Loyal followers! Thine wait is now over! Here I am, most certainly alive, contrary to what some apparently believe, with chapter two of JoaL. It should be noted that I was planning to release new chapters for this fic on a monthly basis since the beginning. School and shit, you know. Gotta keep knacking code. Woop, programming!

I should warn you that I may just sucker punch a few of your expectations straight in the nuts with this chapter, but as I said, the title's what it is for a reason. It's not quite up to the standards I'd like it to be, but things don't really start kicking off until the next chapter, so I had more trouble getting this flowing properly than I'd have liked.

In any case…

Fuck the disclaimer, it's redundant anyway!

Journey of a Lilmothiit

Chapter 2
On stranger shores

Jiraya was close to panic. Scratch that, he was panicking. This was bad. No ifs or buts about it, his student was gone. Minato's only son was gone! He should have known, should have been more careful, should have trusted his nerves and avoided that scroll, but he hadn't, and now, Naruto. Was. Gone. Gone, in a flash of light, gone. Because of that scroll, gone. Because he had been careless. Gone!

And the scroll was just lying there on the floor, looking harmless. Innocent. Hah!

It still did nothing when he tried to read it...

No. He did not have time to waste on a breakdown. Nobody said the kid had kicked the bucket. He was probably still around somewhere. That brat was too damn stubborn to bite the dust like that.

Yeah. This was not the time to panic. He had to look at the situation calmly to figure out where that kid had gone.

He'd have to ask the toads. They would know. If they didn't know where that idiot apprentice of his had disappeared to, no one would.

Naruto woke up slowly. He couldn't move, barely even open his eyes and was sore all over. What happened to him? He couldn't remember. Everything was too hazy.

When he eventually managed to open his eyes, all he could see was a wooden ceiling. He was indoors. So, that meant someone had found him, then. Hopefully, that was a good thing.

He was lying on something furry. A pelt? Or many pelts, perhaps? Some kind of bed?

It took him several seconds and a troublesome amount of pain, but he managed to turn his head enough to see at least a bit more of the room. Hay met his eyes, and a lot of it at that. It seemed he was in some sort of barn, or storage, since the walls were lined with tools. Very old-fashioned tools, mind. What seemed to be some sort of ingots lay stacked here and there on the floor in impressive quantities.

The lighting was dim, but he could see quite clearly, despite the fact that he could not spot any light source. The room was odd, in more ways than one.

Everything about the room seemed to be taken straight out of a different era, and the complete lack of electronic devices, even the simplest ones like lamps, did not make things better. In fact, he couldn't spot any light source at all, except from the stars in the night sky, peeking through a small window.

If only he could remember what happened...

He felt weird, too. Not the painful or uncomfortable sort of weird, even if he did hurt a lot too. Something just felt... different. But he couldn't put his finger on it. Naruto tried to sit up, only to find out that he couldn't, at least not without sharp pain shooting through his whole body.

Well, that had been a bad idea. Perhaps it would be better to try moving gradually. He could move his neck, even if it was difficult, so he tried moving his hand next.

Wait. That wasn't his hand. Unless his hand had somehow grown thick fur and claws while he had been unconscious that was most certainly not his hand.

The seed of disbelief and panic grew rapidly when he tried to curl his index finger, and the index finger of that hand curled as commanded.

No. This was not happening. This was not even possible.

He balled his hand to a fist.

The furry hand obeyed.

Fuck.

He would have screamed. He really would have. He would have screamed loud enough to wake up half the town, had he been able to. Instead, all he got was a vicious coughing fit, violent enough to force him to sit up, despite the pain the action caused. This allowed him to, for good or bad, see the rest of his body.

Yep, both of his hands were like that. And his arms, covered in thick, golden fur as well. His torso was mostly covered in bandages, but he could indeed see tufts of hair sticking out in between the strips. And if he wasn't mistaken... yep, there it was. A tail. He had grown a damn tail! This couldn't be happening. This just wasn't happening!

No. He had to calm down. Panicking was only counterproductive and would lead him nowhere. He buried his face in his hands, wanting to take a deep breath to calm down, but it proved to be futile as his hands met with his face sooner than they should have.

