The Shadow of Shadaloo...

Chapter 8 - The Shadow of Shadaloo...

"For the last time Naruto-san…" Karin stated, hands on her hips as she tapped her toe on the ground impatiently, "You may look fine, you may say you are fine, you may even truly believe that you are fine. But you are not fine." She asserted, staring at a bandaged and bruised up Naruto, "It has been forty-five minutes since we arrived here. You cannot fly home as you are."

Lying in his hospital bed, only being kept there by the stern glare of a woman, Naruto was visibly pouting. He had woken up all of three minutes ago and had immediately said that he wanted to go home and cash his and Sakura's victory check.

It didn't matter that Karin had a point. He only he had to walk far enough to reach Karin's limo and then far enough to reach her helicopter. As a matter of fact he didn't even have to walk to either. They could land the helicopter on the helipad on the hospital roof and he could get a wheelchair to take himself up there.

Although he was not good to go. Twenty minutes after being nearly snapped into two by Zangief was not enough time to heal his bones, even for him. Forty minutes damn sure wasn't enough. More like ten minutes since it probably took half-an-hour for his medical treatment to finish. At most he needed a day and he'd be 100 percent. But an hour wasn't enough.

"I hate the hospital." Naruto muttered to himself as he looked around, "Where's Sakura-chan and Batsu?"

Rolling her eyes at the first thing Naruto had said since waking up aside from 'let's go home', Karin answered him, "Sakura-san and Ichimonji-san are in their own rooms doing what you should be doing right now; resting." She walked over to him and prodded at one of the bandages that were situated above his left eye, "I simply do not see where you get this from. You cannot be fully human the way you operate."

Naruto's gaze shied away from Karin as she poked at him, "I'm just an energetic guy I guess."

"Energetic? That is not the word I would use for you." Karin said, moving away from Naruto to take a seat, crossing one of her legs over another, "So tell me Naruto-san… what technique did you use to produce that strange orange energy? It was shocking to see if I were to be honest."

"Err…" Naruto muttered out, scratching the back of his neck with his cast-encased left hand, "You know how earlier I told you that there were some things that you'd never believe if I told you about them? That's one of the things."

Karin merely shrugged with her hands calmly and nobly placed in her lap, "Well seeing is certainly believing. I saw it. So now I would like an explanation to understand it. Humor me if you could." She said with a sweet smile on her face. Although the underlying meaning behind the smile was that he was better off telling her what she wanted to know otherwise she was going to find out her own way and that was the last thing he wanted her to do.

Instead of answering her question, Naruto simply hit a button on the headboard of his bed and went slack in his bed with a satisfied look on his face, "Oh… morphine… I love that button."

'That devious bastard…' Karin thought to herself with a twitching eye as she saw Naruto doped up on hospital painkiller, 'He would rather drug himself into a stupid, lucid haze than answer my questions?' Well that just meant he was a ninja after all, taking his secrets seriously and keeping them at any cost. That just meant she had to get more creative with her information gathering tactics.

XxX

(Elsewhere in the Hospital)

No surgery needed. That was the best news that any of the Aohura City trio could have received. Neither Naruto, Sakura, or Batsu required actual surgery to heal any of their injuries. They all just needed rest and that was it. They would be kept overnight for observation and then allowed to go home the next morning.

That was good because Naruto was never a hospital kind of guy. If it weren't for the fact that the others were there he probably would have tried to leave the moment he found that he could walk under his own power.

At the moment, Batsu was in Sakura's room in the middle of a stationary wheelie in the middle of her room while sitting in a wheelchair. Sakura herself was sitting in bed poking at some of her deeper, more prevalent bruises on her torso underneath her hospital gown (if this was why Naruto hated hospitals she could fully understand why), "Batsu why are you still in my room?"

"Because I'm not leaving you by yourself." He responded, still trying to keep the balance of his wheelie up, "Naruto's got the Karin girl with him. Teme doesn't need me there, and he wasn't even awake yet last time I checked in."

A small smile came to Sakura's face, "Naruto told me to make fun of you when I saw you for losing first out of the three of us."

"Yeah? Well why didn't you?"

"Because he beat me too." Sakura frowned as she touched a rather intense bruise in the shape of Naruto's fist on her back that she could make out the marking of, "It's not like I won either. What would I look like picking on you?"

Batsu placed his wheels on the ground before continuing the conversation, "I thought it was a draw. It was on TV you know." He ran a hand through his spiky black hair and let out a sigh, "What was that weird orange power though? I've never seen ki like that before." He never even knew Naruto had it.

"He stood up after it was over… that means he won as far as I'm concerned." Were it an actual fight, Naruto would have had Sakura at his mercy with her on the stretcher and him on his feet, but this was not the major concern at the moment, "I don't know what was with his orange power either. It was like it changed his entire body. I don't know if that came through on TV."

"It looked like fire though."

"It wasn't hot." And for some reason he didn't want to use it. But when he had been utilizing it he had been overwhelming her. A single direct hit while he had been like that and he would have soundly defeated her. She knew it. Even from the one punch that she managed to block she knew it, "His entire body was five times stronger and he was even faster like that."

Batsu let out a grunt and stomped his foot on the ground with a scowl on his face, "For a loudmouth he's such a secretive bastard. For all of the stuff we actually know about him we really don't know a damn thing do we?" Naruto's background might as well have not existed before he first showed up in Japan. He never talked about it, never alluded toward it, never told them any stories or anything from then, "It kind of pisses me off."

Despite the fact that she let out a laugh, the humor in Sakura's tone of doing so wasn't really filled with much frivolity. Mostly because Batsu had a point.

