Chapter 3 - New Friends
The first thing Naruto noticed was that she was standing upright, this was significant due to the fact that last thing she saw before being where she was, was the ground rapidly approaching her face. The second thing she noticed was the room she was standing in.
High stone walls lead to a great arched roof, supported by enormous stone pillars. On every wall their were many hallways of varying sizes, branching off in many different directions. Flowing from some of the hallways was a pale blue mist, which upon entering the room combined with the red mist flowing from the center of the room before exiting once again through different passageways.
Deciding she had nothing better to do in this mysterious building, Naruto wandered towards the other end of the room, towards the center of the red mist.
"That technique you made is quite impressive." A deep rumbling voice said, followed by a deep sinister sounding chuckle that seemed somewhat familiar.
"Who's there?" Naruto demanded in loudly, reaching for her kunai holster. It wasn't until her hand brushed bare leg that her kunai holster, along with the rest of her clothing, was absent.
She suddenly felt very embarrassed for not noticing earlier and very exposed and vulnerable in the presence of an unknown intruder without her weapons.
"Who's there?" she demanded again, in a much smaller more timid voice that was an almost feminine squeak. But as soon as the words left her mouth, she felt ashamed of them; they had been weak, pitiful and worst of all girly. None of those traits she felt embodied her at all, and that's nor how her voice was supposed to sound, ever.
This time, using a trick she had learned years ago to stop from being found out, flowing chakra through her vocal chords. "I'm going to ask one more time, who's there?" she demanded in a large deeper masculine voice that she was more familiar with.
"It Is I!" the voice said loudly.
"That's not very helpful." Naruto replied flatly, still using her altered voice.
"Your voice no longer matches your form little one, maybe you need to work on your shape shifting technique." the voice said, this time noticeably more behind her than all around.
"What shape shifting technique? You still didn't answer my… What the?" were the words that came out of Naruto's mouth as she slowly turned around. Covering the most of the wall she had just turned to were two giant doors made of enormous metal bars and an equally as massive frame, and where the frames met at eye level in the middle, connecting the doors was a single piece of paper with the word seal written on it in Kanji. Behind the door was the great shadowy hulking form of a beast that looked big enough to crush Konoha in a matter of minutes. Mustering up as much courage as she could, she dropped the fake voice and addressed the beast. "Are you the Kyuubi?"
"Ah so it seems you have more backbone than any of my previous captors." The beast replied almost cheerfully.
"Why am I here?" Naruto demanded with as much authority as she could, attempting to get a strait answer from the beast.
"I was woken up by your powerful rage, and I wanted to meet the one so bold as too demand my power in such a harsh manner." The beast said, this time sounding quite amused, "Not at all what I expected."
"And what were you expecting?" Naruto demanded, sounding somewhat insulted.
"Something a little closer to what I saw of you when you first called upon my power." The beast replied offhandedly, "And somebody with a little more common sense than to be walking around without any clothing on."
"Never mind." Naruto muttered in response, blushing in embarrassment, before remembering something else that the beast had said. "Now what was it that you wanted to talk about?"
"I have a deal I want to make with you."
"I'm listening, but if it has anything to do with setting you free, you can forget about it." Naruto said warningly.
"I wouldn't expect you to willing release me. No I'm interested in keeping you alive until I can discover how to escape this prison."
"So what do you want to do?"
"I find the human body and senses to be far too weak for their own good."
"So what do you propose? The human condition is not so easily cured." Naruto said a little worried.
"You'd be surprised, with my power; I will enhance your senses as well as your strength and stamina. I only ask for a few things in return." The beast proposed.
"And what would those conditions be?" Naruto asked with a raised eyebrow and arms crossed over her chest.
"First, you must allow me access to your senses, so I can see what you see and hear what you hear, and second, I would like access to your thoughts, allowing me to speak with you at any time."
"Deal," Naruto said without a second thought, "But you're going to have to help me with my part, I have no idea how to do that."
"Alright lets get started." The beast said sounding quite excited to do this.
"Wait" Naruto said, remembering what the Hokage had told her about demons. "How do I know that you won't trick me?"
"Two reasons, first, if I could escape, I wouldn't need to ask your permission, and second, as a demon lord, I'm bound by my word. If a demon breaks his or her word in a contract such as this, they are to be killed in one of two ways, one by being offered to the god of death or two, if they are sealed within a human, all of their powers are to be gradually transferred into that human and they assume the position of demon lord. And trust me; you don't want to be one."
