definately interested in the time travel story. A quality author liek you can do a good time travel story easy enough.
Allegory sounds interesting a turn on the old exotic boy/girl friend story.
Allegory's really weird. It's like fairy tales cohabit with a modern world that doesn't believe in them so much anymore. It combines aspects of from several of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification system - in particular, the "backstory" for Naruto-as-kitsune has several versions within the story that draw heavily on stories of animal bridegrooms, variations of Beauty and the Beast type stories, and cautions regarding greed. Sakura initially finds a short "watered down and sanitized" version which lacks a lot of detail, Sasuke knows another which paints the mortal in it in a much kinder light, there's the older but differing ones, and then there's the one Naruto knows, which is a lot less clear cut.
Ahhhh, if you're interested, Catsi, the opening (rather lengthy) fight of the timetravel story is as follows.
Rinji cursed as their target, an Iwa missing nin, used a earth jutsu to shield himself from a volley of senbon. It was supposed to be a simple escort mission, but the intelligence they’d received in advance hadn’t counted on an S-ranked missing nin deciding to go after the bounty on their client’s head. He and his teammate, Hana, had ordered the chunnin with them to rush on ahead with the client and moved in to take care of the situation. Rolling out of the line of fire, the dark-haired medical ninja fired off another volley of senbon and sprang back into the trees. Obviously, this was taking a little longer than they had hoped, but at least they had the missing nin’s full attention and diverted him from the target.
Hana plowed forward, channeling wind chakra through the metal claws strapped to her gloves, and slammed them down through the earth barrier, tearing it wide open. She immediately followed through, springing off her hand and twisting her body to catch their enemy in a vicious head-lock with her legs. The missing nin retaliated by stabbing her in the kidneys, only to have the orange-haired woman pinning him vanish in a puff of smoke.
Rinji made the hand seals for the chakra scalpel and moved in, intent on finishing him off in the distraction.
“Damn!” the missing nin spat, rolling out of the way and making another set of seals. “You two are fast, but you won’t get in my way again!”
Hana broke her cover then, using her clawed weapon to fling wind-element chakra at the man as pillars of rock snaked out of the ground, intent on crushing the both of them. Rinji was showered in dirt as one of her wind-blades shredded a pillar coming in from his right side. “Get serious, idiot!” she shouted, running past him with a shadow clone dogging her heels.
“Tch,” Rinji hissed, already moving and channeling chakra to his eyes to awaken that cursed gift he’d inherited. She was right and he’d be damned if he let this greedy bastard put their names on the memorial. The world became bright with colored chakra and he felt time seem to slow down as his cursed eyes went to work.
Hana and her shadow clone leapt ahead of him, nimbly dodging the pillars, her bright blue chakra and its echo moving in perfect sync. He could see her gathering chakra in her right hand for a strike and by the way it rotated, he suspected she was preparing the signature move of her father and grandfather. Beyond her, their enemy was flipping through the seals for another jutsu – earth jutsu again.
“Doton!” Rinji shouted, flipping through seals of his own as he moved forward. Spears of rock shot out of the ground in front of him, crashing against the spears generated by the missing nin’s jutsu and rendering them ineffective. He made a second set of seals and disappeared.
A look of surprise etched the Iwa missing nin’s face. “What? How the hell?”
“Rasengan!” Hana cried out, slamming the swirling sphere of chakra towards his chest.
The missing nin cursed loudly and dodged at the last second, slamming his elbow down on her back in a quick and nasty jab that should have shattered her spine. She exploded into smoke, revealing that it was her shadow clone – this time, however, Rinji leapt out of the smoke, chakra-scalpel blazing straight into the missing nin’s heart. The chakra in the body began to instantly decay, becoming inert again as it returned to the dirt it had been previously and the dark-haired medic nin immediately jerked back, ducking his head under a blade wielded by the real enemy.
Hana dropped down from above, intent on pile-driving their enemy into death with a Rasengan to the upper spine, only to be met with a spray of dirt. “****! Another earth clone!” she hissed.
The Iwa missing nin emerged from the earth across the clearing and started right into another set of hand seals. “You’ve wasted too much of my time!”
Hana shot forward, her clawed gloves spitting with wind chakra, and Rinji was right alongside her in an instant, his eyes committing the seals to memory even as he fired off another volley of senbon.
“Forbidden Technique: Displacement!” the missing nin shouted, slamming his hands into the last seal.
Hana’s claws struck the missing nin in the shoulder, pulverizing his collarbone, and Rinji’s arm hooked around her waist to pull her away in that same instant that the jutsu was completed. The world seemed to shudder, flinging both jounin and the missing nin back into the trees with explosive violence.
Rinji took the brunt of the force, losing his grip on his partner as he was propelled clean through a clearing and slammed back-first against a particularly sturdy tree some distance beyond that, his cursed gift immediately deactivating from the impact. It stunned him for a second and he could have sworn he felt a rib crack, but he was on his feet and rushing off through the trees in a heartbeat. He slowed, lingering in the trees when he reached the clearing. He needed a moment to reevaluate the situation. Their enemy was wounded and had just used up a lot of chakra in a failed forbidden jutsu. In effect, they had cornered him and Rinji knew from experience that their enemy would now throw everything in the rest of his arsenal at them in a last ditch effort.
