The next week was one of many new experiences for Naruto, training under Kyuubi was nothing like what he had expected. It was long and difficult and all the time they had to stop to do the various exercises really cut into his travel time. She kept assuring him that they were in no rush but even so Naruto felt anxious, or at least he would have done if he wasn't able to do anything except fall into an exhausted sleep every night.
Her training regiment was brutal, especially for his young body. From the moment he woke up she would have him doing physical exercises. There was nothing too extreme there as she didn't want to impede his growth but it was enough that he started to feel noticeable changes to his speed and strength. After a light lunch she would have him performing various chakra control exercises that would leave Naruto feeling even more run down than the physical ones, having to focus for seemingly unending periods of time was a challenge for a usually hyperactive seven year old.
She had told him that his eventual goal would be to climb trees without his hands but that just sounded strange to him. Until then she had him slowly advancing through the more menial exercises. The one he hated the most was the leaf exercise. He would gently burn the centre of a leaf and Kyuubi would instruct him to stop the flames from spreading only with his chakra. It was tiring, difficult, and it made Naruto singe his hands more than a few times.
However nothing could stop the satisfied feeling he got when Kyuubi congratulated him on advancing a stage or making even a little progress. It worked in motivating him further and making him try harder and his concentration grew in leaps and bounds. It was enough that he could now willingly enter his mindscape through a form of meditation without any help from his tenant whatsoever.
That was where he spent his evenings now, after a day of tiring his body and spirit he would join the old fox in his mindscape and she would set about wearing down his mind. She would teach him anything from geography to tactics and he would soak it up like a sponge. She had a way of making everything sound fascinating to the boy and more than once he found himself wishing for a library to keep learning about everything. It wouldn't have helped him though, after his training and lessons he would feel so tired that his he would fall asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
Sleeping during the day posed its own challenges for the boy apart from the obvious body-clock adjustment it forced him to hide up in trees, which wasn't the most comfortable way to sleep. As well as that he found himself being woken up when the odd ray of sunlight would find its way through the tree he was in and land straight on his closed eyes. Of course Kyuubi would happily sleep through it all, ignorant to the boy's suffering.
After a while, when his concentration began to grow and his body's exhaustion increased it became less of an issue and soon he was practically a nocturnal creature himself. With his new sense of sight, navigating the thick forests was simple; everything was clear and visible as if it were midday. It meant he could safely travel at a decent pace, not as fast as if they had used the paths and road but still enough to meet Kyuubi's liking.
She hadn't been lying when she said he would begin to notice the changes to his other senses soon. The very morning after she had told him he had woken up because he could smell the scent of a rabbit run off from where it had been peacefully napping. He had the strangest urge to run after it but managed to control himself when his mind caught up to his waking body. He didn't mind the smell, he could quickly put it to good use in hunting for food and smelling out danger; it was the hearing that took the most getting used to.
Every bird call and cicada's chirp nearly drove him insane, actually forcing himself to tie a strip of cloth around his ears until he grew accustomed to it. After a while though he did begin to see the benefits; where before he had thought himself a master of stealth he could now hear every soft footstep on the ground. It allowed him to work on it and while it would take a long time for him to walk in a way that he couldn't hear, once he did he would be nigh undetectable by that means.
The same was true for his sense of smell, waking up to his own sweat in the mornings was never pleasant. It was so bad that he had taken to washing before he went to sleep and after he wake up, as well as a midday soak if his training had been particularly intense. The change was welcomed, instead of body odour and sweat he woke up to only the gentle scents of the wildlife and plants around him, a marked improvement.
He would have loved to have said the same thing about his breath but when he had left the village oral hygiene hadn't been high up his priorities, something he sorely regretted. He made sure to remember for the next time they went through a village. He didn't have a lot of money left but now that he was learning to hunt and food became less of an issue he figured he had more to spend on other things.
Clothes for instance were something he was really lacking in and another thing that was now shifted on his priorities. While he could always wash himself of any scents, his clothes were a whole other story; cold water alone just wouldn't cut it. The stale smell of his own shirt especially, considering he only had the two, was beginning to make his nose twitch whenever he was unfortunate enough to cross a breeze.
