Naruto panted as he moved through the woods surrounding the Gremory family's stupidly huge mansion, leaping through the tree branches.

While he knew he was distancing himself from the main compound, Naruto couldn't relax. He knew from clans back in Konoha that people as as Rias appeared to be usually had more than just one building in their name. Heck, the Uchiha clan, prior to the massacre, had an entire seemingly miniature village of their own in a corner of Konoha! So he was willing to bet he was still in the lands and territory that belonged to the Gremory family...which pretty much sucked, especially seeing as he had no idea just how big it was!

So he decided to just keep moving forward—literally. He'd been going straight for hours now. Looking up as he moved, he noted that the sky outside was changing rapidly from deep, velvety blue to cold, steely gray and then, slowly, to pink shot with gold. Sheesh...been moving for most of the night and he didn't even feel the slightest bit short on breath!

Ninja training and a devil's level of physical ability...he loathed the mixture. No matter how beneficial it was at the moment!

As he moved, Naruto kept trying to remember what had happened at the Valley of the End...the details just stopped before his decision to draw on more of the fox's power. Like his mind had hit a brick wall all of a sudden. Everything was blank. Dammit, what happened?! If he could figure that out, he might find a way to get back to Konoha and find a way to undo what Rias had done to him!

Far as he figured, if there was a way to wherever this was, if he could figure out how he had gotten here, he could find the way back.

"Nice thought...but what's that saying about this place...? "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here", right?"

Naruto was so shocked at the fox's voice echoing through his head that he almost tripped and crashed to the ground. What that...?! The Nine-Tails was talking in his head?! But he thought that could only happen if he entered his mindscape!

A snort rang out through his skull "Fool. Did you honestly think that was the case just because I'd never done communicated with you this way before?! Wait...what am I saying?! Of course you did!"

Naruto groaned. So the fox 'Whattda want?!' he mentally demanded as he started moving again.

"Bad mood, you brat? Whatever has you so upset?! After all, you're usually so...devil–may–care!" the demon laughed mockingly, feeling Naruto's rage spike at the comment, then it yowled as the Evil Pieces suddenly tore even grater amounts of energy from it, giving Naruto a satisfying twinge of dark amusement. "Shit that stings...Seriously though, devil or not now, you need to rest up. Your body'll fail on you if you don't get some rest and some food."

Naruto snarled 'I'll push this thing as much as I need to, this ISN'T my body! I was born as a human!'

"So you reject everything you are now just because of what wasn't anyone else's fault but the Uchiha's? Face it, as angry as you are at Gremory and your situation, if it weren't for the Uchiha, NONE of this would be happening now, and we both know it! His choice blew up in your face, now you just lash out at everyone because you can't punish him?"

Naruto scowled 'I don't need or want to hear this from you! After all, if it weren't for YOU, I wouldn't have had the kind of life I have where I was labeled a devil or unholy monster in the first place!'

"Heh...True. Then again...my assault on your village wasn't exactly voluntary to begin with."

This time, Naruto really DID fall to the ground, He lifted his head and spat out a clog of grass out of his mouth. "WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?!" he demanded, shouting his question out loud, he was so stunned.

Naruto could feel the fox grinning wickedly, "Got your attention, did I? Well, it's a long story. So if you don't want to miss any of the details, I suggest you stop worrying about where you're going and actually listen."

Naruto grit his teeth. Hating that this wasn't something that was being held over his head. 'How do I know what you'll be saying is actually the truth?!'

"You won't." the demon admitted bluntly. "But at least I can give you the full story. And I'm the only living individual who can."

'So what do you have to say then?' the boy demanded.

Snickering, the tailed beast started the story of the attack on the village and how it was caused by a masked man with the Sharingan...

There were things that a person could, and could not, accept.

Killing her former master...acceptable.

Being labeled an SS-Class Stray Devil and one of the Underworld's most wanted criminals...acceptable.

Being forced to join up with the Khaos Brigade because of said criminal label...acceptable.

The Nekomata species on the brink of extinction...not acceptable.

Being separated from Shirone...not acceptable...at all!

Allowing former master to drain her little sister's life force to increase his own powers...HELL NO!

