Finally, at long last, here's the next chapter for the "Antifreeze fox"!

And, unfortunately, I will immediately start with some not-so-good news. Namely, due to my dislike of the current manga ark, its incompatibility with where this story is going and the problems with inspiration I'm having these days, I'm putting this story on INDEFINITE HIATUS. I might resume it one day, but don't hold your breath...

Anyhow...

* Review Response:
REVANOFSITHLORD, FateBurn, HellkingUzumaki, BladePhoenix41, Blood D. Cherry, silver083, pandora vanity, Greyjedi449t, Guest #2, NarutoXHonoka, god of all, thank you for your reviews, folks!
Jose19, no, there will be no Legendary Pandora here. Even if I like Teslad. This is because my Maria is quite very different from the canon one, to the point where she wasn't head over heels with Gendo. Thus, no matter how powerful she is, he hadn't gotten an idea of manufacturing what would be their children... I'll give no explanation to the stigmata tissue in Kazuya's and Kazuha's bodies, though... ^^
Sola Caelesti, no, no sealed hatred mode for Naruto. This chapter should give more detailed answer as to what I'm doing with him.
kalakauai, justified in this case due to how much destruction 5-tailed Naruto is causing. He'd evaporate half of them if he does even a minor error in aiming his attacks. And while a major battle without friendly fire victims is rare, I'd rather not kill anyone more than necessary.
Minato 1, no comments, aside from him being NOT weak. Though, he's isn't a physical god Kishimoto had turned him in lately either.
kreshryl, sorry...
Guest #1, no, there is no Legendary Pandora in this story. And the pairing of Maria/Naruto/Amelia is final anyway.
JensenDaniels32, here you go!

* Techniques:
Freezing field: A special field deployed by Nova and stronger Limiters that nullifies almost all forces, sans gravitational, maybe. It also saps the chakra out of shinobi techniques, making them quite useless - only the most chakra-intensive ones can survive for more than a few moments without additional energy input from Naruto... Freezing field, however, doesn't work on natural energy and sage chakra, which makes sage mode a viable method of fighting against Nova.

Disclaimer: I DO NOT own "Naruto" or "Freezing". No profit is being made. I also don't own any other books, anime and manga that I may or may not use as additional sources of inspiration.

"Speaking"
'Thinking'
"Speaking of higher beings / Techniques / Speaking in power mode"
'Thinking of higher beings'

Chapter XII: Minus nine

"I still can't believe that we've won that fight... There were so many of those monsters out there." Naruto said with a small sigh at the end as walked up to the Kyuubi's cage deep within his mindscape. As he was stuck in the hospital wing due to the aftereffects of overusing the youki, ironing out his deal with the nine-tails was about the most productive thing he could do with his overabundant free time. Which is why he was here.

"That would be my victory, hairless monkey." The tailed beast boomed as it moved out the shadows slightly. "After all, without me you would have died out there. It was purely my might that allowed you fight the army of those things, was it not?" There was a pause as the Kyuubi leaned to get its massive head as close to its container's level as it was possible for a mountain-sized fox. "So, what brings you here?"

"I remember the deal we had made." The young sage replied. "And I intent to honor it. But since they do say that the stress of ripping one of your kind out of a jinchuuriki will kill him or her, I'd rather have some more time to research a way to release you with the minimal damage to myself."

"I see." Was the response the Kyuubi gave. "You have always been someone who simply refused to die no matter what. That might be about the only thing about your worthless self that I might respect. Thus, I shall not hold the time you will take for that research against you. At least for now." Upon seeing Naruto nod to that, it continued: "Now, if you don't have anything else important to tell me, begone!" And so the blond shinobi found himself forcefully ejected from his own mind. Not exactly a nice feeling, but, somehow, today it felt like the nine-tails wasn't really trying to be really hateful towards him.

Too bad, now that he was back to the reality, there nothing that he could do to stave off his boredom: all of his scrolls were safely sealed away back in his and Maria's room and since he was the only person in this world who could use chakra – at least the only one he knew about – no one could even unseal those to bring them here... And it meant that counting dots on the ceiling was about the most fun thing he could be doing right now... What a troublesome situation...

