(New Leaf) Canicular 5 (Patreon)

(Quick authors note here, I made a couple relatively minor adjustments to certain details from the previous chapter to better fit future chapters., but it's not necessary to re-read. The relevant changes are that when Koneko mentions the warehouse "reeks of Light", now it's "reeks of Light, sort of- but not really", + Naruto doesn't mention the Light to the Five Principal members.)

On with the chapter!

Koneko
(Sunday morning, July 15th)

I woke up to the sound of the dryer running in the other room and the smell of cooking eggs and bacon reaching my nose. I idly took note of the fact that I wasn’t in my bed as I began coming to awareness, being curled up on my couch instead. I cracked open my eyes, blearily looking towards the cable box under the TV for its digital clock, while trying to remember why I woke up on the couch this morning.

I didn’t try very hard before I gave up thinking about it.

I am not a morning person, so I wasn’t exactly fully awake and functional yet.

My eyes finally started focusing after I blinked away the blurriness.

10:13 AM

“Nnnng…”

“Rise and shine, Koneko-chan!” A familiar voice called cheerily, entirely too energetic for how early it was. “I made breakfast.” His voice became louder, moving closer from the direction of my kitchen.

“Mmrg,” I mumbled. “Too early…”

I heard him laugh at my complaint and felt a hand pat my head between my ears.

Before I could scrounge up more than a groan’s-worth of effort into complaining more, I was distracted by my field of view being blocked by a butt.

It was a very nice butt, even if it was sort of hidden by the pair of baggy orange track pants covering it.

The butt shifted to the side, leaving my view and causing my eyes to fixate on the plate of steaming hot scrambled eggs, rice, and bacon that was left on the coffee table in front of me.

The smells began filling my head fully as I inhaled for a yawn, sending signals straight to my stomach.

‘I guess I can forgive him, just this once...’

I let go of the pillow I’d been about to throw in Naruto-kun’s direction– Wait, why was he here?– and started pushing myself upright to sit properly while rubbing my eyes.

I reached for the chopsticks he had set by the plate and caught sight of the sleeve of my cat-themed pajama shirt.

‘Oh. Right. That’s why he’s here.’

After watching three episodes of anime, I’d offered to let him crash on the couch. After he decided to accept the offer instead of choosing to run home at one-forty in the morning, I’d gotten changed, and we both stayed up to finish the show since he was already staying over anyway.

Or rather, we’d fallen asleep together on the couch while in the middle of watching.

As was usual when we watched anime I’d already seen, I’d been half-watching the show, half-watching his body as I and fed my chakra through him with his arm draped across my shoulders.

In the end, I’d felt the moment he lost the battle against biology and fell asleep, and after a moment of indecision, I’d decided to take advantage of the situation and leaned further into his side, closing my eyes and resting my head against his chest to enjoy his warmth and the feel of his heartbeat for just a little while.

‘Just a little while’ had turned into ‘all night’, apparently.

I picked up my plate and started digging into the simple but tasty meal.

“I didn’t want to wake you up just to ask if I could use your ingredients-” he began as he came back, sitting down next to me with his own plate, “-so I stopped by the convenience store after my morning workout to grab some things. You now have another half-package of bacon in your fridge. Also, hope you don’t mind, but I used your shower and ran my shirt through a wash cycle.”

“Mm, I don’t.” I glanced over at him, pausing when I saw his shirtless form and damp hair, the blonde spikes lying lower than usual with the extra weight. His arms and torso flexed slightly as he moved to take a bite of his own food, his skin still having a pinkish hue from the hot water. “No need to ask,” I mumbled, drinking in the sight from up-close. “Just go ahead and use my stuff next time, don’t worry about it.”

“‘Next time’, huh?” He asked in an amused tone after he finished chewing and swallowing. “You planning on asking me stay the night more often? Want me to cook for you in the mornings so you don’t have to?” He joked with a chuckle, before going back to his food.

Sitting curled up warmly together the steady, rhythmic beating of a healthy heartbeat lulling me to sleep; waking up to a warm smile and bright eyes greeting me, his mouth opening to say–

I tore my gaze away from his body to look at his eyes. I felt myself hesitate from nerves, but I pushed through the urge to stay quiet; to leave things the way they were, as nice as it has been.

“Yes.”

I set my plate down and stated it clearly, getting him to pause.

