I do not own, in any aspect that entitles dominion (not the Mengsk kind at least) of any variation, Naruto nor Starcraft.

Wish I did though...

Warning: Contains swearing.

They call me a Spectre

Chapter 9: When sleep comes

Xil

In spite of resting for a time, he was tired. He had dredged himself through the desert; he had made deliberate use of every stone he could find to lay down to snipe his doomed targets; he was fairly sure he had started sleep walking at some point in following the band of marines and the siege tanks he was to help escort to the surprisingly intact base and drill. As of now though he was barely awake and drifting closer to outright falling asleep on the job, not that it mattered much at the moment. Between the bunkers, the siege tanks, and even the liberal use of one colossal laser 'drill', there wasn't much need for a half dead ghost who had half a day's sleep at most as of late to defend the Drakken drill as it bore into an ancient temple. Well... two ghosts actually.

She followed him like his own shadow if not more quietly. He even legitimately forgotten she was there a couple of times, though he chalked that up more to his weary state of body and mind in his defense... But there she was whenever he looked behind him or to his side, smiling a smile so serene it only made him want to get lost in both it and her gentle eyes whenever her helmet was off... eyes she only had when it came to him apparently. Still, it made it all the harder to resist her, especially since he was one jolt away from lurching forward from his improvised seat and splaying himself on the ground like a presumably dead wreck of a man to onlookers. Weariness aside, he couldn't even resist her as she took his head and prompted him to lay it on her lap once more. With her hands weaving through his hair, gloved though they were, he was losing the last vestiges of being conscious—the semi-loud roar of the siege tanks and the chattering of gunfire were all that kept him from truly sleeping behind closed eyes. That and her soft giggling helped him stay 'awake.'

"Whaaat?" he groaned as he snuggled into her lap like a pillow. An eye cracked open but it only blearly looked out to the world in front of him. Barren as it was, he did his damndest not to glance at the sand-like dust disturbed by the wind.

"It's nothing," she softly chimed as she continued to caress his scalp through his hair. "It's just now that you're in the light, I didn't quite realize how cute you've gotten over the years." At his subsequent groan she giggled once more as quietly as she could as his eye drifted to a close...

XVX

(Flashback!)

Minus Five

"Führen Sie das Protokoll sechs aus! (1)"

Blue eyes snapped open though not out of alarm or a sense of duty. No. Whatever kicked him into gear was something else. Yet he did not move. Could not actually beyond the scope of the paniced searching of his room without the benefit of turning his head. Yet out of the corner of his eye he did spot something white though. Bulky even... "Achten Sie darauf, Ihre Ausrüstung zu tragen. Achten Sie darauf, Ihre Kamera auf den Live-Feed zu stellen (2)."

Before he knew it he had already was already up and dressing himself in his combat equipment. It took even less time to switch the setting of the camera built within his mask from "Recording" to "Live." Yet all of it was done without conscious thought or intent however; each movement his body was almost stiff, predetermined and ordered without his consent.

"Are you reading this?" Sasha Marlin? What was she doing in his room? Who was she speaking to? Wait, was she the one speaking in that... other language?

"Loud and clear Lieutenant. The feed is optimal. We're ready to proceed with the experiment." Experiment? What are—... why did that voice sound familiar? It was itching at the back of his mind like an actual itch of his skin. But no matter how badly he wanted to scratch it, his hand wouldn't move. It was like his body was a statue! A robot rather!

"Very well then. Gehen Sie mit Phase zwei vor (3)!"

Once more his body lurched forth from a cold start as if another willed enacted itself upon it. In a matter of moments he was already out of his room, down the hallway and inside the armory with nothing more than a twitch of conscious resistance to his name. Yet it was apparently something they planned for all the same.

"He's resisting!"

"Hacke! (4)"

... For better or worse his body had stumbled a step as his vision swam, tears forming in his eyes as their apparent punishment afflicted him, whatever it was while he was en route. Whatever it was, it also muddled his thinking as well for a spell. As such he didn't realize what his appropriated body had done till his watery eyes managed to focus on what looked to be one of many tanks used by Sergeant Jones' 660 armor. Normally taken off when not in use, the tanks rather than the armor, or else equipped in advance solely with the expectation of rapid deployment to save time, they had been installed onto the hardskin. More to the point, they had been installed improperly, something the sergeant had repeatedly made a fuss about whenever someone else did it for him. As it was though it wasn't... inherently lethal. Even if he hadn't noticed and equipped it as it was now he would notice the smell of gas within the suit and be forced to take it off before he passed out... What was he doing?

Then he noticed it. He knew he was gripping something but with so little control over himself he could only guess what was in his hand. When his hand autonomously rose he was quick to discern what was in—a motion activated explosive ordinance...

It was then the lights flashed on. "Shrimp? What're you doing in here?"

