The Hokage looked over the report and glanced back up toward the Anbu in the room with him as well as toward Hiashi Hyuuga and Kurenai Yuhi.
"Tenten's parents have not yet noticed?" he asked.
"Tenten doesn't suffer from Hinata's fainting fits," Kakashi said. "As such, the entity bonded with her rarely surfaces where it can talk to us. 'Erma' seems determined to make sure that she takes care of Hinata when she 'goes quiet'."
"Hinata is starting to get something of a poor reputation for mental stability as a result," Hiashi said grimly. "Is there anyway that we can purge these entities?"
"Until we know exactly how they were exposed," the Hokage said. "That may be dangerous. And they seem to have a good control over the entities."
"And this 'Saika' and 'Anri' they've been overheard mentioning?" Hiashi asked.
"Saika is the parent entity," Kakashi said. "And Anri is her host. We haven't discovered the location of this 'Ikebukuro' she's supposed to be at. The relationship seems to be a sort of penpal situation."
"Can you identify the differences in chakra?" the Hokage asked Hiashi.
"It is subtle, but I imagine even the sharingan can detect it if pressed," the man confirmed.
"We place them on watch then," the Hokage said. "If more exposures occur, then we will have to act. But for now, the symbiosis appears beneficial to them."
"Just a note," Kakashi said. "Naruto has mentioned that ...ahem...'Ramen'," he chuckled slightly, "has complained about the mean 'dog' that hates humans inside him. Apparently it doesn't like the idea of the kyubi devouring humans."
"That's at least comforting," Sarutobi said. "Though an enemy of an enemy is not necessarily a friend. And Naruto's mind and soul are already quite cluttered enough."
"If these entities are childish," Kurenai said. "It might be that they'll mature as affected children do. How we treat them might mean the difference between a threat, a weapon or an ally."
Team Guy was camped almost a week away from Konoha, on a patrol route around the edges of the Land of Fire. Tenten was polishing and other wise maintaining her weapons when she paused and looked up.
"Hey, Gai-sensei," she said. "Isn't the graduation test today back at the academy?"
"That's right, Tenten!" he declared. "And I'm excited that you continue to show such an interest in your younger students. However, you must not let that distract you."
"Right," Tenten said, slipping on a pair of thick sunglasses and smiling. "And I'm ready for the patrol route today, so don't worry."
Neji frowned as he looked over toward Tenten and was tempted to activate his byakugan even knowing he wouldn't be able to find much of a reason for the strange fluctuation in her chakra that accompanied that action. Apparently it was something with a physical side-effect, else the sunglasses wouldn't be necessary, but reaching out and snatching away the glasses wasn't likely to be appreciated either.
Gai-sensei knew something about it, because the man often watched Tenten with a measure of caution as well as pride and parental affection.
"All right," Tenten said, leaping up to one of the high branches in a leap that some chunin couldn't do. "Let's go."
Ramen had grown up a little the last two years, though she was still a very exuberant child in nature. Naruto barely noticed much of the time since he was much the same way. The two only really had issues when their focus and attention was split between two different things for some reason and Ramen found herself dragged away towards Naruto's interests while hers fell out of sight.
"All right," Iruka said. "It's time for the test. You will come up here and produce a single clone, is that understood?"
Naruto groaned as his old nemesis was named again. His clones had a tendency to look like someone painted them red. And then they usually got sick and puffed out.
I hate the clone jutsu, Ramen added as if in agreement.
Sometimes Naruto forgot that the spirits couldn't hear what they were just thinking. Which was odd given they lived in his, Tenten and Hinata's heads.
"Okay, I've got this," Naruto said, psyching himself up.
He could vaguely hear Erma quietly encouraging Hinata to do her best and Weird relaying that Tenten wanted to hear how well they did.
Anri and Saika were closed behind dimensional walls at the moment, unfortunately.
Taking a deep breath, Naruto stepped forward to take the test.
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(Posted Wed, 08 Jun 2011 11:39)
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