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 8: A modicum of change...
(Flashback!)
Canyon, Minus Five
"Say again, sergeant?"
Lieutenant Sasha Marlin's presence was not a welcomed one since she had arrived. Aloof, standoffish, and passive aggressive were but a few of the more civil descriptions offered to describe her. Increased patrols were all but demanded by her despite a distinct lack of anything that could be considered dangerous. The small arsenal of gadgetry created by the triplets in their spare time had disappeared within the first week she had arrived, where they were now was anyone's guess. Even the equipment the triplets modified from their weapons to their armor were replaced by their standard counterparts since the modified ones were not "up to code" according to her. She never even made a single appearance outside of her suit...
As for the current situation, they would either need a dictionary or at least thesaurus to help describe someone who went gallivanting ahead of the group during a patrol she had ordered them to partake in, encountered an apparent smuggling operation, somehow released a full grown Scoro, got trapped inside a cave and had been in radio silence since then as the rest of the squad had to scramble in an overall retreat from a beast that was virtually immune to small arms fire.
To make matters worse, what help they were trying to scrounge up was being stalled by an outright, pompous, slack jawed, IDIOT who seemingly had an 'issue' with an "absurd" 'request.'
"Ya heard me you pencil pushin' jackass! We! Need! Tanks!"
"Well if you hicks want them then I suggest you ask nicely an—"
SMASH!
Naruto scrambled away when the colossal scorpion stinger missed him and struck the rocky wall just above his spot, effectively creating a rain of fair sized boulders and shards that only serve to further annoy the already enraged bug from hell.
"Unless you actually earned those bars, captain, instead of having daddy pay for them, then you can kiss my ass!" Frankfurt snarled before cutting off the com.
"Nice one," Denise dryly quipped as she peered past the ridging that was their cover. The Scoro was still hunting Naruto down with its tail since its pincers could only clip at the rock far beneath the rough trail he occupied.
"It's your show now, Shrimp!"
"Got it!"
Immediately he dashed towards the south, following the path dutifully, not once did he pay heed to the tail which he outran when it struck. In the last stretch of reaching a predetermined spot he held out his free hand towards the stony insect that was hell bent on either destroying him or eating him, within its open grasp the air began to coalesce into three barely opaque lines that grew thicker by the second.
"Würden ie bitte feuern?(*1)" someone spoke up in a silky, almost... wrong timbre, into his radio.
Before he even realized it, the half formed 'shell' that was supposed to be veritable trio of blades made, literally, out of thin air had fired from his palm, knocking down the creature and stunning it long enough for Naruto to slow to a halt and stare at his palm in sheer confusion.
"MOVE DAMN IT!" In a jolt he bolted off upon being reminded of the reality of his situation was. Like a Olympic sprinter of old he zipped by clusters of time forgotten rock, hurtling over them even on occasion, and continued to dodge the stinger once more with ease.
"Make it rain!"
"For the record this is using up the last of our grenades!"
"I sincerely hate that lieutenant..."
"Who do we complain to in order to get out explosives back?!"
"JUST BLOW IT!"
"Grouch..." all three triplets grumbled over the intercom.
BOOM!
"SCREEE!"
"I need eyes down there!" the sergeant ordered as he finally peaked over his shared shelter. "Is the bug down?" he asked as he scrutinized the expansive dust cloud that enveloped the rock covered insect.
"I can't tell..."
"Neither can we!"
"If it's dead, do we get to eat it?"
"Dibs on the eyes!"
"Right... I'm going to walk away and hopefully my com would be disrupted by a abandoned can opener or something."
"Würden Sie bitte den Staub zu löschen? (*2)"
"Alright, who's—" Again he lost control of himself as some part of his mind kicked into overdrive, molding chakra with his telekinetic abilities into a gust of wind ushered in by the semi-conscious wave of his hand.
"What are you talking about, Shrimp?" Frankfurt rumbled through the intercom just in time for the now dead Scoro, its equivalent to a head smashed in by a particularly large chunk that used to be the canyon wall, to be revealed. "Well I guess that answers the Scoro question..."
"... Anyway... Have you guys not been listening to... whoever it was that's been talking to me?"
Only the wind chose to respond to him, even if it was only in passing.
"Guys?"
No one commented.
"Sarge?"
He could swear he heard a corpse cough somewhere on the other side of the planet with how silent they were.
"Denny?"
A simian scratching itself in another sector if he were to guess...
"... Twins plus one?"
A man walking barefoot on the pointy end of superheated glass shards was more quiet than the triplets at times! Especially when mildly insulted at best!
... And then it came. The chuckling, dark and foreboding in a sinister understanding of something. It was light of course, almost impossible to hear were it not for a strange tingling in the back of his mind saying he should be cautious of it...
