Disclaimer: If I actually owned this, would I be bothered with writing it? NO! I'd get someone else to write it for me, and take all the credit!
"Behold. I am smiling."- Person Talking
'I feel the need.'- Person Thinking
[Bang]- Specific noises
/Transgender Transformation Technique/- Techniques
:Line Break:- Line breaks
"The People's Registration Act lost its main proponent today with the dramatic reversal of Senator Robert Kelly, who until this time had provided the loudest voice in the cry for mutant registration.", Noted the meticulously dressed news anchor. Then the screen changed showing a skinny, blond, bespectacled man in a suit speaking out over a room filled with people similarly dressed.
"I was wrong in this particular issue, I hope in time, I may be forgiven. Thank you." Said the bespectacled before pushing through the throng of people, his eyes flashing yellow for a moment
"The Mutant Registration Act continues to draw support from many parents rights groups. If you feel threatened by an unidentified mutant…" the voice trailed off as Naruto's attention turned away from it, placing several bags of foodstuffs on the counter of the mini-mart.
Grabbing some money from his pocket, he winced and held his still tender wrist.
'A week later and it still hurts.' Naruto thought, grumbling as he had to fish out the money with his opposite hand.
A week after the incident at the water treatment plant had brought no great joys or pains to Naruto or his juvenile crew of misfits, with the exception of Naruto getting over a very broken hand.
A way that he had found that brought him some temporary relief, was to merely Henge into himself, but with an unbroken hand, much like he would do to hide his take after a robbery, or when transporting the furniture..
Forming a set of hand-signs in the alleyway outside the store, Naruto was once again his uninjured, unburdened self.
'I've got to try changing into animals.' Naruto thought, clenching his now uninjured wrist before skipping out of the alley and back towards home.
Entering the crumbling concrete structure that marked his home entrance, Naruto gave a short glare at the crater he made the last time he was here.
Hurrying through he soon found himself back home. Sidney (Onyxx as he was quick to input) was reading a book on his bed, the small book seeming more so in his large rock-like hands. Sarah and Nick were putting together a jig-saw puzzle on a rug he had 'procured'.
"Heya brats," Naruto called out, "I got food!"
"YEAH!" Came the hubbub as Naruto was swarmed with the previously complacent children.
"Hey, HEY! Watch it! I still need to cook it first!" Naruto shouted over the din, trying to wade through the exuberant children.
"Whadya get?" the wolf child called out.
"Just some meats, some noodles, bread, and a couple of quarts of milk." Naruto shouted back as he placed each item on a makeshift counter.
"Hey Naruto?"
"Yeah, Sarah?"
"What's your last name?"
Naruto frowned at the topic.
"Why do you want to know?"
"Sidney-"
"It's Onyxx!" The rock boy petulantly interrupted.
"NO Nicknames, Sidney" Naruto shot back over his shoulder, still putting away the groceries. "Go ahead, Sarah."
"Well, Sidney and I were wondering if Naruto was your first name or your last name, you know, cause it's so strange and all."
"Well, whoever bet Naruto is my personal name just one something."
Little Sarah adopted a cute frown. "What's a personal name?"
Naruto stopped handling the groceries. "Personal names are the names that parents give to their children, and then family names are the names you and your parents share."
"So if Nicholas Gleason was named Nicholas by his parents," Naruto cut off, letting Sarah fill in the rest.
"-Then his parents are also called Gleason. And if your personal name is Naruto, then it's your first name!" Sarah shouted, finishing the thought. She then whipped around to her bargaining opponent.
"TOLD YOU SO!" She shouted, sticking out her tongue.
"So what IS your last name?"
Naruto grinned at her persistence.
"It's Vortex."
"Vortex? I thought you said no nicknames!" She whined.
"It's not a nickname, and it's not Vortex." Naruto said, his face screwing up in concern. "It's Vortex."
"Hey, you said no nick-names!" Came the shout from Onyxx.
Naruto creased his brow. "I'm not saying a nickname, my name is Naruto Vortex!"
His frown deepened. 'I did it again!' Naruto thought, 'Why can't I say 'Uzumaki'?'
Slowly he tried pronouncing it out, ignoring the giggles of the children.
'Uzumaki.'
"Vortex."
'Oo-Zoo-Ma-Key'
"Oh-You'll-Or-Can"
"What are you doing?" Sarah asked softly, starting to get a little concerned.
'How the hell did I get there? I was pronouncing my name! Why can't I say my name?'
Naruto's thoughts went into a panicked rush for several moments before he came to a startling realization.