His hand slapped the explosive onto the armor's plasma tank. "Hey, Naruto. What're you—" He had approached the blonde from behind. Unlike Naruto, he didn't notice what looked to be a cone made of wind wrap itself around his hand and forearm like a miniature tornado tapered to a point. When he clapped his hand on the ghost's shoulder, he didn't have the luxury of reacting at the last minute. He didn't even have the courtesy of even seeing the horrified gaze wanting to be unleashed behind a now crimson stained mask with three lenses.

In his shock his body ripped his arm out of the body of one of the Triplets. As the man's body collapsed on the ground, his own hands grasping at the open hole in his body as he gagged, the painted hand that assaulted him coldly pressed the activation switch of the explosive as well as another for a delayed start to arm itself. His body didn't bother even glancing at the dying man as it got up and made for a nearby rack where his C-Ten awaited him. He twitched however in an attempt to crane his head back.

"He's resisting again!"

"Hacke!"

And once more his world went blurry as his hand disengaged the safety.

XVX

"Hey Gorden! What's keeping you—" Luis, having just entered the armory, came to a halt at the door as he gaped at the corpse of his dead brother lying in a pool of his own blood. "GORDEN!"

Immediately he ran out to his fallen brother and comrade in arms. He passed the firebat armor, unheeding of the red light of the trap that was lying in wait.

XVX

BOOM!

"What the hell?!"

Frankfurt Jones was the first to round the corner with what remained of his squad following suit. He only gazed in confusion at finding the junior member of his squad at the other end of the hallway which the armory was attached to, clutching his head in pain, his rifle jerking and dragging across the floor wildly as he leaned against the wall for support.

"Shrimp! What is going on here!"

Naruto didn't respond. If anything he tried to shrink into the wall only to jerk.

"Jam, check it out!" He pointed to the armory whilst smoke belched out the open door. "Denise, with me!"

"Yes sir!"

Jam already rushed passed Frankfurt and Denise as they briskly marched down the hall to their squad mate. "Kid, can you even hear me?" Naruto twitched and spasmed once more as he fought to remain frigid. It even seemed that he was actively resisting standing up straight.

"Kid—"

Barely five feet away, the rifle was hoisted up and shakily pointed at the pair, both of whom frozen stiff at the response.

"Na—"

The trigger was pulled. The C-Ten, normally a semi-automatic, had been switched to its automatic setting... it didn't stop firing till the last bullet was spent. Even then his finger, his twitching finger on a trembling gun, didn't let go of the trigger even as he finally stood apart from the wall, a resistant hand sliding down his own leg to the pistol strapped to his thigh. By the time it was withdrawn from its holster, Jam, paled from horror and just as disturbed, stepped out with a chaingun and belt of ammunition lashed across his shoulder. He barely had time to contemplate pulling the trigger in his state of horrid awe when three bullets barreled through his skull.

Both guns dropped to the ghost's side. Both grips slackened considerably. Yet only the rifle fell to the ground with a clatter as dark laughter echoed in the hallways. Laughter uninterrupted as a command was issued for him to step outside. An order he obeyed without resistance. As his eyes glazed over behind his mask.

XVX

"Shut up!"

Yet the laughter continued unabated. Gone were the familiar wall of the underground bunker. In their place were red brick walls covered in splotches of plaster, both of which darkening as if bleeding, decaying. Gone was the floor as well. If there even was a floor, it was covered in what appeared to be a seemingly bottomless lake of murky sewer water with the same consistency of a solid object. If he bothered to look above him or at the walls he would've noted the rusted pipes clinging to them with supports looking to be on the verge of breaking from their fastenings. But he didn't. In fact he didn't notice the walls, or cared if the 'floor' he was hunched over was solidified liquid without the benefit of being frozen. His eyes were clamped shut, his teeth gritted and gnashing, his hands over his ears in a vain attempt to black out the chuckling emanating behind him.

"Pathetic."

His teeth gritted all the harder...

"You slaughtered your friends, your 'family,' and play victim to it while that woman continues to whisper orders into your ear. Orders you slavishly follow without resisting no less."

"Shut Up!"

"What have I done to deserve such a cretin of a host?"

"WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!" he roared as he whipped around. Yet as he beheld his tormentor he couldn't help but gawk at the mountainous fox before him whose size rivaled that of a battlecruiser. Whose malicious grin encompassed almost the entirety of the ghost's vision. Whose narrowed eyes were dissecting him, stripping him down and savoring what it saw. "Truly disgusting."

"... shut up" was all the response Naruto could muster, his mind blank as he tried to comprehend what was going on whilst still processing what he had done but moments before.

The fox, which was behind a series of bars, snorted derisively. "Why should I?" it murmured at its own leisure. "For what reason would I listen to a slave who would willingly slaughter his comrades to lick the boots of his masters?"

