I have to make this a filler-chapter (as much as I hate to do so), but there are a few announcements that I can use it to get out of the way, at least:
IN THE POLL TO DETERMINE IF AKUHA WOULD HAVE ANY ROMANTIC RIVALS OR NOT IT WAS:
44 VOTES FOR GIVING NARUTO HIS OWN YOKI ACADEMY HAREM
22 VOTES TO KEEP IT STRICTLY NARUTO/AKUHA.
THE HAREM VOTE WINS! IF THAT'S A PROBLEM, KEEP IN MIND THAT I LET, YOU MY READERS, DECIDE ON THAT. ALSO, WHILE I'M FLATTERED THAT SO MANY OF YOU ADD THIS TO YOUR FOLLOWERS/FAVORITES LISTS...I NEED REVIEWS!
ALSO, THIS IS IMPORTANT: I'll be moving to a new place in the next month or two, if everything goes well with the move then it'll be in March at the latest, so it could be a while before my next update.
Naruto turned around and nearly choked at who had said they were "looking for him.": A beautiful girl with long luxuriant hair that was a rich shade of crimson and was set in a style that complemented and drew attention to her face rather nicely with her hair bound by bandages at where her ears where while the rest of her hair was unbridled and hung in braids on either side of her face and a long ponytail down to her mid-back. As for the rest of her heart-shaped face, she had a button nose, her lips were full and blood red, and topaz colored eyes. She wore a large, black sleeveless shirt with a white trim and black interior, black kung-fu shoes, followed by a matching black skirt with skin-tight black pants on as well as the skirt for decency's sake. She seemed lithe, agile, and slim. Her bare arms showed small signs of muscle, a mere ripple to prove that she did work out. Her legs showed definite signs of training underneath the black pants she wore, they were amazingly toned, long, tender, and, for lack of a better term, juicy. Added on to all that, slung across her back was a Bo-staff.
With her was another girl in a short black skirt tight skirt that hugged her rather shapely rear nicely as well and sleeveless jacket that hugged her E-Cup breasts nicely cut from the same cloth stood arrogantly in the hall behind him. She had dark purple hair that fell to her shoulders, having an almost silky texture to it. She had a very heart shaped face, with full lips that were a rosy shade of pink. Her eyes were a dark purple as well.
"Can I help you?" Naruto asked.
The redhead nodded, "As a matter of fact, we need to talk to you. I'm Deshiko Deshi, and this is Keito, I advise you not to get on the bad side of Public Safety Committee, Asura-kitsune, so watch your back, deshi." the redhead advised, glaring at him.
"Nice verbal tic, dattebayo." Naruto snickered, then froze and seemed to realize what he'd just said at the end, "Damnit...! Thought I outgrew that!" he grumbled through clinched teeth, looking annoyed at himself.
Deshiko blinked a few times, "Look who's calling the kettle black, deshi!" the redhead snicked at the warring demon/fox spirit hybrid. She wouldn't show it, but the fact that he was a nine-tailed Yoki Kitsune that had the blood of an Asura in him scared her a bit.
Even the name of the race, "Asura", was still often used as an adjective meaning "powerful" or "mighty", and for justifiable reason, as the asuras were originally just, good, virtuous, their nature had gradually changed. The asuras (which were sometimes referred to as "anti-gods") were depicted to have become proud, vain, to have stopped performing sacrifices, to violate sacred laws, not visit holy places, not cleanse themselves from sin, to be envious of devas, torturous of living beings, creating confusion in everything and to challenge the devas and it was significant that it was not for their sins that the Asura anti-gods had to be destroyed, but because of their power, their virtue, their knowledge, which threatened that of the gods.
And added onto that, she knew how strong her leader Kuyou was, and he was only a FOUR-tailed kitsune. She knew from her leaders boasts that generally, a greater number of tails indicates an older and more powerful fox; in fact, some folktales said that a fox will only grow additional tails after it has lived at least a hundred years. One, five, seven, and nine tails were the most common numbers in folk stories, and while the others were strong, the four tail state was an important tipping point. Each increase in the number of tails doubled a kitsune's power (which was already S-class), from the four-tailed point forward a kitsune's power will increase by a factor of ten. In other words the four tail state was ten times more powerful that the three tail. And each new state will mean a similar leap in power. Until the final step, when a kitsune achieved nine tails they would become one thousand times more powerful than the eight tail state.
