The Kinkou of the Yajuu
I don't own Naruto and Animorphs!
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"Talking"
'Thoughts'
-telepathy-
XD Scene change
/ Different point of view
):P Flash back
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Chapter 11
He wakes as Soul begins to demand some food. He sighs and picks up the cub as he sits up. He yawns and Soul growls, he smiles slightly and stands up on the futon that's his bed. Tsunade had decided that since it was late, they'd be staying at her mansion for the night and that in the morning, they'll find a better place to live for the reminder of month that they're here.
He walks to the mini fridge he brought with him and takes out one of the cold bottles. He heads off to find the kitchen to warm up the milk; Soul seems content to be moving and seems to be studying his surroundings with interest. He notices that Toby's up and moving around, the exchange greetings as he continues on his way, knowing that Soul would complain if he lingers to talk with the Seer of the Hork-Bajir.
He locates the kitchen; he notices that nobody's starting breakfast. He looks thoughtful about that as he locates a pot and fills it up with some water before putting the bottle in it. He turns on the oven and places the pot on a burner. He glances down at Soul as the cub stares intently at the bottle. He presses his lips together as he considers putting the cub on the counter so he can begin breakfast.
"Oh, Naruto, I didn't expect to see you here." He turns and smiles at Tsunade's assistant and student, Shizune. "Just warming up some milk for Soul, would you want to try holding him?" He asks as he notices the looks Shizune is giving the cub. "Would you mind?" Shizune asks and he shrugs as he replies, "It's not up to me, he just happens to prefers that I'm the one holding him, but I've handed him off to others when he's fast asleep. It's about time he gets held when he's awake. Don't worry, he hasn't bitten anyone, he's more growl then bite."
He hands a slightly startled Soul to the older ninja. Soul protests but doesn't try and bite the young woman. When he hands Shizune the warm bottle, Soul glances between Shizune and then back at him, Soul does this a few times before Soul allows Shizune to bottle feed him. "How smart is he?" Shizune asks and he shrugs. "I wouldn't be surprise if he's as intelligent as Toby, after all, the Kyuubi did have access to human DNA, my DNA." He muses.
"So it's true what Hinata said? You can transform without using a henge?" Shizune asks and he nods. "What to see?" He asks in amusement. He notices Shizune haste but then nods. "Just to be too freaked out with what beast I'm turning into." He warns and within a minute, he's in his coyote morph.
He notices the many scents that litter the kitchen. He flickers his ear to the door and turns to see Ax in his human form entering into the kitchen. –Shizune, you remember Ax. Ax, this is Shizune, she's Tsunade's assistant.- He says, including Shizune into what he's saying. Shizune looks slightly startled about hearing his voice insider of her head and Ax does walk over to greet Shizune.
"Greetings, may I inquire, in-qu-i-or, where it's, ss-A-fff, safe to run?" Ax says. He notices how Ax is playing with the sounds. –Forgive him, his race lacks mouths and there for, speech. -He informs Shizune privately. Shizune nods and then realises that he was talking with her privately and that Ax was still waiting for her to answer.
Soon enough, Ax leaves the mansion house in order to feed. He's once more in his birth body. "He's a grazer; he absorbs nutrients through his hooves." He explains. Shizune seems amazed to hear that and he adds, "You wouldn't know it from the way he stuffs his face with food when he's human, though."
"You really did come back with interesting friend, Naruto-kun." The woman says and he shrugs. "So true, but it's just the type I keep attracting." He replies lightly to Shizune and she chuckles lightly at that. He notices that Soul's done with his bottle and watches as Soul looks satisfied with his meal.
"He's done." He says and Shizune looks startled, she looks down at Soul before asking, "Does he sleep afterwards?" He shakes his head and replies, "He'll stay awake for another thirty minutes and then he'll nap. After he wakes, he'll need to use a litter box, and then he'll need another bottle." Shizune just smiles at him as it seems that she's clearly amused about how he knows such things.
XD
He keeps his face unmoved when he heard about him being placed onto team 7 again. He didn't object to being partnered with Sakura again, but he has mixed feeling about having Kakashi as his 'sensei' again. Sure, he was kind of hurt to learn that he's the only one out of the rookie nine to be a genin, but he feels bile in the back of his throat at the very thought of being under the Copy Ninja once more.
In his opinion Kakashi was one of those teachers that practice favourism, it really showed during chuunin examine, for he didn't see why Sasuke needed Kakashi's full attention when Sasuke's family most likely have tons of scrolls detailing different types of jutsus that they've picked up since their clan have been founded. 'Or nobody ever considered that they did that.' He thinks to himself, glad that he came here without any of the others, they'll be protesting on his behalf about him being placed with Kakashi once more.
