Chapter 19- Fox and Zebra, Pony and Snake
“Okay, relax. I can fix this. No problem,” Naruto tried to calm himself down. Making a hand seal with his odd paws… Hands… Things, he tried to channel chakra into them. “Transformation Jutsu, Release!”
Naruto kept staring at his own reflection in the mirror, holding his hand seal and hoping he would just turn back into his normal form. “Gah! It’s not working! How the hay did this happen?!” he called out, to which sounded more distressed howls.
“What is all that ruckus up there?!” he could hear Rarity calling, as her rapid hoofsteps grew closer and closer to him.
“Is it the fox?! Is he back?!” Sweetie Belle’s excited voice was heard shortly afterwards, her hoofsteps getting closer as well. “Wow, Rarity. Your mane looks—”
“Don’t you DARE finish that sentence, Sweetie Belle! And wait for me downstairs!”
Naruto looked around, panicked. If there was one thing worse than being discovered as the host to a monstrous fox, it was being found as the fox itself.
Scanning the entire room, he realized there was but one choice left for him. He ran towards the open window and jumped outside.
*****
Landing cleanly on all four, Naruto took a quick look around. “What to do… What to do…” he thought desperately.
“Dammit… I don’t think I can fix this by myself… Whatever’s going on, it’s not a jutsu…” he concluded shortly afterwards. “Right! Maybe that bookworm Twilight will know what to do!” he exclaimed, which only sounded a few foxy barks.
“Hey! It’s the fox!” Sweetie Belle called. Naruto immediately turned back, his eyes widening in surprise to see the filly looking out the window of Carousel Boutique.
“Oh, crap…” Naruto muttered as the door flung open and out came the Unicorn filly, running after him as fast as she could.
“Get back here!” Sweetie Belle yelled as Naruto started running as quickly as his strange limbs could carry him. He dashed into town, Sweetie Belle hot on his tails.
“Hey, is that a fox?” a turquoise Unicorn asked as Naruto ran by her, along with a cream-colored Earth pony. “Woah!” the Earth pony cried as Sweetie Belle stormed past her, nearly knocking her off her hooves.
Heading straight for the market and running between many surprised ponies, Naruto eyed a cart filled with carrots, tended by a yellow Earth pony with an orange mane. Jumping on the cart and running along its edges, he could hear her holler in surprise. “Hey! No running on the merchandise!”
Naruto jumped off the cart and ran ahead, nearly bumping into Fluttershy, who was looking quite distressed and unfocused. He briefly stopped to change his direction, but could hear her saying something.
“Sorry,” she muttered in a deep voice that definitely did NOT befit a mare.
Naruto looked back in horror at Fluttershy, to see Sweetie Belle running past her. “What the hay is going on here?! Is it not just me, or am I going insane?!”
Unfortunately, he didn’t notice that he nearly bumped into yet another pony. Looking down, he could see Scootaloo staring at him in shock. “Zecora’s fox!” she immediately yelled.
Every single pony in the market turned his head at the shout’s location, to see Scootaloo standing in front of a large, nine-tailed fox. “ZECORA’S FOX?!” they all repeated in horror.
A few moments later, the marketplace had become a colorful whirlpool of running, panicked ponies. The whole area had effectively descended into pure chaos. “Run for your lives!” some ponies yelled. “Zecora’s fox is gonna hunt us down!”
Naruto immediately started dashing away, giving a quick gaze behind him to see that now both Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo were chasing him, in the midst of the colorful whirlpool of scrambling ponies.
*****
Finally managing to get out of the marketplace, Naruto could see the huge oak tree that was the library. “Just a little bit more…”
“Watch out below!” Rainbow Dash yelled.
Instinctively, Naruto rolled to the right to avoid getting a shower, like Rainbow had done a few times in the past when they’d run into each other. But instead, he saw her crash-landing into the library’s window twice, before managing to enter via the door. “Is she flying backwards?!” he thought in shock when he saw her wings flapping unnaturally.
“There it is!” Scootaloo yelled.
“Get back here, fox!” Sweetie Belle shouted thereafter.
Naruto ran once more towards the library, only to nearly collide with yet another filly. “Gah! It’s Apple Bloom!” he howled. “And… A tiny Applejack?” he added in utter shock when he saw a nut-sized Applejack standing on top of the filly’s back.