"Okay." Sakura finally said, swinging her legs over the side of her bed to prepare to stand up, "The doctors said they were going to start bandaging me up in an hour. I'm sure that I'm really gross right now, so get out please. I want to wash up."

Instead of immediately reacting to the request, Batsu just sat there in his commandeered wheelchair with a blank look on his face, "I could stay here and keep a lookout. Hospitals are full of all kinds of weird people. Who knows who'd try to sneak a look at you while you were in the bathroom, or worse?" The red beginning to fill his face gave way to his actual intentions.

Sakura just stared at him before getting up with a pained grunt to wheel Batsu out of the room, getting a disappointed groan out of the teenage boy as he was shoved out into the hall and the door was closed behind him, "Okay, bye Batsu, go see if Naruto's awake yet." Ignoring the indignant shout of 'come on' from the other side of the door, Sakura made her way towards the bathroom wondering what she would wear home since Naruto tore up her uniform top during their fight.

With the male in the room having been kicked out, Sakura decided to try and get a quick shower before her doctor came back to treat her bumps and bruises.

XxX

(With Naruto)

For some reason, the content look on Naruto's face as he slurped down container after container of takeout ramen from a stand near the hospital seemed to put a smile on Karin's face. There was finally something she was capable of with her money that mattered to him. It wasn't that Naruto never cared one way or another about her riches and resources, it was that he found no practical use for most of them.

Well her pull to get him outside food into the hospital was obviously something he was very grateful for.

It was too bad that he kept trying to talk with his mouth full… and that the only time he seemed to feel like talking was when his mouth was full of noodles, "Mranks Mra-rin, Rye russ rettin wrungphy (Thanks Karin, I was getting hungry)!"

"You're welcome Naruto-san." Karin replied in a dry tone as at this point her smile was quite strained. Goodness, did he have no table manners? The fact that he was in a hospital bed and not at a table did not particularly matter in this instance, "I have taken the liberty of procuring you, Sakura-san, and Ichimonji-san some clothing for the trip home tomorrow morning as well. Your previous attire was covered in blood." Shibazaki had taken the liberty. But she had been the one to request him to do so, therefore she was still the one that was responsible.

Naruto stopped eating momentarily and realized that he indeed hadn't been in his real clothes since he had woken up, wearing a light green hospital gown in place of his fighting gear. No wonder he felt more or less naked the entire time, "Huh… well that's nice of you." He looked around himself at the several other filled containers of ramen that Karin's second larger butler had given him just a few minutes ago, "Hey, do you want one of these? You paid for the food after all."

"How considerate of you." Karin replied, confident smile back in place now that Naruto was speaking like a reasonable human being, "But I have already eaten earlier, and if you remember correctly I would rather not sully my palette with the diet of commoners."

Of course, Naruto realized that this translated in normal person speech to, 'No I'm fine, but thank you for asking.' He had come to understand a long time ago that Karin didn't try to be as abrasive as she seemed to be on the surface. The current gestures of clothing and feeding him were prime examples of such.

A few knocks then came at the open door as Batsu rolled himself into the room, "Well look who's awake. You look like crap Naruto."

"I'm not the one in a wheelchair." Naruto quipped in return before downing the rest of the ramen, toppings, and the broth in his container in one move. He then threw the empty container at a fast moving figure, growling at the loss of one of his extra ramen bowls, "Jackass! That's my dinner!"

"So what?" Batsu said in a satisfied way as he sat back down in his wheelchair, "And I don't need this chair by the way. It's just more fun than walking everywhere." He popped open the top of the container and took a deep whiff of the contents within, "Ah, I think I've got the one loaded down with the most meat in it. I'm a better ninja than you apparently." He boasted as he pulled off the chopsticks that came with the bowl.

Hearing that Batsu had probably gotten the best ramen out of the bunch, Naruto was about to leap from his bed to lay a beating on his friend for his beloved food until Karin pressed her hand onto his chest to keep him down. He was prepared to push her hand aside, consequences be damned, until he got a look at her eyes.

"Naruto-san this is a hospital, please behave. You still have six more helpings to yourself and you were about to spill them onto your bed and onto yourself." How a rich girl's glare was able to cow Naruto into submission was simply something he himself would never comprehend, "If you are prepared to behave like a child I am prepared to treat you as one. Do not force me to feed you myself."

Naruto's face turned red at the prospect of Karin feeding him, and neither Shibazaki nor Ishizaki were there, with both men gone to return the limousine to where it had been rented from, so it would be her doing it herself the way she made it sound, "Um…"

"Oooh." Batsu commented cheekily before ducking in his chair to avoid a hospital slipper being thrown at him, "Oi! Calm down, I'm still hurt here!"

"And yet no one in the room cares." Karin stated as she moved away from Naruto back to her seat, "After all, I do not have anything invested in your wellbeing and Naruto-san was the one that was originally going to assault you for food. You should be thanking me that a slipper was the only thing that was thrown."

Naruto calmed down from the thought of a pretty girl feeding him his favorite food and focused on simply the food as he popped the lid off of another ramen bowl, "How's Sakura-chan doing? I haven't seen her since they took us away."

"She's fine." Batsu answered, choosing to follow Naruto's lead and dig into the food in his lap, "She kicked me out of her room so that she could clean up before her bandages were put on her. Stingy…" He wanted to say something stupid like he could have helped, but he did not put it past Naruto to chuck his food at him in return, and his aim was going to be way better than Karin's with a slipper.

