AN: Sorry about the short chapter and the long delay, I've just been so busy lately that I don't really have the time for much of anything really. Even my Birthday (Sunday just gone if anyone's asking) was spent fitting a new bath in the house, and given just how tiny our bathroom is that was a nightmare. Now, there's two things I'd like to address in this AN that's popped up in forums and reviews. First off, Henge. I know that it's kinda canon that it's an actual physical transformation, not an illusion, but that's honestly ridiculous. You're telling me that even Sakura, who has tiny reserves, can physically transform into anything or anyone she can imagine? No, I prefer my way of doing things. To me, the henge is a kind of chakra balloon that surrounds you and reflects and/or refracts light to make things look different. HOWEVER, I will also add the caveat that someone with enough chakra can 'fill' that balloon, making it a rubber ball instead. In other words, a physical transformation. So yes, Gamabunta has enough chakra to look like Kurama, and Naruto has enough to become a shuriken, etcetera, etcetera, but they are exceptions, not the rule. Secondly, Naruto being incapable of using standard chakra and ninja techniques. Okay, when Naruto first started learning to cast spells, he was using pure reiryoku, one half of chakra. Now, aside from simply learning it this way, his 'chakra' has settled and 'evolved' this way, like how people change during puberty. Naruto might be able to use chakra by mixing the two energies together, but it will be nigh impossible due to the two energies no longer being bound and growing apart, like magnets. All magnets have a north and south pole, are connected in the middle, and repel each other if identical ends are facing each other. So consider Naruto's 'chakra' a magnet that's broken in two and repels each other. With enough power, you can force them together, but it'll be difficult to use and maintain it like that.
Beta'd by: The trolling SnarkLord
Chapter 28 – A Revelation
Naruto's eyes flickered open and he sat up in bed.
Looking around for the possible cause, his gaze was drawn to the window and the sky beyond.
Blue-purple clouds the colour of bruises drifted through an oily black sky, casting dim red shadows over the forest beneath them, and the trees themselves… twisted, sickly mockeries of life, almost crystalline in appearance with sharp, glinting points reaching towards the darkened heavens.
Getting up and out of bed, Naruto reached for his bedside table and slipped his shiki-bow charm bracelet on, doing the same with his archery bracers. A few moments later he took a cloak off the hook on the back of his bedroom door and slipped that on as well.
Stepping quietly into the hallway outside his room, Naruto was unnerved by the silence. No matter the time of day or night, there were always youkai about, always doing something. But right now, he couldn't even hear the sounds of leaves rustling in the breeze, or the whisper of the wind outside.
Slipping on a pair of simple shoes, Naruto left his house, looking around.
The fire pit was cold and dark, something that hadn't happened ever since that kosenjobi had started hanging around like a pet. Of the youkai in question, there was no sign of them even having been there at all. There was nothing to show that anyone had been there at all.
Glancing back at his cabin, the blonde didn't see Madara napping on the roof as the inugami sometimes did, and there were no kodama spirits hanging around his cultivated plants, bushes, and trees. There wasn't even any of the tengu that liked resting in the trees around the clearing.
When he looked, the home he'd crafted for the inchlings was smashed into pieces. Thankfully, there was no blood, but the whole thing looked like it had been struck with great force, scattering the broken pieces off into the nearby forest.
A wet squelch sound made Naruto pause and look down.
He saw that he'd stepped in some dark red-black substance, a puddle which slowly grew larger as more of it dripped down from above him.
Calling his shiki-bow and putting a lightning arrow on the string, Naruto aimed upwards, before freezing in place.
A youkai of relatively human appearance was impaled on the branches of the spindly trees. One branch stuck through its throat, one in each forearm, and a fourth in the groin kept it suspended like some sort of macabre puppet. Its face though… it had been torn off, leaving a gaping hole from which the dark blood spilled.
Keeping his bile down as best he could, Naruto tried to work out what the hell was going on. He remembered going to sleep the night before, and now he'd woken up here like this. This was either some sort of weird alternate world he'd been dragged into, or it wasn't real.
Of course, just because something wasn't real, it didn't mean it couldn't hurt him. Beyond that, the border between the waking world and dreams was a dangerous, ever-shifting one.
