Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the Naruto or Digimon franchises. Comments/Criticism is fine as long as it isn't straight up hate or flaming. If you do not like, no one is forcing you to read and you can just leave.
Warning: I will be mentioning the Digimon card game in this chapter, I do not know how to actually play and the rules I find are either in Japanese or badly translated and make no sense, so a good majority will probably be wrong or made up by yours truly. I will also be adding a bit that was suggested to me by an old online buddy of mine who passed a while ago. If this upsets you I apologize now and hope you understand.
Thank you and please enjoy
The Hybrid Tamer
-Chapter 4-
-Last Time-
"I thought so to at first, but I- oh hi there!" Naruto cut himself off as he waved cheerily to Rumiko and Rika who stood in the door way with shocked expressions as they stared at the smiling one-armed blonde sitting at their table.
At that moment, Seiko walked in with several plates of food. Seeing her daughter and granddaughter standing there, she smiled at them while setting the dishes on the table. "Morning sleeping beauties, you're just in time for breakfast."
-And Now-
An awkward silence filled the air as the Nonaka family and their odd guests ate breakfast. Rika and her mother were more focused on the one-armed blonde, and the tall anthropomorphic fox in Rumiko's case, sitting at the table than their own meals.
Naruto was completely oblivious to this as he had a bigger dilemma, using chopsticks with his non-dominate hand. Thankfully, Seiko helped him a bit while getting to know the mysterious blonde a bit better.
Renamon just didn't care about the stares, ignoring them in favor of eating.
"Thanks for the food Seiko-obaachan, it tastes almost as good as Ichiraku's!" Naruto said with a wide grin as he finished the last bite.
*Giggle* "It was no problem Naruto-san, from the way you've been praising the place I must be doing something right." Naruto had been telling her about his home while they ate. With every detail he told her about it though, the elderly woman's hidden worry and shock grew.
This boy told her a lot of fantastical things about actual ninja's, amazing abilities such as controlling the elements, and dangerous missions that no child should be on. If it wasn't for the fact she now had an actual digimon eating at her table and had seen the boy himself recover at a startling rate she would have been on the phone calling the nearest mental ward.
Instead, she listened intently to everything he said, making sure not to miss a single detail. "Speaking of which, maybe you should call home, I'm sure someone is worried about you right now." She suggested, hoping that she was wrong and that he was just being a kid with an over-active imagination.
"Huh? Oh! Right, Tsunade-Baachan is probably freaking right about now!" Naruto exclaimed before glancing at his missing arm. Looking around, his gazed settled on Rika who was sitting on his other side and still staring at him.
"Well, the phones over- What are you doing!?" Seiko yelled when Naruto suddenly bit his thumb hard enough for it to start bleeding. Instead of answering though, Naruto reached over and grabbed Rika's hand, making her squawk in surprise as she felt the blood smear onto her hand. Before anyone could react, the blonde made three odd signs with the hands before slamming his hand onto the table with the cry of "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"
*Poof*
Everyone but Naruto and Renamon started coughing loudly as the room was suddenly clouded with smoke. When it cleared, Rika's mother screamed in disgust as they spotted the new inhabitant of the room, a small orange toad with purple and black markings wearing a blue vest.
"Huh, where am- Naruto?' The small toad said as he looked around the room until he spotted the blonde.
"Gamakichi, good to see ya buddy!" Naruto said enthusiastically as he waved to the orange toad. "Could you get a message to Tsunade-baachan and Ero-sennin, I kinda got myself into a little trouble." He said while gesturing to his missing arm.
Gamakichi looked at him with a deadpan. "Oh really? I thought you were always missing an arm." He stated sarcastically, making Naruto grumble about 'wiseass summons,' "So other than the obvious, anything else I should tell them?"
"Yeah, I'm in some place called… uhhhh. Seiko-baachan, what's this place called again?" Naruto asked the elderly woman as Gamakichi face-palmed.
"We're in Shinjuku dear," Seiko said with a weak smile as she looked between him and the talking toad on her table.
