[Orcbane] Chapter 13 - Robbery

The last rays of sunlight slowly disappeared behind the red and yellow peaks of Fairbreeze Mountains, painting the evening sky in brilliant gold and crimson lights.

Naruto and Liadrin were in the garden, sitting on a bench and watching the sunset as they drank a mildly sweet beverage made from flower petals.

Once every few days, the boy would sneak out of the Farstrider Enclave, leaving only a shadow clone behind, and come visit his mother in Fairbreeze Village. One year had already passed since she adopted him, but sometimes, it was still surreal for him that he actually had a family now.

As night fell, Naruto and Liadrin stood up, knowing it was time for him to return to the Farstrider Enclave.

“Good night, Alyndor,” Liadrin said as he kissed him on the forehead. “Travel safe.”

“I will,” he said as he embraced her in return, making the elf woman smile and caress the back of his head.

“Go now. You have a night patrol shift, don’t you? Don’t be late. The Ranger General does not take kindly to such behaviour.”

“You’re right,” Naruto said and broke the hug. “Can I come visit you again at the end of the week?”

“Of course you can; what question is that?”

As he turned to leave, Liadrin called out to him again:

“Naruto?”

“Yes?”

“I hope you’re going straight to the Enclave, without making any detours.”

“Of course. Where else would I go?”

“I don’t know, maybe to a certain village on the coast? Where a particular girl-”

“Mom!” Naruto said in a whiny voice, making her giggle. “Would you stop it? Why in the world would I want to go to Sylvanas now?”

“I didn’t say it was Sylvanas,” Liadrin returned with a grin.

Flushing slightly now, he shot back in annoyance, “Who else would it be if not her?”

“It could have been her elder sister, Alleria, too, could it not?” she said, shrugging her shoulders, pretending to be innocent. 

“I’m leaving,” he said, quickly turning around so she wouldn’t see how her words had gotten to him.

“Oh my! You have a thing for both sisters?!” Liadrin brought a hand to her mouth, pretending to be shocked.

“Stop teasing me. Ugh. I’m really leaving now,” he groaned and disappeared with a shunshin, much to her amusement.

⁂

Despite Lady Liadrin's request for him to head straight to the Farstrider Enclave without making any detours, Naruto had other plans that night.

Sylvanas and Alleria, the two Windrunner sisters, had gotten a leave for the next two weeks. They weren’t at the Farstrider Enclave currently (they were about to celebrate the birthday of their baby brother, Lirath, for the first time) so that was the perfect moment for him to sneak out because, without the two sisters to pinch his cheeks to make sure he wasn’t a Shadow Clone, nobody in the barracks would notice his original body’s absence, especially at night. 

He could not stop smiling when his mind went back to their punishment task from a week ago, as he shinobi-jumped from one tree to another at a fast speed.

“You better be grateful! If not for me, you’d be stuck as an ugly frog forever!” Sylvanas said, her head turned away.

He dropped to one knee in front of Sylvanas, took her hand in his, and kissed it gently.

“Thank you, Lady Sylvanas. I will not forget your sacrifice.”

“Anything for a comrade,” the girl muttered in a barely audible voice, unable to face him.

He started laughing when he remembered how red the tips of her elvish ears were.

‘My god, she was so damn cute!'

If only she didn’t have such a sharp tongue, chastising him every time he messed up.

‘If only she were a little more like Alleria.’

Unlike the bratty and combative Sylvanas, her older sister was more serious, more mature, and seemed less interested in annoying or provoking him. Other than the times when she teased him for having “cute whiskers”, Alleria was more pleasant company.

He almost missed a step when he landed on a tree’s branch as he recalled what his mother had asked him only a few moments ago:

“Oh my! You have a thing for both sisters?!”

He stopped for a few moments to recollect himself. It wouldn’t do any good for him to start thinking about Alleria’s long legs now or her-

“Damn it, get your shit together,” he muttered, frustrated with himself.

