"Talking in English"

("Talking in Japanese")

"Kurama talking while outside of Naruto's mindscape"

"Kurama talking within Naruto's mindscape"

'Thinking or Naruto talking to Kurama with thoughts'

'Kurama Thinking'

Flashbacks

Jutsus

(On-the-spot translations)


A/N:

Firstly, I would like to apologize for the late upload. Although it's technically still the 11th according to the website, I know that to many readers, this chapter has been posted on the 12th.

Secondly, I want to express my great happiness at the fact that this story has continued to get more and more reviews per chapter with every chapter I post. Thank you so much to everyone who has reviewed this story and given their valuable input. Without you, this story probably would have been drastically different.

For now, enjoy!


Chapter 9: Reality Check


On Thursday, when the girls of Team RUBY woke up at 7 to get ready for class, they quickly noticed that Naruto was missing. His bed was completely undisturbed, and it looked like it hadn't been slept in the previous night. When Ruby told Blake and Yang about how she had tried to stay awake to talk to Naruto when he came back, they all came to the same conclusion.

Naruto hadn't returned to the dorm room at all between the time the team training had ended and the time that the three girls had woken up.

After some discussion, the three of them agreed that their attempts to simply "be there" for Naruto were definitely not working, and had probably led to him spending the night outside of the dorm room.

"Well," Ruby said, "I guess he's too worked up right now to even want to talk to us… or spend time in the same room as us. Hopefully he'll chill out and come and talk to us on his own soon."

Blake nodded, but Yang huffed and said "I still think we should just knock some sense into him." She made a few punching motions.

"If you can catch him to do that, go right ahead," Blake said dryly.

Yang opened her mouth to respond, but then thought better of it and just grunted in acknowledgement of Blake's statement.

A few minutes later, Blake, Ruby, and Yang were on their way to the cafeteria to have breakfast. On the way there, they ran into Team JNPR, who were also on their way to have breakfast, and the seven students ended up going as a group.

"So, how's the team doing, Jaune?" Ruby asked.

Jaune shrugged. "Pretty well. With classes starting, we've mostly been getting used to things here. How about your team?"

Ruby hesitated for a moment. "We're doing alright… We've had a few training sessions together to improve our teamwork, and those went well… mostly."

Jaune raised an eyebrow. "Is there something wrong? I noticed that Naruto's not with you guys. Is he hurt or something?"

Ruby shook her head. "No- it's nothing like that. It's just… Naruto's been a bit distant recently. He didn't even come back to the dorm room to sleep last night."

"Wow. Where is he then?"

"We don't know," Ruby admitted after a moment. "We haven't really been able to talk to him since Tuesday. The last time we saw him was when training ended."

"What time was that?" Jaune asked.

Ruby shrugged. "About 6:30. We didn't train for nearly as long as last time."

"Ooh! I've seen him since then!"

Both Jaune and Ruby jumped a bit as Nora sprung up between them. Ruby's shock quickly wore off as she focused her attention on the hyperactive girl. "Really? Where did you see him?"

Nora smiled and said "It was about 8 last night I think. I was coming back from the edge of the Emerald Forest, and he was headed in the opposite direction."

Ruby's eyes widened. "He was headed toward the Emerald Forest?"

"Probably," Nora said with a nod. "I don't think there's much else in that area."

"Nora," Ren suddenly said. "Why exactly were you at the edge of the Emerald Forest in the first place?"

Nora looked at Ren like the answer should be obvious. "We still don't know what a sloth sounds like, Ren. I was trying to find one and listen to it."

Ren and Jaune facepalmed, while Team RUBY looked at Nora incredulously. Pyrrha, however, looked thoughtful. "You don't think he actually went into the forest, do you?"

This made the three present members of Team RUBY look fix their gazes on Pyrrha. "I hope not," Blake said. "Why would he?"

"Well, apparently, it's a… tradition that students spend an entire night in the Emerald Forest before they graduate," Pyrrha said. "Usually, students will do this as a team, and almost always wait until their third year at least, since they can handle themselves by then." She paused for a moment. "But… I might not be surprised if Naruto felt confident enough to try it right away."

A nervousness began to creep up on Ruby as she imagined Naruto going into the forest alone. "Where did you hear about that?" Ruby asked.

Pyrrha shrugged. "It's actually a pretty common practice at higher academies like Beacon- at least, ones that have a Grimm-infested forest at hand. Some places discourage it, some don't. From what I've heard from some of the older students, Beacon's official stance on it is that it's against the rules, but the unofficial rule is that if you don't get caught and nobody gets badly hurt, they'll turn a blind eye."