"Oh" was all Naruto could come up with after being bombarded with facts about a subject she knew absolutely nothing about.
"Get ready; this is going to hurt…" the beast said before changing the type of chakra flowing through the bars as well as the amount flowing out. "A lot."
The instant the chakra started flowing from the bars; the seal on Naruto's stomach began glowing a deep crimson color and her abdomen exploded in pain, which quickly spread across her entire body. The pain was too quick and intense, within a matter of seconds she was falling again, this time backwards, and her vision quickly faded to black.
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Kakashi and Zabuza had each other by the throats, both ready to deliver the killing blow when they were hit by a wave of suffocatingly powerful chakra that carried a great anger and evil.
Zabuza froze in fear and awe of the sheer quantity of the power, unable to imagine what creature could posses such power. Kakashi froze as well because he knew exactly what creature possessed that power.
Mere seconds after the explosion of power came a massive gust of razor sharp wind from further down the bridge, clearing most of the mist. The clearing of the mist allowed Kakashi and Zabuza to see down the bridge to there the others were. Down the bridge a slightly bloodied Naruto holding was holding a beaten and ragged looking hunter-nin by the throat like a rag-doll.
Naruto just help the hunter-nin there for a moment before lowering them to the ground, stumbling back a few steps and pitching forward onto her face.
Kakashi was torn between the need to help his student and the need to defeat his opponent. Putting some distance between him and his opponent, Kakashi leaped backwards and fell into a fighting stance, watching his opponent warily.
His opponent on the other hand stood relaxed and lazily regarded him before their gaze drifted past him to something behind him. Kakashi thought this was a ploy to get him to look away which he didn't plan on falling for, keeping his eyes on his opponent Zabuza. Both parties held their positions for a moment before Zabuza stepped forward, pointing down the bridge.
"Looks like we've got company." he said, and as on cue the angry voices and stamping feet of a small approaching mob of people reached an audible level to the two fighters at the end of the bridge.
Kakashi dropped his fighting stance and stepped off to the side, looking down the bridge at the mob, while keeping Zabuza in front of him, still expecting an attack.
The approaching mob was a band of around forty armed men marching purposefully down the bridge, lead by a man who was barely up to Kakashi's elbow. The man wore a tuxedo, carried a cane and carried himself as he were the biggest and baddest person in the mob.
Zabuza began walking down the bridge towards the approaching mob, passing the genin and stopping facing the still approaching mob. Kakashi followed closely behind, passing the hunter-nin who was tending to a downed Sasuke, stopping to crouch down and check the condition of Naruto, ensuring she was still alive before taking a place next to Zabuza facing down the mob.
The mob halted a short distance in front of the two experienced ninjas and the short man who was apparently the ring leader stepped forwards and said "I knew I couldn't count on you to get the job done."
"So what do you plan on doing now, Gato?" Zabuza asks, gesturing broadly to the bridge. "Construction has been halted, there are no workers here today."
"I'm going to start by eliminating you and these other bothersome ninjas." Gato said with an evil smirk.
Zabuza lifted his sword up out at arms length and dashed towards Gato at incredible speed. Before Gato had a chance to move or even react, Zabuza swung his sword around, cleanly cutting through Gato's neck, spraying blood on the fist line of men in the mob. Zabuza landed in a crouch with his sword out to his side and the mob stood frozen, only the sound of Gato's head hitting the ground shortly followed by his body falling in a heap.
Nobody moved for a long minute before an angry murmur rose through the crowd as they readied their weapons. Kakashi realized that if they intended to attack it wouldn't end well for either party, so he decided to try an intimidation tactic. Taking a few steps forward, he summoned a couple dozen illusion clones with a few shadow clones mixed in and had them all take stances like they were ready to take on the mob.
The mob responded with fright showing in their battle stances, a few members backing away. Seeing that his intimidation was working, Kakashi and the few of his shadow clones tossed warning kunai that landed all around the mob. As soon as the blades hit the bridge, some of the members turned and ran, quickly followed by the rest of the mob.
The army of clones marched forward as the mob retreated, forming a line farther down the bridge in case anybody else approached.
As the mob retreated, Sakura ran up to an exhausted looking Kakashi, dragging Tazuna with her, "Sensei, what happened to Sasuke and Naruto, are they OK?"
