"You know, if we had a better sensei," mused Sakura, "all of this could have been avoided. Someone who showed up on time."
"Kakashi Hatake rarely shows up on time for anything that doesn't directly involve life-or-death situations. And sometimes not even then."
"You're making my point," said Sakura. "So I wish we had a better or at least more punctual sensei."
"Then it goes to you, Naruto Uzumaki. What is thy wish?"
"Wish someone else had to deal with this," complained Naruto in a moment of tired of it all.
"Done."
"Huh? What? Wait!" Naruto came the rest of the way awake from where he'd been drifting off.
click! rewind! clunk!
Time and space rewound to play again.
Toltiir checked and found that the wishes: Sasuke adding a 'spidey-sense' ability to detect ambushes/danger, Sakura wishing for a sensei that would actually show up, and Naruto's desire to just go ahead and get on with things - had three major points where his Timeline Interruption Modification Maintenance Exfoliation With Multilevel Matrix Interface had selected for alteration.
The timey-wimey went ding.
Well, this was odd.
"The fence came down!"
"Beasts are escaping the Forest Of Death!"
"Screw this! I'm locking myself in my house. Y'all can stand around shouting about it in the streets if you REALLY want to draw attention to yourselves."
The crowd stopped, blinked in an eerie synchronization, and then decided that someone actually had a point.
"AAAAAAAAAA!" yelled seven-year-old Naruto as he ran down the road.
"RARRRGHHHH!" roared the six-limbed crocodile-thing chasing him.
"HAH! Take that, demon-child!" said a lingering villager, pointing at the chase.
"HISSS!" screeched a giant spider as it pounced on the lingering villager.
"AAAAAAAAAA!" screamed most of the other villagers, who'd paused and now fully realized that this wasn't the brightest course of action.
Naruto ran. As would happen later in life, he learned when under pressure. Spines shot towards him, which he barely avoided. A tongue shot out, barbs trying to find his flesh. He ducked. A globule of spit, sticky and corrosive, shot past him to hiss against a wall.
Naruto was aware of every sound, every movement around him. He also had adrenalin running through his veins almost to the exclusion of actual blood.
Then he ran across (almost over) a girl who was being swarmed by spiders bigger than his fist, grabbed her and dodged around the spiders and ran as if he was being pursued by giant venomous spiders.
Because he was being pursued by giant venomous spiders.
He ran across a second girl a minute or two later (he wasn't sure how much time because he didn't feel that time-conscious due to the aforementioned adrenalin level and also aforementioned lizard, swarm of giant venomous spiders, and now a rather annoyed young tiger-thing) and ended up carrying one over a shoulder while the first had recovered enough to run alongside him.
For Naruto, it was all a big blur of reacting. Afterwards he couldn't really remember any particular detail.
Hiruzen Sarutobi tossed the carcass of a badaskalisk to the side. "Any idea what caused the breakout?"
"It appears that someone broke into the forest and deliberately stirred things up. There are two dead members of ANBU near the gate: Chameleon and Magpie," said an ANBU whose mask was of an Otter.
"They were stationed nearby," said Hiruzen Sarutobi even as his hands whipped through rapid hand-seals. Spikes of earth skewered a group of spiders.
"As soon as this little exercise is done, I want details," said the Hokage, ignoring the twitching bodies around him. "Everything threatening my village needs to die. Make it so."
ANBU blurred into action around him.
Naruto only became aware of it AFTER the immediate danger had passed.
After he'd woken up from a sleep of absolute exhaustion, right next to the two girls he'd managed to save from Certain Doom, he had been sore in places he hadn't even known he'd HAD.
He'd also had that tiger/bear/whatever cub snoring and laying on top of him. Which had introduced him and the two girls to a brief exploration of fur therapy.
The two girls he'd rescued had gone off to their families, but now they looked at him a bit different. Naruto thought they actually saw him - and that was a good thing.
An ANBU had showed up and taken the wild animal bear/tiger/ohmy away to be returned to its forest.
Though it was kind of weird that he seemed to be able to tell where people were without looking. And that when he fell asleep during class, when Iruka threw an eraser at him, he apparently caught it.
Shikamaru had even noted that it was kind of impressive the time Mizuki-sensei kept throwing things at him and how Naruto not only caught everything but stacked it all up nearby without waking up. Choji said it was kind of amusing.
One thing, noted Toltiir. Orochimaru deciding to get samples of certain tissues and demonstrating the village's lack of strength in a single operation. Not with the rest of Akatsuki's blessings, in fact Pein was mildly annoyed at this and regarded it as needless.
That little expedition caused little Naruto to develop sensory abilities, or at least was the excuse most seized on when he started demonstrating an ability to sense attacks.
Chameleon and Magpie would have died a year later when encountering Sasori near the Suna border, and the puppet-master wouldn't even bother with the corpses as he was after specific prey at that point.
Instead of officially being MIA, they were KIA, and the Hokage demanded a higher level of training for all ANBU as a result. If either of the two had been able to assess the threat and discover they were that overmatched, they could have sent up a signal flare. Instead the two died within seconds of encountering the enemy - unacceptable.
And another result:
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(Posted Thu, 20 Nov 2014 21:15)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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