Wow, lots of things happened since last week, some bad, some good, and some depressing…

First thing, my report card, I got four 90's (economics, psychology, normal history and advanced history), four 80's and two 70's. The only bad grade was in literature (58), and I got it cuz I was just too lazy to do anything in the last test. What I realized is that school makes us lose our self esteem, don't let it get you. Youaren't as stupid as they want you to believe you are.

Secondly: I'm out of burnable CD-ROMs, which is a devastating blow to my anime needs, for already two days I can't watch anything new, since I'm totally out of free space in my hard drive.

Third thing, I'm not only tired, but now I'm sick as well, it's really annoying, and I hate it, I feel like I can throw up any second now…

On the bright side, I got a lot of reviews for the last chapter. So there'll be a lot of shout outs (!).

Chapter 8: One Family

The bowl-headed demon launched his own attack on Karen, a series of advanced Taijutsu, "So fast, no openings!" she cursed; she could barely block his assault, and couldn't even come close to counter-attack him. The second demon didn't attack yet, but he followed the battle precisely, waiting for his chance to slip in the attack. A hard kick to the stomach sent Karen flying to the air, for her great surprise, the demon didn't continue the onslaught and just left the place. The second demon, he was modeled after a shinobi named Zabuza, started his ritual of seals, a large blast of water shaped as a dragon hit her, sending her smashing into a wall.

Hob already accepted the fact that he was a dead man when he saw the sand demon running towards him. He had no way to escape, he closed his eyes and hoped for a painless death.

***Swish!!!***

"you shouldn't give up on life, boy" he heard a female voice, Hob looked up to see a blond haired woman, she was beautiful "just like Karen.." he thought, his eyes gazed past her, he saw that her hand was covered in blood, but the hand was planted in the sand shinobi's throat, her hand was suddenly getting cleaner, just like when they fought the creature before, the blood vaporized into thin air.

"Can't… breathe…" Doro muttered, air was squeezed out of his lungs; the slug was chocking him with immense force, Doro could only pray for salivation at that point, and he didn't even matter who would be his savior, even if it was Hob and he was doing it in front of Karen and impressing her into a long-term relationship, all that Doro wanted in that point was to live on. He was losing his eyesight when he suddenly felt that his body accelerated for a small part of the second and then hit the ground, he immediately took in as much air as he could, then he heard a few more sounds, he could tell they were coming from an open handed attack meeting a soft material, such as a body of slug, he smiled to himself.

"This one is o.k., he just needs to regain his breath" Neji shouted, "this one is a bit scared, but nothing else!" Reilla shouted back, they broke the rules of the chunin exam by interfering and saving the kids, but the exam has only begun, and if the kids didn't have what it took to be chunins, no amount of help will get them there.

"we deeply thank you for saving our lives, we in your debt forever" Hob and Doro said in union, the woman came from the cloud hidden village and the man came from an un-identified one, Hob looked at the man's face, or to be exact, the man's eye, "totally white, like Kare… Karen! What happened to her? Where is she?" he panicked, Doro joined him quickly, he hated to think that Karen was in danger and he wasn't around to help her. "I didn't see anyone else around, only you two" Reilla said, "me either… wait a second, did you say Karen? What's her last name?" Neji started to worry, not only that he'll have to meet her, she was also near one of the greatest demons nest at the village, which was the old apartment of Naruto.

"Damn, I have a terrible headache…" Karen complained to herself, she was buried under the rubble of stone, it was to dark for her eyes to see anything, "guess you'll have to crawl out of here" the kyubi said, Karen threw her hands at her side, and tried to push the stones back and revel the light, "no use, the stones are too heavy, that Zabuza guy got me hard with his water blast" she crawled with her hands searching in front of her for obstacles.

After ten minutes of crawling she found herself in a small room, filled with demonic stench. "my, my, what a coincidence it is… looks like we're just where you wanted us to be, this used to be your father's place, and now it's a nesting den for the demons here" the Kyubi mentioned, he still remembered the day that Naruto stopped calling this apartment  home, the place didn't change much since then.

"Damn, this place is a wreck, you know? Time really messed it up..." Karen stated, pieces of unidentified trash were scattered on the floor, and the walls that didn't fall down were filled with holes in them.

"no, actually, it is probably the best preserved place around, this is almost the same as when your father left it, he just didn't take good care of it" the Kyubi said with a nostalgic voice, nobody touched it since, they leaf people considered it as a hunted place, the fox demon couldn't blame them, as the place was now one of the more attractive places for demons…

"So what's with these holes in the wall? They just happened to be there before?" Karen asked; the place was an un-livable dump, even compared to her apartment, which was considered un-inhabitable by everyone from the sound she ever met.

