Warnings: Unedited as usual, silly and not part of AtO timeline.
7- Harry gets asked to tell a fairy-tale (from Johahptw)
“A story from me?” Harry asked with a little bit of trepidation. The kids in front of him looked up at him pleadingly. One of them even sniffled dramatically with tears in the corner of his eyes.
Such unnatural methods of persuasion, Harry grimaced and took a seat on the floor. “All right, once upon a time, in a very distant land…”
“What kind of land?”
“Which country was it in?”
Harry twitched at the interruptions but said, “far from any shinobi countries…”
“Then how do you know what happened there?”
“That sounds fishy.”
“Oi, you brats, stop interrupting Nii-san’s story!”
Harry gaped. “Naruto, when did you… never mind. Anyway, this story takes place in a castle.” He noticed a few kids about to open their mouths and added, “which was almost the size of Konoha.”
The kids looked satisfied but impatient.
“Anyway this castle was built as a school for special children. Children who could… uh, do magic?”
Huh, no odd reactions. So the concept of magic is probably common in stories.
“Our story is about one such child at the school, a young boy, about twelve…”
“What did he look like?”
“I was just getting to it,” you impatient little…Harry twitched once more. “He was a tiny kid with black hair and very distinctive… purple eyes. And his name was uh, Raiden.” Stupid! Renaming myself because of my scar and ending up with such a stu…
“Oh, such a heroic name!”
Harry resisted the urge to smack his head. Only kids would think that.
“Did he have a bloodline with lightning?”
I brought that on myself, didn’t I? “No, he wasn’t a ninja, so he didn’t have any bloodlines or chakra or jutsu.” Wait a minute… “Sai? What are you doing here?”
x-x-x-x-x
“And out of the stone mouth’s statue came a large and ugly snake. A snake as tall as the Hokage Mountain. But you know what made this snake really scary?”
“It ate people!” one kid whispered in fear.
“It could split apart into tinier snakes.”
“It spoke in riddles!” another kid said and nodded his head sagely.
“Err, all that, but the most fearsome thing about it… One look at its eyes and you get turned to a stone statue.”
The children gasped and Naruto let out a strangled yell of surprise. “So Rika had been right! So smart.”
“I’d look good as a stone statue.”
“That’s not something to be proud of. It just shows that you can’t even defeat a snake. And stop hogging the food, we brought it here to share.”
“Kotetsu? Izumo? Seriously, where are you people coming from? Don’t you have anything better to do?”
Sai held up a large sheet of paper and looked at Harry. “Am I missing anything?”
“Huh?” Harry looked at the paper and gaped, “you illustrated the story while I was talking?”
“Ohh, show me! I want to see.” One of the kids yelled prompting the other kids to swarm a visibly startled Sai.
As the noise level grew, Harry frowned. Now how do I settle this without having to yell and waste energy? Ah! “Raiden was scared out of his mind. How could he survive and fight when he couldn’t see? And all the while the evil spirit kept telling the large snake to kill him. He dodged and tripped…”
“He’s continuing the story…”
“Nii-san, wait, I can’t hear.”
The kids scrambled to their proper seats quietly and Harry hid his grin.
x-x-x-x-x
“And when they held on to each other, Raiden grabbed on to the Phoenix’s tail. Warmth traveled from the bird’s feathers and through them and before they knew it, they were flying up in the air and going up the long dark tunnel to the main castle,” Harry said, smiling at the kids.
“As soon as they landed on the floor, they hurried to sensei’s room where Akai and Hikaru’s parents were sobbing.” Harry enjoyed the silence as everyone hung on his words. He skipped over some of the events and ended the story. “But you know what made Raiden and Hikaru really happy? Rika came in to the hall. She’d been cured when they had been away.”
The kids cheered loudly and Naruto smiled widely.
x-x-x-x-x
“I want to be Raiden.”
“No, I want to be Raiden, you can be Hikaru.”
“But we need someone to be Baka-sensei too, otherwise we can’t play…”
“I don’t want to be Akai. She doesn’t do anything. I want to be Rika.”
Huh? What are they…
“Oh, they already want to play out the story. That means you were a hit, Harii!” Izumo said as they watched the kids argue about roles.
“You’ve got a pretty wild imagination, Harii. A sword from an old hat,” Kotetsu snickered.
“But they make a good team,” Naruto said. “Raiden, Hikaru and Rika, they seem like a really great team.”
Harry smiled. “They are.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pft, I think I went a little overboard with this one. Err, sorry? I decided to post this one separately- since it came out pretty long.
It was a good break from editing and other real life work/stuff to write some silly drabbles.
Chapter 12 is close to getting done. I can’t wait to get it online (eventually- I can’t give you a specific date) and out of my hair. This is just one chapter that I want to move on from, for some reason I’m more excited to just start working on chapter 13.
Polar.
