Ai no Tsubasa
Chapter 1: One Week, Two Days
When Naruto woke, it seemed like just another day. That is, until he rolled over. From under him, a soft, high-pitched yelp met his ears. Beneath him lie three baby foxes. The kits looked up at Naruto with big, black, pleading eyes. Quickly, Naruto stood up in his sleeping bag and hopped to the other side of the now dead fire. The foxes mewed quietly and moved their tiny little legs to follow him.
Suddenly, a white fluff ball wearing red geta dropped down from a nearby tree and taunted Naruto.
"Mama-Naruto has a brand new pack of kits to love and nurture. And here I thought you were a boy, brat."
"Shut your mouth, Ero-sennin! Can't you see that they want to eat me?
The tiny animals then proceeded to rub against his legs. Jiraiya broke into a fit of laughter as the blonde's face became a very bright shade of red. The kits whimpered when Naruto began shouting profanities at his teacher. This only caused the laughter from Jiraiya to echo through the trees. The tall man's resounding voice seemed to shake the forest and small animals scurried away in all directions.
Naruto growled and stomped off toward the small village. The kits ran and played behind him the entire way. Naruto occasionally glanced back at the animals and tried not to let them see him do it. However, every time he'd look they would yip at him happily and quicken their pace.
The first thing he did when he reached town was find a good restaurant with good ramen. Much to his pleasure, the owner made it clear that no pets were allowed and that the foxes would have to wait outside if he wanted to eat there. And oh boy, he wanted to eat there. It made Naruto all the hungrier to know that they couldn't follow him in. He quickly sat down and ordered the biggest bowl of pork ramen this guy offered.
"Oi, old man," Naruto called around a mouthful of noodles. "Is there a bird carrier service in this dump? I need to send a letter to someone in Wind Country."
The owner looked up from his paper and responded, "Yeah, yeah. It's just down the street. Something to Wind is gonna cost you something pretty, though."
Naruto clutched the folded letter in his pocket with joy. He smiled with as much energy as he could muster and his voice clearly showed his elation when he spoke next.
"That's--!"
Naruto was cut off by a ruckus that suddenly appeared around the doorway. It was made by a tall, burly man with muscles to spare. By the way he spoke, it seemed to Naruto that he was a few blows to the head short of stupid. Other men got up from the once quiet setting to follow Mr. Burly outside so they could all "gather around and see his trophies." It was painfully obvious to Naruto that this guy didn't win a baking contest.
With suspicion, Naruto tipped his bowl and downed the rest of his ramen. He tossed a few coins on the counter and thanked the old man who owned the joint, who now had his feet up on a stool and the newspaper covering his face. Then, Naruto followed the crowd out the door.
The doors shut behind Naruto, and for him, the world stopped. His stomach turned and he felt the ramen rising. There stood Mr. Burly holding up four huge animal hides with dozens more in the small pull cart next to him. Naruto stared at one hide in particular that rested on the top of the stack. A fox fur. The face, sans skull, still attached to the body. There was an unmistakable five-point star pattern on the fox's nose. It was the same pattern shared by all three kits.
The same kits that were standing on their hind legs trying to get to their mother whose scent was present. Her scent and the scent of death made them whimper with sadness. For the first time, Naruto wasn't annoyed by the little brats. Instead, he felt a strong urge to protect them welling up in his chest.
"And this one," Mr. Burly said picking up the mother's hide, "was a little devil. I had to chase her from her den for over two miles just to get her."
"You bastard! Didn't you think that she was protecting her children?"
The crowd parted to reveal an irate young blond boy who looked no older than twelve. His shoulders heaved as he growled lowly and glared at the hunter. The crowd of rough men who gathered there took one look at Naruto's small stature and burst out laughing. The kits whimpered even louder, drawing the hunter's and Naruto's attention. Mr. Burly looked down at them and grinned.
"Those would make nice additions to my trophy collection. I'd have a matching set."
"Shut the hell up!" Naruto yelled.
The men all laughed and taunted.
Mr. Burly guffawed, "Are you some sort of nature freak? Do you think you're their new mommy with those whiskers on your cheeks?"
"You don't know who you're messing with, kid."
"Iwato can break you in half with only a fraction of his strength!"
"You better start running now!"
The hunter, now known as Iwato, suddenly changed his deep rolling laughter to a surprised yelp as three sets of teeth sank into his ankles. Naruto took that as a cue to being the assault against Mr. Burly. He crouched on all fours and used his back legs to launch him at his enemy, like he had seen Kiba do.
Unexpectedly, Iwato caught Naruto in mid-air with bear-like hands and swung the boy hard into the ground. Naruto was caught breathless but quickly made his way to his feet. He shook the gravel out of his orange jacket and pants. He put his hands on his hips and huffed.
"Is that all you've got," Naruto asked, while taking a glance to the kits cowering under the cart. "I've taken worse hits from a snake freak twice as old as you!"
