Hello everyone and welcome once again to another chapter of Perfection! I will begin once again with responses to the reviews I have received.
BR0TH3R MENACE: Yes I do acknowledge the fact that Naruto is very developed for his current age, however this is due to the fact that I simply believe that anyone placed into the situation Naruto was placed in would have two choices: Grow up quickly or Die. As he obviously isn't dead at this point, that means that he grew up rather quickly. He thinks of things differently than most other children. In addition, one of the people that arguably had the most influence on Naruto was Sarutobi, the Sandaime Hokage and a very wise man. Naruto picked up much of his vocabulary from him. For your second review: While yes you could say that Sarutobi would take that course, however in this world it must be kept in mind that cannibalism is NOT a secret, most people are reluctant to talk about it yes, but there is no secrecy involved, just the fact that they don't wish to talk about such things.
Rickjames196: Yes I know that Kiba is an easy pick for Naruto's first "turning". This is exactly the reason that Naruto is choosing him first rather than trying it out on someone much harder with a much higher possibility of failure.
Lednacek (all three in order of which came first): In order to shove the finger as close to Sakura's face as he did, Naruto needed to walk into the aisle that she was sitting in, as he is merely a child and couldn't have possibly have reached across the desk, so when Sakura fell face first on the desk she was not hit by Naruto. It is not your fault for thinking this as I did not include it in the scene due to myself finding it relatively irrelevant. 2: I noticed this in my chapters as well and have added a larger differentiation, I hope it will suffice. 3: This is true in our world; however the Naruto-verse is nothing like our world. Ninja's bodies must be much more durable in order to perform the techniques they use. Additionally, Kiba's unconsciousness was due to shock rather than from any form of physical condition, so according to my past knowledge of the series ninja would be able to wake from such a type of unconsciousness relatively quickly as compared to those in our world.
Now without further ado, the newest chapter of Perfection!
=Death is Life=
Naruto awoke with an aching feeling in most of his body, although it was swiftly fading. Naruto glanced around his surroundings and realized that he was not in his home but in some form of forest. Suddenly the memories from the previous night flooded back to Naruto. Remembering that he was not alone, Naruto looked around to try and find his friend but couldn't see him.
"Kiba?" Naruto called out to the forest around him "Kiba where are you?"
"Naruto?" Kiba shouted back "Hold on a sec!"
Naruto heard loud footsteps coming from his left and turned to see Kiba walking out of the treeline. "Finally you're awake!" Kiba said to him
"What happened while I was out, where is Mizuki?" Naruto asked concerned for both his friend's and his own wellbeing. If Mizuki had somehow survived the attack then the two of them were most likely doomed.
"Calm down buddy, everything is fine! I just woke up about two hours ago and I went looking for a bit to see if I could see anything I recognized, but I haven't seen anything yet. Mizuki-sensei… well he's… he's dead." Naruto saw that his friend was uncomfortable with the blood of his sensei on his hands, whether he had been trying to kill them or not, and put a hand on his friend's shoulder
"It's okay Kiba, you did what you had to do. Mizuki was a traitor to the village and tried to kill us both. If you had not done what you did neither of us would be alive." Naruto said, trying to comfort his friend through the pain of killing for the first time. This was a difficult task for him since he personally had no qualms with killing what he saw as cattle for the slaughter.
"I know that, but…" Kiba said in an insecure tone "I-I killed him! He was our teacher, someone we were supposed to trust but I killed him!" As he spoke Kiba's voice grew steadily louder and gained more and more tremors to it until at the end of his sentence he began sobbing while staring at his hands as though he could still see the blood of his sensei staining them.
"Kiba… Kiba look at me." Naruto said slowly. Kiba turned his tear stained face to his friend.
"You want to be a ninja someday right?" Naruto said gazing at his friend seriously. Kiba responded with a shaky nod.
"When you are a ninja, there are times that you will have to kill in order to survive and to protect the people you care about, it's an important part of being a ninja." Naruto told his friend "Killing is always hard the first time you do it, but it has to be done."
Kiba looked a bit shocked at his friend, 'He's talking like he's done it before… wait, maybe he has…' Kiba thought.
"H-Have you ever… you know…" Kiba asked tentatively.
"Yes Kiba, I have killed people before. I have killed a lot of people; my food supply has to come from somewhere." Naruto stated simply, unashamed of his actions.
"Then how do you deal with this… this guilt? How can you get rid of this terrible feeling?!" Kiba asked, shouting the second sentence.
