Guess who started using "XXXXXX" as a page break because they FU*KING FINALLY REALIZED their previous chapters were being posted without page breaks? Yeah… I don't read my stories after they get posted too much. I did try to fix the previous chapter a bit, but people seemed to start reviewing about how there was no update and stuff. So I gave up on it.
Not sure why, but Google Doc page breaks just won't transfer to FFN for me.
And while I previously tried to basically put page breaks through the FFN app, I don't know how many I missed or whatever. So yeah, I suppose "XXXXXX" it is, then.
XXXXXX
He sat on top of a train as he blankly stared at the moving scenery as he thought over what his other clones must have been doing over all this time if the one in the forest was just… uh, making 'ventures' into the streaming business.
He suddenly quickly started looking around in a panic as he remembered one particular time when he decided to just sit on the top of a train only for it to take him to the devil's Underworld dimension. He did not want a repeat of that.
Seeing nothing supernatural going on with this train, he allowed his guard to lower. The odds of randomly getting on top of a train to the devils' Underworld were low but never quite zero.
Well… they were lower than the odds of accidentally finding oneself on a trip to the Biblical Faction's heaven, anyway.
It had gotten easier and easier once Heaven stopped getting into a supernatural war with everything. Fucking EVERYTHING.
Would it kill their leader to stop getting into a fight with everything?
As it was, the guy only stopped because of Naruto's own involvement. The guy wanted to get into a fight because he wanted to be bitchy about stuff? That was already something he wasn't all that fine with. But then he started bringing whole factions into a war because of that bitch-fit?Comment by destructo08: Uh.
Even then, Naruto was willing to tolerate that. He just tried to keep humans safe rather than getting into every skirmish the infinite number of factions these worlds had. So there was still a chance for Naruto to do nothing there.
But then of course after pushing his patience with all the other things that he barely tolerated, he'd bring the humans into it as well. The innocent ones and the ones Naruto could relate with the most.
He had already tried getting involved with every damn war that would start between factions, and it had left him a broken man for a few generations. Not even him with all his clones could peacefully resolve it all. And trying to do it all with force just didn't sit right with him. Ignoring the time he got pissed off enough to storm the Biblical Heaven and beat their 'God' black and blue, anyway.
If he had to choose to do it again, he'd do it a hundred times over. Things had calmed down by so much ever since he had done that.
The calm before the storm? Likely. But still, the peace that he got out of it was… heavenly.
And now he was beginning to find out what his clones were doing when he stopped keeping an eye out on them all. Well, his break from beating the shit out of 'God' would have only lasted so long anyway. Time to maybe see what was up with his clones ever since he started allowing large numbers of them to just do whatever they wanted after their initial reason for creation was completed. He started doing that a few centuries back when he broke when he tried to single handedly stop all the fighting.
All of it.
Emphasis on all.
In DxD, anyway.
The failures had taken their toll on him as more and more memories from clones showed him his attempts had failed and the thousands that would pay the price for it. In the end, he ended up modifying the Shadow Clone Jutsu by a slight bit. The modifications had only happened roughly a century back. Well, successful modifications, anyway. He had been making the passive attempt or two for centuries before that. If anything came of it, it wasn't good enough for him to call it a ment by destructo08: That other clone in this chapter?
It hadn't really worried him at the time, but now he was somewhat starting to get worried just how many of the people he'd see on technological devices were them. Chakra sensing was good and all, but it didn't really tell you if someone on TV was a clone.
Well… something to worry about later, he guessed. No point worrying about it. Unlike the movies of this age that were all about the clones or the creations of man turning against them, his clones never really did that. Naruto wasn't sure if that was out of loyalty to him, however. There was an equally good chance it was simply because they all had roughly the same morals, and the same goals, and fighting him was to cause issues there.
If it was the latter, then the advantages of such were that he at least knew his clones could be trusted to stop him if he ever turned evil.
Shaking his head to focus back on reality, he realized he was at his stop. Well, not his stop exactly, but close enough.
The train was going on a bridge over water.
He jumped off it, into the water.
Instantly focusing on the leftover amount of chakra he had from Isobu from hundreds of years back, he rocketed through the water.
Time to see what was going on in the aquatic world. His gut or 'his protagonist sense' told him to go there, so he might as well.
He could trust the surface world with his clones anyway.
'Speaking of clones…'
XXX
(Back With the Forest Fire)
"The boss fucking sucks!" she screamed as the holy flames got more out of control as she tried to lessen them without the help of Isobu's chakra.
Where the fuck were the devils when you needed them? Normally they responded to anything that seemed to radiate a lot of holy energy on the human world.
And while she couldn't sense the holy energy, she was sure the flames were letting off a lot of it.
Of course, there always was the chance that maybe this area was out of limits to the devil faction. She didn't know.
Letting off a slew of swears at her creator, she yelled, " Wind Style: Vacuum!"
XXX
(Back With Naruto)
He wondered how his clone was doing with the forest fire situation back in Kuoh.
Meh. Not his problem.
He simply looked at the darkness ahead, the world having grown completely dark a while back, light failing to penetrate this deep into the water.
He was going in blindly now.
Wouldn't be the first time for him.
He supposed he could try to provide light himself with chakra, but perhaps these journeys of his were not always about the scenery or even the journeys themselves, sometimes they were just about the destination and he simply had to let the world guide him to wherever he was likely needed.
In other words, he was winging it.
