Medium Meld (Naruto/Gamer, Male OC)

Chapter Twenty - Dreaming of Konoha

"I'm sorry," I said quietly.

Fu started crying again.

I stared at the ground at my feet, unable to look at her; I didn't know what I was supposed to do now; I'd fucked this up badly. Takigakure was still burning to the ground, and neither of us had any water techniques to deal with this amount of fire. It had already spread to the rest of the village, and we had been forced to evacuate because of the heat and smoke.

The conflagration had also dropped burning debris from the enormous tree on the surrounding areas and started multiple fires through the forest. We had needed to move several hundred meters away from Takigakure to avoid getting caught in the flames.

I didn't know what to do now; there were things I needed to check on, things that I couldn't ignore, but what if I messed up again? What would go wrong if I fucked up even worse than I had here? But If I just stopped and didn't do anything, the world might end.

I was stuck between a rock and an even bigger rock.

I knew that the timeline for Shippuden was about to start because this shit had been one of Akatsuki's opening moves along with capturing the Steam guy. I was fairly sure that Gaara was next in line; I most likely had less than six months at most. Which meant that the Land of Demons shitshow was going to start straight afterward, if not during or before.

Should I attempt to interfere with that as well? Deidara had kicked Gaara's ass before abducting him. Deidara had even gotten away from the events mostly unscathed, or maybe down a limb or something? But he had still gotten away, to later fight Sasuke.

That old puppet lady and Sakura had managed to somehow take Sasori down originally, but Gaara had still been killed and his tailed beast taken. The old puppet lady had then revived him at the cost of her life.

It was a pretty weak summary of events, but I couldn't remember all the finer details.

If I tried to help and everything went well, I could keep Gaara from having the tailed beast taken in the first place, I might also be able to keep the old lady alive, and she was pretty strong, from what I remembered, another strong ninja available to help stop the end of the world.

But what if I fucked it up as I did here?

What if I tried to help Gaara and Deidara blew up the village with his suicide technique or something? Did I let bad things happen, to avoid the chance of worse things happening? What were you supposed to do in situations like these?

It was a warped version of the trolly problem in a way.

Did I let the train run over Gaara, and one of the others ends up sacrificing her life to save him, or did I try and derail the train while desperately hoping I wasn't sending it straight towards Sunagakure to potentially murder tens of thousands.

Okay, maybe the comparison had fallen apart entirely, but it made sense to me, at least.

We had to move again a few days later because the fire had started taking more of the forest. Fu followed me towards the border of the Land of Fire because she didn't have a home to return to, and we stopped just short of it by several miles, to set up a temporary camp.

There was a hive of activity along the border, ninja being sent out to investigate the massive fires in the Land of Waterfalls. I don't know if many had managed to escape Takigakure or if any had at all, but if they had, the news would spread quickly. If the circumstances had been different, I would have probably gone straight over the border and spun some bullshit story to get through, but I couldn't do that with Fu here.

"Why did they-" Fu whispered, "What was the point?"

I let out a long breath.

"Fu," I said quietly, "I suck at this kind of thing, so I'm just going to say it bluntly, they were after you because you're a Jinchuriki."

"Why? And how do you know what I am?" Fu whispered, "You're not from Taki."

"They want to extract all of the tailed beasts and kill all the hosts," I said evenly. "I know who you are because I know who all of the Jinchuriki are."

"I wasn't even in the village!" Fu said heatedly before she suddenly started crying again. "Shibuki told me I shouldn't have left."

"You did what you wanted to do; there's no shame in that." I said easily, "You had no idea you were even being hunted; it's not your fault."

It's mine; I didn't say.

It was, at least partially, I could have gone here first, told them about the Akatsuki perhaps, instead of going off on an adventure to find a stupid sword that I hadn't even used because I was too scared to get close to either of them, couldn't even track them properly in close combat.

I could have engaged Kakuzu and Hidan outside the village, even though I probably would have died. I had let them attack them first, so I had a better chance to fight them and live.

I was hardly any better than they were.

"Fu," I said evenly, "I'm trying to do a lot of important stuff, and one of those things is to try to stop Akatsuki from doing things like this."

I was trying and failing pretty badly, though, given the current state of the Land of Waterfall. Fu couldn't know how depressing my thoughts were, too buried in her own grief, but I'd managed to drag out her of her sorrow for a moment, at least.

"Do you want to help me stop them?" I said quietly.

Fu didn't even wait a moment before she spoke up.

"Yeah," Fu whispered. "I do."