The Argent-Eyed Heiress (Naruto/Exalted)

Flying with Naruto was like flying with great, loud ray of sunshine. He was warm, he was bright, and like a small herbal garden, people below automatically turned to face him. Some went so far as to gawk, mouths hanging open, saying things 'what the f-' before Hinata guiltily swung her attention away and winged elsewhere, the wind that followed in her wake rattling eaves and shutters and the occasional string of laundry.

And while Hinata couldn't speak, being a giant bird, Naruto filled the air with enough noise for the both of them, waving so vigorously from her back that she was sure he was going to fall. She had to nudge him, several times, with her beak, to keep him from tipping over and so kept closer to the ground than she would have liked, just in case he actually did.

This created a bit of a negative feedback loop.

He hadn't been so bad to start, but, as he realized how little time he had to talk to people he got louder and more insistent. The natural evolution of his speaking style sounded something like:

"Sakura! What're you up to- and we're past."

"ANBU-san! Heeeeeeey. Don't worry about - oh, and we're past again."

"IRUKA! IRUKA! LOOK AT WHAT HINATA CAN - do you think he heard us?"

"EXTRABUSHYBROWS!"

"AYAMENICEHAT!"

"OLDMANTEUUUUCHI-!" but they were already past, and Naruto settled back down, conversationally adding: "Old man Teuchi makes the best ramen."

This was then followed by a philosophical treatise on the civilizing aspects of ramen and the importance of it as a basic food group. While Hinata was a bit dubious about some of his arguments and the scientific basis of declaring ramen its own food group, Hinata now knew what to get Naruto for his next birthday present, should she gather up the courage to give him a birthday present: she still had two of his, undelivered, moldering in her room somewhere, a mute testament to her own lack of confidence.

And now he was, um, s-s-sitting on her back.

She was interrupted from her more dour thoughts as Naruto began hollering: "OLD MAN! OLD MAAAAAAN!!!!"

She looked around for the likely old man and nearly backflipped in mid-air, wings beating in the wrong direction: Naruto was waving to the Hokage's Tower, calling the Hokage an old man and then both she and he were screaming, falling, the green of the trees and gray of the street getting perilously close. Her wings felt like they were getting tangled up with the air, so she fed silver chakra into herself until she could right her own body, muscles heaving, somehow stronger and heavier.

When she raised herself to a better height, she could see, with her crimson eyes, a tiny figure of the Hokage look through the window of his office, slack-jawed as any civilian, pipe falling out of his mouth. When next she blinked, the pipe was firmly back in his mouth and he looked stern and aloof and Hinata decided she must have imagined that. The Professor, God of Shinobi, the Third Hokage, could not have possibly lost his cool at the sight of Naruto riding a giant bird, right?

Then she blinked again. Something felt a little… off.

And then Naruto said: "Um, Hinata. Why'd you turn into a flying pig?"

-----

Hinata was bright pink when they landed in the Kamino Hot Springs.

She'd figured out the trick to changing just parts of her to other parts of her, and was thus bringing Naruto back as an angel might: black wings beating on her back, human hands clutching his hands so they flew almost like a 'T' with wings, or a human hanglider.

Well, maybe that's not how an angel would have done it, but Hinata was not about to carry Naruto as if he were a - a- bride.

But yes, she was pink.

Just the memory of turning into a flying pig in front of the Hokage wanted to make her bury her head beneath her pillow, pile the blankets around herself, lock her room's door and never come back out again. She'd - she'd - she wasn't sure if there was a word for what she'd done, but she'd done it, and now it couldn't ever be taken back again.

Here was Hinata Hyuuga, the girl who'd turned into a flying pig in front of the Hokage.

Naruto had found the entire situation hilarious, but when he realized how much it distressed her, gravely informed her that if the 'Old Man' tried to make any trouble for her over this, he'd beat him up for her.

It was a touching gesture, and just a little funny too. Hinata had giggled.

Then they had to come back to the hot springs, but like some evil, creeping thing, the memory of the Event just, would, not, leave.

She tried to distract herself by spying on Jiraiya and Taiki, but they'd long finished their conversation and were staring at their descent, hands clasped behind their backs, one looking very cheerful, the other looking very grim.

First and worst was Lord Jiraiya's very knowing expression. It could be called nothing else, though Hinata was not sure what it was Jiraiya thought he knew. Uncle Taiki was scarcely any better, looking highly disapproving and while not ordering her to immediately tell him everything that had transpired, made it a very firm suggestion.

When she stuttered her start, Naruto took over: "Hinata turned into a bird, then a flying pig - you should have seen the old man's face - it was great."

