I don't own Naruto
As Naruto was catching up with his sensei he realized that he had forgotten one of his saber claws on the battlefield, along with his fingers.
'You can get them later.' Kurama decided to interject in his thoughts.
'Yea… I can't believe that I was so sloppy. I thought I had the advantage seeing as he was already injured and had already gone through a fight. I had to rely on suicide tactics to win that one… I need to get more fighting experience...' Naruto admonished himself.
'Yea, that wasn't that smartest thing you could have done. But it was pretty good for going up against a jounin, even if he was handicapped. Plus, I got to have some fun.' Kurama said and Naruto could just feel the giant grin on his face when he was reminiscing about torturing the ex-kumo shinobi.
Naruto was about to respond when he suddenly found himself in front of a large group of women, none of which looked happy to see him. He couldn't really blame them though, being in a camp like this and raped for Kami knows how long would make anyone distrustful of the opposite sex.
He was about to turn around and go back to the battlefield and just get his saberclaw when a blonde streak came out of the group of people and latched itself onto Naruto.
Naruto looked up from where he was currently being smothered to see the face of the girl he had saved earlier. She had a blanket wrapped around her body and was currently hugging Naruto with all her might.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you." The girl repeated as she continued to squeeze Naruto.
'You're just a motorboat magnet.' Kurama noted as Naruto once again found himself between the breasts of a girl.
'Yea, now if only puberty would hit so I could grow...' Naruto thought back dryly.
Naruto just wrapped his arms around the girl to try and calm her down. The girl's knees eventually gave out and Naruto and the girl both ended up on their knees, the girl now sobbing into his shoulder.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you." She continued to repeat as she held onto Naruto.
"It's okay now, nothing bad is going to happen to you anymore. All the bad guys are gone and I'll be sure to protect you until we can get you back to your family." Naruto softly said, trying to soothe the crying girl. "What's your name?"
"Lily." Lily answered.
"Lily. That's a nice name, and a beautiful flower. It fits you perfectly." Naruto replied as he continued to soothe the hysterical girl. "Here, let's get you into something more suitable." Naruto continued as he unsealed a spare leather coat and put it around Lily.
Lily started to hiccup as she slowly pulled back from Naruto and putting the coat on properly. Now that Naruto was actually looking he could see that she had very bright green eyes.
"You feeling better now Lily?" Naruto asked as he gave her a small smile.
"Yes, hic, thank you." Lily responded as she wiped her eyes with the palm of her hands. "You said they, hic, are all gone?"
"They're all gone, don't worry." Naruto reassured the girl.
"That's good." Lily smiled as she looked at Naruto, her eyes shining in the red moonlight.
'Oh, should probably stop that.' Naruto thought as he brought his right hand up to try and cancel his jutsu.
"OH NO! YOUR HAND!" Lily screamed as she saw Naruto raise his hand. She quickly grabbed the appendage and looked it over.
"Oh yea… Forgot about that." Naruto mumbled.
"You had your fingers earlier! Oh no! This is all my fault! You lost your fingers after saving me! Something went wrong and you lost your fingers and it was all my fault!" Lily panicked as she fumbled with Naruto's hand. "I'm so sorry!"
"Hey now. It's fine. It's not your fault, it's completely my fault for being cocky and stupid." Naruto admitted.
'Just remember that next time you get into a fight with someone stronger and more experienced than you.' Kurama added.
'You could have warned me a little bit more.' Naruto replied.
'I believe in learning through experience. You weren't going to die, you're not stupid enough for that, and I did warn you.' Kurama shot back.
Naruto just sighed knowing that the fox was right. He really should have been much more cautious fighting someone stronger than him, and more importantly with more experience. It doesn't really matter how strong you are if you don't know how use that power against your opponent.
"So don't worry and don't blame yourself. I'm fine and all of you are safe, even if the rest of the girls look like they want to kill me." Naruto stated as he looked behind Lily to see the group of women still glaring at him, though it looked like Kurenai was talking to them.
Lily looked behind her and saw all the girls glaring at the blonde boy that had saved her and glared right back at them. Some of the girls looked a bit taken aback with the blonde girls glare, but most just ignored it or it didn't register that she was glaring at them.
Naruto brought his left hand up and formed a half ram seal to cancel the Eien no Yoru.
When the moonlight changed from red to its normal silver-grey shine and the darkness became less suffocating, Lily turned around and looked at Naruto to see that he had his hand up in a weird hand sign that she had seen some ninjas use from time to time.
"Sorry, I don't really need the red moon scare tactic or darkness anymore." Naruto said as he caught her looking at him. "Now, since I am obviously still not wanted here, I have to go get my weapon that I forgot." Naruto continued as he stood up and started walking back to where he had battled the blind kumo nin.
Lily followed Naruto toward the battlefield. She didn't really want to be with the other girls if they were treating her savior so badly.
