28 Strange Occurrences

Some Degree of Nudity, and a Very Large Toad.

A faint noise from outside stirred Taiki from his light sleep on the downstairs sofa. He had made sure Kotori was comfortable in her bed upstairs and now waited until she was sufficiently strong to move about on her own. That had been four days ago, and though this worried him somewhat, he also figured that she would solve whatever inner struggle had put her into this state on her own terms. He was also slightly worried that the team had not received word from their mentor since the first day of the chuunin exams, and wondered why this was. So, when he heard the quiet whoosh and thwock of a thrown kunai slicing into the wood of the doorframe, he sat up in full alertness and dashed to the front door to see who had done it.

The front yard was empty, as Taiki had expected, with no traces of disturbance. He next turned his attention to the doorframe, where a kunai had been used to pin a folded message to the wooden beam. Prying this loose, he unfolded the paper and examined it; even though it bore no signature, the message's content was more than enough to give away the sender. Seeing as things have not gone as planned, a few revisions are in order. I'll give you three weeks starting today to pull your heads out of whatever crevice they may be lodged in, and then we'll start working again. Taiki rolled his eyes at this, but pocketed both note and kunai before returning inside.

-------

"How are your arms feeling?" asked Mrs. Kurogata as she watched her daughter at work. Naeko sat in her usual place behind the counter of the tailor shop, working a thick, dusk-colored thread around her fingers in various patterns and fanciful constructions.

"They're fine, I guess," the genin replied, squinting as she focused on moving loops of fiber from finger to finger. "Still a little bit sore, but that's to be expected." She finally finished her task, frowning as she counted the time that it had taken to accomplish it. Still not fast enough. If I'm going to use this in combat, I have to be quicker!

"But I can't believe they would be so cruel," Mrs. Kurogata continued, shaking her head. "Injuring you just because you chose to save them from potential setback?"

Naeko snickered, untangling the thread and winding it back onto its spool for another try. "You don't know them very well, Mother. A lot worse could have happened."

The older woman made a disbelieving grumble but chose not to press the subject. "I'll take your word for it, dear... it's just that you've made such a great comeback, and I don't want to see you get hurt again."

Unbeknownst to her mother, Naeko had tuned her voice out and had now entered a zone of quietly intense focus. There, there, and there! Now to imbue it with chakra, stretch, and throw! The thread, now woven into a faintly glowing lattice form, hummed as it stretched through the air, arcing gracefully and disappearing into the adjoining room where it connected with an unknown surface and stuck. A few thumps could be heard as various items were knocked to the floor, and the shriek of an alarmed younger girl. "Oneesan, knock it off! I was kinda working on something..."

-------

Aww, poor little girl. It looks like my little display a while ago tired you right out, mused the cat demon as she took notice of her host's deeply sleeping body and unsuspecting mind. So, I hope you don't mind if I have a little bit of fun... It took little effort on the Nekomata's part to insinuate herself into the quiescent, unprotesting brain, pushing Kotori back to the subconscious where she could do little harm if and when she next woke up. When the eyes opened again, they took stock of their surroundings with new focus, taking appreciative note of the body they were attached to. "I could do so many bad things with this, but where to start?" Rising from the bed, the Nekomata stripped the few remaining bits of clothing from her body and stretched, feeling the sinuous ripple and tug of finely toned muscles. "They call me Hellkitty, hm? Well, I shall give them hell." Grinning to herself, she then opened the door and wandered downstairs.

Taiki had prepared a light breakfast for himself and now sat watching television, idly musing over just what Takeshi would have in mind for them once their break was over. His ears twitched when he heard the light patter of footsteps moving down the stairs... and is that perfume? Taiki could then only stare as he beheld Kotori reach the lower floor and then cross the hall to the bathroom, without a stitch of clothing on her body. "Um, Tori-chan, are you feeling all right?"