'Gorgon… Gorgon mentioned he had seen my memories… Gorgon had been in my head! Oh kami, what did he do to my head?'
Naruto clutched his head and started to hyperventilate.
'What did he do in there? What else did he touch, did he taint? What did he take and what did he put in it's place?' Naruto continued to clutch and scratch at his head.
"Do…do you guys think something is wrong?" Whispered the soft effeminate voice.
"Nahh, I'm sure he's fine.", Said the thick as rock Sidney, before getting off of the bed and waving a hand in Naruto's face, "Helloooo? Mr. Narutoooo? Is anybody home?"
Coming out of his panic attack, Naruto gave a small, not-all-that-reassuring grin to the rockhead. "I'm fine, I just need a minute."
Sarah looked up at him with large eyes. "You don't have to tell us your name if you don't want to…"
"Thanks, Sarah." He said, trying to be reassuring as he could while his limbs were still shaking. Glancing at her worried, unconvinced frown, Naruto got another idea.
"Allright Sarah, why don't you help me unpack these groceries then we can all sit down and have a nice story time, ok?"
Childish joy trickled back into her face, and she gave a positive nod, and set to work with the vigor only a kid under ten understood.
With the bags al packed away and the food all stored, Naruto gathered all the kids onto his bed and sat them down in a circle.
"Ok kids, story time!" Naruto said, once the kids were all settled.
"Are you gonna read us a story mister Naruto?" Spoke Nick the wolf boy.
"I am going to tell you all a story, and then each of you are going to tell me a story."
"OOH! OOH!" Came an ecstatic shout from the resident rockehead. "I wanna go first!"
"Are you sure?" Naruto asked, "Cuz my story is a scary story!"
"But so is miiinnnnee…" Sidney said in a whine.
"All right, all right, you can go first if you want to."
"Awesome!" He shouted in joy, his fist in the air pose met with giggles from the other kids.
"Ok, so right? There's an alligator in the sewers!" Sidney said loudly, then paused scratching his head. "Wait, I went too far ahead."
He shook his head at the renewed giggles of the kids. "NO, all right, so there are a bunch of runaways hiding out in the sewers, like us right?" Sidney said, gesturing to the group. "And they were all right 'cause they didn't need their parents or nothing stupid like that. These kids were tough!" Sidney said, flexing his arms in a ludicrous fashion. Sarah's stifled giggles did nothing to help the scary story's atmosphere.
"Yeah, and they were in a sewer, just like this one… And these kids, they looked just like us… Except for Naruto, cause he's weird."
Naruto sputtered for a bit to the amusement of the boys.
"He is not weird!" Sarah spoke vehemently, coming to Naruto's aid.
"He is too! Just look at him, at his hair!" Sidney returned leaning forward to peer at Naruto's yellow locks.
"So what happened to the kids?" Naruto said, deflecting attention away from himself.
"Well, they played and had fun and ate pizza, and life was really cool and always fun 'cause they did whatever they wanted and didn't have any bedtimes or anything!" Sidney finished, raising his arms in the air.
The kids nodded, accepting the seemingly trouble free perfect life that Sidney was describing.
"Then, late one night, they started hearing a ticking noise…" Onyxx faded out, tapping his hands on the floor. "At first they thought it was just water dripping somewhere down a tunnel or maybe some of the rats trying to dig through the walls." He paused dramatically. "But then it started getting closer."
Sarah latched onto Naruto's arm, staring with wide eyes at Sidney's cruel smirking mouth. "And closer…"
"And Closer!" Sidney shouted suddenly, getting a yelp from the young wolf and a scream from Sarah. Even Naruto gave a start. Seeing he had gotten the desired reaction, Sidney continued his narrative.
"'It's Ok' one of the kids said, 'I'll go see what it is.'," Sidney spoke, "Then the other children waited, and they waited. And then when another one was about to go down the tunnel, they heard the screams of their friend."
Sarah's grip became vice like on Naruto's arm as all the kids, despite their apparent terror, leaned forward as Sidney's voice started growing quieter.
"They looked through the tunnels, searching for their friend. And they searched and they searched, but they couldn't find him at all. So they decided to split up to search all of the tunnels faster, because, you know, they were really worried."
"After a few minutes had passed, they started hearing the screaming again, this time from a different person. So they all ran around to try to find each other again, but they were lost in the sewers. They kept running around and around but they couldn't find each other, and all the time, more people kept screaming. Soon, it was down to the last person. And he was running through the sewers, splashing around and trying to make it back to his gang's place. And he ran and ran and never looked behind him. He heard something shuffling around, splashing behind him, going just as fast as he was. But he didn't look behind him. He ran until he found his gang's lair, but still he didn't look behind him. Then he found the ladder that they used to climb to the street, and half way up, he felt a hand on his leg."
