MTL NOVEL Chapter 9: Chapter 9
Deep in the forests of one of Konoha's training grounds, there lied face first in the ground against the soft grass three girls. All three of them were covered in bruises, scratches, cuts and all forms of grime, dirt and overall forest junk. Even their clothes had not escaped unscathed, suffering from having come into contact with claws sharper than they had any right to be.
"We can't chase Tora like this." Sakura muttered, as she picked herself off the ground, removing a few twigs that had gotten caught in her hair as she did, as well as straightening out the strands that had found themselves liberated from her headband and thus began to fall on her face. "It's just too smart and too agile for us. Too small, too."
"Yeah… it can go into all sorts of tiny places we can't follow it through." Naruko said, also raising her face from the grass before letting it fall down again. The grass was soft enough that she just wanted to lie down and rest for a while.
They'd been chasing Tora for the better part of an hour, running nonstop through the forest and even going the full mile and chasing it through the denser parts, where the underbrush became too thick to thread quickly.
Satsuki groaned as she moved so she was leaning against a nearby tree. The underbrush was not particularly comfortable, so she had decided to strip it away first, carelessly ripping the plants off the ground and instead laying on the soft, humid dirt left behind and resting her back against the tree. The bark was a bit too hard to be comfortable, but it was still something like a chair.
Sakura groaned, sitting up fully and trying to figure out a way to beat this mission that had them so vexed. She cursed herself for ever underestimating the difficulty of this mission and for ever accepting it in the first place, though it was obvious they wouldn't have had a choice either way. Then she remembered a very important detail. Naruko…
Yeah. The blonde had come up with a plan that had gotten all three of them passed through Kakashi's bell test, and she WAS the girl who could routinely outwit chunin at the academy, when she performed her oft hilarious pranks. An idea crept into Sakura's brain.
"Hey, Naruko… You're our idea girl here. Any brilliant ideas for this?" Asked the pinkette, ignoring the odd gaze that her other teammate gave her as Naruko seemed to fall into a pensive pout. How she could tell despite the fact that Naruko was face down against the grass, well, that's for you to guess. "Nothing?" That would be a damn shame.
"Wait! I think I've got an idea!" Naruko, began, nodding to herself, her voice muffled by the grass. "I can use henge to make myself some sort of small animal—"
"Naruko, Henge doesn't work like that." Sakura immediately countered. "You can't transform into something smaller than yourself."
"… Why?" Naruko asked, clearly confused by the notion.
"Henge works by creating a chakra layer above yourself that looks like what you transformed into. You don't really transform. How can you not know this?" Sakura asked, raising an eyebrow and being herself confused at the ignorance of the golden haired girl. How could she not know this when she had invented a variant of it that had ensured a particular outcome of the jutsu (IE, a sexy girl)?
"… Really? I always thought it was a real transformation. I… was kinda skipping class the day the Henge was explained." She admitted, rising to a seated position and rubbing the back of her neck. "I just kinda messed with handsigns until I got a combination that worked." She admitted, shrugging.
"…That is both the dumbest and most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." Sakura stated, completely and utterly baffled.
"…I wish I could say the same." Satsuki muttered. "But I've heard her say and do dumber things. I suggest you just roll with it." The Uchiha advised.
"Fine." Sakura said, rolling her eyes. "We'll roll with it. We'll have time to talk about how you managed to screw the Henge to the point of creating your own jutsu later." She added, taking a deep breath. "So… you were saying?"
"Um… I forgot?" Naruko said, blushing and smiling sheepishly.
"I want to punch you so bad right now…" Sakura mumbled. "Be glad my arms don't want to move or I will END you."
The golden haired girl giggled. "Kidding, kidding." She said, raising her hands on the typical surrendering motion. "Anyhow, it's really simple. Trying to clear out the foliage around here… foliage is the correct word, right?" She asked, seeing both of her teammates nod. She gave a grateful nod of her own. "Anyway, it'd take forever to clear the way, so it'd just be easier if I transformed into a small animal and then chased it out of its hiding place. Then you guys catch it when it's coming out."
"…How do we deal with its claws?" Satsuki asked, pointing to her own whisker marks, courtesy of Tora.
