A/N: Welcome back! Oh, so much to discuss before we get in to it. The confusion…
I stopped deleting the "Guest" comments a while ago because they can be very entertaining. I don't respond to the vast majority of them (because I can't directly) but the important ones end up here in the Author's Notes. So yes, as previously mentioned in Chapter 23, time travel is involved in this story if the many, many variations from the canon timeline have not already given that away. "Kakashi's" suspended state in Chapter 23 with the "Jumper," a term that I'll explain in depth through the story, is just one glaring example of such an altered reality. There are events in this story that do not match the canon timeline and that's deliberate, in most cases it's very subtle. There are reasons for it, most of which I have kept partially hidden (until now). Not all of the mechanics have been laid bare yet but they're coming (in passable Naruto-ese no less).
This story began with time travel in mind I simply did not state so at the outset; like the characters of the story, we are discovering this as the story develops. The many splinter-like story plots, while confusing for some, are a direct result of Naruto's "tinkering" with the timeline. It's not going to last especially now that his celestial leash has been tightened for lack of a better term. He's going to need to prioritize things.
NOTE: In case you missed it in Naruto's conversation with his unidentified visitor, that Kakashi was most likely not the real future Kakashi either. Just something to chew on.
Also, for the Guest asking about that part at the end… (?)… you are going to have to be a bit more specific. I threw a lot at you in the latter half of the last chapter (as the varied story threads start to come together in the final act) so I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to. There is a LOT going on because, as hearfanglives pointed out, I'm closing out a lot of open-ended story threads in the next Arc. Speaking of which…
Unlike Naruto, Ino has been training her Falna and it will show when it matters (#5).
Naruto has not forgotten about Hinata (she has a part to play next Arc, #8).
Hold on to #14 for just a bit longer. Don't lose that train of thought…
Does anyone remember where I parked those sea serpents?
~Siva'a-tasi
~III~
Disclaimer: I may not own Naruto but the Umihebi are all belong to me!
Chapter 27: New Bonds
~ Previously on No More ~
The still silent female took that opportunity to step forward and wrap her arms around Naruto's trunk, the boy's body stiffening as he waited for the now tiny bijū to try and rend his flesh or something. Instead, she squeezed just enough to smash her temporary body into his and held it as the choking sounds from the now-staring onlooker petered out from the resulting shock.
"If you tell anyone," she whispered her honeyed voice caressing his ears and making Naruto shiver slightly, "I'll make your existence miserable. I swear on Inari-Kami's name."
Both males locked gazes and blinked near simultaneously at each other. In the end, all Naruto could do was to slowly wrap his arms around her in return, his hands laying flat against her back as the smaller figure shivered once letting a near silent sigh escape her lips. She felt warm. She felt soft as his fingers pressed into the warm-feeling flesh of her back as the smaller figure's eyes closed at the enveloping sensation of warmth.
Then her eyes shot open to lock with the redheaded male, her head bobbed a quick bow, and the chakra entity released itself in a violent burst of smoke. Naruto slowly turned to the slack-jawed male and nodded once.
"Yeah, not a word," the armored male agreed as he vanished into mist, white and crimson confetti floating away on an unseen breeze. Once the final pieces of paper faded from view, the world broke its slumber and a cacophony of noise assaulted his sensitive ears, first and foremost of which came Ino's voice as she began to lay into for whatever unrevealed stupidity he was about to negligently engaged in once they reached home.
He paid little attention to her rant as his picked up his plate and resumed stacking it with goodies, a small smile upturning the corners of his mouth as he looked forward to reaching home and finishing the supplemental network. They would be leaving in a couple of days and he could use the time to set things up with the Umihebi on the return trip.
He had a clan to bond with after all.
~III~
~ Aisu Bay, Aboard the Good Ship Northern Paradise ~
It was the second morning of their return trip home and Naruto's time on the decks of the Northern Paradise was not their normal lazy affair. The weather was finally beginning to warm up the closer they got to Hi no Kuni's eastern shore, the moderate trade winds doing their best to take the bite out of the North's crisp morning start. It was unfortunate that the northern winds stubbornly clung to that last nippy edge making extensive visits first thing in the morning uncomfortable. Beneath the waves he could see several graceful shapes pacing the ship, many more than the trip northward brought to the surface; they were nervous and agitated if their pack-like threshing of a large whale an hour ago demonstrated anything.
The animal's baleful cries actually caught the attention of the crew, several making silent religious symbols over their hearts to ward off evil. It was a very sober reminder of what they were: apex predators not to be taken lightly, true masters of the sea and he owed them an answer. Soon.
Opal had been tugging lightly at their bond, her sadness flowing into his heart during the slower moments as he stared out at the sea. He owed her an answer soon.
All in all, the morning had a heavy feel to it one that intensified when he felt a shuddering pull on his mind strong enough to briefly dim the greying morning sky and stagger him enough to force one hand to shoot out and grab the wooden rail for support. Blinking away the lightheaded wave as it passed, Naruto figured this meeting was long overdue and he'd have to catch up with Opal sometime after.
Moving to Ino's favorite perch (a spool of line coiled up on the deck), he flopped down lotus style and draped his cloak over his folded legs. Once his eyes closed, the journey inward was almost instantaneous.
"Why?!"
Naruto blinked his deep blue eyes open noting that he was standing directly outside the enclosure. Standing just past the bars of the cage, despite the apparent possibility that the bars had enough space for her to turn sideways and slide through them, stood a very pensive "human" woman with raven-colored hair braided into nine finger-thick weaves reaching the tops of her flared hips.
Naruto blinked again when she repeated her query with a touch more impatience.
"Not even a 'Good morning, maggot' from my life-long-."
"DON'T MOCK ME!" Despite her tiny frame, crimson power rolled out from beneath her dark grey clothing swirling like smoke as it poured in all directions. Naruto sighed softly as he stepped directly through the bars. He knew she couldn't pass through to his side no matter how small she shrunk but he got the impression that this conversation needed to be had on a more intimate setting and not as a jailor staring through the prison bars at his inmate.
As he sat down just inside the enclosure, two smaller versions of the sleeping cushion he once created for her appeared on the ground along with a small porcelain tea service for two decorated in grey foxes to match her kimono. It took several minutes of aggravated teeth gnashing before the exotic beauty stopped pacing in small circles enough to ease down onto the provided cushion and accept a cup from him. Once situated, and without drinking, her eyes locked onto his face as she waited for his response.
"I assume you've processed all the memories he shoved into your head?" The bijū-in-human-form nodded once.
"Then I'm guessing your 'why' has to do with why I'm bothering to do all this time/space nonsense?" She nodded once more.
