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Naruto
(Saturday night, May 19th)

“I still think it’s weird you forgot your own birthday.”

Kuro flew across the room in an impressive leap, jumping off of my chest like it was a springboard to land within Koneko-chan’s unsurprised arms, hugged against the actual board that was her own chest.

I grinned in amusement as my friend stepped into the living room with a pink towel draped over her head, still damp from her shower, staring at me suspiciously as if she had a sixth-sense specifically for the purpose of knowing when I was teasing her in my head.

Actually, that probably wasn’t far off from the truth, from what I’d learned about this world’s standard version of Senjutsu. I had an actual in-depth conversation with that Yoru guy yesterday when he came across me meditating in one of the forests surrounding the town, and it gave me a lot of helpful details and specifics that Koneko and I had been missing due to her lack of youkai teachers or experience.

When I asked what he was doing out in a random forest (because it was kinda hella suspicious for him to just ‘stumble’ across me that far from any trails), he admitted that he’d been instinctively drawn to the area when he’d cast his senses out. Something about how my presence was simultaneously almost unnoticeable, but somehow also very welcoming.

Apparently the sensing ability the youkai’s version of Senjutsu gave them access to was way more comprehensive than my own, even if my basic use of natural energy was stronger for direct combat than theirs. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Koneko was unconsciously tapping into that, to read some small cue of mine to know something was off.

Then again, it could just be that she knew me pretty well at this point.

“Like I said earlier,” I replied with a light shrug, “it’s complicated. I didn’t really pay attention to it that much when I was younger. It was only in the past few years that I really had people to celebrate it with, so it slipped my mind with how busy the past month has been.” That was only partially true. I was genuinely surprised the other day when I opened the bento Akeno made for me, completely forgetting that my official records in this world said my birthday was on the 17th.

But I absolutely did pay a lot of attention to it when I was younger, although most of that awareness was me being full of longing and jealousy of the kids who had parents to celebrate their own birthdays with.

“Hm.” Koneko hummed while she walked around my couch in an oversized light-pink t-shirt and short shorts, clearly not buying it as she sat next to me. “I don’t buy it. What’s the real reason?”

“I’m your damn sensei,” I huffed petulantly, crossing my arms and turning my head away. “Where’s the trust?”

I felt and heard the cushions move as Koneko shifted on them, before feeling a tug on my shirt, and the soft pressure of Kuro’s paws stepping on my thighs as she made her way back into my lap. I glanced back to see slim fingers clutching my sleeve. The girl they belonged to had turned in her seat to fully face me, her smooth, pale legs tucked to either side of her while she looked up at me with her doll-like face.

“Nn, I trust you.” The two cat ear-shaped lumps shifted under the towel that was still on her head as she lightly shook it. The too-large t-shirt slid to the side a little, exposing one of her shoulders. “But I want to know you better. To have your trust too,” She said quietly.

Even with the lights on, her eyes almost seemed to glow.

…

“That’s totally unfair, you cheater.” I deadpanned. “Taking advantage of my feelings like that.”

“You taught me that ninjas don’t fight fair,” Koneko rebutted, monotone. “Is it working?” She asked plainly with a tilt of her head, the act broken as the towel slid off her head.

“Pssh, as if! Uzumaki Naruto is made of sterner stuff than to fall for tricks like that!” I bragged loudly, ignoring the warmth in my cheeks and the fact that she had almost certainly heard my heart skip a beat or two.

“Wasn’t lying…” Koneko made her ‘I’m not pouting’ blank-faced pout. “I meant what I said.”

I knew that, but it didn’t mean I would let her think her cuteness was a free pass to getting me to fess up.

“I guess I can make an exception this one time...” I drawled, as if it was a chore to give her this concession. “Just as a reward, for, y’know, putting my lessons to practice.”

At the same time though, at this point, I didn’t really have a reason not to tell her the main reason I forgot my birthday. I didn’t even have to mention the ‘from another world’ thing to tell the truth!

I snickered when she let go of me and pumped her fist, her blank expression almost imperceptibly brighter.