Such were the thoughts of Kuroka the Nekoshou as she made her way to where she usually went when she was off by herself. She needed to see if her sister was all right. Sure her spying was annoying, but it was necessary. It wasn't like she could just walk up to her sister and ask how she was, though she wished it were that simple.

Still...she was a master of Senjutsu and Youjutsu, that made things easier as far as the sneaking and the watching went. But she wanted more than that. She wanted her Shirone and her to be a family again!

Kuroka loved her little sister dearly, enough to accept all the bad that came with things as long as her sister was safe and happy. Though she hated how she had trouble showing it at times, so to make up for her awkwardness, she settled for teasing her when she couldn't find how else to get that point across.

What made it especially bad was that Shirone was all she had after the deaths of their parents.

Sighing the female neko recalled how she and her sister were taken in by a Devil after the loss of their mother and father, and how she herself had been reincarnated as the Devil's Bishop using two Evil Pieces. While serving her master, she became extremely talented in the arts of Senjutsu and Youjutsu, and her magical power as a Bishop became so great that she surpassed her own master in terms of magical power alone. It made her feel so proud. Best of all was that she could use her powers to keep her sister safe for any and all harm. That was the best part. Then it all came crashing down when she later became a Stray Devil after she killed her master, with everyone assuming that she was drunk with her own powers, but the real reason was to protect her sister from her master, and she became one of the Underworld's most wanted criminals, ranking at SS-Class.

When she had heard that following the failed manhunt that came after that incident, Shirone had been sentenced to death by the Devils who had the hopes of preventing another incident like Kuroka's from happening, (which was as unjust as it was utterly ridiculous!) she was going to offer her head in place of her sister's. After all, whatever her faults or sins, she wanted nothing to happen to her younger sister and wanted to protect her from anything, everything, anyone and everybody that would hurt her, even though she knew the paranoid fools would most likely go back on that kind of bargain if she did, still thinking that killing her innocent sister was for the best of all devil-kind. People were like that; human, devil, angel, or fallen angel, it didn't matter who or what they were: Once they made their minds up about something, it was almost impossible to get them to change.

Though thankfully...mercifully...Sirzechs Lucifer himself, beautiful bastard of a saint that he was, had protected Shirone...bless him for that!...and left her under his sister Rias' care. And if there was one thing the Gremory was know for, it was caring too much about anyone and everyone that was made part of their family, either by affiliation via reincarnation into peerage or coming into it by birth, it was all the same to them! Bless them! One and all! Kuroka adored the Gremory for looking out for her little sister that, and she was grateful beyond any form of expression to them for it. Since then, she had been trying to find a way to make it up to them. Maybe serving as a spy and discretely passing on information about the Khaos Brigade, the group created by Ophis, the Dragon God of Infinity, with the sole purpose of removing the Great Red, the most powerful Dragon in existence known as the True Dragon, out of the Dimensional Gap, and consisted of multiple races: Devils, Fallen Angels, Humans who were descendants of legendary/mythological heroes, and a even few unfallen Angels, without either side knowing? The idea had merit, especially seeing as the Old Satan Faction was the largest faction of the Khaos Brigade. But it didn't seem like nearly enough to say just how much Kuroka felt she owed Sirzechs and his family for being there for her sister when she couldn't.

She wanted there to be...more. But what in the heck could she do to fully express how much she felt indebted toward them? This bothered her immensely, she wanted to pay them back, but what seemed to be a big enough way of doing so?

Suddenly, she froze, "Damnit!" she hissed, then transformed into a black house cat and quickly climbed up a tree. Sure enough, two of her sister's fellow peerage-members, the Hunter of Heaven's Cast-Outs, Yuuto Kiba, and the Priestess of Thunder, Akeno Himejima, appeared under the tree she was in.

"Find that vagabond?!" Akeno said, to which their unbeknownst observer paled under her fur, thinking she was in trouble.

"Damn kid...why'd he ditch Rias?!" Kiba spat, looking furious.

HUH?!

Well now...looked like the unthinkable had happened: Gremory had a STRAY! How interesting! What was that saying? Ask and ye shall receive?!

Kuroka leaned forward in the tree branch, hungry for information.

