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The Sleeping Tails Inn	By : c0p13r Category: Naruto > Het - Male/Female Views: 6113 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I don't own NARUTO nor its characters and I make no money off this here fic.

Chapter List
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            “We’re going… in there?” Naruto was pointing, looking very hesitant to trek into the dense bamboo. No sense in asking, though; the Toad Hermit Jiraiya the Gallant was already prying his way through the dense thicket, laughing lightly at the mild obstacle of squeezing through the tree line.
            “That’s right. C’mon, Naruto! I’ve already sent word of our arrival! You don’t want to keep them waiting, do you?” He guffawed as he skirted through the sky-reaching stalks.
            Even so, Naruto hesitated, from more than just the fact that there was hardly any reason for him to rush to meet their appointment. It wasn’t their appointment at all, but just another sleazy pub for Ero-Sennin to lech around in. No different than the last inn and the inn before that, during their whole training journey thus far.
            Naruto huffed, moved a step forward, but felt that warding sensation. The hermit was used to these adventures, he was sure. But to him… “What’s up with this forest?” he muttered.
            “Huh? What’s that?” Jiraiya’s head popped out from between two bamboos. “What’re you waiting for? It’s just a shortcut! Now hurry up!” His impatience was showing. Apparently the woman he was schmoozing at the roadside teashop earlier had only whet his appetite for the more vivacious sort of women at their next stop.
            Naruto didn’t want to say that he didn’t want to go in the forest, lest he get a lecture on what it meant to be a man from a guy who was more like a toad. At the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to just amble into the forest of thick bamboo, deep shadows, and groundward vapor trails. “Why do we have to go through here?” he chose with a sort of indignant pout. He threw a hand out to the left, showing the pathway that went out of the way around the broad thicket and went through a regular forest, rounding a chasm, but there was a bridge that was certainly safe to cross for light-footed ninja. “We can just take the normal road, can’t we? We can get more training done like that!”
            Jiraiya’s face twisted in an unpleasant look as he scoffed. “How dull.” He pulled back and let the bamboo snap back together in front of him. “You’ll gain more from coming through here! Think of it as stealth training! Hup!” As if to demonstrate, he weaved through the close stalks, his large frame hardly causing as much as a flutter to the leaves. His moves became more elaborate, and Naruto felt that he had become a bit too intent on showing off as he jumped from stalk to stalk, reaching to the top of the forest before sliding down… dropping on his face just before he could make a pretty commendable landing.
            Naruto held in a laugh at his boisterous teacher’s humiliation when pulling up and spitting dirt. He was a bit more mature than that now! At least he liked to think so…
            Yet some childish feeling warned him from the forest still. When he reached a hand out and touched a shoot, he felt a very intense shiver, his nerves running to the surface of his body and experiencing everything. “It feels weird, tebayo,” he confessed.
            “Heh! Very perceptive of you,” announced Jiraiya proudly, coming back up to his feet and dusting himself off. “This isn’t an ordinary forest! Aside from being a good shortcut”—which hardly mattered, Naruto wanted to say—“it’s said that this is a spot where the Kyubi’s Chakra had once hit! It cracked the land centuries ago near the border of the Land of Fire!”
            Naruto squeezed in past the bamboo and began to trail after his teacher, listening to the story.
            “It was thought that this would become a desert canyon. Instead, and as you can see, it’s become dense and lush with vegetation! No one can explain the phenomenon. People have tried cutting it down, but the bamboo just continues to grow healthily, almost as if possessed. Heh! I’d say it feels weird to you because of that monster sealed inside of you!”
            Naruto brushed a hand against his stomach. Something did feel off about it, like he could hear the Fox growling menacingly. Maybe this feeling of foreboding came from the Fox’s instinct. Knowing what was in him didn’t necessarily explain to Naruto what the thing inside him was all about, but he could at least detect its agitation. Of the forest itself? Maybe not. But something within it…
            “Ow!” Naruto bounded back, touching his nose and glowering at Jiraiya holding a small sprig of a bamboo shoot. “What was that for?”
            “Don’t give me that tone,” Jiraiya derided him, spinning the stick between his thumb and forefinger. “Aren’t you the one moping about not getting any training done? Well, I promised you some practice, didn’t I? And here it is.”
            He threw the stick with kunai accuracy, and Naruto reflexively moved aside, dodging it, but banging his head into the bamboo beside him. The sun-blocking thicket overhead rustled and a few leaves fell.
            “How about we play some tag?” Jiraiya leapt backward, his form sinking into the deeper mist and shadow within the forest. Through all the stalks, cloud, and shade, Naruto could only see him for a moment before he completely faded from sight. “Come catch me, Naruto! We’ll see if you’re a match for this forest!”
