant. In that instant, Naruto's irritation spiked, hitting the roofs of his limit. In that instant, the wind around them seemed to pick up, blowing with such harshness that dusts flew around. And within that seconds of silence, an animalistic growl escaped Naruto's throat. His once cold eyes flared with burning rage. "This 'little knife', as you call it," the blonde's grip on the kunai tightened considerably, "is more than enough!"

"Oh yeah?" Noda asked aloud before lunging forward, "Then prove it!"

In response, Naruto dash forward to meet his opponent's headfirst charge. His kunai was held ready in front of his face, still in its reverse grip. He saw Noda's wide swing arc coming from a mile away, so he blocked the bladed spearhead with relative ease, mocking Noda's statement of it being a little knife. Both fighters were saber-locked, equal strength being forced out to stand on even grounds. Obviously, Noda didn't expect his attack to be blocked, nor did he expect that the kunai would be sturdy enough to not buckle under his larger halberd.

To be honest, he was shocked.

"What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" Naruto taunted, a smirk on his face, "Or is my 'little knife' too much for you to handle?"

Noda struggled to give a retort, but he was too busy adding some strength into his halberd just to hold his ground. He was baffled by the strength behind that small black knife. Seriously, a knife that size could block a strike from his halberd?! This was downright impossible! Even the idea itself was outright baffling!

Given the circumstances of the current situation, anyone would've shivered in fear. Noda, however, only let a grin spread on his face once more, and let loose an excited chuckle. "Keh...you're stronger than I originally thought. Not that strong, but you're no pushover." The metallic screech of their respective blades tore through the air as their equal force met again in a forward push, "I guess you can tell me your name before I cut you in two."

Naruto gave an arrogant smirk, his eyes glistening with glee, "Naruto. Uzumaki Naruto. And I guess you can tell me yours before I jam your hands up your ass."

"HAA!? You think you're really stronger than me?! Keep dreaming! The only time I'll tell you my name is when you're down on the ground in pieces!" Noda yelled aloud, a vein popping on his temples. With a great heave, the purple-haired teen forced the shorter blonde away by pushing his halberd even further. "You're a thousand years too early to even THINK that you can defeat this great Noda-sama!"

"I don't know about that," Naruto grunted carelessly, "but I won't lose to an idiot who deliberately gave his own name when he clearly said he wouldn't. Changed your mind, perhaps?"

"SHUT UP!" Noda roared. Once again, he dashed forward to attack, jumping high when he was five feet away from Naruto. His halberd was held high above his head; a tell-tale sign that he was going to slam it hard on the ground. Naruto almost scoffed (like a bastard Uchiha) when he saw this. 'This guy's attack pattern is so obvious my orange jumpsuit looks stealthy…' He mentally muttered. He was just telling the truth! It didn't need a Sharingan to see through the idiot's attacks. They were so obvious it actually hurt him to notice them so quickly.

But just because Naruto could see through it, that didn't mean he could underestimate it. Just as the attack was obvious to his eyes, so was the sheer muscle strength Noda was gathering for his imminent attack. Even Naruto knew that if he just stood there like an idiot, he was liable to lose his head.

"I'm through with you!" Noda cried out as his arm brought down his halberd down in a mighty vertical swing, "Helm Breaker (1)!"

As his eyes concentrated on the bladed tip of his opponent's halberd, Naruto had to fight the urge to sweat-drop. 'Helm Breaker? But…' His theory was right that when he figured out that the sheer power behind the attack being tremendous—he could practically hear the air screaming as the halberd grazed it. He was also right, however, in the case of it being easily seen through. And of course, the technique's name bore its own weakness. 'I'm not wearing a helmet.'

To respond to the attack, Naruto fished out another kunai with amazing dexterity. He switched them both into a normal grip before crossing his arms in front of him. Noda's halberd was about to crack his head open when Naruto slashed both his kunai to the offending blade in an X-shaped slash. They three blades crashed, resulting in a loud clanging sound that reverberated throughout the whole area. The clash of the two attacks left both fighters in a state of shock.

