Naruto stayed with Tazuna after that. He didn't want to chance meeting Ice-chan again. He passed his time by practicing walking up and down the pillars. Whenever he feel himself get weak from chakra usage, he would just have Venom return his boots and climb back up. Then when the work was done one day and someone broke out a bottle of sake, they got drunk and one of them dared him to show them something ninja.
Being they were drunk, he wasn't going to waste his time on something like that. So he just grabbed a steel rebar and twisted it until it became a pretzel. As he tossed it behind him and jumped up on a post again, they all dropped their jaws, cups, and stared at him. "Holy shit," one of them stated. Naruto didn't care that he might have scared them or not right then. He only cared that a person he had wanted to consider a friend, maybe even thee friend to open up to had been lying to him the whole time.
He lead Tazuna back to his home and disappeared into the darkness. "He did it again," Sakura said to Kakashi. "He really trusted her. I wonder what she said to him to make him trust her like that."
"Sasuke, when you were watching their conversation, did you hear anything that might help," Kakashi asked him.
"No. I already told you what was said."
"Where do you think he went?"
"I don't know. I will be able to follow him, hopefully, when I recover but until then, I can't."
—oo000oo—
"...Tiger, ram, ox!" When he pressed his hands against the river, he watched ice spread out from it for a foot before it stopped. He frowned before raising a fist and shattering the block of ice. "What should we do, Venom? To get stronger, there is nothing that does not destroy our integrity that we shouldn't learn. But we can't stand using that." The symbiont had no reply for him. Its experiences with emotions were only its host.
"Venom-san," came from behind him. Naruto spun and nearly snarled as Ice-chan came out of the forest. He should have been paying attention.
"Yes," he asked, his voice as cold as the ice.
It hurt Haku. "I am sorry I betrayed your trust, Venom-san."
"Apologies will not heal our hurt."
"But forgiveness will," she told him, taking another step forward. "I am sorry I lied, please forgive me."
"To what end, Ice-chan? Are you going to leave Zabuza for us?"
Haku didn't want to say it but she did. "No."
"We didn't think so." He turned around to walk away but Ice-chan wrapped her arms around him.
"You don't understand," she said into his shoulder. "He saved me, took me in when no one would have anything to do with me. He is very precious to me."
Naruto didn't struggle when she said that. He could have broken loose the moment she grabbed him but decided to listen to her. "...When fighting for someone precious is when a person is truly strong. The grandson of the man you are trying to kill was told something like that by his father, a man your boss killed."
"I'm sorry."
"Why are you even here, Ice-chan?"
"I don't know," she told him. "I just had to try to apologize. I don't want you to hate me."
And he didn't want to hate her. He turned around in her arms and lifted her chin. "You were hated for your abilities, weren't you?"
"Yes. My father tried to kill me but he didn't..."
"Don't say anything you don't want to."
"I do. He killed my mother in front of me and then turned his sword on me. But I used my ice to kill him."
Naruto hugged her. "We're sorry, Ice-chan."
"Haku, my name is Haku."
Naruto removed his mask. "We are Uzumaki Naruto. And we are hated as well. A demon was sealed in our body and many think of us as the demon."
"Naruto, please, come away with me," she said into his chest. "I don't want to fight you."
"...No, we cannot turn our back on this. If we do, Gatou will be given free reign of this country. We won't allow him to hurt another innocent."
"...Okay then." She stepped back and wiped away her tears. "If that is the way it must be." She started walking away. But she wasn't heading to her base. 'If Gatou is the one that is making all this happen then he will have to die.
"Haku-chan..." Naruto said to her as the feeling he got from her changed. "What are you going to do?"
"I am going to do what I must."
Naruto watched her walk away. He wanted to go after her but it was getting late and he had to return. "Meet us here tomorrow night, Haku-chan."
"I will."
He walked back to Tazuna's house feeling better than he had in three days. "We're back," he said as he entered.
"Where did you go," Sakura asked. She was shocked as this was the first time since it was revealed that his friend was Zabuza's ally that she had seen his face.
