I do not own, in any aspect that entitles dominion (not the Mengsk kind at least) of any variation, Naruto nor Starcraft.

Wish I did though...

Warning: Contains swearing.

They call me a Spectre

Chapter 5: Who lies behind the mask

(Flashback!)

New Wallis, Braxsus, three months later

POW!

And down it went with the same grace as a sack of bricks. Though given hills in various groupings, the concept of a mountain was almost alien to those who had lived on the grassy plains that dominated most the planet. The only reason they stayed green throughout the seasons that marked Braxsus was due to the underground rivers that coursed through the continents interconnected by a series of natural bridges where the mountains seemed to only exist. Given its conditions, it was only to be expected that the majority of this world's mammals were suited to the plains by either their girth or by their speed as evolution allowed, unfortunately that applied to both the predators as well as their prey.

The most common threat, and debatably the most dangerous as geneticists continued to argue over projected courses of evolution where agriculture was concerned (both in producing more and keeping threats at bay), was the creature known as Volves since the name stuck to it from origins unknown. Sleek wolves with teeth of a shark and the same ability to reproduce lost teeth, not to mention having the ability to regenerate lost limbs much like a gecko and its tale provided they haven't lost an exorbitant amount of blood beforehand. They were in fact smaller than earthborn wolves in all dimensions which only aided them in speed and evasion, yet with a lower constitution they also traveled in larger packs than the earthborn variant. But every now and then a relative giant was born amongst their kind with a marked increase in aggression to make up for the relative loss for speed…. Though these larger volves present little threat to the free ranged denizens of Braxsus, it was the farming communities that was under threat from these creatures when the livestock and even ranchers fell victim to their vicious jaws that were empowered by the larger muscle mass that attributed to their greater health. With a recent emergence of this type of volve now laying siege to several communities it was only expected for the aptly named beast slayers of the Confederacy to be deployed to wipe out this strain of animal on the small, near island sized continent of Newack.

"That's the last one," Frankfurt drawled.

"Boo!"

"Hiss!"

"Bored!"

A heavy sigh filtered through the suit of the firebat variant of the hardskin. Twenty-three kills by Omega squad's hands… and they stilled complained….

His attention swiveled to the lone ghost of the group as he beamed with pride as he lovingly loaded a fresher magazine into his canister rifle. The triplets came through alright regarding the finer points of a ghost's equipment, as to how would forever be beyond him to a comfortable degree, in less than a month before now for the sake of discretion… and so far he had gotten nowhere on his own investigation. Inquiries as to why a child was now a squad member were obviously going to be shot down, he determined that a long time ago since the Ghost Academy was not an institution to let their secrets loose so easily given its involvement as to the ghost's assignment to this team. Equipment failure however was an issue he can press with the government for his backing. Ghosts weren't cheap to train and maintain after all.

"We're sorry, he had not reported to the armory as requested before deployment." Only one thought coursed through the sergeant's head that day, "Bull." It seemed like a few of the higher ups had a likewise opinion when word reached him that a investigation was underway at the Academy; rapid deployment in this day and age rarely gave anyone a chance to change their current gear.

Regardless, a new suit and its corresponding equipment came through weeks later. The equipment itself, such as the visor for example, was still faulty however.

After so many weeks of finding the appropriate parts and guard duty, this was their first assignment with any element to an offense to it.

"Command to Omega. Command to Omega, come in."

"Omega here."

"New assignment: Amber squad is on a hill southeast of your position and needs reinforcements to clear out a den of those mutts."

"Roger that, Omega out."

"Kill score! Kill score! Kill score!"

"For the love of…" the sergeant groaned as he wearily restrained himself from palming his face with a powered hand which would most likely crack his helmet in the process as not three but four voices chanted vigorously.

"You don't suppose we're allowed to keep a few of the volves for dinner do you?"

A lone eye twitched as the predictable storm came from the triplets…

"Oh! Let's have shish kabob!"

"Should we get the steak sauce?"

"You don't suppose sarge will cook it in pork fat do you?"

That did it…. A mechanized hand painted in a roaring flame tightly grasped a valve to his suit and slowly turned it counterclockwise while the arm it affected rose up, its nozzle hissing ominously.

"… RUN FOR IT!"

"HOLD STILL YA IDIOTS!"

"WHERE DID-… NO FAIR! HE'S USING HIS CAMO TO HIDE!"

"CHEATER!"

"WHY US?!"

"I'LL GET HIM LATER! HOLD STILL SO I'LL COOK YOU IN PORK FAT!"

"YOU NEED ANGER MANAGEMENT BOSS!"