In Noda's case, the fact that Naruto was able to block his attack for the second time was illogical. Considering the fact that it was one of his strong techniques, he should've at least been able to hurt the enigmatic blonde. But no, instead of getting a slash wound, the blonde actually slashed BACK! This was already over his understanding, and it pissed him off eternally.

Naruto…well, he knew that the attack wasn't something he'd sneeze at. Years of rigorous training taught him the basics of countless attack stances; the attack his purple-haired opponent used, and the momentum he gathered, all told him that it was a heavy downward attack. Coupled with that spear/halberd of his, Naruto had already expected for himself to be affected in some kind of way—flinch, a step back, whatever. Imagine his surprise when, rather than being simply pushed back, Noda's attack successfully broke both of his kunai in two. The black blades…they were literally cracked and broken; with the parts broken off flying away after the clash, twirling in the air.

'The…hell?' Naruto thought, shock still overriding his body, 'He broke my kunai!'

'What the hell's with this punk?!' Noda thought with disbelief reigning in his mind, 'With those small knives, he…!'

Naruto quickly disposed his broken weapons, tossing them aside as they lost their uses. He reached out for the utility pouch behind him, aiming to take another pair of kunai. He cursed under his breath, "Damn, this turns out to be harder than I thought…"

He didn't know how right he was.

(Deactivate soundtrack)

---

It was said that females had something called a woman's intuition. A heightened sixth-sense, if you would, that gave them the thought that something bad was going to happen (also known as the 'Obi-Wan I-have-a-bad-feeling-about-this' syndrome). While it was a far cry from an Uchiha's Sharingan, and not that much of a prophecy compared to priestess Shion's vision of the future, it had its perks as well.

And now, the girls present in the Afterworld Battlefront's HQ (Yuri and Shiina) had that tingle on the back of their necks that was their women's intuition acting up. Shiina didn't show any reaction to it other than the slight rise of her head and the small choked gasp she let out. Her red eyes darted towards the room's windows, sensing something that was completely out of place. Yuri acted immediately on the first warning sign that her mind received; standing up from her seat before peering through the very same window that Shiina glanced at. As a battlefront leader, she wasn't one to distrust her instincts.

And this time, like many other times before, her instincts were proven correct.

"What in the world…?" Yuri gasped out, the sight shown to her being too unbelievable for her.

"What's the matter, Yuri?" Otonashi called out; rising from the sofa he was sitting on. His leader sounded distraught, which was very much unlike her. When Yuri didn't answer him—instead, continued to look through the window with wide eyes—he walked over towards her to see for himself. Not a minute later, his eyes almost fell off their sockets.

"This is…bad." Otonashi muttered.

"You don't say?" Yuri exclaimed sarcastically.

There, over at the baseball field viewable through the window, was Noda swinging his halberd like a man possessed at their previously unconscious blonde enigma. Their movements were so wild, so extreme, that the air around them began to pick up dusts as Noda's halberd spun around in effort of the quick blonde. None of them hit home, though; the blonde was on speeds faster than that of Noda's swings.

"Why is that idiot fighting him?!" Yuri asked aloud to no one in particular. Growling in annoyance, she turned to her comrades with a stern look on her face, "Damn it all…listen up! We're gonna go down there and stop their fight! Bring all the equipment you can, because we're going to need it!"

"All right, now we're talking! I'm just itching for a fight, and now is a good time as any!" Fujimaki exclaimed, waving his shirasaya in the air excitedly. Ooyama laughed nervously behind him while sweating profusely, saying, "Fujimaki-san, I think it's better if we don't fight at all…"

"Should I call Iwasawa-san and the others as well?" Takamatsu asked Yuri, propping his glasses up once more out of habit. Yuri shook her head negative, "They're probably doing their band rehearsal right now, so it'll just waste our time. We'll go with all the members present here for now." She answered. Her eyes suddenly darted around in search of something before she practically yelled out to the others, "And where the hell is Shiina-san?"