Naruto gave a pleading gaze to Karin who rolled her eyes and stood up to exit the room, "Very well. I guess checking in on Sakura-san for your sake would not be too difficult for me to accomplish. I'll return in a moment."

Once it was confirmed that Karin was gone, Batsu rolled his wheelchair over towards Naruto's bed to converse with his friend, "Naruto, why don't you ask that Karin girl out?" He asked, getting a confused look directed right at him, "Don't give me that look. I think you could get away with it."

"Not a chance." Naruto did think Karin was pretty, but he didn't believe for a moment that he could get away with asking her out. How would you try and date the richest girl in Asia even if one did have an inkling to try it? That wasn't for guys like him, "If I ever did that she would laugh right at me and probably make some comment about me falling for her. And then Sakura-chan would probably act all passive-aggressive until she stopped being mad about it… whether Karin said yes or no."

"Coward."

"I'm not scared, I just know better."

Batsu felt like ripping his hair out by the roots trying to reason with the younger teen, "Well then just date Sakura. She acts like your damn wife most of the time anyway, and she's the only person besides me with a key to your apartment." He was then smashed across the head with a pillow.

Still holding his current weapon of choice, Naruto bared his teeth at Batsu, "Because Sakura-chan is already into Ryu. It's not some fan thing either. I've seen something like this before, and it's best for me to get out of the way, even if I did like her like that."

"It's a pipedream of a crush damn it." Batsu said with a hint of exasperation, "It's like how girls will fan out over some music idol or something. Sakura doesn't get like that for rockstars, well she's like that for Ryu. Don't take that literally. You're real. You're right there in front of her, and you always have been." He then coughed into his hand, "And if Ryu ever really does show his face you can kick his ass and show off."

Ugh, if he went about it like that then he wouldn't have learned anything from his own past mistakes. That would just make things like a new version of the situation between him, Sasuke, and Sakura in Konoha. Only from what he knew Ryu wasn't a jerk, this Sakura didn't hit him for being dumb, and he wasn't trying to interject himself in the middle of Sakura's attraction for the famed fighter.

Things were fine now the way they were, and he wasn't upsetting that for something that wasn't going to happen the way he did with the Sakura from Team 7. This Sakura did love him, she just wasn't in love with him. He didn't need to rock the boat to test the waters on such a thing, he knew as much without needing to be told, and he was good with that. Actually, he was great with that.

"Can we talk about something else instead of my love life?" Naruto asked with a twitching eye. It wasn't like Batsu was too much of a ladykiller either. For hanging out with Sakura's friend Hinata as much as he did he certainly didn't have anything to show for it either.

"Pssht. What love life?" Batsu responded glibly, flinching when Naruto cocked his pillow back to swing it again, "Alright fine teme… how about that freaky orange ki of yours."

"Chakra."

"Whatever. Tomato/to-mah-toh."

"Not really. What do you want to know about it?"

"Well… first of all what the hell is it?"

"Chakra. I thought we'd been through this already."

"…I hate you."

XxX

(With Sakura – Elsewhere in the Hospital)

A newly refreshed Sakura, redressed in a new hospital gown stepped out of the bathroom still fretting over the damage dealt to her by Naruto. Goodness, how much harder could he have hit her? She could see it all over when she was in the shower.

A rather devious part of her wished that Naruto was just as sore as she was at the moment, but not knowing whether or not he was awake she felt that this was a rather evil thought to have and quickly quelled it. As she did so, a knock came to her door that she opened up.

On the other side was an absurdly handsome man with long brown hair in a braid, wearing a very long doctor's coat that nearly reached his feet and pushing a supply cart into the room, "Hello Sakura-san. It's good to see that you're taking your injuries a bit better than what I'd heard about you."

"I'm fine really." Sakura said with a pleasant smile as she got back into her bed, "Naruto beat me up pretty badly, but it's just bruises really. They'll be gone soon enough even if they do hurt."

"What a brute." The doctor said as he pulled out a roll of bandages, setting them on the top of his cart while his left hand was kept out of sight underneath the same cart top, "To do such damage to a beautiful young woman such as yourself."

"I'm a fighter." Sakura informed the handsome doctor, "And Naruto's not really a brute… that much. He's a good person, and I did the same thing to him." She undid the back of her gown and gave her back to the doctor, shrugging the gown down past her chest to pool around her waist in order to begin the process of bandaging her injuries.

The doctor continued smiling politely as he drew a prepared syringe up from the cart with his right hand, still keeping his left under the top of it out of sight, "Alright, just a little painkiller to help with the discomfort and then we'll proceed and get you all patched up."

Sakura nodded, a little embarrassed at giving her bare torso to a male doctor. She winced slightly when the needle was injected into her back but almost immediately her body gave out as she could barely sit up straight any longer, "Wh-Whoa… that was a lot of morphine for something like this."

"Morphine?" The 'doctor' said with a chuckle as his smile turned from a comforting one to a more devious and maniacal one, "Oh, I'm sorry my dear, but this isn't morphine. It's amazing what you can get from the women at the pharmaceutical supply with a doctor's coat and a face as handsome as my own. Now go to sleep."

Her first instinct was to punch the bastard's lights out, unfortunately hers went out beforehand as she fell back into the doctor's arms, leaning against his chest as he caught her, revealing a long claw attached to his left hand that he had been hiding.

"Oh yes…" Vega said, stroking Sakura's cheek with the claw, lightly enough to keep from cutting her face, "You are going to be quite useful to me my dear. So shall we go?"

XxX

(With Karin)

How embarrassing, offering to go and search for Sakura to check on her wellbeing only to find she didn't know where her rival's room just so happened to be. Luckily that hall had a desk for information and she quickly got the room number, 'Room 723…' She thought to herself as she strode through the halls.

