Chapter 10: Home Never Felt So Good!

By: DemonClowSorceress and Red

Disclaimer: Naruto does not belong to us.

Red: But it would be amazamifying! o/_\0

DemonClowSorceress: Muse-chan, control yourself! You'll scare the readers....

Red: In the name of Jade (TotA) I shall never do the soing that you say I should do! What would become of Hiro-chan!?!

Tsukasa's story was pretty simple, yet very convoluted. Hiro listened as he spun a tale of alternate worlds much like those of summoned creatures, where their respective clans lived in peace and harmony along with the real world (Author's Note: Ugh, hate it that there's no name for the Naruto-universe). Then Tsukasa said something about "the twelve" which completely went over everyone's head including the bird boy's. And finally, he mentioned there being more fur-children somewhere in the real world via the same way they had all gotten here.

"If only we could remember," remarked Daisuke sarcastically, still cleaning her tail with her teeth.

"Well, it's sorta like the zodiac, but with different animals," Tsukasa said in a hopefully helpful tone. "All I know is that we're supposed to be here for some reason."

Hanika leaned forward, her white rabbit's ears twitching excitedly. "So, we have parents somewhere? We're not orphans?"

"Well, they did abandon us - OW!" Tomoya yelled, wincing away from Kaname's sharp elbow. "Well it's true - OW! Knock it off!"

Hikaru and Hikari were busy purring, rubbing their heads together, happy as clams. Shippo clapped hands with Hiro, who was still reeling from the idea that maybe, just maybe, he had real parents. There are others who care about me as much as Papa and Tou-chan do?

OMG, PAPA AND TOU-CHAN!!!!!!

"You guys, we're wasting time!" yelled Hiro as he jumped to his feet, startling every other child. "I have to get back to Konohagakure! Papa and Tou-chan must be worried sick! I've never been away from home this long before! Saru-chan, how far away from the Valley of the End are we?"

Shippo counted as he licked mashed banana off his fingers. "One, two, three.......Inu-chan lives on the edge of the Valley. We should find her tomorrow."

"Why are you going to Konohagakure?" asked Hikari. Tsukasa proceeded to fill her and Hikaru and Shippo in on the circumstances. Hanika was still on the fact that she could have parents and was busy comparing the best parental qualities with Tomoya, who was for once not thinking of acting like a lech. Shippo amused himself with a banana peel while Hiro tried to remember his Papa and Tou-chan's faces, which he was having difficulty doing at the moment.

Kaname and Daisuke, after pushing past each other to get farther apart, suddenly tensed up and sank into poses - Daisuke crouched on all fours like a predator while Kaname's wings extended slightly, trembling a little. Her nose twitched as the wind changed. His mouth opened to release an almost inaudible squeak of echolocation, finding out what lay beyond what his excellent night vision saw. The other children saw this change and likewise froze, waiting.

"What is it?" asked Tsukasa.

Kaname frowned, cocking his head in confusion. Again he sent out a soundwave, listening hard. When it came back he blinked. "I can hear someone - or something - but it knows I can too. It keeps jumping behind stuff whenever I try to pin it down. Like it can hear my echolocation....."

"Oh, it must be Inu-chan!" said Shippo, bouncing over. He cupped his hands and shouted, "INU-CHAN! IT'S SHIPPO! C'MON OVER, THE FOOD'S GREAT!!"

His cry echoed in the night, startling the rest of the Fur Fighters. Daisuke and Kaname kept watchful eyes and ears on the perimeter as a small form detatched from the darkness and stalked closer, more cautious than hostile.

This fur-child had worse scraps of clothes than even a beggar, barely enough to cover herself. Her hair was between long and short, never even, and filled with brambles. She was thin and scrawny in an underfed way, and her long ears drooped with weariness. A fluffy black tail likewise hung low. Saliva dripped from her mouth; she looked at the food with a gleam of burning hunger.

