Okay! You all gave me real good feedback! And by that i mean, you all said nothing -.-' therefore! I shall reconstruct....as long as I can avoid my yelling mom 0.0 She seems to be quite angry with me today.....So I'll try to write a better(er) story whilst dodging death! Yaaaaaaay.... PS: has anyone ever tried reading FF without even knowing the original storyline? My friend attempted this with my prologue the other night...I'm pretty sure her search engine and her brain are pretty fried lol
Disclaimer: I own only what I create
Chapter One: Pursuit
She ran as fast as she could through the thick forest, dodging heavily looming branches and thick underbrush that snagged at her clothes. Her mind briefly wondered if she should attempt to jump into one of the trees and continue the pursuit up above. But considering her clumsiness, which was what got her into this whole mess in the first place, she decided against it. She could hear the two following her conversing briefly, one yelling at the other. Their banter was amusing to listen to, and entertaining-or it would have been if she hadn't been running for her life-however she knew the two were dangerous and particularly lethal. A few kunai whizzed past her making the adrenaline pump even faster through her veins. Due to bad aim or good fortune she wasn't sure, but they continued to miss her.
She was reaching the end of her limit, not being able to run much more. She considered letting them catch her for a moment...but decided against it. And then considered it again. But before she could decide, her world went black as she felt a cold 'thud' to the back of her head.
The two ran after her, one cheering happily the other yelling.
"Tobi I swear...if you don't shut up I will personally see to it that tomorrow morning you don't wake up alive. We finally have her close enough to actually touch and see, and you're still messing around hm!" The man in the spiraled orange masked squealed with glee as he flew in the trees and danced around the other.
"Don't worry senpai! I'll get her!" He cheered and squealed a bit more before darting a little faster to catch up with their prey. Only about ten feet behind her and ready to strike, he stopped abruptly, making the other come crashing into him. The two fell to the ground.
"Owwwww Deidara senpai that hurt!"
"You idiot! Why did you stop hm?!" Deidara got up and brushed himself off. Tobi remained on the ground.
"I was looking for something to knock her out with! I can't just fight her!"
"You fool! How else were you expecting to capture her hm? You're not just going to knock her out!" Tobi leapt up, apparently pleased with something and darted after the girl again. Deidara followed, still grumbling under his breath. Tobi disappeared from his sights and not long after he heard cheering and whooping.
"Senpai! Senpai! I got her!" Deidara nearly tripped over himself. The fool had actually caught it?! He sped up a little, not wanting her to wake back up and escape yet again. He wasn't too far when he stopped, dead in his tracks. There was a different chakra in the air now...neither his, Tobi's or the girl's. His eyes widened and his heart sped up with excitement. The kyuubi...
"Tobi!" He called out for the other. No matter how useless Tobi seemed, he would need his help with the kyuubi. He nearly danced like a child with all the happiness he was feeling. Not only did they catch the girl-surprisingly easily-they would also capture the kyuubi! All in one day...
"Yeeesssss senpai?" Tobi danced over happily. Deidara opened his mouth to tell his partner of his new discovery, only to cry out in surprise as the world went dark as they were both swallowed by a huge toad. Deidara swore and cursed with all the strength he had as he beat at the walls of the toad's stomach. Tobi only sat down cross legged, as he noticed the acid dripping from the walls. He yelled brutally as he jammed all of his exploding clay in both the esophagus and intestine of the toad. He was not going to lose both of his catches, due to some damn toad! Tobi hummed some sort of tune as he saw his senior walking back and forth, working on the clay.
Finally, Deidara jumped to the ceiling of the stomach ready to detonate the clay, as Tobi flew up, screaming.
"Not yet! Not yet! Not- BOOOM!!!" The toad flew apart in a gummy, slimy mess, spraying God knows what all over the two men-with Tobi slightly on fire-and dumping smoking toad parts all over the forest. Deidara franticly ran toward the spot where Tobi had left the girl, only to find her missing. He slammed his fist to the ground angrily. He lost the two biggest beasts to seal all in one day. He would never live this one down.
