[The Fox and the Hare] Chapter 34 - Unleashed (Patreon)

Chapter 34 - Unleashed

It was evening. As the sun disappeared behind the mountains, darkness settled upon the land. Even so, considering that it was March, although it was dark outside, it was relatively early. It was only 8 pm so most people were still outside, enjoying a lovely Friday evening by hanging out with their friends or family.

Although it was a remote city at the foot of the Japanese Alps and despite the fact that it was off-season, the streets, the pubs, and the restaurants were lively, filled with locals and tourists alike. The cool air of the evening was like a blessing after the scorching and humid weather earlier in the day. The main boulevard of the city was packed with people.

“Good evening and welcome!” a young woman with her hair tied in a tight bun greeted the new customers and bowed politely. It was a family of three.

“Good evening. Thank you. We’d like a table for four.”

At the hostess’s confused look, the man smiled and said:

“We’re expecting one more person in 20 minutes or so.”

“Ah, I understand. My apologies. Please follow me.”

⁂

“Apple juice! Apple juice! Apple juice!” a little girl was chanting while banging with her hands on the table.

“Eri!”

At her mother’s admonishing tone, the girl stopped making a ruckus, but she was still swinging her legs impatiently.

Seeing as it was off-season, the owners of the restaurant had not been prepared for such an influx of tourists, so they were understaffed. More than 10 minutes passed since the family of three ordered their drinks but the waiters had yet to come back to serve them.

The little girl’s inappropriate behaviour made a few heads turn to their table, but upon seeing the adorable 8-year-old girl, their annoyance melted away from their faces like a miracle.

But after locating the source of the noise, most people would find themselves inadvertently staring at the long and ruler-straight red hair of the girl’s mother.

Even in a society filled with people who had all sorts of exotic looks and unusual physical traits, Uzumaki Kushina’s waist-long, crimson-red hair could still make one sigh in awe.

“Seems like it’s not only the waiters who are late with our drinks, Naruto is running late too,” Minato said.

“That’s strange. He should’ve arrived at the train station about 15 minutes ago. Maybe he can’t find our restaurant? Let me send him a text message,” Kushina said as she took out her phone.

However, minutes passed without her receiving a reply. By now, the waiters had not only brought their drinks but also the food that they had ordered, but Naruto still had yet to arrive.

“Is Naruto-nii-san not coming anymore?” little Eri asked after a while.

“I’m going outside for a moment to call him,” Minato said as he put his napkin down and left.

⁂

“Good evening.”

“Good evening. Minato-san?”

“Yes, it is I. Sorry for calling you at this late hour.”

“It’s no problem, I just got back from work.”

“Hero work kept you out for so long today?”

“Yes… another pro Hero lost his life tonight in Osaka. It was Fat Gum. You’ll probably hear about it tomorrow on the news. This is the fourth pro Hero who lost his life this month…"

“Fat Gum died?!” Minato said in surprise.

In spite of his looks, Fat Gum was a rather powerful hero, especially against the physical types. He was quite famous in his own right too, having a spot among the top 100 Pro Heroes in the country.

“I know, right? Fat Gum wasn’t some nameless weakling who got his hero licence a few months ago. He was an experienced and strong hero. To think that he would be found dead, floating down the Naka River one day… Things are getting out of hand lately. It seems to me that after almost two years of vigilantes killing villains on sight, the villains are starting to fight back now, lashing out at the whole world.”

“That’s worrisome…”

The woman from the other end of the line let out a long sigh before saying:

“Leaving aside my troubles, why did you call me? Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Ah, right! We were supposed to meet with Naruto this evening, but almost one hour passed from the established time. Is he, by chance, with you?”

“If he was headed towards my place, I would know that. But he didn’t tell me anything. Besides, I’m not in Hiroshima now. Also, Naruto would never miss the chance to spend time with you. You know how much he misses his family-”

Suddenly, the streets, the buildings, and even the air itself seemed to vibrate as an ear-deafening explosion boomed.

Many windows shattered, car alarms went off crazily from everywhere, and the crowd of people started screaming and running away in panic.

⁂

“What’s happening? What’s going on?” Kushina asked when Minato returned to the now-empty restaurant after the crowd dispersed.

