Wow, been a while since i update, at least a month...then of course, not too many people made it to the last chapter...sigh...ah well, this keeps me out of jail
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto and company, their world, the organizations in that world, or anything else you read in the manga. I do own the characters I bothered to give personalities to and the organizations I put them in and I shall flame you to hell if you use them.
Starting Here
Naruto woke up to a sharp, and very loud snap, like someone had broken a giant's bone. He stuck his head out just in time to see a whole host of dark shapes gliding past at an astonishing speed under the water. As he blinked his watering eyes in the bright noon sun, the first wave of cheering from the spectators hit his large ears. Flicking the sand-coloured tail he sub-consciously noticed the day before in annoyance, Naruto stuck his head back into his den, waiting to get use to the high noise level. Finally, after maybe fifteen minutes in his dark hole, Naruto came out into the open. But the yelling crowds that had been there were gone, making the street lonely once more. Off in the distance, a loud cloud of happy sounds exploded, disturbing birds from their roosts even around the Dormitories.
"Why aren't you out watching the race?" an old man said from his perch in the walkways of the Dormitories, drooping beagle ears flopping down in his face.
"What race?" Naruto asked, blinking.
"Why the water race!" the old man replied, eyes hidden in layers of skin opened wide at the boy's ignorance.
"Why do they call it the water race?" Naruto asked the drooping man.
"Because only aquatic demons and their hosts can enter young fool." The beagle man said, amazement at Naruto's blindness clearly imprinted on his voice.
"Wow, that's cool, do you know where they are now?" Naruto asked, curious to a fault.
"They should be lapping the course soon; they always start at the stadium and do three laps." The beagle man said.
"Thanks mister!" Naruto said, jumping out of his hole and onto the rope bridge two levels down.
"And we have the first resignation of the second lap!" a particularly loud bird-boy who was acting as commentator yelled, "That makes thirteen, only seven left folks." Naruto hadn't needed to walk even a minute before the crowds that followed the race hit him. Actually, remarkably close, a crow-winged friend was pulling the exhausted racer out of the water, and upon closer examination, Naruto noted they looked familiar. When he got closer, his eyes opened in shock, who would have guessed that not only were Kakashi and Iruka together, judging by the apologetic kiss Kakashi gave the swimmer, but also demonic?
"Iruka?" Naruto asked, doubting it was his childhood mentor under the triple-toned and rubbery skin.
"Naruto!" the dolphin man said, confirming it was Iruka, jumping out of the loose hug he was in. "Err-this isn't what it looks like…" he said almost rhetorically. "But then of course, it's a little hard for it to be not what it looks like…" he rambled.
"Err-Iruka, what are you talking about?" Kakashi said, slightly worried.
"If you're talking about the demon thing, I'm fine with that." Naruto said, blinking.
"Demon? Oh yes, the demon…" Iruka said, a look of enlightenment spreading across his face.
"Yeah, what else would I be talking about?" Naruto said quizzically, "Although, I am a little pissed you didn't tell me you had a demon too." He added sourly with a face. There was a dramatic pause until Iruka sighed,
"I can't deal with your brand of stupidity today…" he said before collapsing.
"So Naruto," Kakashi said, hoisting the unconscious teacher over his shoulder, "are you staying at the dormitories too?"
"Um yeah, I moved in yesterday." Naruto said, confusion overtaking his mind
"Well then, we had better get him soaked before his skin dries out." Kakashi said, indicating the man slung over his shoulder. But before they could start on their way back to the Demon Dormitories, someone came running up the path from the Office. As he got closer, Naruto recognized Keiyo, one of the twins that had brought him to Everglade only four days ago, wait, he was pretty sure it was Keiyo, Kaito was much more withdrawn and wouldn't be waving energetically to him.
"Hey, the Office has some stuff they think you might want, so they sent me to fetch you. They said the sooner you came the better." Keiyo said, puffing.
"Oh well then, let's go." Naruto said cheerfully, "Bye Kakashi-sensei" he added as he ran off.
"So that was your teacher?" Keiyo asked as they walked quickly towards the whiteness of the Office.
"Yup, and I wasted abut a million hours of my life waiting for him." Naruto grumbled dramatically.
"Oh come on, he can't be that late consistently." Keiyo said,
"But he is! He's usually two hours late and then he tells us some lame-brain excuse like he was helping an old lady with her groceries." Naruto huffed,
"But if he is always late, how did he make it to his exams on time?" Keiyo said.
"Well, he once said that he was on time to important things…" Naruto trailed off, defeated. He was rather disturbed when his acquaintance broke into hysterics and had to stop while he held his gut.
"Oh god kid, you crack me up." He wheezed between bouts of laughter, "hey, you have to come to my place sometime, I think you'd like it. You know Yuri, right?" Keiyo said, continuing on their way after he recovered.
"Yuri, oh, yeah I know him," Naruto said, expression darkening.