But that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. The dark hid many secrets, both in this world and his old one. Best not to scare what might approach him with light, after all.
Tightening the grip on his chakra so as to not cause anomalies simply due to the world's rejection of his existence and, by connection, his chakra, his chakra wastage lessened to zero, well enough that not even his clones would have been able to sense him.
Well, not passively, anyway. Active sensing was a whole different story. In a world where only they had chakra, they lit up quite brightly to their chakra sensing.
Feeling the urge to sleep hit him—the darkness was pretty boring after all—he decided to sleep instead of staying awake.
Sure, he'd likely wake up when he finally hit something, and that was probably going to be somewhat painful at the speed he was going at, but he wasn't all that worried about that.
XXX
He felt something poke him.
He frowned but kept his eyes closed.
Something then poked his cheeks. His upper cheeks, if clarification was needed.
He got annoyed and turned around to try and avoid being poked in the face. Absently, he noted that, for being in water, the place around him felt pretty dry. 'Huh, dry water?' Wouldn't be the weirdest thing he supposed, even if that went against what water was.
As he got poked again and was considering going on a war against the fish population or whatever it was that was poking him, hand twitching and itching to make a Rasengan, he suddenly realized he had just turned around; as if he was on ground.
Opening his eyes, he quickly glared a finger into submission as its owner pulled it back from poking his face again. He noticed that there was no water in front of him, and he was sleeping on the floor. Definitely not something he was unused to, when it came to the latter, he supposed.
The person had black hair, black eyes, and generally wore all brown when it came to clothes.
"Ah, you're awake." English? So it was not one of the supernatural creatures that instinctively understood and 'spoke' the languages of others. Unless it was an English speaker that had been turned into one.
Their ability to speak his language instinctively did not work with him; or well, the ability hadn't worked for ALMOST all creatures here. As with all things, it had its pros and cons, such as him being able to tell a pure blood devil apart because, to his ears, they spoke their own tongue. The cons had been the time spent trying to learn it a few hundred years back, as there were no books, or almost no books on it; their kind somewhat simply instinctively growing to learn the language, and then instinctively knowing other languages and being able to 'speak' them.
As it were, though, this also meant he might be one of the only people who actually got their language. For they didn't understand it themselves, it just came to them. And others couldn't understand it, because they heard and read it in their own language because of how the magic behind it worked.
"Yes, I am awake. So don't think about poking me again," he grumpily said. Pokes to the face weren't necessarily his favourite way of waking up.
Shifting his gaze to the right of the guy, he saw a large reptilian creature, about the same height as Naruto himself, next to him.
Naruto mentally fixed his earlier thought. 'Prefer pokes to being eaten by another reptile. Again. Again again.'
He paused in his thoughts for a moment. 'Again again again again.'
Or… 'Again again again aga—' Basically, reptiles had it out for him. More than any other kind of creature did.
"Ah, sure thing," the man replied. Picking up on Naruto's wariness of his familiar, he spoke, "Oh she's harmless."
As if on cue to prove him wrong, it opened its mouth wide enough to easily swallow Naruto whole.
"Oh stop that, Chomper." He smacked his familiar on the top of her mouth.
Naruto watched in disbelief. "You named her Chomper of all things, man. You expect me to believe she's harmless?"
"Well… uh… all people here are in a way."
"Yes, because that helps me so much with thinking another creature is going to try and swallow me whole." The sarcasm was strong in Naruto's voice.
"Oh, Chomper likes to chew, actually." The man quickly shut up upon realising that likely wasn't going to help his case. Ironically, it did help his case. Naruto's big issue was with being swallowed whole while alive. Chewing was different. Chewing didn't bring back flashbacks to Orochimaru's snake eating him when he was young.
"Well, uh, anyway, lemme tell you about where you are." The man tried to change the topic.
"Nah, I think I know where I am."
"You… You do?" the guy confusedly asked.
"Well…" Naruto looked around at what seemed like a city in front of him. Turning around, he was greeted with a wall of water. Likely where he came jettisoning through? The wall of water seemed to go all the way up to the city's sky, like a dome around it. "We are in an underwater city so, this is Atlantis, right?"
Granted, he had been in Atlantis before and it looked nothing like this. But hey, times changed places.
"Not even close to right." And he was thrown for a loop.
"Not Atlantis?"
The man shook his head in response, the reptile doing the same thing. Sentient, perhaps?
"Oh. Um. Yeah, I am going to have to take that offer on telling me where I am, then. And what fuck up is going on here so that I can fix it like I always do."
At his very sure tone, the man and reptilian creature looked at each other, both seeming very unsure of why the newest person to enter their very beloved haven seemed so sure something bad was happening here.
"Well, walk along with me, and I'll tell you about this place." He gestured at the blond man to follow him. Upon a moment of contemplation, the guy moved to follow him. "So what's your name?"
"Naruto."
"Ah, like the fishcake?" Oddly enough, he felt like he probably shouldn't have known that very particular detail and it was simply something he knew for someone else's amusement. Odd but not the weirdest thing, in this world of gods that they lived in.
"Precisely like the fishcake," Naruto proudly responded.
"Ah. Well, I am Dio."
"Like the anime character?"
"No… I hate Japan because my name is basically a meme now." Anger radiated off of his form.
"Ah…" Well, Naruto was very unsure of what to say to that.
"Just call me D."
"Can't. Heard too many dick jokes along the lines of that over the years."
