[A/N]Here comes Chapter 2.
As promised, I'll begin each chapter the same way. As such, It's going to take quite some time to get back to the battle with Guren… so what SHOULD have taken only a few chapters will now constitute a good deal of the story. Besides, what better way to show off a few of Naruto's bad-ass new moves and his new weapon if I don't write it this way? ^_-
So, with that said, Here comes #2. Once again, if you're going to review, PLEASE make an account so I can properly reply to you. They're free to make, last I checked, so you don't have to pay for anything. ^_^ [A/N]
~~~DEAD CENTER OF THE FOREST OF DEATH, IN A SMALL CLEARING~~~
Hinata felt something change in the air around them.
'Don't move,' she whispered, moving away from their warm embrace for the span of less than three seconds. She sat up slowly, staring around quickly, before finally locking her eyes on the crystal casing surrounding Guren.
"Naruto, come here!" she said, gesturing for him to join her. Naruto jumped up and rushed over, a look of worry painting over his happy features. However, as he scrambled up, he saw nothing different.
"What's wrong, Princess?" he asked, looking left and right, but seeing nothing.
"It's… it's that casing!" Hinata said, her voice panicking, "It somehow strengthened itself!"
Naruto did a double-take.
"What?"
"That's what I thought, too!" Hinata said, her face flushing red as her breathing began to speed up and become ragged. Naruto acted on instinct.
Without warning, he wrapped his arms around her tight and planted his lips to hers.
Hinata shook violently for several seconds before she realized what was happening and relaxed instantly. After roughly one minute, she broke away and smiled.
"T-thanks…" she asked nervously. Naruto smiled.
"You needed it," he said innocently.
It may have seemed like an emergency to anyone else, but over the years it had become almost a common occurrence between the two lovers. Hinata would suddenly break down in panic and begin hyperventilating. Naruto knew from past experiences that he needed to act quickly or there would be very little he could do without rushing to get her medical aide. There had been several occasions in their budding romance where she'd broken down that way and the only way he'd been able to help her was to sit next to her for several days while she slept in a hospital bed. No one had EVER discovered the reason behind these episodes.
Naruto had come up with this cure for her "attacks" after three months of their relationship, which, oddly, had spawned SEVENTEEN separate episodes. Whenever he saw her begin to break down, he'd pull her in, no matter where they were and kiss her while holding her gently until she realized who he was and calmed down.
Hinata nodded and sat back down, turning around so she sat with her back to him. Without so much as a word, Naruto began carefully massaging her shoulders. With every touch he could feel her muscles relax, and when he slipped the shoulders of her dress down to get at her tensed muscles more easily, he felt her literally MELT into his touch.
"Were you always this good, Naru-kun?" she asked playfully. Naruto chuckled.
"Only for you, Hina-chan. ONLY for you," he replied, matching her playful tone.
He waited about three more minutes. They were coming up on the twenty minute mark; they'd used up half of the time they needed, and neither was yet to surpass seventy-five-percent of their needed chakra.
Suddenly, Naruto's head snapped up; he'd just hit on an idea.
"Hina-chan… I could use The Rod!" He said. Hinata's face paled.
"NARUTO! WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT?" she demanded, the hurt tone in her voice ringing strong. Naruto gave her a confused look and tapped on his left hip, where a small, cylindrical object suddenly appeared in a holster on his hip.
"Hina-chan… Please. I'm talking about the Hell Rod. May I kindly ask that we keep our minds out of the gutter until we get back home?" he asked teasingly. Hinata blushed.
"S-sorry…" she stammered, embarrassed. Naruto smiled and reached over to kiss her. Within a second, Hinata's blush shrank to surround just her nose, and she smiled back.
Naruto pulled back a moment later and gave her a playful wink. She nodded.
