I meant to work on at least one of my Harry Potter fics,but lately I’ve been captivated by the awsomenessthat is Naruto. This fichas been kind of floating around in my head for a while now, and hopefully bywriting it out I can get back to other important things, like my school work(although whether writing or school is more important has always been up fordebate). Sadly, in writing this, I’ve caught another idea for a Naruto ficlet, but we’llsee how this one turns out first. Most chapters are a bit shorter than Inormally write, and I’m switching between viewpoints a lot, but I thinkit’s easier to tell the story that way, since it’s a bit like howthe anime is presented. Also in this one, you get a sampling of the kind ofmusic I listen to (at least, while I’m writing). For simplicity’ssake, I’ve decide to name each chapter after the song written (at leastin part) at the beginning of it. Obviously, these songs aren’t mine, andif I don’t put down the original writer correctly, I’m sorry, buteveryone should know that I adore and appreciate their work.

Girl’s Not Grey

I’ll lay medown tonight,
Much further down.
Swim in the calm tonight.
This art does drown.
What follows me as the whitest lace of light,
Will swallow whole just begs to be imbrued?
What follows has lad me to this place where I belong all erased?
What follows?

AFI

It was a late summer day, and it was raining in Konoha. By the standards of, for instance, the WaterCountry, it was only a light drizzle, but here in the Fire Country it was morelikely to be considered a torrential downpour. Anyone outside for more than aminute would be soaked to the bone, and there was an unseasonable chill to theair which promised a cold for anyone who did not soon go inside to dry off.

The rain hadn’t stopped MaitoGai and Rock Lee, though. They were running aroundthe village one thousand times with big bags of rocks. If they didn’t, Gai had decreed, they must do five thousand pushups. Tenten and Neji, Lee’s longsuffering teammates, had gone to the Hyuuga house totrain shortly before the rain started.

Now, despite the rain, Gai and Leewere on their final lap. Lee was starting to pull ahead of his teacher.“This is the springtime of youth!” he crowed happily, and wasanswered by an encouraging shout from Gai. A fewseconds later he stopped, however, when he caught up to a third figure on theotherwise empty road. He couldn’t remember having seen anyone on any ofhis previous laps, so this person must just have arrived in front of thevillage.

If he had been asked to describe the person in front of him,Lee couldn’t have done it. The figure wasn’t overly tall -somewhere between his own height and Gai-sensei’s - but even that was hard to tell withthe large farmer’s hat that covered their head and obscured their face.The rest of the person, except for a pair of feet in non-descript brown bootsthat looked like they had be worn a very long time, was covered in a largebrown coat, so that Lee couldn’t even be sure if the person he addressedwas a man or a woman. The figure carried a pack, which might once have been thekind of bag favored by the Konoha shinobi,or might have been any other brown bag.

“Good morning,” he greeted the person ascourteously as he could. Gai-sensei had alwaysstressed the importance of good manners when you were a wonderful ninja.“Welcome to Konoha. Is there something I canhelp you find?”

He had the sensation of being scrutinized by a pair ofunseen eyes. “Where might I find the Hokage,please?”