Disclaimer: Don't own. Don't care. Writing this for free.
Edited 15/07/2015
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Chapter 2: Doe-eyed.
Harry pranced around the Nara Clan forest, eyes sharp with intent. He (rather she) had a mission. Not a ninja mission or anything of the sort. No, this was far more important.
She needed to find flowers.
Why would 'Mendo', the doe the wizard had become, would be looking for flowers? Well, it was quite simple. She had a reason, a good reason, and that reason was Nara Yoshino.
The mother of his "owner" Shikamaru was a strict woman that had both her son and husband harshly squashed under her thumb. In the Nara complex, her word was law, and Harry-the-doe knew she would need to have her on his/her side to accomplish her ultimate goal.
Move out of the Nara-Clan Forest.
It annoyed Harry to no end that Shikamaru had thought he could seek 'Mendo' as a casual Shogi opponent, all the while leaving her to live in that boring-as-hell forest.
One would believe that after she defeated him, he would, at the very least, give her a room in the main house or something.
No. The only thing Mendo obtained with her victory was a second round by the genius brat, who was wanting to defeat her because his pride couldn't take losing to a four months doe.
Harry had to admit, though, the kid was bloody brilliant. He came up with moves that would have had Ron sweating when he was in his eighties. However, not even the brilliant mind of the young ninja could hope to beat the intellect of a doe with the knowledge of a man old enough to piss dust.
The reason Harry was kicked out of the main house was not because of her victories, but because she became terminally bored at some point within the 4th consecutive Shogi match, and tried to lose on purpose.
Nara Shikamaru was not amused, so she was pretty much shooed away back into the forest.
The only thing to make her feel slightly sated was that Nara Shikaku thought his son was a bit mental. Specially after the adult ninja brought her back to the house out of curiosity (or maybe out of hope for his son mental state) to see if the doe really knew how to play. Harry then decided to play the 'dumb doe' card, going so far as to chew on a piece of wood on the board when Shikaku looked like he expected her to play.
Inner (male) Harry smiled to himself. He felt like the singing frog of one of those cartoons Dudley used to watch as a kid. Harry had wondered back then why the frog never sang in front of anyone but his owner, making everyone around think the greedy man wanting to exploit it was crazy, and driving said man to despair until the man simply put the frog in a box and dumped it somewhere.
Now, Harry knew.
The frog was having fun.
But that's not important right now. Harry had to take advantage that the only male Nara to pay him attention was away on ninja business.
So Harry went looking for flowers.
The efforts of the doe were rewarded when she spotted a small bush peppered with some unidentified pink flowers. Harry moved nearby to take one out, but stopped when voices came out of the bush.
*Hurtssss, hurtsss ssso much. Ssstupid birdsssess*
*Iss ok. The birdsssess isss gone*
Oh, shit. Those snakes were talking. Worse still, Harry understood them.
Mendo was a Parselmouth again.
A doe Parselmouth.
That didn't make any sense! Harry had stopped speaking to serpents the moment the Horcrux was blasted out of his head with Voldemort's killing curse, yet now, as a doe, Harry could understand snake-speech?
*Thisss isss all that damn Death'sss fault.* She hissed out of reflex, and the conversation in the bush stopped instantly.
A moment later, two small, harmless, green-colored garden snakes came out of the bush, looking for what they assumed was a fellow snake. Not finding one, they looked up to the doe. *Wasss it you?* The bigger of the two –that was barely fifteen centimeters long—looked at Mendo with stunned awe.
*Bloody fantasssstic,* the doe snarled, too immersed in her anger to keep her mouth shut and turn away.
The snakes had their slanted eyes widened.
For a tense moment nobody moved.
*A sssspeaker!* The snakes chorused eventually. Harry recognized the term. Snakes called Parselmouths 'speakers' and were bound to obey them for some reason he never bother to find out.
