Naruto: The Seraph Project

Chapter 14: Forgotten Legends (Updated)

I wake up with a start, swallowing a deep breath of air.

I hurriedly sit down in my bed, bringing a hand to my dying heart; my chest is hammered with a sharp pain that fades excruciatingly slowly. I breathe as I've never breathed before. I am all shaking, probably as pale as a ghost. I am soaked and I am sweating. I feel dizzy and for a second, black stars dance before my eyes.

When my vision stabilizes, I analyze the place in which I am. I am in my hospital bed and stuffed under the white sheets that are moistened with my bodily fluids. I am in the room assigned to me and which, little by little, is warmed by the first rays of the day. The window is partially open, allowing a gentle breeze to enter, shake the curtains and fill the place with the many scents of summer. Silence and loneliness are broken by the song of birds.

Much calmer, I search for answers to this nightmarish dream.

I was drowning and I experienced death. I opened my eyes when everything had vanished; I was convinced that I had fallen into a last sleep, sure and certain that I was living my last moments. I felt my lungs on fire fill with water, including the pain leaving them immediately. My heart is still beating, I am alive. Yet this is too real to be a lucid dream, but too unreal to be reality.

Also, if it was a genjutsu, when was I a victim of it? Naruto? Impossible. His knowledge in the matter is lamentable and catastrophic, even absent; he's already struggling to free himself from a simple spell, he'd be unable to cast one, especially one as complex as this.

A horrible headache twists my temples, forcing me to put my hands on them; to this, an odious tinnitus stuns me and makes me deaf for the time of a breath. During this fleeting crisis, memories come to mind. Last night, I'm one hundred percent convinced that I went to bed after leaving Naruto's jail. There's also that icy chill and unpleasant tingling sensation. I don't forget this disturbing fatigue of a great intensity that I was enslaved to. I couldn't even inform Lady Tsunade about Naruto's injuries, although I did mention it to Shikamaru. I almost lost consciousness on the way to my bed and once under the covers, I immediately fell asleep.

The crisis over, I breathe in and out slowly and calmly. I reflect and think; my thoughts race like a panicking crowd during an apocalypse. This dream ... whatever it was... It's the cause of this mortal fatigue and this violent awakening. While unlikely, if I include the possibility that Naruto did indeed put me under genjutsu, what I experienced almost makes sense ... well, in part. I don't know why he made me experience a drowning that will haunt me for nights to come...

What if it was Naruto who spoke to me in his own way? If so, what did he mean by that? This insistence on his own name... I deduce that he doesn't remember at all who he is, even his first name. He'd try to understand why I call him Naruto? At first glance, he's convinced that he doesn't have a name, that I am the one who baptized him thus. What does that mean? Is his amnesia that severe?

In all of this, what happened next troubles me and again, that is a euphemism. That strange scene in which I was paralyzed and unable to move, the teenager who seemed to be absorbing my chakra...

Like a clap of thunder, a fragment of my distant past strikes me with brutality.

I must have been almost five years old when my father was still around. He told me stories of all kinds while sleep gradually took me with it. Some told of legendary ninja exploits or other implausible tales. At that age, I was unimpressed by these adventures that aroused wonder in ordinary children. I was constantly asking him to stop bullshitting me.

One such tale involved seemingly humanoid creatures feeding on chakra. Since no one had ever seen them, their existence served to spice up stories to scare young ninjas to become. In the night, these beings wandered in search of prey and haunted dreams, giving way only to nocturnal paralysis and incessant nightmares.