Chapter 10: Perigee 8
Naruto
Ignoring the extra spectator with the awesome hair, the third round started off similarly enough to the previous one with Yuuto and I charging at each other, both of us constantly attacking and counter-attacking, and neither being able to get a significant upper hand on the other. The more he acclimated to my movements and tricks though, the more those similarities quickly began disappearing.
After catching him with my unorthodox way of moving and use of the environment in the first round, catching him with my sheer agility and use of misdirection in the second, and my overall greater experience forcing him to either patch his openings or take hits he should have been able to avoid, he was hyper-alert and on the lookout for more of my bullshit. He started recognizing the bait I left for what it was when on the offensive, and I began getting fewer and fewer hits past his guard when he was on the defensive.
Even less so when it came to finding chances to trip him up. With him being so cautious of what I might pull out next, that lake of opportunity was drier than Suna.
Eventually, our dance of fists, kicks, and blunted blade came to an end when I misjudged how solid his footing really was.
While barely managing to lean away and backhand his blade to the side when he went for a heavy two-handed downward slash, I moved in close to make a counter attack, throwing a haymaker towards his chest. He took a page out of my book and pivoted on his lead foot, twisting to the side to lean out of the way of the hit with a bead of sweat dripping down his face. Given my own momentum, this had the side effect of bringing us too close for either of us to effectively follow up with an attack; he didn't have room to swing his sword with any real force because we were practically inches from each other, while my other hand didn't have the room to maneuver for a proper grapple, so all I could do was grab a handful of his jacket to prevent him escaping too far.
In the first place though, the haymaker itself was just a feint. My real counter attack was always going to be a grapple, I just needed to force him to move first, and whichever direction he chose would determine how I went about it.
With my fingers gripping his clothes and my forward momentum pulling me past his sidestep, I opened my fist and used our point of contact to turn my momentum into a centripetal force, swinging my open hand around to grab Yuuto's shoulder for a throw while he was off balance–
–or at least that's what I would have done, if it weren't for his front foot sliding across the grass and swiping my own feet out from under me. I hadn't even hit the ground before his blade smacked me in the side with a meaty thwack.
"Shi- oof!" My back hitting the ground forced a grunt out of me. "Owww…" I groaned with my eyes squinting shut to block out the light of the sun, which hung about halfway down the sky at this point. I laid there bonelessly for a moment to catch my breath and let the ache die down, letting my palms rest on the soft grass.
I felt a shadow move across my face a few seconds later, and opened my eyes to the sight of my opponent's face looking down at me from above, a slight grin on his face.
"Looks like it's my point this time, eh Uzumaki-kun?" Yuuto bantered teasingly as he crouched down. In a reversal of the previous round's ending, this time it was the other blond offering his right hand to help me up.
The bastard didn't even have the courtesy to look winded, his breathing coming completely naturally as if he'd just been standing there instead of in the middle of combat.
My fingers curled in the grass as I chuckled.
"Don't get ahead of yourself, Yuuto!" I said as I reached up and clasped his hand with my own. He swiftly pulled me up to a stand, some blades of grass I'd been gripping falling to the ground.
"You may have gotten me that time, but I'm still up two-one!" I said with a matching grin, placing my hands in my pockets as I took a few steps back for the next round. "I can do this all day."
Yuuto also stepped back, smiling indulgently. "Well then, I hope I can continue to meet your expectations." He then blinked as if just realizing something. "Oh, and please, feel free to call me by my given name," he said with a smaller, more genuine smile. "A friend of Koneko's is a friend of mine."
"Sure thing!" I pulled my hands out of my pocket and gave a single thumbs up. "But only if you call me Naruto."
His smile widened, eyes crinkling slightly. "Can do, Naruto-kun."
It was a little bit weird hearing a guy my age call me that, since the only people who usually did that were Hinata and my adult role models, but I ignored the feeling.
At least it wasn't like when that creepy freak Orochimaru did it.
'He seems to smile a lot,' I noticed. 'It's kinda like the thing that Kakashi-sensei does with his eye.'
For a guy with eighty percent of his face covered at all times, sensei was really good at conveying his expressions with the smallest shifts of his single visible eye. In a similar way, Kiba seemed to deliberately shift his smile and other expressions to perfectly match what he intended to show others when speaking, rather than let his expression shift in a more natural and gradual manner.
It was a surprisingly manipulative social trick for a guy as genuinely nice as he seemed to be, but it probably helped him keep up the 'princely' image of himself at school, if what Mitsuri had told me about his reputation was true.
A random thought crossed my mind and almost had me snorting. I imagined Kiba wearing a facemask and a forehead protector covering one eye just like Kakashi, walking through Kuoh academy while greeting the other students, and everyone just acting like it was normal.
I couldn't really picture Kakashi wearing anything other than his shinobi gear, but my time living here has made me appreciate just how odd some of us looked when dressed for battle back home.
Like those absolutely massive purple rope belts that Sasuke and that snake-bastard used to hold their clothes together. Now that I think about it, even that bone-bastard and those other Sound ninja had those same goofy ropes.
The weirdos.
I settled back into my stance as Kiba did the same, both of us looking to Koneko to call the start of the fourth round.
"Three." She began the countdown, and we gave each other our undivided attention waiting for the signal. "Two."
"One."
I didn't catch what came after one, I just saw her hand falling and shot towards my opponent.
Things stayed in Kiba's favor, and the fourth round ended similarly to the third, with me trying to exploit an opening with a counter attack but getting punished for it, eventually leading to my loss. I was forced to block what would have been a "lethal" hit with my arm, meaning I wasn't allowed to use any part of that arm below the spot it was hit for the rest of the round.
Being down a hand made it that much more difficult for me to pull out a win, whether it be through grappling or just straight up beating his ass.
In the first place, he was already a bit too fast and tough for the second option to be realistically viable. Despite his slim build, he barely flinched the few times I got solid hits on him anywhere other than his diaphragm or liver. He was much more durable than he seemed.
Even so, I did put up a good fight, almost disarming him when he lunged for a thrusting attack. I'd managed to position myself so that when I dodged, his sword went between my arm and body just under my armpit, and slid cleanly through the empty sleeve of my jacket. I then squeezed my arm around the covered blade, hugging it close to my body, and jerked to the side to try yanking it from his grip.
Unfortunately, that was when I discovered his grip's strength was much stronger than the power of his strikes would suggest, and all I did was make him stumble slightly. As he managed to pull away before I could adjust my strategy, I realized that unlike his movement speed and attack strength, his grip probably just wasn't something that ever crossed his mind when he lowered himself to a relatively-human level.
He was still holding back a lot more than I expected, then.
In the end he managed to get me with a stab in the side, the same one my disabled arm was on, when I wasn't fast enough to get back out of his range following the failed attempt to take away his blade, making the score 2-2.
Going into the fifth match, Kiba seemed to have settled on a strategy of staying on the defensive and making use of his superior reach, speed, and reaction times to focus on stopping my own assaults and counter-attacking.
This forced me to constantly be aggressive in an attempt to get into my preferred range, since otherwise his greater reach allowed him to casually take shots at me while staying at a safe enough distance. The issue was, not only did he have greater reach, speed, and durability than me, he also seemed to have a similar level of stamina, but his chosen tactic against me had him using much less of it than me, so I was growing tired much quicker than him.
Eventually, he countered my latest attempt to swipe his legs out from under him with a sweep of his own that overpowered my sluggish attempt, sending me to the grass and placing his sword at my neck.
We continued this cycle a few more times, each match ending with me on the ground in some way, getting up and resting for a few minutes with my hands in my pockets, and then proceeding to fight and lose again.
The other issue I was having against him was that, as I had demonstrated in the first two rounds, both an experience advantage and unpredictability could overcome a difference in overall strength.
The keyword being could.
The first factor to take into account, was that for experience to trump ability, the difference between the two fighter's sheer power, skill, and speed had to be within a certain range, dependent on the stronger fighter's capability. Past a certain threshold, there was no amount of experience that could overcome a person able to move faster than you could blink.