There was silence for a moment, before Yang spoke up. "I wouldn't put it past Whiskers to do something stupid like that. He's a real knucklehead sometimes. Especially over the last few days." It was easy to see that Yang and her two teammates were concerned for Naruto now that there was a possibility that he had ventured into the forest.

Team JNPR wasn't sure how to respond to Yang's words, and Jaune decided to try and reassure Team RUBY. "Even if he did go into the forest, it's not like anything in there could hurt him, right?"

Ruby shook her head. "It's unlikely, but... there are some Grimm that no one can handle alone. Especially if a horde forms…"

There was silence after that, until Nora went up to an older student and asked if he knew what a sloth sounded like. Normally, Team RUBY would have found this very amusing, but at the moment, it didn't seem to cheer them up at all.


After a quiet breakfast, Team JNPR went directly to class, and the girls of Team RUBY returned to their dorm room to get everything they needed for class.

When Ruby got into the room, she sat on the chair in front of her desk and leaned back on it with a sigh. Yang noticed that she looked worried, and it wasn't hard to guess what it was she was worried about. "Nervous about Whiskers?" Yang asked her.

"A little," Ruby admitted. "I just want to know that he's safe… During Initiation, he still needed our help to take down the Nevermore. If he comes across another one, I'm not sure if he can handle something like that on his own."

Yang chewed on her lip for a moment, thinking. "Look, we're not even sure he went into the forest at all," Yang said. "If you're so worried about him, just call him. Even if he just answers and hangs up on you or something, you'll know that he's alright."

Ruby smiled at Yang and grabbed her Scroll. "Good idea!"

Blake and Yang waited as Ruby put the scroll up to her ear. Ruby listened at her Scroll rang once… twice… three times…

Ruby heard a total of seven rings before the call stopped and a computerized voice said that her call was being directed to a voicemail box. She lowered the Scroll, hit the "end call" button, and turned to her teammates. "He didn't answer. It went to voicemail."

"Well, leave him a message then," Yang said.

Ruby smiled sheepishly. "Oh, right. Sorry." Yang rolled her eyes at her sister's lack of social sense.

Ruby quickly called Naruto's Scroll again, this time waiting until she heard the customary beep before saying "Hey, Naruto, it's Ruby. You didn't come back to the dorm room last night- well, you knew that already, since it was you who didn't come back in the first place, so I guess there's no point in telling you that- but anyway, we couldn't find you anywhere and nobody has seen you or knows where you are, which is really weird, and we- oh, by the way, by 'we' I mean me, Yang, and Blake, 'cause they're here too, and they helped look for you and stuff- so, we heard that some students like to wander out into the Emerald Forest sometimes to blow off steam and it seemed like something you might do when you were angry, and you seemed like you were a little angry yesterday, since you were zapping all of us way more than before, and someone mentioned that you were heading toward the Emerald Forest last night, and since we haven't seen you since practice, we were kind of getting worried about you, so I called to make sure you were okay and not hurt or anything, so please call me back or at least message me or something. Thanks, bye."

Yang and Blake had to take a moment to marvel at the speed at which Ruby had said all of that. "There," Yang said once she had processed what her sister had said. "Now he'll just call you back once he gets the chance."

Ruby nodded, and the anxiety she had been feeling soon faded away. The likelihood of Naruto actually going into the Emerald Forest and staying there for the entire night was relatively small. Leaving the message gave her the feeling that she was actively doing something about the situation, so she was able to focus on getting ready for class.


Blake, Yang, and Ruby had been sitting in the classroom for a while, and class was only a few minutes away from starting. However, despite his habit of usually arriving early to class, Naruto had not yet entered the room.

As his three teammates sat there, watching the time tick closer and closer to the time that class would start, all three of them felt their anxiety for their teammate rise slowly. Naruto would never skip class. He was too dedicated to break the rules like that.

The door to the room opened, and the three attending members of Team RUBY turned to see if their final teammate had decided to show up. Unfortunately for them, it was some student that they had never seen before. They turned back to the front of the room as the student sat near the back of the room off to their left.

When class started, and Naruto had still not arrived, Ruby felt slightly nauseous. No matter what the reason, if Naruto was missing class, something was wrong.

