A/N: DOUBLE UPDATE DAY~!

Surprise!

THOUGHT I WAS DEAD DID YOU!?

Too bad! I'm still alive!

So here's an interlude of sorts to grease the gears while I puke my lungs out. Did I mention I was sick? No? Pretty sure I may or may not be dying at this point.

Bah!

I've already "died" twice and it didn't stick! This sure as hell won't! If a sodding lightning strike couldn't kill me and my heart couldn't kill me, a little flu won't do me in! If I'm going to die it will be of old age and NOTHING ELSE.

I also feel the need to point out that "this" Naruto clearly isn't normal and struggling with issues of his own...

...remember this is an AU of a sort.

I dare say this story is actually becoming self aware.

"Creation is the engine of hope."

~?

Link (Interlude)

Naruto regarded the suit before him with mild trepidation.

It was, in a sense, his life's work. He'd invested days, weeks, months, years into the creation propped up before him. All of it had led up to this pivotal moment. With this, he might be able to walk again. To move his legs of his own volition. To live some semblance of a normal life...once he ironed all the kinks out. The thought almost caused his blood to sing. Yet a thread of caution wove itself into the tapestry of his thoughts. If this didn't kill him. If it didn't malfunction. If it didn't all go terribly, horribly wrong.

If.

"You sure about this?"

Blue eyes flicked toward Leiko-Go Go, he reminded himself, because her nickname proved oddly soothing-and he willed himself to smile, to feign an emotion he no longer felt. Forcing himself upright in his chair, the young man arched his back and bit his tongue, watching her wheel the suit towards him. In this moment, it rather reminded him of an iron maiden. Self-contained, yet meant to enclose his body from head to toe, it was a marvel of engineering, one meant to fall upon him and assemble itself. All blue and navy and black, a sleek machine that looked made for war, rather than the scientific purpose intended by its creators.

Still, she was expecting some semblance of response and he ought to give it to her. He owed her that much.

...if I die, I'm going to haunt you."

He'd meant it as a joke, something to soothe her nerves as much as his. It worked. She smacked him for the jibe; lightly rapping her clipboard against the back of his head. A small nervous giggle burst out of him, leaping from his lips before he could think to hold it back.

"Idiot." she groused, but the word lacked its usual rancor. "As if I'd let that happen!"

His smile cracked, fractures forming in the facade. "Right, because that's so terribly reassuring...

Perhaps sensing this quiet terror Go Go slipped the hoist aside and went to him, sliding into his lap as though she belonged there. Naruto turned positively scarlet. Before he could think to protest she wrapped him in a firm embrace, flung her arms around the back of his neck, then lay her chin upon his shoulder. Dark hair tickled his nose, brushing against the nape of his neck. She all warmness and softness and curves atop him, none of the cold steel he was accustomed to working with. Some semblance of him knew what was about to happen, but he found himself powerless all the same when she reared back like a serpent.

"Well," he coughed softly, "I can't finish your bike if I do croak, sooooo...

Warm palms seized his whiskered cheeks with a hard wrench.

Despite his best efforts, Naruto flailed back and yelped.

"Owowowow! What the hell was that for?!"

"Stop. Worrying. About it."

Then she crushed her lips to his and all thought failed him. For a fleeting moment all was silent in the lab, broken only by the faint hiss of hydraulics. Her breath warmed his ear as she pulled away and patted his cheek. Then, apparently satisfied by his stunned silence, she climbed off him with the air of a smug huntress, leaving his brain to try and ascertain what the hell had just transpired...

His face puckered as she climbed to her feet and secured the harness once more.

"Oh, that was a low blow."

...another reason this had to work.

Her face flushed. "Well if I didn't do that you'd be dithering all day!"

"Fair enough."

She deserved more than this; his broken shell of a body that failed him more every day.

Oddly enough that made her laugh all the more.

Being trapped in the suit didn't concern him; the nanobots did. If they rejected him...if he'd made the slightest miscalculation, if he'd blundered...would his body hold together? Or would they eat him from the inside out? A base compound like that was potent enough to cripple him outright. Would he even feel the pain? Oh dear, he shouldn't have thought of that...