"Damn that whisker-faced, red-and-black-eyed, blond little yutz! I get that he hated being reincarnated into a devil, but going Stray?!" Kiba snapped, twisting his hands in a violent jerk, obviously envisioning the runaway's head between them.

"At least Rias is still alive, though why he didn't kill her, I don't know. Not that I'm ever going to complain he didn't..." Akeno said, then the two made their way off somewhere else, leaving their unknown observer to ponder what she had hard.

So...a reluctant peerage member, huh? One that Rias wanted protected? Kuroka grinned as she turned into her humanoid form again...oh, this was perfect! Now she could repay the Red Tit Empress for looking out for her sister by keeping an eye on whoever the 'yutz' Kiba had mentioned was! And if she could convince this guy to go back to Rias, he could help keep an eye on Shirone for her!

This was wonderful! She felt like doing a jig and whooping, but there'd be time for that later! She had work to do! Shifting back into her Nekomata form, the two-bishop Evil Piece-carrier quickly set about casting a detection area. As she finished her casting, a hexagonal-shaped detection map with a glowing helix appeared where the one she was looking for materialized in front of her. The stronger this guy was, the better reaction it would get in tracing him.

But as she watched, Kuroka had to shield her face with her arm as the glow blinded her and the tracer shattered like glass before the shards of energy dissipated.

Holy...! Sheesh! Just how much power did this runaway have at their disposal anyway?! Kuroka had to wince at the thought, seeing as how stray devils were essentially living time bombs, one with this much power was a very bad thing!

Well, at least they were staying on one spot from what her tracker had shown her. Good news there. Transforming back into the form of a normal cat, she started heading to the location indicated by her map prior to it's breaking. Upon getting there, she stopped and saw that there was a young man in a hooded jacket who seemed to be trying to rush up the side of a tree for some reason, before gravity yanked him back down and he fell onto his head. He groaned as he twisted so that he could sit up, rubbing his head, pushing his hood down and exposing spiky blond hair.

Well now...so this was Rias' whisker-faced, Red-and-black-eyed, blond little yutz? He certainly fit the bill, trying to run up a tree like that. Yep, this was who she was looking for!

"Damnit...chakra control is still off!" he grumbled.

Kuroka perked at that. Chakra?! He was a chakra-user?! This just got even more interesting to her!

She wondered if he was a senjutsu practitioner himself.

The biggest difference the underworld's senjutsu had between magic and sorcery was that senjutsu stressed the importance of chakra, the aura that was the great original power that flowed into one's spirit, in other words, one's life-force, and turned it into a constant current. It was a power that was both similar yet different from the magic of Devils and the light power of Angels. While it's direct destructive power couldn't match that of magic or the power of light, but Senjutsu could make use of the unknown power hidden within plants, animals, and people. For example, if one learned Senjutsu, it was said that they could excel at reading the flow of someone's spirit, of their aura, and that they could also grasp the movements of a faraway target to a certain degree. One weakness of Senjutsu was that while it could read and handle spirit energy, it also drew in the malice and ill-will that floated off every living being in the world into the user. This meant that absorbing too much of that malice would result in one becoming drunk with power.

Because of that aspect of it, Kuroka had gained her negative reputation, the surviving members of her former master's peerage that saw that Kuroka had used chakra and senjutsu to kill him spread the rumors that it had been because of her using chakra and senjutsu to have Kuroka branded as a criminal and seen as crazy. Come to think of it...she often wondered if there were other forms of Senjutsu to master. World was a big place, after all, there couldn't be just one. As for Youjutsu, well, simply put, that was the form of demon art spellcraft that was mainly unique to the Youkai-classification of beings in the underworld.

She turned her muzzle upwards in a too-human smile. Time to make introductions...

Naruto continued to grumble to himself, hating his situation. If any of Naruto's friends were to see him now, they would most likely have scolded him. But to be honest, he wouldn't really have given a damn about any of that at the moment. Everything he'd recently been through and learned just kept spinning in his head and the young man desperately needed an outlet for his frustrations, so he had thrown himself into training to re-adapt to his new chakra control. Anything, just so long as it let him take his mind off everything he was going through!

