"Huh… What the hell's happened?" Kawaki grumbled prompting Meiko to land and put him down or else she'd have to listen to him complain about being carried by someone. The blacksmith had counted on putting him down before he fully got back into his senses and whether it was because she succeeded and the punk just assumed that the hazy images of speedy traveling from earlier were all a dream or because he just didn't care as much as Meiko assumed he would.
"You helped us survive Danzo. We got to the temple while you were out. Kiyomi got taken out, Naruto chose to stay and pull her out but got taken out himself." Meiko cut it short and strict. "We need to move, we don't have much time."
"Wait, what? What about that blond guy and the redhead chick?" Kawaki wondered.
"Minato and Kushina separated from us, they decided to tackle the temple from another course. They were in a worse condition than we were and the whole place was filled with hunters. It's more than likely that half of all active hunters are there while the other half is by the Ninja Academy waiting for teams coming in to cash out." Meiko sighed, some time back all of this would have flown over her head but by now even someone as thick as her could read situations like these from experience.
"So you dumped them then?" Kawaki wondered.
"I didn't dump them." Meiko pointed her finger at Kawaki. "Though it would have been smarter to just rush for the Ninja Academy and proceed to the next stage, I did not abandon them."
"Seems to me like you kind of ditched them…" Kawaki shrugged.
"I needed to pull out and regroup. Figure out how to save both the team as well as Kiyomi and Naruto. I'm sure it's possible. The proctors won't interfere until the genin are threatened with death and the hunters know it, they'll make their beatdowns last. Plus, it's not like it's gonna be a short scuffle, Kouta's giving them hell…" Meiko groaned and dragged her hand across her tired face and her hair. She really wanted not to be in charge of pulling the team through. She was the least competent person in the original roster to do the desperation planning, then again, having the current roster in mind, maybe that was still Naruto?
"So, not that I'm accusing you of ditching everybody but… What's next? Gonna go cash the cube in, right?" Kawaki asked.
"No…" Meiko shook her head, looking as her grumpiest self as Kawaki demanded answers to questions she couldn't yet provide ones for. He wanted her to tell how exactly she'd waltz back into that madness and pull Naruto and Kiyomi out and how on Earth she'd bring them back from unconsciousness as well as grievous wounds and exhaustion on top. "Just… Give me a sec here…"
"It's not that big of a deal if you did dump them and decide to promote yourself, honestly." Kawaki shrugged, trying to make Meiko's frustration a bit easier on her.
"No, you don't get it. We're still a team. That means that if I bring this cube and cash it out, we're all proceeding to the next round. Knowing that I still won't move to the gate alone. Naruto's still got business in this version of Konoha and Kiyomi and I go way back. I'm not just gonna leave them, I just… That girl…" Meiko began stroking her chin.
"Girl…?" Kawaki squinted one of his eyes, at this point he just looked curious more than anything. He seemed amused by Meiko's decision to act stupid and try to pull out her team even though they laid knocked out in one of the most intense battlefields of the entire Forest of Death. It might have been the stupidity of the notion that amused Kawaki as such decisions were unpredictable while their unpredictable nature was sure to bring outcomes just as erratic.
"Minato's teammate, Kushina, she was able to bring Minato back from a near-death experience by transferring her life force. It had to have been a clan ability or something. If we could find someone like her, they could bring Naruto and Kiyomi back too." Meiko scratched her head, hearing the madness that was coming out from her mouth.
"I still don't get why you're making this such a big deal, just bring the cube to the Academy and be done with it…" Kawaki shrugged.
"We don't do that to our allies here." Meiko turned around and almost shoved a finger down Kawaki's mouth. "I'm gonna rescue them if it's the last thing I do, Naruto just went about it the wrong way. If you want to be the hero, you don't just run into the fray while you're half-dead hoping things work out. Life doesn't work like that, things don't just work out, you need to make them work out. A friend once taught me that through her example."
"Well… Going with you is still my best bet at avoiding Kara so…" Kawaki shrugged. "Let's go find us a red-headed person then!"