Kyuubi knew of his growing discomfort and began to lead him towards a village she thought would be there. Her information was seven years out of date but it was large when she had been sealed so she figured it was probably still there. If it was ruins then she could incorporate that into her students training. Much of the land of fire and the surrounding nations had left over ruins from the first, second and third shinobi wars and navigating them would become invaluable training for actual urban infiltration, without any of the dangers of being spotted.
They broke out of the dense foliage of the forest that Naruto had spent the last week surviving in onto a broad, obviously well used, road. It was clear of travellers in both directions and Naruto set off in the direction Kyuubi pointed him in. He was in an exceptionally good mood tonight, even for him, as Kyuubi had finally allowed him to advance from the more remedial control exercises to the tree climbing and it didn't disappoint.
Of course her explanation had been short and vague; she wanted to see just how much Naruto could grasp on his own. All he knew was that it had something to do with directing chakra to your feet, anything else he had to work out as he went. Unfortunately for him on that first day his view of the world was his undoing. To a seven year old, walking up a tree without your hands seems like the greatest challenge in the world; naturally he had put as much chakra into his feet as he could.
Whilst he was only seven, Naruto was still an Uzumaki and his chakra reserves were exceptional for one so young. Of course this meant that when he had placed his foot on the first tree he was immediately sent shooting back across the clearing to land in a painful heap almost thirty feet away. When his vision cleared and all the spots were gone he looked back to where he had been and only saw the shattered stump of what used to be a tree.
He visibly gulped and learnt something that day, it wasn't about how much chakra you put into something, it was about using the right amount for the right situation. It was a lesson that would become invaluable to him over the years and when he was older he would be able to trace it back to this point. His next few attempts weren't much better and whilst he didn't destroy any more trees he wasn't having much success actually sticking to them. That didn't mean he had given up, he tried until he used up every last ounce of chakra in his body, falling into an exhausted sleep that even the sun couldn't pull him out of.
That was why he was grinning broadly as he walked along the road with the stars and moon as his only illumination. Despite his failures he still knew that Kyuubi believed him ready for this next step and he wasn't going to disappoint her. He only now started to realise just why she stressed control over everything else, maintaining a small, constant flow of chakra wasn't easy. At least she had told him that if he could do it to his feet then in theory the rest of his body would be no problem.
An unfortunate and unforeseen side-effect of the young boy's good mood was that his senses hadn't been on full alert. If they had been then he would have been able to smell his three followers before they had gotten close enough that it was too late for him to run. As it was, the scent of sweat, metal and another that felt familiar but he couldn't place, was on him before he could properly react.
"Well looky here boys, we got ourselves a runt out on his own." Naruto immediately spun to see the three blatant bandits standing easily in the middle of the road, one's hands twitched over the hilt of the sword by his side and the other two stood calmly and watching him. The one in the middle, the obvious leader of the trio, stepped forward, far too close for Naruto's liking. He was a scrawny man but there was no hiding the well toned body he hid under the baggy clothing designed to make his enemies underestimate him; he stank of the unidentified smell the worst.
"A small lad like you, young, fit and healthy; oh yeah, you'll do great as a slave, probably at least enough for us to live comfortably for a week." He grinned as he said it, taking another step towards Naruto in a menacing fashion whilst one of his friends casually walked around the boy to cut off his escape. "Come with us easy and we won't mess you up to badly okay?" His words were dripping in sarcasm and malice at this point, "The buyers generally don't like 'em scratched up too bad."
His two companions joined in on their grin and Naruto continued to be rooted to the floor in panic, unable to move. Calling out was pointless, there was nobody around for miles to hear him and it would only serve to anger his captors. He was so caught up he didn't notice the largest of the three, the one that had walked around to his back, approach him and roughly grab him. He was hoisted into the air and firmly held against the large man's chest in an unwavering grip.