Naruko began to tap her pointer finger against her lower lip for a few seconds before making the sound of a light bulb suddenly turning on and snapping her fingers. Then, with a swift motion, she revealed that she was, indeed, wearing something below her jacket by unzipping and removing it. It was only a white training bra, though.
"Naruko, wear a goddamn shirt." Sakura said, her eyebrow twitching.
"But I love the feeling of my jacket on my skin! And Satchan already got all up in my face about this thing!" She said, tugging at the brassiere on her chest and not even trying to hide how uncomfortable she was wearing the thing. "Anyway, you can use my jacket to tie it up. It's very resistant to cuts!"
Indeed, the piece of cloth was still completely unharmed despite Tora's best efforts.
Satsuki sighed. Then she looked down on her blue shirt. It was very clearly abused from the cat's frantic attacks, but it would still fully cover the smaller girl's torso. When she began to pull it off, however, she realized that in her haste (certain events had caused her to oversleep that morning, something she blamed Naruko for) to get going, she had forgotten to wear her undershirt… and was now showing her underwear to her two teammates.
She yelped and hastily pulled the shirt down, blushing up a storm. "I did not just do that." She said.
Sakura nodded, dumbly, blushed scarlet herself and looked not unlike someone who had just given her a bar of candy. For some reason, Satsuki wanted to pinch her cheeks and pull them. Or eat her. That's how much she looked like a tomato.
Naruko, a faint tint of pink in her cheeks, merely whistled. "Satchan's are bigger than mine." She remarked.
Satsuki did not dignify that with an answer. "Just… just get to it, Naruko. We'll figure out how to get you to Konoha decently later."
Neither decided to mention Sakura's reluctance to remove the uppermost layer of clothing she wore, that red battle dress. Neither knew if she was wearing anything under it to lend to Naruko, so it would've been pointless to call her out on being unwilling to help her teammate.
Naruko's hands slowly went through a series of handsigns, or at least slowly compared to her teammates' speeds and she cried out "Henge" before disappearing in a poof of smoke, revealing, in her place, a small, furry and very, very orange creature.
"…A fox. Really?" Sakura asked, raising an eyebrow. She literally couldn't have chosen a worse animal in Konoha. Then again, there were lots of foxes in Konoha's outskirts, which some theorized was because of the presence of the Nine Tailed Fox not all that long ago. Even so, they kept to the outskirts because it was no secret that the civilians made it a sport to hunt them.
The ninja were often too busy to join in, even if they wanted to.
It literally took a whole second for Sakura to notice that Naruko was no longer resting against the grass where she'd transformed. Sakura blinked and saw that Satsuki had moved at an incredible speed. Now, the Uchiha held Naruko, who kicked all her paws futilely, off the ground, looking at the small kit of a fox critically.
The Uchiha clan had been the one to most vehemently hate the Kyuubi no Kitsune, though Sakura didn't really know why. They had also been the sponsors of quite a few fox hunts back in the day. It was absolutely no shock that Satsuki herself would hate foxes, as pretty much everyone in her family did, for some reason.
After a few seconds, the Uchiha just put Naruko on the ground and sighed. "Just… just go." She said, shaking her head.
Naruko did not need to be told twice as she darted into the underbrush, perhaps too comfortable on all fours for this to stop being weird for Sakura. "Maybe it was a worse idea than I thought…" the pinkette stated, rubbing her chin and frowning. It'd take a while, as the foliage was so thick that it was possible Naruko couldn't see shit in there.
She turned to look at the Uchiha, who was sitting on the grass and looking at the opening in the brush that Naruko had jumped into. "So cute…" She mumbled to herself.
Sakura simply let her face meet her palm and groaned. She wished she could say Satsuki was falling from the pedestal she'd set her in but… She had to admit, Naruko's transformation had resulted in an obscenely adorable fox kit. Maybe she just needed to relax. It was obvious that Satsuki was relaxed and in higher spirits than usual.
At least, that's what the smile on the Uchiha's face told her.
She… was not entirely certain that losing the image of the impossibly cool, unflappable Satsuki was a bad thing if it meant seeing her smile more often. She had a very pretty smile, Sakura realized with a blush.
Lost in thought, both members of Team 7 resigned themselves to waiting until Naruko completed her part in the plan and herded the cat in their direction.