I Live!
Yeah, I'm still alive, in good shape, and recently married. I've just been really demotivated to post and I've spent all my time lurking. Here's a brain fart I got a few months ago when I got frustrated at the paucity of Naruto X HOTD content here - I don't know if I'll continue. I guess I might continue if you guys like the concept?
The first sign that all was not well was the absolutely hellish scream coming from somewhere around him. He struggled to his feet from the broken ground that marked his impact, hoping to assist whoever was making such pain-filled shrieks, his hands bracing the rest of his body. Or at least he tried to. All at once, the rest of his awareness slammed into him. The scream went on and on, torn from a throat that felt scraped raw - he knew because it was his own throat. His body felt like a thing half dead. The stab wounds he'd accumulated and promptly ignored were all screaming for attention. Only the molten steel coursing through his chakra pathways made him feel alive. Too alive even.
His right arm stopped at the elbow. He stared at the stump stupidly. The molten steel coursing through his body seemed to originate from the end of the stump. He could hear laboured wheezing. This was the worst he'd ever been. But then again, he'd been fighting for what seemed like days without rest.
He forced his mouth shut, stifling his screams even as he tried to form the flame in his mind like Jiraiya taught him all those years ago. Some semblance of control returned as he pushed the chakra in his brain faster, trying to power through what was definitely a concussion at the very least. Slowly, he became painfully aware of where he was. Crouched on a strange, dark, hard surface painted with white lines running down the middle. Buildings so sheer they might be cliffs loomed around him, and in the distance, he could see a skyline that looked a lot like New Ame. His eyes darted about in paranoia, infinitely more anxious as the information from his ever increasing awareness trickled in. Must not pass out, he thought to himself sluggishly. With the amount of blood he'd surely lost by now, any shinobi below jōnin would be unconscious at best. He became aware of people gawking at him - tens of people dressed in colorful and vibrant fashions and holding up small rectangular devices before their faces even as they stood behind the rails a bit above him.
For a moment, the fact that he couldn't sense any chakra from them nearly made him consider that he could be in a genjutsu.
"Oh my god!"
His eyes snapped towards the voice, his body jerking in spite of his wants. His meager concentration shattered, sending the chakra he was barely controlling lashing in all directions in his brain. Nausea overtook him, and for a brief moment, he nearly grabbed a hold of the threads again. Then they slipped out of his hands, and the world lurched, darkness rushing in to swallow him.
'Meaningless,'
The dark-haired girl shifted around the strike aimed at her torso as time seemed to slow for her, barely restraining herself from breaking the ankle of the person that swung at her with a casual stomp.
'Father said this is to be just a spar,"
She repeated it to herself like a mantra, opting to strike just below the ear of her assailant as she ghosted past him. The man crumpled like a bag of bricks, foiling the legs of the second assailant who had been on her heels. She restrained herself from smashing her bokken across his throat as he fell backwards.
'Only a spar,'
The third person, a woman, by her lithe frame, threw caution to the wind and rushed her with a roar. She was sorely tempted to kill the bitch for such a stupid move. Did the fool think this was a manga?
'Can't she tell my reach is longer than hers by at least five inches?' A half turn allowed her to stomp the head of the assailant at her feet, putting him out of his miserable struggles even before his head bounced off the wooden floors.
She saw her father's lips tighten at the move, and she grimaced internally. She'd let her frustration slip. Deflecting the descending bokken of her last opponent, she slid past and into the woman's guard, bringing her off hand to touch the woman's throat.
"Stop," her father said, his soft voice doing nothing to hide the steel that made him the greatest with a blade in Japan.
She stilled instantly. She could feel the pulse of the other woman hammering away in exertion.
"You may leave, Saeko. Well done,"
She bowed, knowing that her father was not congratulating her for her victory in the spar, but for successfully holding herself back.
She was a monster. She knew this for a fact. If she was the daughter of anyone else, she'd have been locked away after that incident, then secretly drafted into the sections of the JSDF that didn't officially exist. Instead, her father took special care to focus on 'tempering her', as he put it. She was barred from holding a blade until she proved herself to him.
She bowed to him, the woman before her, and the two downed opponents before she walked out of the room.
Her real self was unsightly, and she would not fail to learn how to mask it at all times.
When next Naruto opened his eyes, he was in his mindscape.
He took a moment to just lie down in the grass that had replaced the sewer that was his mind. Now that he had a chance to stop and breathe, his exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him.
