Darkness spat her back out in the nest, eerily warm shadows sliding semi-liquid between her feathers as it pulled away.
Her mother perched on a nearby branch, staring pointedly at her.
"Don't fall out again."
She swooped away, green iridescence flashing off black feathers.
Tricia lay in the crumpled heap she had been left in, breathing shallowly and trying to wrap her head around the hot rush of darkness, and the sudden transportation.
….Chakra…?
Her mind crawled back to her old life - to kids trapped in icebergs, and four elements thrown around to decide the fate of a world. There weren't any magical birds in Avatar, though. Right? Well, there was some animals that could use bending, but she was pretty sure birds weren't on the list.
She mulled over the ideas for a long time, laying quietly in her nest and pretending very hard that she could logic her way out of this situation. At least that meant her crow (raven?) mother wouldn't be mad at her for doing something stupid again.
A memory niggled her mind, and she dragged herself up to the edge of the nest, peering down at the leaflitter below. It took a few long minutes of staring before she was finally able to locate the soft glint of darkened steel.
Yep.
There it was. She had stumbled over it earlier, but didn't stop to pay attention to her surroundings.
A Kunai .
She blinked slowly, mulling the idea of being reborn into a manga series. The prospect of this whole life being a weird hallucination or coma dream had become marginally more likely. Surely the 'Naruto' universe wasn't a real place, right? And why would she be born as a bird of all things?
Tricia settled back down into her nest, puffing up her feathers and feeling her air sacs inflate throughout her body. She flexed her claws, folding her (elbowswristsshoulders) a bit tighter to her sides. Bird anatomy was weird.
Still, that didn't really explain the Chakra thing.
Why would a bird have Chakra? Unless she was a summon animal? That would explain the talking mother bird, after all. The idea of being essentially a servant to a ninja's needs prickled uncomfortably against her skin. Being used in warfare wasn't an attractive prospect.
Her grasp of the later manga was loose and fuzzy, and after losing interest a few episodes into 'Shippuden', she had never bothered delving further into the series' backstory. Maybe the nin-animal thing had been explained then, and she missed out. That would have been so cool, but her interest in the series as a whole had waned years ago.
Tricia picked absently at a loose piece of grass poking out of the nest, twisting and bending it to push it back into the weave of sticks.
The shadowy transportation, now that she thought about it, might have resembled one of those shadow-bloodline techniques. Like the one kid with the spiky hair… and the deer. Damn, she couldn't remember names right now. He had the hots for Gaara's sister? Then the dog kid had a nin-dog, sorta, maybe… Did Naruto actually have fox summoning animals, or was that just a good fanfiction?
Maybe she should try remembering the manga, before trying to leap to conclusions.
Unless this world was completely unrelated to Naruto, and the whole kunai-and-chakra thing was coincidental.
She could ask her bird-mom, but the old crow seemed pissier than usual.
Tricia eventually fell asleep, staying blissfully unconscious when her mother came back, took a nap squashed next to her, and left again in a whirl of shadows.
She was more careful, from then on, trying to stretch her wings. Tricia would waddle her way to different branches, flapping furiously in a weird glide to another branch, and then climbing her way back up again. She felt like a parrot, using her beak and claws to grapple up the rough bark, but it worked well enough that her mother let it happen.
She probably looked ridiculous, flailing her wings to try and get enough lift that her beak wasn't so strained. Climbing a tree using your mouth and neck muscles is not fun. Neither was trying to talk, with bits of bark in your mouth. It was hard to spit when you didn't have lips.
"Alright, stop."
Tricia slipped, whirling around to haul herself back up onto the branch she had nearly launched herself off of.
Her mother hopped down from a higher branch, tilting her head and watching her daughter stand up again.
"Your feathers are developed enough. If you're still too weak to fly, put some Chakra into your chest."
Tricia eyed her mother as the bird flapped her wings in demonstration, but didn't really know what she should be looking at.
"...how?"
Her mother hissed something softly, spreading her wings and laying one of them over the fledgeling. Tricia shivered, warm darkness dripping through her feathers and curling like curious little fronds against her skin. Something about it was welcoming, and a bit freaky at the same time. Part of her wanted to high-tail it out of there, while another part wanted to luxuriate in it.
But… now that she had a point of comparison, there was a liquidy, warm sort of glow inside her, reaching out toward the living shadows. She puffed her feathers a bit, tilting her head as she considered the feeling, and tried to influence it by her own will.
Several minutes passed, and her mother's wing was starting to get heavier as the older bird lost interest in keeping her comfortable for the demonstration. Tricia had closed her eyes, trying all sorts of mental twists to try to get that liquid warmth to move.
Finally, just as her mother's tensing muscles belied her desire to pull her wing away, she felt it stir.
It wasn't so fantastic or colorful as she remembered the displays of Chakra in "Naruto". No whirling wind or blue swirls, just… a pleasant feeling of something flowing through her chest.
"I think I got it." She mumbled, and ignored the other bird's hissed 'Finally' as she continued to concentrate on moving it around.
She could shift it up to her neck, and enjoyed (read: did not enjoy) the sudden sharpening of the taste of bark still lingering on her tongue. She could move it to her wings and chest muscles, and wondered if she really would be stronger. Couldn't really move it to her legs, though. Her circulation there was awful, so the lack of chakra in that area wasn't much of a surprise.
Tricia shifted absently, digging her claws into the bark. No birdy hand-sign jutsus for her. She was only mildly disappointed with that. The idea of being to spit fire while swooping was pretty attractive. Like a feathery dragon.
With that in mind, she took a deep breath, spread her wings, and jumped.
The warmth pooled in her chest as her wings pumped, feathers catching the air and pulling strangely on the curves of her (armswristsfingers) wings. The expected descent did not come, and she overshot the branch she normally would have aimed for.
Joy bloomed in her chest, and she flapped hard, tail flailing in awkward fans to try and direct her largely horizonal flight. She twisted her head, looking back at her mother to see if the old bird could actually show pride.
Oh wait, she needed her head to steer.
Muscles pulled sharply to the side to follow her neck, and her flight pattern was abruptly thrown off, sending her flailing through the air and landing in a tangle of thin branches.
The leaves supported her for a brief moment, wings outspread to distribute her weight across the fragile hammock.
And then it gave way, and she barely managed to flap her way onto a low branch, instead of landing on the ground again.
She made it!
Well, completely off-course and probably goofy as hell, but it was still flight!
Tricia turned around, hopping in place with delight as her mother casually (and gracefully, the show-off) swooped between branches to land beside her.
For the first time in a long time, the old bird seemed pleased with her.
"Get back to the nest and practice." She rasped, but leaned forward and prodded a feather back into place, adjusting a few other feathers on Tricia's wing in an impromptu preening assist. It felt… unusually maternal.
"Once you can actually fly, I'll teach you to use the shadows."
That day, Tricia learned that crows could purr, if given the right incentive.