He didn’t really understand what was going on. It wasn’t like this was the first time he had liked a girl. He used to like Sakura years ago. But now, it felt different.

Lately, he found himself thinking about girls all the time. His eyes kept drifting without him meaning to, always pulled toward their chests, their legs, or the curve of their hips.

Alleria’s slim figure, alluring hips, and long legs in particular had a way of catching his attention, whether he wanted it or not. The fact that the beautiful she-elf often wore thigh-high leather boots and high-waist leather trousers didn’t help matters at all.

What Naruto didn’t realise was that this was normal. It happened to every boy his age when puberty started.

He ran a hand over his face and dropped down from the tree, heading to a nearby stream of water. It was a forest creek at the foot of the Fairbreeze Mountains. Kneeling at the shore of the small river, he took off his gauntlets and splashed some cold water on his face.

He let out a sigh of comfort and contentment as he also drank some of it. The darkening evening sky with its gold and crimson light glittering like auroras, the beautiful and vibrant trees with yellow and red leaves, the pleasant smell of the forest, the sounds that the animals made as they went to sleep, and the refreshing and cool taste of the river water momentarily brought him to a standstill.

Sometimes, he was afraid that this was all a dream and that he would wake up, only to realise that he was back in the Elemental Nations, back in Konoha.

‘I will protect this place. No matter what.’

He loved Quel’Thalas. He loved his mother, Liadrin, and his grandfather, Vandellor. He loved the Farstriders. He loved the tranquil forest and the peaceful village, Fairbreeze. He loved the Eversong Forest and his life here, in the world of Azeroth. He had never taken Liadrin’s love or his life in the kingdom of the elves for granted. And he had no plans of doing so in the future either.

‘I have to get stronger for their sake.’

‘If I want to protect this place, I need to be even stronger than I am now.’

Unfortunately, even with all his tenacity and a vast number of shadow clones, there was a limit to how much he could grow when he didn’t have a teacher, someone to guide him.

‘I need to learn magic. I need to learn a way to block the curses.’

He had never forgotten about the terrifying curse of the Blood Loa that the troll shaman had cast on him one year ago, in the battle at the Dawnstar Village, by sacrificing himself.

Moreover, the incident from a week ago, when the murloc turned him into a frog, had been a harsh reminder that he had yet to find a way to make up for his weakness.

⁂

A man of average height with long, pointy ears characteristic of the high elves crouched behind a neatly trimmed bush, not far from a tall, white tower. Dressed in black clothes and with his head and face covered by a black bandana and a black scarf, he looked no different from a thief. He was none other than Naruto. He was using a Henge.

“I’m strongly against this, Naruto,” came Kurama’s voice from inside the seal.

“Relax, nobody will catch me. If I could nick the Scroll of Seals from the Hokage’s home, surely I can sneak into Dar’khan’s tower too.”

“You, idiot, it’s not about that!” Kyuubi snapped at him, irritation seeping into his voice. “Did you forget what happened the last time you stole a scroll and tried to cast a technique unsupervised?”

“It’ll be different this time,” Naruto said confidently.

“Stupid men, and fat women. Nobody beats their confidence.”

“Hey, asshole, why are you calling me stupid?”

“Because you’re going to screw us both, that’s why! I’m sharing your body, too, you stupid brat! What if you try to cast some magic that will send you to some other godforsaken land again, or one that tears you apart? Did you learn nothing from what happened the last time?”

“Then what choice do I have, huh? Tell me, what am I supposed to do? I tried to study, and I learnt a lot, but Dar’khan still won’t take me as his disciple. Because I’m just not good enough with maths and books and shit. What else do you want me to do?” asked Naruto in a voice filled with frustration.

His shadow clones were not an all-powerful tool because he still only had one brain. The clones did help with learning, but there was only so much information that the human brain could memorise. In the end, most of the information that he tried to learn would end up being forgotten. It was like cramming heavily before exams and forgetting most of it a few days later… except that he had hundreds of clones. 

