14 - Raven and Hummingbird

Fuyuka thankfully woke up soon enough, rushing back to see how things were going. Gaara was inside a sand sphere, while Sasuke (oh, hey, duck butt's back!) had a blue sphere in hand, almost able to pierce through the sand shell.

Sasuke proved to be far stronger than before, managing to break through Gaara the Scary Strong's sand shell. But noo, Fuyuka doesn't get to watch a fight in peace, she had to look up at the right time, spot a feather, and then go zzz. Again. Less than 10 minutes after she woke up.

People suck.

Nobody bothered to dispel the genjutsu on her, so she slept through a WHOLE INVASION.

Thank goodness Kuro was a free range cat.

So yeah. Hokage: dead. Suna ninja: evil. Oto ninja: also evil. Chunin exams: over.

But now, it was time to go and do some digging on information about the Tsuyoku Clan. She had planned to get a permission slip from the Hokage by bothering him, but the old man was dead, so she settled for Kakashi.

Obviously, because Fuyuka is such a noble and good person, she didn't say exactly what she was investigating. Still, Kakashi was a relatively laid back sensei, so she had permission to do what she needed. Or, in the silver-haired jonin's words, 'permission to do stuff'.

Good enough.

Currently, this girl was sneaking out of the village. Hey, she had the permission slip. Plus, she heard that Naruto would be going to search for the sannin Tsunade with his Sannin teacher Jiraiya, so nobody would notice her vanish.

Someone did notice her vanish. Because as she tried to head for a village exit, she stumbled upon four jonin duking it out with Sasuke with stress lines and a whole fucking shark dude.

So she left. Okay, this might seem a bit rude, but there were four jonin, they could beat depressed Sasuke and Jinbe from One Piece but scary. Honestly, though, if a One Piece character came to life while looking slightly (read: very) different, Fuyuka would have preferred Robin. Ah, the beautiful, perfect, Robin.

Ahem, getting off track here. She would think about exactly who the hell those people were later.

She didn't exactly have any clue exactly where she was going. However, with the Hokage dead, she managed to sneak into his office and went through some mission files. Luckily, the girl found one related to Shadow Star.

Again, with nobody in the office, it was easy to sneak one piece of paper away.

She had a permission slip, after all.

The girl retrieved the paper from her satchel as soon as she was out of the village, scanning the contents again.

'Mission Rank: A

Assigned to: Yamiki Hoshino, Shadow Star Investigation Division

Details: Investigate a small demi-village that seems to have appeared recently'

Making a note of the limited directions, Fuyuka strolled in the general direction of the 'small demi-village'.

A few hours of walking later, Fuyuka sighed, plopping down under a tree and bringing a bottle of water and a bag of fish jerky from her bag. 'Ugh, I completely miscalculated the food. I need to find a river or something because I totally need more fish. I am not eating fruit for a whole meal.'

As she finished her fish jerky, she noticed two birds fluttering around nearby. Two very familiar birds.

It was the raven and hummingbird from when she was fishing.

Why would these two types of birds be hanging out? Do birds even hang out? Can't ravens eat hummingbirds?

She decided to follow them. A literal tiny pink hummingbird wasn't afraid of a whole raven, so she could probably follow them without scaring the birds away.

The blue haired girl quickly put her jerky and water back into her satchel before following the two birds. They were flying quite low, so it wasn't too hard to keep an eye on them, especially with how much black or pink contrasted the blue sky.

Fuyuka was mildly surprised when the birds arrived at a village. This must be the 'small demi-village' Yamiki was sent to investigate.

The girl saw the raven and hummingbird flutter towards a boy standing by a fountain. The boy appeared around 15 years old, and had short ashy blond hair and dark green eyes, staring into the fountain with a deadpan.

He held out an arm, the raven landing on his shoulder and the hummingbird on his finger. Okay, so the birds get along because they were pets. The boy stared at the two birds for a moment, before turning to Fuyuka.

"You're a Hoshino."

"Huh?" Fuyuka looked around in confusion. Was he talking about her?

"The blue one."

"You mean me?" the girl asked, pointing at herself. "Uh, yeah. Why?"

The boy didn't look too dangerous, so she wasn't too worried. Still, even if he was a threat, she could always Stellar Snare him in the face.

"Another Hoshino," he sighed, as if annoyed. "Does Konoha have something against us or something?"

Fuyuka frowned, offended. Then, she realized that if he said 'another' Hoshino, that meant one of her family must be here. And that someone...

"Is someone named Yamiki here right now?" the genin asked.

"You're Fuyuka then?" the boy asked in response. A vein popped on the blue-haired girl's head, but she nodded. "How did you know?"

"Yamiki Hoshino is here, but currently not present. I'm a telepath."

He's a what?

"You're a what?!" Fuyuka waved her hands in front of her in panic. "Who the hell are you, and have you been poking around in my brain or my brother's?"

The blond boy sighed again, as if he was used to this question. "I read Yamiki Hoshino's mind when interrogating him for sneaking around in our village. Otherwise, no."

"How can you read minds at all? And what is this place?" Fuyuka continued asking. The boy scowled at her incessant questioning. "My power. A small village."

The blue-haired genin scowled back at the boy's technically correct but entirely unhelpful and short answers. "Ugh. Who even are you? And what's with the birds?"

He held out his arm, where the raven and hummingbird sat. "This is Kanashi. He is sensitive about his species, make sure you call him a raven and not a crow. The hummingbird is Yokina. She dislikes being ignored, make sure to be kind to her."

"I didn't ask for an introduction for your birds," Fuyuka shot back. Well okay, she did ask, but that wasn't the point. "Who the heck are you?"

The blond boy sighed again. Seriously, why did he sigh so much?

"My name is Shigetsu Tsuyoku."