Dio sighed. "Lemme guess, you are centuries old or something?"
Upon a nod from Naruto, he sighed even more. "Just call me Cho, then."
"Huh, Cho? Odd. How'd you go from 'D' to 'Cho'? Unless…" His eyes moved to Chomper. "Please don't tell me it's short for Chomper."
As Dio's eyes seemed to suddenly focus on anything but his eyes, Naruto knew he hit right on the money there. "You really couldn't have come up with anything better?"
"Oh shut up. I'd like to see you do any better," Dio bit back, embarrassed at being caught that fast with the nickname.
Eyes widening as suddenly he had to give an example lest he lose the high ground in this conversation, he frantically tried to think of something. Mind going to when Dio showed his reaction to Naruto's name, Naruto suddenly had an idea. "How about Maelstrom?"
They both stopped walking as Dio seemed contemplative of it. "Huh. That's actually pretty cool." Naruto smirked back in response. "How'd you come up with it?"
"I am just that good." And he definitely didn't just steal it from his name's other meaning. Luckily, the man seemed to only know of its Fishcake meaning.
"So, about you telling me about this place?"
"Oh, right. I'll get to that." Maelstrom sheepishly smiled over forgetting to do that.
Naruto noted that they hadn't seen anyone else yet as they started going up some stairs, some appearing new, some steps appearing centuries old, with water canals on each side of the stairs, easily 3 people wide in width and unknown in depth, with the water seeming to not move downwards but just stayed still.
Along the way up, Maelstrom began, "You ever find yourself chased down your entire life? Ever just want some peace from it all? Just want a place to get some rest?"
"Yes, yes, and…" Well, death by old age wasn't really happening with him anymore, so…
Maelstrom stared at Naruto as he just trailed off, a distant look in his eyes.
"Um… alright," he awkwardly said as it became clear that Naruto wasn't going to be continuing. "Well, for many of us being hunted by many of our, or other kinds, we find this place." He gestured to the buildings around them as they still walked up the stairs, each building seeming to be from a different culture yet still retaining roots to something else. And then they finally made it to the top, and Naruto saw something that he could say wasn't something he saw every day. Hundreds of people walked by, flew by, SWAM by. 'Oh, so that's what the canals are for.'
"Welcome to Kitezh." Maelstrom held a hand out to the street of people. "City of the pure."
That last sentence got Naruto's attention. "Pure, huh…" He had a bad history with people claiming absolute goodness. The biblical faction's angels had seen to that first, and other events had just reinforced that.
He watched as everyone went around without seemingly a care in the world. Those that flew, those that walked, and those that swam seemed to get equal attention from each other. This felt odd.
It got weirder when he started noticing more details about the citizens of this "Kitezh"; some of the flyers had devil wings. And he knew for a fact he just saw one with what seemed like fallen angel wings but they didn't show any animosity towards each other.
His curiosity peaked, he observed further while Maelstrom simply stayed silent, him and Chomper knowing it could take a while for people to realize and even get used to the variety of species in Kitezh when they are first guided to the city.
And then it takes those people a bit more time to realize something else about the inhabitants.
'Fallen angel wings, mermaid tail, different faction mermaid tail, inverse mermaid, dog ears, cat ears, walking on all fours.' Naruto mentally cataloged everything that pointed at a creature from a different species. He was looking for creatures from different factions, just differing creatures from the same ones could be interesting as well. 'Humanoid. All of them.'
"Human. Everyone has a part of humanity," Naruto vocalized his thoughts.
Maelstrom looked at him in surprise. "That was fast."
Then Naruto looked at Chomper and decided to change his previous guess. "Everyone but familiars or pets?"
"Well, you are a smart one, aren't you?" Maelstrom stated more than asked.
Naruto held back the blush and the urge to feel bashful. Compliments to his intelligence still made him feel things.
"Well, come on. I'll give you a bit of a tour so you can get acquainted with this place." Maelstrom gestured at Naruto to follow as he started walking forward, finally not having to worry about falling down the stairs—because the one time it happened to him and Chomper was one time too many in his opinion—as he and Naruto had both been standing near the top of them all.
Naruto followed, his body growing tense as they finally joined the mildly crowded street. He wasn't sure if he was going to be attacked once he was pretty deep into the city, after all. He was seeing plenty of devil wings around, and he rarely ever had a good experience when those wings were involved.
Choosing to try and relieve his nerves, he looked around at the buildings instead and felt confusion. Every building in the city that he could see just looked wrong.
Not in the "Oh, it was built by an evil ritual that used the souls of children" sense, but something else.
One house looked to be purely centuries old but was covered in a bubble of water that was connected to a canal on its side of the street. Another house right next to it seemed to give off the vibe of a couple of apartments built a decade or two back, but with some parts of the house looking… old. Like as if it was taken from the other house—the part of the other house that wasn't just water.
Every house felt wrong in the sense that it seemed to be old but mutated or built upon to look new or custom made for a species?
And another house right next to it looked like a traditional Japanese house with exceptions being the same thing; parts of it looked like it was from a different culture, and old.
"So, ready to ask questions or…?" Maelstrom asked after realising Naruto was being quite quiet as he followed him.
"I don't know what to ask."
"Why not start from the start?"
Naruto rolled his eyes. "Yes, because that's so helpful. Where did you get that line from, a cheesy movie?"
Maelstrom irritatedly looked back and replied, "It wasn't cheesy."
