Sitting in the hot spring watching two other girls chatter, Temari bravely resisted the urge to roll her eyes, as it would be unprofessional.
Ok, she could understand someone like the Hyuga heiress needing to get away once in a while. Heaven only knew how often Temari wished she could, and rumor had it her family and Hinata's shared not only the same 'stick so far up their butt they have to bend over to see straight' fathers, but an imminent threat of death. Growing up, hers had been Gaara. She understood Hinata's was that Caged Bird Seal always looming, which had a lower survival rate the older a person got sealed, and if you didn't die you'd wish you had.
So she understood wanting to get away from that. Really! And she could totally understand where the heiress came from in hiring her guards from Suna for this trip. The politics of that were obvious as well, as if she'd hired out of her own village odds were high that her family would use influence to have at least one of their members on her protection duty, and that would be no vacation at all. By calling for an escort out of Suna, the heiress could even claim to be making efforts to mend fences between their two villages and earn political credit at the same time as shucking her family's guards. It all made total sense!
And if Hinata hadn't thought of that herself, Tsunade surely had.
Even coming here to Demon country was explained once they'd got here. Temari's first thought was that the priestess and the heiress had to be twins, separated at birth, to look that much alike. Even the facts she knew bore that out, as the Hyuga heiress had grown up with her father, and the priestess with her mother. Knowing some of the scandal surrounding the Hyuga (which any ninja would pick up on receiving an assignment to escort one) and what they did to twins of an upcoming clan head, separating them made even more sense.
Bring in a nanny to play the respectable wife of the clan head and raise the child, and you've got it. A torrid romance such as was all too common among ninja, and royalty, and especially those clans who were both.
Temari didn't say anything about the evident scandal, obviously, and Hinata immediately started chattering with the priestess Shion about Naruto. It was obvious after the first hour they were both besotted with him, and they wanted to bond over that. Temari understood that completely! (Well, not from direct experience, but she'd observed that behavior often enough. Hard to relate completely when her position ensured everyone avoided her, so she'd never had any kind of friends, female or otherwise, to bond with.)
But it was getting on to the fifth hour of their second day together and neither girl had so much as mentioned Naruto's butt yet!
Certain things Temari could not understand, and the shy, retiring violet types were among them.
She was about to resist the urge to roll her eyes again as the demure duo hugged once again, crying over something tame, when an unfamiliar purple sort of energy sprang up about the Hyuga she and her team were supposed to be guarding. If not for her experience with her weasel summoning contract feeling similar, she wouldn't even have been able to guess what was happening.
"Reverse summoning!" Temari shouted at the top of her lungs, snatching up her fan and pouch full of weapons in an instant from the pool's side where they'd always laid within easy reach, in the same motion lunging across the pool to grab the poor, confused girls, including herself in their hug and trying desperately to align her chakra to theirs so whatever it was, she could hopefully get pulled along - because she was the guard and wherever they were going it was pretty stinking obvious they'd need her protection! "Someone is reverse summoning our..!"
When Kankuro and the other boys on the escort mission broke down the door moments later, eyes peeled and weapons out, puppets bristling with poisoned weapons on flanks to either side, all they saw were empty pools, and a faint trace of purple energy sparkles.
The trio of girls had no sooner arrived, bare feet hitting stone floor in some dark basement somewhere, than Temari's fan was out and a Wind jutsu half charged.
"NARUTO!!" "NARUTO!!"
She did not expect to get stampeded by the twins as they'd immediately spotted the blond object of their affections among the crowd of armed soldiers, and ran over to glom him on either side, only to immediately get embarrassed about it.
Temari did not like her odds as she repositioned. Big men in thick armor surrounded Naruto on all sides, and some bore swords big enough to remind her of Mist's legendary seven swordsmen - most of them glowing with suppressed jutsu. Close combat was not her forte, and yet in this small a room with this many people, and worse yet her charge jumping right into the center of that mass, she did not have any choice. She stood between Hinata and the bulk of those soldiers as best she could, fan out and ready, which also had a salutatious side effect of concealing their bodies, as all any of the three girls wore were towel wraps straight out of a hot spring.
If she'd had more modesty, Temari would've been mortified. But for a priestess and heiress it was probably more of a big deal to be standing all but naked in a crowded press of men.
Still, the wind mistress was extremely tense as she hissed out between clenched teeth, "Naruto, tell me if these guys are friendly."
Back in the inn, this time the haunted one as it was closest, Naruto's guards stood acutely embarrassed as the three barely clad girls basically form a mass around Naruto on all sides. One of the twins had him to each side, and the blonde girl stood, her back touching his, as she watched the rest of the room.
And about the only thing keeping this whole scene from being indecent was the table covering their lower parts, and the girl with the fan out behind.
The lead Paladin had never felt so awkward before in all of his life.
Worse yet, this had many of the same problems as they did with food when Naruto was hungry. Every man there would have gladly given those girls a cloak to wrap up in, save for the fact that their equipment was all soulbound, which meant no sharing, and none had anything level-appropriate for three newbies, anyway!
Circe, one of the Warlocks, who'd followed them out of the basement, was aware of that problem, and one other. No person in Stormwind was unaware of the boy who'd contained that orange fox thing, and most had heard of his trauma. Circe was an earthy soul. A Succubus was her most common companion, and she had great faith in the ability of girls and boys to apply therapy to each other. But two minutes of observing this had her convinced nothing was going to happen. The boy was too lost and confused, and the girls too shy. Well, the twins were anyway. The blonde girl appeared to be convinced she was some sort of guard.
It was actually cute the way she stayed on full alert, carefully watching all entrances, when standing in the middle of a friendly raid at the heart of an allied capital.
So Circe took it upon herself to fix their problems. "Ok," she shooed the group of four children up. "You girls need clothes, and the only thing that's going to fit are novice's robes. The easiest way to get those is to pick a class for each of you. Now, do you intend to stay together?"
Four nods in return.
"Well then," Circe began to shoo them towards the inn's exit, the raid fanning out all around while sending their scout types ahead. "If you are to be your own party, you'll need complimentary classes. So what are your interests?"
"Umm, I press flowers?" Hinata shyly volunteered.
See other episodes by Sapphire Cat
(Posted Tue, 28 May 2013 02:22)
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