Naruto : Monsters: Chapter 77

"I still can't believe you kept that cat, Jiji."

Said cat meowed from where she lounged atop of the Hokage's desk, lazily turning its head to glance at Naruto in apparent surprise. Or at least, I thought it was in surprise. It was kinda hard to tell, these days Tora always seemed to have a surprised expression plastered on her face.

The Hokage chuckled and ran a hand over the cat's back before scratching behind its ears, "I don't see what's so hard to believe. Tora here has been a wonderful companion for an old man like me."

In response Tora began to purr and pressed her head into the Hokage's fingers, clearly enjoying the treatment.

Though you could never tell by looking at her face.

Even now, so long after the… incident the poor cat never fully recovered from her ordeal.

Oh sure, she looked healthier now that the bandages covering her bottom half were removed. And she could walk again, though not perfectly. Her hind legs appeared to have gained a permanently bowlegged, making her take wide exaggerated steps whenever she walked, like a cowboy from one of those old westerns. And her tail remained permanently pointed up, straight and ridge as an iron bar.

I had never once seen her tail lower from that position, not even when she slept.

But if you wanted any real proof that Tora never fully recovered from her ordeal, all you needed to do was look into the face of the tiny white and orange cat and stare at its unblinking eyes.

Her soulful blue eyes were held permanently wide open, so round that they appeared like golf balls that were about to roll out of her eye-sockets. That, along with the way her eyebrows were still raised up to her hairline, gave Tora a constant look of surprise.

No, really, every time I looked it at her she gave the impression that someone had just suddenly shoved their fingers up her...well, you know.

Even now as she purred in contentment under the Sarutobi's nimble fingers her soulful blue eyes remained wide open, never blinking.

It was kinda freaky to watch, to be honest.

There were monks who believed that true enlightenment could only be reached through pain and suffering. That by bearing through the worst the world had to offer without succumbing to hatred, you would achieve an understanding of the true nature of the world that escaped most men, allowing you a glimpse of what laid past this mundane reality and into the next, supposedly a nirvana of some kind.

Some of the more superstitious Shinobi in Konoha believed that was what happened to Tora.

They claimed that Tora, in her moment of suffering, had reached enlightenment and caught a glimpse of Nirvana. Which was why she never blinks anymore. Through her enlightened eyes, the world she sees around her was so blissfully beautiful that she could not bring herself to look away and block the sight even for a second, not even to blink.

Or at least so they claimed.

Personally, I believed the reason why she kept her eyes constantly open was to make sure no one tried to sneak up on her and shove their finger up her ass ever again. But that was just me.

Naruto glanced between the purring cat and the Hokage before shaking her head and dropped the topic.

It had been almost four weeks since the end of our first disastrous D-rank mission, the now infamous Tora incident, and since then the tiny cat has become something of a common sight in the Hokage's office.

As expected, when we told the client of Tora's fate she took the news...rather poorly.

Madam Shinjimi, the Daimyo's wife and Tora's original owner was an obese lady with a shrill voice and far too much makeup. She was also as stubborn and pig-head as they come, all too used to getting her way. So when the time came to deliver Tora to her and she found her precious cat in such a poor state she demanded to know what happened to it, ignoring all our attempts to convince her that she really, really, didn't want to know.

Naturally, she didn't listen to our advice and so, as the team responsible, it fell on our shoulders to tell her what happened to her precious cat.

I swear I felt the entire floor shake when the tub of lard fainted.

An hour or so later, a pale-faced and much subdued Madam Shinjimi was seen being helped into her carriage that would take her back to the capital. Without her cat. It appeared that after our rather detailed explanation to the fate that befell her precious pet, she could no longer look directly at Tora without fainting.

Literally, every time she caught so much as a glimpse of said cat she would immediately turn a pale white and faint.

In the end, after repeatedly consoling the understandably distressed woman, it was decided that it would be best if she and Tora parted ways. And thus, Madam Shinjimi returned home leaving poor Tora behind. But for once luck was on Tora's side because she ended up finding a new home almost immediately.

Being the soft-hearted man that he was, Sarutobi took pity on the poor creature and ended up adopting her as a pet. Now, normally that would have been impossible. The very same reason why children were sent to retrieve Tora would have prevented the Hokage from adopting her; Tora was a Nekomata.

As a Nekomata, Tora could sense the true nature of an individual. Specifically, she could sense any ill intent or corruption in them. She was so sensitive to it that Tora fled from Madam Shinjimi's household because the presence of so many corrupt Nobles and bureaucrats was too much for her to withstand for long. Now imagine how it must have felt like to live alongside ninjas, professional assassins who constantly lied, manipulated, tortured and murdered people. Hell, Sarutobi himself had once played a part in the genocide of an entire Clan. In all honesty, our presence should have sent her fleeing in terror the first chance she got.

However, it quickly became apparently clear that Tora no longer gave a shit about our so-called 'ill intent' anymore.

It wasn't hard to understand why. After surviving an unexpected anal virginity removal treatment via Kakashi, I doubted something as mundane as 'murdering back-stabbing ninjas' could scare her.

Hell, I wasn't sure if she could even feel fear anymore.

No seriously, the thousand-yard stare she kept giving everyone in the room paralytically screamed 'you would not believe the shit I've seen'. It was a look you'd expect to see only in the broken eyes of veterans from the worst wars, not on the face of a tiny fluffy cat.

Even I couldn't muster much of a reaction from Tora anymore.

Once, just the sight of me caused her to become petrified with fear. Now it was as though she barely noticed me. All she ever did whenever she caught sight of me was to give me a quick once over, before snorting in dismissal and looking away, eyes still wide open as golf balls from the horrors she had lived through.

Only Kakashi seemed to be able to draw out any kind of reaction from her these days.

Now normally, that would have been the end of Tora's story. But as it quickly became obvious, there was absolutely nothing normal about this cat.

Somehow, and don't ask me how because even I didn't fully understand it, Tora ended up becoming something of a mascot to the Hokage.

Apparently every ninja and Genin that ended up standing before the Hokage's desk over the past couple of weeks took note of the unusual feline sitting there, and soon rumours of the Hokage's new pet began to spread. And whether it was out of pity or maybe even respect for a fellow survivor, Tora's popularity among the ninja population soon skyrocketed. People even began selling merchandise of the cat as she turned into some kind of fad. Just last week I saw Hanabi cuddling up to a plush doll of Tora out of all things.

Either way, by the end of the month since her adoption, Tora had ended up becoming the unofficial mascot to the entire Village of Konoha.

I swear, sometimes it felt as if this entire world had gone mad.

"Anyway," Sarutobi stopped scratching Tora's ears and turned his attention back to us, "I do believe you're here for a reason."

Lending down, Sarutobi reached into an open drawer from his desk and pulled out a dark green and black coloured scroll before holding it out towards us. "Team 7, for your latest mission you are to-"

"No."

The refusal cut through the air of the office, leaving a stunned silence in its wake.

Sarutobi blinked once before turning to give Naruto a perplexed look. "Excuse me?"

"I said no." My blonde friend repeated, firmly planting her feet shoulder-width apart and crossing her arms before her chest, a familiar stubborn glint in her eye as she gave the Hokage a glare. "I'm not going on another D-rank mission and you can't make me."

The old man chuckled at her reaction. "Now Naruto-"

"No."

"Naruto, you can't just-"

"No!" Naruto held her arms before her in an 'X' shape and made a sound that reminded me of a game-show buzzer. "No way, no how. I don't care what you say to me Jiji, I'm not doing it anymore. I'm done, finished! I'm not going on another crappy D-rank mission even if it kills me."

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