Naruto, X-overs 1. MARVEL Naruto 1: Fox off the Mountain

Fox off the Mountain

Mists had risen off the waters of Hong Kong in the early hours just before dawn. It served to conceal most things from the sight of the innocent and the just. Such as the cargo being secretly loaded onto a small freighter by a band of street thugs and dockhands who knew to keep their mouths shut. Overseeing the operation was a large Hong Kong native, his face covered in scars, his suit clean and pressed. Beside him stood two bodyguards, also wearing clean suits, with their hands never far from the guns concealed in their jackets. They were prepared for anything, cops, rival gangs, anything. Except that which had rode in on the mists.

The first sign that something had gone amiss was when the men on the perimeter of the dock and warehouse failed to call in on time. The boss decided to call in some guards off the ship. They came down the loading ramps and gangplanks, semiautomatics and handguns out and ready. The boss pulled out a cell-phone but before he could dial a knife flew out of the mists and struck it out of his hand, leaving a clean and bleeding gash in its wake.

"Get him!" yelled the boss, and the men obeyed, firing blind into the mists. The bullets hit nothing but air and water. A cry and a splash and the boss saw one of the guards was gone. Two more cries followed by two metallic thuds and two more were gone. The boss had his own handgun out and tried to fire into the mists along with his men, but they did not strike their unseen enemy. Then the laughter came. Loud, raucous, almost like some kid the boss had heard running through the streets. It came from everywhere, from the mists around them, from the air above their heads, and the boss could have sworn he felt the concrete beneath his feet ever so slightly shake in time with the laughter. The boss had enough, "Come out. Are you such a coward as to rely on mists and shadows rather than face us?"

"Wow, now there's some balls." The boss whirled to where the voice had come from just behind but all he saw were dust specks disturbed by the wind. Wait. There wasn't any wind otherwise the mist would have already been blown away. "Guess I've got to give you Wo Shing Wo1 that." The boss turned towards the warehouse, where his remaining men were pointing their guns, and where a very strange sight stood.

In front of the dockside doors of the warehouse, before a crowd of dockworkers cowering amongst crates and loading machines, and out in the open for all to see, stood a young man. The stranger's hair was sunny yellow, his skin lightly tanned, and his blue eyes shined with a light that the boss had only seen on the most devoted street racers. But the rest of face and head, save for his mouth was concealed by a mask of some sorts. The mask connected along his neck to a black armless bodysuit with the shoulders and sides marked by six bands of orange. The boss could hear a few of the men behind him snickering. The fools. If what indeed stood before them was some new masked vigilante like they had all over the US, then there was no telling what the stranger could be capable of. The boss looked the costumed stranger in the eye, "What have you done with my men."

The stranger's face broke into a broad grin, "Wow, guts and you care about your comrades. That's something. Don't worry, they're all back on your boat taking a long nap." Suddenly the stranger pointed at the boss, "Tell you what Wo Shing Wo man, tell me where you're shipping this stuff for Ghost Snake and leave it so I," gesturing with a thumb to himself, "won't have to kick more of your asses." And still he smiled.

The boss narrowed his eyes at the stranger, "I am afraid that neither is possible. The shipment is paid for and as you have identified us as Wo Shing Wo then you know we cannot simply let you get away with this."

The stranger just kept smiling, "Understood." Then he moved and he seemed to run on the air. Gunfire fell upon him in streams and torrents, a dozen barrels spitting lead and flame. But none of it touched him. The stranger, who laughed and smiled the whole time, just swerved and danced around the bullets that came at him. He closed in on one guard who then tried to strike with the butt of his gun. But the stranger let fly an open palm, breaking through the gun and sending the man spinning. He then swerved onto the next nearest gunmen and, without slowing down, grabbed him, spun, and tossed him in a long arc into the water. Two more gunmen went down just as quickly but the rest, including the boss retreated up onto the deck of the freighter. They formed themselves into a circle in the middle of the deck, weapons facing all directions. Except up.

When he came down into the deck, the force of the landing dented the steel deck and scattered the men in all directions. They had been rendered disoriented, shocked, and mostly unaware of what had just happened. Then he danced among them, riding the wind, wielding the strength of an ogre, and striking with fists that felt like sone, until only the boss was left. He'd lost his handgun over the side in the stranger's sudden and thunderous attack. He carried a spare strapped to his thigh but what good was it going to do against such a man?

When the stranger finished knocking out the last of the men, he turned to the boss, and jumped clear from one side of the deck to the other where the boss lay. He stood tall above the boss, and the triad man suddenly felt as if he were at the foot of a mountain. "Are you going to tell me about Ghost Snake now?" The boss looked up just as the sun broke over the horizon and set the stranger's yellow hair an even more vibrant glow. The sunlight danced off his blue eyes and bright, white smile.

"Who are you?"

The stranger crossed his arms, squared his shoulders, and spoke in a voice filled with iron and will, "I'm the future Great Sage of the Mountain Wrapped in Leaves. I'm Stonefox." Smiling the whole time. "Now start talking."

1 Wo Shing Wo- one of the oldest of the Honk Kong triads. Brought to you via Wikipedia.


	2. MARVEL Naruto 2: Hunter in the Dark

Forgot to add the disclaimer in the previous chapter- the series Naruto and the MARVEL universe are not creative property and belong solely to their authors and companies.

Hunter in the Dark

The chanting filled the chamber, deep, resonant, and using words that had not been used in centuries. Power thrummed with each uttering, each syllable with a presence of its own. None could feel this more than the circle of six dark robed men standing within the intricate circle placed in the center of the chamber. Perhaps fortunately the young woman could not discern the meaning within the chanting. She had more pressing concerns as she was tied down to the very center of the circle and the ring of strange men. And as she was a nurse she also recognized something else about the room she was in. It reeked of blood.