A snout. He had grown a damn snout. Wait, were those... yep. Ears. Long, triangular, parabolic, not human ears.

And just like that, all attempts at not panicking were thrown to the wind.

"Kyuubi!"

There was a tired groan from his mind. "You're noisy, brat. I'm trying to sleep, damn it!"

Naruto was however most certainly not in the mood for the fox's antics at that moment. "What have you done to me?!"

The great fox snorted. "Idiot. Check the seal before throwing accusations about, will you?"

The blond practically tore off the bandages around his stomach in his rush to check the seal, channelling chakra as he did so. Luckily for him, it was still very much visible despite the fur, as the pattern had transferred to his... coat.

While he still had a long, looong way to go before he could even consider attempting to actually perform an array as complex as the one that kept the great Youma sealed, much less creating one himself, this seal of his was without a doubt the one seal that Naruto had studied the most by far to the point of it very nearly being the only seal he had studied. This was because he wanted to be able to check for himself that the seal had not cracked anywhere without relying on others being there to do it for him.

As a result of this, Naruto knew exactly what it should look like, as well as its limits. Not to mention limiters. If anything, his studies had led to his already great respect of the Yondaime being increased by nearly tenfold. The seal allowed communication, but only if Naruto himself consciously allowed it. The Kyuubi was completely unable to attack or affect him, both physically and mentally. The one and only exception to this was when Naruto used the fox's chakra, as this was unavoidable, but even then the effects were only temporary. And this was only some of the functions the massive seal had. There were still some features that remained hidden to the young shinobi, but he knew the important parts.

Bottom line, the fox doing something like this to him was impossible, unless some part had cracked. Badly.

Which it hadn't.

Naruto double-checked it, triple-checked it, and checked it four times more, just to be sure.

Nothing. There was absolutely nothing out of place. No cracks, no shifts, not even the slightest waver. Nothing. It was almost as if the Kyuubi hadn't even tried to do anything.

So, it wasn't the fox, then. What could have made him like this? Oh.

Genjutsu.

Of course! It had to be! What else could explain all this but an elaborate Genjutsu? He tried dispelling it.

Nothing happened.

He tried again, putting more force into it.

Nothing.

"There is no Genjutsu, kit. This is real."

Naruto wouldn't hear of it. "This can't be real!It has to be a Genjutsu! It HAS to be!"

The fox snarled it him. "Shut up, will you? I've been listening to you panicking for too damn long! Get a hold of yourself, brat. This. Is. Not! AN! ILLUSION!"

"Lies. You're lying!"

This time the Kyuubi roared, his patience wearing very thin, having been forced to listen to the boy's quite unguarded train of thoughts. "Snap out of it, you idiot brat! You know as well as I do that I couldn't lie to you if I wanted to!"

It was true. A common misconception was that the only power Naruto had gained as a Jinchuuriki was greatly accelerated healing. It wasn't. He could detect the emotions of others. While this ability hadn't always been noticeable, this changed after Naruto used the Kyuubi's chakra for the first time, back in Wave. Ever since then, he had gradually grown an ability to not only sense a person's emotions, but could soon also tell if they were lying or not, and Kyuubi was no exception.

Naruto knew this. And the fox had not been lying. It was just difficult to accept that this was really happening. But it was.

Not an illusion. Real. Wouldn't go away. Not a dream.

Real.

Right then and there, Uzumaki Naruto broke down and did something he hadn't done in years. He cried.

He had worked so hard to get the people of Konoha to see him for who he was, instead of for what he contained. For all fourteen years of his life, all he had wanted, truly wanted, was for the people to acknowledge him, to accept him as a human, just like them. To belong. And now, just like that, fourteen years of hard struggles...

Shattered. Like a carefully crafted sculpture of glass, carelessly dropped on the floor. Just like that. Poof.

Gone.

How were they ever going to accept him now that he wasn't even human anymore?

From his cage, Kyuubi sighed to himself. These things really weren't his forte. "Hey, kit. Get a hold of yourself."

Naruto didn't answer.

"Kit," the fox pressed on. "There is nothing wrong with you."

"Oh, yeah?" he snapped back. "'Nothing wrong with me'? Oh, sure there's nothing wrong with me! I... just look at me!"

