Author's Note: Hello wandering fellow Earthlings.
DISCLAIMER: We wish we owned Bleach & Naruto. *sigh* But we don't. So please don't sue.
"DONE!" Naruto yelled triumphantly. Ichiraku looked over with an astonished look and his mouth hanging open. "Already? This is your fifth in the last two minutes!"
Naruto fished around in his pocket and pulled out seven ramen coupons (courtesy of Iruka-sensei). "I've got two more bowls to go!"
"N-No, you know what Naruto? Look here, I'll give you this bee-youuu-tee-ful ring if you stop eating." Ichiraku pleaded, holding up an elegant ring with a pink stone set on a gold band.
Naruto's eyes turned into the size of saucers. If I give this to Sakura-chan, she'll love me for sure!
Naruto nodded and took the ring off of Ichiraku's hands. "Thanks, mister!"
Running down the street, Naruto ran different scenarios of presenting the ring to Sakura and she falling in love with him in his mind.
"Oh, Naruto-kuun!"
"You're so MANLY, Naruto-kuun. When did you get so handsome?"
"Awww Naruto-kuun! Wanna go on a date?"
"Naruto, what the hell are you doing drooling while walking down the street?" The real Sakura walked up and punched Naruto back into reality. Naruto suddenly realized that he had subconsciously walked to the Chuunin Exams arena, where everyone was waiting for the final Exams.
"Oh hello Sakura-chaaaan," Naruto cooed, "How are you?"
Sakura blinked. "Why is it that you sound so much like Kakashi-sensei… you sound like him with a new book of Icha Icha!"
"WHAAAT?" Naruto stumbled a few steps back.
WHAM!
Kakashi looked down at Naruto. "Who has the newest edition of Icha Icha?"
Sakura smirked and turned her gaze to the Chuunin exam arena where Komatsuzaki Rai had just released her favored weapon: her scythe. Forming from her lightning based chakra, a slight smell of ozone, similar to one during a lightning storm spread through the air and the enormous blackish purple scythe ( the color similar to the color of her eyes when she's angry) appeared, curving around her form. Blocking a couple of Kyo's senbon, she swung her purple and black scythe, cutting a couple shriken and kunai in half, then twisting back to swipe at her teammate. Kyo nimbly ducked under the weapon, and flashed several senbon, aiming for Rai's tenketsu, a useful skill he picked up while sparring with the Hyuuga. Fast and just about invisible, Rai didn't notice the senbon thus time until it was too late. Kyo grinned in victory. Now Rai couldn't move and she couldn't continue fighting now that her chakra points where blocked, and her scythe was already rapidly shrinking in size. She looked like a life size musical statue.
"I can't believe I lost to you!" Rai stormed, picking off the senbon and swung her half formed scythe playfully at Kyo, who dodged and looked at Rai with a gleam of delight in his eyes. "Aha! You know I use senbon, so you should've paid more attention" he said, throwing the exact same sentence that Rai always told Kyo after he lost, switching the scythe for senbon. Glaring at Kyo, Rai was going to snap at him for taking HER line, when their third teammate, Maegawa Kaede, walked over.
"Well, congrats on finally defeating Rai. But...Rai seriously wasn't paying attention to the fight, was she?" he asked, an offering to stop the oncoming war that was going to begin between his teammates.
"You know, Kaede? You dont need to rub it in that both guys on my team managed to beat me now" Rai said, flipping her rather long layered blonde hair, slightly damp from her spar with Kyo. Catching sight of a certain nine-tailed fox's host, she walked over
"hey Naruto, how are you?" "You know that I'm awesome, Ai-chan" Naruto said, with a grin like Kyo's.
"I'm NOT Ai-chan. For he last time, you either call me Rai or Komatsuzaki!" Kaede sighed
"Naruto, for the sake of everyone else here, can you please just call her Rai?" Naruto frowned stubbornly.
"But Ai-chan sounds so much better than plain old Rai!" Rai's dark purple eye went to an almost black in anger.