Naruto laughed triumphantly. Iwato growled fiercely. His eyes glistened with feral anger. Seeming without thinking, he lunged low at Naruto. He skidded to a halt when Naruto jumped into the air. The man grabbed at his blue sandal-covered ankle and slammed Naruto face first into the gravel street. The blond boy grimaced at the impact, but stood up smiling, even though he was coughing up pieces of the road.
By this time, a crowd had gathered to watch their resident tough guy beating a pre-teen boy so bad that any full grown man would have been dead minutes ago. They were amazed that the loud mouthed brat could take so much damage and not even have a single scratch or bruise to show for it. Iwato had become completely enraged. He was about to unleash his special technique that not even the villagers had seen. Only rumors circulated about how it could take down any animal without him even touching it. However, it was unlucky for him that Naruto could see the inexperienced man attempting to gather up chakra for a jutsu.
Naruto had yet to lay a finger on his opponent. He stood and smirked as Iwato grimaced to gather chakra with his poorly formed hand seals.
"I'll make you a bet," Naruto laughed.
"What's that," Mr. Burly grunted.
"I bet that whatever it is that you're concocting up won't stand up to me AND that I'll knock you back over twenty meters with just this one fist of mine while you're trying to kill me with your jutsu."
Iwato growled at the suggestion. Naruto laughed. He thought to himself that his must have been the same scenario that Tsunade-baachan saw when he had charged her with a half-assed Rasengan. Just as Mr. Burly reached within range, Naruto pushed a sphere of chakra out around him. Iwato hit it like a wall and stopped in his tracks. Very much like the Godaime Hokage, Naruto punched my man in his forehead and sent him flying backwards, digging a trench as he went. The crowd was silent as their town hero didn't move.
A loud voice broke the silence.
"You lost, brat. That's only nineteen point nine three meters, not twenty."
"Shut up, you old pervert, before I kick your ass, too."
"Get out of here, kid. You can't even touch me, and we both know it," Jiraiya chuckled. "Now, stop causing a ruckus and go back to being a good little student at the camp."
Naruto raised a finger at Jiraiya that held a heavy connotation. He walked in the direction of Iwato, and further, the carrier service that the restaurant owner had pointed out. Naruto could see a clay base of soil at the point where Naruto had stopped. That's what made him slow and stop before twenty meters. There was a lesson even in that. He kicked some gravel in Mr. Burly's direction, causing him to curl into a fetal position and sob.
Naruto's walk was uneventful. He coughed when he accidentally kicked dirt up in front of himself. With the cloud cleared, so had the crowd. A path was made for him to walk down the busy market street. Children hid behind their mothers. It was like being back in Konoha all over again. Naruto almost felt like he was at home.
Three fox kits were the only ones who were afraid of him. And to Naruto's dismay, they were following him again. This time, Naruto refused to glance back at them. In his mind, he had gotten revenge for them, but they didn't owe his anything in return. However, he couldn't shoo them away because he knew that there wasn't anywhere else for them to go without a mother and an angry hunter who wanted them as trophies.
Naruto turned into the carrier office. The smell was deadly to a well-trained and adapted nose like that of the one possessed by the Kyuubi. He attempted not to breath, but failed. Naruto noticed that the kits waited outside, not daring to come into a place that smelled only of bird feces. The blond boy coughed out the breath of air he was holding in. He began choking and propped himself up on the reception desk. The short, round man behind the counter raised an eyebrow and laughed.
Naruto nodded and pulled the letter to Gaara from his pocket and slammed it on the desk. He continued coughing as the man examined the letter and the addressee.
"Sunagakure. Subaku no Gaara. This'll get there in less than 24 hours with my birds," the owner replied.
Naruto open gama-chan and set the rate, plus a few extra coins on the desk. He quickly backed out of the small office and to the doorway where fresh air came in. He gasped in the new air.
"The extra is to send a messenger to track me down when Subaku no Gaara sends a reply."
The man at the desk nodded and Naruto waved and he ran from the smell.
Mission Accomplished, he thought to himself. He sent the letter and had some tasty ramen, not to mention a fun fight. He was ready to go back to camp, say screw it to training, and just sleep the rest of the evening away. Hell, the sun was already setting. Jiraiya would scold him and tell him that he needed to train more. But since Naruto already knew how to solve his training problem, he just needed to pass time and wait for Gaara's reply.
Across the continent, Gaara had already received one reply to a letter he had sent a few days ago. In his office, Gaara re-read the letter from the Godaime Hokage. It sent waves of sadness to his heart.
"Kazekage-sama," it read. "It is my deepest apologies to inform you that Uzumaki Naruto is no longer in this village. He has gone for private lessons from Jiraiya. The estimated time of his arrival back to our village was stated to be two and one half years. I'm sorry that he did not inform you of this himself, but he left almost as soon as you did.
On a second note, if you would still like to visit Konohagakure on Kage business, you are more that welcome. Please let us know if you want to and we will make all the arrangements necessary."
And it was signed by Tsunade, herself.
The question weighing on Gaara's mind was why Naruto hadn't told him or wrote to him yet to tell him where he was. Wouldn't Naruto want to visit him on his journey?