Naruto circled over the forest lazily. The neodragon had a small problem – when he landed he’d be expected to end the ‘summoning’ and, well, he couldn’t do that. So he was buying time.
It also made things easier on his riders. “I don’t suppose I could talk you into helping build the bridge?” Tazuna was asking.
“We’re not allowed to work construction,” Sakura said with a scathing glare at Naruto’s clone.
The clone looked affronted. “What did I do?”
“You broke a house,” Sakura stressed. “You broke it in half.”
“How do you break a house in half?” Tazuna wondered.
“Lift with your back instead of your knees,” Sasuke muttered.
Tazuna blinked.
Naruto glanced down. “The river is flooding,” he rumbled.
“Kakashi must have done something impressive,” Sakura surmised.
Sasuke smacked Naruto gently. “Go down, dragon-san. We need a closer look.”
Naruto wished he could disagree. He nodded and spilled air from his wings.
Kakashi sat down heavily at the base of a tree and resisted the urge to groan in pain. Maybe sending the dragon away wasn’t such a hot idea.
He glanced over at the dragon landing about a dozen meters away and waited for the humans to get off.
“Kakashi-sensei!” Naruto yelled, running over. “What happened?”
“Zabuza and I had a polite and considered discussion on the influence of statistical data on probability structures,” Kakashi said simply.
Naruto hesitated. “Really?”
“No.” Kakashi had the grace not to roll his eye. “He clipped me before I flooded the river. He’s somewhere downstream, battered to hell I’d guess.” Kakashi grunted and looked over at the dragon. “Isn’t it time you dropped the act?”
The dragon tilted his head curiously.
Kakashi sighed and threw a kunai at the human Naruto. The clone vanished in a loud poff of chakra and smoke.
“Naruto?” Sasuke gasped, staring at the clone’s vanishing remains. Sakura gasped and Tazuna just stared, too confused to be surprised.
Kakashi pointed at the dragon’s foreclaw. “The dragon has the same cut Naruto got from that chunin. I wouldn’t have seen it without the Sharingan.”
“That ain’t good enough to throw a kunai at my head, sensei,” the dragon rumbled.
“Also you don’t have anything even close to a summoning jutsu around you,” Kakashi added.
“Oh. Any tips on how to fix that?” Naruto wondered. He sat down on his haunches and raised his lithe body into the air.
“Waitaminute!” Sakura shrieked. “Are you telling me that is NARUTO!?”
“That or a dragon pretending to be Naruto,” Kakashi said agreeably. “But why the deception?”
“Ano…I thought it would be funny?”
Sasuke snorted. “He’s Naruto.”
Tazuna fainted. Sakura looked like she was a heartbeat from joining him, but while she was shivering and wide-eyed and weak-kneed she managed to simply fall on her butt and gibber a bit while pointing at Naruto. “But…you…it…Naruto…what…haaah?”
Naruto snorted a quiet laugh. “Maybe I should start at when I fell down that hole?
Hatake Kakashi considered the monstrous creature before him. Naruto’s body was fifty feet long, maybe a bit longer if he made an effort to uncoil himself. He was clearly quadrupedal, with strong haunches and flimsy forelimbs. Flimsy was something of a relative statement – it was abundantly clear that the muscles under those scales could kill a man with trivial effort. Naruto’s body was almost serpentine; extremely flexible and streamlined. His wing muscles joined just below his shoulders and the leathery membranes continued down to his hips. His neck was fairly long and gave his head an excellent range of motion, and his head was blatantly a weapon with teeth like swords and eyes like hawks.
And, if he cared to wax poetic, the dragon had the soul of innocence. Even as a dragon, Naruto’s body language spoke volumes about how well-pleased he was by his sheer awesomeness. Kalashi shook his head. If this creature wasn’t Naruto, then he was close enough to be a second Naruto. And the world was not so badly designed as to allow a second Naruto.
Sarutobi Konohamaru sneezed, ruining his surprise attack on the Hokage.
“I thought you stopped doing that,” the Sandaime muttered, looking at Konohamaru with the patience only a grandparent can pull off.
Konohamaru thought fast. “Oiroke no Jutsu!”
Kakashi’s pervert sense tingled briefly but he ignored it. Icha Icha could wait until this mess was all sorted out.
The largest problem with this situation was that Naruto was several S-ranked secrets. Jinchuriki, Yondaime’s son, and now dragon of all things. Fortunately for Tazuna that wasn’t an S-rank secret yet, but Kakashi knew that Danzo would…react to this development. How, he wasn’t sure. This was about three steps outside the normal consequences of the ninja lifestyle.
“Naruto, can you henge back to human?” Kakashi asked. “Or however you did that?”
“Adamant Style: Alternate Form no Jutsu,” Naruto rumbled. A moment later he appeared, dressed as ever in his eye-hurting orange and blue outfit.
“Naruto, those clothes are part of your jutsu?”
“Yeah,” he said, surprised by the question.
“Then why, uhh…” Kakashi started, suddenly debating the wisdom of the question.
“Then why are you still in that hideous outfit?” Sakura snapped, forgetting for a moment that the familiar-looking Naruto was…not.
“What’s wrong with my outfit?” Naruto asked, affronted by the idea that he wasn’t wearing the height of fashion.
“Orange,” Sasuke muttered.
Naruto pointed an angry finger. “Orange is a sign of my manliness!”
Crickets chirp.
“Maybe we should get me home?” Tazuna suggests.
“Good idea,” Kakashi agreed. He held a hand out to Naruto. “C’mon. I’m going to be limping for a few days.”
Naruto nodded and hauled Kakashi to his feet, using his own body to steady the larger jonin. “What about Zabuza?”
“Uf. Thanks. I don’t think I killed him, but he’s in worse shape than me. Without medic-nin, he won’t be back any time soon.”
“So what do we do?” Sakura asks. “We can’t drop off Tazuna and leave for Zabuza to kill him.”
Kakahi gave pinkette a look. Apparently she hadn’t quite had her face shoved in just how over their heads they were. “We’re not leaving until I’m good to travel,” he declared. “Tazuna, can you put us up for a few days?”
“Gladly,” Tazuna said quickly. It was going to be a drain on his household, but that was better than being dead.
“Excellent. Then while I heal, the three of you train.” Kakashi closed his visible eye. “Now, let’s get moving.”
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(Posted Wed, 04 May 2011 06:48)
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