That still didn't help him much, but just thinking about it like that helped calm him down a bit. It was with this new calm of mind that he called forth a minor light spell. The bright ball of light hovered just above and behind his left shoulder, illuminating more of the forest around him.
With this new light, he could now see more corpses of various youkai scattered amongst the trees. Some, like the one already mentioned, where strung up amongst the tree branches, like some sort of message or warning. Others were simply laid around on the ground, large chunks of them missing like something had taken bites out of them.
More than half of those on the ground were unrecognisable because of the damage done to them.
Reaching into an inside pocket of his cloak, after dismissing his current arrow, Naruto pulled out a pack of wolf shikigami and activated them, calling a total of a dozen shiki to his side. Two of them he instructed to stay beside him and protect him, while he sent the other ten to search out anything they could find.
A giggle emanated from the trees.
Naruto span around and raised his bow, an arrow already knocked on the string. The wolf shiki standing either side of him growled and prepared themselves to pounce.
Another brief sound of laughter came from another direction.
Naruto immediately trained his bow on the noise, before lowering it. His eyes slid from side to side, trying to catch sight of movement, anything that would reveal who or what it was that was laughing amongst so much death.
In response to Naruto's desires, his conjured ball of light grew larger and brighter. It hovered higher in the air, illuminating even more of the forest around him. The light threw the dead bodies around him into sharp relief, allowing every gory detail to be clearly visible.
Naruto gagged at the sight, forcing bile back down his throat at the tortured and defiled corpses. Several of them had their eyes torn out, alive judging by the clawing nail marks around their empty sockets, and others had their tongues, entrails, and more violently torn from their bodies. One body he could see had been wrapped in barbed wire and dangled from a low branch, and there were many more who had been literally torn limb from limb.
"Do you like it?"
Naruto threw himself to the ground at hearing a voice right by his ear. Twisting around, he saw something which made his skin turn as pale as snow.
His female demon copy.
"W-what?" Naruto managed to stammer out as his shiki-wolves placed themselves between Naruto and his opposite.
"Do you like it?" The demon asked, gesturing at everything around them. "Your reaction was rather disappointing, I was hoping for more fear and less reasoning, but you managed to hold yourself together, and even kept from vomiting at the presents I'd left you."
"Why?" Naruto asked her.
"Truthfully? I was hoping you'd be so horrified as to lose control a little and let me take over." 'Naruko' admitted. "I'd have added the youkai you are closer to, but those memories are too cherished for me to get at them just yet."
She turned her angry gaze on Naruto.
"I want you to break, Naruto Uzumaki." She growled at him. "You may have made me, but I belong to no one. I will be free, whether that takes five years or fifty, and I will take great pleasure in destroying any bonds you may use to come back to yourself.
"When I am through with you, there will be nothing left of Naruto Uzumaki, nothing but a broken and destroyed mind, fit for nothing more than keeping me going." She declared.
"Keeping you going?" Naruto's eyes shot open as he had an epiphany. "I created you! You're dependant on my continued existence to keep existing yourself!"
He was forced to dodge away from the demon as she brought her foot down in a devastating axe kick, cratering the ground for several metres around and destroying his shiki wolves like they weren't even there.
She looked furious, whether at Naruto for his realisation or herself for letting it slip was unclear. What was apparent was that her seemingly 'chatty' mood was no more, and he had better get ready to defend himself.
There was no time for words, no declarations, demands, questions, or even an attempt at a distraction. Naruko was fast, and she was strong. No sooner had Naruto dodged out of her way than she delivered a rage-fuelled blow that destroyed something with each hit, whether that be a tree, a corpse, or simply the ground itself.
Her physical speed and strength far outmatched Naruto's, and each time he escaped by the barest of margins, he tried to figure a way out of whatever was going on. He couldn't dodge forever, and every time he tried to force himself awake – if he was truly dreaming – he failed.
It was as he flashed away in a flicker of blue light, that Naruto decided to try and fight his demonic counterpart. Running was useless, dodging could only work for so long, and all that was left was to confront the problem. With this in mind, he conjured up his shiki bow and a lightning arrow for the string.
Naruko dodged the arrow with contemptuous ease. The following volley of arrows was likewise avoided.
Firing as rapidly as he could, Naruto multiplied the arrows in flight as he went. Each time he released the string, one arrow of lightning would become twenty, firing in a cone like spread in front of him. This wasn't enough though, as the demon seemed to flow like water around his every shot.