~/ *** \~

While everyone was still busy cleaning up the aftermath of this massive Nova incursion and taking care of the wounded Pandora and Limiters that had lived through the battle, Gendo Aoi made an attempt to secure all the aforementioned survivors away in a separate facility. But an intervention of a certain red-haired proto-Pandora had made rethink those plans. Maria was scary when scorned, and whatever she did when she showed the elder Aoi her displeasure with his ideas was quite enough to make him change his mind... And to make him look for a replacement table too, if he wanted to keep up with his paperwork...

Still, while his idea of totally isolating the participants of the battle from the rest of the world in an undetermined location for an undetermined period of time had been violently shot down by 'the Goddess', Gendo Aoi still managed to put those that had survived the latest battle against the alien invaders into a quarantine of sorts. But, unlike how he originally planned it to be, this quarantine was only fourteen days long and the facilities used for it were also a part of the West Genetics complex.

Of course, even Maria's intervention didn't stop Gendo from arranging for an experiment or two on the 'winged' Pandora to study the powers they gained from their ascension, but these experiments were a bit more tamer than they otherwise would have been... Though, these tests were probably for the better anyway, as even Amelia, who was by far the most experienced of the four, still knew only so much about her powers.

These experiments, though, started only on the fourth day of the quarantine. This was caused by the simple fact that the aftermath of the fight against the humanoid Nova had left them all in a pretty bad shape. And given that Satellizer had already displayed an ability to heal others at quite honestly ridiculous rates, patching her up was made the top priority – as soon as she recovered enough, she had been asked to help the medics with curing her comrades. Which, after some persuasion, 'the Untouchable Queen' did.

Anyway, once all four of the ascended Pandora had been healed, the tests began. And it was almost immediately confirmed officially that the 'wings' granted them all a significant boost in strength, speed and toughness. They also seemed to be able to emphatically communicate with each other, but even the super-advanced technology the Chevaliers had access to was unable to detect that – the older than feudalism experiment with two separate rooms, however, had confirmed that they indeed could relay messages among themselves. The same experiment with separate rooms also showed that they all could accurately detect any bearer of stigmata tissue within a significant range.

And with some help from the rests of the Pandora and, more importantly, their Limiters that too were quarantined, it was confirmed that the ascended ones had ridiculous resistance if not outright immunity to the Freezing field for as long as they had their 'wings of light' out...

The rest of the experiments were about testing the personal powers the transcendents had gained. Satellizer's healing abilities were already well-observed by the medical staff. And testing the additional power boosts that both Rana and Ticy had was easy as well.

Only Amelia's personal power was a problem: after all, no known Pandora or Limiter could create mental attacks of any form, much less the ones that were transmitted over the Freezing field. Thus, after two whole days of unsuccessfully trying to replicate the conditions in which the white-haired beauty's anti-mind-control aura would have any noticeable effect, the Gendo's scientists gave up and went to work with whatever other data they had managed to collect.

This meant that the girls were free to return to their more normal lives, at least for now. And while Satellizer, Rana and Ticy were all happy about no longer needing to play lab mouses, the same wasn't exactly true for Amelia. Even if she came a long way from being an emotional wreck she had been when Naruto had stopped her form committing a suicide over her survivor's guilt, she still needed him! No, now she was strong enough to keep going without her beloved blonde, but... It just wasn't the same without him. And he, unfortunately, was still stuck in the medical ward, thank to the extensive damage his body had suffered from overuse of demonic powers...

~/ *** \~

This day had dragged on and on for whole damn eternity for Maria as she once again found herself stuck between the meetings held by the Chevalier officials where the events of the last Nova incursion were discussed yet again and the paperwork she as a colonel had to do. Honestly, why couldn't those old paper-pushers see that someone like her could use the time she was wasting on those thing more productively? But, whatever, the business for the day was over and she could finally relax now.

"I'm home!" She called as she stepped into the apartment she was sharing with Naruto and Amelia. A few moments later her blonde lover answered from the living room. Peeking in there, the red-haired beauty saw him studying the scrolls full of sealing formulas. Shrugging at it as it was something she could never hope to understand, 'the Goddess' headed to the bedroom to change into something more casual – unlike the majority of the Pandora she preferred not to use Volt texture for the mundane tasks like creating clothes.

