Chapter 11 The Patient Snake Strikes

Disclaimer: First Chapter

Story Start!

"So this is Hitome Town huh... I expected it to be bigger." Naruto said as he walked with Team 8 towards a fast approaching town. They had woke up a few hours ago from camping the night before, and now they were close to the town itself, close enough so that they could see a small farming town with only maybe a couple dozen different wooden buildings. Even from their spots at the edges of the forest they could roaming cattle and sheep in the fields. Team 8 and Naruto started to run towards the town as a reasonable speed, running towards the town with Kurenai in the lead, followed by Naruto and then Hinata and Kiba, with Shino being the slowest and trailing behind them.

"Not all towns can be big." Kurenai told Naruto as she looked back at him. The ground managed to get closer to the town in no time, and when they got on the road going through the middle of the small town they started to walk at a normal pace instead of running like their lives depended on it. When they were walking, they noticed that a lot of the people were carrying crude weapons and other such items on their bodies. Kurenai turned to Naruto, before she pointed over towards the crops. "Okay, Naruto, while I go and check out the client I want you to investigate and see if you can identify the animal that has been on a rampage. Team 8, you go ask around town to see if anyone else has seen anything recently." Kurenai ordered, and following her orders they all jumped into action.

Naruto separated from the group and started to run towards the field. Naruto passed by civilians on the way towards the field, but with his speed being above that of a normal human he was able to cross the distance pretty easily. Naruto didn't have any trouble getting to the field, and people didn't pay much attention to the cross dressing boy running passed them at a speed that sent dirt into the air behind him as he rushed to the other end of the field. Naruto wasn't even slightly winded from all the running he had done that day, even as he got to the other side of the field in a few minutes.

It was a large field.

"I rushed all this way out here, and I don't even know what to look for." Naruto realized with a sweat drop when he looked around the wheat field. He had no idea what signs he should be looking for, and frankly, he was concerned that even if he saw something that he wouldn't think of it as a clue. Naruto scratched the back of his head, wondering if Erza would be able to offer some insight on this... to bad he didn't know how to call her out of his body by his own will. So far she only came out when she wanted to come out.

She came out when she wanted to, and not when he did. He just wished that she didn't come out when he was in the bath. It was awkward enough she watches him sleep, awkward but handy for sneak attack, but awkward all the same.

Though, she might just be letting him try and solve this one on his own. Naruto looked towards one of the field workers, before he started to run over to the middle aged man. The man had brown hair and eyes, the normal color for the Land of Fire, and rather fair skin. The man was burly, being that he was larger than 6 feet tall and a good few feet wide. He had on a wife beater for a top, and pants rolled up into shorts for bottoms. The man saw Naruto coming over to him, before he smiled and waved at Naruto the second he saw the headband that was tightly wrapped on his forehead.

"What can I do for you son?" The man asked, completely ignoring the skirt Naruto wore. He could see the fire of a manly youth in Naruto's eyes, and to a farmer like him he didn't understand or try and understand the ways of a ninja. He learned to accept the weird things he saw a ninja do with a grain of salt.

"Hey, do you know what animal has been attacking the fields?" Naruto asked bluntly, and the man took a second to think about it... he took a second to long when Naruto grabbed the man by the front of the shirt and pulled him into a head-butt. The man went out like a light and fell to the ground with a thump, his eyes rolled up into the back of his head as a bruise formed on his forehead. Naruto blinked at what had just happened, before he shrugged it off and went towards the next man that hadn't seen what had just happened.

This was a boy in his late teens that had similar features to the man that he had just knocked out cold.

"Oh, you the ninja that the mayor sent for?" He asked when he finally noticed Naruto, who marched in front of the man.

"What animal has been attacking the fields?" Naruto asked, and it took another moment for the man to realize that Naruto had asked him a question. Too bad for him that Naruto's patience stopped at one moment. As it was, Naruto slammed his forehead into this teen's forehead as well and knocked him out from the strong blow to the head. Naruto blinked when he realized he had knocked another person out, and he started to walk towards a woman that had seen the entire thing go down. Instead of running away though, she raised her hands in the air.

"I didn't see what it was, just that it was big!" The woman said, before she got back to tending the fields. Naruto nodded to himself and started to look for the tracks of any large animals on the ground. He could see plenty of dog prints, but this was a farming town and he had seen many dogs on the way here, sheep herding breeds of them, so he would say any dog prints he found were supposed to be there. Naruto looked around towards the area closest to the forest, before he started to walk towards that area.

The best place to hide a beast, was in a place with a lot of coverage. That and he would have seen it if it weren't in the forest.

