A/N; first off, I would like to apologize for the long waits in between updates. See what happened was that we finally got Internet back. Sometime in Feb./March area. You'd think that would be good. It's a mixed blessing. See my little brother is pretty much addicted to runescape or something like that. So, yeah. Second, you guys would be like, he's your little bro! Kick him off. Well the problem is that a) he's slightly taller than me. b) he's slightly heaver than me.
But that's not the problem, see technique and skill and preparedness and physical strength that I've worked on. Really, I can give him a piggy back no problem but he stumbles after the first few steps. I've also only lost two fights, -the knockdown drag out kind- with him, both involving my glasses, one time they broke and the other time I was forced to stop because of interference a.k.a. parents, both of them holding me back because I dragged my mom's boyfriend at the time at least five feet.
Going on, Now we get to take an in-depth look at Naruto's life. Trust me this wasn't planned much at all. The rough drafts and what I've got my saved on my other word document saved as says different.
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Interlude Chapter; A look of Underneath the Underneath
Naruto had had a pretty shitty life.
Actually, if you were to describe that statement, it would most accurately be described as the understatement of the mellinia, no, of the era! Naruto corrected with a mental dark chuckle.
If it wasn't for the fox, his life wouldn't be that bad. If it wasn't for the fox, he'd be dead.
If it wasn't for the fox...
He cut off the thought. Kamisori, would call it self depreciating, and call him a pessimist.
Well, knowing most of the world's horrors, 'cept for maybe war, -even if he had comparable-, it would be easy, child's play even, to be one. However, if one is at the lowest one could get into the abyss, and yet not fall, well, there's always up.
So Naruto had made optimism into an art form. However it was not without it's problems. It took a lot of energy to do all he did usually, and still be a bit hyper and optimistic. Thus, he pushed all his loneliness, sadness, anger, desires, and ego into his determination. It's why Kamisori had liked him so much.
He could be awesome and annoying at the same time.
After all, with all the shit he'd been through, being a shinobi would be practically easy. And it was, even if he hadn't graduated yet.
"More tea?" An alluring lady sitting at a small table with him asked.
"Hai, and arigato." The lady caught his eyes. The crystal blues said, for everything.
-------
Naruto, knew he was different from the others. He was beginning to run around, while the others struggled to stand. He knew that they were loud, and his ears hurt then. But, maybe it was a good difference? And they were all jealous?
With that thought entertaining him, he went into the orphanage kitchen, and asked the lady for some food.
She started to, until she caught sight of him. She then picked something off the counter top, which he couldn't see. But he could feel it as it entered him.
It was the first time he remembered a brush with death.
He was barely two.
--------
The next attempt on him, that he remembered fondly, was when he was a few months away from three.Those Yamanaka's did a pretty decent job. They still would if he hadn't found a way to counter them. It was very easy. Really who knew that those were so powerful?
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He had discovered the paradise that was the roof. It was interesting. He felt free, he enjoyed the wind, listened to it, felt it, heard it, even raced with it a bit. He was about four stories up. Plus it was pretty quiet, aside from the hustle and bustle of the surrounding village, which was muted with distance.
His hearing allowed him to know that there were a person or two that were hanging around, even if he couldn't scent them all that well. He sure as hell couldn't see them. He had no experience detecting the minute changes of a person's scent depending on their emotions. So when a ninja appeared behind him, he happily cooed over his sudden appearance, and how he was really cool, said hello, and introduced himself.
Then ninja then crouched down, as if to introduce himself, and suddenly grabbed Naruto's ankle, spun around several times, and tossed Naruto into a nearby tree.
Naruto would later swear that he must have hit every single branch in that tree.
One ANBU caught him at the bottom of the tree, quickly taking him to the hospital, while the other apprehended the ninja, on the crime of harming a civilian.
The ninja had some external chakra burns when the nameless assailant had met the head of the T&I.
Naruto had to stay in the hospital for three weeks. The Hokage had come to alleviate some of his boredom, so he learned some card games. He was still bored out of his mind. Eventually, a harried nurse gave him a coloring book and crayons, so he was okay for a week. Later, a decent doctor gave him a notepad to draw on, since the coloring book was full.
It showed that he had some great aptitude in artistry. Naruto noticed this, and thus an artist was born, especially since he had walked out, in less that three weeks, cast free.