"Perfect, that wasn't so difficult now was it?" The three continued to hold their malicious sneers before they formed up and continued to walk down the road. "And here I was thinking you might be one of them ninja brats, guess I was wrong." The large man who was holding him let out a laugh, an unpleasant noise that caused Naruto to wince as it reached his sensitive ears. The last of the trio, the twitchy looking man with the sword kept throwing glances at their latest capture.
"H-Hey boss, what's wrong with the kid's eyes? They're red, eyes ain't supposed to be red are they? I ain't never seen red eyes before, I seen really dark brown an' I seen those weird purple ones but I ain't never seen red eyes. What about those pupils too, all slitted like a cat? That ain't normal I'm telling you boss-"
"Shut up Tazu!" His leader's words immediately stopped the smaller man and he settled into an uncomfortable silence. Naruto had hard time hearing any of what the thin man had said as most of it had been said at an ungodly speed and sounded like the babblings of a moron. However he knew it was about him, something to do with his eyes being red. Except his eyes were blue which made no sense, and what was that about his pupils being slits?
Apparently he wasn't the only one made curious by the jittery man's hasty words as the large man carrying him adjusted his position. He was curious o see what his partner was going on about; usually he would tune out Tazu's babblings but the thing about the kid's eyes had gotten him interested. He shifted the kid until his face was turned towards his own and he examined the kid's eyes, seeing nothing but normal blue ones, nothing out of the ordinary at all.
Naruto suddenly found himself in an odd position, facing towards the ugly brute of the man that was currently carrying him. His legs were braced against the man's muscled stomach and he couldn't help but draw parallels between this position and his tree walking exercise, the man definitely fit the description of a tree trunk with legs. His mind working in overdrive flashed back to the image of the shattered tree stump that was his first attempt at tree-walking.
It was like his body was on auto-pilot, automatically sending all the chakra it could muster in such a short time towards his feet. They only glowed an ominous blue for a moment before Naruto relived that first attempt and was sent flying backwards at a dangerous speed. He impacted with the ground painfully, digging out a small shallow trench that marked his impact. It didn't take him long to gather his sense and get to his feet where he could see two of the bandits stare at something on the floor with incredulity.
From his position Naruto couldn't see what they were looking at but when he stood up he looked at it in horror. Naruto, being only seven, couldn't be blamed for failing to know about the conservation of momentum. When he had performed the explosive chakra manoeuvre he had only been expecting to be pushed away from the brute of a man. He wasn't to know that for him to move one way, something had to move the other.
That something just happened to be the man, and the other way just happened to be towards the tree line of the forest around them. As it was, he was currently impaled up to the trunk on a large, unfortunately sharp branch that protruded out of the tree like a hedgehog's quill. Naruto just stood and looked on with one part curiosity and ten parts shock as he watched the small river of red run from the whole in the man's chest to form a steadily growing puddle around his feet.
Even in death the man seemed just as incredulous as his companions, his faze frozen into a pale look of shock as he looked down at the branch protruding from his chest, right where his heart should have been. The entire branch was coated in thick blood that caught the moonlight, adding to the already horrible scene currently being etched into Naruto's memory. The leader of the trio-turned-duo was the first to recover, having seen his fair share of death and his gaze flicked between his late companion and the small boy who had somehow killed him.
"You! I'll kill you, you little brat!" That was enough to shock Naruto out of his own daze and allowed him to turn and make off in the opposite direction to the older man. Despite his training, despite how fast he had become it just wasn't a match yet for a grown adult and the older man caught up to him. He roughly grabbed Naruto's hand, spinning him and throwing him off balance at the same time.
He was holding a viscous-looking serrated knife high up, ready to plunge it into the kid who had hurt his companion. There was an evil sneer across his face and his eyes burned with fury, not even caring that it was a seven year old boy he was about to kill. Naruto closed his eyes, awaiting the final blow that would take his life as he cringed back, falling onto the ground unceremoniously.