So he made them both nervous. Justifiably so.
While Kuyou had been initially furious to learn Naruto was a "mongrel", that changed when the Student Police had learned from the surviving lizardman that had tried to eat that witchling, Sendo Yukari, what form the blond had taken...the emotional intensity of a kitsune and the sheer power of an Asura, and given that a kitsune's power was tied into the level of their emotional intensity added on top of how powerful Asura already were...when that'd been reported that to Kuyou, he'd had a seizure and was now comatose.
Personally, Deshiko had found that amusing.
And the fact was that this guy seemed like he was actually nicer than her boss helped.
"So what can I do for you, ladies?" Naruto asked.
The two female monsters looked at him. Well, this wasn't turning out the way they thought, he wasn't arrogant in his own power. That was good. No need to fight him.
"Ah. Well, you see...there are concerns about your...shall we say...vigilantism. Things like with what happened to those lizard men and then there was that incident with Komiya Saizo, although it is acknowledged that you didn't do the actual killing... " Keito said.
Naruto looked at the two in flat annoyance, cutting off the purple-haired young woman. "That so? Well, if I may speak plainly: If you "Public Safety Committee" characters actually DID you jobs properly and protected the faculty and staff here, I wouldn't NEED to act like a vigilante in the first place!"
The two ladies paled, worried that he would go into his true form of the six-armed, three-faced, nine-tailed fox and start wailing on them.
Naruto took a deep breath. He couldn't lose his temper. Not after working so hard to get control of his dark side and the fox back at the Shinjitsu no Tak back on the Turtle Island. He couldn't afford to take that kind of step backwards. Especially when he had no idea as to the consequences if he unleashed that kind of power here at a school full of monsters.
"Sorry...but I was taught that the purpose of the strong is to protect those who can't protect themselves, its a waste of time, energy and potential to subjugate those weaker than you are, but if you're going to come down on me for doing what should be your job at keeping people here safe, how is that fair?" the blond asked pointedly.
The two nodded. Much as they didn't like it, that did make sense.
"We admit that, but the thing is, our boss isn't what you'd call...good cop material."
Naruto made a face. He HATED corrupt officials! They were the worst kind of villain. People that had positions of authority and abused it for their own selfish gains and felt that they could change the law to however they wanted when it was convenient for them because of their authority and that it made them be above reproach.
Deshiko and Keito, seeing his face, gulped. "N-n-now wait. We don't like going along with him! It's just we can't get away with disobeying him! The guy's a four-tailed kitsuine and..." they trailed off as they saw Naruto narrow his eyes at them.
"Which one is he? Myobu or Nogitsune? The myobu are known as celestial fox associated with the god Inari and are benevolent. Nogitsune are wild fox who are often malicious. Furthermore, the kami Inari that kitsune answer to set a few rules that are forbidden to be broken, if the rules are followed, then that's how to tell them apart."
HELLO! The two girls felt their jaws drop, before they grinned.
"Say...exactly what are those rules?" Deshiko asked, she was so eager, she didn't even notice she had dropped her verbal tic for a moment.
Naruto nodded. Seeing no harm in telling them, especaially if it helped keep their thug of a boss in line.
"1) Attempting to trick a human is a killing offense. If a fox appears before a human in disguise, it can safely be assumed to be up to no good, and can be killed without fear of reprisal. This is most common in Japan, where trickster foxes can even be eaten. Not all foxes need to fear death, and not all humans who meet foxes in human form try to kill them, but humans who kill foxes for trickery are never brought to task.
2) Foxes are outside human society, and their affairs make no permanent change to humanity. This is true even of foxes who married humans and were respected members of society. If a fox flees their human in-laws, taking their human child with them, no one goes after them; if a fox dies and it becomes known that they were a fox, the surface of society seems to shiver, then glaze neatly over the hole where they had been.
3) Foxes who take on human form are not expected to remain in human society for long. Fox scholars and fox priests are always discovered; fox companions leave their human friends out of disgust, or die suddenly, or move away; Japanese stories of fox wives end with the wife's early exile from the home; Chinese stories of fox wives end with the wife's early death or exile, or are cut too short for the reader to have any assurance that the marriage is going to last. Foxes' existences in human society are built on illusions that are expected to eventually fail, or crafted in abandoned corners that are eventually reclaimed by their human owners. Foxes themselves are often light, transitory creatures—the wandering priest, the scholar who drifts into town to take part in the latest contest, the mysterious maiden who comes to the door in the night, the succubus who drains her lovers dry and tosses them aside—so their very natures ensure that they will not stay in one place for long. Humans know and expect this, so when they discover that someone is a fox, they are willing to excuse almost any behavior as long as the fox takes itself and its unsettling habits out of town.