That's when he partially heard the comment, "knew...would...heal fast. Demon child."
Did that mean he was bad? Were demons bad? He hadn't done anything demon-like had he? Or was it one of those nickname things?
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He must be remembering. She watched as his eyes shifted colors. They shone darker as his emotion got darker. Eventually ending a dark color that you couldn't tell what color it was originally. As his mood got lighter so did his eyes. When he was happy, -for real-, his eyes were a gray accented blue. If he was anxious and over-thinking some things they were a deep but clear sapphire blue.
"'Ruto-chan, you shouldn't think such depressing thoughts." She admonished in a playful scold.
He stared back for a bit. His hand clenched his cup tighter. "I thought I told you not to call me that."
"Well, you're acting childish so I'll call you Naruto-kun once you're out of memory lane."
"Fine, Tenshi-san." He said, recalling a turn on memory lane. When the lady with hair like the purple iris, and honey-gold eyes and with her bronze skin seemed like an angel from the heavens.
"It's Kuro-hime." She said.
Silence reigned for a bit.
"If you're gonna ask what's wrong, just look outside."
"The weather brings back bad memories huh?" She murmured into her tea. "Just so you know, this isn't too great of a time for me either." She disliked the wet in the air.
"Any time before 'dawn' is."
"That joke is so old."
"So. You calling noon, dawn is always funny. Classic even."
"Whatever. Shouldn't you be in school?"
"Iruka-sensei is off for the week. On vacation. Officially. That means evil substitute teacher."
"What 'bout that Kami-"
"Kamisori-sensei? Mission. For once. Wanting to get out of the office. One of those, in his own words 'Let's leave for several months and do nothing except birdwatching and running around like a headless chicken' type deals. It's still another week before he's due back."
"Makes me glad I'm not a ninja, or something like that."
"You're a wet-girl. There is a profound difference."
"I know. I proud of that fact. After all wet-boys and girls have deaders. Ninjas and assassins have targets. They have targets because sometimes they miss. We don't."
"Makes me glad that most of the world doesn't know of you. If they did, I'd be dead."
"Course you would be. After all, there is a profound difference in a dead person and a target. You'd be dead, and I'd be out a friend."
"More would ya'? Thanks." He said as she poured it into his cup, and tossed a heap of sugar in.
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He had managed to annoy the orphanage people into another notepad. It was bigger than the last one. Which had been destroyed by someone. So he had to get another one. Needless to say, it was harder to do so. He had went a ways away from the place after filling in a few pages. He was now in a park, when he felt,... something. A presence. Was it a ghost? Whatever as long as it wasn't bothering him, it was fine by him.
So he was sketching the pond, and surrounding plant life, remarkably well for someone not even four yet. You could tell what it was, but it had a lot of stray marks and perspective mistakes.
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Naruto thought back to a study he had once read. Young kids had an inherent sense of composition. The term meaning that everything was well placed and the page was filled, even if the people were as big as the tree next to the house and could touch the sun. Older kids, had a better sense of proportion, so the subjects they drew were more lifelike, but lacked composition or background.
The strangest thing was that anyone can draw. You just have to be in the right state of mind, have a certain perspective on things, understand how lines and shades of color made and melded into works of art. How they reflected life and reality. Needless to say, most of Naruto's 'works' had undertones of a sad peace. (A/N; this is true. There is no such thing as talent, only perspective and showing it, and practice. That's all it is. Look at Piccaso if you need an example.)
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Naruto went with his instincts and dropped his sketchpad and tools, ducked and rolled over some.
He should have continued rolling.
He didn't.
The sack caught him. He didn't know the material, but he could tell that there were other things in the sack other than himself. Like rocks and hunks of scrap metal.
He felt the sense of weightlessness that he associated with the 'tree' incident and 'flying.' Otherwise known as being thrown. Into a pond. In a weighted sack. The pond being a good seven feet deep.
When later recalling the incident, Naruto would say, "Drowning is not as peaceful as people would have you to believe. It sucks. Your body screams for air, your mind says no, the headache forces you not to care, and as the water hits your lungs, you get a shock to your system, you immediately try to cough it up, but you've no air to cough with, more water pours into ya'. You're dead within thirty seconds after that. Needless to say, drowning is a sucky way to go."
