Kurenai nodded to Kiba. “Mostly. There are some secrets we can’t tell you.”
“But,” Naruto started.
“Naruto, you shouldn’t know half of what you do,” Kurenai said. “You’ve had a year to come to terms with it. We’ve had two days to figure out how to handle everything you came back with, and you keep adding more and more things that need to be considered, researched, debated, cataloged, and probably classified. Give it some time; I’ll make sure you know what you can share with whom. Now, why don’t you start with…I think you called her Signum.”
Naruto sighed and nodded. He turned to Kiba. “The first thing I remember is flashes of a fight with a swordswoman named Signum. She beat Hinata and me pretty badly. I can’t tell you how I got there, or where exactly it was, because those memories were beat out of me in a brutal way. I was unconscious for three hours after that. Hinata took another day before she woke up…”
“He’s waking up?!”
Naruto opened his eyes and immediately regretted it. He shifted an arm to sit up.
“No, don’t move,” the unknown voice said. Female, it was female. Naruto couldn’t tell more than that. “Your Linker Core was drained just a few hours ago. It’s amazing that you’re already awake, but if you push yourself you could be in real trouble.”
“Hinata?” Naruto croaked.
“Is that your friend’s name? She’s here. Her Linker Core was drained, too. She’s recovering fine. Can you tell me your name?”
“Naruto Uzumaki.” Naruto tried to open his eyes again. The woman was a blurry shape, but he thought he saw a smile.
“Welcome aboard the Arthra, Naruto.”
“I faded out for another hour or so before I was strong enough to really answer questions,” Naruto said. “TSAB docs have some good equipment, but they’d never seen anything like”
“Naruto,” Kurenai warned.
“like the Byakugan,” Naruto finished. “We had to learn their words for stuff.”
The doctor scratched his head. “So these eyes are some kind of inherent ability? Not a defect?”
Hinata nodded her head slightly. “Y…yes.” She hoped they wouldn’t try to take her eyes. She didn’t have the chakra to try and fight them off.
“Well, once your linker core recovers, I hope you can demonstrate,” the doctor said kindly. Well, the girl could apparently see perfectly well, so they both got clean bills of health, apart from the obvious.
“Hey doc,” Naruto called. “Thanks for fixing us up and all, but where are we? And who attacked us?”
“I’ll leave your attacker to the Harlaowns,” the doc said. “As to where you are, this is the TSAB ship Arthra.”
“TSAwha?”
“Well that answers that. You must be from an unadministered world. Are you mages?”
Naruto looked at Hinata. “Hey Hinata, do you know what he’s talking about?”
Hinata stiffened at Naruto talking to her. “N-n-n-n-no, Naruto-kun.”
The doctor frowned. “So that’s another no. But why would Signum drain your cores if you aren’t mages?”
“Signum?” Naruto pounced on the name.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” the doctor muttered.
Meeting Admiral Lindy was when they finally got some answers. “What do you mean you can’t get us home!?” Naruto yelled.
“Calm down,” Lindy ordered. Her tone was pleasant enough, but it was like silk-wrapped iron.
Naruto seethed but stayed quiet. Hinata was wide-eyed and nervous.
“As I was saying, Chrono found you by investigating a dimensional rift on an uninhabited world. That rift took you from your home, which could be anywhere.”
“So how can we get home?” Naruto asked.
Lindy smiled sadly. “An easy question to answer. This is a very rare kind of rift. I’ll spare you the technicals; the bottom line is that it is closing by itself. Once it closes, you will instantly be pushed back through it. You should return to where you left, and since this rift shows clear time wobblies you’ll actually travel through time to a day after you left. Maybe less.”
“Wobblies?”
Lindy sighed. “Everyone always wants a proper explanation of how time compression and travel and all that works. You’d need to take a course in n-dimensional physics to get a clue and another three years of temporal mechanics to understand properly. So yes, wobblies.” Lindy herself didn’t have the full three years under her belt, but she had crewmen who did and she knew enough to do her job.
The idea of more schoolwork left Naruto appropriately horrified. “So how long until that happens?” he asked, thinking a couple days, maybe a week.”
“A year and a half.”
That was when the ninja blacked out.
Kiba stared. “A year and a half?”
“It actually ended up being a year and three months,” Hinata added. “The closer it got, the better they could figure it out.”
“So after that you got those weapons?”
“There was an incident to deal with first.”
“Yeah,” Naruto added. “Big mage battle with Signum’s boss.”
The masked men vanished.
Hinata held up her handsign. “Byakugan! …over there!” she pointed at a rooftop a quarter mile away at an angle she shouldn’t have been able to see.
“You’re kidding me!” one of the disguised familiars complained.
Naruto ran for the rooftop, using his chakra to jump at high speed, his arms trailing behind him. Easier than tree jumping. As he closed, he pulled out a kunai.
“I thought you didn’t have kunai,” Kiba said.
“This was after a few weeks,” Naruto explained. “The TSAB really don’t like mechanical or bladed weapons, but we found a few places on Earth that could turn out a decent arsenal, and Fate paid for it.”
“I thought Fate was part of the TSAB,” Kurenai added.
“Yeah, but she has a ruthless streak,” Naruto laughed. “After going for a cartridge system, she was pretty open about different ways of doing stuff.”
“Cartridge system?”
“Uh, that’s kinda complicated. Where was I?”
“You were going to attack the catgirls disguised as guys,” Kiba said, glancing at Naruko.
“Right!” Naruto enthused. “And I kicked her ass with my great taijutsu!”
Naruto coughed blood and hauled himself up.
The masked man wasn’t even breathing hard. “Just give up already,” he said in a bored tone.
“Give up on me giving up!” Naruto yelled, crossing his fingers. “Kage bunshin no jutsu!”
“What?” the familiar asked, staring as Naruto copies formed. “Silhouettes?” More clones popped up, surrounding her. “Impressive illusion, but you think it will scare me?”
“Yaaaah!” the Naruto hoard shouted. As one tide of tacky orange they closed on the disguised familiar, burying her in bodies that were much too solid.
“Gak!”
Chrono showed up a few moments later to finally deal with the twins.
Naruto beamed proudly. “And I took her down.”
Hinata blushed. “Um, what about Chrono?”
“He helped,” Naruto admitted.
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(Posted Thu, 28 Jul 2011 04:00)
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