"Thank you!" Naruto called out behind him with a smile on his face. Naruto made it to the end of the field, before he closed his eyes and started to call out a sword to his hand. He was going into the woods where he was sure a feral animal would be, so he would need a weapon to defend himself with. In his hands was a spear, a spear taller than he was, with two blades at the top of it running against each other with a small amount of space between them. Instead of a sword, he had ended up deciding to summon a weapon that would give him more range. He lifted the spear over his shoulder, before he started to walk into the forest to find something.

He didn't know what he was looking for either.

He couldn't see any tracks nearby either, so he would look deeper into the forest. So with that in mind Naruto kept going farther and farther into the woods. He was sure that he was still in sight of Hinata's Byakugan... damnit, he should have totally taken her with him. Oh well, it wasn't like some animals were going to be any trouble for him to deal with. This was a C-Rank mission that even Genin could do with only moderate trouble. Naruto could do it easily as well if he put his mind to it.

"Look out in front of you." Erza stated to Naruto, coming out of his body and surprising him just as he tripped and fell down and smacked into the ground.

"Kya!"

"... That was surprisingly cute of you." Erza said as she looked at Naruto lying face down on the ground. Naruto didn't say anything as he looked up with some dirt covering his face. Naruto was sweat dropping, because of him going 'kya' out of surprise had not been a habit had had before now. Of course, his screams had always been a little higher pitches, but he was twelve so that wasn't really his fault for that. Naruto stood up and shook his head, before he looked at what he had tripped over... what he was still standing inside of.

A large footprint... at least 5 feet long easily, and maybe 2 and a half feet wide. The indent in the ground was deep, almost 6 inches deep. Whatever had made this footprint had hit the ground with a lot of force, or weighed a LOT. He would say both given how big the print was. Naruto gulped lightly, knowing that this was going to be harder than he thought it was. Naruto looked at the footprint closer, and at the front of it he could see five toes... so this was something with almost human feet.

Feet that were five feet long.

"Shut up... just shut up." Naruto told Erza with a twitching eye. She seemed to smile for a moment, while Naruto looked at the footprint... that came out of nowhere. He could see a matching footprint close by, but other than that there were no more footprints around. Naruto looked around for anything that looked like those kinds of footprints... Naruto blinked when he saw another set of matching footprints farther away. He grinned and started to follow towards the feet marking in the ground. Now he had a clue to go on, and he was going to follow it and see what he was going to find at the end of these footprints.

"Those are some large feet." Erza commented next to Naruto, who nodded as he jumped over the next set and started to look around for anything that he could find. Naruto looked at a path to his right, and in the distance he could see more prints. Naruto started to run towards those prints as he went deeper into the forest. While he ran, Erza made sure to look around Naruto so that nothing could take him by surprise. This was the only reason why she would let him foolishly go off on his own, because with her around nothing would be sneaking up on him.

"Yeah, maybe it belongs to an Oni or something. That would be SO cool if I brought back the horn of an Oni as a prize!" Naruto said with his tone filled with enthusiasm. Of course, Naruto was one of the few people that actually wanted to run into a demon during a mission. Demons were SO rare these days that killing one was a big deal. Now most demons were summon creatures or sealed away, so you would rarely come upon one that had free will, or was unsealed.

Hey, Giant toads and other creatures existed, so saying something like an Oni existed wasn't too hard to believe.

"You seem excited." Erza stated to herself mostly.

"Hey you demon bastard! Why don't you show yourself?!" Naruto shouted out a taunt as he walked towards the next set of footprints. Erza face palmed at Naruto openly taunting demons to try and draw them out. The boy might be amazing in a fight, but when it came to thinking about when to pick a fight and when not to, he still had much to learn. One does not just pick a fight with an unknown opponent and expect things to go smoothly. She shook her head, and she was about to warn Naruto that he was about to step into another footprint, before something dropped out of the sky and crashed into the ground behind Naruto.

Naruto heard it... oh yeah he heard the sound of something huge slamming into the ground behind him. Naruto turned around, before he looked up and saw something that was casting a large shadow over him. Naruto started to saw something that would scare the hell out of anything that was caught by surprise. The first thing he noticed was that this thing was standing at over 28 or so feet tall easily. Naruto heard the sound of something behind swung towards him, and he jumped up and landed on a nearby branch. The ground where he had been cratered from the blow. Naruto finally got the chance to see what had almost smashed him.

Rocks... the entire thing was a giant golem shaped pile of rocks. It was brown in color, and was generally human shaped with larger arms and hands for more power. It had a larger lower jaw with square teeth, and a single round hole in its head for an eye. Naruto looked at its feet, and it had no toes... so this thing wasn't the thing that had made the tracks that he had followed here. Naruto started to spin his spear, before he pointed it at the golem creature and charged the magical staff and sent a bolt of lightning at the head of the creature.