He only cracked an eye open when the blow didn't come after a few seconds and he looked up at the man with the knife. The vicious snarl was still here, but now it looked frozen in place, his eyes too had lost their gleam and Naruto quickly understood why when he suddenly dropped to his knees, followed quickly by slumping forward to lie, unmoving in the middle of the road. He had five shuriken buried in his back, except there was something weird about them; they were white instead of the usual grey and they were each as thin as paper.
Naruto looked around for their source but couldn't see or smell anybody nearby, except for the last of the trio still alive who had just caught up to his leader when the shuriken had embedded themselves into his back. He was now standing, quite scared, with his sword drawn and furtively looking into every shadow he could find, trying to find the source of the attack. He didn't have to wait long as five more of the odd shuriken flew out a random shadow in his direction.
He may not have been a ninja but his reflexes were good enough to deflect two of them, while two others sailed past him and the last grazed his shoulder, drawing a thin line of blood. He was panicking now, spinning wildly and waiting for the next assault, this time it was more direct. Paper flew out of the forest on both sides, sheets of it, except it wasn't directed at the man. They all seemed to congregate in the space between him and Naruto.
They glued themselves to one another and slowly took on the shape of a cloaked figure before colour leaked into them and the attacker stood there as if they had been there all along. The swordsman had seen enough and quickly dropped his weapon before sprinting off in the opposite direction. Apparently the attacker wasn't satisfied with this outcome and quickly dispersed into the numerous sheets of paper again.
Each one miraculously transformed themselves into tiny paper aeroplanes and sailed off at unimaginable speed. Naruto, who had been watching all of this with fear and curiosity though whoever it was, was just going to cut off the bandit. However they surprised him when the aeroplanes showed no signs of slowing down. They were all aimed at his back and in the time it took for Naruto to blink, they were stuck in his back like kunai, hundreds of them, each creating a small trickle of blood.
He was dead before his head hit the path and the paper was already reforming itself into the ominous figure. They walked back over to Naruto who was still paralysed in his position on the ground and looked down at him. He couldn't see their face from the shadow cast by their hood but he took their hand when it was offered to him. He was more than surprised when what came out of the sleeve of the cloak was a small, feminine hand with bright purple nail polish on each of the nails.
She helped him to his feet and with her free hand she lowered the hood of her cloak, revealing her face. She was a woman of around twenty, maybe in her late teens but she had eyes that had seen much more than one should in such a brief span, much like Naruto's own. She had a shock of blue hair that went past her neck with a small paper flower nestled in two of her indigo locks. She had no other discern able features that would make her stand out in a crowd, unless you counted her seemingly orange eyes, except that might have been a trick of the light.
She projected a very neutral atmosphere, her eyes were dulled and apathetic to everything they gazed on and her mouth seemed set a position of indifference. She looked at Naruto once with those same half-lidded eyes and motioned with her head to the road before walking off. Naruto quickly understood and walked after her, not willing to say anything to the strange woman unless she spoke first, especially after the display he had seen.
After a while of walking in unbearable silence he had to break that self imposed rule as he hated long periods like this.
"Thank you" It was quiet and meek, far from his usual voice but the woman acknowledged it all the same with a curt nod.
"You do not have to thank me, those men were scum and deserved to die. Slavery is pitiful." Her voice barely changed pitch throughout her entire sentence, staying the same deadpan, emotionless tone.
"I'm Naruto" he was growing more confident now that the woman seemed to have no ill will against him. Again she replied with the same nod but her pace didn't change.
"Konan." They continued on for a while in another oppressive silence that seemed to surround the mysterious woman. Naruto couldn't think of anything else to ask that would jeopardize his position so kept quite as well. At the pace Konan was setting it didn't take them long to reach the next village and they passed through its gates without any problem from the guards, although Naruto did notice that Konan had put her hood back up.
They wound through the streets until Konan stopped in front of an inauspicious inn that Naruto might have missed if he had been alone. She quickly walked in and Naruto nervously followed her, wondering where the strange woman was taking him, and more importantly why he was following. They walked upstairs and she knocked on one of the few doors that were obviously rented rooms. It opened with a creak and Naruto saw someone who surpassed Konan in emitting an impassive and cold aura.
