38 Carter's Death

-Jaun, Switzerland-

-September 9, 2007, 1630h local-

Naruto, Peggy, and Sharon appeared inside a living room of a fully furnished home. They can see through the window that the house is built on the side of the mountain, evident by the majestic scenery of white-capped mountain ranges and pine trees.

"This where you are going to stay for the foreseeable future." Naruto said.

"Where are we?" Peggy asked after she sat down on the sofa, her frail body can't handle stresses as it used to, especially the dizziness the teleportation caused.

"We're in a safe house in Switzerland. A friend of mine owns this place..." Naruto replied. "We got five hectares of open mountain terrain we can use to condition your body after the procedure. I think that's more than enough."

"What exactly am I doing here?" Sharon asked.

"You're the insurance..." Naruto answered, but when he saw the questioning look of his audience face, he continued. "If Peggy here dies for any reason during this procedure, I want someone to know that she decided to undergo this process under her own volition. I hate Fury to blow a gasket if the whole thing turns sour."

Sharon would've liked to berate Naruto for doing something that might kill her Aunt, but he was very candid that there's a chance the procedure won't work. He even admitted that he needed a weak test subject for the final part of his experiment.

"What are you going to do with my Aunt?" Sharon asked in concern.

"Now that's something I can't tell you. Only you're Aunt can know. Think of it as doctor-patient confidentiality..." Naruto replied. "I just brought you here, so you know where your aunt would be staying." He finished before holding onto Sharon's shoulder and disappearing.

-RAF Base Hospital, Alconbury, UK-

-September 9, 2007, 1545h local-

The pair suddenly appeared inside Sharon's car in the parking garage of the hospital, and Naruto handed over her phone.

"Try not to blurt out anything to Fury. You might trust him, but you can't trust the people around him." Naruto said before disappearing again.

Sharon debated to herself about reporting to Fury. She's a loyal SHIELD agent and not reporting an enhanced man claiming to be the Nine-Tails who took the first director of SHIELD to be experimented on is not precisely the definition of loyal. But in the end, she decided just to let it play out but she's going to try and contact Naruto again to get updates about her Aunt.

She was going to leave the hospital when she realized something. The RAF hospital is a high-security facility. Everyone needs to sign when going in or out. If she and Naruto appeared inside her car, did Naruto found a way to sign her out.

Sharon immediately ran out of the car into the entrance of the hospital. When she got inside, the receptionist immediately took notice of her.

"Did you leave something behind Ms. Carter?" The receptionist asks.

Sharon confirmed that everyone saw 'her' leave the hospital. She has no idea how Naruto did it, but it's certainly a cause for concern. That sent another thought into her head, so she casually lied to get back in.

"Yeah. I forgot to tell my Aunt something." Sharon said while holding up her phone.

She went through the whole process of signing her in again before being allowed inside the hospital. They took her signature, a photo, a copy of her ID, and a biometric scan. All of it should be done when she went out too, so how the hell did Naruto fake her bio scan.

Sharon paced down the hallway to her Aunt Peggy's room. She went inside without knocking and saw her 'Aunt Peggy' sleeping on the bed.

She silently closed the door, drew her gun, and approached the bed. When she's close enough, she aimed the weapon on top of the impostor's head.

"Who are you?" Sharon asked dangerously.

Her 'Aunt Peggy' slowly morphed into Naruto and gave her a wink before turning back into her 'Aunt.'

The thing scared the shit out of her. It's like a scene straight out of a horror movie. Sharon immediately high tailed it out of the room if Naruto is capable of replacing everyone, who knows what would happen to her if she reports to Fury.

-Jaun, Switzerland-

-September 9, 2007, 1646h local-

Naruto appeared almost as suddenly as he left. Peggy was looking at him with a look of concern in her eyes.

"Where's Sharon?" Peggy asked.

