Just like Instinct
Chapter 1: A Morning to Remember
Waking up was never easy with Naruto, and that particular morning was no different. He began by giving a loud yawn, throwing in an exaggerated moan to spice things up. Sitting up, the blonde blearily rubbed his eyes before checking the time. Five in the fucking morning. Why the hell was he up at 5?
A small, high pitch voice in the back of his mind seemed to scream about something important, but the voice was muffled by the bleary haze that covered his tired mind. Understanding that he had to get out of bed, despite not knowing why, the blonde did so begrudgingly. Walking with an unsteady gate, his feet carried him towards his shower, following the same path they'd walked on most mornings.
It was a brutal fight to stay awake in the shower, and he was quite certain that he actually had fallen asleep for a moment, before being suddenly jolted awake by the fact that he was no longer supporting his own weight.
Stepping out of the shower with a towel draped over his shoulders, the blonde made a beeline to the second most sacred object in his house, the coffee pot. Obviously, the title of Most Sacred Object in the House undoubtedly belonged to his Ramen pantry. After a quick cup of coffee, drinkable via a few cubes of ice, Naruto found himself with a little more energy to contemplate his situation.
"Fuck!" he swore, spilling his second cup of coffee as he abruptly stood up. "Baa-chan is going to kill me!"
Finding himself with substantial motivation, Naruto was dressed, alert, and halfway out the door faster than someone could utter the phrase, "You're fucked". Unfortunately for the blonde shinobi, he was unable to step farther into the hallway of his apartment before he found himself face to face with a large, darkly lit, oval shaped window that hung lifelessly in the air. Even more unfortunate was the fact that he had unknowingly stepped through the strange window in his fervent haste to avoid being punched through a wall. Tsunade would be pissed. And such was why Naruto hated mornings.
To say that Louise was nervous would be an understatement. She was beyond nervous. She was so far beyond nervous that even Professor Colbert's impassioned monologue seemed to be a quiet murmur compared to the overwhelming thumping of her heart, which incidentally had taken residence in her throat. Despite this, Louise Françoise le Blanc de La Vallière, third daughter of Laurent de La Vallière, Duke of La Vallière put on a brave face. As a noble, she was taught from a young age to never reveal her emotions. While her ability to hide her emotions was not up to her mother's standards, she was, instead, quite capable of channeling her anxiety into bravado. And today, on the day of the annual Springtime Summoning Ritual, Louise knew she needed bravado more than anything else, if only to retain her dignity in the face of her failure.
One by one, each student proceeded to step forward and chant the spells they had prepared to summon their familiars. So far, the student-created spell chants had been increasingly bland, leading Louise to feel slightly relieved to know that writing one's own spells was a skill that was difficult to learn; no doubt most, if not all the students who'd summoned so far would have killed themselves trying to spew a massive fireball or something of the like.
"Alright, next student please proceed with the ritual!" Professor Colbert called out, stamping his large staff for emphasis. His gaze settled on a young man with blonde hair who quickly took the hint.
"That's me, Professor Colbert! I, Guiche de Gramont shall summon a magnificent familiar " he said with a grandiose wave of his wand, which was curiously fashioned out of a rose. Louise raised an eyebrow at his proclamation, as did many others. Being nobles, they were quite used to behavior such as this, but Guiche always seemed to take it to the next level.
"Enough with the speeches, Guiche… Just summon your familiar so we can get on with this." Colbert said, most likely resisting the urge to palm his face.
"Brimir, our grand creator that always guides us when we are in need, I summon the strong and noble one who shall become the slave of Guiche de Gramont and answer my Divine Summon!"
Louise watched with silent awe as Guiche waved his wand, seemingly creating a tremor in the earth. With his wand held out in front of him, he slowly raised it as if pulling on a fishing line. The tremors increased. Guiche had a look of utter concentration on his face. And suddenly, the earth in front of him burst revealing… A mole?
"Whaaaa?"
Guiche de Gramont, fourth son of the famous Tristain General had summoned an oversized mole with a giant nose. As the seemingly stricken boy kneeled down to pat the large mammal's head, the mole let out a small grunt of sheer adoration. How Louise was able to identify the beast's grunt, she'll never know.
Louise was screwed. She was well aware of that now. She groaned as she watched Professor Colbert fawn all over a Salamander that her classmate, Kirche, had summoned.
"Right… All I have to do is summon something much more impressive than that! Something absolutely magnificent that will elicit the adoration of my classmates! Like a Dragon!" she thought, but quickly dismissed the idea as she glanced at her blue headed classmate's familiar. The blue headed girl stoically rubbed the excited dragon's snout, eliciting a strange squealing sound that didn't seem to mesh with the appearance of the beast in the slightest. "Right… I don't think I want to summon a dragon."