"Well, if you just calmed the fuck down, then perhaps you'd be able to think more rationally about this. I'm not about to do your work for you, brat."

"Calm down and do what?! Hide? Run away like a damn missing nin?!"

The Kyuubi frowned, snapping. Fuck being gentle, it wasn't his style. "Brat, shut the hell up. Where is the brave idiot I know? Where have that never-give-up attitude of yours gone?! Stop being such a bloody defeatist! This ISN'T YOU, you damn moron! Snap OUT of it! I'm sick and tired of your wallowing!"

Naruto's jaw tightened, but he didn't say anything.

The fox let out a low growl, oozing of disappointment."So, that nindo of yours was a ruse, then?"

That, if anything, struck a chord within the young blond, and a powerful one at that. How dare that bastard fox claim he had given up his nindo!?

But hadn't he? Never give up, and never ever go back on a promise, was that not his nindo?

Was that not exactly what he had nearly done?

No. He wouldn't allow that.

This wasn't him. This wasn't how Uzumaki freaking Naruto was supposed to think.

This wasn't how Uzumaki Naruto was thinking.

No. Where did his attitude go, indeed? This might have been the greatest damn fall that he had ever taken in his life, but was he not Uzumaki Naruto? Was he not the future Hokage? Damn straight he was. Uzumaki Naruto did not give up. Was that not his nindo? Was that not his way of life?

Screw the rules. Fuck the world. He was Uzumaki Naruto, future Hokage, and he did not wallow. When life gives Uzumaki Naruto lemons, he damn well does not only make lemonade, but lemon cake, lemon pie and lemon ramen as well! And the rest of the lemons? Throw the things in life's face. After making them combustible, of course.

He was Uzumaki Naruto, and he did not give up. He NEVER gave up. He'd make it through this, and he'd bloody well be grinning like a nut through the whole thing!

He straightened his back, pain forgotten and a determined grin dawning upon his furry, fanged visage. Yeah, he was Uzumaki Naruto. No matter what he looked like, that was one thing that would never change.

Jiraya was getting more and more frustrated by the minute. While the toads had confirmed the fact that his wayward student had indeed survived, and had not been taken by the Akatsuki to the sage's great relief, they were still for some reason unable to reverse-summon the boy to mount Myoboku, or even warp themselves over to his side. Old Fukusaku had said that the connection was too weak from wherever he was, which simply did not make any sense. The position shouldn't matter, as long as one was within the elemental nations. Anywhere on their world map, really. So why was the connection too weak?

He'd briefly considered the possibility that he could be in Makai, but the existence of that plane had never been even remotely confirmed, and it was in all honesty only a theoretical realm whose myth was created as a sort of explanation as for where the Bijuu came from. It became the myth of Makai, and it wasn't something he'd ever really believed in. It was still a possibility, but not one he even wanted to consider.

The Elder Sage hadn't been of much help, either. What he'd finally gotten from him after a few too many narcoleptic fits and bouts of dementia was that the fox had returned home. Jiraya had naturally assumed that the elder had been talking about the Kyuubi, but the answer he got when he spoke his presumption out loud suggested otherwise.

"Him too."

Just those two, simple words. Nothing more.

Huh. Logic suggested that in that case, it was Naruto he had been talking about, but that didn't make sense. Naruto's home was and had always been Konoha. That was, unless...

Had the old Sage been referring to the Namikaze's ancestral home, perhaps? He had the scrolls that Naruto had stored; they were in a storage scroll in his pouch, but the problem was that he couldn't for his life read them. On the other hand, thoughtful as he was, he had written down the four lines of text on the stone monument in romaji, both as his student had spoken them in their original tongue, and the translated version. It wasn't much, but it was the only key he had. As a spymaster he was a pretty good cryptograph, but he was well aware that it would be much more effective to send it to Konoha and let their team of professional cryptographers take care of it, since for all of his experience, he was only one person.

So, he did what he could. He had wasted no time getting his entire spy network focused on finding the boy, but nothing had turned up yet, which wasn't that big a surprise since only a day or two had passed, but he was worried about the kid.