Unlike the rest of the people who had scrambled away in terror, Kushina had activated her Adamantine Sealing Chains, encasing herself and Eri within.

“I don’t know. It must be yet another villain attack. We should leave immediately.”

“But Naruto-nii-san is somewhere out there. What if-” Eri began to say.

“Your brother is a big boy now. He is strong, he can protect himself. Now come. We have to disappear.”

Due to Kushina having been forced to reveal her quirk for the sake of protecting herself and their daughter from a potential attack, Minato was afraid of All For One or one of his many subordinates catching wind of them.

With Minato holding Eri in a piggyback carry, the family of three started running towards the parking lot where they had left their car.

As they drove away from the restaurant, half a dozen police cars and just as many ambulances passed by them, going towards the location where the loud explosions had come from.

⁂

Two men wearing black suits were standing shoulder-by-shoulder inside a poorly lit office.

“Uzumaki Naruto has been secured. Unfortunately, Agent Mitarashi lost her life in action.”

“Mitarashi Anko died? What a shame,” came the voice of an old man from behind the desk.

Leaning against the backrest of the leather chair, the old man was sitting with his back to the two men, looking at the scenery of the night city through the large windows of his office.

“Another thing that we have to report is that the No. 58 hero, Fat Gum, was found dead this evening. This is the fourth death among Pro Heroes this month alone. We have reasons to suspect that the Villains are no longer acting solo. We believe that there is an organisation behind these attacks now.”

Turning around with his chair, the old man put his elbows on the desk as he rested his chin on his interlocked fingers.

“Finally. It has begun. This is good. This is great news.”

The two men exchanged a brief look of confusion at the words of their superior, but they didn’t speak up. They didn’t dare to even meet his eyes directly, much less directly question his words.

“Kakashi, Yamato. You did great today. You can expect a significant bonus this month. You are dismissed for now.”

“Thank you, sir,” the two replied before bowing and leaving the office.

⁂

“He’s stirring awake.”

“What the… Does he have a healing factor?”

“We’ve pumped enough anaesthetic to give a regular person eternal sleep, how is he waking up now?”

Opening his eyes, the painfully bright lights forced him to close them again. His hearing was muffled. His body was numb. A skull-splitting headache was making him nauseous. He felt as if he was underwater.

“Where am I?” he asked.

However, instead of answering his question, the people around him injected yet another dose of sedatives into his veins to knock him out again.

Not receiving an answer, Naruto started pulling at the straps that were tying him down to the bed. However, he was too weak. He could barely move, let alone break out of the maiden-like device tying him down.

“Danzo-sama?!”

“Sir, it’s good to see you, sir!”

Even in his currently muddled mind, Naruto recognized the name spoken by those people.

‘Danzo, animal-masked attackers, Anko, Bakugo… I think I even saw someone who looked like Yamato and Kakashi from my past life when they attacked me… what’s with them… what’s going on… what did they kidnap me for… why am I here?’

While he was still trying to make sense of the situation he was in, an old voice came from the right side of his bed.

“You’re probably wondering why have we captured you. To put your mind at ease, I will let you know that we are not villains.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Naruto spat in anger.

“You won’t be able to break your restraints. I advise you to stop struggling. In the first place, we have no intention of hurting you,” the old man said calmly.

“Why did you attack me for no reason if you’re not villains? Why did you kidnap me? And why are you putting these damned lights into my eyes for fuck’s sake!”

The lights were so strong that he couldn’t even open his eyes.

“Oh, but we do have a very good reason to keep you here, Uzumaki Naruto,” Danzo said.

Going by the sound of steps echoing the silence of the room, Naruto could guess that the old man started pacing back and forth while he was speaking.

“How is it possible for someone to be born with two quirks?”

“Just what kind of quirk is your Adamantine Sealing Chains? Why did it activate so much later than the quirks of all the other people?”

“Your Fox Quirk, is it really only a Fox Quirk or is it something else?”

“The vast majority of trained pro Heroes spend decades risking their lives against Villains but the chance of them awakening their quirks is astronomically low. How did your quirk awaken? And how did it awaken more than once?”

At that moment, the sound of Danzo’s footsteps stopped as he was once again sitting on a stool by Naruto’s bed.

