Chapter 9 – Visions and Answers

I own nothing except my OCs

Some excerpts here are by Peter Mohrbacher, Magic the Gathering artist.

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" " – human speech/writing

' ' – human thought

' ' – demon thought

" " – demon speech

White.

Everywhere he looked was white.

Actually – no. Not white. It kept shifting. Yellow, green, white, blue. Yet it was so faint, so brief, that he could barely see it.

He tried to move, tried to see, tried to understand, but nothing changed. All white.

No.

Not white. A void.

Out of the bright void, a voice called out:

"Can you not see?"

It was calm and serene, yet firm and fierce. It echoed around him, soft as a whisper, yet loud and booming as roar.

He tried to look, tried to see, tried to find…

But there was white.

"It appears…you are not ready yet to see by your own eyes."

Again. Where?

"Yet…you are different. You will see. Oh yes. Much you will see…"

Silence. See? 'Will see'?

"Perhaps a peek shall be thy reward…Very well"

Then, it spoke a word. It echoed in his soul, made it drum, it was powerful.

And there was light.

It cleared, he could see! He focused on the sight before him, but then he stopped.

In front of him stood a great Tree. Its limbs pushed forth in every direction. A mass of wood that twisted upon itself, bending and creasing in patterns that swept across its boughs with wild intent. He traced a single twisting groove with his eyes, he followed a path that dove and spun across the waves and eddies of the massive branch. It split and re-joined, crashing and shattering against a swirling ring that tangled in upon itself and tore a path around to the reverse side forcing its way upward toward the reaching tips of the branches that splayed across the starry sky above him in violent motion and held totally still. The gnarled mass stretched outwards towards the infinite expanse that surrounded it, its boundaries impossible to define.

He gaped. Even in its sight, he could barely comprehend it.

For all its size, the space in which it dwelled sought to dwarf it. Luminous clouds, pushed away in every direction and fell away behind the meridian of the horizon. Everything was equally far away, massively far away, leaving him distant from all things.

The earth stretched below him, carved in glimmering relief and veiled in a thin blue halo. He scanned the winding traces of water for features he recognized but the familiar places were lost amidst the enormity of the thing he beheld. Like the strange and distant rivers, he realized that even though his experiences existed as a part of the Tree, they were lost amidst the glory of the Tree's scale. He was nothing and his life had been nothing.

The Tree loomed over him like a sleeping giant, a fearsome beast that might wake at any given moment. He silently screamed, tried to step back, but he was drawn to it. He took a step. Then another. And another. He kept taking steps – he was so close, nearly touching the roots, when he froze. He couldn't move.

"Not yet. You are not ready."

He turned his head to a tall figure, floating above the roots. A severe figure clad in a sweeping grey costume with a polished white dome standing in for a face. It bore large wings, unmoving, yet fluttering, yet as he focused…were those papers for feathers? It held a book under one arm.

"You cannot comprehend this yet can you? You are unusual. Very few manage to come here, and fewer stay sane, even from a glimpse."

He tried to speak to it, yet the surprise prevented the words from coming out. In the end, he managed to ask.

"How do you know this?"

"I know all things. For that is what I am."

"Who are you?"

"I am knowledge. I am –"

Nothing. Not a word spoken.

The figure tilts its head by a fraction, as though expecting this. "You are not ready."

It then pointed a finger upwards. A symbol of light carved itself through the air. A circle with two opposing spikes.

"Seek them out. You shall know."

He went to ask more questions, but he felt as though everything was pulling away from him and he was being pulled away at once.

Just as everything faded, he heard it whisper.

"Tzeh u-lmad"

Naruto rose up from his bed with a gasp. He frantically looked around for the tree and the winged figure, but then he remembered where he was. He was back in his house, inside his bed. He let out a calm sigh.

"Mmmph…what? What time is it?"

He now also remembered with who he was.

Looking to his side, he saw Ajisai sitting up and rubbing her eyes. Her hair was still in that onion-like bun, albeit a little frizzled. Her clothes were dirty and covered with water marks. She looked at him before widening her eyes and frantically looking around, as though an attack might happen. Naruto quickly grasped her shoulders and made her look at him.

"Hey, it's okay. We're safe now, we're in my house." She started to calm down as he kept whispering reassuring words to her. Soon enough, her eyes and breathing returned to normal.

An awkward silence hung, as both of them were unsure what to say. Before they could make an attempt though, a loud grumbling was heard.

GRUMBLE!

His cheeks slightly flushing, Naruto looked down and rubbed his head in embarrassment "Heh-heh. Guess we should eat first. Are you hungry?" She nodded. With that confirmation, the two got up and headed out of the room. As they headed downstairs, Ajisai kept looking around at the paintings and walls, with a small gleam of wonder in her eye.

