"Don't lie! You demon-loving assholes have him somewhere!" A drunk guy yelled.
"We don't! However, even if we did it's none of your business. We can do what we want." Ayame said in annoyance.
Teuchi scoffed, "Why don't you go sleep it off-hey!"
The panic in Teuchi's tone made Naruto try to stand up. With a few hops, he was able to see the drunk, who was a ninja. He wore yellow goggles and always had a grudge against him. Now the drunk was trying to slash his friends with a kunai. In an instant something flared up inside him and he leapt on the man. Naruto immediately snapped his neck without a second thought.
All he remembered in that next moment was a painful hunger. He heard Ayame and Teuchi trying to tell him to not bite something, but he couldn't understand. It took a second to realize that he was trying to bite through the drunk's shoulder. Granted, it didn't work, but Naruto wanted to keep trying.
Something inside him told him that the chefs were going to leave him because of his actions. That immediately made him come back to his senses and look up. Sadly, both of his friends were gone. Tears started falling from his eyes. However, when he started sobbing, someone ran back into the room.
Naruto looked up, "Ayame, I'm sorry! I don't know-"
"It's ok, Naruto. You just wanted to protect us … As for the biting … You didn't bite us." Ayame pointed out cheerfully though she had a bit of concern in her tone. "Your eyes changed while you were trying to … eat. Dad is going to try making something. We'll figure this out. Come with me and tell us what happened. Let it go, ok?" She asked, softly urging Naruto to let go of the body.
Eventually, Naruto let go and limped to the kitchen with Ayame's help. He recounted what happened as Teuchi went back and forth between rooms. Once he finished explaining, a bowl of fresh ramen was set in front of him and it smelled better than anything he ever smelled before.
"Naruto." The blonde looked up from his now empty bowl and at Teuchi, who looked oddly serious. "We aren't scared of you. We aren't going anywhere. Understand?" Naruto nodded and saw Teuchi point at something.
Those blue eyes followed the finger downwards and they widened in shock when they reached the end. Naruto saw that his leg had partly grown back. After two more bowls, his leg was back and the chefs told him the ingredient that was used.
Flashback Ends
Naruto's breath became calmer and slowly he began moving again. Finally, he came to a new part of the ventilation. It seems a remodel did happen because it branched off. One path went straight ahead and that's where a lot of the breeze was coming from. The other was a grate that looked down into a dark room. Both seemed smaller somehow, but he didn't feel cramped so he kept going.
After a second of trying to decide which way to go, he decided to check out the room below. Naruto tied some trap wire to the grate and carefully broke it open. With the grate safely dangling from the ceiling by the wir,e he dropped down. Despite being dark, Naruto saw that there weren't any obvious cameras, but there were a lot of computer monitors, a whiteboard with doodles on it, tables, chairs, and a few file cabinets.
Without a password handy
Naruto decided to try the file cabinet first. Thankfully, it wasn't locked and he flipped through the files. Of course, he knew this was not the time to sit and read so he just took a picture of every page. With the files all photographed he put everything back where it was.
To be as detailed as possible he snapped a picture of the whiteboard and a picture through the small glass window of the door. That's when he realized how far the remodel went.
The room he was in was the room with the tubes before. Now it was a discussion-type room and the tubes were on the other side of the door. Of course, that might've been done to prevent more experiments from crawling through the vents. Not that it mattered now though.
Naruto quickly jumped back into the ceiling vent. One quick tug of the wire brought the grate back up. With the grate secured with some tape, he removed the trap wire and quietly crawled back. The blonde was relieved to smell only the two ramen chefs. He crawled out and after putting everything back they went home.
"No one followed us, right?" Ayame asked once the door to their home was closed behind them.
Naruto opened the window a crack and sniffed, "I don't smell anyone else." He answered after shutting the window.
"Good. Let's see what you found." Teuchi said and they hurried over to the small laptop that they normally use for keeping the accounting from the ramen stand organized.
After connecting the tiny camera to the laptop all the pictures became available. One by one they shifted through the pictures. The first ones are the ones that were the most recently taken.
Naruto pointed at the picture of the human-like thing in the large tube, "That's the one I saw before. It actually looks like it is growing ears now … I think." He commented curiously, absolutely positively that the charred person didn't have anything beyond gaping gashes for ears last time, but now there were nubs. "I didn't see the thing that attacked me though."
Teuchi hummed thoughtfully while looking at the person floating in the vertical container, "Huh … I wouldn't be surprised if it was moved or even destroyed. It sounded pretty vicious." The ramen chef said and frowned when Naruto winced. No doubt this conversation was bringing back bad memories so Teuchi decided to just flip to the next picture. "The stuff on this board … There's no doubt about it … Definitely science!" He exclaimed triumphantly, making Naruto burst out laughing as Ayame rolled her eyes.
"Very funny, Dad," Ayame said both amused and a little impatient. She quickly reached forward to hit the button to flip to the next picture, but Teuchi stopped her. "Something wrong?" She asked, noticing that Teuchi was seriously concentrating on one part of the photo. "You can blow it up, you know?"
