There Goes The Neighbourhood...

Chapter 20 - There Goes the Neighborhood...

For the benefit of those that have never been rendered unconscious, it is a very strange sensation to say the least. Before you even open your eyes the first thing that comes back to you is the ability to hear. Where before it would be some kind of droning white noise, the noise begins to clear and become more and more coherent and less echoey until it is fully restored.

From that point your sense of feeling comes back and you try to move. It is only at that point when you try and fail due to the recent rebooting of your motor skills that you become aware that your eyes are fully open and that the reason you could not see was because you were readjusting to the light.

This is the fate that met one Uzumaki Naruto upon his reawakening. It almost felt like a Monday morning after an entire Sunday of to-the-wall training, especially the part where he woke up in his own bed. The part that wasn't familiar was the fact that he was wrapped up with his entire body covered in gauze from head to toe, and that his entire body hurt like hell.

Never one to stay down when it wasn't necessary though, Naruto sat up and threw the comforter off of himself only to roll his eyes at the fact that he was stark naked. As he pulled the wires connected to the machine monitoring his vitals that had been transported into his room he inwardly thanked whatever deity was responsible that he was in his bedroom with his nudity.

He then cursed the same deity upon the self-removal of the catheter that was in him. Thank you Tsunade-baachan for that information that he never lost due to how traumatic it was to learn. He was not letting someone else take a catheter out of him while he was awake to prevent it... he'd rather fall on that grenade himself.

With ginger steps he got out of bed and put on a pair of boxers and athletic shorts before opening his door and stepping out into his hallway towards the living room, being led by the sound of the TV.

He didn't expect to see Batsu sitting there in his normal blue school uniform lazily playing videogames. A first person shooter was on the screen and he had a headset on so he was obviously playing online, "Who's the asshole running around with the Striker shotgun?" He asked into the headset, "Why am I mad? I'm mad because a Striker with 'range' is a borderline hack you motherfucker. I'm getting a grenade launcher next match and then I'm tearing your ass up."

Shrugging to himself, Naruto walked over to the couch and sat down next to Batsu to watch the game. Batsu didn't really care that someone had sat down next to him because he was on a kill-streak. This continued until the game ended and Batsu turned his head towards the person that was almost in his personal space. He then looked like he'd seen a ghost and jumped out of the chair completely, "Holy shit! You should be dead!"

"Whu-?" Naruto replied 'intelligently' before he looked at himself, "Well I feel like I should be. Does that count?"

Batsu stared at Naruto until he was able to calm down. From that point Batsu serenely turned the game console off and sat down next to his close friend, taking a moment to speak before doing so, "Okay let me explain… so I come back to town after a month of kickass training in the wilderness with my dad, and he drops me off at my mom's house. I walk through the door, and she's giving me this worried look, and I'm about to freak out before she tells me that you're apparently about to die. I immediately stop caring from that point forward."

"I'm not-."

"I'm not done yet." Batsu cut Naruto's response off before continuing, "I didn't care because I'm thinking that this is bullshit, and I go to your house to call you on it since you wouldn't answer your phone. I knock on your door and I'm standing outside with my fist cocked because I'm expecting this to be some stupid prank of yours and I'm ready to retaliate. But lo and behold, pretty little Cammy opens the door and lets me in. I go to your room and I see Kasugano Sakura sitting by your bed with a worried look on her face. I turn back towards the living room and I see Kanzuki Karin with puffy eyes. That's a sign of crying. There's something wrong with that chick crying. It's creepy."

That was really the first thing in Batsu's rant that Naruto paid attention to since he really didn't care about the rest of it, "Wait, Karin was crying?"

"Not in front of anyone, but you could tell she had been doing it." Ignoring that though, Batsu got back on track, "So I go back in and look at you, and I'll say this for you; you were the freshest mummy I've ever seen in my life. I mean you were fresh, ready for the sarcophagus." He reached out and grabbed one of Naruto's bandages, "King Tut would be proud."

He said that out loud in Naruto's room when he first saw him and got punched in the stomach. By whom he wasn't going to say.

And in this instance Naruto flipped him off so he kept going, "And then I find out that while I was gone, four days before I got back you went and got yourself mauled in a deathmatch with some scary guy."

Naruto rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his bare bandage-covered chest. It wasn't like he was going out looking for trouble… he was looking for Sasuke. There was a difference even though he couldn't come up with a decent distinction between them at the moment.

"So I have two questions for you, and answer them truthfully." Noticing that Naruto was listening closely he gave the boy a dullard look and drawled on, "You couldn't have waited four days to get yourself into the shitstorm sweepstakes? And who in the world, on God's beautiful green earth did you pick a fight with that was able to put you into a coma for over a month? For fuck's sake you didn't have skin on your body when I first saw you."

"A month!" Naruto shouted in pure shock, standing up from his seat too quickly and recoiling in mortal pain that racked his entire body in multiple ways, "What do you mean a month? You're here now four days after it happened!

Shaking his head, Batsu had a frown on his face, "No, I said I came to see you four days after it happened, not that today is four days after it happened. It's been over a month. It's the middle of June dude." He gave Naruto a once over and shivered in phantom pain, "You are severely underestimating just how badly you got your ass whipped. Like I said, you died… like three times. I don't even know how you're standing up right now."

And once Batsu mentioned it, Naruto didn't feel too hot at all standing up. He needed the tanner boy's help to sit back down safely before he fell out in the floor, "Oh man… w-what? But I've never been out for any longer than a day." He argued in an increasingly raspier voice.

Getting up from his place on the couch, Batsu went to the refrigerator to get a drink for himself and Naruto so that he could wet his throat, "Believe it bud." Batsu said as he threw a can across the room from the conjoining kitchen at Naruto only to flinch when Naruto instinctually caught it and cried out in pain, "Ooh, my bad." His newly healed skin must have been very tender, "But since you went under, things have gone insane around here."

Before Naruto could ask him what he was talking about, another door down the hall opened up and revealed Cammy in one of her leotards, a light-blue version this time with her hair down and a furball in her arms. She let out a yawn and looked around before seeing Naruto on the couch. That quickly woke her up, "Naruto you're awake?"

With a grin, Naruto waved over at her while holding his soda can, "Hey Cam. I'm not dead and I think my skin grew back. I heard it was gone for a while." He then frowned at the can in his hand, "Can you open this? I think I'll bust the fingernails I just grew back if I try."

Cheerfully bounding over to her newly awakened roommate, Cammy handed Naruto the furball in her arms in exchange for taking the can from him to open, "Hold this please."

Naruto curiously turned the little yellow ball of fuzz in his arms around to see a kitten with white circles around his eyes just staring back at him defiantly. Great. So it was one of those cats, "What the hell is this?"

"I adopted him while you were in the coma." Cammy explained as she traded back the soda for the cat, "I can't think of a good name for him yet, so how about you name him?" That would be a good way to try and cheer Naruto up after waking up, "Go ahead."

Reaching a hand out to pet the cat on the head, Naruto was rewarded with the little bastard nipping at his finger hatefully. With a deadpan look, Naruto stared the kitten down before looking up at Cammy's expectant face and then over at Batsu, "I don't want to name a kitten. I've got a reputation."

"Hey." Batsu interjected on the cat's behalf, "That's one tough cat. Last week I was over here and Cammy had to run out to get more fresh gauze to bandage you with. She left the window open and that little bastard fell out and walked right back up the stairs. I saw him sleeping in a rusty piece of scrap metal in a puddle of gasoline before."