And the eyes...now that he knew the "full" story from the fox, he HATED the eyes! So what if the transplanted Sharingan gave him the ability to observe and differentiate the flow of energy coming off others, predict and mimic movements and techniques, and see through illusions, he hated the eyes! Unfortunately, he couldn't afford to go around in Hell, of all places, and stumble around because he was blind, so he couldn't slash and gouge them out.

Sure the fox could by lying, but how much could he say was false? He had just been born when that all happened!

He was caught by surprise when he suddenly felt a warm, heavy weight settle into his lap, and he looked down to see a black cat curled up on his legs. Naruto was shocked to find an animal so ordinary in the world of demons, but shook his head. At least this was normal. He wondered about how that could be.

While he didn't much like cats seeing as he'd be mauled and slashed up pretty bad a a few, such as Tora, the cat owned by Madam Shijimi, the wife of the Fire Daimyō, this one was just curled up in his lap, and rubbed up against him affectionately. Naruto sighed, feeling grateful for the small comfort, and raised a hand to pet the cat, but then thought better of it seeing as he didn't like the idea of those claws the animal had, and (feeling silly) asked the cat "May I?"

The cat flicked it's tail, but otherwise ignored him.

Hoping he wasn't doing the wrong thing and upsetting the animal, the blond ninja-turned-devil tentatively started rubbing the feline's neck, resulting in a loud, throbbing purr vibrated up through his legs as the cat showed it's enjoyment over the action. It made him smile.

Suddenly, the cat started glowing and smoke shot up from it's paws and covered it. Yet as Naruto could tell due to what was happening in his lap, the feline's body grew and changed, it's limbs lengthened and changed to a human's, the fur on top on the cat's head lengthened and became loose as it flowed down like an ebony waterfal as the fur on the rest of it's body turned loose and changed into a revealing kimono robe.

Where the cat had been, Naruto suddenly found himself nose-to nose with a young woman with a voluptuous figure, long black hair with split bangs and hazel eyes with cat-like pupils, a pair of black cat ears and two black tails. Her attire consisted of a black kimono, a yellow obi, a set of golden beads, and an ornately detailed headband. The kimono featured a red interior and it was open at her shoulders, giving view to her large breasts, which had plenty of size. She also had a pair of cat ears on her head and two black cat tails.

She smiled teasingly, her eyes seemed to glint with playful wickedness, as though they were just itching to cause trouble. She draped her arms around his neck, her legs locked together after going around his waist, and both tails coiled themselves around one of his legs each.

"Hiya, little runaway! Nya~!" the woman said coyly. The cat-woman smirked, enjoying the flustered blush on his face and the feel of his muscles pressing against her generous assets. 'Hmm...nice hard abs, bit malnourished, but all in all...not bad.' she thought.

Naruto gagged on his spit before whipping out a kunai and swiped at the nekomata, but in less than time than it took to blink, the woman had disentangled herself from him and leapt back and away, landing in a branch of the tree Naruto had been trying to use to train with.

He turned and made to bolt, but the feline female's voice caught in his ears.

"Don't bother trying to run! As much as I enjoy a good chase, with chakra-levels as high as yours, finding you with senjutsu is way too simple."

Naruto froze at that and turned to look up at her.

"Wha...what did you just say?!" he demanded, eyes wide. She knew about chakra?! And "Sage Arts"? He'd never heard of that before!

The catgirl smirked and lept down from the tree, landing perfectly on her feet. "Got your attention, huh? Nya~!" she said.

"Could you PLEASE drop the verbal tic?! It makes trying to talk to you really annoying!" Naruto said, getting that he had a verbal tic himself so that he had no real room to talk, but resolved to learning to drop it after this.

"Well, if you're gonna be that way, I just guess I'll have to reconsider my offer to teach you Senjutsu and Youjutsu then..." she said as she turned and started to walk away.

"W-Wait!"

"Hmm?" Kuroka stopped and opened an eye, not bothering to turn around of even look over her shoulder. A smile danced on her lips...how typical, a devil who was suddenly interested as soon as they learned there was something in it for them. Boring!

"This senjutsu stuff...can you travail dimensions with it?!" the blond asked.

Odd question, but she decided to answer him. "Why yes...I'm capable of performing space-time manipulation with my arts." she said, a slight fib, seeing as she was only manipulate space at this point. Still, if he was asking about going to different realities, she knew that was all he cared about space manipulation.

