Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto and DAN DA DAN.
Warning: Curse words. Sensitive language.
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A bell rang as a door slowly swung open. A man stepped in through the door of a cafe before stopping at the door mat, looking sideways at the crowded seats. Spotting his target, the man nonchalantly continued walking, ignoring the welcoming call of the baristas. As he reached the table, the man plopped down on the couch across the person he was meeting. He sat crossing his legs in silence, studying the appearance of the person while audibly gnawing his chewing gum.
It was a girl with dark blue, shoulder-length hair. She was wearing the typical uniform of a high schooler: a white blouse with sailor-style collar under a dark blazer, a dark blue pleated skirt, shin-length white socks, and a pair of black loafers. However, what caught his eye was the pupils of her eyes which leaned toward the color of pale lavender.
Strange. Modern Japanese's eyes don't typically have that color. She looks kinda cute though. Woah woah woah... Dealing with those pedophile aliens and youkai's is driving me insane!
Stopping his borderline pedophilic thought, the man cleared his throat. That cough got the girl's attention as she looked up at him in a jerk. While he was scrutinizing her, she was nervously rubbing her hands on the table, looking quite distraught.
"So," The man raised an eyebrow at her reaction. He took a sheet of table tissue before spitting out his chewing gum on it. "What's got you so spooked, young miss?"
The high school girl gulped nervously, struggling to look at him in the eyes. "I-... I heard that you deal with evil spirits. My friend told me that you used to help her before. Is- is it true?"
The man pursed his lips. "Maaa. So, you can see spirits?" The girl meekly nodded, abruptly closing her eyes as if she saw something. The man hummed in fascination, "Then can you tell me if there is any spirit in here right now?"
As soon as the man finished his question, the girl's body began to shake in fright. The man crossed his arms, patiently waiting for her to respond. The girl then raised her right hand and pointed at a waiter who was walking toward them with an empty tray in his hand. "Well?"
Still with her eyes closed, the girl reluctantly answered, "Th- there's a head on that tray."
The man snorted, impressed by her answer. Indeed, there was a transparent head on the tray. Its eyes were bloated and full of red veins, its cheek sunken and its mouth torn from left ear to right ear revealing a gruesome set of dark jagged teeth, but the waiter was none the wiser. As the waiter was walking past the two, the head's bloated eyes were locked onto the girl as if it noticed that she could see it. Meanwhile, the girl's shaking became more uncontrollable.
"Alright, that's enough, you son of a bitch. Go rot in hell or something." Clicking his teeth, the man snapped his right fingers, and the ghost head dispersed into thin air before disappearing completely. "Not bad, young miss. It's not that common for a person to see spirits, let alone ones that are that insignificant. You must've got some pretty special eyes."
However, when the girl hadn't yet recovered her composure, the man let out a soft sigh. "It's gone now. Don't worry, that one may look scary, but it can't do anything to you. Anyway, let's get back to business. Tell me about your problem."
"Th- there's something in my house. A female ghost." The high schooler took a few breaths to steady her heartbeat before continuing, "Last week, I saw it sitting on my dad's shoulders. And it never left his side ever since. I told my dad about it, but he- he didn't believe me. However, I noticed his health has been deteriorating since that day. Now, he's bedridden. We went to the hospital for a checkup, but the doctor found nothing wrong."
The man listened to her recount in apt attention, his right hand soundlessly drumming the table. "What does it look like?"
The girl's eyebrows slightly burrowed as she struggled to describe what she saw. "It wore some kind of a dancer costume I'd never seen before. It wore a silk pleated dress with a silk cloth draped across its left shoulder. There was also a pointed headdress on its head. But I couldn't see its face clearly. The face was a blur."
So far, the description fits nothing from here. "Did your dad bring home anything strange these days?"
