Hey everybody, its Amira. This is my first story, so please give me any feedback you can. Plot ideas could help too if you have any, i have a general idea but any input is greatly appreciated. 2nd Chapter's in progress. Catch ya at the bottom! :)
Silver Tiger, Iron Angel
It was dark…and cold. She could feel the goose bumps spreading quickly up her arms. Her shoulder-length, silver streaked black hair floated across her face.
Wait…. Floated?
I'm…under water?
Why?
How?
How am I breathing?
I'm not breathing??!!!
What in the world is going on?!
She slowly opened her electric blue eyes to just a slit, carefully keeping her body completely limp. She was a ninja after all, alerting whatever might be out there that she was awake was definitely not a good idea.
At first she couldn't see anything but a dim, sickly green light, seemingly all around her.
O.K., so that rules out most natural bodies of water, I have never heard of any glowing green lakes or ponds, and the water is completely still, so it's definitely not natural. There aren't any chakra signatures nearby, so I know I'm alone, but just to be safe…
She opened her eyes slowly, cat-slitted pupils trying to adjust to the strange, dim light. Looking down, she saw a dark circle. The same dim shape was above her as she looked up. She slowly reached her hand forwards,
And hit glass.
She quickly used her fingers to follow the glass. It circled her completely.
I'm…in a giant…TEST TUBE!!!!
Her mind roared with indignation.
NO ONE STICKS ME IN A TEST TUBE AND GETS AWAY WITH IT!!!!
She thrashed in the water, banging her hands against the glass as hard as she could in the restricted space. She barely had room to even put her elbow straight out in front of her.
RAGHHH! Ok, this isn't working. Think. The glass is either too thick and I'm not strong enough to break it, or I'm not getting enough momentum going when I hit it. Sooo… Chakra. Let's see if I have any left.
She quickly relaxed and calmed herself, taking stock of her current condition.
Right. No major injuries, a few scratches on my shoulders, no idea how those got there. Strength seems to be normal, so that rules out the lack of strength theory. Even if it was reinforced with steel, I'm strong enough to break through it easy. Grrrr…. at least I still have my clothes on, that would have just added to the wonderful humongous mountain of humiliation piling up here. Let's see……YES!!! TAKE THAT! Chakra levels full power!!
She focused her chakra in her fist, reared her arm back as far as the tube would allow, and hit the glass.
The glass immediately exploded outward. The water, and she, washed onto the floor in a torrent. She lay, stomach up in a puddle of water, shards of glass, and her own blood as it slowly seeped out of the gashes left in her back and right hand by the sharp glass.
Damn! Forgot about the washout. Ow, this is uncomfortable. Have to try to get up without severing any more major arteries; I think I already hit one in by back. Jeeze, I'm losing a lot of blood….
And she blacked out.
Akiri awoke suddenly from her dreams/memories and was instantly in a defensive stance on top of her bed. Someone or something was crawling under her bed. Something relatively large … and tired from the way it was breathing, she could have heard it from the next room over. She slowly sat back down on top of her new, heavy black comforter. Whatever it was, it was a ninja, but its chakra signature indicated only a genin level use of chakra. It was probably safe to assume it was human. Now the only question was,
"WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING UNDER MY BED, DWARF!!!!!", she yelled at the top of her lungs while quickly jumping to the end of her bed and flipping it up against the wall.
Underneath the bed was a panting and shaking Konohamaru, green scarf, red face and all. He looked like he was hiding from the devil from the way he was shaking.
"P-P-Please don't yell. I don't want to die if obaa-chan hears you!" he said in a quavering voice, as he moved to hide behind her curtain.
Akiri quickly caught him by his collar and held him up in front of her face.
"Hmmm……. What to do with you? I could turn you over to Tsunade-san, but that wouldn't be any fun." She puzzled over the matter for a second, and then answered her own question. "You know what? I'll make you a deal since I'm feeling nice. You tell me what you did to make Tsunade want to kill you, and I'll let you hide in my room. I'll even make breakfast if you let me in on the plan next time you try and prank that top-heavy blondie. How does that sound?"