Hana knew that, too. From his vantage point, Rinji could see she’d landed closer and, recovering faster, she now slipped into a catlike stance he knew all too well. She was preparing to play her trump card, which meant he would have to be ready to hold up his end. “Tch, was that technique supposed to hurt?” she taunted.
The Iwa missing nin spat, ripping senbon from his shoulder. One of his arms hung limp, unable to be supported by the crushing injury to his collarbone. “You interfering *****! I’ll ******* kill you!”
Rinji drew a long kunai from his pack, but held his concealed position and pressed his hands into a seal, casting a genjutsu.
“You’ll find I’m a little different from the other ninja you’ve faced,” Hana growled, making a single seal. Instantly, reddish chakra seeped from her body, encasing her in a bubble of red, steaming chakra. Her appearance became more feral, her fingers curling as claws formed, and a tail of chakra began to form behind her.
The missing nin, pale, took a half-step back. There was no doubt that he now recognized who he was up against – the Wild Fox, daughter of the Rokudaime Hokage.
Hana roared and dropped into lower version of her stance, growling.
Rinji rolled his eyes at her antics, activating his eyes again. He could clearly see the thin film of chakra covering his teammate from head to toe in his genjutsu. He’d never liked looking at that illusion form of hers normally, but through the bizarre vision granted by his cursed inheritance, he now found her illusion ethereally beautiful and fierce, every inch the kunoichi he’d fallen in love with.
The enemy shakily drew a weapon and sunk into a defense stance.
Hana took that as her cue to attack. She sprang forward, swinging her chakra-charged bladed gloves in a fierce downward slash that tore long gashes into the ground and only narrowly missed the target. Cursing, the Iwa missing nin could only dodge and try to stay ahead of her movements as she drove him into the center of the clearing.
Rinji waited until they were close enough before silently dropping down behind the missing nin and putting the kunai to his throat. The missing nin froze in place, shooting a quick glance over his shoulder and starting at the sight of the eerie red of the medic’s eyes. Those eyes were terrifying and no one knew it more than Rinji. He flicked his gaze to his partner. “Hana, that’s enough. Calm yourself.”
Hana pulled in her chakra slightly, the signal for him to disperse the genjutsu. “Tch, I was just getting warmed up.”
“What the hell are you?” the Iwa missing-nin muttered, his eyes darting between the two of them.
Rinji cocked his head slightly and began tearing weapons pouches off the missing nin with his free hand. “It’s none of your concern.”
Hana giggled, kicking the weapons away from them.
All of a sudden, four chakra signatures entered his passive sensing range. Rinji frowned a little, trying to focus on the signatures and dig out a wire tie at the same time, and said: “Hana, give me a hand.”
Hana gave him a curious look as she approached and took over the task of holding a weapon to the missing nin’s throat.
With both hands free, Rinji pinned the man’s wrists and slipped the wire tie over them. Meanwhile, he continued to track and feel out the chakra signatures. There were definitely four, at least two with jounin level chakra and the others at the genin and chuunin level, and all four signatures were moving in their direction. He cinched the zip tie up with a rough jerk and shoved the missing nin to the ground, maintaining a solid grip on the tie.
“What’s up?” Hana asked, adjusting her stance.
There was something odd about those signatures. He could swear they were familiar. “We’ve got company.”
“Perfect,” the Iwa missing nin said, leering at them. His chakra suddenly went completely inert and then shot straight towards his torso.
Rinji immediately let go, he and Hana both jumping back as the body exploded in a shower of dirt and debris. Exploding Earth Clone, he surmised, following the chakra signature. The Iwa missing nin had switched with it and was now moving underground towards the middle of the clearing.
To complicate matters, the four new signatures were now rapidly moving in their direction. They’d be there in only a few moments and he couldn’t tell if they were friend or foe.
The Iwa missing nin burst out of the ground, just as a Konoha jounin-sensei and his genin team burst out of the trees on the far side of the clearing.
Hana cursed and immediately launched forward, leaping high and sweeping her leg down in an axe kick. The missing nin leered and made a one-handed earth seal. A wall of earth crashed into her side and Hana dropped hard, skidding towards the genin squad. She didn’t get up.
Rinji clenched his hands into fists and started to move forward.
The missing nin raised his hand, the earth coiling up for another strike as he wagged his finger warningly.
Rinji stopped in place and, dimly, he could hear the jounin-sensei ordering his students to stay in place.
:V There's more written, obviously. The scene after this, Hana's anecdote to Sakura regarding "the one you end up with isn't always who you first expect", several of the scenes with Sasuke confronting Rinji, in particular, and one very awkward, ridiculous closet scene with Team 7 attempting to spy on them. But this fight? I'm super proud of. It's really fluid.
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