Everyone's attention was immediately drawn to the wall where Shiina usually leaned on, near the cupboard that held several of the principal's stuffs. That spot was vacant. At this, Fujimaki laughed, "Well, I guess I'm not the only one getting eager."

That wasn't entirely wrong, though it wasn't the complete truth either. Yes, Shiina had gone in advance, but it was only because she was supposed to be a ninja; upholding the 'one step ahead' rule.

---

'No matter how hard I try,' Noda thought furiously, 'no matter how hard I hit him,' he brought down another slash to the speedy blonde in front of him, only for him step to the side while using the edges of his kunai to redirect his halberd, 'this kid just won't buckle!'

Naruto's movements were simple. His opponent's weapon is large enough for him to keep track of it, so he could easily weave in and out of its range, attacking and dodging Noda's attacks. What kept him out of harm's way wasn't the complexity of his movements, but it was simply the speed he carried himself with. Of course, compared to his Bijuu mode, it was a far cry. However, his normal speed was already above normal, non-ninja people. This also brought himself to believe that his purple-haired adversary wasn't a ninja, despite the choice of weapon he had.

However, as he had to once again redirect Noda's downward swing with his kunai, he had to admit that his strength was phenomenal for a non-ninja fellow. The force he put in each of his swings were stupidly strong that Naruto had to remain on his feet lest he would've been cut up in half.

'This is getting nowhere.' Naruto thought, gritting his teeth in frustration, 'I can't defeat him without badly wounding him, and I'm not sure if I can hold him in a prolonged fight.' Naruto had formerly thought that if couldn't temporarily incapacitate his enemy from fighting, he should tire him out. His legendary stamina should be able to keep him standing for that purpose. But, in that regard, he didn't know about his opponent's stamina. Who knows what would happen if the both of them duke it out for the whole day; assuming that the halberd-wielder's stamina can keep him fighting for that long.

Before he could plan any further, Naruto had to duck from a suddenly extending halberd. "Holy-!" the blonde dropped on his back to avoid the offending blade. On closer look, the halberd didn't exactly extend at all. Noda had trusted it towards him while holding the bladeless end of the shaft.

Seeing the blonde's fetal position, Noda smirked and delivered a kick with his left foot, impacting with…the place all men held precious of. In any case, Naruto let out a soundless scream at the feeling of a sudden impact against his balls. When his throat finally let up enough for him to scream, it was hoarse and unpleasant, "MOTHERFUCKING PIECE OF CRAP-EATING SHIIIIT!"

"Huh…I didn't know cursing could sound so badass." Noda said offhandedly as he removed his feet from where he previously struck. He clicked his tongue in annoyance; he didn't like doing low blows (excuse the unpleasant grammar pun), but when the opportunity presented itself, Noda didn't have time to think it through. He was already hanging on a ledge fighting against this stupidly strong blonde that he had to fight dirty.

"B-Bastawd…th-dat friggin' hurts!" Naruto breathed out, still rolling on the ground holding his family jewels.

"Keh! Don't blame me for taking the shot when I could!" Noda replied aloofly. He picked up his halberd, once again shouldering it before turning around and walked away. "In any case, just stay there while I call Yurippe and the others. I'll still cut you into pieces, but I'll see what Yurippe had in plan." He thought that their fight was finished, with the blonde rolling on the ground in absolute pain while he walked away not-exactly-unscathed.

He didn't know about one thing, though. Noda didn't know what, or who, he was up against.

That was why when he heard a sudden shuffling sound and turned back around, surprise jerked all over his body when electricity streamed from his lower regions. To be precise, his…manly weak spot. In fact, he was so surprised he lost his grip on his halberd and let it clatter on the ground.

Yes, he didn't know about Naruto, who spent three years chasing a vengeful Uchiha around to try and bring him back. Chasing an avenger like that ought to make Naruto familiar with the case of vengeance, while having his parent-figure die on him gave him a taste of sweet vengeance being prepared. When his balls were assaulted, vengeance should be his in a matter of seconds. And for that, Naruto had counter-kicked Noda in the balls as an act of sweet, sweet revenge.

