When both Sakura and Sasuke were winded, Naruto stood up and dusted the seat of his pants off. "My turn?"
Kakashi glanced at the sun, then back to him. "You think you can do it in less than an hour?"
"Well, your favorite word is 'teamwork' - or so I heard," mused Naruto, tossing something up into the air. "MJOLNIR!"
Lightning crackled around the object, which shifted and grew into a two-handed sledge hammer decorated with yellow hemispheres on the hammer's head where the handle merged with it.
Set Up.
Barrier Jacket.
Aggressive Mode.
Naruto's clothing blurred and reformed, now he was wearing a duster-style coat over burnt orange clothing.
"Did that hammer just talk?" asked Sakura with a couple of twitches.
"Summoning!" said Naruto, slamming the butt-end of the weapon onto the ground. Runes formed in midair, rotating in a set of two circles around his weapon.
A disc formed nearby and hung there for a moment, then it jerked and expanded to over ten times the original size.
"Hmmm, that's odd," said Naruto. "Flight mode."
Flight Mode Active.
Seeing orange wings form on the hammer and on Naruto's back was a little startling. Seeing him leap fifty feet into the air and just hover there was a little more startling.
Sakura fell to her unresponsive knees and screamed like a little girl when the pseudo-reptillian head came through the disc. Which really wasn't her fault as she WAS a little girl after all. As the head was big enough to swallow her and Sasuke whole in a single snap, having a purely instinctive reaction wasn't all that unexpected.
The head was followed by a neck, and then the rest of the body followed.
"Sparunthakurus?!" asked Naruto.
"Naruto?!" asked the dragon in a voice that was sufficiently deep that Sakura would later swear her bones vibrated. "I'm sorry, but my son is too busy to play right now. Remedial Elvish lessons."
"Oh," said Naruto. "Well, can you give me a hand then?" He pointed at where Kakashi had just uncovered his Sharingan and was staring. "I'm being tested. I'm supposed to go after him as if my life depended on killing him, and take the two bells off of him."
"He wants you to rip his balls off?" asked the dragon, peering closer at the scarecrow-like figure. "Just when I think I'm beginning to understand humans, they pull something like this."
Kakashi predictably dropped both hands to cover a portion of his anatomy but didn't stop staring.
"Th-th-that's a dragon?!" squeaked Sakura, who had gotten her mouth working again.
"It's not a genjutsu?" asked Kakashi, who had really really really been hoping that his Sharingan would have revealed an illusion.
"No, we're supposed to get those bells off his belt for some sort of test," continued Naruto. "Unfortunately, between him arriving late and my team members wanting to demonstrate their mad ninja skillz, we're almost out of time."
"Ah, I see," said the dragon, sitting back on her hindlegs and snapping her wings out in a dramatic gesture.
Sasuke was feeling something he'd never expected to feel before. Envy. He wanted one of those so badly he could taste it. The idea of him atop that dragon, as it snarled and held Itachi down with its claws. Followed by a little crunching noise, of course.
Sakura twitched repeatedly and tried not to pee her pants. The dragon was over fifty feet long with scales that looked like ancient bronze. She hid behind Sasuke and tried to get her shaking under control.
Glaring down at the target, Sparunthakurus (which was just a short but formal name and not her full name of course) let her aura produce the dragonfear and directed it towards the tiny figure of the human target. A minor illusion let her eyes glow a baleful yellow and her teeth glimmer menacingly.
KA-THUD!
Nobody spared a glance for the fainted Sakura.
dingle dingle
Everyone DID glance at where Naruto was now holding up a pair of bells.
"That... what?" asked Kakashi, who glanced back and forth between the DRAGON and the two genin.
"Thanks! Say hello to Sparky for me, would you?" asked a cheerful Naruto.
Sasuke stared, managing to keep most of the shaking out of his legs, or saying something stupid and uncool like "D-d-dragon?!" as he instead considered how cool it would be to be riding said dragon and simply have Itachi EATEN. Maybe he could scrape together enough money from an estate sale to make it a mission?
Naruto walked past Sasuke, idly tossing him a bell, and then considered the ungraceful heap that was Sakura.
"I will. Play nice, little humans." said the big dragon as she vanished in a puff of smoke.
"So, do we pass?" asked Naruto.
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(Posted Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:17)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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