"Alright then, is that everyone?" Professor Colbert asked the crowd of students as he searched the crowd for any stragglers. Suddenly, Louise's bravado disappeared as she ducked behind a taller-than-average student who was preening over his newly summoned cat.
"I do believe Miss Vallière is the only one left." Kirche said, grinning all the while.
With a new boost to her bravado served by the mocking redhead, Louise stepped forward with her chin raised. There was no way she would lose to that woman of all people. Not after the claim she made the previous day.
"Just wait until I show you up, Kirche." she thought with a dark chuckle.
"As if Louise the Zero will summon anything!" a female student said with a smile that positively oozed superiority. Louise clenched her fists even tighter around her wand. She was determined to prove them wrong and determined to show them. She would show them that she wasn't a failure.
"You said you can summon something better than me, right?" the voice of Kirche cut through the mocking chatter of students. The well-endowed teen was petting her familiar's head, letting the silent challenge stand.
"Of course!" Louise bristled, before turning her back on the redhead. She refused to show any weakness to a member of her family's longstanding rival family, the Zerbst.
"Please…" she thought, before gripping her wand in
"My slave, who lives somewhere in the universe!" she began, ignoring the growing chatter of confused students. Already she could feel the pull of mana flowing through her wand. Louise gripped the wooden focus tighter, in vain hope of easing the pressure.
""I, Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière, in the name of the great Five Pentagon Powers, following my fate, summon a familiar!" She yelled, pushing all of her being into the incantation. She pushed it all into the spell: her refusal to fail, her refusal to be looked down, and her determination to change her destiny. With a final wave of her wand, Louise released the spell. Everything in her vision was cloaked by an explosion of mana and dirt.
The first thing one experiences when being pulled into a strange portal is mild discomfort. Strangely enough, this lasts for only a few moments before it sets in that you are now essentially freefalling in a vacuum of space. Next is the feeling panic that lasts for approximately 30 seconds. This, in turn, is followed by extreme vertigo from the feeling of weightlessness. Finally, one realizes that they are unable to breathe and begin to panic once again.
At precisely this moment, Naruto rediscovered the ground. And pain. There was a lot of pain as well. Wincing, the blonde collapsed in a heap on the ground, before letting out a breath.
"I will never trust my front door again." he thought, giving his throbbing body a quick pat down. The pain itself was at a manageable level, yet it was different than what he was used to. It wasn't the searing pain of a battle wound, nor was it ache of being sore. In fact, the pain felt reminiscent of the damage his body had once taken when he used Kurama's Chakra, only to a much lesser extent. Of course, this was before the seal had completely absorbed Kurama, leaving him a rather cynical voice in the back of his head.
"Gaki, I'm certain your door had little to do with your current situation." Kurama muttered with a trace of mirth.
"I know that… I was being facetious…" Naruto mentally sighed with a feigned frown. Despite the oddity of it all, he did, in fact enjoy the internal conversations he had with his near-eternal companion.
"Ah… No. I am stating the obvious, gaki."
"Maa, maa." Naruto dismissively thought, before turning back to his current situation. It was quite evident to him that he was nowhere near his village. He knew from experience the sensation of being summoned, even if this particular summoning was quite different than anything he'd experienced. With this in mind, he did a mandatory survey of his surroundings before turning back to his apparent audience.
The group, composed of at least 40 individuals whose ages seemed to range from 14 to 18, continued to give him their best impression of a cat that had just been tossed into a pool of water. Upon closer inspection, it seemed that there were 5 or 6 students who had been recently struck with enough force to knock them on their feet, or in the case of one young man, to be knocked into a state of unconsciousness.
"Yo." Naruto said, killing the silence that permeated the air with a sift spoken syllable to the solar plexus.
The reaction was immediate and quite strange in Naruto's opinion, ranging from mild chuckles to the single case of 'rolling on the floor' laughter. The blonde scratched his head in confusion. He'd never gotten that reaction before. Jiraiya's mandatory introduction, on the other hand, had most likely received this reaction many times. Naruto tilted his head in confusion, offering a half-hazard grin.
"Am I missing something? I think I'm missing something here…" he said, only to discover the teens in front of him found it even funnier.
"Louise la Zéro convoqué un roturier! Une bête en plus!" a blonde girl with twin pigtails senselessly babbled in a tone that Naruto assumed was meant to be a mocking fashion. Glancing at her quizzically, he took a single step towards the teenager, as he wasn't aware that someone so young was even susceptible to strokes.
"Umm… Is she alright?" he asked with a pointed look at the closest person, only to recoil in confusion. She seemed to be the only one not laughing at him. Her face was stuck in a look that too shock and fury and stuffed them into a blender on the pulse setting.