"Kiba, I will be the first to tell you that killing for me is not like killing for others. I kill to eat Kiba; I murder people constantly so that I can survive. Our situations are different, but the base reason remained the same. You killed Mizuki so that you and I could live. You had no other reason, simply to live another day. This is what ninja must do their whole lives in order to serve the village."
"I-I know that, but there must be another way! Death can't be the only option can it?" Kiba said, trying to find a reason for what he was feeling.
"There is no other way around it; any other punishment would not truly end the harm they do to others. Death will not bring back fallen comrades, death will not re-create broken homes nor will it repair a broken spirit, but it will bring the one who caused it to an end. The only way to insure that your enemies do not harm you and those you hold dear is to kill them." Naruto said while staring off into the treeline.
"I know all of that already; my parents explained it to me when I entered the academy! I just want to know how to stop this terrible feeling! I can't stand it! I would do anything to make it just go away!" Kiba yelled at Naruto, tears falling and a desperate, pleading expression on his face.
'There it is, now's my chance! If I ever see Mizuki in hell I will have to thank him for giving me this opportunity…' Naruto thought gleefully. "Well Kiba, there is one way that I know, it gets rid of the feeling quite quickly actually, although it may be difficult to adjust to." Naruto said while turning his body and head to be half facing Kiba and half facing the treeline.
"What is it? I'll do anything I don't care how hard it is!" Kiba said, desperate for an end to the increasing terrible feeling in his chest, a feeling of regret, guilt and self-hatred that was unbearable to nearly everyone, especially a child of his age.
"Well Kiba, this method of dealing with that feeling is very simple; in fact I use it every time I kill someone. You simply need to make yourself believe…
That everyone you kill is food, nothing more and nothing less…"
"W-What?!" Choked out Kiba as he took a step back in surprise.
"You heard me Kiba" Naruto said "I view everyone that I kill as if they are cattle for the slaughter. That is how I got rid of that feeling you have right now. You don't feel bad for the death of the cow your beef came from do you?"
"N-No, I-I don't, but h-how could I th-think that about another h-human?" Kiba said, his voice shaking with uncertainty and fear.
"Simple, do what I did and give in to your inner animal, your inner hunger." Naruto said as he fully turned towards Kiba and held out the arm of their recently deceased sensei. "All it takes is to just let go."
'Could I really do that? Could I really eat Mizuki-sensei? He was a traitor but… No, I have to get rid of this feeling! I can't stand it anymore!' Kiba thought, desperate to rid himself of the guilt that comes with killing someone you know, someone you liked, someone who was nice to you and helped you. It was the worst thing Kiba had ever felt. 'Anything would be better than this feeling, so I'll do it. Now what did Naruto say to do, to give in and accept my instincts, to just let go…'
Kiba slowly closed his eyes and focused on his instincts. Soon enough Kiba felt something about the air around him change, it suddenly felt cooler, as if he had moved into the shade. Kiba opened his eyes and around him was a massive forest. 'That definitely wasn't there before…' thought Kiba
*GGGGGRRRRRRAAAAAAAAA!*
Kiba jumped in surprise as the animalistic noise echoed throughout the forest, filling every corner of it with a small tremor from its volume. 'What was that? It sounded like some kind of giant animal!' Kiba thought 'I don't know what that was, but I'd better get out of here before it finds me.' With that thought Kiba began wandering in a random direction. He did not know why he chose that direction, he just felt like it was the right way, as if something was pulling him there.
-15 minutes of wandering later-
Kiba was getting close, he could feel it. As the pulling feeling got stronger and stronger he began to speed up until he was running as fast as he could towards the source of the pull. Soon enough Kiba broke through the treeline and exited into a large clearing. The trees above seemed to stop suddenly, allowing light to flood the clearing. Parts of this clearing were filled with small ponds and small streams ran between several of them. A haze of mist rose up from the ponds causing what should be low visibility throughout the area, but Kiba could see everything just fine. In the center there was a pond that was at least twice as large as the largest of the other ponds in the clearing. It was about the size of a house, and in the center there was a small round island not even large enough to lie down on.
All of this, while somewhat eerie and yet strangely beautiful, was not what got Kiba's attention. What caught his attention was the shrouded and misty figure standing on the island in the center of the large lake. It was the one thing that Kiba could not see clearly in the clearing and drew his attention near instantly.
"Who are you? Do you know where we are?" Kiba called out to the figure. The figure seemed to focus on him, and then simply vanished. Kiba was about to go looking for the figure when it appeared… Directly in front of him.
