Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto

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Wraith

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Chapter Two

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Naruto stared at the writhing Xeno crucified on the wall before him by his katanas; one speared throught its chest and the other pinning its tail to the ground. The foul creature was raised upwards by at least two feet, just enough so that its feet couldn't touch the floor. Drawing one of his handguns, Naruto fired a few shots into its chest and watched as it went limp. Not trusting it to be dead yet, Naruto spun a full 360 degrees and decapitated the Xenomorph with a wrist blade hidden in his gauntlet.

The blade was roughly three feet long, slightly curved, serrated in some places while smooth and sharp in others along its outer edge. Flicking his arm down and to the side, Naruto retracted the blade and ignored the hiss of alien blood eating away at the metal grate of the cat-walk.

He had been separated from Dro and Draco after the seventh ambush by the Xenomorphs on Sub-level 9. They were getting smarter with each passing day and Naruto was beginning to fear, not for himself, but for his people. It had been four years since the Xenomorphs were unleashed upon the Elemental Countries. At first, Naruto had believed it would be only a matter of killing off the Queen immediately and be done with it, but...

"Hsssss..." Not even bothering to face the newest arrival, Naruto aimed his still-drawn handgun and shot the Xenomorph in the face four times, killing it instantly. After removing his swords from the headless Xenomorph, Naruto cleaned them and sheathed them before drawing a knife and cleaning out the skull, the blade made of the same metal that made his swords resistant to the corrosive effects of Xeno blood.

With the skull cleaned out, Naruto pulled out a scroll, sealed the head away, and pocketed the scroll. He had developed a habit of collecting the skulls of Xenomorphs once in awhile whenever he had the chance. This poor bastard just happened to be his latest victim...

"Dro. Come in, Dro." Nothing. "Dro, what's your location?" Naruto tried to contact his friend over the communicator, only to get static in return. Switching it off, Naruto sheathed the knife he had out, holstered his pistol, and continued through the maze of cat-walks, stairs, ladders, and tunnels. "Damn radios. Always crapping out when you need them the most."

Naruto knew Draco would be fine since it wasn't even a living thing and could be rebuilt and repaired, but Dro was a completely different situation. The dark skinned man had always been a little hot-headed, very trigger happy, some what of a nut-job, and not very reliable when he was caught in a fierce battle. Dro couldn't help it; he gets confused and aggitated when cornered and this causes him to shoot everything that makes noise or moves.

For only a split second, Naruto caught sight of an unknown figure, most likely human from what it looked like. Naruto turned on his heel and sprinted down the corrider and a short flight of stairs with his pulse rifle shouldered once again...

Nearby, a wall had the words Sub-level 24 painted on the dark stone in bright white...

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(With Dro)

"Damn it!" The man hissed as he held his bleeding leg, limping as he ran as best as he could down the narrow tunnel. He was currently on Sub-level 17 with a wounded leg, low on ammo, and lost. He had managed to fend off the last wave of aliens easily for some time on Sub-level 13, but there were too many of them and he was nearly overwhelmed. The only reason he survived was because Draco managed to stumble upon him while searching for him and Naruto.

Their reunion lasted only five minutes before they were split apart again when Dro fell through a section of grate that had been weakened by the flourescent green alien blood...

The hole had been too small for Draco to fit through and Dro just happened to fall into a chute that dropped him off at Sub-level 17, the floor he was on right now. A nearby Xeno had been lucky and managed to slash his left thigh before it was turned into swish cheese by Dro's pulse rifle. The already wound area of his leg was hit by a light spray of the alien's blood, burning the already wounded flesh.

Thunk. The dull drone of a magazine cartridge being dropped on the stone floor rang loud through the deathly silent hall as Dro reloaded his rifle for the fifth time. It was his last clip. After checking his leg for a moment, Dro pushed off against the wall he had been leaning on and started running (limping) down the hall again. He needed to get to medic station and quick.