Yang and Blake were also worried, but they were able to put their nervousness on behalf of their teammate on hold while they were in class. Ruby, on the other hand, was not good at focusing for long periods of time to begin with. For the first ten minutes, she was able to pay at least a little attention to what the professor was saying, but that soon became impossible.

Ruby began to subtly check her Scroll to see if Naruto had made any sort of response at all, whether it be a message or a call that she had somehow missed. There continued to be no response.

Soon, Ruby had the idea to send him a text message, thinking that maybe he would respond to that. She quickly and discreetly typed the message into her Scroll.

"Naruto, please check the voicemail I left you. It's important."

That was all that she felt safe typing while in class. She didn't want to get caught by the professor after all.

She didn't notice the student that she hadn't recognized pulling out his Scroll and glancing at its screen, nor did she notice him glance in her direction before sighing in exasperation and putting his Scroll back away.


When Naruto had woken up that morning, he was still in the tree he had fallen asleep in, which was a good thing, since the alternative was him falling out of the tree. That would have resulted in him being very irritated.

After stretching and hopping down from his tree, Naruto decided to run to the edge of the Emerald Forest and back to loosen up his muscles. It was a fairly short run, as the tree Naruto had chosen to sleep in was close to the deadly woods, though still on Beacon grounds.

About halfway to the edge of the forest, he heard his Scroll ringing. Not wanting to interrupt his run, he decided to ignore it until later.

When he returned to his starting point, he pulled out his Scroll to see who had called him. He took a deep breath and let out a long sigh when he saw that it was Ruby who had called him. Apparently his Demon Lord persona was effective only for in-person interactions.

Naruto paused for a moment to think about whether or not he should check his voicemail box.

During his contemplations both while sitting in the tree and while running, Naruto had come to realize that it was very unlikely that any of his teammates would betray him in the manner that he had experienced in the Elemental Nations. However, they were almost certain to react negatively to the fact that he was from another world, and the fact that he was a Hanyou.

Their job was to fight and kill demons. Being half demon wasn't going to earn him any goodwill.

After a few seconds, Naruto decided to leave his voicemail box unopened for the moment. He didn't want to have to deal with his teammates until he had taken enough time to think through what he was going to do and how he was going to proceed.

Checking the time on his Scroll, Naruto remembered that he had class in less than an hour, and groaned in frustration. It was one of the classes that he had with the rest of his team, and he wasn't sure he was up for another appearance of his Demon Lord mask.

Then, Naruto had an idea that caused the ghost of a smile to grace his face.

He'd already used the Shunshin no Jutsu (Body Flicker Jutsu) to avoid his teammates, why not add the Kagehenge (Shadow Transformation) to that list?


When Naruto walked into the classroom that already held his three teammates, he did not look like himself. He had Henged to give himself short, black hair and brown eyes. He was also a few inches shorter than his actual body was.

He sat down near the back, and on the left side of the classroom, out of the direct line of sight of his teammates, and began to take notes as soon as the professor began the lecture. As focused as he was on his notes, Naruto was surprised when his Scroll went off quietly, signaling that someone had sent him a message.

Half to silence the Scroll, and half to see who would be sending him a message in the first place, Naruto discreetly opened the Scroll and then the message. After reading it, and seeing that it was from Ruby, he sighed. Apparently Ruby wanted to make contact with him enough to become distracted from class.

Naruto turned off his Scroll, deciding to ignore the situation at least until class was finished.


Throughout the course of class, Ruby had ended up sending Naruto a total of five messages, each one sounding more worried than the last. When the class was finally dismissed, Ruby, Yang, and Blake reconvened just outside of the classroom, where Ruby was trying her hardest to not completely freak out from how worried she was. With each message she had sent only to have no reply, she became more and more certain that Naruto had indeed gone out into the forest, and was now not in any condition to reply to her messages.

Naruto himself had headed straight for the library as soon as class had ended, and therefore had missed the state that Ruby was in. With his Scroll still off, he hadn't realized that she had messaged him several more times.

"Calm down, Ruby," Yang said. "What makes you so sure that Naruto's in trouble?"

Ruby took a deep breath, doing her best to be levelheaded in this situation, and replied "I left him a voicemail. I sent him five messages. He's not replying. Something's wrong, Yang!"

Yang didn't have anything to argue against that, and she and Blake became worried as well.

"Okay," Blake said. "Naruto might be in trouble. What's our plan?"

"We go looking for him," Ruby said. "Let's go get our stuff and get out there to find him."

She took off for the dorm room, where all of their stuff currently was, before Yang and Blake could reply. In her anxiety, Ruby even used her Semblance, leaving her two teammates in the dust.