'Knowing my luck, he'll focus on Sakura over me.' He thinks bitterly. "Where's Ero-sennin? Or is he still out and about with his spy network?" He asks, slightly hoping to meet up with the pervert. "He was searching for you until Hinata brought news of your where about not being in this reality. He's been busy keeping take of Akatsuki after that." Tsunade says, he curses mentally, he had hoped to get the old man's help perfecting the jutsus he's learnt from the scrolls he has in his procession.
He tries to milk as much information out of Tsunade during this session before meeting up with his old and new team mates, well, at least for the remainder of the time he's here. "What are the Akatsuki up to? I mean, other then gathering demon carriers?" He asks and before Tsunade answers, the door opens and Sakura enters, at the moment, he wants to throttle the pink haired teen for cutting his time short with the old lady.
"Naruto? Naruto!" Sakura says, clearly stunned by how much he's grown. He hadn't really noticed the difference since in the Animorphs' reality, they were very well feed and therefore never lacked the correct nurturance that stunt people's growth.
He had actually noticed the change about three days after he first started morphing, his childhood malnutrition had been corrected and his body began growing to make up for it. By the end of that first month, he had grown thirteen center meters. He's current height is a few inches shy of six feet. He's at the point where his frame is now filling out, to make him look less scrawny looking.
"Hey Sakura." He says, keeping his annoyance out of his voice. "You look…" Sakura trails off, a slight blush appearing on her face and he answers, "Good?" Sakura nods and he shrugs.
"Morph did wonders for my health." He says, Tsunade had examined him to see the effects of how morphing had on his body, especially on the Fourth's seal. It seems that the seal looks as good as it has ever been, despite the fact that he had burped Soul out of his body. Tsunade had also commented on his much improved chakra control when he demonstrated some of his morphs, they were his goshawk, puma, and uritso morphs. It seems he's been practicing chakra control when he controls the changes that occur when he's morphing into his collection of beasts.
He looks over to old lady Tsunade and asks, "So, where's Kakashi?" Tsunade points out the window and he heads to look out of the window, Sakura following in his wake. He glances questioningly at the young looking old lady and she nods her head slightly, he then opens the window and steps out onto the red tiles that make up this portion of the roof. He shakes his head as he finds Kakashi sitting on the roof, reading one of Ero-sennin books.
"You really need to get new reading material." He says to his cell leader. "Yo." Kakashi says, clearly disregarding his advice. Sakura then proceeds to lecture their teacher about his choice of reading material. While the pink haired teen was doing that, he's checking out Kakashi with his chakra sense he's come to rely on to locate people's chakra. He frowns as he notices the odd way the Sharingan eye interacts with Kakashi's chakra.
He sighs and once Sakura pauses, he asks, "So are we doing this today or tomorrow?" Kakashi and Sakura blink at him, Sakura confused while Kakashi studies him for a few seconds before replying, "Tomorrow, the same place as the first one." He shrugs and begins to walk to the edge. "Ok, see you both then." He leaps off the roof, within seconds; he's in his goshawk morph. He lets out a screech as he says, -Bye, Sakura. See you, Kakashi.-
He ignores Sakura's shouts of how he almost gave her a heart attack. He's satisfied in his display of his morphing skills. Now he just has to remember where they're now living as he soars over the village, he notices some crows hanging about the market place, he heads higher up into the air, not wanting to be mobbed by a flock of crows.
It takes him about an hour to finally locate the slightly run down mansion that they're staying at. He lands by the porch and de-morphs; he then enters into the mansion house. He blinks as he hears something coming from down the hall. "Is that the Lion King?" He wonders, he had packed a TV, DVD player, and other electronic things that you couldn't find in this reality, or you'd find less advance versions around.
It's not long before he finds most of the gang lounging around on the few couches and chairs, some of them he had packed inside of some scrolls, watching the large screen TV that's playing Disney's the Lion King. It's at the part where Simba is being chased out of the pride lands by the three hyenas that work for his uncle scar.
He glances at Danielle; he left Soul in her care so that he can see what Tsunade wanted. He surveys the members that were lounging about in front of the TV. He notices Ax and Marco were lounging around Danielle. For the members of the rookie nine, he spies Shikamaru sitting with Temari, Ino sitting with Hinata and TenTen, Lee sitting with Choji, Kiba, and Shino, and then Neji sitting on his own on one of the lazy boy chairs he had packed.
He shrugs and settles on the other lazy boy chair. He doesn't mind the choice of movie, though he wonders what they're going to do once the movie's done. He's not worried about Toby, guessing that the Hork-Bajir Seer was busy reading through the scrolls in what appears to be a library.
XD
"I can't believe you many movies you have, Naruto!" Ino says as she goes through the selection he brought with him. "If you think this is a lot, then you should see what he left behind." Marco says, he finds it slightly amusing that Marco's flirting with Ino. "You mean he owns more then this?" Tenten asks, clearly startled that he could own more then the selection he brought with him.