Dro failed to make it another foot before he was ambushed by a Xenomorph, its tail speared through his spine and out his chest...

He was dead before his corpse even hit the floor...

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(With Draco)

Gun fire echoed endlessly through the corridors and passage ways as Draco found itself cornered in a large arena-like room, nothing short of a horde of aliens surging into the chamber like tidal wave. He had ran out of missiles an hour ago and was now relying on his smart guns, flame throwers, fangs, claws, and tail. Draco knew he could use his cannons, but in the cramped spaces of the Undercity, the unofficial name of Konoha's lower levels, his cannons would only cause structural damage and possibly bring down the next level up down on his head or send him careening down a hole should the floor give way.

"Hssss..."

Draco found that he was unable to turn around in time to stop the alien that had gotten behind him, the creatures claws already working away at its neck and guns. Throwing itself onto its hind legs, Draco smashed his back against the wall behind him, crushing the Xeno and causing further damage to his thick armor. Five of the aliens rushed him, seeing that its underbelly was left wide open, but they too were squashed underfoot as Draco fell back down, guns blazing and shredding through the remaining few Xenomorphs blocking the exit while barreling past a few others.

"Damn things are like bees. Kill one and you get the whole damn hive bearing down on you." Draco growled to itself as it ran as fast as its circuits and joints allowed it, which was quite fast compared to its predecessors. Spotting a particularly weak and large series of pipes, steel, and stone, Draco zig-zagged for a short distance to build up momentum. Turning sparply down another corridor, Draco bashed the end of its tail into the side of the pipes and steel and stone, bringing a large quantitiy of the metals and minerals down on the heads of the aliens and blocking the pathway completely.

After several minutes, Draco slowed to a halt near a pit-like chamber. It was roughly thirty feet across/wide and went all the way from the ground floor to the lowest sub-level; Sub-level 35. A fall from Sub-level 14 was more than enough to kill something, even Draco.

"I need to find Fox and Dro..." Draco muttered to itself as it did a stupid thing...

It jumped across the gap and down to the next floor, Sub-level 15...

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Naruto snarled in anger as he pushed his legs to run faster, his muscles straining to hold pace. If he had known that this person would have been so damn hard to keep up with before hand, he would have either shot the person in the leg or trained more often...

They had gone up from Sub-level 24 to Sub-level 20, for Kami's sake!

'I'll take option A.' Naruto waited for a clear shot, which he got after a moment of waiting and shot the running person in the leg. The person crumpled like wet tissue paper and hit the floor hard. Panting, sweating, and gasping for breath, Naruto slowed down and slung his rifle across his back again as he got a good...look...at...

"A woman?!" Naruto all, but yelled in shock as he tried to catch his breath. He was lucky that this area had been cleared out recently or else he would have had a dozen aliens on his ass...

'At least it was a hot woman...' Naruto nearly smacked himself while mentally cursing his late sensei, Jiraiya of the Sannin. 'Damn you, Ero-sennin. Next time I see you, I'm going to ring your neck and tell Tsunade that you were being perverted again!'

He faintly heard a loud girly scream of fright in the distance...

She had shoulder-length hair that was black as night pulled back into a pony-tail behind her head, tanned skin, and had bright green eyes. She was clad in very little, most of it being armor of some kind, and had only a couple scars on her body. She had on a pair of armored boots on her feet that went up to her knees with metal buckles on the shins, an unusual armored loincloth of some sort that had a piece of armored cloth in the front to cover her crouch, another piece hanging from either hip, and a slightly wider one covering her rear. She was also wearing odd armor that looked almost like large scales on her shoulders that covered only her left breast, both of her biceps, a portion of her neck, and she shoulder blades. A long-sleeve fish-net shirt was underneath the armor whatever of her unarmored torso and right breast bare, and fish-net leggings were attached to the woman's armored bikini/loincloth. The woman also had a pair of heavy bracers on her forearms that appeared a bit bulky with a pair of serrated blades on them and an odd barreled weapon attached to the back of her left shoulder that wasn't even a foot long. Attached to her belt were several gadgets and among them was an odd gun-metal grey mask and what Naruto believed to be a combat knife.