"Run it again..." Naruto groaned. His limbs were tired like never before. Jiraiya had been in a bad mood lately, and had been making him run his taijustu over and over and over...with a full body weight strapped on about 10 times heavier than him. If that wasn't bad, the sage made him run in the suit...He had to admit, it was getting near the point of Gai level training...
"Are you serious you grumpy old perv?! I've been at this for three days nonstop! I know my taijutsu needed work but come on!" The sage knocked back some sake and glared at his student.
"I thought you wanted to become hokage? Or did you think you would get that position sitting around hiding from the Akasuki?" Naruto growled and cursed the sage under his breath as he prepared himself for the next set of drills. Jiraiya uncorked a fresh bottle of sake and quickly drained half the bottle. He had not been in a good mood at all lately. He was on his last bottle of sake, and hadn't seen a woman in little over a month. He was also fresh out of ideas for the new 'Icha Icha' book he was working on. He sighed to himself.
"I guess I'll just have to leave it all to imagination..." He began working on an elaborate scene in his head, and was almost to the point of drooling when a new presence caught his attention. He carefully weighed the chakra in his mind and compared it. His eyes narrowed dangerously.
"Akasuki..." He threw a few things together in his pack and gathered it all together. "Naruto, take off the weights. We have some company...and you can bet they know we're here." Sure enough, with a little concentration, both could hear the two squabbling men. There was also another chakra that felt familiar to Jiraiya, but he couldn't quite place it. He turned to the struggling boy who was untying the weights from his body. "Stay here...and don't get involved or you'll be off to visit Pein and the rest of Akasuki quicker than you could blink." He threw a couple of seals together when he recognized the pair. He silently apologized to the toads for sacrificing one of them. But then again, from the torn guts would emerge new toads so they couldn't complain too much. Of course, with Gamabunta who knew?
Not long after he heard the gigantic toad emerge from below and swallow the two men. It wouldn't kill them, but it would subdue them long enough for Jiraiya to figure out why they were there and what they were originally after. He heard the two squirming anxiously and angrily in the toad's stomach.
"Better hurry up..." He was about to give up, as he couldn't find anything, until he noticed a few small drops of blood. Nothing major but enough to get him interested. He followed what little clue he had, and finally hit what appeared to be a girl. She had long white hair, and was covered in blood. He clothes were muddy and torn, obviously very old. She was knocked out cold, and although he couldn't see any visible cuts or wounds, she had to be hurt in some way, and if the Akasuki were after her, it definitely wasn't good. He picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. He darted away as quickly as he could back to where Naruto was. The boy was standing impatiently (big surprise) and staring off into space. The sage darted past him and shouted over his shoulder.
"Run!" Naruto nearly toppled over himself in surprise as the man passed him with surprising speed. He was hesitant at first, and then ran just as quickly after the old sage.
"Typical pervy sage just leave me-" But Naruto's word's were cut short as there was a thundering "BOOOM!!" heard throughout the entire forest. There was the stomach churning sound of flesh and other parts hitting the forest, as well as a sickening wet sound of some sort of disgusting slime.
"What the hell was that you old perv?!"
"Some men from Akasuki...They were after this girl and came across us instead. We have to relocate...get to a new forest, or a new town. Thankfully when they blew up that toad-" Naruto's eyebrows rose at this interesting bit, "It erased our scent and all our chakra so it'll be harder to find us." The younger processed this bit of information.
"So they went after that girl? What for? She doesn't look like anything more than an average person..." Jiraiya huffed.
"Never judge a person by appearance only...I thought you already knew that." Naruto raised his brows.
"Yeah, but come on, no headband, no weapons, nothing that would suggest she's a ninja..." Jiraiya just looked at his student.
"Really, I knew you weren't the most observant Shinobi of all time, but really..." Naruto growled threateningly. "Look at her Naruto, she's covered in someone's blood, hers or another person's we don't know yet. The Akasuki were after her for whatever reason, and we can bet she's important to them for whatever reason. They don't just target anybody after all." Naruto nodded a bit.