Naruto pulled on the object strapped to his leg, freeing it from its prison. On its own, the tool he called "Heaven's Rod" Was really anything but impressive. As it was, it rather resembled an attachment for a vacuum cleaner; it was nothing more than a three-foot silver tube secured within another three-foot silver tube by a single latch, with a single hook-like attachment situated at the one-quarter mark of the inner tube. Naruto could have held the weapon up at eye level and stared through it; the entire thing was completely hollow.
However, once his began filling the rod with his chakra, the story changed altogether. He pushed upward on the latch release, allowing the inner rod to move down six of its twelve locking notches. At the seventh notch, he released his grip on the latch release, causing the tool to stop moving. As it stopped, the tool began changing, and as Naruto brought the thing to rest along his left arm with the larger end in the crook of his elbow, the whole thing changed shape.
The larger portion in his arm slid down, becoming a rounded guard that rested square in his elbow, while the hook on the inner tube shrank and became a trigger. The inner tube itself expanded, forcing the outer tube to expand with it, until the thing had become three times its normal size. The front of the weapon had separated into a series of six quadruple-layered barrels that seemed designed for one thing: massive blasts of absolute destruction.
The tubes had effectively transformed into a twenty-four-barreled, automatic shotgun operated SOLELY on his chakra.
Naruto looked at the ferocious weapon in his hands and whistled. He'd used it many times before, but the sight of the thing always managed to impress him.
Hinata, however, was less than impressed.
"You went to our wedding… ARMED?" she asked. Naruto turned to her with a questioning expression.
"You did too, if you think about it," he said, flashing his dojutsu with a blink and shutting them off with another, "Our eyes count as extremely dangerous weapons. NEITHER of us were entirely unarmed during that ceremony. We could have killed EVERYONE in an instant if we had a good reason. Even if we didn't have them active at any point during the ceremony, they were always there in case." Hinata thought about it and turned away, choosing to pout. Naruto smiled.
"You still look really cute when you pout, Hina-chan!" he said as he turned his weapon in the direction of the crystal. Hinata smiled and blushed a bit.
Hinata watched as, for the first time in several years, Naruto began to adopt a persona he'd only used when he was EXTREMELY bored: she watched as his face began to twist, his eyes going full fox mode and his lips curling back in a demented smile. His whisker marks thickened up, extended out six inches from his face, and he leveled a crazed gaze at the mass of crystals.
When he next spoke, his voice wasn't the happy, caring, loving one Hinata knew and loved; it was one filled with a perverted desire for death and destruction, filled with twisted blood-lust and carnal insanity. His left eye twitched, and the weapon began to charge. Hinata watched, frightened, as the gun began to shine with a faint blue color… and then watched, horrified as it began to glow red AROUND the faint blue shine.
"NARUTO, NO!" she shouted… but it was too late.
With a smile that would have sent any psychiatric patient running scared into a corner, Naruto all but bellowed, "SO, YA WANNA PLAY HARDBALL, HUH? I'LL GIVE YOU A NICE, HARD BALL TO PLAY WITH! ACTUALLY, I'LL GIVE YA MORE THAN TWENTY OF 'EM! JIGOKU NO NAGAREBOSHI!"
With that, he pulled the trigger. All twenty-four barrels lit up at once, sending burning red streams of star-filled blue chakra firing out and into the crystal structure ahead.
The energy did what Naruto had hoped it would; where the attacks he'd used before had bored in and gotten stopped half-way, this attack managed to make it much deeper. The attack drove through the crystal with enough force to hit Guren inside; Naruto hadn't expected the attack to be cut off after he'd managed to hold the attack for ten seconds. As Guren uttered a guttural scream of agony, the crystal around her became frenzied; without warning, the structure began sprouting extra layers WITHIN extra layers and creating large crystal spikes to deter physical contact.
Naruto's crazed persona died in an instant as he witnessed this sudden change. With a furious roar, he threw his Chaos Scepter hard toward the ground, not even bothering to find out if it bounced off into the forest. A small chakra pulse told from Naruto's hand told him two things: one, the structure was now completely impervious to ANY kind of chakra release, as the small pulse turned into a small whip that lashed out and struck his arm… and two, the scepter disintegrated and reformed within its holster on his hip.