"So? That means it's just a freaking junkyard cat."

"So?" Batsu repeated in disbelief, "That cat? Ha, it's indestructible."

Turning back to Cammy, Naruto saw her big blue eyes looking at him hopefully. She really wanted that cat to have a name apparently and she simply couldn't come up with one. Thus she was leaving it up to him. How sweet.

Either that or she was using him to think of something that she couldn't.

So sparing her a nameless cat, Naruto looked at the spiteful little beast and clicked his teeth before bestowing a name upon it, "Special Agent Jack Bauer." With that he stood up and walked back into his room leaving a stunned Cammy holding 'Special Agent Jack Bauer' in her arms as he licked his paw, "I'm taking a shower and then going out." He said as he shut the door to his bedroom.

Cammy blinked and looked at the little kitten in her arms as it mewled, "Special Agent Jack Bauer? Like from that American show?" She liked 24, but not really enough to name a cat after it, "Can I just call him Jack? Do I have to say the whole thing every time I call for him from now on?"

"I would." Batsu admitted freely.

"Hey, I just thought of something!" Naruto's voice echoed from behind his door, "I already know the answer to this, but Cammy changed my bandages while I was naked and asleep didn't she? What did she see?"

Cammy shrugged and saw nothing wrong with telling the truth, thus she did, "Everything of course. You were naked." She heard Naruto curse in his room and shook her head as she looked back towards a redfaced Batsu, "I don't see why he would be embarrassed. He was growing back his skin for most of the time for God's sake."

In the middle of tearing the bandages off of his body behind closed doors, Naruto took a moment to stop and poke his head out of the door while he was in the middle of freeing himself from looking like the blondest mummy ever, "Oh, and thank you for taking care of me while I was out Cam. I really appreciate it." Even if she saw him naked, which was still pretty cool once he had time to dwell on it.

A smile graced her face at Naruto's thanks before he closed the door back, "You're welcome." With that, Cammy bounced the little kitten in her arms and carried him back to her room, "Come on Agent Bauer, let's get you back to CTU." She cooed to the little creature, getting a soft mewl in response.

Batsu idly wondered from his place in the kitchen if he ever got gravely injured could he get a pretty girl that he knew to be his own nurse? No, not a chance, he'd have to graduate and then move out of his mom's house and get his own place before any of that could work, "Wait… he said he's going outside? He doesn't know yet does he?"

XxX

(Downtown Aohura City)

Shibazaki didn't know what he was more scared of. At the moment the limousine that had been containing his young charge Kanzuki Karin had been stopped in a busy intersection along with every other car as the hoodlums that had seemed to flood the town recently took it upon themselves to set up a roadblock for 'training' and to wait for any local fighters worth any reputation to either recruit or destroy.

But he wasn't scared because they had gotten to Karin and were currently in the process of recruiting or killing her.

No, he was scared because that was what they had tried to do, and they had failed miserably in the process.

Not only had she gotten out of the vehicle on her own without any prompting from the antagonists, she had proceeded to run through all seventy-plus of them in the span of two to three minutes in addition to destroying their makeshift blockade by hurling their bodies through the flimsy set up.

"You all take this paramilitary thing of yours too seriously." Karin said, walking up to one of the thugs that she had defeated. He was trying to crawl away from her, but even if he did, he'd then have had to deal with the people that he and his friends had just tried to bully, "Just what are you trying to prove? You either integrate or destroy all of this city's gangs. I used to think it was good at first, they were quite the nuisance, but now you lot have become a bigger headache than they were."

Despite the fear of the damnable she-devil that had just torn his entire group apart, the man mustered enough bravado for one last threat of numbers, "Ha, you can do whatever you want to me. Mad Gear is an army! We'll send a whole division to your home to make sure you never pull anything like this again." He flinched away fearfully when she bent over him giving him the dullest look that she could muster.

"Go ahead." Karin said plainly with her hands on her hips, "The mercenaries my father hired when he heard how dangerous this town was becoming… well they need the workout in my opinion, to do something to earn the money they're being paid. And I'll definitely do this again if you block off an entire main section of road for such an asinine reason!" She shouted at him before lifting up her boot and planting it against his face, "Sleep!"

Karin had a schedule to keep that day. She didn't have the time to be screwing around with a bunch of weekend warriors. She was a very busy young woman.

A sharp whistle sounded out and she turned around, prepared to deal with another loser Mad Gear member, only to see the man that she figured to be living on borrowed time only a matter of days ago, "Man… way to wreck shop Karin. Seriously, did you kill any of them?"

"Naruto-san?" How the hell was he standing? He looked as pale as a ghost, but that was to be expected due to his recovery of skin and how he hadn't been outdoors for a month, "You woke up?" She almost lost control of her inhibitions and hugged him when she saw that he was in his fighting gear as well and then saw Cammy and Batsu with him, "Did he just recover today? And you let him outside in his fighting equipment?" She stopped fretting when Naruto set a hand on her head.

"Oh chill out boss lady." Naruto said calmly, "I can walk just fine, see? I just came out here to get a new set of phones to replace the ones I lost. I'm fully healed." He then doubled over when Karin poked him in the stomach with her index finger, "Did you hit a pressure point or something?"

"No, I just poked you." She deadpanned in return, "You are still gravely injured. You should not have left your home until you were one-hundred percent. This isn't the same quiet city that you left behind when you took your summer vacation."

Summer vacation she called it. If she hadn't been crying because of him he would have… "Duh." Making his cross hand-seal, Naruto sent out clones to try and move the debris and useless Mad Gear bodies out of the street, "What is Mad Gear doing here?" Rolento ran like a girl in Tokyo from Akuma, not that he blamed him, but from that he figured that it was the last he would see of the man and his ambition.

"Forget that! There is something more important than them at this time." Karin all but yelled, having to refrain herself from slapping Naruto because if a poke hurt a slap from her might have put him back into another coma if she had hit him right then, "What. Is. Wrong with you? What did you and that Uchiha boy end up fighting to put you into a coma for a month?"

"I didn't pick that-." He tried to defend before a stern hand from Karin pointed at her limousine which had her timid steward Shibazaki peeking up behind the wheel to see if it was safe, "What, you didn't vent enough cracking all of these guys' skulls?" Karin opened her mouth again and Naruto threw his hands into the air as he walked to the limo, "I know, I know, I'm getting in!"

The heated brown eyes of the Kanzuki Dynasty heiress turned towards Batsu and Cammy, one of whom took an involuntary step back, "Err…" Batsu started to say as he found it hard to meet the scary girl's gaze, "So are we coming with? Or can we just go home… 'cause she's got a kitten." All Karin did was let her gaze linger and Batsu slowly walked towards the backseat of the limo to get in with Naruto, "Right. I'm in."

Cammy didn't seem to care how Karin was looking at her one way or the other, but the angel-faced former assassin got in as well because everybody else was doing it.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Aohura City)

This town was getting worse. Before when it had been filled with delinquent gangs at least back then it had just been a matter of an adolescent pissing contest. It was just a bunch of tough guys (and girls) trying to prove that they were the strongest. It was mostly harmless wannabes aside from the rare real-deal that was able to cause sparse property damage.