And as Maria was undressing, a thought occurred to her: she had never really thanked Amelia properly for saving her life during that battle against the humanoid Nova. True, the last two weeks had been a blur as everyone was recovering from the aftermath of the incursion, but, still, that was a very very weak excuse for not doing anything nice for her white-haired kohai...

But, really, what could she even do to repay that debt? For a few minutes, Maria had absolutely no ideas, but then inspiration dawned upon her. Didn't Amelia mention that she too had feelings for Naruto? While the red-haired 'Goddess' would be the very first person acknowledge that she was actually quite greedy and selfish woman, ever since the Alaskan pogrom she had grown quite close to the whitehead: sharing with her didn't look like something completely out of this world. That, and – Maria though – having a threesome might actually be quite fun.

Still, something like that should be discussed with Naruto first. Snapping out of her thoughts, the red-haired beauty put on the dress she had picked for tonight and headed to the living room. The blond sage, of course, was still there, studying those scrolls of his. 'The Goddess' wasn't really sure what he was trying to do with them, but it was probably related to him needing to free his demon to uphold the contract he had made with it some time ago.

"Mhm... Naruto-kun?.. Can we talk about something?" Maria said as she sat onto the armrest of the sofa, next to her beloved blonde. The said teen let out an unintelligible sound, telling her that he was listening, yet he continued reading his scrolls. "Say..." 'The Goddess' paused for a moment, gathering her inner strength to actually voice the question she was going to ask. "What do you think about... ?"

Amelia sighed softly as she stepped under warm shower. The quarantine had finally ended yesterday, so, of course, she had spent the entire today training, as if trying to make up for all of the list time in one go. And whatever thoughts were occupying her head at the time, she was completely absorbed by them, so much so that she didn't even notice Maria sneaking up on her until the redhead turned the shower next to hers on.

The two beauties spent another few minutes in a rather comfortable silence, until...

"Say, Amelia-chan..." 'The Goddess' said, causing the white-haired beauty to look at her. "What are your feelings towards Naruto-kun?" She asked then in a playfully-conspiratorial voice. This question had caught the once-E-Pandora off-guard.

"Ah-... Um..." She stammered. "I..." Whatever else she was going to say was cut off when Maria slipped into her personal space and pushed her against the shower's wall.

"You love him, don't you?" The redhead whispered as she practically pressed herself against the younger girl's body. "And you want him; to do you passionately, in all the different ways, again and again." This caused poor Amelia to freeze up with the look of a deer caught in headlights while a deep blush spread across her cheeks... Chuckling at the expression on the other girl's face, Maria steeped even closer to her. "He's mine, though." She whispered while grabbing ahold of white-haired beauty's hands and pulling them above her head. "But if it is with you, I'm willing to share."

"Eh?-..." Amelia breathed out, totally caught off guard by this. And she couldn't say anything else as 'the Goddess' suddenly kissed her, right on her lips... It took the once-E-Pandora quite a few long moments to catch up with the reality, but when she finally did, she – actually surprising herself with this – began kissing the red-haired 'Goddess' back...

They remained lip-locked for almost a minute with Maria still pinning her 'prey' to the wall as she still held her hands above her head. Eventually, though, the two of them broke the kiss.

"You know, this is the first one I have with another girl." The redhead confessed. "And I must say, it felt nice. I wouldn't mind more of it." Hearing these words made Amelia blush an even deeper shade of red. But Maria didn't pay it much attention as she was already attacking the girl's lips again, drawing her into another kiss, deeper and bolder one this time.

And as the two of them were busy exploring each others' mouths with their tongues, 'the Goddess' switched to holding the whitehead's hands with just one of her own, using her now-free other hand to cup the girl's quite sizable breast, making moan into the kiss. Smirking inwardly at the reaction she had just gotten out of her 'prey', the redhead continued playing with her.

"M-Maria!.." Amelia, who was still more or less completely at the said beauty's mercy, breathed out as their kiss ended. She got a smirk in response, and a moment later the red-haired Proto-Pandora latched onto the crook of her neck, kissing and licking the sensitive skin there. "A-ah!" After playing for a little bit more with the white-haired beauty's breast, Maria – while keeping on with kissing her at the crook of her neck – moved her hand further downwards...