The girl paused for a moment, her hand resting lightly on the bathroom door, and glanced back over her shoulder with a teasing smile. "I'm feeling perfectly fine." She then wandered into the bathroom and slid the door shut after her, and not long after Taiki could hear running water as she took a shower. Almost unbidden, his mind conjured up the image of the proceedings, the striking visual of water gleaming on pale skin, all delicately muted by clouds of steam -

"Damnit!" Taiki pounded himself on the forehead, trying to strike that visual from his mind. "I can't think of her that way, she's my teammate and she's also probably still sick." It took sheer focus of will, though, to prevent his thoughts from straying afterwards, and he was successful until the bathroom door slid open again. He pinched his nose as best as he could to stanch the trickle of blood he could feel beginning to ooze forth, and studiously looked elsewhere.

"It seems I forgot a towel," mused Kotori – or is that really her? Taiki wondered, gagging a little at the irony taste that trickled down his throat from the redirected blood. "Are you all right, Taiki? You don't look so well."

"I'm – okay," choked Taiki, waiting until he heard the footsteps going up the stairs before looking in that direction again. A view of a perfectly formed backside draped by a curtain of long, damp crimson locks made his mind wander again, and it took twice the force of will to bring it back to a less devious path. The same perfume that he had smelled earlier now returned in double force, causing Taiki's head to spin.

So far, so good, the demon mused as she toweled herself dry and then wrapped up loosely in a robe before trotting back downstairs. A few more minutes of this and he'll be putty in my hands.

-------

Two weeks later found Takeshi sitting on the floor in his apartment, various books and papers scattered around him while he tried to synthesize something concrete out of the compiled knowledge. "Think about it. What have the most successful mentors used to teach their students, and where could I improve?" After some moments' rumination, an answer came to him and he quickly snatched for a pencil and piece of scratch paper before the idea left. "My main mistake was in assuming that they knew how to work as a team in the first place. I should have seen this earlier! Kotori has been trained as a solo act from day one, or at least I'd guess she has, and who knows what Taiki's style is. Naeko is still recovering from what she thought was a near-lethal mistake and is too afraid to take a risk because she doesn't want to hurt the rest of her team like she did before. So..." he paused for a moment, absentmindedly tapping his pencil against his teeth, "I'll start with pushing them past their individual limits and then giving them tasks where they'll have to rely on the others' strengths and abilities." Smirking, he added, "Yes, I think that'll work perfectly. They won't like it at all, but they brought it upon themselves."

-------

My god, I haven't left this place in two and a half weeks, thought Taiki as he took a quick shower and then got dressed again. I think she's asleep again, so I can slip out and get some groceries... Putting his shoes on and stepping outside, he took a breath of fresh air and sighed in relief. "What's come over her? Does stress cause her to turn into a complete nympho, or what? Not that I mind, but it's just strange... it's not her. And that perfume – it causes me to lose all sense!" Taiki shook his head once or twice to clear it and then began walking down the path that would take him back to the village.

"I don't know how long she's going to stay asleep, so I've gotta make this quick," Taiki resolved, picking his way through the various stands at the marketplace to find what he wanted. As absorbed as he was in his current task, he still stiffened at a familiar presence a few steps behind him, and he carefully turned around with a studiously neutral expression. "Good afternoon, sensei!"

"Afternoon, Taiki," replied Takeshi with the easy grin that his students had learned not to trust. "Out for a little bit of shopping, I see?"

"Just getting a few odds and ends. It's for a friend, not me." When this merited a dubiously raised eyebrow, Taiki quickly added, "Just because I'm good-looking doesn't mean I'm completely self-centered, sensei. I'm taking a break in my training and thought I'd help a friend out. Is there anything wrong with that?"

A small head-shake. "No, nothing at all. I applaud your initiative, and if you don't mind me asking, what kind of training is it?"

This stopped Taiki cold as he fumbled for an answer, and said the first thing that came to mind: "Stamina training, sir."

Both eyebrows raised this time and then dropped into a furrow of puzzlement as Takeshi tried to fish the hidden meaning out from this statement. "Right. Well then, carry on."