I hadn’t been planning on anything. Those thoughts hadn’t crossed my mind until he brought it up. Saying ‘next time’ was just… natural. He was my guest and had stayed over because I’d wanted it, so of course he could eat my food while here. I had offered to let him– one of my best friends– spend the night once already, so of course it could happen again. It just made sense and I hadn’t thought that deeply about it.

But when he said it, I thought about it- and when I thought about it, I liked the sound of it. So, I decided to go for it; to try being proactive about making a change in my life for once, without circumstances pushing me in that direction like they had when I first asked him to teach me about Senjutsu.

He lowered his chopsticks and turned his head to meet my gaze, twisting in his seat slightly to face me more directly with surprised blue eyes.

“I like it when you’re with me,” I told him, watching his eyes open a little wider and feeling my cheeks begin heating up. I pushed on, not letting myself get cold feet once I’d started. “I like being with you. Day or night, in or out of school, or training, it doesn’t matter; I want to spend more time together. I want to become closer to you.”

“K-Koneko-chan?” His face started reddening, contrasting surprisingly cutely with his whiskers. He stammered, mouth opening and closing to find something to say. “I- uh… what-?”

I leaned over and reached out, gently pushing up his chin with my palm.

“Close your mouth, idiot,” I said with an upwards quirk of my lips. “You’ll catch flies.”

My hand lingered for a moment, and he swallowed while staring into my eyes as I pulled away, my fingers lightly brushing the underside of his jaw as I went.

Then he blinked, looking confused. “Wait, I’ll ‘catch flies’? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He lifted an arm while lowering his head to take a whiff of his bare armpit. “I didn’t miss an area while scrubbing, did I? I don’t think I smell bad…”

I didn’t know if I wanted to throttle him for derailing the moment, or laugh at Naruto-kun being so… Naruto.

I spotted something at the edge of the table in my peripheral vision.

“It’s an English saying, means something similar to silence is golden,” I explained, settling for rolling my eyes while hiding an amused smile. Naruto-kun was about to get his karma for messing up the mood of my almost-confession, so it balanced out. “By the way, look out.”

“Huh?” He glanced around confused, before he saw it and he panicked. “Shit! Bad Kuro, no! I already fed you!”

The black cat had silently climbed onto the table and just snatched up three of his bacon slices in her maw, jumping away when he lunged from the couch to grab her. He tried to chase her, but the moment his back was turned, Shiro jumped onto the table with an audible clatter and made off with the last two slices, much to Naruto’s dismay as he turned back at the sound.

“Dammit!” He moaned in despair, his hands scratching violently through his hair. “And I already cleaned the frying pan, too…”

I thought for a moment about sharing some of mine-

“Sucks to suck,” I said, before stuffing one of my own slices into my mouth.

-but it was only a moment.

Naruto’s whiskered cheeks puffed as he stuck his tongue out at me.

After he settled back down to eat his rice and eggs moments later, he hesitated. “Koneko-chan… what you were saying earlier… did you mean…?”

 I nodded while chewing. “Mm.” I swallowed my bite and looked up at him, shuffling just a bit closer so that our knees were touching. My tail wiggled with nervous energy.

“I like you, Nyaruto-kun.” Even with my embarrassing verbal slip, I couldn’t help but smile at the expression that formed on his face. “Let’s keep having more fun together, ne?”

His red cheeks stretched into a goofy grin. “You bet, eheheh!”

-----

We talked some more during and after breakfast, not focusing on anything serious for long, just keeping things as casual as usual for a nice and relaxing morning.

Eventually, the rest of the day came calling for us. We were going to meet up again later today to go on another patrol/hunt, but for now we each had things we needed to do, and I still hadn’t gotten a chance to take a bath since the day before yesterday.

Naruto-kun waved over his shoulder one last time as he walked down the sidewalk, heading towards the downtown area while twirling his sword in his other hand. I waved back, smiling– not that he could see me with his back turned. It was the thought that counted. Besides, even if he couldn’t see me anymore, I could still see him just fine.

‘Definitely a nice butt, for a guy.’

Something something ‘hate to see them go, love to see them leave,’ as the westerners would say.

Still, I couldn’t help but feel like I was forgetting something as I made my way back to my apartment door.

It was only after my bath that I remembered what that something was, when I went into my room to pick out the day’s outfit and saw Kuro enthusiastically rolling around on my bedsheets and pillows like they were covered in catnip.