"Gaaah!" Kiba yelled while jumping in shock.
"For being me, you're quite the scaredy cat." The figure chuckled while backing away from Kiba slightly.
"HEY, WHO'RE YOU CALLIN' A SCAREDY CAT YOU CREEP!?" Kiba yelled, face red with anger.
"Technically I'm calling myself a scaredy cat." Spoke the figure in an amused voice
"WELL YOU'RE A... wait, yourself?" Kiba asked confused. Finally focusing on the figure in front of him, he noticed that the mist that had surrounded it earlier has cleared, revealing... himself.
"W-W-What!? You're me!" Kiba exclaimed confusedly.
"Yep, and you are me!" said the second Kiba.
"But you can't be me, I'm me!" Kiba yelled.
"Well, it's a bit complicated, but we are both the same, both Kiba, but we are both different as well." Said the second Kiba with a contemplative look on his face.
"That doesn't even make any sense!" Kiba exclaimed at his double, a look of anger and confusion clearly visible on his face.
The second Kiba seemed to think for a moment, before saying "Think about it like this, we are both Kiba, but we are each a different piece of Kiba. I am th-" "Wait, are you that instinct thing Naruto told me to find!?" Kiba interrupted
"Yes, I guess you could say that I'm Kiba's instinct, while you are his conscious mind." Kiba's instincts stated, seeming irritated that he had been interrupted.
"Good, Naruto told me to accept you somehow, do you know how to do that?" Kiba asked
"I'm not really sure how to do that, maybe if we shake hands and think about fusing together or something, that's all that I can think of." Said Kiba's instincts.
"Well, sure I guess it's worth a shot." Kiba said, extending his hand for his instincts to take, which his instincts did quickly.
Both of them closed their eyes and concentrated on trying to fuse together some way. After a few minutes of nothing, both of them suddenly felt a pull in the corner of their minds. Sensing that this was what they had been looking for, both of them accepted the pull and immediately they both felt a strong pulling sensation before blacking out.
=Meanwhile, with Naruto=
Naruto had been slightly worried about his friend when he suddenly went unconscious, but figured that Kiba was probably visiting his instincts just like he had.
'I wonder if Kiba's instincts will be anything mine were.' Naruto thought while he sat nearby, waiting for his friend to re-awaken. He was also munching on one of Mizuki's legs, small drops of blood seeping out of it as he sank his teeth into the mangled leg, holding it by the bone sticking out of one side.
'They probably won't be, he doesn't have a demon sealed inside of him.' Naruto thought
'Having the Kyuubi in me really changed things with my merge.' Naruto then began to think of everything that the Kyuubi had changed for his merge.
First of all, due to the Kyuubi being a malevolent spirit consisting mainly of hatred and chakra, Naruto's instincts had been much more aggressive, even trying to take complete control during the merge. The second thing is that Naruto's instincts were more aligned to that of a fox. This is due to the way the Kyuubi was sealed into Naruto. While measures had been set up to prevent the Kyuubi from affecting his conscious mind, his unconscious mind, his instincts, were able to be influenced by the Kyuubi, if only slightly.
'Stuff like that probably won't happen to Kiba.' Naruto thought. 'Although, I wouldn't be surprised if Kiba's instincts turned out to be dog-like because of his clan.'
"GAH!" Exclaimed Kiba as he suddenly awoke.
"Kiba! You're awake!" Naruto said happily, setting aside the leg in favor of helping his friend up.
"Well, did it work?" Naruto asked, slowly moving a torn piece of Mizuki's arm near Kiba without Kiba noticing when he heard Kiba's stomach rumble.
"I-I think so, I don't feel all that different though." Kiba told his friend with his mouth full
Naruto chuckled and said "Well, it sure looks like it worked, considering that you're eating part of Mizuki's arm right now."
"I'm, I'm what?" Kiba said as he looked towards a small puddle of water nearby.
In the puddle showed the image of Kiba...
Blood covering his hands...
Red dripping down his teeth...
A mangled piece of his former sensei's arm hanging out of his mouth...
=End of Chapter=
Hah, I was tempted to end the chapter where Kiba blacked out in his mind, but decided against it. I once again hope that you enjoyed this new chapter of "Perfection". It always sounds funny to me when I write that, seems like I am gloating or being arrogant... Trust me I don't mean it that way, it just happens to be the title of the story :P. Please remember to send me any questions you have in a review or private message and I will do my best to answer them. If you liked it, follow or favorite for future updates.
Until the next moonlit night,
Musamura