"We needed to blow off some steam. We actually feel better." He smiled as he stretched, touching the ceiling. But that smile started to fade as he grew cold. "Do you feel that?" His eyes widened as his breath fogged.
"Mom," Inari said as he ran inside. "There is a giant crystal forming at the far port!"
"Crystal," Naruto wondered for a moment. "...Ice!" He pulled his mask up as he ran out the door. Sakura followed him out, asking what he was talking about but he had no time to explain. He shot a web at two trees and sling shot into the air. Using a memory he got from the first host, e created small wings between his arms and torso from webbing and was able to glide a bit before he landed. He ran, not wanting to waste the time to get another shot off.
He came to a man speared to a tree with ice. His clothes said he was a bandit. But this wasn't an area bandits could reach easily. Gatou had to have hired him. And a lesson from the original Venom and his predecessor, where one bandit was, a lot more were wait. "We hope she hasn't gotten herself into more than she could handle!"
He kept running and passed more men having been killed by Haku. When he came to the port, he found a wall that had been broken apart. He also found signs of at least two hundred bandits lived there. "Gatou, come on out here," he heard Haku shout. "Come on out so I can kill you!"
He ran and jumped on the wall. The building in this city were taller than the ones where Tazuna lived but not enough to web sling from them. He climbed up one and started jumping from roof to roof to get to where he heard it. He reached the last roof before the docks and looked out. Haku was running through the bandits to reach this short man in a suit. And she was getting stabbed for it.
"HAKU!" He jumped down there, grabbed her, and used a web as a rip cord to pull her and himself back. He took the weapons from her back and arms and bound the worst of the wounds. "What...What were you doing? You said you would meet us tomorrow."
"Gatou is the one that...is keeping us apart," she told him. "I don't want to be without you Naruto-kun." Blood was running down the side of her mouth as she spoke.
"No... No, you shouldn't have. You should have gotten us. No." Images of Venom and Spider-man came to him. Spider-man watching a a woman named Gwen Stacy die in his arms. Venom seeing the woman he loved being killed by Carnage. "No..." Haku pressed her hand to his face before it fell to the ground.
"...Touching, really," Gatou said. "I must thank you, boy. If you hadn't rescued her, she would have gotten to me and killed me."
Naruto placed her hands over her stomach before standing. Then he faced the group before him. "...That is something we will have to change!" The symbiont became smoother with no openings. Except one. The mask split over his mouth, becoming fangs at the edges. Inside himself, Naruto knew that the Kyuubi's chakra was pouring out but he didn't care.
The bandits, still numbering over two hundred stared at the boy as his spider faded and his clothes changed from black to red. "HAHAHA!" He ran forward, claws shooting out ahead of him, tearing out throats, slicing open stomachs, cutting off arms. Once he reached them, tendrils of the symbiont shot out stabbing anything around him. He never stopped running or killing. No one was safe from him right then. Except one man in the back. "HAHAHA! Are you ready to die!? I am going to enjoy this!"
"Pl-Please, I will give you anything! Money, power, wo..." One of the claws came up under his chin, closing his mouth. Then up through it and his tongue, just touching the roof of his mouth.
"SHUT THE HELL UP! DIE WITH SOME DIGNITY!"
"N-Naruto? Venom-kun?"
"I am not Naruto! I am not Venom! I am Carnage!" Two arms covered in white, as cold as ice wrapped around his waist.
"Please, Naruto, don't become this thing. We are fine."
"H-Haku?" Naruto dropped Gatou and spun around. There, covered in a white symbiont, was Haku. A blue spider like his covered her chest and over her were the blue holes like his. Her symbiont didn't cover her mouth or chin. It also stopped before her hair.
"How...How can this be? We saw you die." He changed back to his normal appearance.
"We don't know," she said to him. "We just are."
Behind them, Gatou was whimpering and trying to crawl away. But a web hit his leg and pulled him back to Naruto. "You said you will give us something. Money, yes?" Gatou, unable to speak, nodded. "Your money, all of it in one of your, no doubt, many bank accounts." Gatou reach a shaking hand into his coat and pulled out a pen and paper. He started writing a number down before he felt his leg get broken. "You lied," Naruto told him. Gatou wrote the correct number down as well as the password. Naruto took it. "Now I want another one." Gatou hastily wrote another and gave it to him.