In the end, there wasn't much more he could do, except waiting for some sign of progress in the search and inspect the carvings on the dome's stone walls.

Carvings of tall mountains, vast seas and a sky with two moons...

"A Lilmothiit? What's that?"

"What you are,"was the fox's rather deadpan reply.

"Oh, I get that,"Naruto argued. "But I still don't know anything about them. Us. Whatever."

"I... Perhaps some other time, kit."

"What? But-"

"Later, kit. Someone's coming."

Naruto tensed in apprehension. Too many what ifs swarmed his mind. Oh, he wanted to trust whoever it was that had brought him here, he really did, but he had a bit too many reasons not to. He was a shinobi, and the chances that the one that had taken care of him might be an enemy was still very much there, yet the most prominent reason still was his upbringing. Growing up, Naruto had learned the hard way not to trust easily, however nice a person might seem.

A man walked in, lantern in hand. Naruto reflexively reached for a kunai, only to curse as he remembered that he didn't have any on him. To make it worse, he was far from his best, injured as he was, but while the man did seem to be very strong, he didn't have the build of a fighter, but rather that of a hard labourer, ergo a civilian. In the end, he'd probably be able to get away if he needed to.

But the man only made a few pacifying gestures. ["Easy, I'm not going to hurt you."]

Naruto frowned, not dropping his guard. He didn't know that tongue. "Oi, Kyuubi. What's he saying?"

"Not sure," was the slightly hesitant reply. "It's... vaguely familiar. It sounds like old Atmorean, and a bit like Elven, but..."

"But? And what's Atmorean?"

["You were quite injured when I found you. I'm surprised you can move already,"] the civilian went on, not realising that the young fox had no idea what he was saying.

"The language of the humans on this plane, last I checked."

"Can you translate?"

"Languages change, kit. It's been at least three thousand years since I last visited this land. I'll give it a try, sure, but I make no promises."

Naruto decided that he could live with that; it was better than what he had expected from the fox, anyway. "So, what was he saying?"

"From what I can decipher, he's not our enemy. As for the second part, he's either surprised over something, or he's saying that he lost his best shirt in a mine shaft."

"Right..." the boy replied, unsure what to think about it all. Since when did Kyuubi joke about? Or was he being serious? The fox had sounded rather deadpan about it.

Meanwhile, the civilian started to notice what was going on. ["You do understand me, right?"] He might not be very used to dealing with beastfolk as very few stopped by his little village for very long, and it's not like he was the innkeeper, but he knew utter confusion when he saw it, human or not.

The person who he was pretty sure was a Khajiit didn't move. He took it as a no. Well, that was a bugger. He didn't know any other language. Why would he need to? He was but a simple blacksmith, and his wife handled the trading.

It didn't take long until the two realised that their meagre ways of oral communication wasn't going to work and made a rather impressive attempt at communicating through gestures, which soon ended up in what they were pretty sure was a mutual cussing match in their respective tongues which did little good, except for perhaps relieving the tension a bit. The civilian eventually gave up and left, much to Naruto's frustration, but the man came back within a minute with a bunch of paper sheets and pieces of charcoal. It made communication easier, even if it was mostly through base symbols and pictures, but it made it easier nonetheless, and Naruto felt much more at ease with the situation.

The man was named Torolf, he found out, and he was the blacksmith of the town he was in. Helgen, it was called. He still didn't know exactly where he was on the world map, except that it was up north, at least according to the weather. Torolf was a friendly soul and eccentric enough for him to be at ease around the man. It didn't take long before he was introduced to his wife and son. His wife, Matlara her name was, had a sharp tongue on her, and knew quite a thing or two about hunting. Their son Haming was a rather peaceful spirit, even though he dreamed of becoming a solider.

It should be noted that no one in this family could cook to save their lives, so they went to the local inn every day. Every meal. Naruto just couldn't stand for this and soon saddled himself with the mission to cook the meals. He wasn't exactly the best cook in the world, nor was he used to any of the ingredients that were available in this land, but he managed and the results were still worlds better than what anyone in this family could produce.