Shippo beckoned her closer. "C'mon Inu-chan, come on. They won't hurt you. We're all the same." He held out a piece of meat, cooked and dripping with juices. "Here. Are you hungry?"

She jumped, grabbed the food, and scarfed it down. Hikari blinked. "I think she is. Really hungry."

"What's your name?" Hiro asked.

The dog girl, having finished her meat, licked her lips happily and wagged her tail. "Mei. My name's Mei." Big brown eyes looked at the odd assortment of children. "Who are all of you? Are you friends of Shippo?"

Introductions were quickly given as the fur-children settled in for the night. Hiro watched as each child drifted to sleep in his or her own fashion and company. Kaname, alone and hanging from a ledge by his knees, wings wrapped around his body like a blanket. Tsukasa, sitting on a different ledge by the cave entrance like a canary, his small wings folded in to cover his face. Daisuke and Mei, sharing a canine bond, curled up beside each other, their tails over their faces. The cat twins likewise, but on the other side of the cave. Hanika, hunched inward, her ears twitching even in sleep. Tomoya, snoring gently as he sprawled over a rock, belly up. Shippo, sleeping the most normal of all, holding his tail like a child holds a teddy bear, sucking his thumb.

Suddenly he felt eyes watching him. Whirling around, he saw the flash of gold in bushes and was instantly wary. The tale of Orochimaru's Hebi were still fresh in his mind, and his own squirrel instincts were telling him that snakes were not a good idea to go up against alone.

"Are you the snake-man's Hebi?" asked the little boy to the eyes cautiously. They blinked slowly, then moved from side to side. Hiro refused to relax, though. "Then who are you?"

But the eyes blinked shut and disappeared, leaving Hiro with the feeling that he'd seen something he wasn't supposed to.

The next day the band of Fur Fighters roused themselves early and made themselves presentable. Mei had said that Konohagakure was only a few hours away from their current location, and none of the other children wanted to make a bad impression. The girls made hair, clothes, and faces a cleaning priority, while the boys made sure they didn't look too hideous (though Hikaru and Hikari balked at washing with water). Daisuke, in a rare form of sharing, unearthed some hair ribbons and a new set of clothes for Mei, cleaning up the dog girl til she looked like a showdog instead of a stray.

When the prettying was done, Hiro took his place at the head. Inhaling the familiar scent of the forest, he pointed south. "Let's go, Fur Fighters!"

They made good time, frolicking through the forest like they had no care in the world. Most of the children had lived hidden lives, avoiding people and the freeness of a normal childhood. This was a rare opportunity to run, skip, laugh, and be themselves without a care and no chance of being judged. Hiro saw them more happy and carefree in those few hours then he'd seen them be in all their short acquaintence.

Soon Hiro began recognizing parts of the forest. His nose smelled the village's unique smells of people, food, and chakra. "This way!" he crowed, running towards the smells. His ears soon picked up voices - voices he knew. "We're close! We're really really close!"

********

Well, they were close. Just not to Konohagakure. Apparently they came out a town early, which explained the people and food smells. The chakra smell, however, was something totally different.

The chakra smell took Hiro and Company through the town. Normally they'd avoid it; chakra of that magnitude meant serious ninjas. But they followed it anyway on the scant chance that it was one of Hiro's nii-chans or nee-chans. They made a strange sight - Daisuke and Mei at the head, noses in the air and sniffing quickly, while Hikari and Hikaru's eyes darted from side to side, pegging down everyone that moved. And, of course, the fur they wore was an eye-catcher as well.

It was almost sundown when Hiro's ears caught the sounds of an arguement. It was coming in the same general direction of the chakra, so the group quickly scampered over and peeked around a corner on top of each other to see what was going on.

Two men were crowding a woman. Standard.

The woman was a knockout beauty. Definitely not sold short in the T&A departments. She wore her kimono like she knew it too; it sloped over her breasts and the hem ended only two inches below her butt. She also wore high-heel sandals like Shizune-nee-chan and Tsuna-baba did. Standard.

