Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of the characters.
A/N: It's been a while, and I apologize, and I can now say that the fic is back in business. Hope you enjoy!
Chapter 3: Budding Friendships
Naruto was once again woken up by the sound of the apartment door and voices. At least the door didn't slam this time. It sounded like Neji and Shikamaru were over again, and half of him wanted to go out there and try to socialize with the boys while the other half wanted to go back to sleep. He groaned in indecision, annoyed at being woken again anyway.
'Kid, it's going on noon. As much as I dislike the moody guy and his duckass, he's in the clear on this one.'
Naruto groaned again. "Fine, take his side!" he muttered out loud. To his surprise, someone else answered.
"Take who's side?" The blond twitched in surprise, sitting up and turning around to face whoever had quietly entered his room. Shikamaru leaned against his doorway, looking bored.
"Heh, nothing. I talk in my sleep sometimes. What's up?"
Shikamaru shrugged it off. "Just seeing how you were getting along with Sasuke as a roommate. The coffee maker was brought up, though you trying to buy his love won't work." A playful smirk appeared.
Naruto flushed at the idea. "N-no, not love!" Shikamaru's amusement grew. "Just peace. He's been antagonistic."
"He's just like that."
"Then why are you guys friends with him? Or why does Sakura want to date him? I don't get it."
The other boy shrugged again, sighing. "We get along with him, and I guess girls like the chase and the dark, brooding thing." Naruto made a face. "But anyway, we were going to get together this weekend before classes start, match our schedules up and get a study group going on for the semester. Thought I'd invite you in."
Naruto wasn't sure whether to laugh or be relieved, but he grinned anyway. "Most people would be hitting up a party."
"Is that more your scene?"
He thought about it for a bit, realizing he had no clue what his scene was. The cons to homeschooling. "I...don't know what my scene is, but I'm game for meeting up with you guys."
"Cool," Shikamaru said, "I'll let you know the details." The two of them added each other in their phones and Shikamaru was gone. While his phone was flipped open, he looked at his contacts, biting down a smile at seeing names in there other than Iruka or Yamato. Now there was Sakura and Shikamaru, too.
'See?' he said mentally. 'I'm already friends with Shikamaru!'
The fox grunted. 'It's a good start.'
Naruto got up, deciding that he'd get dressed and get some food before sitting in on the trio in the living room. He put on jeans and his favorite orange t-shirt with a swirl design on it that matched the light blue demon seal on his stomach that he passed off as a tattoo.
After he whipped up a bowl of sugary cereal and a spoon, he went back to the living room and sat cross-legged in the second chair. Neji and Shikamaru gave him nods from the couch while Sasuke, sitting in the other chair, ignored him. Naruto noticed he had a cup of coffee and felt a tug of satisfaction.
"Naruto," Neji said suddenly, causing the blond to look up with a mouthful of cereal. He could hear the demon sigh. "Do you know anything about fighting games?"
"No," he said after swallowing the mouthful, "Iruka allowed me to play some games, but said fighting games were 'too violent.'"
"Iruka?" Shikamaru asked.
Naruto shrugged. "Yeah, my adoptive father. Parents died not long after I was born."
'They were both awful.' The blond resented the urge to gnash his teeth-the fox always made vague rude comments about his parents, but never told him anything.
And cue the awkward silence, Naruto thought. At least on Sasuke's part he didn't look awkward, just glanced up at the blond before going back to reading something. "What about this game you guys are on about?" he pressed, and the other two looked relieved.
"The Clash of Ninja series," Shikamaru said. "The newest one is Clash of Ninja 4: The Return. It's the biggest fighting game out and we always take part in the tournament in Konoha. In your spare time you should practice a bit, see if it's your thing."
Naruto flashed them a grin. "That sounds great! It's up to the bastard, though." Three pairs of eyes turned to look at Sasuke. He didn't look up, but eventually gave a half-hearted "hn." "I don't need to play the other three, do I?"
"You don't," Neji said. "It has a basic story. Group of ninja fight other group of ninja trying to prevent a war, and in The Return a demon fox from mythology is the big bad. It has a really large fighting roster of just under 70 characters."
His grin felt frozen all of a sudden, and he could feel the interest of the demon. "Demon fox? That...sounds weird." He forced a laugh.
Only Sasuke appeared to notice something off with him, as he looked up and studied him. He tried to ignore the gaze while listening to Neji. "You know, that old myth about the nine tailed creatures living in some sort of spiritual plane and guarding our world. The more tails they had, the more status and power.
It goes on to say the tailed guardians were forced out of their home and into our world and in a rage they attacked, but were sealed into human vessels by a group of people prepared for that very thing to happen. The demon fox, called Kyuubi, was the strongest with nine tails, and was said to attack Konoha."
