To The Marrow

Decoy

Last Time:

A second later Naruto clutched his head in pain and his body began to shift ...

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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's full sized clothes. The creature had blue orbs for eyes, 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 numbers '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're 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 file. "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. 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-"