My note: I don't own Naruto or the Ultimate Marvel universe. Just imagine owning a universe though... It's been a while since I've posted anything. Not sure how this will turn out, but I welcome feedback. Especially on little details, continuity issues and such. The bits in the [square brackets] are people talking in a language not understood. EDIT: adjusting formatting issues that have arisen.

New York Ninja

Part 1

Four years ago...

Twelve-year-old Uzumaki Naruto dropped onto his ass, breathing heavily, grinning broadly despite his exhaustion. Who would have thought that one jutsu would be so hard to learn?

But what a jutsu! So much cooler than the dumb old clone jutsu they taught at the Academy.

"There's no way Iruka-sensei won't let me pass now!" Naruto almost-shouted enthusiastically.

It was getting pretty late though. Where was Iruka-sensei? Shouldn't he be here already? Wasn't he supposed to meet him out here? That's what Mizuki-sensei had said anyway... It had been dark when Naruto sneaked into the Old Man's office to swipe the scroll, but now it was getting a little cool too.

It was probably already around midnight. Naruto wasn't tired yet though. He figured it was the adrenaline. Naruto grinned to himself. Stealing the scroll from right underneath the Old Man's nose - what a rush! He felt like a real ninja.

Still, he didn't see what the big deal was. Naruto glanced down at that Forbidden Scroll again. It looked just like any other scroll to him, if a little bigger. The shadow clone jutsu was so cool though! And that was just the first jutsu in the scroll!

What other awesome moves could he find written in the large scroll...? It couldn't hurt to look, right? Iruka-sensei wasn't even here yet.
Naruto nodded to himself. "Let's see what's up next... Shifting to the Nine Worlds...?"

Naruto pulled the scroll onto his lap and opened it up a little further to read the next jutsu. He read and re-read the next jutsu's title a couple of times, frowning confused. "Huh? A time-space jutsu...? What's that supposed to do?"

After the jutsu's title, there was a lengthy and technical explanation of exactly what the jutsu was supposed to do. Naruto skipped over that part after the first couple of sentences. It was boring anyway! He figured he'd just try the jutsu out and see what happened for himself.

There were over a hundred hand seals to the jutsu, each seal meticulously recorded in neat, perfect penmanship. He read through the sequence a couple of times, until he was confident enough he'd get it right. Naruto rolled the scroll back up, tied it to his back, and started to form the hand seals.

It took him a good ten minutes. He forced himself to go slow, to make sure he got it right.

"Naruto!"

Naruto jumped, yelping in surprise, just as he finished the last seal. He saw the surprised look on Iruka's face, just as he felt the jutsu's effect unravelling all around him. He felt a tugging sensation, just behind his eyes. There was a rushing roaring noise that filled Naruto's head. The world went black; the last thing Naruto saw was the worried look on Iruka-sensei's face...

And then...?

Bright white light filtered down through the green leaves of trees. He heard birds, singing in the distance. A calm breeze rustled the leaves, setting the beams of sunlight to dance.

Naruto sat up. He must've landed on his ass. Maybe he passed out? The forbidden scroll lay a few feet away. He got up, hefting the scroll. He heard something in the distance, a strange honking sound. Naruto followed his ears. Where was Iruka-sensei? Naruto came to the edge of the wooded area.

There was a road, a really, really wide road. There were all these yellow metal and glass things. They looked like carts, without horses. A lot of them were making that loud honking noise that he'd heard.

The buildings on the other side of the road were unlike anything Naruto had ever seen before. They were tall, so very tall, made of brick and metal and shiny reflective glass. They seemed to reach for the sky.

Never mind where Iruka-sensei was... where was he now? This sure wasn't the Hidden Leaf village. There were people of all different shapes, sizes, and colours walking at the side of the road. None of them gave him even a second glance as he wandered out of the wooded area.

It had to be a park or something, Naruto realised absently, as he looked around, bewildered. Those impossibly tall buildings stretched as far as Naruto could see. They probably encircled the park.

"Where am I?" Naruto wondered.

A loud honking caught his attention. "[Get out of the road, you stupid kid!]"

Naruto jumped, surprised. He'd walked in front of one of the yellow metal carts. The driver was leaning out of the window yelling angrily at him.

Naruto hurried back to the side of the road and back to the safety of the wooded park area.

"Freaky..." Naruto muttered to himself.

He watched from the safety of a nearby tree, earning him some strange looks from passers-by. They certainly didn't think it was weird, these big yellow metal machines...

Naruto was starting to feel confused. There were so many sudden questions. What had that man yelled at Naruto? It was like he was talking in another language. What were those yellow metal cart-machines? How did they move? Were they alive? Who would build buildings so tall and why? Two or three of those sky-high buildings could probably house the majority of Naruto's village. Comfortably even!

Naruto decided to explore this place a bit more.

The park looked natural in places, but Naruto could tell that it wasn't. Someone had planted these trees and made sure that they grew properly. Someone tended to the grass and the bushes. There were paths that ran through the park and sunken roads, and Naruto was sure that someone maintained those as well.

As he suspected, those tall buildings surrounded the park on all sides. If he didn't already know for sure anyway, he knew now: this wasn't his village. And that brought up a whole bunch of new questions.