"Alright Uzumaki, I'm giving you three seconds to run." Naruto, sensing danger, stumbled a few steps back, tripped unceremoniously over a sleeping Shikamaru, and in the midst of this chaos, he ring slipped out and fell to the ground. And shattered.
"NOOOOO! MY RING!"
Shikamaru, who was rudely awakened by the klutz and his screaming, cracked one eye open and gingerly poked the object that had suddenly fallen onto his head and bounced off, landing a couple centimeters from his head. And this time, the world shatters.
Sakura opened her eyes, and her first coherent though was kill Naruto and Shikamaru. The first words out of her mouth was no different. "NARUTO! WHAT DID YOU THIS TIME? WHERE THE HELL ARE WE AND WHY?" That was a pretty good question, considering that everyone they knew was either spinning around, are bouncing off the people who were spinning around. Naruto groaned and cracked his eyes open just a little bit. "I seriously don't know this time. I swear"
"Sounds like you're finally serious," Sasuke desperately tried to stop his spinning.
"What just happened?" Sakura saw something that caused her jaw to drop and pointed at it while saying,
"Well, it's probably something serious, seeing that Kakashi-sensei isn't reading an icha icha novel..." the boy's heads spun around, and came eye to eye with a very stunned looking copy-ninja. Somewhere in the background, Shikamaru yells
"The goddamn ring fell on my face and I only touched it...and the sky just kinda popped or something... Hey watch out!", the last part directed toward the very stunned team 7 and their teacher.
"Holy c-aaaaaaaaaahhhh!"
"Sakura-Chaaaaaaannnnn!"
"INO YOU PIG! GET. YOUR. ASS. OUT. OF. MY. FACE!"
...and there was silence.
Everyone was uncomfortable-Sakura had Ino's butt in her face, Sasuke received a headbutt from Naruto, Kakashi went to save Jiraiya so that his precious icha icha series author wouldn't go missing (or at least, if he did, he'll be with him), Temari was banging Shikamaru's head with her fan, and Shikamaru was trying to get OUT of her range before his brain went dead, Akamaru had somehow gotten out of Kiba's jacket and Kiba was, if course, freaking out...and the world comes back to life.
"Sakura-chan, don't leave me! Ah, damn you, air! How unyouthful of you!"
"AKAMARU~!"
"...so troublesome..."
"Shikamaru. Do you honestly like being whacked by my fan THAT much? Cuz you're still in my fan's range" Temari said, glaring heatedly at the lazy, cloudwatching genin.
The words were just out of her mouth when suddenly a huge gust of wind blew the competitors (and their teachers and one (actually three) legendary sennin) into different directions. The genin reached out and grabbed onto any sort of clothing that looked somewhat familiar.
Names were yelled across at each other, and another violent gust of air pushed and shoved the genin into different directions down into the seemingly peaceful city.
-
Slowly coming back to consciousness, Kaede rubbed bis neck, where a strange mark was burned. 'where's Rai?'...wait...why Rai all the sudden?...'where is she? I need to know if she's safe'... Kaede battled his two reasonings. 'this is weird...my mark feels like it's burning...' you're imagining it. Let it go, think normally, and stop worrying about her like you always do. 'but I need to protect her...' Suddenly knowing what he was thinking, Kaede froze, his back bent forward. Him, protecting Rai? Ridiculous...Rai was always helping him...but on missions...'I always end up taking he blow for Rai...' frowning, Kaede walked around carefully, looking for others that may have been blown in his direction.
"Attention all shinigami; it is found that several unknown outsiders have illegally entered Sereitei. This is an emergency order, and all of the gotei 13 divide and capture all I'd the drifters. Repeat; this is an emergency order. It has also been noted that some of the drifters have some unknown type of reiatsu."
Toshirou's POV
Running down the outskirts of Seireitei with Matsumoto, I searched for the so called 'strange reiatsu' that he hell butterfly has warned. Reaching out with my own reiatsu, I indeed felt a flickering, but strong and very un-shinigami like reiatsu. It was...too flickery to be able to become a member of the gotei 13. In fact, it was too inconsistent to even be called reiatsu. "Something wrong, Captain?" Matsumoto looked over, slightly frowning.