Taiki beat a hasty retreat back to Kotori's home, praying that he wasn't being followed as he went. He crossed his fingers that the resident would still be asleep when he returned, a hope that went ungranted as he eased the door open and came face to face with a red-faced, steamingly angry Kotori – fully dressed and brandishing a stray pair of pants accusatorily in his direction. Damnit! I knew I should have taken my laundry with me when I left... "All right, mister, you've got some explaining to do! I have a two-and-a-half-week gap in my memory, and I woke up naked with these next to my bed. The few things I do remember I don't want to talk about, and I know that you were involved quite intimately!"

Dropping the groceries and tensing himself to flee, Taiki stammered, "B-but I thought you knew!" The blue eyes narrowed and fixed him in a deathly glare. "You mean that wasn't you the whole time?"

"No, you dimwit, that was her. She took advantage of both of us, apparently!"

"Oh." Against his better judgment, Taiki then wondered, "But did you enjoy it?"

"Get out," Kotori howled, throwing the pants at Taiki and baring her teeth for a killing lunge. "Get. Out. Now!" Taiki needed no further incentive and ran out as quickly as he could, leaving Kotori alone to deal with her demon.

-------

"Well, today is the last day we have by ourselves," Naeko thought aloud as she looked at the surrounding terrain, trying to gauge where she was. "I've got to prove that I can do something right, or I'll never get over my failure!" She came to the edge of the path, parted the foliage, and looked down. "Yep, this is the place. Everyone tells me it's dangerous here, that I'll die before I hit bottom if I fall, but I have to try!" Taking a strand of the thread she'd been working with earlier to hand and anchoring the rest of the spool to her belt, she closed her eyes and stepped over the edge. Soon the air whistled in her ears as she fell, but Naeko forced her mind to be still and her hands to move the way she'd taught them, spinning the thread into the lattice of earlier and then empowering it with her own chakra. She flung the thread upwards, feeling it catch on one of the canyon's many jagged outcroppings and yanking her to a halt.

Finally daring to open her eyes, Naeko looked up. She'd fallen about fifty feet, but the thread still held strong against the wall of the canyon. Allowing herself a shaky grin, she muttered, "That's a start. Now to really put this to the test!" Stretching a second length of thread out from another spool on her belt, she wove another line and cast it out about twenty feet to her right and ten feet down, then transferred the chakra from the first tether to this new one, holding her breath as she dropped and swung to another point on the canyon wall. "I think I can do this!" She repeated the process until she was about four hundred feet down, then stopped to consider how to continue.

A loud yell from above distracted her from her thoughts, and she peered up to see an orange-clad speck free-falling through the air. "What the – that's Naruto, the village screw-up! How did he -" Naeko cut off that line of thought. "Questions later. I've got to stop him from falling. Good thing I thought to bring a third spool of this stuff with me; I just might need it."

Then came a poof and a loud rumble as something very large came into view above her, peppering her with bits of rock as she tried to figure out what it was. "A toad?" She blinked, wondering if she was hallucinating, and once she convinced herself that she wasn't she noticed that even the toad's grip on the canyon wall was quite tenuous. With a quick prayer to the gods that this would work, she unhooked one of her own tethers and flung it out again, attaching one end close to her and the other as far as she could reach across the width of the crevasse. She severed the thread from her belt and breathed a sigh of relief when the line still held; then crossed to the other side and repeated the process until a crisscrossing web of line was in place. Her efforts were none too soon, as the toad's toeholds came loose and it dropped down another few feet, but was halted by the faintly luminescent safety net.

"This really isn't my day, now is it?" the toad boomed, voice echoing off the walls like distant thunder and fixing Naeko in a foul gaze. "I get summoned to this godforsaken place only to nearly fall to my death and then get caught by the likes of you! And who the hell is jumping around on top of my head?"

Naeko could only shake her head in wonderment and disbelief. This really isn't my day either...