Naruto was pretty sure he couldn't feel his hand anymore below where Sarah had slowly buried her way into his side.
"He looked back, and there on his ankle was the torn off hand of one of his friends, and attached to it was the largest, scaliest, meanest looking alligator he had ever seen! He screamed for help and tried to climb up the ladder. But in the flash of an eye, the alligator bit him, and he was dragged back into the murky sewer water."
Sidney looked around at his captured audience. "And they say, that in the sewers of New York, you can still hear the ticking the alligator used to lure his prey…"
Then came a ticking noise and all the children, save for Sidney who was rolling on the floor busting a gut, jumped five feet into the air.
"HAHA, YOU SHOULD SEE YOUR FACES!"
"That was really Mean!" Sarah shouted, getting to her feet and putting her hands on her hips. Her pouting face was completely lost on Sidney however, as the rock head continued rolling around on the floor banging his stone hands against the masonry.
"I wasn't that scared." Nick said in a quiet voice, still obviously trembling.
"LIAR! You jumped like five feet!" Sidney shouted, coming out of his laughing fit. Nick's hackles started to raise at the accusation, but Naruto interceded before it could become something more.
"All right, all right, that's enough. It's time for the next story." Naruto said, looking at Nick and Sarah. "Any takers?"
:Line Skip:
Two weeks after Naruto's discovery of the mockery in his mind, saw him laying down in the sewer treatment plant above his hideout.
'I really need to find a name for this place.' Naruto thought, looking down at the floor below him. He gave a causal shrug, dismissing the errant thought for what it was, and stopped flowing chakra to his back. Dropping the forty feet or so to the floor, he landed amidst the rubble caused by his failures over the course of the last couple weeks.
As soon as his wrist had healed, he had pursued his powers research in earnest.
He had pushed himself to the very limit of both his energy and sanity as he tried to recreate what he had done in his fight against the 'Spider-Man'. In the days since then, he had leaned to crawl up the walls, and then walk, and then run. Soon after that, he had done it on the ceiling. But his 'sticky' secret wasn't the only thing he had worked on.
Naruto had also been training his Kawarimi to be done faster, farther, and with less concentration, allowing him to move about a fight with ease. He had gotten faster with it, but it seemed he couldn't get it to go much farther, no matter how much he concentrated on where he wanted to go.
Aside from even his work with the Kawarimi, another basic technique was renovated into something 'suitably awesome', according to Naruto.
Naruto was unique in the fact that, out of all thirty ish member's of his graduating class from school, all of whom had learn the Henge at one point or another, Naruto's Henge was the only one to be completely solid.
He used to utilize it, and to great effect, for his Sexy technique, but as that had been less than useless in this new place, he was forced to use this feat in different ways.
Naruto walked up to one of the few standing walls left in the interior of the building, and then concentrated.
His chakra flowed, in a way that was becoming ever more familiar to him, and formed around his hands.
He didn't shout out the name of the technique, or form handseals. He had no need of them anymore, not for a small chakra technique like this.
His hand shifted into the visage of a giant hammer, weighty and massive. Planting his feet, Naruto swung the weapon into the wall, creating a sizable dent. Smoke emitted from his hand/weapon after the hit, transforming back into I's original state.
'It needs work…' Naruto thought looking from the dent in the stone, and back to his hand. 'But I can do something with this.'
Nodding his head in satisfaction in the destruction he had caused today, Naruto called it quits, and went to go take a shower and lie down.
Arriving at the large chamber he called home after extensive rinsing and drying off ('Concrete dust is a bitch to get out' Naruto thought.) He saw two sleepy heads already on their pillows.
'I guess the guys couldn't wait for me.' Naruto thought with a small smile. Then he walked over to his bed and saw a little mop of pink hair sticking out from the covers. Sighing he sat down at the edge of the bed.
"Hey Sarah," Naruto said quietly, "What's up?"
Shaking eyes darted from him to the tunnel door and back to him.
"I heard a noise…" Sarah answered back, in a voice even softer than his.
"Ohh, where did you hear it?"
"Down there!" She said loudly, pointing at the slightly ajar steel door leading off into the main sewers under New York.
"Down there?" Naruto asked. "Are you sure?"
"Uhuh…" Sarah said, sliding a little more under his covers.
'If it's those guys who experimented on me, they sure took their sweet time.' Naruto thought, eyes lingering on the steel portal. 'But why would they come now? And if they were making noise in the tube outside, shouldn't they be here already?'