Naruto's breath picked up and his heartbeat pounded in his throat like a jackhammer. Jutsu that could allow him to get back to Konoha? Was she serious?!

"This Sage art stuff...you can use it to sense chakra-users?!" he asked, hunger in his tone.

"Duh! How'd you think I found you? Nya! But I'm curious...how much do you know about chakra?"

In response, Naruto clapped his hands together in the ram hand sign and flared his chakra for all he was worth, getting the nekoshou-turned-devil to whip around and stare at him in shock.

The blond shrugged, seeing he had her attention. "Would show you a few chakra techniques I know, but my problem is that I have so much chakra I keep overloading the small-scale jutsu I try using, no matter how hard I work on chakra control, I can never work a small enough flow. It's sort of like trying to fill a shot glass using a fire hose. Since I became a..." he stopped and made a face, "a you-know-what, this body can handle it better. Threw my control off."

Kuroka nodded, "Highly overdeveloped chakra system and your energy was denser. After you were changed, your mental and physical energies were properly proportioned evenly. Unusual problem."

Canceling the flair of his energy, Naruto scowled "Can you help me or not?!" he demanded.

"Impertinent one, aren't you? Maybe I'll reconsider choosing to become your sensei in Senjutsu and Youjutsu if you're gonna be like that, Nya~!"

Naruto choked at that. His attitude could end up costing him his way home! "No! Wait, please! I'm sorry! It's just I've been through a lot recently way too fast!" he pleaded.

Hmm..."How so?" the black cat asked.

Naruto sighed at being allowed to at least explain himself, and so he told her all about his past growing up a pariah, learning the truth about why that was during the incident with Iruka, Mizuki, and the Forbidden Scroll, being assigned to Team 7 and their missions together, the Sauna-Oto Invasion and his battle with Gaara and Shukaku, the funeral of Hiruzen Sarutobi, the search for Tsunade, and Sasuke's bitterness and attempt to defect and the resulting mission to get him back as well as its consequences. "...So after I end up fighting for my life, I literally wake up to being told I'm a devil now all because of someone else's bad choices! Managed to get out of that Gremory place, but now I have no idea where to go to get back home, and I learned that the teme's family are the ones who ruined my life!"

Sheesh...Kuroka had to admit if that were this guy's life story, no wonder he was ticked off about being made a devil, it was practically a slap in the face! Having things blow up in your face because you wanted to look out for the people you cared about...she knew THAT feeling all too well.

An image of her imoto, little Shirone-chan, and the ways someone with this much power could easily keep her safe. That decided it. Besides, as she noted about him before, seeing as how stray devils were essentially living time bombs, one with this much power was a very bad thing. She couldn't just let him run wild or he'd eventually become a threat to her imoto's wellbeing.

Kuroka sighed. Her mind quickly piecing together a plan, one that was far from foolproof, but at least seemed feasible enough. As she hammered out the details of what she'd need to do, she felt she could make it work. Would be tricky, but if she were careful about it, it could work.

She turned around, looking at him for a second before she smirked. "Name's Kuroka. Better attach a "-sensei" honorific to that name kiddo."

Naruto froze, then got down on all fours, bowing deeply his head pressing to the ground. "Yes, Kuroka-sensei! Name's Naruto!"

Kuroka blinked, dumbfounded, then broke out cackling. His name was "fishcake"?! That was rich! Hilarious! Not to mention it made her hungry...the nekoshou shook her head, amused.

"Alrighty then, Fishcake-chan! Let's get to work on your instruction!, Nya!" Kuroka told him, beaming.

"WHAT'D YOU CALL ME?!" Naruto shouted, bolting to his feet, all reverence and respect

"Gon~na have to grad~u~ate if you wan~na have me use your na~ame! Nya~!" Kuroka sang annoyingly. "Call it incentive, kiddo!"

Naruto groaned, he could tell from his newest "sensei's" expression that in his eagerness for a way back to Konoha, he had just damned himself to enduring more than he might be able to chew!

Rias paced her room (having had to spend the day hunting and removing those damned cameras his brother had placed in her room, both to give her peace of mind as well as keep herself too busy to think about recent events) worried out of her mind. None of her peerage members had found a trail leading to the wayward blond. They'd been searching all day and it was dusk now.