Lightning met earth, and earth crumbled into nothing as the lightning passed right through its head quickly. Naruto blinked and looked at the staff in confusion, because he had just equipped it so that he could shoot lightning up into the air and call for help if he needed. The entire creature was soon nothing but crumbled earth on the ground. Naruto jumped out of the tree and back onto the ground with a grin on his face. Erza was surprised by the strange turn of event as well. Naruto was going to have to ask why the lightning did that to the earth later, but until then Naruto looked around for any sign of the enemy.

"Do you here that?" Erza asked, and Naruto blinked when he listened and heard what she was hearing... it was the strange sound of a flute? Naruto heard four thumps hit the ground around him, and strangely enough Naruto's vision started to shift... in his left eye. Naruto's body froze up when he saw, out of his left eye, that the world around him was replaced with the color red for the ground, and lighter red for the air and sky around him. Naruto could only hear the sound of the flute playing in the background, and his body seemed to be suddenly tied up by wire.

This was only out of his left eye though... for some reason his right eye wasn't noticing the change in the area around him. To his right eye the world seemed to be normal, and he could see four ninja standing in front of him. He couldn't move his body or speak out, or even hear what was going on around him, but he could still see out of his right eye.

Naruto could see three boys and a girl, all around 14 or 15 years old in age. The first person, or freak, that he saw was a boy with two heads standing at the front of the group. He had light blue hair, and the second head was sticking out of the back of his head. He wore black, tight, shorts that went to his knees, and over that he had a tan colored tunic with a white Yin/Yang symbol on it in complete white. His shins were wrapped in bandages with blue sandals. His tunic was long sleeves, and he had black armbands. The final piece of clothing was a purple robe around his waist.

The second person was a tall guy with a balding problem, and an orange mohawk on his head with two tuffs of hair on each side above the ears. He was chubbier than the... he was the chubbiest person of the ground. Even his face had chub on it, and he wore the same uniform as the guy ahead of him, but with short sleeves instead. The guy had small eyes and he couldn't tell where the guy was looking at the moment.

The third guy was a tanned boy with a sound shinobi headband on his forehead, and dark hair spiked up in a ponytail in the back. He wore the same uniform as the others, but his sleeves were almost non-existent. He had a total of 6 arms, 3 coming out of each sleeve on his tunic. The guy wore the same purple robe with the bow in the back like the others did, and even the same footwear. The guy was grinning as he looked over at the unmoving Naruto, who could still see the fact that these people were talking to each other like Naruto wasn't even here at the moment.

The final person was a red haired girl, and he would have noticed her first because of that, but she was a bit farther away from the others. She had a flute to her lips, meaning that she was the cause of the reason that he couldn't move his body at the moment. Her hair was the longest in the ground, but it was shaggy as well in the back as it went down to her waist at the tips. She had long bangs, and even longer side burns that went passed her shoulders. She had a single thick strange of hair in the middle of her face. Her eyes were sharp though, and he could see her brown eyes staring at him. She wore baggy clothes, with the only tight thing being the skin tight shorts.

Seriously, what was with that uniform? Even she was wearing that same tunic that went down to the knees but with slits up the sides at each leg that went to the waist. She had that same purple robe with the bow tied behind her. She even wore the same shoes and shin bandages, and even the same black armbands on her forearms. The clothes were so baggy that Naruto couldn't tell if she was flat chested or just smaller chested. At least she had on a weird black beanie with bandage tape around her forehead.

The silver flute in her hands though was the source of the illusion, so Naruto focused on that flute.

Okay, time to show that even though his body was helpless, he himself was NOT helpless. Naruto looked at the ninja in front of him, before there were four glows in front of Naruto, and in a second four swords appeared in front of Naruto, floating at his own command. The max that Naruto could make float in the air and control like this was 5 swords, so looking at the surprised ninja, he made the swords fly towards each of them. They all jumped out of the way, and the girl didn't even stop playing.

He changed the direction of the swords, and the one with multiple arms started to spit out sticky white stuff... and people called his power wrong. At least Naruto never spat out stuff that looked like cum, because even though the swords had been captured, Naruto was sure that he would be laughing at the strange.

'Gross!' Naruto thought when his body was covered in spider webs shot from the guy he had mentally insulted. Okay, right now Naruto really wished he was good at Genjutsu, or at least good enough to dispel it. He couldn't even remember the trick to doing it right now. He was just glad that he could see normally out of his right eye... the eye he got from Erza. The fact he was aware he was in a Genjutsu made the pain he was feeling inside of it a little less intense... it felt like his arms were melting off.