Kiba was within this threshold for me, or at least, he was holding himself back enough to be within this threshold. I had a lot more experience fighting a bunch of different people and styles than he did, that was something really easy for me to figure out based on his struggle to effectively deal with new tricks the first time he'd seen them, and his relative straightforwardness. His move set was a bit too clean.
Once you get enough experience, you've probably seen so many things that even completely new tricks are similar enough to something you've dealt with in the past, that you can at least somewhat answer them, and sometimes even use them yourself if they fit your style.
But gaining experience was a two-way street, a double-edged sword. Just as you learned from fighting different opponents, opponents learned from fighting you.
Going back to how this was a problem for me, Kiba didn't need to have a lot of experience fighting different opponents to beat me, not when he was currently gaining all the relevant experience directly from fighting me multiple times in a row.
And with how quickly he caught on and adjusted to my style, I'd bet good money he would have been considered a 'genius' alongside Sasuke or Neji back in the Academy. All it took was a bit more than an hour of sparring with a ninja to properly recognize most of my dirty tricks before I could land them. He was practically half-way there to "looking underneath the underneath" even without actual ninja training.
But only half-way.
After my sixth loss in a row and the eighth match in total, I figured it was about time to make him understand the other half of the phrase, even if he'd never actually heard it before.
"It's starting to get a bit late, and you guys haven't even introduced me to your red-headed friend yet," I began from my spot sitting in the grass, mostly recovered from the previous round, "so how about we go for one more round before calling it for the day?" I planted my hands on the grass to push myself up.
"That's perfectly fine with me, Naruto-kun." Kiba agreed with a confident smile. He blinked a moment later, the expression dropping as if I'd said something in a foreign language, and looked at the two girls on the patio. "Wait, did Koneko-chan not introduce you to Rias yet?"
"Nope," I said. I committed the name to memory and made a point of deliberately throwing a grin Koneko's way while she was eying me getting up from my seat, and settled my hands in my pockets again.
She pretended she didn't hear or see us, immediately averting her eyes to look at something in the distance. Kiba audibly sighed in fond exasperation.
After a couple seconds, Koneko's golden eyes glanced back towards me to meet my gaze.
I tilted my head slightly, throwing a quick glance at Kiba before locking eyes with her again.
She rolled her eyes, nodded slightly, and mimed zipping her lips shut.
Kiba himself eyed the interaction in bemusement, glancing my way to try figuring out what was up, but not seeing anything out of the ordinary about my person.
Koneko caught on pretty early if I've been reading her right, but as far as Kiba was aware, nothing new had happened during this particular pre-match rest period aside from that little non-verbal exchange. The lack of any obvious tell had him suddenly suspicious and on guard though.
As he should be. The second factor, unpredictability…
As he settled into his stance, I stayed standing mostly-casually and took stock of myself, hands still resting in my pockets.
My muscles were starting to get sore in the way that would need an hour or two of rest to recover, rather than the few minutes I'd been getting away with until now, and my upper body was littered with small and large bruises, primarily on the arms. Those would heal by the time I got to bed tonight, but until then, they will continue aching. My school jacket was utterly wrinkled and lightly covered in grass and dirt stains, but other than needing a serious wash, the only direct hit it had taken hadn't damaged the actual threading of it, so I wouldn't need to stitch any holes closed as long as it didn't get any tears in this final round.
'Knowing my luck, it probably will,' I thought in resignation. 'Eh, at least I have a spare. If it happens, it happens. I probably need the practice to knock the rust off of my sewing skills anyway.'
My borrowed clothes on the other hand, would likely need some hefty scrubbing to remove all the greens and browns staining them.
Pushing that tangent out of my mind for now, I gave the only other boy out here my attention with a sly grin that was at odds with my current loss streak. It just seemed to put him even more on guard.
"I'm starting to get a bit exhausted. Getting through your defense and escaping the counter attack is tough work when I have to do it so many times, ya know?" I teased. "I think for this last round I'm gonna let you come to me. See how good you are on the attack. And who knows?" I said, pulling my hands out for an open-palmed shrug, "Maybe you rely too much on your speed, and I won't even need my hands to avoid you since I don't have to focus on finding openings anymore." I finished with a wide, taunting grin on my face, plopping them back in its pocket.
Kiba had eyed the gesture, his gaze flicking between my pockets and my hands. He focused on my noticeably dirtier left one on its descent into my shorts. A competitive smirk of his own slowly stretched across his face and he straightened out of his defensive posture.
"Hoh? I may not tend to act on it openly, but even I have my pride as a swordsman," Kiba stated seriously, dropping into a much more aggressive stance, his dominant side turned toward me and his sword held close to his body with the point aiming at my chest. "Well then; I guess I'll just have to show you my very best, if I want you to acknowledge my bladework on its own merits!" He declared with a fierce smile. "Koneko-chan, if you would?"
"Only if this really is the last one, and you buy me snacks later. I'm getting bored." Koneko pretended to want to hurry this along, despite her obvious interest in seeing how this particular match would play out.
The redhead– 'Rias,' I reminded myself– stifled a giggle behind her hand at the smaller girl's blatant attempt at extortion.
"Of course." Kiba agreed to her demand, not taking his eyes off of me.
Even with him knowing from the start that I was up to something and definitely trying to bait him, he was taking said bait hook, line, and sinker for the sake of his own enjoyment and pride.
He also definitely made the connection between my hand and my seemingly out-of-nowhere confidence.
Perfect.
I shifted slightly back and kept my weight evenly distributed on the balls of my feet as Koneko called out a countdown.
"Three."
The second factor to take into account when two different tiers of fighters clashed, was that the first factor only applied in a straight fight, where both combatants fought with conventional styles. Unpredictability acted as a multiplier for experience, and by definition didn't care about normal fighting conventions. There were no rules in a real fight that said you couldn't prepare a trap for your opponent ahead of time, just like using experience from past fights in current ones, and there was nothing saying you couldn't use tools gathered on the fly to your advantage either.
"Two."
The thing about being unpredictable, is that it's a matter of information control. Not just gathering or hiding information from your opponent, but also deciding what to give them in order to lead them towards certain conclusions. Sometimes, the best way to hide from someone what you're planning on doing…
"One."
… Is to let them figure out exactly what you're doing.
"Go."
Kiba's bent legs released their stored potential energy and he dashed at me pretty quickly. Unlike the previous rounds, he kept himself restrained to my level of speed and no faster.
I sidestepped to his dominant side as he began with a lunging stab, which transitioned into a backhanded horizontal slash that I backpedaled away from as he gave chase. His sword sliced through the air several times in quick succession, alternating between one and two-handed strikes at seemingly random intervals, forcing me to keep giving ground even as I ducked and weaved out of its path.
Whenever he went for a stab, I sidestepped to his dominant side, forcing him to adjust his footing or else let me get around his backside. When he slashed at my sides, I counterintuitively back-stepped diagonally in the direction the swing came from, simultaneously dodging the initial swing and giving myself more time to react to the follow up from further away. When he attacked from above, or targeted my legs, I pivoted and twisted away from the blade, or jumped back out of range.
For what was actually closer to a minute but felt five times longer, his unrelenting attacks pushed me back and forth across the entire yard in a constant barrage of flourishing steel and trampled grass. And sure, it was an incredible show of skill and for a human teenager in this world to make me put in this much effort, noticeably better than what he'd shown me beforehand; It was just, without his speed backing him up, for all the intensity of his advance and the close calls where he almost got me…
… He still hadn't managed to land even a single scratch on me. I felt my anticipation and excitement slowly cooling down.
We finally reached a lull in the combat as my back rapidly approached the hedge barrier, and I no longer had room to jump away from the oncoming swipe at my legs.
So instead of jumping back, I jumped over the swing and slammed my foot down on the blade as it passed below me, trying to plant it into the lawn as I landed.
Props to Kiba, even while restraining his speed, he moved fast enough to jump back right before that could happen, and so we stood there staring at each other as a breeze swept between us.
