The Contract Arc 1: First Day (2)

The Contract

Chapter 2- Deal

“Step into the cage, boy, and hold out your arm to your side.”

This was it.

It was one thing to agree to a thing but, when confronted with the enormity of their decision, many wavered and most backed down.

They were not Uzumaki Naruto.

With a confident stride that betrayed none of his apprehension, the shinobi stepped out of his realm and into the demon’s lair.

The biju reared upward, sucking in a deep breath, its eyes never leaving his.

Don’t move, it seemed to say, just before it lurched forward, the dull orange glow in the back of its throat the only warning Naruto had before being engulfed in flame.

Shock, fear, anger… myriad emotions surged through him in the split second before the fire engulfed him before settling on cold determination, fueled by his steely focus.

The biju had asked him to trust it.

He did.

The biju showed itself worthy of his trust.

He didn’t burn.

No, that was an understatement; rather than feeling the agony of his flesh sloughing in the heat, he felt abnormally refreshed; invigorated.

And, in his outstretched right hand, he found himself holding onto a small, cylindrical object.

He didn’t attempt to move. The biju’s flames still washed over him and it had not told him to move; he wasn’t dead, neither did he feel ‘possessed’ so there was no reason to be impatient.

Finally, the flames died down and his vision was once again filled with the biju’s visage, looming in the darkness of the seal.

“You trusted me.”

It sounded surprised, as though it hadn’t quite expected him to have taken all that had happened in stride.

“I don’t go back on my word. I may not have been explicit about it but I agreed to trust you. There’s no going back from that.”

Something flashed through the biju’s eyes, too fast for him to pin it down, before the fox leaned forward. “In your hand rests the Summoning Contract for the Kitsune of the Tsuba Plains. Mark it as you did the Toad Summoning Contract.”

Naruto had unrolled the scroll, bitten into his thumb and was about to smear his blood across the designated line when the impact of her words struck and he snapped his head upward, seeking the biju’s gaze. “A Summon… ing… Con… tract…”

His words had trailed off into silence when, seeking for the biju that had abruptly disappeared, his eyes fell upon the most perfect being he had ever laid eyes upon.

Entire schools of etymologists spending their lifetime working would never have found a word to capture the image of perfection before him.

Hair like the most glorious sunset reaching the small of her back, eyes like the most perfectly preserved amber, a face carved by the gods and blessed with an ethereal beauty…

“Beautiful…”

The word tumbled out of his mouth, though he didn’t realize that he had uttered it.

At that moment, the blood from his now healed thumb splashed on the scroll and a muted flash shone from the scroll as it disappeared.

Naruto never noticed it, enraptured as he was by the vision before him.

“Well… it’s nice to see that I’ve still got it.”

Even her voice sounded like something divine! Naruto just couldn’t wrap his mind around it. If he wasn’t distracted, he would have made the connection between the disappearance of the biju and the appearance of this angel but as it was…

“Who…” He stopped, swallowed, tried again. “Who are you?” Success, though his voice sounded like the dying rasps of a dehydrated toad.

The angel arched an eyebrow, amusement visible on her features. “Hmm? I’d have thought the tails would have given you a hint.”

Truth be told, Naruto’s gaze hadn’t even strayed past her chin. Her words, however, seemed to wield a mystical power over his body and he found himself tracing every dip and swell of her body.

If her face was angelic then her body belonged to the queen of succubi.

Her olive skin seemed to glow beneath the white, translucent robe she had materialized.

‘Jiraiya was right,’ Naruto noted absently as he drank in the sight before him, ‘there really is something uniquely alluring about a woman perched on the line between wearing clothes and going starkers.’

The robe did nothing to hide the curves of her body, from the swell of her breasts to the dip of her waist and the flare of her hips yet it did everything to conceal her most vital parts.

Suddenly, he sneezed.

The action was just incongruous enough to snap him out of his daze.