"GO TO A SPA!"

"I THINK THERE'S A CAT HOUSE AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE, SARGE!"

Fwoooosh!

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Denise merely shook her head as she witness the retreating forms of over half her squad mates. "Another day in paradise." With surprising expertise, her own mechanized hand reached out and nabbed a cloaked ghost from his hiding spot.

"Ack! I don't want to be cooked alive, Denise!" he cried through his synthesizer as his invisible hands raked small trenches in the dirt in a failing bid to escape.

"Don't worry… he's not fond of cooking people in pork fat to begin with."

"How is that helpful?!"

(End Flashback!)

XVX

Meinhoff, day

Infested terrans… it's been years since he or any of the other Raiders actually seen them in combat since the zerg essentially became dormant for so many years. They were walking nightmares of what was once a terran after the parasites that be took a hold and twisted their flesh and their minds to obey and serve without question… at least they weren't suicide bombers any more. The fact that they weren't able to withstand the UV output of Meinhoff's sun was also a welcome change for the Raiders as they deployed what they could to destroy the nearby structures that deployed near endless numbers of former terrans against them when night had set in. Marines, Firebats, freshly acquired Hellions, Reapers, and two ghosts even… however technical it was. Only one was truly loyal to the Raiders while the other was something else entirely…

And he wanted words with the Ghost of the Raiders….

Gabriel Tosh, a man rumored to be many things. His story was his own as well as his reasoning towards hiring, as well as helping, the Raiders in their missions be it his own design or whatever life had presented to them. The only thing that was a certified fact about him was that he was a ghost much like himself, the only differences between the two, that could be certified at least, being cosmetic and skill set. The latter however was only rumored in its listing of abilities as far as Tosh was concerned.

He was a dark skinned man with long dreadlocks that fell short from reaching his shoulders. His eyes were long since milked over as if he had been blinded by a wound that did not claim his eyes, yet they functioned as well as any other eye as they lorded over an unkempt mass of facial hair that dominated his face. His armor was custom made as far as the ghost could tell, for he hadn't encounter the make nor model in any Dominion or rogue's arsenal: His body suit was black along with the armor that went with it, though brighter due to the reflective properties of steel untreated in such a matter. His hands and forearms were protected, as was his chest, his waist by an in complete belt, and his legs in respective coatings of armor with the boots, raising up slightly to the outward side after stopping at the knee, taking the look of a more greave-like design than his armor. Like any other design of a ghost's suit, there were lines embedded into the suit to pulse whatever color programmed into it to prove that the power was on, Tosh's suit was maroon red in that regard as they followed the normal pattern of its predecessor with only one variation. His left shoulder bore the insignia of a triangle much like a King Cobra's head with its hood flared, with the pattern of a skull laying underneath the snake's 'head' while two of the lit lines trailed around it before disappearing into a gauntlet. A necklace of beads as well as another necklace featuring a wooden voodoo doll hung from his neck while bits and bobs of bones, both carved and left alone in terms of alteration from species unknown, were bound ho him by small strands of twine if not used as some other decoration.

What he wanted was unclear given that the ghost avoided him at every turn, even going so far as to hide behind Dr. Hanson, without her knowing about it over half the time, when the opportunity arose. Unfortunately the home field advantage was no longer in effect since he volunteered for this mission of search and destroy… alongside Gabriel Tosh soon after getting wind of this.

Now the only thing keeping the other ghost away was the fact that both were on separate teams destroying every structure and cocoon they could find till night came, much like it was doing right now. To make matters worse, for him at least, the collective ragtag teams had wiped out the north and northwest sections of the infested town with a slight fraying of the northeast. Chances were that he wasn't likely going to have guard duty as a valid excuse to avoid Tosh any further unless the zerg deployed more nydus worms on them like they did at Backwater…

XVX

Night

From a distance, the cries for ruin and revenge were as clear as diluted trumpets in the night as the host began its second march on the Raider compound. Bunkers have been made coupled with a few supply depots as an impromptu wall much like in Backwater Station to keep the thousands of claws and talons at bay, though bullets were another story. With a sizable section of what was once a town that surrounding the plateau that was the Raiders' compound, connected to the town by three bridges of a natural make, demolished after a sudden retaliation from the defenders once day broke, there wasn't as likely a chance for their numbers to breach the northwest bridge and its defenses… as proven as the sensor tower only detected a small trickle of once terrans trudging along the edge the chasm that helped defend the Raiders' base as opposed to the mass horde that gathered on the opposite side where the fire teams gathered to aid the bunker teams of the eastern side. Other than watching the southwestern passage from a raised platform, guarded only by debris that the original refugees had set up before the arrival of the freedom fighters/mercenaries, till proper defenses could be installed, the special operative was left nothing to do that could in any form guard him against Tosh's impending… meeting.

