LC; OKAY! I can't think of anything that rhymes with twelve. Oh wait, let's dwelve into chapter twelve!
Naruto; Why are you obsessed with rhymes?
LC; Cause only orange doesn't have one.
Naruto; That doesn't answer my question.
LC; Don't feel too bad. You have a block of wood for a brain so you can't grasp anything to complicated.
*Silently thanks Inuyasha*
Naruto;...Huh?
LC; See! On to the chappie!
Disclaimer; Damnit! The force is strong with Kishimoto! I don't own naruto, inuyasha, or star wars, cause if I did, they would merge to form, ninja demon wars! And it would put all other t.v. shows out of business!
Chapter 12, Two sides of the same coin?
Naru knew Hinata couldn't keep fighting, she hadn't fully recovered from her fight with Neji during the prelims yet. When Hinata collapsed and began coughing up blood, Naru made a clone carry her to Sakura and then protect all three of them.
That was the idea anyway. Gaara noticed the three genin over on that branch with the clone and he launched his sand arm at them. Hinata was unconcious next to sasuke, so only Sakura and the clone got pinned to the tree.
The clone dissappeared, letting Naru know what it felt like to be on the recieving end of the sand arm. "Who are these people to you?" He asked for the second time that day.
"Who are they?" She repeated angrily, secretly glad for the respite. "They're my friends is what they are! If you lay so much as another finger on them, I'll pulverize you!"
He smirked evily and pushed harder with his arm, causing Sakura to yell in pain and pass out. "Sakura!" Naru gasped. She turned back to the red headed jinchuriki.
Her ears and tail were still visible, and Gaara was wondering if she was transforming as well. "Gaara of the Sand, I am Naru Uzumaki of the Leaf!" She called to him seriously. "Like you, I am a jinchuriki! But unlike you, my reason for living, IS TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE OF MY VILLAGE WITH EVERYTHING I HAVE!"
Naru fought with all she had in her thirteen year old body. Gaara had to admit, this girl was strong. And now that he focused, he knew she wasn't even using the demon within her's chakra. This was all her own power, and she was starting to make him work.
When they seperated again, Gaara spoke. "You fight for others, why? You must know of the way they stare at our kind. The looks of hatred and fear." He growled.
"I do know." She admitted calmly. "I know the pain of being alone, of being hated for something I had no say in, of fighting to prove my very existence!"
He could hardly believe his transformed ears! This girl did want what he did, to prove she existed, and yet, she went about it completely differently. "Proving your existence while being held back by others, is impossible." He said.
"Your wrong." She was looking down at her feet and shaking.
"They don't hold me back." She persisted, her voice shaking. "They don't hold me back, they, they push me forward!" She brought her self eye level with him, her purple and slitted eyes glistening with unshed tears. "To love only oneself, is a life I would not wish upon anyone!"
She leapt forward and began giving him a barrage of punches and kicks. He then sent his sand. "Sand coffin!" He cried, completely swallowing her in the sand. "Kit, summon me." Kyu ordered, he was sick and tired of this brat.
"Right!" She had already begun making the hand signs. She nicked her thumb, then yelled. "Summoning jutsu!"
And with a giant puff of smoke, there stood the nine tailed fox, the Leaf's greatest nightmare, the size of a large bear. "Hop on!" He growled joyiously. It wasn't everyday she summoned him out this big. Usually he only came out the size of a cat.
As the duo launched into the sky, the one tailed racoon was fully released as Gaara's eyes closed. "We have to wake up the medium!" Kyu cried, firing fire ball after fire ball with his awesome tails. They came in handy.
"Just get me close." Naru told him, unsealing a sickle and chain.
As he did so, she swung the wieght until it smacked Gaara upside the head. "Direct hit!" She cried victoriously. The demon roared his frustration at having to leave so soon as Gaara glared holes into her head. "Aw sorry, did I hurt you?" She asked tauntingly. "Your a very annoying girl." He commented.
"And your a very lonely little boy." She replied easily, reeling in the wieght of the chain. "Now that we got that straight, how about we get back to fighting?"
"Kit, I can hold him still if you make me bigger." Kyu pointed out. At the size he was currently at, it was like he was a fly to the giant racoon. "Good point." Naru began routing more chakra into his form, making him grow. With a start she realised she didn't have enough chakra left to make him big enough. "We're going to have to do a combined transformation!" She cried, already molding the chakra. "Do it Kit!" He bellowed.
With another puff of smoke, she had transformed them both into a giant nine tailed fox!
"Time to get to work!" They yelled.
As Kyubi grabbed hold of the racoon, Naru jumped from the transformation and ran towards Gaara. His sand attacked her, held her back just inches before she would have decked him again.
