Freaky Foxes

Part II

Demon trotted alongside Whisker Face through yet another warren of stone paths and artificially constructed human dens. It was strange being without the bell around his neck. As much as he'd hated it—especially in the beginning—the stupid thing had grown on him and now he missed the sweet sound it had made with every step he took.

However, there was a bigger issue than the loss of his bell pressing on his mind. Human settlements held no interest for him. They were all the same: smelly, confusing, and full of human beings. All that really varied was how big or small they were. But this particular human community…

This is where Whisker Face lives. The golden-furred vulpix hesitated for a moment and glanced in the direction of the lake where the blond boy lived. And that means that I'm close to that place where I was hatched, and where I lived…before.

Snorting, Demon turned back to follow Whisker Face—

—And caught sight of shadowy movement in a narrow space between two buildings.

Hmm? He sniffed the air and caught the scent of something…familiar. But that's…

Without thinking, Demon bolted for the alley, vaulting over some discarded cardboard boxes in his rush to get to the shadowy things that he'd glimpsed and smelled.

:You!: he barked, fur bristling. :What are you doing here?!:

A trio of vulpix flinched at his unexpected appearance. One had a notched ear, one had a nasty scar on its foreleg, and one was actually missing one of its six tails. But all three possessed the usual coloring of the species—something that Demon most certainly did not.

:…So, Ugly is still alive,: Notch-Ear sneered, the first to recover from the surprise.

:And here we thought that we were free of your curse,: Five-Tails huffed.

:Why did you have to come back?: Scar-Leg complained. :It was so much better with you gone.:

:Shut up!: Demon snarled. :Now why are you here?! The Mothers always taught us to never go near human dens!:

:So what are you doing here?: Notch-Ear retorted.

:Yeah!: Scar-Leg agreed. :Didn't you leave swearing that you'd uncover the secret of evolving into a higher state?:

Five-Tails made a big show of looking Demon over. :Huh, you're still a vulpix…and you're still ugly, Ugly.:

Demon bared his teeth and arched his back threateningly. :Why you—:

"There you are!" Whisker Face sighed, stumbling into the dimly lit alley. "I thought we were past the whole running away…thing…" The human paused and took in the sight of the three other vulpix. "…Old friends of yours?"

:Human!: Scar-Leg hissed.

:Run!: Notch-Ear barked, darted away down the narrow alley.

Scar-Leg followed, but Five-Tails lingered for just a moment, flashing Demon a scornful look.

:You're always bad luck, Ugly.:

And then he was gone, too.

"Oops…must've scared them off…sorry," Whisker Face chuckled weakly. "Hmm…I wonder if they were some of the pokémon that have been causing trouble." The human boy scratched at his hair. "Could only three vulpix break that window and ruin all that candy?"

Demon paid no attention to whatever Whisker Face was rambling on about.

…Why did I have to be the one born cursed?

There were some days that Hiruzen Sarutobi not only felt his age, but felt twice his age. The elderly professor sighed tiredly and tapped the ashes from the bowl of his pipe and tossed aside his latest edition of his favorite research journal. Normally taking a look at what other researchers were investigating was a good way to clear his head and get refocused on his own work…but not today.

Not for the last few weeks, in fact.

He was honored that Itachi had chosen to come to him for help. But at this point there was really not much to do. The young Uchiha had mailed him a packet of information as he'd said he would in his call, but…it was only profiles, there were no solid plans for the future, no clear goals beyond acquiring a few monsters of myth.

There was no way to act on anything at this time. There was no concrete proof, no photographs, no copied credible documents—all he had received where photocopies of notes that Itachi had written by his own hand. To do anything to such respected gym leaders there had to be some damning evidence and so far there wasn't any yet.

What a dangerous group this is…so secretive that not even their own members know what their ultimate goal is beyond some vague promise of truly uniting the world. And to think that their commanders are mostly gym leaders…from Wind Country, Earth Country, Water Country, Waterfall Country, and Fire Country… And Orochimaru and Team Sound…

He'd had a long career as the League Champion for Fire Country, and around the mid-point he'd stumbled across three youths while traveling incognito—a girl of privledge, an illegitimate country boy, and an ambitious inner-city orphan. Their companionship had been unusual and their potential was great. He'd looked in on them from time to time when his sometimes hectic schedules had permitted it. He'd almost thought of them as his own children (in addition to his own real children) at times, and had been proud to watch them grow up and all become well-respected gym leaders.