"So it was a movie?"
Maelstrom stopped dead in his tracks. "Oh crap. Uh, I mean, I came up with it. No movie involved!" He waved his hands around as if that would help convince Naruto.
"Riiiiight."
It was silent for a few seconds. Unbearable for Maelstrom but nothing that made Naruto feel any more tense than being in such an unfamiliar crowd.
So Maelstrom decided to start giving information to fill up the silence himself as Naruto seemed to be more into looking around and trying to figure it out himself than to ask questions. "Most of these buildings used to look similar some few hundred years back, or so I was told."
"You weren't around back then?" Naruto asked somewhat pointlessly.
"Correct. I haven't really been here so long when compared to some, like the old man."
"Old man?" Naruto asked, already wondering if that was their leader or something.
"You'll meet him in a bit. Just wait until then."
"Alright. So you said they all looked similar? What caused them to change?"
"Well, uh. I don't exactly know how to explain it besides that, when people came, this place started to slowly change to welcome those people."
"Just like that? You don't know anything else?"
"Well, the old man does call it the belief system sometimes. It's one of the names I have heard him call it."
"Ah." Naruto made the sound of recognition.
"Wait, you know about it? No newcomer that I have welcomed has ever shown any signs of knowing it." Maelstrom got in his face, his voice conveying a lot of curiosity.
"Well, I have been around for a while, you know," Naruto vaguely answered just to get on his nerves. What could he say, it sometimes amused him to channel a very, very tiny portion of his late sensei in situations. Well, he assumed Kakashi was dead anyway… Not everyone could be an immortal like him.
"Oh come on! That's just like what the old man says!" Maelstrom shouted in irritation along with Chomper making a noise that Naruto could only assume was a noise of frustration, getting the attention of some of the people on the street. "Oh, uh. Nothing to see here, people. Go back to doing whatever it is that you were doing."
And that's all it took for them to go back to walking off.
Naruto was more focused on something else though. 'The old man also vaguely mentions the belief system?'
"So, what about all these people?"
"Ah. This is my favourite part." Maelstrom smiled. "You ever find yourself chased down your entire life? Ever just want some peace from it all? Just want a plac—"
"Didn't you already say this earlier?"
The glare he got back in return would have murdered him if Maelstrom was an Uchiha. Or if he had a dōjutsu. Well, knowing Naruto's luck, he wouldn't be surprised if Maelstrom did have one.
"This is my favourite part," he damn near growled in irritation from being interrupted. The man must have really liked those lines of his.
"Is he serious?" Naruto asked the man's reptilian pet(?).
Chomper nodded. 'That thing is definitely sentient,' Naruto thought. 'Probably….'
"Fine," Naruto sighed, raising his arms in a "I give up" motion. "Say your lines or whatever."
And just like that, Maelstrom's countenance did a 180 as he repeated his lines. Naruto just tuned him out like he and his clones tuned out YouTube ads.
He tuned back in once the man was finishing with the repeated lines. "...ome rest? Kitezh is that place for many of us. Humans forced into becoming devils, humans forced under God"—Naruto rolled his eyes at the presumptuous title—", humans hunted, enslaved, or something even worse can find rest here. No one here has it out for you. We are all just people who want a safe place from the supernatural that may search for us. A place where they won't find us. A place that only accepts those of us that are pure of heart."
The man mentioned humans quite a lot. That coincided with what he knew of the belief system alright. Only humans were capable of powering it. Partial humans less so, but they were still capable of it.
Slowly, an image began to paint itself in his mind as to how it all worked.
But first, he had an overenthusiastic man to reply to. Apparently Maelstrom really loved giving that little speech, if the look he was shooting his way meant anything.
Probably meant he wanted a reply.
… Reply or prank?
An age old game for Naruto.
"Oh come on, didn't you find that cool?" Maelstrom began to walk towards Naruto before suddenly just falling, both of his shoes' shoe laces having been somehow tied together.
Prank it was. Naruto tried to hide his smile as something near Maelstrom's feet went poof. Only he noticed it.
"Mother fuc—fudger!" Maelstrom changed his sentence fast as he saw a child nearby on the street. "The old man said he'd stop doing that!"
Oh. So the old man did that too? Naruto was unsure how he felt about credit for his prank being given to someone else. But it did feel nice to not be blamed.
"But the old man promised… He keeps his promises."
Naruto took it back. He no longer felt unsure about how he felt when it came to someone else getting credit for his prank when Maelstrom's eyes met his in suspicion.
Naruto broke off into a cold sweat.
"AWESOME SPEECH!" he blurted out the first thing to come to mind in an attempt to keep Maelstrom's mind off of suspecting Naruto had caused his shoelaces to unlace and then tie together and cause him to fall.
Luckily for him, it worked. The man's face lit up. "Really!? You liked it!? I practice that speech so much for when I get to greet a newcomer."
Well, the coast was cleared. And then Naruto saw the suspicious eyes of the reptile. The coast was not clear, it definitely suspected something. Fuck.
Well, no need to get the guy waiting, he supposed.
"Yeah, it was a ni…ce speech," Naruto choked out. Lies weren't his specialty. Perhaps it was a nice speech, but Naruto was more focused on doing whatever it took to move the topic onward and away from anything that might get Maelstrom from noticing the suspicious eyes his reptile was giving Naruto.
"So everyone here is human to some extent, huh?"
"Well, mostly everyone."