Amelia's eyes shot wide open as she felt gentle fingers run against her nether lips, which were quite wet with her juices. And as Maria went on with teasing her pussy, the sensations it was causing soon enough made the younger Pandora start moving her hips in an attempt to get more of this pleasurable feeling, which was immediately noticed.

"You're such a naughty girl, aren't you?" 'The Goddess' cooed as she continued teasing the whitehead's moist pussy. Whatever the said whitehead was going to say in response was silenced as Maria once again claimed her lips with a kiss... After maybe half a minute, the red-haired beauty decided that it was time to take this all to the next step and gently slid two of her fingers into her 'prey's' pussy.

Amelia moaned loudly, breaking out of the kiss, as she felt those fingers sinking into her silky depths, reaching towards her core. Meanwhile, Maria was marveling the sensation of the smooth and wet hot tightness wrapping around her digits, idly wondering whether she felt like this to her Naruto-kun when he was doing her... Getting her fingers two knuckles in, 'the Goddess' stopped, giving Amelia – whom she was still holding against the shower's wall – a few moments to adjust to the 'invasion'. Then she started sawing her fingers in and out, very slowly at first, but getting faster as the time progressed. She also went back to kissing and licking the crook of the white-haired beauty's neck, thus letting her be as vocal about the feelings she was experiencing as she wanted to be.

With Maria's gentle fingers working wonders within her pussy, it didn't take Amelia all that long to reach her orgasm; with a loud cry-like moan she clamped hard on the digits invading her most sacred place while also covering them in generous amounts of her juices. And somehow the red-haired 'Goddess' managed to send the younger Pandora to such a high cloud nine that she never noticed it when those magnificent fingers left her pussy. Or when they were brought to her face. She even sucked them clean of her own cum without giving it a single thought...

'Damn, this is so hot!' Maria admitted to herself. Molesting this girl and giving her quite an orgasm had left her herself dripping-wet between her legs – no thanks to the shower they were still under – and burning for a long and thorough fuck... Getting the whitehead to let her fingers go, 'the Goddess' gave her a quick kiss on the lips, getting a small taste of the girl's juices for herself. And, well, she couldn't say she disliked it; she probably wouldn't say 'no' to eating her out while having Naruto-kun fuck her into the oblivion. But, anyway, it was the time for then to rejoined that blond stud and get the main event of the night going.

Finally releasing Amelia from her hold, the red-haired beauty stepped away from her for a few seconds to turn the showers off. Then, she picked the still-recovering from her trip to the cloud nine girl up and headed towards the bedroom while carrying her bridal style.

~/ *** \~

Over the next few days Naruto had finally managed to make a breakthrough in his research. Neither of his two Pandora lovers were sure what exactly that entailed as for them both the seals were nothing but a mass of gibberish symbols drawn on a paper, but, according to him, he had finally found a way to modify the 'key' in such a way that, baring something really unexpected, he now should be able to survive releasing his demon without many problems.

When he was asked why he needed to do that in the first place – after all, as scary as that power was, it was power great enough to take on an army of Novas – the blond sage replied that he had made a deal. And he was going to uphold his end of it. As for what was going to happen once that demon was out... Well, according to Naruto himself, since the Kyuubi was still connected to his half left in their original world, without being shackled by the seal it would simply be on its way back to their home universe before the hour was over.

Of course, for a being so powerful that it could be compared to a force of Nature, even an hour was more than enough time to cause an untold amount of destruction, but Naruto claimed that it had the Kyuubi only wanted to return to the world of its creation and no desire to trash this place on its way out. Hopefully, that indeed was so...

"Alright, here we are." Naruto said as he stopped near the middle of a rather big, but still secluded dale they had chosen as the place for release of the Kyuubi. Maria and Amelia, who were accompanying him there, nodded before dropping their bags onto the grassy ground.

"Naruto-kun? Are you really going to free your demon?" Amelia asked quietly, obviously scared: she had witnessed was but a mere fraction of its power, yet it had already been so powerful and full of malice... She was very afraid of what would happen, once this monster was no longer chained down by the seal on her love's stomach.

"Well..." The young sage replied, while rubbing the back of his head. "Kyuubi can't really go back to my world as long as he is bound by the seal. And we've kind of made a deal..." There was a pretty long pause, before he continued: "Anyhow, shall we get started?" Upon the girls' nods, he made a ram handseal before, well, regurgitating a huge scroll.