“All those mysteries, all belonging to one person... And the answer to all those questions lies in the palm of my hand now. Unveiling those mysteries will lead Japan into a new era. Forget about the villains running amok or All For One; if we find the method to safely awaken our operatives’ quirks, Japan will rule the whole world.”

“Cooperate with us, Uzumaki Naruto. It will be much easier for both sides.”

“You’re expecting me to become your comrade after the way you treated me? Are you out of your mind? When I’m getting out of this I’ll rip you and everyone else here to shreds!”

Greatly contrasting with the teenager thrashing wildly in his restraints, the old man’s face was calm, emotionless.

“We don’t have to be enemies. We don’t have to fight against each other. After all, our purposes align. You want to become a Pro Hero and protect the weak. We want to eradicate all of those who endanger our society. We are the same.”

After saying those words, Danzo shook his head and sighed softly, showing a bit of emotion for the first time.

“I thought someone like you would be able to see the bigger picture. It seems I was wrong. How disappointing. You’re giving us no choice but to take what we want by force.”

Turning his attention towards the medical staff present in the room, he said:

“His claws are coming out. He’s too dangerous to be kept awake. It looks like his body has already built a tolerance for the sedatives you’ve been using on him. You have my permission to induce an artificial coma if you have to. We’ve waited for this chance for nearly two years. We can’t leave anything up to luck. If anything goes wrong and he escapes it will be your heads that will roll.”

“Y-Yes sir.”

⁂

A bad feeling came over Mirko when she heard the massive explosions coming from Minato’s side of the call.

“Minato-san! Minato!”

Unfortunately, the call ended without her getting an answer.

“Darn it.”

She had not even had the chance to ask where exactly was Minato waiting for Naruto, so she didn’t know their location.

Mirko started pacing around her hotel room restlessly.

‘Naruto would be devastated if anything happened to his family.’

Anxiously, she tried calling Minato back several times, and she tried calling Kushina as well but they weren’t picking up. After that, she also called Naruto but he wasn’t answering either.

“Oh, come on!”

She let out another curse as she let herself fall on the sofa. She wanted to go to their help, but she had no idea where they were.

Only a few minutes after Minato’s call, the Hero Network App suddenly bombarded her with half a dozen notifications at once.

A massive explosion rocked Hiruya Town, Shizuoka Prefecture. 10 civilians were confirmed dead, and many more were injured.

Flying-type and water-type Pro Heroes needed in Hiruya Town, Shizuoka Prefecture.

Eye-witnesses report Uzumaki Naruto was ambushed and captured by a large group of Villains. Pro Heroes specializing in tracking are needed in Hiruya Town, Shizuoka Prefecture.

[...]

The moment she read that news, Mirko jumped out of the window of her hotel room with no regard for the height of the hotel building she was in.

Her long white hair fluttering wildly in the cool breeze coming from the sea, Mirko’s body left behind a loud boom the moment her feet touched the rooftop of a nearby building. She jumped with so much strength that she broke the sound barrier, startling many people below.

⁂

Despite having built a certain degree of resistance against the sedatives they had been using on him, Naruto felt his senses start dulling again after they injected a new serum into his neck. His desperate thrashing quickly came to a stop as his body turned slack. He felt his consciousness slipping away.

The two medics and the assistant observing him grew alarmed as his heart rate unexpectedly spiked.

“What’s going on?!”

“Why is his heart rate going up like that?”

Normally, after administering the drugs that would induce coma, the patient’s heart rate would decrease so much that the medics would have to feed them special drugs to keep the heart functioning normally. But now, the teen boy’s heart rate became inexplicably high and irregular.

“He’s going to go into cardiac arrest at this rate!” one of the doctors yelled in a panic. If they somehow killed Uzumaki Naruto, none of them would live to see the light of the next day.

Seconds after the doctor’s shout, Naruto’s body went slack, his heart rate nothing but a flat line.

Colour drained from the medics’ faces. One of them even fell to his hands and knees in despair. However, his head shot up abruptly when a low, deep growl came from the supposedly dead boy.

“What the hell-”

The maiden restraining him creaked loudly, and sizzling sounds came from the fabric of his clothes and the bed underneath him as a crimson liquid-like substance started spreading all over his skin.