*It'sss been yearsss sssince the lasssst ssspeaker… weren't ssspeakerss ssuposssed to be humanssss?* The smaller one (the one hurt by the bird by the looks of it) moved its head to the side to speak with the other snake.
*Who knowssss, being ssso long… We needsss to tell the othersss.*
For a moment, Harry's brain played a funny image of him/her with a crown, surrounded by snakes and being the queen-doe of this world's snakes.
Harry shook the image away.
*No, waitsss!* Mendo hissed, but the snakes were didn't seem to be listening.
Desperate, Harry called forth his magic with no other command than have it stop the two reptiles.
It's hard to say if the result of her magic was a partial success, or a bout of accidental magic. All the reincarnated hero of Great Britain knew was that one second there were two perfectly normal snakes, and the next there was something else in their place.
The not-quite-snakes moved as fast as their new bodies could allow them, though now Mendo was quite sure the current situation was an improvement to the earlier one… maybe.
After all, the hisses that should have been easily translated to him became a slurred, nonsensical mess, akin of fabric being rubbed upon fabric.
The doe sighed in relief. Temporary danger adverted.
Still, she knew it was just a matter of time before she got found out, and then she would have a ton of shite to take care off because the universe just loved to spite "her".
More resolved than before to get on the good graces of Nara Yoshino, Mendo took the cutest flower of the bunch, and paced back towards the Nara complex, not bothering to worry on the partially-transfigured snakes she left behind on the forest.
After all, is not like they could cause any real damage now.
…
Himura Danzō was looking to the object on his desk with no small amount of apprehension. There was no doubt in his mind that the serpentine thing on top of his desk was the work of Orochimaru. The Sannin he had temporary allied himself with (until said Sannin started becoming more of a liability than a useful resource) was the only person Danzō knew was capable of managing such a feat.
To think the man could come up with something like this… this…
This sock.
This snake-sock hybrid.
Maybe he dismissed the man's usefulness a tad too soon.
All the incredible things Danzō could do with a spying tool of this caliber… Yes. Danzō could see it now, the supremacy of Konoha would be guaranteed.
After all, if whatever jutsu that transformed the living into inanimate objects without even a Hyuuga noticing the chakra was perfected, Root could learn secrets, of enemies and allies alike, swiftly.
Not to mention Danzō would be able to disguise a hundred of his men as pebbles if it stuck his fancy. The old War Hawk could then store his soldiers and even send them on missions, without alerting the enemy countries that an army was moving their way. In fact, the whole logistic of moving his troops from one location to another would be revolutionized. They would even be able to mail themselves to the home of their targets, fooling every sensor and killing whoever opposed them before they knew what hit them.
This new initiative had even more potential than the experiments with Harashima Senju's DNA!
Danzō put a hand on the arm that was both possessing the Senju's DNA and multiple Sharingan eyes. Certainly, Orochimaru had been most useful in the past, and he would continue to be so in the future.
They would probably come to some sort of agreement easily, for Danzō knew the exact thing he would offer the Sannin. After all, Danzō knew of a way to fix Orochimaru's rotting arms –damage courtesy of Hiruzen and the Shinigami the Hokage called forth after the Chūnin Exams.
An agreement, yes… better yet, an alliance. An alliance between Root and Orochimaru.
With this alliance they would be unstoppable.
Danzō would be unstoppable.
And thus, the Root that supported Konohagure's tree from the shadows would reign supreme.
Now all Danzō needed was to be sure to swiftly take care of the soon-to-be-appointed Hokage: Tsunade (who was surely getting drunk in a bar somewhere). Once he had taken the girl out of the picture, he could take Konoha to a new age of supremacy unlike anything in the history of shinobi.
Yes. First Konoha, and then the world.
The future looked promising indeed.
…
Nara Yoshino was taking the clean laundry and putting it out to dry on the sun. Her days as a housewife were both taxingly-boring and greatly unappreciated by her family. On top of that, the men in her life, both son and husband, were incredibly lazy, and more often than not were sprawled into the floor doing nothing while she worked her butt off to make sure their home was clean and there would always be tea to drink and food to eat whenever they wanted them.