Already he could feel Tosh's presence leisurely stalking his way to the platform he now resided to ensure no sneak attack occurred. No one was going to get in his way if they could help it, not even Tychus when liquored up was willing to dare whatever power that lurked within him. A few notches below smashed he might, but not likely. The telltale signs of a leisurely stroll up the staircase that denied most of the personnel access due to the weight of their armor or were too bulky to begin with only served to remind him of how cornered he was unless he jumped down and brave the night soon after.

"You know, I'm startin' to think you don't want to talk to me now with all this runnin' about." Despite the chuckle of a non-insidious nature that went with it, every muscle within the ghost's body slowly tensed to its peak when that accented voice of a tropical origin crept through the air with the same measure of off putting strangeness that few men dared to communicate with. "Now, now. I'm ain't here to cause ya grief, mister Uzumaki."

A smug smirk split itself upon Gabriel's features as the younger ghost turned to him in the same fashion as a man hoping what doom that approached him was a hoaxed created by his own mind…

XVX

Laboratory, Hyperion

"Blood type O Positive," Doctor Hanson mumbled as he typed away at the keyboard for her records. "Entered surgery once to remove birthmarks…" She had been long since forced from the bridge by Matt Horner given her own connection considering her connections to the refugees below. The only reason she hadn't protested was that she could agree with his reasoning, "You're too close to them." She was no soldier, and a façade of a scientist detached from a subject could only last so long… all she could do was attend to the work she had yet to perform as accurately as it should have been.

"EGGHEAD!" Her scowl upon striking a wrong key went unnoticed by Rory Swann as he stormed into the laboratory with nothing but a scowl and a strangled monkey wrench in his grasp which he pointed threateningly at the only other scientist in the room whom quickly drawn a curtain to protect two stasis tanks from common view in a mixture of practiced protocol and nerve wracked panic upon the barking of his moniker. He was a man in his early twenties with neatly combed hair rose up and stayed together with the help of hair gel. He was dressed in a lab coat much like Ariel constantly worn, yet his garb was more of a worker's assortment of garments that held some of the scientific necessities in its bands rather than a gray sweater and a brown knee length skirt under the professional's coat. Swann's monkey wrench only stopped but less than an inch away from yellow safety glasses. "I said it before and I'll say it again: Leave the Hyperion's maintenance to me and my guys. Thanks to you the entire left half of the ship lost communications." A nervous gulp, an equally queasy laugh, and a shaky raising of the hands in defeat did nothing to alleviate the chief engineer's mood if the squinty-eyed death glare was an indication.

The doctor only shook her head as she returned to her work with the clear and obvious intent of ignoring the two. "In need of psychiatric help when possible," she mumbled once more as she written into the notes section of her medical journal. "Hey! I may not be as "cultured" as you two may want me to be, but I get along fine enough. It's when someone goes messin' with the ship that makes me difficult," Rory countered with the turning if his head to give the doctor a piece of his mind while keeping his stance. Though with the lowered guard, he wasn't able to discern that Egon Stetmann was slowly creeping away while the burly one-armed man was pointedly ignored in order to complete a medical file. "Now I just need an up to date headshot to complete this…"

Blinking and pocketing his wrench, the chief engineer wandered to a respectable view of the screen which the volunteered doctor vested so much interest in. "Naruto Uzumaki?" he drawled. Squinting and bringing up his only hand in a pinching the smiling face of blond haired child a few years younger than a teen, effectively blocking out a total of six whisker marks that adorned his cheeks. "Huh… so that's his name." The assertive, pronounced strike of a punctuation marked the end of the current flurry of key strokes on Ariel's behalf as she slowly turned to face a somewhat confused Rory Swann.

"Are you saying that throughout your time here, you have yet to learn his name?" Her eyes matched the same sense of incredulousness that laced her tone of voice. The engineer nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders in return. "Never asked, never gave. Just about everyone called him "kid" and the like when I got here, never once took offense to that as far as I knew. If anyone knew his real name, it was the commander and the captain."

The skeptical stare did not lose its edge as she pointedly moved her slipping glasses back up the bridge of her nose.