This had to be quick, as visiting hours in the hospital would be over and she would have to leave and retire to a hotel for the night. Ishizaki had made her accommodations while he had been out with Shibazaki and would be back soon to retrieve her so speaking to Sakura would probably be the last thing she would do before leaving.

Eventually making it to room 723, Karin knocked on the open door before peering inside to find it vacant. She narrowed her eyes and growled to herself lowly. Sakura had probably gotten up and left to find Naruto's room while she had been searching for her room. Well this was the price she paid for being a good person.

Stomping back down the hall in a huff towards the elevator, Karin reached them to see the doors to one of them closing. Normally she would be thankful of this as she was not going to ride an elevator with strangers by choice, but this time before the doors closed she managed to get a glance at the people inside.

A very familiar and very handsome man with long brown hair in a braid and a doctor's coat, and a young woman with short brown hair in a hospital gown and a wheelchair that seemed to be unconscious. Karin couldn't see her eyes, but she still had a crushing suspicion as she could swear that she had seen the man before.

It took the closing of the door and the chiming of the elevator before her eyes widened and she strung together what she needed to know about the identities of both people, "Sakura-san and Vega-dono?" Her eyes turned towards the floor marker above the elevator door as the lights started chiming and descending until stopping on the sixth floor, "Thank goodness." She said, getting out her cellphone to quickly dial.

XxX

(Meanwhile – With Naruto)

"You're so full of crap." Batsu said as he and Naruto decided to use the top of a ramen container as a makeshift Frisbee, tossing it back and forth from Naruto's bed to Batsu's place by the door, "That's physically impossible. No one in the world, nobody, has breasts that are 106 centimeters that don't sag. That's retarded." This was clearly before Naruto's time in Japan or he would have told him within minutes of meeting this person. He had to go to America.

"I'm telling you it's true." Naruto responded, catching the ramen top before throwing it right back, waiting for it to return, "And she was a medic, so I guess she had medical secrets or something. I don't know. It was a while ago. She gave me that crystal necklace I always wear." He then started feeling around his chest and neck, letting his focus lapse and allowing the ramen top to bounce off of his head, "Damn. Where's my stuff I came here with?"

"Probably in the cabinet." Batsu wheeled his chair over to the cabinet by the door and opened it to pull out a bagged set of dirty, torn clothes and other things including Naruto's fighting gloves, "See?" He was preparing to toss the bag over when he heard Naruto's phone go off with a ringtone of American 80s metal, "Really why do you listen to this all the time? I can barely understand the lyrics."

"I'm American aren't I? Learn English." Naruto said, gesturing for Batsu to throw the bag to him. Catching it in one hand, Naruto used the other to fish his necklace from the bottom of the bag and his phone out of one of his pants pockets before flipping it open quickly, keeping the call from going to voice mail while he put his necklace back on, "Yo. This is the butcher, what's your beef?"

"Naruto-san keep your stupid greetings to yourself right now, this is important! Sakura-san has been abducted by… I think it was Vega-san."

"What? Vega? The jerk from the arena?" Naruto jumped out of bed, nearly ripping his connection to his morphine dispenser out of his arm. He tucked his phone by his neck and started pulling it out himself before digging into his bag for undergarments and pants, "How do you know? You saw them?"

"He is getting off of the elevator on your floor any second. Stop him, I am heading towards the stairs as we speak."

Quickly sliding his shinobi sandals on after hanging up, Naruto headed towards the door while Batsu rolled out into the hall after him, "Where's the fire?"

"Sakura got kidnapped. Get up and let's go!"

Immediately, Batsu jumped out of his wheelchair and pulled his hospital gown's back shut as tightly as he could, wishing that he could wear pants at the moment as he started running down the hall as well with something of a limp, "Fuck… it never fucking stops does it?"

In hindsight from the way he was lamely moving through the halls he probably did require the wheelchair to a certain extent.

Meanwhile, Naruto slid into a corner and turned it to run towards the elevators, gritting his teeth as he saw the doors close without anyone inside. That meant that whoever got out on this floor was still close and they had gone the other way. Speeding to the end of that hall, Naruto stopped and looked both ways to only see one man pushing a wheelchair with a brown braid.

He growled and clinched his fists before sprinting, planning on grabbing Vega and snapping his neck like a twig. Right before he planned on leaping at the bastard and wrapping his arms around his head, Vega swiveled himself around, sticking Sakura's unresponsive body between the attacking Naruto and himself as he ducked behind her.

Due to this, Naruto had to avert his jump to instead clear both Sakura and Vega, landing right behind them only to take a one-legged mule kick to his back that knocked him face-first, harshly into a supply closet door that his body knocked open with an audible smash.

"Hm." Vega looked at Naruto with a hint of satisfaction as he pulled himself up and started racing back down the hall, still pushing Sakura's chair. She would make good leverage for as long as he could hold onto her, "Hahahaha, keep up you ugly worm! At least make this fight more interesting than your revolting existence has been thus far!"

Naruto got up holding a newly formed knot on his forehead and seething in anger as he started pursuing Vega once again back down the hall, "Vega! Let Sakura-chan go!" Instead of getting Sakura, Naruto was given Vega's doctor's coat which was thrown at him.

He swatted it aside only to receive a kick right to the face from Vega who had stopped to place a white mask over his face and fight him with the opening he had created. Naruto steadied himself on the wall he almost slammed against after Vega's kick and turned to duck the slash of a claw on his adversary's hand that left a deep mark in the wall behind him. Two more slashes that Naruto had to jump away to dodge and he sincerely wished that he still had his weapons on him to fight fire with fire even a little bit.