"I guess you're right...but then think of it this way, if the Akasuki are after her, how do we know she's safe? How do we know she's not dangerous to us?" Jiraiya smiled a bit.
"Finally, the intelligent part of you comes out for its annual visit...you're right I admit, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend...and besides, when a person is hurt they're on everyone's side."
"Must be the end of the world if both you and me are sounding smart for once..."
"All we need now is Gamabunta with wings and we're all set." Jiraiya joked lightly with his student. Naruto sniggered for a while with the thought of the huge toad with tiny white wings. The two then traveled in silence for about two hours. At this point, Naruto began to worry about the girl. She had been out for a while, and could've been suffering from blood loss.
"Hey pervy sage...when do you think she'll wake up?" The sage snapped his head up as if remembering something.
"Oh right! I should check her!" Naruto nearly fell over.
"You never thought that might be a good idea?!" The sage rubbed his neck in embarrassment.
"Well I was a little more preoccupied with getting away safely and I forgot we had a new group member..." The student shook his head. Sometimes he wondered how this man had become a legendary sannin...and trained the fourth hokage, the most powerful of all leaf shinobi. But then the man actually acted serious and reminded Naruto how it was possible.
They stopped in a small clearing in the forest, and the sage inspected it carefully. He seemed satisfied after a moment and set down his pack.
"This'll do for the night...start a fire." Naruto set down his pack and sighed with relaxation. This was probably the closest he had been to resting in a couple days. He grabbed a couple of sticks and twigs lying around and began to work on the fire as he was told. Jiraiya laid the girl down and stared at her. He stood up and made a couple of strange expressions, as if contemplating something. Naruto noticed this and laughed at the sage.
"What's wrong, afraid to touch for once in your life?" The man crossed his arms and huffed indignantly.
"This is different...She's obviously younger than me by far, and I don't violate girls while they're knocked out. I'm no pedophile perv..." Naruto rolled his eyes.
"Want help?" The man chuckled with amusement.
"You think I'm just going to fall for that trick? Please...You're a horny teenage boy, there's no way I'm letting you undress her." Naruto stumbled in surprise.
"First things first old man...You're the horny one in this group, and second, since when are we...undressing her?!" Jiraiya rolled his eyes.
"To do a proper exam I have to get her out of these clothes, plus you don't want her to get infected or to keep bleeding in a place we don't know about..." Naruto narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
"I think you're just making excuses old man..." The sage just huffed, and continued to stare at the unconscious girl. Naruto rolled his eyes and walked over to the two.
"Why don't we both do it? That way we'll both keep an eye on each other and we won't feel guilty. How about it?" The man shrugged.
"Sounds at least a little better than what we were going to do...let's do it." The two stood still for a moment and stared at the girl, as if willing her to come back to consciousness. When that didn't work the two kneeled down and began to slowly work at the dirty, torn dress the girl wore. Luckily-or unluckily, depending how the two looked at it-the girl was covered quite well under the dress, so they didn't have to do anything drastic. Although there was blood and all sorts of tears on the dress previously worn, the girl was clean of cuts and wounds, only showing a few light bruises on her light skin. Jiraiya sat cross legged and stared off into space for a moment. Naruto waited somewhat patiently.
"Having more memory issues you old perv?" Jiraiya glared at the boy.
"I'm trying to remember the medical justus Tsunade taught me..." But all that could be imaged in the sage's head was the woman's large bust size and some rambling in the background. Naruto punched him when he saw the man start to drool.
"Focus you perv! She could be bleeding internally for all we know!"
"Fine fine fine..." The instructions finally came back to him (after more thoughts of Tsunade's breasts) and he threw some signs together making his hands glow green. He moved his hands over the girl slowly, examining her, making sure what he found was certain.
"Well, she isn't hurt too bad anywhere, her arm is a little fractured and she was hit in the back of the head. That's probably why she's been out for a while...those men hit a key nerve in the neck. We can bet she won't be up until early in the morning." Naruto nodded, with the usual sense of trying to understand and getting the basic idea. If Sakura had been there she had probably rolled her eyes and explained it a bit more. But the sage could care less and continued the examination.