"So," I broke the silence, hands still in my pockets and breathing only slightly taxed. "What happened to 'showing me your very best'? Even without my hands, this is easier than before." I said, hiding my disappointment behind a taunting smirk. It wasn't the entire truth, but it was close enough. I was definitely overselling it a little.
While it was less physically demanding on my body, I had to give more special attention to being deliberate in how I dodged in order to consistently keep myself out of his range. Regardless, after him hyping himself up like that, I kinda expected more.
The swordsman chuckled like he knew something I didn't, not bothered at all for some reason.
"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. I wasn't giving it my all just yet," Kiba said slyly.
Oh?
"I just wanted to figure out your movement habits when you're committed to evading." He explained with a smirk. "I've experienced you on the aggressive, and probing for openings to counter me, so I wanted a fuller picture of how you fight for our final engagement." His smirk widened. "I think I've seen enough, so how about we begin for real now?"
This guy…
"Hahahahaha! You cheeky bastard, you stole my line!" I burst out laughing in relief, and a not-so-tiny amount of embarrassment. "Or maybe I'm the bastard here, looking down on you after I've been getting my ass handled for the past hour, haha!"
I spent all that time internally monologuing about information superiority, and here this green-as-grass highschooler was, taking an opportunity I unintentionally gave him to figure me out, while I was waiting for the right time to trigger the trap I'd set. Not only that, but he turned around my own bait on me, saying he wanted to see me in action in the one scenario he hadn't seen yet.
'I guess I've gotten complacent, after all my time in this world,' I thought mirthfully.
'... No, I shouldn't try to sugarcoat it.'
I'd gotten arrogant.
Oh sure, I could argue that I've stuck to minor tricks and grapples instead of my bread and butter in the name of fair competition; that if I had a blunted kunai we could both really go at it in the way I initially wanted, instead of playing around with this half-assed point-based competition we ended up on. I could argue that if it was actual sparring, I wouldn't have let him truly get one over me in just a single session.
It wasn't even hard to admit it to myself, because even at the absolute lowest I've been since I was a pre-teen, I still noticeably outperformed even the most dedicated adults in this world. Even in the earlier days at the Konoha Academy, I was able to casually sustain a run that would clock in as a record-breaking sprint here, and by the end near graduation I was able to shatter logs with my bare fists. Until I met Koneko, I hadn't truly considered anyone to be my peer, being the 'biggest fish' around in almost all physical categories to my knowledge.
'It's a good thing I got this wake-up call when I did.'
I hadn't even noticed my growing tendency to outright dismiss the threat fighters of this world could pose without their guns. If I hadn't met Koneko, and the first person I met from the so-called "Moonlit World" was more on the unfriendly side, I could have been in serious trouble if it came to blows!
"But yeah, you're right," I said with a grin as my laughter died down. My eyes met with his, and I'm certain he saw the same anticipation in me that I saw in him. "May the better fighter w-"
I twisted away as Kiba's sword lunged through the space I'd just occupied. "-oah!"
The handful of sod I flung at his face from my left pocket was similarly dodged with a pre-emptive tilt of his head, starting the moment my hand left my shorts.
The time for words was over it seemed.
Instead of transitioning into a slash that I would just sidestep again, he kept his momentum, and with just a minor adjustment turned his lunge into a shoulder tackle in an attempt to slam me into the hedge at my back. I didn't have the speed to fully escape it or the footing to challenge it, so I twisted with the hit and let it spin me around, my back being fully turned towards him for just a moment.
Knowing that I was planning something myself, Kiba had manipulated that little warm-up fight and what he'd learned of my dodging habits to put my back to the wall, and since the fight never technically ended when we stopped to talk, pulled a surprise attack to force me to dodge on instinct.
Given that my options were to either dodge to the side where his free hand was waiting, launch myself backwards into a bush where I'd be an easy target, or try to get around his backside where I'd have much more room to maneuver, there was only one actual option for me, which he anticipated and abused perfectly.
And if he had planned that far ahead, there was no way he wouldn't take advantage of being out of my sightline for that split second my back was turned. He'd been on the receiving end of that twice already to know just how dangerous that could be.
All of these things went through my head in that split second, condensed into the form of a single thought;
'Why the hell are the bishounen guys I fight always so damn talented?'
It was about time to unleash my own trap for him, anyway. He wasn't the only one who got a free action out of my back being turned. The only question remaining, as my twist started bringing him back into the edges of my vision… 'is he aiming high, or low?'
A flash of motion from below, coming from my right side.
'There!' He was dashing at me low to the ground, a backhanded slash flying for my legs.
I finished my spin by jumping backwards and over his blade, my body moving through the air parallel to the hedge as I saw his eyes narrowing in satisfied focus. He smoothly aborted the attack midway through, altering the motion and using his body's momentum pull his sword hand close to his chest in an instant, before rushing forward in a rising thrust. Time seemingly slowed down as my adrenaline pumped, and I tried to time it just right.
My feet just barely touched the ground.
My swinging hand released the payload I'd discretely refilled it with at his face again.
The tip of his training sword closed the distance to my center mass.
He turned his head and closed his leading eye in time, letting it smack ineffectively off of his cheek.
There was no time to dodge.
I winced, the sound of the composite material and bone smacking together.
Kiba's eye narrowed further, even as a grin stretched across his face.
His sword was passing between my body and my right arm, and I was pulling my sore left fist back to my side from between us.
I had continued the motion of my swing, punching the flat of his blade off course as it approached. He forced me to actively and directly defend myself with just his true opening move.
'My turn.'
I instantly clamped my right arm against my body to pin the blade between them, and jerked to the right with almost the entirety of my weight. Kiba was holding on tightly, but with his own right arm also being his sword arm, this left him at an awkward angle with little ability to leverage his free left hand to help.
Just to be sure, I slipped my own left hand in and out of my pocket for a third time and threw the contents at his face a moment later.
He flinched and sputtered as the small lump of grassy topsoil exploded all over his cheek again, but still held on to his sword while stumbling forward with a squint. I swung my now free hand down to clamp around his wrist and squeezed his tendons while doing another spin to the right. I pulled his wrist past me with the motion, the handle twisting out of his loosened grip as I threw him away from me by the arm.
He recovered almost immediately and turned to face me while quickly brushing the dirt off his face, but by that point I had gripped the handle of the sword myself, unsheathed it from its place under my armpit, and tossed it up on top of the tall hedge wall that was now to my left.
"Man, you really are super skilled," I complimented him with a grin. I pulled the fabric of my pocket out, to show its stained but otherwise empty state. "If I'd prepared any less than I did, you could have turned that around real quick."
He smiled angelically at me, the entire right side of his face marked with smears of brown.
"Has anyone ever told you that you are absolutely infuriating to fight against, Uzumaki-kun?"
I laughed at the switch back to using my last name. "Hey, don't blame me! It's your fault for pushing me this far, I need tricks like this just to keep up."
He let the cheery act drop in favor of a deadpan stare. "Of course. My mistake."
I glanced down at my shadow stretching across the grass in front of me. It was noticeably longer than it was when we first got out here.
"Let's wrap this up." I stated, to which he nodded in assent. "You're good with a sword in your hands, but let's see if you've been slacking with your fists!"
I held my left hand slightly in front of me, palm-forward, as I slid my right foot back and bent my knees.
Kiba smiled wryly.
"My teacher only made sure I knew the basics before he had me focus on the blade," he said as his hand rose into a passable boxers stance. "So don't don't hold this against me, but I'm not going to slow myself down this time."
"Don't worry then, I won't drag this out either," I said with a smirk, which slipped into a slight grimace. "I seriously need a shower right about now, this is the dirtiest I've gotten since I went to the hospital."
I shook my head to get back on track. I turned my hand and curled my fingers twice in a 'come here' gesture. "Come, show me what you've got."
He practically flew at me in an instant–
Thump
"-Agh!"
-before an impact sounded out and he sputtered, clutching his face and trying to wipe the dirt off.
"When did you even–?! kuh!"
He was cut off as my right arm– the one that just flung my first and final payload at him– connected across his chest in a lariat, sending him crashing down onto his back, flipped by his own momentum.
He wheezed as the breath was knocked out of him for the second time today.
