Hello there, Naruto fans and welcome to my very first story! Please leave constructive criticism to help me improve, so that my future stories can be better.

Disclaimer: I do NOT own Naruto and I am not making a profit out of this story. However, I do own Kuri the squirrel, but he's based off some other person's squirrel from a oneshot (ehh, can't remember who, but I'm lookin'. Will tell you eventually). Kuri can be used by anyone who wishes to use him. You don't have to credit me; just don't claim he's your own creation, okay?

*Kuri means "Chestnut"

*Naishinno means "imperial princess"

*Usagi means "rabbit"

*Mieko means "already prosperous"

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Chapter One: Boredom and Nuts

_____________________________________

Hanabi is bored. Bored and pissed. A month ago she and her otousan came back to Kohona only to discover that the Akatsuki attacked a week prior to their return. Rebuilding had already begun in the Village of the Leaf, but it would take half a year before the Academy was rebuilt and the senseis could go back to teaching. Everyone was busy, so no one in her clan would be able to give her home schooling. That meant she wouldn't become a ninja till she was thirteen, which pissed her off even more. Her friends were off helping their families; her sister and cousins doing their own thing for the clan or for the village; otousan was busy with clan affairs (rebuilding of the half-destroyed Hyuuga compound, calculating damage costs and conducting new living arrangements along with the typical clan head duties). Hanabi was tired of training, and everytime she offered to help somebody, they said they could take care of it, so she should go on a play somewhere.

So here she was, in the outskirts of her clan's land property, in some tiny clearing surrounded by tall trees with red, orange and brown leaves; bored and grumpy, laying on the dirt ground throwing any little pebble she could get her hands on into the air, wanting something, anything, to do. A blizzard storm, the end of the world, a troop of invading geckos; whatever it takes to get her off her butt and active. Goddamit! She's a ninja-in-training, not a civilian invalid!

"I hate life." Hanabi figured talking to herself might help ease the dull day. "Dummy. I should have brought a manga or something. Maybe if I fall off a cliff I would fly on top of a yellow cloud and go search for magical dragons that grant wishes. And I'll have super cool powers where my hair turns yellow and everything is all flashy and I save the world…ehh, wait, I don't even read that stuff. Stupid Kohonamaru and his crappy mangas. Maybe a cute little Usagi would drop from the sky and tell me I'm a princess and I need to transform into cute but skimpy and unnecessary outfits to defeat ugly monsters that want to rule the world...yeah! That's cool!"

While Hanabi continued to converse with herself about the adventures she would have as "Naishinno Soldier of Justice," she didn't realize that the pebble she was throwing up in the air was going higher and higher and she unconsciously threw harder while making emphasis on her story, especially whenever she comes across "Evil Queen Nimatoad" in her mind. The pebble went as high as the lowest branches of the tall trees. By great coincidence, a squirrel nearby woke up late from his nap, having partied hard the previous night with the raccoons in the east forest. That's what happens when you're an animal and you don't do ninja stuff or have books, movies and videogames.

The first thing he noticed was that he is really, really hungry. Twelve shots of 25% nectar content drinks don't do much to curb your appetite. He would have a hard time finding food, since he haven't been storing for the upcoming winter like he should have, because he was, you know, partying with garbage-eating raccoons, who don't need to store nut and berries for the winter.

The second thing he noticed was a brown blur that appeared from the bottom up and was falling down to the ground.

Fooooood!

Having only just woken up from a long snorefest in a scratchy unmade bed of twigs, his brain haven't yet gotten up, choosing to instead hit the imaginary snooze alarm and take five more minutes, and of course, he did have a headache, you know, from partying hard with raccoons (when was the last time YOU went to a party?), so it didn't register to him as to why a brown round thing was being thrown into the air, or by who. All he cared about was that it looked like food, so it MUST be food, and it will be his late breakfast. Without hesitation, or common sense for that matter, he leapt out of the low branch and into the air and grabbed for the brown thing. Aha! Direct catch.

Now that his brain was active and functioning due to the sudden rush of adrenaline, it took a millisecond for the poor squirrel to realize that, not only was the brown thing NOT a yummy delicious acorn, but that jumping off a branch was a very stupid thing to do.

He fell for what seemed like forever, and he braced himself for impact with the hard, unforgiving ground that was going to leave his behind in a world of pain if he manages to live.

