Chapter 554: The Shark from Another World
At the forest's edge, a tall figure emerged from the trees carrying the body of a rogue ninja over one shoulder.
He wore the wide black-and-red-cloud robe of the Akatsuki. A massive spike-covered blade was strapped across his back. The face beneath the robe was shark-like -- angular and flat-eyed -- and it held no expression that wasn't strictly necessary.
Kisame Hoshigaki.
He and Itachi had just finished their infiltration of Konoha to gather intelligence on the Nine-Tails jinchuriki. On their way out they had run into Jiraiya of the Sannin. Itachi's body had been giving him trouble since he'd used Amaterasu, so Kisame had sent him ahead to rest while he stayed behind to pick up a bounty contract in the area -- the Akatsuki always needed funds for its future tailed beast operations.
"Done. Time to go find Itachi-san. Hope he's had enough time to recover."
He shifted the weight on his shoulder and started walking toward the agreed rendezvous point.
"I'm sorry -- could you wait here for a moment?"
A voice came from up ahead. Unhurried and calm. "Things are a bit involved over that way right now. Better if no one wanders in."
Kisame's feet stopped moving. His small, round eyes snapped narrow. The whole of him shifted the way a shark shifts when it picks up something in the water -- every sense instantly at maximum, entire body tuned to a frequency that was looking for a threat.
"Who's there?!"
He tracked the voice.
Standing beside a thick, ancient tree -- golden hair, deep blue eyes, orange jacket.
Kisame recognized the face. It was the Nine-Tails jinchuriki's face. Uzumaki Naruto's face. But the age on it was completely wrong. No adolescent roughness, no unfinished edges. What the face carried instead was the settled, quiet composure of a grown man.
"Well, this is..." His hand found Samehada's handle without him consciously reaching for it. His tone came out strange, careful. "Quite an unusual face you've got there. Would you care to explain? Why does your face look so much like that Nine-Tails brat's?"
"That I can explain. It'll just take a moment."
"Actually, skip it."
Kisame cut him off. His mouth pulled back into something that had cruelty in it but passed for a smile. "I'll cut your legs off, carry you to Itachi-san, and you can explain everything at your leisure once we're there. That includes why you're out here in the first place."
He'd already worked it out. This person blocking his path meant something was already happening on Itachi's end. He needed to get back. The fastest way to do that was to put the obstacle in front of him on the ground.
"I can answer every question you have," the blond young man said. There was restraint in his voice -- a reluctance to start something. "I don't want to fight you."
Kisame didn't answer.
He moved instead, slow and deliberate, settling into his fighting stance one step at a time.
Samehada came up in front of him. The bounty target's body dropped to the ground. The massive spiked blade caught the light and returned it as something cold. His feet spread. His weight dropped into his center.
Naruto looked at him. Something tired and resigned moved into his expression.
"Just stay here quietly, alright?"
The next instant, Kisame's pupils shrank to their absolute limit.
Behind the blond young man, something was rising.
A massive red apparition, building itself out of the air, growing until it blotted out the sky. Growing until the surrounding trees looked like objects on a child's floor. Growing until the entire forest fell into its shadow. A nine-tailed fox -- the kind that existed in old stories, in warnings, in things people didn't believe in until they were standing in front of one.
Just the apparition. Just its presence. And every instinct in Kisame's body screamed at once.
Cold sweat broke across his forehead. He felt it slide down his skin.
Samehada shook in his grip. Every spike along the blade's length retracted inward, pressing flat against the metal -- like a creature that had forgotten it was a weapon and was trying to make itself as small as possible. This blade had followed him for years. It had fed on the chakra of more opponents than he'd bothered to count. He had never felt it do this.
He couldn't win.
The conclusion arrived in his mind with complete, unadorned clarity.
This wasn't a question of fighting technique or tactical adjustment. The two of them weren't in the same order of magnitude. He didn't even have the standing to exchange a single blow. If the person in front of him had a thought -- just a thought -- Kisame suspected he would stop existing.
That line he'd been given -- stay here quietly -- wasn't a threat. It wasn't a warning. It was simply the statement of a fact in a situation where the gap in power was so wide that the concept of combat didn't apply.
A warning. That was all it had been. And it had already reached this.
Kisame lowered his hand slowly. Let himself step all the way back out of his fighting posture.
"Relax. I'm not going to do anything to you."
Naruto's voice came warm and easy.
"Ask whatever you want. And I have a few things I'd like to ask you as well."
He meant it. He had no intention of raising a hand against Kisame. In his own world, Kisame was part of the Ember organization. This Kisame was from another world, and between them there was no history of any kind -- but even so, Naruto found he couldn't bring himself to strike that familiar face.
Kisame was still working through what he'd just seen. The image of that enormous crimson apparition filling the sky was still sitting in his mind, refusing to clear.
If this person genuinely wanted to do something to him, there was nothing Kisame could do about it. Since he'd been told he wasn't a target, the only reasonable move was to stay put and figure out what was happening.
"What's going on with Itachi-san?"
He spoke first. That was the question that mattered most.
"And what exactly is it you're after?"
His eyes stayed fixed on Naruto's face.
"Don't worry about Itachi." Naruto answered without hesitation. "I can't speak to every detail of what happens over there. But he won't die."
No elaboration. No explanation beyond that. But there was something about the simplicity of it that carried more weight than a longer reassurance would have.
Kisame didn't push. He nodded once, set the question aside.
"...Your face," he continued. "And that chakra. Nine-Tails chakra. Who are you actually?"
The intelligence on the Nine-Tails jinchuriki was clear. Uzumaki Naruto was an orphan. No family, no parents, raised alone in Konoha since childhood, treated by the village as though the fox inside him were something to be afraid of.
If he had a father -- if there was a father who looked this similar to him, and who carried this kind of power -- then why hadn't this person appeared the first time Kisame had come to take the kid?
None of it added up.
"Because I am Uzumaki Naruto," Naruto said, his voice level. "The future version. And the version from another world."
Kisame's face went rigid.
That shark-like face, which had never been built for a wide range of expression, now managed to produce something that read very clearly as: are you serious right now?
It was the truth. But the truth was so absurd that saying it plainly made it sound more dishonest than any lie would have.
He didn't push further though, because Naruto kept going.
"I've answered a lot of your questions. Now you answer one of mine."
"Why did you join Obito's side? Or Madara's, as he presents himself."
The question landed out of nowhere. Kisame didn't respond immediately. His eyes narrowed by instinct -- a defensive reflex.
Naruto didn't give him room to think, and continued.
"You despise the Bloody Mist policy. I know that much. The graduation exam that forces students of the same year to kill each other. The massacres and purges targeting clans with bloodline limits. The rules that treat shinobi as disposable tools and sanction killing your own comrades to protect classified information."
"All of that is something you hate."
"But every part of it -- the Bloody Mist policy that carved into you, that pushed you far enough to defect -- it was the product of one person pulling strings behind the Fourth Mizukage. That person was Obito. The exact man you now serve."
"Why did you choose the side of the thing that broke you?"