‘Oh. Right.’

She paused in her motions while on her back when she saw me, head upside-down as she stared at me. I stared back.

‘I guess I did kinda kidnap his cat.’

I shrugged after a moment and went back to getting dressed for the day.

I’d either drop her off at Naruto-kun’s home later– preferably when he was there to keep an eye on her– or have him come here to pick her up when he had the time. I’d get to see him a little bit more either way, so both worked for me.

-----

Kuoh Academy, student council room
(Thursday, July 19th)

Over the course of the next few days, while there wasn’t a whole lot of progress on the “find Kalawarner/capture another Fallen” front, with them seeming to be lying low for now, that didn’t mean that patrols were uneventful across the board. Some of the others in our peerages had come across more than one incident. Kiba and Hyoudou had separately eliminated at least two Stray Devils each, all of them with body counts, while Tsubasa and Meguri had ended up clashing with a group of Eastern Faction youkai who’d shown up to harass the Five Principals.

While we’d been told that the leaders of the Kyoto and Kanto factions were collaborating on the Kuoh situation, the Kanto faction was pretty infamous for not putting a lot of effort into keeping its members under control, so things like this were almost bound to happen. We’d literally expected it to happen and planned around how to handle it.

The most concerning thing was that Kiba and Hyoudou weren’t the only ones to take out violent strays during the four day period. Reya and Ruruko had also come across one together, and Momo another. While we had already known that Stray sightings were rising because of the youkai population migrating away from Kuoh, this was an absurd amount of strays suddenly showing up, especially because Kuoh was actually becoming more and more dangerous for them, with the Five Principles’ presence and Fallen activity on the rise.

“Is this not really suspicious?” Momo asked as we all sat around the long table in the center room, Sona’s base of operations having enough seating to host both peerages fully for this meeting.

When it had become clear to our [King]s that there was even more stuff going on in town with the debriefings we’d given over the last few days, they’d called another joint meeting to explain everything new going on, this time with everyone except for Naruto-kun present. It was still school club hours, so he was at his computer club right now.

It started with going over what Naruto-kun and I came across on our first patrol and Sona’s followup with the clock tower, which didn’t reveal anything suspicious, and ended with discussing what the other patrol pairs encountered, mainly focusing on the strays since it seemed like all the Fallen that weren’t named Mittelt had gone to ground.

And she was basically useless.

Momo continued her thought. “It’s very unlikely to be a coincidence, which can’t spell anything good for the town if this is part of some sort of plot.”

We hadn’t even gotten bounty notifications from the Underworld’s enforcement agency for these strays before we’d found them, meaning they were relatively new arrivals to the town; we’d taken them out before the government had time to compile and send us a file on them, a process which would have started the moment their agents in town uncover the signs of activity from things like missing-people cases and noise complaints.

The fact was, six strays in four days– encountered on regular patrols, not even actively hunting them down– was absurd. Even if bounty orders and dossiers were sent our way, that would still be an unreasonable number.

“You’re not wrong,” Sona agreed, contemplating. “There’s also the fact that going by descriptions, all of the strays were on the extreme upper-end for the level of their mutations. For their control of their Demonic Power to be that bad, all of them must have been far more powerful than their bodies could have handled.”

Kiba nodded. “Of the ones I fought, if they’d had enough control of their power to retain their sanity and a humanoid form, I estimate they would have been about as strong as Koneko-chan without the use of her chakra.”

Buchou hummed, elbows on the table and fingers laced together in front of her mouth. “We’ve had them identified and confirmed by the agency, they were all low-class [Pawn]s with only a single Evil Piece.” She unclasped her hands and set them in front of her, a finger starting to tap on the polished wood. “For each of them to have as much raw power as a [Rook] as talented as Koneko-chan is unusual on its own, and to all show up around the same time indicates some sort of group ties, most likely as disposable assets for a backer.” 

She stopped her tapping.

“The Five Principals wouldn’t ‘lower’ themselves to working devils of their own volition, so they’re out of the question. That leaves the Grigori- who are almost as hostile towards strays as we are, the Kanto faction youkai- who don’t have a reason or the organizational structure to use proxies like this, or a fourth party entirely.”