But coinciding with the time that Naruto had gone down at the hand of his powerful attacker Mad Gear had come in and decided to integrate the gangs that they wanted to use and destroy the ones that refused or that were useless. There were still a few that were marked by the city's most powerful fighters, but other than that there was nothing. After Naruto, herself, Karin, Batsu, and their friends, the quality of homegrown fighters dropped off severely.

Behind them it was Kazama Daigo and his gang based out of Gedo High School, which were the only real notable fighters around. She wasn't really sure how skilled Hibki Dan was because he had never fought anyone she thought he could beat in front of her, but Sakura was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he was between Daigo and his gang and her group.

"Hey that girl! That's Kasugano Sakura! She's on the list, put her down hard!"

With a sigh Sakura began going through the motions and bashing the brains out of the latest Mad Gear goon squad that was looking to take her down and get promoted after it had been determined that she would rather eat a bag of tacks than join them.

She wasn't even riled up or inspired to fight, really just going through the motions to overcome her foes. One step, two step, duck the first punch. Move past that guy and lunge towards the others that aren't ready. One Shunpukyaku tornado kick for all and those idiots are a non-factor. Turn back to the first one, oh look he pulled a tanto on her. Take it from him and stab him in the top of the foot, pinning him to the sidewalk.

Sakura wins. Yay. And thus she continued on her way, leaving several twitching beaten up bodies behind her.

Just going through the motions. Maybe Naruto going down to bitter injury was affecting her more than she thought.

When he lost in the past he still always made himself look invincible, somehow always just popping right back up. It was a lot of the reason she found him interesting enough to befriend back when they were twelve years old. He was strong and more skilled than anyone else in the entire town, but he was a kind guy and never flaunted it outside of a fight.

Even then he only did it with his 'best ninja in the world' moniker.

…Okay, so at times he could be overbearing… and from time to time he could be explosively antagonistic to people that were incredibly dangerous… and he could shove his foot into his own mouth like no one else…

But damn it she missed that dumbass loudmouth jerk.

"S'up Sakura-chan."

She could even hear his voice as clear as day, as if he was just five feet away from her. Why was her mind mocking her like that? She couldn't see him again, not today. It hurt when his eyes would never open no matter how long she stayed for.

"Earth to Sakura-chan. Wake up empty-head. We're holding up traffic driving in pace with you. Someone give me something to throw at her."

Just leave her alone already ghosts of Naruto's voice! It sounded just like him. She'd have to get some training in. Maybe some hard work would take her mind off of things.

"Ryu thinks girls are icky! Boobs frighten him, that's why he doesn't pay you any mind! Damn it, are you deaf or are you just ignoring all of this? Turn left bitch!"

Gloomily listening to the voices of the past in her head she turned to find Naruto hanging out of the moon roof of Karin's limo, staring at her with a perturbed look on his face a look that then turned to shocking pain as Sakura jumped him and gave him a monster hug, "You're awake! Wait, you're awake? What are you doing outside? You were almost dead the other day."

He was almost dead right then. Normally a hug from Sakura wouldn't hurt him because while she was strong, Naruto's body was durable enough for it to have never mattered, thus making it a normal tight hug when compared with normal people. Well right now he was all tender and squishy, so it hurt like hell.

Not answering at first, Naruto's voice came out squeakily when he did, "Get in the car… talk about it there. Please?" Sakura let go of Naruto and watched him stiffly slide down through the sunroof like a cardboard cutout in a crappy haunted house. The door then opened up and she got into the car with everyone else.

XxX

Outside of a building complex, Sasuke stood looking up at the sign that was being hung up out front, Genhanten. That was the name of the restaurant in Hong Kong that Gen owned. It was a front for his assassinations as well, and it would be something of his base of operations while he was in Japan.

That old bastard had better appreciate him expanding his enterprise while doing the mission that he forced him to accept.

Sasuke had sent Yun and Yang home the moment he was able to turn his Sharingan on and plant the suggestion in their heads that they had their own business to attend to back in China. It was better that way. From that point onward his mission to crush Mad Gear's leadership chain was going to get way harder. Rolento had gotten away and he was building up his weaponry and training his raw recruits in urban combat on the streets of Aohura City.

Other than him, Sasuke had to find the other leader and kill him as well, and if it didn't happen soon Aohura City was going to get torn apart. They were already freely disrupting whatever they wished, the police couldn't really stop them directly.

Once again he suddenly felt someone's gaze on him and turned to find Naruto in his fighting gear staring at him, seemingly backed up by multiple people including that roommate of his that he had met over a month ago.

"We need to talk." Naruto said, his voice expressing that he wasn't going to take no for an answer in this case.

Sasuke knew that Naruto healed faster than him, so Naruto would probably be in way better shape than him at the moment, thus he nodded and led the way inside of the still being furbished restaurant. He tried his best to hide his limp and keep the bandages underneath his sleeves hidden, but he knew that someone had been attentive enough to figure that he was hurt.

He sat down in a chair that was pulled out from a table in the middle of the restaurant and he motioned for everyone else to do the same. Naruto brazenly took a seat and pulled it out directly in front of Sasuke, not choosing to sit at a table the way everyone else did out of instinct.

The tension was clearly palpable as the two stared at each other without blinking as if it were a challenge. A direct test from one to the other. If there had been any doubt before, it was definite that this Sasuke person was from Naruto's past.

Naruto still stared at Sasuke even as he opened his mouth to talk, "Thanks for back at the arena in Tokyo."

With a scoff, Sasuke looked away from Naruto and crossed his arms over his chest as the workers that were putting his store together were hard at work, "Don't thank me. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. That guy would have slaughtered either of us one-on-one." He still did it two-on-one as a matter of fact, "I didn't do that to help you."

"Well either way I still appreciate it." Naruto said, "And I want to bury the hatchet. I forgive you for shoving your damn Chidori lightning hand through my chest four years ago. We're cool."

"WHAT?"

Cringing at the loud shouts of disbelief from his friends, Naruto turned towards them and directed them to chill out, "Yeah, but like I said, it's cool. It's not like he's trying to stark-raving murder me now, so it's all good." He then turned back to Sasuke, "But you came to Aohura City looking for me?"

A stiff nod came from Sasuke as his onyx eyes studied Naruto, "How do we go home?" He asked with little tact or caring of the fact that their origin story was not one Naruto particularly cared for others to hear, "I've been here for long enough."

Looking around suspiciously and seeing his confused friends, Naruto turned his attention back to Sasuke, "What makes you think I know how we got here to begin with? I can't remember anything from the end of the fight. Why would you want to go back anyway? All you're gonna get is a jail cell for running away and joining Oto."

Screw Otogakure. That ship had sailed, landed on the opposite shore and had been dismantled for lumber that was now being used to build some crusty old seaman's shoreside shack. He just wanted to go back to achieve his ambition.

"I need to get back so I can avenge my clan and kill-." With a sigh, Sasuke let it go. He'd been hoping that Naruto had an idea of what had gone down, but he never held much faith in that. Searching for Naruto was more for the fact that he wanted to confirm that this was all real. That everything he had done for the last four years hadn't been some crazy dream, "Ugh… nevermind."

Naruto rolled his eyes and slumped back in his chair, "Really? You're still on that? Sasuke, we're stuck here. I haven't caught a single hint of anything that could get me back anywhere. No spooky ancient legends, no scientific space-time machines, nothing. And if you haven't found anything either then I don't know what to tell you."