They reached the main hall. "Could you wait here while I get us some food? I won't be long." Again, she nodded and kept looking around as Naruto left for the kitchen. 'She's a quiet one' he thought. 'Oh well. She seems nice, if a little stoic.' He entered the kitchen, which was really a combination of empty sinks and unlit ovens and began preparing food, all the while thinking about that dream.

'What the hell was that Tree? I've never seen anything like it. It felt so weird, like it was broken, fragmented, flowing. Although, come to think of it, it looked familiar. But if so, where did I see it before?' He lit up a fire for the meat. 'What was that winged figure I saw? What did he mean by "You are not ready"? What did that symbol mean? I should write it down. What did he mean by 'I am knowledge'?' The blond clutched his head in frustration.

'Gah! This is too much! I have too many questions and no answers! Maybe Obscuro knows about this? Or the notebook I found in the cave? Yeah, I'll look into that'

His mind made up, he kept preparing the meat. 'I wonder if Ajisai likes rabbit as much as beef,' he thought as he took the plates to the main hall. She was still in the same place that he left her, looking at the mural on the floor with curiosity in her eyes.

"Hey, I hope you like rabbit." She looked at him and eyed the plates he was holding with a curious yet hungry gleam in her eye. Not seeing her protest, Naruto handed one to her. They sat on the couches, eating in silence; all the while our resident jinchuuriki was sneaking glances at her. Remembering the morning's events, Naruto took a deep breath. 'Time to face the music, I guess.'

"Are you okay?" She stopped her eating and looked at him. "I mean, from last night. It's not very pleasant for first-timers." The purple-haired girl widened her eyes as she remembered what happened yesterday.

"I-I'm fine, I guess, but what was that? It felt so dark, so cold, so…" she trailed off as her expression turned scared. Preparing himself to take a leap of faith, he responded with a question of his own.

"What do you know about demons?" She raised an eyebrow at the odd question.

"Demons? Like the ones in stories?" Naruto nodded in confirmation. She tilted her gaze upwards.

"Nothing solid, apart from the fact that the stories say that they are all evil and like to prey on humans." A little test then might work. "Do you believe those stories?"

Contemplating the question, she shook her head. "I believe what I see and have proof of. Relying solely on rumours is foolish." He agreed with her on this.

"Well, eight years ago, the leader of this village, the Fourth Hokage, sealed a power demon, called the Nine-Tailed Fox…" he gestured at his stomach "…into an infant to contain its power.

Around a year ago, that infant –now a child - met a shadow-demon called Obscuro who, when everyone else would have left him for dead, took him in, let him stay here and taught him."

Thinking on what he just said, Ajisai settled into her trademark impassive stare. What did that story have to do with anything? Of course, it only took a few moments for her to connect the pieces - the shadows that draped him and last night's experience. Her eyes widened in shock, staring at Naruto who now gazed to the ground, unwilling to meet her gaze.

"Yeah, I'm the container for the Kyuubi, and what got us out of Rain Country was Obscuro." She kept looking at him, unable to find a sign of deceit in her eyes. She sighed; at least she wasn't dead in a ditch, or lying around as those ninjas' toy.

She suddenly got up and did what Naruto had never thought anyone would do; she hugged him. Never being on the receiving end of a hug, Naruto turned a bit rigid, although he managed to hear her slightly choked whisper. "Thank you."

Ajisai knew that if he hadn't come when he did, her fate would either be death or worse than it. A hug was probably the least troubling thing she had done.

She pulled away from him and turned her head sideways so that he wouldn't see her blush. Her memories from that day focused on how he attacked those men. "Did…Obscuro…teach you how to fight like that?" The name tasted odd on her tongue. Naruto nodded in response.

"Yeah, for the first month or so, then I had one of the ninja here train me. He said it'll be better for me if another human taught me how to fight, although he can do that pretty well."

"Did he teach you those ritual things that you showed me?"

"Yeah, it's the main thing that he trained me in. The rest I picked up from my human tutor – her name's Yugao – or I just read it here in the library." Her head perked up at that last part.

"You have a library?" she asked in a calm tone, yet Naruto could tell that it had a tinge of excitement in it. The look in her eyes was very familiar to him – he sometimes saw it in the mirror when he woke up with the promise of Obscuro teaching him new stuff.

"Yeah, it's a big one. I'll show it to you later." He barely saw it, but the corner of Ajisai's lip twitched a bit.

"So, what's your story?"

Ajisai looked down, her expression hardening. She was a cautious girl, and didn't hand out her trust so easily. Yet, this boy had done more for her than anyone else in her short life. Best of all, he did it with no apparent demand for compensation. He told her about his life, so why shouldn't she tell him about hers? She took a deep breath and began telling her story.