4) Foxes and humans agree that humanity is a preferable state and that humans are superior to foxes. This is part of the Buddhist karmic ladder, in which souls migrate up and down the evolutionary chain according to their spiritual merit and the pinnacle of the chain is Homo sapiens.
5) Foxes have a sort of informal class system. At the bottom are the babbling, lunk-headed would-be tricksters who try to steal rice balls from humans and wind up in fox soup for their troubles. At the top are the graceful, elegant scholars and scholarly maidens whose sophistication makes human scholars' heads spin. In between these peasants and aristocrats are the fox maidens who marry farmers and happily become farm wives, the crafty fox-men who become human men's drinking companions, and all the rest of the mass of foxes. This is truly an unwritten rule because no fox story ever juxtaposes, say, a rice-thief fox with a scholar-fox, and no character, fox or human, ever alludes to a class difference between foxes, but it's clear in the way different foxes are characterized.
6) Foxes cannot physically harm humans. In story after story, humans beat, rape, even kill foxes, and the best the foxes can do is... struggle. If they're lucky, they can escape, but they don't get to come back swinging. In one story, a slighted fox rounds up teams of fox "warriors" to attack the human man who refused to give the fox his daughter in marriage, but the foxes' swords are only reeds, and the skirmishes all end with no human injuries. If a fox wants to hurt a human, she or he must attack indirectly, through tricks, spells, and fire. The one exception is in the case of rape. Foxes can rape humans; the violence of subduing a human doesn't seem to count as physical harm.
7) Angry foxes can set house fires. This is a Japanese belief that shows up in at least two translated stories.
8) At least part of a fox's gift is always trash. This is shone most promptly in the fact that Japanese foxes are particularly fond of transforming leaves."
Deshiko looked at Naruto and nodded. So if Kuyou really was as good a guy like he claimed, he couldn't hurt a human. So that meant if he harmed one, he was either evil for being a Nogitsune, or that the person was a monster like the rest of the school's faculty and staff.
Seeing as he always claimed to be a Myobu kitsune, Kuyou had painted himself into a corner with that.
Deshiko fought down a smirk at that. Kami...this hybrid was just making her day! She didn't like working for Kuyou, but the choice wasn't hers to make. Wait...why did she just think that? She resisted the urge to shake her head.
"He says he's a Myobu kitsune, but he's a self-righteous sadist, so he's a Nogitsune. But that's beside the point. We needed to inform you that you'll need to watch your step, is all. We get that you just want to keep others safe, and as such, that you're only doing what you are since those who are supposed to watch out for others haven't been, but there are those who won't see it that way, deshi." the redhead said placatingly to the powerful male individual.
Naruto grunted, "Ain't that the story of my life..." he muttered, thinking of how he was hated back home for hosting the Kyuubi to keep the fox from destroying Konoha and how everyone who knew that made him an outcast because they saw only the dangerous power.
The two females blinked in confusion.
"Long story. You're not the only ones to be concerned about my power." he said, not wanting to explain any more.
The two girls nodded. Common problem with monsters: most see only power and judge only by power, and when those who were weaker were in the majority, they attempted to sabotage the strong and keep them from the strength they rightfully had.
Suddenly someone cleared their throat from behind Naruto and he whipped around to see the Black Devil herself with narrowed eyes trained directly at him. "Naruto...who are these two?!" Akuha said pleasantly with a too-sweet smile on her face, in contrast to how she was cracking her knuckles.
"Uh..." Naruto gulped, backing up.
"Easy, We was just discussing how he needed to cut back on the whole vigilante thing. His moves are too big, and we can't have this place blown up." Keito said, recognizing this new individual as a vampire. And obviously these two knew one another. The idea for a fight between them wasn't one that anyone wanted to entertain.
Akuha's anger vanished instantly and she laughed, "Don't need to tell me that!" His moves were too big and he couldn't blow the academy up? Oh, that was as true as it was rich!