"Vous êtes ... Mon ... Familier?" she asked, babbling the same nonsense as the other girl. It was quite possible that there was an airborne, stroke-inducing chemical that had been released… As much as that option appealed to Naruto, it was more likely that whatever or whoever summoned him here, had summoned him somewhere the normal language wasn't spoken. The very thought alone was… Well… It was fucking mind blowing. He rubbed his temples in frustration. Hopefully he was wrong and he wasn't linguistically screwed over.
"Louise le zéro vit toujours aux attentes!" a girl mocked as she laughed as she pointed to the pinkette. He groaned as he realized his theory was confirmed.
"Kurama…" Naruto mentally called out to his companion for help.
"Gaki… I'm as confused as you are."Kurama replied, leaving Naruto with a mental image of the fox with a glazed and dumbfounded look on its face.
Louise la Zero, as the pinkette was apparently named, strode up to him with a look of sheer fury on her face, which didn't match at all with her small and seemingly soft features. She babbled some nonsense at him, which if course only made Naruto blink in utter confusion. Growling in frustration, the pinkette turned her attention to the only adult in the area.
"Dois-je compléter le rituel nouveau? Je ne peux pas resummon une familière?" she asked, pointing to him with a snarl. The balding man replied with more nonsense and a shake of his head, leaving Louise la Zero to sigh in frustration, before she turned and started towards the blonde shinobi.
"Vous avez de la chance, roturier. Normalement, un noble ne serait jamais sttop si bas pour ce faire." She said as she her hand flicked to a hidden pocket of some kind. Well-honed shinobi instincts blared to life as the girls hand disappeared. His hand went to his kunai pouch, only to stop as the realization set in… She was wielding… A stick?
"Okay? So you have a stick?" Naruto asked in his continued state of befuddlement. Sadly, his talking served only to increase the frustration that the pinkette felt for him, as she kicked him in the shin. In the universe, Naruto noted, there seemed to be an unspoken law about civilian women being capable of harming even the most seasoned of male warriors when pissed.
"Ow! That hurt you fucking chibi!" he said, caressing his pained shin as he hopped on one leg. The pinkette paid his complaints little mind as she used his injury as a sign to jerk him to the ground. He was beginning to wonder if he should actually defend himself.
"Je suis Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière. Pentagone des cinq puissances élémentaires; bénisse cet être humble, et de lui faire mon familier." She said with a rhythmic quality to her voice. The blonde opened his mouth to give a witty reply, only to find said mouth otherwise occupied. The pinkette had leaned forward and locked her lips with his, yet Naruto didn't jerk away like the tiny voice in the back of his mind screamed for him to do. No… Instead he returned the kiss. His reasoning continued to scream for him to break the kiss, yet his body refused to listen. After 4 seconds, it was done. The girl stood up and turned his back on him to face the man who was nearly bald.
"Strawberry?" he licked his lips, tasting the lingering kiss as his mind rebooted.
"Gaki! There was… strange… contract!" Kurama's shouting seemed to distant. Broken.
"What the fuck?" Naruto cursed when he was once again lucid. He got to his knees, only to fall back down on his ass as steam began to rise from his exposed flesh. He winced as he realized his very skin was being scorched. "What… What did you do, Chibi?"
The girl turned around and stared into his eyes. With blue eyes locked with pink, Naruto was suddenly overwhelmed by an unwelcome instinct: I must protect her. His eyes widened in recognition as he slowly hissed out the word before succumbing to the pain.
"Con… Tract?"
Louise stared at her new familiar in silence. He seemed to be maybe around her age, although he was most likely older than her, judging by his angular facial features. His face, while slightly handsome, also possessed an unnatural quality to it. She curiously brushed a hand over the strange whisker marks that adorned his face.
"Ritual markings?" she thought. It wasn't unheard of for nobles or even commoners of foreign countries to mark their bodies for various reasons, be it ritual or fore decorative purposes. Her familiar's markings, on the other hand, seemed to be an actual feature of his face, not a marking of some kind. She shook her head in frustration.
"I shouldn't think of my familiar like a person! He's just a dog!" she thought, as she continued to rub her familiar's whisker marks. "Is… Is he… Purring?"
Realizing that she was petting a commoner's face, she recoiled and quickly drew back her hand, before turning back to her bed. She'd let him wake up on his own. Then she'd put him to work, if only to get some use from a commoner.
Alright… This is when someone shouts, "KOYAN! Why aren't you focusing on your other stories?"
Sorry guys, I just needed a break from my other stories, and this story just called out to me. I mean, really? Why isn't this particular crossover written more often? Actually, scratch that. I refuse to acknowledge the other Naruto and Familiar of Zero Crossovers that I have personally read as even being decent. Utter trash, I tell you.
Anyways, this is my newest project that I hope will inspire others to write a decent FoZ x Naruto Crossover. I mean seriously… It's almost tailor made for the Naruto crossover fandom… Or any crossover fandom for that manner.
Favorite and Review please,
Kuromaru-kun/Koyan