“Let me start this off by saying, as far as I’m concerned, my birthday was two days ago,” I began. “BUT, despite that, and what my government ID says, I was born on October tenth.”

Her head tilted again in slight confusion, but she patiently waited for my explanation.

“Remember how I mentioned that I was in a really tough fight before I got crippled?” I asked with a sheepish smile. Koneko nodded. “Well, I was fighting that chick on my birthday, October tenth. During the battle, she opened a portal to the empty space between dimensions right in front of me, right as I was charging her and activating the technique that split my soul.”

“The Dimensional Gap?” She asked suddenly with widened eyes and raised brows, her face showing a rare level of reaction. Kuro stiffened in my lap and pawed at my stomach, as if startled by the change in tone. I absently began stroking her fur while shrugging.

“If that’s what you guys call it, sure. Anyways, I fell into the portal on October tenth with my chakra system wrecked, and was found in one of Kuoh’s parks on the shinigami’s doorstep by my landlord on May seventeenth, last year.” I shrugged again. “I didn’t exist in the government’s system, so they set me up with official records and listed my birthday as the seventeenth. I just forgot to account for the weird timeline change and stuff, since I’m used to it being in October.”

This time it wasn’t just Koneko looking at me, even Kuro had craned her feline head around to stare up at me like I was a weirdo.

But she was just a cat, so what did she know!

Koneko’s head eventually bobbed once in a nod. “Okay.”

“‘Okay’?” I echoed in confusion, having expected… I don’t know what I expected, but definitely something more than that as a reaction. “That’s it?”

“Mm.” She nodded. “Your past is as weird as you are, but I trust you.”

“Oi, wanna run that one by me again?”

Koneko ignored my threatening tone and held both her hands in front of her, palms up. A pair of small red magic circles lit up above them with a spin, and two boxes wrapped in bright orange wrapping paper appeared in her palms, neat little bows tied on top.

“Koneko-chan?” I glanced down at the presents dumbly, caught off guard. One of them was smaller than the other; about the size of a bento box, compared to the one that was as big as a shoe-box.

“I didn’t know what to get you on short notice, so I got these two.” She held out the boxes insistently, looking up at me. “Happy birthday, Naruto-kun.”

I smiled awkwardly. “You really didn’t need to get me anything, ya know. Just hanging out is enough for me, but thanks–” I froze, before a wide grin stretched across my lips at the unexpected third gift she’d just given me.

“Alright!” I pumped my fist, to her wary confusion. “You said it!” I pitched my voice up in a bad mimicry of hers  “‘Happy birthday, Naruto-kun.’ You finally called me by name outside of training! Yes!”

She ignored my outburst, looking away with slightly red cheeks and twitching eyebrows, and spoke as if nothing had happened. “The one I was looking at didn’t feel like enough, so I got something more practical to go with it.” She shoved the boxes against my side since Kuro was taking up my lap space.

I accepted the gifts and began tearing off the wrapping, starting with the smaller one.

Inside was a thick spool of high quality, high-tensile strength, extra-thin metal wire. I wouldn’t know how well it compared to the ninja wire back home until I tested it out, but at the very least, it would be really useful for setting traps and upgrading my forearm-mounted kunai holsters.

“Nice.” I hummed in appreciation, a couple ideas for a new release mechanism already running through my head.

I pushed the thoughts aside and unwrapped the second one, lifting the lid to reveal…

A stuffed animal.

I lifted the orange plushy toy to eye level with both my hands under its ‘armpits’, and silently stared into the foxy face with blank eyes. It stared back, round, glossy black eyes even more blank than my own, with a floppy pink tongue extending out from the corner of the black stitching that marked its ‘mouth’. With nine equally floppy tails hanging down below it…

… I pictured a shrunken-down Kurama, with his dumb rabbit-fox face making the same expression.

“Pffff-!”

Eventually, I managed to stop laughing long enough to apologize to Kuro for falling off the couch and disturbing her seat on my lap, as well as to thank my friend for the perfect three gifts. Eventually.

-----

Kuoh Academy, behind the old school building
(Tuesday, June 19th)

I shifted to the right, dodging the right jab thrown at my side.