"Are you his girlfriend? Seemed pretty possessive of you to act like you were gonna rip his head off just for being near other women." Keito asked with a raised eyebrow at the vampiress.
Akuha froze. Was she Naruto's WHAT?! She wasn't expecting someone to ever ask her that kind of a question. And to be honest, she didn't have an answer. But something in the back of her mind stored
"Oi, oi, oi! What's something like that got to do with asking me not to go overkill with my power?!" Naruto snapped.
Saved by Baka-sama! Akuha felt relief wash over her as the two who answered to that four-tailed subdivision leader of Fairy Tale that was spying for the organization during his time at Yokai Academy both shared a look and then turned to Akuha and bowed, muttering an apology to her before they turned and left.
Akuha turned to her old friend. "Thanks." she told him, offering a small smile.
Naruto shrugged "What I'm here for, I look out for the people who matter to me, and it was a valid question, anyways." he grinned.
Then the bell rang and he paled "Crap!" he bolted, muttering swear words to himself under his breath.
Akuha watched him go, shaking her head with amusement. She'd have to clear things up with Mikogami about why he was late. She respected the Kishin, especially since Mikogami was the one who took Moka in after Akasha Bloodriver sealed her to prevent Alucard from awakening. But since Naruto was here on a job, as well as to keep the Akatsuki from getting their hands on him, the old friend of her step-mother couldn't be too lenient with the little fool that was Uzumaki Naruto.
She could see why Naruto would hate deep-cover assignments that involved playing at being a schoolboy. Not only was he horrible with desk work, but like most shinobi in his dimension, Naruto's education consisted of only a ninja academy then gone straight into the field. Still...ignorance of the human lifestyles was somewhat common at this academy, so it wasn't too big an issue for him. Most thought he had simply preferred the social structure, customs, history and lore of his "true nature" to that of human's, so the ones here left his near-ceaselessness about the modern human world alone. Still...it was funny to see him freak out like that about being late for class.
"Glad I told Mikogami about Kuyou already, so he'll keep an eye on the "Public Safety Committee" members, might give Naruto an excuse this time. Now to save my old friend from detention..." she said. 'And find out the answer to that girlfriend question...' Part of her in the back of her mind said.
Akuha froze as that crossed her thoughts. Wait just one second! Where the HELL did that come from!?
She shook her head. She was starting to lose it. She couldn't afford to, her role as a double-agent for the Dark Lords was risk enough without going crazy. Business before pleasure. Stop Fairy Tale and Akatsuki, then figure out her feelings!
She spun on her heel and made her way to get to the headmaster's office, when she suddenly froze, something had just made her aura pulse within her body, giving her a chill and her body instinctively tensed up, as if in the presence of danger.
Looking around, Akuha realized that it wasn't just her, but EVERYONE in the academy with a yoki aura from being a monster!
But what could get that kind of a reaction from so many monsters all at once?
After thinking it over, Akuha's eyes widened.
Oh crap!
They were here!
Standing in front of the building was a young, attractive woman around the same age as the students at Yokai Academy, with long black hair down to her hips and violet eyes. Her attire consisted of a school uniform, which consisted of a dark red jacket with the letter "P" embroidered in gold, a white undershirt, a red bow, and a green skirt with a thin white strip around the lower end of it.
She looked up at the building skeptically, her eyes sparking with amusement, but her expression said she wanted to pulverize this place. This had better be worth her time.
Shouldering her backpack, she wondered what her boss sent her here for.
"Laws are just words, order is a fantasy society made up because it was scared. In the flow of eternity, the only truth is that everything dies." she said, smiling.
Then she pulled out a cellphone from her bag as it started ringing. Allowing the call to go through and putting it to her ear, she spoke to the one on the other end.
"Yeah, Amano Yuma speaking." she said, then paused as she heard "Yeah, I'm at the academy," she paused, letting the one on the other end speak, "so I'm out to find who got the Old Man so worked up? Needle in a hay stack in this place, but seeing as the aura's residual echos were what we felt, I gotta say, I was wondering why I was sent. Good to know this won't be boring then. Just a question...any restrictions for this job?"
Her eyes lit up and she smirked at what her answer was. "No holds barred. Even allowed to kill my target if I can get them to join us? Ho, that's just what I wanna hear! Buh~bye!" she cackled, hanging up.
Yuma looked at the academy with renewed interest. This was gonna be fun!