"Well, this is just GREAT!" he shouted, plopping down on the grass two feet away from Hinata. Hinata stood still and watched him as he sat still and slowly began breathing in long, deep breaths to calm down. A moment later, her courage returned, and, knowing he needed some help, walked over and did for him as he'd done for her.
Despite Naruto's struggles, Hinata wouldn't let him be alone. A few minutes later, Naruto finally caved when Hinata walked around behind him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders to lock over his chest and REFUSED to let go. With a light smile, he reached up both hands to take hers and squeeze them gently.
"Thanks, Hina-chan…" he said weakly. Hinata nodded.
"You would do the same for me, Naru-kun," she said happily.
"That reminds me," she said, her memory returning again, "That crystal mass is getting stronger. Apparently, from what I see, the more time you hit it, the more chakra it has to take from its internal storage, meaning she has less time to heal. However, it one uses a technique that entails a pure, concentrated burst of chakra all in one place… that crystal will wait for a signal from the user to either bulk up, or do what it just did: it absorbed your chakra, so you can't damage it anymore." Naruto cursed again.
"How could I have been so stupid? I just JUMPED, AGAIN!" he said, hoarsely whispering the last two words so he wouldn't hurt Hinata's ears.
"While we're here, forced to wait, why don't you continue the story? I think you were at the point when the Third showed up with Kakashi-san," Hinata said. Naruto nodded.
"Indeed, I believe I was!" he said with a smile, "Let's see…"
_
CHAPTER 2: PSYCHO BLAST AND THE HOSPITAL
OP: "SOUL DYNAMITE" - ACCESS
~~ At the time they found me, there was not much they could do. I was unconscious from over-exertion, which is strange considering how much energy I have…
Anyway, the most they could do was take Kozu-nii and me back to the village. I was placed under observation in a top-secret wing of the hospital, reserved for only those of special upbringing. Kozu-nii was sent off to the village morgue for an autopsy. As if they couldn't figure out what had killed him just form looking at him… ~
It took only a few minutes to move Naruto off the corpse, and another ten from there to move them two back to the village. While Naruto was transported to a heavily-guarded, top-class underground wing of the hospital for diagnosis and study, Kozue's corpse was moved to the village mortuary for an examination.
Several hours later, Naruto sat on a cot in a white-washed hospital room. Over the hour he'd been awake, his tone of voice indicated that he was highly depressed, but his facial expression was a complete blank: eyes half closed, eyebrows and mouth straight and unmoving.
~ I really didn't know what to think or feel anymore. I'd just lost the only remaining member of my direct family… I was devastated. Had any of the doctors thought to find out about it from me, I could have told them before they tested me.
I knew what they had to do, though, so I kept quiet and let them test me. Everything from my blood and DNA to my reflexes, eyesight and hearing were tested. I just sat on that little table and let them do what they had to do, knowing the people who wanted to protect me were outside, deciding how to approach the situation. ~
Outside the room, standing behind a one-way window, Naruto was being watched by Kakashi and a tall, muscular doctor with three small scars under one eye and cropped, yet spiky light-blue hair*.
~ I've still never found out much about that strange, scar-faced doctor. It was as if as soon as he'd completed his assessment of my mental state, he just… vanished. I asked Jiji-san about it afterward, and he told me that doctor had to ship off to another land to help out different people. Knowing that he was a doctor, I could understand that excuse. I just wish I can see him again someday and thank him for his help. ~
"What's his condition?" Kakashi asked with a hint of worry in his voice. The doctor turned, allowing his white coat to whip around behind him.
