(300B3, Guys Give me your Powerstones, We are very close to the Top 20)
Chapter 19: The Destined One
Sora stretched lazily as he finished his daily training routine. The sun was high in the sky, and a gentle breeze rustled through the leaves of Konoha's many trees. With the Chunin Exams just a few days away, most genin were frantically preparing, but Sora? Well, he had other ideas.
"Hmm, what to do, what to do," he mused aloud, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "I could prank Kakashi-sensei again, but last time he retaliated by replacing all my clothes with spandex jumpsuits. Lee was thrilled, but I'm still finding green fabric in unexpected places."
As he pondered his options, a sudden thought struck him like a bolt of lightning. "Wait a minute! What about that reverse summoning jutsu I read about in the Hokage's secret library? ...Which I definitely didn't break into. Nope. Not me."
Excitement bubbled up inside him as he remembered the details. According to the scroll, performing the jutsu would transport the user to the realm of the animal they were destined to form a summoning contract. It was typically used by Jonin or experienced chunin, but since when had Sora ever let silly things like "rules" or "common sense" stop him?
"Well, no time like the present!" he declared, cracking his knuckles dramatically. "I wonder what kind of majestic, powerful creature I'll be connected to? A dragon? A phoenix? Ooh, maybe those ninja ostriches I've heard about!"
With a grin that would have made any sensible adult very, very nervous, Sora began forming the hand seals. His chakra swirled around him, building to a crescendo as he completed the final seal.
"Reverse Summoning Jutsu!"
There was a loud "poof" and a puff of smoke. When it cleared, Sora found himself... in a forest?
"Huh," he said, looking around. "This is a bit anticlimactic. I was expecting something more... I don't know, mystical? With glowing mushrooms or talking trees or-"
His monologue was cut short as he realized he wasn't alone. Dozens of beady eyes were staring at him from the surrounding trees and bushes. As his vision adjusted to the dappled sunlight filtering through the canopy, he realized what those eyes belonged to.
Squirrels. Hundreds of squirrels.
And they did not look happy.
"Uh, hi there!" Sora said, waving awkwardly. "I come in peace? I definitely haven't stolen any nuts recently, if that's what you're wondering."
The squirrels continued to stare, their tiny paws twitching as if itching to throw something. Preferably something hard and painful.
Suddenly, a deep voice boomed from above, causing Sora to jump. "Hooman, it seems that you are fated to our clan."
Sora looked up to see the source of the voice: a squirrel easily the size of a bear, perched on a massive branch. Its fur was a dignified silver, and it wore what appeared to be a tiny acorn-shaped crown.
"Oh, wow," Sora breathed. "You're like, the Squirrel King or something, right? Do I bow? Or offer you a nut? I'm a little fuzzy on squirrel etiquette."
The giant squirrel's eye twitched slightly. "I am the Elder of the Chestnut Clan, young one. And if you wish to form a contract with us, you must first pass... the test."
Sora's eyes lit up. "A test? Ooh, is it a riddle? I love riddles! Okay, hit me: What's brown and sticky?"
The Elder Squirrel blinked in confusion. "What? No, it's not a-"
"A stick!" Sora exclaimed, laughing at his own joke. "Get it? Because sticks are brown, and they're sticky! ...No? Tough crowd."
The Elder Squirrel sighed deeply, a sound that seemed to convey millennia of exhaustion. "The test, young one, is simple. You must avoid getting paint on you for the next three hours."
Sora's grin widened. "That's it? Piece of cake! I once avoided Iruka-sensei for a whole day after replacing all his clothes with-"
He never got to finish his sentence. At some unseen signal, buckets of paint in every colour imaginable came hurtling towards him from all directions.
"Oh, it's on!" Sora laughed, his hands already forming seals. "Body Flicker Jutsu!" He did that while using his signature Shapeshifting Jutsu
In a blink, he vanished, reappearing on a nearby branch. The paint splattered harmlessly on the ground where he'd been standing moments before.