When they got to the battlefield Lily saw a few craters and a man lying with dried blood caked around his eyes.
"You probably shouldn't have looked at him. You might have nightmares." Naruto brought her from her thoughts.
"I-I… He was the one that took me… I kind of feel glad to see him like that. Does that make me a sick person?" Lily asked, she was slightly disturbed that she was taking a small amount of joy from his suffering.
"I don't think so. He got what was coming to him, and you get some form of vengeance." Naruto replied as he started to scan the area. "Where is it…" He mumbled.
"What are you looking for?" Lily asked as she walked up next to him hoping to be helpful.
"My other saber claw," Naruto then unsealed his saber claw. "It looks like this, I dropped it somewhere, I just don't remember where." He then resealed his saber claw.
"Okay I'll look for it." Lily said as she started to walk around the clearing searching for the curved weapon.
"Thank you." Naruto said as he went the opposite direction that Lily had gone.
After several minutes of searching Naruto was about to resign himself to asking the jaguars for another saber claw. He didn't know how that talk would go over, probably not all that great, but he didn't really have another choice. It was dark and he needed to get the girls back to the village and to safety.
"I found it!" Naruto heard Lily yell from across the clearing. He turned around to see her walking towards him with his saber claw gleaming in the moonlight. She also seemed to be holding something else in her other hand.
Naruto walked towards her so that he could meet her halfway. When he was close enough he could see blood dripping from her other hand. He was about to ask her what had happened when you opened her hand.
"I also found your fingers. I don't know if you want them or if you could somehow fix your hand with them." Lily said somberly, truly sad that he had lost his fingers in his attempt to save all of the girls in the camp.
"I don't know if anyone will be able to reattach them…" Naruto told the girl, "but I would like them as a reminder not to be stupid." He added when the girl started to look down. "I wouldn't worry so much about my hand though, I'm pretty sure someone will be able to regenerate the fingers, medic-nin are pretty amazing at what they can do." Naruto half lied. He knew that no normal medic nin could regenerate his fingers. Maybe someone on par with Tsunade, but she was in a league of her own when it came to medical ninjutsu. He was really hoping that Kurama could regenerate his fingers for him.
'I might be able to, just get me a book on anatomy so I can look at the structure of the hand.' Kurama interjected.
'Can't you just look at my other hand?' Naruto questioned.
'Don't make this harder than it has to be, if I look at your other hand I might just end up giving you a second left hand.' Kurama retorted.
"Really! Oh that's great!" Lily exclaimed, glad that losing his fingers wasn't as bad of a loss as she first suspected.
"Yea, so I'll take those off your hands" Naruto said as he offered his right hand for her to put the fingers and saber claw in.
When she gave him the items he began to retract his arm to seal the items when he dropped them on the ground.
"Fuck." Naruto said as he looked at his hand, forgetting that he couldn't grab anything with that hand.
Lily just giggled as she picked up the saber claw and fingers and put them in his other hand.
Naruto thanked her and sealed the items into his cloak. "I guess we should go back to the group. Hopefully they don't try and kill me…" Naruto deadpanned as he started to walk back to where the group was waiting, Lily walking right beside him.
"Sooo…" Lily started off, trying to start a conversation. "Where are you from?" Lily asked before she berated herself seeing as his hitai-ate was sewn into the right arm of his leather coat.
Naruto just gave her a sidelong glance before deciding to answer. "I'm from Konoha. One of the five major ninja villages."
"Is it nice there?" Lily furthered along the conversation.
Naruto was silent for a few seconds contemplating how to answer. "The scenery is really nice. It's one of the safest villages you can live in; however, the people are stupid and hateful. If you can get past the people, then it's a nice place to live."
"Sorry if I said something I shouldn't have." Lily responded with a quiet tone.
Naruto, realizing that he may have been a bit harsh with his response tried to fix the situation.
"It's fine. I just don't like the people there. Not many people like me so I'm a bit bitter towards them. I didn't mean to be so harsh."
"It's okay. If the people aren't nice to you why should you be nice to them." Lily stated.
"My thoughts exactly." Naruto smirked, but it fell once he saw the mob of women still glaring at him with murder in their eyes. "They're still pissed."
Lily looked at the large group of women and saw one with red eyes walking towards them.
"Don't come any closer! He saved me! He doesn't deserve your scorn!" Lily exclaimed jumping between Naruto and the woman approaching them holding her arms out in a protective way.
Kurenai, who had been trying to calm all the women down so that she could get them back to Tanzaku Gai safely, turned around when she saw all the women collectively glare at something behind her. Seeing her student there with another young woman she couldn't hold back the sigh that escaped her lips. These women had such a large amount of hate for the male populace right now, not that she could really blame them.