"Strange? ... I don't- !" The high school girl widened her eyes as she suddenly remembered something, "Yes! He did bring a wooden statue last week. He told me he bought it from a local souvenir store when he went on a business trip in Southeast Asia. Now that I think about it, the statue looks very similar to the ghost. Could it be that-?"
"Interesting." The man cut her off, his hand stroking his chin in a thinking pose. "Before I can say anything for sure, I need to take a look at it first. Can I come over to your house tonight?"
The girl fervently nodded. She nearly jumped from her seat, desperate and elevated at the possibility of getting rid of that spirit in her house. "Please!"
"Alright, text me your address. I'll be there at around 9 tonight." He pulled out his smartphone before handing it over to her. "What's your number?"
After sharing their contact number, the girl stood up and bowed at him, "S-see you tonight, Uzumaki-san." She then left through the cafe's front door, with a spring in her step.
The man nodded without looking at her as his eyes fixated on the screen of his smartphone. Specifically, the name newly saved in his contact. Her name. "Hyuga Hinata."
He let out a chuckle, talking to himself. "How ironic. Not only do her eyes look similar, but she also has the same name. Are you playing a joke on me, fate?" Uzumaki Naruto stood up, cracked his neck and left the cafe himself.
As he traversed the sidewalk outside, he turned to look at the setting sun that painted the sky reddish pink amidst sporadic white clouds. As its rays shone on him, it shaded his blond hair an orange hue making him look even more of a foreigner amongst the black-hair population of Japan. This chance encounter with a person who shared the name with the one he knew spurred memories long buried within his mind. Nostalgia started to kick in. "How long has it been since I arrived here? A few hundred years? I don't remember anymore. But not once did I ever hear of your or any of our friends' names. Neji would have had a field day if he knew this. Fate really has its way, eh."
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The clock on his smartphone hit exactly 9PM when Naruto arrived at the location of Hinata's, the high school girl, house. Since it was a proper business visit, the blond wore a simple white dress shirt, black pants and leather boots. He was standing in front of the door gate outside on the road. He didn't expect the house to be in the suburb, surrounded by rice paddies. Perhaps, this might have played perfectly into the eerie vibe that he could sense from the house meters away as soon as he got out of the taxi he rode earlier. The house was of the typical one-story Japanese style, with a big tree by the wall right next to the gate.
He rang the doorbell a few times, but no one had responded yet. He took a few steps back, trying to get a wider view of the house from the outside. Maybe he might catch a silhouette of someone moving inside the house. Naruto hummed in thought before pulling his smartphone and dialed Hinata's number. The call was connected, but there was no answer. He repeated a few more times with the same result.
"Should I just jump over the wall? Nah, can't do that. That'd be trespassing. Dealing with the police last time was a pain in the ass. Almost got my name dragged through the mud." Naruto scratched the back of his neck as he contemplated what to do. The last time he violated the laws, it was such a big headache to explain what he was doing. He had to owe someone a favor to bail his ass out.
The blond man let out a frustrated groan. "I hate doing this shit." He then looked up at a security CCTV that was installed on a nearby light pole before clasping his hands, "Demonic Illusion: False Surroundings Technique!" Naruto grimaced when his jutsu was successfully activated. Genjutsu had never been his favorite. It always left a bad taste in his mouth whenever he used one as it reminded him of a certain someone who had nearly succeeded in putting his entire world under one.
Shaking away the slippery slope of thought, Naruto glanced back at his client's house. He first tried to force open the gate, but he decided not to. There was no need to cause unnecessary property damage and waste money to compensate. "Jumping over the wall it is then."
With an easy leap, Naruto landed inside on the soft ground of the front lawn. As soon as he alighted, he felt a sudden chill rolling down his arms. Then, he heard a faint singing sound, likely coming from inside the house. The blond narrowed his eyes. With a half-ram hand seal, he summoned a Torii gate, which dropped on top of and overlapped the house gate, essentially blocking off an escape route and stopping any spirits from running away. He was not familiar with spirits outside of Japan, so he was not taking any chances. However, one thing was for sure; any spirits bound by an object tended to be of vengeful nature. The more vengeful, the more powerful. It could fatally hurt its victim.
