Chapter Two: A Boy Meets A Fox

Minato felt some of the blood drain from his face, to the clear delight of the blue-haired girl whom he now was allowed to see had four fluffy tails with fur the same ocean-blue color of her hair.

She giggled in her evil way before winking at him, a gesture she somehow managed to make both charming and intimidating at once.

"Don't worry, my cute little human, Kushina-sama has given us explicit instructions not to eat you, though I suppose she couldn't complain too much if I just had a nibble."

The jounin found himself strongly hoping that the fox demon was joking as he racked his rather impressive brain for any information he might have picked up on fox demons. A part of him tried to rationalize the possibility that this girl was just some shinobi from a rival clan trying to somehow use her supposed status as a demon to wheedle information out of him.

"Regardless of who they are, they put some amount of effort into saving my life so I don't think they're enemies." He thought to himself reservedly, "Not that that actually means anything, of course. If they meant to extract information out of me I imagine they'd need me alive.

"What if she is a demon fox, though? Do I know anything about them that might get me out of this? Let's see…they're supposed to grow a new tail for every century of life with the maximum number of tails being nine once they reach a millennium. They're supposed to be extremely tricky, able to take on fully human forms and disguise their true nature even from the most skilled shinobi, according the Account of the Hirako Warrior they are supposed to be exceedingly skilled thieves with an insatiable appetite for human blood. But wait, those fangs looks more suited to tearing flesh than for draining a man of blood. Not that the idea of being eaten alive is any more appealing than being drained of blood, less so in fact."

In the few moments that it took for Minato to consider all of this, Melone suddenly moved onto the bed and was crouching next to him an all fours. Despite being a hardened warrior of both renown and skill he was first and foremost a sixteen year-old teenage male with raging hormones. This became a rather inconvenient fact when his adolescent mind found itself all too aware of the rather generous curves of the beautiful girl crawling seductively towards him. Minato found the dull pain in his chest momentarily forgotten upon noticing a much more persistent throbbing in a much more dangerous area of his body.

As if to make a precarious situation even worse, the poor jounin suddenly became painfully aware of just how thin the white sheets which covered his body were. With a hard swallow, Minato fought to keep his more primal instincts under control and began intently studying the wall directly in front of him while trying with all his might to ignore the small movements of the mattress which indicated the fox-girl was slowly making her way closer to him.

"What's wrong, little human-chan? You aren't scared are you?" The girl purred teasingly in a dangerously soft tone only a few inches away from him. Apparently though, Melone was intent on breaking his self control and crept even closer until he could feel her warm breath tickling his neck and whispered with as more sexual intent than he had known possible directly into ear. "Don't worry; I only bite hard enough to make you really enjoy the rest." With this the girl leaned her body into Minato's side which found his arm enveloped inside the fox-girl's ample bosom and the poor teenager found his sheets had suddenly become much tighter in the worse possible area.

At this point the jounin found himself in a violent war with himself, the part of him that sounded suspiciously like his friend Inoichi was loudly proclaiming that if he did not take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity he would no longer deserve to call himself a man and might as well turn his testicles and penis in as sacrifices to the gods as they would surely never forgive him for such a betrayal. The part of him that allowed him to build the name for himself that he had amongst his peers and enemies warned him to keep his cool and that he might well be under some sort of twisted genjutsu for all that he knew.

His inner struggle was interrupted however when the girl giggled delightedly and began teasingly rubbing her hand over the sheets where a sudden "hill" seemed to have sprung up, to Minato's simultaneous dismay and glee.

"Oh?" She purred wickedly once again into Minato's ear. "Could it be that you need to be taken care of in another way? You are a healthy young man after all; it's good that you're still so lively."

Suddenly the door knob clicked and the door burst open with an unexpectedly loud bang as it hit the wall at the end of its swing. From the entrance walked in a beautiful woman with fiery red hair and emerald green eyes that seemed to shine with brilliance completely independent of the light given off by the fire.

Her face was set in a stern glare that Minato was largely grateful did not seemed to be aimed towards him. He barely registered Melone jumping away from him and off of his bed and only really noticed when she began speaking in a hurried and apologetic voice, like a child who had been caught sneaking a cookie from the cabinet.

"Ah! Kushina-sama! You're awake already! How did you sleep?" The blue haired fox-girl was nervously scratching the back of her head as she said this and the glare of the red head seemed to only grow harsher.