He couldn't help but remember what led him to the point: the fight with Sasuke; his hubris finally biting him in the throat; his agony as the mad Uchiha sealed all the tailed beasts into him, all but shredding his chakra system; his hopelessness as his so called best friend tore open a portal with his hax eyes to toss him through; Hinata's rage as she confronted the Uchiha; the casual way the mad man decimated her; his hopelessness even as he cursed his helplessness in spite of the oceans of chakra scouring through his dying body; her life's blood spurting all over that man's face even as his laughter sputtered and died, abruptly killed off by the dying girl's hand through his heart; the explosion from what must have been an effect of the caged bird seal on her forehead due to her violent death; and the force of the explosion finishing what Sasuke was unable to.
He still had no idea how he lost his arm.
He still had no idea how he was alive.
No, scratch that. He could take a guess on the second one.
His only saving grace was that he'd unlocked the seal to give Kurama room to work with before his disastrous fight. If the seal was still intact, he was completely sure he'd be dead from the rapid, explosive denaturation of the seal.
He sat up to consider the other occupants of his mindscape. Despite being bijuu, they hadn't escaped unscathed. Or escaped at all. Besides Kurama, they were all dried out husks, crumbling even as he beheld them. He couldn't really be surprised. The rest had been sealed, forcefully extracted, brutally controlled, eaten by Kaguya, and forcefully sealed again, this time into a dying Uzumaki with a seal that parasitizes foreign chakra. Only Kurama could have survived. Not only did he have more chakra to burn (more than his eight siblings combined), but his chakra was treated as relatively native by his host's body.
Yet even the mighty fox didn't escape unscathed.
The fox was dangerously lean. Fur that used to be luxurious looked old and partially decaying with patches of red chakra oozing from gaping wounds. His breath was a loud wheeze more suitable as a death rattle.
Naruto sighed to himself. His mindscape and its tenant were as good as they were going to get - for now. He needed to get back to consciousness.
Blinding pain welcomed his venture into consciousness. He ignored it, focusing on his surroundings with his other senses beside sight. He could hear scurrying - possibly people. He was on a metal surface, naked, with metal cuffs around his ankle and left wrist, and a metal band across his chest. From the light shining through his lids, the room he was in was brightly lit. Something slightly obscured the light, possibly the head of someone observing him. He guessed that he was in a room, possibly a treatment/experimentation room of some sort from the smells. There were possibly 3-6 people with him there, as well as other strange beeps and whirling sounds he could not identify.
He tentatively flared his chakra. His coils hurt like hell, but he was relatively fine.
Next, he reached out for nature chakra. It was, for lack of a better word, different. It was different enough that it might not even be chakra at all. He'd never considered nature chakra especially hard. Sure there were differences in the feel when he used it, and when Sakura used it, but for the most part, it was somewhat similar. This though? This was really different, and was what confirmed to him that he wasn't in the Elemental Nations any longer. Strange contraptions? Not conclusive. Pathetically small amounts of chakra? Not conclusive. But the energy of this place?
First of all, it was incredibly dense. It was as though all the energy was concentrated in nature as what he was sensing, with relatively nothing left inside people. Secondly, it was extremely friendly, playful even. The moment he sensed it, it rushed at him like an excited dog, frolicking around him and trying to get into his system. He allowed a little bit in and studied it as it raced through his coils excitedly. He'd never put emotions to energy before. Heck he didn't even know of energy that could be harnessed like chakra, but wasn't. The closest was youki - the energy the bijuu used instead of the chakra that was their essence. Yet there was no other way to describe how this one felt besides playful. He took in some more, shunting some into Kurama's space in his core. The bijuu was more adept at dealing with strange energy than anyone else he knew. He maintained the connection for a slow count of three hundred, then cut it off and entered his mindscape again. The extremely cute, extremely naked woman poking at Kurama with curiosity nearly gave him a heart attack, before putting him on guard instantly.
"Who are you?" he asked, suspicion evident in his voice.
The woman whirled around and jumped in shock, her breasts jiggling and threatening to distract him. He forced the distraction under control with iron determination, and before she landed, he had covered her in a kimono.
He would not have naked women prancing around in his mind like his lecher of a sensei!
He met her eyes, and sensation flooded him. The feel of water running over rock and crashing down a great height. The taste of things as they decayed and were compacted between his/her plates. The weight of the ocean as it was swirled around her/him, held steady by his/her field. The gentle rumble that rippled across her/his plates when he/she ground them together. Hot magma churning in her/his belly as he/she belched out new land. The companionship with old, hulking men as they touched his/her consciousness.
He forced himself to dissociate from the nearly overwhelming impressions. The woman stood shyly, gazing at him as he composed himself, a crazy idea coming to his mind.