That flute was still messing with him. Naruto couldn't use his chakra properly, but he could still use magic. Naruto summoned a sword in front of him and cut himself out of the webbing, much to the surprise of the people in front of him. The sword was floating in mid-air after all. The one with blue hair started to charge forward. Naruto felt an intense pain in the back of his head, and suddenly he felt the illusion loosen a little. Just enough for him to regain control of his body for long enough to dodge a blow from the blue haired guy, and swing his sword with his hand in that second to cut off both heads of the guy.

The guy's face as his heads were cut off was one of complete surprise. He had NOT expected Naruto to be able to move, and Naruto could thank Erza for hitting him in the back of the head to snap him out of the illusion... of course with that damn music playing he was back in the illusion again, just stuck in a different position this time around. Of course, that didn't matter much to him since he was in shock.

He had taken a life... he had surprised the blue haired one and killed him... Naruto had killed somebody out of reflex. He had swung his sword and taken the both heads off that person. The body was still bleeding on the ground in front of him... even worse was that the only one that seemed to care about a teammate getting killed was the large one. The red haired one seemed pretty indifferent to the death, while the brown haired one still had a grin on his face. Naruto felt a hit to the back of his head again.

In that second, Naruto covered his ears with his fingers and jumped up back to the tree branches, surprising the ones in front of him again. Naruto really wished that he could hear their voices, but the red haired one was still playing her flute, so he wouldn't be able to talk. The large one slowly charged at Naruto, who could see it coming a mile away. Naruto summoned a dagger into his mouth, before he pressed his feet against the branch and jumped down towards the one charging him. Naruto made one of the swords float, before he had it go flying towards the guy's back. Naruto was punched in the gut and sent flying with his dagger coming out of him mouth, and the gut section of his armor being broken apart. The sword hit its target though and pierced the man through the spine and coming out his chest.

Even as Naruto smashed through a tree, he still had his ears covered. It would seem that the death of two comrades had made the other two remaining take Naruto far more seriously as black markings started to appear on their bodies. Swirling wind designs appeared on the multi-armed one, and lines forming like circuits appeared on the girl's like veins. Naruto started to run away, knowing that he couldn't win this battle.

They had seen him use his trick with the swords, and would know that he could make them fly from behind them. They had six usable marks, and four usable legs to fight with. Naruto was limited to his legs right now... and his legs were shorter, so fighting like this would be useless for him. When he got back to Konoha, he was learning about Genjutsu, because this was a big weakness of his if he was having this much trouble getting out of them. He could see Erza next to him... and then he felt something hit him in the back of the head.

The girl had appeared behind him and kicked him in the head, a place without armor on it. Naruto stumbled, but refused to take his fingers out of his ears when he saw her still playing her flute. Naruto felt something prick him in the Fairy Tail mark on his arm, and looking at his arm he saw a needle sticking out of the symbol. Naruto suddenly felt very dizzy, not being able to hear attacks coming was a problem... and Naruto fell to his knees and let go of his ears when his arms went numb.

"I thought Lord Orochimaru had just sent us after more trash, but this boy was pretty good. He killed the Birdbrain and Fatso, even if by surprise." A slightly feminine, and rough, voice said as Naruto's vision grew more blurry. Naruto used his arms to keep himself from falling on his face, even though they were numb.

"He even cancelled the invasion. This brat must have some bloodline if Lord Orochimaru cancelled the destruction of Konoha so that he could get his hands on it... though he didn't have a choice when the Uchiha boy never got to fight, and the Jinchuriki got defeated. The entire plan rode on those two factors. Lord Orochimaru has taken an interest in a bloodline that can defeat a Jinchuriki... and a new bloodline that hasn't been recorded." The male voice said, and Naruto started to force himself to a standing position as his eyes closed. He couldn't see them, but the girl wasn't playing with her flute so he could still fight back. He wouldn't stop fighting until he was knocked out.

Which could happen at any moment.

"Stay awake Naruto!" Erza demanded on him, but even her voice was fuzzy to him. He had some damn powerful sleeping drug inside of him right now. Despite popular belief, Naruto was not completely immune to poison. He could just push through it with willpower for a while. Eventually he would pass out though, the poison wouldn't kill him anyway, but he would be knocked the hell out for a good amount of time.

"You know Tayuya, with that brown eye and red hair, this boy could be a long lost sibling or something. He must be pretty ruthless to kill Sakon, Ukon, and Jirobo in cold blood like that. Just your type, now if he has a foul mouth the two of you would be a match made in hell." The male voice said, and at least Naruto learned the name of the female. Naruto sent his metal armor away towards the pocket dimension, so that if he was captured they wouldn't get his armor.

He passed out two seconds later.

Chapter End!