She was about 5'8" in height and very voluptous. Her breasts were at least E-cup, her waist was slim, and her legs were long. The woman had dense and wirey muscles, giving her a lithe and athletic build. The woman's right thigh was bleeding from where Naruto had shot her, although it was a shallow wound meant only to stop her and she wasn't bleeding too bad.

Kneeling down beside her, Naruto placed his hand on one of his pistols while taking a towel out of his satchel bag. After wrapping the towel around the wounded section of her leg, Naruto tied it off and put his right hand over the crudely dressed wound to put some pressure on it to slow the bleeding.

"Mind telling me why you ran?" Naruto asked, guilt gnawing away at him for wounding a woman who had done nothing more than run from him. She was panting almost as much as him and her dark hair was matted down with sweat.

"Mind...telling me...why you shot me?" The woman hissed back while trying not to yelp in pain. She had trained herself not to show fear or pain, but getting shot wasn't at the top of her 'To do' list and it was never a pleasant thing to experience.

"Sorry about that, but I was getting tired and you didn't exactly listen to me when I told you to stop." Naruto retorted as he focused his chakra into his right hand and changed it into medical chakra. The woman flinched at the sight of the green glow that illuminated Naruto's hand, but her panic slowly eebed away as a gentle warmth enveloped her entire body, the feeling concentrated around the wound on her leg. After a few minutes, Naruto finished healing her leg, but the warmth remained behind and continued to sooth the woman into a calm sense of safety.

"Name?" Naruto asked again, this time in a friendlier tone as he pulled the woman up to lean against him, his left hand no long resting on his gun holster.

"Kyra...Kyra Drokan." Kyra answered, her voice barely slurred as she leaned against the silver eyed kistune. The internal warmth produced by the medical chakra had caused her body to relax .

"Beautiful name for a beautiful woman. I'm Naruto Uzumaki...Now stand up." Naruto started warmly before his tone turned cold as he dragged Kyra up to her feet and brought his rifle back up to his shoulder with his right hand while wrapping his left around Kyra's waist, bringing a faint blush to the woman's cheeks.

"I can walk on my own." Kyra retorted in embarrassment as she pushed off of Naruto and turned to walk away, but she quickly saw why Naruto's voice had turned cold and shouldered his rifle; Xenomorphs...and a lot of them. They were approaching slowly, almost arrogantly, and in large numbers. There had to be at least seventy of the aliens crawling toward them.

"Run and don't look back. Get back to the surface and hide." Naruto commanded coldly as he brought his M41AE2 rifle about and shouldered that gun as well, holding both of his rifles in one hand each. Turning to look at him in shock, Kyra made the mistake of looking into his eyes. A cold chill enveloped her mind, enticing fear to gnaw at her as those cold metallic silver orbs bore cold fury and blood lust as they glared at the horde of aliens approaching.

"But...What about you?" Kyra managed to whisper. As she said this, Kyra was still obeying Naruto's order, albeit slowly, and was now stepping back so that Naruto was between her and aliens.

"Run and don't look back. Get back to the surface and hide." Naruto repeated as he channeled chakra into his eyes once again, his pupils mutating into cross-hairs once again. Still hesitant, Kyra turned and began jogging away while looking back at Naruto. Just then, Naruto snapped his head around to glare at her while the contingent of shadow-skinned beasts started running.

"RUN, DAMN IT!"

This time, Kyra obeyed whole-heartedly and took off at a dead-sprint as if the Devil was on her heels...Might as well have been since the alien beings were considered demons by many civilizations that knew of their existance. As she ran, gun fire filled her ears and drowned out even the shrieks of pain and death from the aliens being slaughtered by Naruto.

Even after a full minute of running, Kyra could still hear the horrendous drone of Naruto's rifles before everything suddenly went silent...