"Whoa." The white-haired beauty exclaimed upon seeing the thing. Indeed, the red-and-yellow-striped scroll was at least a foot in diameter and as wide as Naruto himself was tall. And, once the blond jinchuuriki opened it, everyone could see mind-boggling numbers of small neat symbols.

"And that's just the key?" Maria asked, unable to really believe that the crazy-complex thing in front of her was nothing more than a key to the real seal. After all, if that was just a key, then how complex the seal was? - There was no way it was created by a mere human! If only she knew that, indeed, Naruto's seal had been created with the help of a Death God...

"Yeah." The young sage confirmed as he placed his left palm on a blank square drawn right next to the key's arrays. And once he pushed his chakra into it, the symbols suddenly turned alive and flowed from the scroll onto his hand, the whole array shrinking down till it could fit on just his forearm... Sealing away the now-empty scroll, the blond shinobi gathered the natural energy to enter his sage mode: doing that supposedly would grant his body an additional layer of protection during the release of the Kyuubi. "Alright, let's do it!" He said as he took of his sweater and T-shirt – causing both of his ladies blush a bit at the sight of his bare torso in the process.

Regardless of that, however, they took more than just a few steps away from him so that the Kyuubi, once it will be free, won't squash them under its paws. And for whatever reason – probably to ease their own minds – Maria and Amelia both summoned their weapons, the later one bringing her wings of light out as well.

Meanwhile, Naruto brought his left hand – and the key that now rested on it – to the now-visible spiral seal on his stomach and whispered something under his breath. For a few moments, even after he moved his hand away, nothing had happened. Then, the seal itself started moving: the spiral got thicker, while also 'pulling' the strings of jet-black ink from the character arrays that normally surrounded the aforementioned spiral. Soon enough the seal looked a half-opened diaphragm of a photo-camera with a sinister reddish-black abyss seen through it.

Whatever was going on, apparently, wasn't nice for Naruto himself, as the metamorphosis of his seal had brought him to his knees, and his breathing now was quite rugged. And then he actually screamed as the reddish goo-like... something radiating pure malice and hatred began leaking out of the opened seal. Looking closer, both girls could recognize this something as the energy that the blond sometimes used to create a protective and empowering cloak around himself, just much more concentrated.

"So, that's the power of his demon!.." Maria whispered. Though, soon it became quite clear that she had been too hasty with that exclamation: quite soon there was more or less a small lake of the liquid youki, yet more was still pouring out of Naruto's seal.

Finally, after quite a long while, the last drop of the demonic power leaked out of the seal. And as soon as it happened, the whole 'lake' started bubbling violently as the youki began taking a shape. A shape of a humongous nine-tailed fox that was as tall as an S-class Nova and a few orders of magnitude more powerful. Maria couldn't even think of a word strong enough to describe just how great the power of the Kyuubi was... She had never faced anything quite like that, and now had no troubles believing that the nine-tailed demon could indeed be a force of Nature that could level mountains or create tsunamis with but a sweep of its tails...

As it completed its manifestation, the Kyuubi lowered itself so that it could look at the two human females its now-ex-container had chosen as his mates with its own eyes. But as impressive human as both maidens were, they weren't all that interesting to it, so it quickly switched its attention to Naruto. The said teen was just beginning to recover from releasing it from the seal – even with the Uzumaki toughness and sage mode power-up on his side, the process had been far far from painless...

"Hey, brat!" The demon's voice boomed. "You still haven't kicked off, have you?" The young sage let out a whimper in response. "Oh, drop the act, fleshbag, I made sure you'll live!" Naruto whimpered again, though, he had to admit – just to himself – that the pain he was feeling was already receding. Or, maybe, he was just getting used to it... "Fine, whatever..." The Kyuubi said, sounding quite exasperated. "But listen to what I will tell you now. These would be the last words of wisdom I will ever share with you after all."

"Ghm..." The now-ex-jinchuuriki let out an intelligible sound to tell the bijuu that he was listening.