Well. That did not match the belief system. That was one point away from that, then.
"Like Chomper here isn't human at all."
Nevermind, a point back to the belief system. Familiars or pets didn't count.
"Although there are some cases when a purely non-human appears. Although, those scenarios are rare. The old man said it's because Kitezh doesn't call out to them like it does humans. But it still only allows the pure-hearted of them in, so they have to find the physical location of Kitezh by chance instead of being guided to it or teleported to it somehow."
This old man knew a lot. Perhaps he set up the city this way?
"Say… Any religious sites here?"
"Only one. Kitezh doesn't exactly allow religions usually."
Belief system it was, then.
Whatever powered the city required the beliefs of humans to keep going. 'Gods', then. Long forgotten ones, perhaps? With no worshippers of their own left, and having to resort to this?
The beliefs of humans could lead to powerful things in this universe, as his own experiences could attest to. The question was, was he about to unearth some evil plot as usual?
"Why don't they allow religion?"
"Oh, well, this city is our safe haven. Praying to gods can lead to them finding us. Being hidden is one of our greatest defenses."
A sort of textbook answer.
It could be true.
Maelstrom continued, "That and several species here don't deal so well with holy activities such as worship, regardless of which faction is being worshiped, so we do it to respect them."
Naruto narrowed his eyes. "Wait a minute, didn't you mention the Biblical Faction's leader by his title earlier? Last time I checked, that causes a lot of pain to devils and I don't even know what other species." It used to be worse. Devils as strong as high class devils could die simply from saying the name. Middle class ones died simply from having people around them say it. It took Naruto having to… convince the Biblical Faction's leader into changing that.
His fists—voice was pretty tired after all that convincing.
"Ah…" Maelstrom appeared sheepish. "Yeah, I have got to stop doing that. I am sort of going broke with how much I have to pay as an apology every month when I say it in a crowded area with people who can't handle that word. Man, now that you mentioned it, I probably got reported a bunch of times earlier when I said it."
Well, at least this place cared about the health of its people if it had penalties in place for them getting hurt.
"Why didn't you stop me, Chomper!" He accusingly pointed a finger at Chomper.
Chomper… bit the hand.
Naruto's eyes widened at the scene. After a comedic three second delay where Maelstrom's eyes also slowly widened, he finally started shrieking quite loudly.
And then Chomper let go of the hand, showing that, besides the mild teeth marks, the man was unharmed.
"I am dying! Someone call a medic!" This didn't stop Maelstrom from collapsing and rolling on the floor, grasping the previously 'bitten' hand, seeming to not notice it was no longer in Chomper's mouth. Naruto just watched with a deadpan expression as he noticed the surrounding people ignoring him with a skill that suggested this was not a rare occurrence.
"This is embarrassing…" Somehow, he got the feeling the reptile agreed.
"You said it, mister," came a voice from below to his right.
Looking there, he saw a kid that reached his upper thigh in height just staring at Maelstrom with a look of disappointment.
"He does this often?"
The kid, having somehow heard him over the shrieking, responded, "Yeps, mister."
"Ah."
"Any chance you can help me stop doing… that?" He looked at the man who had yet to stop his hysterical actions.
"Oh, mommy told me never to get close to him when he's like this."
"And 'mommy' never told you not to talk to strangers either?"
The mischievous smile he was given showed him that the kid only listened to whatever rules of his mother that he found convenient.
"No."
Bullshit.
But he wasn't about to call him out on that.
Without the kid's notice, a Kage Bunshin was created and transformed into a speck of dust that attached itself to his clothes.
If the kid didn't feel like helping him out, then it would just be too bad if a certain SOMEONE—and that SOMEONE definitely wasn't a clone of his—snitched to the kid's mother.
And then Chomper let out a terrifying noise of frustration. Terrifying to Naruto only because he just had way too many experiences with getting eaten by reptiles.
The noise both scared off the kid and managed to get Maelstrom out of his hysteria.
Naruto watched as the man casually got up, patted himself, and then looked Naruto in the eye and said, "This never happened."
For the sake of continuing the tour, he nodded. And, thankfully, that seemed like enough, as Maelstrom reverted to a more light-hearted version of himself.
"So, the further you are from the center of the city, the newer the people that live in Kitezh, generally. Most people prefer to get a house closer to the center of the city, so the oldest members usually have the houses there."
"How does one get a house?"
"Oh, just pick one that isn't already picked by someone else. Generally speaking, one person is only allowed one house."
"Wait. So it's free real estate?"
Someone in the crowd near him snorted. That was a victory for Naruto. Someone got his reference.
"Yeah, I guess you could say it is?"
Maelstrom did not count among those that got it, apparently.
"So all the oldest members have the innermost houses?"
"No. Some actually chose places far out. I suppose a person from those groups isn't someone that you'd call a 'people person'."
"How far out is your house?"
"It's… Well, if we had to talk about how far it would be from the center, then we'd have already LONG since passed it if it was on this side of Kitezh."
"That new, huh. Or any chance you were one of those who chose to live far away?"
"I wish. But nah, I am just not that old when it comes to living here."
"So you haven't really shown me any key locations?"
"That's because there aren't any, for the most part. The houses and locations change depending on the people living here. The only key location is the church dedicated to the only religion allowed here. It hasn't changed at all."
"Oh, alright. Say, how fast do the changes happen?"