Kakashi scanned across the bridge, spying Naruto laying in the middle of the bridge, and a short distance further, two figures; the hunter-nin beaten and sore looking with a half dead looking Sasuke using their shoulder for support. Just as he spotted them Sakura let out a shocked gasp and pushed passed him, running towards Sasuke.
Sasuke and the hunter-nin stopped next to Naruto, Sasuke kneeling down over her and checking her injuries. The hunter-nin remained standing, looking down at Sasuke and how he put great care in making sure Naruto was alright.
As Sakura got close the hunter-nin took a few steps back and Sakura ran up and crouched next to Sasuke, grabbing his chin and turning his head to check for injuries, then checking his chest. Sasuke tried to shrug her off, his attention fixed on an injured Naruto, but Sakura persisted until she was sure that he was not badly injured before giving Naruto any notice.
When she finally gave Naruto attention something seemed odd about them, their cloths seemed extra baggy and their face was more delicate looking. Sakura hesitated for a moment, then began checking Naruto for any major injuries. She quickly checked their face and arms, noting their daintiness and smoothness, finding nothing under the blood and dirt, she moved on to the torso splitting Naruto's tattered jacket up the front. Sakura was shocked when she revealed Naruto's chest tightly wrapped in tattered bandages.
"Umm, well she's not injured..." Sakura said, looking at Sasuke, too shocked to say anything else.
Sasuke ignored Sakura and grunted as he slipped his arms under Naruto's back and legs and attempted to lift them. Sakura grabbed Sasuke's shoulder and forcefully pushed him back to down.
"You are hurt, you shouldn't be walking, much less carrying people around..." Sakura said to him gently, still holding his shoulder down.
Sasuke conceded and set Naruto back down, allowing Sakura to pick them up while Sasuke rose unsteadily to his feet behind her. Sakura was amazed by how light Naruto was, and how small she seemed when she thought of the Naruto she had known for so long. Sakura took Naruto and walked over to Kakashi, she found him standing between Tazuna and Zabuza.
"We're not enemies anymore, I am no longer getting payed," Zabuza said with a grin.
"You will have to excuse me if I am not reassured by that statement..." Kakashi replied, looking over his shoulder to see Sakura holding Naruto and Sasuke shortly behind her.
"Come Haku, we should be going." Zabuza said as the hinter-nin appeared by his side and the two of them began walking down the bridge.
"Take Naruto, and I will help Sasuke," Sakura said to Kakashi, transferring Naruto into his arms and rushing back to help Sasuke along.
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Naruto expected to hit the floor any second now, but the hard impact never came, instead, she landed on a soft surface that she recognized as a bed. For a moment, she just lay there; pulling the covers in tight and admiring the softness that made her sheets back home feel like sandpaper.
Naruto groaned, she didn't want to get up, but it was hard to ignore the throbbing pain in her head. Try as she might, she couldn't stop it from bring her to full awareness, and once there, there was no point in trying to go back. Rolling over in bed, she opened her eyes and looked up, only to hiss in pain and surprise curl up in a ball with the sheets pulled up over her head and her eyes screw shut to keep the blindingly bright light out.
She didn't know exactly why, but the blinding multicolor glare she saw reminded her of the dream she had just had. In that dream she had been in a large mist filled chamber, talking to her demon about a deal to enhance her senses, or something like that, then he forced some extra thick red chakra into her then she was suddenly in a bed.
As soon as she ran through that in her head, she realized that it had actually happened and cursed herself for being so stupid before wondering what the extent of the changes would be and if they had all happened or if they were still happening. While in the process of imagining what things have and will change about her, she tried to remember exactly what happened before she had the "dream". While replaying the hazy seen back in her head, she was hit by a sudden and very startling realization. Last time she saw Sasuke, he was looking very… dead.
Springing to life, she lept out of the bed in a single fluid motion and while keeping her eyes shut tight, made her way to the door, bumping into the walls a few times on her way. When she found the door she paused momentarily and ran her hands across her chest and hips to ensure that at least the essentials were covered.
After ensuring that she had at least the minimum required clothing on and keeping her eyes shut tight, she made her way quickly but carefully down the hall to the kitchen, where she heard the voice of Sakura coming from. Stopping outside of the kitchen, she experimentally opened her eyes, starting with squinting. It took a few minutes for her eyes to adjust to the light in the house, but eventually she could open them normally, and she was amazed by the sharpness and definition of everything. Her doctor had once told her that her vision as it was had been almost as good as an Uchiha's, but what she saw now made what she used to see seem colorless and blurry.