"Well," the doctor said, "my best diagnosis is shock. He just watched someone who knew him as family die in his arms. That's not easy for anyone to deal with, least of all a boy of his age. He'll probably carry an emotional scar for the rest of his life… but, considering how many of the villagers treat him day-in and day-out, I can't honestly say it's much different from his daily norm. This one will just be larger than the rest." Kakashi nodded.
~ They called it shock at the time. I thought they should have called it "mental shut-down". I didn't understand much at that point. I just wanted Kozu-nii back. ~
"What can be done for him?"
"Strictly speaking… there's nothing we can do. All we can do is let him rest and gather himself. I hope that he'll be back up and at it like his normal self in a few days, at best. Of course, there's also the matter of his eyes…" the doctor said, trailing off as he searched his charts in search of the answer to Kakashi's next, and most anticipated, question.
Finding it quickly, the doctor said, "Strangely enough, before being admitted, his eyes were twenty-twenty, in both eyes, in terms of his vision. After being admitted, his eyes had regressed to five-five in each eye, and were slowly progressing back up to twenty-twenty in each. It's as if something happened that messed with his vision in that forest…"
~ They didn't know it yet, but the reason my eyes had regressed in strength was due to the sudden implanting of my eyes. It was different when you awakened your eyes, Hinata, because you'd trained them to reach that point; you just had a quick moment of blindness while your eyes evolved. Well, with mine, it was roughly six hours of varying levels of vision, all of which hurt my head. I couldn't see anything with any clarity at all; it was like being body-swapped with a bat and trying to use its eyes. ~
"And what of the one we found with Naruto?" said the voice of an elderly male. Kakashi and the doctor spun on their heels and bowed as a man in a long white robe.
"At ease, gentlemen. As I asked, did you find out anything about the other?" The Hokage asked. The doctor nodded.
"We've identified the man through the Bingo Book as Kozue Namikaze, the distant second cousin of our friend inside this room. Seems he was related to our late Fourth Hokage," The doctor said, but continued as the Hokage's frustrated stare began to burn holes in his head, "A-anyways, it seems the man's eyes had been removed pre-mortem. His eyelids had sunk into his sockets. In addition, the large wound in his chest was made by a poisoned blade. We've identified the poison as the one most commonly used by Orochimaru. He must have wanted something this Kozue-san had… I also found large amounts of residual chakra in his bones, which would explain how he managed to live for so long… he was forcing his marrow to create more blood in the hopes of the wound clotting so he could find a place to rest and recover. Unfortunately, all he wound up doing was prolonging his death."
~ It seemed one of the major things Kozu-nii never shared with me was that he was a professional bounty hunter; he'd been slowly working on emptying out the Bingo book, but had still managed to lose track of a number of powerful enemy shinobi. In the end, the one target he wanted to bring down most ended up being Kozu-nii's death… It's sad, in an ironic way. ~
"I see…" The Hokage said, while thinking, 'Minato… why didn't you ever tell me you had family out there?'
"In any case," the doctor said, "the autopsy is over and we'll be burying him in secret tomorrow. As for our young charge inside, I've already informed Okami-san of his condition. He's stressed and in shock. He needs at least a few days to rest and recover before he is capable of leaving. I'll make extra certain that no one aside from myself and the nurses see him, unless you give the order to, and I will personally prepare and deliver his food at every meal to make certain no one tried to poison him while he's here. You have my word, and a doctor's word is his life."
"Thank you, Doctor," the Hokage said, smiling as the doctor left to see to his duties.
~ I was allowed to visit the sight of Kozu-nii's grave a few days later to pay my respects. Compared to the day he died, I acted… rather composed and quiet. I surprised Jiji-san… He thought I'd throw a bratty temper tantrum and loose my head. I guess I'm better at keeping calm in the face of stress and grief than others… ~
"Sarutobi-sama, what are you thinking?" Kakashi asked.
"In truth… I'm wondering if I should go see him or not… If what the doctor said is true, he should be left alone. However," Sarutobi said, "If something did happen in that forest, we need to know exactly what it was."
