AN: This chapter came out amazingly easy. I wrote this in perhaps 30 minutes, without deleting anything and I hadn't even though about it until I started writing it XD Well, I had a general idea of course, but I threw a lot of random things in for the heck of it.
This chapter came out FAST(er) O.O I was so surprised, I just felt like continuing this, since I'm so in love with this x3. I love writing fantasy/fairytales/anything that makes you able to do whatever you want without needing to research a lot of stuff to still make it believable XD. I love making up my own little things x3. I guess that's why I love AU-fics XDD.
Also, someone asked if I could throw in some NejiGaara o.o… I personally don't really like this pairing, I'm sorry XD I'm a big fan of LeeGaara –shifty eyes- Why are you looking at me like that? XD
LeeGaara is just cute x3
Anyway, let's see who I can pair Neji up with… 'cause a sexy guy like him should have his own bishie, right? o.o Well, if there are requests for Neji, I might listen to them x3. Except when it's Gaara… 'cause Gaara belongs to Lee. Right Lee? –huggles Lee plushie-
And on a final note (All of you: YES! FINALLY), I laughed my ass of from 'Tralala's' comment regarding chapter 4 XD I would've replied to that personally… but I couldn't T.T -smacks her- (I'll assume that you're a girl o.o). AND I'D LIKE TO THANK ALL OF MY OTHER REVIEWERS WHO ARE JUST AS AWESOME AS SHE IS! XD (and maybe awesomer x3)
Anyway, hope you don't find this one boring –sweat drops- there's not a lot of action going on here. Well, maybe the last part –grins-.
Enjoy and review! –puppy eyes-
The Prince And The Fox
By SmexLemur
Chapter 6: Those Three Little Words
"Where is he?" Sasuke asked Kakashi for the tenth time that evening. "He was supposed to be here three hours ago! How difficult is it to deliver a letter?" Kakashi had to hide a chuckle—the Prince had been worked up about Naruto's well-being (even though he would never admit that, of course) for the past couple of hours.
"Your Highness, I think Naruto is just staying at Neji for the night, after all, the storm is rather heavy," Kakashi pointed out. "We should just wait until tomorrow, unless you want to go search for him that is…" the silver-haired man resisted the urge to wiggle his eyebrows and instead opted to just smile cheerfully at him (though Sasuke wouldn't be able to see that, considering the mask he was wearing). The Uchiha sighed in frustration as he paced around frantically.
Perhaps he was just overreacting, perhaps Naruto really was staying with Neji for the night, but that wouldn't seem like Neji at all. The Lord usually was cold towards servants and would put them on the street even when the heaviest typhoon was raging. Sasuke shook his head and thought of the other option: Naruto could've found shelter in the village nearby, right? He could've just as easily stayed with a kind farmer.
But then… there was the other one. He saw it in his mind—a blonde boy lying in the mud, his body motionless and his head dripping with blood from the fall. The horse was nowhere to be seen and Naruto had obviously broken his neck while falling or had frozen to death or—
He shook his head again. Why was he panicking so much? He had only known the obnoxious servant for five days, damn it! Hardly enough to even care for someone, right? Besides, he didn't care for anyone at all, no matter how long he had known them. Well, perhaps he cared a little for Kakashi…
"We search for him first thing in the morning," was the determined reply from Sasuke. "Notify Kiba and tell him to have our horses ready at sunrise." Kakashi blinked for a second, unable to believe his ears. Sasuke was actually willing to look for a servant? He shook his head and suppressed a chuckle.
It seemed as if miracles still existed.
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"WHAT IS THIS!" Naruto hollered the next morning as he stood in front of the mirror, staring at it.
His reflection was staring right back at him, but something was different on his human body. And that something was a huge difference, because that something would raise a lot of questions when people would see him. Right on top of his head, two tips of ears peeked out from his mop of blonde hair. This would've been fine—had he been a fox, of course. But fox ears did NOT belong on top of a human's head!
"How—what!—How could this happen?" he stammered over and over again as he tried to search for answers by replaying the conversation he had with Kyuubi. He couldn't remember anything about turning back to a fox, unless he had told Sasuke his true feelings (whatever that meant), if he had told Sasuke he was a fox or if his time was up. Well, neither of those seemed to be it, so then what?
"Kyuubi!" Naruto hollered, completely forgetting that there were other people in the mansion and that he could easily wake them up.
There was no answer, nor did he expect any.
"Kyuubiiiiiiii," the blonde continued to whine as he pulled on his fox ears. Perhaps if he would wear a hat, nobody would notice?
"What is it, kit?" a deep voice sounded through the room, before a boy with long, wild and dark red hair appeared. He had the same whisker marks on his cheeks as Naruto had and a mischievous look in his red eyes—when he grinned, Naruto could see the fangs. "What did you want now? Not satisfied?" Naruto blinked once.