Teuchi blinked, "Yes … Of course … How do I do that?"
"Like this," Ayame said and expanded the photo as Naruto leaned in to look.
Once it was big enough Teuchi pointed at the screen, "There! See just beyond the board? Naruto, is that the vent you went through?"
Naruto looked and saw the dangling grate he had hanging from the opening, "Yeah. I must've accidentally caught it. Why?"
"We hear a lot of ninjas complain about certain things after missions," Teuchi muttered, but Naruto twitched in annoyance. "I have a point. One of the biggest complaints is about vents. You remember, Ayame?"
"Oh right!" Ayame gasped and immediately examined the image. "Naruto, when you aren't around we hear people freely chat and Dad has a point. Vents look big enough sometimes, but when some ninjas go deeper in they get stopped because things get far too narrow. That vent looks much smaller than the opening you entered through … A lot smaller."
In any other circumstance, they all might've ignored this detail. However, Naruto was bitten by something really weird and he's changing because of it. On top of it, the vent in that room did look smaller. Too small for a human to go through.
Teuchi tapped his chin in thought, "They clearly changed things after that creature got out. It'd probably be too obvious that something is going on in the academy if they changed the entrance we saw. What if they just increased the amount of venting, but made them narrower to prevent more escaping?" Teuchi mused out loud. "Did you feel odd while going through?"
Naruto tried to remember every little thing, "No … I started freaking out and …" The young ninja trailed off and his eyes closed.
A second later Naruto clutched his head in pain and his body began to shift.
Ayame and Teuchi's eyes slowly went down to the floor as they tried to keep Naruto in their line of vision. By the time the shifting stopped, they were looking at a fascinatingly small lump wearing Naruto'sfull-sizedd clothes. The creature had blue orbs for eyes and a black button nose and they all just looked at each other in confusion for several moments.
"Um … Naruto?" Ayame spoke softly, trying not to startle Naruto. Of course, once she said that the blue orbs seemed to widen in panic and she chuckled. "You're … so cute!" She said before patting the vines growing out of what was probably Naruto's back.
The tiny being wearing Naruto's clothes looked like a completely green hedgehog made of soft moss. In between the hedgehog's soft mossy spikes were long skinny leafy vines. Each of those vines seemed to move like limbs in the sleeves of the shirt. However, they weren't the main limbs.
Both ramen chefs could clearly see that the adorable moss hedgehog had its own four little paws. The 20 or so long skinny vines were just fully functional extra limbs. Those vines laced themselves through the clothes so Naruto didn't lose them. However, Naruto did all this without realizing it. Now that he was aware he seemed to lack that control resulting in the clothes falling when Ayame picked him up for a cuddle.
"Ok! We answered that fast enough so let's continue!" Ayame chirped cheerfully while snuggling Naruto against her chest, but still let him see the screen.
"Right. Right." Teuchi muttered in amusement before finally clicking the button to flip to the next picture. "Now we're getting somewhere." He said when he saw that the next few pictures were for an experiment called '000' or the source.
The small mossy form of Naruto squeaked and one of the vines moved to point at something on the screen. That involuntary motion startled Naruto and his vine fell limp. Of course, the young ninja finally got curious. As Naruto was focused on trying to use his vines, the ramen chefs tried to figure out what he was pointing at.
"Oh! Dad, this file has the number from that one charred person in the tube." Ayame pointed out and immediately hit the button a few times to go back to the first picture.
Teuchi's eyes widened, "You're right!" He exclaimed when his eyes found the number '000' at the base of the person's tube. "Let's see who this guy is." He said and flipped back to the picture of the file as Naruto tried to make one of his vines grab the turnip plush perched on the table next to the laptop.
Ayame smiled down at Naruto, "Good job! You've almost got it!" She cheered Naruto on as he shakily wrapped the vine around the plushy. Since Naruto seemed fully concentrated on his task she turned her attention to the photo of the file her dad was looking at. "Huh … So this person was a Leaf ninja?"
"It clearly states something about a chakra thing so yes he was a ninja, but what happened?" Teuchi pondered out loud as he skimmed the pictures that covered all of the files. "They have the basic things like gender, blood type, and so on, but they don't have any personal details that will tell us who he is … something infected this guy's chakra coils and he started warping. Apparently, he's still changing so you might be right about his ears being different, Naruto."
With that comment, Naruto dropped the plushy in favor of looking at the screen. The tube guy was healing. However, it sounded like the thing that did this to him was used elsewhere.
Teuchi sighed, "I see. Whatever warped his body was harvested and used in other experiments." He theorized and flipped through the other pictures to see the connection he expected. "Yeah. It seems all the other experiments are because they took a sample of something from Tube Ninja and was warped as a result-"
Naruto suddenly squeaked fearfully. The ramen chefs looked worried but noticed why Naruto was shocked. It just so happens that Teuchi stopped on the photo of the lab sheet for the last experiment in the camera. There was a picture of that experiment, which was a ghastly vine beast.
Ayame looked horrified and patted Naruto's mossy head, "That's it, isn't it? That's what bit you."