Golden Tower

The red-haired cosplayer didn't seem to appreciate what Zheus was saying. He squeezed his eyes menacingly, shouting some other incomprehensible nonsense.

Zheus stopped approaching when he realized that this guy could be dangerous. Although he was sure that he was in some form of creepy simulation, he didn't want to get stabbed for anything.

Pain, even if prompted by a deception of the senses, was still pain.

His smile lessened, while he studied the man more closely: short red hair, tanned skin and well-built body. He wore a very traditional Japanise attire: haori and hakama both in shades of blue.

A black piece of cloth with a long metal band was bind to his right arm. On the metal surface of the object there was a carving of what seemed to be a large and fat "i" letter.

He had a dark-colored sheath on his right side, from which he had taken out the small blue sword that he currently had in his hand.

His movements and behavior seemed to suggest that he was a real person and not some code generated npc.

During the short time Zheus spent thinking about what to say to the blue-clad man to make him stop that little act of his and instead start giving some answers, a tense silence formed between the two.

The only sound that could be heard was the whispering wind and some random cry of some of the pack animals that were still alive.

When Zheus finally collected his ideas and was starting to open his mouth, the sound of an incredible furious roar erupted from the east.

A few moments later, the sound of the most terrifying explosion that Zheus had ever heard came from the same direction.

Huge quantities of sand stretched towards the sky, creating a mastodontic golden tower visible even from great distance.

The winds created by whatever caused the explosion reached rapidly the two men that just a couple of second before were in silent confrontation.

The pressure was so strong that Zheus had to fall back a dozen of steps.

- What the hell was that?

Zheus looked back at the redhead, instinctively wanting to see his reaction.

What he saw in the man's eyes stunned him: at first, they were full of incredulity, then became submerged in grief.

He made a couple of slow steps towards the direction from which came the explosion, his bloodied eyes pointed on the far column of sand that was starting to fall down from the sky.

The strong winds that were even causing the carts and chariots to tremble vigorously seemed to be incapable to affect him in any way.

After a couple of seconds, tears started to form in his eyes. He seemed to suddenly grow weak: the winds, that until that moment didn't even seem able to affect his clothes, managed to crash him on the wooden side of a near carriage.

His hands grasped at the planks as a drowning man grasped for a lifeline and managed to use the carriage to keep himself standing.

His sword felt down when the wind started to pull him away, embedding itself on the scorching sand with a melodious metal sound.

The red-haired seemed to have completely lost his mind: he kept mumbling words in that strange language, with a broken and rough voice while his reddened eyes looked at the sand coming down from the sky.

Zheus realized soon that he was repeating the same sounds over and over.

- Isn't that a little too much overkill for roleplaying?

Thought Zheus, feeling a little lost.

His eyes looked at those of the red-haired man, sensing the despair that was contained in them.

It was in this moment that an idea started to spin in Zheus's mind. It was totally ridiculous, but no matter how many times he tried to convince himself that it was completely preposterous, he still didn't manage to suppress it.

What if it was all real?

The kind of feeling expressed by the red-haired naruto-man wasn't something that could be emulated at will. He truly was in pain.

Zheus's mind started to connect together the last things that he remembered as his expression became more unsightly every second it passed.

First, there was the shooting. When he passed out that night he already had four bullets in his chest, meaning that only a chirurgical miracle could have assured his survival.

However, he had no memory of such operation or even any kind of period in a health facility.

In fact, the next thing he remembered was that incredible pain that he felt while awakening next to that dead Asian Bob Marley.

Maybe they anesthetized him to operate him, but It made no sense keeping him in slumber mode for the months needed to bring about a full recovery. It made really no sense whatsoever.

On the other hand, only a sane body could survive a transmission to a simulation. So if he did survive the shooting, someone should have stitched him up and kept him unconscious for months.

That was clearly ridiculous.

- Then what happened? I died and reincarnated into a narutoverse? That's even more ridiculous.

Both his ideas on how he got there were silly, but the reincarnation concept was way more ridiculous than the other one.

He didn't believe in reincarnation or salvation. He even held in contempt those new spiritual insanities like belief in karma and inner peace.

Reincarnation? Zheus giggled. Dreams for weaklings that preferred believing that their next lives would be better than actually work on bettering their one and only chance at life.

He was going to keep searching through his memories, trying to find something that would shed light on this absurd situation when an angry shout broke his line of thought.

He felt a tingling sensation behind his head, while a deep sense of danger consumed all his attention. Before he even tried to scan the area around himself to see what was happening, he heard a whooshing sound and felt an aching sensation on his left cheek.

A loud thud came from behind him, but Zheus didn't stop to try and see what it was: his feet immediately started to move on the warm sand, ducking over to the right while he glanced sorely at the red-haired man.

As expected, the man was looking at him with vicious and maddened eyes, his hand still spread towards Zheus's precedent position.

He seemed to have recovered to some degree and he clearly didn't have good intentions. Zheus though that red-head might take out another item to launch at him, so he tried to find immediate cover. The man instead started to furiously make hand incantations, while his eyes expressed untold quantities of hate and rage.

Zheus's eyes flashed with surprise seeing the absurd velocity with which red-hair was executing complex movement with his hands. He was familiar with some of those incantations: they were clearly Naruto's hand positions. However, mixed with the ones that he knew, there were many others that he had never seen before.

After a dozen of seconds, the enraged man screamed and both his open hands pointed outward.