He raised his left hand, fist clenched, and held it out towards her. She looked at it, cocking her head to the side like a bird watching something interesting. He held it up and looked at her, meeting her eyes again. The weight behind those eyes were massive, unfathomable things. Slowly she raised her hand as well, mimicking him. He took a step forward, and she did the same. He took another, and she did as well. In six steps, their fists met, and he blacked out in his own mindscape.
If you'd asked him before now, he'd have been pretty sure that you couldn't pass out in your own mind; especially if you got there by passing out physically in the first place.
It was inside him.
When the guards opened his cell and cuffed him, he'd been - surprised. He supposed he had been locked away and forgotten. That was the 'right' thing to do to a killer like him. Ryuk had abandoned him, disappearing with his book as he left. The Shinigami had warned him from the very beginning of its fickle nature - it was his fault for mistaking amusement for kinship. He'd thought that they were finally going to put him out of his boredom.
He was wrong.
Whatever they injected into him was trying to twist him into something. Something so hideous that the dregs of what morality he had left rebelled with all their strength. If not for his particular awareness about himself, he was sure the change would have crept up on him and taken him suddenly. He hadn't moved from this cell ever since he was brought here, needing all his energy to keep himself. As the other inmates in neighbouring cells gradually changed, he was supplied with more incentive to resist. The first to change - a hulking mountain of a man who'd been on death row for multiple homicides - simply sat down one evening, and didn't move until morning. By morning, he was something else.
'A zombie. They're turning us into fucking zombies!'
As the hours dragged on, he curled tighter on himself, afraid that once he started moving, he'd be trapped in his head as something else piloted his body on impulses that were alien to him. His need for sleep disappeared. His thirst disappeared. But his stomach felt like a yawning pit had been opened in it.
"Fuck!"
He turned his head at the curse. A caretaker was trying to wrest his hand from one of the turned, screaming in pain as the thing held on to him with its teeth. Reaching for his baton, he clubbed the thing in the head, smashing the back of its head in. It dropped like a sack of rocks.
The man muttered to himself as he bound his hand, struggling with the wound as he left the room. He didn't notice all the other former people pressed against their cell doors, heads following him like hounds following the scent of meat.
"Take note of his injuries," said the consultant. "It is rare to see injuries of this nature while the patient is still alive, so it is indeed a boon that he was brought here in time for this conference."
The patient was a young man, from what she could see. She looked closer as the consultant droned on, momentarily tuning him out. Roguish red hair that looked soft now that he'd been cleaned. A sunken face with six harsh scars like whiskers - an indication that they'd probably been intentionally applied on the young man. One eyelid was hollow - possibly the missing eye in his chart. His face showed signs of extensive battery, a patchwork of bruises in various shades of black with ugly purple splotches.
"The most fascinating thing is indeed his accelerated healing,"
The words of the consultant caught her attention again.
"Every trauma specialist in the hospital is already terribly excited, and we hope to study how his body does what it does."
As she walked towards her car, she sighted Toshiro waiting by her parking spot. With a sigh, she turned around, heading for the hospital cafeteria. The man didn't know how to take a hint.
She sat where she could keep her car in view, a cup of coffee before her.
'I miss Rika,' she thought morosely. 'She'd know how to scare that creep away.'
This was her last workshop before she resumed her new job - a simple position as a nurse in a sleepy high school. The pay was adequate for her lifestyle - even though as a registered nurse, and a medical doctor-in-view, she was imminently overqualified for the position.
Her mind went back to the cute patient. 'Uwa… I just thought of him as cute,' she thought.
The sounds of the cafeteria created the feeling of background noise for her as she lost herself in random thought, occasionally checking to see if the creep had given up and left. Besides Rika, she had no friends. Her parents were dead, and her relationship with her extended family was bad - to say the least. Women hated her - 'drop-dead beautiful' and 'medical doctor' was a combination that was too intimidating for most men who weren't creeps like the stalker pervert hanging around her car. Work, school, tag along with Rika - those were the three things that described her life. Hopefully with the new job, she'd have more time to focus on her interests - when she found them.
He opened his eyes in his mindscape again and found himself staring into those weighty eyes. Instinct took over as he blinked away, suddenly appearing three feet away from her, chains materializing to bind her before he caught himself. She looked at the chains curiously, like a child who had only seen something in photos before suddenly coming face to face with the real thing.
The memories came rushing in in an instant.
FireRockFlowingFoldingWaterSteamPressureLifeHuman - the feelings felt like an assault. His hunch was correct - she was the avatar of this world.
