Naruto took another bite out of the spider leg in his hand with a disgruntled look on his face. He'd come to the conclusion that he'd need a weapon if he wanted to go deeper into the forest than he already had, that was all well and good, if not for some slight issues even his young mind recognized.
One, to get a weapon he needed money and someone that would be willing to sell to him.
He had neither.
And two, even if he had a weapon, there was no one to teach him how to use it.
The second one was easily ignored, there was no better teacher than life and experience and if he kept using the thing in here with his life on the line he'd make his own fighting style with it.
As for the first issue.
Well he was screwed.
Like a damned light bulb.
He'd returned to the forest after he'd fully recovered from his mauling and had started searching for something to fight, he might not have a weapon, but he could still learn to fight better with his body. For the next few days he'd continue to do so until today, he'd stumbled across an entire nest of giant spiders, and could now be seen sitting cross legged on a large pile of them, munching on the top one, well he thinks its a nest, what do you call a big group of spiders anyways, a hive? A cluster? He raised the leg to his mouth again as his thoughts wandered before he froze, his mind focused on the memory of a conversation he'd overheard between two creepy looking guys with black glasses, in the village.
Didn't nests or hives or whatever usually have queens?
As he thought this he noticed he was surrounded by a quickly growing shadow. He dove off the pile of spider corpses with a yelp just in time to avoid being crushed. He flipped onto his legs and turned to look at the spot he'd been sitting. There, crouched on top of the pile was the biggest spider he'd ever seen, even bigger than the fish, about four times bigger than the largest of the spiders he'd hunted before, it's fangs were huge, it's legs thicker than most spiders he'd faced and it, well she he guessed, was glaring right at him.
Kami-sama, how had something so huge managed to hide from him for so long, actually why was she hiding from him, why did she wait so long if she was going to attack anyways?
As he thought this he caught sight of something glinting in the corner of his vision, he briefly threw a glance at it and his eyes widened, his pupils shrinking.
Webs.
His eyes swerved all over the clearing. Webs. Webs! WEBS! Completely surrounding the clearing.
He gulped, so that's why she waited so long, there's no way he'd be able to escape without getting caught in a web for at least a little while, those webs looked stronger and thicker than the norm too. He'd be willing to bet that the brief time he'd be trapped would be more than enough for the queen to finish him off, yeah he wasn't going anywhere.
He looked back at the pissed off queen as cold sweat started to form
"Eheheh, I don't suppose we could talk about this could we?"
KKKKKKHHHHHHHHHH
The queen screeched as she launched herself at him, he squealed and leaped out of the way as she crashed behind him in a cloud of dust, he twisted on his heel and tried to attack her from behind, only to have to roll out of the way from a string of web that launched from her backside, he prepared himself to dodge another assault only for the queen to launch a web up into the trees and retract it, pulling herself up and glaring down at him.
He tensed, what was she planning?
He ducked as the queen fired a bullet of compressed webbing at him from her mouth and paled when he heard the sound of breaking wood behind him, he glanced back to see that the bullet had literally torn a hole through the trunk of a tree.
He looked back and saw the queen rearing back, before she launched a salvo of web bullets at him as he started running and dodging for his life
Anko Mitarashi was an...odd woman, although if one knew of her circumstances then her oddities could be excused. Years ago when she was just an itty bitty Academy student she was approached with an apprenticeship offer to non other that Orochimaru of the Sannin himself. Under the Sannin's instruction she'd grown so much stronger, and learned so much.
Then her sensei turned out to be a traitorous monster that experimented on people in an attempt to gain immortality, apparently tortured her(she said apparently cause she could remember fuck all about those last few weeks), and frickin branded her with some sort of cursed seal.
To make it worse the villagers all associated her with him and thought she'd follow in his footsteps, life in Konoha had been near hell at that point, discrimination, insults, distrust everywhere, the only reason she hadn't been assaulted was because she was a chunin, she only had three friends and one of them was an ANBU so she didn't see her much.
Its only natural that anyone would pick up some quirks in her position.
Like a bit of sadism to people she didn't like.
Or a little exhibitionism.
Or making the Forest of Death her hang out spot.
Ok yeah, that last one was a bit out there but she liked it and don't you dare judge her, and it wasn't like she was stupid enough to go to the really deep parts that even higher leveled ninja stayed the fuck away from, because of a certain creature that claimed it as its territory.
So yeah, she was an odd woman, but she liked to believe she kept a good eye on the happenings on her 'territory'. Which is why when she'd finally returned to her forest she was a bit perturbed at the clear ruckus she could hear from the spiders nest around the west side, had one of the deeper dwellers come to this part of the forest and found the nest, it wasn't common but the simple fact that there was a nest proves that it did happen.
Spider queens are deep forest dwellers after all.
Well deeper than the current one though.
Did the hokage send someone to get rid of them, that was more likely since he normally used this part of the forest for the Chunin exams and sending a bunch of genin that likely didn't have any elemental jutsu and most certainly didn't have the strength needed to pierce the queens shell wasn't exactly wise.
She shrugged and was about to head to a deeper part of the forest when her ears picked up on something, she focused on the sound to try and figure out what it was and sent a bit of chakra to her ears.
"Bad day! Bad Day! Bad day! Bad day!"
She blinked
Well that ruled out the appearance of another deep forest dweller, but that voice had sounded a bit young for a peace time ninja, hell even for a war time ninja now that she thought about it. She absently stretched out her senses.
Well the person certainly had enough chakra to be a shinobi, hell they had more chakra than she did.
She pouted a bit at that fact.
But the chakra was odd, wasn't flowing as well as it should, like it was dormant, despite the sheer amount of it the person actually felt more like a...ci-vil-ia-
"OH FUCK!"