Ah…done like a true Uchiha. Madara should be proud.

Noda felt the air in his lungs disappear as did his voice, resulting in him screaming out soundless nonsense like Naruto did beforehand. The pain was beyond his description…no, it was beyond his imagination! As a matter of fact, it felt like he had just lost the ability to stand upright and thus crumpled on the ground. Unlike Naruto, whose vocal chords were working faster than the healing of his testicles, Noda didn't have that kind of healing factor on any part of his body; so he didn't put up a lengthy line of curses like the blonde did.

His mind was screaming bloody murder, however, and it was best to leave him with his thoughts for now.

Cackling like a madman, Naruto stood up (as much as he could with the throbbing pain in his lower regions) with his hands cupped around his manhood as if he could heal it faster that way. "HAHA! Revenge is a bitch, isn't it?! That's for kicking me in the nuts, bastard!"

"Why…you...!" Noda growled, slowly picking himself up from the ground. "I'll make you pay for this!"

The intensity of the hateful glare that both of them were sending to each other was hysterical. You could practically see the stream of electrons, resulting in electricity coursing between their eye contact. Be that as it may, though, there wasn't much the two of them could do to each other except for glaring and holding their respective balls in pain while standing on shaking knees.

What do you expect? Having your greatest weak spot kicked unceremoniously would always result in temporary paralysis.

Something inside Naruto just screamed at him with the urge to Rasengan his opponent's ass and be done with it. He was positive that it wasn't Kurama's talking, so perhaps his dark side was acting up again?

'Though, I have to admit, a Rasengan would really come in handy.' Naruto thought sullenly, 'Problem is, that'll probably too destructive to use on this guy. I don't know if he's super-powered or anything, but I won't take any chances of getting him killed.' As Naruto looked down to his abdomen, picturing the image of his Jinchûriki seal in his mind, another thought permeated through his steady train of thought, 'Moreover, I don't know how to draw out that strange energy that Kurama talked about. It's supposed to be there, or at least he said so. But I really can't feel any of that strange energy. All I feel is myself. It's as if nothing had changed in my body…'

"Oi…you finished daydreaming, punk?!" Noda's voice struck like an arrow, pulling Naruto out of his thoughts. Noda didn't wait for a reply; he quickly took his halberd and raised it above his head, once more getting ready to fight, "Because it's high time I pound some senses into you!"

Naruto stared at the purple-haired teen. He snickered lightly, pulling out yet another kunai with his right hand. "Don't count me out just yet!" Naruto yelled out with a slight smirk of enthusiasm, "I still owe you a good beating, bastard!"

Before the two of them could advance, something struck the ground beneath them. Noticing the sudden attack, both fighters jumped away from each other. Naruto caught sight of what actually struck them just now, and to his curious surprise it was…a shuriken?

'That's not mine…' Naruto thought. 'But then, who…OH SHI—!'

Naruto had to cut off his thoughts when he saw a flurry of shuriken flying towards him, each with precision that caught him off-guard for a bit. He had to struggle as he blocked each and every of them with the single kunai in his right hand; black sleeves becoming nothing more than a blur as he moved it quickly. 'What the hell…? Is there another ninja here?'

That was when he saw it. As he followed the trail which the shuriken barrage was coming from, he saw a teenage girl with dark indigo hair and equally dark scarf running towards him. The speed in which she threw her kunai knives was flabbergasting! It was as if she had endless supply of kunai under her sleeves. Naruto growled, confirming his thoughts of the presence of another ninja. He let out a sigh of relief when the relentless rain of shuriken ended eventually.

He kept an eye at the girl. She was wearing clothes in an adjacent manner as the people he had met so far. Only, in her case, it consisted of some sort of sailor uniform, the scarf that was aforementioned, black arm guards that reminded him of the ones Sasuke used to wear covered her arms—though Naruto failed to see any armor in it—and a short skirt that was cut in slits on some angles. Probably for the sake of maneuverability, Naruto surmised as reached back for another kunai.