XVX

Meinhoff, night

The roar of gunfire, flamethrowers, and the screams of the dying infested terrans filled the night in droves that sometimes lapped over one another with ease. It mattered little however to one ghost in shock. "How-?" A low chuckle from the dark skinned man halted him, though whether that was the intended effect or not was unclear, yet the opening wasn't missed by the older of the pair.

"While ya ain't exactly famous by legitimate means, your name isn't unheard of thanks to your abilities nor is it forgotten by those who knew ya back then." Something of a devious grin creased itself upon himself as an already tense body pushed itself to a near mimicry of rigor mortis despite his living state, and it wasn't lost when he picked up the latent sense of aggression towards unsaid implications he had no part in but relished nevertheless. "While some still cling to whatever grudge they have against ya, it seems that the fates gave me the fortune of only associating me self with those who have a more…" the grin took an odder turn at the pause, "favorable view of ya."

"What do you want?" Even with a mask with a buitl in synthesizer, Gabriel could sense the terse nature of the question if his psychic aura wasn't enough to tell his mood. Regardless, his grin was of a much darker nature now. "To finish the job with Mengsk," he replied lowly with an ease that was as rehearsed as it was true. His grin never faded, in fact grew in satisfaction when a literal spike arose from the younger ghost in both mood and the psionic level as his senses could tell.

"That doesn't answer my question…" Easily the urge to shake his head in sheer amusement as he mused only to himself: "Angry enough to rip a legion apart and yet he can still see an evasion of a question." Another chuckle had to be restrained as well lest he set the younger one off by accident. "Be that as it may, it is the truth. Unfortunately someone like him ain't gonna go down by one man's hands. No, I'm gonna need all the help I can get, and I ain't the only one Mengsk made an enemy out of over the years." Again a spike rose, more gradually than the first by comparison, from the teen in front of him in a magnitude that the ground vibrated as a side effect. "I know you and Mister Raynor want him dead as much as I do if not worse."

The two stared at each other intently with their own reasoning and their own disposition firmly set. The grin finally turned to a smirk after a long moment of silence, and the man who wore it finally turned to leave the same way he came. "Talk to me if you're interested in hearing me out, preferably when you're less… agitated." He had no response for Tosh as he descended the stairs, merely content enough to turn around to resume his original duty to find a veritable wall of the infested lumbering towards the barricade. Were they drawn in by the psychic call that the zerg seemed to be fascinated by? Probably.

"Day break in thirty seconds." The Adjutant was simply ignored in favor of tightly grasping the rifle in hand, taking aim, and letting loose pent up hostility…

XVX

The smirk took a darker turn as wave after wave of psionic energy assailed his senses as a horde of what was once terrans, now twisted into shambling creatures of nightmares bearing claws and other such weaponry of the zerg in their misshapen flesh, took the brunt of a freshly reawakened anger that often lay dormant till provoked. Oh how he wished to see the destruction first hand as to better gauge what Naruto Uzumaki could do with his one of a kind power, yet even he knew he was taking a chance of being turned into a target after riling him up… hacking into a computer to witness the now current results would be more than enough to satisfy him for the time being.

The ability to mold this "chakra" with psionic energies to unleash not only whatever powers it entails but to unleash more devastating forces upon one's foes… he could almost say it was a shame that Project Phantom could produce only one with his ability while others were stuck to the more archaic means that divided one's attention. Again, he could almost say it if it were not for some parallels between Phantom and Shadow Blade. Then there was personal history as well…

They may come from different roads, he, Naruto Uzumaki, and James Raynor, but they were all the same at the end. They had a job to do, and nothing was going to stop them from completing it.

XVX

Bridge, Hyperion

Day break had already washed away the seemingly endless army of infested that attacked the compound and the now bolstered forces of the Raiders that poured out in retaliation…

The projected course of attack was to start at the northeast and work their way south where their specialist was now rampaging for lack of a better word. But that's not worried the captain of the Raider's flagship, not entirely at least. Matt already sent a squad to ensure that nothing unexpected happened to him, or worse yet he was caught in the event he wasn't even capable of defending himself from exhaustion…

But that's what worried Matt, he didn't get like this without something to antagonize him. Already Matt had pulled up a screen at the holo-table, switched it to a two dimensional view of the battlefield, and reviewed the movements for all the units on the ground for the past few minutes before day break since the actual cameras for such a job were too focused on the defenses that were being attacked. Surprised, expected, annoyed, perhaps a combination of all three were what manifested inside the captain as he learned that Tosh seemed to occupy the same vicinity of Naruto for the span of three minutes. Plenty of time to get someone worked up over something, anything. But what?

A gloved finger gently tapped the edge of the gilded table in thought. "What are you playing at, Tosh?"