That was when he met the Shinigami.
For the first time.
It was really unexpected. It was not the way he'd always thought it would go either.
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"What's with the chuckle Mr. Moody?"
"Remembering when I met Kai."
"The Ever Crazy kappa eh?"
"Crazy might cover it in some circles, but it doesn't in the ones we travel."
"Ditto. With friends like ours it's considered good preparation to keep padded rooms and straitjackets handy."
"Do you see me disagreeing with that statement at all?"
-------
He heard this conversation when he first woke up. With precision pounded into him by experience he kept his frame exactly the same. His breaths matched. He had slowed his heart beat.
"Oh, and what part of "make sure he doesn't die" did you not get?" An angry man asked. He was tall with pale skin and had jet black hair, which was short in the back, but long in the front. His eyes were mismatched. One was a dull green. The other was a ghostly blue. He was wearing a dark muscle shirt and dark green pants. His goatee and the wicked tattoo around his white-blue eye made him look devil-incarnate.
"How should I know that humans could drown?" A glib voice responded. This guy was shorter than the other, but had a decent tan, and aqua eyes. His hair had a variation of his eyes, with greens and violet strands interspersed. He had a look of an guy a few steps up from homeless. Baggy pants that had been patched and washed so many times it was impossible to distinguish what their original color had been. A worn but impractical jacket for fire country was a green so dark it was nearly black. The shirt underneath could be described as stained by many unidentified substances, some which were undoubtedly blood and dirt. He had a tattered scarf that was a light gray blue wrapped around his neck. To top it off, he had some purple shades in circle frames on top of his head.
"My sister, your boss, is so going to have our heads. Says he's necessary for the balance."
"Seriously?" The guy who was working the 'whatever' look at the moment, asked like a surfer.
"Dead seriously. Or did you think the universe imploding or something like that is not important?"
"Strange that a little kid has that much say or power for that matter."
"Yeah, well, getting Kyuubi sealed in ya' would do that."
"Get out! Really?" The blue haired guy looked really excited.
"Now I see why my sister insists on you being on short, easy assignments. I just realized that you're really annoying." The possessor of the mis-matched eyes said.
"Just now? Damn, I'm loosing my touch then." He seemed to almost break down and cry. Naruto would later think it was because he'd ruin the whole damn 'whatever' look that way which is why he didn't do so.
"..."
"What, did I just say something I wasn't suppose to?"
"I'll just let you figure that out."
"Not fair dude. Not fuckin' fair boss dude."
"Deal with it. Like you deal with Death."
"Ah, but death is like so easy! Dealing with it is much easier. Dealing it to others, child's play."
"Shut up. Just shut up, before I make you deal with the paperwork on the souls of fish."
"Fish have souls?"
"You do don't you?"
"That was below the belt. Insult my mother while you're at it.'
"Let's not." The God grumbled. He remember what his sister had reported what had happened when that happened. Brutal was too bland to describe what would happen. Even a God would have trouble with a freakishly strong Kappa, who had been given temporary loan of even a small portion of a God's power. Not really, but enough to break a sweat. If you were caught off guard, and were running for your life. Hiding behind a door because you sister would round up a posse and do the most cruel things imaginable, and as THE goddess that dealt with the death side of things dieing, she knew a large number of ways to harm you.
A lot of them were just plain strange. Really, he had seen someone who had been beaten to death with a leg of frozen lamb. Strangely enough the lady who had done it, didn't get caught by the police, even if they were more pissed than usual since he had been an officer and all. They ended up eating the evidence.
"Hmmm. Whatever."
"Good. This never happened. Now, then, you've got your contract manual?" The God got a raised eyebrow to his question. "Of course you do. The manual does explain the different ways people can die."
"Oh, it does? When did it do that?"
"Just now." The manual which had been a couple of hundred pages thick, now was close to eight-hundred. It could have been used to kill. Blunt force trauma and such. Then there was the evil paper cut in a jungle to where you might die from infection, but that was caused by the paper cut.
"You do realize that the manual can now be used as a weapon right?" Glib asked, in a statement/question way.
"Yes. Anything can. However if you want to keep your-"
"I'll keep my regulation stuff. Thank you very much. I refuse to use my book that way. You know the you break it you buy it policy that your sister has."