After one of Vega's missed slashes that Naruto jumped out of the of, the blonde teen ran forward towards Vega, ducking a straight stabbing punch from the claw and sliding on the tiled floor directly beneath the Spaniard before posting up a kick that nailed him in the belly and shot him into the ceiling.

Vega smashed it with his body before falling back towards Naruto who then used both legs to time a kick that sent the vain noble flying backwards, rolling down the hall, banging into walls every which way with his lanky limbs.

Naruto sprang back to his feet from his successful maneuver to see Vega getting back up as well, and he had kicked him back towards Sakura damn it! He quickly made hand-seals as Vega drew his way behind the girl and her chair.

A small puff of smoke came from Sakura's wheelchair just as Vega made it behind it, holding his claw towards the person sitting there, "Don't do anything hasty Uzu-." He stopped talking when he saw Sakura's body on the floor where he thought Naruto would have been standing. The wrist of his claw had suddenly been grabbed and the back of the head of the person in the chair slammed into his masked face, sending him stumbling backwards.

Naruto's well timed Kawarimi no Jutsu opened up an opportunity for him that he took advantage of to deal Vega damage as he stood up out of the chair and kicked it back at the man. Unfortunately Vega was absurdly agile and limber, jumping over the chair and kicking off of the wall prior to launching at Naruto with a spinning slash of his claw, "Sky High Claw!"

Naruto fell back to the ground and let him pass over his body harmlessly before rolling backwards as Vega rolled forward out of his swan dive. Naruto got up and cocked his head back while making more hand-seals, "Chakura Tanki-sha (Chakra Spitfire)!" A small blue chakra projectile flew from Naruto's mouth but Vega ducked to the side towards another hallway corridor, making the attack miss and burst a hospital room door open.

Well hell. Why did all of his personal techniques have to cost so much chakra to perform? Two hours was not enough rest to replenish him as even the spitfire took too much despite its compact size. It was him brute forcing pure chakra out of his mouth so that it kept its form away from his body. Just letting the burst fly made his vision swim until he shook it off after almost stumbling into a wall.

Not about to let the hostage taking sack of crap get away so easily, Naruto let slip from his mind that Vega had gone back the way where he had substituted with Sakura and when he turned down the corridor as well he saw that Vega had picked the girl up and had taken off with her once again, this time carrying her over his shoulder.

'I knew he was a ninja!' Naruto screamed in his own mind. The way Vega ran, even while carrying someone was not conventional the way most people did. His body was as far forward as his balance would allow him to be to move at top speed and stay mobile. No one ran like that except for himself and those trained in this world's ninja arts, 'He can't be as fast as me in a run!'

But he seemed to be despite Naruto's belief to the contrary.

Still not accepting his own inability to save his friend, Naruto started pumping more and more energy to his legs, pushing past the screaming pain in his still tender body not two hours removed from abuse in combat in order to catch up.

"Sakura-chan wake up!" Naruto shouted, trying to awaken his friend who hadn't seemed to respond to anything the entire time. Where the hell were the orderlies or hospital security? True, it had only been two minutes since the ruckus truly began, but it never ceased to amaze Naruto just how powerless most of the peacekeeping forces of the common folk happened to be without vehicles or guns.

Still, he wished he had a gun right now… or even just something he could throw at Vega's legs to stop him or slow him down.

He made more hand-seals and shot off another spitfire, but it merely hit the ground instead of Vega's legs.

In response, Vega immediately stopped running down the hall in favor for turning sharply right where he dove straight through the window. A panicked Naruto immediately rushed to it and prepared to jump out to where he saw Vega had landed on an adjacent rooftop three stories below the sixth floor of the hospital Naruto was on.

If he thought he could just take Sakura and run away he had another thing coming. This was Naruto's mindset as his eyes started to bleed red, taking over the usual shining blues that had previously colored them. Jumping up onto the sill of the window was only a precursor for Naruto's monstrous leap straight out that passed clear over Vega's head, landing right in front of the aristocratic assassin.

Not bothered by being cut off by the young man that was originally his prey in the first place, Vega threw Sakura off of his shoulder at Naruto. As the blonde shifted his body to catch her and ensure no harm came to her, Vega moved within the blindspot that throwing the girl provided him with via compressing his body and rolling several times at an inhumanly rapid pace, reaching Naruto's side just as his arms extended to catch Sakura, "Rolling Crystal Flash!"

"Gah!" Naruto exclaimed as Vega uncoiled from his balled-up form and lashed out at Naruto with a direct straight stab of his claw. He gaffed Naruto in the side of the chest underneath his right arm, cutting him deeply and sending crimson splattering on the rooftop, but Naruto was still able to catch Sakura as he jumped away from the deadly claw that had already stricken him.

He wasn't worried about his own wound, despite the severity of it as it would only be a faint marking on his skin within thirty seconds, instead fretting over the fact that Sakura was still unconscious even with all of the rocking and falling and running. Something had to be wrong. He put his head to her chest and didn't hear a heartbeat for a long lapse before finally one was heard. He growled hatefully at Vega, standing up with his fists clinched tightly enough to draw blood with his ever-sharpening fingernails.

Vega chuckled to himself and merely licked Naruto's blood from off of his claw, delighting in causing harm to the secretive jinchuuriki who seemed to look even more loutish than he remembered from earlier that evening, and it wasn't just the bandages and other medical supplies on his face either.

"What did you do to her?" Naruto asked/demanded to know, setting Sakura down on the rooftop as Vega jumped his way up a nearby water tower and stood up its ledge ostentatiously, "Answer me damn it!"