Hearing Naruto resign himself to their fate caught Sasuke off guard. This was the same guy that tried to fight him every week in the Academy even though he barely improved week after week and never studied. The same guy that fell off of a tree on his head for the better part of a week learning how to run up it. This was someone that didn't quit.

And then it hit him when he looked at the people there with Naruto.

"You don't want to go home do you?" Sasuke's sharp eyes caught the subtle nuances of someone caught in an uncomfortable position, "…This is why I didn't try to form anymore bonds Naruto. Because I'd have to break them once I went back."

"Oh, so you care now? You were all about breaking bonds when we fought." Naruto replied brazenly, "That was the whole reason you fought to kill, remember? You said I was your best friend, and then you tried to drown me downstream from that waterfall."

Sakura, Karin, and Batsu looked at each other strangely and then at Naruto and Sasuke as if they were crazy. Why was Naruto not beating his brains in after the things that this guy apparently tried to do to him? Cammy was just wondering to herself what it took to make Naruto mad enough to seek vengeance by way of taking one's life because apparently trying to kill him in the past wasn't enough.

That was different. A different time. Sasuke was driven by a different kind of advice. Advice that in the end he chose to disregard, "My brother told me that if I wanted his eyes, his power, I had to break my closest bond and kill my best friend to get them. That I'd never reach his level to kill him without it. I didn't want to be anything like that bastard after I thought about it when I wound up here. So I don't want to kill you anymore."

Aww… well that just made Naruto feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Or was that the nagging injuries? Why wasn't the Kyuubi finished handling that after a full month yet?

Still though…

"…You know first thing's first when all of this is over and we're both healed; we're settling up with each other once and for all, right?"

"Tch, obviously. We don't even know who won the last time since we got dumped away from each other when we got dropped here. This isn't over yet."

"Good."

"Fine."

Sakura's nosy meter was punching through the red at this point and by now she had gotten fed up with the inside conversation that she and the others were playing studio audience to, "Alright that's it! Naruto, what are you two talking about? Dumped and dropped where? Where's your home? And who is this person?"

He'd been keeping one big ass secret right in front of her for the last four years and she was sick of dancing around it like the elephant in the room. While Karin's curiosity might have been piqued months ago, she'd been waiting for infinitely longer.

Realizing that Naruto had never told them anything that didn't apply to them, Sasuke almost felt the need to mentally pat Naruto on the back. So the loudmouth could indeed keep a secret when he needed to. And he was about to reward Naruto with a genjutsu to suggest to Sakura and the rest of the group that what he and Naruto were talking about was none of their business, never would be any of their business, and that they should never bring it up again.

At least until Naruto covered his field of vision towards Sakura with one of his hands before his eyes could change. Spoilsport.

"No Sharingan suggestions." Naruto ordered flatly, "These are my friends. Don't fuck their minds please." Clearly none of them knew how close they were to getting stuck with some underlying suggestion that would have sounded like the best idea they had ever heard, "You need to wear sunglasses out in public to keep you from using that."

"Seriously, who is this guy?" Batsu asked, his head down lazily on the table he was sitting at, "You two are chatting like two old soldiers that were on opposite sides." It was weird, especially since he himself was the student in the room.

The two former Konoha genin looked at each other before Naruto gave Sasuke a look that told him to introduce himself. Well Sasuke might have been rude and for all intents and purposes anti-social, but if he was going to be in Aohura City for the duration of his mission it would be best to make sure that these people didn't at least get in his way, "Uchiha Sasuke. I used to be Naruto's ninja teammate. It's complicated."

"Then uncomplicate it." Karin asserted from her own seat.

Sasuke then looked between the girl that seemed to be of some sort of nobility and then to the regular-looking schoolgirl that had taken the conversation in this direction. Neither of them thought that he was ultra-handsome, either that or they didn't care. And his attitude seemed to annoy them more than make them think he was cool, unlike pretty much every other girl he had ever met that swooned over him, not just in Konoha but in Hong Kong as well.

…And he didn't like that. Who knew? He was yearning for the days of fan-girls and these girls were making him even more irritable than normal.

"Fine. You want it uncomplicated?" Sasuke growled out, ignoring the fearful waves of Naruto trying to get him to shut up, "Me and this guy are not from here. I don't just mean Japan, I don't just mean Asia, I mean from this entire dimension. We got dropped here somehow in the middle of a fight and got separated, now we're not." He finished gruffly, leveling a glare on Karin, "There. Is that uncomplicated enough for you, you little-?"

"I would punch you if I thought I could even bust a grape with one right now." Naruto said, holding his hand over his face, mortified. Four years of trying to think of a smart way to explain his situation and Sasuke just blurted it out in aggravation in only ten minutes of meeting his friends.

It was silent other than the sound of the workers fixing the restaurant up until Sakura slammed her hands down on the table and retook her seat, "Why not? It makes just as much sense as anything else we've heard from them. Now we've got this guy backing up Naruto's crazy. I believe it. Welcome to Earth."

"I'm not crazy Sakura-chan." Naruto whined pitifully, getting a raised eyebrow out of Sasuke. He called that one Sakura-chan too? But then again that name was pretty common in Japan apparently, "Our land is a place called the Elemental Nations. Pretty much every country has a ninja village and there are five big ones; we're from the biggest one. Then one day he turned all crazy and ran away and I went after him with some friends. We got into this big battle."

All eyes shifted to Sasuke who looked back at them defiantly. But then Batsu looked away from him and back at Naruto to continue paying attention. He really didn't have room to talk. He and Naruto shared a really nasty fight against each other before they became friends too.

But Naruto carried on with his recanting of the Sasuke Retreival incident, "I talked, he didn't listen and then we fought. He started fighting harder and he shoved his hand through my right shoulder." He pointed to the exact point juncture at his chest and right shoulder that Sasuke had done it. At this point the murderous intent from every other listener other than Batsu had the man himself scooting away from the girls before he found himself caught in the crossfire, "I got back up, we kept fighting, he set me on fire, I got back up, we kept fighting, and I don't remember the rest."

"He shoved his hand through your chest?"

"He set you on fire?"

"Can I kill him please?"

Sasuke stood up from his seat and began walking around the restaurant that he was to manage for the duration of his stay in Japan, "That was four years ago, and I was following some questionable advice back then. Now things are completely different… especially since I don't know how to get home so this whole thing is moot." He then looked at Cammy, the girl that asked to kill him and smirked, "You can try if you want to."

He was really hoping that she wouldn't though. As Sasuke was he would probably have lost an arm wrestling contest to a twelve year old. He didn't want to mess up his new restaurant getting his ass kicked all over it by a girl.

Quickly setting herself into her instinctual fighting stance, Cammy jumped at Sasuke only for Naruto to grab her arm and throw her over her shoulder to walk away with her before she could get to him, "Naruto! Put me down!" She complained, wiggling her arms and legs while he had her off of the ground.

Her fellow blonde fighter, blue-eyed fighter did no such thing. While Cammy wasn't dumb enough to break obvious laws, nor was she a bad girl that felt the need to do whatever she wanted, she was pretty impulsive, "No. You aren't just going to attack Sasuke even if he is an asshole."

"Hey."

Naruto ignored his former friend taking offense to another insult from him and set Cammy down by the rest of his friends before his eyes started to flutter dangerously, "…Oh and that was a really bad idea. Someone help." Before anyone could ask why or even get up to help him, Naruto crashed face-first through the table and fell unconscious.