Still marveling at the clarity of her vision, she peeked into the kitchen, only to be blinded once again by the natural light that was shining in her direction. The light had caught by surprise and as she was trying to retreat to the shadows, she tripped over her own feet and landed flat on her backside just inside the door to the kitchen.
By the time she was able to see what was going on in the kitchen, she notice the one she had been looking for sitting at the table looking at her with an amused expression on his face. The joy and relief were so overwhelming that she failed to notice the other two in the room or the fact that Sasuke, though alive, was covered in bandages and didn't look to be in the best condition. Leaping to her feet, Naruto launched herself at Sasuke faster than the eye could follow and tackled Sasuke off of his chair, enveloping him in a tight hug.
"Ow!" Sasuke exclaimed in a pained voice, "You're squishing me."
"Sorry," Naruto replied, quickly rolling off of Sasuke and sitting up. Glancing over at the two still sitting at the table she said, "Good morning."
"Naruto, its evening." Kakashi said in a flat unconcerned voice.
"Really? How long was I out?" she asked, helping Sasuke to his seat before taking her own next to him.
"You've been unconscious for two days now, and for most of it you had a nasty fever." Kakashi said, setting down his book and looking intently at Naruto, what concern that was lacking in his voice showed on what little you could see of his face.
He was about to say more but Sakura butted in, and she wasn't too happy. "You still haven't explained to me what is going on here. This is not the Naruto I know and I want to know who she is what she's doing all over MY Sasuke." She demanded, standing and pointing at Naruto, who frowned at her claiming the position of Sasuke.
"If you want my brother, then you have to prove to me that your worthy of having him, and it's not all about looks." Naruto said defiantly, wrapping her arms around Sasuke's nearest arm and pulled him towards her.
"Brother?" Sakura asked with a dumbfounded expression on her face. "Kakashi-sensei, who is this?"
"That's Naruto, Sakura." Kakashi replied, keeping his eyes fixed on a partly visible mark on one of Naruto's wrists.
Sakura's jaw fell open as she turned to stare at "Naruto", this was not the loudmouth blond that always hung around with Sasuke. No this was an attractive young girl that had just denied her access to Sasuke. She would have to act quickly to get her approval before a different girl won her favor.
Unable to restrain his curiosity, Kakashi pointed to Naruto's wrist and asked, "Naruto what's that mark on your wrist?"
"Nothing." She said quickly, releasing Sasuke's arm and turning her arm so the mark was hidden from view.
"Don't try to fool him Naruto, he saw something and you're going to show it to him." Sasuke said, grabbing Naruto's arm and pulled it out before Naruto could protest or resist, revealing a tattooed pattern on her arm.
The pattern was a black rectangle covered in a multitude of thin white lines beginning and ending in white circles and surrounded in seeming random pattern of black lines.
"Naruto! Experimenting with seals is dangerous." Kakashi said, frowning at Naruto.
"But this is just a storage seal, it's perfectly safe." Naruto explained, somewhat timidly.
"Where did you learn such a complicated seal, in fact, where did you learn anything about seals? That information is supposed to be restricted to Genins." Kakashi said, sounding a little less scolding.
"I learned it from a book that I stole from the library before I got kicked out just before we left school." Naruto explained before placing her thumb over the center of the mark. "Here let me show you the book."
In an attempt to activate the seal, she tried to summon her chakra to her thumb, but instead of her desired result of a pulse of chakra to open the seal, her chakra flared up jagged and flame-like around her hand and began to climb rapidly up her arm.
All she could get out of her mouth was "Uh-oh…" before the flame like chakra reached her torso and her entire body exploded in pain so intense that her vision went black and she collapsed onto the table. But as suddenly as it began, it disappeared, along with the flame like chakra, which had spread to cover her entire body.
Opening her eyes, she half expected to be blinded by the setting sun still coming in the window, but instead it seemed quite dull. This had her slightly confused but not as confused as the utter lack of color in her surroundings or the fact that while she was almost 100% sure that Kakashi was in front of her and the door was behind her, but for a reason she didn't quite understand, she could see both of them at the same time, along with everything in every other direction as well. It was somewhat disorienting to be looking in every direction and be unable to focus on one specific thing, but for some reason she could tell exactly what direction she was facing no matter what direction she turned her head.
Through this amazing newest vision, she could see the expressions on the faces of the others around the table and decided to clarify something.