‘Left cross with a step forward, footing and weight distribution off; probable feint.’

I smacked the fist aside with a backhand, sending it wide to her left to open her guard, and stepped back instead of trying to take advantage. Koneko had shorter limbs than me in the first place anyway since I had just over half a foot of height over her, so backing out of melee range left a small window where I was still in range to attack her, but she wasn’t able to attack me.

The hard surface of her left kneecap just missed me, swinging up into the space my midsection had just occupied a split second ago with a swish of displaced air. I suddenly leaned back when she immediately twisted on her foot and her extended leg shot out in a karate kick aimed at my face, stumbling slightly when my school jacket fell off my shoulders and almost tangled up the back of my legs. The sole of her sneaker missed my nose by barely a centimeter, and with a twist of her whole body, she swung that leg down and used the momentum to rotate into a spin kick.

I flicked my wrist and ducked under her heel, but Koneko stopped her foot directly above me, so I had to react fast and brought my hand up to catch her by the ankle, halting the heel-drop that probably would’ve dislocated my shoulder. The metal wire that had been hidden within the folds of my jacket– that she was currently standing on– swung up with my wrist movement, a twitch of my finger snapping the looped wire to wrap around her sock.

I still had her other ankle awkwardly trapped in my grip above her head-height, so it was game over.

My eyes met hers in what felt like slow motion as I yanked on the wire, only for my eyes to widen as her weight shifted in my grip and the wire continued sliding around her limb loosely, feeling no resistance from my yank. My eyes flicked down for a single moment, just to see the other end of the wire slip out from the loop, the kunai that it had been tied around nowhere to be found. Just a plain, thin, wire end that had no weight or knot to catch on the loop to tighten.

Koneko kipped up off of that foot in the same moment, leveraging my grip around her other ankle to swing her leg up and hook it around the back of my neck while my arms were out of position, then immediately throw her body back and downwards. Without being able to stick to the ground with chakra anymore, basic physics pulled me down with her.

I let go of her ankle to brace against the fall with both hands, but both of her hands were still free too, and she grabbed my wrists with her own vice grip, holding my arms to the sides. She landed hard on her shoulders and neck, abusing her [Rook] durability to its fullest in order to not even flinch as she somersaulted us with the momentum.

I felt the shift of gravity as the world went upside down for a moment, my vision entirely blocked by her white gym shirt, before my back slammed into the packed earth with a deep thump, the weight on my torso bouncing with the impact a little like I was some sort of shock absorber. My breath left me with a wheeze while my vision was full of the open blue sky, bordered by the canopy of leaves surrounding the clearing.

My student’s face popped into the bottom of my view, a rare satisfied smile on her lips while she leaned forward to hover over me.

“That’s my win.”

I blinked while catching my breath, straining against her grip on my wrists for a moment in a failed attempt to escape her pin, before giving up and letting her pin my hands next to my shoulders. I lifted my head up to look directly at Koneko-chan and chuckled weakly.

“I guess it is, you win,” I admitted with a grin. “By the way, how did you know–”

“Using your jacket as a distraction is one of your favorite tactics, and pretending to make a mistake is another,” she cut me off. “I also saw the wire. My eyes are much better than a human’s.” She said it all in a deadpan tone like it should be obvious, but I could tell she was proud of herself. It wasn’t often she beat me in spars since she had to restrain to a certain level of power. In this case, it was no chakra allowed.

Usually she was handicapped even further, needing to pull her punches since I wasn’t able to handle her full strength without massive injury at the time, but my gradual recovery of my physical strength and speed over the month meant that she was now fine using her base abilities against me without too much worry.

“Sorry, by the way,” she continued with an apologetic look. “You probably need another new jacket. I smashed it hard with my heel to snap the wire.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it,” I assured her with an attempted shrug. “I’m the one who keeps using it in fights, so whatever happens to it is my fault.”

“Mm.” She accepted that.

It got quiet for a moment, each of us just looking at the other.

“Ara ara, how scandalous!”

A shiver of uncertain dread ran down my spine, which was currently being pressed into the dirt.