With a sigh, Hiruzen forcibly turned his thoughts away from the betrayal of his favorite protégé. Re-stuffing his pipe, he left the privacy of his small office and headed to his laboratory. There was no point in tormenting himself over the "Akatsuki" business when he had far more pressing domestic issues.

Roughly a month back the trouble had started with wild vulpix raiding the town for food. It hadn't been too big of a problem at first—just a few raids. But the little fire foxes had quickly escalated, appearing almost every day.

Initially, the solution had seemed simple. Every weekend (and sometimes on Wednesdays) at noon there would be a sort of farmer's market in the town square where fresh fruits, vegetables, and sometimes fish and other meats would be sold in little stands. It would be a great temptation for hungry wild pokémon, so he had advised that the market be canceled until the vulpix realized that there was no easy food to be found in Konoha Town.

In response, the vulpix turned to raiding restaurants and grocery stores. They would steal the food off plates at the outdoor tables at the local cafés, startling patrons and ruining their meals. And they would take advantage of doors propped open at food marts to steal whatever fresh food they could find.

In turn, the professor had told such establishments to keep anything edible behind closed doors. So the restaurants kept their customers indoors or gave them take-out, and the grocery stores stopped propping their doors open for patron convenience. …Which led the vulpix to breaking windows to get to what they were after, sometimes even in broad daylight.

Are they really so desperate for food? It doesn't seem likely, as only vulpix are the ones attacking. If there was some shortage of natural food in the area I would expect to see other local species following the lead of the vulpix. There hasn't been any significant shift in the climate, so what could be the root cause of this aberrant behavior? No living thing ever does anything without having some sort of reason—

"Damn it! I'm not paying you a hundred bucks!"

The old man paused as he stepped into his workroom and slowly turned to see Kushina Uzumaki, one of his part-time assistants, using one of the video phones in the corner to place a call. He doubted that the red-head was talking to her son; she wouldn't speak that way to Naruto. So who was she calling?

Puffing on his pipe, he slowly approached her and the phone.

"Oh ho ho, a bet is a bet!" a familiar voice cackled over the connection. "You lost, now pay up!"

…Tsunade?

"Well, I don't have a hundred bucks laying around to give you!" Kushina snapped back.

"You could borrow some," Tsunade cheerfully suggested. "I know Minato has a lot of money that he does nothing with."

Now the normally unflappable red-head was flushing in embarrassment. "There is no way that I'm asking him to pay this bet off for me!"

"Want to make a bet on that?" the blonde woman chuckled.

"No!" Kushina barked, looking even pinker in the face.

"What sort of bet are we discussing?" the professor inquired curiously.

The Uzumaki woman flinched and guiltily peered over her shoulder at him. "Oh…hi professor! I was just…I'll get back to digitizing your notes from that last project. Bye!"

And then she was hurrying out of the room, leaving the phone on and connected.

Intrigued, Professor Sarutobi settled himself in front of the abandoned phone and nodded politely to the woman on the screen. "Good afternoon, Tsunade. How are you?"

"Oh…hello," Tsunade grimaced. "What are you doing there?"

"This is my lab," Sarutobi replied. "Why wouldn't I be here?"

"Your lab?" she repeated slowly. "So…she works for you? For how long?!"

"Yes, she works for me part-time, and has for years now," he answered and puffed on his pipe.

Tsunade's expression darkened. "And you never told anyone that she was there with you?! Surely Minato has asked you if you've seen her at least once!"

The professor sighed deeply, fingering his pipe. "I would've told young Minato about her had she not specifically asked me not to give out her information. She wished to start over fresh so—not knowing the circumstances of her life before—I had no basis to judge her request." He sighed. "At that time I had no reason not to agree to what she wanted."

Now Tsunade glared. "So you just let her hide in your backyard?"

"I've always advised her against what she was doing; I never really approved of her approach on starting over." He took another drag on his tobacco. "She never listens."

Tsunade opened her mouth to make some biting remark, but something off-screen and just out of audio pick-up range distracted her. "…I'll be right there, Shizune!" she called out somewhere to the left. "Ugh, so many challengers, so little time…"

"You're taking challenges again?" Sarutobi asked with some surprise.

"Yeah," she sighed. "A little blond punk with funny scars went charging head-long into The Forest even though he's scared spit-less of ghosts and stuck it out…and that got to me. An eleven-year-old made me look like a coward, and I don't like that. So—like him—I'm doing something about it."

