Ninja Chef Naruto

By _

Chapter Twelve: Filler With Ramen

#Konohagakure#

"I realize the Sandaime basically said take all the time you need, but..." Obito paused, gesturing to the ruins behind him.

"No, I understand. It's because I turned my back and lost myself that monsters like him can walk around so, so openly without any concern of being hunted down." The recently retrieved, busty blonde kunoichi murmured mournfully as she gazed at what was left of the village her brother and lover had died to protect.

Obito, assuming it was obviously Orochimaru she was referring to, simply nodded in understanding and led her towards the field hospital.

Jiraiya scowled as he let them walk away. He had his own bad news to give and was hardly looking forward to it. The recipient was exactly where he'd thought she'd be, hanging out in a ramen bar, listening as her daughter gave an enthusiastic and exaggerated retelling of her first real mission.

"And then we caught up with him and he blocked my Rasengan, brushed off a kick from Gai-san and took out Kakashi-san's clone all with one hand!" The miniature redheaded kunoichi blathered, making eager air punches as she spoke. "He was so cool! When those cloaked guys from the chunin exam showed up, all 'you must be the kyuubi container' he totally stopped the shark guy all by himself." She paused to inhale a bowl before continuing a bit more thoughtfully. "Well, until Tsunade decked him for calling her 'Obaa-chan.' Then they all ran off and all these other ninja showed up to collect money from Tsunade. Did you get to fight any cool super-ninja here, kaa-san?"

Kushina's eye twitched violently and she gurgled her own ramen in surprise, trying not to drown as she was unwilling to let it go to waste in a spit take. "N,no. Of course not. Nothing exciting ever happens in the actual village." Was her nervous reply once she'd composed herself enough to talk.

This was followed immediately by a fog-horn cry of pain resonating over the village and dozens of ANBU dashing past, screaming about swamp jutsu and summoners to try and seal up the eternal summons again.

The toad-sennin naturally hid behind his invisibility jutsu as talking to Kushina took precedence over stopping a multi-ton, dozen story tall monster of stone and fur from breaking loose and rampaging around.

Tatsumaki gave her mother a skeptical look, but let the subject drop.

"So anything else happen?" The mother asked, grasping at straws for a distraction.

"Well, ero-baka got defeated by some girl pretending to be Orochimaru, but I think he was faking since he got up real quick once she was gone."

Jiraiya cursed angrily before scrambling for a new hiding place as the two turned to look in his general direction.

"Oh! And Kakashi-san also faced down Itachi! He totally got his butt kicked too, they were all..."

Grumbling to himself, the great toad sage wandered off to get a bottle of saki or two before checking back here for the older redhead. He probably needed to write some kind of report now anyway. While the Sandaime had let him get away with never doing any paperwork, he doubted Obito, as a brand new kage, would.

#Otogakure#

Sensation returned to Naruto slowly, starting with a soft, rumbling vibration against his head through two warm, cushy orbs pressed tightly against him.

"Back the fuck off, you over-inflated, brain-dead slut." Tayuya's voice rang over the continuous hum that coincided with the weird vibration.

"Hey! I'm giving you a chance with sensei, you should be grateful!" Kin cried back, clearly unhappy.

There was the sound of a tussle as the chef slowly opened his eyes, almost unwillingly.

"Let go or I'm going to rip off your fucking arms and shove them up your ass so hard you'll be shitting out your mph-"

"Sensei is trying to sleep. Keep it down."

The first sight that greeted him was Kin in an orange 'why yes it is mesh armor' bra and panty set, shoving a Tayuya-shaped demoness's face into her cleavage to silence the foul mouthed girl, their arms interlocked in a struggle of second-stage cursed seal versus kekkei genkai enhanced strength.

"L,like I give a fuck about him..." The cursed seal user backed off slightly before she could be smothered and murmured back much more quietly this time, her artificially tanned face blushing deeply enough to show despite her temporary skin-tone.

"So do you want in or not?" Kin demanded, frustrated at not being able to simply overpower her new rival.

"W,why the fuck would you think I did?" The other kunoichi averted her eyes even as she continued the fight.

Kin grinned evilly. "Well it's not like you know anything about seducing people is it? But lucky for us, Yugito-chan is an expert."

Both kunoichi paused, turning their attention to Naruto. Or at least he thought they had, until he realized the purring had stopped and both of them were in a state of enraged shock.

"What? Neither of you were paying any attention to him." Yugito's voice came from somewhere above and behind him, the warm thing pressed against him instantly being labeled 'Yugito's bare skin', meaning the cushy orbs were… Naruto froze, holding completely still, not even daring to breath.