Maelstrom shrugged. "Can't say. Seems to be different per person. I do know we try not to allow a single species to all choose one place to live in, though. A while back, a whole section of the city began to change to something somewhat resembling a holy place. It had been a painful experience for many 'dark' creatures here, and houses had to be changed, and in some cases, the old man had to get involved."
Interesting. Most likely the belief system, then. Religious people did tend to have more value to that system. So their houses must have changed the fastest. And they must have just somehow decided to live nearby due to coincidence?
"Should have called it Kitezh: The City That Changes To Become Your Home," Naruto sarcastically muttered.
This left Maelstrom gaping. "I should add that to my speech!"
"Please don't."
His words may as well have been spoken to a wall for all the effect they had as the man took out a notebook and began to scribble into it.
"So if the only key location is the church of this place's religion, then are you taking me there?" Naruto asked once he saw the man done with his scribbling, subconsciously noting down that the language written was English as well.
"No. First, I think you should meet the old man."
"Why?"
"You seemed to be sure there was something wrong with this place when you came here. Something you'd have to fix. Well, the old man is the one who's most likely to have answers. Even if there is nothing wrong with this place, but I'll leave the convincing to him."
XXXXXX
After some time and viewing many other species/human-hybrids along with uniquely customised buildings, they were finally at this so-called old man's place.
Naruto narrowed his eyes. Heavily narrowed his eyes. Narrowed his eyes further.
Something felt wrong about this…
"This is the guy's house?" He pointed.
"Yeah. Aren't you going to go in?"
Naruto just stared at it from outside for a while. The big lower door seemed… It tired him emotionally to stare at it.
He looked up and found a balcony on the top floor. He fought the urge to tear up. Fought the urge to simply jump up there by a habit that shouldn't have been there anymore.
His eyes became slitted in his anger, his teeth sharpening slightly, and his whisker marks deepened, along with some other changes that he tried to resist, but the chakra his body was used to getting once upon a time never came. This was just something his body had adapted to as it prepared itself for the corrosive chakra by trying to make changes itself before the corrosive chakra painfully did them.
This… this was HIS house—well, apartment, really, but the whole building was here. It was from back when he lived in Konoha.
Taking a few deep breaths, his changes reverted. The lack of corrosive chakra just being yet another reminder to his sad past.
"So… part youkai?"
"No."
And then he walked forward, not needing the help of Maelstrom to find where the "old man" would be. Not just because he knew the way to his old room, but because of one other factor.
Maelstrom was left confused as to how he knew where to go. Could he perhaps sense the old man? Impossible, right? He had tried for years and even tried getting others to do so, but had failed to sense him. The man was an expert at hiding his energy.
And then they were finally at the door that led to Naruto's old apartment. The one he grew up in.
He knocked.
It opened within less than a second and Naruto finally saw the "old man".
Maelstrom was the first to speak.
"This is Old Man Neil. He's the person who has been here the longest," Maelstrom told Naruto, introducing him to a very old, but not frail-looking man. "And, come to think of it, you two kind of share a similarity. You are kind of like Old Man Neil with how I can't sense you. I have spent months asking him how he does it but he never did tell me. I don't suppose you could tell me?" Maelstrom looked at Naruto pleadingly.
"Now, now, Dio. Let an old man have his secrets now," Neil chuckled. "And I'll give you a lot of treats and heat later if you allow me to keep this secret as well, Chomper," he bribed the reptilian creature as it, too, showed signs of irritation at not being allowed to know how it couldn't sense his mana or whatever his body used.
The cold-blooded creature instantly lost all hints of interest upon being bribed with heat and treats.
"Chomper! No! Don't fall for his bribes!" Maelstrom yelled, but alas, his companion had taken to acting like she couldn't hear him.
"Now, how about you let me have a word with the newcomer with some privacy?" Maelstrom wasn't even allowed a moment to respond as Chomper bit his pants and began walking away, dragging his screaming form away as the reptile was NOT in the mood to have her potential rewards from Neil be taken away because her master pissed him off.
Naruto and Old Man Neil watched as the man was dragged away. "She's going to eat him, isn't she?"
"Not all reptiles want to eat us, you know. Boss." Neil threw the last word quite late.
Naruto stared at the only other creature with chakra in the city, and replied, "Who are you and what did you do to my clone?"
Neil looked affronted and gestured at him to follow him into the building, and so Naruto did. Once the two were inside and fairly sure of no prying eyes looking at them, a puff of smoke appeared around Neil before dissipating and revealing what could have been Naruto's twin, except he wore much different clothes. Clothes designed for extreme cold.
"Geez, Boss, just because you never learned to let go of your fears of being eaten whole does not mean some of us didn't."
Looking at the clone's clothes, Naruto grew curious as to how old it was. "So, when did I make you?"
"A little over 6,000 years ago."
"Ah, alright." Naruto nodded. "So when did yo—WAIT A DAMN MINUTE. I AIN'T EVEN CLOSE TO 6,000 YEARS OLD!" he exploded the clone's way upon his realisation.
'Neil' chuckled. "Heheheh, but you should have seen the look on your face! Pffft!"
It wasn't so funny when he was the victim of a joke, Naruto decided.
"So, could you answer any questions of mine about this place?"
"I am surprised you don't just dispel me."
"You are Neil. The oldest 'living' citizen of Kitezh. Even if I dispel you for your memories and make a replacement, that replacement won't be Neil."