In mere moments, the boy was nowhere to be seen. A demon stood in his place, a dark crimson creature bellowing with rage.

The fox demon’s corrosive skin didn’t melt off only his clothing and the bed. The maiden was being corroded too. With a final exertion of his large tails, the impossibly durable and several hundred-kilogram heavy maiden snapped like an old and rusty chain.

“No! Please, no!”

“I have a daughter at home, please-”

The medics’ pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears. They were savaged and gored out mercilessly by the fox demon’s claws.

⁂

“Oh my god!”

“Holy shit.”

The two agents who had let out those shouts weren’t even Christians, but the scene in front of their eyes left them shell-shocked. They had come to check up on the situation after hearing the roars, but they had not expected to see anything like that.

The room where Uzumaki Naruto had been detained looked horrifying. The solid, metallic bed was broken, the heavy maiden was shattered to pieces and the two doctors and their assistant were dead, their corpses unrecognizable. Their remains and their blood were splattered all over the walls and pooling on the floor too.

“Code Red. Uzumaki Naruto has escaped and he’s on the loose. I repeat, Code Red, Uzumaki-”

But the man’s head was pulverized as a massive appendage smashed into it out of nowhere, decapitating him cleanly.

Turning around, his colleague instinctively activated his quirk, covering his body in flames as a desperate last-moment attempt to protect himself, but the demon’s claws split him in two from the waist effortlessly.

With the medics pumping him full of drugs and putting him into an artificial coma, Naruto lost consciousness. Now, there was nothing left to hold back the bestial ferocity of his Fox Quirk. The five-tailed demon fox was on a rampage.

Although it was night, the Headquarters of the ROOT organisation was still packed with people. There was almost no difference between the number of agents working during the day and those working at night because many Villains preferred to act during the night, under the cover of darkness, and slip away from the Pro Heroes’ pursuit by making use of the seedy districts of the cities where the night life was bustling. ROOT’s purpose was to eliminate all the individuals who posed a danger to the order and prosperity of Japanese society, regardless of whether they were villains, civilians, or even heroes.

That being said, if the first bestial roars coming from the basement didn’t tip them off that something wasn’t right, the agent’s walkie-talkie transmission being cut off and his following scream made it obvious that something had gone terribly wrong.

⁂

‘With this bonus and a few more years I’ll be able to retire,’ Kakashi thought as he changed from his battle gear into casual clothes. He was in a great mood.

ROOT may have been an organisation whose existence could not be revealed to the public, but the pay was well above that of regular Pro Heroes (unless they were famous). That said, not all members of the ROOT had been coerced or manipulated into joining its ranks. Many of its agents did it for the money while others preferred to remain anonymous instead of becoming famous like most successful Pro Heroes.

‘Danzo-sama doesn’t often give out bonuses, but when he does, they’re well worth it,’ Kakashi thought as he grabbed his duffel bag and went to his car, a luxurious, black, Toyota sedan.

Getting inside, he turned on the engine, but just as he was about to leave the parking lot, ear-deafening alarms started blaring from the ROOT HQ.

He let his head fall heavily on the steering wheel in exasperation. For a moment, he even considered just pretending that he had not heard it and go home. But it was just a fleeting thought. He couldn’t do that when there were cameras everywhere. That kind of behaviour would get him fired for sure or even worse.

Slamming the door shut with more force than necessary, Kakashi broke into a light run towards the building.

However, the reception area was deserted, and, instead, all the agents were crammed at the entrance of the stairway that led to the basement and in front of the elevator.

“What’s going on? Who triggered the alarm?” Kakashi asked one of the operatives.

The ROOT agent’s first reaction had been to shoot back a snarky answer, but upon seeing who was the one asked the question, he swallowed his anger and said in a polite tone, as if he was speaking to a superior:

“It’s Uzumaki Naruto. He’s on a rampage.”

“But he was knocked out, and the doctors pumped him full with drugs.”

“The doctors are dead. They-”

A thunderous demonic roar suddenly made most people kneel on the floor and cover their ears in pain, and Kakashi was forced to do the same. Some of the weaker agents even lost consciousness, foaming at the mouth and with blood coming from their ruptured eardrums.