Skidding to a halt, Kyra spun around and frantically tried to hear anything that might signify Naruto's survival. Tears threatened to fall from her eyes when a deathly silent roar echoed all around her. Steeling her resolve, Kyra turned back around and started running again, searching for a way out. If Naruto died, she would not let his death be in vain and escape just as he had wanted her to.

'Be safe, Naruto. Please, please, be alive...' Kyra eventually found the gap that led from the top floor to the bottom. Without stopping, she leapt up and planted both of her booted feet on the railing before jumping with all her might, catching ahold of the guard rail that ringed the gap a floor above her on the other side. Pulling herself up and over the rail, Kyra repeated the process again and again until she was five floors higher.

After climbing over the railing one final time, Kyra took a moment to catch her breath before continuing on her run. Her legs were stricken with pain, but she pushed on. Her lungs burned with hunger of oxygen, but she pushed on. No matter what, Kyra wasn't going to stop until she knew she was somewhere safe.

Suddenly, a massive mechanical beast smashed through a wall before her with two Xenomorphs lunging at it. Running on instincts, Kyra grabbed the knife at her belt while activating her plasma caster. The knife was thrown at the head of one Xeno while a ball of plasma was fired at the other, both dying in ways respective to the weapons of their death.

Leaping over the metal creature, Kyra quickly snatched her knife from the alien's skull and continued running. Draco quickly got back up and followed after her. After awhile, Draco noticed that a large service elevator was up ahead of them. Grabbing the woman up in its jaws, Draco slid to a stop before darting into the elevator and dropping Kyra.

"Up!" Draco growled, making Kyra jump slightly and hit the button for the very top floor on the panel. A pair of grated doors slid closed in front of them and then another dropped down on the outside the seal off the elevator shaft. The elevator lurched upwards slightly before rising at a constant rate to the ground floor. As they did, Draco collapsed against the wall as its mechanical body began to fail.

"What's your name, woman?" Draco asked in a tired voice. Kyra only sat down on the ground and leaned against the wall with her head down.

"Kyra." Kyra answered quietly as she drew her knees up to her chest. Her mind was numb with what had happened and she didn't want to accept that a person she knew for only a minute was dead.

"What were you doing down there, Kyra?"

"..." Silence answered the machine. Not wanting to pry, Draco decided to consume its energy and rest. It was only a quick hundred meter treck back to the APC for repairs, so Draco figured it was best to wait until it was repaired before interrogating the obviously shell-shocked woman.

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(Sub-level 20, With Naruto)

"God...damn...fuckers..." Naruto snarled between pants as he leaned against the wall, a gradually dissolving barricade of alien corpses twenty feet thick and tight-packed all the way up to the ceiling. His trench coat was nothing more than tattered shreds of melted and torn cloth, his scarf was no better, his left pant leg was shredded and torn up to his knee, and his Anbu armor had taken a severe beating from the Xenomorph blood that had sprayed him during the fight.

His pauldron, gauntlets, katanas, guns, boots, face mask, shirts, and his gloves were the only things repairable and/or undamaged from the heavy Xenomorph assault. Having run out of grenades and ammo for his pulse rifles, Naruto left his M41A1 and M41AE2 rifles behind and began limping his way to an access ladder leading directly to the surface.

"I'm...going to...kill that...damned...Xeno bitch...when I...get out of...here." The silver haired immortal growled as his body began to heal the acid burns, slash wounds, and bite marks littering his body. "I hope...the others...got out...alive."

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AN: And there you go! Chapter 2 of 'Wraith'! I hope you guys liked it! While I was typing this chapter up, I couldn't decide to keep Kyra or not, but in the end, I kept her in the story. Yes, I killed Dro off, but his death will have a great impact on Naruto's attitude (once he finds out, that is). Kyra is indeed a human trained by the Yautja, but that fact will not be revealed to the others for quite some time.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed the story so far!

Please R & R!

-Phantom Wraith