He was running low on equipments. The earlier clash with that halberd broke two kunai knives, and he dropped another pair after getting kicked in the balls after that. He felt his way around his utility pouch, 'One, two…three more kunai, 6 shuriken and a smoke bomb.' He gritted his teeth, 'Damn!'

Noda, who had gained his balance after jumping back so suddenly, stood still in shock as he saw who had intervened in his fight. He gulped, a bead of sweat trailed down his forehead. Of all people that were supposed to come, he didn't expect this one to show up so early. Sure, this girl—Shiina, he reminded himself—was on his side. But before that, she was one hell of a scary person. And there was a reason for that.

In a way, she was stronger than him.

"What has happened here?" Shiina asked with her back to her ally, "He was supposed to be asleep in the infirmary."

"Can't you tell? He woke up. Then he ran away, so I had to chase him down." Noda answered, surprised by the usually-silent Shiina's impromptu question. Shiina nodded silently, now focusing on the blonde. She eyed the weapon he was carrying carefully, noticing the familiarity of it that made her widen her eyes for the smallest fraction. "That's…a kunai." She muttered cautiously. The sight of such a weapon made her think of the obvious, which she dreaded to even think of. "Is he…a shinobi?"

"Shinobi?" Noda let out. He frowned, "Oi, oi, don't tell me that he's someone you know from your past."

Shiina shook her head, "Hardly." She said curtly. Her confusion still remained all the same, though. What was a shinobi doing here?

Setting her confusion aside, she focused at the task at hand. Yuri had said it before; the blonde could not escape from them in fear of regrouping with Angel. Whoever or whatever the blonde might turn out to be, Shiina decided to drop it and pulled out her twin kodachi. She would have to fight him to figure out.

Her sharp ears picked up the sound of fast-approaching footsteps, which she noticed eventually—as the mass of blue hair came up—was Hideki running towards them from the higher grounds. He ran from the infirmary, it seemed, and the sweat he accumulated nearly made him glisten as much as the handgun in his hands. "Oooii! Wait up!" he called out loudly.

"Keh…how long was that idiot planning to take to get here, anyway?" Noda muttered lowly.

Unknown to any of the SSS members, the reason why Hideki took so long was because he had lost sight of Noda and Naruto, and proceeded to search in all of the wrong places. It was actually a pure miracle that he arrived when he did.

The sight of another one popping out made cold sweat run down Naruto's cheek. He clicked his tongue distastefully. The situation was bad for him. He had forgotten about how many allies that the purple-haired guy might have. With reinforcements coming up soon, his time was running out. 'Damn it all…!' Naruto thought desperately. Even though it was only by two people, he was already outnumbered. Not to mention that these two people in front of him were obviously stronger than normal people, and that third person (who he deliberately saved before) seemed to be on their side now that he noticed the way he was dressed.

He would need something to even things out.

'… I got no other choice.' Naruto stood straight, relaxing his stance as he exhaled a long breath. 'I don't know if it'll work, but judging by what Kurama said…that "mystery energy" should be at my beck and call. Time to see if his theory is right.' Hesitantly, he brought his two hands upwards in front of his chest. Curling his fingers, he left the index and middle fingers of both hands standing before bringing both of them up in a familiar finger-cross hand seal. The move made his three opponents tense up in confusion of what he was doing. The confusion, however, dissolved into outright shock in the next words he yelled out.

"Kagebunshin no Jutsu!"

And shock exploded into cautious fear at the sight of a dozen doppelgangers appearing in a flicker of bright light, all around the blonde in a random formation. Shiina did not…no, could not comprehend what just happened right before her eyes. One moment, the strange blonde looked like he had been successfully cornered, and she thought that all she needed to do was to knock him out.

Now she didn't know which one she was supposed to knock out.

Noda had seen things like this happening in online RPG games, and all he could surmise was that this blonde that he was supposed to look after was…a mage. 'That's impossible.' He thought, 'Those kinds of guys only exist in games!'