"Hmm," Konohamaru considered, somehow managing to look like he actually had a choice if he wanted to live. "I'll agree to tell you what I did, but I can't agree to the second part. I have no idea who you are and if you get me caught next time, I'm in big doo-doo. How do you even know I played a prank on obaa-chan? Are you a ninja? Who are you exactly? And what are you doing in obaa-chan's house? Why would you want in on pranking her if she's letting you stay in her house? Why do you call her Tsunade-san? How…" Konohamaru seemed to have an endless stream of questions pouring out of his mouth so she decided it was long enough after the sixth and she stuck her other hand over his mouth, effectively cutting him off, temporarily at least. She had heard of the hyperactive boy from Tsunade (mostly complaints) and knew he was likely to go on forever if undeterred.
"Konohamaru, if I live in Tsunade-san's house and you are constantly pulling pranks on her, don't you think that she's going to come home at the end of the day spouting wild stories about "that stupid Naruto mini-me" stealing her sake or making a bowl of water fall on her head? I've heard about every single prank you played on her in the entire month I've been here! Frankly, I've been itching to stop just hearing about them and actually play one. Unfortunately I've been officially ordered to stay out of sight. Pranks aren't any fun if you do them where no one else can see them; pranks are best done in public, and as noisily as possible so I'd need some outside assistance." Kiri smiled evilly at the thought, then walked back over to her still vertical bed, slammed it back down to its normal position on the floor, and dropped the kid on the bed.
Konohamaru gaped at her, and then slowly smiled. "You sound like my kind of prankster."
"Good. My name's Gintora Akiri, nice to meet you. Please call me Kiri. Now if you would give me a second to change, I'll go down and see what's in the kitchen." she said looking down at her blue and black plaid pajama pants and oversized t-shirt that she suspected had been Tsunade's by the fact that the top half of it was stretched to the point where it was nearly see through.
Konohamaru nodded, actually looking patient for the first time in his life. He couldn't wait to see what this scary girl could come up with. His mind was still bubbling with questions, but he suspected that if he just let them spout out of his mouth like he normally did, she might change her mind and hand him over to Tsunade. He shivered. That would not end well for him.
Kiri pulled her clothes out of her drawer and went into the adjoining bathroom to change. It matched her room, small and an extremely boring beige color, but it had a sink, toilet, and shower, so she couldn't really complain. She shrugged off her baggy pajamas and started to pull on her usual outfit. It consisted of average black capris, a mesh sleeveless shirt covered over by a bright blue tube top with her clan symbol on it (a jagged black shape that slightly resembled a lightning bolt), and a pair of black sandals that were pretty much universal footwear for ninjas. On top of everything, she strung two chains to hang from either side of her waist to cross in the middle and meet in the back, and shrugged on her "headband" so that it lay over her right shoulder and ran under her right arm, like the strap on a messenger bag. It was made of a very thick, heavy black material and had metal plates in the front and back, Konoha's symbol carved into the upper part of the front plate. It also happened to weigh over a ton, which wasn't so average, but she wore it as easily as if it wasn't there. She quickly combed out her unusual hair and managed to get it to lay flat and not look like a complete haystack that it usually was in the morning. She knew her hair color was unusual, but that didn't make it any more acceptable to her to let it do whatever it wanted. Black hair with silver streaks or not, she was not going to put up with it!
She went back into her room and put her pajamas in her clothes hamper, then looked to Konohamaru. She was surprised to see him still sitting on her bed, exactly where she had left him. She had expected him to at least be bouncing off the walls from what she had heard. She looked at him again, and then laughed. His face had turned bright red and he appeared to be holding his breath as hard as he could. He looked like he was about to explode if he didn't ask her some of the questions that he was desperately trying to hold back. She laughed and announced, "Konohamaru, if you don't breathe soon you are likely to suffer brain damage from lack of oxygen. Don't worry about annoying me with questions; I won't turn you in, that would be killing my best chance of a little fun around here. You can ask me anything you want over breakfast. Come on, Tsunade-san won't be home until a lot later."
Konohamaru leaped off the bed and ran out her door into the hall towards the kitchen. Kiri smiled. Either he was as starving as she was, or he really wanted to know who the heck she was. She walked down the hall to the kitchen, chuckling to herself.
Yes! The Prank Master of Konoha has finally returned. Beware everyone; she's come back with a vengeance! Kiri grinned evilly, thinking up hundreds of plans in the space of time it took to walk between the guestroom and the kitchen. Most of them were crap, but some showed promise. The question was, was her accomplice good enough to keep up with her. He was a quick kid to be able to trick the Hokage so many times in just the space of a month, but that was grains of sand compared with the giant boulder she was thinking up at the moment.