Since he was stuck in this ridiculously cold world where little made sense and he had extreme difficulties of communicating, the boy had decided to stay for a while, at least until he learned the language. Torolf and his family had been nice enough to offer him a roof above his head, even if it was the barn. The very least he could do was to make sure they got proper food. The main problem was that nobody had even heard about ramen. It was depressing, really, but he'd have to make due until he somehow got back to the Elemental Nations.

Oh yeah, I didn't mention that, did I? Naruto had realised that he apparently was on a different planet, possibly in an entirely different world. Nobody had really told him this outright, but the fact that there wasn't just one, but rather two moons in the sky was a rather massive hint. He still didn't know what the hell had happened to him after opening that big-ass scroll, and he had absolutely no idea as of how to get back, but he'd realised that dwelling upon such things would do him little to no good at the moment. If he got here, he could get back; he just had to figure out how to do so. At this point in time, he settled for tackling each day as they came. To get his answers, he'd have to ask, and to be able to ask, he'd have to be able to speak their tongue in the first place. Fortunately, Kyuubi was able to help him a bit along the way, even with his somewhat outdated linguistic skillset.

A few days passed and the young Lilmothiit was back up in top condition, and he wasted no time making sure everything was in order. To his great relief, his chakra system was still fully functional, and perhaps even more so than it was before. The first thing he attempted after realising this was to summon one of the toads, since he wanted to contact his sensei, only to find out that he couldn't. He had nearly panicked, believing that he could no longer use Ninjutsu, but then he tried the Rasengan, and it worked perfectly, no problem, so the issue did not lie with his ability to use chakra. Perhaps it was because he was in a different world? That would make sense, in a way. Not being able to contact Ero-sennin was depressing, but there was nothing he could do about it for the moment, so he didn't let it hold down his mood for long.

On a different note, his chakra control seemed to have skyrocketed after his foxification for some reason or the other. Kyuubi had eventually told him that this was because the tail had tenketsu as well as the rest of his body, and while he had been pretty vague about it, the great fox claimed that the reason that his control had been so bad in the first place was not because of his massive capacity, but because of the fact that his chakra system told itself that it should have more tenketsu than it had, resulting in an effect similar to that of a Hyuuga having blocked off about a fifth of his Tenketsu.

Naruto had been sceptic regarding this theory, since it would imply that the Lilmothiit genes had not only been faffing about in his DNA from the very beginning, but should by all means have been his dominant set of genes, which made no sense since he had been a human all of his life until this point, but further investigation actually supported Kyuubi's theory rather than his own.

At first, Naruto had been very firm in his opinion that his new body was bad news and a liability with no silver lining, but the first moment he started going through his regular Taijutsu katas, he was proven very wrong indeed. The tail that he had at first been horrified about having was a boon like no other, and not just because it gave him better chakra control from having the so-called 'right' amount of tenketsu. No, that didn't even begin to cover the advantages a tail brought forth. The reason as of why most animals have tails in the first place is to enhance their balance and flow of movement, and this was something that our young hero noticed pretty much immediately when he started training again. It was such a massive difference that he'd have to be ten times the idiot he had been two years ago not to notice.

And it felt so right.

He'd believed that his new body would be a liability, but only days later he could barely comprehend how the stiff, unbalanced body of a human could effectively fight anymore. His shifted leg joins made each step he took so much softer, and his tail made everything just flow...

He loved it.

It was as if a wedge had been removed. Taijutsu had never been his strong point. Sure, he could throw a killer punch, but his legwork had always been near abysmal, no matter what he did. Jiraya had spent a lot of time with him to try and remedy this, and he had improved, but he had still been worlds apart from where he should be. Now, this seemed not to be a problem in the least. Everything just clicked. His body moved exactly how he wanted it to, and all of a sudden, Taijutsu wasn't a problem anymore.

As if his body had been wrong, but was no longer.

So perhaps the Kyuubi was right, and it had been in his DNA all along, and it was only when he was sent to this place that those genes had... 'activated', so to speak. It was strange, and it still sounded just as illogical to Naruto as it had before, but he was no medic. So he did what he did best and simply took one day at a time. What else could he do, really?

After a week and a half of Naruto trying to keep going as normally as he could, ergo training his ass off every minute he wasn't cooking, sleeping or trying to communicate, Torolf decided to teach the young man the craft of blacksmithing.