Instead he fell on top the body of what was probably a now angry predator.

"KYAAH!!!!"

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke………..Poke.

Chchchchchchchchchchchchcht!

"Uwaah!"

Hanabi jumped ten feet away from that, that rodent.

Everything had been so sudden. One moment she had been saving the Evil Queen's smoking hot brainwashed minion Prince Mieko and defeating the equally hot but willingly-evil right hand General; the next moment some crazy rat fell from the sky and landed on her spine. The rat did some crazy dance in a circle, as if he was having a hard time deciding which way to run, and it had rolled around and even hit its head on the ground, and then it stood still as if dead. When she poked it with a long stick, it came back to life.

Now the two were staring at each other, trying to anticipates the other's next move. Now that I think about it, it's kind of cute. Hanabi have never seen a rat with a long furry tail and light golden brown fur. Its beady black shiny round eyes reminded her of the plastic eyes of one of her neechan's stuffed toy (by the way, isn't she too old to have baby toys in her room? And she sleeps with a fox one! Sometimes neechan embarrasses me.) Just barely noticeable was a set of pearly white buckteeth. Meanwhile, the poor unfortunate squirrel wasn't observing the girl; he was too busy think. Okay, don't move and everything will be fine. Oh kami, who am I kidding: I'M GOING TO DIE!!!! He cried in his head and said goodbye to himself. He thought he would had more time to do everything he ever wanted to do: travel to far off lands, win in one his late night poker games, get his freak on with some random girl, preferably gray squirrel, and explore the "urban life" of telephone poles and hedges. Instead, he was going to be eaten by this upright alien-creature that was naked save for the top of its head and wearing some kind of dark material that felt like long strands of fur netted together to make some kind of thin material not suitable for making a nest. He pleaded to all the known deities: Please, please, if you let me live through this I'll stop throwing nuts on top of the deerfolk, and I wont tell the mice that there's a field of grain over near the mound when there actually is a snake there. I'll even drop by my family's home now and then to say hi.

Then the squirrel completely forgot about his life and death situation and his pleading when the foreign-animal revealed crumbs of some sort in the claws of one of its arms.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hanabi stared amused at her new pet. She had managed to sneak in with the wild rat and carried it to her temporary new room, which was one of the quarters in the Hyuuga Mansion, since half the Compound was still in ruins. The moment she held out the crumbs the fat fluffy rodent jumped in her waiting hand and nibbled on the meal. Now it was feasting on some raisins and cashews that she grabbed quickly from the small kitchen she shared with neechan, niisan and her other cousins. It lounged on one of her floor pillows and an old rag near a bowl of food and another of water, stuffing itself full.

I think I'll call him Kuri-kun, for his light brown fur. Otousan and neechan don't need to know about him, and I'll only have him until the Academy in fixed. Hanabi was already planning all the wicket plots, schemes and pranks she could pull of with her new little "helper." Especially pranks.

The now named Kuri felt like he is in paradise. First of all, he wasn't eaten. And the creature (that he can only consider a mutated female monkey as his best guess) was feeding him! Never before had he tasted such delicious treats; sugary dried fruit of some sort and a kind of smooth soft nut he had never encountered in all his life! And fresh cool water! It had always been acorns, leaves, some wild berries and the occasional cricket or beetle. He had to walk a mile to the nearest spring everyday to get some water, with the potential hazards of predators and annoying fish that wanted to gossip. But most of all, he adored his brand new nest. Instead of twigs, it was some soft fabric, and squared, and it had a vibrant red color that would make a robin jealous. There was a sort of unattached bedding thing of similar material to the girl's fur (which he now knows isn't exactly fur since she can change it for another fabric sheet) that he could cuddle into. The home wasn't too bad either: very spacey. There were also many other square nests piled in a corner, all vey colorful and soft looking. The girl had her own nest, a very BIG one, and didn't mind earlier when he had been on it, before she moved him to the one he was lying in at the moment. And on top of all that, he had this feeling, this strange itch in the back of his mind, that this new home was impenetrable to snakes, hawks, falcons and wildcats, as if he would never had to keep one ear and one eye open while he slept, and there seem to be a lack of other squirrels and mice, lizards and bugs, all who would have interrupted his dreaming to ask him if they could stay the night.

Screw those raccoons. This is where the real action is, and he wasn't going to leave anytime soon.