Freaky Foxes
Part VI

Naruto trudged home, tired and worried.  While Izumo and Kotetsu had gone off to get scolded by their superiors for not notifying their supervisor of what they were doing, he had gone to Professor Sarutobi for help.  Even though it was Sunday, the old man had opened his lab so that Demon and Naruto's other monsters could get medical treatment.

With the rapid medical treatment, Demon would be fine, he probably wouldn't even scar.  But the professor insisted on keeping the vulpix overnight so that Demon could rest and recover more.  And even after Naruto picked him up Monday morning the vulpix would have to be kept out of battle situations for several days or risk re-injuring himself.

Evening was approaching and the sun was starting to set, laying long shadows on the path as Naruto walked.  By the time he got home, it should be about dinner time.  But with all the craziness that had happened during the day, he wasn't left feeling all that hungry.

I wonder where that ninetales came from…  And what made it so mean?

Rounding the bend, his house came into view.  Warm yellow lights shone through the windows as if to welcome him home.  Adjusting his white jacket (which was now scuffed and dirty) he headed for the front door and stepped inside.

"Taidama-eh?!"

For a moment, he feared that the ninetales from the woods had beaten him home and invaded his house.  But the nine-tailed fox turned towards him and revealed that it had two whole eyes instead of the scarred face that he'd expected.  It was clearly a different fox that was lounging in the living room.

"Where'd you come from?!"

The ninetales simply blinked at him.

There was a thump and a muffled curse from somewhere else in the house.

"Mom?" Naruto called out worriedly, not daring to leaving the front door and walk past the strange ninetales.

He heard some quick footsteps and then his mother came into view.  "Oh, you're home-is that blood on your shoulder?!"

"It's not mine," Naruto answered quickly.

"Then where did it come from?" she asked, striding over and peeling his backpack and the dirty jacket off his back before he could protest.

"A wounded abra fell on me."

His mother frowned at him.  "That wouldn't be the abra I've been chasing all over the house, would it?"

Naruto squinted a bit in confusion.  "Why are you chasing it?"

"Well, when I got home I went to check your room to see if you'd beaten me back and I saw it sleeping on your bed.  I went to investigate, and it teleported on me."  She grimaced.  "I guess it reappeared on top of Kyuubi, it woke up, it made this screaming sound, and it's been zigzagging all over the house via teleport ever since.  So far it's broken several dishes and picture frames…and generally just made a mess."

"Sorry," Naruto cringed.  "And…Kyuubi?"

"She just got here a few hours ago," his mother said, gesturing towards the ninetales.  "Your father sent her."

"He sent her?"  Naruto immediately relaxed.

"Yeah, I told him what was going on here and, since he's all tied up with this fishing thing he got signed up for, he sent Kyuubi over to see if she could help us out."

Naruto's spirits immediately sank.  "Oh, okay."  So he won't be coming…

There was another thump, like a stack of books had been knocked over somewhere.

"There it goes again," his mother muttered.  "I tried bringing Hoshi in to block its teleport, but that abra is slippery."  She threw his dirty jacket over her arm and tucked his bag under her arm, and shoved him deeper inside the house.  "Well, since you brought this houseguest in, catch it if you haven't already or kick it out.  I need to clean up the broken glass."

"Okay," Naruto nodded, skirting around Kyuubi and venturing into the house in search of the troublesome psychic monster.

While his mom dug out a broom and dustpan, Naruto started checking every room.  As his mother had said, all sorts of things from books to vases to wall pictures had been disturbed by the wild pokémon's panic.  When he reached the door to his room, he found Hoshi the starmie floating there, central jewel focused through the doorway.

"Hoshi, is it in there?"

Flash.  Flash.

"Thanks."

Naruto squeezed past the giant purple starfish and flipped on the light switch.  His room, barely clean on the best days, looked like a pokémon had used whirlwind in it.  Not seeing the bright yellow creature anywhere in plain sight, Naruto started checking his shelves, the inside of his closet, and the tangled lump of sheets on the bed to see if it was hiding.

"Not here…  Not here…  Not-yah!"

Pausing in his inspection of his bed-sheets, he glanced down to see the abra's claw-like hand clutching his ankle from the shadowy recesses under his bed.

"Th-there you are."  Naruto sighed and crouched down by his bed.  "What are you doing down there?"

The abra slowly crawled out into the light, still tightly clutching its precious spork and with tears gathered at the corners of its squinty eyes.  The bandages on its shoulder had come loose, and smears of pink signaled that the wound had started to bleed again.  It just looked so pathetic sitting huddled on his floor…

"What's up with you, huh?  How come you gave my mom such a hard time?"

It didn't answer; it just held up its arms to him like a small child would to ask to be carried.