"Kiba down, Uzumaki wins." Koneko called out. "Kiba with six to Uzumaki's three."
The redhead–
'Shit, what was her name again? Rin? Risa? No wait, it was something foreign sounding. I'll just call her Red for now.'
–began clapping loudly.
"Those were excellent matches, you two!" she called out.
I sent Red a grin and a thumbs up, before crouching down beside Kiba with my elbows resting on my knees.
"Uzumaki Naruto's First Rule of Combat: If you enter a fistfight with nothing on you but your fists, it's your fault if you lose when the other guy pulls a knife on you." I said cheerfully. "I don't have any other rules thought up right now, but the second would probably be 'never let a giant snake swallow you whole,' or something like that."
Kiba had one forearm held over his eyes to block out the sun as he caught his breath, but shifted it enough to shoot a baffled look my way.
"But hey, don't take my word for it, I'm just the guy who put you on the ground three times." My grin probably radiated enough smugness to drive a man to contemplate murder.
"As I said. Infuriating." He grumbled.
I laughed and held out my hand. "Want some help up?"
"I'd appreciate it, thank you." He accepted the offer with grace, and grasped my hand.
"Come on," I said with a grin, pulling him up with me into a standing position. "Let's go introduce me real quick and then hop in the showers."
He nodded and we turned to walk over to the girls.
I paused and looked over my shoulder for a moment.
"Oh, uh… should we grab your sword from the bushes real quick?"
Kiba just shook his head and chuckled like I'd said something funny.
"Don't worry, that issue is already handled." he said with a weirdly mysterious smile. "For now, let's go meet with the girls and get cleaned up." He turned and started walking towards the mansion.
What?
I looked back at the hedge, seeing no sign that anyone had snuck past me and climbed it in the past minute. No gaps in the leaves, snapped branches, anything like that.
And that was assuming I wouldn't have heard anything in the first place.
'Does he mean they have someone regularly check the yard for misplaced swords?' I thought incredulously, looking back towards the building. 'That would actually be insane. Easily doable for them, but still insane.'
Then I remembered something Koneko briefly mentioned about Devils; Namely, the fact that they have their own form of Summoning/Reverse-Summoning technique. One that, by the sound of it, was much more common among their kind and convenient to use than Summoning was for shinobi.
Suddenly what he said made a lot more sense
"Oh, I get it now," I reached a hand up to scratch the inside of my ear, before seeing the dirt on my fingers and deciding that wasn't a good idea. "You coulda just said you poofed it away with your devil powers, y'know."
For some reason, Kiba tripped.
"Six-four, point to Uzumaki." Koneko's deadpan voice rang out.
Red looked on in bemusement as I broke down laughing, turning and saying something to Koneko that I couldn't hear from here.
Kiba stood back up and acted like nothing happened.
"I'm quite sure I have no idea what you're talking about." He said, then continued walking.
I smiled as my laughter died down and I moved to catch up to him, lacing my fingers together behind my head.
Today has been fun.
While approaching the girls, I noticed that it wasn't just my imagination that Red had been eyeing me strangely at times. She currently had a friendly smile on her lips, but her eyes seemed a little distracted, almost like she was looking right past me.
I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder and instead pulled a hand from my head to wave.
Red beat me to it with a wave of her own.
"You must be the new friend Koneko-chan has mentioned," the busty redhead greeted with another smile, "You can call me Rias, I'm her club President and one of her friends." She tilted her head slightly with a wry smirk as she looked at me. "You may have heard my name passed around in school. I may have a bit of a reputation."
I wasn't quite sure what she meant by that, so I ignored it in favor of introducing myself as Kiba and I stopped in front of her and Koneko. I had to look up to meet her eyes.
Damnit! She's just as tall as Kiba!
"Heh, it's nice to meet another friend of Koneko-chan's!" 'I definitely won't forget your name this time, I swear!' "I'm Uzumaki Naruto, but you can call me Naruto if you want," I said with a grin. It turned sheepish a moment later. "And uh, I kinda don't really pay attention to people at school unless it's the teacher or someone's trying to talk to me, so I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about." I admitted. "Apparently Kiba's sort of a big deal or whatever, but I only heard of him when Koneko-chan mentioned him."
She blinked and looked at Koneko, seeming stumped, while Kiba chuckled awkwardly next to me.
Koneko nodded. "Uzumaki-kun wanted to ask the Kendo club to fight him, but he would have beat most of them easily."
Rias shook her head and her smile returned.
"Speaking of, that was an impressive showing." She nodded in Kiba's direction in acknowledgement. "Not a lot of people our age can force Yuuto-kun to actually try, let alone beat him when he is. You must have worked really hard to get to the level you are now."
"Ah, yeah," I smiled awkwardly, internally cringing at the irony of her saying that about my current state. "I have a lot of experience fighting guys way more naturally talented than me, and he'd have fit right in with them, so I guess you could say that I've picked up a couple tricks over the years to even the playing field and then some."
Her smile turned coy. "Oh? You wouldn't happen to have any more up your sleeve, ones that you haven't shown us, would you?"
I shook my head childishly. "Nuh-uh, not telling!" I stopped and smirked, looking up into her eyes.
"I'd have to be a pretty crappy ninja to just give away all my secrets, ya'know?"
She blinked.
"Oh, right. That makes sense," she agreed.
Her eyes widened suddenly and her mouth opened–
–just for Koneko's hand to reach up and cover it, blocking whatever Rias was trying to say. The crimson haired girl didn't seem to even notice her words getting muffled, clasping her hands together in front of her chest excitedly as she kept trying to speak.
"You two stink and I'm hungry." The snow-haired girl said blandly, arm stretched comically high above her to reach her taller friend's face. "Go take your showers already."
I looked at the short girl with raised eyebrows, getting her to look my way. "Didn't you just eat like a whole plate of cookies not even an hour ago?" I asked incredulously.
"It was two plates, and those were snacks. I want actual food." She said it as if it were obvious and made perfect sense.
"Huh. I can't help but wonder where it all goes," I mused while smirking down at her "petite" (flat) form. 'Since it's obvious none of it goes to your chest' is what I thought, but I wisely kept it to myself. Even I know when to stop poking a sleeping tiger.
…Uh-oh. Her eyes narrowed.
Did she read my mind or somethi-?
"Are you sure you don't want any help?" Kiba asked with some concern, looking over his shoulder at me as we walked down the hallway.
I chuckled weakly, limping along after him on our way to the showers, my shin aching.
"Don't worry about it," I waved him off. "Sometimes a guy just has to deal with the consequences of his actions. Even when those actions themselves are avoided, the initial intent can be enough to invite reprisal."
He looked even more confused now, but shrugged helplessly and just kept walking.
Koneko sure can throw a helluva mean kick.
Chapter 11: Perigee 9
Koneko
"I'm ordering the food while we wait for them." I said to my [King] while tapping on my phone, getting no response from her.
We were currently sitting in one of the larger and comfortably furnished living rooms, on one of the larger and plusher couches in the home, which faced a floor-to-ceiling OLED screen TV. The two boys were currently getting cleaned up in the home-gym's shower room, and would meet back up with us up here on the second floor when they were finished changing.
The room we were in wasn't quite a home theater– that was over in the western wing, on the 1st floor and recessed into the ground– but it was a much more convenient place to eat, with a long knee-high table stretching parallel to the couch in between it and the screen. The lights could be dimmed on a dial too, so while the windows and creme colored walls meant this room couldn't get quite as dark as the theater, we did at least have the ability to lower the brightness enough for the picture to look good.
Of course, none of this actually mattered to everyone who lived here, being Devils with perfect night vision, but I guess the interior designers accounted for us having non-devil company over at some point.
"I'm getting sushi catering, I'll get Kiba his usual from that Italian place he likes, and Uzumaki mentioned his favorite food is Ramen earlier." I continued. "What should I get you?" I asked her.
Again, to no response.
I turned away from my phone to stare at her blankly. She'd break down and acknowledge me if I stared hard enough.
She always does.
A little extra encouragement to speed up the process wouldn't hurt though.