"Right, I'll get it right to them… I'm sure they'll be willing to lend a hand! Ha!" *Poof* Gamakichi said with a laugh before disappearing into a puff of smoke.
Naruto growled while glaring at the spot the toad had disappeared as he clenched the table hard enough he embedded his fingers into the wood. "Stupid smartass toads." He started to grumble again before slowly standing up and turning to Renamon. "Can you show me to the bathroom, I need a bath."
"Sure," Renamon said, placing her own chopsticks down on the empty plate as she stood up, stopping for only a moment to pull her tail free when it snagged on the chair she was sitting on. Once they were both gone, silence reigned over the dining room for several minutes until Rika stood up.
"I'm going for a walk." She stated bluntly, dropping her mostly untouched plate by the sink, washed the blood off her hands… again, and marched out the front door.
Meanwhile in the bathroom, Naruto had an light blush of embarrassment across his face as Renamon stood behind him dragging one of her clawed digits down the back of his shirt. Without his other arm, he needed the blonde fox's help just to undress. With how damaged most of his clothing was though, this mostly resulted with her essentially cutting the tattered remnants off of him.
"Done," Renamon stated as reached as she reached the bottom of the bloody shirt, causing it to slowly peel off and fall onto his destroyed jacket.
"Thanks for the he… w-w-what a-are y-y-you doing?" Naruto stuttered out, his blush deepening when she had him turn around and started sniffing around his bandages. She didn't answer right away, instead continuing to sniff the injuries reddened wrapping thoroughly. After a minute or so she finally backed away with a satisfied nod before swiftly slicing through them, making them land in the pile of ruined clothing.
Instead of revealing the bloody gash and gory stump that was there just a few hours ago though, it showed everything to be completely healed. The only evidence of said injuries were the still missing arm and a narrow pink scar that sat directly over Naruto's heart.
"I was checking if it was safe to remove the bandages," She stated neutrally while flicking the trace amounts of blood off her claws. "It was."
"…Okay, I'll just… take a bath now…" Naruto said nervously, slightly intimidated by the sight.
"Do as you want," Renamon replied as she vanished in a blur of motion.
"…I wonder if she can teach me how to do that?" Naruto thought aloud as he made sure the door was closed and locked before going to the tub next to the shower and started filling it. "Seriously, pretty much everybody I know can do something like that but me." Memories of Kakashi, Gaara, Jiraiya, and others using the shunshin to vanish like that played through his mind as he pulled off his pants.
Unknown to him, Renamon was still in the room, hiding in the shadows of the surprisingly tall ceiling as she observed him sink into the warm water. Ever since she had that dream she had been interested in the boy. That interest only peaked even further when she saw not only his extremely rapid recovery from almost guaranteed lethal injuries but his ability to summon other beings.
Also during the entirety of breakfast, while it looked like she had been ignoring everything but her food, she had in fact been carefully listening to Naruto as he described his misadventures. Thanks to her many years of experience, Renamon was easily able to tell that he had been telling the truth about the majority of it all.
All of this put together led to the prospect of a much worthier Tamer to make her stronger than Rika. But then again, that was only the first impression. So, just like with Rika, she would observe him until she felt she had enough information to make her final decision.
-With Rika-
The red-headed girl marched down the streets of Shinjuku at a steady pace, her hands stuffed in her pockets, and her eyes staring blankly at her feet. Her mind was running a mile a minute as she tried to process what had happened over the last… seven hours? Eight? It felt likes days.
As much as she hated to admit it, last night's events had left her shaken, very, very shaken. One of the reasons she didn't eat breakfast was because every time she looked at the blonde next to her, visions of him laid out on the floor covered in blood. Even now she could swear she felt the warm, squishy, bloody tissue between her fingers as his face quickly paled…
'Dang it! Get out of my head!' She shouted mentally as she shook her head on frustration. 'This isn't you. You are strong, you are independent. Not some weak little girl that gets squeamish from a little… blood.' She couldn't repress the shiver that ran down her spine as she thought of the life-giving fluid before growling in annoyance, making the few bystanders around her inch away cautiously.