"Oh, well, maybe not Yuri, err-Naturu's not here, hey, you know what, I'll take you there myself after we get your stuff." Keiyo said hurriedly, seeing the smoldering detest in Naruto's stance and tone. So, with fewer words mentioned than before, they made it to the Office, Keiyo to hand in a mission report (the friend who had been told to find Naruto and pass on the message had waylaid him when he was making his way to the Office to hand in the report because he didn't know who the blond was), Naruto to pick up a large overnight bag that he recognized as one of the few non-essential items he owned. Inside were a second set of clothes (the dark ones), a toothbrush, and several items he probably should have had before now.
"Oh, and if you see Hyuuga-san, could you tell him to come for his items as well?" the lady behind the desk in the second basement said overly politely that obviously hid a world-wearied outlook. Hey, if you worked in the Lost and Found and the Pick Up center for an entire city, as the only employee in sight, you would hate the world too.
(space/line)
Keiyo was still there when Naruto trudged back up the mildew infested stairs (AN this is an actual staircase and I love it, but it's being torn down tear) and they made their way to the dormitories (which was along the way to Keiyo's "place"). After dropping off the sack into his den, Naruto and Keiyo took a side path to another major street and several easily remembered twists and turns later, they found themselves standing outside a tall, massive tree that had been grown around a square, wooden room. In the branches, a small house could be seen, and a staircase led into a lower level that might have been completely underwater. Hung over the door was a simple sign that read "Live Music After Ten Glasses".
"Cute name." Naruto commented, a pace behind Keiyo.
"Wife's family's traditional source of income." He said, fake cheeriness imprinted on his voice.
"Wife?" Naruto gasped, Keiyo was barely a year older then he, if that.
"Arranged marriage, but we live with it, but she still makes me play whenever I'm in town." He added spitefully.
"What do you play?" Naruto asked
"Guitar and vocals." Keiyo said, unlocking the door.
"Darling, I brought someone to help with the spring cleaning!" he yelled when the walked in. Naruto's eyebrows shot up when he saw the inside of the bar. They were in the box; a large dance floor and a stage mostly filled the interior, around the edge was a tall shelf with stools pushed under it for seating. But despite the name, there was no bar, or anywhere to serve drinks. Then he spied a staircase that snakes around the edge of the room and up through the ceiling that probably lead to an upper level where the drinks were served. The staircase also danced down past the floorboards.
"Finally, you said you were just going out to drop off some paperwork." A feminine voice barked from the ceiling, and down the stairs waltzed a girl with violently fuchsia hair that danced in an ambient breeze in a dress made of patchwork neon colours. "How dare you stay out this long? You know how busy it'll be tonight, and we need to air this place out, and the new supplies need to be picked up, and I can't do either of those chores, but someone needs to get out all the summer menu stuff, so I hope your 'friend' can be in three places at once, or I'll need to get my brothers over to help." She ranted, coming closer and looking more and sounding more like a tornado that had hit an unfortunate tropical bird.
"Don't worry darling," Keiyo said, sounding exasperated, "my 'friend' has unlimited energy, I'm sure you can work him into the ground, he can take care of the windows while I go to get the supplies, leaving you with more just enough work that involves running around to make up for the high-fat, high-calorie dinner I'm going to force down your skinny throat." He said, adding a particular drop of sarcasm onto the last part.
"Fine, but he had better be as good as you say, or you're going to have to find another bed for the next year. The groceries for the next months are being dropped off at the regular place, and make sure that you count the number of bottles, the clerks like to dip into the stash sometimes." Keiyo's wife grumbled at him before Keiyo turned, gave Naruto a "thanks, you're screwed" smile, and ran out.
"Rude bastard," the girl muttered before turning a wide (and very fake) grin to him and sticking out her hand.
"Pleased to meet you, I'm Moyocco Inari." She said pleasantly, but there was the edge of a whine still present on her voice.
"Uzumaki Naruto." The blonde said excitedly to hide the anxiety of meeting another girl with multiple personalities (he was beginning to expect all girls to be creepy in that manner by now).
"Well, we had better be preparing this place for summer now, shouldn't we?" she said sweetly, but the authoritarian edge on it sent shivers down his spine and he fully realized why Keiyo was so excited to go out.
(space/line)
Naruto quickly found out that the box wasn't actually nailed together, and thus, was relatively easy to disassemble, excluding the pieces that the tree had grown around, those had been nailed together. So Naruto (and several clones) were put to the task of taking apart the corners of the box, and placing odd mental frameworks covered in a completely sheer material in their place. While he was doing the heavy stuff, Moyocco-san ran around inside, adding little touches of colour to most things, and replacing many of the items such as menus and changing the weekly specials. Something that Naruto noted as being odd was the fact that Moyocco-san didn't use any chakra or any ninja tricks to do anything, odd for a ninja family to force a marriage to a civilian one.