"Why does it bother you so much?" The Kyuubi's initial response was to inhale a chest-expanding amount of air to yell and shout. She wanted to demand that he just answer her question, but the rage seemed to fizzle as a brief internal battle was waged and concluded across the slim eyebrows of her face.
"It makes no sense to me…" Her words died off to a whisper, but it was easy enough to guess where they were going.
"It makes no sense given our history?" Though a question, the answer was simple enough to determine even for someone as dense as he was about personal relationships. She nodded once with a bit less force than before.
"If I were you and you did to me what I did to you… what I tried to do to you…" Once more, he finished her unfinished statement.
"… you wouldn't have forgiven me so easily?" This time the minuscule movement of her head moved from left to right as she agreed. Taking a deep sip of his own tea (and marveling at the texture of his mindscape), Naruto set the cup down and expelled a cleansing breath.
"I didn't get a choice as to whether or not we'd be stuck together forever." Her eyes blinked but she gave no other indication of movement. "Neither were you, given what he did to my mother before turning you loose on the village. Should I hate you for something you had no control over?"
Here she had a powerful reaction.
"What happened once his control broke was entirely my decision! I tried to kill you!" Her face fierce, she tried to lock eyes with her container, to force him to meet her stare head on which he did easily enough.
"And after decades of imprisonment, wrongful imprisonment caused no less than twice by the same asshole, who wouldn't fight to be free? Am I supposed to be angry you for a long chain of circumstances forced on you?" Kyuubi could only blink in response. "Does that mean that I should hate all of Konoha for the rest of my life?"
"YES! Get angry! Be upset! You've earned that much of a right!" Naruto's head tilted sideways just a bit as his eyes softened.
"You used to complain all the time about how all humans were the same. You used to rant that they were worthless maggots crawling around in the muck and mire of their own greed and petty jealousies."
"They are!" she growled out.
"Then, if I respond in the way you're accustomed to other humans doing out of fear and ignorance, doesn't that make me no better than they are?" Here the strongest of the nine rocked back on her heels, her sunset-colored orbs fluttering open from their angry creases as his logic waged war with her millennia-reinforced beliefs.
"Look, Kurama," she blinked twice almost forgetting that they'd lived several lives together previously and that he most likely knew a great deal more about her than she realized, "I've done the anger thing before. I've vented my rage and it's earned me nothing but more anger in return. At some point, the senseless cycle of violence takes more than it gives and leaves your mind and body used up." He quietly lifted his teacup up towards his face.
"Personally, I'd rather focus on the things that matter more and deal with the hatred when the time is right. Allowing it to fester just eats up energy and gives you ulcers." The unconvinced bijū snorted loudly.
"But I took so much from you. You can't possibly forgive me for that." Kurama wanted desperately to not believe the foreign images clogging her brain. If she believed and the insignificant human before her let her down, as so many others had through the years, the bijū might have to stop believing in the dream of her father. Images could lie. Memories could deceive. No, this human had to earn her trust the hard way and it started from that moment on.
His eyes came up to lock with hers and he smiled, a true spreading of warmth across his features. "I forgave you during our first life together. Your debt to me was repaid long ago."
Her eyebrows knitted together suddenly. "I'm not going to become your live-in vixen so don't get any strange ideas!"
Naruto's tea shot out of his nose and mouth causing a brief round of sputtering and coughing. "We're friends, Kurama, nothing more. Besides," he took a second to wipe his mouth on a napkin, "you're out of luck because I'm spoken for."
This time the chakra entity snickered. "Your loss. There are still a few items I don't understand completely."
Naruto perked up a little. "Like?"
"How is all this supposed to work now that Kami herself has gone back on her promise to you and you've only got one chance to get everything right on the next go-round?"
"Well, I'm not too worried about what needs to be done since, between my original life and the first slide, we've pieced together most of the important events that need to be adjusted. I just need to find one last piece of the puzzle to be absolutely sure." He sighed as his eyes looked up at some non-existent thing near the ceiling of her cavern. "Everything I'm doing now is to prepare me for the last slide, for my last chance to lead a normal life given all that I've learned about my clan."
"Slide?" Naruto had to hide his blush at the cute way her eyebrows scrunched together behind pouring and preparing another cup of tea.
"From the way Inari-sama tells it, you're familiar with the concept of time-space displacement?" Kyuubi nodded.
"It's what you humans mistakenly call time travel but it's very unreliable. You could end up in an alternate reality with a completely different set of parameters." A flashback of an odd reality where Naruto's parents were alive, and Sakura's folks had become the heroes of Konoha flashed through the bijū's mind and she winced at the memory. She disliked that pink-capped creature passionately.
"That's true. The Uzumaki dabbled with that kind of theoretical kinjutsu utilizing large amounts of chakra to brute-force punch a hole through the timeline and send people and their possessions backward through it. Chakra surges large enough to make that happen have unreliable effects on your final destination making fine control of where you end up almost impossible without divine intervention." Kyuubi nodded as she listened to his level of understanding.
"However, my desire to free you from this," he thumbed his hand to the metal seal up above them both, "caught someone's attention and they petitioned to Kami herself to restore the natural order of things." Kyuubi's head tilted in a fashion similar to his own. "Minato Namikaze may be big stuff in Konoha but the powers-that-be weren't very impressed with his shiki fūin shenanigans. That means they agreed to help me find a way to reverse your sealing into me since no one can undo the Shinigami's bargain with Minato Namikaze. The only way to free you would be to make it so that the sealing never happened in the first place and that requires exacting control over any kinjutsu powerful enough to send me back in time."
The shock on Kyuubi's face at such a revelation bordered on incredulousness.
"So, she passed on knowledge of a powerful fuuinjutsu ritual-."
"Seven Heavenly Buddhas…"
Naruto nodded, "Correct, a powerful kinjutsu that will allow me to travel along my individual thread of life to a specific point of my existence within my current plane of existence."
She let out a low whistle. "But at what cost?"
Naruto shrugged almost unconcerned with the question. "It's not important."
"It is to me!" Kyuubi hated the idea of being indebted to any mortal and this was stretching the fragile reality of what she could bear at the moment.
"Nothing material can go back with me, meaning I must prepare a slightly different seal, the Takarabune no Tabi*, to send back non-living items, and nothing of the original can remain once I arrive in my new body. While I can travel backward along my lineage, even to a previous sire or grandparent, it must be within my family's genealogy." Kurama's eyes snapped open as she chewed on the implications of such a powerful seal. "Also, after the final slide, all knowledge of the kinjutsu will be wiped from my memory and, for better or worse, we're stuck with what happens."
"What about the original consciousness?" He paused for several tense minutes before responding.