"Stop pouting and tell me what you want to eat, or I won't order anything for you."
When the boys had approached us after their final round, introductions had been short and swift. I'd made sure of that. The excuses I gave for the sake of my nose and stomach weren't exactly lies– they really did smell and I really was hungry– but I mostly just wanted to cut off Rias's incoming Japanophile-induced outburst when she found out Uzumaki was a ninja.
I enjoyed watching anime just as much as any other Japanese teenager, but Rias was an Otaku among Otakus for everything Japan. That aspect of her didn't bother me at all, but I was at least aware that it could be overwhelming to people who didn't know her.
"I'm not pouting." She denied while pouting, head turned away from me.
"You are." I deadpanned.
"Fine, maybe just a little." She admitted, reluctantly uncrossing her arms and turning to face me. "But only because my cute little [Rook] kept the fact that she knew a ninja— a real life ninja!— a secret from me!" She accused me with playfully narrowed eyes.
I suppressed a reflexive eye-twitch at her calling me little. It didn't usually bother me when she did since she practically raised me after everything that happened, but so soon after Uzumaki obviously mocked my height, my mind was unintentionally on the lookout for any perceived comments on my size.
Instead, I stared at her even more deadpan than before.
"I've known him for less than a week," I stated blandly, "and spent maybe six hours with him outside of classes, tops." She began to fidget under my gaze as my words reached her. "Half of that was yesterday, and most of the other half was today."
I stared at her some more.
She broke first, as expected, looking away with a slightly embarrassed expression
"Okay, okay, I get your point! You couldn't have known." She admitted defeat. "Just stop looking at me like that!" She whined.
If I averted my eyes, it was definitely because she asked me to stop staring, and pointedly not because I had learned that the boy named Uzumaki Naruto was a ninja within the first minute of actually interacting with him face to face.
I cleared my throat.
"Anyways, food. What am I getting you?" I asked for the third time.
Rias hummed lightly while leaning back to sink further into the couch cushions. "It's been a while since I've had ramen, so I'd like some too if you would," she requested after a moment of thought. "Miso tonkotsu, please."
I nodded, adding her order to the cart.
"Oh, and get something for Akeno too, just in case she decides to come back after she's done with her plans for the day," Rias added. "I already let her know we have a human guest over for now, so she shouldn't just teleport in if she drops by. It would be a shame to have to wipe Uzumaki-kun's memory."
I nodded, adding an oyakodon and finalized the orders, confirming them for delivery.
Despite Akeno's prodigious skills as a chef, her personal tastes leaned more towards simple comfort foods like the common chicken-and-egg on rice bowls.
Then the second half of what she said hit me.
"You wouldn't need to wipe his memory anyway." I denied with a shake of my head.
She glanced at me with a quirked eyebrow and sly smile. "Are you sure? He may be a ninja, but ultimately he's just a normal person, one who shouldn't be aware of our side of the world unless we plan on involving him."
'Did she forget he was talking to Kiba about fighting a guy with a sword made out of lightning earlier?' I thought in confusion.
It occurred to me a moment later that even though I heard them speaking clearly, they might have been out of range of her hearing entirely. Which would make sense, with how surprised she was to find out he was a ninja upon being introduced.
I could tell that she already accepted my declaration, and was just playing the Devil's advocate to hear out my reasoning. From the look on her face, she was probably trying to find a way to tease me again.
Best to nip that in the bud.
I stared her dead in the eye. "I'm sure, because he already knows I'm a devil, and he definitely suspects Kiba is too."
That surprised her, going by the widening of her eyes.
"Really? How did that end up happening?" She questioned curiously. "And Kiba-kun was holding back significantly, and they were relatively evenly matched basically the whole time. Why would he suspect Kiba?"
I rolled my eyes.
My [King] didn't so much 'lean' towards, more like embodied the caster-type mindset entirely. She didn't have any more than a vague idea at best of what was considered 'normal' human physical ability, and didn't understand that for someone on Uzumaki's level, Kiba was clearly moving at low-superhuman speeds.
"His eye for detail when observing people is absurd." I explained instead, choosing not to point that out and embarrass her. "He figured out on his own that I wasn't fully human within five minutes of meeting me. All it took was him watching the way my muscles flexed when moving and a basic line of questioning, before he landed on inhuman ancestry as the explanation. At that point, I figured it was fine to tell him I'm a devil." I finished.
She didn't need to know that I had taken the drop on the roof the way I did deliberately, as a way to get him open enough to sate my curiosity.
"Huh." A look of intrigue crossed her face. "I guess if that's the case, there's no way he didn't notice something off about Kiba-kun," she muttered.
Regardless though, a thought occurred when I remembered what happened at the beginning of our meetup.
"Either way, I doubt memory manipulation would work on him for long anyways."
"Why is that?" Rias asked. "Does he have some sort of resistance?"
I wasn't sure if that was an accurate way of describing it, so I shrugged instead of nodding.
"He was able to convince himself to ignore the compulsion field around the property, even though it clearly affected him." I pointed out. "With his level of body control and observation skill, I wouldn't be surprised if he could figure out his mind had been messed with, even if he can't remember how."
"You're probably right then, and trying anyway might just cause more problems than it would solve," she concluded. "I'll be sure to let Sona know her peerage should either be extra careful with their abilities around him, or to approach him first and be upfront about the things he might notice."
I felt a tension I hadn't noticed in my shoulders begin to relax when she finished speaking.
"Still, he calls you 'Koneko-chan' already, huh?"
And here came the annoying part.
"You even added a '-kun' at one point down there! Maybe Akeno was right yesterday. He sure 'moves' fast, to have caught you already," Rias teased, shuffling herself closer on the couch so that she could throw her arms around me in a hug. "Should I be worried that Uzumaki-kun is going to end up stealing my Koneko-cuddling time in the near future?" She questioned dramatically while holding me tightly.
I bore the indignity of the teasing by ignoring it. If I acknowledged her, it would just encourage her to keep going. Instead, I let myself relax with the feeling of nostalgia I got from the warmth of her soft body pressing against me.
My eyes slid shut involuntarily as I took in the scent of the girl who gave me a new home, who gave me a place to belong. I leaned further into my master's embrace. I could hear her calming heartbeat, feel it through her embrace.
It felt like safety.
"I'm glad…" Rias murmured next to my ear, and I realized that I had begun nuzzling her cheek at some point in the hug. One of her hands found its way up to the back of my head and she began combing through my hair with her fingers. "It makes me happy, to see you make new friends, to watch you open up just a little more," she said softly, gently squeezing me a little tighter.
I continued practically melting under her fingers ministrations for what felt like hours as we slowly rocked from side to side, and I might have even drifted off sooner rather than later if it weren't for the muffled sound of Kiba's footsteps approaching from the hallway at an even gait.
He had a very particular way of placing his feet when walking. It wasn't a whole lot different from normal people, but it was different enough to be noticeable for how extremely consistent it was. I assume that it's an unconscious habit left over from his swordsmanship training.
Moments later, the single set of steps stopped and the sound of the door opening behind us reached me.
"Ah, sorry for interrupting. Should I close the door and give you two some privacy?" I could literally hear the teasing smile in his voice, but I was too comfortable to care and continued to lean into Rias' arms with my eyes closed. Rias's fingers only paused for a second before continuing to lightly massage my scalp
I idly wondered why he came by himself, since Naruto shouldn't know his way around the place yet.
'Probably left him with a list of directions.'
"There's no need for that, you can come in." Rias said to him after pulling her face away from the side of my head. "Don't mind me, I'm just cuddling my cutest pillow– I mean club member." She joked while doing a little wiggle. Kiba seemingly took the invitation and began the walk around the couch. We were near the middle of the couch, me on the left and Rias to the right, and going by his steps, Kiba began heading to the right side
Now, I don't find girls attractive to the best of my knowledge, and Rias is my family, but even I felt my face warming up a little at the motion. Fittingly enough for her anime obsession, my [King] has anime-sized udders, and she is holding me very tightly to her chest right now, which made it very hard to not think about the two–
"You hear that, Kiba? She just said you aren't the cutest." My heart rate jumped and my eyes snapped open in surprise at the sound of Uzumaki's voice, coming from right behind the couch.