"I just brought her back to her car..." Naruto answered while walking towards the couch. He sat on the opposite of the sofa and pulled out a large whiteboard and marker. "Let me start by laying out the whole thing for you. I'm only going to say what I'm going to do and why I'm going to do it. Do you still accept the conditions?" He asked seriously.

"Yes." Peggy answered with confidence, ignoring the sudden appearance of the massive whiteboard.

"Ok. First of all, I left a decoy in your room that will 'die' 3 months from now. We need you to be entirely out of the picture so we can maximize the surprise during the counteroffensive..." Naruto explained while writing it a condensed version on the whiteboard. "Secondly. If Coulson doesn't find Cap in two years, I'm going to get him myself."

"Why can' you just do it now?" Peggy interjected.

"Because I'm still fixing some stuff before I can find him, and we need the time for you to condition your body. When the Captain is found, we need you to be ready for anything before revealing you to the world..." Naruto answered. "Thirdly, we can't continue with the procedure until we strengthen your body for at least a month. I'm going to visit you every day and leave ready to eat meals, and three bottles of nutrient shake that you need to finish every day. When we start the restoration process, you're body's going to need a whole lot of nutrients. We need your body to stock up as much as it can..." He said while placing a 500 mL tumbler. "Fourth. During the restoration, we're going to hook you up to a dialysis machine. Each cell of your body would either rejuvenate or be replaced. Either way, it's going to flood your body with toxins. That's second to the most dangerous part because of the shock of the toxins in your body might cause a systemic collapse of your organs."

"Second? If systemic organ collapse is bad, what could be worse than that?" Peggy inquired with a raised eyebrow.

"Well. That's the last part. While the rejuvenation is happening, we need your soul and body to adapt to it."

"My soul?"

'Yes, your soul..." Naruto confirmed. "Your soul aged with your body. If it suddenly inhabited a body not suited to it, there are going to be some complications. The solution for that is the most problematic danger we would encounter..." He said while drawing a human body. "Everyone of us has chakra. The combination of energy from the body and soul. It's stored inside the body as chakra reserves and moves around through a chakra network. Are you with me so far?"

Peggy nodded, although she doesn't honestly believe what he's saying.

"Most people minuscule chakra reserves and atrophied chakra network due to lack of use through dozens or hundreds of generations. It's just enough to keep someone alive. We can't do shit to reverse any of that completely. But what I can do is to make your reserve a tad larger, increase your chakra regeneration, and reinforce your chakra network. That won't be enough to make you do something like this..." He created a ball of fire in his hands. "or this." He now suddenly multiplied into three. "or any other stuff I could do. But what it would do is controlled bleeding of chakra into your body. That would make you stronger, faster, and more resilient, basically just like Captain Rogers. The downside is that one small mistake on my part could cause your body to explode. Do you get it?"

Peggy sat there frozen. She started skeptical about the whole chakra argument, but Naruto's demonstration quickly made her a believer. If chakra is indeed real, how did it get lost slowly over time, and is chakra that versatile?

"I'm just going to assume you got it and continue..." Naruto declared. "I'm first going to remove your soul temporarily from your body..." Peggy immediately became alarmed by what she heard, but Naruto immediately placated her. "Don't worry about that part; there's nothing that could go wrong there. Next, I'm going to call upon the King of Hell to store your soul temporarily. Again don't be alarmed. The King of Hell would then restore your body to its peak form for your age before your soul is returned. That would exponentially increase the chance of everything going well. Now we get to the hard part..." Peggy just gave up questioning stuff and is having a mini existential crisis. If saying that summoning King of Hell is not something to worry about, then nothing means anything in more.

"I'm going to do a series of techniques that will repeatedly strip away anything 'problematic.' A muscle cell not performing enough? That would be activated. Dying nerve cell? Destroyed and replaced. It would be killing you each cycle since it would be replacing a large number of your cells every time. The process would continue until we reach a physical peak. At the same time, I'm going to make the changes to your chakra system we talked about to help your soul adapt. When it's all said and done, you'll come out of it a little weak but rejuvenated. It should take two years for you to adapt and another year for me to teach you stuff. Your old fighting style wouldn't work with your new body. It's like an amateur driver is suddenly placed inside an F1 car." Naruto finally ended his explanation.