A scowl formed on Sasuke's face. He thought that they would have at least gotten around to talking about something important like maybe chatting about Akuma; the man that had torn them limb from limb in Tokyo. But then Naruto had to go and haplessly destroy his restaurant's property right as he had gotten through paying for the furniture.

Grr… maybe he could talk to Gen. That old man had to have some advice on who tried to murder them in the Nippon Budokan. Maybe it was a rival assassin like himself?

Either way he still had work to do for the time being, and he could have that conversation after he ran damage control in his new place.

XxX

(Aohura City Old Industrial District – Hidden Warehouse)

The dingy little storage facility, while not particularly glamorous, served its purpose. There were crates piled on crates with all sorts of hardware cases of varying sizes inside

"This is coming together." Rolento said in a satisfied manner from his place standing on a large chain tied to the ceiling. From his place he could see everything going on. So much new weaponry smuggled through the Kiril Islands, and it needed a home. Thank goodness he had recruits that had such wonderful hiding places tied to their names, "This is coming together very well."

Standing below him on the ground was a towering and hulking man wearing tabi socks and geta, blue jeans, traditional wrappings around his torso, blue samurai gauntlets on the backs of his hands and wrists, a blue kabuto helmet with a crescent moon blade on the front of it complete with an entire facemask that concealed his physical features, and red body armor that covered his upper torso and shoulders with a failed kanji for 'death' on the front of it. At his waist he had a katana and a jutte for both hands each, to dual wield with either.

"I will admit one thing to you." Despite his appearance, the man beneath the armor and mask spoke English with a completely unrelated western accent, "You definitely know how to persuade people. But what did I tell you? If you wanted a good country to find strong recruits for Mad Gear, Japan is the place."

Rolento felt the need to start cutting into his comrade's obsession with all things Japanese, but chose not to. Infighting over something so idiotic wouldn't help at this stage of the game, "Perhaps too good of a place. The people that refuse our invitation are notoriously strong around these parts. Not just regionally but nationally. Some beyond that."

"We're international too." The American samurai said with a chuckle, "Who do you want me to get? Come on, you know you want a heavy-hitter around to show these guys how it's supposed to be done." And to show just how strong Mad Gear really was for those that still wrote them off as some common rising gang.

A heavy-hitter… well there was an idea.

"Sodom." Rolento said to his samurai companion as he slid down the chain and stood on the same level as the man that towered over him, "I think we should call Poison. We're going to need her to make sure Hugo has some direction… we both know he's not the brightest."

"Oh… you're calling him off of street-cleaning?" Sodom said, laughing behind his mask, "We've got everyone on the list accounted for. At this point the only thing left is to recruit them or to finish them off. The last thing's what Hugo's for."

The two men began walking around the warehouse, taking note of not only the weapons being unloaded, but of the assault vehicles being uncrated and inventoried, "We have all of them accounted for except one." Rolento revealed hatefully, "He's been hiding for the past month."

"What? Who, the assassin that came after you or the Uzumaki kid?" Sodom asked, "I thought you said they got crushed under Budokan Hall."

"An assassin wouldn't have been identified even if he died there and they never released Uzumaki's name amongst those that died that night." Rolento said, remembering the two boys that wound up taking the wrath of that monster of a man that spared him. While it was emasculating it was better than the alternative; a fight he knew he had no hopes of winning, "No, the latter is alive, and this is his hometown. We've been here a month and haven't confronted him yet."

Though his facemask didn't allow him to show a single facial expression, even with his eyes, Sodom's voice was blazing with skepticism, "And you think Hugo can find him? He's not really the brightest… that's why he's with Poison."

"I'm aware of that." Rolento said wryly, banging on a tank that they were walking past with his staff. God he loved the sound of a tank's hull. It sounded like invincibility, "But this isn't going to be a search. Hugo's not exactly subtle and if he hasn't shown himself yet he'll just run, so we're going the other way with it. We're going to call him out, and if he doesn't show it'll be a reputation-killer."

Apparently according to local lore Naruto had a temper the size of the Pacific Rim and an ego that implausibly surpassed it. While some could say it was rightfully so, the fact of the matter was that too many people were able to confirm such a thing to merely dismiss it. Therefore if he was legitimately taunted and called out he'd do something about it. He'd love to see Naruto do something about it against Hugo, which was where Poison came in.

Poison would definitely be able to piss Naruto off and goad the brat into a fight that he simply couldn't win.

And if he still didn't show up it would only establish Mad Gear as something to be further reckoned with since the guy that had fought and survived against the best in the world backed down from a fight with them. Either way the recruits would then be coming by the droves, street punks especially, to be a part of an organization that could scare off Uzumaki Naruto.

XxX

(Naruto's Mindscape)

"Blah!" Naruto pulled his head out of the murky water that comprised the floor of his sewer-like mind. But there was something different about it this time. Did he taste blood? Was his mind bleeding? Was that even possible? Did that mean he had brain damage?

Slapping himself before he asked too many questions, Naruto got up out of the reddening water and followed the flow back to its source; the boiler room that housed his titanic tenant. While he didn't plan on showing up he decided that he needed to bitch at the bastard that had taken over his body in the middle of a battle that he didn't even take part in the end of.

His body had been taken over and he found himself as a spectator in his own defeat, feeling blinding pain from the chakra and only getting bits and pieces of Kyuubi's attempt to use his body to tear Akuma asunder before everything went black. And then he wakes up a month later in the worst ongoing condition of his entire life. He never stayed that hurt for that long. Not even close. Something was going on and the Kyuubi was the cause.

As he got closer and closer to the hall that would contain the most powerful chakra construct in the lands, Naruto heard a strong outpouring of wind that would start and stop every three seconds. When he reached the hall of his intent he felt the wind that would come out in bursts and stop.

It was strong enough that he actually had to struggle to walk down the hall without being blown away by it. Needless to say it was quite annoying and Naruto had a bone to pick with the jerk at the end of it, so by the time he reached it he was already riled up, "Alright you orange, furry pain in my ballsack! What the fuck was-?" He stopped yelled when he didn't see the usual orange figure laying lazily behind the great bars of his seal.

Instead the Kyuubi was down on its side, breathing in a labored fashion, hence the strong wind. That was the creature trying to breathe.

Looking down into the water at his feet, Naruto saw that the blood was emanating from the inside of the cage, from the Kyuubi itself. That wasn't right. A biju didn't bleed… did it? Shukaku didn't at least… unless its blood was sand, but he doubted it.

"Kyuubi." Naruto said as he walked closer to the cage. He wasn't going past the bars though. He did that during the fight with Akuma and then he didn't remember a damn thing after that until he woke up, "Kyuubi." He repeated slightly louder only to still get no response.

There was no overbearing, smothering presence that came with standing before it the way he usually got. He didn't even think that Kyuubi knew he was there. This was not good. That fox was hurt. Whatever Akuma did weakened the Kyuubi badly.

"What the hell happened to us?" Naruto asked under his breath before planning to forego his trepidation and go right through the bars of the cage once more.

"…Your enemy was formidable…" Naruto jumped as far away from the cage as he could when he heard the low rumbling voice of the wounded biju, "…His last move would have destroyed your soul, and mine as well because I was projecting more than a fair bit of myself through you. So I countered as best I could. I ended the connection the moment I understood what was happening, splitting the injuries between us. I still took far more than your share."