If the situation wasn't what it was, he'd have called her graceful and elegant in her movements.
As it was, that ethereal grace only served to enhance the deadly and predatory nature of his opponent. Flickering around the forest in flashes of blue light, releasing a small torrent of elemental arrows as he went, Naruto's relentless pursuer continued to avoid every single one of his attacks.
Arrows of lightning and fire dodged. Conjured darts of pure reiryoku were slapped aside. Elemental balls of energy were avoided. Streams of fire as useful as silly string. Shikigami were torn apart.
All while the sickly forest was destroyed under the raw strength of the demon's blows.
The trees, catching alight from Naruto's repeated use of lightning and fire techniques, illuminated the demon with flickering light. Casting her features in dancing light and shadow, she appeared both tempestuously beautiful and ominously malevolent at the same time.
Naruto's arms began to ache from the repeated volleys of arrows he'd fired again and again at his counterpart, though his shots weren't coming any less frequently or with any less accuracy or force behind them. Still, he was human, and a young one at that, humans had limits, even ninja.
"Feeling tired, Na~ru~to?" Naruko's sing-song voice and casual attitude appeared to have returned. "Don't worry, just hold still and let me eat you. It will all be over so soon, who knows, it might not even hurt."
She stalked towards him, but Naruto wasn't going to just give up. Stomping hard on the ground, spikes erupted around him. Naruko simply leapt up and balanced with incredible grace on one of them. The blonde boy wasn't finished though, and slamming his palm into the earth, he pulled, dragging a massive club made of stone with him.
Swinging the club, or more accurately swinging himself with the club, he attacked the demon mirror of himself. As he expected, she taunted him by landing lightly on the club, the kanabo, that he'd created, and was immediately pierced through the feet as the club exploded with spikes.
She screamed, though whether in surprise, pain, or anger, Naruto couldn't tell. Her blazing eyes told him she was angry though, absolutely furious. She darted forward, faster than Naruto could react, and drove her hand up and under his ribs, instantly getting a grip right on his heart.
He gasped.
He could literally feel her arm, slick with his blood, piercing his body, reaching up and around his organs, and squeezing his heart. He was panicking, his breath coming in short, sharp bursts, and his heart was beating erratically, causing him immense pain.
He looked right into her angry eyes.
His sight flickered for a moment, one instant seeing her, another showing him his bedroom. He saw her again. His room. Her. His room. Her. His room. Again and again, he felt like he was going to have some sort of fit as he felt an unpleasant mix of bile and blood rise in his throat as his vision flickered madly.
His arms felt weighted down and weak. His legs were unresponsive. All he could feel was her hand around his heart. All he could see was his demonic counterparts eyes filled with anger, rage, and… despair?
Blackness seemed to crowd the edges of his vision as everything became blurry. Sounds faded away, becoming indistinct, and sensations soon began to follow. The only one that remained was her hand still impaled in his gut, reaching up and crushing the life out of him.
Was this how he was going to die? That couldn't be right, she needed him alive to exist, even in anger she wouldn't outright kill him, would she? Or was this all in his head? A mental death that would leave him an empty shell for her to possess and do with as she wished?
This was… honestly pathetic.
That was all Naruto could think. He'd created the problem, his demon half, and he was utterly incapable of doing anything about it. He knew of no humans who knew how to deal with demons permanently, not in this day and age, and while he'd scoured all of the books that youkai the length and breadth of the Elemental Nations had sent him, all he'd really learned was how to use demonic power and how to summon demons, neither of which he really wanted to do without knowing more about demons themselves.
He'd already made that mistake once.
His vision failing, Naruto could no longer make out the demon as anything more than a vaguely yellow blob, though his sight was still flickering. Either way, there was nothing he could do, not one thin-
xxxxx
Naruto sat up with a great gasping breath.
His eyes wildly darting around, they eventually settled on Tsurara straddling his body with both of her hands pressed to his stomach. Looking down, coughing up blood as he did so, he saw a film of frost and ice keeping the hole in his abdomen closed.
Takame and Masami soon rushed in with the first aid kit, unrolling gauze and bandages that were immediately wrapped around his stomach to stop the injury becoming any worse than it already was. Reaching for the wound, Naruto stopped as he saw just how much his hand was shaking.