"What kind of sound was it?" Naruto asked, again quietly.
"Like a" Sarah said, before making a raspy scratching noise with her throat.
Naruto stared at her for a moment before she explained. "Like the sound Sidney makes!"
Naruto nodded his head, remembering the noise from the several retellings that the community rock-head had made after finding the success of the first telling.
'Ahh, that's a relief!' Naruto thought, tension easing out of his shoulders. 'She was probably just hearing things.'
"Don't worry," he said in his best soothing voice. "I'm sure it was nothing."
"But I heard it!" She replied loudly, causing one of the boys to moan into his pillow.
"All right, all right," Naruto said, seeing he wouldn't get any sleep if she was still afraid. "I'll go out and make sure everything is all right."
Sarah was shaking her head viciously before he even stopped talking. "NO, You can't!" She shouted, much to the consternation of the formerly sleeping boys.
"Quiet…tryin' ta sleep…" mumbled the wolf boy, rolling over in his sheets.
Sarah grabbed the hem of Naruto's comforter with hesitant trembling hands, her eyes down as she played with the blanket.
"Wh-what if you don't come back?" She asked in a tiny voice.
Naruto looked down in wide eyes, cursing himself for not recognizing her worry for what it was.
'She's not worried about the danger, she's worried that she might lose me. Her parents kicked her out to the street, where she could trust no one and nothing, and she gathered a close group of friends, me included. A group so close that they might as well be family.' Naruto thought, a warm feeling suffusing his chest, a feeling of knowing and acceptance.
"Hey," Naruto said, holding up her chin with his thumb and fore finger. "That's never gonna happen."
Her watery eyes peered into Naruto's
"Listen to me, I am never going to leave you, allright? Whatever dangers there are, out in the world or down that sewer, it won't matter. I will be there," Naruto said, giving her a tight hug. "And I'll always come back."
A little sniffle escaped Sarah before she threw her arms around Naruto's neck, burying her head below his jaw.
Naruto could feel the wet patch on his clothing as the little girl finished crying into his shoulder/neck.
When the hug broke apart, Naruto turned around, and without a word, left through the steel door, locking the door behind him.
:Line Break:
Naruto had been wondering through the sewers for about an hour, and he had yet to hear the sound that had frightened Sarah so.
'Hopefully I won't find it either.' Naruto thought, trying to still himself as much as he could, trying to hear the far off sounds of the sewer. 'Hopefully it really was just water dripping or a big rat or something. I am SO not in the mood to fight those soldiers again. Bullets hurt.'
And with that understatement of the year, Naruto heard a scratching noise echoing down from the sewer walls.
"Welll, fuck."
Naruto jumped up, flipping around to land on the ceiling, using his chakra to hold himself there. Once secure in his more stealthy ceiling approach, Naruto crawled towards the sound.
'Well now that I've heard it, I can't go back.' Naruto thought to himself as the scratching echoing down the tunnel was joined by small hisses. 'Now that I know someone, or something is down here, I have to find out what it, or he/she is. Otherwise whatever it is making that racket might bump into Nick or Sidney…or Sarah.' Naruto shivered in thought as the hisses gave way to small, guttural growls, imagining the thing making those noises coming face to face with innocent little Sarah.
'That's not going to happen.' Naruto thought, carefully crawling around a hole in the ceiling, leading up to a sewer cover.
Making it around the hole, Naruto quickly scurried for shade as the source of the scratching, splashing, hissing and growling came closer.
Holding himself completely still, Naruto gasped as the light coming down from the sewer cover fell upon a creature unlike any he had ever seen.
It stood at least eight feet tall, from it's clawed feet to it's hunched over shoulders. From head to toe the beast was covered in scales, dark green ones lining it's tail, legs, arms and head, and a pale tan for its chest and face, all glinting hellishly in the evening light. On each of the creatures hands stood three fingers and a thumb, each tipped with a rending talon four inches long. Upon the creature itself, stood the tattered remains of what Naruto could only assume had been some kind of white coat, and a pair of dark slacks.
A forked tongue darted past the pale snout of the abomination, right before the entire being froze, crouching down into the murky water.
The tongue darted forth several more times.
And then the creature looked right at Naruto, hissing loudly.
"That is the biggest fucking alligator I have ever seen."
AN
I know, another short chapter. But don't worry. Next chapter, shit gets intense. And a good bit longer.
Next chapter we have dual lizard fights, and a few cameos from some cool people.
10k
As always, a big thank you to resident beta 7winds
Also! Please remember that reviews are how I measure myself as a person and writer, so please be kind and leave one!