"My mother and father were both ninjas who lived in Amegakure. When I was roughly 4, someone took their lives in an act of revenge. I was out playing when it happened, so I came home to a smoking apartment and charred bodies." Her voice began to falter as she kept recalling her memories.

"I lived on the streets for a while until a retired ninja found me, lying among the trashcans. He took me and several other orphans in, aiming to make us ninjas to support his cause of allying with Hanzo. I stayed there so I could learn as much as I could.

One day, we were training in our crumbled old building when Hanzo's forces came crashing in. Claiming our teacher and us traitors to the regime, they killed us off. Obviously, I survived. I made it out of there just before they saw me."

She was sniffing at this this point and her eyes misted over. While she wasn't necessarily close to any of the other orphans, the old ninja was the closest thing she had to an actual father at that point, with her actual father barely paying attention to her when he was alive.

"I fled the village, taking refuge in small towns like the one you met me in. While I never supported my teacher's goal, at that moment I hated Hanzo with a passion. Sometime later, I heard that he was assassinated in his home by a 'god'. A few days later, I heard that an 'angel' was killing off his forces, bit by bit. I was hoping to stay hidden until everything settled but…"

The purple-haired girl began crying as she realized her situation. She was gone from the only home she ever knew, all of her family dead, and was almost raped and killed by her own countrymen. The irony of that was just sickening.

Inwardly panicking, Naruto was at a loss at what to do. Never having dealt with this kind of predicament before, he tried thinking of a way to calm her down. He then remembered what happened this morning, just after he woke up. He went to the sobbing Ajisai, and hugged her. She leant into his touch as she kept crying, for all that she had lost, little though it may have been. After a few rounds of tears, she looked into his eyes.

"Better now?" She nodded while rubbing her eyes with her sleeve. With nothing coming to mind, they sat in silence.

Eventually, he diced to ask her something that should avoid certain future predicaments. "Ajisai-san, do you want to meet Obscuro?" She nodded.

No sooner than she did so, the shadow-demon's form materialized from the corner of the room, floating tall and intimidating, with horns, wings and all. In its hand was the small board with the word "Greetings" written on it.

"H-hello" Ajisai said in a startled tone. Plucking out a small eraser and a piece of chalk from…nowhere apparently, he wiped the board and wrote "Ajisai, correct? You are going to stay here for the foreseeable future I presume?"

Looking over to Naruto who nodded at her, she replied, "Yes, I will."

"Very well. The house is yours to explore, although I recommend that you refer to Naruto for any questions about it. One thing though, I require some of your blood." She raised an eyebrow at the odd request. Seeing the unasked question in her eyes, the shadow-demon wrote "For security measures."

Looking at Naruto who nodded again, she pulled up her sleeve to show her arm. A shadow tendril creeped from Obscuro's "body" and pierced her arm.

Wincing a bit, she watched with a small sense of fascination how her blood floated from the small hole, around the tendril and gathered into a small, red liquid-y sphere. Withdrawing the tendril and vanishing the wound (something that surprised her), Obscuro turned to leave when Naruto shouted "Hey! Why didn't you ask me when you took my blood!?"

The demon simply wrote back "Because she isn't annoying." Ignoring the blond's cry of indignation, the shadow-demon vanished.

"Is he always like this?" asked Ajisai.

"He can be a bit of a jerk sometimes, yeah, but I think he does it just to test me or to rile me up." Naruto then got up from the couch and motioned to her "Come, I think that I should explain this in the library." She got up and followed him into the library.

Naruto let out a small smirk of amusement as he watched Ajisai's eyes dart around every corner, gazing in adoration at the multitude of books that rested upon the shelves. "It's great, right? It's my private sanctuary. Whenever I study or need to calm down, I come here."

"I'll let you read some of the books, but now I need you to pay attention." Seeing her focus on him, he said "First, try not to cut yourself or touch any paper that has a weird circle drawn on it, like the one I showed you. It may not activate, but I don't want to take any chances.

Second, if you take a book from here, make sure treat it with care, as some of these guys are really old. Also when you return it here, put it back from where you took it. I can't stand it when everything's scattered.

Third, if you go out, tell me beforehand. The forests here are dangerous to be wandering around untrained, but most of all, don't go into the village." The purple-haired girl asked "Why?"

Naruto scrunched his face. "The villagers hate me because of the Kyuubi, so they try to make my life miserable. If they see you with me, they might attack you or try to follow you here."

"But if I go into the village alone, no one will have any reason to suspect that I'm with you," Ajisai pointed out. Naruto blinked in surprise, that thought had never crossed his mind. He scratched his chin at this surprising, yet somewhat embarrassing, revelation. If what she said is true, then that means getting supplies from the village will be easier with her aid. If Obscuro accompanied her, she could enter and exit the village unnoticed, away from the eyes of the ANBU that occasionally patrolled here.

