Disclaimer: First Chapter
Story Start!
"I'm going to the bathroom, don't wander off."
Trifa, in a few hours, could already tell that she was going to have to keep a close eye on this boy whenever possible. He had nearly no common sense, no sense of urgency seeing as he had no problem walking in Atlas with nothing but a tattered cloak to cover his far too overexposed body. The boy didn't have a sense of shame, even she made sure to get new clothes before boarding the airship. He was more interested in seeing things, and doing things, than he was about anything that normal people would be concerned with.
Like hypothermia, and how his feet had been in cold snow for hours.
"Can I come with you?" Naruto had never been able to see a person do that before, everyone just went somewhere private to do that. He had always wanted to see what somebody did in the bathroom, but had never gotten the chance.
Trifa blushed and hit the top of his head.
"No, stay here, I'll be back soon." Trifa could tell that he wasn't being a pervert, his genuine curiosity about everything was hard for her to put up with, but she understood it a little. It was like he was a newborn baby, all things in the world were new and exciting for him... it was like he was unnatural. He didn't belong anywhere, he was a Faunus like her, but he held no love for his fellow Faunus, no love for humans either, but he didn't hate either Faunus or Human as well. He just held fascination with them both, with no true desires towards either other than wanting to see more.
He saw the world through eyes of wonder, everything was special to him in the way that he was seeing a lot of things for the first time.
Naruto just stayed put and nodded his head, looking out the window of the airship with a smile. The last time he was in one of these, he hadn't been able to pay for a ride, so he had stowed away in the cargo. This time he was able to watch as the world passed by underneath him. It made the world seem so much smaller than he knew it was.
"... Those black things again..." Naruto spoke as he looked and saw those same black things that people threw nervous fits about, flying towards the airship right towards him. The cannons on the airship changed directions, and started to open fire on them.
"Giant Nevermore, just great, and we just barely took off. Bad Luck is kicking in early today."
"So that is what those are called." Naruto said as a grown man walked up next to him, smelling quite a bit like booze. Lean body, with a sword strapped to his back, and graying black hair that was spiked out. He was a scruffy man with red eyes, and he seemed a little familiar to Naruto for some reason. Naruto didn't think on it, and instead watched the Nevermore get shot and destroyed. When they were destroyed, they quickly turned into a black mist, which was quite the odd way to go. "They're being destroyed, are they evil?" Naruto turned and asked the man.
He got a raised eyebrow.
"The creatures of grimm are evil creatures with no souls, were you raised under a rock kid?"
"They don't seem evil to me, they seem too dumb to be evil. I think evil is when a person does bad things, with the knowledge they are doing something bad... and still choose to do it... these things don't seem smart enough to do that." Naruto had always assumed they were just really dumb animals. Sure, they looked scary, but he never thought they seemed evil. They killed humans and stuff, but humans killed humans as well, so by that definition humans and faunus were also evil. "People are more evil, since people chose to do the wrong thing... animals just do what they feel they must do." Naruto spoke as he gave his input on it.
He felt nothing when he saw the grimm slaughtered, since they were attacking the ship, but he didn't appreciate somebody calling an animal evil, just because it killed their kind. Grimm didn't seem like they were making the conscious choice to be killers, otherwise they would have run away from the airship when it started to slaughter them.
Qrow Branwen raised an eyebrow.
"You talk like you're not a person."
"Am I a person?" Naruto asked as he turned fully to Qrow. As he watched people and learned, never once had he ever gotten the feeling that he was a person. When people looked at him, most of the time they only gave him eyes filled with disdain for his homeless appearance. That, or he was given perverted looks of arousal by those who saw him as sexually attractive. As of yet, nobody had ever looked at him with eyes that showed any respect, even Trifa didn't look at him with eyes that had respect. Her eyes showed she was thankful to him, but she too considered him to be a strange thing, not a person.
Qrow was taken aback a little.
Life must be hard for the little faunus.
"Of course you're a person, you're as much of a person as I am." Qrow assured the kid as he leaned up against the railing. He smirked to himself, self-assured that he had said something very smart. 'This kid kind of reminds me of Kushina, especially the face... but he looks a little like Minato... in the color department.' Qrow raised an eyebrow when he glanced at the teenager.
Odd, Minato was dead, and they weren't old enough to have a kid this old, so it must be just a weird coincidence that he was meeting a teen that looked like the Maiden that he was searching for. She had dropped off the radar completely after stealing the Relic, and if Leo was telling the truth, turning it into a person.
"You must not be a competent person then."
"Naruto, don't talk to strangers!" Trifa walked up towards Naruto, and leaned down. She pushed her shoulder into his stomach, before she stood up straight and lifted him up, safely securing him with her arm. Trifa looked at the human, the booze smelling human, before she turned her nose up at him and started to walk away. "You need to be aware that humans will try and make you do horrible things. You shouldn't talk to him." Trifa lectured Naruto as she continued her walk away.
Qrow raised an eyebrow.
Well, a faunus who seemed to a neutral opinion on everything, with a woman who seemed to have a hatred for the human race.
'I shouldn't think about it, I need to focus on finding the Relicof Knowledge and bring it to Oz.' Qrow took a swig of his flask. He shouldn't concern himself with a strange couple of faunus, not when he was on a mission that concerned the fate of the world.
It should be easy to find, considering wherever it was, Grimm were sure to follow.
*Crash*
"A grimm got in the airship!"
"Everyone stay calm, I'm on the job." Qrow unsheathed his weapon and started to run towards the greater grimm, a Griffon rush through the window. The Griffon started to run towards him, and he rushed right back at it faster. Swinging his sword, his jaw dropped when the beast jumped over him and started to run towards the blond teen that he had been talking too earlier. Pointing the end of the sword's gun barrel at the Griffon, he shot it in the back to get it's attention... only for it to ignore him almost completely and continue to try to get to Naruto.
Trifa tripped and dropped Naruto on the ground.
Naruto stood up and dusted himself off, with no sense of urgency as the grimm stopped in front of him, and looked down at him with confused eyes. The grimm leaned forward, and sniffed Naruto a few times. The shock spread through all of the people on the airship who were seeing that happen, while Naruto just tilted his head and reached up and touched it's black feathers. The griffon lowered it's body forward, and offered a wing down to Naruto, so that he would climb onto it's back. Naruto looked at it, and he saw human blood was dried and cake onto the Griffon's mouth.
It had killed recently.
It's head was sliced off when Qrow jumped into action, turning it into smoke, and he landed behind Naruto with his confused eyes turned against him right away. Naruto's hand was stilled reached out, but he lowered it.
"I've never seen a grimm act like that before... it must have been an ancient grimm." Qrow knew that they got smarter as they got older, so maybe the Grimm had a strange plan to murder, or this boy was just really weird himself. Either way, the boy was in danger if he was attracting grimm to him. "Run to the panic room in the airship, both of you, I'll stay here and fight any grimm that get aboard." Qrow turned his sword into a scythe, and prepared for a long and tiring fight.
This was going to be a very long trip.
Chapter End!
Please Leave Me Lots of Nice Long Reviews, But No Flames Please!
Okay, there seems to be a common misunderstanding.
Naruto doesn't have a Semblence, and he doesn't have Aura, since he is the magical Relic of Knowledge... I 'wonder' what he uses, that isn't Aura/Semblence.