“If I recall correctly,” Tsubaki spoke up, adjusting her glasses, “I believe Yoru and Akatsuki-dono mentioned a few months back that a powerful youkai had shown up briefly to investigate Kuoh, and the Five Principals as a result of the that, at the behest of a third-party employer. What are the chances these strays are connected to the same individual or group?”

Kaichou tipped her head forward in a nod of acknowledgement. “High enough to be concerning, but simultaneously low enough to, paradoxically, also be a concern as well. Whether it is a singular unknown group responsible for both incidents, or two unrelated unknown groups, either reality poses its own issues for us in the mid-to-long term.”

“Which is why for the moment, we will just have to settle for doing what we can about the immediate situation at hand, while Sona and I figure out what we can do on our end as Kuoh’s overseers,” Buchou agreed with a sigh, before firming up. “Akeno, Koneko.”

I came to attention as we were addressed.

“You two are the best at sensing and tracking out of all of us, so from now on, your jobs will be search and destroy. Make combing sweeps of the town with a priority of finding and rooting out any dangerous strays as soon as they appear,” Buchou ordered. “The other factions know how to act subtly and maintain the secret of the supernatural world, but too many strays acting too chaotically will threaten that secrecy and put even more people in danger.”

“Hai.” I nodded.

Akeno just smiled one of her close-eyed smiles that was more scary than reassuring for whoever saw it.

“As for the rest of you,” Kaichou continued, “We will continue assigning patrol duties as before, but with a focus on enforcing buffer zones between the known Five-Principal Clan occupied areas and the rest of the factions present, emphasizing de-escalating tensions. Our priorities are to prevent any conflict from spilling over and affecting the town, determining who is behind the current chaos and dealing with them appropriately, and re-establishing our authority over the town’s supernatural population, in that order.” Sona waved her hand. “Dismissed.”

With the group of determined teenage devils calling out a chorus of “Hai!”s, the meeting was over, and those of us that didn’t have more business in the student council room began filing out. While most of the others left immediately to do other things while chattering about this and that, like Kiba, Asia, and Hyoudou who were going to an arcade before it got too late, I stood outside the door, leaning against the wall with my arms crossed and eyes closed while I waited for Akeno, since she had stayed behind to help Tsubaki clean up the tea and coffee cups.

After a few minutes of listening to people move around inside the council chamber, I flinched when my shoulder was unexpectedly poked, my eyes snapping open in an instant.

‘...’

A giggle came from above me, and I glanced up from Akeno’s chest– it’s not my fault it’s eye-level for me– to see her purple eyes looking down at me with a mischievous grin.

I hadn’t sensed her at all.

“Ufufu, you and Uzumaki-kun aren’t the only ones who can sneak up on others now, Koneko-chan~.”

I wasn’t particularly trying to sense for her in the first place, but I hadn’t even heard her coming either. Either way, it was impressive that she’d managed to pick up silencing her footsteps as well as Naruto-kuns already, since I know that wasn’t a skill she’d had before the rating game.

“Want to go meet up with Uzumaki-kun at his club?” I didn’t acknowledge her antics or achievement and got straight to the point. “I want to hang out together before we go hunting.”

I also needed to tell him we’d have to stop our usual patrols and late-night hangouts for now since I had new orders, but that wasn’t that important, because I could also just tell him through text.

Akeno blinked with a raised eyebrow, before smiling.

“I’d love to.”

-----

Naruto
(Wednesday night, July 25th)

I crouched in the boughs of a tree as I watched a small group of robed guys pass by underneath me, less than ten in total. All of them were walking over to, and taking turns vaulting over, the brick wall that separated the forest from the supply depot, on their way towards the warehouse from that first night. While I would have expected an organized group like the Principal clans to want their members to use a more official looking entrance than just hopping the fence, this particular group of guys weren’t coming from the city, and were actually staying at a brand new compound further into the woods.

From what I could tell based on the other days I’d spent staking this place out on and off, the way they spoke and their plain, solid-color half-robes meant that while they were officially part of the Five Principal Clans, they were more like branch members; grunts who handled working with the civilian side of the clans’ power bases, and were closer to civilians themselves than they were to the cutthroat traditional onmyoji that made up the bulk of the clans’ actual power.

In other words, they were blue-collar workers with all the same stereotypes and work habits, the only difference being that they had a tiny bit of magical ability.