The old professor had to smile. "I'm glad to hear that, Tsunade."

The woman gym leader rolled her eyes. "Well, I've got to be going now."

And then the screen went black.

A "blond punk with funny scars"? Hiruzen mused, watching the smoke lazily rise from his pipe. What an interesting description…

A muffled commotion from another part of his sprawling laboratory caught his attention and he stiffly abandoned the seat in front of the phone to investigate.

I wonder…

Naruto was so distracted by the brief and odd encounter with the wild vulpix that he actually collided with Ebisu when he entered Professor Sarutobi's lab. The stiff lab assistant dropped a case of computer disks and a few small binders in the collision and they hit the tile floor with a noisy clatter. Naruto bent down to help gather the things, but Ebisu waved him off in annoyance.

"No, no, you've done enough."

"Oh come on," Naruto scowled. "It's not like I broke anything!" …At least not this time.

"Let's not tempt fate, then," Ebisu sniffed, adjusting his shades (like many Aburame, he never seemed to take them off, even when indoors). And then he noticed Demon peering around Naruto's leg. "A vulpix?! You've captured one of those marauders?!"

"No," Naruto replied with a frown. "I've had Demon for a while. I left town with him. …Where were you when I got my license anyway?"

"It was my day off," Ebisu answered, and briefly removed his dark shades to get a good look at Demon. "…Did you dye that poor thing?!"

The blond boy rolled his eyes. "No, of course not! Why would I do that?"

"You were quite infamous in school for attention-seeking behavior," Ebisu muttered. "Surely you would continue such behavior out of school as well."

Naruto glared. "No way! I've got more important stuff to do than goof off!"

Ebisu didn't look the least bit convinced.

"Hey, would you stop looking at me like I'm some kind of punk loser?!" the boy demanded.

Ebisu simply put his shades back on and went back to gathering his dropped things with a weary sigh.

"Hey!" Naruto fumed, balling his hands into fists. "You—"

"Oh, hello Naruto."

Naruto looked past Ebisu to see Professor Sarutobi coming down the hall with his pipe in his mouth.

"Hi, Professor," Naruto grinned and waved.

"Professor," Ebisu nodded to his superior and then swept off to some archive room with his armload of stuff.

The boy glared at the retreating back of Ebisu's pristine white lab coat. "Hey, Old Man, why'd you have to hire him? He's such a jerk."

"I did not hire him for his social skills," the elderly professor sighed. "He earned his place at my lab due to his great intelligence, diligence, interest in pokémon science, and work ethic."

Naruto wrinkled his nose. "Whatever, he's still a creep…"

Professor Sarutobi shook his head. "So, how was your journey back?"

"Kinda boring," Naruto shrugged, and pulled Drifter's pokéball from his belt. "Could I swap this for Shadow?"

"Of course," the old man smiled, taking the ball from his hand. "Your mother is in the Computer Room, if you were curious."

"Thanks!" Naruto grinned, and took off down another hallway.

He'd never hung out in the professor's lab much as a young child. He ran around too much and tended to crash into things and break things like test tubes and specimen jars. Ebisu really took offense to that, and referred to Naruto as "a tauros in a china shop" all the time. But he knew the place well enough to make it to the tiny, out-of-the-way computer room where his mother was working in less than a minute.

His mother sat in the dimly-lit computer room near one of the five computer terminals. It looked like she was taking the professor's hand-written notes from some experiment or research project and putting them in a digital document. And it looked like she was having a hard time deciphering the notes.

"…I hate it when he invents some new short-hand…thing," she muttered darkly.

Naruto skidded to a halt in the doorway, and then tip-toed up behind her. "…Hi, Mom!"

"Gah!" she jumped and spun around her swivel chair to face him. "Oh, you little booger!" Once she caught her breath, she hugged him. "Welcome home."

The boy happily hugged her back. "Did you miss me?"

"Oh, definitely," she answered seriously and moved back to look into his face. "So, five days until your birthday. Are you excited?"

"Mm-hm," he nodded. "Hey, Mom…" …Do you think he'll come?

"Yes?"

Naruto scratched nervously at the back of his head. "How come you never said anything about the wild vulpix?"

"You're here for your birthday, not to worry about crazy wild pokémon," she replied. "And I was hoping that the problem would be solved by now…"

"Oh." Naruto leaned against the table. "So, what's the professor going to do to figure it out?"

