Fox Leaves 14

Chapter 14: Fresh Growth

The Kyuubi sighed as he rested a hand on Naruto's head. The little Hanyou was fast asleep in his lap, much like he used to do as a toddler. After the past few days, he couldn't blame the young man for wanting a little comfort from his Father.

He smiled at the thought. Father. The kid still wanted him as a father. His mind drifted back to the conversation from before.

"Listen, Naruto. If you want to go to the village, look for your family, I won't hold it against you."

The little Hanyou shook his head after a second, fingers running through his hair. Areas were stained orange and red from blood that had gotten everywhere. "You, may not be my blood father, but you raised me all my life. That means more than just someone who might be dead now."

The fox's head tilted to the side. "Why the sudden change in heart, may I ask?"

"Just, something a friend told me."

The fox held back a smile as he ran claws through wild yellow hair, gently pulling him more securely into his lap. Hefting him up into his arms, the Demon sighed as he walked the boy to his room, Hitodama setting out a futon for the young man. It was nice to be home, even if their departure from Wave had been tainted with both sadness and celebration. Celebration from Isonade having taken back his territory, but the sadness was Naruto's loss of a friend who never had a chance. Both the young man who had been lost at the bridge, and the little Hitodama that had been snuffed out by the overwhelming youki of both the Sanbi and the Kyuubi. The demon was proud as spit at the young Hanyou's first summoned spirit, and had assured the young man that he would be able to try again in a few days. It was still disheartening to the young man to have lost something he hadn't even known he wanted.

Giggling caught his ears, and the fox looked up in time to see Shukaku trying to sneak back into the house with Gaara . Ever since the incident with Naruto, the Tanuki had sworn to spend more time with his own charge, and at the moment, that involved harassing travelers coming to and from Konohagakure. For some reason, more than the usual amount of people were heading into the Hidden Village, and the pair were having a field day with them, especially those who appeared to be ninja.

Red eyes were skeptic as they took in the sight of the pair. Gently, he set Naruto down on his futon, the Hitodama placing a second one out for Gaara, who was yawning fit to hurt his jaw. "And where have you two been? It is well past the midnight hour," he rumbled softly, ruffling Gaara's hair as the boy plopped down on the futon.

The Tanuki grinned evilly as he squatted next to the futon's hands on his knees. He was dressed in his priestly disguise again, all of his markings covered up by cloth and youki-based illusions. He scowled for a second when the ginger's haori was thrown in his face, but sighed as the child wriggled under his comforter. "This kid," he offered, poking the yawning sand-child with a claw, "is a genius with pranks!" he exclaimed.

"Of course he is. He learned from Naruto who learned everything from me."

"No I mean really!"

The fox rolled his eyes as he turned to the red-head. "Alright, what did you do this time?"

A sleepy smile. "Gaara's been working on seals. Naruto's better, but I have my own." Evil grin now. "I switched all of the explosive tags with my pepper tags."

Kyuubi raised an eyebrow. "How did those two learn any of the sealing arts?" he asked, turning to the younger demon.

A sneer. "You, are nothing more than a walking natural disaster," he mocked, waltzing from the room. Annoyed, the fox walked after him, only for the raccoon to turn on him once on the porch. "The rest of the Bijuu don't have the same luxury as you and the Shichibi and Hachibi."

"You taught them."

"Just the basics," he shrugged. "That's all I learned before I was sealed. They picked out more from that Scroll they stole from the silver ninja."

"If Gaara was able to create a custom tag like that though, how good has Naruto gotten?"

"Something about costumes-on-the-go. Gaara said there's a handful in the forest around some of the smaller paths."

~...~...~...~

Minato struggled not to grin at the sight of the young men in front of his desk. It seems that the mononoke were back from where ever they had vanished after the incident with the Forbidden Scroll, and these ninja teams were the proof.

"I demand the names of whoever might have done this!" one yelled, paint flaking off of his face. The Suna-nin had been drenched in pink, with an orange swirl taking over his face. His team mates, a pair of women, one with a fan and a timid girl with a yellow bandanna around her throat, were clean behind him.

"I see that the spirits went easy on you."

Kankuro paused. "Spirits? Went easy?"

The Hokage reached over the desk and pulled a flake off the boy's cheek, holding it up to his eyes. "Water-based. The mononoke love to play with my ninja, and they tend to use permanent dyes and paints. As I said, they went easy on you." A grin, slightly melancholy. "They tend to target hair as well. Gave one of my top nin a bright-pink mohawk a few years ago." Bright blue eyes were twinkling as he leaned back in the chair. "So yet again, as I said, it or they went easy on you."

"Now you," and those brilliant eyes turned to the other stricken team, a serious looking troop from Hidden Grass as the Suna team exited, the eldest girl dragging her brother behind her. "This is a new look for the mononoke, I'll admit. Is it an illusion, or a full transformation?"

The sensei folded her arms under her chest. The gender of the squad was reversed from the normal dynamics. Instead of two boys, a girl, and a male Jounin, there was an abundance of estrogen within the grass-nin. The formerly-male genin seemed to be a trip and fall away from bursting into tears, but their once-female counterpart seemed bemused as she flexed her bulked-up arms.

"If it was just an illusion, we would have broken it by now," the older woman growled, resisting the urge to shift on her feet. She was a little better off than her younger students, only by the extra years in training as a ninja. Ink black hair fell back in a waterfall of silk, coarser than it had been while the Jounin had been male. This amused the Kusa-nin vaguely, but the lack of a certain part of his/her anatomy bypassed all possible amusement. "We checked the night of the incident. We can find no seals, or markings that might indicate a seal," she offered, waving a hand to indicate her and her team.