"I see… conflicting plans of action…" Kakashi said, "Though… you have to admit this was quite the twist of fate. If you hadn't sent us out there today, we wouldn't have found him and Naruto wouldn't be here right now. Now Naruto knows he's lost probably the only family member he had left… and probably knows far more than you wanted him to."
~ Kakashi-san's ability to, as he phrased it, "look underneath the underneath", was always a point of admiration for me. I could never understand how he could analyze a situation in seconds from only one glance and form a plan from it. It confused me for many years. ~
"You aren't suggesting that this Kozue, a complete stranger unfamiliar with our law… no, I suppose that is plausible… I should go in," Sarutobi said. With that, he knocked on the door.
~ That knock sounded like someone had fire a cannonball. It was loud, and I wasn't expecting it. They didn't see it, but I jumped a good three feet off that cot and cowered in the corner until Jiji-san spoke. ~
"Naru-kun, it's me and Kakashi-san. May we come in?" he asked.
~ That relaxed me a little. I trusted him. ~
"Yeah, come in," Naruto's voice said from the other side, sounding monotonous and … almost dead. Sarutobi gave Kakashi a worried look. Kakashi nodded and slid the door open. The two entered to see the young boy staring blankly at the floor. Kakashi gulped and slid the door closed.
~ They didn't know it at the time, but my eyes were worse than what the doctor told them. I could barely make out the shape of the room, so when they walked in, I could only make out the forms of two misshapen blobs joining the rest of the blobs in the room. ~
"Naru-kun… can we ask you a couple questions?" Sarutobi asked. Naruto shrugged.
~ I didn't know what he expected me to say. What did he want me to do, refuse and fall asleep? ~
"What happened in the forest today?" Sarutobi asked. ~
Naruto had completely relaxed by this point, leaning back in Hinata's arms a bit. She smiled and moved so he was sitting in her lap.
Naruto smiled and sighed.
"It's insane, now that I look back on things…" he mused, "One day I'm an impressionable, rowdy six-year-old prankster, the next I'm sitting almost blind in a hospital room recovering from intense shock. I just wanted to curl up and travel back in time to before that happened and ask to stay home for the day. Now… I'm glad I didn't know how." Hinata laughed.
"I'd have been frightened if you DID know how to time-travel, Naru-kun!" she said jokingly.
"You don't have to worry; I still don't know how. I don't think I'll EVER know," he said with a grin, "And, quite frankly, now that I have you, I don't think I even want to anymore. For all I know, I could stop myself from ever meeting Kozu-nii, and I would have remained completely ignorant of you and your feelings. THAT scares me…" As if he were actually thinking about the possibility of being without Hinata, Naruto shuddered violently.
"You're THAT averse to losing me?" Hinata asked, touched.
"Hinata, if it weren't for you, I'd be sealed in a stone cell under the Hokage Tower. I'd be a criminal," he said, knowing from experience EXACTLY what would have happened without Hinata's presence in his life.
"How long do you think we have before she comes out?" Naruto asked, sounding bored.
"I'd say you added another two hours," Hinata said matter-of-factly.
"Really? Well… might as well keep going with the story… Unless you don't want me to…" Naruto said, winking playfully at Hinata.
~ THE END… FOR NOW… ~
Hope you liked it! ^_^
For those wondering, the various technique names are thus:
Jigoku no Nagareboshi=Infernal Shooting Stars: Normally, the attack involves charging the Chaos Scepter weapon with Naruto's Star Chakra, in which case the attack is simply called "Shooting Stars". In the basic state, the attack is a simple blasting of all the built up chakra in each barrel, resulting in an explosion of twenty-four bursts of chakra that hits the foes dead on and doesn't stop until the charge is depleted. However, Naruto's "Psycho" state keeps him from thinking straight, and in this state, he adds the presence of the Fox's Youki to the mix, adding a burning, corroding nature to the attack.