"Konnichiwa, Swi-chan!" a voice suddenly said, breaking her from her thoughts and Rias whipped around and her eyes widened at who was suddenly in her room with her.

"YOU!" the redhead said, blave energy with a red outline enveloping her hands.

"Nya, Nya, Nya...cool it, wouldya? This is just a projection. I'm not really here!" Kuroka complained.

Rias narrowed her blue-green eyes as they started glowing red, even as she dissipated the Power of Destruction she was about hurl at the double S-class criminal. "What do you want?!"

The image shrugged and stretched as if getting out of bed, not at all concerned with the Gremory's rising anger, "Well, I was thinking we could cut a deal..."

"Absolutely not!" Rias spat, glaring.

"Oh? Seems rather hasty to refuse out of hand like that." Kuroka's projected self said.

"Considering what you did, is that really a surprise?! Besides, we're devils! We know all the risks that come with making a deal!" Rias said.

At that, Kuroka outright scowled. "That so, you bitch?!" she spat, "Tell me this then Gremory: If the the ones you care about and mean everything to you are at risk and the ONLY way to protect them is to do something unforgivable and horrible, would you?! Or is the Gremory Family's reputation of being so caring just a bunch of utter bullshit!?"

Rias tensed, losing her glare as her eyes widened with sheer shock as they faded back to their normal color. "What?!" then she seemed to piece it together. "Koneko...!? You...?!"

Kuroka nodded, dropping her scowl as well, "Renamed her after all, eh? And quick on the uptake, I see. Yes, I did it for her." she said wistfully.

"Wha-wha-wha...how could...? I mean, what...? Then why didn't...?" Rias sputtered.

The two-tailed catwoman shrugged. "Who would've believed me? But that's not the issue here."

"But if there's a way to clear your name...!"

Kuroka laughed, but she blinked as her eyes started to moisten, "I could be free to join the House of Gremory and be with my sister again? I won't lie, I love that idea. But now's not the time. Y'see...I've got a proposition for you."

Rias frowned, still shocked. She turned away from the hologram and punched the nearest wall. Her mind buzzing with thoughts on what she had just learned. "So what do you want?" she asked, distracted.

"Naruto Uzumaki."

At the name, she spun around, wide-eyed and even more shocked than she was before. Ok...NOW Rias was listening!

"What?! You...you know him?! What did you...?!"

Koneko's sister shrugged, suddenly all business, "Took him on as my pupil in Senjutsu and Youjutsu. Don't worry, won't tell anybody. Look, Gremory, kid's got issues with reincarnation as a devil. That's obvious. And with how much power in him he hasn't tapped into that he has already, it'll be bad if his power grows too strong for him to control. He needs your help with that. What I'm willing to offer is that I'll work him to exhaustion with Senjutsu and Youjutsu lessons, then when he's out like a light, I teleport you to where he is and you drain the excess power from him. On top of keeping an eye on him and helping train him, I'll make sure he learns the underworld's laws. And when you show up, even provide you with information on the Khaos Brigade: members, goals, locations...whatever I can get, so you can give it all to your brother and the rest of the Four Great Satans, and I'll even try finding out about where your newest member is from you you can head there and find out about him that way, shead some light on why he's the way he is towards you and maybe find a way to convince him to go back to your group, all I ask in return is that you continue to do what you have been doing and keep my imoto...Shirone-chan, Koneko-chan...whatever she wants to be called...safe and happy. Do we have a deal?"

Rias' mind whirled. Someone that was labeled a SS-class stray for protecting her family was willing to make a deal like this?!

"How do I know I can trust a member of the Khaos Brigade?" she asked.

Kuroka smirked, "So...it's not my actions, but my affiliation that you can't stand now, eh? Nya. Well to put it bluntly...I'll be acting independently from them. I owe your family for rescuing my imoto anyways, so what do you have to lose?"

Rias gulped. This all seemed too good to be true, yet if she could convince her brother that Naruto was the one providing the information...she could keep him safe for a while, at least. If he was doing something so beneficial to the Four Satans, who could label him an official, kill-on-sight stray?

"All right. You've got a deal." Rias said with a sense of resignation.