But, worst of all, he just was not good at maths. No amount of shadow clones and studying could make up for his inability to solve complicated maths equations and problems. And maths and physics were the core of Arcane Magic. Without them, Naruto had no future as a mage.

When Kyuubi didn’t reply right away, Naruto continued:

“You asked me if I forgot about the past. But I didn’t. It’s you who forgot that blood curse that tortured us both a year ago. Or did you also forget that a week ago, that murloc shaman turned me into a frog? What if we were on the battlefield? How would I have escaped with my life then? I wouldn't. We both would've gotten killed!”

“Why can’t you just buy some armour with anti-magic enchantments? The elven military has that, and you also have a blacksmith friend, don’t you? Why don’t you ask him to craft you some armour to defend against curses?”

The fox was talking about Ranis Moonforge, the dark-skinned high elf who had befriended Naruto a year ago.

“That’s just a band-aid solution that won’t help me out when I have to infiltrate the forest trolls' cities!” Naruto retorted. “How would I wear high elven armour when I’ll be disguising myself as a troll to spy on them?”

“Just tell your friend to make your armour look like it’s troll armour, idiot!”

“How many forest trolls have you seen wearing armour, you dumbass?” Naruto shouted back at him. “Most of them are half-naked; they barely have a loincloth! How would I look going around in full plate armour? You stupid fox!”

The bijuu started growling at him. He and Naruto had become friends, but the boy had a talent for getting on his nerves.

“Look, I’m not as stupid as you think I am. I developed my elemental jutsu just fine with shadow clones, with minimal help from you, didn't I? I will do the same with magic. I will use shadow clones to test the waters. I’ll be safe.”

Kyuubi let out a sigh.

“How do you expect to learn magic when you aren’t good at physics and maths? I focused my senses on Dar’khan the entire time, and he never lied to you about that. This Arcane Magic of theirs really requires the caster to be very intelligent.”

“I’m not going to steal a tome of Arcane Magic,” Naruto replied. “There are multiple forms of magic in this world. It’s not like our ninjutsu. I’m sure that other forms of magic don’t need me to be a freaking nerd. I mean, just think of the troll shamans who were casting lightning and lava spells or the murloc shaman who hexed me into a frog. Don’t tell me those savage monsters are some sort of geniuses. I could bet my yearly salary that murloc shaman doesn’t even know how to read and write.”

“. . . Fair enough,” Kyuubi admitted, but he didn’t give up even now. “But what makes you think that you’ll find that other different types of magic in this elf mage’s tower?”

Naruto jumped over the tall fence into Dar’khan’s residence and hid behind a fountain so that the Arcane Guardians, the tall golems with the glowing gems shining brightly in their waists, would not detect his intrusion.

“That day when the troll army invaded and I burst into Dar’khan’s tower, he was casting some blackish, dark-purple coloured magic. I didn’t realise it back in the day, but over the past year, I’ve become more familiar with the elves' magic. Now I know that that black, dark purple magic isn’t Arcane. I’ve never seen any other Farstriders or Magisters cast that type of magic before.”

“You’re betting on something that may not even exist. What if you get caught? Did you forget that these elves have Scrying Magic? Isn’t that how they found out that your little elf girlfriend drew on her sister’s face?”

“W-What girlfriend are you talking about!” he sputtered. “Sylvanas and I are just friends! Hell, not even that; she hates my guts, and I can’t stand her either! We’re rivals!”

“Right. You do know that my Negative Emotion Sensing works on you, too, right?”

“. . . Shut up,” Naruto groused at him in a mixture of embarrassment and annoyance. “Look, that’s beside the point! Why do you think I cast a Henge on myself to look like a high elf thief? Even if Dar’khan uses Scrying Magic to see who broke in, he’ll see just a regular elf man, not me.”

“Grrrr….”

No matter how the bijuu tried to dissuade the boy, he had an answer for everything. It appeared as though Naruto had really thought things through this time. Understanding that it wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment act and that the blond had planned things out well, Kyuubi gave up trying to change his mind. Letting out a “hmpf” sound, he said:

“Do whatever you want.”