'Get it together Rika!' She told herself as she marched into her favorite card shop. 'Forget about him. Focus on the cards,' With that she submerged herself into the world of digimon trading cards. She checked for new booster pack releases, examined individual rare card sales, and even stopped at a return bin where she dumped a few junk cards she had on hand for in-store credit.
She had finally settled for a few data-type booster packs and was heading towards the checkout when she passed a shelf she hadn't noticed before with several packs on display that she hadn't seen before. It was a large sign next to it with a picture of a white Wargreymon with ice surrounding it and a bunch of writing and a large arrow pointing to a stack of booklets.
'How in the world did I miss this?' She wondered as she read the sign.
Say hello to the all-new Elemental Mode and Elemental Type cards!
Infuse your deck with the power of Ice, Fire, Wind, Light, Dark, and so much more!
For more details please take a pamphlet!
Intrigued, she grabbed one of the booklets and started reading. It described how with this new release, the game would now consider elemental alignment in the attack/defense statistics. To make it even more interesting, the new Elemental Mode Cards could be used to change a digimon's natural affinity to a more desired one, such as turning an Ice-type to Water-type when fighting a Fire-type.
Rika found this both cool and irritating, cool since it would add a whole new level of challenge when playing against others, but irritating since that meant she would have to entirely restructure her deck to account for the numerous new weaknesses it now had. Such as how decks now had to have forty per deck instead of thirty to compensate or the new card mechanics.
Grabbing a few of the new booster packs, she checked out and started heading back home, the events of last night completely forgotten… for now.
-End Chapter-
AN: Sorry for the shorter than usual chapter. The Elemental Card thing was, as I explained at the top, an idea an old online buddy gave me, TheWolfKing975, before they passed two years ago. I am glad I finally have a reason to use it and hope you all liked it as well. As for those confused by Renamon's behavior, when she and Rika first became partners, all the foxy digimon cared about was using Rika to get stronger. Since she still has this mindset and hasn't developed her bond with Rika yet, she sees Naruto as a potential better choice and as such is considering possibly 'trading up'.
Also, to make up for the shortness of this chapter, please enjoy this Omake I had planned for later in the story.
-Learning the Internet-
"So this really holds information about anything you can think of?" Naruto asked excitedly as he sat in front of a state of the art desktop. Rika stood beside him with an exasperated expression as she watched him looked over the results of typing 'ramen' into search engine and start drooling.
She had just spent the last three hours explaining and demonstrating how to use the device after he got curious from watching her use it to do her school work. "Just about. Now I'm going to go get something to eat. Renamon, make sure he doesn't do anything stupid while I'm gone." She ordered, looking to a dark corner just as her partner 'appeared'.
"Yes Rika," The fox said in her usual monotone as she moved over to Naruto's side with her eyes focused on the screen. Satisfied, the red-head left, the door slamming slightly as it shut behind her.
Renamon remained completely silent as she watched her possible new Tamer search up a variety of random things, including but not limited to ramen, ninjas, toads, and more ramen. Despite not showing it, Renamon felt a small spark of interest as she looked over the variety of results that came up from the boy's series of random searches.
"Hey Renamon, how do you spell your name? I'm kinda curious as to what it'll lead to." Naruto said after he looked up his own name and ended up with several pictures of whirlpools and narutomaki.
"R-e-n-a-m-o-n," She stated blandly, hiding her own curiosity as she watched the boy type in her name.
"Got it, and search," Naruto said dramatically as he hit the enter button…
…only for a look of absolute shock to appear on both his and Renamon's faces as the results quickly popped up on the screen.
-With Rika-
*CRAAAACK!*
Rika had just gotten back to the door of the room she'd left Naruto and Renamon in with a half-eaten sandwich in her hand when she heard the sound of something breaking rang out in the air. Rushing into the room, she could only blink in shock at the sight of an unconscious Naruto with blood streaming out of his nostrils and a horrified/embarrassed looking Renamon who currently had her burning fist punched clean through the computer screen.
"What the heck happened in here?!"
Her question would go unanswered for many, many years.
-End Omake-
