Okay, I got some reviews . . . and it seems most of you (including me) would like to keep Gloo!
As you wish!
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto; not even Gloo! Neji owns him! o_0

Chapter 18: What's Left

Gloo dropped to the ground and started a fit of coughs. He could feel himself grow weaker and weaker.

"Gloo! Gloo!" Neji cried. He was patting his back, trying to ease the pain for him, even if he knew it wouldn't work. His pet was coughing up black blood, which was actually still goo. Tenten was next to Neji, who was trying to comfort him. She could see small tears forming on the bottom of his eyes, which was very surprising because Neji rarely cries.

"Master, I . . . want to thank you . . . you know, for being nice to me," Gloo managed to say. A smile was forming on his lips as he felt the feeling in his stomach that would mean the end of him. He had lived a very short, but happy life.

To the sound of weeping and coughing, Hanabi woke up. She was lying on the ground for some reason when she clearly remembered laying down on a tree. "Gloo! No! Hang on!" Hanabi turned to the familiar yet unfamiliar sound. She knew that deep voice well, but she never heard it in a tone like that. It was one of great sadness. It was weird.

She saw Neji crouching next to someone and Tenten crouching next to him. Not surprsing, but what was surprising, besides Neji crying, was that Neji was crying to the enemy! She recognized the young teenage boy with the sandy-colored hair wearing the black ninja-like clothes without a mask. Ninja, as in one of those silly American movies she once observed. She scrambled up and scurried over to her older cousin.

"Neji, what do you think you're doing?" she said harshly to him. Neji continued to comfort Gloo, but Tenten noticed the girl.

"Hanabi, it looks like our enemy, is Neji's friend!" she said with a "he couldn't tell us that earlier" smile. This fact was too confusing for the young Hyuga to grasp.

"What? We've been fighting him the whole time!" she exclaimed. "Well, what's happening to him now?"

"He seems to be . . . dying." Tenten whispered the last part out so her cute friend wouldn't hear. Hanabi started to smile and was about to exclaim proudly that they've won, but Tenten shook her head. "That's not a good thing, according to Neji."

The smile disappeared and was replaced with an exasperated sigh. "Do you have time to explain?"

Tenten found it hard to see the girl act so tough when earlier, her sleeping figure was about to be stabbed in the heart. She gave her a hurried explanation, "I'll give you a brief summary: this guy used to be this slime ball that followed Neji around. Then he seemed to have found a body but couldn't control it and instead starting attacking us. Now he's muttering something about his 'master's master' dying so he's dying too. Now Neji's sad because he loves the slime ball that followed him around."

Hanabi tried to take this all in. "So . . . if this story is true, then can't this 'slime ball' just jump off the body? He was okay not having a body, and when he did have one, it caused problems."

Gloo heard this suggestion. The girl who looked like his master (whom he now knows is Neji because a lot of people call him that) could be right. He might still live if he doesn't connect with the body. This Ryu figure was lying with his stomach on the ground, so he can just exit from the neck there. He closed his eyes, feeling the last moments of his life wandering in his head, and tried to disconnect. He could feel himself morph and turn small. He didn't feel heavy like he did when he had the body. He didn't feel big and tall, but back to being small and seemingly a weakling. It was when he heard a small surprised cry that he opened his eyes.

"Augh!" Tenten exclaimed. "Neji, something's wrong with your friend!" Hanabi peeked over her cousin's shoulder and saw a small black glob sitting on the ground.

Neji, who was not weeping as much as earlier and was just sobbing, replied, "I know Tenten, he's gone. You don't have to make a comment." His eyes were closed and his face was hidden so nobody could see the state he was in.

"No, look!"

"I . . . don't want to see him . . . lifeless."

"He doesn't seem very lifeless to me," Hanabi commented.

Neji's eyes snapped open and turned back to his once-enemy. They were right: Ryu's head was gone turning into the black slime, but Gloo's same substance figure was back. Neji quickly wiped away his tears and stared happily at his faithful black jelly-dog. Gloo stared back at him.

"Grrroooollb!"

Oops. Now that he doesn't have a body, he can't speak either. His master noticed this, but he didn't seem to mind. However, before they could fully recover and celebrate, Kiba and Akamaru came bounding into the scene.

"There you guys are!" he said with a slight tiredness in his voice. He was scratched up everywhere; his thin jacket was a mess, there were twigs and leaves in his hair, and Akamaru had the same features as his master. "You need to come back with us! Hinata's found something!"

After arguing for a while, Sakura and Naruto had finally come to a decision: they were going to bring Ryu to the room where his throne sat and continue the discussion from there.

"Burying takes too much time, Sakura!"

"It's the least we could do for him!"

"What are you talking about? Did you even know the guy?"

"Well . . . um . . . no, but-"

"He was the bad guy! In case you forgot he kidnapped Hinata!"

"Well-well-you killed him!"

"Now what are you saying! I never killed him! I was poisoned! Hinata-"

Naruto didn't want to finish that sentence. He doesn't want to blame Hinata. He doesn't want to blame her for anything.

"Um, I kind of agree on burying him," Hinata spoke up. The two looked at her. She was leaning on a tree after her amazingly fast recovery, though she still doesn't have the strength to stand on her own.

"I don't get you girls! Why? I didn't expect hearing that from you, Hinata, since you were the one abducted!" Naruto exclaimed.

"He wasn't really all that bad . . ." she murmured.

"Hinata . . . what? What do you mean?"

"I . . . don't know. I don't why but I just feel sorry for him."

