Chapter 20: Nindō 0020: Waiting Ad Infinitum
The night sky glimmered with stars along with a crescent moon that shone through the window of Naruto's home, illuminating the otherwise dark bedroom room in the moonlight.
Naruto was cuddled up with Hinata in their bed with his back toward the moon and his wife in his arms as he rubbed her belly, "I'm going to be making a trip to Uzu soon," Naruto said. "My clone found something, but I need to go there in person to check it out and deal with it."
"Can't you stay for longer?" Hinata asked in a pleading voice. "Just until the morning?"
"I'm not leaving now," Naruto said, amused. "It's the first and second rounds of the Chunin exams that are going to take place tomorrow, I have to be there, at least for an opening speech. Not to mention the other Kage are all going to arrive along with their contestants tomorrow."
"Oh," Naruto felt Hinata's body melt into his as she pushed herself closer to him, "That's good. Leave after the third round if you are going to," She said wantingly, "Not before that, okay?"
Naruto could feel from the heat in her tone why she wanted him to stay and couldn't help but smile as his hand that was rubbing her belly moved lower, "My Hinata is also needy sometimes, huh?" His lips brushed against her ear as Hinata shivered.
"Naruto-kun …" She said in a high-pitched voice as his hand reached its destination, sadly, Hinata's hand pressed upon his, stopping him from making any moves, "Hurts …" Her pained whisper made Naruto give up s he pulled his hand back higher to rub her abdomen in a specific pattern.
"How annoying," Naruto's tone took a dark turn that made Hinata shiver, but she didn't seem scared and more excited instead.
"Just a few days, Naruto-kun," Hinata whispered. "You know that."
Naruto growled in response to her words as his lips made their way to her neck, deciding to tease her instead. Hinata's whimpers and suppressed moans filled the room for the next few hours.
…
The next day.
[Naruto …] Kurama's heavy voice reverberated in Naruto's mind.
[Yo, you're finally up.] Naruto was currently addressing the young shinobi of Konoha and the other four hidden villages with a motivational speech as he replied to Kurama mentally.
[Are you … truly all right? The things I saw … felt. They concern me immensely.]
[What are you talking about? So I went crazy for a few years, big deal. I got through it.] Naruto continued his uplifting and motivating speech for the young ones.
[What about the second time? There was a third time after that which was even worse. And why is there a huge blank at the end that leads right back to the current timeline? What happened there?]
[Oh right … You can't actually know about anything that involves #%$^%@, can you?]
[Involving who?]
[Let me finish this speech. I'll go back home and talk to you in peace. I'll tell you my current perspective on all of what happened. Then I'll tell you about the reason that I was able to come back to this point in time in such a manner.]
[Time manipulation always leaves holes, Naruto. I know from experience.]
[And I know that what helped me come back is an absolute authority far beyond what you can think of at the moment. Be patient Kurama. I'll explain things to you soon.]
It took Naruto another hour to work out the first round's announcements where Kurama's impatient pestering annoyed him out of his mind. He disappeared the moment he got the chance to replace himself with a clone. His destination was the bedroom in his house as he started meditating, appearing in his sewer-like mental space.
"I'd forgotten how dark and dreary this place used to be …" Naruto looked around with a sigh as the state of his mind instantly started changing. With each step that he took the whole place took up a much sunnier and landscape-like environment. In a few seconds, Naruto's dreary mindscape turned into an endless grassland with a forest, a house, and all sorts of things.
"I hope you don't expect me to stay in that house …" The huge nine-tailed fox sat beside the house, looking down at it. "I'm not that small."
Naruto chuckled as he approached the fox and sat down close to him, "You know, Kurama," He said, "when I ended up in that dimension. My first thought was of denial. I expected Kawaki to return at any time and apologize for everything. I imagined all sorts of scenarios. Ones where many years had passed and everything was fine. Another where he needed my help after all that time. Even one where he freed us instantly, treating it as a joke that I would then reprimand him for. As you probably saw, that's not what happened. What followed was seething fury. I tried everything I could to free myself, to free Hinata. Nothing. I even spent some time crazily screaming into the nothingness of that abyss to let me out, hoping someone would hear. Eventually, I gave up, hoping that I would just age and wither away or something. That didn't happen either. I don't know what made it that I was free in that paradox of a dimension, but I was only free to the extent that my mind was free and my body was able to move according to the whims of my mind, but it wasn't free."