"Melone," she finally spoke, her voice even more reproachful than her gaze. "when I told you to watch the human I did not mean for you to sexually harass him. After all the work I went through to brink this kid back from the edge of death it'd be a real pity if you caused his condition to decline again with one of your pranks."

Melone seemed to be sufficiently cowed as she hung her head towards the floor and rubbed her forearm nervously. "I'm sorry Ka-chan, I got carried away." With this she seemed to look back towards the redhead though Minato could not be entirely sure as she was still facing away from him. Whatever was on her face seemed to satisfy this "Kushina-sama" person as after a few more moments she merely sighed and ordered the other fox-girl to leave, an order which was readily obeyed.

'…..Wait, did she call her "Ka-chan?"' Of course Minato realized that if they were in fact demons then the idea was not altogether ridiculous , even so Melone had four tails so presumably this woman would have….

'Well. Shit.'

Of course he had registered the name the blue fox-girl had given his location but when he had envisioned something like a nine tailed-demon fox his mind had created something much more sinister than the stunningly gorgeous woman standing before him. However, Minato had never been one to ignore the facts and all nine of her tails were displayed quite clearly for him to see.

Though he understood that it was still entirely possible that he was still in a genjutsu of some sort, suddenly he realized that he could still indeed be dying and this genjutsu cast over him to fool him into thinking he has been healed.

"Well you are an interesting one, shinobi-san." The nine-tailed fox said with an amused smirk and raised eyebrow. "Still recovering from the brink of death in a strange house full of demons and you're still calmly analyzing everything around you. You should be more careful with your eyes and face though; they give every one of your thoughts away.

To answer some of your more troubling thoughts, yes this is real, I have no intention of eating you or allowing you to be eaten, my motives are purely innocent. Truthfully, it was mainly for the sake of distraction that I saved you in the first place, life can get quite tedious when you've lived so long as I have without getting some excitement when you can. Of course, if you have any worth at all in your profession I don't suppose my telling you will do much to assuage your worries."

The woman, whatever she was, had an extremely disarming demeanor and he found himself instinctively wanting to trust her. Fortunately he was not so young or foolish as to be drawn in by something as irrational as his instinct in this instant and experience had taught him that often it was those who were charismatic that held that special knife marked for one's back.

Minato was at a complete loss for how to react to this development, either he was truly in a genjutsu and whoever had put him under was also a mind-reader and able to control a genjutsu with an incredible level of skill whilst simultaneously reading his thoughts or else the entire situation was all quite real. So far as the young jounin was aware only the Yamanaka clan of Konoha was capable of actually delving into another person's mind and none of them could perform a genjutsu while they were at it. Unless it was to trap a person in some recess of their subconscious but none of his surroundings were even vaguely familiar to him.

'Once you have eliminated the impossible…'

Minato decided that whatever the girl's nature it was time to stop being played with, thousand year old fox demon or not. He calmly fixed his human cerulean eyes into her cat-like (or rather, fox-like) emerald globes and spoke in a measured tone.

"So, where is the Land of Fire from here?"

"That wound," Kushina said with a sternness which brooked no argument "was caused by a blade poisoned with a particularly noxious toxin which worked at a relatively slow but extremely persistent pace. By the time I found you, necrosis had already set in on much of the surrounding tissue, including most of your left lung, a good portion of your heart, a large bit of your right lung, half of your liver and was setting in on your stomach. Though at that point you'd have been dead anyway had any human healer attempted to save you.

Powerful and incredibly learned in all forms of magic though I may be, even I was unable fix such egregious damage to a mortal like you without some residual damage at least a week afterwards. Your treatment was only just finished two days ago, most of your body's energy was consumed in the process and you shouldn't even be walking on your own right now, much less making any long trips to this "Land of Fire"."

While the severity of his wounds was certainly cause for a bit of shock on his part, the jounin had decidedly more important issues on his mind, namely the fact that he had been out for over two days! And then there was the other part of her revelation.

"So, if I have this right Kushina-san," he began in as diplomatic a tone as he could muster "you are telling me that I am stuck in a demon castle for the next seven days?"

"At least, yes."

"Well then, you would not happen to have a library would you?"

_PAGE BREAKER NO JUTSU!_

Well that's it for chapter two, sorry for taking so long to update heheheheh.

More coming soon! Reviews motivate me, just sayin'.

Super-happy-fun-time love to Riuolo for the one and only comment!