"Y—you're Kyuubi? What happened to the scary 'hey, look at me! I'm a big giant fox with nine tails and I'm gonna eat you'- look?" The boy gave him a grin, chuckling lightly. The kit certainly was amusing.
"I can hardly appear in this tiny room in that form. I would break down the house and I don't really want to get any attention from these damn Hyuuga's. People are hunting me enough as it is," he explained, shrugging a bit as he flopped on the bed. "Anyway, what do you want? I swear that whiny voice got on my nerves, otherwise I wouldn't have even bothered." Naruto's eye twitched.
"I didn't exactly expect you to appear," he admitted. Kyuubi shrugged.
"I hafta keep an eye on you. If you, you know, break the rules I set and stuff. Plus it's rather entertaining to watch you and the Prince fight constantly. I haven't had this much fun in a couple of hundred years," he replied, giving Naruto a devilish grin. "So, what is it? I haven't got all day."
"It's this," the blonde said, pointing at the fox ears. Kyuubi gave him a confused blink, before he mouthed an 'oh'. "Well, what's the meaning of this? Am I turning back in a fox? And why the hell didn't I know! What, you think Neji's gonna let me go when I have fox ears sprouting out of my head?" Naruto said, flailing his arms. The red-haired demon gave him another shrug.
"Guess I forgot to mention that," he said. "When you're too long and too far away from the Uchiha, you slowly turn back to your own form, because I can't have you running away from your duties," he said, giving him a grin. "I somehow had to ensure you would at least stay with the Prince, so I managed to come up with this!" Naruto pouted.
"Yeah, well, I only am here to deliver a message for Neji. I wasn't planning on running or anything," he declared. Kyuubi waved an arm around.
"Yeah, yeah," he scrunched his nose a bit, before mimicking Naruto's voice, " 'I'm Naruto and I won't go back on my word!', right?" The blonde blinked for a moment.
"…I really sound like that?" Kyuubi barked a laugh.
"Yeah, you now understand what I had to endure for the past five minutes?" Naruto gave him another pout, before jumping on the bed as well, landing on his knees.
"So what do I have to do about the ears? Are they staying or not?"
"Nah, you just have to go back to the Prince, or the Prince has to come here. They'll disappear right away," he added. Naruto gave him a scowl.
"Anything else you forgot to mention to me about this whole thing?" he asked him, just to be safe.
"Hm, I don't think so," he said, rubbing the back of his head. "Well, guess I'll be off then. I got humans to eat(1), tails to groom, stuff like that," he trailed off, blinking when Naruto suddenly pounced on him.
"Hey, hey! Why do you wanna help Sasuke anyway? What's in it for you?" Naruto narrowed his eyes. "And don't give me that 'I still owed the Uchiha's'-crap, 'cause if you do that, you need to tell me why you owe them and why you didn't help them out eight years ago when they all got murdered! If you had done that then, the Prince wouldn't have been this unhappy in the first place," Naruto added as an afterthought. Kyuubi pried the boy off of him, ruffling his hair in the process.
"I didn't owe them anything back then," he explained finally. "Two years ago, there were a bunch of demon-hunters and they were trying to get me. Your little Prince helped me then, saying that if he ever needed a favour, I needed to give him whatever he wanted. Well," the fox-demon let out a low chuckle. "I don't like being ordered around. I could've taken down those demon-hunters myself, had he not interfered. Anyway, he still saved me, I suppose, but I didn't ask for it." Naruto blinked, before his face broke out in a grin.
"I see, so you're helping him out now, without him asking you? So you're basically giving him unwanted help? He's not gonna like that," Naruto said, smirking a bit. Kyuubi nodded, grinning at the expression on Naruto's face. Ah, how he liked messing with arrogant humans like Sasuke… it was so much fun to see them get angry when they didn't get what they wanted.
"That, and it's funny to watch the whole drama. We demons need some form of entertainment and eating humans does get boring after a while, especially if you're already a thousand years old. Besides, if I did grant him a favour, he'd probably just use it for something stupid."
"Naruto!" a voice called out from behind the door to his bedroom. Naruto recognised it to be the voice of the servant he had met the day before, TenTen. "Are you alright? I heard someone screaming," she continued. Naruto looked at Kyuubi nervously.
"Well, I'll see ya later, kit," the fox-demon said, ruffling Naruto's hair once again, before disappearing. The blonde blinked once, before he heard another pound on his door.
"I'm alright," he called out quickly, straightening his hair a bit and putting on his black nightcap. It had been a gift from Iruka the first night he came to the castle and he always took it with him—it had been, after all, the first gift he had ever gotten in his life, so it was a precious thing for him. He opened the door, revealing TenTen.
"Prince Sasuke has arrived only minutes ago, apparently he was worried for your well-being," she stated, smiling a little. Naruto blinked once, before his eyes widened.