            Naruto took a moment, and then grinned determinedly at the challenge. He wasn’t going to back down from something so simple, even if it was sort of weird for an old man to suggest a game of tag. “Fine! And when I catch you”—He zoomed forward, chasing the last spot he saw Jiraiya—“we’re going on the main road, tebayo!”
            “Guahaha! Fine!” echoed Jiraiya’s voice with no discernable location. Naruto leapt onto the patch of ground Jiraiya had last touched; he saw the sandal prints on the ground, but they went in no direction. Therefore, Naruto had to assume that the crafty codger was moving from stalk to stalk, leaving no evidence of his path. “Just hurry and catch up, kid! Or we’ll be through the forest before you know it!” His laughter was loud, and then not so loud, and then soft, and then gone.
            Gone silent? Or just gone?
            Naruto seethed and looked left and right. Which way did he go? Probably forward; he was single-minded when it came to meeting women. This was probably just a ploy to get his protégé through the forest quick and without complaint. All this time, and Naruto was still falling for his juvenile trickery.
            Trickery…
            “He might have gone right, then,” Naruto considered, now thinking that Ero-Sennin could just be in a playful mood and wanted to annoy him by making him take the longest amount of time getting across the forest. And being right-handed, that would be the direction he would natural turn on a whim.
            Naruto shook his head vigorously. “No, no!” He thrust his hand forward with a point, committing an action to contend with his brain’s decisions. “Forward! Ero-Sennin said we’re on a schedule so he can’t go off course!” He leaned, grinning at his own power of deduction. Shikamaru would be so impressed by his honed problem-solving prowess when they met again. “Get ready, Ero-Senning! You’re not getting away, tebayo!”
            With commendable control, reflexes, and surefootedness that he hadn’t had before, he plunged into the deep dark of the forest, picking up Jiraiya’s nimble stalk-jumping, though he left the bamboo rustling in his wake. He pivoted, spun, checked the ground every so often, and raced entirely in the wrong direction.
            He couldn’t see it, but the sun was going down fast. Outside the forest was a crimson glow, but all around Naruto was dark. And quiet. Naruto noticed it after a while, and by then, he had started to realize that he was successfully lost. He found a niche to ground himself and survey and wait. He turned in each direction and pushed his hearing capabilities to the extreme. Surely he’d pick up something from Ero-Sennin, like a breath or a rustle of clothes. Nothing. The old pervert had made it an art form of creeping around undetectable, so unless he wanted Naruto to find him, he would be gone from all the senses.
            What Naruto would not give for an Inuzuka nose.
            “Alright.” He took out a kunai and slashed at a bamboo stalk to make a marking. “I’ll just let him know where I am then!”
            He chose a direction and headed off. He used instinct to choose his path, swerving very infrequently. But when everything just seemed to blur into a familiar thatch, he decided to stop. He picked another clear patch, sighed, looked and…
            His jaw clenched.
            And then loosened.
            “Whew! I thought I’d just wound up in the same place again, tebayo,” he said, having checked the bamboo around him to confirm. With a weary expression, he said to himself, “That’d be too cliché if I just went in a big circle.”
            Silence.
            “Where is he?” Naruto breathed heavily, turning this way and that, trying to think of where his mentor could have gone.
            Silence.
            “The forest can’t be this big! Dammit!” He clutched at his head and whined loudly. “It would have been better if I had gone in a circle! Everything looks exactly the same!” He spun around, his eyes scanning the dark forest, seeing nothing move but the trailers of mist in some unfelt breeze. He was starting to sweat. It dawned on him that he couldn’t even go back the way he came, because he didn’t remember which was he came!
            “Then-Then I’ll just go straight,” he resolved, again thrusting his finger outward in front of him. “The forest can’t go on forever, and when I get out, I can find Ero-Sennin at the inn!” With a bit of anger, he kicked out and trudged through the bamboo stalks. “Damn Ero-Sennin knows where to go, so he won’t get lost! He’s probably at the inn already.” He shoved through some more brambles. “Probably forgot all about me!”
            He continued to complain out loud, but it was more to keep sound in his ears, for he noticed that every ended sentence seemed to be sucked up in the quiet around him, and it made him feel very alone. Beyond being ignored; actually alone. Nothing to discover him. When his mouth stopped, the dread that he’d always be alone seeped in, lost in this forest. He held off for as long as he could, but then shouted with his hands cupped to his mouth, “ERO-SENNIN!!”
            Again, when he listened, it was like the forest choked all other sound. If his voice carried to where it needed to go, the reply back was certainly stopped from reaching his ears.
