A/N: Have you ever wondered about the period between Naruto's first real mission and the Chunnin exams. What happened between those times? Well, if you'll bear with the fact that I've set this story in Japan (Naruto's not actually in Japan, but since the writer is from Japan, it works) then I will tell you.

Prologue

This part of Foreign Bonds leads you on a powerful journey through Japan. To begin, I will reintroduce you to our characters. First is the oldest, Jason Hedgepeth. He is an American of six feet in height, with brown eyes and a brown Mohawk with white tips. He has lightly tanned skin and is seventeen years old. The other two are both sixteen. The older of the sixteen-year-olds is a Japanese boy named Ukobi Lailoken, who normally says his name backwards. He is very short for his age, being only 4 ft 9 in tall. He has shaggy black hair that looks as though it was badly cut and eyes so dark brown that they're almost black. His skin was also dark, but that was because he was Japanese. The other is Raila Miri, who also says her name backwards. She has black hair that reaches her waist and golden brown eyes. She is tall for a Japanese person, standing 5 ft 10 in because her dad is British. Together the three will work their way through dangerous travels, which will test their very will to live.

Poor Ukobi must save his birthplace from destruction while he is away from his friends. No one will help him to save these people, except for the young genin ninjas that he traveled to the village with. Will that be enough? Meanwhile, Jason must become the leader he never was in order to rescue the master of his new found friends, but when nearly all of his friends are unable to fight, he finds himself protecting them from the Death Dragon himself. In addition, Raila becomes a demon that lay dormant within her for so long. Starting when she sees her friend kidnapped and tries to rescue him, she ends up having to protect three children from death, facing it herself when she decides to admit her true relation to a hateful demon child. What will become of our three heroes, each facing his or her own challenge and separated from the people that they had traveled with for so long?

Chapter 1: Landing

Jason and Ukobi sat quietly talking to each other on the boat while Raila was somewhere up on the deck. The boat was on its way to Russia where the three would take a train and a ferry to the land of the hidden villages. Jason and Ukobi both wanted to ride a plane to Japan because they correctly thought that it would be faster. Raila, though, insisted on doing it her way. She said that it was because the boat could carry both her and her weights, but Jason thought it was for another reason. She hated planes, along with most forms of electrical travel. In truth, she had wanted to ride a boat for the whole trip to Japan, but she compromised with Ukobi in order to save time on their trip.

"Are you two going to sit there the entire trip?" Raila asked after they had been traveling a week.

"Why?" asked Ukobi. "What's there to do?" The boys hadn't left their cabin on the boat since leaving the states.

"Come with me," Raila said. She led the boys to a rope ladder, which led to the highest part of the ship, near the smoke stack. "You are not afraid of heights, are you?" she asked. Jason looked up the ladder and gulped. He motioned Ukobi forward.

"I'll wait here," he said. Ukobi looked at him, but then shrugged and followed Raila to the top of the ship. When they reached the top, Ukobi gasped. The view was incredible. For a long time, he stood there looking at the sun reflecting like glittering diamonds off the water. A short distance away, the shadow of land shimmered in the morning mist. Soon, they'd arrive on that land, but for now, there was only the sea. Ukobi called down to Jason.

"You've got to see this!" he said. "It's incredible."

"I'm fine," Jason said. "You enjoy the view." He stood there for a few more moments, but then went back into the cabin. Raila and Ukobi stayed where they were until they saw land in the distance. Upon seeing it, they looked at each other, smiling, and quickly climbed down to get their luggage.

A quick landing and departure later, the three were on their way to South Korea in a train. Once in South Korea, they'd ride a ferry to Japan. Raila, unable to stay inside for a very long time, took her chakra woven staff and stood between the railcars. For a long, she sat there, thinking of the time since she had left Japan. She had only been four at the time. She remembered one of her friends, a girl named Kai. The girl had died just before she left, or at least, everyone thought she had died, but really- …As if the memory had pulled a switch, Raila began to convulse. Her head began to hurt and her eyes began to twitch uncontrollably. Soon, she blacked out. When she came to, she felt like a different person. In fact, she was a different person.

When the nine-tailed fox attack came, Kai had not died. The reason for this was that Kai was a demon. The Demon of the Fangs, as a matter of fact, or Demonio del Colmillo. When the attack had come, the body of Kai had died, but Kai's spirit flew into the body of the nearest person, which happened to be Raila. As Kai, who had surfaced in Raila after almost twelve years, awoke, she began to shake her foggy head. Where am I? she thought. I'm supposed to still be in her subconscious, unless she's dead. Kai looked around and found herself laying flat between two train cars. Where the heck am I? What Kai was trying to figure out was how she was the dominant person in Raila's mind because Raila refused to respond to her thoughts. Then she remembered, A chemical plant. The radiation. We've got to fix it. Fortunately, Raila's body was already trying to fix the mental connections, but since that would take some time, Kai would have to be Raila until they reconnected.

Suddenly, her thoughts were interrupted when Jason came out of the railcar.

"Are you ok, Rai?" he asked her. Kai didn't know how to answer. Was she ok? "Are you ok, Rai?" he repeated. Kai nodded shakily and put her head in her hands.

"I think so," she mumbled. Then, she went to the roof of the railcar in order to have time to think. Laying her staff across her lap, she watched as Jason went back inside. He was muttering to himself about how he was worried, but Kai paid no attention to him. She was trying to figure out how to be Raila. She began searching her memories, but couldn't come up with any of Raila's. All that seemed to surface where her own memories.