Koneko-chan and I turned our heads at the same time to look at the source.

Akeno was caressing her cheek with a palm, her other hand clutching her elbow as she smiled mischievously at us from the close edge of the clearing.

“To think Koneko-chan has gotten this bold~” The raven haired girl did a little wiggle that did interesting things to her proportions, almost distracting me from her actual words.

I blinked, and Koneko and I glanced back at each other.

Or rather, more specifically, we both looked down to notice the fact that she was still on top of me. She was sitting on my stomach and her face hovered over mine with less than a foot separating us, while still holding me pinned to the ground, entirely at her mercy. Her legs straddled my sides, giving me a dangerous view of her bloomers pressed against me, accentuating her thighs and–

“K-uhh!” I choked out a startled sound in alarm as I snapped my head to the side to look away. ‘Nope! Not the time for this, hormones!’

I tried salvaging the situation. “You won Koneko-chan; the spar’s over, so you can let me up now, ya’know?!”

My friend– just friend– released my wrists and sat up, her hands settling on her thighs.

I scrambled to get my elbows beneath me and push myself up too, but I ran into a little problem.

“... What did you want, Akeno-senpai?”

Koneko-chan was still sitting on me.

Her face had a hint of red, but was otherwise blank while she stared back at the upperclassman

‘And is it just me, or did she just sound more monotone than usual?’

“Uhhh, hello?” I poked my student’s knee to try getting her attention after she ignored me. “Koneko-cha-ack!?” 

Her tail flicked around and smacked my cheek.

It didn’t hurt, I was just surprised by the action, and left momentarily speechless that she would ignore and tail-whip me like that.

“Ufufu~” Akeno giggled, slipping her hands behind her back and bending slightly at the waist to emphasize the chest of her school uniform. She then sighed with an exaggerated pout of regret. “Unfortunately for me, one of my contractors canceled on me last-minute for a family emergency.” She brightened. “Luckily, that client gave me-” she brought one of her hands out from behind her, holding up a colorful slip of paper, “-this, as an apology.”

“A karaoke voucher?” Koneko didn’t seem impressed, her eyes narrowing. “And?”

Akeno smiled with her eyes closed. “And I’m inviting you two to go with me.”

I mentally shrugged since I was still on the ground. I’d never done karaoke with friends before.

“Sure.” “No.”

I glanced up at Koneko with a raised eyebrow. “Really?”

She looked away and crossed her arms resolutely. “... I want to train more.”

“There’ll be snacks~” Akeno waved the voucher enticingly, expression unchanged.

Koneko’s resolve faltered slightly.

Akeno’s smile widened. “All the junk food you want, on me.”

“Deal.”

‘I guess we’re doing karaoke after all,’ I let out an amused breath.

‘Now if only Koneko-chan would let me get up!’

-----

“Mirai ni kouun woooo~!” I sang/yelled into the microphone loud and proud and definitely off key. “So- no- chi- no- sa- da- me!”

I inhaled deeply, letting my fighting spirit rise to fill the dimly lit room as I followed the words on the screen.

“Jooooooooooooooooo~ Jo~!!!” 

Koneko clapped politely from the couch with a stick of pocky in her mouth, while Akeno catcalled and whistled wildly next to her.

-----

“Uh. summa-lumma, dooma-lumma, you assumin’ I'm a human.” Koneko alternated bending her knees slightly, shifting back and forth with the beat in stiff and robotic motions. “What I gotta do to get it through to you, I’m superhuman

Akeno stifled a giggle behind her hand next to me. I didn’t bother holding back, and was cracking up 

Hearing Koneko rap at high speed in perfect English, monotone as hell, was super weird but extremely funny, especially when she began pointing sideways finger-guns around with straight posture and a blank face.

-----

“Ii kagen... mattete mo...” Akeno swayed gently along with the music with closed eyes, the bright sound of piano keys following her angelic voice. “Baka mitai~”

It was an alright song, I guess. Akeno’s soulful voice did a lot of the heavy lifting in my opinion, but I could at least understand why a lot of people apparently considered it really emotional and compelling, sometimes to the point of tears, even though I personally was made of sterner stuff than that.

