Despite all the many interesting things that I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing and experiencing throughout my five years on the road, I can’t say that I’ve ever had to run away from an oversized armadillo whose gender I couldn’t figure out. Its shell had the kanji character for “male” written all over it, but the way it’d address itself like a female and used feminine speech threw me off.
After many minutes of running from the armadillo rolling after me, I finally managed to lose it and began to relocate myself. It separated me from the others, so I wanted to regroup with them soon. Catching my breath, I made my way towards the general direction of my team’s meeting point. I was only a few steps in when suddenly, I felt something catch my feet and I fell over. I winced a bit as I scraped myself against the ground. I rolled onto my back before fumbling back onto my feet while still trying to catch my breath. I froze when I sensed movement behind me and began to look back but stopped when I felt the cold metal of a kunai held up to my neck.
“Hand it over.” The person behind me demanded. He was close, and his voice was right next to my ear.
“I’m failing to understand your request.” I answered calmly, not letting my pulse falter the slightest bit. Keeping my cool has become a habit of mind throughout the years of minor crimes, and I got the feeling I was in no position to try and fight back.
He pressed the kunai against my neck harder, proving my suspicion. His two teammates appeared before me. They were shinobi of Kumogakure; one male, one female. They both looked fierce. I didn’t blink.
“You know what I mean.” He growled, getting impatient with me. “The tags. We know you have one.”
I didn’t react. “You must be mistaken,” I answered flatly, mentally locating the number four tag in my pouch. I felt him draw blood.
“Don’t make me slice your pretty little neck, girl. This isn’t a game and we all know you have it. It’s either you hand it over now and keep your head, or I kill you and take the tag myself. It’s your choice.” His teammates continued to stare me down, silently threatening me to do as he said with their eyes. I frowned and reached into my back pouch, only to ram my elbow into his gut.
He gasped in pain as he fell to the ground, and I immediately jumped into the air as the other two genin lunged towards me. Out of my haste, I nearly dropped the flare bomb I was trying to light before throwing it as high as I could into the air. Just as it went off, I felt a strike against my back, knocking me out.
My head was spinning when I woke up. It looked like I was in a cave of some sort. Ropes kept me held in place. I felt colder than usual, but at least I wasn’t shivering. Frowning at how uncomfortable I was, I looked up, quickly discovering that I couldn’t see much because of the dim lighting. I tried to curse under my breath, but found that my throat was too dry to make a sound other than one of a dying toad.
“Looks like the lil’ girl is awake.” A female voice taunted. I blinked rapidly in attempt to have my eyes adjust to the darkness more quickly. It didn’t take long, and I soon found that all three of them were in the cave as well. “Not feeling too hot, I bet. Sucks to be you.”
I struggled a bit to test the strength of the ropes. They sure didn’t hold back because I could feel the ropes digging into my wrists and ankles. It stung, but I ignored it and looked up at the team, glaring at them.
“How long has it been?” I demanded in a harsh tone.
The male who held the kunai to my throat scoffed. “Heh, I’ll admit that I’m surprised your loudmouthed comrades haven’t found you yet. It’s already the second day of the test, after all. I thought they’d be better than that.”
My eyes grew wide for a moment before I went back to glaring at them. Knowing my team and how big comradeship in Konoha is, my failure to return would most likely cause the other two to freak out. I prayed that they’d at least have some common sense and not assume that I was mauled to death.
“What the hell to you plan on accomplishing by keeping me here? You think you’ll be able to keep me tied up for the rest of the week?” I said, glowering at them. They were clearly underestimating me if they thought I would stay here for six more days. If worse comes to worst, I’d have to resort to using the Youkugan.
“Oh, don’t be silly. We’re tough, but we’re not arrogant.” The female of the team sighed, waving her hand nonchalantly. “We’ll just have to make you lead your pesky comrades into a trap for us.”
I raised an eyebrow, not at all satisfied by this idea. “And how do you plan on doing that? Hopefully you don’t believe that I’ll just agree to this idea of yours.”
“If you don’t, we’ll blow off your legs.” The second male stated with a disinterested tone, gesturing towards my tied of legs. I then felt myself being lifted by the back of my jacket and pulled outside until being thrown on the ground. The light blinded me for a moment and I winced, growling as the shinobi who held the kunai to my neck ran his hand up my legs, pulling the fabric of my pants as he did so. Bastard.
“These here are infused with my chakra, you see?” He said, his fingers brushing over my legs.
I looked down to see what he was talking about. The moment I did, it felt like my heart dropped into my stomach as my breath escaped me. On each of my calves was a paper bomb, which were find when I was the one placing them, but not so much when they were stuck to me. My breath hitched as the reality of it all dawned on me once again.