Human screams and sounds of gunfire came from the basement too. Then, a massive explosion boomed, an explosion that rocked the entire building from its foundation. The windows were shattered by the shockwaves, the walls cracked and the power was cut too, plunging everyone into darkness.

For a moment, it was silence.

Then, the footsteps of a four-legged being were heard. The sound made by his clawed limbs scratching the marble floor as he walked was eerily loud in the deathly silence that had been instilled.

As the four-legged beast started climbing up the stairs, the ROOT agents’s terror grew with every step it took. Sweat fell down their foreheads like rain and their hands were shaking as they aimed their rifles at the stairwell.

A pair of crimson-red eyes appeared in the dark. They were the cruel, slit eyes of a savage beast. Then, another roar petrified everyone with fear.

But there were two people whose mentality withstood the demon’s killing intent.

A lightning sword grew from Kakashi’s hand as he jumped at the four-tailed crimson beast.

At the same time, from the other side of the room, Yamato yelled:

“Special Move: Silent Strangle Vines!”

Yamato’s arm transformed into four wooden tendrils and they were even faster than Kakashi, reaching the demonic beast first.

However, the two ROOT agents had grossly overestimated their strength. A deafening boom made everyone’s ears ring as the berserk Naruto broke the sound barrier.

In the next moment, Yamato stared wide-eyed as the demon’s claws tore through Kakashi’s body like a hot knife through butter.

An experienced and powerful senior member of the ROOT was killed before he even realized it, his body ripped into pieces.

A cruel grin stretched the fox demon’s face as he turned his head at Yamato. As the creature got on all fours again, Yamato knew instinctively that he only had two or three seconds left to live. And just as the beast launched itself at him, wood spikes suddenly broke out from all over his body, like a porcupine. It was one of his ultimate moves, a special technique that combined defence and offence.

However, the demon’s claws tore through his solid wooden spikes as if they were rotten twigs.

“F-Fire!”

“KILL HIM!”

With the violent deaths of Kakashi and Yamato, the rest of the agents finally snapped out of their shock.

But it was all for nought. Like a fox among chickens, he was unstoppable. Their bullets couldn’t pierce the demon’s crimson skin, their fire quirk attacks couldn’t burn him, and their physical attacks didn’t even faze him. He was like a juggernaut.

His claws were so sharp that they could slice through their rifles and through their bones as if they were all made of paper and his five large tails were so heavy and powerful they would pulverize anyone unfortunate to get hit by them.

In only two minutes, over 20 highly trained ROOT operatives met a violent death. That wasn’t a fight. It was a massacre.
⁂

Dozens of Pro Heroes and just as many police cars and vans packed with Special Assault Team forces arrived at the ROOT Headquarters only 15 minutes after the alarm was triggered.

“Goodness gracious…!”

None of the Pro Heroes, policemen, and Special Assault Team agents that had been sent there were greenhorns but even so, they had never seen such carnage in their entire lives. It was like a scene out of a horror movie.

Not few were the ones who felt the bile rising to their throat before bending over and throwing up uncontrollably. Even Pro Hero Gang Orca who had the upper body of a killer whale was visibly distraught.

But while everyone was momentarily frozen in shock at the gory sight in front of them, a short girl with long white hair and a pair of rabbit ears rushed past them like the wind. She was completely fearless.

She was too fast for the other to notice, but a tense look was on her face, and her jaws were clenched from her anger. Her blood was boiling in her veins.

‘I swear to God, if they did anything to him, I’m going to end them. HPSC or not, I’ll kill them all!”

Uncaring of the pooling blood splashing on her legs and back, staining her white Hero suit, Mirko ran at full speed through the first floor of the building looking for any sign of Naruto.

‘He has to be here somewhere! He was definitely attacked and captured by the black ops of HPSC!’

According to the police reports that she had read, the eyewitnesses said that Uzumaki Naruto had been attacked by people wearing white animal masks.

With her speed, it didn’t take Mirko long to search the whole building, from the basement to the last floor. Furthermore, with her taking the lead, the other heroes and armed police forces snapped out of their shock and followed her inside too.

But there was no sign of Naruto. Not one person was left alive in the building. All the ROOT agents present in the building that evening had been killed violently, to the last person.