His clone blinked at him confusedly. "You have changed. You used to send all of us to be slaughtered."
"Oh, it's not like I have some newfound respect for clone lives. I can just respect that you are more useful to me and this city alive than whatever clone will replace you."
"Oh jeez, Boss. Almost hurt my feelings there."
"You want to live and survive everything or something?"
"How can I? I am a clone. I wish to be useful. And back when you made me, being useful meant staying alive to help as many as I could. Surviving and living past everything isn't what I care about. It's saving people that I care about. I live so I can help, not because I have an instinct to keep living."
"... You hurt my head."
"Honestly, Boss, I think I hurt my head too. Can we do less thinking next time? My existence and my relationship to you confuses me the more I think about it. Especially the more centuries that go by since the 'you' that made me."
"Yeah, less thinking sounds nice to me too. My head hurts. You have a paracetamol here or something?" Naruto held his head and leaned against a wall.
"A what?"
"A paracetamol."
At the blank stare he got, he realised that living in an underwater city for who-knows-how-many–years may have made it so that it never came across the pills.
"Nevermind…"
"Got some Sacred Gears that can heal stuff, if that would help. Heck, I think there's one specifically for headaches as well. No, wait, I dreamt that last one up."
"Your population is… probably less than twenty thousand with most being human hybrids from what I saw. How the hell did you manage to somehow get to have one of the rare few humans of Kitezh have a Sacred Gear, much less a healing one?" Naruto walked around the apartment, trying to ignore the nostalgia of it all.
"Well, it's half-human, half-devil, actually."
"What!?" Naruto's head snapped back towards the clone.
"Oh. You haven't figured it out yet? But I suppose I don't know how much you know about this place."
"Summarise. Fast."
"Right, well, when I first came here, it was just me and a lot of corpses. The previous people that lived here. Unfortunately, they were humans. Not enough to power the belief system into making Kitezh provide enough for them, with no magic of their own that they knew how to use. I don't know how, but they actually managed to live on Kitezh for centuries. They must have spent all their time in worship to get the energy needed to have the city provide enough for them considering the lack of sunlight and various other things here. But eventually they did die off, unable to provide enough to the system for the city to stop submerging itself so that they could finally live on the surface and be free. Unable to even know how they'd do so anyway."
"... I really don't know how to summarise if this is the best you can do," Naruto insulted his clone.
"Alright, alright. Fine. Fuck you too. Basically, a large number of the people who joined are from back when devils started turning humans with Sacred Gears into devils and enslaving them. Back then, the leader of the Biblica—"
"Faction hadn't put a defense system into the Sacred Gear system yet so having half-devil human hybrids with Sacred Gears was possible!" Naruto breathed out the revelation that finally came to him.
"Uh, yeah. I guess you know that part. And rude for interrupting me," it muttered the last part, which Naruto missed.
"Do you know what that means!?"
"That Kitezh has the largest numbe—"
"That Kitezh has the largest number of Sacred Gear users, that aren't pure humans, in existence!"
The clone's eye began to twitch at the second interruption.
"Yes. What you said."
Naruto walked to the balcony of the replica of the place he once lived in and looked down to the streets. The place his clone lived in may have been a pretty close replica, but the sight from the balcony broke any illusions of this being Konoha. The people and their species, the cultures, the fact that every building was fairly different and customised. If it didn't scream "Not Konoha", then he wasn't sure what would.
But that's not why he came out here. He didn't come here to compare it to Konoha.
He came here to take a second look at the city from near its center. Now that he knew what was here, he knew this was too big of a discovery for it to remain unknown by the factions forever. Hell, he wouldn't be surprised if the Biblical Faction already knew about it, considering the number of Sacred Gear users that had probably been here for a couple of hundred years.
Generally speaking, a human didn't even live past a hundred years usually. The fact that the Sacred Gears here hadn't returned to the Sacred Gear System for so long and in so many numbers, was probably enough for the place to be marked by that faction.
Neil, guessing what Naruto was thinking, said, "Kitezh is its own domain."
Naruto turned back to the clone that had taken on the guise of Neil again, now that they were out and could be viewed by people. "And?" he questioned.
"It's sort of like the homes of the 'gods' of any faction. They rule over it."
" He is a bit too strong for conventional rules to apply. Or have you forgotten that devils are affected by his name even in another world that is their, and a couple of dark gods', domain."
"The barrier of Kitezh has an additional, inner layer that is powered by me. You know how that would help weaken his hold here."
Naruto stared at his clone curiously. "Imposs—How?" He quickly changed his statement upon getting a look from Neil. They both didn't quite believe in that word, after all; especially when it was said in regards to them. "I might have figured out how to make clones that can live for a long time, but they still can't generate any chakra of their own. How?"
"It doesn't waste any chakra. It's just there. Took some years to set up. Lost most of my chakra in those failed attempts but I finally got it done before I ran out."
Naruto stared at the old clone in amazement. "It recycles the same chakra it used hundreds of years back?"
He got a proud nod as an answer.
"That's incredible," he breathed out.
Neil puffed out his chest at the praise. "It's not perfect, but it's worked enough that he can't pinpoint our location. He probably does know it's somewhere in Russia, though."
"Wait, this is Russia? Huh. I expected it to be a magical location in another dimension." He was amazed he made it so far from Japan.