"You took the hit for me?" And here Naruto was gearing up to curse the beast out for taking him over when he was in dire straits. He could still do that, because the principle of the thing still stood and the Kyuubi kind of got what it deserved for snatching control of his body, "Does that mean you're going to die?" Would he die too? It worked the other way around so why not?

"No." Even weakened, the Kyuubi flared up enough chakra to drive Naruto back a step, "I did not take the hit for you. I was too late to empty myself from you to distribute the damage evenly to save us both from the fate that wound up befalling us. Had I been free it wouldn't have harmed me so severely, but since I was trapped and projecting myself through your body with only four tails…" Kyuubi trailed off and let loose a snort that almost knocked Naruto down the hall.

The Kyuubi wasn't using enough power to keep Akuma's attack from devastating him through Naruto, and since he was pushing his will through Naruto's body he got the backlash as well. Akuma figured that his enemies were dead after he hit Naruto with the Shun Goku Satsu, and with the building coming down around them he took it as a fitting burial.

Naruto stood his ground, and after covering himself up from the hot breath that Kyuubi expelled, Naruto walked closer again, "…It wasn't like you could protect yourself from in here." He finished in the Kyuubi's place.

The sentimental mush in Naruto's tone was evident and it had no place there with a creature of its stature as far as the Kyuubi was concerned, "It doesn't matter now. I will not die. But I can assure you that my wounds are far more severe than yours. That attack was made as if it were meant to destroy my kind. I am in essence chakra with a soul that developed an entire physical structure."

"When will you get better?"

"No one has ever damaged me from within my jinchuuriki to this extent before so I don't know. I can either focus my chakra to you to heal you or myself. I chose you because if you died while I was healing myself I still would have died regardless. You are still in terrible shape if you haven't noticed." Naruto actually did come close to dying repeatedly after he fell into his coma. Without the Kyuubi he wouldn't have survived Akuma at all, "Your soul has been damaged as well just like my own, making it harder for your body to sustain its desire to heal."

How do you learn how to attack someone's soul… without a seal? That was ridiculous. And it left Naruto to try and break down exactly what the Kyuubi was saying to him. Why couldn't an all-powerful being learn to dumb things down for his benefit?

"So you can't heal my body like normal because my soul has a boo-boo and you're healing it too…" Naruto tried to deduce, "And it's not your full healing ability because you're healing your body and your soul too." What the fuck did that guy do to them? Was that even possible? "I didn't know people could do that."

"I wouldn't call it a 'boo-boo' exactly, but yes you imbecile, that's basically the gist of the situation. Until your soul is fully repaired I can't heal you as swiftly as normal, and until you're fully healed I can't focus on myself." Naruto's soul was almost complete though. It was why he had woken up from his coma to begin with, "Without me your soul wouldn't have restored at all. Be grateful." If the incredible regeneration ability of the Kyuubi hadn't been able to extend to more than a physical sense then none of it would have mattered because Naruto would have remained comatose.

"Thank you." Naruto expressed, putting his hands on the bars to look inward.

"I don't want your thanks. I want silence so that I can sleep and focus on the repairing of the rest of your body, my body, and my soul. Now leave. And remember, you won't recover from injuries as quickly until I'm healed."

Frowning deeply into the dark as he looked at his downed reluctant partner, Naruto banged his head weakly against the bars once with a clang, "Don't worry about healing my body. I'm awake now so I'll just do it like everyone else does. Focus on yourself buddy. That's more important. Later." And with that, Naruto vanished from his mindscape leaving the Kyuubi alone.

Did that child already forget that his body had been taken over and used as a puppet by the very being that he had just referred to so familiarly. And not a hint of negative emotions happened to be sensed from him when he said it. If he was indeed earnest in what his feelings conveyed, he didn't care about that once he realized that the Kyuubi was critically injured.

"Idiot." Kyuubi weakly swished its tails around once before shutting its eyes and continuing its diligent work to restore itself and keep Naruto in one piece, "I'm not your buddy." The brat would be on his own until this was complete. Hopefully he would begin to perceive discretion as the better part of valor for a while.

Not likely.

XxX

(That Evening – Real World – Naruto's Apartment)

"If you're out of it for longer than a day again I might have to beat you up. The first coma you were in was extremely annoying."

Naruto opened his eyes to find himself set down on the big couch in his living room with Cammy leaning over the back of it observing him and the yellow kitten walking around on his chest like he was an inanimate object, "Where'd everybody go?" He asked blearily.

"Sasuke kicked us out of his restaurant after you broke his table with your body. Everyone got dropped off at their homes by limousine." Cammy explained as she picked Special Agent Jack Bauer up off of Naruto's chest so that he could sit up against the arm of the chair, "Everyone had afternoon things to do, so it's just me here."

"That's not really a bad thing Cam." Naruto said as he rubbed his eyes, "Talk to me here. What happened since I went down?" Little Miss Shadaloo Assassin would probably have retained the ability to observe a situation tactically. She'd retained all of the other stuff regarding combat, so why not? She'd have a better take on the situation than his other friends, "What happened today… that usually doesn't happen around here."

The street fighting was usually way more straightforward. It had a simplistically barbaric charm to it. I don't like you, I'm going to kick your ass, and that was usually that.

But blockades, huge groups of organized thugs? Not normal. Usually the numbers never went past fifteen attacking at once. Karin beat up five times that many today.

"It does now." Cammy said, playing with the kitten as she sat down next to Naruto on the couch, "Mad Gear are quite aggressive. They've somehow neutralized police intervention on the streets and are targeting notable fighters in town." She hadn't been around long enough to be famous for her own skills, but she knew of others that were and had been defeated already, "But why here?"

Because there were an abnormal number of skilled fighters in Aohura City compared to any other city in Japan and it was far away enough from Tokyo so that politicians wouldn't pay it any mind, thinking it was just more mindless street violence. The city was kind of famous for being incorrigible on that front.

Rolento and his partner weren't dummies. They could have tried a city further to the north to set up their little army, but they wanted to be close enough to Tokyo that they could make their move when they wanted to while staying away from the bigger cities.

Well this was Naruto's town. Not really, but if that was the way things were it was up to him to protect this place. It might not have been a hidden village that he had pledged his allegiance to, but it was his home now, and there were some good people there.

Aside from that he remembered Rolento's speech in Budokan Hall on wanting to take over the country, and that just wasn't going to fly at all. Utopia his ass.

With a sigh, Naruto got up and looked around for his shoes and equipment pouches, "I guess it's up to us if anything's going to get done about this then."

"You're not going to fight anyone." Cammy asserted with a sharp glance in Naruto's direction, "Just how well do you think you would do the way you are now? Carrying me fifteen feet put enough stress on you to make you black out."

"You were struggling." Naruto defended weakly in return, "It's not that bad. I just won't try to move anything heavy. Problem solved."

"Are you calling me heavy?"

"I don't know. How much do you weigh?"

Instead of Cammy hitting him for such a callous comment since he was still injured, Special Agent Jack Bauer jumped out of her arms and onto Naruto's face where the kitten clawed his face up until Naruto grabbed for him and held him at arm's distance, "Thank you Agent Jack." Cammy said with a smile, holding out her hands for Naruto to return the cat to her, "Don't ask a girl about her weight."