"No way! Not when I'm this close!" She cried, bringing her head down with enough force to knock Kyubi out. Both demons vanished and the two were flung apart, to land in seperate trees.
They were two sides of the same coin, but one had to land on top, one had to win this battle! "Gaara!" She yelled her warcry.
"Uzumaki!" Gaara responded, jumping to meet her with his own punch.
The two hit eachother at the same time, with the same force. And as they fell side by side to the ground, they could not help but wonder who would land on top.
Because when you flip a coin, one side always lands on the bottom.
Gaara landed on his back, and Naru on her stomache. When he found he could not move, he began to pray the girl could not either.
To his utter horror, the girl began to stir. "Damn, that hurt like a bitch." She groaned, lifting her head to look into Gaara's eyes. "Your strong, I'll give you that."
She began to wiggle her way over to him, knowing if she didn't Sakura would never get free. "No, stay away from me!" Gaara cried. Was this fear? Was this what it felt like?
To his surprise, his outburst seemed to have done the trick. Naru was now still, with her head bent to the ground, her nose lying in the dust.
She was trying to hide her tears.
When she did look up, her eyes were still shining, but the actual tears had halted. "I know what it's like, in that dark and lonely place. To not be of use to anyone. To have to struggle to be seen." She said quietly. "I know that pain! But, now I'm not so, alone. I have friends, people I trust. People I love. (YAY Kiba!) And, I won't let, anyone, hurt, any of them!" Now her eyes were sharp with pain and anger. "Gaara, even if I must kill you, I will save them!"
Before she could move on to her wiggling, Hinata and Sasuke appeared by her side. "It's alright, Naru-chan." Hinata consoled her. "The sand broke away and Sakura's going to be just fine."
Naru's expression immediatly relaxed and all of her KI simply vanished. "That's good to hear." She murmured before falling asleep.
One word ran through Gaara's head as his siblings carried him away. 'Love? Is that what makes her so strong?' He pondered.
He raised his head slightly, to gaze at his siblings. "Something wrong Gaara?" Kankuro asked.
"Kankuro, Temari, I'm sorry." He muttered, closing his eyes and hoping they would leave him be. Temari and Kankuro exchanged a glance before looking at their younger brother.
"It's alright." Kankuro finally sighed.
Back at the Leaf, great sorrow wrenched the hearts of every man, woman, and child in the village. The third Hokage, Sarutobi, was dead.
The next day, despite her injuries, Naru went to the funeral. As she placed the small white flower on the grave, her thoughts wandered to her memories of the Old Man.
"Thanks." She murmured, before rejoining the long line of shinobi who had come to pay their respects. In honor of the occasion, her hair had been let down. The wind and rain toyed with it, as though trying to tempt a smile on this gloomy day.
Konohamaru stood by her side, crying. Without thinking about it, she kneeled down and hugged him, allowing him to cry into her shoulder.
Later that day, she and Kiba sat alone in a tree on the outskirts of the village, near the wall. "Naru, you going to be okay?" He was worried for his girlfriend.
"I'll be fine." She assured him. "I'm just thinking, about the ones precious to me."
"I hope me and Akamaru are counted in that number!" He joked, glad she seemed to be getting back to normal. "Don't worry!" She laughed happily, though both were still dressed in their funeral clothes. "Both you and Akamaru are on the top of the list! Your just below Akamaru actually."
Kiba spluttered while trying to come up with something to say, when he saw she was laughing again. Akamaru was also barking strangely, his own dog was laughing at him? Talk about loyalty.
"I'm only kidding Kiba." She reassured the poor depressed boy. "Your at the top."
The next day, she found herself sitting on the window sill of her bedroom window. "Kit, someone's coming." Kyu alerted her. When she looked down at the ground from her perch, she recognised the flowing white hair of the toad sage.
"Yo pervy sage!" She called down cheerfully. "What are you doing here?"
He jumped up to her window and she let him in. "Why, this is where all the beautiful women live!" He flattered.
"Aw, ain't you sweet?" She replied, pretending to hide a nonexistent blush behind her hands. Without any sign of warning, her hands flew away and she smacked the old pervert right out her window. "Come back when you stop being a pervert!" She called, closing the window.
Five minutes later, someone knocked on her front door. Congratulating herself on a prank well played, she took her camera, and when the door swung open, got a snap shot of the hand imprint on his cheek.
"I amaze myself." She gloated, placing the picture under her shirt, where she hoped it would be safe. He may have been an old man, but he was a dirty old man.
After she let him inside, he told her he wanted her to come with him on a mission. "We need to bring back one of the sannin, Tsunade." He finished, taking a sip of the tea she had made. It actually wasn't as bad as he thought it would be, even though no one had taught her how to make it, or cook for that matter.