"Nothing of the original can remain," he repeated as if it should be enough to explain everything. Fortunately for Kyuubi, it was.
"The original consciousness-."
"Soul," he corrected.
"-soul… is absorbed… completely?" He nodded in return and Kyuubi pressed on. "This has to have detrimental effects on the human mind… the repeated fracturing and remolding of two different personalities…"
Naruto nodded. "You saw the results of the second slide in this lifetime, the multiple personality problem manifesting in the clones." A soft gasp was her only response. "That is why we are being given only one more chance to go back."
"We?!" This time he smiled.
"Yes, we. In order to power the seal construct, I need to tap into your powerful reserves and mix them with my own to fill the chakra storage arrays."
"Even if I would help you, bijū youki is unstable in its raw form."
"Yes, it is, which is why normal time displacement borrowing your youki is… unreliable… at best. The more surges, the more likelihood of ending up off-target or out of dimension. I have modified the chakra storage seals to use conversion matrices that better blend your energy with my chakra, but it takes months to properly make and fill them so that they're usable. This is why I never start the process until you and I are," he paused as if mulling over a diplomatic phrase, "less adversarial with each other."
The chakra entity chuckled softly.
"It just works better when we're on the same team."
"…and by staying anchored to your personal timeline, there is less chance of you," she paused, "us… being sent off into another realm of existence."
"Correct."
"Then how do the clones work exactly?"
"They are true jumpers. While the kinjutsu partially anchors their chakra to my timeline, there is a higher than average chance of one of them being sent somewhere unexpected. The first two jumps showed that one-third of them get lost on average, so I'm allowed to send two to the same point of any single timeline section as a buffer. It is assumed by the powers involved in this that one of them will not go where it's supposed to be."
"You never explained how the blood clones live so long. I understand the limitation of how much material can go back with each clone but not how they live beyond the normal week long limitation."
Naruto smiled at this. "I was surprised at what Inari-sama, as my patron guide in all this, was willing to allow. But combining a limited duration nature chakra conversion seal, which keeps them mostly charged, and by forcing the clones to 'refresh' their blood weekly with blood pills, which keeps their blood from clotting and destroying the clone, you have a functional agent that can perform to my level of skill at the time of creation albeit at reduced levels of power, like true clones. They don't 'refill' as well as the original, so they have to be very careful how much they exert themselves. Chakra exhaustion or loss of too much blood will still kill one of these super-powered blood clones."
He stood to leave, his conversational companion still staring absently at the untouched tea in her palms.
"I never asked you to do this for me," she groused, the blond smirking down at her still kneeling form and terse way of speaking.
"I know that." With one final warm smile, Naruto faded from the mindspace and opened his eyes to the feeling of warmth.
~III~
It took a couple of seconds to register even as a bitter wind ripped across the deck. He was warm, a soothing sensation enhanced by the blanket draped over his shoulders and the warm, soft body resting with her back pressed against his chest and his arms hanging over her shoulders, her hands gently stroking the backs of his own.
"Thank you," he murmured into her right ear relishing the shiver causing her back to shimmy just a bit.
"Your teeth were chattering, baka. You need to take better care of yourself if you're going to zone out like that." The back of her head landed gently on his collar bone. "How can I win you away from that harpy of a Nadeshiko woman if you're sick all the time?"
He chuckled trying to picture the extremely buxom Shizuka with feathered arms and taloned bird feet.
"What had you so lost in thought?" She pressed her cheek against his bicep trying to hide the worry in her voice. He didn't want to worry her, but he'd need to make some decisions in the near future, at least for this run of the timeline. Could he make a worse decision than spending this lifetime with the lovely creature wrapped up in his arms?
Of course, there were worse decisions. A pink-haired, angry-faced kunoichi's portrait flashed across his mind and it took all of his control not to flinch.
"I believe someone has taken control of my heart." He could feel her entire spine tighten up. "Unfortunately, I worry that I'm not good enough for her, that my troubled life will bring pain to her and her family." Ino's hands had paused in their rhythmic stroking of his hands but something jarred her back to motion, her face resting once again on his arm as she tried to regain control of her breathing, her heart jackhammering into his chest through her shoulder blades.
"Oh, well… I guess she should be happy that she won, whoever she is." Ino was ritualistically telling herself that she would not be jealous of the purplette but her rapidly heating face was trying to give away her frustration and building tears. She was also torn between storming off and staying put to enjoy the last moments of intimacy she would be able to enjoy in the arms of the man she might love with all her soon to be miserable heart.
"I would hate to for her family's flower shop to suffer because I admitted to loving her…" Naruto whispered almost too softly to register.
"If she loves you, she'll find a way… to…" Ino blinked once, then twice, her mind trying furiously to discount whether or not the Hyuuga Clan even owned a flower shop.
"Also, there is the CRA and what would-." His words came to an abrupt stop as Ino whipped around, clamped on to the sides of his head with both palms, then furiously smashed her lips against his. It didn't take much more convincing for him to reciprocate.
It took even less for the crew's cat-calling to start up.
They kissed passionately, her lips worrying almost frantically at his mouth as it if she were racing against someone. In the end, the need for air overrode her need to taste his sandals through his tonsils.
"Does this mean what I think it means?" she huffed out between breaths.
"Only if you're willing to take a chance on me," he countered, the blond kunoichi's head furiously bobbing up and down as happy tears poured down her face.
Taking a deep breath, he nervously reached up to palm her hands bringing them down to rest between them. Ino's glorious face began to falter as she noted the serious turn of his mouth, the interesting way his eyebrows knitted up as he considered his next words.
"Naruto, what's wrong? Shouldn't you be, I don't know, a little happier that you get to paw and grope me now?" She was trying to lighten the mood, that much he understood, but there was no easy way to do what he was about to do. She at least deserved to know.
"Think about this, kit. What if she can't accept me?" Naruto took another hefty breath and squared his shoulders as he locked eyes with her.
"If you're going to give me a chance, then I need to do the same with you." Ino blinked in surprise. "What I am about to tell you is one of the greatest secrets of our village, an S-ranked one that changed my entire life. You can't tell anyone what I'm about to tell you, but you have a right to know." He paused and swallowed hard, his palms beginning to dampen as he gripped her smaller hands.
"You have the right to walk away before things get too serious."
It felt like the world was falling out from under her feet. Here she was getting the objective of her ambitions over the past five months and he had a secret scary enough it might chase her away? This made no sense. Why hadn't anyone else, oh yeah… S-ranked and all that.
Swallowing the lump forming in her throat, Ino straddled his lap, her hands clutching on tightly to his calloused paws as she took several steadying breaths.
