The Kinkou of the Yajuu

I don't own Naruto and Animorphs!

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"Talking"

'Thoughts'

-telepathy-

XD Scene change

/ Different point of view

):P Flash back

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Chapter 1

His eyes crack open and he finds himself in a forest, just not the kind of forests his use to. He sighs and he sits up, he sighs as his back cracks and pops. He sighs and slowly stands up, he then checks to see what he brought with him, once that's done he picks a direction and heads off towards it.

After walking for about an hour, he comes across some kind of path with lines on it. He cocks his head to the side as he stares at it for a few seconds. He shrugs and decides to follow it; he keeps to the side of the path, not knowing anything about it he decides to be cautious since he doesn't know what the path is for. Soon enough something speeds pass, he jerks and leap back only to watch some kind of metal monstrosity speed away on black wheels.

"What the Hell!" He shouts as he stares dumbly at the thing as it vanishes from his sight. He glares down the path, his arms crossed over his chest and a scowl on his face. After a few more of whatever those things were passed him by, he sighs and continues down the path but keeps to the side of the black path with lines and stripes on it.

He walks to give himself time to think, he has this weight in his gut that he doesn't like. 'Blasted fox.' He thinks to himself as he scowls as he stuff his hands into his pocket.

After walking for a few hours, buildings begin to appear in the distance. His stomach growls and he looks sheepish as he realises that it's been a while since he's eaten. He groans as he realises he doesn't have any money to pay for a meal.

Then he slaps himself as he reminds himself that he's a ninja and he shouldn't have that much trouble stealing something to eat. "I wonder if they have any ramen…" He wonders out loud.

It's not long before he's walking through the streets of a really freaky city. He's currently walking through a housing district, he's spotted a few shops but he's looking for something a little busier before he attempts to steal something to eat. He blinks as he watches a really large and long monstrosity stop a few feet away.

He watches as something opens up, he blinks in stunned amazement as people walk out of the metal beast. Soon the opening close and it rumbles and jerks as it begins to roll away. He just watches it move away, still trying to accept what he just saw.

Once he recovers he heads off towards the center of the city, hoping to find what he's looking for in that part of the city. He pauses and notices something to his left. He studies the woman and the woman pauses to glance his way. He uses what he learnt from Ero-sennin about a month after leaving Hidden Leaf.

He looks startled and then narrows his eyes at whatever it was that's parading around as a human woman. The so called woman looks surprised and continues to walk away, he watches whatever it was walk away. He makes a mental note to watch for others like her as he turns away and continues towards the center part of the city. He couldn't help but wonder what other surprise a wait in his near future.

XD

He's been here for about four months now and he's gotten use to the oddness of this world. He's currently resting on one of the bare bars of a construction site that's not far from the mall. He's also just star gazing, even though it's really hard to see them.

Something catches his attention and he hears something from below him, he notices a group of teens his age coming into the construction site, clearly following the odd glowing blue sphere as it comes to this spot. He watches as it lands and it opens up.

He groans as he finds that it's some kind of deer, scorpion, and humanoid being with an extra set of eyes on movable stocks on the head. He eyes the tail with the wicked looking blade on it; he also notices the injury that the thing had. He gets nervous when one of the teens move to the being's side.

He sighs as it seems that whatever it was, it wasn't going to harm the teens. He watches as one of the teens enters into the odd blue thing and comes out with some kind of blue box. He watches as the blue deer looking thing takes hold of the box and he expands his sense, he feels a strange energy swell up within the cube and then move into the teens, mixing with their chakra. He doesn't know what it's doing to them, but he knows it's interacting with their chakra.

Something lands and for the first time he hears the blue beings voice in his head, he's too shocked to remember just what the being said but he watches as the teens flee as a group begins to head towards the blue egg thing. He shivers as he senses an evil vibe coming from the leader, one that reminds him strangely of Orochimaru.

The leader turned out to be what the first being was; only there's something off with it. 'There's two being, I've sensed this before. I don't like the looks of this, not one bit.' He thinks privately to himself.

He looks away as he witness the murder of the first being by eating him. He loses track of what's happening below him as he begins to think about the odd energy he sensed when the second being began to transform. 'Now, where's that blue cube? I need to examine it, whatever it did, it's a key to how that thing transformed and if it is, then maybe I can gain that ability as well. Just image the ability to actually transform into other things without someone cancelling it!' He thinks to himself, several ideas involving various ways of getting Sasuke out of Hidden Sound play out in his head.