            He was alone.
            He tried again.
            Nothing still.
            Once more, hurting his vocal cords, but to no avail.
            “That-That dumb hermit,” he simmered with a slight waver in his voice. Then he carried on, straight and forward. Don’t stop to look around. March straight forward, eyes ahead of you. Don’t look because there’s nothing to see. The dark was getting worse, and would continue to close around him. In the night, there’d be nothing to do but stop…
            He stopped.
            There was a light shimmering ahead. A single lamplight, hanging at the side of a doorway of a quaint establishment; larger than a house, but certainly not a mansion. Like an overgrown shack, maybe. How something like this could be built in a forest this dense and treacherous…! Naruto could hardly believe his eyes, thinking it must be a mirage! Possibly, it was abandoned after the Kyubi chakra had hit? No. That would have devastated the building, and while it was falling apart, its disrepair was due to negligence and time. Not to mention the lit lamp. It couldn’t have been lit all this time. Somehow, though, that made much more sense than this building existing in the first place.
            Naruto crawled into the clearing and looked around. How had he not noticed this before? That lamp was small but blazing pretty brightly. He stood on the cusp of its reach, not entirely sure this wasn’t some sort of trap.
            He gazed at the head sigh.
            The name of the establishment was written with a crude illustration of a fox curled up and resting on its bushy tail. More to the side was the insignia that hot springs were included. Naruto almost disbelieved that, but it would explain the carpet of mist dragging along the forest floor.
            But it was so still! Naruto couldn’t trust it. In a place like this, normal people would come rushing out to greet him and implore his patronage – if he assumed right that this was an inn. For a quick moment, he almost guessed that this was the inn Ero-Sennin had booked. Possible… but for all this time, his room and board choices always involved friendly, bouncy staff.
            Not a woman, bounce, or friendliness in sight.
            But then, before Naruto could investigate further beyond what his eyes could see, the former appeared at the doorway, holding out a lamp on a stick, her eyes catching the light and making it motionless, like the reflection on a lifeless lake. It might have been from the glow of the lamps’ red shade, but her hair was a vibrant crimson and rolled up in twin, elegant buns. Her face was keen and beautiful, and her robes were tidy. She stood with the demeanor of nobility, beyond what someone who lived in such a place should look.
            Haunting…
            Naruto felt something like a stone drop to the pit of his stomach, making him uncomfortable as the lady’s eyes transfixed on him.
            “Are you weary?” she asked softly, though in this oppressive bamboo forest, her voice carried.
            Naruto snapped up, unnerved. Dumbly, he looked this way, and then he looked that was, as if it were possible that she was addressing someone other than him. He even pointed at himself to make sure, though the lady made no gesture; just waited. So, feeling a bit foolish for his hesitance and not wanting to embarrass her with his naivete, he forced some relaxation in his posture and laughed. Dryly, but it was a laugh. “I-I guess I’m a little lost, tebayo,” he sheepishly confessed.
            And at that, the lady made to turn, indicating that he should follow. “We all lose our way on the path,” she said in her soft, even tone. “But we must find our way. Please come in, and you may rest.” She did not wait and stepped over the threshold into the awaiting dark.
            He couldn’t move, and he was glad for it. The shack looked like it could collapse on top of his head, and there was that gut feeling that warned him from accepting the kindness of this stranger. Not that she looked like an assassin or anything…
            “Uh, wait a minute,” he called out, not yet mustering the nerve to move from this spot.
            The lady did not reappear.
            His right foot trudged through the damp earth, not lifting fully to take a step. “Has-Has an old guy with long white hair come by here? He probably acted inappropriately?” He chewed his lip, leaning and stretching his neck as if he could peer through the doorway and see Ero-Sennin hiding sneakily at some angle just to annoy him.
            “Come in,” her voice said again, and he could see the slightest shimmer of her eyes in the dark. “Rest and make yourself well.”
            Naruto cast a glance behind him; one last vain hope that Ero-Sennin would come stomping through the dark and chastise his student for not finding him. There was nothing, and no chance that he’d have someone beside him for this venture.
            Grabbing nervously at the straps of his rucksack, Naruto hoisted the load unnecessarily with a lunge from his shoulders, and started forward carefully. The lamplight didn’t shift; the lady was waiting expectantly for him, the glow in her eyes seeming intensified beyond the soft glow of her lamp. Even when he came up to the doorway, she didn’t move to make way.
            He hesitated, and then he entered freely and of his own free will.
            The lady’s lamp raised, illuminating her beautiful face so that Naruto may observe her up close. She was almost smiling. “Welcome to the Sleeping Tails Inn.”
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The Sleeping Tails Inn