"You gonna take that lying down?" He teased the other boy. "I don't know about you, but me personally…" he trailed off with a snicker.
Kiba chuckled, "I guess I'll have to change my morning hair care routine if I want to beat Koneko-chan."
Rias definitely noticed my reaction, because she ignored their byplay and brought her hand from my hair to my chin, tilting my head this way and that to look my face over, even as my heart was already going back down to normal.
"Are you alright Koneko-chan?" She asked with concern in her eyes.
I nodded simply. "Was just surprised." I said honestly. It had somehow slipped my mind in the moment that the ninja was… well, a ninja. I've never heard him moving through the school this past week, but here in the safety of my home, I genuinely expected my senses to keep me aware of everything around me.
I turned my head and narrowed my eyes the tiniest bit at Uzumaki, who was watching everything curiously even as he silently slipped around the couch to my left, dropping into the plush cushion with a whumpf sound– the first sound other than his voice to give away his physical presence here.
He was back to wearing the clothes he arrived in, minus the jacket, which I assumed was being washed with the other clothes at the moment. With his orange shirt leaving most of his arms bare, it revealed that the bruises littering his smooth skin had already begun turning yellowish. His knuckles– which had their skin split open when Kiba's sword made contact– were a raw pinkish color, looking like the fresh skin that appears when a scab comes off.
I'm not exactly perfectly familiar with human biology and their healing speed, but even I could tell that he's healing too quick to be normal.
'Probably related to his ninja stuff.' I thought. 'Speaking of…'
"I should make you wear a bell when you visit. You move too quietly."
He blinked owlishly at me, before snorting. "If you wanted a pet that badly, you should go ask those Pervert Trio guys at school. I'm sure they'd jump at the chance to have you put a bell around their necks. Call them Koneko's Nekos instead."
Kiba sputtered and choked on a surprised laugh somewhere on the other side of Rias, having taken a drink of something while Uzumaki was talking.
I felt my face scrunch up involuntarily. "That's disgusting."
What a gross thing to even think about.
Uzumaki smirked. "Sure, but it looks like it's my win this time, so it worked as intended."
I sent a withering glare his way, which made him put up his hands in surrender even as he grinned.
Rias giggled as she released me from her hug, and stretched forward to grab the entertainment system's remote from the table.
"As funny as it is watching you two flirt-"
I turned my narrowed eyes on Rias, and it was Uzumaki's turn to sputter at someone making an absurd statement.
She continued with a smirk. "-we should probably figure out what we want to watch while we wait for the food to arrive." She finished her statement with a click of the remote, turning the system and screen on.
"I'd prefer something lighthearted," Kiba gave his opinion from the other side of our redheaded master. "And maybe light on the action if it isn't animated. I somehow get the feeling that most of us would find stunt-action either hilariously bad, or dreadfully boring." He added with a light chuckle.
Uzumaki got himself under control and glanced at the options as Rias scrolled past them on the streaming service.
"Anything is fine with me, to be honest," He shrugged, adding his own two yen. "The last time I had both the time and patience to really watch anything was over two years ago, after working a protection detail job for an actress."
Rias paused in her scrolling.
"You worked as a bodyguard for an actress?" Rias asked in interest. "Did you get her autograph? Who was it? Why did she need a ninja to protect her? Did you need to fight anybody?!" She rattled off rapid fire.
"Woah hehe, slow down there." Uzumaki chuckled at her excitement. "Yes and yes, for the first two. Her name was Koyuki Kazahana, but the public and even most of the directors and other staff only knew her by a fake name she chose as her stage name, which I think I'll leave to you to figure out on your own." He smirked smugly at Rias's pout as if he just told an inside joke that only he understood.
"As for why she needed ninja to protect her," Uzumaki moved on, "that's a longer story."
That didn't stop Rias's thirst for a real life ninja story, and so she urged him on.
Kiba leaned forward to listen, interested as well.
What came next was a somewhat barebones retelling of what sounded like a plot straight out of a movie. It involved a family man on the verge of creating some unspecified revolutionary technology, being betrayed and murdered by his own jealous brother, with the literal key to his success being hidden in the possession of his daughter who escaped the initial attempt on her life. Said daughter had apparently been able to remain anonymous under a fake identity for over a decade, despite also openly being an apparently successful actress.
It turned out that the woman's uncle apparently had ninja connections of his own, which was how he arranged the initial assassination, and was the reason why Koyuki needed ninja bodyguards of her own. Long story short, Uzumaki's team beat her uncle's, and the guy was tossed behind bars with a life sentence.
As if that wasn't enough, apparently the shoot they were doing was done up in the icy north, and the two teams came to a clash on a bunch of icebergs, many of which ended up cracking apart and sinking due to the fights.
"What kind of ninja stuff did the other team use though?" Rias whined. "Tools, moves, attacks, you can't just skimp on the details like that!"
I poked her in the side, getting a flinch. "Your 'Otaku' side is taking over."
She sheepishly gathered her composure back with a cough into her fist. "... I'm sure I have no idea what you mean by that."
Uzumaki and Kiba both chuckled at the byplay.
"Anyway, there's not a whole lot I remember about the way those guys fought at all." Uzumaki said after a moment. "I've fought a lot more people in the years since I was thirteen. The most I can say is that their leader made frequent use of the naturally occurring ice in his attacks, but he wasn't even anywhere near as good at it as the first ice user I fought, despite being over twice his age."
He shifted in his seat, and I felt the cushion behind me shift in response as he leaned back with a slight wince.
"Hey, off topic, but do you guys have a stool or something laying around somewhere that I can rest my feet on?" He asked casually. "My legs are pretty sore."
"Or something. This couch has electronic footrests on either end. Check on the other side of the armrest with your hand," Rias instructed him, "You should feel a pair of buttons just underneath that which raise and lower it."
"Oh, sweet." He leaned over the armrest to look.
The quiet hum of the couch's mechanism working reached me a few seconds later.
"Ah, a thought occurred to me;" Kiba suddenly spoke up. "Since we're waiting for food anyway, why don't we just put on something mindless to watch while we wait and discuss what we actually want to see?"
"So, Drag-so Ball?" I suggested.
"You take that back!" Rias squawked, losing her composure for the second time in two minutes flat. "Drag-so Ball is a classic!"
We ended up putting on a random game show. None of us could figure out what the rules were, but to be frank, it seemed like neither the contestants nor the hosts were 100% sure either, so we basically just talked over it anyway.
Most of the conversation was related to school since that was the one subject we all definitely had in common, but other things included annoying clients we've all dealt with, places we wanted to visit, and random facts about anything we each knew.
Despite the fact that both parties in the room were only very recently "in the know" about each other's natures, there was surprisingly little to no grilling for details from either side.
Uzumaki was being so upfront and casual with mentions of his background that they slipped into the conversation completely naturally, his personality integrating into our group dynamic seamlessly in a way that made our respective natures seemingly irrelevant.
We did eventually get back to the original topic, and settled on a Studio Gerbil movie that only Rias had seen.
Shortly before the game show ended, my phone vibrated from where I had left it sitting in my lap, and picking it up revealed a notification telling me that the delivery driver was here.
I glanced at Uzumaki for a moment, before turning away without my expression shifting, and gently nudged Rias.
She shifted to look down at me. "Hmm?"
"Food's here. Can you help me carry it up here?" I asked.
"Oh," she blinked, "that's right. Sure thing." She nodded.
The weight itself wouldn't be an issue, but I didn't want to risk accidentally spilling the ramen in the delivery bags while trying to carry everything.
We stood and walked around the couch on Kiba's side.
"We should be back in about five minutes," Rias said to the two boys as she opened the door to the hallway. I stepped through, her following closely behind me. "Try not to start a fight that destroys the room until then!"
She closed the door, leaving them with that teasing remark.
"Well then," she turned to me with a smile, "Shall we be on our way?"
I nodded and turned and began walking, feeling her eyes on me the entire way.