In the end, he moves towards a wall, not wanting to be spotted since the group below were going about erasing any trace of the blue egg and the first blue beings body. He creates a shadow clone before he decides to rest, the clone will alert him when those below where gone. He has nightmares of slugs attempting to crawl into his brain, of metal dogs gnawing on his bones, and the blasted fox laughing in the back ground.

XD

He cheers as he finally found the blue cube that inserted that odd energy with those teens' chakra. It took him a whole month but he found it, even using shadow clones to help him search throughout the whole construction site looking for it. His clones gather around and on seeing it, they too celebrate.

He pockets the cube and all of his clones head off out of sight to vanish. He also leaves the construction site, it's about three in the morning but he doesn't feel a bit tired. Satisfaction at finally claiming the blue cube as his own clearly perks up his spirits.

He heads towards the place he's staying at. It was an abandoned run down building that he and his clones were able to fix up to be semi-liveable. He's the only one living there, but that's how he wants it. It gives him the peace and quiet he needs to continue to practice his ninja skills.

'Step number one, accomplished. Next step, to activate cube to gain transformation ability. And then to spy on Marco to learn how to use said ability.' He plans out in his head. He kind of discovered Marco through accident, he hadn't really expected to run into one of the transforming teens but he had. He had caught the teen semi transforming in order to heal a cut; he can only guess what kind of beast the teen had been using in order to heal the cut.

He makes it to the building that's his base of operations. He glances around and then bites his thumb; he smears the blood on the front of the door. A symbol glows and he opens up the door, he grins as he walks through the unsealed door. He sighs, kind of feeling guilty about stealing those kind of scrolls from the library of his home village, but they never gave him the opinion of borrowing them like a normal Leaf ninja.

He makes it to the enlarged living room; he had knocked out a lot of walls and did some rewiring to make sure that the bare wires don't start fires. He glances at his collection, grinning like a mad man as his eyes land on the Ranma ½ DVDs he has in his collection. He had gotten most of this stuff from storage house he had plundered when it began to get too risky to steal from stores.

His grin dims as guilty once more attacks him, but he shrugs it off. He's become a thief in order of making ends meat, he rarely needs to use his ninja skills to steal things, mostly he just needs to avoid video cameras and leaving finger prints. He could do it with one of his hands tied up as well as on one leg; it was just too easy for him.

Sure, they have better technology and such, but he has experience and skill to get around it. Oddly it helps that there are TV shows about solving mysteries and crime solving shows too, they helped a great deal. He sets the back pack down by the lazy boy chair, he continues on to the kitchen part.

He picks up an apple and bites into it as he goes through what he has for groceries. He adds two things to the list he has on one of the fridges he has in the kitchen. He sighs and heads off to take a shower; he'll nap in the afternoon.

/ Loren/

She notes the blond coming out of the apartment, they've tried to examine the build but it seems that something is protecting it, keeping them from getting an accurate reading. The blond glances around, she sighs as once more the young boy glances in her direction before the boy heads off to get groceries.

She trails slowly after the blond she's nick named Whisker, after the odd scars on the teen's face. Nobody really knows his real name, though those that he associates with in his chosen profession just calls him Kage, which translates into Shadow. She often wonder how it is that Whisker can sense the Chee, since from what she and other have been able to analyse, the teen is perfectly human with the expectation of his ability to tell when they're trailing him and when they're around him.

Oddly, the blond teen seems reluctant to confront them as they were to confront him. She's not the only one to notice the way Whisker walks, it shows that while the blond might not look like much, he is able to defend himself, she's seen others walk with that same grace and control to know that the blond was trained warrior. It still bothered them that he can escape from their surveillance, how they don't know but he can and does.

They might trail Whisker for a whole day and the next day, they follow him for about five minutes and they lose him, so much so that they'd only pick up the trail once the teen returns home. –He's heading in your direction, Lou.- She tells the other Chee in the area. –I see him.- Is Lou's response.

They trailed Whisker for most of the day; the teen spent a good amount of time in the library reading a lot of different books, most of them were about world history. Though she did notice the addition of zoology books, which made her wonder if he's noticed the silent war between the 'Andalite bandits' and the Yeerks. Personally, they thanked their creators' souls that Whisker doesn't seem to be connected to the Yeerks or they'd have a big problem on their hands.