"Here, why don't we just bring his body over to that stone room we were once in? And then we'll talk more of this there," suggested Sakura.

In an awkward silence, Naruto and Hinata nodded in agreement.

Along the way, the three ninjas met with Kiba and Shino, who were both in a messy condition.

"What happened to you guys?" Naruto asked darkly. He wasn't really in a good mood because he was picked to carry the enemy to the temple.

"That Jug was actually pretty strong," Kiba said as the ninjas darted through the forest.

"My opponent, too," agreed Shino.

"So, uh, where are we going?" Kiba asked.

"Back to that dark room," Naruto answered. Even though he wasn't in the mood, he still wanted to be the one to talk.

"Where's Neji?" Kiba questioned again.

"Maybe he and the others are already there."

This was the first time Kiba noticed that Sakura was here. Shino had already noticed, but he didn't say anything. "Sakura, when were you here?"

"Me, Tenten, and Hanabi are your backup team," she answered.

"Oh . . ." was all he said. He was mentally checking if everything was all right, making sure all his systems were functioning, especially his nose. With his nose, and eyes, he should have spotted Sakura immidiately.

Finally, they reached the now crumbled rectangle room where all the fights started. But something was missing, something big. The throne was still there, but what wasn't?

"The mountain," Shino started. "It's gone." The others looked around, and it seemed Shino was right. The mountain was gone!

"Wha-where did it go?" Naruto dropped the corpse on the ground and went to look. "A whole mountain can't just disappear!"

Angrily, Sakura, with the help of Hinata, picked up the dead body Naruto dropped. Kiba asked why they had him, and the girls replied in unison that it was a long story. So he shrugged his shoulder and offered to carry it, which the girls gladly took. They carried him inside his empty stone room and laid him on the floor. "Now what?" Kiba grunted. Ryu was heavier than he thought.

"NARUTO GET OVER HERE!" Sakura shouted to him. The blonde ninja quickly dropped in from the roof through the hole that was supposed to be the light for the room.

"WHAT?" he shouted back. And they started their argument.

Tired, and still not fully recovered, Hinata walked away from all the noise to the throne. She hated when people fight, and she would always get a headache from all the shouting. To keep her mind off of the two, she closed her eyes and tried to remember the last few days, which was bad, but was good enough.

She remembered waking up to see her kidnappers . . . who were arguing. She remembered being punched and blacking out. She remembered waking up to see that she was high in the air. She remembered kicking Jug between his legs, dropping her. She remembered their . . . arguing . . . voices as she fell through the sky; landing on the leaves she argued with herself which way to go; she woke up to meet Ryu; she stayed with him for a while, and he even made her clothes; on their second meeting, Jug and Kiro were arguing again; she was unconscious again and woke up in a dark place; she heard the older Ryu's plans about her; she saw Naruto and his team rescuing her, but they were arguing if it was really her or not.; there was when Ryu and Naruto were arguing who she will go to . . .

Hinata stopped thinking. Even through all of her memories, there were still arguments in there. That was frustrating. She fled to the back of the throne, hoping to not get noticed. It was there that she remembered there was something about this dark side of the room. Something was hiding in the shadows of the darkness. Something mysterious. She turned back to her friends. "Kiba!" she called. Like a dog, the Inuzuka snapped to atttention at his name, and the others turned their heads also. "I need you to find Neji and the others; tell him I've found something and need help investigating it!" Without asking any questions, Kiba nodded and left with his dog.

Sakura, though had one thing to ask. "Hinata, you're not thinking to use your Byakugan are you?" she worried.

"I'm going to find out what's over there," the Hyuga answered, pointing to the back of the room, past the throne.

"But you can't! Using your Byakugan means using chakra!" the ninja medic exclaimed. "You're still low on chakra and if you use any more, you might lose all and . . . You just can't!"

"Sakura," Hinata started calmly. "I never said I'd use it."

The ninja widened her eyes. "But I though you said you wanted to find out-"

"Well, that's what I need Neji for."

"Use my Byakugan? Why can't you just create a hole for light like in the other room?" Neji asked. He had stopped his celebration of Gloo's return for this?

"No! We might mess something up!" Hinata cried. "I don't want to ruin anything."

Seeing the pleading eyes of his younger cousin, Neji sighed and decided to give up. He heard the story of her fight with Ryu and how she used the Gentle Step: Twin Lion Fists. That jutsu could damage even the strongest of men, but it takes up a lot of chakra, so it shouldn't be used when you're low of it. She knew that.

"Fine." He turned to face the dark room ahead of him. "Byakugan!" The veins on the sides of his eyes bulged as he scanned the room, his eyes widening.

Meanwhile, while all the others were with Neji, Kiba found Hinata's Ryu-made clothes neatly folded and stacked behind the throne, placed on top of one of the platforms. There was something about the flowers that were sewn into her silk shirt that made him be suspicious. Before he could inform her, though, Neji called Kiba over. The obedient teenage walked over to him, Akamaru trailing closely behind.

"Do you smell . . . dead people?" he asked quietly, like he was . . . scared.

Kiba and Akamaru sniffed around. "Yeah," he said in the same soft voice.

"That's what I thought. Quickly, we need to find a way to flood this room with light," he commanded.

They all then started for the roof, forgetting everything about the mountain.

Please Review!

Unlike the flowers, the mountain has no significant meaning; I just wanted to put that in.
For some reason, I can't bring myself to hate Ryu! I made him the enemy, but I can't hate him!
I think it's because I always hate when old people die. It's so sad!

Oh my gosh! We're already nearing the end! However, I've planned something . . .