"not really, when Naruto was about 14 he got an idea to use my power in one of his jutsus, but he forgot how hard it was for him to learn the first time and when he tried combining them the chackra got out of control and blasted the holes and almost killed your father, after two days he woke up and decided not to practice that jutsu in a small room ever again" the nine-tailed demon said, he remembered how much he laughed at Naruto after the accident.

'hmp, so what was that jutsu anyway? You better not tell me it was something stupid that got him nowhere" Karen asked, she wasn't sure what she should think about her father at that moment, on one side, she was getting to know everything about him, but on the other side, she hated what she learned, her father was everything she didn't want to be, a loser with no logic and just a stupid passion for a title, it was just like Sasuke and Sakura treated her, always asking her what she would want to accomplish or what she would wish to be in the future.

"Her name is Karen Uzumaki… when I think of it; she kinda looks like you two…" Hob said, his mind stopped when he heard what he said, Karen didn't look 'kinda' like them, Karen had the blond hair of Reilla and the eyes of Neji, she moved in the exact same foxy way that Reilla walked, and she held her eyes straight like Neji's.

"Can it be that you two are her… parents?" Doro asked, his mind was filled with the same thoughts as Hob's, But Karen lived alone, and she was an ex-leaf, the woman in front of them was a cloud shinobi, but Doro couldn't think of the resemblance as just a coincidence.

Reilla looked at Neji's face, it was pale and she knew that her face were pale none-the-less, Neji told her that from all the investigators that ever came to the leaf, she attracted the highest amount of demons, Neji hypothesis was that the since the demons were drawn out of Naruto's memory, they went after people from his past, "but Karen, his daughter, how will they react to her…" she wondered, a picture came to her mind.

 she saw once how the demons were born, the chackra pool started whirling faster but grew smaller at the same time, all of the chackra liquid focused itself at one single point, after a minute it begun to rise, and seconds later it was a pillar of spinning chackra, after the vortex calmed, a demon was floating above the pool. Neji had his mind occupied on the same thing, he didn't know today's Karen, but he remembered the playful little girl that Naruto asked him to take after before going on missions, she used to call him "niijii" and tried to poke his eyes out. And now she was around the most dangerous places at the whole fire country, alone against an army of demonic shinobies.

"I will take the silence as a yes, I have a shitload of questions for you two, but you should answer them to Karen, she's the one you left behind" Doro said, misunderstanding the two. "You got it wrong, we're indeed related to her, but we are certainly not her parents, but it doesn't matter, where is she?" Neji replied immediately, he couldn't believe that the genins thought him and Reilla as Karen's parents; they weren't THAT comfortable with each other…

"dunno, she was fighting these two demons before, one with a giant sword and a boy with a freaky bowly haircut, she said she could handle them but she looked really tired after fighting the first bunch and kicking their asses" now that Hob thought on it, Karen wasn't necessary in such a bad position, other than her weird chackra control, she was a top sound ninja, both in terms of body and mind, and from the part of her fight he *did* see, she also had learned a handful of amazing jutsus.

"look under the sink, there should be a bunch of scrolls that your father kept, mainly variations that he made for his own jutsus" the demon suggested, as much as Karen tried, she couldn't find any interest in her father's apartment, and nighttime was growing closer, and she still needed to find her teammates and set up for the night. "if they are still alive" she suddenly thought to herself, for her great surprise, it actually got her worried, not just the fact that she might need to cut off sleeping this night, but the fact that Hob and Doro could have been hurt, she then realized that ever since the incident with Shally, she started to think about them more and more, she actually found herself angry at them when they sparred recklessly with each other.

 "Oh my! Its female feelings! I just have to get out of this body!" the nine tailed fox said in highly amused voice, he knew that being trapped in humans was helping him learn how mortals thought, but he never imagined that he could get an insight on female psychology, it was a chance that he never came to think about.

Karen was about to stop the demon from pondering on his new chance when she heard a loud sound, she looked outside to see a colorful flare at the air, "the first quitter of the exam" she thought to herself.

-------=----------=-------------

"you – are – not - her" the teenaged boy said, he was so close, the girl he caught did have blond hair, but she was not the one he looked for, he laughed at her pathetic try to call for help through the flash bang, she might have thought he was one of the other ninjas, as she handed him a scroll of some sort, but he didn't mind it, he allowed his hand to manifest into a claw, a swift motion cut her left leg off, she managed to shoot up the flare before he hit her again.

This time sending her into a large bush, he allowed the chackra to run to his mouth, his breath of flame quickly embarked the girl; he turned back, into his home for the past 8 years, which was the only place that was somewhat close to a home. He saw two of the huge demon gang that nested near his father's house, he called the two, a quick touch was all he needed, and they both vanished, leaving their so-called memories to him.