"That had nothing to do with the seal, I have no idea what happened." She said, turning to face the three, though it didn't matter to her, she could see them anyways but they probably didn't know that.
"Hey what happened to your eyes?" Sasuke asked, sticking his face close to Naruto's for a better look.
"I dunno, but everything looks weird. What do they look like?" Naruto asked, seemingly unfazed by the closeness of Sasuke's face to hers.
Instead of explaining, Sasuke pulled off his headband and held it close to one of her eyes. From what she could tell, her iris was plain white surrounded in a thick black outline with a half circle that reached two thirds of the way across the inside that ended in a black dot that was noticeably thicker than the line attached to it. While observing the appearance of her eye, she noticed color seeping into her vision while her range of vision began shrinking back to normal proportions.
It took a nearly a minute for her vision to return to the way it had been when she first entered the kitchen and with the return of her more normal vision came the resumption of her eye to its normal appearance, with the exception of an elongated pupil.
"So what was that all about?" Sakura asked, saying it as if Naruto had done that just for attention.
"I don't know, that's never happened before." Naruto replied, completely ignoring the tone of Sakura's voice.
"Naruto, you should go get some more rest, we'll talk about this tomorrow." Kakashi said picking his book back up and resuming his reading.
"Alright, I'll go back to bed." Naruto said with a sigh before getting back up and quickly walking back to her room and climbing back into her bed. She was wide awake until she got back into her bed, then she felt suddenly exhausted to the point where she couldn't keep her eyes open.
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"So what exactly happened back there?" Naruto asked the great caged red beast from her seat, safely outside of the cage.
"Your body is still undergoing changes, and that includes your chakra." The creature explained in a loud rumbling bass voice. "It shouldn't happen again if you avoid heavy chakra use for a short while."
"You're an eternal demon, define short while." Naruto said sarcastically before changing the subject to what she was actually asking about. "What about the thing that happened with my vision?"
"The sharper vision was the desired effect, but the other result had me surprised almost as much as it had you." The beast replied as this kind of thing happened every day.
"So what exactly was it? Because it was kinda cool." Naruto asked, hoping it had not been a one time thing.
"It would appear that I inadvertently activated your potential bloodline limit when I initiated the changes to your body." The beast said, the rumbling voice sounding thoughtful.
"Which means?" Naruto asked, not quite sure what it meant.
"Every human alive in your world today who doesn't have a clan ability has a dormant ability waiting to be activated." The beast explained.
"So why don't I hear about new clans and clan abilities appearing all the time?" Naruto asked,leaving the amazement of her potential abilities in favor of pursuit of more information.
"Because bloodlines don't just happen for no reason." It replied, sounding somewhat impatient.
"What do you mean?" Naruto asked, still doing her best to tolerate the moody beast that claimed to be a demon lord.
"A bloodline under normal circumstances takes generations to develop and often times doesn't get passed on to the next generation or develops into something utterly useless. For example the Sharingan was just a lucky act of evolution, similar to blue eyes but more advanced visual properties." The beast explained, sounding almost happy to explain this to someone. "But in special cases such as yours, prolonged or intense exposure to unnatural chakra can unlock the potential power hidden in your genes."
"That's cool, so if somebody got hit by a concentrated blast of your chakra they might develop a bloodline?" Naruto asked, interpreting the explanation as best she could.
"No, if anybody but you got hit with what I hit you with, they would be no more than ash or, if they were lucky, nearly dead, though it probably wasn't too good for you either. You have had my chakra flowing through you since day one, and because of that you can survive its poison like properties." It explained, sounding amused.
"Oh." Naruto said with a sigh, "So what do you think my bloodline is, and what can it do."
"Well going by what happened in the kitchen, I'm going to say that it's a doujutsu, but as for what it can do, that's for you to find out."
"Aw, that's no fun," Naruto said playfully sticking her tongue out at the beast, "I thought you were supposed to know all about that sort of thing."
"You just be thankful that its not something totally useless like the ability to sense cheese or something." The beast said with a growl.
"Well as much as I would like to sit here for a few more hours and talk, its morning and I've some work to do." Naruto said, focusing to the real world to pull herself out of her little dream world. "Besides, you should be able to speak to me whenever right?"
Naruto had had some disorienting moments in her life when entering and leaving the part of her mind that held the Kyuubi, but this one topped them all. When she was aware enough of the outside world, she immediately opened here eyes and what she could see of her dream world split open with her eyelids. Though she could orient her self visually, it took a moment for her body to recalculate which direction was down, so in one of the scariest moments in her entire life, her vision was rimed in a dull red glow and she was falling towards the wall.
