บท 66: Calm before the Maelstrom
"So... everyone is expecting us to form a team now... we're Pro Heroes."
Momo didn't know what to say to Naruto as the two of them sat together. Shrinking Ray, the Pro Hero who would be arriving at UA to help them with their mission, had his flight from Europe delayed due to some weird weather that had consumed one of the small cities. All of the flights in the country had been cancelled due to just how horrible the weather there was, meaning the hero they were suppose to meet with wasn't going to show until the flights were running again. They had some more time to say their goodbyes to everyone before they went on their first job as pro heroes, since they weren't going to be able to stay in the dorms with everyone.
"I think this is... I don't like this." Momo figured out what to say.
She was achieving her dream of becoming a hero, she did it. That was all she wanted since she was a child, and she had been given it to her after she helped save the world. In all aspects, this was her just reward for her actions. She did something amazing, and that led to her being allowed to become a pro hero early. In retrospect, she should have seen this coming, but at the same time, she never thought achieving her dream would leave her feeling so bitter inside. She looked at Naruto's surprisingly calm face, and she reached out and grabbed his shoulder.
"Hmmm?"
"You have an idea on how to get us out of this... right?" Momo wanted to graduate with everyone.
"The only way I can think, is to show everyone we aren't ready... that we need to come back to school." Naruto did know of a way to return to being students, but he wasn't going to do it. "That would mean having to show we're incompetent heroes... and people will get hurt if we don't do a good job. I don't like leaving me friends behind, but I'm just going to try and focus on the good I can do for my friends." Naruto clenched and unclenched his fist.
Momo sat back down and looked like she was going to cry a little.
This wasn't what she wanted.
"Our friends are going to be heart broken. How are we going to tell them?" Momo couldn't think clearly, everything in her mind was just thrown out of order. The answers weren't coming to her.
Naruto sighed and sat down next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into a one armed hug.
"I'm going to try and make this better, I promise."
"You promise?"
"I'm giving you the promise of a lifetime." Naruto gave his word, honest and true in his convictions, and she leaned into his side, feeling calmer than before. She felt his warmth against her body, and his smell was just... relaxing to her as she felt safe next to him. Not safe in the physical sense, but she felt like he was guarding something more important with his presence... she felt her heart grow warmer.
She took a deep breath, and she closed her eyes, before she exhaled it all out again.
"To think... today started out so fun... then we met the future Naruto... and everything is just turning to chaos." Momo didn't want to say it, but she felt like she knew a little of what happened. She looked at Naruto, before she leaned up towards him. It was a simple kiss, on his cheek, nothing romantic or intense. A quick, soft peck was all that she intended to give him. "... Thank you Naruto. You've been supporting everyone, and we all want to thank you... you've been Class A's leader, our pillar of support, the one we look to for an example of what we want to be... you're my hero." Momo ended her soft kiss, and wrapped both of her arms around him.
She was crying.
Naruto smiled.
'Mina... she's not going to take this well... this will break her heart... between being a pro hero, taking care of Eri, and improving myself... I can't...' Naruto's eyes grew softer, when he thought about what he was going to have to do.
His heart hurt.
While they were living at the school, Naruto was able to keep their relationship going on. It had been easy to balance school life with Mina, and while Eri had added a little stress to the relationship, it had been strong enough to take it. With him becoming a pro hero, and Mina being a student, they weren't going to have any time to be together anymore. Naruto's arm around Momo grew firmer, his own shoulders shaking as his dry eyes watered. He couldn't be together with Mina, be a pro hero, and take care of Eri while trying to balance his life with Mina's school life. It wasn't good for Mina, and it wouldn't be good for Eri either. He couldn't do that to either of them.
Eri was more important than Mina.
He had taken it upon himself to raise Eri, he needed to be there for her and support her. Mina had her own family, she was old enough to start growing on her own, and she was emotionally stable enough to realize what he was doing was for the best.
"Are you okay?" Momo looked up at him through her tears.
He smiled.
"I'll be all right, I've just got a difficult road ahead of me... we're leaving behind our friends, and... I've got too much on my plate now. I can't be together with Mina anymore... it's for both of our own good that we separate." Naruto spoke with deep, calming breaths. The two teens separated, with Naruto wiping his tears away.
So... this was what it felt like to give up what you love?
