Naruto and Red were still walking through Viridian Forest, and Naruto was starting to get impatient to get to Pewter City.
"Hey Red, are we almost there?" Naruto asked enthusiastically.
She sighed,"For the hundrenth time Naruto, we're not there yet, it'll probably take atleast two more days at the least."
He put his head down then said,"But we've been traveling in here for a whole four days already!"
"Yes Naruto, we have," Red replied. Suddenly, she stopped walking.
"What's wrong?" Naruto asked, instantly alert.
"Something's been bothering me for a while, and I finally figured out what it was." She replied.
"What is it?"
"Well, we haven't run into any wild Pokemon ever since we got here."
"Well, I caught Kurama," Naruto said.
"Yeah, but I don't think Vulpix are native to this forest, something strange is going on."
"What do you think it is?"
Red shook her head,"I don't know, Naruto, I don't know."
"Umm, do you think we should keep walking?" Naruto asked her.
She nodded," Yeah, probably, just be alert, I feel like this isn't just a natural occurance."
Naruto nodded,"Alright, dattebayo."
"By the way, why do you say that so much?"
"Say what?"
"Dattebayo," she said.
Naruto shrugged," I don't know, I've just always said it."
Red sighed, then started walking again, she had been trying to understand him ever since they'd met, and was failing miserably.
(...)
That night, there was another presence in the forest. A single dark figure walked silently through the forest, toward the two sleeping figures. He stopped about a foot away from Naruto.
Suddenly, Naruto's eyes popped open, he felt as though someone was there. He sat up, careful not to disturb the sleeping Vulpix in his jacket. He'd learned the hard way that it didn't like to awoken by anyone. He looked around, and saw the dark shape of a man looming over him.
Naruto sprang up, ignoring the protesting of Kurama.
"What do you want?" He shouted at the man, hoping to wake Red up in the process. From what he heard, his efforts weren't in vain. There was a rustle of blankets behind him as his traveling companion sat up.
Red rubbed the sleep from her eyes,"What is it this time, Naruto, I swear, if you're sleeping walking again-," She stopped when she saw the man, and stood up, grabbing Charmander's Pokeball.
Instead of responding to Naruto's question, he just simply said,"Hand over your Pokemon now."
Any sane person would be severely frightened at this point. A large, creepy man comes up to when you're sleeping and demands that you give him your epic creatures that battle for you and are your friends, anyone would be scared. Fortunately, the first word that you'd think of when you think of Naruto isn't sane, so he wasn't scared at all.
"Pfft, why would we do that?" Naruto asked him.
"If you don't," he paused for dramatic effect,"I'll have to take them by force. He cracked his knuckles to show that he meant business.
"Okay," Naruto replied,"Try me."
With that, the man ran at Naruto. He was more of a brute force guy than a Pokemon battle guy.
Naruto jumped swiftly out of the way. The man, obviously not expecting a ninja, was surprised by how quickly he'd moved and how gracefully he'd done it. He stopped, then looked around for Naruto, who had seemed to have disappeared off the face of the planet.
"Kage Bunshin No Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)," Naruto shouted.
The man looked toward the sound of the voice. Naruto jumped down from a tree branch, and the man ran at him. His hand made contact with the boy, but, as he hit him, Naruto seemed to disappear into a puff of smoke. Suddenly, the man felt a force on the back of his head, followed by an intolerable pain. He blacked out, and crumpled to the ground.
Red whom had been watching the entire fight, put Charmander's Pokeball down,"Wow, Naruto, that was amazing!" She praised him.
Naruto smiled and rubbed the back of his head,"It was nothing, really."
"Um," Red started,"Do you think we should tie him up now, I have some rope in my backpack."
"Yeah," Naruto said, still smiling,"Wait, why do you have rope in your backpack?"
"...," She thought for a moment,"For emergencies!" she came up with. She herself wasn't entirely sure why she had rope in her backpack, it had just suddenly appeared there right before she'd left home. She had just figured that her little sister had put it in there.
"...Okay," Naruto said.