He had been surprised at first, but decided that it would be a good idea. Naruto had lost his admittedly small supply of kunai and shuriken somewhere on his unexpected trip across worlds, and from what he had been able to piece together, the throwable category of weaponry was rarely used these days and thus very hard to come by, so making his own seemed to be his best shot, really.

What he hadn't expected was just how fun the art was. It wasn't exactly Fuuinjutsu, nothing could compete with that glorious, glorious art, but there was something simply relaxing and almost poetic in hammering metal into the graceful shapes that of death-dealing utilities. As usual, he had been a fast learner and picked up the art surprisingly fast. Torolf had been very impressed. Furthermore, thanks to his differing cultural references he had a lot of fresh influences to freshen up the more classic designs that the Nords, the people of this land, seemed to favour. Unfortunately, the young traveller seemed to have no aptitude for swords whatsoever, or maces or even axes for that matter. Daggers he was perfectly fine with, although not as good as he was with hand-to-hand combat, and he couldn't help but feel quite sad about it. After all, one needed a proper understanding of the inner workings of an object before one could even attempt making it. So far, he'd been forced to settle for kunai and shuriken.

Armour smithing went better, surprisingly enough. He had been raised as a shinobi, and while he had been far from the best, he did know what was practical and not (at least apart from colouring), and what did and what didn't offer enough manoeuvrability. It made for quite a few interesting sets of armour that apparently had been sold quite quickly, and for a hefty amount of money, too. He wasn't exactly an expert blacksmith, even after two months, but apparently his works were unique and practical enough for people to buy them and that was definitely enough for Naruto.

Somewhere around the second month, Torolf introduced him to different kinds of metal, and the smith trainee had practically fallen in love with both dwarven metal and orichalcum, the first simply because it was the single most orange thing that he had encountered in this world so far, and orichalcum because its green shade reminded him of the lush forests of his home. He tried finding new ways of using the minerals and it didn't take long for him to come up with a rather fascinating alloy with steel and the green ore. It made the material surprisingly light, yet highly sturdy. After a while, it was all he used for his throwing weapons.

These experiments of his had a downside, however. Minerals were expensive, and Torolf and his family weren't exactly the richest people around. Naruto, being who he is, couldn't stand the thought of being the cause of his benefactors' economic decline and decided to take matters into his own hands. So, he started adventuring. He didn't go too far; he stayed within the holds of Whiterun and Falkreath, but it was still enough for him to be able to pay for his own minerals with a rather hefty margin. He mostly did bounty hunting, as that was what was closest to what he had been doing in Konoha, but it was difficult to resist the occasional dungeon delving.

This life of his lasted for a while. It was... surprisingly peaceful. When he had finally learned the melodic language of the Nords to a satisfying degree, it didn't take long before he had bonded with most of the villagers of Helgen.

He was happy, he realised. He missed his home, every day, but he couldn't help but feel that he was actually being happier in this village than he had ever been in his life. He did feel a bit guilty about thinking that way, but... He was happy now, nobody hated him for reasons beyond his control, and things were peaceful.

However, he had a strong feeling that it wasn't going to last.

On the fifth day of the fourth month since Naruto's arrival, things began to stir. Imperial soldiers arrived, reinforcing the already impressive town guard. A caravan of prisoners was approaching.

On one of these wagons sat four people. Ulfric Stormcloak, Jarl of Windhelm, bound and gagged. Ralof, a Stormcloak solider, bound. Lokir, Horse thief, bound and in rags. A Khajiit woman, with fur white as snow. Cast in chains, dressed in rags.

Change was approaching.

No, I am not dead. Yes, chocolate cookies are delicious. Yes, I love it when you leave reviews. Woop. I'm gonna sleep now.

You may have noticed I changed the summary. Yeah, I think it sounds better now. What do you guys think?

Quite a lot of people have been asking me about Pairings, and to be honest, I haven't really decided yet, aside from femDovahkiin x J'Zargo. Either way romance won't play an important part in this story. The one I'm considering the most is Naruto x Fuu, but I haven't decided yet.

So, until next month, I'm leaving you with that little cliffhanger. Don't hate me!