"Okay. I can take anything. I can do this!" The way he stared for several minutes into her eyes without arguing nearly had her ready to take back her own words.
"Tell me what you know about the Kyuubi…"
~III~
~ Yuki no Kuni ~
When the Northern Paradise made port in Hi no Kuni, four figures waited patiently near the gangplank to disembark. Naruto's eyes raked in the familiar coastline as they approached never missing the temperate climate and plentiful greenery of his adopted homeland. The trip to the Land of Snow had taken longer than expected and drained more of him than he was ready to give.
To make matters worse, Koyuki's parting gifts had been unveiled the same morning he'd had his little heart to heart chat with Ino making the quiet moments she'd asked to think over his great revelation even more nerve-wracking. Apparently, the new Daimyo felt the need to be extra clear about her desire to get closer to the royal heir of House Uzumaki, something Ino found extra-eye twitching even as she wrung her hands in angst over her greatest fear: The Kyuubi no Youko.
The great defeat of the monster that haunted her nightmares as a child was a lie, all of it fabricated to help old people sleep peacefully at night and frighten small children in order to make them behave. 'If you're bad, the Kyuubi will rise up from the grave and steal your soul!' Worse still, the greatest hero of their village, and arguably the entire shinobi world, sealed the monster into the belly of a defenseless newborn and the man she now cared for more than any other. The horror of it all sucked the moisture from her mouth and made her want to cry. In the end, she spent the last two days locked away inside her cabin while he paced the weather deck.
The clanking of the heavy wooden walkway slammed onto the pier snapping him out of his daze, his left arm adjusting the gift duffle over his shoulder. If you discounted the very personal correspondence included in his bundle, the scrolls of Hyoton jutsus comprising their entire ninjutsu catalog were an unbelievably generous gift, priceless in the hands of any hidden village. He wouldn't be able to use more than half of it without the proper kekke genkai but the gift was worth beyond anything he'd accomplished there, at least in his own eyes. It appeared that Princess Koyuki's desire to scrub her country's history of her evil uncle's rule extended into eliminating all vestiges of his reign including his love and use of Hyoton shinobi.
He saw it for what it was, however, and that was a clear manipulation to hold him in her debt, one she could cash in later if need be. Then she piled on the charm for Konoha at large.
The Land of Snow would rely on Konoha for its support even going so far as to include alliance overtures to the Hokage delivered by their sensei in the form of valuable trade proposals: technology for resources they could not easily procure. Asuma's reputation would grow over this political achievement arguably winning him to her cause (Koyuki was a shrewd negotiator and adept at reading people).
A warm hand suddenly wrapped around his own, the soft skin sliding over the rough callouses and squeezing just enough to announce her presence. With a hesitant smile, Naruto leaned over and kissed Ino's cheek eliciting a blush from the grinning girl and a raised eyebrow from his Nara teammate.
The Kyuubi grunted deep from within her seal, Naruto shrugging off the ancient being's disbelief. It took several hours once the sun came up that morning before she returned to him but, when she did, it was with a bone-crushing hug and a flippant, "If you were dangerous, you would have already skinned my corpse and eaten my flesh."
Naruto fought the strong urge to joke about being hungry and her looking very tasty.
"It's about time," Shika grumbled out before stepping off onto the shore.
Naruto's own, "Troublesome," preceded him as he joined his team in saying farewell to the wooden decks of the Paradise.
Without fanfare, they raced off into the trees for home and, hopefully, a little normalcy.
~III~
"Then we returned the Princess to the empty ambassadorial lodgings in the capital where the city celebrated Doto's defeat and her return," Asuma recapped summing up their entire mission as he set down the official trade missive on his father's desk.
"Well done Team Asuma!" The Hokage's gratitude was genuine despite his concern over another mission escalating out of proportion. "It appears I'll need to upgrade this to an A-class mission and pay you accordingly."
The three Genin beamed even as their sensei's chest puffed up with pride.
"Take the next three days to recover as per standard procedure. Asuma, please stay so we can discuss something of significant import." The older nin grunted his affirmation as the three youths shuffled for the exit.
"Plan on our usual weekend get together," their sensei called out. "Until then, enjoy your well-earned time off." Each acknowledged with a nod before single-filing out of the room.
Once they were gone, the Hokage's congenial warmth faded rapidly from his eyes. "There is much to discuss that you will need to be aware of and the vast majority of it hinges on at least one of your students."
Asuma's face darkened even as his hand twitched towards the pocket carrying his beloved smokes. Kami he wanted to light up.
He would leave an hour later wide-eyed with shock and both hands nervously trying to light up a fresh cigarette.
~III~
Below the tower of the village's strongest shinobi, the three Genin members of Team Ten paused before their traditional disintegration into separate post-mission routines. For once, however, Naruto found himself loathe to part ways. Nothing waited for him back at the apartment but silence or more work on various projects, the last thing the normally energetic blond wanted was to get buried-in fresh from a long mission. He wanted to relax. More importantly, he wanted company.
"How about a quick bite to eat. My treat," the Uzu heir offered much to the shock of his teammates. It wasn't that Naruto was tight with cash often offering to pick up the tab. It was the melancholy in his voice that made them pause and something broke Shika from his prepared denial in lieu of the fluffy islands of cotton laying delicate patches of shadow along the cobblestoned roads of Konoha.
"Sure Naruto. Any ideas?" Ten minutes later found the trio traipsing into Yakiniku-Q. Following the hostess to their booth, the threesome froze at the familiar call of a certain pink-haired menace.
"Ino-pig?" Ino whipped her head around to spy the draped landscaping of her best frenemy. "Still slumming I see?" Shika grumbled something all too familiar sounding.
"Hey there, Forehead. Still looking for a sponsor so you can rent out space for advertising?" The seated kunoichi's eye twitching gave away who won that round and Ino smirked, even more, noting the presence of one Akimichi minus the brooding wonder.
Choji decided to play peacemaker.
"Hey, guys! Care to join us since Team Eight got called away for a retrieval?" His eyes were hopeful, almost pleading. Shikamaru relented sliding into the far side of the booth and directly across from his friend. Ino slid into the middle spot and Naruto took the end as the conversation picked up to match the fragrant smells and sounds of grilling meats.
It didn't take long before the stimulating conversation turned to recent missions and Team Ten's return from the Land of Snow. Judging by the one-part jealous squeal, one-part star-struck gasp, it wasn't hard to judge where Sakura stood on the Yukie / Koyuki secret identity issue.
"Shut up! You did not get chummy with the Rainbow Princess?!"
It took considerably more effort, and revelation of a special autograph showing the famous actress hanging off of the reluctant-looking blond shinobi as she plastered his face with lipstick kisses before she'd willingly budge, her eyes smoldering with jealousy the entire time. Suddenly her jealous envy turned malicious.