“What in tarnation’s this here fox?!” Applejack cried in an unusually high voice. “And what’s up with all those tails?”
Apple Bloom gasped. “It’s Zecora’s fox! I told y’all it was real!” Apple Bloom exclaimed.
“Oh no…” Naruto muttered, as he turned back and ran away, knowing where this was going.
“Wait!” Apple Bloom called as she gave chase.
“What the hay?!” Applejack screamed, as she was blown off the filly’s back and fell down on the ground near the library. “Apple Bloom! You get back here right now!”
Apple Bloom, however, didn’t listen, and gave chase after the fox, too fast for tiny Applejack to even hope to catch up to. She was soon joined by the other Crusaders.
“Sweetie Belle! Scootaloo! Did ya see it?!” Apple Bloom called.
“Yeah! It looks kind of funny, but that’s gotta be the fox from yesterday!” Scootaloo replied.
“But where’s Naruto?! We can’t get the fox without him, he’s part of the team too!” Sweetie Belle said.
“There’s no choice! If we wait for him we’ll lose the fox!” Scootaloo answered.
“Alright then, let’s get it! For our cutie marks!” Apple Bloom shouted.
“For our cutie marks!” the other two fillies answered in high spirits, all the while unknowingly chasing after Naruto.
“How I wish they’d just get their cutie marks already and this will be over with!” Naruto cried mentally.
Just then, he finally noticed that he was already out of town, and heading straight to the Everfree Forest. “I got it! I’ll lose them in the forest! No way they’ll be brave enough to search there without me!” he grinned to himself as he ran into the trees’ shadows.
“Hey!” Sweetie Belle cried. “It ran back to the forest!”
“Hurry! Before we lose it!” Scootaloo called.
STOP THE MUSIC HERE
*****
Naruto ran as fast as he could on the forest’s trail, deviating away from it a minute of running later, when he spotted a bunch of thick bushes to hide in.
“It ran into the bushes!” Apple Bloom alerted the others.
“You’re not gonna get away, fox!” Scootaloo then shouted.
“Crap! They’re actually following me?!” Naruto thought in shock, and then started running deeper and deeper into the woods, between fallen trees and bushes. As he got farther and farther away from the path, the forest scene all around him began growing wilder: the trees grew closer to each other, had many more vines dangling from them, and weird, huge mushrooms began showing around every corner. The voices of the Crusaders gradually grew weaker and weaker, until after five minutes of running, they could not be heard anymore.
Naruto finally came to a stop, catching his breath. “Those legs… Weren’t… Made for… Running…” he panted. Of course, all that came out of his mouth were tired-sounding, soft howls.
“I didn’t notice it last time because I was with the others, but this forest is really quiet…” Naruto thought as he looked around him. There were almost no sounds to be heard. No streams of water, no whistling of the wind, and no tweets of the birds. Nothing. Complete silence. This made the forest seem even creepier. “I hope the girls can find their way back. Well, if they lived in Ponyville all their lives they can probably navigate here…”
“Oh… Crap…” he muttered when he realized something. “I don’t know this forest at all!” he hollered, the howls shattering the silence of the forest like a hammer shattering glass.
“Oh well… How hard could it possibly be? I’ll just go back…” he thought optimistically and turned around, retracing his steps.
*****
“Either this mushroom is very common, or I’m walking in circles,” Naruto thought as he spotted for the third time a red mushroom with white spots that was as big as him. He has been looking for the path for over thirty minutes now, and was starting to get worried.
“If only I could summon shadow clones I’d already be out of here…” he lamented. He had tried several times now to summon them, but it seemed like in this form he simply couldn’t use any jutsus at all. Even directing chakra to his legs seemed impossible, as he failed to do so to try to climb trees, to find his way out through the treetops.
“Maybe on that double-trunk tree I should take a left…” Naruto wondered as he passed by the unusual tree again. Going with his gut feeling, he changed course and walked to its left, eventually arriving at some more thick bushes.