And with that, the fox turned silent.

Now that the bijuu stopped nagging him, Naruto could focus his entire attention on breaking into Dar’khan’s tower.

Mindful of the fact that Dar’khan could cast a Scrying Spell to learn the truth about the past, he didn’t walk on the wall like a ninja; after all, he was the only person in Quel’Thalas who was capable of that. His disguise would end up being useless.

He took out an enchanted grappling hook and, after winding it up several times, he threw it with deadly accuracy right next to the top window of the tall tower. Instead of having a hook at the end, this grappling tool had a suction cup of sorts that immediately glued itself to the smooth white wall.

‘Nice,’ he thought, pleased with the tool. With his shinobi abilities, he would normally have no need for such tools, but they were pretty fun to use.

Holding onto the rope, he started pulling himself up slowly, mimicking the way a regular person would scale a wall.

Two minutes later, he finally climbed up to the window at the top of the mage tower.

His hand went to his belt, and he took out a specialised knife with a diamond edge. Both the knife and this grappling hook had been bought from the Guild of Rogues, an infamous organisation which was located in the Murder Row, a rather dangerous street in an ill-famed district of Silvermoon City, the capital of the kingdom.

The Murder Row street served as a gathering point of sorts for all types of dangerous individuals and other people who walked in the shadows, skirting the law.

Holding onto the rope with one hand, Naruto used his diamond-edged knife to cut a small round hole into the window, just big enough for his hand to fit through and open the window from the inside.

That part went flawlessly. . . However, after he took out the piece of cut glass and shoved his hand through the window, a loud alarm started blaring.

“Oh, come on!” he complained.

It appeared that the mage had set up sensor spells to detect any intruders.

With the deafening alarm ringing, he could not afford to linger. The mage would wake up and catch him in less than a minute! He smashed his fist into the window, shattering it completely, and hopped inside the pitch-dark room.

Having already been inside that room two times, he was somewhat familiar with its layout. He turned on his magic lantern, and, still not forgetting to play the part of a regular robber, he started grabbing haphazardly every valuable thing he could get his hands on.

He stole some golden instruments, a magic dagger and two wands hanging on the wall, three spherical crystals of a deep, black-purple colour, a bunch of books that looked like they were valuable, and a couple of other things.

However, it was all just an act. He didn’t need most of that stuff. They were just a diversion, a way to fool the Magister and hide the fact that Naruto’s target had been one particular book, the one that had been lying on a pedestal.

Despite the numerous things that he had stolen and shoved inside his bag, it hadn’t changed its size or weight. It was a Runecloth Bag, a bag that was enchanted with a space-expansion and a weight-reduction spell. It was a precious item outside of Quel’Thalas and Dalaran, where magic wasn’t as common. Many adventurers, porters, and military personnel wished to own one.

“Stop right there, thief!” Dar’khan, wearing a blue nightcap and a purple nightgown, burst into the room screaming.

However, by the time the mage had arrived, he only managed to catch a glimpse of the elf man’s black robes as he jumped out of the window.

The Magister didn’t have his usual magic staff with him, but he did have a small wand, and he rushed at the window, firing a barrage of Arcane Missiles at the thief.

“Catch him!” he yelled at his Arcane Golems, and the large robotic golems started charging at the fleeing Naruto with great momentum, each one of their steps making the cobblestone street shudder.

Dar’khan also jumped out of the window and cast a Slow Fall spell on himself.

Just when it looked like the Arcane Golems were about to corner the thief against the tall fence, and the Magister began levitating towards him, the thief grabbed two small bombs from his pocket and threw them down.

“This blasted rogue!” Dar’khan screamed in anger when the bombs exploded, blanketing the entire courtyard with a heavy and dense cloud of smoke.

It was the bread-and-butter skill of any rogue worth their salt: Vanish.

