The setting sun painted the sky a brilliant, bloody red, and Kyubi looked at it with no small sense of irony. Around him, the shadows of rock spires lengthened, seeming to reach for the still figure that watched the brightness die in her solitary evening ritual. A breeze whistled amongst the stone and made her blue robes flutter.
"Demon," the Lady said, finally acknowledging his presence. "What have I done to gain your interest this time?" She called, not bothering to turn around.
The fox's lips twisted into a secretive little smile. He wasn't at all surprised that she had sensed his presence. His eyes flickered to the bloody horizon, and then again to her motionless back. "Just wondering what you find so fascinating in that," he mused, nodding his head to the sky even though she wasn't situated to actually see the gesture. Not that she needed to be.
The Lady was silent for a moment, then her hair spilled down her back in a silken cascade as she lifted her head. When she finally spoke, her voice was collected but quiet. "It's a blood filled sky, a portend of things to come. That is, if the wrong choices are made."
The demon-fox stiffened. Did she know? Or was it just a generalized warning to him? After all blood and demons usually went together tooth and claw.
He was looking at her warily when she spoke again. "You've been with the ninja child," she said abruptly.
Kyubi bristled, suspicious and suddenly inexplicably tense. "Yeah, what's it to you?"
Finally, she deigned to turn and look at him, and he settled his gaze on her mouth, as he didn't dare stare into her bottomless eyes. The Lady seemed to study him, and then she sighed, a soft exhalation of weary breath. "Just be aware that you can't keep him. He's strong and stubborn, and very much tied to the human world."
The demon snorted. "Fickle woman, aren't you? Before, weren't you preaching about how the brat belonged here? With all us freaks?"
"I've realized that that will prove impossible." Again, she glanced briefly at the sliver of red sinking behind the horizon. "If you don't want to lose him forever, you'll have to let him go. At least for now."
"What, can you see the future or something?"
The corner of her lip twitched as she answered him. "Only sometimes."
"Then did you see this coming, you bossy bitch?"
The voice came from behind them, though neither Lady nor demon seemed surprised by its presence. The speaker was Mai, usual sneer pasted comfortably to his face, though this time the expression was edged in anticipation. Fanning out behind him was a large number of other creatures. Both the Lady and the fox-demon turned to look at the approaching group, one face unreadable, and the other bored. Kyubi lazily buffed his claws on his pants. "You're early," he muttered, not really sounding like he cared all that much.
The Lady ignored the demon, and instead answered Mai's insolent quip. "I suspected your lust for power would overcome your good sense." There were no questions about what was going on. She knew very well what he was up to, though Kyubi couldn't tell if she had just figured it out now or had somehow known in advance.
Mai's sneer got sharper. "Your confidence is misplaced."
Her lips quirked, almost bemusedly. "Oh really?"
Kyubi's skin broke out in goosebumps.
The breeze that had been lightly blowing around them abruptly died, and the air became unnaturally still as if the sky itself was holding its breath. Suddenly, black energy appeared around the Lady, swirling and pulsing in a way that caused short hairs to prickle almost painfully. Dark tendrils shot up from her body and hit the sky, spreading and growing until the setting sun was swallowed into premature night.
The creatures broke out into frightened murmuring, but Mai made a quick gesture with his hand. A scaled man stepped out of the shadows behind Kyubi and gingerly handed him something. The other creature seemed unable to touch it, but the Kyubi didn't have the same problem, as long as he stayed away from the interior. The fox-demon looked down at the object, and grinned. Mai's voice broke through the darkness in a sudden urgent hiss. "Quick, stop her before she finishes powering up!"
Kyubi was already moving.
Unnatural speed spurred him toward her in the blink of an eye. Still, she sensed his movement and a spear of dark energy left the aura around her to shoot towards him. The fox barely managed to dodge. He felt the darkness brush past his hair, leaving behind a frozen cold that caused his heart to skip a beat. If that had touched him, he suddenly knew, it would have been his utter, and probably painful, destruction.
He sent his own energy blast, the color red instead of black. It was stopped by her aura, of course, but it gave the fox the split second he needed to toss the chains with complete accuracy at her uplifted hands. Kyubi darted away, just in case things didn't work out. But he needn't have worried. Like there was a magnet guiding them, the manacles slid around her wrists and suddenly clamped down.
The aura around the Lady vanished, and the blackness over the sky dissipated as if it had never been, revealing a sliver of red on the horizon. All this had taken place before the sun could even finish setting. The Lady sagged suddenly, bent over like an old woman with the metaphysical weight of the manacles.