"Of all the times for Benio to be busy elsewhere." Takame growled. Benio was the one amongst them that knew the most first aid, but she'd been absent the last few nights, claiming to have found something of a hobby to keep her occupied recently.
Masami grabbed Naruto's shaking hand and tried to calm him down. There was no joking, no mock seduction, nor any of her usual antics, just her speaking nonsense in soothing tones. She talked about anything and everything, the first thing that came into her mind, whether that be her dying some of the villagers' underwear luminous green, a rather beautiful flower she'd seen the week before, or her thoughts on the migratory patterns of birds.
It all came out a jumbled mess, but it nevertheless managed to gain Naruto's attention and hold it.
Masami calmed down a little seeing Naruto's eyes following her face, at least, enough to ask him just what the hell had just happened. People just don't suddenly have torn holes appearing in their bodies, whether they be human or youkai. At least, not without a rather nasty curse being involved.
He told her, in a voice that was far weaker than an eight year old child's had any right to be. He told her of what the demon had said, and of the revelation about it's nature he had had.
Masami's worry instantly sky-rocketed. After all, what could they do? Naruto had received injuries and nightmares from his demonic counterpart before, but never anything more than bruises, shallow cuts, and what amounted to superficial injuries. They had been easy to heal with his demonic healing technique, as they had resisted all other methods of healing, but it wasn't like any of them were particularly dangerous even without that.
This proved that Naruko was far more dangerous than had previously been thought. She was still around, somehow, despite being 'killed' years ago when Naruto had first created her. She was able to directly influence Naruto's mind and body, something most youkai were only able to do with possession.
She held onto him as he reached for his injuries with one shaking hand, laying it on his abdomen and casting his demonic healing spell on himself. Underneath the bandages, tendrils of flesh grew from his frayed body, lashing across the hole made in his chest under his ribcage, and quickly tying themselves together and smoothing over the surface to leave only a scar behind.
Tilting his head to the side, Naruto spat out a few drops of the black substance that always turned up when he used his demonic technique and settled down to get comfortable. His internal injuries were harder to heal than the entrance wound and would drain him more than that one had.
He didn't go to sleep though, no, he didn't think he could at present. He didn't know if he would awaken in that strange, twisted world his demon counterpart inhabited and he wasn't eager to find out. It didn't help that she was his perfect counter; too fast for his arrows, too skilled for hand to hand, and too strong for his shikigami to take down.
But… he'd also noticed what she lacked. She used no techniques, either his own or her own variations. She was very direct, even her chosen methods of intimidation and her ways of freaking him out were relatively simple, yet quite effective all the same. She also fell for traps rather easily, like what he did with that club and the spikes.
She really was his 'opposite', as the incantation used to create had turned out to mean, or 'mould reflection' to be completely accurate. With such a vague wording, and him simply throwing power into it, he shouldn't have been surprised that he'd gotten her. A reflection wasn't perfect after all, what was left for you was right for your reflection, 'opposites' as it were.
xxxxx
Several hours later, Naruto had finished repairing the damage Naruko had done and had strengthened the muscle to match everything around it. After all, just because the muscle existed around his heart didn't mean it had the strength necessary to keep up when he started exerting himself.
Masami and Tsurara had gradually regained their teasing edges as the hours wore on, but neither of them were back in top form just yet, and when Naruto and Takame started getting ready for their morning spar, the pair of them did make to speak, possibly to argue against them doing so, but neither of them did so in the end.
Naruto knew that he wasn't going to stop training because of an injury like that. While it still ached, and the new flesh felt strange, he was fully functional and capable enough, so why wouldn't he spar with Takame? In truth, he'd probably only stop when he was properly incapacitated, something that wasn't particularly likely.
Takame also knew how effective Naruto's healing technique was, that odd black substance it produced aside, and didn't take it easy on him during their spar at all. On the contrary, she seemed to hit him harder, faster, and more viciously than usual.
Naruto wasn't entirely sure what was up with her, but when he tried using Kurama's negative emotion sensing all he got was undirected rage, anger, and a degree of bitter resignation.