After getting over the shock of the transition, she climbed out of bed, stripped off her sleeping cloths and set off towards the bathroom, pausing along the way to look out one of the windows to verify that it was indeed night time, because the moon shone as bright as the sun used to in her eyes.
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"So you made a deal with the Kyuubi to enhance your physical capabilities and ended up with a bloodline as well?" Kakashi asked aloud, recapping to himself what Naruto had just told him.
"That's what I just said." Naruto replied from her seat across the table from him. Today she was in a confident mood, she hadn't applied her usual transformation, or even her everyday tomboyish clothing. No, today she wore a tight fitting black tank top that showed off her figure, and a matching pair of short track pants that came to just below the knee.
Today was Sakura's turn to guard the bridge, so Naruto took advantage of the time and explained the situation to Sasuke and then Kakashi and after some gentle coaxing, she managed to get permission to get to know her bloodlines abilities, via training in the forest with Sasuke. A few hours before supper time she and Sasuke found a clearing within yelling distance of the house and began to practice.
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"Naruto, wait," Sasuke commanded, dropping his fighting stance and dusting himself off.
"Yes Sasuke?" Naruto asked, cutting the flow of chakra to her eyes to return them to normal.
"So far we've confirmed that, much like the Byakugan, your vision can extend a full 360 degrees, but unlike the Byakugan, you can only see in gray scale and not through or around things." Sasuke listed off, counting the pluses and minuses on his fingers on his fingers.
"uh-huh." Naruto puffed, wanting to keep training. "So what do you want to try now?"
"We'll see if you can do anything else, of course." Sasuke said in an obvious "No duh" tone.
"And how do you propose that we do that?" Naruto asked, only being slightly sarcastic.
"I explain, you do, simple as that." Sasuke said, activating his own bloodline. Eyes glowing like evil pools of fire, he focused them on Naruto until he could see her chakra, noting as always the harsh violet red hue of it. Once the chakra came into view, he could follow the flow and, if he wished, copy it. "Alright, flow the chakra through your eyes like I told you earlier."
Complying, Naruto loosed a flow of slow moving chakra to her eyes, once again plunging her world into colorlessness and seamless panorama. After activating her bloodline, she looked over to Sasuke for further instruction.
Sasuke watched as Naruto's regular chakra flow suddenly diverted a small percentage towards the front of her forehead and down through her eyes. It amazed him to see, though the amount of chakra flowing through her eyes was only a small portion of her chakra, that small portion was more than likely equivalent to what was flowing through his entire body. Once he was sure she was ready, Sasuke began explaining things to try.
"Start with trying to change the speed at which the chakra flows through your eyes, and see if you get any different results." Sasuke suggested, keeping his focus on the chakra flowing through her head.
Concentrating hard, Naruto increased the flow to her eyes as much as she could and for a moment she thought it had worked.
"Naruto careful!" Sasuke yelled, leaping over to her to catch as she began to collapse, "That was way overboard."
"Huh? What happened?" Naruto asked in a weak voice.
"You forced most of your chakra to flow through your eyes at an unnatural rate, any more and you would risk killing yourself." He explained helping Naruto to her feet, for it was obvious that she couldn't stand alone, much less walk. "Come on, let's go get some supper."
Too tired to complain, Naruto merely sighed and leaned on Sasuke, trusting him to get them back in one piece.
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It took all of Sakura's self control not to maul Naruto as she and Sasuke returned for supper, here was an attractive girl looking exhausted and content, leaning up against Sasuke, though they claimed it to be a brother sister relationship, she didn't completely trust Naruto. It wasn't fair, the second best, who always came up just short of Sasuke turns out to be his adopted sister and to further add to the insult, she was more attractive and well developed than herself. But Naruto had given a challenge, if she were to beat it, then maybe she would have a better chance at Sasuke.
"Naruto overdid it again." Sasuke said, taking her to a seat at the table, before turning to the group. "When's supper, Naruto and I are famished."
"Actually…" Kakashi started before he was cut off by a loud thump.
Everyone jumped to the ready, startled by the noise and prepared for an attack, but when they turned to face the source of the noise, all they found was Naruto collapsed at the table, sound asleep.
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"Naruto?" Sakura asked tentatively as she intercepted Naruto on her way back to her room.