Meiko squinted while Kawaki stood up right next to her and stared right back up at Meiko's face. The meaning of the gesture wasn't lost on the blacksmith who just wrapped her arm around Kawaki's neck and pulled him in for some rough-housing for making fun of her.
"Can we stop for Dango then?" Kawaki wondered.
"Sweets come after work. Might as well learn that now." Meiko answered while the two took off toward the looming structure of the Konohagakure gate looming on the distance.
"So what you're saying is that sweets will be involved at some point, just not now?" Kawaki looked at her.
"Sure, if we make this work, I'll treat you," Meiko smirked.
"I could get used to this…" Kawaki rubbed his hands together looking sly as if he had just somehow tricked his companion.
"What on Earth is this, you know?" Naruto's feet landed on a hectic battlefield where a bandaged Otogakure ninja with a mechanical arm held Kouta's unconscious body in his free arm while holding his metal arm raised up and ready to deliver the finishing blow.
"What the…" the eyes of Dosu Kinuta raced across the surrounding temple grounds until they've settled on a passed-out young man with multiple golden arrows sticking out from his body. This Naruto looked identical to the fallen one if it weren't for the black eyes with red pupils and the all-around twisted facial expression of this person.
"Hmph… So you've killed him then? No… He's still alive but I can't fight him like this… No… No… This won't do, this won't do at all, you know…" Dark Naruto began scratching his head erratically after noticing Naruto's unconscious body.
"Naruto Uzumaki!" Gaara roared out, sending a crashing wave of sand at the direction of the confused Dark Naruto. The sand crashed into the tree that the distressed shinobi stood on and rooted the poor plant out and washed it away. The confused eyes of the Jinchuuriki scurried across the battlefield looking for the enemy before he turned both of his hands up as if attempting to wrap them around someone, like an embrace.
The wave of sand that Gaara crashed at Dark Naruto began whirling and pooling together into a singular mass, a rising pile of sand with everything it had entombed being stuck within its clutches as the mass rose to the air. "Sand Coffin!" Gaara yelled out before raising his hand out and preparing to crush everything that had found its way within his makeshift tomb of sand.
"Piss off, you know…" Dark Naruto growled by throwing a careless solebutt kick at Gaara's back, outracing the boy's sand on return by appearing behind him seemingly out of nowhere. Gaara's eyes whited out and the mass of sand under his command collapsed into a harmless shower all across the temple grounds.
"I'm glad that you evaded this by yourself. I can't help you that much while we aren't linked by my Kama. Until you are truly my vessel." A white, ethereal shape appeared from behind Dark Naruto sending the young ninja down by calling forth pain excruciating enough to force Dark Naruto to shove his fist in the way to keep himself from falling.
"You're a bother, go back in!" Dark Naruto growled, feeling crippled by the pain of Isshin's emergence.
"You let down your guard!" Kin Tsuchi, a female amongst the Otogakure trio sent a wave of senbon needles Dark Naruto's way. The steel buzzed right past Naruto's sides without hitting him once, Dark Naruto yelled out in pain and clutched his head when the puny jingle of tiny bells hanging from steel wire attached to Kin Tsuchi's senbon summoned a mother of all migraines for him, one that wasn't Kin's doing but instead a nasty side-effect from his imperfect fusion with Isshin.
"Extreme Decapitating Airwaves!" Zaku Abumi yelled out, thrusting his arms forward and forming a wall of high-pressure mixture of both soundwaves and airwaves from the holes in his palms, utterly blasting the area ahead of him into dusty nothingness. The sound that Dosu's comrade had created was so concentrated and powerful that it let out blinding white light and blocked visibility of anything in front of Zaku. The Otogakure genin dropped his hands down while they hung heavy by his sides. While sweat and weariness troubled the genin, he seemed content with a nicely executed combination, even when it wasn't yet finished.
"Shouldn't have brought attention to yourself, punk!" Dosu Kinuta yelled out while rushing into the steaming zone of devastation that his teammate had left behind. His arm was winded back and ready to finish the dirty deed but when he prepared to smash it into the kneeling figure of the enemy as he has done plenty of times before, his eyes shot out wide from the shock of seeing nothing where Dark Naruto was meant to be.