"I think the last time I counted; the number was well over a hundred and thirty." Ax muses, he's in his human morph since they had ordered take out. Ax had paused from eating to answer Tenten's question. "And he only brought twenty-three?" Ino asks and gives him a slight glare, he shrugs. "I didn't want to take the whole collection when we're only staying for about a month." He answers.
"And we wouldn't have time to watch all of them either, since we do have missions to do." Shino says, he's actually surprise to hear Shino say something, since it's kind of rare. "Ok, so which one should we watch next? I also don't know how to read these either…" Ino asks. Marco then reads the titles and the descriptions on the back of the DVDs.
Soon, they're once more around the TV, the ninja's voted on watching Jurassic Park. He can't wait to see the ninja's reactions to the dinosaurs. Toby also joins them in watching the movie. They also turned off the lights, as Choji and Ax finished off what remains of the take out. Marco makes sure the surround sound is on so they get the full effect of the movie. He sits back and enjoys just hanging out with his old 'crew.'
XD
He prowls around the area in his African hunting dog morph, he didn't do his coyote since people might mistake the golden canine as a large fox and he didn't feel up to dealing with the furious mind of the puma and he highly doubts anyone will enjoy having a large brown bear move about the forest, especially since the only kind of bear they're familiar with were the black and white panda bears that were totally grazers.
It's not long before Sakura appears with Tsunade and Shizune. He de-morphed and steps out of the forest, he nods to the three. Within ten minutes, Kakashi appears and this is something which surprised Sakura and himself since they're use to waiting for three hours for the grown man to arrive at the meeting site.
"You're not late." Sakura says in awe, he nods in agreement with Sakura's statement. Kakashi coughs slightly and he just puts his arms behind his head. While he's fought controls, it's been a while since he's fought against a ninja. 'Against Sasuke to boot.' He muses silently.
It's not long before Kakashi announces what kind of test they're going to have, it's similar what they had when they first started out as a team, only the time limit is until dawn tomorrow and that they're going all out. He starts off with the fire dragon jutsu that he used on the uritsos.
"Is it suppose to have black skin?" Sakura asks as they watch the black coloured dragon chases after Kakashi. "No it shouldn't." He admits as water jutsus that Kakashi's trying doesn't work on the fire dragon. He sighs, not sure if he could stop the dragon before it burnt Kakashi into a crisp chunk of burnt flesh.
"Can you stop it?" Sakura asks as Kakashi begins to do earth jutsus in hopes of putting it out. "I doubt it; it's just doing what it's suppose to do." He admits. After about an hour, the black skinned fire dragon vanishes, leaving Kakashi worn out from being chased around by the fire dragon.
Sakura and him just kind of stood around, watching as the fire dragon wears Kakashi down. He's still trying to figure out what went wrong with the jutsu, he's unsure what Sakura was thinking about though. "Where did you learn that jutsu?" Kakashi asks as the grown man catches his breath.
"A library scroll." He replies, not seeing any harm in telling Kakashi where he learnt the jutsu. "You learnt that from a library scroll?" Sakura asks and he shrugs. "I did it in the sewers against a pack of uritsos that were attacking Hinata, Jake, and myself. The black skin is new though." He muses out loud.
"So this is the second time you've used it?" Tsunade asks, speaking up for the first time. "Yea, it actually is. I've learnt others but never got around to performing them." He answers. "How many?" Kakashi asks and he thinks about it and answers, "I had a total of thirteen scrolls when I first arrived in their reality. I then received a bundle of twenty scrolls from the Ellimist, five of those scrolls had ten scrolls stored within them. That would make it about seventy-eight jutsus I now know, but I've had quite a bit of practice with sealing, so about seventy-five jutsu I haven't practice regularly."
He suddenly becomes aware of the fact that everyone's staring at him. "What?" He asks. "You learnt that many jutsus just from reading a bunch of scrolls? In less then two years?" Kakashi asks, clearly stressing the last part. He crosses his arms in front of his chest and replies, "And I made Sasuke keel over in exhaustion to boot." He swears that Kakashi was on the verge of keeling over from a heart attack.
"Didn't he use this curse seal? Or a chidori?" Sakura asks. "We couldn't use those two attacks against each other and Sasuke couldn't activate his curse seal, either. It seems that there was a side bet going on concerning on my willingness to use … my other chakra instead of who'd win the fight." He replies. "The Ellimist won." He adds.
"You had him and you just let him go?" Sakura asks and he gives her a blank look. "The Crayak and the Ellimist put everyone back to where they were previously, though I doubt that Sasuke remembers the incident, Crayak doesn't seem the kind of being to have his failure be remembered if he can help it." Recalling what the being did to his own pawns to prevent contamination of the collective mind of the Howlers.
"Are we still doing this or what?" He asks, trying figure if the test was still on. A dense silence answered his question. 'At times like these, I wish I just kept my mouth shut.' He thinks to himself.
To be continued …