Chapter 29 - My SI Stash #29 - Bond Breaker by shadenight123 (Multiverse Cross) (2/2)

Chapter 1 - Continuation (just added, my bad)

I admit, I was somewhat grateful the hallucination decided I was to be ghost-like in appearance and form. It meant I didn't have to run to keep up with Naruto's surprisingly quick dash out, nor did it mean I had to sweat in order not to end up a corpse dragged on the ground. My natural buoyancy made me look like one of those helium filled balloons, and there was nothing solid for me to hit against.

The people seemed to enjoy staring in the direction I was being pulled towards, but apparently no one seemed to care about me in particular.

Heck, they probably couldn't see me, if the ghost-like appearance I held was of any indication.

Then again, hallucination. It wasn't supposed to make sense; it had to merely be. One night, I had a dream about me being a toddler on a tricycle, escaping an Alien and passing through a battlefield where marines and spacemarines fought each other using the kitchen's table as an impromptu divider.

Don't judge me by my dreams.

I found myself growing incredibly annoyed with the way the hallucination was progressing. The speed was decreasing, but the scenery seemed dull, even boring after a while. I could see the street, and the various small shops nestled within the buildings nearby, and the occasional bench or tree, but there was nothing special by itself.

No hordes of shinobi rushing about, or secret-Anbu-Patrols doing rounds, or stuff like that.

It was surprisingly peaceful.

Except for the menace known as Naruto Uzumaki, who apparently stopped running at a certain point, but being myself friction-less, I was reaching without putting in the minimum of efforts.

”Wh-Why are you following me!?” the child announced, quite loudly in the middle of the street. His fists were clenched tightly, and he looked like he had a bad case of 'shakes'.

”I'm not following you,” I replied, lifting my chained arm. ”You're pulling me along.”

Sophism.

Sophistry.

'The art of falling on your feet no matter what hell you might go through' as I personally call it.

I looked around, evidently, the rushing I felt had been either the ambulance -possible- or the fact they were carrying my body on a wheeled table of sorts into a hospital room.

Oh hell.

Could this be one of those so called 'Near Death' experiences that always end with the guy simply remembering 'the light' when he wakes up?

Frankly, I could have done much worse for a hallucination brought forth from cerebral bleeding.

I grimaced. The thought really was one of my worse, but 'better to think hell on Earth and walk through a garden of roses' than think heaven and end up trudging through mud.

”Urgh...It's not coming off!” Naruto exclaimed, his hand moving apparently through the chain tied at his end. ”How do you get this off!?”

”Don't ask me,” I replied with a lazy shrug. I froze midway. What if the shrug was actually me convulsing? No, no, better to remain calm and avoid movement.

Any kind of movement, really.

”Ah! I know!” Naruto exclaimed suddenly, and began to run once more.

Yes, I knew it was something like this. They brought me into the hospital room first, and now it's off to the operation room. Maybe they'll do a scan or something to find out what the problem is, and then-

A temple.

I looked at the thing propped at the top of quite a lot of stairs, and then at Naruto's heavy wheezing. The funny thing was, there was a tiny whispering part of my head that kept repeating that 'it couldn't be a dream'.

And you know why? Because dreams usually are non-sequitur.

Now, to explain it in layman's terms, say you want to go from point A to point B. In real life, you will walk there, take a car there, fly there, or anything else, really, but you'll have those boring minutes of walking or running where nothing important happens. It's normal, and soon your brain will file them away and forget about them.

In dreams, you don't 'remember' how you go from one point to the other. It's because you simply 'Teleport' from point A to point B, and the in-between isn't important...unless the in-between is actually part of the dream itself.

This was different. I clearly remembered the street and the turns taken. I knew precisely we passed by a shop that sold noodles, and that there was a retail store a few streets further back.

I remembered the road taken.

Then again, hallucinations didn't have to be like dreams. It was my first hallucination anyway; it could be vastly different.

Frankly, if this was the way I died -judging by the ghost-like appearance and everything else- instead of Naruto I could have, I dunno, ended up in some Harem story of sorts. That would have been a good way to go.

I don't know how he managed, but Naruto literally threw himself into the shrine and held his hands over his head, curled in a ball.

I blinked.

”What is that supposed to mean?” I asked flatly.

”Gah!” he exclaimed. ”You're still here!”

”Apparently,” I replied. This didn't seem to discourage him. He gripped a bucket near the well of the shrine and threw the water inside at me.

The water passed through my frame and I simply kept looking at him, with my best 'Are you serious?' gaze.

Now, this is something I possess which is shared with every other person I know of that belongs to my particular brand of profession. When a sleep-deprived IT guy stares at you, he stares with the intensity of a man who's been told the other guy 'washed' his computer with water to clean it up. The stare of 'You are a moron to the nine-thousandth degree' is a stare that only those who have seen the deepest pits of stupidity of mankind can ever fathom to possess.

It is the stare.

And it comes natural.

”You're not going away!” Naruto yelled, and pointed his accusing finger at me.

”Apparently,” I acquiesced. ”Ask the priest for an exorcism?”

”There's no priest!” Naruto yelled again. Was he really that loud of a character? Right, it was in the character description 'Loud, Annoying, Orange-Wearing Shinobi'.

”I see,” I said. ”You know you're still in your pajama?”

Naruto looked down at his clothes, paled, screamed, and rushed off once more.

I inwardly gurgled a curse to the Gods of Chaos.

Was this my one-in-a-lifetime death experience? Couldn't I have had Hooters, Playboy Girls and S_e_xy Actresses playing the Harem Game?

Were this my last conscious thoughts? A screaming twelve to thirteen year old child?

Damn, my last breath s_u_c_k_e_d.