One fine day
Chapter 2
No disclaimer, been there done that.
// Story begin \\
Shocked eyes met in the mirror as comprehension dawned, a hand rose to touch and then stilled as his eyes widened further. For the first time he became aware of the blood and dirt encrusting his fingers, matching the blood around his mouth and his stomach rebelled. Bile filled his mouth and he made a dash for the toilet before his roiling stomach finally gave in to the urge and expelled its contents in a bloody mass.
He wouldn't look at the mess he'd made, or acknowledge the stench of blood that filled the air as he pulled the chain and flushed. The thought running through his head, 'Not a dream!' over and over again. His body began to shake in reaction even as he gave into the urge to vomit again, and again. Twenty minutes saw the end of the episode for the moment, it also gave the other people in the house time to realise that he wasn't still in bed.
"Are you in there Naruto?" He just stared blankly at the door for a moment before attempting a reply.
"Yeah!"
"How are you feeling? You're alright?" Sakura sounded hopeful he thought, maybe she thinks she can stop worrying if I say I am.
"I'm fine," he lied as he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth smearing the blood a little.
"Oh, good. So are you coming down stairs?"
"Erm, yeah. Just give me a minute." Turning back to the sink he washed his mouth out with tepid water then spent several minutes scrubbing his hands with a nail brush, looking at them critically he went after them again, and then again until the skin was a raw red before turning to his face. Meeting his eyes warily in the mirror after that he noted that he seemed different somehow, not that the mental trauma of finding out you'd done, 'that', wasn't enough, there was something else in his reflection that he kept missing. Giving up for the moment he left the bathroom and made his way back to his futon, rolling it up and getting dressed for the day in his favourite jump-suit. That proved to be harder than it sounded since he seemed to have had a growth spurt which cleared up one of the changes he couldn't pin earlier, it was a change in perspective as his eye-level had risen several inches, crossed with the fact he was broader across the shoulders and he began to wonder just what the hell the Kyubi was doing to him.
It had to be the demon fox, because, well it was the only thing that explained his actions last night. Somehow the fox had gotten loose and made him do all those things.
"……." The grumbling noise he heard in the back of his mind almost sounded intelligible, like a badly tuned radio channel or something. Ah well it probably wasn't worth listening too in anycase.
"…flesh….." Okay that was clearer, it seemed…..Naruto frowned in concentration as the next burst of 'static' began and found he could almost understand.
"Are you…..to me? Damn puny……." Naruto blinked for a moment, there was only one entity that spoke to him like that even if he'd only heard it once.
"Kyubi?" he sent back tentatively.
"No! I'm the Easter bunny, can't you tell from the ears? Not only are you weak, but you're stupid too. Who else you got hanging back here?" the voice trailed off into unintelligible mumbles for a moment.
"What the hell are you doing talking to me?" It wasn't that they hadn't talked in the past it was more that he happened to be awake and sitting on his rolled up futon. The flea bitten fox shouldn't have been able to talk to him.
"Well now that you mention it…You made this possible."
"Whad'ya mean?"
"Do you remember using my youkai yesterday?"
"Um," he scrunched his brow, "Er, what's youkai?"
"Demonic chakra, moron. Why, oh why couldn't my vessel have a modicum of intelligence?"
"Oi, why didn't you just say so then?"
"I did but you're just too stupid, it's a wonder you can walk and breath at the same time. And one of them should be automatic, but I'll let you utilize that puny brain of yours and figure out which it is."
"Are you done insulting me yet?"
"Why, no, I don't think I am, but I suppose we've got more important things to discuss than why your IQ is smaller than you are."
"Yeah like why you made me go out and do that," he didn't need to tell the demon what he meant as he flashed the dream sequence across his mind as he asked his question.
"I? You think I had anything to do with that?" How the fox managed to sound so indignant Naruto would never know.
"Yeah you fuzz-ball!"
"You'll address me as Kyubi-sama, or master, if you dare address me at all."
"Yeah, an you're trippin if you think I'd give you more respect than I give the Hokage." He wasn't sure what 'tripping' meant but he'd heard it used in a similar context before.