Yang and Blake hurried after her as quickly as they could, both to start looking for Naruto faster, and to make sure that Ruby didn't go off looking on her own in her panic.


Naruto reached the library, which was near the dorms, within a few minutes. He quickly located the books he needed, and checked them out. As he left with the two books under his arm, he remembered how he had turned his Scroll off, and pulled it out with his free hand to turn it back on. Once it was fully functional again, he noticed the several messages that Ruby had sent him, along with another message from Blake, and two from Yang.

He was surprised at their insistence, especially so soon after the intimidating training session, and began to open up the messages to read what they said as he began walking back to the dorm.

"Naruto, could you please message me back and at least let me know that you're not out in the Emerald Forest trying to kill Grimm?"

"Hey, even if you're in the Emerald Forest, a message to let me know you're okay would be nice."

"Seriously, Nora said she saw you headed toward the Emerald Forest last night, and if you're trying to go through that dumb tradition, I don't care. I'm completely fine with it. Just let me know so I can stop worrying."

"Please, Naruto, I just want to know that you're alright. Call me, message me, whatever. As long as you tell me you're alright."

Those four were from Ruby, and Naruto raised an eyebrow when she mentioned the "tradition." He would have to look into this tradition later.

"Naruto, as your teammates, we would like a report on your current condition. If we can't make contact with you, Ruby's going to tear through the Emerald Forest looking for you."

Naruto raised an eyebrow at Blake's message. What was all this about him being lost in the Emerald Forest?

"Whiskers, you better message us back, or I'm kicking your ass when I find you."

"If this is some kind of sick joke, I will kick you in the balls!"

They were overreacting in Naruto's opinion, and he decided that he would take his books back to the dorm room before messaging them back, since he didn't feel like trying to type coherently with one hand.


By the time Yang and Blake had reached the dorm room, Ruby was nearly twitching in agitation and impatience, and there were more than a few rose petals scattered across the room. She was already prepared to go after Naruto, and the second she saw her teammates, she ran up to them. "I'm going to go on ahead. You to follow once you're ready."

"Hold on, Ruby," Yang said. "We can't just go charging into this without any planning."

Ruby opened her mouth to protest, but Blake cut her off. "She's right. First, let Yang and I send him messages as well. As much as I hate to say it, he may just be ignoring you." This suggestion definitely didn't make Ruby feel any better. "Second, if we're going to have a search party out after him, we should have an official one. Contact the Headmaster, have multiple teams, do a proper search pattern. If you end up getting lost in the forest, that won't do anyone any good."

As much as she didn't want to, Ruby couldn't deny that Blake was right. "Alright. Message him. If he doesn't reply, I'll go to Ozpin."

Blake and Yang quickly typed out and sent their messages. A few minutes later, Yang sent a second message, and Blake and Ruby looked at her curiously. "I threatened to kick him in the nuts if this was all some stupid joke," she explained.

Ruby didn't react to this at all, while Blake nodded in approval. Whether it was approval of the threatening message or approval in the idea itself, Yang was unsure.

Ten minutes passed with no replies whatsoever, and Ruby decided that enough was enough. "That's it. I'm going to get Ozpin, then I'm going in there myself to look for him. Where is Ozpin's office any-"

Her words were cut off as the door to the dorm room door opened. The three girls fell silent and froze as the person who opened the door stepped through.

It was Naruto. He still had his battle clothes and equipment on, and there were a few leaves in his hair. One of them fell and glided down to the floor of the dorm room as the blonde ninja stepped into the dorm room and shut the door behind him.

He looked at his teammates, and for a moment, all of them stood still. Then Yang's hands curled up into fists, and her eyes turned red.

Naruto shifted slightly and set his books down on the bookshelves next to the door. 'Well, this is going to be interesting…'

Yang moved forward and cocked her fist backward. Naruto easily caught the punch she threw, and held onto her fist so that she couldn't try it again. He felt the air around her heat up as she said "What the hell is wrong with you!?"

Naruto raised an eyebrow. "Nothing that I was aware of. Were you thinking of something specific, or just asking in general?"

Yang growled in anger, and Naruto felt the heat increase. "Are you just ignoring us completely now? We sent you like 20 messages!"

Naruto pushed back against Yang's fist, and tightened his grip. "I don't have to answer messages if I don't want to. And try 8, not 20."