There was a moment of silence, as everyone stared at her wearily, not quite sure if she had really been rendered harmless. Then Mai, sneer in place, stepped forward. "I told you you're confidence was misplaced," he said to the Lady. She tried to lift her head, but the weight was too much for her, and she drooped forward again, back bent painfully.
Kyubi eyed the sky as the sun finally finished setting. "Now that was fun," he declared.
The dying light was echoed bloodily in his eyes.
Naruto growled, canines lengthening. "I said, move! You two deaf or something?!" Narrowed blue eyes glared, and the powerful chakra aura enveloping him pulsed with the angry beat of blood through his veins.
The snake-woman stared, and then licked her lips nervously. "He told us not to let you leave." She said, voice faltering. She exchanged a brief glance with the cat-creature in a couple of seconds of wordless commune. Then, seemingly reassured by the presence of the other, they both turned back towards Naruto with aggressive stances. It seemed that they had decided that they were more frightened of the Kyubi then this kid. Even if he was currently crackling with violent energy.
Naruto snarled. Big mistake.
Naruto moved, so blindingly fast that the chakra aura still swirling around him made him resemble a mutant firefly. He appeared behind the cat-creature, and it turned and slashed at him with its good arm. Naruto ducked it, easily, and then sent his fist barreling into its face. The punch landed just under its jaw and caused the creature to fly all the way across the room. It slammed into the opposite wall with such force that cracks actually appeared in the stone.
Blue eyes flickered briefly to the left, and then Naruto was moving again. Leaping out of the way as the snake-woman used her muscular tail to smash into the ground where he had just been. Here, cracks also appeared in the floor with the impact, and Naruto spared half a second to worry about the structural soundness of the room.
The woman slithered across the floor after him, fangs bared and dripping with some kind of acidic venom; when it dripped on the floor it sizzled and left pint sized holes in its wake. She spared a moment to toss the bed at him, and as Naruto dodged it, he suddenly found her tail crashing towards him again in a pincer move. This time, there was no way to avoid it.
His surrounding chakra suddenly coalesced in front of him, forming an impermeable barrier that deflected the crushing tail. Naruto sprang upwards from behind the barrier. Quickly, he put his hands together in a seal. "Kage bunshin no jutsu!"
Fifty glowing clones suddenly flooded the room, and the snake sent her tail out in a wide arc, taking some of the Naruto look-alikes down. Still, there was many more where that came from, and she was soon overwhelmed. The snake-woman joined the cat-creature in unconsciousness on the floor.
There was a brief commotion as all the Naruto's high fived each other and whooped in triumph. Then one of them shouted: "That's enough already! I've got things to do!"
The clones all vanished with a soft pop of displaced air, and after the smoke had cleared, Naruto took one last brief glance at his vanquished opponents. "I did tell you to move." He said, smirking broadly.
Then he turned around and quickly vanished out the door. He had a demon to stop.
Sasuke, Shikamaru, and Kameko crouched behind a rock spire, watching the turmoil below them. Some of the populace of Sanctuary were in chains, others were being cowed into submission by the aggressive usurpers. Kameko's wooden hand clenched into a tight fist as she watched. "They're scared," she whispered to the two ninjas. "They'll go along with it, not because they agree, but because they're afraid for themselves and their families. If the Lady herself has been taken out, then they're going to feel like there's nothing they can do. Without her protection . . ." She shook her head angrily.
"We need to come up with a plan," Shikamaru said, laziness gone from his eyes as they narrowed in calculation.
"First we need to get Naruto."
Shikamaru shot Sasuke a brief look. "Obviously."
A shouted roar caught their attention. A huge man, made twisted and deformed by oddly placed lumps of flesh, was desperately fighting his captors. As they watched, he hit one and sent him sailing halfway across the courtyard. "Just kill him already!" One of the creatures ordered the others.
"Shale!" Kameko hissed, suddenly leaping from their hiding place.
"Wait!" Shikamaru said, and then swore as she ignored him and sprinted down to help the struggling man. He exchanged a brief, frustrated glance with Sasuke, (though really, Sasuke had a strange gleam in his eyes that made Shikamaru think he was anticipating the fight a little too much), and then they jumped down to help her.
And the battle was joined.
Kameko used her sleeping powder and poisonous nettles to free the big man, while Sasuke and Shikamaru fought the others and freed more of the prisoners. Those freed immediately joined the fight, and seeing this caused some of those who had been previously cowed to also jump into the fray. And for a second, it seemed like they were winning.