"Yes?" Naruto responded, caught with her hand on the nob, she turned it and opened the door, waiting to see what Sakura had to say.
"I uhhh... was just curious about... well, this," Sakura said, gesturing to Naruto's untransformed self covered by nothing but an oversized t-shirt she was using as a nightgown.
"In here," Naruto said, entering the room and flopping down on the bed. Sakura followed, closing the door behind herself and seating herself on the food of the bed. "So do you want to hear the full story?"
"Well it seems like I'm the only one on the team that wasn't informed, so yeah, I would like to know." Sakura answered, sounding a little hurt.
Naruto sighed and started her explanation, starting with who her parents were and going right up to how she met Sasuke. Going into extra depth on the necessity of the disguise, and ending with the subject of the nine tailed fox and her duty in carrying it.
Sakura remained silent and thoughtful for a few minutes, looking at the floor.
"So the villagers hate you for something you have no control over?" Sakura finally asked, getting a nod from Naruto, looking thoughtful again for a moment before asking, "And what about Sasuke?"
"We're the only family the other has," Naruto replied with a sigh, "It's been that way pretty much since we met."
Naruto looked up at the sound of footsteps, seeing Sakura walking to the door.
"Sakura," Naruto said as Sakura reached the door, "Want a word of advice?"
Sakura stopped, the door open and looked back at Naruto.
"Brush up on your skills," Naruto said casually, "He's fond of a girl who can take care of them self."
Sakura immediately turned and stomped out of the room, slamming the door and stomping down the hallway. Naruto just grinned to herself an closed her eyes, trying to get some sleep.
- - - - - - - -Line break- - - - - - - - -
To Naruto, being confined to bed was a fate worse than death, she had recovered from her chakra exhaustion hours ago and she wanted to do more training. But no, sensei had said to stay in the room and in bed. So in bed she was, practicing what Sasuke had told her to try, but this time with more restraint.
She had tried different amounts of chakra, but that hadn't yielded and results, so now she was experimenting with altering the flow of chakra through and around her eyes. She was convinced she was on to something, because she started to get a result before she lost it, but she was having trouble figuring out exactly what she had done the last time to start the change.
She was about to give up, when on her last try, she did something just right and her vision returned to its normal size and shifted from gray to what she thought might be negative colors. At first, she couldn't see anything special, but as she turned her head, she caught sight of a dull blue glow in the shape of a person coming from the direction of the kitchen.
Wanting a closer look, she got out of bed and stepped closer to the door, but just as she was about to open it, another of the glowing blue silhouette walked past the door at almost arms length. This time though the silhouette was more defined, when looked at closely, it was a series of blue tubes that seemed to branch and reconnect in random places with a higher than usual concentration of tubes in the hands and the abdomen.
Waiting until the person had passed by, Naruto reached for the door knob, but froze when her hand entered her sight. She froze because it wasn't a hand that entered her view but instead a similar series of tubes that she saw on the passer by, but her hand was a pinkish purple color as opposed to the light blue of the others.
After recovering from the surprise, she quietly opened the door and snuck to the end of the hallway. Keeping tabs on what she assumed was the chakra of the other residents of the house, she slowly made her way out of the house, sneaking into an empty room and out through a window, doing her best to not be seen.
Once outside, she fled into the woods with out any particular objective other than to put some distance between herself and the residents of the house. She kept running for nearly twenty minutes before she finally decided that no matter what she did they wouldn't be able to hear her. Searching her surrounding area, she found a small clearing that was just big enough to perform minor jutsu in.
Once in the clearing, she found a seat at the base of one of the surrounding trees and began to think of what she could do to test her new ability. The instant she had an idea, she leap to her feet and summoned a shadow clone and activated her doujutsu, moving in close and observing in detail every angle of the human shaped series of tubes, noting where the brighter spots were and how it left the tubes and swirled in a peculiar manner near where the eyes were.
After observing the formation of tubes until she felt their was nothing else to observe, she cut the flow of chakra to her eyes and turned her focus to the eyes of her clone. They were different than before, this time they were divided into to perfect halves, one pure black and one pure white, and they were constantly spinning. After feeling she had seen enough, she dismissed her clone and reactivated her doujutsu, conjuring elemental chakra to her hands and watched how it acted differently than regular chakra.