"Hello," she said tentatively.
She waved at him, his mind flooding with feelings of warmth and so much joy. The tinge of loneliness underlying it all gave him some clue as to why she was so eager. He noticed she was clothed this time, and in the same manner she used to favour before… He halted those thoughts immediately.
"What do I call you," he asked.
She shrugged, almost nonchalantly, but through the connection to her, felt the almost desperate longing with which she considered his response. 'Figures. Even anthropomorphised female avatars of nature act coy,' he thought ruefully. He watched her closely and she fidgeted under his gaze. Her mannerisms were like her's, but her body structure and the way she held herself was like Tsunade - his mother in all but name, and his first and longest real crush. Her hair was shaped like Jiraiya's unruly mane, and the colour was an exact match for Kurama's fur in prime condition. Looking at her was like remembering the best of them. It was pain he didn't know he needed.
"Kioku," he said, a sad smile on his lips.
She took a hesitant step towards him, radiating concern. The part of his mind that was rabidly curious concluded that she must be basing her avatar on a collection of his memories and dreams. He didn't begrudge her. Until she put her hand on his face, he didn't realise he was weeping.
A long while later, he disentangled himself from her arms, ignoring her small whine. He turned to confront the biju in the room - although he wasn't sure if the term applied to Kurama any longer. He looked healthier - as in 'no longer dying' - although he had changed, coming to resemble the foxes in Kioku's world more closely. It would only be much later that he'd wonder at how he knew what those foxes looked like. The patches in his fur were filling up slowly and his breathing was steady, his heartbeat filling the silence in his mindscape.
Stretching his hands out, he held his chakra in the position to meld a three-way. Kioku joined without hesitation, and he pulled in Kurama by himself. Kioku's energy meshed well with chakra. He couldn't use it, but that wasn't necessary for his purpose this time. Channelling the meld, he wove it into the fabric of his mindscape, watching the cracks repair themselves. The grass bloomed, flowers painting the landscape even as majestic trees reminiscent of Hashirama's work shot up, their tops disappearing into the sky of his mindscape. Kioku laughed - a sweet, musical thing - and he could feel the laughter bubbling in his chest as well. Holding it for a moment longer, he luxuriated in the feeling of completion before finally letting Kurama out of the meld. The ground had grown around the biju, shaping itself into a shady alcove perfect for the biju to indulge its favorite pastime - sleeping. He wove again, his chakra and Kioku's energy winding around each other like the time Hinata and him… He fed that line of thought into the whirlpool that was their energies. The husks of the remaining eight were pulled into his maelstrom as he wove something new, guided only by instincts and the not-quite intuition from Kioku. Reaching for Kurama once again, he began to pour into him.
Biju were essentially sentient, super-condensed masses of chakra. As long as chakra existed in whatever world they were in, they had access to all of it - in theory. They were only limited when around other biju, and decided who got first access by their number of tails. It meant that all he had to do was expose Kurama to Kioku. Theoretically, the biju should begin to gather chakra automatically by itself once that was done - at least according to Jiraiya.
It turned out that the pervert was right once again. He mentally raised a cup to the dead man as he watched Kurama recover. He kept weaving into the biju until he looked less dead, and simply tired. Letting go of Kioku, he allowed their weave to fall apart gently. Somehow, during the entire thing, Kioku had gravitated closer to him until at the end, she was right in front of him, staring him in the eyes from a distance so small that he could see himself in those eyes that kept drawing him in.
He lowered his eyes, breaking eye contact. With some shock, he discovered something he hadn't noticed earlier - Kioku's chest didn't rise and fall. It served to show him the gap between them. At least Kurama had been around humans long enough to unconsciously go through the motions. He knew he was emotionally fragile. He knew that Kioku embodied the best of those who he held dearest to his heart - two of whom were once objects of his lust. It was all the more reason he needed to be very careful. Ninshu helped connect people, yes - but it was only an unmitigated fool that didn't see how it could very quickly be abused. He was once that fool, but the last few years had cured him violently.
"It seems to be quite a failure."
The words of the pompous fool who led other fools to 'inspect' them drifted to his ears. He couldn't even spare the effort to look in their direction anymore. Every bit he could muster was aimed at keeping his body away from the thing they planted in him. The others had no such qualms. Screeches and breathless pants kept any silence away as they struggled against their cages in a futile attempt to reach the ones watching them.
Their minders cringed as they tried to persuade the inspectors, but they were making no progress.
"Enough! We wanted super-soldiers, not mindless slavering animals. Put them down and decommission this facility. This project is over."