"My, well aren't we awfully brave saying things like that from way over there. Why don't you come a little bit closer and say it."
"No thanks, I'm fine just where I am. I ain't half as stupid as you seem to think!"
"That's really not much of a credit to you then, since I pegged your mental capacity somewhere around that of an earthworm. You haven't even asked why it's all your own fault or what my youkai has to do with it."
"Alright then tell me already baka-fox!"
"Well since you asked so politely….Where to begin? In the battle yesterday…yes it was only yesterday, you used my chakra to defeat that ice user."
"Haku," he interjected, "his name was Haku."
"Whatever, you think I care about the name of some useless fleshbag? Hah! Anyway everything would have been fine if you'd have left it there, but you allowed him to provoke you into using my youkai a second time. The second time you used slightly more than a tails worth of my power. That put you on the edge of your bodies ability to endure the presence of my youkai. The second time did some damage to your chakra circulatory system, again nothing irreparable but still debilitating. Then when that puling creature that had the audacity to call itself a demon attacked the pink haired vixen you like, that's when you made your final mistake."
"You mean I'm dead?" a shocked Naruto asked.
"No, baka," he ignored the sigh of relief, "If you were dead you wouldn't be talking to me and you certainly wouldn't have been talking to anyone on the living plane. No what you did was reach beyond the seal and pull out roughly three tails of my power, an amount you weren't ready to use even if you were at full health. Basically what you did destroyed what remained of your chakra system. If I had allowed things to stay as they stand you would be dead, but I don't feel like dying just yet so I made repairs. Unfortunately for you they're much more far reaching than just repairing the damage, instead I made modifications to your body."
"What do you mean modification?" again his lack of education let most of what the Kyubi said slip past him without understanding what it meant.
"Hmm, well it was a part of the seal you see, the original design drained a certain amount of my chakra to aid you in healing faster than normal, but there was a different aspect of your healing function that no one else knows about. The seal not only heals but it also adapts your body to make your body more resistant to the same type of damage in the future. Are you following me so far?"
"Uh, yeah, yeah I think so. You're saying I'm not human?"
"Oh no you were completely human…but eventually things like elemental jutsu wouldn't have effected you as badly as your body learned to absorb the energy rather than be damaged by it."
"What d'you mean were?" Naruto yelled still stuck in the first part of the Foxes explanation.
"Calm down baka-kit, your emotions will be the death of you one day. I mean you were up until yesterday."
"You made me a demon didn't you?" Naruto advanced on the Kyubi's prison with every intention of doing physical harm to the fox irrespective of their sizes.
"No, I'm afraid that while I'm powerful I simply don't have the ability to do that, only Kami himself can make changes like that. No, I did the next best thing, I made you Hanyou, half human and half demon. Of course I used myself as a template so you're half Kitsune. Which brings us to your little foray last night."
"But that was…"
"I already told you I had nothing to do with that…well I suppose that's not strictly true. You are Kitsune because of me so I suppose the instincts of a young Kitsune are indirectly my fault."
"Huh?"
"Let me see if I can explain this to you. Normal foxes in the wild eat small prey, rodents and birds and the like, occasionally they'll come across the carcass of a larger animal. When they do they tend to eat quickly and try to get the most nutrition out of the carcass, that usually entails eating something like the liver. In a sense that's what you did, you took something from the bodies of each of the stronger people who died yesterday. Being Kitsune, you didn't need to eat the liver, you could have eaten anything including hair or bone as long as it contained a trace of the genetic materiel. You did much better than I did when I was at your stage of development, when I was as young as you there were no ninja like the ones that exist now. There were no blood-limits." Kyubi had been watching the boy as he spoke and seen that he was losing him as his eyes glazed over and decided to do something about it.
Taking in a massive amount of air the demon fox yelled in Naruto's mind, "BAKA!!!!" The shock of the sound knocked Naruto flat.
"What was that for!?"
"Pay attention idiot. This is important. In essence you used the genetic material to adapt your body. You have gained quite a bit by doing what you did along with the natural abilities of a Kitsune."
"Like what?"