Forcing his head through them, he could peek on an abnormally large tree. “Huh?! Does someone actually live here?!” Naruto thought in surprise. The tree and its surroundings was decorated by large, wooden masks, and strange, colorful bottles and other artifacts were hanging from its branches on ropes. The trunk seemed to be hollow, as he could see a door and a couple of windows built into it.
“Oh, maybe they’ll know how to get out of here,” Naruto smiled and walked towards the door. After arriving, he knocked on it twice and waited. Only when he retracted his foxy paw, he remembered. “Oh crap! I totally forgot I’m still a fox!”
But it was too late for him to do anything about it. The door opened to reveal… “Zecora!” Naruto exclaimed, his eyes widened in surprise. She had a somewhat similar stature to a pony, but was starkly different. Unlike ponies, who had a homogeneous coat, she had a striped coat of light and dark hues of gray. She had deep blue eyes, a medium-length tail, and a whirlpool pattern on her flank that somehow resembled a cutie mark.
Zecora smiled at the critter standing at her doorstep. “I thought I heard somepony talks, but it seems it was just you, orange fox.”
Naruto let out a mental sigh of relief. “At least she’s not panicking like the ponies back in town…”
Zecora then arched a brow at the fox standing in front of her. “Wait… Can this be? Is that… Naruto whom I see?” she asked, stunned.
Naruto’s eyes shot open. “No way… She recognized me?!” he thought, and immediately started nodding his head. “Yes! Yes! It’s me! Can you turn me back?!”
Zecora chuckled. “It seems my warning you did not note, so I must make now some antidote.”
“Huh? Warning? Antidote?” Naruto yelped.
“Come inside, my furry friend. Just trust me, and my help I shall lend,” she said as she stepped aside to allow him entry. Having not much of a choice, Naruto nodded and walked in.
Zecora closed the door behind him, and Naruto sat on the floor, watching her as she was walking over to many of her shelves, choosing several bottles and pouring their content into a large cauldron that sat in the middle of the room, that was the tree’s huge trunk. The cauldron lay in a small hole in the floor, surrounded by stones and filled with woods. The zebra soon after lighted the wood on fire by rubbing two stones together, which generated sparks.
After making the fire, Zecora walked over to some of her drawers, taking out several odd-looking leaves and flowers, and adding them into the concoction, which now turned green in color. She was singing quietly to herself in a foreign-sounding language, seemingly having fun brewing the elixir.
“How did you know it was me, Zecora?” Naruto asked, forgetting once more that he couldn’t speak in this form.
Zecora laughed again. “I do not understand what you speak, but taking a guess is not a hard trick. If you want to know how you were recognized, just take a look at by what you are symbolized,” she explained, pointing to her stomach.
Naruto looked down at his stomach. There was a large whirlpool picture on it. His expression turned into a puzzled one. “How did she recognize me by this?”
“I remember this crest from the day before. It was on the sleeve of that shirt you wore,” she clarified, smiling like she was quite enjoying mind-reading Naruto.
“She remembered that much about me? She barely saw me for a minute in that foggy place!” Naruto thought, quite impressed.
Naruto and Zecora looked again at the elixir brewing in the cauldron for a few minutes. “Tell me, you orange critter, did anypony else touch that blue flower?” she then asked, looking at him.
“Now that I think about it… Except for the crusaders, everypony else touched them!” Naruto realized, and nodded his head. “Wait… Is that why I turned into this?!”
Zecora chuckled once more. “It appears Naruto understands, but afterwards we must do the same for your friends.”
“The liquid has reached the right hue. Now it should be right for foxes, and ponies too.” Zecora said as she gave one more gaze at the cauldron. “In a few moments, this will be done. Just step in, Naruto, and your ailment will be gone,” Zecora instructed after looking at the contents of the cauldron again.
Naruto nodded, got up on his legs and began marching towards the bubbling concoction. “I really hope this will work…”
Just two steps before reaching it, the front door suddenly flung open and through it flew Rainbow Dash, with Applejack riding on her back. “I’ll save ya, Naruto!” the tiny pony cried, as Rainbow started crashing into everywhere in the house.
Zecora started yelling in the foreign language from before, as she saw her house turned into a pile of broken glass. Many of the bottles had broken by now, strangely colored liquids pouring onto the floor from them.