"Ha!" he crowed. "You'll have to do better than that to-"
His victory was short-lived. The branch beneath his feet suddenly glowed with an intricate seal, and a paint bomb exploded point-blank.
Sora's eyes widened in shock. "Seals? Do you guys know seals? But... but you don't even have opposable thumbs!"
Using every ounce of his reflexes and a healthy dose of panic, Sora used his shape-shifting jutsu to literally disappear half of his body. The paint passed harmlessly through the space where his right side should have been.
The surrounding squirrels chittered in alarm, their tiny paws covering their eyes at the horrifying sight of a half-vanished human.
Sora couldn't help but chuckle at their reaction. "What's the matter? Never seen a boy cut in half before? I guess you could say I'm... half the man I used to be!"
Seizing the moment of confusion, Sora activated his transformation jutsu, turning himself into a perfect replica of one of the smaller squirrels. He scampered into the crowd, using a subtle genjutsu to convince the others that he'd always been part of the group.
For the next half hour, chaos reigned in the forest. Squirrels darted to and fro, hurling paint with reckless abandon. Sora, in his squirrel disguise, found himself caught up in the madness.
"Get the human!" squeaked one nearby squirrel, waving a tiny paintbrush like a sword.
"Which one is the human?" another asked, looking around in confusion.
"I think it's that one!" a third declared, pointing at a random squirrel who promptly fainted in terror.
Sora caught up in the moment, and couldn't resist joining in. "Yeah, get him!" he squeaked in his best squirrel voice. "He went that way! No, that way! Maybe he turned invisible!"
As the confusion mounted, the Elder Squirrel watched from his perch, a mixture of amusement and exasperation on his furry face. "Perhaps," he mused to himself, "we've finally found a human as chaotic as we are."
Just as Sora was really getting into his role, suggesting increasingly absurd places the "human" might be hiding ("Maybe he shrunk himself and is hiding in an acorn!"), the squirrels seemed to come to a unanimous decision.
"If we can't find the human," one particularly paint-splattered squirrel declared, "then we'll paint EVERYTHING!"
Before Sora could process what that meant, the squirrels began launching themselves into the air, creating a living rain of paint-covered fur. It was as beautiful as it was ridiculous – a rainbow-hued storm of bushy tails and tiny screams of "For the acorns!"
"Oh, nuts," Sora muttered, realizing he was about to be caught in the world's most colourful downpour. With no time to think, he did the only thing he could – he dug.
Using his earth-style jutsu, Sora burrowed into the ground faster than any real squirrel could have managed. He congratulated himself on his quick thinking – until he realized the squirrels had thought ahead.
The underground was riddled with paint bombs, their seals glowing ominously in the darkness.
"Okay," Sora admitted to himself as he frantically dodged and weaved through the subterranean minefield, "I'm starting to think these squirrels might actually be evil geniuses."
After what felt like hours of underground acrobatics (but was probably closer to five very stressful minutes), Sora finally found a safe spot to surface. He cautiously poked his head out of the ground, looked around, and then promptly wished he hadn't.
He had emerged in what could only be described as a squirrel disco. Dozens of larger squirrels were getting down to some serious nut funk, their little paws waving in the air like they just didn't care. A massive acorn-shaped disco ball spun overhead, casting dappled light across the forest floor.
"Well," Sora said, pulling himself fully out of the ground, "this is unexpected. But I guess even homicidal paint-wielding squirrels need to unwind sometimes."
No sooner had he gotten to his feet than Sora felt a strange compulsion come over him. His feet began to move of their own accord, and before he knew it, he was right in the middle of the dance floor, busting moves he didn't even know he had.
"What the - I can't stop dancing!" he exclaimed, his body popping and locking with surprising skill. "Is this some kind of jutsu?"
A nearby squirrel, wearing what appeared to be a tiny sequined vest, nodded sagely. "The Groove Genjutsu," it explained, doing an impressive backflip. "No one can resist the call of the disco!"
Sora's mind raced as he continued to dance. This was clearly another test, but how could he avoid paint while being forced to dance? And more importantly, how was he pulling off these sweet moves?