Until a huge ice missile hit a group of the Lady's supporters and froze them solid.
Kameko turned quickly, and then cursed. "Chin, you bastard!"
The little blue creature laughed shrilly. "Ah, Kameko, so predictable. You should have run when you had the chance. But instead you just had to come back here. How stupid." Another shard of ice appeared in the air before him, and he gestured lazily at the three creatures behind him. "Kill all who oppose us," he said, and then laughed as the ice missile suddenly shot through the air.
They scattered, and the frozen projectile hit the ground where they had been. The intense cold caused cracks to appear in the ground, and then froze them over in the same instant with a sheet of hard ice.
Sasuke dodged the ice, and then suddenly found himself dodging again as the creature with the blade-like fingers took a swipe at him. It was fast, as fast as he was, and Sasuke quickly realized he was going to have to pull out all the stops if he wanted to survive. Which meant his ultimate technique, but it required some time, and his opponent wasn't giving him any of that.
Suddenly, the creature froze and let out a frustrated cry, and Sasuke followed its gaze downward to see the shadow holding it in place. From the other side of the shadow, Shikamaru shouted. "Sasuke! Quick, do it!"
The dark-haired ninja didn't need any more reminders. In a blink of an eye, he settled on the side of a wall and grabbed his wrist, momentarily out of the direct battle. Chakra began to gather visibly in his hand, and a loud sound, like a thousand birds chirping, suddenly drowned out the sound of fighting. When the energy got bright enough, Sasuke took off down the side of the wall and back to his opponent.
Shikamaru prudently chose that moment to withdraw his Kagemane no Jutsu, just as Sasuke hit the creature and pulverized it with his chidori. The blade-handed thing hadn't been all that tough, so with the extra energy from his technique, Sasuke also took out one of the armored turtle creatures that had accompanied Chin.
The chidori dissipated, and the second turtle creature suddenly roared and sent spikes flying through the air towards him. Sasuke dodged, but still got nailed as one thick spike suddenly lodged painfully in his shoulder. He landed with a grunt of pain besides Kameko, who was pulling uselessly at her left leg where it had been frozen to the ground. Several deep cuts on her body oozed sap, and Sasuke sent one brief glance over her to survey the damage.
He turned his attention back to the second turtle-creature, and suddenly tensed as he watched it retreat. He glanced up further and suddenly cursed as a shrill laugh echoed through the courtyard. An ice missile, big enough to blot out the moon above them, was floating in the air, just waiting to be let go. "Just try to dodge this!" The little blue creature cackled, and let it fly.
Sasuke stilled. Not even he would be able to get far enough away in time to duck it. Chin was going to take out all of his opponents – and some of his allies – in one frozen swoop. They were all going to die.
"Kage bunshin no jutsu!"
Orange chakra flared suddenly, so blinding that Sasuke had to shut his eyes. An army of blondes got between them and the ice missile, all glowing with intense energy. There were some "poofs" as the ice plowed among them, but the intense chakra beat against the missile, and before it could get very far . . .
It shattered into a million glittering shards.
The knobby blue creature's jaw dropped. The expression on his face was rather comical, though brief.
"Take this, jerk!" The shout came, with the voice of a thousand Narutos. About a hundred clones dog-piled on the tiny villain, and a sudden flash of white light came from within the clump.
The Narutos nearest the center popped with a burst of jutsu-smoke, and the others jumped away, looking smug. The reason for the smugness became apparent once the smoke cleared. Chin's last brief flash of power had iced him to the ground. His needle-toothed mouth was open in a literally frozen scream, and as they watched, the pasty blue-white skin along his neck cracked with the splintering of ice, and his head fell off and rolled across the ground.
There was a pause.
Then, an abrupt babble of voices as the rest of the rebels began to surrender.
A few minutes later, once it appeared that the Lady's supporters had everything under control, there was a loud "poof" that left only one Naruto. With a grin, the blonde boy waltzed over to Sasuke and Shikamaru, who were standing by Kameko as one of the other creatures burned through the ice to get her leg free. "Did you miss me?" He asked, voice chipper.
Shikamaru snorted with a brief burst of laughter, and then covered his mouth in a sudden yawn. "Sa, so much trouble."