But that wasn’t enough to escape from a mage as experienced as Dar’khan. The Magister waved his hand, and a vortex of cold wind burst from his wand, blowing the entire cloud of smoke away.

With a display of agility unexpected from a man as lofty and classy as him, the high elf Magister climbed over the tall fence instantly and started pursuing the thief.

Dar’khan’s silhouette disappeared as he used the Blink spell two times in a very quick succession, instantly teleporting 40 metres and catching the thief from behind.

Sensing Dar'khan's presence behind him, Naruto cursed under his breath. He shoved his hand in a small pouch at his waist, grabbed a handful of its contents, and threw it at his back, in Dar’khan’s general direction.

The Magister was caught off guard, and he let out a cry of pain.

Naruto snickered softly as he heard the Magister starting to cuss up a storm. What he had thrown at him was yet another favourite escape method employed by rogues: Blinding Powder.

It was a product sold by the Guild of Rogues, crafted by grinding Fadeleaf plants. It was rather expensive but definitely worth it. If caught off guard, even a Magister like Dar’khan would get blinded and be rendered helpless for a minute or longer without someone else’s help.

Leaving the yelling mage in the dust, Naruto ran into the forest with the magic bag on his back. He continued to run on the ground for another three kilometres before finally dropping the pretence and leaping up into a tree, proceeding to shinobi-jump travel from that point onwards.

⁂

Four days have passed since Naruto broke into Dar’khan’s mage tower. Word of the robbery had spread like wildfire because crime in Quel’Thalas was rare, and someone successfully robbing a Magister’s Tower was even rarer, almost unheard of. Even the newspapers in Silvermoon, the capital city of the kingdom, were talking about it.

But Naruto acted like it had nothing to do with him. He went on patrol missions, he participated in the Farstriders’ drills, and he even visited Ranis Moonforge’s smithy and placed an order.

‘I wonder, is it too early to try to sell the stuff I stole from Dar’khan on the black market in Murder Row?’ he thought as he trained, pouring his chakra into his kunai.

Thanks to his friendship with Ranis and with the help of his transformation technique, Naruto had managed to get the elven blacksmith to forge for him kunai. Unlike usual daggers, kunai had a loop on their handle where he could tie various things like smoke bombs or even vials filled with poison or paralytic gas. Kunai also had a different weight distribution compared to regular throwing knives. All in all, they were better suited than regular daggers for him.

A layer of sharp wind coated his dagger, and a large, skull-sized hole appeared in a rock when Naruto threw his kunai at it.

‘I remember seeing Kakashi-sensei use a jutsu that multiplied the shurikens once. . . I think it’s related somehow to my Kage Bunshin Jutsu. . . but I don’t know its hand seals.’

He made a couple of dozen shadow clones who started experimenting with various hand signs and moulding their chakra, like usual.

Every once in a while, he would grimace as he got the memories of a clone that died a particularly brutal death, getting burnt from within, or having their chakra network explode and destroy his nervous system.

His lack of relevant progress in this matter made his mind go to his other, more recent failure.

‘That robbery was a bust. . .’

He had not been caught; nobody even suspected that he was behind it. His act of pretending to be a regular rogue, a thief, had been convincing enough that Dar’khan’s Scrying Spells didn’t detect anything out of place. However, the grimoire on the pedestal, that large tome that he had seen glowing with a black-purple light, turned out to be useless.

‘Focus on my negative emotion? Despair, anger, hatred, loneliness, bloodlust, envy, apathy . . . what the heck is that even supposed to do?’

It was a tome on Shadow Magic, but all that book talked about was how to cultivate those dark emotions in order to summon the Whispers.

Due to his upbringing, Naruto had suffered much in the past. But he had never thought about weaponising his negative emotions like that. He was not the type to dwell on negativity.

‘What are those Whispers even?’

The tome said that if he managed to summon the Whispers, he would be blessed with untold powers, powers like he had never seen.

Four days later, however, he hadn’t achieved any success, regardless of how hard he and his shadow clones tried.