Red pulled the rope out of her backpack and handed it to the blond ninja. He walked over to where the man had collapsed and pulled the rope tightly around him.
When he was finished, he went over and sat next to Red,"I wonder why he wanted our Pokemon."
As he finished speaking, Kunai walked up to him and curled up in his lap.
Red shook her head,"I don't know, I guess we'll have to interrogate him when he wakes up."
(...)
About an hour later, the man started stirring.
"Hey," Naruto said," I think he's waking up."
"Yeah," Red agreed.
The man sat up, he had black, raven hair, and brown eyes. His body was mostly covered in a long black cloak, and even though the cloak was in the way, it was quite clear that he was very muscular, as if he'd spent every moment of his free time at the gym working out.
"Hey," Naruto said,"Who are you?"
The man said nothing, but just grunted and put his head down as if in shame.
"Why were you trying to steal our Pokemon?" Red tried.
This got an answer out of him,"My organization is going to control the Pokemon world, and become the supreme rulers of everyone," He said, smiling wickedly.
"What's your organization called?" Red asked as sweetly as possible, trying to milk as much information out of him as possible.
"The organization I belong to is the infamous Team Blödhgarm (Team Bloodwolf (Yay Eragon's ancient language!))
"Team Blödhgarm..." Naruto repeated quietly.
"Where are all the Pokemon that reside in this forest?" Red asked a little more forcibly this time.
"Gone, we captured them all," he laughed maniacally.
"What!?" Naruto and Red exclaimed at the same time.
At this outburst, Kurama popped its head out from Naruto's jacket, gave a short growl to express its annoyance, then ducked back inside the jacket and presumably went back to sleep.
The man looked at the Vulpix with a surprised look on his face, Naruto and Red didn't look surprised or alarmed at all as they were used to the Kurama's temper.
Then, Naruto walked up to the man,"Listen well," he said,"we will stop you no matter what, dattebayo."
The man looked like he was about to protest.
"Believe me, I never go back on my word, that's my ninja way."
(...)
"Are you sure we should have just left him there?" Red asked Naruto.
"Yeah, don't worry about it, he was out cold when we left, so he won't be coming after us any time soon, and I doubt that he will anyway," Naruto smiled somewhat maniacally and cracked his knuckles.
Red flinched slightly as she saw him do this, she was extremely grateful that he was on her side.
"Oh, hey," Naruto said.
"What?" Red asked.
"I was wondering if you wanted to have a Pokemon battle with me, you know as training for the gym."
Red smiled,"Sure, it sounds like fun."
About five minutes later, the two of them had found a substantial clearing so they could battle each other.
Before they started however, Naruto pulled out his Pokedex and retrieved Kurama from the depths of his jacket. He struggled to remember exactly how to do it, but he eventually came to the spot that let you check specific Pokemon's moves. He learned that Kurama had the moves Quick Attack, Ember, Tail Whip, and Tackle.
"Okay," Red shouted,"Let's begin!"
Naruto gave a curt nod, then sent Kunai out, figuring that she'd start with her Charmander. His assumptions were proved correct as she threw a Pokeball into the air and the fire lizard popped out. Naruto was pretty sure that her Charmander was a higher level than his Kunai, but he hoped that the advantage over fire he had would work in his favor.
Red initiated the attacking,"Charmander, use Scratch!"
Acting as fast as he could, Naruto said,"Kunai, dodge it and use Water Gun!"
Kunai managed to evade the attack, and posed to release the Water Gun.
"Charmander, dodge it!" Red yelled frantically to her Pokemon, knowing that one hit with water could potentially knock it out.
The order happened just slightly to late though, but the fire lizard managed to evade it slightly and instead of getting it full force, it got hit on it's left shoulder.
"Good job, Kunai," Naruto said,"Now use Bite!"
Kunai obliged and ran forward, showing off it's razor sharp teeth to Charmander.
"Charmander," Red said,"Counter it using Ember!"
The fire Pokemon then formed an Ember, and released it at Kunai just as the Squirtle was closing in on it.