“Dame da ne~, dame yo, da~me~ na no yo~...”

I felt something press up against my cheek, and glanced down to see that Koneko was reaching up to dab under my eye with a napkin. She wordlessly held it out for me to take with amused eyes.

"Th-thank you, Koneko-ch-chan." I silently mouthed gracefully without any hiccups, accepting the napkin to dry my face and blow my nose while listening to the somewhat decent song.

'All this damn dust in the air, making my eyes water.'

-----

Central Kuoh
(Saturday, July 14th)

It hadn’t been hard to sneak into the school’s administrative office a while back to take a look through the student records and find out my friends’ birthdays without tipping them off. It was something I hadn’t even actually thought about until Akeno ambushed me with my own, which made me feel kinda bad that I hadn’t thought to ask any of them until then. Her birthday was a week from now, so I figured I’d head into town, maybe the mall, and walk around until I saw something I thought she might like.

Honestly though, it was kind of hard trying to pick out a gift for her. Not only the fact that, being part of Rias’s peerage, she was rich enough to probably buy out entire stores and have cash left over, so anything I could buy would be something she could easily get herself without a second thought, but also the fact that she wasn’t even much of a ‘material’ person.

Aside from her taste in expensive clothes and other, more adult wear that she sometimes flashed at me and Koneko when she wanted to fluster us, she was the type who preferred home-cooked meals over flashy high-end restaurants.

So while I was here to look around and maybe find something to buy as a gift, I was most likely just going to try and make something by hand during the week, using stuff I see today as inspiration. Most of my DIY experience is with making traps, smoke bombs, and painting, but a lot of that stuff translated pretty well to crafting other things too, like my bracers.

I was walking past a high end-looking costume store and glanced in the giant window at one of the themed cosplays on display, when I paused in my tracks, something I saw scratching at the back of my mind.

Through reflection on the glass, I caught a glimpse of a figure that I felt like I recognized from somewhere, walking down the other side of the street. I turned my head to look directly, just to see a tall woman with straight blue hair done up in a bun, and a young girl with blonde pigtails walk through the door of a cafe. What made it stand out more than anything, was that the blonde was wearing a black, wide-skirted dress with white frills, a style I had only actually seen in person once, more than two months ago.

“Isn’t that…?” I muttered to myself, watching them step into line through the cafe window while thinking of the childish Fallen that had surrendered without too much fuss.

‘Which means… that woman with her probably is too, right?’

Though, the older looking chick didn’t seem too happy to be there, going by her stiff posture.

Sure, she could be some regular lady the blonde befriended recently, but the two seemed too familiar with each other.

I remember someone mentioning at one point the blonde Fallen was sticking around town as a sort of joint-custody prisoner to ease tensions after everything that happened. Despite technically being under house arrest, she’d been so helpful in answering Rias’s questions that the redhead had decided to basically let her roam as she wished, as long as she didn’t leave the town.

The fact that the blonde was so quick to throw her faction under the bus after the incident had nothing to do with them wanting her as far away from their day-to-day operations as possible, I’m sure.

I grinned a little in amusement at that, before another thought crossed my mind.

‘If the Fallen have been keeping her out of the loop as much as possible, then why meet up with her now?’

I debated what to do. On the one hand, it was probably nothing, just the Fallen sending someone to check up on her, which would explain the hostility the taller one barely hid; no soldier liked when their comrades betrayed their cause.

On the other hand, it could even be someone from their organization trying to take it into their own hands to ‘deal’ with a traitor, spending some time trying to get any information out of the blonde before finally acting or something.

Or, it could be the blonde trying to get back in their graces, passing on any damaging info she might have gotten on Red and the others.

I watched the two make their orders and head over to take a seat while they waited.

I glanced back into the costume store, taking in the various outfits and cosplay accessories on the racks, before studying my own features in the reflection, contemplating.

I sighed, coming to a decision.

Whether it was something or nothing, I needed to make sure

‘No one will find out,’ I promised myself.

I ducked into the store.