He got on his four and continued running, he heard from behind him the older man coming, he wondered how many more mistakes he could afford to make before they all run away. He hated himself for sending just a dog out on that important survey mission, but it was the best he could provide for the meanwhile. He sniffed the air, he smelled four people, two kids older than him, a man and a woman, both the adults were around for the past few weeks, he thought many times about talking to them but always decided against it, they just didn't know, only she could possibly know.

----Chapter 8 – one family – ended with a cliffhanger-----

Yay, a new character, who is one of my favorites, based on some berserk manga issues and Trigun thoughts, got to love' it.

Shout outs (!):

Synaptix:

Here's a small hint, the jutsu was used in a flashback, and it wasn't referred to by its name, if you look over the old story again, you'll find it. About Karen's character, she was raised in a different way from Naruto, so she deals with things differently, and besides, she angst sometimes, and how can anyone hate angsting characters?

RuByMoOn17:

Yep, chunin exams are cool, but we all know that it won't go according to plan, never.

So you noticed the demons? That neat, I decided that every advanced blood-line should be explained through some involvement by demons, wait for the Hyuuga history!

hmr:

Karen meeting Reilla? It would have to be a happy family reunion, right? Cuz I only write fluffy happy scenes, right? By the way, what does the name 'hmr' stand for, is it 'hiten mitsuguritsi ryu' from kenshin?

X2DarkLord:

Your nick sounded familiar so I checked and you're the guy who wrote some Kyubi focused stories! Why did ya stop? I really liked reading them… anyway, you're right, the demons are the demon brothers (chain), Zabuza (big sword), Lee (bowel head), Baki (sand forehead protector) and a random summoned slug (slug…), you're prize is a virtual cookie. And when I say virtual cookie – I don't mean a real cookie, or even a virtual manifestation of a cookie, it's just a token of appreciation without any legal bindings…

Eikou:

Actually, I wrote last week's shout outs (!) in 2 AM, so I was tired, worried about the report cards and then English project, and now I'm just tired and sick (we handed the damn project! Whoo hoo!) the report card was really nothing special, all I know is that next semester I should work hard on English (so I could do my finals and get over it this year), Math (to get good grade on the ridiculously easy final exam) and that I should remember to zerox someone's note in bible and literature, other than that, I can keep living as I've done until today, wasting my time between animes and the gym.

Oh, and I one of the 'get depressed and suicide' type of people, so I get depressed easily, I guess that's why I like angst stories, it's like sharing my pain with the world, yay.

Hattuteline:

Doing the same chunin exam again? Am I crazy or something? After it was clearly stated that they don't do the same exam year after year? Did you really believe I would bore you with ten chapters of preliminary fights between characters you just don't care about? I hope you give me more credit than that… I really liked the first exam and I think it's one of the anime's smartest things, but since I couldn't think of anything like that I just moved to the survival team exam with slight modifications.

The demons? They aren't as strong as the originals, but they act the same, they think the same (to the extent demons, made out of chackra, can think) and they attack the same, according to the restrictions on them.

Hyate? Was he a chunin? I'm pretty sure he was an ANBU (and therefore, a jounin), but I can't find his rank anywhere in the mange.

Oh yeah, I just remembered something funny we had today in history class, we're learning about WWII start, and when you ignore all the millions of people who died there, the course of war was damn funny.

Poland invasion: million Germans with tanks against a few soldiers on foot and horses running\riding respectably towards their death while the Germans take them out like ducks, besides, can any of you imagine the polish people fight? I sure can't… Norway\Denmark invasion: same thing, all the Germans had to do was to step on the island, shoot the drunk soccer fan and then declare "ve are the Nazis! Thiss land is vours!" and that's the end of the story. France: now this is the funny part,  France built this great defense line, but stopped it at Holland\Belgium, they counted on the Dutch people to stop the Germans from advancing… and after the Germans got to France borderline, they thought the Germans won't go through the mountains, so they took all of their army to the horizontal land, but surprise, the Germans went through the mountains (which were at the end of the French defense line, so they basically walked to the end of the wall) and defeated the French army like the sissies they are. Now all they had left was the British help army on France territory, it appears that the German commanders argued for two days on who will get to kill the brits while Britain sent all of there ships to bring the soldiers back, so after the Germans finally decided who will attack the Englishmen, they found out that they lost their chance.

Anyway, I know war is awful and WWII in particular, but there are some things you just can't ignore and be serious about, like counting on Dutch people to protect you from Germany.

Oh, and it might sound like I hate the Europeans, but it's not true, I only hate French people.

Keep it real, till next week.