She had already been trembling when the chanting seemed to intensify in volume and repetition. Was there something in the air, she thought, everything feels like it's getting heavier, it's getting harder to breath the air is so thick. And… was that growling? She dared to look between the robed men, into the shadows at the edges of the chamber. The shadows were moving. A whimper of fear escaped her. One of the robed men paused in his chanting and looked down upon her.

"Have no fear woman," His voice reminded her of some of the doctors she had worked with, one's who were horrible at lying, "Know that your sacrifice is to serve something far greater than yourself." She was too shaken by all that surrounded her that she couldn't bring herself to ask what the man meant. Even then the one who had addressed her quickly resumed his chanting. The atmosphere grew more ominous, and the shadows seemed to come alive. She tried to avoid looking at them until something caught her eye.

There! Standing near what looked like a staircase that went up, was a man. The man wore what she swore had to be a dark blue ninja's costume, with a black cloth wrapped around his head concealing all but his dark eyes. He looked right at the subdued woman and held a finger to his hidden lips in a gesture of silence. Then the chanting stopped.

The woman dared to glance up and she saw that one of the robed men had stepped forward, holding above his head an ugly and twisted dagger. Two more men stepped forward and gripped her at the arms and shoulders, keeping her still. Slowly the man with the knife brought down the ugly thing so as to center it on her heart. He raised the blade up again and the woman knew this time it was going to come down, fast and strong, right into her heart. She wanted to scream, yell, cry, but all she could do was stare at the tip of the dagger. But then, it was gone. The dagger was gone. And a heartbeat later she realized, so too were the hands holding it. The man who had been about to kill her was sent flying into the shadows of the chamber and standing in his place was the ninja-in-blue, with black, smoking, blade in his hand.

For a moment nothing happened, nobody moved, even the shadows had ceased their shifting and coiling. Then all the robed men leapt away and dived into the shadows. The ninja pulled something out of a sash and tossed it high into the air. The woman saw the object and noticed it looked like a small wooden plaque with kanji carved into it. The plaque floated up above and seemed to pulse in the air. From the shadows came various cries of anguish and frustration, some clearly human and some clearly not. Something flashed in the corner of her eye, like light off metal, and suddenly the ropes holding her were cut. The ninja's eyes met the woman's once more. "Leave." And she did. Half stumbling along the way, but she made it to the stairs. She looked back once more at the man who saved her, but his attention seemed to focus on the shadows where her kidnappers had retreated. Yet he still knew she was there. "Leave. The way is clear to the outside."

"Thank you." He did not respond and she had spent enough time in the dark. As she as ascended the stairs, the shadows reached out as if to grab her ankles, but they were stopped by a series of ebony colored throwing knives that burned as they cut into the shadows. Throughout the chamber the masked man could hear more pained hisses and squeals.

"You will pay for your affront," One of the robed men stepped forward from the dark, the one whose hands had been lost; "Our master will make it so. I personally will-" His sentence went unfinished as the intruder's blade sliced clean through his neck, sending the head rolling and leaving the body to fall back into the shadows. He slowly returned the black blade, what looked like a katana with its back straight, to its sheath. He looked down onto the place where the cultists had fallen. And he sneered.

The room exploded. From the shadows of chamber came swarms of demons, all small in size and stature, but bristling with spines, claws, and fangs. Their flesh looked to be born of shadows and darkness. From their mouths (and many had more than one) the demons hissed, snarled, and even screamed in languages clearly not human in sound. The shadow-swarms closed in on the intruder. Their lethally tipped limbs grasping towards him, longing to rend, break, and tear. But none could touch him. Oh they tried, the little demons tried, but they just could not touch him. With just the slightest movements and shifts to his body he evaded them. Claws that should have ripped flesh off bone passed just within a breath of him. Then the sword came out. The blackened blade cut through demons as if it were treading water. And where the blade cut demon flesh, smoke coursed from burned wounds. In a matter of minutes, the smoldering corpses of over a score of demons lay scattered and broken on the floor. The remaining creatures retreated from the swordsman whose blade had wreaked such havoc and ruin upon their kin. From the dark the cultists yelled at their supposed minions. They called out labels of cowardice and weakness, promising pain and punishment but all to no avail. The demons knew what they faced, what stood before them, and what was all too ready to devour them. The bodies of the demons melted away and streamed back into the shadows. And as the last of the demons retreated so too did the shadows of the chamber, returning to more normal dimensions and revealing the would-be magicians.

"Who are you?" one of them cried out. The stranger turned his gaze upon the questioner. Then for what seemed to be the first time that night, the robed one could see the man's eyes. Twin red orbs, each one holding a black pinwheel of two swirled dots spinning around a third central dot. "An Uchiha? Impossible! They're all dead except for-" but like his fellow before him he was cut off, this time with the stranger's black sword skewered through his abdomen, with the stranger's masked face leaning close to his ear.

"Don't," and the stranger's voice came out in a whisper filled with hate and malevolence that contrasted with the calm of his tone, "say his name." The stranger withdrew his blade from the smoking wound and before anyone could blink, the magician's corpse fell into quartered pieces. The stranger turned his burning gaze upon the rest of the magicians in the chamber, too frozen by what they had witnessed to run or fight.

"For the righteous man a sword and a spear. But for the wicked man… a short rope and a shallow grave." Then the screaming started.


End file.

Naruto, X-overs