Seeing the dark expression on Naruto's face, Kurama recalled, "That was when you tried to kill yourself. Trying to detonate your chakra the same way we did with the Baryon."
"Didn't work," Naruto shook his head. "In hindsight, it was a good thing, as you can see," He spread his arms, gesturing to himself. "I didn't know then, but trying to explode myself was just the start. Spending tens of thousands of years waiting for someone to show up in a timeless void. Waiting for something to happen, anything … I had thoughts at that time that I am not very proud of anymore, especially the ones I acted upon. I completely lost my mind. My being, everything. But eventually, that also got old. That was when the worst of the worst came. The time that I spent as an apathetic unfeeling mass of whatever floating in that abyss. I think Kawaki did visit me at that time, but I couldn't be bothered to move or care about what he was saying or planning. Sadly, sociopathy also got old rather quickly and I desperately desired to feel something, anything. It was like there was a voice in my mind that was screaming at me that it wanted some kind of emotion. Emotions that I honestly had completely forgotten."
Kurama listened intently to each of Naruto's words, having previously seen the exact scenes that he was describing.
"This cycle repeated once again and I was still insane when my memories cut off for you. And that's when I met #%$^%@," Naruto noticed Kurama's confusion and smiled, "Don't worry, there are absolute universal rules that prevent anyone from comprehending her name unless you have permission. That includes beings with even the basest of consciousnesses."
"You calling me an instinctual beast?" Kurama growled at Naruto.
"I'm calling you a fluffy fox," Naruto scoffed, "Take a smaller form once we're done with this talk. Hima was asking for a pet the other day, it's better that you take that role, you can keep her safe as well."
"So what about this … entity that you met?" Kurama ignored Naruto's words and asked his question.
"I'm serious about the pet thing," Naruto said before answering. "#%$^%@ got curious about what kind of person was still alive after having experienced so many lifetimes — literally millions of years. At the start, she just viewed me from afar, but eventually, she ended up getting too curious as I spent countless years not knowing what to do. When she showed up in front of me, my first action was to grab her — she's a ############# —" Noticing Kurama's confusion, Naruto realized, "I can't really describe her to you either, I guess. So anyway, I was a tad bit crazy when I first met her. And by that, I mean completely insane. Still, she stayed, observing me, making fun of me, and in general infuriating me. For another million or so years. Fun, right? I don't know how it happened but in that time, I seemed to have gone from mad to somewhat normal. I don't know what what she did, but I seemed to be getting fixed as she messed with me and plain bullied my ass."
"Who exactly is this … entity?" Kurama couldn't help but ask.
"Someone extremely important to the universe, without her everything everywhere would crumble. Remember that thing we found about the Ōtsutsuki patriarch who ascended and became a literal god according to those murals? People of his level are like bugs in front of her," Naruto's explanation had Kurama feeling an increasing level of disbelief.
"And you're telling me that she took an interest in you?" He couldn't help but ask, uncaring if it sounded offensive to Naruto.
"The universe, Kurama," Naruto spoke, "Is around 26 billion years old — her words. And I, with that anomaly of having my consciousness aware in that timeless space had spent a nearly quarter of a billion years merely floating there. She, who maintains the order of all time in the universe, noticed my anomaly and came to check it out. Her arrival was no coincidence."
"Is this entity like some kind of Time God?" Kurama asked.
"In simple terms, yes," Naruto nodded. "She's the one who gave me the lead to the Mark of Dominion that the Uzumaki clan uses as their crest. She noticed the connection between me and the mark and gave me a little lead."
Kurama couldn't help but feel that Naruto had just skimped out on a very large number of details, "There's a lot more, isn't there? Stuff that you aren't planning to tell me."
"You saw how you can't even hear her name, Kurama," Naruto said. "It's better that I don't say too much since it involves forces beyond what you can comprehend."
***
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