"Well there's the increase in sensitivity to light, meaning you can see in the dark."
"Whu? So that was real? That's why I thought it was all a dream, I mean I can't see in the dark and yet I could…."
"Hmm, true. You also have increased your hearing range, you can hear higher pitched sounds than a human can. You also have augmented hearing. Try it, push a little chakra into your ears…no! Not that much, what are you trying to do? Blow your ears off? That's better….good now turn your head a little until you find something worth listening to. Now the two I just mentioned are natural abilities of the Kitsune, we'll have to wait for your body to adapt to find out what else you've gained."
Naruto listened carefully since the information was actually interesting before he did as he was bade and tilted his head a little then began to scan around until he heard, turning his head back a little he swept past the voices again, "…That dobe, I….." On the next sweep he got it nailed perfectly, he could hear a conversation taking place downstairs between Sasuke and Sakura as if he were in the room with them.
// \\
"Don't ask me, I went and told him to come down stairs."
"Do you think he's alright?" The unknown eavesdropper dismissed the tone in Sasuke's voice, it couldn't have been concern. He must have taken a few more hits to the head than he thought he had the day before if he believed that for a moment.
"Well I don't know Sasuke, he seems alright but he was throwing up when I got up there," Sakura trailed off hesitantly not sure how to finish.
"The doctor did say that might be a side effect of the chakra poisoning. I still haven't figured out how he got chakra poisoning, that usually takes someone else's chakra interfering with your own, and you said that no one else came near him."
"He did try to kill that boy."
"Hn. Maybe but we still don't know that, there could have been another explanation. Maybe Kakashi-sensei managed to break the ice-dome. I know one thing for certain, the dead-last of our class doesn't have as much chakra as you said was present, and he certainly isn't malevolent," he admitted the last begrudgingly not willing to give Naruto any credit.
"That doesn't make any sense though, Kakashi had his hands full dealing with Zabuza," she paused as Sasuke snorted, "that wasn't nice Sasuke, I'm pretty sure he would have won if that Haku boy hadn't interfered."
"Maybe, but he didn't, and now we're in trouble. We've got an A rank missing nin running around that could beat our sensei, not to mention Gato and his army of mercenary thugs. Naruto's just getting up from whatever happened to him yesterday, I'm still sore from being stuck with so many senbon, and you…..How are you doing at the moment?" he stopped as she glared at him, nothing beats infatuation like sticking your foot in your mouth, "I know stupid question, but are you in pain, can you fight? That's what I meant, I mean none of us are going to be much use in a fight plus we're only genin for Kami's sake."
"No I'm not in pain, it just itches like crazy. I think I can fight a little, but you're right we're in trouble and it doesn't help that sensei's body disappeared last night."
"No need to worry there, I found his charred remains outside, they're like ten metres from the door."
"Oh….Are you sure it's Kakashi? I mean, if it's charred how can you tell?" She watched as Sasuke's eyes widened.
"You're right, it was mostly ash, the only thing that made me think it was Kakashi was the head-band. Shit, I was hoping it was a Konoha hunter-nin or something disposing of the body so enemies couldn't get his secrets."
"But surely if it had been a Konoha ninja they'd have stayed to help us, or even let us know they had disposed of the body," Naruto blinked as he heard their conversation turn into an area he wasn't ready to face just yet.
// \\
"Oh shit, they found Kakashi, what do I do now?" he let the chakra slip from his ears as he panicked.
"First you stay calm," came the commanding voice of the nine tailed fox.
"But…."
"I'm a fox, I'm not interested in buts, if you want to talk about them go talk to an Inuzuka. I just told you to stay calm, if you panic you'll make mistakes and make them even more suspicious of you. As for the rest of it, just say you remembered the same conversation Kakashi had about the hunter-nin and why they get rid of the bodies."
"So I could say I woke up last night and burnt it because I thought we should?"
"You could take it a step further and ask them why they didn't already do it. Anyway, you'd better get down there now before they think up anything else."
"Uh, right," it still made him feel queasy to know that he'd done what he'd done last night, but he felt a little better knowing that it hadn't all been his fault. Then there was the fact that he was going to get the chance to rub the Uchiha-teme up the wrong way, since he'd beaten Zabuza's apprentice while the Uchiha 'Prodigy' lay oblivious to everything around him..