"Tsunade has been chosen for the title of fifth Hokage." He watched her carefully, knowing full well her dream of being the first hokage. "Well, guess I'll miss out o being the first female hokage." She muttered thoughtfully. "But hey, maybe I'll learn some new jutsu from her!"
The very next day, they set out to search for the elusive Tsunade. Along the way, Jaraiya began thinking of Naru's abilities and possible flaws. Her kenjutsu was almost master level, she knew a pretty goof arsenal of jutsu, and her genjutsu wasn't half bad. Her only real flaw, as far as he could see, was she was too used to fighting alone.
All of her strageties were made with the thought that she would be alone during a battle, not with allies. And if there was more than one enemy, she would have her word cut out for her.
As he tried pondering a way to fix this, Naru continued skecthing in her notebook.
'Damn, and I thought making ice tags was difficult.' She fumed, after crossing out another mistake on the formula. Who knew combining wind and earth would be so hard? Sure they were polar opposites, but when mixed the right way, they were supposed to be able to create sand storms.
That kind of tag would be useful for quick get aways, and she could almost feel that they would end up saving her one day. Now, if only she could get the two to work without blowing off her eyebrows...again.
Somehow, without her noticing, Jaraiya had slowed his pace to walk slightly behind her and peep over her shoulder. Sadly, being in such close proximity to the little lumps on her chests activated his sixth sense. 'Oh no, my perv sense is tingling!' He could almost see through the jacket and shirt, right down to her little pink bra.
Of course, with that girl's love for orange, the bra could very well be orange or even red. As he contemplated the possible colouring of Naru's bra, his eyes wandered to the notepad, his original target.
His jaw very nearly hit the dog poop on the ground when he saw what she was attempting to do. 'She's putting two elements together to make one.' He surmized. 'I heard rumors of her using ice tags in the chunin exams, but this is ridiculus!'
He was so stunned, his sixth sense had turned itself off, and he was no longer interested in what color her bra is.
Naru was unaware of Jaraiya moving behind her. However, when he began thinking about her bra, her sixth sense activated. "Oh no! My pervert sense is tingling!' (The perv sense, is when a pervert gets close to a woman's boobs. The pervert sense is when a girl realizes the pervert is close by and thinking about their underwear. Just thought I'd clear that up!)
Feeling a sense of dread and anger, she stopped drawing on the notepad and turned her head slightly.
However, her pervert sense seemed to be diminishing. His eyes weren't on her bum, or bust, but the notepad! 'Huh. Maybe I need my pervert sense checked?' She shrugged and continued the very hard calculation.
Eventually, they came to rest at a local shrine. "Why don't you go pay homage to the shrine's diety while I prepare our lunches?" Jaraiya asked, secretly hoping to look through the elusive notepad.
"Okay!" She said cheerfully, dropping her bag onto the ground and tossing the notebook on top. She ran up the steps and clapped her hands to pray.
When she finished doing that, she began to play with the big bells. Ding Dong! They sounded, deep and low.
Jaraiya watched, a chuckle escaping his lips, as his student began acting like the kid she really was. 'It's nice for her to act like a kid sometimes. Better than that seriousness she uses around those close to her. It may be who she really is, but no kid should be that serious all the time, or have to act happy-go-lucky all the time either.' He pondered, already taking out the notepad from the pile, along with the lunches.
As he looked through it, he saw that this girl had clearly inherited her father's nack for seals.
When they ate lunch together, Jaraiya began wondering what destiny had in store for her. "What do you think you'll do for your life, other than become Hokage of course?" He asked her.
She looked up from the rice ball she was currently biting into. "Huh?" She asked, swallowing the mouthful of food. "I guess, I'll forge a path for others like me to follow."
He liked her answer, it seemed similar to his own dreams actually. His dreams to end this senseless blood shedfilled world known as the path of the shinobi.
"Hey pervy sage," Naru began. "Why did you ask me to come with you?" She asked finally. He looked up from his lunch in surprise. "Hm?" He muttered, stupified. "I guess because you remind me of your father! And also, because I want to teach you some new jutsu."
At the magic word 'jutsu' he had Naru's full attention. "You know a lot of jutsu already, but hey! The more the merrier!" Naru was now to excited to hear what kind of jutsu she'd be learning to continue eating. A reason Kyu never spoke to her about new jutsus during lunch. She'd forget to eat said lunch.
The next day, they came upon a village in the middle of it's spring festival. Jaraiya saw Naru's look of amazement, and remembered she had probably never been to a festival. The villagers wouldn't take too kindly to the demon child being there. He sighed sadly, thinking how Minato would've reacted to that.