"She should have been a lawyer. Now that he's back alive and all, along with baggage, it's your job again. Teach him how to breathe underwater so this doesn't happen again. It's a pain in the ass bringing someone back to their body and settling them after they've left."
(A/N; For future reference, any word that is like breathe in the sentences above is a word that has been assimilated into everyday speech from a different language. Like if you spoke Russian. Computer has no word for itself in that language, thus you'd use computer. That's basically what I'm writing. So in the dialogue above breathe has been used since there is no possible way accurately describe what you're trying to express in normal language.)
"He awake?"
"Yeah, has been for a while. Well, I've got duties and such to attend to, as well as a sister to convince to back off. Oh, and good luck explaining all this to him. Now then, my job is waiting, and those animal masked people are finally getting over here." He said. "'bout damn time." He grumbled. Then he disappeared in a white flash while wondering, 'I miss the old world where if a god wanted something done, it would be done as fast as possible. We also didn't have all the restrictions back then. We're technically bordering the line here. Most people like him don't know half the shit that's going on in the realms that he's about to learn.'
That's how Naruto meet 'Kai.'
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"More tea?"
"Ah, hai, hai. It's always so good. I'm addicted to it. Did you put something in it?" After dumping in some sugar and tasting it he said, "Strange that a killer and a healer live in the same body."
"Not really. I just jump at the opportunities to learn and stuff. Now, stop thinking so much. You'll get frown lines."
"You can get frown lines?" He asked in disbelieving tone of voice.
"Not me, never me. You, I dunno. Maybe scowl lines. Or maybe someone will hit you hard enough your face will stay that way."
"I'll never let'em. I'll use your fighting style if they even try."
She chuckled. "Violent today ne? You been hanging out with that summer shinigami way too damn much. You've been avoiding me lately. Do you like hanging with him more than hanging out with Yuugi, Neko and I?"
"I have been in school until this week. I also had tons of make-up work, from skipping out so much. Because I've been sleeping in since I was staying up pretty late working."
--------
'Kai' was an unusual dude. He loved fighting, like all kappas loved blood and fish. He loved drama. Which made highly entertaining at times, and embarrassing to be around at others. Coincidentally he loved fashion. He talked like a surfer dude, and acted like one, but that didn't mean he was an idiot. He was pretty damn smart in his own right, he was not really book smart, but loved reading. It eventually worked out even if he had to read it several times. Not really political smart, as in he wouldn't go all megalomaniac and manipulate everything and everyone but he could divine the methods and reasons behind them. He was people smart. He was battle smart. He was good about finding all of your secrets. If he were wanting to verbally tear someone to pieces. Well, good luck finding all of them.
'Kai' was proud of the fact that the last person he had verbally tiraded upon wound up in therapy. That guy had interrupted his fight. The fight with the guy who insulted his mom. He had ended up in a morgue, and had six seamstresses working on him for three days to piece him all together. The funeral was still close casket due to minute missing pieces though. And that was before he signed up with the Shinigami.
His skills had since improved.
Naruto would definitely get a few really mild ones throughout his childhood.
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"Oh really? What is it about? Is it something I can use? Besides that's still a lame excuse."
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There were side effect from his brush with death. Like being able to see the ghosts and such. It also manifested at random. Well not really. Whenever he was concentrating, he could see them, or else it would be a spike emotion or in pain.
The bad part was the fact that when poisoned, if not feverish, he could see them better. Closer to death and all that. Even if by a couple of inches.
Strangely enough he also had problems when it came to cats. They knew you could see. You knew that you can see. They knew you knew you could see. They then would do the cat equivalent of glomping, in the fashion of cats. It was pretty embarrassing.
Still he knew 'Tora' quite well. Well the Tora before the current one.
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"That's a secret. Ya' know in big and bold."
"Oh, am I going to have to sic Yuugi on you?"
"Face it, I'm not telling you, or your apprentice either."
"You know, he's not."
"I know. Maybe because he likes you, after all I've walked-"
----
Of course there were times when cat glomping and poison got to him. Whenever he lived under someone else's roof in Konoha other that his eventual own, or Kuro-hime's for that short week and a half, he'd end up poisoned. It sucked almost as bad as drowning.