It had barely been ten seconds before she decided to get straight to the point.
"So," Rias began with a sly tone of voice, "What's the real reason you asked me to come with you?" She asked. "It wouldn't happen to have anything to do with all those glances you've been sneaking Uzumaki-kun's way, would it?"
I could hear the grin in the way she said it. Unfortunately, she wasn't entirely wrong, so I couldn't just ignore her teasing like I usually did.
I didn't respond immediately, trying to think of how to put into words what I'd noticed, and how it tied in to what I wanted to ask her.
I'd seen the way his bloody knuckles had healed, and confirmed over the past half hour that it wasn't just my imagination that he healed abnormally fast. Not only had the pink already faded from said knuckles already, leaving unblemished skin, but many of his visible bruises had also all but completely faded by the time we stepped out.
"Uzumaki…"
Except for one. A patch of deep black and blue, slightly swollen flesh near the middle of his shin that hadn't seemed to get better in the slightest.
The fact that after sparring for the better part of ten rounds with Kiba, and his worst injury of the day came from me failing to hold back my strength enough? Me kicking him in retaliation for an insult he hadn't even made, just because I assumed his meaning, after he'd been nothing but genuine with me in all our interactions?
"He heals fast." I began. "Extremely fast, for a human. But…"
From the moment I had seen the injury, I'd recognized that it was my doing and felt shame in my impulsive action. It had been a long time since I'd felt this much guilt over hurting someone, the last time being when I'd still been getting used to my strength as a [Rook] and accidentally hurt one of the maids chasing me, trying to get me to take a bath as a young child.
Which is why I decided to try making it up to him, even though by all rights it seemed like he didn't particularly mind.
"It's not enough to fix him." I declared, stopping to turn and face her.
Rias, who had been patiently listening as she sensed the seriousness in my tone, raised an eyebrow in slight confusion. "Oh?"
"I accidentally hurt him much worse than he deserved when I kicked him," I explained, "I'm going to apologize, and I want to make it up to him, but I'm not as good with Recovery magic as you."
"Ah, now it makes sense." Rias hummed happily as she realized this was me asking her for help. "I'd love to give you some lessons and pointers whenever you have the time, but you do realize you won't be seeing results immediately, right?" She smiled kindly at me with her warning. "Healing magic is one of the highest forms of magic after all."
That was fine with me.
As we continued walking, I told my [King] what I had in mind.
Naruto
With the girls having stepped out, Kiba and I were left to our own devices for the next few minutes.
Naturally, given our sparring was still fresh on the mind, that conversation circled back around after a minute or two of idle commentary on the awful show playing on the TV.
"You know," Kiba began with a thoughtful tone, as a hand rose to cup his chin, "I've been replaying our matches in my head, over and over again from the moment we finished, and I still just can't figure something out."
"What is it?" I asked curiously.
"I'm certain that I've pinpointed every moment your left hand went directly from the ground to your pocket," he explained. "Every moment during or after a match, every break in-between, from the moment I realized I had to take you seriously after your first move, I'd been studying your movements well enough to clearly remember the motions you've made, even if I didn't notice the sleight of hand at the time."
"Yeah?" I grinned, seeing where this was going. "And?"
Kiba pointedly eyed my expression with a wry smirk of his own.
"Pardon me for my bluntness, but as a devil reincarnated by a [Knight] piece, I am quite easily capable of reacting to and deflecting bullets being fired at me." He stated it almost blandly, dropping the polite fiction of normality that he'd kept up until now. "Despite that, I can't recall any point where you filled your right pocket, and the few times you'd been out of my vision for long enough, the follow-up actions you actually took meant it wasn't possible for you to have done it then," he elaborated. "So, how did you do it?"
"Your observations are actually spot on," I smirked at him. "There's nothing special I did that you haven't made the connection to, you're just thinking too narrowly."
"Too narrowly?" Kiba's eyes narrowed in thought.
"Yeah. You should try stretching your mind," I snickered, "maybe take a moment to admire the scenery a bit. You know, before you jump straight into the action."
"What?" He blinked in confusion.
It took a moment, but I saw the exact moment his expression changed to one of realization, and then exasperation as he got my meaning. It was, in my opinion, hilarious.
"Hahahahaha!"
"From the very beginning…" He sighed while pressing his palm to his forehead. "You had that in mind right from the moment we started, before that even. Wait…" Kiba brought his hand down and looked at me even more appraisingly than before.
I got my laughter under control and curiously met his stare.
"... Couldn't you have brought that out at almost any point earlier, and gotten your three wins sooner?" he pointed out.
I shrugged.
"I mean, yeah, probably," I agreed, "but maybe you would have been more on guard for nasty tricks. Maybe I wouldn't have been able to take full advantage of the distraction. A lot of things could have changed the outcome." I explained. "In the end, I decided I wanted to see the best you were willing to bring to the table, and then do my best to beat that version of you. So I saved my best trick for last."
Kiba chuckled.
"Well congratulations Naruto-kun, because you certainly succeeded. I'll have to add a hand-to-hand section to my training routine," he said. His smile shifted into a challenging smirk. "I hope you understand, this means you have to keep improving too. I can't have my sparring partner falling too far behind me, after all."
I smirked right back and opened my mouth to respond–
The door opening at our backs cut me off. Koneko entered first, with a platter as wide as her arm was long in one hand and two paper bags in the other, followed by Red with two bags of her own.
"Only gone for five minutes, and you're already back to talking about fighting." Koneko rolled her eyes. "Boys."
I stuck my tongue out at her as she walked around the couch and set the platter on the long table. She snapped her fingers and three glowing red circles filled with symbols similar to Fuinjutsu– I think they're called 'magic circles'– appeared just above the table in front of mine, Rias', and Kiba's spots on the couch. Cheap plastic trays descended from them onto the table, appearing out of nowhere. She then placed one of her two bags on my tray and the other on Rias's.
"I got you ramen, since you mentioned how much you liked it. Miso and pork."
I had to physically hold myself back from jumping towards the bag to tear it open, both for the sake of manners, and to not accidentally break the footrest mechanism.
"Thanks a lot!" I said eagerly, making sure not to drool.
The footrest couldn't lower fast enough.
When everyone got seated and our food all prepared for consumption, Rias dimmed the lights and started up the movie. Apparently it was made by a really famous animation studio, and was regarded as one of their best.
It was a weird story about a bamboo girl named Kaguya who became a princess or something, involving her struggle to fit into her new life as a noble in the capital after living as a peasant in a village. After having been ridiculed for being a peasant by other nobles she transformed and suddenly got a bunch of suitors, who she sent on quests to prove themselves to her.
A bunch of stuff happened, and then later it turned out she was actually from the moon originally?
All in all, despite the coincidental parallels between the character and Super Granny, it was an alright story. As the credits began to roll, I could understand why Rias was tearing up and sniffling near the end, even though I personally was made of sterner stuff than that.
A flash of red shined in and out of existence from the corner of my blurred vision, and I felt Koneko's finger tap my shoulder. Turning, I saw a vague outline of her arm holding something boxy out for me.
"Th-thank you, Koneko-ch-chan." I spoke gracefully without any hiccups.
I accepted the box of tissues and blew my nose heavily multiple times.
'All this damn dust in the air.' I tried using the back of my hands to wipe the irritant from my eyes, but it just kept coming back.
We all continued to hang around and talk for a while, but it was already starting to get kind of late by the time the movie ended, so things wound down pretty soon after.
The first to excuse themself was Kiba, citing homework he wanted to finish before tomorrow, followed shortly after by Rias claiming 'club leader duties with Sona' while winking at Koneko. It looked like she was trying to be discreet with it, but I didn't understand why she was winking even when I noticed it, so I guess it didn't really matter in the end.
Koneko was currently leaning over the table and packing what little of her leftover sushi remained into a tiny little bento box, while I had put the footrest back up around halfway through the movie, and was currently leaning back and relaxing in the comfortable silence, my right arm resting across the back of the couch. I glanced around the dim room and took in the mess that remained, from the takeout bags to the disposable utensils and soft drink cans
The quiet suddenly became just a tiny bit more uncomfortable than before.