"If you're not careful, Ino, you might lose your man to a powerful world leader." Naruto's eyes narrowed as they glanced up to see the pettiness in Sakura's glare only to nearly snort his drink through his nostrils with Ino's retort.
"I don't mind having a powerful sister-wife to keep me in expensive things." Sakura balked with indignation. "Oh, you forgot about the CRA for the Uzumaki Clan, didn't you?"
Judging by her sputtering fish impersonation, Sakura probably dumped that realization the moment they revealed it was Naruto's clan and not the last Uchiha's being discussed at the Council meeting she attended. He had to admit that it felt good to watch his girlfriend (man that word felt right) shut down her personal life troll.
He reached under the table and gently squeezed one of the hands resting on the girl's shapely thighs.
'Yeah, it feels good not to be alone.'
The good feeling couldn't last as Sakura defaulted to her standard fangirl mode, tempers flaring as she rushed to the defense of her not-so-secret love. It was with annoyed farewells that he kissed Ino's lips goodbye (much to Sakura's raised eyebrow of confusion), paid for their food, then slipped away from the temporary distraction. He needed to make preparations for the grotto anyway vice getting thrown in the brig for assaulting a fellow Leaf nin.
~III~
When the smoke from Naruto's reverse summons to the Grotto finally wafted away, it looked like the entire clan of giant serpents was gathered. As his eyes raked the gathering, every muzzle was creased with concern and frustration, the occasional fluttering of jaw flukes a clear indication of agitation if what he'd seen from Opal was any meter to gauge by. 'Well, too late to change it now.'
He stepped to the center of the room where space had been left open, his legs still itching from the recent addition to his supplementary chakra network.
'It's not too late to stop this foolishness. As much as I dislike these walking man-purses, they have a reasonable point about this possibly killing you… and me!'
'We spoke about this while the clones were adding the final seals. This is why I need your help since Hestia's blessing makes linking the upper and lower networks fully almost impossible.' Hestia's gift made a contiguous network along his back impossible without sealing over the array, which would create unforeseen, and possibly explosive, results. To complicate things further, his father's seal on his stomach rested on the View Gate and the seal array Opal rested in while in his realm prevented access to the Limit, Harm and Death Gates from the front. At least two of them were unreachable in any form without damaging the seals in place.
Between the two halves of his latest sealing masterpiece, Naruto had to make do with six of the seven gates, ninety percent of the major tenketsu coils, and direct access to three-fourths of the minor tenketsu points, sometimes referred to as "pores." It would have to do for now and this was where his agreement with Kurama came into play; Kurama, limited though she was with how much youki she could push through the iryojutsu seals attached to the containment seal, would focus the majority of her effort on the gates and coils his array could not reach directly. The supplementary network would have to handle the rest.
Having lived through the death of Mito Uzumaki attempting the same idiotic feat, the bijū was less than thrilled.
'If you get me killed, I will beg the Shinigami of enough time to torture you in the afterlife.' Naruto blanched as his feet came to a stop in the middle of the Umihebi clutch. 'I think a thousand years is fair.' Naruto gulped even as he began removing the blue and red battle kimono.
"It is not too late to turn away from this foolish course," came the worried voice of Marianus, Opal's mother.
"Agreed, Walker. You have proven your worth." The clan patron's eyes were heavy with sadness having seen the ceremony performed only one other time before, an event that doomed the Uzumaki Clan right before the Great Breaking, the death of the great clan at the hands of its betrayers.
Naruto looked up from his spot on the floor to the two eldest of the Celestial Clan and smiled.
"There is much more at stake here. It's not just the Uzumaki but the entire world of men at risk. If I do not chance this, many more will die. Too many people I love and care about will die. How can I look them in the eyes once I pass to the afterlife if I didn't do everything in my power to protect them?"
The entire grotto was silent for long moments except for the rhythmic breathing of over two-dozen dinosaur-sized sea serpents. Many hung their heads believing this would be the last time a Walker would be among them as it was known that he was the last with the passing of his father. Soon only the soft patter of two pairs of feet caused tearing eyes to open.
The blond Genin turned first to smile at the saddened face of his future summons. Opal's human image was wreathed from the waist down in her normal wrap, her long legs and torso bared save for strange markings covering the nexus points of her own chakra network, these glowing the same soft blue he'd seen in his Rasengan. The tears of her eyes ran fresh trails down her smooth cheeks as she stopped and moved to stand directly behind him, the cool skin of her chest pressing firmly into his back. Suppressing a shiver, his head snapped forward to meet the second transformed summons expecting to see Titus, his eyes snapping open in shock.
Padding softly to stand directly in front of him was an older female bearing the same blue markings, her human form resembling a woman closer to Yuhi Kurenai in age. Long waves of dark hair hung lifelessly down her back and partially covered her naked chest, which was enormous. Her lower body was covered identically to Opal, however, her curves were much more pronounced, the body of a full-grown woman even if she appeared a bit underfed. No tears marred her perfect but pale features, her eyes the same deep-sea blue matching his own.
When she stopped directly in front of him, her face rested almost equal with his own, her being half a head taller than he was. The fact that her chest was resting high upon his own, almost to his collarbones, made their initial meeting a bit awkward as his pants began to tighten uncomfortably. Apparently, she noticed, her mouth quirking upwards into an unfriendly smirk as her soft hands clamped onto his shoulders (painfully) and pushed him downwards.
Naruto knew that he'd be kneeling for the ceremony just not that she'd be close enough for the cushions of her chest to stroke both sides of his face on the way down. Once his knees thumped onto the uncomfortable stone of the Grotto's floor, he felt Opal kneel behind him, her legs straddling his own with her palms pressed against the backs of his shoulders. The still unidentified woman in front of him kneeled with her thighs forcing his wide to the sides of her own, her hands slapping with a resounding sting onto the pectorals of his chest.
"I refuse to let my brother feel the pain of your idiotic death," she hissed out through clenched teeth. "Your selfishness and greed will cause my baby sister enough pain as it is, a sad but unavoidable fact. I will not let you so scar another of our clan if I can help it." Her anger was palpable at this point and Naruto's narrowed eyebrows rose into his hairline against his will.
"And what protects you from such a horrible experience, Miss…?"
"Survive this and I might tell you," was her only harsh reply. "Now, prepare yourself!"
The last gentle sound he heard before the pain started was the soft sobbing of Opal kneeling directly behind him. Then the world erupted into a blinding golden light as someone began pouring liquid fire into his chakra network.