"First of all, I'm sure that when you decide to stop fooling around, you'll notice that your sage mode will become more powerful and much easier to active without me in you." That were some good news as the sage mode was one of the two power-ups that allowed Naruto to fight against the Novas. And the blonde was sure that the latest clash was far from the last one he'll be fighting in. "And while I will no longer be there to save your ass whenever you mortal body gets damaged, you should still be able to heal faster that average human. Likewise, your resistance to poisons and corrupting influences should still be strong."

"Nhmhm..." Naruto responded.

"And, finally, a bit of wisdom: nature, whether you believe it or not, exists on the balance of all its parts. That applies to chakra too." The nine-tails said. "That done, it's about time I return back to our home world. Have a nice time being stuck there till Shinigami-sama collects your measly little soul, hairless monkey." And then, the massive figure of the Kyuubi no Yoko suddenly lost its solidness and just a second later the wind blew it away like a reddish-orange smoke...

A few seconds passed, and then, apparently not seeing any need to keep himself conscious anymore, Naruto allowed the darkness to claim him. Maria and Amelia, seeing that, immediately dismissed their weapons as they rushed to his side.

"I-is he alright?" The white-haired beauty asked frantically, clearly frightened by the possibility of something bad happening to her love.

"He should be fine." 'The goddess' replied after a few seconds as she checked his pulse: it was still strong and within norm. "Let him rest, and our Naruto will be as good as new before you know it!" 'At least I hope it will be so...' The redhead added in her mind.

~/ *** \~

Even though much of his self-healing remained, without the Kyuubi's assistance, it took Naruto a week to completely recover. Then again, he probably shouldn't be complaining about that as under normal circumstances a jinchuuriki would actually die when his or her bijuu was extracted.

Anyhow, while he was stuck in the hospital wing, the young sage had been thinking about what the nine-tails had said before it departed from this world, presumably going back to the Elemental Nations. According to it, the natural energy, just like the nature itself, existed on the balance of all its parts. That much seemed like a given, so why was it so important? - Naruto really doubted that the Kyuubi had said those words merely to torment him in some way or another.

Then, at long last, just before he was to be released from the hospital wing, a realization had dawned upon the young sage. It happened after he had recalled a lecture Kakashi-sensei had given to the Team Seven after the mission to the Wave country. Namely, Naruto recalled the fact that combination elements like ice were stronger than either of the basic elements they were created from. And if he were to extrapolate from there, the combination of all five basic elements together would be the strongest, most potent form of chakra.

And if it was so... Could he, as a sage, really wield something that went beyond bloodline abilities? Truth to be said, that sounded like something rather implausible. But he wouldn't really know for sure until he tried it, would he?

Thus, as soon as he was released from the hospital wing and cleared for active duty, Naruto went out to the training grounds and began experimenting. And, of course, at first, the only thing he had noticed to change was the speed at which he could enter his sage mode: whereas it took him a little bit more than three seconds to do that while the Kyuubi was still within him, now he could access it in less than a single second. Not to mention that, indeed, his sage mode now was even more powerful and more complete than before. But, still, there were no signs of sage chakra gaining any 'new' properties...

Then, after a couple days of not gaining any results, a sudden realization had visited the blond shinobi. After all, the Kyuubi did say then natural energy, not the sage chakra, which was the former mixed with normal human chakra. In other words, the nine-tails had meant that he should somehow use the natural energy directly, without mixing it with anything. Thus, some further experimenting was in order...

Turning into sort-of living energy pump was tricky, but after a lot of trying – and not without some help from the Shadow Clones – the young Uzumaki had finally figured it out. And almost as soon as he did, he was able to produce a few dark-red – so dark that they looked to be almost black – orbs that floated lazily above his palm. And after a few more days of trying, Naruto became capable of actually manipulating these orbs into doing something other than just being there.

He now could transform these energies into simple weapons like battle staffs, or he could turn them into a shield that offered some very decent protection! And, what was way more important than that, since it was still a variation of a sage mode, he was still immune to the effects of the Freezing Field. Which, coupled with the fact that he could keep this new and improved sage mode up for hours even in a fight, meant the he once again could truly fight alongside with his girls!

That's all folks!
Read and Review!

And repeating this once more... Due to my dislike of the current manga ark, its incompatibility with where this story is going and the problems with inspiration I'm having these days, I'm putting this story on INDEFINITE HIATUS.