Applejack pulled out a tiny rope and lassoed with it Zecora’s ear, jumping on her from Rainbow’s back, while the blue Pegasus continued flying all over the place uncontrollably.
“Ponies! What is this you—,” Zecora cried, when Rainbow bumped into the cauldron, knocking it on right on top of Naruto, spilling all of its content on him. “No!” the zebra yelled in shock. “You know not what you do! You've gone and spilled my precious brew!”
“Looks like we made it just in time, girls!” Twilight called in a relieved tone, as she and the others ran into the house as well. “I didn't want to believe that you cursed us, but the evidence is overwhelming! We heard everything from outside!”
“You made me look ridiculous!” Rarity cried, her mane now looking like the fur of a Puli dog.
“You made me sound ridiculous!” Fluttershy said in a very, VERY deep tone.
“Nzktk zjdsinif zkdd izntkd!” Pinkie cried incoherently, her tongue all inflated and sticking out, covered in blue spots.
“You ruined my horn!” Twilight yelled. “And you turned Naruto into a fox, and then tried to cook and eat him!”
“How dare you! You destroy my home and destroy my work, then rudely accuse me of being a jerk?” Zecora called defensively.
“You put this curse on us, now you’re gonna uncurse us!” Rainbow demanded, after she finally managed to land down.
“Everypony…” a muffled voice sounded.
“It is unwise to venture down this road. Your actions will make my anger explode!” the zebra threatened.
“Release Naruto, and tell us where the Crusaders are!” Twilight demanded, pressing her forehead against Zecora’s.
“Stop it!” Naruto yelled, emerging from under the cauldron, which he pushed away from himself. Everypony immediately looked at him.
“Naruto! You’re alright!” Rarity called in relief. He was now sitting on the floor back as a human, wearing his pajama and soaked wet with Zecora’s cure.
“Yeah, of course I am! What’s the matter with you all?!” Naruto asked angrily.
“But… Zecora tried to get you to enter into this hot concoction! Wasn’t she trying to cook you?” Twilight asked.
“No, she was making an antidote. Seriously, Twilight, I can’t believe you actually bought into all that stuff.”
“But she said she’s gonna make us do the same!” Rainbow said, after finally landing upside down next to the fallen cauldron.
“Yeah, because I told her you all touched the flowers. She was trying to cure us!” the blond human explained.
“Cure us from the curse she put on us?!” Applejack shouted in her squeaky new voice.
To everyone’s surprise, Zecora started laughing. “If you will remember back, the words I spoke were quite exact.”
“She warned us not to touch that blue flower,” Naruto smiled.
“That plant is much like poison oak. But as its name suggests, it is just poison joke,” Zecora explained.
“What in the hay does that mean?” tiny Applejack asked.
“It means that plant does not breed wrath. Instead, that plant just wants a laugh,” the zebra said in her rhyming way of speaking.
“Will somepony please talk normal?” Applejack frowned.
“I think what she's saying is that when we ran in to save Naruto and the Crusaders, we ran into the poison joke,” Twilight said. “All our problems are just little jokes that played on us!”
“LITTLE JOKES?!” Applejack called angrily. “Very funny…”
“So what was with that chanting?” Fluttershy asked in a stallion’s voice.
“And the creepy decor?” Rarity added, looking at the strange masks all around in slight fear.
“Treasures of the native land where I am from,” Zecora replied. “This one speaks ‘hello’, and this ‘welcome’,” she pointed at two of the different masks in her house.
“Not welcoming at all, if you ask me,” Rarity muttered under her breath.
“And the words I chanted were from olden times. Something you call a ‘nursery rhyme’.”
“Okay then…” Twilight muttered, finally convinced. “So… That liquid in the cauldron was the cure for the poison joke?” she reconfirmed.
“Indeed it is. It’s a shame that in your library this book you miss,” Zecora said as she pulled out a green-covered book from one of the many bookshelves in the room.
Twilight gasped, and then looked at Zecora sorrowfully. “Actually, I do have this book. But I didn't look inside because the title was so... Weird.”
Naruto took a peek at it. Just the length of the book’s title was starting to give him a headache.
“I… I'm so sorry, Zecora,” Twilight said, looking down at the ground shamefully. “I had the answer the whole time, if only I had bothered to look inside…”
The others also looked down at the floor, guilt-ridden by falsely blaming Zecora for what had happened to them.