"You're heavy…and you made a mess of everything," Naruto frowned, and took the abra's non-spork hand.  "You can walk."

The fox-faced creature clutched his fingers tightly and toddled after him as if it were a human child.  However, its obedience ended the instant it came too close to Kyuubi.  The sight of the creamy-yellow fox immediately had the abra squealing and crawling up Naruto's leg.

"Gak!"

"Quit horsing around!" his mother shouted from the kitchen.  "If that thing breaks anything else…I won't let you eat ramen for your birthday dinner!"

Naruto immediately started to sweat as he wrangled with the wriggling psychic beast.  "Hey, hey calm down!"

The abra didn't listen.

"Mom, where did you put my bag?!" Naruto yelped, trying not to topple over from the flailing abra's weight.

"I left it outside the laundry room."

Naruto headed for the location as quickly as he could.  Fortunately, the laundry room was in the opposite direction of the ninetales, and as soon as the abra couldn't see Kyuubi anymore it calmed down from flailing in panic to sniffling and clinging.  This made it a lot easier to move, but the abra was still heavy…and very clingy.

Reaching his black and blue bag, Naruto flopped down on the floor and dug around in it with one hand.  "What's up with you, huh?  You were behaving so good before…"

The squinty-eyed monster whimpered and tightly clutched the front of his shirt.

…Scared…

Naruto frowned at the weird cold tingle that ran up his arms and down his spine.  "How come you stuck around here?  I left the window open so you could leave if you wanted to.  …You want to stay?"

The sniffles stopped and it peered up at him, lizard-like tail slowly wagging.

"That's a yes, I guess…"  He finally found a pokéball in his bag and was about to use it on the abra when a thought struck him.  "Hey…was that mean, one-eyed ninetales out in the forest the thing that bit you?"

The abra's eyes opened wide again (which was just as creepy-looking as the first time he'd seen it) and it looked around in a panic, as if expecting an attack.

…Scared!…

"It's not here, I swear!  The ninetales in the living room is a different one…never mind," he sighed, seeing that his assurances had no effect, and held out the pokéball.  "Here, you won't have to worry about any ninetales in here."

The abra instantly dove into the sphere, and within moments the ball had vanished in a flash to reappear in the professor's lab.

I wish I just did that in the first place…  Naruto sighed and dragged his bag to his room, shooed Hoshi outside, and headed for the kitchen.  …I was just too worried about finding Demon.

"So, is the problem taken care of?" his mother asked as he entered the kitchen.

"Yep," Naruto replied, giving her a thumb's up.

"Excellent," she smiled and threw out the last pieces of a broken plate.  "So did you find Demon?  I meant to ask sooner, but the abra chase and your bloody jacket distracted me."

Naruto nodded, his worry rising again as he thought of the state he'd found the missing vulpix in.

"Help me get dinner started," his mother said, putting away the broom and dustpan, "and tell me everything…"

***

First thing Monday morning, Naruto was at the professor's lab, waiting for his vulpix to be returned to him.  He sat in the small presentation room, which was mostly used as an informal meeting place when other researchers stopped by, and for Professor Sarutobi's yearly lecture to hopeful youngsters who were in the process of studying for their licensing test.  His mother was also in the lab, off doing her assistant duties in checking the professor's e-mail for priority messages and such.

Naruto drummed his fingertips on one of the rectangular tabletops while he stared blankly at the large black screen on the far wall.  I hope that-

"Tell me again why we're coming here so early?"

Peering over his shoulder, Naruto blinked in surprise as Izumo and Kotetsu came into the room.

"Because we need to tell the professor what we saw and experienced in the forest," Izumo sighed.  "The chief ordered us to."

Kotetsu just yawned and slumped into a seat a few chairs down from Naruto.  "It's too early…"

"Well, you don't want to get into any more trouble, do you?" Izumo countered.

"You guys got into trouble?" Naruto asked, feeling a bit guilty for accepting their help instead of looking for some other trainer to satisfy his promise to his mother.

"A little bit," Izumo shrugged.  "It could've been worse for leaving our assigned post without telling anyone.  It helped that we stumbled over information that could relate to the current issue with the local population of vulpix."

"I really wish someone would get around to fixing the radio in that guard shack," Kotetsu groaned.  "At least then we'd have something to listen to while we sit there and do nothing…"

"I don't know about that," Izumo said.  "Konoha Town's pretty quiet and safe.  I doubt there'd be much radio chatter to listen to."

"Well, the radio can be tuned to music stations, right?" Kotetsu replied.

Izumo frowned slightly.  "I don't think so…"

Kotetsu looked rather disgruntled at this as he scratched at the whiskers on his chin.

"Huh, I didn't know that there'd be other people here."

All three of them turned to find yet another person entering the presentation room.