Naruto wrinkled his nose and then looked at Sasuke, who was staring at him with an unreadable look in his Sharingan-tinted eyes. They gazed at each other for almost a full minute, until Naruto began to fidget. Suddenly, the dark-haired boy reached forward and grabbed his chin. "Dobe," he muttered, studying the blonde curiously. His other hand reached up and pushed back Naruto's lip so he could get a look at the fangs. "Hm. What happened to you?"
Naruto pulled his head away with a jerk, and stared at Sasuke, half in challenge, half in fear. He stiffened his back and glared. "I'm different," he blustered.
One dark eyebrow lifted. "You've always been different, idiot. And loud. And annoying. Where'd you get the power, dobe?"
Naruto stared at him, uncharacteristically at a loss.
Sasuke shook his head. "I've seen this before, but it changed this time." The blonde could feel the sharingan studying him. "It's a permanent part of you now."
Naruto took a fortifying breath and suddenly lifted his head. "Yeah, well, I'm not completely human any more." Blue eyes narrowed, and spoke with forced flippantness. "I had a demon inside of me that gave me power sometimes, when I was in trouble. Now the demon-fox is out and looking humanish, and he apparently changed me on the way. Want to make something of it?" He glared at Sasuke challengingly.
"The demon-fox," Shikamaru interrupted, musing. "I get it. The nine-tailed fox demon that attacked the village all those years before. They sealed it in you." Once again, the lazy boy's brilliant mind had made the connection before anybody else. Then he frowned. "Wait a minute, he's out?"
Naruto ignored Shikamaru and continued to watch Sasuke's eyes wearily. Suddenly, the other ninja's eyes narrowed and his hand shot out to grab the blonde's chin again. Naruto barely managed to control a flinch. Then, surprisingly, Sasuke forcibly turned his head to the side and gently touched the side of his neck. "Where'd you get this?" He said suddenly, eyes narrowing in suspicion.
"What . . ." Naruto began, only to be interrupted by Shikamaru's surprised exclamation.
"Is that a hickey?"
Naruto suddenly blushed in mortification, and once again yanked his head away from Sasuke. "Didn't you hear what I said? I'm part demon!"
Sasuke was still glaring at his neck. "So. What." Then abruptly, "who touched you?"
Kameko suddenly shoved between them, dragging her injured leg slightly. Naruto had never been so happy for an interruption in his life. He could have kissed her, if not for the fact that it would probably set Sasuke off again. Naruto very deliberately did not think about why it would set the dark-haired ninja off. "Look, this isn't over yet. Mai and his goons still have the Lady, and I hear that the fox-demon is helping them."
Naruto looked at her. "Kyubi?" He frowned. "Yeah, I figured pervert-fox was doing something stupid." He turned to Shikamaru and Sasuke-of-the-glaring-eyes. "He's my responsibility. I've gotta stop him." A moment of uncertainty flittered through his blue eyes, but then his lip firmed. "One way or another."
"A lot of us are injured badly," Kameko said, gesturing at her bum leg. Then she glanced bleakly at the frozen bodies still incased in Chin's ice. "Or dead. But everyone who isn't is setting out to free the Lady. Will you help us?" This was directed at Shikamaru and Sasuke, as Naruto had already stated his position rather clearly.
Shikamaru sighed wearily. "Ah, why not? I suppose we are on a mission."
Sasuke continued staring at Naruto with narrowed eyes. "Yeah," he suddenly drawled. "I think we should meet this pervert-fox of yours." Sasuke had put two and two together, and come up with four, or rather, with fox.
Naruto looked at his glaring teammate, and gulped.
TBC
Author's Notes: Oh my, there are so many! Okay, first off, some of you may be wondering why the boys don't have any new or more powerful techniques at this age. The reason for this is because this story is a TWT (Timeline? What timeline?). And I don't like how old they are in the series (they're babies for goodness sakes!) so I'm moving ages up just because I can. Otherwise, they still know all their old techniques.
Also, Naruto's chakra and its effect on things like Chin's ice missile is a result of his demon mixed heritage. It's protecting him instinctively, kind of like Gaara's sand, only not as extreme. The rest you can probably figure out.
And yay! PlotLemmingBreeder made me fanart of Kyubi and Naruto! Head on over to take a peek, go to www. fanfiction. net profile.php?userid = 250813 (just take out the spaces) and click on her homepage. The picture is titled Trouble With Guardians. Hopefully, deviantart will allow us all to access it, if not, go back later.
All that's left to this story is one chapter and an epilogue. I'll be posting them both no later than one week from now. Thanks for reading!