He gave his surroundings a check, weapon pointed as a precaution, before turning his attention to his HUD in hopes of finding something to help explain the outright silence he was suffering from. To his discomfort his suit's com system was somehow turned off upon a quick perusal's discovery. Frowning, he nudged the earpiece-like switch what was a part of his mask and enabled the last vestiges of a conversation taking place.
"—Watch your tone, Sergeant Jones."
The sergeant didn't need to reply to have his seething discontent palpable.
"Omega Squad, regroup and report back to base."
(End Flashback!)
Naruto's quarters, Hyperion, seventy-eight hours later
A part of him wanted to bolt once his mind was lucid enough to realize that it wasn't his bed per se as far as his head was concerned. Another wished to cringe was the strange feeling upon his head was actually two sets of fingers softly running through his hair in a slow, never ending caress. Even the most instinctual portion of him wish for him to rise once it became evident that his once sealed door had been unlocked...
But at this point there wasn't a point in resisting now that she had certifiably 'caught' him...
It was a good run though. Using his fellow Raiders as veritable shields as well as his familiarity of the Hyperion to evade her for the better part of five, maybe six days straight if one was to be technical. But eventually even he needed sleep. He guessed he should've known better. What she lacked in raw power that he had, she had the greatest control of the two. She could've sliced her way through without rousing him for what it's worth, and even then she had the same training as he had before they were separated.
... Maybe it would be a different story stole a couch from bay eight, where they keep all the odds and ends they collected over the years but never quite thrown away, and propped it against the door to keep it from opening period...
But as it was said, there wasn't a point in complaining now. Slowly his eyes drifted to a close once more, content with enjoying the peace for a little while longer till what he knew finally came next.
... All he could only do now is hope that she remained ignorant of the past that chose to haunt his sleep as of late.
XVX
Lab
Fresh ashes of a cigarette was dumped into the tin ashtray next to the computer just before the lit vice returned to the mouth of James Raynor as he continued to scroll through the seemingly endless list of names. It was only out of the culmination of curiosity and a distinct desire to distract himself from his current task to casually eye the door the minute the doors opened for Doctor Hanson to meander through only for her to stop and stare at him in surprise.
"You don't normally come down here without a reason," she states with a slightly raised brow.
He turned back to the computer without a second glance. "Just something's been bugging me..." he admits as he continued his 'research.'
"It's that girl, isn't it?"
"... Yeah... Been watchin' him too, have you?"
"His previous documents aside, he still needs a perform a checkup for the sake of updating his information," Ariel replied in a matter-of-fact tone and a slight smirk in hopes of breaking his apparent mood whilst making her way to him.
It didn't work; his focus was on the screen and the screen alone.
"The most I can tell is that he knows her, just he won't say where or how. And if I were a betting man then Tosh known this too when he put that request in for a team to find his missing agents; either way it played out, him going or staying on the ship, they would've met at some point. What I would really like to know at this point is what kind of history they have before I make something of a move..." The man sighed as he leaned back into his chair, propped an arm atop an armrest and settled his cheek upon the fist that was a curled hand even as Doctor Hanson walked over to a prime position to peer over his shoulder.
"Her picture's at the current bottom of the screen."
Brown eyes shifted to the area Ariel had pointed out and promptly clenched in exasperation upon discovering she was spot on. "Always in the last place you look," he grumbles as he pulled up the file of a apparent twelve year old girl...
"[Saeko Busujima]
Age: Twelve.
Eye Color: Blue.
Unique Characteristics: Purple hair, natural.
Planet of origin: "Earth."
-Side Note: Despite the astronomical odds against it, current level of technology and even inter-planetary political relations are a near exact duplicate of the original Earth's history in the circa of the early portion twenty-first century save for distinctive variations such as condimental formations and suspected fabrication of their history upon the planet (source/reasoning of this anomaly is unknown, only suspected of such thanks to comparing "official" documentation against existing data concerning the pre-colonial era).
Identification number: One-oh-seven.
Analysis:
Temperament: Level headed. No overt/observable signs of aggression and/or anything considered to be psychotic tendencies. Sociopathic tendencies have been noticed however, namely a near total disregard of those outside of her own clique. Even then she shows no distinctive, however minute, signs of worry or remorse for her group in general should they have been injured/killed by her own actions or the actions of others save for a notable handful as far as her group's overall pitiful number is concerned.
Psionic level: Eight.
-Side Note: Meets bare minimum of being a level eight "ghost." Where she lacks raw power, however, she makes up for it in strong mental discipline and focus that usually applies to a blade or a blade-like object to which could be applied for radical feats that have otherwise been proven impossible to duplicate by the other subjects.
Special Notice: Since the installation-wide power failure (cause of which was subjects eighty-seven, fifty-two, ninety-four, and sixty-eight's (in order of determined contribution) sabotage of all three power stations by a suspected coalition of their psionic powers), subject one-oh-seven has taken to almost never leaving the company of subject one-oh-nine unless essentially forced to do so. It should also be noted that one-oh-seven and one-oh-nine have been in correspondence with one another via letters since one-oh-nine had been deployed for the Word of Mouth experiment till the latter disappeared shortly after activation. One-oh-nine's status and subsequent whereabouts remains unknown; no observable tendencies have been noted from one-oh-seven other than a steady increase of inquiries regarding any continued correspondence from one-oh-nine."
