Note: I only own my Original Characters.
I hope you enjoy this chapter, things are better explained and some mysteries are answered if you hadn't figured them out already from the previous chapter ;)
Anyway, Read, Review and Enjoy!
-Otakucraze
From this chapter onward whenever Tori is speaking Japanese it will be in italics "like this"
If she is talking in English it will be "like this"
Chapter 2
Tori awoke with an aching head in a small layer of water on the ground. Groaning she got up, noticing the stone walls and shivered slightly from the cold. Getting up she began wondering down the corridor, wondering why this all looked familiar to her. She wondered around until her acute ears picked up breathing. Stopping suddenly the image of Naruto approaching his demon was instantly brought to her mind.
"It's impossible, I can't be harboring a demon" Tori whispered to herself before looking around the corner to see if she saw anything, like a cage holding a giant demon, and she was relieved that she didn't see anything other than more corridor. Heaving a sigh of relief she began to walk down until she saw bars on her left. "Crap" she muttered and curiously peeked inside, and let out a laugh. "You are my demon?" She said to a very small looking fox, which scoffed at her remark
"I happen to be part of the great Kyuubi"
"Ha" Tori said, "Impossible"
"I brought you here for a reason Tori"
"I'm not letting you out" Tori said, crossing her arms
"… what?"
"I've seen what the actual Kyuubi does to the boy he is sealed in and there is no way I am letting you do that to me"
"Not even if I tell you why you have such a strong connection to this place?"
"No" Tori said stubbornly looking away.
"Not even I tell you why you had those dreams when you were younger?" The kitsune said deviously. Tori snuck a peek at the snug evil face the fox said.
"You know why I had them?"
"Yes, and if you let me out-"
"No" Tori said and he growled
"Why not?"
"I have no chakra, if I let you out you will destroy my body and get out" Tori said matter-of-factly
"You are wrong" the fox said cunningly "If you didn't have chakra I wouldn't be sealed into your body, I would have destroyed it years before" The fox said knowingly. Tori faltered in her knowledge
"What? How?"
"Your chakra was sealed along with your memory, all you have to do is make the sign that Ino makes and say "Kai" and you will remember everything and get your chakra back" The fox began to wag it's tail
"No" Tori said stubbornly
"Fine don't listen to me, have fun getting out of the little mess you got yourself in"
And with the final words said Tori found herself back in her body and on the shoulder of a man with her hands tied. The woman rolled her eyes at the sloppy job the shinobi made of tying her hands and wiggled her hands free and reached over to the shinobi's other shoulder to get him in the sleeper hold. He went down with minor struggle, but enough to alert the other three. Tori quickly untied her feet and kicked one guy in the face and ducked from a punch from another as she punched him in the gut. Spinning her leg around to trip the other shinobi she grabbed her backpack and ran the opposite direction they were headed. The other three were faster and she was surrounded once again, this time more prepared. Tori sighed; this was going to be a difficult situation to get out of. The three men pulled out kunai and charged. Ducking and rolling Tori escaped being shanked and got out of the circle of men. Running to a tree the girl used the velocity to propel herself on a tree branch and performed a ¾ giant, a move that had her swing completely around the branch, getting closer as she did so to give her enough backwards force that when she came backwards she opened her legs to a v and knocked two of the three men with her feet to their heads. She then performed a castaway where she propelled away from the remaining shinobi, landed on her feet, and began running again.
"Oki nasai" the man said to the two shinobi on the ground when he ran after the girl. Tori kept at an even pace, knowing that even if she ran as fast as she could she could never match the shinobi after her, so an even pace would suffice and keep her energy level high enough to help her get out of another mess. She tread softly, so not to make deep easy to follow footprints in the dirt and wished she could travel by tree like the shinobi could in Naruto, but she knew she needed chakra to so that. Looking back she was surprised to see that she was not being followed a noise caught her attention in front of her and she looked forward with enough time to see an elbow in her face. She had no time to dodge and slammed into the elbow with the running velocity she had. She blacked out.
Awaking in the same sewer as before she growled and walked the corridors to the cage. She leaned back on the wall behind her, arms crossed. The human sized fox with one tail looked at her.
"Having fun"
"Screw you"
"You should really just say "Kai" it could be a secret weapon" The fox said, smiling evilly
"No"
"You are stubborn"
"And you are annoying"
"You really don't want to know why you had those dreams, do you."
"I do, I just don't trust you" Tori said and the fox shrugged
"I don't care if you trust me or not, but fighting against those Kiri shinobi would be a lot easier if you knew about everything I do"
"I say it again screw you"
"You are really a little firecracker aren't you" The fox said, smiling deviously. Tori looked appalled before her anger got the best of her and she rushed towards the cage
"Take it back!" She said as she reached into the cage, as the fox backed up just out of her grasp.