Naruto steeled himself for the confrontation that was about to happen when he told them part of what he'd done last night, they wouldn't understand it and he wouldn't blame them in the least. It only made sense if you didn't look at it too closely, it wasn't something most genin would even be thinking about. Now that he thought about it though, it did kind of make sense, Zabuza had made mention of the fact that Kakashi was a famous ninja who was in several Bingo books for other hidden villages which meant that there was a bounty out for him and also they'd pay good money to learn some of the secrets held in such a high ranking Konoha ninja's body. With his decision made he pushed the door to their room aside and stalked downstairs.
// \\
"Morning Sakura-chan," he smiled widely at the pink-haired girl before turning to the dark and surly presence in the room, "Teme."
"It's afternoon dobe," Sasuke scowled at his team-mate.
"Really? So I've only been out for a few hours?"
"Try thirty or so Naruto, you had me worried," she trailed off when she saw the grin widen on his face.
"Sakura-chan was worried about me?" Wham an irate Haruno stood over the prone body of her most irksome team member as she flexed her good arm. 'Cha! Take that Baka!' inner Sakura yelled as she surveyed the damage done.
"Oi you two stop it," he glared at an elated Sakura before he watched Naruto sit up rubbing his head, "We've got bigger problems at the moment."
Naruto let the false smile he'd been keeping up to slide off of his face, "Yeah I know."
"Yeah like you know anything worthwhile, so why don't you give us the benefit of your in depth analysis of our situation?" Sakura sneered at the academies dead-last.
"Alright, to start off there's the fact that we're a rookie genin team without a jounin-sensei. The missing nin who killed a high level jounin of our village is still out there somewhere, doing what we don't know. All of us are injured so even if we wanted to do something we're too weak to do it. We've failed our contract, Tazuna's dead and Gato still has an army behind him, which we can't deal with because of our injuries. The townspeople are probably terrified now that there's no one to protect them. Oh and then there's the fact you didn't dispose of Kakashi's body when you should have," Naruto finished ticking off imaginary points off on his fingers and looked up at his team-mates, "What?"
Sakura twitched in shock that Naruto was able to reel off so many of the points she and Sasuke had just spoken of, Sasuke on the other hand was reeling from the implication of Naruto's last point.
"Are you saying you're the one who got rid of Kakashi's body?" Sakura froze at Sasuke's words as she finally worked through Naruto's words and reached the same conclusion.
"Er, yeah. I woke up last night and couldn't believe that you hadn't already done it. After sensei made a point of telling us how many secrets a ninja's body could reveal about a village," he didn't say it but the tone implied, 'and you're supposed to be the intelligent ones on the team?'
"but that was Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura exploded.
"Yes that's right it 'was' Kakashi-sensei. It isn't anymore, it's just a lump of flesh that can reveal secrets about our village. I hate to agree with the dobe but we've got bigger problems than that. We need to decide what to do now, do we stay or do we go back to the village?"
"I say we stay and try to help the people here! We promised and I won't go back on my word!"
"Alright anyone who isn't an idiot gets a vote," Sasuke smirked at the outraged expression on Naruto's face, "Look it simply isn't practical to stay, we don't have the experience to pull something off like this."
"That's the problem, how do we get off of the island? I mean we arrived by boat but since Kakashi died Gato's tightened his grip on the island, he's shut down all communication with the mainland and there are boats patrolling off shore." Sakura motioned with her damaged arm and brought it to the attention of Naruto for the first time. It was so quick that he almost missed it but the angry red appendage snagged his eyes and he followed it until she pulled it back into her lap.
"Sakura?" he spoke quietly.
"Yes?"
"Who hurt your hand?" he knew who he suspected but he needed to hear it from her mouth.
Sakura flinched at the mention of her wound, the pain of loss might be gone for the moment but there would be other times when she would feel it as she found more things she couldn't do anymore. She'd almost resigned herself to the fact that she wouldn't be able to follow her dream of being a powerful kunoichi alongside Sasuke.