"Here, turn her over...We forgot to check her back." The two prepared to pick her up when the girl shot up, chest heaving and slapped both their hands away. She stumbled backwards, nearly falling. Her bright blue eyes darted over them, examining and evaluating their faces. She was breathing heavily and shaking slightly, as if fighting to stand straight.
"Who are you? What do you want?" Naruto scratched his head a bit.
"Hey pervy sage, I thought you said she was supposed to be out a little longer?" The man shrugged.
"I guess they didn't hit her as hard as I thought." 'But even so...there's no way she should be awake yet.' The sage thought to himself, eyebrows only twitching a bit giving away slight emotion. The girl glared at the two.
"Answer me! Who are you and what do you want?" The sage huffed indignantly.
"I think we're the one's who should be asking questions...after all, we found you unconscious after the Akasuki had been chasing you and probably saved your life. You owe us some thanks."
"I never asked you to save me. You don't know me and I don't know you. You could've just left me to be taken. In fact, how do I know you didn't take me from the Akasuki for your own purposes?" She gazed at them with harsh eyes, legs shaking beneath her. Naruto stood up with a defensive pose.
"Hey lady, we saved your ass! We didn't take you for any other reason than we thought you were hurt, and we brought you here with us and took care of you! You could be an enemy for all we know. You should be thanking us!" The girl took a step back and growled. Jiraiya's eyes narrowed.
"Both of you stop it. Naruto," he swept the boy's legs from under him, causing him to face plant into the ground. "Sit down and shut up. Stop pointing fingers at each other. Right now, neither of us are enemies as far as we know. Let's just get a few things straight." The girl locked eyes with him and he saw her legs shaking fiercely beneath her. Whether in fear, or exhaustion he wasn't sure.
"Take a seat. You're about to shake yourself to pieces..." The girl glared a while longer and hesitantly took a spot on the ground, about fifteen feet away from the two shinobi.
"Firstly, who are you?"
"My name is Inari..." the sage waited for more, but obviously it was all the girl was going to give him.
"Pleased to meet you. I am the great toad sage Jiraiya!" The man took his usual pose, showing off and twirling his hair around. "Oh, and this Is Naruto..." He pointed dulling at the boy sitting on the ground. The boy crossed his arms indignantly.
"Future hokage you old perv! And don't you forget it!" The sage ignored him and continued.
"We're leaf shinobi from Konoha, if you hadn't already guessed. We have no affiliation with Akasuki and have no aims to capture you." The girl watched them a second longer and smirked a bit.
"Well, now I recognize you a bit...the Sannin Jiraiya. And apparently future hokage...Honored." It was said with some sarcasm, making Naruto's blood boil. Jiraiya continued before his student could cause another outburst between the two teens.
"So tell me now, why were the Akasuki after you?" The girl looked away and shrugged.
"I'm not sure. Apparently I offended them or caused them some anger. All I know is I was minding my own business and suddenly I was running away from two men." Naruto finally butted in.
"There's no way that's true! The Akasuki don't just go after anyone for no reason!" The girl just glared back at him.
"Well apparently they do." Jiraiya watched her carefully. Naruto was right, she was lying. He could see it in her body language. But there was no way they would get the truth out of her now. They would just have to trust her for a bit, and watch her. Because if the Akasuki was after her, You could bet it wasn't good.
The girl's breath had slowed slightly, but she was still heaving and shaking, which lead Jiraiya to believe it wasn't the cause of fear.
"Are you alright?" She shook her head and waved a hand.
"I'll be fine, they just hit me with a minor poison. Nothing serious. It'll be out of my system in a while." The sage raised a brow.
"In my experience, it's best to get the poison out of your system, not let it run it's course and kill you." She laughed.
"They had no intention of killing me...It'll just make me a little queasy for a while. I'll be fine." She took in a breath. "Now, can you tell me what you did with my clothes before I catch a cold?" The sage rubbed the back of his neck.
"Well...I don't think you'll be able to wear them anymore..." He showed her the cut up pieces of cloth and she sighed.
"Well, nothing major at least. Do you have anything for me to borrow?" The sage giggled and gave her the thumbs up.