"I said… Outta my way, you know!" Dark Naruto growled in pain while a fleshy sound made Dosu dread turning around and facing the consequences of picking a fight with someone who had broken the spine of Gaara of the Desert with just one strike. Despite Dosu's defiance to face the demise of his comrade, the scream from Kin Tsuchi made him turn around and witness Dark Naruto swinging the detached arms of Zaku Abumi at the downed kunoichi while Zaku laid armless in the pool of his own blood and a lifeless look on his face.
"Y-You killed them…" Dosu's voice shook when he saw what remained of both Zaku's arms that were used as a battering weapon as well as the mushy puddle that was Kin's remains. Dosu looked around, trying to gather support from his fellow hunters but none of them stayed after witnessing the sheer ease and brutality at which the embodiment of hatred dispatched those that got in his way with. They were all promised more fight than they could handle but nobody said anything about senseless murder.
"Yeah…" Dark Naruto let the wet, bloody stumps drop to the dirt. "I didn't kill Gaara because I felt a bit bad for him, you know. You guys can flip over and just die, you know…"
Dark Naruto wheezed and panted in pain while he stood over the dead bodies of Dosu's comrades for a short moment while Dosu contemplated if he wanted to attack and face the same fate as his comrades or try to run and hope that Dark Naruto would spare him as he did those that fled. Dosu chose instead the third option of breaking. He flailed his arms around while laughter that began to deafen the Sound genin himself a bit left his chest.
"You… Felt bad for Gaara of the Desert?" Dosu expanded his eyes to where the vessels around them streaked red over them.
"Yeah… Like me people hated him. Just like me, he went through dealing with all that hatred all on his own." Dark Naruto exclaimed with a longing tone. As if recalling the hateful eyes that surrounded him in his own childhood and projecting all of that despair onto someone else made the effects of physical pain pass easier. "People lied to him about giving a shit, just like they did with me, you know. We're the same, except he ended up getting in my way, that's the only thing he is to be blamed for, you know. I like him. I feel bad about seeing him have to justify his existence all the time, it's all the filth around him that need to prove they're to be allowed to live."
"Zaku was an orphan since the early days. All of us rose from poverty and stole food to survive, some days living off of the beatings we took after we were caught. Didn't you feel bad for any of us?" Dosu chuckled to himself, having lost all semblance of wits again.
"I've no patience for crybabies, you know!" Dark Naruto growled and waved his arm at Dosu, a twisted, crimson triplet of slashing chakra claws left his arm and left the Otogakure genin to slump on the dirt in four pieces with a wet splat. "Had a rough childhood and all you're doing is standing in front of me and crying about it, sheesh…" Naruto mumbled to himself before approaching Naruto's unconscious body.
"Naruto, wait…" Isshin burst forth once again, making Dark Naruto grunt in pain, twist and furl in unnatural positions that churned his bones but that pain was preferable to the agony of Isshin's emergence at this stage of possession. "What are you about to do, think about it. Remember our deal, you must find the boy with the Kama seals, my true vessel."
"Piss off already, space-ghost!" Dark Naruto roared out after letting Naruto's tracksuit slip through his fingers so that he could force Isshin back into him. Once Isshin returned to the Kama-less body of his temporary vessel, the inner darkness of Naruto's body and mind once more loomed over its original body, or, rather, a past version of his true original body. "You're such a hopeless loser, you know that? No matter how much everyone hates your guts, you keep getting in trouble so that they could like you. If only you finally got the hint, that's why I joined up with that energy-bastard, I wanted to show you… Look at yourself, I can't show you anything now, you know."
Naruto's body looked almost a bit serene, he would have long since bled out had the arrows launched at him dissolved or been removed but the way they were they only made Naruto's demise take longer. Depending on how much chakra he had at the moment of near-death, he may even have had days left to lie and bleed here like the complete failure that he was.
"Although, looking at your stupid face gives me an idea…" Dark Naruto grinned. "I'm you, I can't go anywhere but be you and I don't need to be anything or anyone else. But there's already a me in you, isn't there? We'll see how it feels being the odd one out in your own body, it's time for the inner darkness to become the true nature."