“One little hand sign is all it’ll take for your legs to be blow right out from under you. We wouldn’t want you to lose your pretty legs, would we?” He slid his hands across my skin as he pulled back, clearly amused by the situation they put me in.
“Quit fooling around, Tsura. We don’t have all day.” The other male shinobi called. Even his own teammate was getting annoyed.
“Lighten up, Ganjou. I’m just messing around.” Tsura responded with that annoying smirk on his face.
“You’re disgusting,” I growled, adjusting myself so I sat with my knees up to my chest.
His devious grin only grew wider as he nodded towards the kunoichi, who then came over and sliced the ropes off. I stumbled a bit as I tried to get up, spewing profanities as I did so. I must have been in that position for at least twelve hours, and perhaps even longer still.
“What a foul mouth you have on you.” Tsura chided mockingly, stepping towards me. I shot him a deadly look and he paused, but that smile never disappeared. “But the rest of you is quite beautiful. It’s a shame we have to be enemies.” That said, he held up my mask before me. My eyes widened and I quickly snatched it from him, hastily tying it around my nose and mouth where it belonged. In my anger and annoyance, I didn’t even notice that it wasn’t on me anymore, and his sarcasm only ticked me off even more.
He laughed, enjoying his teasing far too much for my liking. In a split second, however, his sickening grin disappeared and was replaced with a darker one.
“You will find your teammates and tell them that you were ambushed by another team. You managed to take them down and steal the tag that they had on them.” He held out two tags; the one I had, and the other which I noticed was a fake, but I could only tell after examining it closely. I figured they wouldn’t risk giving up the real one. I caught them out of the air as he tossed them at me. “You will then lead them back here after three hours. We will be waiting here, of course.” I glared as he smiled again. “Run along, now.”
“You’re cowards.” snarled, turning my back to them. “Disgraceful, pathetic cowards.”
I could feel Tsura’s teammates glaring daggers at me, but only heard his voice as I left.
“I prefer to be called smart.”
It took me half an hour to arrive at our meeting point, and another hour until my teammates returned. Their faces were ones of shock and relief when they saw me casually sitting by the small springs that ran down a short cliff. I looked up and casually greeted them holding out the two tags before me.
“I brought you guys a gift.” Two pairs of arms were immediately wrapped around me and I was quickly knocked over by the sudden weight.
“Where have you been?!” Ino asked, finally being the one to actually voice words. “You’ve been gone for an entire day!”
I rubbed the back of my head sheepishly. “Maa…I was being chased by an armadillo. Then I got ambushed by a team, but it’s a good thing they weren’t that impressive, because I just put them in a genjutsu and checked if they had one of these.” I lied perfectly, holding up the number two tag, as well as our own number four. “Turns out they did. Lucky break, eh?”
My teammates only smiled at me, glad to see that I was alright and visually unharmed. Well, no point in telling them about the explosive tags or the threats, unless one of them miraculously knows how to reattach bits and pieces of a pair of blown off legs.
“Speaking of the tags, we just got a number one just now.” Chouji stated proudly, revealing it to me. I nodded once and he slipped it back into his weapon pouch. “We’ll rest for a bit before going out again. Maybe somebody else should hold on to one of the tags. It’s better to lose one than both, right?”
“I’ll take it.” Ino voiced, so I tossed the number four to her. “Why didn’t you come back here after you got rid of the other team?” She asked as we settled down.
I sighed and leaned back on my hands, glancing up at them nonchalantly. “It was a long day. By the time I was safe, I was kilometers away from here and was way too tired to get back, so I waited until morning came. You guys should know that I won’t get taken down that easily, though.” I said reassuringly.
After washing ourselves off a little bit and eating some fruit that grew from nearby bushes and trees, we set off once more to begin our hunt for another over-sized animal. I had two hours until I had to lead them towards the ambush sight. I really wanted to warn them. I really, really wanted to warn them, but I had no idea where those Kumo genin were hiding. I wasn’t going to take any chances, either. It might selfish that I was following along with their plan because it was my legs that were at risk, but it was also because these guys loved their comrades so much. They’d blame themselves and then it’d seem like I didn’t believe they could handle an ambush, which is like underestimating them and not trusting them. As a shinobi, especially one of Konoha, that was just plain insulting.
“Man, how hard is it to find a giant-ass animal?” Ino whined as we scanned the area. “You’d think they would be easy to spot out here.”
“Maybe they overheard Chouji talking about barbecuing them and ran away.” I joked.
“Cut that out, Riku. You’re making him drool.” Ino sighed, rolling her eyes.
Another hour went by in relative silence and no signs of giant animals could be found. When we entered a denser area of the forest, there was a sudden rustling in the trees that broke the silence. We all froze and pulled out our weapons, ready to defend ourselves.