His father had gone through this pain, when he forced himself to kill his mother and stop her rampage. He had gone through something like this, and Naruto could only feel more respect for the man. He went through something much worse than this, since Naruto would still see Mina again one day, but his father killed his mother, knowing they would both die.
"I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault."
'I'm sorry... that I feel happy about that.' Momo respoke in her mind. Through this entire situation they were in, through everything, she felt a small bit of happiness when she heard what Naruto said. After spending months watching him, being together in class with him, tutoring him, and training with him her feelings had just grown and grown. Being with him, but never being able to confess her feelings because of him being with Mina, had been painful for her. When Mina awakened her to her feelings in that bath together, it had come crashing down on her like a tsunami.
-St. Lavender Academy-
"For the Dead Bone Pulse Quirk, the Quirk factor is located inside of the bones, the marrow, and the corresponding part of the brain that would control the world would have to be located in a similar part of the brain as those for enhances strength. Beginning extraction of the bone marrow."
Corpses, and a few of them.
A young, rather handsome man, stood in the middle in a full surgical outfit, large, thick glasses in front of his eyes with a his long grey hair in a ponytail. Each of the corpses that he had on the tables were all known for having different Quirks in life, and each of the bodies were from either people who donated their bodies to science, stolen corpses from graves, or from students at the school who died in training accidents, or were just murdered by other students. He had plenty of corpses to work with, examine, before finally taking apart and putting them back together.
Quirks were not some magical force.
They were physical, biological traits that could be genetically passed down. That meant that they should be able to be transferred from person to person, provided that all the parts of the body needed for the Quirk were surgically implanted for them to work. Like muscle Quirks, by taking the muscles fibers out and implanting the parts of the brain that regulated super strength, one could gift the Strength Quirk from somebody to another person. It was completely possible to grant a person multiple Quirks through this process, but since studying corpses like this was looked down on, and the process was highly looked down on, he could never do it in Japan. Here though, after he had been contacted by the man Orochimaru, who nearly destroyed the world, he had been glad to know that he would be able to continue his research deep underground St. Lavender Academy.
All he had to do was one thing.
Create the perfect body.
"Kabuto." The computer monitor turned one, and showed Orochimaru's now youthfully designed face.
Thanks to his mind having been mostly mechanical in design near the end of his life, he had been able to download himself to his back-up servers and allowed his mind to live on, even though his original body had died. Now, without a body, and without his life's work, he was reduced to little more than a face on a screen, forced to work through others now.
"Lord Orochimaru, please hurry, I'm quite busy creating the perfect being." Kabuto spoke as his machine finished extracting all of the bone marrow from the corpse he had been working on. With a small tank of bone marrow, he used a scalpel and began carefully cutting out the part of the brain that controlled the Quirk he was taking. The Quirk was a highly powerful one, and it would do great in his perfect warrior. "Though, I thank you for the new materials." Kabuto was too busy to listen to anything that wasn't his precious dead bodies.
He was learning so much about how Quirks worked.
"Remember who supplies you with your corpses."
"Remember that without me, you will never have a new body." Kabuto spoke back, reminding him that their relationship was one of mutual benefit. He just wanted to make the perfect warrior, for the simple reason that he wanted to see if it was possible. Once he created said warrior, he would decide if he was going to use it for good or evil, but as of now, he held no true allegiance to either side. "I will keep my word, and give you a suitable host body." Kabuto spoke with a nod to himself.
With his Quirk, it was quite simple.
Reanimation.
His Quirk allowed him to take corpses and restore them to a working condition, he could take the DNA of anything, and use that DNA to making a working corpse that he could then control. He didn't truly bring them back to life, but with science, he should be able to restore a body to the point that it was alive, though the memories inside of the body would naturally have died out long ago, and the soul wouldn't be inside of the body either. He couldn't forcefully rip souls from the afterlife, but creating a body for Orochimaru's mind to inhabit would be no problem for him.
"I'm sending you two very special corpses, both of these corpses have the same, powerful Quirk... I want you to study it, and see if you can use them to recreate something very valuable to me."
"Which Quirk, and if the item is related to their bodies, it will be recreated when I restore their bodies." Kabuto gave a forced tone of boredom, as interested as he actually was in special corpses. "What Quirk do these corpses have?" Kabuto asked with veiled intrigue.
"Monster Fox."
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