Regardless of that, their sparring session went as usual and was followed by breakfast like normal. After that, Naruto got ready for the Ninja Academy, packing a bag with everything he needed. A standard set of twenty kunai and twenty-five shuriken were quickly followed by pens, pencils, notepads, and the required text books.
They weren't supposed to have their weaponry at the bottom of their bag, but Naruto didn't particularly like kunai or shuriken, and even if he did need them, all he had to do was place one hand on the ground and make them with earth manipulation, compression, and alteration. They weren't quite the same quality as shinobi standard weaponry, but they were more than adequate for an academy student.
Just as he was about to head out the door, he paused, realising something wasn't going like it normally did. Patting at his hair, he found it lacking a butterfly that had rested there for several years now.
"Where's Benio?" He asked.
Takame and Masami glanced at each other, before both looked to Minako. All of them shrugged as one, not knowing where she was. Tsurara didn't bother replying, she was always near Naruto, and if he didn't know, then she wouldn't know either.
"She said something about a hobby last I heard." The zashiki-warashi offered, though her answer still didn't really explain anything. "Besides, it's not the first time she's gone out by herself, I'm sure we'll see her later."
Naruto murmured an agreement to that, but he wasn't so sure. She usually told them when she'd be off doing her own thing, if as a courtesy if nothing else, but Benio was her own person and she didn't need a keeper to watch over her every moment of the day.
Naruto decided to simply shrug and go with it. Maybe when she came back from whatever it was she was doing she would tell him about it, but it wasn't any of his business really. For now, he was going to go to school. If he remembered right, they had sparring practise today, and Naruto needed all of the help he could get there. He didn't know why it was, but despite how much effort he put into it, he was only just above middle of his class in pure taijutsu fights.
xxxxx
Later that night, Hinata Hyuuga shuffled her feet nervously as she stood in one of the training rooms near her bedroom. Technically speaking, she shouldn't be out of bed right now, but everyone else aside from the perimeter guards should be asleep now, and she didn't think she'd have enough confidence to do this if there was a good chance of being discovered.
Laying on the floor next to her were numerous non-lethal weapons she'd managed to acquire discretely. This included nets, bolas, whips, and many other … items used to capture and restrain someone without killing them, or even doing much damage to their bodies.
She gulped and licked her lips nervously as she looked at the mannequin set up in front of her. Tentatively, she reached for a whip, before channelling her chakra through it. As it was made from a formerly living thing, being braided leather, it responded rather favourably to her chakra.
Letting it hang loosely at her side, Hinata marvelled at how the whip moved sinuously as she pulsed her chakra through it, writhing in a very snake-like fashion, almost alive really. After she began to get the hang of making it roll and crawl across the floor, a process which only took a quarter hour or so, she began trying to lift it off the ground just with her chakra.
Unfortunately, she found this more difficult. While she could make the whip bend one way or another, gravity kept it rolling to the side and curling into a spiral instead of having it support its own weight. This wouldn't stop her though, she was fairly determined to be good at this, Naruto had said she could fight without hurting people with something like this!
A crack echoed around the room as she lashed out at the target, the mannequin, and the whip wrapped itself around one of the outstretched limbs. Tugging on the whip proved it had a firm grip, and after several minutes of pulsing her chakra through it, she figured out how to get the whip to release what it was holding.
Another cracking noise echoed around the room as she made another attack. Once again, she spent a little time getting the whip to let go of the mannequin, this time trying to get it to return to her, though she failed at this part of her secret training session.
Once more she cast out her whip, again, and again, and again. She would stay up two more hours practising this new skill of hers, until the point it would only take her a few moments to get the whip to release whatever it had managed to wrap itself around.
xxxxx
Hiashi Hyuuga, face pale, quickly retreated from the room. Having been awoken by the noises close to his room, he had been drawn to the training room. Seeing his elder daughter practising to use the whip had brought him up short, and unbidden images drifted through his head, images of his late wife, Hitomi.
He gulped then, and began to wonder just how much Hinata might have taken after his departed spouse.
Seeing the whip hit somewhere Hinata hadn't intended it to go – though Hiashi wasn't aware it was a mistake – made him pale even more and wince in sympathy for the wooden mannequin. It was then he decided to leave and never mention her training unless she brought it up herself.
He pitied whatever man his daughter decided to chase in the future, unless they had a complimentary kink of course.