"No Matsumoto...the reiatsu...I don't think it's any type of reiatsu we've ever encountered before." Of course, just then, the giant pile of paperwork just happened to pop into my head, and my brows furrowed even more. Why would they send us, the captains and the vices to destroy outsiders who had such unsteady reiatsus and probably end up killing themselves?
"Um...Captain! Watc..." Matsumoto yelled at me, and because my head was down, thinking of the immense amounts of paperwork and the gigantic headache that would follow, I rammed into a wall. At least, I thought that it was a wall. Until I looked up to see a stormy purple eye curtained by blonde hair.
"Watch were you're going, midget!" she snapped, narrowing her eyes.
The girl WAS short, just barely taller than me. AND SHE'S CALLING ME A MIDGET! HAS SHE EVEN SEEN HER OWN HEIGHT?
"Do you even know you're own height? You're just BARELY taller than me!" "WTF? I'm 5 cm taller than you. And for your information, THAT IS ALOT, dumbass!"
"You. Are. The. Shortest. Person. I've. Ever. Met." I ground out, ready to refrigerate her in hyorinmaru's ice.
"not including yourself, MIDGET?" I was going to retort when Matsumoto said
"CAPTAIN Hitsugaya...she's one of them" both or our heads whipped around and the exact time she said "IM ONE OF WHAT?" I said "SHE'S one of them?" the blonde ignored me and continued looking at Matsumoto.
"I'm one of what?" she asked again, looking a rather weird combination of confusion and worry, and I rolled my eyes.
"The outsiders that snuck into Seireitei, Of course." this girl is probably one of the reasons why-other than Matsumoto, blondes were considered to be dumb.
Then to my surprise, she shrugged, not really caring.
"Well, it's not like I wanted to come to your Seir-something. Damn that idiot Shikamaru for poking IT. actually, screw Naruto for even having IT in the first place. It's not like he could have given IT to anyone in the first place, but I'll bet you everything you own that he wanted to give IT to Sakura"
"IT? what's IT?" Matsumoto asked, very, very confused.
The blonde rolled her eyes, and drawled "Jesus, you're making me feel like you're interrogating me or something"
"That would be because we are...dumbass"
"Shut up, midget. I swear, if you wrote your name on a board-it was hitsu-something, right?-and held it up beside you, it'll probably be taller than you. And you probably wear that sword of yours on your back because it's taller than you, isn't it?"
And the last strand of my patience broke. This. Girl. Is. Impossible. "IT'S NOT LIKE YOU'RE TALLER THAN THAT SCYTHE OF YOURS! YOU WEAR IT ON YOUR BACK TOO!" fuming, I did my evil-captain glare, captain Hitsugaya style.
apparently, this girl has seen very good glares before-"Whoa. You have a pretty decent glare, but you still have to practice a little more before you get to Sasuke's level"
Feeling that her captain was going to dice the girl into pieces, Matsumoto quickly cut in. "But it looks like there are several others out there as well, with similar reiatsus."
The girl visibly brightened up "Well then, I'll be off!" and ran off toward the direction Matsumoto was looking in.
Feeling very very annoyed for the thousandth time today, I laid a hand on Hyorinmaru and started following
Renji's POV
Jeez...another 'invasion'? If this ends up the same way as Ichigo's 'invasion' went, I'm going to quit being a vice captain. And Mihou can take my place. Seriously, that girl basically does all my duties for me anyway...
"Abarai."
I turned to see captain Kuchiki next to me, Senbonzakura right in it's usual place. "Abarai. The shotaichou has asked for all captains to meet in the meeting room for an emergency meeting. You go ahead and track down the drifters. Do not make the sixth division look bad. I am trusting this to you and the third seat." with my head bowed, I went to participate in the wild goose chase across Seireitei.
I was wandering around Seireitei and suddenly a mass of reiatsu pops up, but before that, I heard the voices yelling at what seemed like the top of their lungs. Either they have very, very big lungs, or my hearing suddenly got multiple times bigger, because they sounded like Yachiru high on candy. Except pissed off instead of happy.
