There was a poof of smoke, and then a crow stood on the forest floor. It stood at not quite three feet in height, with a fedora at a jaunty angle and an unlit cigar in its mouth. “Ay, this ain’t Lil’ Joey’s place! What’s goin’ on here- oh, hey toots!” The bird started visably eyeing up Hinata, much to Naruto’s annoyance. “Well, haven’t seen you ‘fore, miss. My name’s Frank, but if you’d like you can call me Frankie.”
Hinata kept in mind Kurenai-sensei’s warnings about the pride that summoned creatures had about their dignity. Bowing low, she said in as non-threatening as she could “A pleasure to meet you, Frank-san. My name is Hinata.”
The crow looked a bit bashful, toeing the forest loam. “Ah, miss, just Frankie please. Don’t know how ‘ta feel when yer’ after makin’ me sound all respectable and all. Hey!” The bird saw Naruto behind Hinata, glowering. “You wanna start somethin’? Miss, is he botherin’ you?” The bird started advancing on the blond, acting threatining in the kind of comical, over the top way that only a 2’ 10” landbound ganster avian could. “You stop botherin’ this broad, you understa’n me? I only give out warnin’s infrequent-like, so you better watch out!”
“Ah, ano, Frankie, this is my friend.” Hinata wanted to head this off before there was some kind of misunderstanding. Of course, that only led to another misunderstanding.
Frankie stopped his advance and cocked his head at her. “Oh, like tha~at. I see. Well, that’s yer own affair, ‘spose.” He pulled out a lighter from under his wing and started working the wheel a few times, the *clak* *clack* sound fading into the woods. “So, what can ‘ol Frankie do ‘fer ya?”
Hinata showed him the scroll that she had signed. It was smaller than the Toad contract that Jiraya-sama carried around with him, but she still needed both hands to manage it. “Frankie, I have signed this contract and wished to consumate our relationship.”
“Huh. Well, I suppose that I’ll have to tell the Boss. He’ll want to meet’ca, ‘fcourse, but I don’ ‘spose there’ll be any problems.” He took a long drag from his cigar and blew out a smoke ring.”Provisionally speakin’ though, I can say that he’d say yes. He looked over at the scowling blond. “Hey, you better treat her right, or you’ll answer to us, hear? The Family looks after its own.”
Whatever Frankie was expecting, the sudden grin wasn’t it. Finally! This family sounded like it would be better for Hinata than her current one.
--
Naruto had noticed a few changes in his teammate over the las two years. First, as it turned out, Hinata was a girl. Which sounded stupid of course, because of course Hinata was a girl. It was just now, she was a girl girl.
The second change was that she was somewhat more forceful now than when Team 8 was formed in Iruka-sensei’s classroom two years ago. That could only be a good thing, in Naruto’s book, of course, but sometimes it was hard to reconcile the two images of her then and now.
That had started after she had gotten the Crow contract and was accepted into their family. Or Family, rather. The bad thing was that that didn’t mean that she got to leave her current family of jerks and idiots and, and, non-Hinata-likers. So, she had two families. Huh. Weird.
He had thought that he would be jealous that she had two and he had none, but he wasn’t. Maybe, because her first one was so bad, the other one cancled it out. Like how minus one plus one equaled zero. Maybe that left her with effectivly zero families, kinda like him. He thought on that one for a minute before dismissing the idea. It probably just meant that she had a bad family and a better one. At least she was smiling more often these days.
Even if half the time they were smiles like that scary trenchcoat-girl wore.
She was also talking different these days.
“So Mugsy, what’s it look like?” Team 8 was out scouting enemy positions for the Konoha couteroffensive. Or “scoopin’ out the nimrods who’re tryin’ ta muscle in on our turf”, depending on who you talk to.