"I have two questions if you wouldn't mind answering."

"Depends on the question."

"How did you come up with the procedure, and why are you doing this? The real reason."

"I guess that's fare..." Naruto said with a sigh. "The procedure is a combination of some things I thought might work. I started testing a lot of stuff for plants. I then moved up to a mouse, a cat, a pig, then a chimpanzee. Don't ask how I got any of those. Then I finally moved up to human test subjects..." He could see Peggy's reaction, but he just continued. "When I do my mercenary job, I take one or two guys that wouldn't be missed. Things quickly got messy after that. I have no idea why but doing chakra enhancements without step by step preparation turns humans into a human bomb with each cell individually exploded..." Peggy paled, hearing the possible side effect of the procedure. "As for the second thing. My girlfriend has her ability to have kids taken from her, and I want to give it back to her. I'm not doing this for me. Even if I know that down the line we will split up. I'll still do it."

Peggy thought hard about what Naruto said and started to connect stuff.

"You're in a relationship with the Widow." Peggy stated with confidence.

Naruto gave her a full-bellied laugh.

"Damn. You're really smart..." Naruto exclaimed while wiping a tear from his eye. "Anyway. Are you ready to start?"

-Saint Luke's Church, London, UK-

-November 28, 2007, 1100h local-

Naruto is leaning on the railings of the choir loft, looking over the whole ceremony making sure nothing would be missed. He's wearing an all-black suit partnered black leather shoes and Aviator style shades.

'Peggy Carter' died eight days ago, and her will stated that she would like her funeral to happen in this church. The reason he's attending is that Natasha wanted to join the funeral, so he came with her. He had to try hard not to laugh at the whole thing since he knows that Peggy's alive and well. He almost lost it when Sharon started crying while giving her eulogy. Actually more than well, she's excellent. The procedure went off without a hitch, and she's already able to move around without assistance, unlike the first few days where she would regularly trip over nothing since her mind is still adapting to her body. Aside from that, Naruto can't believe how beautiful she looks. He finally understood why the Captain fell head over heels for her. If he didn't genuinely believe that Natasha is more beautiful than Peggy, she might have been mesmerized by her too.

Naruto sighed when he thought about what he would need to do in the following weeks. He needs to intercept all the files of Peggy's death certificate to make it easier for her to return to society. The question is how he would do that while maintaining the cover that she's dead.

When the funeral ended and 'Peggy's' body was carried out of the church to bring to the cemetery, Natasha looked at him and gestured that she would talk to some people for a while. Naruto just nodded and gestured that he would just wait where he would be there waiting.

Naruto didn't stay there alone for long when he heard three sets of footsteps from behind him until one by one, the three reached the railings. Barton positioned himself on the left, Fury on his right, while Coulson is on the other side of Fury. All of them are wearing black suits except for Fury, who's still wearing his black coat.

"What the hell one-eye, you didn't even change into a suit." Naruto said, looking at Fury. Fury's eyebrow started twitching.

"I'm still wearing black, aren't I?" Fury defended.

"Whatever you say, man..." Naruto said dismissively before looking at Barton. "How'd you like your bow?"

"You couldn't leave a single note on how to use the thing!? I almost destroyed the field before I figured out how to use it." Clint exclaimed while keeping his voice level low.

Clint took a month to figure out how to use the bow. Of course, he isn't only studying the bow since he has a family to think about. He almost surrendered in ever using that particular bow again when he cracked it.