"He's been talking about sending Iruka and maybe Ebisu out into the forest to try and find where these vulpix live and gather data about their environment."

Naruto thought that over for a moment before an idea struck him. "Hey, do you think Demon could help? He's a vulpix that came from around here."

"That's a very good idea, Naruto," the professor remarked as he appeared in the doorway. "Here's your pokémon," he added, tossing Shadow's pokéball to the boy.

"Thanks," Naruto grinned, and turned to the golden vulpix who was sitting on the floor. "Hey Demon, do you think you could show us where the local vulpix live?"

The little fire fox eyed him before glumly turning away in refusal.

"No?" Naruto pouted. "Why not?"

"Maybe those wild vulpix are old friends of his," his mother suggested. "He might not want to give away their home to humans."

Naruto rubbed a scarred cheek. "Oh…"

"Don't worry about it," his mother smiled. "I have about an hour's worth of work left to do, and then we can go home."

"Okay," the boy nodded. "I'll just hang out with Konohamaru until then. See ya!"

Waving to the two adults, Naruto scooped up Demon from the floor and jogged off in search of the professor's grandson. He'd promised the kid details on what he'd seen at the wrecked candy store, and he'd keep it. And wherever Konohamaru was lurking was probably more interesting than the sterile lab, full of incomprehensible equipment and fragile test tubes.

The vulpix in his arms was unusually quiet. In fact, Demon had been rather subdued ever since the brief encounter with the wild vulpix in town. It really made Naruto wonder what they might've talked about to make the little gold fox so…pensive.

I really wish I could understand pokémon…

Demon stared out over the glassy lake near Whisker Face's home den. The lakeshore was gravelly with a few much larger rocks here and there. The vulpix perched on one such large stone and did his best to ignore the others.

:Wheeee~!: Sandy squealed, skimming over the surface of the lake, occasionally dipping a thin black limb into the water as she flew.

:I like this lake!: Typhoon growled as he popped his head above the surface of the water.

:It is a good lake,: another gyarados—a white-whiskered female allied with Whisker Face's mother—heartily agreed. :Come, I will show you more.:

:Okay!: Typhoon eagerly gurgled, and the two water serpents disappeared from view again to explore the depths of the lake.

:There's so much water…: Bolt mumbled anxiously.

:Yeah, so?: Gamakichi replied carelessly.

:…I don't like it,: the pikachu decided.

:Why?: Shadow asked, lounging in the sunlight. :I think it's pretty.:

:It's more than pretty,: the vaporeon, Uzu-chan, declared. :It's great! I swim in it every single day.:

:Ugh,: Bolt shuddered.

Demon rolled his eyes and glance dismissively over his shoulder at the pokémon laying in the grass behind him. :What, just because you almost drowned as a little baby pichu you hate water now?:

Shadow the umbreon blinked. :Oh? You almost drowned? When?:

:The day that I first met Naruto-kun,: Bolt replied, fidgeting with his lightning-bolt tail. :I was reaching for a berry by a fast-flowing stream and slipped into the water. It was cold and wet and awful! But then Naruto-kun came and fished me out. He saved my life!:

Demon snorted and glared down at his ugly paws. I wonder…would I have made it if he hadn't found me?

:That's cool,: Gamakichi grinned and clapped.

:Wow,: Shadow breathed.

:You're very lucky,: Uzu-chan remarked.

:Yeah, sure, it's great and all,: Demon grumbled. :But it's stupid that you're still afraid of the water. It's not like you're weak against it like I am. You could learn to swim if you wanted to.:

:No thanks,: Bolt sniffed. :No swimming for me.:

:Then you'll just drown the next time you end up in deep water,: Demon shrugged. :How sad…:

Bolt stomped his little foot and angry sparks dance on his red cheeks. :You! …Why do you always have to be such a jerk?!:

:You wouldn't understand,: Demon grumbled, hopping off his rock seat and trudging towards Whisker Face's home.

:Why don't you try telling us about it first before deciding that.: Shadow suggested.

The vulpix paused and gave the pikachu, croagunk, umbreon, and vaporeon a scathing glare.

:You wouldn't understand; you're not a freak like me.:

And then he slipped into the house and found a couch to hide under.

After being on the road so long, it was easy to forget how things had been. But coming back here there was no way to avoid remembering. He was the ugly one, the freak, the living curse.

It's just not fair…