Soon she's back where she started, in front of the ruined apartment building that the blond has taken up residence in. Whisker sends a look her way before he opens the door. She's glad when her replacement appears, they've decided that Whisker was a potential problem that needs to be 24/7 surveillance. 'Better have some advance alert then be caught totally by surprise, even if three quarters of the time we can't seem to find him through the whole city.' She muses to herself.

/ Naruto/

It's been a grand total of six months since he found the blue cube and he's activated it, he received the transformation ability even though he doesn't know a whole lot about how it works. He's been trailing Marco discreetly, he already noticed the hawk that seems to be connected with Marco and the other transforming humans, he doesn't inquire about the other's names since he doesn't want to tip the scale in the Yeerk's favour.

He already knew that those who were part of this organization called the Sharing had second entities within him, he's now able to name what these entities were and what they were, they were parasites that were what the Kyuubi wished to be, since they had the ability to take control of the host bodies. Sure he might claim that the Kyuubi was a parasite, but in reality compared to these things, the Kyuubi was a symbiotic being since it does help him on occasions and does speed up his healing ability.

The Yeerks can also transfer into other hosts without any harmful effects, unlike with the Kyuubi where such an act will kill him. He also learnt that these parasites need to leave their hosts every three days to feed off some strange energy that they can't get from their host. He also learnt some things about the other hosts that the Yeerks have at their disposal, mostly the herbivore Hork-Bajir and the cannibalistic Taxxons.

He's seen those on that night where that dying Andalite gave those five humans the ability to transform, or as he learnt, to morph into other beings. He sighs, wondering if that man he got his information from was still suffering from the insane Yeerk within his head. He has mixed feelings regarding this whole invasion that's going on, he also can't help but frown about the fact that the man hadn't mentioned anything about those robotic dogs he knows trail him around, he's glad that they can't tell the difference between the real him and a shadow clone.

He sighs as it brings up one very large question, who was it that they can transform into other beings. 'What am I doing wrong? I should be able to do the same things they can do but I can't seem to figure out how to 'morph' into other beings.' He thinks to himself as he lies on his bed, his thoughts going over what he knows from his observations of the teenager called Marco.

'Well for one thing, that dark girl's parents own something similar to a vet clinic. They have also gone to the zoo, into the back part of it. Ok, lets see, zoo equals animals, so do they need the beast? If so, what do they need from the animals on display?' He wonders, he knows that if Shikamaru was here, the teen would have already solved this bit. "Ok, what do they get from the animals? Why the physical contact at all…" He says out loud, in a soft tone.

-How about DNA?- A voice rumbles in the far back of his head, he blinks and erects a barrier, he growls and curse that he hadn't noticed the demonic chakra coming out of the prison. He frowns and sighs after about ten minutes, he lowers the barrier and asks, -You want me to take blood from these beasts? Are you insane?! They'd notice if I injured them and I don't want to harm them.- He hears the demon sigh and replies, -You don't need their blood to get their DNA. I have to admit; whoever created this ability put a great deal of thought into this. Basically, all you need to do is touch the beast you want to become; somehow you now have the ability to copy and store the blue prints of other beings DNA. Oddly enough, if one was untrained in energy usage, there would be a two hour limit to how long you can use said bodies. But since you can, you don't have to worry about that little time limit.-

He blinks, kind of surprised that the fox demon wasn't rubbing in the fact that he couldn't figure it out and just plain amazed about what the fox is implying. –So I just need to touch and concentrate on the wanting to become said animal and I'd copy the DNA and store it in my cells?- He thinks, not really aware he's sending that to the fox. –That is correct, once you acquire a copy of DNA, you won't ever need to reacquire it ever again.- The fox adds. He frowns and asks, -Why are you so interested in me using this ability?- He can just feel the fox demon rolls its eyes before it replies, -I'm tired of looking through the same old human sense. There are times were I wished I was trap within one of the Inuzuka, they can at least 'merge' with their dogs.-

He doesn't know what to say to that and the demonic presences retreats back to where it came from, leaving him alone in his own mind once more. He sighs but decides to wait until tomorrow to make any plans concerning this information. He rolls onto his side and curls up ever so slightly, allowing the blackness of sleep to over take him.

To Readers:

Kinkou means Balance, while Yajuu means Beast, so the title means The Balance of the Beast.

To be continued …