A pause ensued between them.
"What is—"
"... One of the reasons he isn't exactly social," he interrupted as politely, though awkward, as possible as he took out a pack of cigarettes and subsequently drew one of its namesakes after grounding the lit one into the ashtray.
"I would still like to—"
He withdrew the device from the computer.
"Commander!" she cried incredulously as she reached for the USB. He only tucked it away into the folds of his vest, away from her frantic grasp.
"No offence, doc, but I can't in good conscious let you see this at this point," he drawled as he got up, Hanson backing away so not to interrupt the action, and walked towards the door.
"And who's to say I haven't seen it already?" she demanded with a scowl.
He smirked as he replied without looking to her just as he crossed the threshold of the automatic doors. "If you read up on it then you wouldn't have asked me to begin with."
"What if it was to refresh my memory!" The doors clamped shut. For minutes on end it became more and more evident that he had called her bluff with the ease of a veteran poker player would have against someone who had just started playing.
With a sigh of exasperation she pushed her gradually slipping glasses up her nose as she too headed for the door.
"Well then," she muttered as she entered the passageway, "let's test your theory then."
XVX
Cantina
"Pay up," he softly chuckled. The 'ghost' grunts as he shoved a small allotment of credits to the dark skinned man before getting up with a disgruntled, heavier grunt he got up from his seat at the balcony that was Tosh's domain. A wave of small red hexagonal plates suddenly afflicted him, leaving nothing in their wake as they raced from the top of his head to the bottom of the soles of his boots, each 'layer' of the hexagons seemingly vanish without a trace along with the segments of body they had covered till nothing was left to be seen of the man they covered just before even a sliver of Ariel Hanson's body could be spied upon as she ascended the staircase and later entered the small open room.
"Ah Doctor Hanson, how may I help ya?" Tosh said with a chortle only he could hear and a grin much too reserved compared to his true mood.
She only observed him at first with pursed lips as she seemingly had second thoughts of what she had originally planned on. Slowly, but surely, she took a seat across from him in a calm manner and eyed him.
"Just how much do you know of Naruto Uzumaki?"
It took every ounce of his willpower to keep his smile from becoming devious in nature. "Now why would you ask me that?"
Her lips pursed further to the point they became a frown of its own caliber. "You're actions to this date have hardly been subtle to someone who's been paying close enough attention. Nor has your... cargo been as discrete as you would've liked."
He chuckled more audibly this time much to her now official, small frown. "Then let me ask you this then... why is it that ya want to know?"
She paused as she mulled over her soon to be answer.
"It wasn't because Jim Raynor took away your toy now is it? I would've thought that someone of your caliber would be a bit more mature than this."
A glare met him to which he only grinned at in return.
"I'm just messin' with ya," he lowly chortled as he leaned into the back of his chair. Much to her curiosity his smile began to fade. "Besides, you and Raynor got nothin' to worry about from me or my... associates."
"And why is that?" she asked incredulously.
"Because," a ghost of a smile haunted his lips, "as much as I can rile him up, in the end its his choice on whether or not to help me, not mine." The 'smile' was lost a moment later.
"... To help you with what?" she dared to ask after a moment.
He smirked in a sarcastic fashion. "If we have one thing in common is that we hate a certain man." He tilted slightly as he seemed to be reaching for something beyond Ariel's sight, with a sluggish flourish he produced a chipped, but familiar variation device she had in her possession not too long ago.
"How'd you—"
"She did a good job," Tosh interjected with a slight grin. "But legendary as she may be, even the tiniest of details can escape masters when they are in a rush."
Blue eyes narrowed as the hand they all but commanded slowly reached over to the device, fingers tentatively grasping the USB and tugged on it gently to find it trapped within Gabriel's grasp. "... With or without this, I have no intention of standing idly by out of good conscious."
"How noble of ya," he chuckles as he lets go. As she got up and made to leave he called out again. "And a word of advice." She turned to half glare at him. "I suggest reading the entire thing instead of taking a few notes this time around; I don't have a copy of that to spare ya know."
XVX
Naruto's quarters
Within the darkness of his room she never budged from her spot even once. Still he lain his head atop her lap since she had placed it there though she could see him twitching on occasion. It only grew worse as time went on: Legs curled and kicked out, hands spasm against their will between curling into fists and forming half formed claws with clenched fingers as they tried to open...
But never once did he stray from her lap on his own accord.
She only smiled as her bare fingers ran through the depths of his hair.
A/N:Translation (from using Google translator...There isn't any classes for the German language where I live as far as I know! (Cries.)
German: (1): "Would you please fire?"
(2) "Would you please clear the dust?"