"So, uhh," I broke the silence, "... want some help cleaning up?" I asked awkwardly.
Koneko placed the lid on her little bento and swiftly tied the ribbon that would hold it closed into a bow, before it sank into a magic circle that appeared below it.
That done, she wiped her hands meticulously with a napkin, and then scooted back in her spot on the couch herself.
She leaned back into the cushion and closed her eyes
"No need." She said after a moment, eyes still closed. "We have servants for that."
I could have facepalmed at the obvious answer.
"Damn rich people…" I muttered under my breath, even though it was obvious she'd hear.
Koneko's head tilted slightly, a lock of her hair slipping past her ear as her eyes slid open. Her golden orbs almost seemed to glow in the low lighting, already locked onto my own.
I was suddenly hyper aware of the placement of my arm for some reason, resting just a few inches behind her head on the cushion.
I very deliberately stopped my body from tensing up reflexively.
"We're going to have to put off finishing our discussion again…" Her voice shook me out of my distracted state.
It took me a moment to realize she was no longer looking at me, but looking at one of the windows past me.
I pulled my eyes away from her dimly lit features to turn and look out at the night sky myself.
"You make that sound like it's a bad thing," I said with a chuckle. "I don't really mind it, myself."
Even with the fact that the light from modern cities tended to block out the light of distant stars at night, this part of town was secluded enough from the more commercial areas that a majority of the brighter constellations shone through. None of them were particularly familiar to me.
It wasn't the best night sky I'd ever seen, not by a long shot, but I think I appreciated it more in this moment than I would have as a kid in Konoha.
"Personally, I've enjoyed talking with you, Koneko-chan," I looked back at her with a grin, "so I just see it as another excuse to hang out another day."
She didn't disagree.
We'd just finished walking down the path to the front gate to say our goodbyes for the night, when she stopped short a few steps.
"...I'm sorry." She said as I turned to find her head bowed. "I didn't hold back my strength nearly enough. I shouldn't have kicked you at all, especially not with as little thought given to it as I did."
Ah, so she noticed my little limp.
'Or maybe she saw the bruise earlier, and felt that now was the best time to bring it up?' I thought. 'It doesn't really matter which, I guess.'
It honestly surprised me a little that she said sorry… which then led to me being surprised that I was surprised. In the first place, it shouldn't be shocking that a girl as thoughtful as she seemed would feel the need to apologize for hurting someone. At the same time though, Sakura-chan used to hit me way harder all the time without apologizing, so I just didn't really expect it.
I blinked.
There was a strange moment where that thought struck me as odd in some way, but right now wasn't the time to analyze why, so I shoved it to the back of my mind for later.
"Y'know, I can't exactly say 'it's no issue' because I'll probably walk with a limp for the next few days-" I'd idly diagnosed my shin bone itself as being bruised on the walk to the room we gathered in, and estimated my own abnormal recovery time to be around a week or so, maybe less If I kept my weight off of it. "-but honestly, I'll be fine."
I stepped closer and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Besides, it's clear to me you feel remorse over it, so don't worry about it that much." I met her gaze with a reassuring smile when she lifted her head. "I forgive you."
Koneko held my gaze, seemingly looking for something in particular, before giving up with an exasperated sigh.
"Fine," she agreed.
I turned back towards the gate, but was stopped from doing anything more by her snagging hold of the back of my shirt.
"Wait."
I looked back over my shoulder as she spoke.
"Even if you forgive me, you shouldn't be putting weight on that leg. I'll help you get home." She stated it in a way that gave no room to argue.
"Oh, I didn't realize you had a driver's license." The mental image of the small girl struggling to see over the wheel was pretty funny.
"I don't. I'm a [Rook, I'm going to carry you." She declared her intent, causing me to blink.
"Ehhheheh, wouldn't that look super suspicious though, a girl your size carrying a guy bigger than her?" I chuckled nervously, futilely attempting to discreetly remove my shirt from her grasp.
A pair of bat-like wings longer than her body spread out behind her as if appearing from nothing.
"We'll be flying, obviously," she countered with a roll of her eyes.
I gulped.
Koneko only carried me most of the way to my address, only relenting and bringing us back down when I insisted that my neighborhood had cameras everywhere, and that it would look suspicious if I appeared in the cameras close to my apartment without showing up in the ones by the front gates. Of course, I didn't mention that I was known to do this all the time using camera blind spots anyway, and that the community's security company was familiar with my antics, but she didn't need to know that.
The flight itself wasn't all that special to me, having been able to do so myself by the end of the war, but it wasslightly nerve wracking having to trust in the grip of such small arms while we were well over ten stories high in the air. You could be strong enough to carry the weight of a truck, but that didn't mean you'd actually be able to carry it easily without a secure way to hold it. Back home, we'd just use the tree-walking method to keep our grips, but I could tell that Koneko wasn't doing something similar from the way I could shift around in her arms.
The rest of the way was spent walking, with my arm thrown over her shoulder at her own insistence. It was a little awkward since despite my own short stature, she was still a good half a foot shorter than me, but it was infinitely more preferable to my pride than our previous setup.
There is no experience in the world that can prepare a man for being held in a princess-carry by a girl, especially one smaller than himself.
If I ignored the intense burning in my cheeks, this was downright pleasant comparatively. Not that being carried by Koneko-chan wasn't pleasant or anything, it was just–!
'THINKING OTHER THOUGHTS NOW!' I cut off that line of thinking entirely. Nothing good could come from it.
"Uzumaki." Koneko's quiet voice once again broke through my strange thoughts. "I want to ask you something."
'Seriously, what is up with me recently?'
I didn't let my thoughts show on my face. "Alright, what's up?" I gave her my full attention instead, sensing the seriousness in her body language.
For as short as I've known her, Koneko was an almost perfect example of consistency. In the way she walked, talked, and breathed, she defaulted to a languid, almost minimal effort approach to things. I wasn't seeing that right now.
Her steps were uncharacteristically stiff, and her breathing tightly controlled.
"Before I ask, I have something else I need to tell you, for context," she added.
"I'm listening." I confirmed.
She took a deep breath, held it for a couple seconds, and released it.
"I still don't know what you meant about a 'chakra network' earlier, but I'm not just part-devil. I'm also a youkai," Koneko revealed.
"Huh." I blinked, wracking my brain to remember the relevant info she'd given me earlier. "That's neat, I guess?"
I can't say I was expecting it, but it didn't exactly surprise me at all. She could have said she was part cat and I wouldn't have batted an eye. At this point, anything seemed possible.
Just another thing to mentally catalog under 'Koneko factoids,' that functionally changes nothing about how I view her.
"Earlier, I mentioned that using chakra comes naturally to us youkai. What I didn't mention, is that Senjutsu does too. It's something that almost all species of youkai can use to some extent, and my species is especially drawn to it," she explained. "For reasons I don't want to talk about, I put off learning how to use either of them." Her hand, which had curled into a fist by her side, shook lightly. "A recent situation has made me aware that it was a mistake. I should be able to get a hang of the basics on my own, but I don't know how much that would even help at this point," she admitted, her head slightly lowered.
We stopped walking.
'Ahh, damn. How unfortunate.' I sighed internally, offering my condolences. It sounded a lot like she was hinting at the type of tragic backstory that was all too common among the people I'd met in the Elemental Nations. We'd both danced around the topic of our childhoods earlier, so I already figured something bad happened, but to think it involved Senjutsu…
"We only just met recently, and don't really know each other well, but…" Her voice wavered slightly as she looked up at me, her hesitant golden eyes firming as they met mine. "I want to get strong enough to protect my friends," she announced with conviction.
"Could… could you teach me how to use Senjutsu?"
It must have taken a lot of courage from her to ask that question, if my guess about her own trauma was correct.
I didn't have to think about it. I gave her my response.
"I'll teach you." I stared down into her eyes with deadly seriousness, trying to convey the vital importance of my next words.
"I only have one rule. If you can't follow it while I am teaching you, then I will not teach."