'Minato, if you could see your daughter's life, would you have let the fox destroy the village? Or would you have done it yourself?' He asked himself, not really expecting an answer.
"He would have let the fox do it." Naru answered, scaring the wits out of him. "If he had let the village get destroyed at all, he would have let the fox do it."
"Gaki, why don't you go down and have some fun?" Jaraiya asked, a mishevious twinkle in his eye. She turned to look at him in surprise. "Are you sure?" She asked cautiously. She did want to go. And since no one here knew of her tenant, they wouldn't chase her away, would they?
"Go on ahead!" He assured her. "You need to be a kid once in a while!"
She smiled a 100 watt smile and ran down to the festivities. Jaraiya chuckled at how enthusiastic the normally serious girl could be.
Two hours later, Naru had eaten lots of carnival food and won various prizes. Her favorite of which, was a large stuffed fox with cute ears. She hummed softly to herself as she searched for the next game to play.
"Hey cutie, you here for the festival?" Slipping into her mask like a fish into the water, she turned to see three young men, around fifteen standing just behind her.
"Yeah I am!" They most likely didn't know she was a ninja, since she had stuck her headband into a jacket pocket so it wouldn't fall off during a particularly difficult game. "It's really fun here! I've never been to a festival before!" She giggled happily, hugging the fox protectively.
"Come with us, we'll show you around!" One of them urged her.
On one hand, she had no proof they were after something from her, on the other, she didn't really want to go with them. Thinking back on how many people were present, she decided to accept.
"Sure, thanks!" She replied, fingers itching for a kunai, if only to calm her nerves.
"Follow me!" The ring leader ordered, putting a hand to her lower back to steer her to the village square.
The three boys began playing different games with her, each trying to win the grand prize of that stand. Naru won the shuriken game easily, and won a big bear plushie. "Aw!" She exclaimed happily. "So cute! Kawaii!"
With her ability to see where she was going restricted with the many stuffed animals and what nots in her arms, she couldn't see the boys were steering her into a dark alley way.
She could, however, hear the sounds of the many festival people dwindling, until it was more a pleasant hum, than an obnoxious roar.
"We haven't even gotten to the good part yet!" The boy announced eagerly. She lowered the toys to see where they were, and found herself staring at a brick wall. "We're about to start the real fun, alright cutie?"
One of the boys knocked the prizes out of her hands and held her in a choke hold as the second boy brought out a knife and began to cut open her jacket.
That was the last straw! As soon as the third boy began to feel her stomache, she flipped.
Vaulting backward, she got the first boy in a chokehold of his own, afterwards she wrapped a leg around one of his and tripped him up, to land on his nose, firmly breaking it.
The second boy had recovered from his shock and lunged at her with the knife. She parried the amatuer move easily and used slight of hand to relieve the boy of his weapon, before elbowing his back, knocking the wind out of him.
The third one, she threw the knife at, pinning him to the wooden wall behind him by the sleeve of his kimono.
"Next time your going to rape someone, make sure they aren't a kunoichi." She advised, bringing the headband out of her pocket. "The moment you called out to me on the streets, you ticked me off."
Boy two had recovered yet again, this time when he lunged at her, it was for her legs to knock her down. Using her momentum, she twisted around and round house kicked the boy into the brick wall. "My name is Naru Uzumaki, and the next time I see you, pray that I've forgiven you for what you almost did!" She ordered, not really putting up an intimidating act since she had picked up all the plushies from the ground and was pouting slightly at how they had fallen in the mud.
When she met up with Jaraiya later and he asked what she'd done, she answered; "Hmm, not much! I met some nice boys who won me a lot of prizes though!" He failed to notice the satisfied gleam in her eye, or the mud on the toys, or the ripped jacket for that matter. He was too lost in his thoughts about how innocent and naive she was.
'Ha, so innocent, doesn't realize the boys probably wanted to get in bed with her!' He sighed inwardly.
/HA!HA!HA!HA!\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
LC; I like this chapter!
Naruto; Got to admit, not bad, not bad at all.
Kiba; And I was in it more too!
Akamaru; Bark bark!
LC; YAY! Naru-chan beat Gaara, Jaraiya, and some perverts! What more could she beat up?
Naruto; Orochimaru, for one.
LC; Who knows? Maybe next time! *Eyes computer eagerly*
Naruto; Just do the sneak peek thing.
LC; OOOOOKAY! Next time on a Kunoichi's Tail! Naru meets the third sannin! How will the sannin react to seeing Naru, a girl so much like her own youthful self? (OH NO, I'm turning into GAI!) What about Shizune? And will Orochimaru get Naru? So many questions, so little time to type! We may not find out for a few days!
Read and Review, and everything in between
For the one, the only! Chapter thirteen!