His dark red hair hung low over his face, obscuring his eyes and his skin was very pale to the point of looking almost sickly. He took one glance between them but his eyes, hidden as they were, lingered longer on Naruto.
"Who is the child?" Konan shrugged and only offered a one-word reply.
"Slavers" It was enough to satisfy the other man and he stepped aside to allow them entry. The room was plain, nothing fancy about it, just thin walls and a few beds as well as a small mirror hanging on a far wall. He was roused out of his semi-stupor when Konan kept talking. "And this?" he didn't know what she was talking about until he turned to see a small red-haired girl of about his own age asleep on one of the beds, she was obviously what Konan was motioning to. The red haired man offered his own shrug and in an equally curt way offered his own answer.
"Orphan" Konan's eyes narrowed slightly but she nodded, Naruto noted there was obviously something about orphans that affected these people.
"And you know this how?" The man just looked at her in that same, dead-eyes way that conveyed nothing to Naruto but Konan seemed to understand. "Where is Yahiko?" The man offered no reply again and Konan sighed, again Naruto was left out of the loop as Konan obviously understood everything that was happening. By now the minimalist conversation had roused the red-haired girl from sleep and she was blearily sitting up, rubbing her eyes.
She looked around at the two adults and her eyes stopped on Naruto, but she didn't say anything. Naruto had completely missed the very hushed conversation between Konan and her companion but caught the end of it where they seemed to come to some kind of agreement. The man looked around at Naruto but he firmly pointed his finger at the girl.
"You boy, you will protect this girl." Naruto looked at him, shock written across his face as his eyebrows tried to climb higher into his hairline.
"What!?" Naruto couldn't see but he could definitely feel the man's eyes narrowing under his natural hood of hair.
"I do not like to repeat myself." The voice was cold and emotionless but it conveyed enough malice to make Naruto gulp and quieten down. "Wherever you are going, you will take this girl and you will make sure she comes to no harm. Am I understood?" Naruto could only nod meekly, he didn't know that it was killer intent being levelled at him right now; all he wanted was for it to stop. It did so when the man saw his answer and he returned to his normal emotionless state before taking one look at Konan and walking out of the room.
The blue-haired woman glanced between the two shocked children and held out her hand; in it a sheet of paper just appeared and wrapped itself up into an intricate flower, more so than the one in her own hair. She touched it with a finger and colour leaked in from the point of contact and the flower quickly became blood red. If she was satisfied with the result she didn't show it. She motioned for the two children to come closer and they did so, Naruto looked over at the redhead and she looked back, both were just as clueless as each other.
Konan plucked a paper petal from the flower and held it in front of her for a moment; Naruto could have sworn he saw it glow for just a moment. She then did the same for another of the petals before quickly, before either child could react, pressing a petal into each of their arms, just below the wrist. It burned for a moment, making Naruto wince, he was used to pain but nobody was immune. He gritted his teeth but it seemed that the girl wasn't quite as desensitized as him as she let out a yelp of surprise and pain.
The petal wasn't there anymore and if the few glances through watery eyes were anything to go by it had simply burnt away. In its place, on both of the children's wrists was a small mark in the shape of the petal. Naruto and the girl both rubbed it to try and ease the lingering burning sensation that the process had left behind; when they looked back up from their marked wrists they saw that Konan was already gone.
Naruto looked across at the young girl who was still rubbing her wrist and looking at the mark with a mixture between wonder and annoyance. She seemed to notice his gaze and turned to look at him. Naruto got his first real good look at the girl; she had piercing green eyes that he immediately noticed were filled with the same pain as his own, loneliness seemed to cling to the girl like a shroud. Her hair was the most impossible, vibrant shade of red, as if it had been drawn instead of grown.
He noticed that the girl seemed to be doing the same thing to him, sizing him up and curiously looking at him. Her upper lip was slightly curled into the makings of a snarl and her eyes projected a defensive atmosphere, she was obviously used to being on her own. When she seemed done with her examination of him she narrowed her eyes and took a step back.
"What the fuck's up with your eyes?"