Deciding she would just talk with her student and tell him what they were going to do she started to walk towards him and the unknown girl. She was a little caught off guard when the girl jumped in front of her student in defensive way and yelled at her to stop. Stopping, she raised her eyebrow and looked at her student who had tilted his head so that he could see from behind the girl in front of him.
"She thinks that you are like the rest of the mob back there and want to either berate me or beat me to a pulp." Naruto explained seeing the questioning look on his sensei's face.
Oh, so that's what this was about. "Don't worry young lady. I'm his sensei. I just came over to talk to him about what we are going to do next." Kurenai tried to assure the young lady.
Naruto, seeing Lily was still a bit unsure, decided to help his sensei out. "Don't worry Lily. She really is my sensei. Look at her forehead."
Lily, listening to Naruto, looked at her forehead and almost immediately blushed in embarrassment when she saw the Konoha hitai-ate on her forehead.
"I'm sorry! I didn't see your headband. I thought you were coming over her to be mean to... Uh… Oh no! I didn't even learn your name." Lily turned to Naruto looking like she was about to apologize for kicking his puppy or something.
There were a few seconds of awkward silence before Naruto finally figured out what Lily was waiting for. "Oh. My name's Naruto."
"Thank you for saving me Naruto!" Lily exclaimed as she once again hugged him into her bosom.
'How many times is she going to thank me?' Naruto thought as he once again found himself in the older womans chest.
'She just wanted to say your name.' Kurama voiced.
Kurenai stood there with her eye twitching as she saw her student get glomped by some blonde girl that he had saved. She didn't know exactly why, but she wasn't too pleased with seeing Naruto in that position.
"Okay Lily, I would really appreciate it if I could speak with my student." Kurenai announced, a tiny bit of her annoyance slipping into her voice.
Lily jumped out of her embrace with Naruto and looked towards Kurenai a bit sheepishly. "Sorry. I just wanted to show my gratitude."
"I understand that. But we still have to get all of you back to your homes safely." Kurenai addressed. She then turned to her student. "Which brings me to what I was going to talk to you about. We are going to have to escort all these women back to their homes. That may take anywhere from a week to a month depending on how far some of these women have been taken from their homes. This night we can set up in a hotel in Tanzaku Gai, but on the road we are going to have to camp out. I have brought some extra tents, but nowhere near enough to house all these women. We will have to buy some more in town tomorrow before we head out."
"They can use my tent. I'll just sleep outside." Naruto added. He already slept outside it made no difference to him whether he used the tent or not.
"That's very kind of you Naruto, but you don't have to do that." Kurenai discouraged. She didn't want her student to have to sleep outside, the weather wasn't always as nice as it was right now.
"It's fine sensei. I already sleep outside." Naruto reassured.
"If you say so…" Kurenai conceded. She then turned and started to make her way back to the group. "I'm going to get them moving. Since they are obviously fearful of you I would suggest you get some rest and just meet us tomorrow when we start to return the girls to their homes."
Naruto nodded his head, not that his sensei saw it, and turned towards Tanzaku Gai. He could see the lights from the city and figured he was about five minutes away from it if he were to travel at a leisurely pace. Deciding he would just sleep here tonight he looked towards the treeline, when he remembered there were still traps around the clearing.
Naruto brought his right hand up but scowled when he remembered he only had one finger. He brought his other hand up and formed a half tiger seal and flared his chakra. Now that he had disarmed all the traps around the clearing he looked for a nice tree to sleep in.
"Naruto."
Naruto turned to his left and saw Lily still standing there. 'Oh. Why is she still here?' Naruto wondered.
"I was wondering if I could stay with you tonight." Lily mumbled as she shuffled her feet, not making eye contact with Naruto.
Naruto cocked his head to the side and raised an eyebrow at Lily. "Wouldn't you rather go with them? I'm pretty sure Kurenai-sensei will be able to get you into a hotel."
"I don't really like them that much. I mean they have been so rude to you after everything you have done for them. I would just feel better and safer with you." Lily responded watching as the group of women started to leave the clearing.
Naruto sighed. "If you really want to, then you can stay here." Naruto then unsealed a scroll from his coat and unrolled it on the ground and unsealed its contents.
After the smoke cleared wooden poles, rope, and canvas could be seen on the scroll. He then got another scroll out of his coat and unsealed the contents of that scroll to show a blue shirt, black pants, and another black coat.
"You are going to have to pitch the tent. I'm hungry, and I assume you are too, so I am going to find us something to eat."
As Naruto was heading into the forest intent on finding something to eat Kurama made his presence known.
'You're first mission outside of the village and you are already a hero. You keep doing this and you will be the most popular shinobi in the world.'
'What? I'm no hero.' Naruto retorted, actually snorting at being called a hero.
'Tell that to the girl back there. She's already worshipping you as a hero. If you keep doing stuff like this you better get used to being a hero, and when people start to admire you don't be an ass about it.' Kurama warned.