The men smelled like sake. Standard. Every child's sensitive nose wrinkled in disgust.

The woman wasn't intimidated. On the contrary, she was being extremely sarcastic and rude.

Definitely not standard.

"Look, why don't the two of you poorly-evolved primates go pester some other female of your intelligence level?" she snapped at them, her hand on her hip as she tossed blue treeses over her shoulder. Angry ice-colored eyes stared daggers at the men. "I'm very busy right now, unlike you intoxicated excuses for higher mammals."

The others were moving on, but Hiro found her style of speech oddly interesting. It was like she was older than she appeared to be. Much like Tsuna-baba did, except this lady spoke like she'd been around for centuries.

One of the men, however, apparently found her insulting. He grabbed her arm roughly and made to smack her. But before his hand struck, her other hand pressed against against his chest, fingers splayed over his heart.

And he went flying backwards, crashing into the storefront across the street. The noise brought other people running, including the Fur Fighters who had left Hiro behind. They clustered around their fearless leader, who pointed to the blue-haired bombshell and whispered, "She's the chakra."

"Who is she?" whispered Tomoyo with hero worship in his eyes as he looked up and down the woman like she was made of candy.

By this time the other man had left to help his fallen comrade. The woman paused to look up and down the street as if searching for a way out, but with people coming from all sides in a crushing crowd, instantaneous escape seemed unlikely.

Hiro suddenly bolted to the woman's side. Standing in front of her, he raised his arm above his head, he threw his last smoke bomb down to blind the people approaching them. "Come with me, Aoi-san!*" he said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her along. "Fur Fighters, flee the scene!" he yelled at the other children.

Once they were outside the town, gasping for air and grasping stitches in their sides, Kaname found the breath to snap, "And why the hell did you bring her along, pray tell?!" pointing at the blue-haired woman. "Are you trying to get us caught and killed? Or are you just stupid?!"

"Is that a trick question?" asked Daisuke, collapsing on the ground in exhaustion.

"But Aoi-san was in trouble!" whined Hiro, defending his choice the only way he knew how - honestly. "She would have gotten in trouble for breaking the store!"

"Meh, who gives a crap?" said Hikaru, stretching lazily. His ginger tail twitching side to side in annoyance. "The better thing to wonder about is how to get to Konoha. Are we close?"

Hiro grinned sheepishly, sweatdropping. "Yeah......we went a little too far. It's the next village over......"

This kid will drive us all crazy, thought every Fur Fighter as Hiro rubbed his head with his tail.

"Excuse me." Aoi-san came forward and knelt to the children's eye level. "I appreciate your assistance, but I was perfectly capable of dealing with the situation at hand on my own."

Kaname snorted, "Pfft. Yeah right."

"Are you all right then, Aoi-san?" Tsukasa asked, rubbing his hand while the bat boy lay unconscious on the ground with a smoking chop indentation in his head. "Would you like us to escort you somewhere?"

She looked at every child intently before resting her eyes on Hiro. Ice-blue irises shifted to a golden hue as they widened in shock. "You.....are you possibly Uzuha Hiro from Konohagakure, son of Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke?"

She knows Papa and Tou-chan!? "You know my Papa and Tou-chan?!" he repeated aloud, surprised and pleased.

She tilted her head. "I know they have been searching this land for you. They are quite - "

POOF! A cloud of smoke suddenly surrounded Aoi-san, causing the Fur Fighters to choke and cough. When it cleared, in Aoi-san's place there stood a small girl the same size and relative age of the Fur Fighters. She was dressed in a Chinese-style kenpo suit that was one size larger than skin-tight, colored black and red with a red dragon design on the back. Her shoes were traditional black slippers and her hair was half up, half down, the loose hair falling to the small of her back.

The Fur Fighters stared shamelessly and Hiro suddenly had a thought that he voiced, quite loudly, "Hey! Can you take us back to Konoha? Please Aoi-chan!"