"You're unbelievable! You had enough time to count them, but you couldn't bother to reply to let us know you were okay!?" Yang yanked her fist out of Naruto's grip, and looked like she was going to try and punch him again, before pushing past him and walking to the door. "Whatever! You're not worth the effort it would take to punch your teeth in for being such an ass!" The angry blonde left the room, slamming the door behind her.

Naruto, who had turned to watch Yang leave, turned back only to be taken completely by surprise.

Ruby walked up to him and slapped him in the face.

Naruto was shocked enough by this that he didn't even move to catch Ruby's hand. His head was jerked to the side by the force of the slap, and he turned back to Ruby to stare at her, dumbfounded.

Ruby was shaking, her hand still half extended from the slap. Her hood was still up on her head, so her eyes were obscured, and Naruto couldn't gauge her expression.

"Ruby, wha-"

He barely began to speak before Ruby pushed him out of the way and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Naruto turned back to look at Blake, a little more alert this time. Thankfully, his fellow black-clad student simply stood there, glaring at him. "Well, that was unusual."

In that moment, Blake became so angry at Naruto that she began to produce honest-to-god Killing Intent. It was very weak Killing Intent, but it was KI all the same. Naruto stiffened, not from the effects of Blake's KI, but from sheer shock that she was able to produce any at all.

"I don't care," Blake said slowly, her voice venomous, "why you've been avoiding us, or why you don't want us asking questions about your past." This had all started after they had asked about his training and he mentioned Konoha, and it hadn't taken Blake long to figure out what had started it. "How much effort would it have taken you to send us one message? One. Damn. Message! That's all it would have taken to let us know that you weren't in mortal danger!"

Naruto was now beginning to feel a little guilty. Perhaps he had dismissed their messages too casually.

"I thought we made it clear," Blake continued, "that we cared about you. That you were our teammate, and that we were willing to put ourselves in danger for you. I thought… I hoped that you would feel the same for us. I guess I was wrong, since apparently it's too much to ask for you to even write us a message to put our minds at ease!"

Blake walked past Naruto, who didn't move as she opened the door. She paused before leaving to say "And if it meant that much to you, you could have asked us to not ask questions about your past instead of treating us like lepers!"

She shut the door behind her, and Naruto winced at the sound. He stood still for a few seconds before slowly walking over to his bed and sitting down. 'They were that worried about me?' He thought back to the training session yesterday, when he had begun to go a little overboard with his Jutsus. 'Even after all of that, they were worried, and I've been treating them like... like how Sasuke treated me.'

Naruto put his head in his hands as he realized what he had done.

'Forget bringing up Konoha. Now I really might have ruined everything…'


Ruby sat next to Yang underneath a large tree. There were tears in her eyes that she refused to let fall, and Yang had an arm around her younger sister.

"After everything we've done together- Initiation, the training, him saving me… do we really mean that little to him?"

Yang sighed. "I don't know, Ruby. I just don't know…" She looked up as she heard footsteps, and saw Blake moving in their direction.

Blake walked up to the two sisters, paused for a moment, and then sat down on Yang's other side. The blond put an arm around her partner as well. Blake looked like she was going to protest for a moment before just sighing and accepting it, knowing that this was for Yang's comfort as much as it was for hers.

"I wish things could go back to how they were before…" Ruby whispered.

"Me too, Ruby…"


A/N:

Writer's block hit me like a bus this last week. I'm not so sure how well this chapter went, and how well the last one went. Things didn't flow as smoothly as I would have liked, but hopefully that's all behind us now. The next few chapters were already written some time in advance, and are a bit more polished, as I have had the time to write them, forget about them for a few days, and then go back and read them from a less biased perspective. There was much less of that for this chapter and the last one, as they were kind of a spur-of-the-moment addition.

By the way, this is a fairly common addition to fanfiction, but just to clear things up, the Kagehenge, or Shadow Transformation Jutsu, is a technique that Naruto created that is a more powerful version of the Henge no Jutsu. Similar to the Kage Bunshin, the Kagehenge has corporeal effects. Essentially, Naruto becomes whatever or whoever he Kagehenges into. This is how he could become a Fuma Shuriken in the fight with Zabuza and be actually used at a weapon rather than a distraction.

So, here's to moving onward and upward. Next chapter comes out on the 18th. Until then, thanks for all of your support.


Japanese Terms

Shunshin no Jutsu - Body Flicker Technique

Kagehenge - Shadow Transformation

Henged - Pseudo-Japanese. The past tense of Henge. It could be replaced with "transformed" and have pretty much the same meaning