"Don't take such a tone with me." Vega bit back frostily, eyes gleaming with malice from behind his white mask, "You should know your place, and you should have just taken the offer. Bison would have found you intriguing, and a ninja would have been perfect to run the day-to-day operations for the Dolls. But since you refused, there's no need for me to tolerate your hideousness and your previous insult by denying me so resolutely. The woman is just sleeping... she is very useful though. I've gotten several clean shots on you because of her. Some ninja you are."

"Shut up!" Naruto snapped at Vega before launching at him without warning, intent on punching him straight through that water tower.

A scoff came from Vega at Naruto's frontal attack before he dashed directly forward off of the water tower ledge, "You do not attack an enemy with the high ground you fool." He said as he slipped behind Naruto and grabbed him around the waist before dropping him to the ground right on his shoulders and back, "Izuna Drop!" Vega then jumped away from Naruto and postured like a bullfighter that had just slain the animal of his title's namesake, "All that strength, and no grace or deliberation to your actions whatsoever."

Only Naruto wasn't unconscious or dead, and at the moment he was far more dangerous than some bull.

Standing up like the walking dead, Naruto's eyes seemed to be glaring hard enough to bore a hole through the back of his head, "Is that the best you've got?" He growled out, "You might look like a sissy but that doesn't mean you have to hit like one too."

Vega bristled at this and turned to see an orange aura radiating off of Naruto that got him to take a step back involuntarily, 'What is this, Psycho Power? That's impossible! The only people in the world with energy this dark are those touched by Master Bison!' It was just as dark and twisted as that power was, but there was something more feral to it, more akin to a beast. This was not a battle that Vega wanted to fight any longer, but he doubted that he could merely just leave after antagonizing Naruto to such a degree.

Naruto blurred out of Vega's sight with raw speed and in response he backflipped out of the way of a fist smashing into the top of the roof with enough speed himself that it formed an afterimage shadow of his movements. Still, Naruto's short distance speed was clearly superior and only the foresight of knowing how direct Naruto's attack would be kept him from being pounded into the rooftop.

And once again, things still fell into Vega's hands as with a few more nimble motions he positioned himself back by Sakura, pointing his claw down at the girl. There was no honor in something as ugly as defeat and death, and he had no qualms taking hostages to kill an opponent, "You might be nigh indestructible Uzumaki, but what about her? Do you really want to test how fast you are against me when all I have to do is move my arm to give the lovely Miss Kasugano here a new place to breathe from?"

Before he tried to take Vega's head off again, Naruto stopped, shaking in rage at Vega's cowardice. It seemed to know no depths, "I'm gonna kill you." He said plainly and simply. There was no further explanation or reasoning needed. He had never trusted anything about the man from first glance and this just confirmed that he was right on the money, "You're dead. I've never said that to anybody before, but you're dead you bastard!"

"It would pain me to kill someone with such potential for so much more beauty-." Vega continued, ignoring Naruto's threat. He was the one with all of the cards right now. Naruto would do well to remember that much. As an example of this he used his claw to hook the front of Sakura's hospital gown that he proceeded to cut open all the way down the front to expose her body to the elements, "-But it would be that easy for me to do it. Faster than you could break a mirror with your ugly face."

The only thing Naruto cared about breaking at the moment was Vega's neck. And that break couldn't come fast enough for his tastes.

Still, he stood down, or at least refrained from making any moves as his chakra continued to radiate around him like a beacon in the dark night. No matter how fast he was, he'd have to be able to damn near teleport if he wished to safely retrieve Sakura in one move covering a distance of twenty meters, and with Vega's claw sitting right above her chest there would be no chance of him being able to even tighten his muscles without her life being forfeit.

Vega used his free hand to point at the rooftop beneath them, "Down. Get down, facedown. Right now. I don't want any tricks or stupid heroics out of you. I would much rather murder you and leave Miss Kasugano alive. She's not repugnant, nor has she offended me personally the way you have."

There wasn't a choice here. Naruto slowly started crouching down and leaned forward, placing his hands on the surface to begin lying down. His brain was working a mile a minute but he wasn't thinking of anything. He was going to die or Sakura was going to die. His hands were tied.

Wait, his hands.

Naruto's hospital gown had come loose enough during the fight and the chase for it to drape down over his arms when he placed his hands on the ground. Covering his hands and concealing them from view. It was a simple matter of core strength and sleight of hand that allowed Naruto to remove his hands from the sleeves of the gown without a single ruffle of the garment or alerting Vega to his intentions.

Biting his lip hard enough to draw blood with his sharpened canines, Naruto was officially choosing to cash in every bit of positive karma he had built up over the last few years because he had never needed any ungodly stroke of luck any more than he needed it right then and there, 'Please! Let this work! Give me just one opening, I don't care what it is! Just let me save Sakura-chan!'

The opening did indeed come.

It took the form of Vega's own arrogance and the feeling that despite Naruto's strange powers he had everything well in hand with his hostage. With that feeling of domination over such a clearly powerful creature one becomes drunk with authority, and even the best make amateur mistakes when under this influence.

Apparently not satisfied with how slowly Naruto was surrendering himself to a prone position on his belly, Vega decided to make a threat, to the wrong body, "Stop procrastinating! Get on the ground with your hands behind your head!" He snapped before making a grave mistake to a desperate, eagle-eyed Naruto. He pointed his claw up from Sakura at Naruto to accentuate his command.