"Kusaka," Aoi-chan said after a few moments of contemplation. The Fur Fighters just stared blankly at her so she clarified, "My name is Kusaka. And, yes, yeah, I'll take you guys back to Konoha. Follow me!"

"Okay Ryuu-chan!**" cried Hiro, falling into step behind her as Kusaka headed southwest. The rest of the Fur Fighters shrugged in unison and trailed after her.

********

The Konoha Twelve were exhausted. After combing Konoha for the past week, they still had no leads on Hiro's location. All the ninja, however, knew that their concern paled in comparison to that of Naruto and Sasuke.

Both patrols had compared notes and agreed; it was when the order to return had come that they had stopped talking. Naruto had become a morose individual, staring at the ground with a pathetically sad expression on his whiskered face. Sasuke, on the other hand, had simply become stone-faced, no expression whatsoever. Both had failed to utter a sound for the five hours it took to return to Konoha.

"I'm sorry we couldn't have been more help," said Gaara, walking alongside Sakura with his siblings. "But we checked all our checkpoints in Suna. He didn't come into the country." Both Kankuro and Temari added their own apologies.

"Thank you, Gaara." Sakura looked at her two teammates and felt terrible. "I'm sure they appreciate it too."

The young Kazekage thought hard for a second. "Maybe he's lying low. There was that random attack on the village in the west, he could've hid someplace until he felt safer to move...."

"He's been gone for a week." A flashback to when Sasuke had defected came back to her; she'd felt just as helpless then as she did now. Her eyes threatened to overflow with tears, but she kept them at bay. The last thing this sad atmosphere needed was her useless tears.

Akamaru suddenly stopped short. His nose sniffed the ground, then tilted up to test the breeze. He voiced an almost inaudible whine, questioning what his nose was telling his brain. Then his tail began to wag vigorously.

Surprisingly, it wasn't Kiba who noticed his partner's weird behavior first. "What is it, boy?" Hinata asked, scratching behind his ears. "What do you smell?"

"Arf! Arf!" barked the large dog, turning back to the forest and sitting his furry white butt down. He kept barking as if to say, "Look! Look over there! Look!"

So the Konoha Twelve began to turn around. Already they were thinking it was a random animal, or some passing fancy of Akamaru's nose that he wanted to share with them. He had his own ways of cheering people up.

Then a voice broke the silence. "PAPA! TOU-CHAN! PAPA!! TOU-CHAN!!"

Naruto and Sasuke spun around, dropping to their knees from pure reflex. Naruto threw his arms wide and caught the racing bullet of fur. The force knocked both fathers backwards as Hiro started hugging the living daylights out of them.

"Hiro-chan!" exclaimed all the Konoha Twelve, descending for a huge group hug. "Hiro-chan, you're back!"

After a couple minutes of hugging, kisses, and questions, Hiro finally popped out of his fathers', nii-chans' and nee-chans' embraces and skipped back towards the forest. "Papa, Tou-chan, I brought home friends! Can they stay?"

The Konoha chunin stopped their ecstatic rejoicing and stared. Like timid wild animals the rest of the Fur Fighters crept out from the forest's protection, eyes wide in caution. Even Kaname and Daisuke, easily the toughest ones of the group, were poised to fly and run, respectively. The only one indifferent to the stares was Kusaka, but this was not surprising.

Sakura came forward first, crouching down to their eye level. "Who are your friends, Hiro-chan?"

The squirrel jumped out of Naruto's arms and in front of the Fur Fighters. "This is Tenshi-chan, Usagi-chan, Inu-chan, Tanuki-chan, Akki-chan, twin Neko-chans, Saru-chan, Kitsune-chan, and Ryuu-chan! We're the Fur Fighters! They helped me find my way home. Can they stay?"

A.N.

* - Aoi means blue, so Hiro calls her Miss Blue.

** - Ryuu is dragon.