"That will go a long way to make up for what you have done here," Naruto said to him.
Gatou tried to speak, to ask if he would let him go now.
"We never said we would let you go," Naruto said to him. "This is just to see if we will kill you fast or slow. You should have spit in our face and told us to go to hell, coward." Holding him up by the broken leg, Naruto dragged him to to the center of the bodies. He then proceeded to break the rest of his limbs.
"We are no going to kill you," Naruto told him. "But you are still going to die. The punishment must fit the crime. This will fit. You too the arms of a hero of this country. You took its hope. We have taken your limbs. And now, we will take your hope." He lifted on of the severed limbs up and squeezed the blood out over Gatou. "In time, you will smell just like the bodies here. And the scavengers will come. And you won't have the strength not ability to stop them from eating you alive. And until you die, you get to watch as the bodies of men you hired are eaten as well." He secured him in place with some webs. "Just to make sure." He turned and walked away, Haku beside him.
"Naruto, you shouldn't have done that to him."
"He hurt you, Haku-chan," Naruto said, running a finger along her cheek. "He has hurt thousands. It is time he got what he deserved."
She was silent for several moments as the walked away from the port. "...That red form you took, Carnage, that was because of the demon, wasn't it?"
"Must have been. We are sorry you had to see that, Haku-chan."
She shook her head. "We don't mind, Naruto-kun." She hugged him and pulled up his mask. "We are just glad we have you." She kissed him on the lips. She felt a piece of paper go in her hands.
"This is for whatever Zabuza wanted." It was one of the account numbers.
"...We can't accept this," Haku said.
"Do accept it," Naruto told her. "I don't want Zabuza taking on anymore missions like this. I don't want him to die. He is too important to us for saving you."
Haku looked from it to Naruto. Her symbiont shrunk from a suit to a choker. "We are not going to see you again, are we?"
"We are going to try, Haku-chan. We don't want to live another day without you. But we can't leave Konoha and you can't leave Zabuza." Haku hugged him again, not wanting to believe it but knew he was right.
"We will miss you, Naruto." She turned and walked away and it was the hardest thing for Naruto to do to watch her go away. But he could only turn and walk away himself.
—oo000oo—
"Zabuza-sama, Gatou is dead," Haku told him when she entered his room.
"Damn, he hadn't paid us yet."
"We have his account number and password." She gave him the note.
"...You killed him?"
No, we did not. Naruto, the boy in black, did after I tried to kill him. He got the note and gave it to us so we can give it to you."
"Why?"
"Because you saved us, Zabuza-sama. ...We think we are in love with him, Zabuza-sama."
He tilted his head at her. Her new speech, the way she held herself, she had changed during this encounter. "What did he do to you?"
"We don't know, Zabuza-sama. But we are stronger for it."
"And I don't like it," Zabuza told her. "There is a ninja from Konoha, a traitor named Orochimaru that gives people a seal that changes them. If they survive, they go to him."
"It isn't like that," Haku told him. "He didn't mean for it to happen, it just did. And we went there because we fell in love with him first."
Zabuza laid back down. He still didn't like what had happened because didn't understand why it happened. But the kid made no attempt to claim Haku and gave up the money. "...Haku, when I achieve my dream...I will not mind if you go after him." He groaned when Haku hugged him.
"Thank you, Zabuza-sama! I will make go make sure everything is in order so we can go and get it done now." She ran from the room and Zabuza sighed.
"You can't fake or force emotions like that. Naruto, eh? I am going to have to visit Konoha and him when I become the Mizukage."
—oo000oo—
The door opened and closed. "The mission is about over," Naruto said when entered.
"How so," Kakashi asked, doing one fingered push ups.
"Gatou is dead," Naruto told him. He dropped his cane on the floor. Everyone in the room stared at it then him.
"Do you have any idea what you just did," Kakashi asked.