Reaching the main door, Naruto pushed aside the sliding door. A wretched smell invaded his nose. The smell was so strong it felt like a punch to his face. "Holy fucking shit."
On the floor in the middle of the living room laid the unconscious facedown form of Hinata. A few meters away from her looked to be a man standing. Naruto assumed that to be the father; however, from the man's posture it didn't seem like he was just standing. He was actually dancing(?). His left hand, bent at the wrist, was raised up to his head while his right hand dropped down to his waist. The man was also tiptoeing on one leg, bending at the knee, while raising the other one up to his buttock. His head was swaying sideways, his face frozen in a smile while his eyes were locked onto Naruto's as if enticing the blond. Meanwhile, the sound of female singing he heard earlier echoed throughout the room even louder, accompanied by a melodious sound of an instrument almost akin to the Mokugyo but was not quite so at the same time.
Naruto walked slowly toward the asleep Hinata, kneeling to check her pulse while his eye contact never leaving the possessed man. Feeling her pulse, Naruto stood back up. The girl was still alive. Channeling his Yin-Yang release, the Uzumaki approached Hinata's father, a black rod phasing out of his right hand. As he got closer, he could hear the possessed man murmuring something.
"Do you like what you see, mister? Am I pretty?"
The questions would have sounded coquettish if they came out of a pretty woman. But when said by a dad-bod middle-aged man still in his work uniforms, those words sounded so off-putting Naruto almost vomited.
Out of a sudden, the one-legged standing man sprang like a frog as he jumped toward Naruto, aiming to loop his arms around the blond's neck. In reflex, Naruto smacked the man across his face with the black rod, sending the possessed man crashing into a nearby TV. The blond cursed after seeing the damage done, "Fuck me. That TV looks very expensive." Naruto then pointed at the now discombobulated possessed man as if having a normal conversation, "Hey man. I didn't mean to do that, okay? It was self-defense, so don't charge me for that, 'ya hear?"
The possessed man stood up shakily, his body twisting and turning in a creepy contortion. "Why are you hurting me, mister? Don't you like my dancing?"
Naruto shook his body in disgust. "Come on, man. Don't go saying that shit while looking like that."
"Then I'll make you like ME!" The possessed man then lunged at Naruto again, with more vigor than before. His voice became distorted with a deep female voice overlapping his. The evil spirit was not that strong physically, but it was fast. Very fast. Naruto barely managed to raise his left arm to block. The possessed man tightly wrapped his legs around Naruto's waist before opening his mouth wide to bite the blond's arm.
Naruto grimaced as the possessed man's teeth bit into his flesh. The long sleeves of his white shirt could do nothing to stop the bite strength, the blond's blood seeping out and soaking the fabric. Naruto fell onto his back before swinging the black rod in his right hand at the man's back. He could not hit him in the head as that would break his skull and kill him.
That was why Naruto hated dealing with spirits that had already resided within human bodies. Against aliens or spirits in their incorporeal forms, he could use his full power and go all out to beat the shit out of them. However, against spirit-possessed humans, he could not deal too much physical damage to the body because the one getting hurt was the human victims, not those spirits. Conventional solution was to eject those spirits from the physical bodies, but that was easier said than done. If only he had Rinnegan, he could have used the Human Path to pull those assholes out.
However, human bodies also had limits. Even if the mind was controlled by the spirits, the bodies could still be shut down. Naruto abandoned his rod for simple fists instead. The blond began punching at the mid-section where the liver was at. After three punches, the possessed man's bite weakened. Using that brief respite, Naruto twisted his body and flipped their position. Now sitting on top in full guard, the blond landed punches after punches to the possessed man's face until his eyes rolled to the back of his head.