By then, Naruto had set his hands back onto the ground as when using the Kyuubi's chakra Naruto always felt more comfortable moving on all fours instead of just trying to stay on his feet. The moment the claw took the slightest motion away from Sakura, Naruto pulled himself forward with his hands and pushed off with his feet hard enough to smash the portion of rooftop beneath him. From that point things might as well have been moving in slow motion for them both.

Flying at Vega like a bolt from a crossbow, Naruto snarled and drew his hand back, forming a Rasengan in his right hand without delay. By now Vega had realized that he had taken his threat of killing Sakura from Naruto's mind and knew that at this time even if he made good on said threat, Naruto would be upon him and would get an easy killing strike. Thus he instead chose to move his claw into position to impale Naruto before he could be reached.

Thin steel claws vs. Rasengan.

Rasengan wins.

Perfect.

The Kyuubi's chakra was not a factor in this equation whatsoever… it was a variable.

"I told you, you were dead! Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)!" Naruto's Rasengan broke clear through Vega's claws and slammed right into his body, being driven with mal intent before Vega was propelled and rocketed off of the rooftop into the air. He was sent flying like a ragdoll before smashing through the windows of an office building across the main street from the hospital.

The complete carnage that sat across the street from Naruto filled something dark in the pit of his stomach with a sense of righteous satisfaction. As if that were the fool's just desserts for doing anything as idiotic as picking a fight with something as treacherous as its human representative that it currently had a hate-hate relationship with.

"Yes… do you see now how much you need me? How things feel so right when you just stop thinking and let my instincts guide your hand? Without me you would never feel the desire and the satisfaction of obtaining your vengeance against your enemies. Embrace your true self Naruto, and you and I can have the world."

A snarl tore itself from Naruto's mouth before he turned his attention back to his fallen friend where he fell to his knees by her side, checking her heartbeat to make sure that her condition didn't worsen from Vega's reckless drugging.

Her heartbeat was steadier than before. It was strong again, eliciting a sigh of relief from Naruto who fell onto his backside and cradled the immodestly dressed girl close to himself as his adrenaline high began to die down, 'Fox… I don't want the world. I don't want anything but to go home.' He thought to his all-powerful tenant.

"You don't even want to go home. Don't lie to me."

'Fine.' Naruto thought with a sigh, 'I don't. But I'm still going to find a way. I promised I would. Kyuubi, why do you have to destroy anything? That's not who I am.'

"Still at war with yourself are you? Just like every other human… denying what you really have inside you. The things you really mean that you simply refuse to say aloud. One day you'll see. One day someone will push you too far, a time worse than today, and when you do you will entrust your heart to me. You'll do what you always do; you'll take that hate and you'll keep pushing it inside. And one day… you'll rely on me to deal with it." At that point he could positively feel the Kyuubi's toothy grin from behind the bars of its cage, "And I assure you, I will not let you down. I will do as you will desire. I'll destroy it all. I'll take all of your pain and rage away, along with everything else."

'I won't.'

"You can't stop me. All I have to do is just wait. This is the reason I'm the tool of you humans is it not? The reason I was desired so greatly and despised at the same time? But what do you know? You're still just a baby; making noise and moving around trying to figure things out. You don't even know what to do with yourself."

The fact that the Kyuubi was starting to speak to him more frequently these days did not sit well with Naruto as looked up into the sky and saw many people on the hospital staff standing by the window on the sixth floor that he and Vega had burst out of, then over to the office building he had blasted the assassin into. He didn't have to be able to see inside to know that he was already gone.

After all, Naruto had traded his built up good fortune to save Sakura. No way Kami would spot him a two-for, that would make things too convenient for him.

Speaking of which, Sakura began to stir and wriggle around a bit in his arms, slowly opening her brown eyes to look up at him, still a bit disoriented but eventually getting enough of her whereabouts to focus in on the dangling crystal necklace in her face and then on the person wearing it, "Naruto?"

"Hey Sakura-chan." Naruto said, finally finding it in him to spare her a grin of comfort as he pat her bare back calmingly, "Just take it easy alright?"

It was of note that Naruto was very warm to Sakura, although that also could have been because it was winter and it was rather cold outside when one wasn't wearing clothes. Also something else very important to take note of that she addressed immediately, "…Why are we naked?"

Naruto blinked and then looked down at the two of them. Not even a tinge of red came to Naruto's cheeks as he responded in kind as he was far too relieved to feel shame. He was too mentally tired to. Physically he wasn't feeling that hot either. Tapping into the Kyuubi's chakra twice in one day after an entire day of abusing his chakra with energy-taxing ninjutsu and getting his butt kicked twice.

He hadn't had to run a marathon like that in a long time.

So no. He didn't particularly care that he was holding a girl sans clothing at the moment. If Jiraiya could see him now he would have smacked him one, "Well I'm not naked, I'm wearing pants. You're naked though."

"Okay."

"…"

"…Why am I naked then?"

That was a conversation that was best had when both of them were fully clothed, so Naruto walked over and grabbed his own bloodstained gown that other than the blood coating it was still intact. Sakura covered herself, not feeling the wet spot from the blood due to her own body being mostly numb, and used Naruto to stand as her body was still rather unresponsive due to the drugging.

After keeping Sakura upright, Naruto looked up at the window in the hospital sixth floor that had been broken open by Vega and himself and saw Karin and Batsu looking down with the two butlers of the blonde heiress standing behind them trying to get sight of the scene.

Naruto rolled his eyes and held one of Sakura's arms around his neck to help her stay on her feet, "Can we go home now?" This was why he hated hospitals. No weapons allowed, thin clothing with no padding or mesh armor that he liked, and sucky security that couldn't stop a nosebleed. He'd have been better off healing alone in his own house. And people thought he was crazy for feeling that way.