Was it too much to ask an occasional offer to help? Sure, she was still a Chūnin, even as a mostly inactive one, so stamina was not a problem and she could manage three times as much as she did daily if she really had to.
"Still, a little bit of help would be nice," She mumbled.
Yoshino let an annoyed huff as she hanged yet another white sheet. The sun was shinning brightly in the sky, making sweat form in her temple and dampening her long brown hair.
Then, a breeze blew and all the sheets flapped softly, like angel wings, revealing a cute baby doe, no older than 4 months, carrying a single pink flower. The doe moved closer to her and bumped her wet, black nose in her outstretched hand. Yoshino smiled.
"You agree with me, don't you?" Yoshino asked rhetorically and the doe tilted her head. The kunoichi felt her heartstrings get pulled, instantly falling in love with the little one.
Mendo's behavior was unusual in a deer, but she couldn't dwell on that. Not when her round green eyes seemed to look at her in such an adorable way. Even the slightly starved condition of the doe (which made it's eyes budge) and the little thunder scar in her forehead were endearing.
"Do you want to keep me company, Rai-chan?" Yoshino asked and the little doe buried her little head in her arms affectionately.
Feeling considerably happier now that she would have some company, she softly patted the head of the defenseless doe. The poor thing probably felt scared in that huge forest… maybe she could keep her to herself? Her son probably wouldn't care too much anyway. He had been complaining about this one since it was delegated to his care.
A couple hours later the idea of keeping the doe cemented itself in Yoshino's mind when Mendo, recently nicknamed 'Rai-chan', picked up a duster and attempted to help her out with the cleaning.
Sure it was a total failure, but more spontaneous help she had ever gotten from anyone at home.
It was, no doubt, the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
To Be Continued
Extra: Because socks come in pairs.
Naruto Uzumaki was many things: He was loud, loyal, a consummated prankster, and the future Hokage… what he was not, was a competent house keeper. Not that that was usually an issue, for the whiskered blond certainly didn't mind going about the discarded underwear on the floor to pick up one that didn't smell too bad when he noticed his drawers empty; but he needed to leave his home clean before he went with the Ero-Senin in this mission to find the next Hokage.
Normally leaving his place looking like a pig's pen wouldn't matter to him, but Sakura, in a rare moment of camaraderie, offered to come over to water his plants while he was gone, if he wanted. Which lead to Naruto accepting, and having to buy plants so she could water them… After all, the whole affair meant she would be coming over to his house.
Thus he needed to clean his mess for once.
Or hid the dirt.
For a moment, Naruto considered not giving a proper clean to his home, just squeezing the piles of dirt in his empty closet and secure its doors with a wooden plank. It should do the trick. He could always get the hideout re-opened when he came back and needed a less dirty underwear than the one he would, no doubt, be wearing (maybe for months) until he came back.
However, the fleeting idea of letting his dirty laundry fester and grew fungus died after he began to approach the pile of clothes he would be hiding in the before-mentioned closet, and a sock tried to bite him.
Wordlessly staring at the sock that placidly lied back into the pile, Naruto decided to take until the last piece of clothes to the cleaners.
Because, even Naruto in his ignorance knew, that when your clothes try to bit you, it means that laundry day is long overdue.
End of the Extra.
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AN: Rai-chan -Yoshino's nickname for Mendo-, is about the same as calling Harry "Lightening-chan". Yes, there is actually a female Japanese name meaning lightening.
I like Mendo as a name more, but I cannot imagine Harry having the same opinion, so he might purposely ignore anyone who calls him/her (the gender change confuses me every now and then) Mendo.
Also, some people will point out that I simply changed the "Omake" label to write it off as an extra. That is true. But since that one could be canon with no problem I decided to leave it behind instead of moving it to the Omake collection I shall update the same day I put on all the proof-read stuff.
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