"W—what, really? Why!" TenTen shook her head with an amused look.
"No idea, but he seemed to be mad about something," she said.
"Was it about me?" Naruto asked immediately, again a shake of her head.
"Well, you had something to do with it," she bit her lip. "But Lord Neji was the one he was mad at. I don't know why, but His Highness always blames others—" she immediately slapped her hand against her mouth, her eyes widened. "I'm sorry! I shouldn't have said that!"
"Don't worry about it, Ten," he said, grinning. "I knew that too, I guess that's one of his many flaws, huh? You shouldn't be afraid to speak your mind, y'know," he stated, blinking a little when she visibly relaxed at the friendly tone in his voice. She had been rather afraid he would get mad and would tell the Prince what she had said—that would definitely earn her a beating or perhaps she would even be locked up.
"Anyway, they both request your presence," she told him, before giggling softly. "And you might want to take that off." She pointed at his nightcap, which was resting perfectly on top of his head. He gave her another grin.
"Nah, I love this hat!" It was partly true of course—he didn't know if his ears had disappeared yet, so he didn't want to risk it. Especially not with Sasuke around. He ran down the stairs as the bundle of energy that he was and entered the same room he had been in with Neji the last evening. Both men turned when they heard him enter—Neji with a very wide smirk on his face and Sasuke with a scowl.
"Why didn't you come back to the castle yesterday?" he demanded, walking over to him and grabbing his upper arm. Naruto winced at the harsh touch and the harsh tone. "Did Neji do something to you? Are you hurt?" he asked, glaring over at Neji, whose face hadn't changed ever since Naruto had entered the room.
"N—no!" Naruto said, yanking his arm away. "But you're hurting me now!" he said angrily. "And why do you even care? You've ignored me for the last couple of days and now you're acting all worried! What are you, bipolar or something?"
"Is he always like this towards you, Naruto?" Neji asked in that usual soft and deep voice. Naruto blinked once, focusing his eyes on the other boy. "If you want, you could always stay here with me. You will be treated much better, I can assure you that," he continued, giving Sasuke a small smirk, who was fuming.
"Know your place, Lord Neji," he said through clenched teeth, before taking Naruto roughly by the arm and leading him outside into the hallway. "Grab your things, we're leaving. I assume your horse is in the stables?" Naruto nodded, his eyes refusing to even look at the Prince right now. What the hell was going on with him? Naruto really was at a loss and the urge to take Neji up on that offer was growing as the seconds ticked away.
He walked stiffly up the stairs to grab his clothes, which had been drying all throughout the night. He then suddenly remembered the letter he was supposed to bring Hinata and hurriedly walked into his room to fish out the letter. He looked at a startled TenTen, who had already begun cleaning up his room and quickly asked her where Hinata was staying.
"Thanks and bye!" he called out as he quickly dashed out, heading towards the bedroom TenTen had given him directions to. When he arrived at the door, he politely knocked on it, gave a startled Hinata the letter and hurried off again, leaving the Hyuuga heiress in a confused manner. Naruto figured she could just send a messenger if she wanted to reply to Kiba's obvious declaration of love—she probably had enough trustworthy messengers herself anyway. Kiba had just been an exception, since he was merely a servant.
He quickly said goodbye to Neji (who didn't seem happy about the fact that Naruto was leaving), before hurrying off, completely forgetting that he was still wearing the abominable nightcap.
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When they arrived back at the castle, it was utter chaos. Kiba was running around in circles, chasing a dog who apparently didn't want to get a bath, Shikamaru was sitting lazily underneath a tree while watching the clouds, Iruka was being molested by a guard named Genma (Kakashi promptly jumped off his horse to chase him away from his boyfriend) and anything else that might go wrong, was going wrong right there.
However, one glare from Prince Sasuke fixed it all. Everybody immediately went back to their jobs.
"Your Highness," a male servant came up to him, panting slightly. "Lady Sakura(2) has arrived this morning. It seems she wanted to surprise you, but since you weren't here… well, she's in a bit of a foul mood." Sasuke visibly paled when the man mentioned her name, but nodded. "Good luck, sir," the servant said, giving him a small nod, before hurrying off again.
"Who's Sakura?" Naruto asked curiously, as they walked towards the castle. Sasuke briefly stopped walking.
"She's my fiancé," he said and with a few swift strides, he entered the palace doors.
Naruto's heart shattered in pieces when he heard those three little words.
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(1) So, I don't know if that's actually true XD I don't think so at least x.x But I think I made Kyuubi joke about that. Yes, a little scary, but it was a joke nonetheless o.o… Poor Kyu-chan has a bad sense of humour, but that's why I love him x3 –huggles-
(2) Let the Sakura-bashing begin! I mean, I do like her in the manga XD but… I needed another evil person and I could only think of her, really o.o… x.x ah well XD