~III~
The bonding process was meant to be a simple affair. A summoner and his chosen summons from the Celestial Clan of Sea Serpents, the Umihebi, once agreed upon and approved by the elders of the clan, came to the grotto and, before the entire clan, exchanged of each other's chakra essence. The process was meant to mix their energies and open up the summoner, at least initially, to the spiritual chakra used by the Celestial clan tying their chakra networks with their summoner at the genetic level. This exchange and evolution were facilitated by the Summons as they pushed their chakra into the network of their summoner with one palm while drawing the summoner's chakra into their own with the other. Simple really.
There were a great many things that could complicate the process in reality. A mature Celestial summons practiced chakra manipulation for centuries and, by the time such bonding was attempted, was largely proficient at purging impurities during the transfer, however, Opal was far from practiced enough to deal with bijū youki. To surmount that hurdle, Ellamus would initiate the transfer pushing purged chakra back into his body for the younger echidnae to latch onto to, at least until she could get the hang of purging the demon's raw youki on her own. She wouldn't have very long to get the hang of it if she were to stay untainted by the demonic malice of the imprisoned bijū. It was an enormous risk to say the least.
It was fortunate that Naruto and Kurama mutually agreed to tighten the seal as much as possible (a complete purge of the fox's chakra was impossible since it had been leaking and mixing with Naruto's for a decade and a half) and Kurama would have to split her efforts between funneling her chakra through the iryojutsu arrays tied to the seal while holding back as much of her youki as possible during the exchange. Once the transfer started, the great fox slammed her eyes closed, blocking the annoying golden glow suffusing the mindscape, and focused solely on the three green-glowing arrays she could visualize in the nested tetragram seal. If would have to do while the angry elder wyrmkin tried her best to kill Kurama's host, her hostility almost a physical manifestation to the irritated nine tails.
Ellamus, for all the hatred Kurama could feel oozing from the creature's pores, was doing nothing to cushion the blow of their merging. The serpent's energy was a bludgeon trying to saturate the boy's coils with enough energy to explode them while allowing the younger Opal to siphon off cleaner chakra minimizing her exposure to the demonic youki. To her credit, Opal tried to keep pace with her eldest sibling as she could feel the raging pressure attempting to rupture the chakra pathways of the human she cherished above all others. Ellamus could feel the younger female's anger and frustration through the now tri-way bond and lamented her pain. It was the same way she'd felt decades before as she watched Mito-sama melt away from the inside, but she meant what she'd threatened. Ella couldn't save Opal from the pain, but she'd make sure Titus escaped the same horrible fate so she pushed even harder hoping to destroy the boy's network before Opal could get completely lost in the summoner's physical and emotional torment. Better to end it all quickly and, hopefully, join her own summoner in the sacred plains of the beyond.
Besides, the thinnish wyrmkin was not expecting him to live very long. Mito's chakra network, even with the external sealing network, was quickly overrun minutes into the dual bonding. Inside of ten minutes, the redheaded woman began bleeding from the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Inside of fifteen, her very pores began weeping blood. It was another two minutes, despite the older woman's begging for the great serpents to keep going, before Ella could stomach no more of the shared pain through their link and broke away.
It was that unwillingness to continue that left enough life in the elder Uzumaki for her to successfully transfer the Kyuubi to a waiting Kushina Uzumaki. This time she would see it through to the bitter end.
The boy's body locked into an unmoving mass of muscle the moment the transfer began, and Ella caught her eyes jerking downward once his thighs clamped onto the outside of her own. The amount of force from his legs startled her as she expected him to be physically weak given his lean yet muscular physique, very much unlike the hulking male forms of her kin. Her eyes locked onto his naked chest and, despite her now overflowing rage at the boy's foolishness, her mind appreciated the hard-sculpted muscle tensing and flexing beneath his skin, a telling sign that he was stronger than his appearance let on as he carried the weight well. Perhaps with an increase to these weighted seals on his body…
With a snarl, she snapped her eyes back up to his face and shook her head. The bond was already changing her feelings towards the boy and she tried to fight it once the realization hit her. His eyes were clenched tight so she could not see those deep blue orbs, so shockingly like her own…
Another angry shake of the head, this one not unnoticed by her parents who looked to each other with hope in their own eyes. Ella-chan had been alone far too long for it to be healthy.
This time Ellamus closed her eyes. It was a mistake as, with nothing to distract her and keep her rage focused, the memories began to flow from her new summoner into her own – 'NO! Mito is my only summoner! Mito… is… my!'
She could see it all, his original life and the pain and isolation he felt in Konoha. The memories flowed like a river… the Uchiha… the scorning girl with the child's body and annoyingly pink hair (she hated the color immediately despite loving her sister's shell-like tinge. The frustrating one-eyed man, Kakashi was his name, made her teeth gnash together… the betrayal of a village… the pain of loss when the old man died…
Her eyes flew open even as the tears began to flow, her breath now coming in ragged pants, her overly cushioned chest heaving and swaying with each gasp. She tried to fight it, to push her flow harder, but the boy's body only tensed more, his back arching as his hands came up to clasp onto the undersides of her upper arms. She winced slightly; his grip was painfully strong and a primal urge to feel those hands clamped onto her wide hips made her blush before she could bat the feeling away. It was as she clenched her jaws one more time and pushed her chakra into the young summoner with everything that she had left that his body began to glow, softly at first but then vibrantly along every square inch, that warmth began to flow back into her.
It started out as a mellow heat enveloping her arms before moving on to her hair. She could feel the weakness in her own limbs fading, the fraying ends of her listless hair disappearing as the tangled nest of locks repaired themselves. Her underfed and emaciated muscles drank in the healing energy pouring from his body, the sinuous threads expanding and toughening as his strength restored her. Wrinkled lines faded, cracked lips mended, and her toughened skin softened under the flood of healing chakra from both his networks and her adaptation to his Uzumaki bloodline. The light slowly began to fade from golden honey to a peaceful white blotting out the subtle blues of the Grotto. The memories continued to flow and the rush of peaceful ones overwrote the hate of his life and made her panic.
She wasn't dying, as she'd hoped; his bond was healing her body and the pain of loss from Mito's death was beginning to ebb partially. She wasn't ready to let go and fear drove her to break away. She would never forget her first summoner, the one she cherished above all others.
Ella raised her palms from his chest and tried to break the flow but found herself locked in place. His grip had tightened yet again and, despite his chakra restoring her physically, she found it still painful. Worse still, both his and Opal's chakra continued to surge through her own coils, her heart now beating painfully in sync with both of theirs.