"Zabuza did it just before you collapsed," it brought to mind other questions she wanted to ask, such as what was that red chakra that had shown in his aura yesterday. She watched in shock as Naruto clenched his fists, a low hiss came from his as he tried to rein in his anger but it quickly became too much and the anger began to slip out. The chakra that flared wasn't a normal blue but the intense blood red chakra they'd seen yesterday.
"I'm going to kill him," he looked up and Sakura stepped back when his blood-red eyes met her own, "I'll gut him like a fish for you Sakura. That's a promise!" Even Sasuke was wary of this more primal seeming Naruto, the whisker marks on his face were more delineated and his canines seemed to have lengthened while his whole face thinned down. If he had to pick an animal that Naruto looked like he'd have said without hesitation that he looked even more foxlike than he'd ever looked before.
Sakura didn't know how to respond to the intense emotion she could hear in his voice when he vowed to make the missing-nin pay for hurting her. A part of her wished that it had been Sasuke who'd done something like it for her, but she knew that he reserved his hatred for his brother.
"Er, thanks. Um, Naruto? Do you think you could calm down a little?" He reverted back to normal so quickly that the pair had to ask if it had all been some kind of henge or genjutsu that they'd been subjected to.
"So, did we come to any conclusions?" Sasuke decided that someone needed to get to the bottom of their situation.
"Well we can't leave, Gato's blocked everyway I can think of and if we stay we're going to need reinforcements. Trouble is he's cut off communications, so how do we get word out?"
"We could steal a boat," Naruto suggested.
"Baka, I just told you we can't get through the blockade!"
"What if the boat doesn't look like a boat? We could henge it to look like something else."
"It might work," Sakura conceded, "Do you know how to henge something else of that size?" At Naruto's shaking head she sighed, she didn't either and Sasuke was known for only being interested in combat oriented jutsu so he wouldn't know either.
"What about a messenger bird?"
"Unlikely to work since we didn't bring one with us and there probably aren't any on the island that would go to Konoha." Sasuke grunted apathetically as his idea was shot down just as fast as Naruto's.
"Who said it had to be a bird?" Naruto interjected excitedly.
"What do you mean Naruto?"
"What about a clone?"
"Eh? What good's that going to do us? If we could get a clone off the island we could get off it ourselves," Sakura was seriously thinking about decking him again.
"Yeah, but who says a clone has to be human shaped?"
The three teens shared a look for a moment before Sakura asked, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Naruto grinned before replying, "I don't know Brain, where would we get that much taffy? ….."
"If the dobe says 'Narf!' I swear I'll kill him," Sasuke said conversationally to Sakura.
Sakura and Naruto shared a look before they turned and stared wide eyed at the last remaining Uchiha, Sakura didn't even blink as she reached out and smacked the back of his head.
"Ouch! What the hell was that for? Hit the dobe if you want to hit someone!"
"But that was a joke, and the Sasuke I know," 'and love' she added silently, "would never make a joke like that."
"Yeah there's no way you're Sasuke. He's got a stick shoved so far up his…"
"Naruto! Finish that statement and I'll kill you!" Sakura wasn't done yelling yet but Sasuke interrupted.
"You can't," Sasuke said.
"Why not?"
"How long can you hold a clone for Sakura?"
"Um, about half an hour. Why?"
"And I can hold one for maybe three hours. What about you Naruto?"
"Um," Naruto thought about it for a moment, "Is there a limit?" He'd never had any problem with his clones running out of chakra mainly because they; didn't last that long in a fight. He had a few he'd left at home though for security purposes and they'd been active pretty much since he'd learned the Kage Bunshin technique several months ago. Sakura stared at him as if he was stupid for even asking such a question.
"So you see, even if we were able to form the clone it wouldn't have time to get to Konoha and deliver the message. Another thing is that I can't form a solid clone yet, I haven't watched Naruto use the Shadow clone technique with my Sharingan activated, and they use more chakra than a normal bunshin," he said patiently.
"Okay so now that we've figured out that Naruto is the only one who can send the message, what's to stop me from waiting until he's delivered it and then killing him?"