Enough!

Any more of this hesitation and he'd surely be driven mad.

...so what was he waiting for?

"Do it."

She let go.

Scarce had she done so than the suit seized upon his prone form like a living thing. Of course, this had been its intent all along. Painstakingly programmed to know his form and contour to it, the technology did all that it was meant to do and more. For a terrifying moment he felt nothing. Nothing beyond the warm insulation of the suit, the gentle prick in the base of his spine, the ever-present numbness in his legs.

Then his world flared to life.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Too much here!"

He blinked away the HUD and willed himself to breathe.

"Itachi," he began, directing his words toward the suit's internalized AI, "Is the warm-up complete?"

...yes."

Named for Sasuke's deceased brother, the artificial intelligence was likely the first of its kind. It lived, grew, adapted, and in some ways, thought of itself as a sentient being. Part of him wondered if that had anything to do with the late Uchiha scanning his brain as a base for the computer to use before his unfortunate demise. Who knew? Still, the way it spoke to him sometimes...

"No glitches?"

A pause followed. "None, Naruto-sama."

"Then what're we waiting for? Turn this puppy on!"

"Link-start...activating.

The faceplate clanked down over his head, hiding his face from the world. Say what you would about Tony Stark being a fictional character-no more than anyone he supposed-but the man was a genius. The concept of what he'd done had sparked this idea, turned the waning embers of imagination into a roaring flame.

"Alright," Go Go's face gazed back at him from beyond a nearby console, her terse expression bathed in the waning blue light of the HUD. "How do you feel?"

Naruto pause, taking a moment to ponder just that.

He felt...good. Very good. As though he'd just woken from a long nap, leaving his body rested and refreshed. Just a few modifications from the schematics he'd seen, tweaking the nanobots just that tiny little bit inside his own veins, and you had a working system. Even now he could feel the metal shell as though it were a part of him, the adamantium as much an extension of himself as he was it.

He felt it all.

Just as he felt his legs-FELT!-still un-moving in the chair.

Time for the moment of truth.

Sweat dampened his palms as he struggled with himself, contorting his entire body in the supreme, singular effort required to stand under his own power. The suit responded with him, servo's clicking, whirring, moving whilst the nanobots worked. Muscles that hadn't known movement since he was a boy surged with life. He felt the serum working, oozing strength and power into him behind the flowing metal.

Then he pushed up. Just like that. He was standing. Shakily, one foot fumbled forward. Then another. And another.

A wild whoop tore itself from his throat.

"Ha! Take that you son of a-

With a ponderous creak the suit failed him on the next step and he pitched forward like a statue into the floor. The thrusters squawked in protest, their pitiful pulses overridden by the pilot's startled shout. Mercifully the hardened faceplate protected his visage from harm. It did not, however, do anything to save his ego. Alright. It worked. Clearly. But did he have to land like this...?!

Go Go giggled.

...biiiiiite me, Leiko!"

She only laughed all the louder. "Is that an offer?"

It would prove to a long evening, but a worthwhile one at that.

Neither could possibly predict the chain of events they'd just unleashed.

A/N: Its always fun writing an AU of sorts, though some of you might want to go back to the last chapter to get caught up. That's fine, I can wait! I've also got an editor and others helping me out now

So in the Immortal Words of Atlas...

...Review Would You Kindly?

And enjoy the previews!

Potential ones at that!

(Previews!)

It was perfect.

"I...but you...how did...?!"

She was incoherent for a long time.

"Soooo...I'm guessing you like it then-ack?!"

Naruto yelped as she spun, seized his face in her hands and gave him a resounding smooch.

"UNLIMITED POWAH!"

...somebody punch him. Please."

"What? No! I'm not getting anywhere NEAR that!"

Ha! Success!"

"Just wait for it."

"Wait for what-WHY AM I ON FIRE?!"

R&R~! =D