"Oh, it's already different," said Toltiir. "The Hokage and Jonin all know that someone set you against the village. The Ninetailed Fox is neither good nor evil. Creation AND destruction now. So you didn't just attack the village, someone had to have SET you to destroy the village."
"Okay, so is the boy any less ostracized for this?" asked the Fox.
"Ahhhh, no," admitted Toltiir. "Odd. I would have thought so. No change there."
"I thought so," said the Fox. "So the boy is still entirely alone growing up."
"Wait. Hold on. I didn't change anything there, so why did THAT change?" asked Toltiir. "Well, I can certainly use THAT and I'm certainly not going to leave this situation as is."
Her broken bloody body was thrown down, whimpering and crying at the pain despite her ninja heritage.
"There's the girl, per our agreement," said the ninja. "Now let us go!"
"You've tortured... what have you done?!" snarled Hiashi Hyuga, who might have been harsh and a discipline-oriented individual, but he was also a father whose baby girl was a bloody mess.
"They have given us back Hinata, per the agreement we need to let them go free," said the Third Hokage. "However we didn't make any agreement about unharmed... Naruto? What are you doing?"
He'd snuck out at all the noise.
He'd seen a little girl about his age. A little girl about his own age who had landed on the ground with a 'splunch' sort of noise. He could tell that her arms and legs had been broken, she was staring with eyeless sockets at the sky, who was making gakking noises and whimpers.
And there was some little voice saying he should go there. He could help. He could show at least this one person something special.
As he got up to her, he noticed her tongue had been cut out.
That little voice inside him said yes. He could do something. Just touch her and release the power within him.
Just like so.
The Third Hokage, the assembled Jonin, a few Chunin who'd come to see what was up, some of the genin and shopkeepers who'd heard the noise and shouts as a group of foreign ninjas had taken refuge in a building and a hostage, all took a step back as a white light that was almost a tangible presence flared into being.
The Hokage heard the music and wondered what the word 'halleluiah' meant. Or the enormous white wings spreading wide from Naruto's back. Or the way the column of light went skyward and scattered the clouds.
Or the way that light hit the foreign ninjas and suddenly their clothes were empty and falling to the ground. The Third Hokage didn't miss much when he wanted to.
He even noticed a little black cat on the top of a building, wearing sunglasses, and muttering something about how maybe this was a little too over the top.
He noticed. Didn't mean he was able to make any sense out of it.
The light winked out after a few moments and Hiashi Hyuga was there suddenly, striking the boy away with a harsh phrase.
"Poppa?" asked the little girl on the ground.
Sarutobi looked to the rooftop, not seeing that cat there any longer. Nor did he waste any concern for the foreign nin at the moment.
No, his concern was entirely for the exhausted Naruto and the apparently completely healthy Hinata Hyuga at the moment.
"I thought," said the Fox, "that nothing was going to go differently until the stealing of the scroll."
"Well, that was the plan," admitted Toltiir. "Odd. Some butterfly effect I guess. But it's on track to normality now."
The Fox chuckled. "Oh sure. If you consider it normal that:"
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(Posted Fri, 15 May 2009 10:23)
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