To their surprise, Zecora laughed. “Maybe next time you will take a second look, and not judge the cover of the book.”
“Mhm,” the six mares replied, nodding their heads. Naruto smiled, content that all the issues were resolves.
“Wait…” Rarity then said, still troubled by something. “But what about the girls? Didn’t they come here with Naruto?”
“Yeah! I saw ‘em chasing him when we all thought he was a fox!” Applejack called.
“I’m afraid I don’t have the answer. Perhaps Naruto can explain the matter?” Zecora asked, looking at him.
“Oh, yeah. I kind of shook them off at the forest. I figured they’d be able to get back on their own, but then I got lost here,” he explained, smiling sheepishly.
“YOU WHAT?!” everypony yelled, startling him.
“Naruto, this forest is like a maze! If you stray from the path you are almost guaranteed to get lost!” Twilight said in horror.
“Not to mention, there are many dreadful monsters in there!” Rarity exclaimed.
Naruto’s eye widened in horror. He jumped up and ran outside. “I… I have to save them! This is my fault!”
“Where are you going?! Leaving by yourself will be your undoing!” Zecora called as she ran after him, along with the others.
“Don’t worry! I won’t be alone!” Naruto replied and crossed the index and middle fingers of his hands. “Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu!”
Hundreds of Naruto duplicates appeared one by one all around, both on the ground and on nearby trees, each emerging from a cloud of smoke. As soon as they came into being, they all spread in different directions and started scanning the forest.
“We’re going too, Naruto!” Twilight called to the original.
“No, you can’t help me in your condition,” Naruto said.
“What they hay are you talking about?! I’ll just fly up there and find them in a flash,” Rainbow said as she took off, then flew in a spiral and crashed into a nearby treetop. She then slid down the bark and walked back dizzily to the group. “Ugh, never mind…”
“Naruto, might you explain what you are? You seem like the strangest creature here by far,” Zecora finally asked, as the group was waiting for the Crusaders to be found.
“Oh… Right…” Naruto said, turning to look at her. “My name is Naruto Uzumaki! I’m a Ninja from the Village Hidden in the Leaves. I came here from another world…” he answered, when he realized just how strange it must have sounded. “Uhh… You believe me, right?”
Zecora smiled. “When I first saw you, I thought you were unusual. It is not much of a surprise that you’re an otherworldly individual.”
“Really? How did you know?”
“It was just a guess, but I don’t think that was how anypony would dress.”
“I have to agree with Zecora on that matter, darling. Those are very, VERY distinctive clothing. I still wonder if I should make an autumn line based on them,” Rarity said from underneath her lengthened, ribbon-like mane.
Naruto then good his first good look at her today. “Wow, Rarity. You mane looks—”
“Don’t you DARE finish that sentence, Naruto!”
*****
Meanwhile, one of Naruto’s clones jumped between branches of different trees, looking for the crusaders. “Apple Bloom! Sweetie Belle! Scootaloo!” he yelled repeatedly, his voice echoing in the dark, silent forest. “Where are you?!”
Suddenly, a troubling hissing noise reached his ears, making him stop moving and look down at the ground below. His eyes widened in horror to see a humongous green snake, over a hundred feet long and three feet wide, moving its head in a wavy pattern, with its split tongue sticking out. It was gazing at the three little fillies, whom simply stared at it in a trance. Then, they suddenly stood up on their hind hooves, and began walking in a circle, waving their front hooves about, as if dancing.
“What the hay…” was all the clone could mutter at the surreal scene. Quickly regaining his senses, he jumped down between the snake and the three fillies.
“What the hay are you doing?! Get out of here!” he yelled back at them and looked up at the snake’s eyes, which had a spiraling image in them. “Hey! You want a meal?!” he yelled, waving his arms and trying to divert the snake’s attention. “Come get… Me…” he muttered, as his arms slumped down, his eyes becoming glassy.
Naruto started marching around, waving his hands around in a non-rhythmic, almost robotic-like pattern. A few moments later, as if taking the time to ponder what to do, the snake suddenly charged forward as quick as lightning, sinking its foot-long fangs into Naruto’s chest.