"No, but I will give you something back" and as quick as lightning, and an evil smile he put a claw out to her temple before Tori could back away. Tori began to scream as memories came back to her
A three year old version of herself was running around her father jumping around him
"Show me a jutsu, show me a jutsu" she said in perfect Japanese
"Okay, fine" her father said as he knelt down and showed her the seals necessary
Tori was five and was standing tall in pride as she received her hitai-ate with the whirlpool symbol on it. Her mother and father hugged her when she ran to them with a wide grin
"I'm a kunoichi!"
Tori was six and the village was being attacked, the door to her home was kicked in by the reformists as her father distracted them as her mother grabbed her shoulders.
"I am going to give you a gift, remember that the life of a Jinchuuriki is a hard one, but if you fill your heart with love you will have a happy life. Don't let the emptiness take that away from you" She said as she did various handseals and grasped her daughter's stomach. Tori screamed and soon the pain vanished as her mother collapsed, dead on top of her. Her father grabbed her hand and did the seals for a transportation jutsu. They appeared on the top floor in Tori's room.
"I am going to have you forget everything, and bind your chakra so that they can't track you," he said as he wrote Kai on his daughter's hand. "When you are safe say "Kai" to release the jutsu, okay?" The six year old girl nodded as her father did a sealing jutsu and watched as his daughter looked like she was going to fall asleep. "Now to get you someplace safe" He muttered to himself as he thought of a place and began to do the necessary handseals. The door burst open and the man unknowingly placed both hands on his daughter, sending her to not just one place, but two. Part of Tori traveled to a far off place, like her father wanted and she collided on the pavement hard, but she was still conscious as the door opened.
"Who is she?" The young girl could not understand what the lady was saying as she groaned
"I don't know" a Japanese man said and picked her up to bring her inside
"She has a bracelet, is this Japanese? Can you read this?" the lady said in the weird language that Tori could now completely understand. The two continued their conversation as the woman closed the door and the two walked down the hallway
"It says Uzumaki Kushina Tori"
"Is that a name?"
"Yes"
"So her first name is... Uzuka-"
"Her first name is Kushina"
"Ouch… wait, didn't you say Tori?"
"Yeah, it is her middle name"
"Let's use that as her first name and her last name doesn't matter since it will be changed when she gets adopted anyway" The lady said as the man gently put the girl on the empty bed, it was then that they noticed the blood materializing from her head. The women yelped as the man grabbed the phone and dialed 911
"We have an emergency at 116 N College Street. A girl was dropped off at the Orphanage and has a deep gash to the head" the man sounded frantic as he spoke into the phone. The young Tori groaned in pain and the woman went to her side pressing a towel to her head and applied pressure the young Tori yelped as tears formed in her eyes.
"Shh, shh it's going to be alright" the woman said softly.
"Okay, thank you" the man said and turned to the woman and the young girl "An ambulance is on its way" the man said and Tori felt the darkness lull the young girl into a sleepless slumber, away from the pain of being in a strange new place knowing that her parents were no longer alive and far far away from her.
Tori opened her eyes and clutched her head in pain, noticing that she was in a clearing with three shinobi around her. Turning a back-flip into an aimed kick to the chin she clutched her head and fell to her knees from the sudden movement. It was getting dark, and had no idea where she was and it was getting colder. She shivered as a slight breeze hit her scarcely clothed lithe form. She couldn't succumb to being captured, she had to ignore the pain in her head and get out of this mess. Standing up as she pulled her hair to numb the pain that increased from the motion she watched as one of the men charged towards her, brandishing a kunai threateningly. She jumped up, and using his shoulder she jumped off of him, tumbling and doing a somersault her propelled herself towards the forest, blindly running due to the pain. She jumped up a tree branch but missed and fell to the ground, effectively landing on her ankle and a sickening crack was heard throughout as a high-pitched scream of pain followed, Tori had broken her ankle.
"Alright you little bitch, you are coming with us" the man brandishing a kunai said and Tori was surprised she could understand him perfectly.
'Maybe that is why my head hurts so much, I not only remember what happened twenty years ago, I also remember a language I had forgotten over that time in an instant and it is taking a lot to process.'
Tori stayed still, cursing herself for slipping off of a branch, she had no chakra, and now she was going to be prisoner.
A kunai zipped in the darkness stabbing the shinobi in front of her in the shoulder. He yelled in pain as the other two grabbed kunai and got into a fighting stance. Four men flew past her wearing black clothing with white armor guards. Tori recognized it as ANBU. The masks were in the shape of a wolf, a cat, a bird, and a rat. The four fought the three Kiri men and a kunai from the Kiri Nin landed itself in her shoulder and she yelped in pain as she pulled it out.