They complained about higher ups, joked with the other workers, and cut corners on stuff like ‘walking around and using the front gate’ when there was a perfectly good wall to jump over; the usual stuff for working men.

Completely different to the four sorcerers from a week and a half ago.

Luckily, the sorcerers hadn’t been back in three days.

Even though the four had been scared by Koneko’s sort-of bluff when she wasted a decent chunk of her chakra for intimidation, they weren’t total newbies who didn’t pay attention to their surroundings, unlike these guys.

I closed an eye and brought a small handheld night-vision scope up to the other, my vision flipping to shades of green as I scanned the trail behind them for any stragglers.

‘Perfect.’

Confirming there wasn’t any movement, I slipped the device into a hip pouch and dropped to the forest floor, dashing towards the group silently while keeping myself to the shadows.

I caught up to the edge of the tree line as the last one hopped up from his crouch and grabbed the ledge with his hands. I took a running start, aiming around a dozen meters to the right of where the group vaulted it, timing  my jump.

If there was one thing I learned about breaking and entering over my years of pranking jackass shopkeepers and old-man Hokage, it was that all security systems– whether technology based or mystical– had the same weakness.

After all, in order to let the right people in, they had to be able to let people in.

I soared over the wall right as the last man pulled himself over the edge, and I landed in a silent roll behind a stack of pallets right as he landed heavily on his feet next to his obliviously chatting co-workers. The tiny glow of the talisman the group’s leader was holding, that he pulled out before the first person hopped the wall, flickered out.

Why go through the front gate, when they can just turn off the security for a few seconds? What could be the harm?

That was the sort of mindset people got into when they got comfortable in a routine, like people who leave their back doors unlocked all the time because they couldn’t be bothered to use the front door, having to unlock and re-lock it every time.

The Hokage office windows were the exact same, with people like Kakashi-sensei constantly popping them open and skipping the main reception entrance when reporting to granny.

While the group of workers filed in through one of the rear doors, I skirted around the sides, darting from cover to cover as I made my way to the side of the building where I knew there was an unlocked window on the second floor.

Sure enough, I spotted the faint orange glow of a light cigarette as I hugged the wall, just barely lighting up the hand and face of a middle-aged man who was leaning out the window while puffing smoke.

I watched from below as he turned his head, reacting to the indistinct sound of one of the new arrivals calling for him.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll punch out in a moment!” He yelled back. He took one more long drag of the thing before putting it out using the metal windowsill. “Calm yer fuckin tits fer once, ya brat!” He pulled back into the building and carelessly slid the window down as he left his smoke spot, only mostly shutting it.

I waited for about five seconds before scaling the wall and quietly shimmying the window back open, slipping inside and sliding it back to mostly closed behind me.

I found myself in an unlit hallway, one end leading to a stairway heading down, and the other end heading to an office area. I slinked into the office space and ducked behind a desk as I saw Mr. Smoker punching numbers into a console on the far wall. He finished soon enough and left back the way we came, his heavy footsteps clanging loudly down the metal stairs when he reached the end of the hall.

I took the moment to stand up and look around to get an idea of the places layout. The office I was in was suspended over the center of the main warehouse space, with a pair of windows on either side looking out over the warehouse floor. Looking through the windows, I saw the newly arrived robed figures walking around with clipboards under the work-floor lighting, checking various shelves of wood planks and metal sheets, and crates of stone and gravel.

“If I were a Fallen, what would I want with this place…” I muttered as my eyes scanned the warehouse from above. “... and where would I look?”

Off to the corner of the main floor, I saw another door, marked with both a stairwell symbol and ‘Restricted Access’ sign.

But I knew from what I’ve seen of the building layout both inside and outside, that staircase didn’t go up.

‘Bingo.’

I turned to begin mapping out the most direct, hidden path through the shelving units to get there, when I paused.

“I figured you’d be back at some point. I could just see it in the way you moved.”

There was a tanto pressed up to my neck.

“Uhh,” I muttered, looking up into the gray eyes of the female sorcerer from before. She still had that intensity in her eyes that none of the others had back then, but the scar across her cheek sat smoothly, her face more relaxed than I’d expect it to after catching an intruder who was friends with devils. “... it's not what it looks like?”

Her expression didn’t change, but somehow I felt like she was laughing at me.

“Go on then, Uzumaki Naruto-san. Explain what it is.”

‘Dammit.’