“Boo!” a girl suddenly shouted from behind him.

So absorbed had he been in his training and thoughts that he hadn’t noticed her arrival. He jumped away like a cat scared out of its wits.

“Goddamn it, Sylvanas!” he shouted when he saw who the culprit was.

The pretty, long-haired she-elf was giggling happily at managing to get one over him.

“If only you could see your face! Haha!”

“Sigh. What are you doing here? Weren’t you supposed to have a leave?” he said in annoyance. 

“Did you hit your head, Froggy? Did you forget we have an appointment today?” Sylvanas asked.

“Hey, don’t call me that!” 

Sylvanas snickered at him.

“Froggy! Froggy! Haha! I’m going to keep calling you Froggy, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Then don’t get mad at me if I also keep calling you Twigs.”

Sylvanas shrugged her shoulders.

“I don’t care. That nickname doesn’t affect me anymore. I’m not that skinny anymore, am I?” she asked, as she ran her hands over her hips and waist. 

At the age of 16, after one year of rigorous training with the Farstrider, Sylvanas’ physique became quite different from when she and Naruto had first met. Her legs had gotten thicker, her arms and her shoulders stronger, she had grown a few centimetres taller, and (Naruto secretly noted as his eyes involuntarily darted to it) her chest started growing too.

Afraid of getting caught in the act, he quickly looked away, busying himself with his kunai.

“Whatever,” he muttered. “So, why did you return when you’re supposed to be on vacation?”

“Hey, didn’t you say you’d introduce me to your favourite blacksmith?”

“Oh!! I really forgot about it. My bad, my bad,” he apologised twice. With how many memories he got from his Shadow Clones every day, it was easy for him to forget things.

“Hey, guys,” he told the rest of his shadow clones, “quickly grab all the kunai and clean up the training ground. We have to leave in five minutes.”

“Yes, boss,” they replied in a chorus.

“I’m so envious of that spell of yours,” Sylvanas said as she watched the large group of clones quickly repair the training ground.

“Well, I did want to show you how to do it, but your mother said it’s too risky.”

Naruto had offered to teach the Ranger General and the other elves how to unlock their chakra and learn his skills, but his offer had been turned down.

It wasn’t because of pride but caution. They had no way of knowing what effect a foreign power like chakra might have on their bodies. There was a chance it wouldn’t mix well with the mana that flowed through them.

On top of that, the high elves were a long-lived people who valued peace and stability. They disliked sudden changes. Unless something from the outside forced them to adapt, they rarely took the initiative to do it themselves. With the Sunwell fulfilling all their needs and more, they did not have a strong incentive to seek a new form of power.

Because of all those factors, the idea of testing Naruto’s chakra on other elves had been put off until he became an adult. For beings who lived thousands of years (some elves were even older than Quel’Thalas itself, having been alive 7000 years ago, when the elven kingdom was founded), waiting five or six years was no different than humans waiting a week or two.

⁂

A few minutes later, a fourteen-year-old human boy and a sixteen-year-old elf girl could be seen leaving the training ground together, heading toward Ranis’ personal smithy. Very few blacksmiths ever joined the Farstriders, so those who did were often given special treatment. But no one resented that. Even the regular Farstriders benefited from having a smith in their ranks. It saved them a great deal of money on repairs and on consumables like arrows and traps.

“Can he make frost and fire traps?” Sylvanas asked as they walked.

“I think he can. He once inscribed an Exploding Formula on one of my throwing daggers. I’m telling you, he’s really good.”

He then began describing how his dagger had blown up a boulder bigger than a carriage. Naruto’s animated storytelling and Sylvanas’ quiet giggles as she listened made a few passing Farstriders grin at the sight.

“For all their bickering, look at them. They’re always together, even when she’s supposed to be on leave,” one elven woman said, laughing along with her friends as they jogged laps around the training ground.

