When Naruto got up the next morning, he learned that herding a giant chicken was a difficult task. It was worth it as far as he was concerned though. His new pet was orange just like fluffy his foul mouthed rabbi- er, imaginary friend. This was totally the best day ever.
Eventually, he got the idea to hop on the bird's back, and turn its head in the direction he wanted it to travel in. The chicken seemed to get the idea rather quickly, and they were soon making their way back to Konoha at a brisk pace...
&!&!&!&
Yakushi Kabuto sighed as he made his way towards Konoha's gates. Instead of taking a week's vacation to the Capitol like he had filed time off for, he had gone to the lair of his new master. If he had known his week would be half as bad as it had been, he would have run for the Capitol in a heartbeat.
On his first day in Otogakure, he'd been forced to prove his superiority to a couple of meatheads, which had translated to a good hour long fistfight which he had only won by the skin of his teeth. After that, things had improved until four nights ago when an experiment he'd never personally laid eyes on escaped from captivity.
He'd gone in to break up a fight between some of the other recruits that were standing next to a large pen, had gotten caught in a Katon jutsu for his struggles, discovered that the fight had been over who would inform Lord Orochimaru of the escape of one of his experiments, and that he'd volunteered since everyone else had just run off. He'd run around the base for a while searching for the bastards before deciding to just get it over with. Besides, what was the worst that could happen?
When Orochimaru-sama hadn't even seemed to know anything about the "Monster Fire-breathing chicken", he began to wonder if someone had been trying to put the newbie on. It turned out that there really was a fire breathing chicken however, and that it was running around loose somewhere.
He learned exactly why the others had been fighting not to be the one to tell Orochimaru that the creature had escaped when Orochimaru handed him a bucket of bird feed and ordered him to bring the animal back. He had spent two days and nights searching to no avail, and had only managed to worm his way out of the task last night when he pointed out that he needed to be getting back to Konoha.
By the time he reached Konoha's gates, he was hot, he was tired, he looked like he'd gotten himself on an arsonist's shit-list, he smelled, and a small blond boy blew past him on a five foot tall chicken.
Shit.