"You betcha I do!" Not long after several articles of clothing came flying out of his pack, and he finally came up with a small white kimono.
"Here you go...I uh, borrowed this from a young lady I met in town a while ago!" Inari raised a brow and took the Kimono. It was a bit skimpy for her taste but she pulled it over her head. Thankfully, it fit her well and gave her room to move around. She thanked the man and sat down by the small fire Naruto had made. The boy was now eyeing the girl angrily. He knew absolutely nothing about her, and she was apparently joining the group for a while. He could see the sage's plan to keep her, even though he hadn't said anything. She could be an enemy for all they knew, and the pervy old fart was accepting her with open arms! He took a sharp stick and doodled in the ground. They had better things to do than worry about another person in their group...It would be much more difficult now that they had someone new.
He heard the girl pardon herself briefly and turn around to walk off into another part of the woods. He looked up an saw there was an opening on the Kimono, showing an odd shaped mark on her back.
"What's that mark on your back?" The girl whirled around, eyes wide. She felt around on her back and discovered the opening the dress was designed with. She hissed under her breath.
"It's nothing...just a birthmark." She turned around and hurried off. Naruto watched here suspiciously and then turned back to his doodling. The sage looked at him.
"What mark are you talking about?" Naruto looked up, about to comment how he could miss the dark, large mark on her back, when he noticed the man working on his pervy novels. He sighed.
"She has a mark on her back, shaped like a tail." He outlined it with his fingers to show the man. Jiraiya snorted.
"What do you care? You're the one with whiskers..." Naruto just launched a rock at the man in response. From there, became a dirt/rock war of sorts, until Inari returned. She came back only to find rocks littering the clearing, some stuck in trees, some completely lodged in the ground, and two men with bruises. The two were curled up in their makeshift beds, just about asleep. The sage was still scribbling in his book, and Naruto was inspecting some of his bruises. Inari shook her head.
"Does this happen often? I'd rather not be around when rocks go flying fast enough to indent themselves in trees..." She looked at a pebble that had made it's way halfway through the tree. The two just shrugged. Naruto was watching the Kyuubi's healing powers at work as the bruises quickly faded away, and disappeared from sight. He was about to lay down to sleep when he caught a whiff of some chakra. It wasn't the sage's or his, but it was a familiar chakra. One that he had smelled quite often in his childhood...He turned to Inari who was climbing a tree.
"What village do you come from?" She whipped her head around in interest.
"I don't come from a village. I've lived my whole live in the forest..." Naruto cocked his head as she laid comfortably on a branch.
"Have you ever been to the leaf village?" She paused, and closed her eyes.
"...Once or twice yes."
"Have we met before?" She opened her eyes, he electric blue tingling in the dark.
"Why do you ask?" Naruto shrugged and fell back to the ground.
"You're chakra...just seems familiar for some reason."
"I'm not a Shinobi, I don't have access to my chakra..."
"That's a pretty lame excuse."
"I've never met you before in my life. I've been to the leaf village once or twice and have never come across you." He looked over to see the electric blue eyes burning, as if they were trying to make him believe what she was saying. He huffed and turned over. She could say it all she wanted, but he knew...he had felt that chakra before.
Author's note!
Alright, first let's get a few things straight before we get any questions running...I kept Naruto in the forest a little longer than he is in canon. Just about one year...So he's sixteen, and just about done with his time in the forest. Inari is...sixteen right now lol we'll get into the 'technical' stuff later. Why does Jiraiya have women's clothing? Because he's a man whore and a creeper and steals clothes lol either that or the poor woman dashed away from him before she could get her clothes back on. Or something of that sort...I'll leave it up to imagination lol Ummm I really can't think of much to say in this note....But basically that's where the plot takes place right now. In between Parts 1 and 2 when Naruto goes off to train with Jiraiya. If you guys have anymore questions just put it in a review lol Oh, and if my character is even a LITTLE mary sue, do tell lol Even if it's a flame, go ahead
Please please review! They're very lovely food for authors like me...lol we enjoy them much!