GelouG
It has been years. Years and years. These years that tremble and trickle, the sun that leaks into the sea and poisons it yellow. I have watched and waited and this child has grown mighty; he has become a Namer, and all that which it entails. And it is now my time; to fall into the seethe and be consumed.
Go forth, child, you have known what I have known.
"So what's the take?" Naruto says, amiable. He leans on the mission counter before the receptionist; his shadow stretches over her and clutches the drywall behind her, which shreds within the grip.
"Ten K two-forty, sign here." she answers mechanically, and her body spins to offer a piece of paper up to him, stamped with a man's life and the record of his death. Cause: burn wounds. Contract client: Konohagakure. Executing Agent: Naruto. No last name. No shinobi ID. Not part of Konohagakure Armed Shinobi Forces, special contractor. Refer Hokage Office, code 1DX3566.
Naruto smiles down at her, an arc of teeth that gleams straight through the stuffy grey light of dawn, and for a split second she perceives the thing that actually lies before her, the long, coiling body and dark-matted fur, the close-knit teeth and jaws that gape. Then the awareness slips from her in the numbering of a form and her primal brain screams as it is locked away beneath Regulation and Rule and Code Format.
Naruto takes the form. He smiles down at her again.
Baressa Hachiman, career Chunnin. Graduated 132 VF (Village Formation), immigrant from Iwagakure. Under light suspicion of espionage for her home country. Kept to unimportant desk duty until loyalty is confirmed.
Naruto knows everything there is to know about this woman, this girl of twenty-one, who repeats numbers in her head as she ignores the shadow looming over her. No one would miss her. He knows this.
"Have a good day." he says cheerily, and he exits the mission office, as the shadow digs long furrows into the drywall and tile behind him, which slowly begins to reknit itself. Just as the girl would if he killed her. Just as the village would if he set it all aflame, burnt it all to ash and danced upon the corpses and kindling. This is hell, Jigoku, and Naruto has been trapped here for years and years. Nothing changes, not for long. The bodies walk without souls. The walls mend without carpenters. The plants grow without rain.
Aware of the futility, Naruto goes to visit the puppetmaster. His teeth shine as he walks, his lips a red curtain over white bone.
On top of the Hokage monument, Naruto stands and stares out at the dead horizon. There is nothing beyond Konoha's walls; a black horizon parallels the cloud-studded one above. No ground, no grass, no trees beyond the wall. Only the infinite nothing.
"I'm here again." he says. He hates the redundancy deeply, but it is the only way It will answer.
There is a shift and the Hokage momument melts; and Naruto stands atop something tremendous, beyond Name save Its own. The black horizon becomes an endless mantle of blood-matted fur, and the Tower opens lengthwise, to reveal an eye the size of a thunderstorm. He feels heat bathe him instantly, enough to make him sweat.
YOU ARE It answers, in no more a voice than a bellow of statement, or an animal's roar. It does not vibrate matter to produce pitiful sound, or speak with shuddering cords in throat – what It wishes is. Such is the nature of divinity.
"Four souls for an hour." Naruto says, and smiles his toothy grin, a gesture that means nothing to nothing; it is the dancing of a dead angler in the deep, with no one to see or notice.
YES It answers, and the world warps, to begin the long mesh back into the reality Naruto once stood within. For an hour, Naruto will be free, to smell scents that are real, to find Names with real meaning, to discover and learn and enjoy.
For this he must pay the price of four souls, souls that will be drained to a husk, their knowledge and names taken to feed a Realm unto itself, but Naruto has long since surrendered even the illusion of guilt. He has begun to enjoy the taking.
A maw opens before him, a toothy gap out into a world he has almost forgotten; it has been two months since he saw grass that did not hide in itself the Presence of the Beast. For anyone else there would be no difference, but to him it is purest torture, to look everywhere but see only the one Name; the Name he whispered as a foundling, unaware of what he would wreak.
Naruto steps out on the grass (Ghoraz, he thinks, and the blades stir to his will) and turns back, but there is nothing. The Beast has drawn back for the length of an hour, and instead he only sees the great sequoias (Baȯhst) that swamp Konoha in their branches (Gœmmun).