The three men were tortured for information as the night brought the fog and the cold and Tori began to shiver as her teeth chattered. The man with the wolf mask came over her and sat down next to her, leaning back on a tree as he watched the three ANBU interrogate before handing Tori a cloak. Teeth chattering Tori said in perfect Japanese
"Thank you" the man looked at her and slightly tilted his head as she wrapped the cloth around her body the shivering lessened and the girl clenched her teeth together to stop the chattering. She pulled the cloth closer to her body for warmth.
"Wolf, we are done here, we got all the information needed and the bodies have been disposed of"
"Good" The man next to her said and he stood, offering a hand to Tori, who gratefully took it and pulled herself up and yelped in pain as she applied too much pressure to her broken ankle. The man next to her caught her before she could fall over and allowed her and had her rest against the tree he had been leaning on before motioning for her to climb on his back. Tori complied, only because she could think of no other way of moving out of the area. Once securely on his back the five took off to the trees. Tori was reminded of the feeling of flying like she had on her motorcycle and a pang of sadness swept through her as she remembered that her bike was not in this world. Putting her chin on the man's shoulder she enjoyed the feeling of flight as she closed her eyes. Exhaustion tugged at her mind and she fell asleep, smelling the man's musky earthy scent.
She awoke when the four ANBU slowed down. The four hopped down into a clearing and the man carrying her lowered her down to the ground gently. She rested against the tree trunk as she watched the other three go off to find firewood as the man once again rested next to her. Tori looked at her feet and unzipped the boot that her broken ankle was encased in. She gently took the boot off and looked at the damage. The bone was protruding and almost broke through the skin and she heard a sharp intake of breath from the man next to her. Checking the damage of her boot, and thankfully there was none, she took a deep breath before grabbing the ankle and shin, in one quick motion she set the bone back in place, yelling sharply in pain as she did so. Breathing sharply from the pain she checked to make sure the bone was where it should be before putting the boot back on. She leaned back against the tree trunk and closed her eyes as tears escaped her eyes. She controlled her breathing as the other three rushed into the clearing
"What happened?"
"She set her bone back in place" The man with the wolf mask said
"Is she okay?"
"Just in pain that she inflicted upon herself" The man said calmly. The three nodded and put together their findings of firewood and got a small fire going. One of the men went off and came back with five fish.
Soon the fish were cooking around the spit and the man next to her picked her up and brought her closer to the fire. A cooked fish was handed to Tori and she took it gratefully, bowing slightly as she did so and took a bite of the hot meat. It was soon devoured and she kept her face down for the privacy of those around her that ate quickly to replace the porcelain masks upon their face. Without a sound the four ANBU disposed of the fire and Tori was once again on the back of the man with the wolf mask
"I'm not too heavy am I?" Tori asked, slightly concerned. She had never been carried this far before, and the man wasn't complaining. The man chuckled
"No, you are as light as a feather, I could carry you all day" He said as he looked back slightly. Tori smiled softly at the man, slightly blushing in the dark. Tori may have had a thin body but she had a lot of muscle, and was a lot heavier than she looked.
"I am amazed those Kiri-Nin were just passing through the forest when they saw the girl. They actually thought she was the container of the Kyuubi" the man with the rat mask said, striking up a conversation
"It's quite silly, I mean she looks like Uzumaki Kushina, but it is quite knowledgeable that she died 12 years ago, and she would be, what, in her forties? She is in her late twenties" The man with the cat mask said. Tori rested her head on the man's shoulders, getting comfortable
"I'll have to remember that next time this happens" Tori said solemnly.
"No need, once you are in Konoha you won't have to worry about this happening again" the man carrying her said
"So you are from Konoha?" Tori asked
"Yeah, what were you expecting, ANBU from Kumo?" the man with the bird mask asked the girl
"I don't even know where Konoha is, and what is a Kumo?" Tori said, slyly making it known she had no idea where she was, the man with the bird mask stopped on the branch he was on and watched her pass before catching up, falling into step beside the man with the wolf mask
"How can you not know where Konoha is?"
"I am not from here, I don't even know where here is" Tori lied. "How long until we get to Konoha?" Tori asked into the silence, directing the question to the man carrying her
"About an hour away" He replied.
"Ah" Tori responded and rested her head once more on his shoulder breathing in the musky earthy scent the man had and took another nap, out of boredom rather than exhaustion.
Tori awoke once more from the four slowing down to a walk. Tori looked up to see the familiar gates that introduced Konoha to the reader of the manga and the watchers of the anime. Tori gasped, the first rays of sunlight had already begun to rise up and Tori was hit with the reality that she was in the anime that she once dreamt of.