There was the orphanage who fed him some pretty common stuff, or didn't feed him at all. Then there was the -.
-------
Naruto forced that memory down.
"Thinking back? Again? hm?" She asked as she took a sip of her own tea.
"I blame the sky and the mood, and the fact that Yuugi is out." It was cloudy with a hint of storm. Typical for this time of year.
"Ah. I miss Yuugi too."
"For different reasons too, I'm sure."
"It's not like I asked you to walk in on us."
The pair stayed in silence for a while. While she didn't have a problem with being public with anything, she knew Naruto well enough to know when to back off.
So she busied herself with his appearance. He still had the mane of golden hair. It was pretty long in actuality. Most of his bangs were brushed to the left, falling over his eye, and the longer ones onto a whisker or two, while the bangs that had remained steadfastly to the right spiked up a few inches. The rest of his hair was pulled into a ponytail at shoulder length. The ponytail went on for a few more inches, spiking all the way. His customary earphones were on, and given how this set was made, it went over his ears and behind his head, and under his hair.
His eyes were a shifting blue, but whatever the accent of to the color which varied on his moods was a dark blue. He still had his whiskers, or as she liked to call them birthmarks even if they weren't. Still close enough. He was still wearing dark colors for his pants, this pair being one of his lazy pairs, since he had paint stains on it, it was ragged at the feet, and a few holes in it, stitched as they were. Ninja wire wasn't ideal, but he had it on hand, and it looked cool. He probably had several weapons on him even now, mostly hidden, although since she lent him some of them she could guess. The shirt that he had on was really big on him, being one of Yuugi's old ones, he probably had seven knives on him under there. He probably had some short ones attached on his calf, maybe five depending on size, not counting the kunai and such he had in his weapon pouch. He probably had some senbon under the wrapping on his left hand. He probably had wire in his pant's pocket, along with some cash and a piece of paper and a short but sharp pencil that could be used as a weapon in and of itself.
Then there was the vest. He had recently changed his brown civilian style vest into a vest that was reversible, also civilian style in design, with one being a brown he had messed with until he got a hint of orange into it and changed the grey one till it was a grey-green. It had doubtlessly been modified and armed to capacity. He had probably un-sewed it into halves, stuck some mesh armor and some other plates and such in there for defense, before adding a lot of hidden pockets and thus weapons.
This little guy was prepared for war.
What war would that be? She mused. The most important one. Survival.
She decided to cut her musing.
"How's Hitomi?" She asked.
"Good. She's adapting very well."
"Heard she's being praised as a prodigy. How much is your doing?"
"A bit. I mostly just expounded on the basics. Can't say I don't have my regrets though."
"About her -?"
"Yeah."
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Naruto had a lot of regrets on how he met some of the most interesting and important people in his short life. His ANBU 'guardian', he had met later when she had quit that line of work due to a mission related injury and was close enough to dying to where some the doctors that worked mostly on and for the ANBU let her have some death-bed wishes. Even so, after a quick meeting and discussion on several subjects near and dear to her, she fought for her life and even if technically not ANBU level anymore, she was still a highly skilled and competent jonin.
Even her replacement, who had took care of him when he was an infant, she had his blood on her hands. And the blood of others.
He had met the Sandaime when he had come close to dying several times when he was young. Or not dying for that matter. Like when they visited the shape shifters who ran the ramen bar. Those two had also protected him a couple of times when they didn't have to.
He had met 'Kai' when he had died. Even if the God of rebirth and renewal had revived him. That being the other side of death. Death must have been really scary since the remotest possibility of her being there had scared the other god off.
He had ran in with the Drayad's for a month, which thankfully all available ANBU were out on missions or were off in some hospital room, after being left for dead with a couple of knives stuck in him. While he couldn't do the things they could with plants, he could still effect the environment around him. Enough to track, and hide.
He had meet the 'true' Itachi later when a few thugs, who didn't even have the decency to be drunk or other wise impaired, even if the glass bottle suggested differently, that had cornered him into an alley, and pulled out a couple of switchblades and a pair of knuckles. Itachi probably still had the small silver scar near his hairline. Fuckin' glass. Fucking exploding note inside the glass. Itachi definitely remembered that. He had complained that his mother was annoying him over the burned hair. He had gotten annoyed at the smell, which until it faded, he was temporarily stuck inside the village doing patrols.