Hana Inuzuka was Kiba's older sister and next in line to inherit the family business.  She was pretty, even though she too had opted to have the family symbol-the red fang-tattooed on her cheeks.  Kiba's sister was passionate about canine pokémon and she was more than fierce enough to intimidate her younger brother.

"Hello…" Izumo greeted, puzzled.

"My mom volunteered my help for the fox monster problem," Hana cheerfully explained.  "So here I am!"  She hopped up to sit on the table top.  "It's too bad my mom and I left when we did.  If we'd been in town when this mess started, we would've taken care of it within the week!"  She squinted at Naruto curiously.  "Hey, aren't you one of Kiba's friends?  …Ramen?"

The boy scowled in response.  "My name's Naruto."

"Oh, right," she grinned.  "I knew it was something soupy."

Kotetsu snickered.

"Oh good, it looks like everyone's here," Iruka remarked with a smile as he entered the room.  "Here you go, Naruto," he said, handing the boy a pokéball.  "The professor should get here in about ten minutes.  Please make yourselves comfortable until then."

Iruka bowed, and withdrew to take care of whatever tasks he'd been assigned for the day.

"Whatcha got there?" Hana asked curiously, eyeing the pokéball in his hands.

Still a bit annoyed by the "soupy" comment, Naruto simply opened the sphere and let Demon out.

The vulpix materialized on the table in front of him, curled up and asleep.  He looked a lot better with the blood gone from his golden fur.  Naruto gently ran a hand along Demon's spine, careful not to press hard and aggravate any tender, barely-healed spots.

"…I thought something looked off," Izumo said, "but with the blood and dirt all over him I wasn't sure."

"You weren't kidding when you said it would be obvious if your vulpix got sucked into any food raids," Kotetsu remarked.

Hana looked intensely interested at the sight of his dozing fox.  "…What is it?"

"A vulpix," Naruto answered slowly.

"No," she shot him an annoyed glance.  "I meant: what gender is it?"

"Oh, he's a boy."

The Inuzuka teen was positively gleeful.  "That's great!  I have a female vulpix.  Would you like to arrange a time to try and breed them?  I'd love to see if that color gets passed on."

Naruto blinked.  He'd never given much thought to pokémon breeding, and whenever it had come up in class he would stop paying attention.  Breeding was somewhat expensive, and worse it could be time-consuming.  It took time for the pokémon to produce an egg, and then more time for the egg to hatch, and then time until the hatched pokémon was ready to be used in battle.  There were some advantages-pokémon that hatched in captivity bonded faster to their trainers, which they viewed as their parents, and certain pairings could produce offspring with unusual move-sets.  But still he'd never given any serious consideration to trying it.

"Really?"  Naruto scratched at his scarred cheek.

"Of course!  Here," she pulled a pokéball off her belt, "you can meet her and see what you think."

The vulpix she released had the usual color scheme of the species.  It was well-groomed and healthy.  But what really caught Naruto's eye was the yellow ribbon tied in a bow around the base of the fire fox's six curly tails.

"A bow?" Kotetsu said quizzically.

"It makes her look cuter," Hana informed him and then refocused her attention on Naruto.  "Now, I caught her from the wild so I can't give you any pedigree on her, but Pixy is very well behaved and obedient and while I haven't battled with her nearly as much as my other pokémon, she has performed well."

Naruto shifted uncomfortably.  "Uh…do I have to decide now?"

"No, this offer is open indefinitely, just let me know."  She gave him a feral grin.  "Since you're one of Kiba's buddies, I'll give you a great deal."

"Thanks," Naruto grinned nervously.

Kotetsu took advantage of the brief lull in conversation and brought out Vixen, who was still timid and cringing away from everyone.  "Here's one of the culprits captured just yesterday.  What's your professional opinion on her?"

"You caught one?" Hana murmured, moving in close and gently prodding the little fox to gauge its temperament.  "Huh, shy little thing.  It's hard to imagine it raiding grocery stores and stealing food off café tables."

"I'm thinking it was the pack mentality," Kotetsu shrugged.  "There were about fifteen of them raiding the bakery and she just got left behind."

"Ah…"  The Inuzuka girl kept on checking the quivering fox over, lightly running her fingertips all over its body, even getting a peek at its teeth.  "A nice coat for being fresh-caught, very nice tails, good teeth…a little grooming and a better diet and she'll look fantastic.  She has great potential for captivate and picking up the TM for attract would be a good investment.  But in order to use those moves effectively-to be able to battle at all-she needs a big confidence boost, and that'll take time and patience."

"Great," Kotetsu grumbled.  "I caught me a fixer-upper…"

"You're not going to ditch her because of that, are you?" Hana asked disapprovingly.

"No, no," the rookie officer muttered.  "It's just frustrating."