She tried to slap his hands away from her arms with little effect. He was a juggernaut she could not break free from and her growing panic became sheer terror. She tried to shift back into her full form, but the bond prevented the change. Looking over his right shoulder, she could see Opal's face shining with sublime pleasure as her tears slid down the younger female's face and onto his back; the girl was ecstatic in the grip of the bond and had surrendered to it completely, her head resting on his body while her hands slid under his arms and wrapped around his waist. Ella was terrified – she was not ready to surrender her pain, her anger, her hatred!
With her hands now slapping frantically at his arms, she lifted her right foot and began slamming it into his chest repeatedly. It was like striking the cave walls of the grotto and she heard a small voice in the back of her mind trying to soothe her, a timid voice urging her to succumb. Her eyes snapped back to the now slowly opening eyes of her summon- no, her captor, and she saw the faint trails of blood leaking from his eyes even as his body radiated green energy like a bonfire. She saw the love in them and recoiled, or at least she tried to.
Naruto's arms jerked her body towards him even as her hands slammed into his chest and pushed. With his palms flat against her arched back, he began to pull her into him slowly, inexorably closing the distance between her chest and his.
Titus stepped forward but a heavy claw reached down and clamped onto the juncture of his long neck and shoulders. Looking up at his father, the eldest of the clan gently shook his head negatively bidding him to stay put. Ella had volunteered of her own free will to perform the bond and, once initiated, had to be seen through to the end without interruption. Part of the reason the elder wyrm had allowed the female to retreat into her cavern was to hide the clan's shame at her abandoning the failed dual bonding her original summoner and he'd made no secret of how this was seen as her final chance to redeem herself in the eyes of the Umihebi. Failure here only had one possible outcome, and, despite his frustration, Titus subsided to watch the undeniable conclusion.
Ella began to cry outwardly now, her sobs turning to mewling pleas for him to release her but she saw stern-eyed discipline in the human's eyes before her. Her palms had become fists, helpless human fists that disgusted her. They reminded her so much of Mito-chan and her sobs increased. 'Why did she have to leave me? Why did she abandon me to this?!'
He'd pulled her in close now, her arms folded until her elbows were jammed into his sternum and her upper body nearly turned sideways. Why couldn't he just let her fade away? Why couldn't he just let her worthless life end peacefully? She couldn't save Mito-chan. She couldn't save anyone!
Then it happened. Her right shoulder and ribcage made contact with his chest and heat flooded her entire being. Despite her valiant fight, he'd turned her enough to sit her body across his lap as his arms snaked the rest of the way around her shoulder and waist. She felt tired and the chakra transfer slowly began to dwindle. It took several more minutes before the green glow pouring from his body faded to nothingness but by then her tears were flowing freely, her shoulders shaking as love, his love for her, assaulted her on all sides.
She could also feel Opal's love through the bond and the deep-seated worry caused by her own selfish refusal to move on past the one great tragedy of her life. Exhausted, bruised, and beaten into submission, the great echidnae of the Stormbringers Sect collapsed into a deep slumber wrapped safely in the arms of her new summoner, her still teary face nestled deep in the cleft of his neck and shoulder.
~III~
~ Two Days Later… ~
Ellamus stirred from a deep slumber, the familiar smells of her cavern in the grotto comforting to her extremely keen senses. She liked the cool dampness of her home as it often suited her… wait, her usual melancholy just wasn't there. She felt lighthearted; a disturbingly unfamiliar feeling of warmth nestled deep inside her armored chest. At least she was back in her normal form and felt unassailable.
Eyes still clamped shut, her neck unwound as she stretched languidly relishing the creaking pops as her back aligned. She felt full of life for some reason and had the unwelcomed desire to swim out and hunt. She was ravenous, more so than usual but, for some odd reason, she had no urge to fight it. She needed to be in prime form for when he-."
Memories of the bonding struck, and her eyes snapped open to confirm her location.
Yes, she was in what passed for her sleeping quarters. She lay wrapped into a half circle with her tail curled around her hindquarters, forelegs, and tucked under her chin, the fan blades folded safely away as was her norm. As her eyes adjusted to the inky blackness of her cave, her nose picked up two additional scents while her ears registered their identical heartbeats, heartbeats beating in time with her own.
The great echidnae's head swung down on her elongated neck, a smile creasing her beaked maw as she registered how really physically good she felt. The bonding had changed her making her disgustingly healthy and it was all his fault. Her eyes locked in on the blond form reclining up against her side and she tried to fight the urge to hug the extremely warm male to her cold body. Instead, she stared at his peacefully slumbering form, all traces of blood from his eyes long gone, as she lamented her cursedly healthy existence.
Ella gently shook away the morose feelings of depression knowing that her sleeping summoner would feel them as well and she wasn't exactly wanting to deal with an awake teen at the moment. Despite her frantic fight for escape during the ceremony, a memory that made her flush with shame, she'd felt the mutual feelings of desire welling up at their intimately close embrace. Despite knowing such feelings were a byproduct of their merging, she could not argue he was attractive as most humans went. While not forbidden, it wasn't something she was comfortable with just yet. If he didn't die on her, they would have time to sort such things out later.
Her graceful neck swung her head out over the edge of her bowl-shaped ledge to the ivory shadow of her baby sibling and she smiled despite herself. The Lifegiver was curled up on the cavern floor of her home still fast asleep. So long as she remained the eldest summons, the summoner would sleep here whenever he came to the Grotto to train his new bloodline, correction… bloodlines. A quick scan of his chakra network confirmed that his partially cracked tenketsu pathways had survived the onslaught, despite her best efforts to kill him, and had expanded enormously. The boy had a disgusting amount of chakra to begin with, almost twice what Mito-chan had at her prime, and that amount, as well as the tubes that carried it, was now double in size. She could feel the slumbering bijū through their full bond and, if Ella had to take a guess, the boy now had almost a third of the energy housed within the bur-, no, the Kyuubi.
She would have to get used to the symbiotic lifestyle. They would be allies now and all four would have to share the summoner in some fashion.
Of course, this meant the boy's chakra control would have been halved if not outright destroyed. He would not be happy about that, however, the two echidnae would help him recover that lost control and push beyond with his new training regimen. He would need to be unstoppable if he was to survive his enemies.
It wouldn't be long before the news of a new summoner to the Celestial Clan would make the rounds in and throughout the summoning realm. That meant their human counterparts would soon know and that meant more enemies would be seeking his head.
The Umihebi would be a threat once again.
With a sigh, she rolled over onto her back, one clawed hand gently scooping up the gently snoring boy and laying him flat along the softer scales of her underbelly, his head resting in the center of her now restored arms. A small smile crossed her muzzle, before she could bury it in a frown of annoyance, at the sight of the twin echidnae tattoo on his chest. She'd noticed Opal's pale form now intertwined with a darker representation of Ella's forming an odd coiling version of the yin-yang symbol on his chest. With the full bonding complete, a large pearl had manifested in the center representing the oracle with kanji for "He Who Walks the Path" trailing vertically through the gem's center.