Karin just nodded silently and motioned for Ishizaki to prepare the chopper on the rooftop helipad for takeoff.

XxX

(With Vega – Daybreak)

Naruto had almost finished him off. That final attack, he had never seen it hit any living thing before. Vega could honestly say that he'd take getting hit by a mall car over taking another Rasengan. The impact was more or less the same, only a car would spread out the damage dealt more evenly. The point of contact with Naruto's Rasengan was relentless and it almost caved his chest in. More than half a dozen of his ribs were broken and from the blood that kept dripping from his mouth no matter how much he tried to keep down there was definitely something ruptured.

But he was able to make it out of the office building he had been shot into, killing an investigating security guard and taking his clothes and crawling through the shadows until he could reach a cab to take his private jet to leave the city and the country. Money was great for getting out of countries without having to sweat the small stuff.

Travel was not his overwhelming concern at the moment. He had been injured and badly. He couldn't explain how he hadn't died yet, and he'd require medical attention on the plane to survive, but other than that things were out of his hands.

The only thing he had to worry about was how he would explain the night's events to M. Bison. When the score would be tallied after everything being said and done his own defeat would be overlooked. It was largely inconsequential. Nothing he did that night threatened Shadaloo, same for Balrog despite his humiliating loss as well to a nameless young man that was actually public and televised unlike Vega's little deathmatch.

The truly important thing that would be taken from that night would be his report on the young man with talent, that was the only person at that tournament that caught his eye and then caught it again later with his absurd orange power of death.

At the sight of Vega's savage near-death experience, and after learning of just what Vega had to tell him after he recovered enough to speak forth his recount of the battle (not much of a battle when it came down to it after the cards had shifted to Naruto's hand), it would attract the attention of someone worse than the devil due to the boy's dark powers reminiscent of Vega's boss's own.

This was the worst revenge that Vega could begin to enact. It almost got him to smile a bloody grin just thinking about the Pandora's Box that he was about to open on the poor runt of a teenager.

After all, if the single man that could stand against the attention of M. Bison existed yet, he would have just been killed by now as well. A fate worse than this would obviously await Naruto sooner rather than later. And it would be absolutely sweet to be there to see what brought the repulsive blonde ninja to his knees.

He would dream about all of the possible ways to break Naruto's heart, his soul, his body, and then his will…

…While he slipped into something of an injury-induced coma from his wounds that the doctors he hired couldn't believe he had been crawling around with.

That angry red spiral mark on his chest that sat over his snake tattoo wouldn't be going anywhere for a long, long time.

XxX

(A Few Days Later)

"And you're sure about what you saw?" A man said, stepping outside of an airport gate after his plane had just landed in Tokyo. He hadn't planned on coming back nearly so soon to Japan, but there were some smatterings that he simply couldn't ignore.

A nod came from E Honda as he ignored his injured arms and offered to take the large duffel bag in his arriving friend's possession. Of course a glance at said arms with confusion then reminded the sumo of his own injury and he grinned sheepishly as they proceeded to walk through the rest of the airport to the ride outside, "Absolutely. You've seen the footage from the final fight. The proof is there." He gestured to his own arms as well, "He did this to me a few months back but he didn't fight like that. It was the most malevolent thing I've ever felt. You said you were looking for that weren't you?"

The man with E. Honda was a younger man with short brown hair wearing a white karate gi and a red headband around his head. It stuck out in an airport terminal to say the very least, but at least he was wearing shoes; red soft slide on shoes, but he had enough sense to not go barefoot everywhere. It wasn't like he was in a fight right then and there.

A chuckle from Honda got the younger man to look up and over at the larger fighter, getting him to elaborate, "I'm just wondering what it'll take to get you to wear normal clothes."

An eyebrow was raised in response, "I didn't know wearing a blue yukata everywhere qualified as normal clothes these days. I must have missed that." E. Honda let out another good-natured laugh at being more or less called a throwback. He wasn't really in the mood for joking though.

The last time he had come across a dark inner energy like the one E. Honda was alluding to, he had come into contact with the man that had killed his adopted father. He couldn't lay a hand on the perpetrator, bearing witness as the man smashed a deserted island with his fist alone.

Apparently within him there was the same power.

Even if this Naruto person didn't share in this curse, it was worth looking into, especially if this destructive fighter that had killed his adopted father got wind of Naruto's own abilities as well. It was too dangerous to simply let Naruto alone, even if he had no malevolent intentions at all with such a dark power.

From the sound of things E. Honda liked him very much even though his arms got busted up in battle against him, 'But the Satsui no Hadou (Surge of Murderous Intent) doesn't differentiate between those that try to be good or bad.'

An interruption then came to his thoughts, "He lives in Aohura City. There's also someone else there that wants to see you pretty badly, so if I were you I'd stay there for a bit even if you find him quickly." E. Honda said as they made it outside onto the street, "Do you know where that is? I could take you if you'd like Ryu. It's a pretty long way."

The man, identified as Ryu at this point just gave E. Honda a pleasant smile and shook his head, shifting his duffel bag over his shoulder for more comfortable carrying before he figured out which direction west was in and pointed, getting a nod for his trouble to tell him he was correct in getting the direction, "No thanks. I think I'll walk by myself."

With a confused look on his face, E. Honda shook his head as he watched Ryu walk off, not even bothering to try and hitchhike as he wandered down the road as if it were normal to walk everywhere, "You're a strange bastard, you know that?" He shouted down the street after the man, only getting a wave over his back in return.