The lady across from him had met him when he was close enough to death by massive poison overdose, which still had it's nasty grips on him today, after several years. She had to resort to more barbaric methods to get it out. Even so, she couldn't get all of it and had to suffice with countering most of the side-effects. It simply wasn't her forte. The brutal and complex poison that could be extracted from a corpse. She was better with the poison that could never be detected upon death.
Yuugi, had been at first hostile to the young blond, mostly for intruding on his life and not his burden. He had been a good supporter of killing Naruto as an act of mercy, but after a brief question after Naruto had 'died' for lack of better term, and he had asked what death was like, only for Naruto to reply 'boring' the red-eyed man had warmed up to the kid.
Kamisori had shown Naruto why his nickname was the Razor. Little bits of flesh that used to be a human being would earn someone such a gruesome title. Naruto liked his weapon. Who knew that that ninja wire could be used like that?
As for Hitomi, well, he had found her in an alley, when she was in the six/seven age range, about to get the same treatment as him, and possible worse, since her throat had been slashed, and although she wasn't bleeding out via a severed vein, she probably couldn't talk. The two husks of men who were "candy-eaters" were quickly killed in the most painful way. Several stabs into their lungs. The two were so hyped up on the drug's effect, they had to have gotten some within the last half hour, or the euphoric effect wouldn't have muted the pain sensors in their nerves so well. He was lucky that they hadn't gotten very far into the mania stage of the drug or else he'd be dead since the mania stage allowed the equivalent of unlocking the limits on your muscles. When Kuro, and Yuugi had patched her up, he asked Kamisori if he could get her into the academy, if only to learn some self-defense skills. She had outdone both of their expectations, even if she talked in hand-code all the time. Allegedly, the females of her class had adopted the code and turned it into their own language. He surprisingly didn't really have anything to do with it, other than a careless remark.
-------------------------------------------------------
"It is one of the things that you'll carry with you all your life. We all have them. It's part of being human, at least part of it. I think."
"Oh, what about part cat or fox-like for the matter?"
"Oh, that? Take any opportunity. Not the doors, you're a ninja. Take the window. Follow your instincts. But remember to think before acting, but not to over think. Keep a level head. Don't tip your hand too earlier, and count your money you won at the table later."
Silence ensued again. Probably from the gambling remark she mused.
"Kuro-hime?" He asked.
"Yes?"
"Are you mad at me for that?"
"It's not possible. I consider you the son I don't have. After all, I did save your life back then, and I haven't regretted it since then." She got a look from him.
"Fucking Morsus." Naruto said naming the poison.
"Indeed." She said into her cup, before downing it in one swallow.
"I hear Yuugi coming towards. He's frustrated and tense. I'll leave you two alone so you can work out that tension." He pulled out his Drayad trick, and disappeared into the streets of Konoha.
'I really need to name that, the Drayads aren't really big on naming things. Except for flora.' Naruto thought. "Now time for some ramen."
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(A/N; this chapter is finally finished. It took some heavy editing on my part since, I wanted it to fit in. As said before and above, little bro+ computer+ limited amount of free time+ my reading fix+ Internet/dial-up+ fixing some plot holes+ I hate typing+ school(review+ English research project due+ study for pre-cal/chemistry) + mom wanting me to socialize which means no computer for like an hour= why it took so long to post this.
Also as much as I'd like to say that updating will be faster in the summer, it's probably not gonna work out. Maybe in July, but not June or the last week of May. I'm gonna see if I can get a laptop for my birthday, ( the chance of this happening is less than my dog paying my library dues for late books and the one it chewed up.) It's the same for Christmas. Job would cut into my time even more.
Naruto; You just can't win can you?
me; It's so sad isn't it"
Kamisori; couldn't you cut back on reading?
me; I could, but if you suggest it again, I don't care how much I like you. You will die. Even if I have to alter the story again to fix the plot holes that would appear.
Kamisori; You're serious aren't you?
Yuugi; She is as serious as my name means play.
Naruto; Your name is a huge misnomer.
Kamisori; Truly. Although so is mine. It's why I don't go by it.
Yuugi; Nah. I'm just the king of games.
me; You're not from Yu-gi-oh, dispite how much you would like to be.