“Eh, just a couple a’ mooks, boss. Two of ‘em are coverin’ the gate, but they just look bored more than anythin’ else. There’s another four or five in the barracks with a deck of cards. The one without depth preception had a better hand, but the little bald shit has a pair of aces up his sleave and is dealing from the bottom of the deck like an amature. Their boss is sitn’ up in his office with the door locked and is currently enjoyin’ some ‘alone time’ with the secretary, if you know what I mean.” The bird frowned. “Not very pretty, either. Not compared to a coupla’ broads I knew in Fresno. Now they had some good lookin’ tailfethers-“
Case in point; two years ago Hinata-chan would have blushed at the mention of ‘alone time.’ Now she smirked. Smirked! “Well, we might just have to interupt them.”
Shino frowned. “While they do seem unprepared for an attack, our orders are only to scout ahead. Engagements are expected to be avoided whenver possible.”
“Hey, you talkin’ back to the boss, punk?”
“Stuff it, Mugsy. Go back and tell the others to gather nearby. Casual-like, mind. Don’t want these jokers to catch wind of nuthin’ and try to get competant on us. Don’t start nuthin’, either. Just wait for us to make our move. Tell Frankie and Vinnie that I’ve got some messages for ‘em.” Hinata turned to to Shino, and raised an eyebrow.
Shino almost sighed. There were times that his teammates could be rather rash. “Our orders notwithstanding, it seems like a trap to catch an overconfidant reconassence team. An ambush would either wipe out the reconicance team, leaving only Team 19 to serve as the main force’s eyes, or serve to make further recon forces more circumspect, limiting the information that they would gather.”
Hinata nodded thoughtfully. That seemed plausible, and sneaky to boot. As a pair of crows flew in, she had made up her mind. “Vinnie, Frankie. I think these wise guys were gonna try to pull a fast one on us. I want you and a coupla’ the boys to keep an eye on those jokers. See who’s comin’ and goin’, what’s movin’ around, the works. Frankie, tell the Old Man that there’s either an outpost with the worst guards around here, or a trap. Tell ‘em that we’re movin’ on to Point Alpha 5b. If anyone else askes, we’re off to meet with somebody in Tanaka Town.”
--
Hiashi woke all of a sudden. He couldn’t tell what woke him, but when he looked around the room he saw a large dark bird with a vest and black and grey feathers. “Good, you’re awake. It’d look stupid for us to have this conversation while you were asleep.” The bird spoke in a dry, hoarse voice that commanded respect. Gesturing with one wing toward a small chest by the futon, he said “Open it.” Hiashi unlatched the box to find a small, head-shaped object. Lighting a candle, he saw that it was a small pumpkin with one of his daughter’s pictures pinned to it. Hiashi raised an eyebrow. “Origionally, it was going to be her head, but she’s a spunky little thing, and I like that. But if you oubt that I could do it, dig a little deeper.” There was Hanabi’s hairbrush lying under the pumpkin.
“You have my attention.” His voice was remarkably calm for a man woken in the middle of the night, receiving death treats towards his daughter.
“I thought I might. I know who you are, Hyuuga Hiashi. You may consider me as a concerned godfather, of sorts. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve got some respect for you, but I’m also a little concerned for some of my people here. I don’t like how they’re bein’ treated here. I realize that you’ve got your own problems to deal with, but you gotta show me a little respect. So, here’s how it is; I don’t interfere with any of your…operations, and in return, you get your head examined and start figurin’ out what a family is. I know that there’ve been some hard choices, I know ‘dat. But ‘dat don’ mean that you gotta be an asshole to e’rybody. You don’ start showin’ respect to people, you’ll start gettin’ what assholes always get sent. I’ve some good friends with the pidgions, so don’ try mess wit’ me on dis’.” Hiashi nodded slowly, trying to figure out what this bird was talking about.
“Oh, and Hiashi.” The bird looked very, very dangerous. “If I ever see your daughters walkin’ outa your house lookin’ like they got hit by a bus again…” the “godfather” gave a very meaningful glance at the box “you never know what’d happen.”
The bird hopped up to the window ledge before spreading wing and flying off into the moonlight, leaving the Hyuuga sitting up in the dark with a chest full of threat and a lot to think about.