"Put some fucking clothes on, you kami-dammed skank!" Tayuya roared, shoving Kin away and charging the female jinchuriki much like the monster she appeared to be would.

Kin grabbed the back of girl's clothes, inadvertently proving the cursed seal's second form was completely human in shape except for horns, a slight tail and the typical nails to claws. It also proved she was a natural red head and that even when the rest of her clothes disintegrate, nothing will destroy the Orochimaru designed belt/bow, which settled onto the girl's hips in a rakish tilt.

The shock caused her to freeze and drop the transformation, her cocoa colored skin turning pale again as various darker bits turned pink, her figure slenderized and an untamable clump of dark crimson shrank to a sparse patch of paler red that did nothing to hide what was behind it. The belt/bow slid off her narrower hips even as her eyes caught his and her face turned hot pink.

"Ha ha, sorry about that Tayuya-san." Kin chuckled nervously.

"I'll fucking kill you!" The enraged/embarrassed girl screamed, whirling around but soon discovering she was unfortunately outmatched in her human form.

"Hmm, they're not the sharpest kunai in the pouch huh?" Yugito purred huskily, languidly soaking in her unnoticed victory of having Naruto all to herself yet again.

Said shinobi nodded absently against her rumbling, purring chest, believing this to be a good dream. It'd be even better with ramen.

"Leave Onii-chan alone!" And then things went straight to hell as a tiny, white-eyed adopted younger sister burst in.

#Konohagakure#

"I assume there's a reason you wouldn't show yourself while Tatsumaki was around." Kushina stated, driving Jiraiya from his stalking.

"I found him." The sennin announced without preamble.

"I,I see..." The red head almost staggered, glaring at her trembling hands before she smoothed her hair. "And? There must have been a reason you didn't tell Tatsumaki immediately."

"The shinobi she told you about fighting, that's him."

"So they have to be enemies then." She deadpanned back. Jiraiya only nodded. Kushina undid her hiate-ite, staring at her reflection off the leaf symbol for a few moments. "Told you no child of mine would die that easy." She murmured, to herself more than to the aged pervert.

"Kushina, you don't need to-"

"What?" She demanded, suddenly radiating killing intent. "Beat myself up over this? I'm not. It's those bastards on the council and Sarutobi's fault! I got over my part in listening to that old monkey long ago, the only reason I'm still here is for Tatsumaki. If they made him what he is, then they deserve what they get!" The red head roared, summoning her chakra into a burning corona around herself.

"Sensei did what he thought was right. There was no way the public would accept him as Arashi's son while Tatsumaki was still around to play the part of heir." Jiraiya tried to justify his old jounin-sensei's actions, the reasons ringing hollow even to his own ears.

"And the public took him with open arms as an anonymous orphan." The kunoichi shot back snidely. "We could have hid ourselves away with four just as easily as three, try again pervert."

"He was suppose to be a deterrent, the most powerful jinchuriki. If he was gone-"

"Nothing would happen." The woman glared and scowled at him for daring to use that line of reasoning, the same lines the council used to convince the Sandaime to take her son the first time. It had been disproved twice, first by six years of nothing and then by the village being destroyed because a group of super-ninja that thought he was hidden somewhere still under the village's control and an attack would draw him out.

Jiraiya sighed. "I suppose there's nothing I can say to change things is there?"

"There is one thing... Two I guess..." The kunoichi calmed herself slightly, playing with her headband and turning away. "Is... is he... happy?" She hesitated to ask, her regret and anger disappearing behind the emotionless facade of a trained assassin.

"I'd guess so, doesn't seem to care too much about what others think. And from what Tsunade says, he's a genius ninja who isn't too bright about anything else."

"Heh. That sounds like one of my kids alright." The woman tied her hiate-ite back into place and turned her full focus on the shinobi. "And then the other thing... Any girls interested in him?"

"Uh, one of Orochimaru's bodyguards was pretty concerned about him, I guess..."

"That's it? Just one 'pretty concerned'."

"I haven't exactly had a chance to set up any spies on him..."

"Hmph, fine... Was she cute?"

"I didn't get a good look, all I was really able to notice was that she was a foul mouthed red head with long, straight hair. Huh, now that I think about it that sounds a little like-" Jiraiya turned a speculative eye to his greatest student's widow.

"Don't you dare say it, ero-sennin." She replied coldly, glaring.

"What, you don't think it's cute he's found a girlfriend just like his mother used to be?"

"Of course not! There's no way I'd allow Arashi to be with anyone besides me, so anyone my little boy was going to be with would have to be completely different." The kunoichi declared vehemently, one hand balled in a threatening fist.