Just as he finished, Keiyo returned, with three crates of booze carefully balanced and tied to his back. His wife rushed out to greet him, or rather, his cargo, just as the Narutos finished their assigned task.
"Done!" he cried cheerfully, jumping down and making the clones poof out of existence.
"Great," Moyocco-san said, "could you help us get these down to the cellar?" she asked politely, but with the undertone that said, "refuse and I'll skin you alive and make you like it". So Naruto took the top crated, leaving Keiyo with the other two, as, previously noted, Moyocco-san wasn't a ninja, thus didn't have the muscle mass to care anything remotely as heavy as the crate of alcohol. Instead, she unlocked the gate that barred the downward staircase, which in turn, lead to a chilly room under the dance floor.
"Set them down there", Moyocco-san said, pointing to a clear section of the floor, "and we can begin unpacking. Just read the label and put the bottles with the same type of liquor." She put the lantern she held on a hook in the ceiling and let Keiyo open the first crate. The next several hours were spent carefully organizing and documenting the beverages being unloaded, much to Naruto's dismay.
By the time that they finished, the sun had set and most people had left work, so it was time for the Moyocco couple to start working. Of course, they invited Naruto to stay for a while, so he did, and was served his first alcoholic beverage. Or at least, his first alcoholic beverage he was informed of consuming (with Jiraiya as a teacher, who knows what sorts of things he had been exposed to). Surprisingly, the bar quickly filled up and while most people chose to sit and have their drinks on the upper level (which sported the bar as well as a long shelf/table and numerous stools that acted as seating), soon the lower level filled with people demanding music, so rather disturbing dance tracks began playing, much to the other patrons' delight.
Then, barely three hours after the bar (which now resembled a club more than a bar but was legally classified as a bar, not a pub mind you, a bar) opened, a bell rang ten times to the pleasure of the dancers. To Naruto's (yes, he was still there) surprise, after the yelling died down, everyone dropped into a silence so complete that the crickets, who had been trying to ignore the noise coming from the Ten Glasses, wondered if someone had killed the people inside and happily chirped their little non-existent hearts out. Then a rather obnoxious and loud but exciting brass sound broke the air and an equally obnoxious, but undeniably extremely talented, voice joined it and Keiyo, or Kaito, or rather, both of them appeared on the relatively small stage along with a drummer and a guitarist. One of the twins had a bizarre instrument that played more brass instruments then some small jazz bands. The other one was singing a loud song made up of fragmented sentences and garble, but at certain lines, a faction of the crowd would do a particularly weird dance move.
"Isn't Moyocco-sama dreamy?" the girl sitting some way from Naruto on the bar said like a Sasuke fangirl.
"Which one?" her friend giggled
"Keiyo duh, but Kaito has the whole mysterious equal sexy thing going." The first one said sagely, causing Naruto to snort into his glass. Kaito, mysterious? The poor sap was like a dormouse, except when he had one of his toys in his hand, a half memory from the wagon ride to Everglade surface, someone was yelling at Kaito when one of his inventions, he had assumed that it was one of the fire-pipes at the time, had blown up. Naruto had almost sat up that time, but someone who had run to get something in the wagon to put out the fire had seen him, and then drugged him.
"Pity he's married." The third girl sighed.
"And gay." The second girl giggled as the bubbles in her drink hit the back of her throat. At this point, Naruto decided that he should ignore them, and tried to, really. Luckily, they left shortly after.
(space/line)
By eleven, no one noticed that the band had left, as they had been steadily adding to the number of dancers on stage and handing out drinks (to paying customers only, of course). The band slipped out by going down to the cellar, and the handful of people sober enough to notice followed them to congratulate them on a good opening night for the summer. Naruto took this opportunity to try to elbow his way trough the crowd to the front door; by the time he made it out, the Moyocco twins and the rest of the small band as well as Inari had made it out to the boardwalk from the barred path that sneaked to the waterline. One twin held a bottle of liquor; the band's instruments were in their cases, lying on the path and in general, they looked content, Naruto stopped and looked at the happy picture they made, six friends, laughing in the moonlight. He suddenly felt jealous of the carefree life they seemed to lead, even though he knew that at least the twins had a double life with a more sinister road before them.
Getting sentimental, aren't you? The Kyuubi whispered in his head
I wonder what life would have been life for both of us would've been if I hadn't been sealed inside you.
I would probably be a happy, irritating child who had two parents and whose dream was to open a ramen shop. Naruto thought sourly, and a lot of kids would have parents too if you didn't attack the village.
Now, that's irony there, the Kyuubi spat in reply.
Why? Thought Naruto, do you eat orphans or something?
Get home; you might want to be sitting down when I tell you. The Kyuubi whispered in his head, a spice of venom in her voice.
"This had better be good." Naruto grumbled out-loud, interest sparked, breaking into a light jog.
Stopping Here