"Oh yeah, that's the thing that you're a normal girl about." Naruto said, thinking about how he was going to declaw that damn cat without Cammy knowing, "Look you can't make me stay. This is my house. I come and go when I please. If I want to go street-sweeping that's what I'm gonna do."

"Really?" Cammy lifted her bare foot and poked Naruto in the stomach with her toes and watched his knees quiver, "You're going to do this in one night? Good luck fighting anyone of any substance as the walking wounded. You're just one big bruise right now."

Holding his stomach as he backed away from Cammy's foot that she then lowered now that her point had been proven, Naruto decided to pick her brain for some information, "How long does it take normal people to heal from what I got up from?"

Raising an eyebrow, Cammy gave Naruto a strange look. He really didn't understand just what had happened to him, "Never. They never heal. Normal people don't. You were supposed to be dead. You were dead. Everyone thought you were going to die. Somehow you stabilized over time, but you stayed in the coma. And then you just woke up today and you want to go, go, go. Take a rest Naruto." She insisted.

Screw that. He apparently had just gotten through sleeping for a month. That was enough rest. He never understood why people that had just awoken from things that kept them under for a long time were always directed to rest. Wasn't that what they had just gotten through doing?

"If I just sit around and don't find a way to work through this injury then what good am I?" Naruto asked, heading to the kitchen area table to grab his supply pouch belt that he then wrapped around his waist, "Cammy, Mad Gear isn't some normal gang. They want something big, and their leaders are willing to try and overthrown Japan's leaders."

Japan's armed forces didn't have them on their radar and wouldn't until it was too late, and the police weren't big enough to deal with them.

"I still can't let you go out and just get yourself even more hurt than you already are Naruto." Cammy argued in return. If she was that negligent then Sakura would kill her. Maybe she could tie him up. How hard could he possibly fight her back anyway?

Naruto waved his arms indignantly, "What are you my nurse/probation officer? I'm just going to train, I promise! I'm not going out there tonight to fight these guys, that's stupid. I don't know anything about them." First he had to go and pick the brain of someone that knew who the people in Mad Gear were… maybe Sasuke since he was supposed to kill the ringleaders so he had to know something.

First thing was first. He had to get himself whipped back into shape. Before he could leave though, Cammy's voice stopped him just as he put his sandals on and opened the door, "Just so I know…" She started to say before trailing off in a suspicious manner since she didn't trust that he wasn't going to do something stupid, "Where exactly are you going to go to train?"

"Outside of town." Naruto said plainly, "The mountains. It's a good quiet place. Nobody goes up there. It'll be a good place to see what I've got in the tank right now."

"The mountains…" Cammy said, giving him an emotionless look that told him that he'd better stop holding out or she'd stop him right there, "Uh huh."

"Yeah, just the mountains." Naruto replied defensively as he pulled the hood of his costume over his head to refrain from meet her eyes. A big grin slipped across his face as he eyed the open night sky, "The mountains… because that's where Ibuki's village is. Later!"

Before Cammy could reach the door and stop him, her roommate had already vacated the doorway and had jumped over the banister at the end of his apartment complex floor and had made it to an adjacent rooftop.

Cammy ran to the railing at the end and yelled out after him as she saw him jumping roofs into the distance, "Naruto, I thought that you didn't know where Ibuki lived!" No one did. That was the whole point of her ninja village.

The entire time Naruto was running away from Cammy on the rooftops he had a grin on his face, "Yeah, she had my clone blindfolded when she took it to her village that one time." He couldn't help but laugh to himself as he made it to the location that he was at when Ibuki blindfolded his clone and veered off in a seemingly random direction, "It's a good thing my clone counted their steps and the turns they took all the way!"

And when that clone had dispelled he had been right outside of his apartment and the clone had done absolutely nothing else until then. That night he immediately ran inside after Ibuki left, wrote down the number of steps and directions, and memorized them before getting rid of the paper.

The raucous laughter of the orange-clad shinobi echoed out in the night air as he was planning on paying his kunoichi friend a visit on her homestead. He needed some advice from a fellow person that had been trained since childhood as a shinobi on Akuma, and what he could do about it.

Come to think of it from what he could remember Akuma fought a lot like Ken and Ryu, with differing nuances in his style the way those two differed from each other. Every strike from Akuma was meant to maim and kill unlike the two of them. And what kind of guy like that just showed up to take them on and disappeared just as quickly as he came? Was a fight to the death really all he wanted out of them? What kind of person lived like that?

Just another thing he'd have to chat about once he got to the hidden locale of the ninjas he supposed.

"I'll be there by tomorrow afternoon." Naruto said to himself as he formed the cross seal with his index and middle fingers on both hands, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" He was joined by fifty whooping blonde copies leaping from building to building along with him. Together they were going to help him triangulate the position of the ninja village.

XxX

(Later That Night – Streets of Aohura City)

"Ugh…" The normally slicked back spiked hair of one Kazama Daigo was a complete frizzed mess at this point. His normally neat blue school uniform was torn, frayed, and smattered with drops of his own blood. His face was covered in the markings of the brutal beatdown that he and his gang were sustaining as he tried his best to pull himself up once more. He wasn't going to stay down.

The alley that the Gedo High School Gang used as a nighttime hangout was officially a warzone, and the battle was all but over. Daigo's dozens of friends and underlings were all strewn about, broken and beaten to varying degrees of severity. Not a single one of them were willing to leave though out of the sixty-seven of his crew. None of them left him for Mad Gear. And they fought the bastards to show them where they could put their ultimatum to join or get wiped out.

But it wasn't enough.

It was only two. Two members of Mad Gear. And only one had done the lion's share of the fighting. But he was a monster.

His friend Edge and his knife-based dirty fighting did nothing but piss their enemy off, and the eraser-haired blonde was smashed into the ground like an insect. The biggest and strongest member of the gang Isurugi Gan, the aspiring sumo, he was outright dwarfed, overpowered, had the body armor on his torso smashed, and was then thrown through a wall.

Daigo himself fought as hard as he could. He lasted longer than any of them, but it wasn't enough. He just couldn't hurt that monster. And his arms gave out as he tried to push himself back up, his face smacking onto the pavement, "You bastards…"

A sigh came from a woman that walked in front of the downed Daigo and stooped in front of his head. She had long pink hair, pink lipstick, and a blue police hat on her head. A very attractive looking girl wearing a half-cut white tanktop that was very high on her body, almost revealing the undersides of her breasts. In addition to that she had on very short cut-off jean shorts with a chain wrapped around her waist and a pair of handcuffs on her hip to go with a pair of red pumps on her feet.

"You know, you kids think you're immortal or something." The woman said, tapping Daigo on the head with a riding crop, "It would have been so much easier if you would have just joined. You're strong, and your gang is useful and loyal. This didn't have to happen."

Daigo continued to struggle, but upon planting his hands upon the ground he couldn't muster the strength to push himself up. His body was giving up on him, "Heh, this was the only way it was ever going to happen." He said, body racked with pain, "And you called your monster off… that's disappointing. I wasn't done with him yet."

A dry look was etched on the woman's face as she put her cheeks in her hands with her elbows on her knees, "Kid give up the ghost already. This is your last chance." She then backed away as this time it seemed as if the young gangster would actually reach his feet on that try to stand up, "Are you serious?"