"Well, may I first ask what happened before this," he waved a hand helplessly, "this transpired?"

The Jounin pulled herself up into parade rest, hands behind her back. The Hokage may not be her village leader, but he was worthy of respect, especially if she wanted him to help her become a him again. Urg, too many pronouns, even if just only in her head.

"The time was well past the midnight hour when we set up base camp in the west by north-west area of the forest, an estimated three hours out from the gates of Konohagakure. My team were preparing to bed down for the night when Mebaemaru was ordered to fetch water from the nearby creek. Upon his attempt to leave the clearing, he tripped a wire that released a flurry of what must have been tags, which upon touching or grabbing these tags, resulted in the transformation you see before you." Her eyes were dark as she remembered the harmless looking scraps of paper drifting in the air, forcing the transformation of her and her team, how the ones that had not activated have simply released their built-in chakra when they hit the ground. "If this is a trick by Konoha to force my team to miss the exam, then you may be assured that Kusa will not stand for this injustice."

"No, I've never seen this type of trick before in my live!" Minato offered, shaking his head. "I can offer one of my experts on Genjutsu to look at you and your team, and I know that there is a seal master somewhere within the village. Probably doing more, research."

...~...~...

Jiraiya stifled a giggle as he peered through a knot in the wooden fence. The steam made it hard to see, but so many years had helped to hone his eyes into the sharpness of the hawk. Suddenly, he sneezed violently, and he grumbled as he rubbed his nose. "Someone must be talking about me," he muttered.

"How about now? Are we talking or hurting you?"

The old frog perv looked up sharply, only to pale at he towel-clad form of a trio of women, Anko, Tsume, and Yugao.

"eep."

~...~...~

Minato blinked as he suddenly felt proud of himself. He shrugged it off after a second though. He wrote down the address to Kurenai's training ground; no need to send them to her apartment. "The Genjutsu expert will be training here for the next few hours, Takeko-san. I suggest you go and have her look at your team while my people hunt down the master of seals."

He sighed a few minutes later as the quartet staggered out in varying forms of ease. He chuckled as he ran a hand through his hair; if that WAS a prank, it was one his wife would have been thrilled to have pulled off herself. And the paint-drenched young man from Suna was just more proof that the mononoke were as harmless as ever.

Minato was glad. He had kinda missed seeing what the spirits could do when they had gone missing for a few months. His only hope was that the Scroll of Seals could be found, or that when they couldn't use it, that the mononoke had destroyed it. Either way, he had his people on the lookout for any foreign ninja who suddenly knew any of the techniques from the scroll.

Especially the Nidaime's technique. He shuddered at the thought of that one. He had been too young to see it in action, but the thought of having to fight the dead scared the young Hokage.

The corners of his lips lifted as his thoughts drifted back to his wife. Even after thirteen years, he still missed her terribly even though he's had plenty of time to mourn her. The snatches of one of her favorite songs drifted past his lips. "everyday, we started fighting, every night, we fell in love. No one else, could make me sadder, but no one else, could lift me high above..."

He grinned as he summoned a trio of shadow clones to take over the paperwork, heading out to train for a while as he waited for Sasuke. "Nowadays, I cannot find her, but when I do, we'll get a brand new start!" he sang before jumping out the window, ignoring the funny looks from his Kage Bunshin.

~...~...~...~

Gaara sighed as he sat on a tree branch near the road. His mind was troubled, even as he used his chakra to play with the sand he now carried in a series of small gourds around his waist. His control was good enough to create one large gourd out of sand, and with his large reserves he was able to hold it for the entire day. But when he had awoken the nest morning, he had found that his control wasn't good enough to hold while he slept yet. The gourd had fallen apart, flooding the small mansion with the densely packed sand. Shukaku had laughed. Kyuubi wasn't amused.

He nibbled at a nail, the sharp prick of a tiny claw scratching his lip. The claws were new, having started to form only a few weeks after their vacation to Wave. Of course, compared to everything else that had formed within the brothers, claws were not much to worry about. 'I'll panic if we start growing tails!' Naruto had declared after they had shown their developing weapons to the Bijuu. It was one of the few times both demons had laughed at the same thing. Then they had glared at each other and stormed off to different sides of the house.

'Those people last night, they seemed so familiar,' he thought, worrying at the clawed nail. 'Why did I think I knew them?' he wondered. The humans that he and Shukaku had pranked last night had seemed familiar, so he had switched the paint from acrylic house paint to water-based finger paint. He didn't know that two of them had been his family, his brother and sister, because he had been too young to remember them when he had followed Shukaku across the desert and into the forest. Something in his heart though recognized them, and so he had gone easy on them.

Luckily for the boys, even though they had been pranking for days, they had missed the arrival of another familiar face. Familiar to Naruto and Kyuubi anyway. Orochimaru had remembered his encounter with the demon of the forest, and had studied everything he could find about the Tailed Beasts. He didn't know if any of the techniques he found would work, but he had been ready to try.

Gaara's musing was interrupted by the arrival of his brother, blue eyes bright as he crouched next to the sand child. "Gaara-kun, any clue what's happening in the village?" he asked, his own claws picking at the bark of the branch.

The younger child shook his head. "No clue. You have any idea?"

The blonde shook his head, scratching at the back of his head. "No,I was just thinking of going top ask Hinata if she knew anything. You up for that?" he asked.

The sand-child smirked as he stood, balancing easily on the thin branch. "Let's go!"

Naruto smirked, and then the world was quit as the pair disappeared, racing off towards the village.

Deep within the manor, a single chip fell off of Naruto's cup, unseen by any of the demons, and would remain unnoticed until it was too late.