"We defended a friend," Naruto replied. "In doing so, we killed Zabuza's employer. No reason to complete the mission now that he isn't being paid. The CEO is probably less of a bastard."
"He is," Kakashi admitted. "But a death like that will be noticed."
"He was killed by his own bandits," Naruto said with a shrug. "A group of them felt they weren't being paid enough and decided to betray the others. They all died fighting each other. And the ruckus drew us so we cleaned up the rest. It was when we were checking for survivors we found him already dead, trampled to death, if his broken limbs are any kind if sign."
"You tortured him before you killed him," Sakura demanded.
"Did he deserve less," Naruto asked her seriously. "And it was nothing compared to what a professional could and would have done."
"You serious, kid," Tazuna asked. "He is really dead?"
"Believe him," Sasuke said. "He has no sense of humor while on a mission." Looking at Naruto, his clothes still red with blood, he wondered if this is what revenge would do to him. "Naruto, was it worth it?"
"It wasn't for ourselves we hurt him for. We hurt him for all those he hurt. We killed him for all those he would hurt. It needed done."
"I asked if it was worth it."
"...To all of them, it was. But to me and what we had to do, no. We are glad it was done. But in another way, we wish it hadn't."
"What happened," Kakashi asked.
"We released it when we saw our friend hurt." Kakashi fell over, his balance gone.
"Did..."
"It is safely sealed away again," Naruto told him. "It will not happen again until we can can control it. We promise."
—oo000oo—
Naruto returned to Konoha after almost two months to hear news that the Mizukage was dead and another had taken his place. No one seemed to know who it was but the bingo books were being redone. That was the biggest news that came. Bingo books changed as the men and women inside it died and new ones were add. But someone was being taken out of it without dying.
After climbing up to the top of the Hokage tower, Naruto entered the window. "Hey old man! What is all this fuss we keep hearing about?"
Sarutobi smiled. "Thank you, Naruto, you just saved me the trouble of summoning you."
"Huh?"
"I have here a note from one of the last members of the Uzumaki clan."
"EH!?"
It seems you are engaged with one of your clan members, a common practice, with the opportunity to turn it down, of course after you meet her. The Mizukage has sent her."
"But...But...I can't be engaged! I don't have any family!"
"You do now," Sarutobi told him.
"But how do you know she is who she says she is!?"
"Because she has your Kekkei Genkai. A bit different but the same ability is there."
Naruto froze. "She has my Kekkei Genkai?"
"Yes, Naruto, she does. I have seen it for myself. She also has your speech." He turned to the door and opened it. "You won't have to wait, miss. He is already here." He got out of the way to reveal a girl with dark hair that reached below her shoulders wearing a white dress. She saw him, smiled and jumped on him.
"Hello, Naruto-kun, we are your fiancé, Haku," she informed the stunned genin before kissing him.
Sarutobi arched an eyebrow at how bold she was. "Yeah, she is related to Naruto."
—oo000oo—
"Did you hear," this woman said to her friends as she entered the tea shop. "The Uzumaki does have a clan."
"So," the younger woman replied.
"So, he is in an arranged marriage," the older woman told her. "A clan member with the same abilities arrived here either today or yesterday and told the Hokage she was going to marry him, just like that."
Kurenai shook her head at their conversation. "Why is it some women can't resist gossip?" She turned back to see both Kiba and Shino staring at Hinata in concern. "Hinata?" She looked like she was ready to faint or run for it.
"...Bye, Kurenai-sensei! I will be meet you tomorrow!"
—oo000oo—
"Excuse me, can you two stop doing that on my floor," the Hokage asked. A knock came from his door. "Come in." It was thrown open by Hinata. And the first thing she saw was a stunned Naruto still being kissed by Haku. Tears came from her eyes as she fainted.
"What we do," Naruto asked.
—oo000oo—
Author's notes: I never actually read a story where Zabuza actually became Mizukage. And I don't want him to die but couldn't think of anything to do with him that was original. Then it hit me what to do with him. It was so obvious that I had to. I am going to have to do something though others have though. The Clan act, you know the one. HakuXNarutoXHinata.