A flash of white aura burst forth from Dark Naruto's body, Isshin manifested from Dark Naruto's body and looked down at his current vessel. It repeatedly bellowed and asked what it was doing but Dark Naruto embraced the fallen body of the alternate version of his alter ego and let their embrace be commemorated by a nova of white light. Once that intense sunburst was through, there was only one Naruto. The youth's eyes soon burst open, revealing red irises in more human whites.
Naruto gazed at his own hands, seeing the dirt riddling them and feeling them twitching in light pain. He turned for the arrows that had sent him down but he couldn't see them any longer. They were a material chakra construct, the intense reaction that woke Naruto up must have molten them away. Only dried out red stains on his tracksuit remained of his wounds.
"Hatred…" he muttered. Naruto glanced up as he had noticed that his forehead protector had slipped off, letting his hair fall over his face and he didn't like the black color obstructing the view. "That's Sasuke's hatred right there. That's Sasuke's hatred right there too…" Naruto pointed at random directions where he felt a surge of negative emotions. "Even Meiko… Hatred and regret too, a strong signature."
Naruto turned to Kiyomi's unconscious body before turning his eyes for the Forest of Death again. When the awakened Naruto used his speed to dash toward Sasuke's hatred the nearest to him, it felt almost as if all of his cells had disassembled all at once and turned into miniatures ray of fierce sunlight and moved simultaneously before converging into a singular point. He was fast right now…
A fireball hurled across the entrance to the village, prompting Meiko to swipe with her chakra-cloaked buckler in hand to deflect it. She knew that counting on a hunter helping her would have been silly but this was ridiculous. It seemed as if though Sasuke had absolutely no feelings toward his friend and didn't mirror Naruto's devotion whatsoever. To think that they had located not only Sasuke but also one of the red-haired people capable of healing was his goon…
Kawaki tested his own strength against the Juugo in Sasuke's squad of hunters. The punk's forearms and his hands had expanded drastically in size to match the transformation and savage strength of his opponent. A jet of water hurled underneath Kawaki's legs and seemed to pull all sense of balance from down under, tripping the boy up. Feeling his moment of victory approaching, the Juugo exploited it with a murderous gleam in his eyes, even managing to distract Meiko for a second.
Just when Meiko's eyes returned to her opponent, Sasuke's blade was right up in her face, ready to rob the blacksmith of her sight permanently before splitting her helm into two with one slash. Before Meiko even had the time to get frightened by the grim prospect of the future for her, a flash of white blurred in between her and Sasuke and the infernal Sharingan gleaming in Sasuke's eyes whited out while the defeated Uchiha, broken by a single elbow thrust to the gut, flew back through multiple buildings, disappearing in a trail of destruction across several village districts.
"I told you I'd break all the bones in your body if you abandoned us for Orochimaru back then, didn't I?" Naruto straightened his back and stared at the tunnel of destruction he sent Sasuke through. He turned back to Meiko. "Oh, hey, I knew you two would be here too. So you ran into Sasuke, not too many hunters are left, I guess, the odds are the best they've ever been."
"We weren't looking for Sasuke, you dolt, we were looking for that woman or her clan folk to heal you and Kiyomi!" Meiko pointed at Karin who looked devastated by the loss of Sasuke and was running through the debris toward her crippled and broken affection.
"Why would you waste your time for something like that, you know?" Naruto lowered one of his eyebrows in irritation.
There was something distant and different in his voice. That was if one completely ignored the ash-colored hair and the red eyes that the future Seventh was sporting. If it wasn't for his matching drapes as well as the general familiar feeling about some part of him, Meiko would have spent all of this time doubting if she wasn't dealing with some alternate version of Naruto again. Who knew, maybe there were more than one Dark Naruto?
"Yo, where's Kiyomi?" Kawaki grunted, rising with a shiner on the right side of his face.
"I left her behind, you know," Naruto replied. There was no hatred or malice for his injured comrade in his tone, there seemed to be little to no emotion whatsoever. It was almost as if he didn't care about Kiyomi at all and just acted out of pure instinct to fulfill his immediate goals.
He left her behind!