"Sakura-chaan's being mean Sasuke!"
"Shut up dobe. Let's just get this over with, the sooner the message is on the way the better."
"Ooooh Sasuke's so cool," inner Sakura squealed, Sakura didn't even bother paying attention to the voice until she noticed Sasuke and Naruto watching her in shock, "Um, I said that aloud didn't I?" she didn't need Naruto's emphatic nodding to confirm it, "Hold on a second guys, I've just got to hunt down the voice in my head and hurt it," and with that a furiously blushing Sakura closed her eyes.
Naruto turned to Sasuke, "Was that freaky or what?"
"I don't know, I think that describes most of the girls I know. Now let's leave her alone while you make a bird shaped clone." Ten minutes later Sasuke looked down at the worst clone he'd ever seen, it was even worse than the times Naruto had tried to use the bunshin technique in the academy. "Damn it Naruto concentrate, it doesn't even look like a bird."
"I am concentrating, it's just that I don't watch birds so I haven't got a clue what to make it look like. Go on try it, picture a bird in your head and then make a clone based on it." Naruto snickered a minute later when Sasuke's attempt at a clone proved to be worse than Naruto's.
"Alright I get the point. Do you think you could copy a bird if you saw one?"
"Yeah that's easy," he declared. It was a quarter hour later that Sakura found them outside staring down at the ugliest bird she'd ever seen.
"That's got to be the worst attempt at a clone I think I've ever seen Naruto."
"Um Sakura, that happens to be an exact replica of a bird that was sitting on the pier a couple of minutes ago."
"Eh? Then that's one uuuuglly bird," Sakura said.
"Heh, gotta agree with you there Sakura but then it doesn't need to be pretty to fly." With that the clone flapped its wings and lifted into the air like a rocket.
"Damn it Naruto it's too light," Sasuke yelled as the clone dispersed under the force of its assent.
"Alright, um, there that should do it. Bird clone technique!"
"Well that's an original name for it," Sakura smirked as she unconsciously cradled the stump in her good hand.
"It doesn't really matter what we call it as long as it works. Right lets try again." The bird flapped its wings and lifted slightly, another flap and it was almost head height. It took another twenty minutes of experimentation for Naruto to figure out how to make the bird fly parallel to the ground.
"Now that we've got that down it's time to figure out what to put in the message."
"Why bother? It already knows what to tell Ojiisan," he sighed as the others looked at him skeptically, "You guys forgot it's a clone didn't you? This is gonna be priceless, I'd love to see the expression on the old mans face when my clone appears. Mass bird clone technique!" Naruto quickly formed the handseal and watched satisfied as nearly fifty clones of the ugly bird appeared around him, "Now you all know what the message is, split up and get there quick. The quicker you are the more likely we are to survive. Alright go!" The birds took off in a flurry of white wings and rapidly disappeared over the sea as they spread out.
"Now all we can do is wait," Sasuke sighed, he really hated feeling this weak and resolved that if they lived through this he'd train harder than he ever had in his life. He'd have to get back to the Uchiha compound first though so that he could go through the clan scrolls on the Sharingan and discover what it could really do since Kakashi hadn't really trained him in its use yet.
// \\
Zabuza Momichi looked up from the wreckage of the third patrol boat that had dared to challenge his passage from the Land of Waves. His ex-employer hadn't wasted any time in tightening the noose on the small island nation, to the point that no one was allowed access to a boat of any description, those foolhardy enough to try were dealt with, with lethal force. Zabuza on the other hand hadn't broken any of Gato's new laws since he was taking a nice stroll across the narrow straight that separated the two land masses from one another. The only problem was the inconvenience of having to stop occasionally to destroy another boat filled with samurai too stupid to know when to quit. The walking on water bit should have told them they were in over their heads but at least all that was nearly over, all he had to do was cover another sixty metres or so and then walk up a two hundred foot cliff, a feat that was child's play for a ninja of his ability.