The power of the bow depends on how far you pull the string back and how long you hold it. The power raises exponentially, starting from a quarter pull all the way to full draw. The same goes for the draw time. The weakest one would be from 0 to 2 seconds, and the power would rise exponentially from that until max power at ten seconds. Pulling the bow at quarter length to until 2 seconds would make the bow fire normally, but fully drawing the string at ten seconds would cause the arrow to have the same force as a javelin missile.

All the explosions aren't helping Laura's recovery since it stresses everyone, especially Laura and Cooper. Good thing Naruto left a cooler full of ready to eat meals that lasted them for a week and a half. He hated to admit it, but those meals are one of the best things he ever had. Laura is still continuously bugging him to get Naruto to bring more food.

"Where's the fun in that?" Naruto retorted with a wide grin. "Oh. Say hello to Lila for me. Say it's from foxy."

Clint's head rapidly turns towards Naruto. His eyes are wide and alarmed.

"You're fucking Foxy!?" Clint shouted.

"You didn't know?" Naruto asked before laughing hard. "You're telling me Lila never told you. That's gold!" He forced out before laughing hard again.

In the past eight months, Laura and Clint have been busier with Copper, which inevitably caused them to lose some time with Lila. Good thing that she started going to school, which took up most of her time. Another peculiar thing that happened though was Lila had a new 'imaginary friend' she calls foxy. She would play in her room with Foxy for hours. The reason Laura and Clint thought her playmate was imaginary because they never saw her playmate, and the description of Lila's playmate changes every time.

Clint is seriously considering placing cameras with motion detectors all over the house, particularly in Lila's room.

Fury interjected before Naruto could blow Clint's gasket.

"What are you doing here?" Fury asked.

"Natasha wanted to come, so I came with her. A whole lot cheaper than riding a plane." Naruto replied.

"No plan or business?" Fury continued the questioning.

"Nah. Just pleasure. I wanted to tour London with Nat. I was alone when I first cane around here..." Naruto answered. "Are you any closer to finding the Capsicle?" He asked Coulson.

"I'm nowhere close. I just narrowed down the crash site to a 100km radius, but it landed on an area with a lot of unstable ice that's continuously shifting." Coulson confessed.

"If you don't find it in three years, I'm stepping in..." Naruto said. "The guys in the ice for too long."

Coulson was going to argue, but they heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The trio turned around and saw Alexander Pierce exiting the steps.

"Nick. What the hell are you doing hanging around here?" Pierced ask. "And who's the new guy?"

Naruto turned around, revealing a face similar to Sasuke with blonde hair. The sudden change surprised the trio but managed to hide it.

"Good Noon Secretary Pierce. What a pleasure to meet someone like you. I'm Nathan Umber. My father wanted me to pay respect to the woman that saved her life..." Naruto smoothly lied with a British accent while extending his hand. "Apparently, these guys..." He motioned towards the trio. "Thought I was some kind of security threat."

"A pleasure to meet a fan..." Pierce replied while shaking Naruto's hands. "Would you mind leaving for awhile. I need to discuss something with my associate here. National Security and all that stuff. You understand." He 'requested.'

"No problem, Sir." Naruto said before looking back at the trio, who's using all their will to stop dropping their jaws. "Gentlemen." He greeted before leaving.

Pierce waited for Naruto to leave the choir loft altogether before looking back at Fury.

"I heard you're starting up another search for the Captain. What's that all about?" Pierced asked.

"We have a new promising lead that significantly narrows down the area." Fury lied.

"If that's the case, I want a report on it..." Pierce ordered with authority. "I'm assuming Coulson is leading the search, so I want Sitwell helping him. That might speed up the whole thing." He finished before walking away, not giving Fury time to veto it.

When Pierce was gone, Fury gave Coulson an order.

'Make sure Sitwell doesn't lay a hand on the Captain when you find him."

Coulson just gave Fury a nod.

What nobody saw was black characters crawling up the hand Pierce used to shake hands with Naruto until it reached his nape before disappearing. That particular fuin script is an eavesdropping seal and an Hiraishin seal combined.