He was snapped out of his musing when he heard Ajisai ask in a cautious tone "What are you thinking about?" He told her of his thoughts just know, and made sure to put an emphasis on getting new supplies. The girl seemed unfazed at his, what some might call, manipulative thoughts, but rather seemed to agree with him, as she had similar thoughts as well.

Checking that he hadn't left out anything important, the blond went to conclude his little instruction when Ajisai asked him, "Can you teach me?"

While a bit startled at the spontaneity of the request, Naruto knew that if she was going to live with him, she will need to fight in the future, so why deny her that? "Teach you what?"

"Teach me how to fight with knives. I saw that you had skill with them when we first met. Taijutsu too. I haven't really fought against anyone for a while. It wouldn't help if I got rusty."

Mentally weighing the requests, Naruto replied "While the taijutsu part I can help you with, I don't know if my knives – daggers actually – would suit you. They're for more than just hacking and slashing."

"It's fine. I already have an idea of how I want to fight. I don't need you to teach me your specific style."

"Oh? How do you want to fight?"

"That…is a secret" she smirked. Naruto just stared. "Right," he muttered.

With that topic of discussion closed for now, the blond asked, "So, what kind of book do like?"

When Obscuro returned a couple of hours later, it wasn't surprised to see the two animatedly chatting, each holding a book; on philosophy of all things. While the debate might have been interesting to hear, there were more prudent events to take care of. Tapping his chalk on the large blackboard, he got their attention.

"You have explained to her the rules of this place?" it wrote.

"Yes."

"What does she wish to do then?"

"I would like to learn about knife –"

"Dagger" Naruto coughed.

"-fighting from Naruto-san. Also, if it wouldn't trouble you Obscuro-san, could you help me get some ninja tools? I can make a list."

"I could, but if I may ask, what shall you do here to help?"

"Naruto-san and I have agreed that if you could get me to the village undetected, I could buy supplies and you could bring them here."

"I see. This is actually a good plan. It will allow us to retrieve more supplies without the risk of Naruto getting caught. I'm not surprised that he didn't think of this first ("HEY!"). Oh well, more tests then."

Naruto gulped at the mention of 'tests'. It would vary from time to time on which topic, but when Obscuro gave out a 'test', it left either his body aching like hell or his brain overheating.

"Tests? What kind?" Ajisai asked with an underlying hint of mirth in her voice.

Obscuro flicked a pebble at Naruto's fore head and wrote "Mandala pattern with 4-verse incantation. Now!"

As Naruto attempted to rack his brain for an appropriate answer, one though came to his mind in the meantime.

'Well, things are gonna get more interesting around here from now on…'

-Obscuro-

After a (painful) pop quiz, Ajisai had asked to practice chakra control, which the young Uzumaki joined in. After a few hours of reading books and discussions, he gave the purplenette a tour of the house and the forest outskirts. Stopping at a clearing, Naruto decided that they might as well spar so he could get a feel of her fighting style. After the spar, he said that he would come to a conclusion tomorrow.

More reading and discussions later, the two headed upstairs. As Naruto approached his room, he then realized that he had yet to give Ajisai a proper room. When he turned to address the situation to her though, she simply said, "I don't mind if we share the bed." Her reasoning?

"We already did it twice and I don't think there's another bed around."

While he knew that there was a spare bed lying around the house, Naruto was a bit hazy from the spar and the recent discussion, so he just nodded. So she went into the bathroom to wash up while Naruto waited. While she did so, Obscuro's board popped into the room.

Already surrendering to the theory that Obscuro could somehow read minds, he whispered to the shadow-demon about his dream. Not a single word appeared on the board while the blond talked. After giving his account, a piece of chalk appeared in Naruto's hand and Obscuro wrote "What did this symbol look like?"

Drawing the symbol onto the board, the shadow-demon stared at it in silence. All the while, a flurry of thoughts floated in the demon's head.

'Well, I certainly did not expect this. What is even more worrying is that symbol. For some reason, that symbol seems extremely familiar, but I don't know why, as though recalling a distant dream. Whether this bodes good or ill I do not know, but I must get to the bottom of this. There are too many unknowns as it is, and none of us need any more complications.'

The symbol was erased. "I shall look into this. Tell me if you have any more of these dreams." With that, Obscuro vanished.

After Ajisai got out, Naruto went in and washed himself. He soon went to bed with Ajisai taking one side and him the other. "Good night," he said.

"Good night and…thank you, again."

Smiling at the thanks, the blond settled in and soon fell asleep.

Hi guys! New chapter! What do you think?

Check out my other story, a Harry Potter crossover called 'Mugenjin of Judgment'. It's different than anything you've seen before!

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