I sighed and walked toward the noise. When all fails, go solve the problem by yourself. I knocked on a nearby tree.
"When you walk in enemy territory, you generally don't go yelling around" this, of course got an immediate reaction. The big one who was eating what looked like an oversized toothpick suddenly got more of those out of his pockets or something...is it normal to keep toothpicks in your pockets? The red eyed one pulled out...A SHURIKEN?...they still use them? Some of them went into a weird pose, the big one that looked like a cat...ah. He was using reiatsu, to control his puppet. The girl with the buns...WHOA WHERE DID ALL THOSE WEAPONS COME FROM? while I was analyzing this, of course, they attack. Looking at the rather sharp display of knives, toothpick-thingys, and soundwaves coming my way, I did the most natural thing for me: Howl, Zabimaru!
Ryuuhei's POV
It all started with the invasion. Maybe it was caused because someone was pissed off that I was laying down traps for Mihou, or maybe because I allowed vice captain Matsumoto to go drinking with Hisagi... hm...
Whistling, I walked toward the group of reiatsu near my usual training meadow. He one I usually use with Mi-chi, and it's our family's. Time to test out how prankable these people are!
From up here, I could see eight of them. One on his back, another spiky haired blondie who was sacking the one on the ground with her fan..oh my...she and my sister will definitely get along well with each other... Two white haired people...old people? A quiet one, one that was wandering around, looking... A very noisy one, with a shiny bowl cut. And a girl.
Finding an area that no one was, right about in the middle, I concealed my reiatsu and jumped. Turning in midair, I landed on my back just next to the boy on his back, and winced. "The training ground's ground is certainly harder than I remember..." and 16 surprised eyes were on me. Actually, no. One of them had one of his eyes masked, and another had sunglasses on, so I don't know if he HAS eyes in the first place, so 16 minus 3 equals 13. 13 very surprised eyes looked at me. Feeling like we needed an icebreaker, I lifted a hand.
"Yo. 'm Ryuuhei." the blondie blinked out of her stupor the fastest and sarcastically said
"oh yes, right! You're supposed to introduce yourself to your enemies!" I blinked
"I didn't know outsiders knew this much about Seireitei..."
Again, the double take. Then, a black butterfly came fluttering in.
CALLING ALL SHINIGAMI: ALL SHINIGAMI ON THE LOOKOUT FOR DRIFTERS; A CAPTAIN'S MEETING IS STARTING. ALL SHINIGAMI CAPTAINS ARE TO REPORT TO THE MEETING ROOM. VICE CAPTAINS AND THIRD SEATS REPORT TO THE WAITING ROOM.
I stood up.
"Well, we heard it. Come on, I don't think that you've had a decent tour of Seireitei anyway. The waiting room is that way...I think...um...I don't know your names..." the one on the ground stood up "Shikamaru." I turned toward the blonde "Temari" I nodded. Next were the old people. The masked one raised his hand, eyes still on a book called... Icha... Icha... "Kakashi" and the white haired guy reading over his shoulder looked up "I'm Jiraiya" the girl looked at me hostilely ( you know what they say how if looks could kill... She could definitely do a good Captain Hitsugaya glare...) but I still got my answer "Kin" the quiet one that I didn't know if he had eyes or not looked at me "Shino". The red eyed one tilted his head to the right, studying me. "Akagi. Kyo Akagi" then suddenly came this crying noise to my right. "With all my youthfullness I will tell you my-" he never finished that sentence, because Kakashi looked up and said "That's Guy. It's normal for him to act like that, so it's ok" and 'Guy' started sobbing and saying something about his eternal rival being cooler than him. That one would be easy to prank. Very easy. Smiling happily ( hey, who wouldn't be happy after finding a very prankable person randomly?)
"Alright then. Let's go see the captain general!"
Mihou
"Understood, Captain Kuchiki."