"Whoa. And I thought I'd known you all these years... I approve." Jiraiya cheered her on, making her blush.

"S,shut up! It's not because life is suppose to like one of your stupid books. As an abandoned orphan he'll need lots of lavish, devoted attention to make up for earlier neglect, more than any one girl can provide. Not to mention... er, ahem. Grandchildren, because I'm much too young for that yet. But when the time comes... It would be... nice to know our legacy, my clan's and Arashi's, was secured by a few dozen little bundles of joy or so." The mother trailed off, holding her face and blushing like a Hyuga princess with a crush.

"I'll see what I can find, but don't get your hopes too high." Jiraiya told her, waving as he walked away, leaving Kushina to her fantasy world. He wasn't exactly comfortable thinking about newborns right now...

#Otogakure#

"So the cursed seal actually makes Naruto-kun's cooking a requirement to function?" Orochimaru puzzled over this, slathering peanut butter, chocolate and banana slices onto her sashimi before eating it.

Zaku shivered at the sight. It was disgusting, almost enough to make him not look forward to the 'ninja of unknown origin' ramen he'd prepared. "Well, after a mix-up where he ate my lunch and I spat his into the nearest trash can, the disease is... gone. Just vanished completely. He's better than any of the records ever indicated he's been since you first found him. I really can't explain it, none of the medical research I've been able to-"

"Kukuku... don't be too concerned, Kabuto made no progress in almost five years. What you have accomplished... Hmm, actually now that I think on it, where has Kabuto been these past few weeks?"

#Undisclosed Location#

"Tell me what you know." Shunk.

"Mph hpm mhp!"

"Oh, you'd like me to remove the gag wouldn't you, Itachi-in-disguise! Now tell me what you know!" Shunk.

"Mphf!"

#Otogakure#

"Probably off convincing Sasori he's still spying on me, I suppose." The body-thieving kunoichi mused, adding pickle relish to the mixture for the next bite.

#On The Road Somewhere#

Sarutobi frowned thoughtfully as he observed his most recent pupil manipulate the toy ninja puppet by making a series of strange faces with the chakra wire hanging from her lips. Her control was excellent, which was to be expected as every move she was capable of now has through pure chakra manipulation.

But what concerned him more was how her chakra had started to change. He was familiar with the girl's lineage, it was close kept secret that was one of the reasons he'd kept her from Danzou's little orphan kidnapping operations.

The Konomashii clan had a rather… Unfortunate kekkei genkai that led them to flee from Kirigakure decades before the true bloodline eradications began.

The ability to instantly coat themselves in poison and to breath it out, while useful for its automatic immunity was… Well, there numbers were always few, as by the very nature of their powers, the toxicity being their natural state and suppression of it requiring some concentration…

Many were the suitors and lovers that died in an impassioned moment.

He didn't fault her parents for sealing away her kekkei genkai at her birth, even when it became clear it severed almost seventy percent of her chakra from her.

In fact he suspected the sealing was what had led to her horrific injuries in retrospective. All that bottle up chakra finally unleashing itself… It was lucky she had been using it in such a way at the time.

Now that the seal was broken, though… The girl had been lacking the amount of chakra needed to practice sealless jutsu safely. Chakra exhaustion was one of the chief concerns he had had with training her up until the seal breaking…

As stated in a long and completely incomprehensible explanation a few chapters back, molding chakra using handsigns varied from village to village as each seal meant different things to different villages.

A ram seal's use in Konoha was an ox seal's use in Kumo for instance. The sign itself wasn't important, just how the user was trained to flex their chakra while making it.

Not only was this the main reason jutsu theft was so difficult, it was also one of the reasons sealless jutsu often needed repeated practice. Once someone made the kawarimi seals enough times they just knew how it felt and could imitate it with a thought.

Alternatively, teaching someone to use chakra in its pure form from the start was… challenging. Fortunately, with all the practice she was getting with internal manipulation it might be possible to simply describe how to move her chakra and she'd be able to manage from there.

Now, how to broach knowing her clan, letting her kekkei genkai get sealed and allowing her to be a nameless orphan with a rather large handicap in chakra volume?

"Ow! Dammit, that hurts." Anko complained loudly as her human transformation failed again, causing two fox tails to appear under her very tight mini-skirt before she gathered her chakra and turned back, smoothing down the fabric that had folded up almost into a belt to accommodate her extra limbs.

The old man barely stopped himself from suggesting she stop wearing it if it was so painful, but fortunately his survival instincts kicked in and he held his peace. He wanted to live, after all.