Like what was he going to do for food? His stomach growled almost as if it had been waiting for this question to occur to Naruto. Naruto wondered how long ago he'd last had food. Too long. It had been night, when Naruto had swiped the scroll and performed the jutsu that brought him here. But it was day here and he had no idea what time of day either. The sun was now sinking past those buildings, casting the whole park in shadows.

Naruto had passed a stand selling some kind of sausages in buns when he'd explored this park. He found his legs following his nose and his nose following his stomach back to that stand. Hopefully, the owner would still be there.

The smell was totally foreign to Naruto, but his mouth watered anyway. He stopped when he saw someone else buy one of the things. The man in question had paid with strange-looking paper money, pulled from a flat, black leather wallet which he'd kept in his jacket pocket.

And that brought home another point: Naruto didn't have any money.

Naruto glanced back at the man. He'd seen exactly where the man kept his wallet. The man had dark skin and he was bald. He was in pretty good shape, if Naruto had to guess. He had a patch over his right eye. Would it be right to steal from someone who was half-blind already?

Naruto's stomach growled again. Then again, the man's clothes were nice. He could probably afford to spare some money for a meal.

They'd taught stealth at the Academy and Naruto was sneakier than most. He grinned to himself, forming a shadow clone.

General Nick Fury was caught totally off-guard when a short boy - maybe twelve - stopped abruptly in front of him. The kid was shorter than most around his age. He had spiky blond hair and clear blue eyes and his cheeks were marked with whisker-like lines. He looked almost like a cartoon fox. The kid could have been any jogger, out for an evening's exercise; he was dressed in a lurid orange tracksuit.

"[Sorry about this, mister,]" the kid said.

Fury frowned as the kid started making strange hand-puppets... There was an explosion of white smoke. Fury jumped back, startled, his hand going for his gun.

The smoke cleared. Fury couldn't believe his eyes. There was a very well-endowed, very naked girl standing there, just a few remaining clouds of smoke keeping her... modest.

"[Hi there!]" The girl giggled, winking at Fury.

This was... surreal.

Fury frowned, catching the hand in his pocket. He turned and faced another boy. This one was identical to the first one before that bizarre transformation had turned him into a girl. Of all the distractions to use-

"[Sorry boss,]" the girl said. She disappeared in a cloud of white smoke.

"[Damn,]" the boy muttered. He moved, faster than Fury expected, trying to sweep Fury's legs out from under him. It was only years of experience that let Fury step back, over the attack.

The kid used his momentum, twisted out of Fury's grip, and landed two quick kicks to Fury. He was knocked back a couple of steps. The forgotten hotdog in his hand went spinning through the air. The kid caught it with one hand and wolfed it down quickly. He made a face. "[Yuck! Onions!]"

Fury took a step towards the kid. "Give me the wallet, kid." It wasn't the money. Fury had maybe fifty bucks in there. His SHIELD ID was less easily replaced.

The kid frowned, not understanding. He formed a cross shape with his hands. "[Shadow clone jutsu!]"

There was another explosion of that white smoke. When it cleared, there were more than a dozen identical boys standing there. As one the boys rushed him. They had some skill, there was some training there, but the boys didn't really work together. Fury ducked under a sloppy flying kick. That boy kept going, colliding with another. They both disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

They were fakes, Fury realised. It was some kind of trick. He kicked one of them and the boy disappeared, just like the last two. Fury took a strong punch to the gut for it. He took a step back. The nine boys left seemed to rethink their strategy. Fury pressed his advantage.

The fight didn't last long. The last of the kid's clones seemed to learn from the mistakes of the first, but Fury had a lot of experience. The original kid was gone when the smoke cleared. His clones were just a distraction. Fury's wallet lay twenty feet away. He picked it up. The kid had taken his money and left all the really valuable stuff behind. Fury would keep an eye out for the orange-clad boy. There was some skill there. "Not bad, kid. Not bad at all."

Naruto couldn't go back to that same food stand, but he was sure he could find something, somewhere to eat. He had some of that flimsy money now. He knew it was money, because it all looked the same. Naruto had put some distance between him and the man he'd robbed. He needed time to figure things out.

Naruto knew he wasn't in his own village anymore. If the title of the jutsu was anything to go by, he probably wasn't even in his own world. He had to figure this out. He thought about trying Shifting to the Nine Worlds again, but he had no idea where he'd end up if he blew it this time. He didn't even know what he'd done wrong last time...

The shadow clone jutsu was another story entirely. He'd bolted the second he figured out that that guy he'd robbed wasn't just some guy in good clothes. He should have expected it, Naruto guessed, having grown up in a ninja village and all.

Naruto had left his clones behind to distract the man, emptied his wallet of all the money, then ditched it and taken off. He could now remember the fight though and he was pretty sure he'd lost.

"Good thing I ran," Naruto muttered. He grinned. "As if that nosebleed could catch me anyway!"

He glanced down at the strange money. He wondered how long it'd last. At least enough for a meal, he figured. Maybe two? He really had no idea. About anything. He'd have to figure it out somehow. He had no idea how long he'd be stuck here for. It was a pretty safe bet the village wasn't going to send people out looking for him. Or if they did, it wasn't going to be to bring him back.

Naruto would need food and shelter, someplace he could practise, figure out how to make it back on his own. He could pick pockets for now, but he'd need to figure out how to talk to the people here. His new shadow clone jutsu would come in handy for that, at least...