"O-Oi..." Hideki gaped. Rendered speechless, he said the only thing that came to his mind, "I don't remember seeing this many when we're in the infirmary."

The confusion wasn't one-sided, either. Naruto, even though he was the one who casted the jutsu, was both surprised and confused when his clones materialized as they did. He had grown so accustomed by the usual puff of smoke that it caught him completely off-guard when they came in a flicker of light. It was like that occurrence in his Genin days when he accidentally confused a flash bomb with a smoke bomb and threw it to his feet.

Nevertheless, he felt a bit relieved to see that he could actually use jutsu. He was already worried when Kurama told him that he had no chakra since he was already dead. The mysterious energy that he had awakened seemed to be a good compensation for chakra; the slight side-effects that affected the jutsu were trivial, at best. Naruto also noticed another thing when he called upon the energy. The energy, whatever it actually was, was already so in-tune with his body and chakra coils that he didn't feel anything different when he used it. Using it felt no different than using his usual chakra.

Maybe that was the reason why he couldn't feel it. It was because his body already adapted to it that he didn't feel any strange power.

"…well, that came out a little differently." Naruto muttered to himself. A joyous grin formed on his face not a moment later, "But it's pretty cool! It's WAY cooler than the usual shadow clones!"

Even though he was busy marveling over his new shadow clones, the three SSS members didn't make any move to attack him. Hell, they were confused enough as it was, seeing someone conjuring not one, but a dozen clones with a simple hand gesture—they still thought that it was strange though, the hand gesture. Thanks to this, Naruto had more than enough time to showboat around in his usual exuberance and all the clones galore.

"HAHA! Sorry to keep you waiting! This time, I'll go all the way out!" he yelled aloud, pointing a finger aggressively at his three opponents, "I'll beat you all down with one jutsu, straight from my ninja handbook!"

The mere idea of it was enough to make Shiina's skin crawl, so imagine what it did to the remainder two males behind her.

Fortunately for them, the other members of the Afterworld Battlefront arrived just in the nick of time, guns in their hands and a fierce look in their eyes.

"Hold it right there!" Yuri shouted out, taking point beside Shiina with her Berreta held steadfast in front of her. Following her lead, all of the people she brought along converged on her formation with their respective weapons pointed at Naruto and his clones. Ooyama even brought along his trusty sniper rifle—a M24 SWS variant of the Remmington 700 rifle—for this occasion, though Yuri was the one who forced him to bring it despite his protests.

Even so, Ooyama had clamped up when Matsushita brought along a freaking rocket launcher willingly, despite it being overrated.

Seeing all the offending weapons pointed at him made Naruto flinch. He didn't recognize those weapons, but they bore eerily similar appearance to that of the Sky Country's kunai launcher. Whether or not those weapons would launch kunai was a mystery to him, but he didn't intend to find out. "They're all popping up like a bunch of seaweeds!" he muttered to himself.

Just what was wrong with the people here? Normally, there shouldn't be so many people wandering about with those kinds of weapons in hand!

And all of them seemed hell-bent on pursuing him, for reasons unknown. Naruto couldn't believe that he had already drawn this much attention to himself, despite being only recently transported to this world. Why were they after him? And why so serious about it?

"There's only one way to find out." Naruto said to himself, punching an open left palm to strengthen his fighting resolve.

Meanwhile, the mind of one Otonashi was running rampant at the scene before him. Needless to say, he could not believe that all of this was happening. 'Well, this is pretty unusual…MY ASS IT IS! This is very unnerving!' he thought with an annoyed look on his face. He inwardly sighed to calm himself and his raging thoughts, 'Okay, calm down, and let's look back at what happened until this point. A strange kid popped up in the middle of our battle with Angel, and seemed to be on her side. Strange kid then proceeds to unleash inhuman power to stop cannon from hitting Angel before passing out. After we brought him in, he escaped and fought three of our members on equal grounds. Moreover, strange kid then made clones of himself out of thin air.'