He winced slightly as he remembered his apprentice and the time he'd spent teaching him such simple tasks. He thought he'd laid all of that to rest the day before when he'd buried the child but it seemed that he'd flet more for Haku than he knew. For the first time in a long time he felt the stirrings of loneliness, though he didn't bother to label it. Thankfully he was distracted from following that line of thought when a seagull squawked nearby, a little startled that he'd allowed a living creature get so close without him noticing it.
A quick glance told him that it was just a seagull, another and he was second guessing himself since seagulls weren't known to fly in formation, sure they flocked together but to form a line and space themselves twenty metres apart was not natural. The clincher though was when the nearest bird came in closer to investigate him it circled him twice before it seemed to come to a decision and promptly flew away. Zabuza winced when the bird crashed headlong into the cliffface that was now only thirty metres away.
"Damn, that's one stupid bird, not to mention ugly…." He trailed off when he saw the tell-tale smoke of a dispersing clone.
// \\
He wasn't the only one to wince either as the person responsible for the clone suddenly had the memory of impacting a cliff at nearly forty miles an hour shoved into the forefront of his brain along with the last memories of the bird clone. It took a couple of minutes for him to process them and figure out what it all meant but when he did he came to two conclusions, no make that three. The first was that murdering bastard that killed their sensei was leaving the island, which was good, the second was that he loved the sensation of flying high above the ground, it was even better than tree soaring, and thirdly there was the fact that he hated landings.
In the meantime neither of his team-mates had noticed his distraction, Sasuke was busy getting some of the miniscule food supplies they had left together so they could have lunch and Sakura was watching him since he'd made it clear she shouldn't be doing very much of anything in her current condition. In truth Sakura was feeling sorry for herself now that the reality of only having one hand was starting to sink in, and the realization that her life had changed kept slamming into her every time she reached for something out of reflex and found she couldn't lift it with her stump. That and the fact she was beginning to feel useless to Team 7 saw her enter the beginning of depression.
"Heh-he-he," Naruto's chuckle broke the others attention as they looked up, there hadn't been a great deal to really laugh about so far today though they'd tried.
"What's wrong with you Naruto?"
"It looks like we're gonna be alright guys," Naruto grinned at his friends.
"How do you figure that dobe? We're still stuck on this island with all these people trying to kill us," Sasuke's glare was extremely effective at cowing his hyperactive team mate, especially with the Sharingan whirling madly.
"But, the one we were worrying about is gone," Naruto protested.
"You'd better explain that or I'm gonna knock you into next week."
"One of the bird clones saw one of Gato's picket boats explode a little while ago and went to see what happened."
"Who cares what happened! That's one less group of mercenaries we'll have to deal with."
"Would you let me finish! Okay when it got closer it spotted someone walking away from the wreckage, turns out it was that Zabuza guy. Anyway putting the facts together it looks like he's leaving and him and Gato aren't on good terms no more," he finished triumphantly with a foxy grin.
"Or they want to make it seem that way so we'll come out of hiding. It might have slipped your feeble mind but there're still a couple of hundred mercenaries out there," Sasuke sneered.
"Hold on a second Sasuke-kun, Naruto might be onto something. It's not like we've been trying to hide," she winced as she thought of how stupid they'd been to not bother hiding, "Gato's men could have found us at any time, they knew who hired us so it wouldn't have been hard."
"Yeah and if we can't hide from these guys for a couple of days until help arrives then we don't deserve to wear these hitai-ate," Naruto thumbed the metal plate on its silk band.
"Okay now that we've got all that sorted, Naruto go pack the gear while I get more supplies," the dark haired boy directed.
"What do you want me to do?"
"Keep an eye out for any enemy movement." Just as he finished saying that and Naruto had almost risen to go upstairs the front door crashed open causing them all to reach for weapons.
// To be continued \\
Authors Notes:- I have to admit I was a little disappointed with the reader response to my stories first chapter but I was kind of expecting it to disappear quickly in the sheer mass of Naruto fanfics being updated everyday. So here I am hoping for better response as I release another chapter. It's taken me a couple of days to write and get this polished enough where I'd release it, on the other hand it takes only a couple of minutes to post a review to let me know what you think of it.
So hit that (Submit Review) button and let me know how it's going.