Head bowed, I waited until captain left until looking up and reaching out with my reiatsu. Captain Hitsugaya was with a group of outsiders, and from his reiatsu fluctuation, Matsumoto was probably trying something really embarrassing. Renji was with another group...fighting with them? I wistled. If they could get him to try to practice his bankai on them, they were good. Ryuu was leading them to the waiting room already...from our training grounds. And...ah. Found them!
Jumping onto the rooftop of the sixth division, I looked at the direction of the drifters. Hm. They do have pretty decent reiatsu, even though just about none of them had alot of control over theirs...closing my eyes and thinking of a plan to bring them in, using my reiatsu to find out a bit more about them. Two of them were pretty similar, one that felt like a dogs... A wind type, and another neutral. My eyes snapped open suddenly. The last two...had TWO SEPARATE REIATSU'S...and the second REIATSU'S were pretty violent...and even more surprisingly, no captain or vice captain was anywhere near them. A hand on Ikari proved me right, because my reiatsu was already thrumming, ready in anticipation of the battle about to commence.
Dropping out of the trees a couple meters away from the drifters, two of them spun around, and even from here, I could see their eyes, pearly white with...veins, I guess, leading outwards. The dog's reiatsu...ah. So he was bonded with a dog. An adult, who was smoking, one that was eating from a bag of...chips? ... So this was these where the wind and the neutral reiatsus. And at the back, a blonde, blue eyed boy, about the size of Captain Hitsugaya. Next to him, it was a red haired, light blue eyed, PANDA MARKED boy WITH NO EYEBROWS and a giant sake-bottle thing on his back. I sighed and sat down. WHY THE HELL DO WEIRD PEOPLE ALWAYS COME TO SEIREITEI? …I take that back. WHY AM I ALWAYS STUCK WITH THE WEIRD GUYS? Of course, then, Ikari starts sniggering in my background.
'Shut up.' I said, true to Captain Kuchiki's style, and then now, instead of the slightly hostile look I was receiving, they turned to slightly worried looks. The one eating the bag of chips stopped eating and decided to ask.
'Um...Excuse me?' and yes, I had to remember just NOW that the outsiders knew nothing of zanpakutos and all, so I probably looked like a mentally-unstable person. I coughed once, and replied;
'I was talking to my zanpakuto here' and tapped the sheath of Ikari. Receiving more blank stares, I elaborated.
'zanpakutos are parts of our souls in solid form. In other words, they're our battle partners, and this is mine-Jigoku no Ikari' Standing up, I walked over to the adult one.
'Now that you know the name of my zanpakuto, it is only normal for you to know my name as well.' Bowing, I continued. 'Mihou Watanabe, the third seat of the sixth division'. Apparently the guy was very unused to these types of introductions, because after a few seconds of (awkward) silence, he replied-'Asuma'
Straitening up, I looked around.
'And may I have your names as well?' starting at the girl next to the boy with the same eyes as her, she stuttered out a 'Hinata', and the boy looked away, looking bored, while replying with 'Neji'. Inwardly I sighed-another captain Hitsugaya personality has come up…turning my gaze to the boy with the food, he said after swallowing 'Chouji'. Turning around, I came eye to eye (actually, it was a bit off. He was shorter than me) with a pair of cerulean blue eyes. And with a seriously eye-blinding grin, he said (more like YELLED)
'Hi Mi-Chi! I'm Naruto!'. After the ringing in my ears stopped, I realized that in the span of seconds, he had found a nickname for me. Two voices muttered 'ignore him' behind me, I stepped back a bit and turned to the very-anti-social-looking-panda-boy and raised an eyebrow. Meeting my eyes for a single moment, he turned and muttered 'Gaara'….hm. so self loving demon, huh? Pushing that bit of information away, I turned to Asuma.
'Seeing that you are for now, considered invaders of Seireitei, we must take you to the meeting room, to wait for the captain-general's decision. So….' I trailed off, and Asuma nodded 'I highly doubt that we can oppose?' I nodded, and he continued
'Well then, miss third seat-lead the way.'
End Note: Thanks to Elaine (for being there even though she was worse than useless), our very own Suicide Bomber (midget alert), and plz tell 4000kills if you must flame.
~ BM & Cin