'You will no longer walk alone.' It sounded campy even as she thought it and she sighed at the suddenly mushy emotion. This new bond would take some getting used to, but the boy had earned some measure of her respect. It would be a long time before he earned her heart despite the urgings of their new link.
Her body began to shrink and compress, the flat scales of her underside swelling to be replaced by the annoying globes of fat that caused human males to stare and ogle. She almost regretted it immediately as the snoring male began to drool into the massive valley of her non-drool-repellant cleavage.
"Ugh," she muttered tearing out a chunk from a worn blanket and stuffing it between his face and her chest. She would have to work on his sleeping habits if this was to become the norm.
Despite her drool-covered revulsion, she smiled. It might not be as bad as she thought.
"It's a bit early…"Minō began making Ella roll her eyes at their lack of respect for her privacy.
"To be breeding your summoner…" Nectamia continued, Ella's eyes swiveling over to glare hatefully at the two smaller muzzles peering down into her bowl.
"Isn't it?" they concluded at the same time.
To be honest, she found them annoying in the extreme. How they'd weaseled their way into Opal's life was beyond her, but she chucked that up to her abandoning her sibling when she should have been mentoring her. Now they'd been assigned as his personal messengers and Ella was stuck with them, a very… unpleasant… realization to say the least. She would much rather have had Amabie; at least she was respectful and by far the fastest of the messenger sect. Instead, Ella would have to bear with their less-than-desirable traits, for now.
She also knew them as the rampant gossip queens of the Clan and her denying any attempt to breed the boy, despite being physically unable to bear hatchlings with their dissimilar biology, would only spur them on. She decided to ignore the insinuation outright.
"You'd better have a good reason for invading my den without leave to enter or our new summoner will need to find a new pair of messengers." The two smaller wyrms blanched, fading briefly from their familiar midnight purple to a pale grey.
"Poseidus, while pleased at the boy's success, says that he must return home soon. He apologizes for the interruption to the bonding cycle but the shinobi of his village have grown concerned at his disappearance and are assembling search teams to seek him out."
Ella tsked audibly, her frown turning from the sisters to the slumbering male with his face propped up between her breasts, mounds the size of his head she noticed absently. She hadn't had enough time to bond with him and would need at least a week before she had enough chakra to inhabit the array on his chest. His memories were still a fuzzy blur in her mind, and she wanted to see how he lived among the hateful creatures that destroyed the Uzumaki she loved more than life itself. She would have to make him promise to summon them both soon so they could begin his training… and resume their bonding process. Normally a summoner would stay with her for at least a month while they adapted.
This would not do. This would not do at all.
"Tell my father I will bring him shortly. He needs to be made aware of a few things before he returns to those hateful creatures." The duo nodded in response as they slipped quietly away, their voices already whispering energetically.
"I am not happy that our time together has been interrupted," she whispered to his sleeping face. Despite her insistence on not caring for the boy, she hugged him tightly to her human-like body smirking as his lips fluttered against one the bulging orbs of her chest. Idly she wondered if she could smother him to death with her bosom before taking one of the massive blobs in hand and smacking him gently in the face, his brow wrinkling in irritation as he fought the need to awaken.
Perhaps his reaction would be entertaining…
~III~
~ Konohagakure, Office of the Sandaime Hokage ~
"What do you mean 'he hasn't been seen in forty-eight hours?'"
The rest of Team Ten stood ramrod straight before the Hokage and his ANBU Commander, Dragon. At the moment, the tense question had come from the agitated ANBU standing to his right even as the upper corner of the Hokage's office turned into a winter wonderland; it was suspected that the corner was inhabited by Neko during this watch shift and her concern for the Gaki was well-known among ANBU and non-ANBU alike.
Asuma chimed in. "We split up after our last mission report, my Genin going to Yakiniku Q for dinner with most of Team Seven. Naruto left earlier being unable or unwilling to partake of certain company and that was the last anyone had seen of him. Repeated efforts by his team to check in on him have turned up unsuccessful." The two on the far side of the desk were well aware of the Haruno girl and her antagonistic relationship with Naruto.
Ino's teeth clenched, the grinding from her molars catching the attention of everyone in the office. She'd been frustrated at not being allowed access to the complex Naruto was reported to now live in since the attack on his old apartment. Girlfriend status did not make her privy to the S-ranked secret that was his current living arrangement unless he specifically shared it with her, something she planned to rectify the moment he was found again (after she pummeled him to death for disappearing without telling her first so she could revive him with mouth to mouth).
"His new place?" the Hokage asked nervously.
"No response. His seals work is surprisingly… strong," the younger Sarutobi confessed. Under any other circumstances, Hiruzen would have been extremely proud of the young Uzumaki.
"Dragon," the Hokage began turning to task his strongest shinobi with sending a sapper squad to break down the boy's sealing network only to have the door to his office burst open admitting a ragged looking Naruto Uzumaki. The exhausted and pale-looking boy had barely closed the door before a blond blur tackled him into the wooden portal, the girl's arms cinching up his waist in a bone-crushing hug.
"Hey, Asuma-sensei! Hokage-jiji! Dragon-sama! What'd I miss?" Before anyone could answer the glib greeting, Naruto's world exploded into stars as the rock-hard fist of his genteel girlfriend crashed into his skull driving him into the floorboards.
~III~
[A/N: Odd Facts and Stuff]
[Takarabune no Tabi] literally means Voyage of the Takarabune, or "Treasure Ship." The Takarabune is the mystical conveyance of the Seven Gods of Fortune, otherwise referred to as The Seven Lucky Gods, a relevant concept as Naruto will need to channel their blessings if he is to succeed in his endeavors.
The following excerpt is a pretty succinct description of the Seven provided courtesy of G-Shock's watch line dedicated to the Japanese pantheon, artwork courtesy of Toshikaza Nozaka:
"The Seven Lucky Gods are worshipped as part of a Japanese belief system derived from a blending of indigenous and Buddhist beliefs, and refers to the seven gods Ebisu, Hotei, Benzaiten, Bishamonten, Daikokuten, Jurōjin, and Fukurokuju. The gods originate from various backgrounds, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and the Shinto faith, and if one pays homage to the Seven Lucky Gods, one is protected from the seven misfortunes and will receive the seven blessings of happiness, as described in the Humane King Sutra. Belief in the Seven Lucky Gods dates from the end of Japan's Muromachi period, was widespread among the people of the Edo period, and has continued into the present day."
~III~