Forced with a new logic beyond normal human understanding, Otonashi gave up on thinking about it altogether.

"Just what…is happening to this world?"

---

Frederica's realm…

On a higher plane of existence, in a realm where all the incident happening in countless worlds were observed, Frederica silently watched.

She had bore witness to all of the things happening in the world she sent Naruto to, and she was somewhat interested that his mere presence there had made such a substantial change in that world. At first, she had smiled when Naruto—despite his obvious injuries—helped the individual known to the parallel world as "Angel", and apparently saved from a cannon fire. She expected something like that, of course, but for him to instantly jump in to save someone—despite the lack of chakra in his system—just minutes after his arrival was admirable.

But then, he shocked her by drawing out a power alien to his own. It represented a light so bright, it rivaled the brightness of his own will of fire. Oh no, that wasn't the essence of his will of fire that he'd drawn out. It was something else entirely. She knew what it was, but she found herself doubting the possibility of such power in his hands. She checked, re-checked, and made a third time attempt to see if she was wrong.

But she found no such thing.

"There's no doubt about it." Her hand lashed out to her side, calling for an Orb of Time to come. One came not a moment later; pulsating white light glowed as it hovered towards her. Her eyes shone with something akin to curious interest and subdued confusion. "That power is Reiryoku…a spiritual power unique to the world, universal code: Bleach." She was saying it as if her voice could reach Naruto, to answer his curiosity. Alas, it couldn't, and she was the only one who heard what she said.

"How could Naruto use it so easily?" she wondered aloud, "Scratch that, how come Reiryoku even exists in this world?"

She didn't open any dimensional portal between Bleach and Angel Beats. Therefore, a transfer of any kind of matter between the two worlds shouldn't be possible. If so, then how come this happened at all?

"Don't tell me…" Frederica started with dread, "His very existence caused a miniscule rift between the two worlds?"

At first, she looked on with a sense of dread and confusion, eyes wide with bewilderment. Moments later, those tense features dissolved into a more relaxed one and she let loose a mirthful chuckle, "Kuhu…hmph. You really are a wild card. To think that you would bring about such a change to this world and brought along such power…"

She smiled, "You're really an interesting story to read on, Uzumaki Naruto."

-End of Chapter 1-

-xo-

At long last…I managed to update like a BOSS! In fact, I've updated this along with posting the new Naruto-Spiderman crossover! EEEPIIIC!

Extra Note: Re-uploaded in February 13th 2013 to add trivia and next chapter's teaser :D Also, to replace bad grammars. Bad grammars replacement will be gradual, but the time depends on when I would realize the errors.

Trivia Time!

-Noda's attack, the Helm Breaker, is taken from Devil May Cry's videogame attack technique. It is Dante's attack while utilizing Rebellion as his weapon. For fans that play the game, do forgive the copyright-less use.

-Naruto's appearance in the story may or may not trigger some of Otonashi's memories to resurface. His first arrival (and loss of consciousness) already triggered his doctor instincts. Oops…spoiler for those who didn't watch the series.

-Reiryoku (spiritual power), while indeed is from the Bleach universe, will be used in the story quite frequently. Naruto will use it in replacement for his chakra, though his jutsu will be slightly different than what it used to be. However, Naruto will not be able to use Reiatsu (spiritual pressure).

-The reason why I included Reiryoku in this story is because it's the suitable power replacement for Naruto's non-existent chakra. Naruto is in spirit/soul form, so he has no chakra in his body. Now, when dead people can't use chakra (an amalgam of spiritual and physical energy), dead people can still use a part of their latent energy. That part is their spiritual energy; thus, Reiryoku.
Rest assured, Naruto won't be spewing off countless Getsuga Tenshou with ease.

-Next Chapter-

"Are you Angel's ally?"

"Who were those people, anyway?"

"You're late, Uzumaki-san."

"Y-You guys…"

"I see you like that guitar…"

"So…mind telling me what this world exactly is?"