The fierce Inuzuka girl flipped her ponytail over her shoulder.  "Good."

Demon decided to wake up about this time.  The golden vulpix yawned, blinked, and started at finding Hana Inuzuka's vulpix, Pixy, sitting in front of him and watching him curiously.  Slowly glancing around, he eyed timid Vixen, studied Izumo, Kotetsu, and Hana, and then looked over to Naruto.  And then the vulpix stiffly sat up and rolled something that he'd been curled around to Naruto's hands.

"Huh, what's this?" Naruto frowned.

It looked like a pokéball, but it wasn't like one he'd ever seen before.  The lower half of the shrunken sphere was a metallic silver color instead of the white of most types of balls, and the top half was black.  When he tapped the button and expanded the sphere, he could see fine silver kanji painted on the black expressing power, good fortune, strength, and a slew of other positive things.  And painted right over the button was a red and white uchiwa fan-the symbol of the prestigious and ancient Uchiha clan.

"Fancy," Kotetsu remarked.  "Could be a custom ball; I hear some rich people get those for their beasts."

"Is there anything in it?" Izumo wondered.

Naruto held the button down to open it, but there was nothing inside.

"I wonder where your vulpix found that," Hana mused.  "No Uchiha would just throw something like that away.  And vulpix don't have the pick up ability-pokémon that do practically have a sixth sense for discarded items."

"Too bad he can't just tell me…" Naruto pouted.  A lot more things would be easier if humans could understand pokémon the way they can understand each other.

Vixen barked something, which was surprising as Naruto had barely heard a whimper from the cringing creature before.  Demon snorted and yapped something back at her.  Vixen seemed quite upset by whatever he'd said, and even went so far as to dart at him like she was going to attack.  But Pixy interfered, using a small roar attack which startled Vixen badly enough for her to tumble off the table top and land on the floor.

"Well…that was unexpected," Kotetsu said, walking around to the other side of the table to retrieve his vulpix.

"Do girl vulpix fight over boy vulpix?" Izumo wondered.

"I've never seen it, but I suppose it's possible," Hana said with a shrug.

Naruto gave Demon a suspicious look.  "Do you say stuff to other monsters to piss them off on purpose?"

Demon sniffed and poked the strange pokéball with a paw.

"I hope I didn't keep you all waiting too long," Professor Sarutobi said apologetically as he entered the presentation room.  "How is everyone this morning?"

"Pretty good," Izumo said.

"I wish I was still in bed," Kotetsu grumbled, returning to the chair he'd claimed with Vixen (once again timid and shrinking) in his lap.

"I'm ready and raring to go!" Hana grinned.

"I'm good," Naruto replied and held out the strange ball.  "Have you ever seen a pokéball like this one before?"

The professor took the sphere and squinted as he studied.  "I've seen a few similar to this," he said slowly.  "Where did you get it?"

"Demon had it," the boy answered.  "I have no idea where he got it from."

"Hmm…"  The professor moved to the computer terminal by the large screen on the wall, hooked the sphere into some machinery, and did some typing.  "So, I hear you encountered an aggressive ninetales out in the forest with the wild vulpix?"

"Yeah," Naruto nodded vigorously.  "It had this ugly scar over where its right eye should be and it was really nasty."

"It also seemed capable of using hypnosis," Izumo added.  "That's not usual, is it?"

"Not without being bred for it or trained specially," the old man said as he stared intently at his computer.  He hesitated a moment before activating the large wall screen and putting an image of a scar-faced ninetales up.  "Did it look like this one?"

"Definitely," Naruto shuddered.

"I wouldn't forget that ugly face," Kotetsu nodded.

"Yes, that looks like the same one," Izumo replied.

"Does that ninetales belong to anyone?" Hana asked.

"It did once," the professor sighed.  "The pokéball that Demon found belongs to this particular ninetales.  Originally it had no nickname, but over the years it came to be referred to as 'Madara's Ninetales' or simply 'Madara' after its original trainer."

"Original trainer?" Naruto repeated.  "Was it traded?"

"Not really," the professor said, and shrank the ninetales image to squeeze photographs of three men's faces and some tiny text about them.  "Madara Uchiha was the first trainer and he captured it from the wild as a vulpix.  Next it came into the custody of Susano Uchiha.  And most recently it was put under the care of Shisui Uchiha."

"Professor, those dates…" Izumo trailed off uncertainly.

Naruto looked at the information blurbs and noted a span of years listed by each Uchiha's picture.  That Shisui guy looks like he's close to Sasuke's older brother in age, but…

Professor Sarutobi fingered his unlit pipe and regarded them with a grim expression.  "Those dates are their year of birth and year of death."

"Year of death?!" Kotetsu blinked, wide-eyed.

"Yes," the old nodded.  "All three of them are dead…"