Kunai got knocked backward, but swiftly got back up, ready to attack again. Red let out a quick sigh of relief, knowing that she'd just dodged a bullet.
"Charmander, use Ember again!"
"Kunai," Naruto said,"Use Water Gun!"
The two attacks were released at the same time, hurtling toward each other quickly. When the attacks collided, there was a huge explosion of steam, hovering in a cloud around the battle zone.
When it cleared, Charmander had fainted, while Kunai stood there, panting.
"Good job Charmander," Red said, returning it to it's Pokeball.
"Thank you for fighting, Kunai," Naruto said, smiling at the Squirtle, "You did well."
"Okay, now for my next Pokemon!" Red said. She was pretty confident, she'd been training the little Pidgey that she'd caught, and it was now pretty tough.
"Okay, dattebayo," Naruto said.
"You ready to go, Kurama?" He asked the Vulpix.
It let out a little huffing noise, but there was an eager look in it's eyes as it sprinted out into the battle field.
"Go Pidgey!" Red yelled, throwing a Pokeball up into the air.
"Okay, Kurama, use Quick Attack!" Naruto said.
The little kitsune ran forward and almost seemed to blur as it manuevered to attack the Pidgey. Red didn't even try to counter the attack, there was no way she could get the order out in time. The Pidgey got hit point blank.
"Pidgey, use Gust!" Red shouted, acting quickly after the first attack.
"Kurama, dodge it!" Naruto shouted.
Kurama attempted to get out of the way, but wasn't fast enough, and got hit full force. The poor Vulpix got sent flying backward, and landed roughly on it's back.
"Kurama, get up!" Naruto yelled.
Kurama jumped to it's feet, and looked at Naruto for orders. That Gust had taken a lot out of it, making the Vulpix look worse for wear.
"Kurama, try using an Ember," Naruto said.
"Pidgey, dodge it," Red said.
The Pidgey wasn't quite fast enough though, and it got hit with the Ember. Unable to continue going, fainted, and Red called it back to it's Pokeball.
"Good job, Kurama!" Naruto exclaimed as the Vulpix clambered up him and climbed back inside his jacket.
Naruto and Red walked toward each other.
"That was a good battle," Naruto said, smiling.
"Yeah, I had fun," Red replied.
"Well, let's get going!" Naruto said, running off to the trail.
Red sighed, and raced after the eccentric blonde, it was going to be a long rest of the day.
(...)
It was almost sunset when they saw it, the skyline of a city. They were finally out of the forest.
"Is that Pewter City?" Naruto asked Red.
"Yes, that is," she replied,"Now you can stop asking me if we're there yet."
(-)
Thank you for reading this chapter, I really appreciate it, and I hope that this chapter makes up for the extremely short chapter 6. Fun fact, even though it felt like it to me, chapter 6 actually wasn't my shortest chapter, the first one was. I just though that was interesting, so I thought I'd share it. Okay, now I guess that I'll reply to reviews (The replies are starting out from when I last replied to them, so around chapter 5)
Lightningblade49 - Yes, yes it is.
Izana Okami - Yeah, I do think that Naruto will catch a legendary at some point, probably sometime after the Indigo League.
blue-hart - I love you too :D
Mojtaba13 - Probably not, but I may put him in later if the situation requires it.
Gir240 - Yeah, I was thinking of him eventually getting a Froakie a little bit later on.
Ddragon21 - Yep, and probably a lot more in the future :D
Kurama no Jubi - I'm not entirely sure what you said, but I have a general idea thanks to my half semester of Spanish class, anyway, I'm glad you like it!
john - I was definately considering giving Red a Piplup, and Naruto at least one legendary. Both of those will have to happen a little later though, I don't really know when would be a good time to give Red a Piplup, and I atleast want to wait until after the Indigo Leauge to get Naruto a legendary, so it will happen, just not for a while.
Well, thanks again for reading this, I appreciate your support, and if you have any ideas on Pokemon either Naruto or Red should get, please tell me because I'm not entirely sure what Pokemon to build their teams with. Anyway, that's it for this chapter, I hope that you'll continue reading this!
Next time, Pewter City