"... willingly?"

The liquid floor encompassed the entirety of the room they were in including the cage the fox sat behind. As murky as it was however a cloud of red mist began to disrupt the murk underneath the fox which slowly began to creep toward the blond on the other side. Even so, the fox rose an eyebrow at the blond. "Yes. Willingly. How else would you describe it when you have all this awesome potential given to you even when you haven't asked for it?Your mind is yours to command, is it not? You have abilities stemming from your mind, do you not? You could've warned them.You could've blocked your own routes and sabotaged your assassinations. I bet you could have easily took your own life if you tried hard enough. So tell me, were you really left with no choice? Did their lives really matter so little to you that barking at you was enough to forsake them?" The fox's grin became more sickening as it stretched further across its face. Underneath it the red mist surged forth from its crawl toward the blond, his fists curling and his knuckles popping.

"... Shut up." The cloud of crimson pooled beneath him and coiled like a perverse vine around his reflection beneath him. The fox only chuckled in the meantime.

"Well, mortals are predisposed with faltering in the face of tragedy. Even the greatest of your kind hand been known to succumb once the odds become insurmountable. Perhaps I am wrong about you. Yet you are still a slave regardless of your character.One who has no choice but to obey." The fox leaned in close to the cage. "Unless he had help of course."

"Release me," it sinfully hissed as it brought its eyes to focus on a tag on the other side of his cage's bars. "With my power you wouldn't be weak again. With our combined might your captors will tremble! Make them suffer as you had. Take from them what they took from you!Just tear away this accursed seal!"

Almost mechanically Naruto lumber forward. Unlike before however this was of his free will, the mist dutifully following his every step. Soon enough he was at the bars, in front of the seal with his hand poised to snatch it from its place. Yet he hesitated. He glanced through the gaps within the bars that kept each other at bay. He stared into the beady eye staring at him, waiting in anticipation... expecting him to pull it away. Waiting for him... to make a mistake.

Was he simply being paranoid?

Would it hurt to investigate?

... would it really make a difference?

He pooled what power he could and reached out to the fox as it patiently stared at him, its tails, nine in total, waving about in anticipation behind it. Its grin faltered for a moment in confusion, undoubtedly sensing something amiss before scowling and snarling. With a restrained growl the fox managed to eject Naruto from its mind with such force that his body stumbled back before utterly crashing into the 'ground' with a splash. Whilst he laid there as if stunned, the fox's grin was lost to a neutral scowl. It too was lost to a fanged snarl as the blond began to convulse not with pain or in a seizure, but with hollow laughter that soon escaped him.

"I lose any way I go about it, won't I?" he asked no one, earning a derisive snort from the colossal fox.

"What does it matter?" the fox growled. "You face subservience without a force by not accepting my help, whelp. Do you honestly find that more preferable to oblivion?" When the ghost didn't answer, much less move, the fox snorted once more in derision. "Pathetic."

"Heh... I am, aren't I?"

"Hm?" The fox's eyes narrowed as the blond began to heave with mirthless giggles and wheezing. His lips were adorned with a broken grin as he looked 'up' from his spot to the hallway beyond, effectively masking his eyes from the gigantic being's view.

"I'm certainly in a shitty situation, aren't I?"

The grin was lost a second later. In its place was a neutral frown devoid of all emotion. "You know it's stupid now but in all honesty I wanted to believe them. I honestly wanted to think that, despite everything, I was going to help people. Being placed in this squad, that had to mean something, right?" He paused. "I'm someone's a tool no matter how you look at it though. Not with them though. Not Omega..."

"If it's going to end, I think they deserve an ending on my terms."

Red eyes narrowed even further in suspicion. "What are you getting at, whelp?"

At last the blond sat up though his pace was labored yet almost deliberate. When he finally hunched forward the fox's glare bore into the almost dead expression the blond gave back.

"It's as I said, I'm ending it on my terms."

The room began to rumble with such intensity that 'floor' rippled and sloshed with newfound waves. Each one started out small at first, no bigger than the boy's foot at most. Soon enough the waves rapidly grew to the size of the ghost as he sat, the floor churning and whitening as the waves only became taller and larger as they sloshed against the walls and crashed into one another. Yet the ghost didn't move throughout it all even as the waves literally towered over him. His patch of the floor was left undisturbed, an eye of the storm as it were as the waves brushed but did not enter his personal space.