She entered the kitchen and went to get herself some leftovers from last night's dinner. She and Tsunade had been too tired to cook, so they just made a couple portions of instant ramen. Okay, maybe more like ten packages of the stuff, but they had been hungry. Not that she had complained in the least, in her opinion, ramen was the best thing ever invented since the kunai. She poured some into two bowls and popped them in the microwave before turning back to the ball of kid sitting at the table and practically vibrating with excitement.
She walked over and sat down, mentally preparing herself for a tsunami of questions. She didn't have to wait long.
"Okay. Number 1, what are you doing in Tsunade obaa-chan's house. Number 2, are you a ninja? Number 3, what experience do you have with playing pranks on high-class ninjas? Number 4, why does your hair have silver streaks in it and why do your eyes have cat pupils? And number 5, what's for breakfast?" Konohamaru questions spewed out of his mouth so fast, she had a hard time distinguishing between where one question ended and the next began. She smirked, at least he had only had five questions, it was better than the never ending stream she had been bracing for.
"Arighty, lets see. I'm in Tsunade-san's house because I have been placed under house arrest. I am a former ninja of this village, but I died fifteen years ago fighting the Kyuubi and only came back to life about a year ago. The council still has to decide whether to let me rejoin the village's ninja force or just keep me under house arrest forever. The reason it's here is because, before I died, I was Konoha's official weapons master and one of the village's top jounin and the council was nervous about just letting me wander around the village. They thought that Tsunade-san would be the best one for the job of keeping me contained. I guess they might have been a little mad at me too, since I fell asleep during the council meeting. It's not my fault though; those old coots are as boring as a bag of potatoes! They wouldn't know a funny prank if it drew on their faces with a Sharpie while they were sleeping. Trust me, I tried to make them see the humor in it, but they seem to have been offended for some reason that I drew daisies all over their faces. They'll fade in a week anyway! Oh, right, second question. I think I answered that already. On to the third. Experience. Have you ever heard of the Fourth Hokage?"
Konohamaru looked at her like she had just suggested he didn't know what mayonnaise was.
"Yeah, I guess that's kind of obvious. So, did you hear what happened to him the night he was named Hokage?"
Konohamaru shook his head. Kiri grinned.
"It was the weirdest thing, I mean, somebody somehow managed to get the guy stoned drunk, then dressed him up like a geisha, makeup and all, and stuffed him up the nose of the Third on the Hokage monument. They found him the next morning and it took nearly five teams of ninjas to get him down. He never messed with the perpetrator's underwear drawer ever again though."
By the end of the completely innocent story, Kiri's grin looked like it belonged on a smug cat and Konohamaru was rolling around on the ground, laughing so much that it hurt.
"Of coarse, it was all covered up afterwards, no one wanted the village to hear about their fierce and powerful Hokage being made into a pretty geisha-booger. It was such a shame. Oh well, onward. The hair came with the head; Kami-sama threw it in for free. The eyes came later, but that's a classified matter. Last but definitely not least is only one of the greatest things in the world, RAMEN!!!!!"
"Ramen for breakfast?" Konohamaru looked at her funny. "Please tell me you aren't as obsessed with ramen as Naruto-kun."
"Who?' was Kiri's only reply as the microwave finally beeped and she rushed over to her delicious breakfast. She carefully lifted the two steaming bowls out of the microwave and carried them over to the table as fast as she could without spilling them, which was pretty fast since she was a ninja. She quickly set Konohamaru's bowl down in front of him with a pair of chopsticks and hastily mumbled "Itadakimasu" before she started shoveling the long noodles into her mouth.
Konohamaru just stared, holding his chopsticks halfway to his bowl.
Yup, another Naruto-kun for sure. I wonder if she's really strong, or if she has any really cool jutsu she can show me like Naruto's sexy-no-jutsu. I am definitely going to be Hokage some day if she trains me! She said she was a jounin before she died, maybe she knows some awesome jutsu that was lost when the Kyuubi attacked!......Wait a second, something didn't compute with that last thought. What was it? She was a jounin? No, that's possible. Awesome forgotten technique? Still possible, lots of ninja families died out. Her teaching me the jutsu? Also possible, if I manage to stay on her good side. Hmmm.. What could it be? Wait a second, died…………SHE DIED!!!!! IS SHE A GHOST!! HAVE I DONE SOMETHING BAD THAT SHE'S COME BACK TO HAUNT ME!!!
