"Excuse me?!" asked Sakura and Naruto.
"I have no need to stay in the village to become stronger," explained Sasuke. "I am stronger. I can hunt down and destroy That Man."
"You can't go Missing-Nin right off the bat," said Naruto. "We just got to be genin!"
"Why not?" asked Sasuke. "I heard that Kiri-nin have the highest rate of loss on their first C-Rank."
"Uhm. Usually that's because Kiri has the highest rate of death among their shinobi forces of any village," said Sakura. "I did a paper last year on that. They use conscripts, steal children from civilian communities to go through ninja training, and they end up with a 32% rate of shinobi death just during the first year."
"Which causes them to up their recruitment of raw numbers of unskilled shinobi, which reinforces the death rate numbers," said Sasuke. "Yes. I remember. Besides, I'm not abandoning the village. I'm simply leaving it for an unspecified amount of time. I have no idea how long it will take me to find That Man after all. If our sensei ever shows up, you can explain it to him."
"Why not file a request for leave from the Hokage?" asked Sakura reasonably. "Display bio-data."
"Eh?" asked Sasuke, glancing at the slab as text changed.
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Cordata
Class: Cantatis
Order: Polymorphic
Suborder: Draco
Family: Draconus
Genus: Orientalis
Species: Shinobi
Diet: Omnivore (note that amount of food required is dependent on mass of form at time of consumption.)
Lifespan: roughly 1200 years
Mating: Possible at Juvenile stage (50-150 years) but normally takes place from Young Adult stage to Wyrm stage (250 to 900 years) with highest chance of successful reproduction in Mature stage (500-750 years). During peak years, females experience a mating drive that takes up two weeks of every year unless carrying eggs or having laid them recently. Normally one egg is laid at a time, but as many as four can be developed. Species is strictly neither reptillian nor mammalian as it has characteristics of both and is in the Cantatis (Enchanted Beast) Class.
Eggs are carried for five months, laid in the sixth month, and hatch after a year and a day. Males typically end up with one to four females.
Dragonsleep: Typically for a period of a year per age category, a dragon falls into a torpor and will sleep in a safe location while their body sheds scales, expands to the next size category, and otherwise develops both magically and physically. During this time they are in stasis and require no further food nor water nor additional air. Due to being very vulnerable during this period, dragons will typically hide their lair and surround it with traps for safety. When awakened during this period, the dragon will typically be disoriented and performing at less than their full potential.
Lair: This species is especially bonded to their chosen lair spot, at least until Young Adult category where they typically create a new and more permanent lair. Shinobi dragons venturing more than 100 miles from that lair and unable to return to that lair at least once every month will find their innate abilities weakening and symptoms of being ill until a new lair can be established.
"I... lay EGGS?!" asked Sakura, feeling somewhat put out about that.
"FOUR?" asked Sasuke, sounding disgusted. "I may have to put up with FOUR useless mates?"
"Twelve hundred years?" asked Naruto. "That's a long time."
There was silence between the three briefly.
"You don't got to worry about four gals after you," pointed out Naruto. "Right now there's just you and me and Sakura. Only one girl in the species."
"Fine, look me up in three hundred years and we'll discuss it," said Sasuke, switching back to dragon-form and moving towards the exit.
"Don't you DARE!" yelled Sakura, shifting and punctuating her statement by a blast of ice to throw the other dragon into a wall.
"What was that?!" demanded Sasuke, picking himself up and glaring at Sakura.
"I knew what was going on, not all the details, and I COULD have chosen not to be a dragon," said Sakura. "There was that one moment. I chose to be with you, Sasuke. Can't you see that? Can't you see WHY?"
"Like I should care what delusions you suffer from?" countered Sasuke. "Stay out of my way!" He drew a deep breath, chest and neck shifting as they were lit from within. He breathed out - a blast of lightning that lifted Sakura's dragon-form up and slammed HER into a wall.
"Anything either of you want to add to this?" asked Sasuke.
vumm - vumm- VUMM- VUMMM - VUMMM
Sasuke and Sakura both noted the way the dorsal ridge on Naruto's dragon-form developed a foxfire glow which started at his tail and then raced up his length. Both of them experienced a moment of a BAD feeling about this.
They were right.
FWUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM!
It roiled like wind. It burned like fire. It stabbed deep like lightning. It hit like the Fist Of God.
Sasuke wasn't sure WHAT Naruto's dragon-form breath weapon was - just that it caused him to dig talons into the stone floor to avoid being thrown away from it. After it had passed, Sasuke was quite aware that it HURT even as powerful as he was now.
And he was aware that he was powerful. His dragon-form was almost three meters in length, and had a strength and durability that was much greater than he'd been when he'd been human.
He hadn't tested it yet, but some instinctual knowledge told him that even shifted to human he was much tougher and physically stronger than he'd been.
That text had told him about some of his OTHER abilities. He hadn't tried them out and wanted to at the soonest chance. Doing so in the Village wasn't going to happen without displaying what he currently was.
Still, a pecking order had to be established now. Whether Naruto was some 'Hero of the Age' or not - he meant to be at the top of that order or outside the order altogether.
Sasuke's mouth opened and yellow-red lightning flared out to strike Naruto in the chest and score along the chest.
Naruto replied in kind again with the white blast of whatever-that-was.
Sakura noticed that the damage to the walls and floor of their floating-island lair regenerated itself slowly.
Sakura had also noticed that the two were going to continue fighting. She interposed her bulk between the two to get them to stop.
Naruto DID stop, the stream of liquid fire ending almost immediately.
The blast of red-yellow lightning from Sasuke though - THAT scorched a line along ribs and up neck and finally ended just above one ear.
Sasuke stared at the injury he'd given her briefly then made a noise. "Fine. We'll return to this argument later. What now?"
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(Posted Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:41)
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