With a sigh and a lit pipe he decided he'd think of someway he could broach the subject with Tenten later. At least Anko's situation was fixing itself quite neatly.

#Seireitei#

"You sent for me, Shunsui-taichou?" A shinigami with spiky blond hair asked, entering the 8th division's captain's office.

"Ah, Arashi-san. It seems we need to step your training up a bit." The captain said groggily eying a retreating hell butterfly as it hovered away.

"What happened?" The former Hokage asked in a calm, controlled voice. Few things had ever phased him and a change of plans was hardly anything for a ninja to be concerned about.

"We, as even extremely minor gods, are caught up in a three front war." The death god in floral pink rubbed his forehead, annoyed. "You already know a bit about hollows, but there a few things you'll need for your mission. First thing's, they're the natural soul collector for the Reikai and king Yama. If he was still on his throne the collected souls would be brought to him and reincarnated, rewarded or punished. The hollow's wouldn't be anywhere near as out of control, but we aren't spirits and we can't trust any that could take up the throne. The closest we've ever come to mimicking him is having our zanpakuto cause reincarnation whenever we destroy a hollow or a soul. Oh, and it also might be important to know that many of the older vasto lordes and adjuchas remain loyal to king Yama, even though he's our prisoner."

"And the arrancar?" Arashi asked quickly, trying to decipher where this new knowledge fit into his mission.

"Arrancar and vizards are just gods or spirits that took up the other side's powers. They aren't important." Shunsui lounged, pouring a saucer of sake. "What you need to understand is that hollows are just another form of spirit that resisted or eluded our initial invasion and most spirits are elemental in nature..." The captain glanced at his zanpakuto, causing the younger shinigami's eyes to widened. "Right. A shinigami is just a very minor god, a captain on his own is weaker than most other godlings, so to police Reikai we needed an equalizer. What's the natural form of power that most of us gods have? The Yggdrasil-given ability to program and hack reality using symbols, sounds and our will. Once most of the spirits were conquered, all a shinigami needed to do was draw a connection to a specific spirit's prison and..."

"And that's why we need to dominate and enslave our zanpakuto. Because in reality we're only borrowing their power as our own by how subservient we can keep them." The former ninja was quick to understand the basics.

"Right." The other death god paused to sip his alcohol. "A spirit's power is different in one other small way, when they accumulate power it improves everything about them simultaneously with a slight edge to any attribute they might emphasize or be extremely skilled in. When a god accumulates power it unlocks more powerful and instinctive use of their ability to influence reality. To fling out effects, modify themselves and others and create or contain things. The demons residing in the Makai's main power is their ability to use mana and sheer destructive, or at least corruptive, potential by simply existing or taking any action."

Arashi puzzled over this briefly. "But what does this have to do with me?"

Shunsui sighed, finishing his drink and shaking the bottle to make sure there was no more in it. "Mortals have a mix of all three other's traits. In fact you might say their power was to adapt and imitate the rest..." The man trailed off for a moment. "When you summoned me, I composed a seal to further Igudo-dono's timetable. It was meant to take power from the oni kyuubi and accumulate it to as much as it could safely store... About half I guess. That energy was to be purified through the boy and later used to accelerate the creation of the kyuubi kami... Unfortunately..."

"Unfortunately..." Arashi gripped the hilt of his zanpakuto and prepared to murder his commanding officer.

The captain sighed and scratched his head. "Well, I might have made a few oversights and mistakes... Happens to everyone occasionally, right?"

The unranked shinigami leapt at him, blade halted by a sake saucer held casually between two fingers.

"I figured, well life'll probably suck for him, why not make him more attractive to women? But that's beside the point. The seal was designed to create the final kami biju. But for some reason the oni kyuubi decided it liked the brat and actually gave him enough chakra to rapidly evolve him into a demon. I can't even imagine why but it had a minor side effect. See, when the seal felt him sliding towards 'hanma' or 'hanyou' it decided he was better off being the kami kyuubi, so it sort of starting following through with that. Since he was already made part demon and I didn't make an array anywhere near powerful enough to fix that... He's kind of become the first, highly illegal, demon-god in the last... Eh, fifty-thousand years I guess. The only other two I ever heard of were Urd-sama and Ifurita-sama... Well I guess they were demoness-goddesses... But the point isn't they were both hot... The important thing is... Huh, forgot where I was going with that."

Arashi gnashed his teeth, realizing that not only was he stopped by a lazy gesture, it was a lazy gesture from a drunk. "And the oni kyuubi?"

"Oh it goes free once the filtering's done. Igudo-dono didn't shut down the doublet system in this dimension until about five years after I'd already made the seal, so..." The captain pulled out another bottle from hiding.