"Y-Y-YYYYY- YOU DIED!!!!" Konohamaru screamed, knocking his ramen bowl so it spilled all over him and jumping up from the table.
"Yes" Kiri said simply, staring at him as he stood there staring.
"BU-BU-BU BUT YOU'RE EATING!!! AND YOU CHANGED YOUR CLOTHES!!! AND YOU PICKED ME UP!! GHOSTS CAN'T DO THAT!! WHAT ARE YOU?? " Suddenly the dwarf appeared to have an epiphany. "ARE YOU TELLING THE TRUTH? I DON'T BELIEVE YOU!!! THERE IS NO WAY YOU COULD HAVE POSSIBLY DIED AND COME BACK TO LIFE SINCE YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY NOT A GHOST!!
Konohamaru sat down with a huff, arms folded across his chest, his nose in the air.
Great, Kiri thought, grumbling another non-believer. "Konohamaru, I'm afraid I can't explain how I'm alive, Tsunade-san has already put that little bit of info into the classified folder. I really did die 15 years ago; my name is even on the memorial stone. I am alive, I am certainly not a ghost, and even if I were, would I waste my eternity of solitude living in a house with that big-chested, drunken, party pooper? The only time she's ever really entertaining is when she comes home covered in god knows what from one of your pranks!I would much rather spend eternity somewhere more interesting, thank you very much!"
Konohamaru peered at her suspiciously; ramen noodles sliding down the front of his shirt. He seemed to be completely oblivious to the fact that he was covered in his breakfast. After a minute of intense scrutiny, he cautiously walked around the table to where she was sitting, carefully putting out his hand, pointer finger first, and poked her in the shoulder.
"Grr."
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!" Konohamaru yelled as he jumped back quickly and fell on his butt.
Akiri broke out laughing. "Dwarf, you need to get better at keeping quiet. What would happen if someone sneaked up on you while you were following a target and you screamed like that? Now, why don't you do something about your breakfast, since it seems to have mysteriously gotten all over you?"
Konohamaru looked down at himself, realizing that he did indeed have ramen all over him.
"Oh man! Now what am I going to do? If I go home to get clothes, obaa-chan's bound to find me and turn me into a foot stool!" Konohamaru pondered the route to his apartment, but could find no way guaranteed to be Tsunade free.
"Why don't you borrow some of my stuff" Akiri supplied. "It shouldn't be too much trouble to roll up the sleeves and pant legs. Come on, I'll see what I can find." She said as she led him back down the hall.
Konohamaru ended up wearing a pair of her shorts, a belt, and a black sleeveless shirt which was the only one she had without her clan symbol on it. His scarf and luckily his underwear had survived the soaking of ramen broth.
Akiri stepped back to admire her handy worked and almost burst out laughing again. The shorts luckily went all the way down to below his knees, because the tank top was so long it almost looked like a dress on him. He managed to pull it off with some dignity, but he was half as tall as her 5' 8" so she expected it could have been worse. Konohamaru had told her about his recent escapade while she was searching through her drawers. Apparently Tsunade got very mad when you dyed her hair purple. It was too bad that the dye would wash out with water though; Tsunade would most likely wash it out before she came home, so Kiri wouldn't get to see it.
Konohamaru looked at himself in her full-size mirror, deciding if he could go out in public wearing a girl's clothes, especially if that girl was a certifiable giant. (at least from his perspective) He decided that he actually looked kind of good, and turned around to see Kiri with her hand over her mouth, trying to contain her laughter. He glared at her and stomped back to the kitchen, indignant.
Kiri followed him, still laughing inwardly. She found him sitting at the table, eating the rest of her ramen.
"DWARF!!! PUT DOWN THOSE CHOPSTICKS AND STEP AWAY FROM MY RAMEN BEFORE I AM FORCED TO USE FORCE!!!" She roared as she ran to rescue the remains of her breakfast.
Konohamaru rolled his eyes and backed away from the bowl. Definitely like Naruto. I wonder what he's going to think of her, if he ever gets back from that training. It's taking forever. He's supposed to be back in two days though. I wonder…
"Hey, Kiri. What do you think about doing a test prank, just so I can see what you're made of?" It was Konohamaru's turn to smile evilly.
"What did you have in mind?" Kiri replied, shoveling down the last of her ramen as if it was going to run away from her.
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Hey! i'm back! so what cha think? Next stop, old friends, sharpies, and lots of fainting! See ya! :P