After observing both of her different types of elemental chakra she could conjure, she tried combining them again, this time watching them carefully and trying to see how they react together. Taking the fact that she could see what was happening within, she tried to hold it stable, without much success. After a few tries she got bored of just doing that and began to perform minor flame jutsu, watching the swirling chakra in them.
Just after performing another flame jutsu, Naruto noticed something out of place, visible through the mist of chakra left over from the jutsu was a feint greenish glow that didn't seem like it came from the jutsu itself. Growing curious, she set off through the trees, on a quest to find the source of the greenish glow. She didn't have to look far though, in a clearing a short distance away, Naruto found a small child who's chakra was green and flowed in strange patterns on their hands and the left of their chest. Sneaking as close as she could, Naruto deactivated her doujutsu to get a good look at the child, Naruto gasped, the child was clothed in an oversized shirt that came past their knees and both the child and the child and their shirt were filthy. The child was crying until Naruto caught their attention with her gasp, the child looked up with tear filled red eyes at Naruto. The child just stared at Naruto for a moment, as if they couldn't believe their eyes, before quickly getting to their feet and running at Naruto.
"Mommy!" the child cried as they grabbed onto Naruto's leg with more strength than their skinny arms looked like they possessed.
Naruto, meanwhile was too surprised to even react and merely stayed where she was until she was roused from her shock by a low rumbling chuckle in the back of her mind. Unable to think of anything better to do, she pried the child's arms off of her leg before picking them up and set off back towards the house.
When she arrived at the house, Naruto completely forwent all stealthy measures she used to escape, and walked right in the front door. She didn't care what her sensei or teammates would think about her sneaking out or returning with mysterious child, the child looked starved and probably wouldn't survive much longer on their own.
- - - - - - - -Line break- - - - - - - - -
"What are we going to do with her?" Sasuke asked, pointing with a thumb towards the room Naruto and the child were in.
"Who? Naruto or the kid?" Kakashi asked, not looking up from his book.
"The kid, she seems awfully attached to Naruto." Sasuke replied flatly.
"I'm sure we could take her back to Konoha with us." Kakashi said with a sigh, setting down the book.
"Huh…" Sasuke sighed.
"There we go, all clean." Naruto said cheerfully, carrying the child into the room and over too the table, the child now all cleaned and now clothed on one of Naruto's shirts.
"What do you think, Naruto?" Kakashi asked Naruto, turning to her as she took a seat at the table.
"I'm not leaving her here, she's way too cute." Naruto said, hugging the child close, "But she does bite."
"Really, she doesn't look like a biter." Sakura said, walking into the room, passing a barely perceivable glare at Naruto, who chose to ignore it.
"You have no idea, look at this." Naruto replied, holding the child's hand out, palm up and traced a finger across a deep line that ran parallel to the child's knuckles and reached almost all the way across the palm. "That's a mouth."
"What?" Sakura exclaimed with a look of disgust, edging away from the child. "That's gross."
"I think their cute," Naruto said defensively, sticking her tongue out at Sakura, "She has one on each hand and one on her chest"
"Well, that certainly is interesting." Kakashi said, not showing much interest.
"Then you wouldn't mind me telling you that she has horns as well." Naruto said with a grin.
"You can't be serious." Sakura said, casting a glance at the child's forehead for any obvious signs of horns.
"Here, look." Naruto said, brushing the child's hair back over one of her ears, causing the child to cast a nervous glance up at Naruto. Now clearly visible in front of ear was a small slightly pointed white lump protruding from the child's temple.
"She seems nervous with everybody looking at her." Sasuke said, leaning back and stretching. "Kinda reminds me of you."
"I'm sure she had good reason." Naruto replied, her voice and mood suddenly sour.
"What makes you say that?" Kakashi asked, alerted by Naruto's sudden change in mood.
"When I was getting her all cleaned up I found bruises, old and new, and they were caused by people, not clumsiness." Naruto explained grimly. "The people here obviously don't like her."
"Well then we have no choice than to take her with us." Kakashi said, standing up. "Now I think its time we all go to bed, we are returning to Konoha in the morning."
"But I've spent like the last three days in bed, I'm not tired." Naruto complained, trying the "Puppy-dog eyes" look on Kakashi.
"Too bad Naruto, you'll complain about being tired tomorrow if I let you stay up, besides, I think you need to find a bed for your little friend before she falls asleep on your lap." Kakashi pointed out, motioning to the child, who looked exhausted.
"Fine." Naruto said, setting the child on the floor and standing up and turning to the child, "Come on, let's get a bed set up for you."