"Oh Ise-fuku-taichou, Shunsui-taichou is drinking instead of doing his paperwork again." Arashi cried out, already knowing how bad Kushina had been whenever he did something she didn't like while on 'upstanding Hokage' time. He gave the bastard one last glare, but knew there was really nothing he could do. His poor son... Anything 'illegal' was a mazouku and any mazouku were suppose to be...

"That's low Arashi-san." The captain scolded him, pulling the brim of his hat down to take a nap even as the lieutenant stormed in. Once he was sure the man had left, he smirked carelessly and poured from the new bottle. He'd said things he wasn't suppose to, things he knew would influence the comparatively young shinigami against Igudo-dono... Yet he just didn't care.

The truth was that Igudo-dono had greatly exceeded his authority. How it was Kami-Sama hadn't suspended his license by now was something of a mystery, any number of the actions he'd taken since being placed in charge of this world were grounds for suspension, if not quarantine or even deletion.

Igudo-dono had severed the Yggdrasil connection by converting himself into a filter-lock function of it, true, but Kami-Sama was certainly capable of exceeding such measures the second any suspicions arose.

If forced to choose between the world Igudo-dono had crafted and the way things were intended to be, Shunsui knew he couldn't make the right choice. Or rather, that making the right choice wouldn't matter. If he turned against the one in control of Yggdrasil locally…

On one hand he really did like the increase in status, responsibility and power. On the other, there was more paperwork, less free time and the very thought of the mortals trying for immortality and actually achieving it without him at his old post to stop them pissed him off beyond measure.

Most of the newer shinigami weren't even aware that was suppose to be their function, cutting down those who refused to die when they were suppose to. Used to be you'd befriend a spirit to act as your zanpakuto, not dominate it. Everything concerning death had been a joint effort, the shinigami finding the faux-immortals, using their powers to summon aid from whoever had accepted them as a partner, the hollows collecting lost soul where and whenever they failed to pass on. Lost soul even becoming hollows in especially neglected areas at times… Even the sparse, unorganized demons had lended themselves to torture those that truly deserved it…

But then his thoughts drifted back towards the most sweeping change. In the old days so much as a half-second daydream of cleavage was enough to get you pummeled by the perv-senses anything female seemed to have. Then Igudo-dono took over and boom.

He found his original, devoted lieutenant reading a porn magazine instead of doing her paperwork. He caught himself flirting with Unohana and she didn't suddenly attack him... Well, not until he stepped over a line that even he admitted was taking it too far, too soon...

It was less pronounced among the humans and spirits of the time, since they were never as strict as the gods had been about prudence and modesty but it was present among them as well. And understanding the implication behind the sudden change and Igudo-dono cutting off Yggdrasil... Well... Between this present and that past what was right sort of blurred to him...

Especially as he gave his frustrated lieutenant a lazy smile and watched her stutter and blush. He tried not to imagine how bad she'd be without Igudo-dono sitting on the Yggdrasil connection. If she was so repressed and prudish now...

#Author's Notes#

Yeah, not feeling it with this as much anymore, sort of a filler/minimal computer access/set-up chapter. I'll try to get back into it, but for the moment... eh... Well, it's shorter than I had wanted it...

Hollows eat spirits to keep their powers from consuming them, or something like that yeah? So, the whole reason Orochimaru was made a half-hollow for this story... Well, you get the idea.

Also, it struck me that if you were to use hollows to collect souls instead of shinigami, things might go a whole lot better, provided someone was managing them and keeping them from going crazy. I mean if a soul that hangs out long enough turns into one, it indicates that it's part of some natural cycle that the shinigami are screwing with in their self-righteousness.

Let's face it, the Bleach shinigami are just the sort of arrogant, micro-managing bastards that would fuck up the entire natural order of things to make themselves feel more important. If we go by filler, they even go looking for more ways to jack everything up.

And while we're all being honest, as a manipulative, backstabbing plot device, Danzou is kind of awesome and versatile. As someone who's actually exposed and in the open… well, even the god-mod Sharingan couldn't make up for his suck, could it?

It disappoints me how close to canon 'Dance Of The Pyreflies' turns out to be relative to Kushina and demon sealing. Turns out the author wasn't imaginative, just semi-clairvoyant with a dash of Final Fantasy X as a cross-over to disguise it once the future was revealed to us.

Konomashii – Likeable, desirable, nice, ect. I had wanted something more like 'pure water' and figured mashii meant something akin to pure as it was used for pure white and pure water, so… I found this word, which works better because 'you always want what you can't have'. I just know someone's going to correct me on it.