He was dead serious even though he was staggering in place. He had his hands up and was ready to continue fighting, "If I laid down now… to you… I could never look that stupid kid Uzumaki in the eye again and take myself seriously as a fighter." His entire gang had put themselves on the line fighting that monster to the finish. He would be damned if he would let himself let them down by quitting.

His funeral then. She gave him the chance. She wasn't the one that was going to be finishing the battle though. There wasn't any need for her to fight.

The woman motioned behind her and from the dark of the alley came a towering figure that was twice her height and width, "If you really want to keep fighting Hugo that badly I'm sure he's fine with it." She said before walking around the mammoth man that dwarfed both her and Daigo, "Don't take too long with him Hugo, the point's been made already. Just kick his ass and be done with it."

"Got it Poison." Hugo was a mammoth of a man with a pink leopard-skin tanktop and pink jeans, brown boots, spiked bracelets on his wrists, and a thick chain on his hip around the back of his waist to his other hip. He had messy, curly black hair on top of a huge head and his eyes were obscured by shadow, "You know you can't beat me." He said to Daigo in a thick, deep voice, "You're not strong enough."

"Heh." Daigo said as he held his hands out to his sides and built up yellow ki in his hands, "Well let's see how you like this big man." Suddenly the ki expanded and grew in intensity before Daigo shoved both of his hands out at Hugo and fired a beam directly at him, "Kou Kikou Kai (Hard Spirit Cultivation Cluster)!"

The attack hit Hugo full-on and the resulting blast shook the buildings that comprised the alley, chipping off pieces of brick and even cracking a few windows out in the actual fronts of the structures.

A still standing Daigo breathed heavily and let his hands fall to his sides in exhaustion. That stupid, dopey giant actually let him fire his best ki attack. Well now the big bastard had a brand new hole right through his belly. Good riddance. It was time to get his people to the hospital and go home to his sister Akira.

"RAAAGHH! Monster Lariat!" From the smoke that had been created because of Daigo's attack, Hugo suddenly charged out and surprised Daigo who was too weak to retaliate in any way to a horrible dashing clothesline that hit him right in the neck and sent him flying like a boneless ragdoll to the far wall of the alley that he hit with a smack, cracking the surface. He felt to the ground and didn't move again.

While Hugo was overlooking his work, Poison had ventured outside of the alley and had taken out a cell phone to report on their progress, "Yeah, the Gedo High School Gang, their leader was an idiot. Message sent Sodom. I'm sure a few of those kids will walk again one day though."

"It can't be helped that some of these kids have too much spirit for their own damn good. It's why I like this country though, heh. Anyway, we've got a new job for you and Hugo. Flush Uzumaki Naruto out and break him by any means necessary. Break his spirit, break his body, break his reputation… we don't care, just make sure you break something."

Hugo? For just one kid? It didn't matter how good of a fighter some sixteen year old brat was. Sending in Hugo was overkill, "Really?" Asked Poison, "You do know that Hugo warms up with throwing around gangs like the one we just got through with, right?"

Why not send him somewhere he'd be more useful, like breaking up more of these punk kid groups that thought they could stand. Oh or maybe that Saikyo-ryuu dojo. They could wreck that joint to the ground.

"That's why we're telling him to do this. He isn't going to have any trouble with this one once we get the fight to actually happen, and just looking at Hugo would be enough to convince people that they want to side with us instead of stand against us."

Eh, it made enough sense to her she guessed. It was a show of force to take down a prominent figure in the public eye, "Well where do we find him?"

"We don't know. That's why we said to smoke him out. Be creative. The flashier the better. Let's try to make a spectacle out of this thing. The more eyes the better."

"Flashy is what I specialize in." Poison assured her boss over the phone with a grin, "Don't you worry about a thing. We'll get him running towards us. And we'll be waiting." She said as Hugo's shadow appeared over her shoulder walking out of the alley, "Or Hugo will be anyway."

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{Character Profile}

Name: Sodom

Nationality: USA

Gender: Male

Age: 30 (April 25)

Height/Weight: 6'9/335 lbs.

Bloodtype: A

Likes: Collecting various Japanese items, geishas, sushi, eating pizza.

Dislikes: Losing a fight.

Hobbies: Water performances, driving big trucks.

Rivals: Guy, Cody, E. Honda (friendly).

Fighting Style: Self-taught martial arts

Current Techniques: Jigoku Scrape, Butsu-Metsu Buster, Daikyo Burning, Shiraha Catch, Yagura Reverse.

Hyper Techniques: Meido no Miyage, Tenchusatsu.

Background: Sodom is a high-ranking member of the original Mad Gear gang that took control of it along with Rolento after its previous fall from grace in the United States. Formerly undefeated in underground fights until the first fall of Mad Gear, Sodom is quite powerful due to his use of multiple objects such as his swords and his use of the jutte as his weapons of choice in combat. His speed with his swords is quite impressive for not being a formally trained samurai. Sodom has a lot of respect for the Japanese culture and obsesses over most of it despite the fact that his grasp of the Japanese language leaves much to be desired. He has actually killed many Japanese enemies after they find humor in his lack of ability to speak the language or write correctly with kanji.

Name: Poison

Nationality: USA

Gender: Female

Age: 21 (December 17)

Height/Weight: 5'8/114 lbs.

Bloodtype: N/A

Likes: Her pet cat, French fries, Cody.

Dislikes: Jail time, cops, being ignored.

Hobbies: Acrobatics

Rivals: None

Fighting Style: Acrobatic fighting

Current Techniques: Cat Claw, Thunder Whip, Poison Kiss, Aeolus Edge.

Hyper Techniques: Love Storm.

Background: A notable member of Mad Gear even back during its original heyday, Poison took to overseeing the affairs of the giant Hugo as both his handler in the gang and his manager in his career as a professional wrestler. She is very vain and is quite flamboyant as evident by her choice of dress, showing little shame or modesty for her actions or appearance. She takes great offense to being upstaged or shown up and can be quite cruel in case of such an incident. Despite these personality flaws she does see Hugo as a friend and does care for his well-being despite Hugo being perhaps the most dangerous professional athlete in the entire world.

Name: Hugo Andore

Nationality: Germany

Gender: Male

Age: 25 (May 19)

Height/Weight: 8'0/506 lbs.

Bloodtype: N/A

Likes: Poison, tag team wrestling.

Dislikes: N/A

Hobbies: Weightlifting

Rivals: None.

Fighting Style: Professional wrestling.

Current Techniques: Giant Palm Bomber, Monster Lariat, Shootdown Backbreaker, Ultra Throw, Moonsault Press, Meat Squasher.

Hyper Techniques: Gigas Breaker, Megaton Press, Hammer Frenzy.

Background: Raised on a farm as a part of a family of circus strongmen, Hugo dreamt of being a famous wrestler and came to North America at the age of twenty to do so. Going undefeated due to his inhuman size and strength that he only cultivated further and seemed to increase, Hugo was notorious for dealing career-ending injuries to his opponents, causing promoters to see him as too much of a liability to sign to any contract. Hugo joined the original Mad Gear with promises of financial backing in regards to his wrestling career, and to this day continues to balance working for them and furthering his career, crushing any who stand in his way on either front. While not the brightest, when given ample direction Hugo's sheer power is enough to overcome any obstacle, thus establishing Poison's role as his manager. Can be somewhat brutal and sadistic in combat due to him not quite knowing his own strength.