“Who’s there?” Ino demanded as we looked around, though I could tell she was frightened. Chouji was definitely getting tense himself. “Show… Show yourselves!”
I wondered if it was the shinobi from Kumogakure failing to conceal themselves, but they seemed to be much more experienced than us. I then began to wonder if they decided to ambush us a lot sooner. Then again, maybe the rustling is just a small critter roaming about and it was really just nothing.
All of a sudden, the silence was broken by an orange blur falling from the tree above…and right onto me.
“What the--?” I hissed as I pushed myself up, shoving whatever it was that was on me over to the side.
As I got onto my feet, I noticed that the space around me was black. My surroundings turned into what appeared to be a dark room filled with liquid that went up to my ankles. I couldn’t tell what the liquid was, but I wasn’t in any rush to find out. Before me was a cage and in the middle of it was a paper seal.
Cautiously, I made a rotation as I took in the details of my surroundings. Was it a genjutsu? It didn’t feel like one, though. I tried using a dispelling technique anyway, but nothing changed.
“Where the hell am I?” I muttered to myself before I felt a presence behind me. “Who’s there?” I demanded immediately, swinging around with fists up.
“Whoa, wait!” The familiar voice called. “I-It’s only me, Riku!”
“What—Naruto?” I gasped, but he seemed to be the one that was the most shocked.
“What are—why are you—?” He stammered before a good few moments before finally getting over his shock enough to put together an audible sentence. “…How did you get in here?”
I could only blink in response before finally, I shrugged. “You fell on me, and then I ended up in this place. What, do you know where we are?”
Surprisingly, an unfamiliar look of hesitance appeared on Naruto’s expression. He nodded once very slightly before pointing at the enormous cage behind me. “This is…sorta like the inside of my head, where the Kyuubi is…or something like that, anyway.”
My voice escaped me for a moment as I turned around and craned my head back to see the top of the cage. Suddenly, two large eyes snapped open and I jumped back in surprise.
“Tch, one brat was already too much.” A voice growled from the cage as the eyes narrowed into a glare.
“So that’s…the Kyuubi.” I whispered before looking back at Naruto, who nodded in response. The demon responded with a huff and closed its eyes, disappearing into the darkness. I guess it’d rather not bother with two genin intruding. “And all of this is in your head? You mean like your subconscious?”
“I…guess so. I don’t really get it, but I know that nobody else has ever been here before, so it’s really weird that you’re here right now.” He pointed out with a confused expression. “Oh, but don’t worry! It’s not dangerous in here or anything, aha!”
After realizing that I wasn’t corroding or anything, I simply nodded along and offered a faint smile. I wasn’t sure if I was even conscious myself, but it didn’t seem too unbelievable. After all, I knew that he was the jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi, though I had no idea he had a sort of bijuu realm of sorts in his head but hey, what do I know.
I was about to ask him how to get out of here before I realized that I could use this to my advantage, but I wanted to confirm something, first.
“So, this place…” I started while turning to face Naruto completely, seeing as the Kyuubi didn’t even make a sound anymore. “Nobody can see or hear us, or anything like that, right?”
“Yeah, why?” He asked before realization donned upon him. “R-Riku, w-what’re you planning to—?”
“Get your head outta the gutter, idiot.” I immediately interrupted while shooting a glare at him. He gulped and laughed embarrassingly. I could’ve sworn I heard a deep chuckled from behind me as well, but chose to ignore it. “I need your help with something, and it looks like you’re the only person I can tell without any risks. Here me out, alright? It’s really important.”
Naruto’s expression became more serious and he nodded furiously. If this really was his subconscious and it really was Naruto that I was talking to, then all this would stay in our memories when we went back to “the real world.” If that was the case, then I could safely explain the situation to him in his subconscious, so I did.
I told him about how I was ambushed and how the Kumo genin put explosive tags on my legs. I told him to tell his team after, since the enemy wouldn’t be watching them. We would then lead our own teams to the same area so Naruto could tell my own teammates about it while I led the Kumo genin away from them.
“They might bring reinforcements so they have a higher chance at beating us down, so make sure you guys are ready, alright?” I finalized, staring directly into his eyes to make sure he wasn’t hesitant about this. Then again, it’s Naruto. I heard he tried to take on an S-Ranked criminal on his first mission outside of the village, so a little task like this shouldn’t be frightening at all.
“Don’t worry, Riku. You can count on me!” He reassured with a toothy grin while pumping his fists into the air.
With a thanks and a fist bump, I said goodbye to him and the silent demon before being removed from Naruto’s subconscious.
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Chapter notes: Riku gets a little tied up in a bad situation.
Chapter end notes: So I meant to upload this earlier but I fell asleep for literally the entire afternoon and evening and now it's 2:40am but I'm gonna upload it anyway :'D Thanks for reading!