"What are you doing?!" it snarled as it eyed the foaming water as it tossed and turned with the utmost suspicion. Even when the child didn't answer him he didn't tear his gaze away from the roiling water. By doing so he barely noticed the red miasma within the water seemingly creep into the blond from underneath him as if it were being absorbed. Regardless however, with his attention on the water he was barely surprised if at all when what looked to be a jagged piece of proper cement flooring break through the turbulent surface and slam into the gate, blocking it off from view from the utter bottom to the very top. It was soon followed by another piece identical in form and purpose as it roughly joined its companion piece. By the third appearance of such a barrier what ire and mirth the fox had was lost as it was replaced with languid annoyance. "You truly are pathetic."

The ghost could only smile a crooked smile in response. "I'm not laughing at other people's pain though."

A fourth piece of torn floor slammed into place as a fifth and final one subsequently followed to close off the remaining gap.

XVX

"Understood. Just be sure not to keep us waiting long."

"Lieutenant! The readings are fluctuating again!"

"Hacke!" came the now automatic response, dull and droning from repeated use.

"Uh... Lieu-Lieutenant! Something's wrong! His vitals aren't responding as they should!"

Hearing that, she whipped herself around with a hand half drawing a service pistol from its holster on her armor. Even as she cocked it as a precaution, there was no defense against a rock hurtling through her body with the force of a railgun. Even the siding of a nearby mountain was safe from it as a new yet small, by relativity, barely perceivable from a distance crater nestled into its side. Regardless, she fell to the ground where gushing blood and a spattering of sand and dirt stained her once immaculate armor of a now dying Sasha Marlin who gasped and sputtered her dying breath.

"What happened?! How'd we lose control?!"

"I don't know! Where's those phrases!" The sound of paper shuffling and clattering in a hurried search could be heard in the earpiece of his suit. His free hand rose up and clasped itself around his mask and tore it off with brute force, severing what connection it had to his suit. With the noise now silenced he tossed the mask away where it dug into the nearby sand upon its landing. Even then it wasn't enough. With his pistol he shot at it several times, each bullet hitting its target and destroying it piece by piece till nothing was left but shattered circuitry, torn metal and destroyed glass from the once lenses.

With nothing of relevance to shoot at, his arm lowered, gun still within his grip.

He first looked to the lieutenant, now dead, before slowly craning his neck in the direction of what was evidently the morning sun judging from the color that washed over his surroundings. Unblinking, blinded eyes beheld the sun for moments on end before looking away, a mirthless giggle leaving his lips which now bore a crooked smile. As it was his mind was all over the place and he knew it with lukewarm lucidity. He just couldn't bring himself to care...

With his broken smile he wandered away from the body and the normally hidden entrance of the bunker. A warm, surprisingly gently wind buffeted him in its passing and once more he craned his head as if he were following the intangible thing, his crooked smile twitching. At the first large rock he stumbled across, found only by smacking his foot against it due to inattention, he plopped himself and made it his seat to watch the sun once more, his gun on his lap.

Soon enough it was right under his jaw.

He pulled the trigger.

Click!

...

Click!

...

Click! Click-click-click-click—

His finger kept squeezing the trigger again and again with no end in sight as he continued to stare at the sun with blank eyes and a fading grin. He didn't bother to count each squeeze. He didn't bother to even investigate as his finger continued to depress the trigger. His free hand didn't even twitch to so much as find more ammo or to even check for a malfunction with the pistol itself. He didn't even bother trying to investigate the familiar crunching of sand underneath the boot of CMC armor behind him, nor responded to their demands to put down the defunct weapon as he continued to watch the rising sun.

He didn't even react when a gauntleted hand gently grasped his shoulder and gently nudged him. Gis eyes never even flicked over to the mane of red that presented itself in the edge of his naked vision as a pair of hands gently pried the gun from his grasp, his finger still twitching.

A/N: Google Translator (for I am inept at other languages!)

(German) (1) "Execute protocol six!"

(2) "Be sure to wear your equipment. Be sure to set your camera to the live feed."

(3) "Proceed with phase two!"

(4) "Heel!"

... Yes, I did get the mind control idea from Bioshock. Sue me. As for "why use German though?" Given the context of a future far away and the predominant language is apparently English, I can only assume other languages (any really) once preferred by Terrans of old have either died out or fallen to the wayside like a naturalized immigrant within any country with a different predominant language (For example say one moves to Spain where Spanish is the main language, thus one needs to speak it often enough it becomes the first language so to speak as opposed to one's original tongue in the long run). At the very least I thought it would be obscured enough not to be recognized at first by anyone if it was actually heard by someone else in regards to Naruto.

Other than that I must say... damn. Been roughly three years since my last update for this story. In fact it was a bit difficult to crack into this again to do it any sense of justice. I even thought about skipping it this month after a week for time constraint reasons... But no. Didn't feel right. So a week later than I intended plus a scrapped chapter, here we are. I hope you enjoyed this and found it worth the wait.

Also on a random note, who hasn't egregiously used a mining drill to wipe out the Protoss? :P

Monkeybandit2, making off with your attention! No refunds.