“They’re still children, so it’s fine. But I doubt the Ranger General would be happy if their friendship turned into something more,” said a male elf with long black hair tied in a perfectly styled man bun. “There’s no point in getting involved with a human. They’ll be gone in four or five decades. You’re just setting yourself up for heartbreak and suffering.”

“Speaking from experience, Zarenis?” another woman asked teasingly.

“Yes,” he replied simply, offering no explanation.

Unaware of what the others were gossiping about, Naruto and Sylvanas continued their walk without a care in the world.

“Did you make an appointment with him?” she asked when Ranis’ smithy came into view. “I don’t hear any hammering.”

“Ugh, I didn’t,” he admitted sheepishly.

“By the Sun, what am I going to do with you?” she sighed. “Didn’t Father teach you it’s rude to show up at someone’s home without notice?”

“I forgot, okay? Sorry. Just don’t tell your father again. I don’t want another lecture the next time I visit,” he said in chagrin.

When they reached the door, they saw it was shut.

“Hello? Ranis?” Naruto called out after knocking. “Oy, are you in there?”

Sylvanas let out a sigh.

“It’s locked, Froggy. He’s not here. No point in shouting.”

But then a faint sound made one of her long, elvish ears twitch.

“Wait, I think I heard something. It sounded like a cry,” she said and hurried to the window.

Naruto followed her, and the two of them pressed their heads together as they tried to peek through a narrow gap in the curtains. What they saw made them both pull back instantly, as if burnt. When another cry followed, louder and unmistakably feminine this time, both of their faces turned bright red.

They glanced at each other for a second before quickly looking away, even more embarrassed than before.

“Um, maybe we should go,” Naruto mumbled.

“R-Right,” she stammered.

They wandered aimlessly for nearly ten minutes without saying a word. Eventually, Sylvanas came to a stop and called out to him.

“Froggy?”

He was so flustered by what they had stumbled upon a few minutes ago that he even forgot about his annoyance at his new nickname.

“Yes?”

“Would you like to come to Windrunner Spire tomorrow?”

He glanced at her in surprise.

“What for?” he asked.

The girl tucked a strand of her platinum hair behind one of her long, elvish ears, and his stomach turned over when her bright eyes met his.

“It’s Lirath’s birthday. And there’s a festival in the village at the foot of our cliff,” she said, lowering her gaze shyly. "A goblin caravan is coming. . . I think it will be fun."

Naruto stared at her, open-mouthed, thrown off completely by her unexplainable behaviour.

To him, Sylvanas had always been pretty. Even a year ago, when they first met and he had called her ‘Twigs’, it had only been because she was so beautiful that he didn’t know what else to tease her about. But now, a year later, even that ‘flaw’ had disappeared.

More than that, the stubborn, combative attitude of hers that had annoyed him so much seemed to have vanished.

What stood in front of him at that moment was an incredibly pretty elf girl, talking to him in a soft and shy voice, inviting him to go with her to a festival.

“Mother gave her permission for you to take tomorrow off,” she added in a hopeful tone.

“I-, I, ugh-” 

“You can’t?” she asked, directing those bright, soulful eyes of hers at him.

Even if he had had some plans for tomorrow, at that moment, it would have been absolutely impossible for him to refuse her.

“Yes! No! I mean that yes, I want to come!” he said, almost shouting towards the end, panicking. “I just, I just didn’t expect you to, you know, invite me somewhere. . . I thought you-" he rubbed the back of his head "-didn’t like me all that much?”

The girl sneaked a glance at him before quickly looking away. 

“I gave you my first kiss and it was when you were a frog. . .” she mumbled, her cheeks reddening by the second. “Would I do that for someone I hated? Dummy.”

By now, the two teens were so embarrassed, they didn't dare to even glance at each other.

“Then… see you tomorrow?” 

“Yes.”

And with that, the girl left, disappearing like the wind, leaving only a slight scent of cherry flowers behind.

Five minutes after the girl ran away, Naruto was still rooted in his place, stupefied, his heart racing. Sylvanas’ attack had left him speechless.