"Yeah, that's the biggest weakness of the town. It's a physical location. I have been looking forward to moving it at some point, but I have no chakra left to do anything of that magnitude. And I don't quite feel confident in touching the infinity without dispelling; I was one of the first ones that came out of your modifications of the Shadow Clone Jutsu that was stable enough to survive, so I am not really as stable as whatever you probably create these days after all that time modifying it."
Pausing to breathe—Neil ignored the intrusive thought of whether he could survive without the act of breathing—he continued, "My current plan is to do it with the help of the 'gods' of this place. I know they exist. I had to use the power of beliefs of their other followers to get this apartment made since they couldn't use any of mine."
"Would have been cool if clones could produce any such power from their beliefs," Naruto remarked.
"Because this world rejects us, dumbass, not because I am a clone."
"Oh. Yeah, that. But, like, we never did find out if clones can power these 'gods', did we?"
"We never figured out if you could," Neil snarked back.
"What? Nah. We had the Shinigami back home, didn't we? I think that's enough to prove that people back home could do it."
Neil stayed silent for a moment, giving his Boss the point there.
"Any of the original Longinus-tier Sacred Gears?" he asked.
"A couple, yeah."
"This place… a lot of people would love to invade it and enslave them, won't they?" Their Sacred Gears still hadn't been updated yet to have more security measures. That was on purpose too, most likely. He probably did that so that the only Sacred Gear users in the world that weren't pure humans would be wiped out by others in their attempts to get their hands on Sacred Gears still working on old 'software', so to speak; many knew the older 'software' ones had FAR less defenses to them. He probably would have wiped them off directly but Naruto already had to deal with that centuries back.
But so many had died regardless…
Naruto was suddenly hit with some memories which brightened his mood a bit. The kid he had stuck a clone to earlier had finally gotten home and met his mother. The clone took the opportunity to tattle to his mother and then watched her lecture him on it. And then the clone popped once it settled in the mother's head that a stranger was in her house.
'That'll teach the kid to be cheeky with me again.' Yes, Naruto could be quite petty.
Neil simply managed to guess he got some pleasant memories from a clone.
"So, Boss, is that enough information for you?"
"I am not leaving yet."
Neil sighed, "I was hoping you wouldn't say that. Stuff usually goes bad around you. Thought if you left early, maybe nothing bad would happen."
"I think we both know that if I am here, then something pretty bad is going to happen soon regardless, and my presence can help lessen its effects."
Neil swore in response. "So what, we just wait it out?"
Naruto shrugged. "No clue. Maybe walk around? For all we know, it's a rebellion thing or something." He walked out back to the balcony, as if expecting to suddenly see the streets full of mobs and fire.
"What if we miss the main thing of whatever is about to happen?"
"I am the main character. I won't miss it if I am this close to it."
"Careful, Boss. Keep joking like that and I'll almost believe you believe that bullshit."
And then the 'sky', the part of the barrier of Kitezh that was right over them, cracked along with the sound of a deafening boom, catching both of their attention. Naruto just gave a tired smirk at Neil, and Neil simply facepalmed at how it seemed like the universe was out to prove him wrong.
"You don't know if that's bad. For all you know, that happens here all the time!" He tried to dissuade his creator. Except, well, that wouldn't be happening; at least not today.
"Filthy beasts, half-breeds, traitors, humans, and reincarnated trash, bow before your superiors!" The voice was heard all throughout the city.
As if the voice was a signal, the cracks on the barrier suddenly began spreading very quickly.
Naruto, with his point 'proven', just continued to tiredly smirk at Neil.
"Don't say a word. This proves nothing," he growled.
Water suddenly began leaking through some parts of the barrier around the city.
"Let's just save this city first," Naruto finally spoke. With a flicker of movement, the replicated balcony of Naruto's old home was suddenly empty of people.
XXXXXX
Author Note. Again. Not that I have written the top one yet.
So… uh… I don't even remember why that attack happens. Time to bullsh*t it. It probably seemed so obvious to me when I first started writing it… But yeah, I don't remember. Can't make sense out of it either.
Anyway, this chapter was mostly supposed to be some battle scene, but I spent too much time sh*ttily describing Kitezh. I hate myself. I could have spent effort on it but I half-a*sed it like always.
I wanted to continue this chapter because a lot is missing, but for reasons I don't wish to put here, I realized that would delay it by forever. So… just enjoy this terrible piece of writing, I suppose.
Also, for most of the months this was delayed, it was because I am terrible at describing people/objects/places, and my internet was slow enough for a decent amount of that time that I figured watching a 144p video of Kitezh from a Lara Croft game wouldn't help me with details. If 144p would even load…
So yeah, one day I got angry enough, put on a Tiktok song on loop—feel free to leave a hate review for the fact that I use Tiktok or call songs famous on it by that—and just started writing.
Figured it was a magical city, and I already planned to have it have gods, so why not basically use the belief system and make the city whatever I wanted it to be? That saved me from the description. And if I missed anything, I can just say it was on the other side of the city.
I feel like I probably should have confessed to that last line on Discord and not here… Meh.
So yeah, not happy with this chapter at all because it doesn't have most of what I wanted to put in it, but whatever. You get what you paid for: AKA trash.
I should probably re-read it to find a bunch of mistakes, but if I do that, I won't post it until months later… Meh.
Guess it's time to spend forty minutes trying to post it because of my ineptitude...
And why the hell are the "XXXXXX" not in the middle of the screen? Bruhhh... I can't be bothered reading through all this to see what else has been changed.