Naruto stopped his punches and took a few lengthy breaths. The blond shook his head in annoyance. He had to restrain his power but kept just enough to leave the man unconscious. "What a pain in the ass."
Right at that moment, Hinata awoke, her body stirring from her slump. She grabbed her head in pain. "Ow, my head. Wh-what happened?"
Naruto turned to look at the girl, "Yo. You're up, missy?"
"Huh?" Hinata groggily opened her eyes before widening at the sight of the blond restraining her unconscious father. "Dad!"
"Hey, hey. Nothing biggy. He got possessed earlier and probably knocked you out. So, I just put him to sleep, that's all." Naruto said patting the unconscious man's cheek. The wound on his left arm had already healed, but the blood-soaked sleeve was an intimidating sight.
"Please don't hurt him." Hinata pleaded, tears threatening to fall.
"Well, then we should hurry up and lift the curse before he got real hurt next time. Go bring over that wooden statue that you told me." Naruto nodded his head at her. Since he was not familiar with spirits from Southeast Asia, he decided to do some research while on his way here. He had also called a friend who was much more knowledgeable than him on the general topic of spirits. After all, she herself was a spirit medium. Although she never admitted that they were friends.
It turned out that object-bound spirits were usually products of curses created by traditional animist sorcerers in that region. In some practices, the sorcerers would trap wandering spirits that could not pass over to the afterlife inside objects and used those spirits to do their bidding. For instance, when a client came over and asked the sorcerers to place a curse on someone with whom that client had conflicts, the sorcerers would tell the client to place the objects within the vicinity of their target. After the target was in possession of the cursed objects, the cursed spirits would come out and begin wreaking havoc in the target's life. Possessing them to inflict self-damage, hurt people around them, or even commit suicide. A very sinful act.
Naruto never understood how there were people who earned a living by doing harm to people. However, considering all these years he had been in this world and going through times of crisis, the blond guessed he should not have been surprised at the human's brutality.
A few minutes had passed, yet Hinata had not come back. Naruto narrowed his eyes. Did something happen to her too? The blond clasped his hands in a Tiger hand seal. Then four black rods materialized from the floor and wrapped around Hinata's possessed father's four limbs in tight bonds. The blond stood up and began following where Hinata had gone. He climbed up the stairs then turned right. As he passed a door, he saw an opposite room where its door was open. He stopped at the threshold, catching the sight of Hinata standing still in front of her father's desk. She was looking at a laptop, its screen light shining on her pale face. Naruto walked over behind her to look at the screen. His eyes widened slightly.
On the screen were rows upon rows of video files. Naruto immediately covered Hinata's eyes with his hand. It was not something that a girl should have seen. Especially something that was the possession of her dear father. Naruto dragged the stunned girl away from the desk and sat her on the bed. "Hey, listen. Let's focus on finding the statue for now, okay? You go search the other rooms. I'll search here."
Hinata nodded absentmindedly and left. Naruto sighed before walking back to the desk. He closed the laptop with a thud. "You sick old man. You have a daughter, and you watch those kinds of videos?" The blond shook his head in disappointment as he began opening the desk drawers one by one. Five drawers so far with nothing out of the ordinary. Pulling out the lowest right drawer, he finally found the object. The size of a palm, it was a statue made of Dalbergia Bariensis, a rosewood tree native to the Southeast Asian region. Its carving was of a woman dancer wearing a costume matching the description of the spirit that Hinata had told him. On the wooden surface, Naruto could see linings of written characters that he could not understand. Those characters were nothing like the Kanji that he was familiar with at all.
"Found it." He then took out a handkerchief from his pocket to wrap it up. Curse objects should not be touched directly as there was a possibility of the curse being transferred to the toucher.
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They were back downstair in the kitchen. The girl had somewhat recovered her composure, her body not shaking anxiously anymore. Meanwhile, her possessed father had also woken and was now struggling against the binding rods. The curse spirit tried to leave the body but to no avail as the spiritual energy of Yin-release inside the black rods had essentially nullified its astral movement.