-----

Five minutes later, I walked out of the store without anyone the wiser and crossed the street towards the cafe, while quietly humming out a quick tune to get my voice right.

In the costume store, I had tipped a rack off balance as I passed by, just enough so that it fell over after I got further into the building to cause a distraction, allowing me to discretely grab everything I needed to disguise myself. I had then snuck into one of the changing rooms when no one was looking, swapping outfits as fast as possible before walking out of the store without being stopped.

My school clothes were currently tucked away in a bag I’d taken from the front desk while the clerk had been busy cleaning up the mess I made. I made sure to leave enough cash by the register to pay for my ‘purchases’, as well as a little bit extra for the hassle I put the unknowing worker through.

Entering the cafe and stepping into the line to buy something, I nonchalantly glanced around, pretending to admire the admittedly cozy interior while I looked for the table my targets had claimed.

‘What?’ I thought in confusion and alarm when I couldn’t find them. ‘Don’t tell me they left already?!’

I made note of the interior and everyone in it, and compared it to what I remember seeing from outside when the two first entered. It took me a couple tries, before I realized that my eyes kept glazing over a particular part of the room, and the gap in my mental map became glaring. Immediately after figuring that out and focusing harder, I laid eyes on the two seated in a corner by the window.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t find them, they had just put up one of those perception barrier things, a small one that made people ignore them.

The line moved forward, and then it was my turn.

“What can I get you, miss?” The twenty-something year old redheaded lady behind the counter had a forced polite smile, like she couldn’t wait for her shift to be over, before it shifted slightly in interest when her eyes raked me up and down.

I pitched my voice up, carefully suppressing my natural rasp. “Just a strawberry shake, please.”

I didn’t get it quite right, but I was close. All those times transforming into a girl with the Oiroke no Jutsu meant I had a pretty good general feel for how I could adjust my voice to match my old “female form”. There were some biological differences between my vocal chords that I just couldn’t make up for, but whatever.

The woman’s eyes locked onto my neck with raised eyebrows and a giggle. “Oh. Oh. You’re totally rocking that outfit, by the way,” she began with a grin. “Might want to wear a choker next time, otherwise you’re good.”

‘Dammit.’

I resisted the urge to look away and ignored the comment, meeting her eyes head on, with only the facemask I was wearing to cover my whisker birthmarks to hide my embarrassment.

“Anyways, coming right up, miss.” The chick winked and got to work.

Within a minute, money and milkshake exchanged hands, and I was strolling over to take a seat at a table near my targets, my wig’s blonde pigtails swaying behind me. It took a lot of control to make sure my walk looked naturally casual after that humiliating situation

There was something seriously embarrassing about actually crossdressing for the sake of espionage, compared to using the Sexy Jutsu. Having my Adam's apple pointed out while dressed in a magical girl cosplay was way more emasculating than literally fondling my Oiroke’s chest in public.

I sighed in relief as I sat down and pulled out my phone, slipping my shake’s straw under my mask to drink and pretending to text someone while I tried listening in to the Fallen’s conversation a table over.

…

… Just to not actually hear anything.

‘I swear on the fucking Sage…’

I glanced over discretely, and deadpanned.

‘God dammit.’

The frowning blue-haired chick’s lips were moving, but no sound left them, swallowed up by whatever barrier they had up.

What a waste of effort.

The entrance door chimed, and my eyes widened as a pair of familiar figures walked in, one wearing the Kuoh Academy boy’s uniform.

I kept my head low and tilted my phone like I was engrossed in a video, watching from the corner of my eye as Norika and Mitsuri walked up to the counter and began talking with the redheaded barista who looked startlingly similar to Mitsuri now that I saw them side by–

‘Oh.’ The thought occurred, that today might actually be the unluckiest day of my life. ‘They’re related.’ 

The barista leaned over to jab Mitsuri with her elbow, a sly grin on her face as she ‘discretely’ gestured in my general direction.

I pretended not to notice when my two friends glanced over, hoping they wouldn’t recognize me. Norika seemed to do a surprised doubletake with zero subtlety when she spotted me, and Mitsuri–

‘Why the hell is your face so red, you weirdo?!?!’