"You did what?" the two older men said, in precisely the opposite tones.

Hinata felt her hopes plummet. The chances of keeping the events of today a secret from her father: unlikely. Jiraiya, humiliatingly, made her demonstrate her 'flying pig'.

"Oh, that's beautiful," he told her, making her feel slightly better. "You shouldn't have nearly enough chakra to sustain this. And you say you're not using any at all right now?"

Uncle Taiki had subsided into a thoughtful silence. Hinata nodded timidly despite the fact that her head probably outweighed his entire body.

Naruto scratched his head. "Is it really that hard?"

"Impossible is closer to the mark," said Jiraiya absently. He took on a lecturing tone. "When it comes to transformation techniques, the farther you get from 'human-shaped' the more spiritual energy you need to invest into the technique. The problem isn't the physical aspect of it, it's the imaginative one. To become a bird that can fly, you must either have an instinctive rapport with birds brought on by tradition and breeding - or remember each and every muscle and each and every bone and cell and maintain that image. It's not something just anyone can do. To start mix-and-matching critters is…"

"I turned into a windmill shuriken once," volunteered Naruto. "It wasn't that tough."

"Yes, your -"

Jiraiya stopped. Turned.

"You what?"

----

So, as it turned out, Naruto also had a gift for transformation techniques.

Hinata had always known his stamina was impressive, but within the time it took to have short fly around the Village, Naruto had already recovered enough to demonstrate his 'windmill shuriken' transformation.

She clapped, despite herself, human once more: she remembered how hard he'd worked just to transform into the Hokage. This was magnitudes more impressive.

"Are you rubbing off on my student?" Jiraiya demanded, half-joking. "He's usually more of an idiot."

There was a 'boompf' and a cloud of smoke and then Naruto complaining: "Hey! I'm not an idiot!"

"Brat, you turned into a sharp metal disc. And it was actually aerodynamic. That's two flavors of impossible. Had it had some sort of seal on it, you'd have hit the Impossible Trifecta."

Naruto looked lost. "But it's not that hard…?"

"If ninja could transform themselves into small objects that could be trivially moved from place to another using a technique straight out of the Academy, the Great Wars would have been a nightmare." He thought, then amended that statement: "More of a nightmare."

"...really?"

Uncle Taiki nodded gravely. "Mobility is the main issue in any war among ninja. Mobility and detection."

"Power's the main issue in a war among ninja," Jiraiya contradicted, before nodding his head. "But at the mook-level, it's exactly that. Imagine it, twenty genin, moving as fast as a jounin? Even if you detected them - to a sensor, it'd feel like a major offensive was being launched when it could really be a single jounin carrying twenty garbage genin who only know how to henge. By the time you deploy your troops to counter that phantom army, you're being overwhelmed by the real army elsewhere. And genin are not hard to produce, and the transformation technique not hard to teach. It would have changed-"

"...what's a sensor?" interrupted Naruto.

Jiraiya stopped. Then he wearily turned towards Uncle Taiki. "You see what I have to work with here?"

"I do," said Uncle Taiki dryly. "I wish you the joy of it. Lady Hinata," he bowed slightly in her direction, "we should depart."

"Aw!" Naruto said, waving vigorously. "Let's go flying again!"

She lost her ability to capitalize again, and looked down at her feet. "o-o-o-ok."

"Farewell, Lord Jiraiya," said Uncle Taiki.

"Take care of yourself, kiddo," he replied.

They left.

After they had walked three or four steps beyond the limits of Kamino Road, an area still partially deserted due to the time of the day, Uncle Taiki stopped and said, a little awkwardly: "We should get you some new clothes."

"...?"

He gestured. Hinata felt along her back: where her wings had sprouted, there was now an enormous tear: her sweater was practically backless.

Panicking, her entire body shook - and then ballooned outwards as she turned into an enormous boar, a proper boar, not the small, soft thing she'd been while flying, bristling with bony spurs and whose hide could deflect knives.

Uncle Taiki looked at the multi-ton behemoth of a feral-looking hog standing in the middle of the street.

"Huh," he said.

-----

Mortified, upon returning to the Clan Compound Hinata went straight to her room without even eating supper. The next morning she discovers she is… (Choose 1)

[x] ravenously hungry
Father is at the breakfast table. Training session with Father.

[x] somewhat peckish
Hanabi is at the breakfast table. Training session with Hanabi.

[x] still mortified
No breakfast. Do something else.

-[x] examine the strange kunai
-[x] go hunting with Team 8
-[x] practice controlling the shapeshifting
-[x] write-in?