Naruto just shook his head as he continued to search for food. After a few more seconds he saw something move in the underbrush. Quietly crouching low to the ground and stalking his way over to where he saw the movement he readied a kunai in his left hand.
Just as he was about to move the bushes out of the way a brown blur darted out. Reacting quickly, Naruto turned and threw his kunai at the blur. With a crack the object was pinned to a nearby tree, when Naruto got a closer look at the creature he realized it was a rabbit. A fat rabbit at that, it will make a good dinner for him and Lily.
Naruto re-entered the clearing to see Lily, now dressed in a black coat that reached to about mid shin on her, having some trouble setting up her tent. He glanced to the ground next to her to see that she had not put on the shirt or pants. He figured the shirt would've been too small to fit into and he guessed the pants were the same if she hadn't put them on. Naruto decided to get the rabbit cooking before he would help her with the tent. So with that in mind he meandered to the edge of the clearing to pick up some firewood.
When he was finished gathering firewood and had made his way back to camp he noticed that Lily was nearly done setting up the tent. It seems he wouldn't have to help her after all. With one less thing on his mind, he quickly got busy setting up the campfire to cook his kill.
After he finished setting everything up he unsealed his fire starter. Fumbling with it a bit since it was a little difficult to hold the ferrocerium rod with only one finger, he started striking it to get the kindling burning. Once he got a good spark he slowly breathed the fire to life. Seeing that the fire was sustaining itself he turned around to the rabbit, or where the rabbit was earlier.
Looking around him thinking he may have just misplaced the rabbit. Naruto heard a crack and snapped his head towards the sound to see Lily sitting about five feet away with the rabbit in her arms.
'Don't tell me she is going to get pissy with me for killing the rabbit.' Naruto sighed inwardly.
"Do you have a knife?" Naruto heard. He looked towards Lily to see her looking at him expectantly.
"Uh, yeah." Naruto answered dumbly as he fumbled around inside his coat before he brought out a kunai and handed it to her.
"Thank you." And with that Lily got started with skinning and disemboweling the rabbit. Naruto could do nothing but watch as she expertly skinned the rabbit.
Lily finished skinning the rabbit and looked up to see Naruto staring at her intently. She blushed in embarrassment and turned away from him. "What?"
Naruto stopped staring when he heard her. "I just didn't expected you to be so good at skinning an animal. Not many civilians are so adept at such a skill, even less women." Naruto answered truthfully.
"Well my dad's a butcher." Lily retorted as she turned her attention back to the rabbit and started to cut the meat out of the carcass. "He used to be a hunter and would take me out every now and then. He taught me everything I needed to know when it came to hunting animals and processing them."
"Smart man" Naruto mumbled as he reached inside of his coat and unsealed a large frying pan. He had it thrown at him a couple days earlier and figured that it was his now. He handed it to Lily who thanked him and started to cook the rabbit in it.
Both Lily and Naruto sat in comfortable silence as they waited for the rabbit to cook. Both enjoyed just sitting by the fire listening to the crackling and popping of the wood. Lily loved the heat that was given off, it had been too long since she had felt this warm. Naruto liked the heat, but it didn't really do anything for him. His body heat almost always stayed at a constant temperature. Something that Kurama's presence probably did for him.
Naruto perked up when he saw Lily reach to the pan that was at the edge of the fire. He was hungry and was looking forward to a good helping of rabbit.
Lily grabbed the plastic grip of the pan before lifting it out of the fire. She took the kunai that Naruto had given her earlier and prodded the meat in the pan making sure it was thoroughly cooked. When she was convinced that it was cooked to her liking she scooted closer to Naruto and placed the pan between the two of them.
The pair quickly dug into the food. Lily was starving, she had been kidnapped this morning and had not eaten anything all day and was only given a few sips of water from an empty canteen to keep her alive. Naruto was starving because of his incredible metabolism and the fact that he hadn't eaten anything after breakfast, focusing solely on the mission.
Thirty minutes later there was a pile of bones next to the empty pan. Naruto was looking at the fire with a blank expression on his face. Lily was lying on her back looking at the stars. She brought a hand up to her mouth as she yawned.
"You should get some sleep. It's been a long day and you will need your energy for tomorrow." Lily heard as she turned to look at Naruto who was still looking at the fire.
"I guess… But make sure you take your own advice. You're going to need just as much, if not more energy for tomorrow." Lily countered as she got up and made her way to the tent. Naruto had also unsealed a sleeping bag for her. When she asked how he would stay warm he just told her that he doesn't get cold. She didn't ask much after that knowing that ninjas were pretty secretive. "Good night."
Naruto just sighed as he turned back towards the fire. He slowly closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep in his upright position. 'Tomorrow is going to be an annoying day.' Naruto thought before he fell asleep.