"Here" Naruto dropped the wooden statue into a tray before pushing it to Hinata, "Pee on it."
"!" The high school girl widened her eyes, a burning blush on her face. "P-pee? Why m-me?"
"Somehow, it can only work with women's urine." Naruto said in a matter-of-fact manner. After all, he did not make those rules. He then handed her a bowl of rice and a cup of salt. "Don't touch the wood directly. Just grab the tray. Then when you're done, throw rice and salt on it. That'll weaken the power of the spirit. Once it's weakened, a simple talisman will do the job of destroying it."
The high school girl meekly huffed in embarrassment and headed over to the bathroom. A few minutes passed before the possessed father began thrashing against the bindings more intensely. Naruto walked toward him and knelt. He took out a talisman from his pocket and slapped it on the man's forehead. The man convulsed a few more times before losing consciousness again. His erratic breathing had stabilized. The smell emitting from his body also subsided. The dark circle on his face slowly disappeared. The symptoms were fading one by one. By the time Hinata came back from the bathroom, her possessed father's appearance had returned to normal.
"He should be fine now."
Hinata immediately rushed toward her unconscious father, crying in relief. "Thank you, Uzumaki-san! For saving my father. I won't forget your kindness."
Naruto waved off nonchalantly, putting one hand in his pocket pretending to look like a cool guy. "Not a problem, young miss." You did pay me loads after all. That was months' worth of ramen supply.
As the blond man reached the front door about to leave, Hinata asked another question, "Wh-what should my father do to recover quickly?"
Naruto struck a thinking pose for a few seconds before answering, "Eh~ just sleep it off."
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Naruto looked up at the shining stars in the sky as he walked on the dirt road. There were no city lights in the suburb, so he could see those luminous spheres of plasma in space quite clearly. That little exorcism stunt took about an hour to finish, if it could be called an exorcism. He did not want to take the gig at first, but when it was from a cute girl who happened to bear some resemblance to his long-deceased wife and had the exact same name, he figured why not and said 'fuck you' to fate. Plus, it was free money. Ain't no ghost could ever hurt him. Aliens? Maybe. But that was also a long shot.
A sudden ringing from his phone interrupted his thought.
~ Stay with me
Mayonaka no doa wo tataki
Kaeranaide to naita
Ano kisetsu ga ima me no mae
~ Stay with me
Naruto snapped his fingers and shook his shoulders to the rhythm of the song. He let the ringtone play for a few more seconds before answering, "Yo, Seiko-chan."
[Who's your Seiko-chan, you old coot?! Don't call me that.]
"Aww. You wound me, Seiko-chan. I thought we were a thing. You know, you sound so much like my deceased wife."
[Shut up! Anyway, how was it? Any wrong happened?]
"Oh, you know me. Nothing happened. Just a piece of cake."
[Did you follow the local remedy?]
"I could have just beat it out of him."
[Then he would have died and left the girl orphan, you jerk.]
"Eh, you could just take her in and train her your ways. She's got a pretty special pair of eyes, 'ya know."
[It's dangerous. It's already hard enough for me to protect Momo from the paranormal.]
"Sooner or later, she's gonna be exposed to it. You should loop her in before it's too late."
[*Sigh* We can't force her to believe in it. Last time I did, she was so angry she even called me a fake medium.]
"Yikes... well, I guess let's leave it to fate. Until then, I'll help you protect her from harm."
[I guess so... Thanks, Naruto.]
"You're very welcome, Seiko-chan ~"
[Shut your trap!]
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A/N: I'm back with a crossover attempt with Dandadan! My new favorite anime at the moment. The opening song is such a bop! Anyway, shall I continue this one? Let me know in the comment.
Fun fact: did you know that the voice actress of Seiko Ayase also did the voice of Hinata? *Mindblown* From doing such a meek character with a weak voice to this kickass hot granny. *Clap clap clap*