"But," Naruto said, "if they were there to protect our world, why attack it?"
Shikamaru shrugged. "Doesn't really say. Doesn't matter anyway."
'Is that true?' he asked the demon.
"More or less."
'Then why did you attack us? Why do you hate us now?' There was no answer, and Naruto bit his lip. 'Kyuubi?' Still nothing.
Later that day after Shikamaru and Neji left, Naruto sat on the couch playing Clash of Ninja 4. He tried out every character on the roster and aside from getting better at the gameplay in general, he found his favorite character was Junko, a spunky female ninja who used to be the vessel of the Kyuubi until it was pulled out of her and became a danger.
He was in the middle of a story fight between her and Nori, a childhood friend who later went renegade, but Junko never gave up. Sasuke sat on the chair and watched as Junko was blasted in the face by an electrical ball and lost the match.
"Why don't you use your Sage Mode?" Sasuke asked. Naruto quirked an eyebrow at his roommate.
"Sage Mode?"
"Junko had a mentor named Hochu, who taught her how to use Sage Mode to become more powerful," he explained as he got up to sit next to Naruto on the couch. Naruto went on full alert with the close proximity. "Hit this button to activate it once the gauge on the right side of the screen is full." He leaned over Naruto and tapped one of the buttons on the controller, and Naruto felt his breath hitch.
"I uh...wondered what that gauge was for." Why was he so nervous so suddenly? It was just Sasuke.
"Hn," the raven said, shrugging. "Just keep in mind all of your attacks change while in this mode. The gauge used to be for Kyuubi Mode in previous games, but that changed with this one for obvious reasons."
With that said, Sasuke picked up a second controller and looked at Naruto. "Match?" Naruto grinned and went to multiplayer, choosing Junko as Sasuke chose Nori. Sasuke ended up winning all three fights, though the last match was close.
"I'll keep practicing, bastard, then I'll kick your ass."
Sasuke scoffed. "I'm a tournament winner, and I was even going easy on you. So dream on, dobe." He smirked and left to go to his room after that, leaving Naruto alone with the game to practice.
The blond couldn't help grinning. 'That was actually pleasant.'
'Too much so,' the demon groused.
'By that you mean what?'
'I mean that you're really hard to watch when it comes to duckass.'
Naruto frowned as he went to fight Story Mode Hori once more. 'What do you mean by that?' But once again, the fox stopped responding.
Later that evening, Naruto went into his room after he beat the Story Mode of the game. Which ended with Junko fighting a controlled Kyuubi and Hori jumped in last minute to join the fight. The two ninja won against the fox and Junko got her demon fox and Hori back, but it was unknown who exactly was controlling the fox.
Naruto pulled up Google, planning on searching for info on Kyuubi. He tried once before but couldn't find anything of note-hopefully that would change now that he had a name to use. He threw 'Kyuubi myth' into the search engine and waited for the results.
One site claimed it wasn't nine tailed beasts, but one beast with ten tails that was later turned into nine separate beasts after it entered our world. Another claimed they were always nine entities but weren't meant to live permanently in our world and went crazy.
'If I can, I'd like to help you,' he said, looking at depictions of what the beasts were said to look like. These supposed attacks happened less than 150 years ago, yet no one knew for sure what they looked like. Apparently they resembled animals. A raccoon, cat, turtle, monkey, dolphin-horse, slug, beetle, octopus, and the fox.
The fox scoffed. 'You have no reason to help.'
Naruto bristled. 'I just sympathize, okay? I wouldn't be very happy either if I was dragged away from where I lived and spent the rest of my days in someone else's body.'
The Kyuubi was silent for a while. Naruto sighed, continuing his search for information, but then he decided to speak again. 'You humans dabble too much into the supernatural. Somehow you learned to cage us into you, and that's after you learned to forcefully bring us from our world into your's, when before we only appeared in your world for short times to protect it.
That's what we get for protecting you. Your betrayal. You say you want to help now, but later on down the road you'll change your mind when you need me for something. You'll only get our rage now.'
A shiver slipped down Naruto's spine at the tone the fox used. Maybe it was a wiser decision to keep things as they were, since there's no telling what Naruto would do by trying to fix matters.
He heard nothing but the promise of death in his voice.
Short chapter just to get the story rerolling. That, and nothing else will go on except for the weekend get together and the starting of classes, which will be next chapter. Also, don't expect any SasuNaru in this so soon, as I'm wanting to develop it slowly from clashing with each other, to friendship, and then romance. I won't have them be with anyone else though, like with Rich & Famous.