He stretches out his hands, and feels the air. The wind that billows. The faint tickle of a storm, as it roars to the distance in the east.
This is the world he surrendered for a Name.
He still does not know if he regrets it, and it has been years and years since.
The Gulp of Names, coded 5QT0948
Produced: Naruto (Uzumaki) under Master (Unknown)
Recording Agent: Baressa Hachiman, c. 3/5/152
Small book attributed tto foundling child, specifically the (REDACTED). Book concerns "Names", described as elemental knowledge of a unit, substance, or being that allows command or interaction with it. Book is bound with unknown substance, osmoses biological compounds for unknown purpose. Pages (crafted of other unknown substance) actively deal corrosive cellular damage to unprotected biological substances (see: Casualty Rep. 543000291-*******95), recommend remote manipulation with sterilized synthetic object.
Book contains 1,163 "Names", ordered via Schema according to ability to affect other "Names", beginning with various insects/vermin and graduating to inanimate objects (who influence via their relative duration, thus ranking higher). "Names" vary in effect according to their Schema and the Schema of what they influence – explanation here is brief. End of book lists "Names" of forty-three citizens of Konoha (all deceased, see 296839546-*******89), likely linked to Viper Abductions.
Use of "Names" is inadvisable. Effect is unpredictable, unlinked to chakra use as current medical theory posits (see Lab Reports (REDACTED)); recommend study by Fuinjutsu adept due to similarities in use.
Addenda c. 3/25/152: Recommend subject be terminated. (see casualty report (REDACTED)).
The first he finds in a rice field. It is a farmer he does not know and never will, for the Beast does not share the Names it takes. The farmer is bent over, carefully tending a long row of beans. They are healthy and free of blight, large and fat on the beanvines. It would have been a good harvest.
Naruto steps behind the man, and watches him work, silent. The farmer does not hum, or sing, or talk to himself. His breath is measured, spaced out to pace a day of hard labor. His skin is dark and there is a sunburn on the back of his neck. He has not noticed it yet, because the dirt under the man's fingernails is not smeared across the burn. He wears a long pair of work slacks and a brief tunic, opened wide to let the wind cool him.
These observations, Naruto treasures them. It is all a world he sees too briefly.
He has souls to gather, though.
{EOTCYA}
The man explodes. His bones crack under the weight of a world unknown, his blood boiled by the seething heat of the maddened fur. Red steam bursts out and is smashed inward by the inexorable grip of a god. The clothes sear black, stain with blood, and crumple.
Then it is gone, all of it that once composed this farmer, except for the tunic and slacks, which rapidly crumble to ash, falling upon the bean row. The leaves crinkle beneath the heat of the ash and begin to smolder.
Naruto feels the distant hum of the Beast, forever in his mind, as It swallows everything the man knew, the man was, and is partially sated. It is pleased. The farmer was a man of definites, of sunrises and work and dirt and seeds, no uncertainties or confusions to dilute the straight lines of meaning. This is the meal the Beast cannot provide itself, and the only service Naruto can even begin to offer It.
Three more souls, and fifty-six minutes of life.
Naruto turns his gaze eastward, towards the thunderstorm, and walks in a straight line towards it, and the harsh rain he can smell striking the ground, the sharp crack of thunder and the slow, ponderous grind of clouds against each other and the sky. There is a million Names in that storm, a whirling heart of what IS. It draws him inexorably onward.
Behind him, a leaf finally heats too much, and a naked flame alights on the edge of a leaf where the ash has settled. The bean row begins to burn.
I am not dead, and neither is he. Even in the heart of this great Thing, the beating realm It commands in mockery of the boy's home, I am not dead. I can taste Its command, so much more potent than the frail Names I wielded in my youth. Here all things are in seven Names, and in their proportion they are mighty; in their obscurity, their scarcity, their purity and majesty, I find meaning cleansed of dross.
Oh; It is mighty.
I will know It. I will possess It.
I am that I am, master of the boy, once Namer and now phantom; I am by my will.
I command: I shalt not die.
{JURURAYA}
; the heart that does not beat; its grip on life eternal, and unmeasured.