Her thoughts crashed at that as she spun on her heel and launched herself in the direction of the spider nest. Had she been calmer she'd have questioned why the spiders attacking a civilian was causing so much noise or how the civilian child was still alive and come to the conclusion that it likely wasn't a normal civilian, right now though she was a bit distracted by the fact that what sounded to be a civilian child had wandered into the Fucking Forest of Death!
Naruto was frustrated, if the tiger from before was able to see through his movements then this thing could predict the future. Whenever it seemed like he was about to pull off an attack she seemed to just know it was about to happen and dodge, she was naturally faster than he was, though he'd been able to divert that by kicking the ground rather than running normally, she switched between long range and melee combat on a dime, either coming to the ground and trying to kill him personally or sitting on the trees and launching web bullets at him.
Web bullets that were harder than stone considering when he'd tried to chuck a rock at her she'd fired a web bullet and shattered the rock in mid air. He'd been so surprised by that he'd almost gotten hit by the stupid thing that hadn't even been slowed by the rock it had just shattered through.
If he'd been determined to dodge those things before, he was desperate now.
'Think Naruto think, I need a plan, I need a really good pla-' "Woah!" He rolled out of the way of another salvo.
"Oi! I'm thinkin' over here!" He yelled at her
KKKKKKKKHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
"Yeah hiss hiss to you to lady! Yipe!" That one nearly took off his head!
He grabbed one of the corpses and launched it at her, then dove as it was near shredded by the returning spray of web bullets.
"I'm going to enjoy eating you!" he screamed, in response the queen launched herself at him from the trees. He moved forward a bit so he was dead center of her and caught her, his knees bending from the force as the ground beneath him cratered a bit, with a yell of exertion he threw her into her own web then while she was distracted ripped a tree from the ground and pushed it into her, spinning it around while he moved her on it, before he knew it he was looking at a giant web ball on a stick rather than a spider.
He let it go and slumped a bit as he panted
"hah hah hahah ahahah AHAHAHAHAHAHAH I WIN! HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW WEBS! YEAH! EAT IT! HOW DOES IT TASTE! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!" his head was thrown back and his arms were on his hips as he laughed victoriously
*ssssssssssss*
What was that?
*sssssssssssssssssss*
He stopped laughing and turned back to the ball of web which had started smoking, a spot at the top seemed to be sizzling and melting
'Oh you have got to be kidding me.'
The spider burst out of the top of the web, a menacing green mist escaping her mandibles
"OH COME ON!"
The spider fired a stream of acid at him from her mouth.
Anko's thoughts at the moment as she watched what she knew to be konoha's jinchuriki start darting around the clearing leaving indents in the ground whenever he moved, dodging web bullets and acid from a creature that would normally require a team of shinobi, or at least an experienced Chunin to deal with and that's only because it doesn't have the speed to keep up with higher tier ninja, all without using a single drop of chakra could be summed up in a simple four word phrase.
What the actual fuck.
She'd arrived at the web barrier a little while prior and cut her way through just in time to see the brat rip a goddamn tree from the earth and beat the spider queen with it.
That shit shouldn't have been possible even with chakra unless you were a monster like Tsunade Senju, but here it was, a tiny brat not even in the academy displaying near impossible physical strength and using it rather well.
What the fuck was even going on?!
And then the thing started shooting acid.
Ok time to step in.
'Think Naruto think! How do you kill this thing?!' Despite that stunt with the tree having cleared the way for him to run, but the thought was inconceivable to him at the moment, with the tiger the thing had scared the ever living shit out of him with how easily with its ferocity, come to think of it it might have had some intimidation factor into it, combat wise the queen seemed to be stronger than the tiger, if only because she seemed to be a lot smarter, but where as the tiger had intimidated him, this thing just PISSED HIM OFF! He still couldn't fly or leap around too much as there was still enough webbing all over the place that it would be risky, so he was grounded.
Suddenly she paused and leaped back up onto a tree just as a fireball crashed into the ground.
"Well that didn't work"
"GAH!" He flung himself away from the voice that had suddenly come from right next to him.
He panted with wide eyes and his hand over his chest as he stared with wide eyes at the newcomer, his eyes near instantly locked on to the her headband (AN: What did you think he'd notice her state of dress, he's not even in the Academy yet, him knowing about cursing would be excused since, well lets face it the villagers wouldn't censor themselves to him, but not things like this)
'Ninja'
Well that explained where the fireball came from.
His eyes narrowed, he wasn't sure whether to trust this one or not, he hated all the civilians and some ninja helped them but some ninja also saved him. He leaned to the side of caution and narrowed his eyes, prepared for this to become a three way fight rather than a two on one, he probably wouldn't win but one of them would be going down with him.
"Who are you?"
The woman threw him a side glance
"I'm the one saving your ass kid, better be grateful" she said before her eyes trained back on the queen
Naruto blinked and relaxed slightly but still kept his guard up, he didn't know this woman and she was from the village.
He may want to be strong and cool like his Jiji but he had no love or loyalty to that village beyond it being the place his Jiji lives.
Still she was saving him so. He bowed slightly, still prepared to dodge an attack from the woman or the spider who finally seemed to stop observing the newcomer and registering her as new prey.
"Thank you for the assistance"
He said and looked up
"I can't go up to her cause I'd get caught in the webs, could you burn them away?"
Anko blinked at his question and the guarded tone he used, but figured any plan was good, especially when the spider seemed to be able to predict and dodge her ninjutsu.
Why was this thing only a class C beast again, she wasn't fast but her armor and prediction made her dangerous.
She'd hate to fight an A rank or even worse an S rank beast if this is what counted as a C, she idly felt a bit of respect for beast hunters.
A fireball was launched at the queen who dodged out of the way but it continued on to burn the webs covering the clearing, they were rendered to ash and the fire fizzled our nor long after.
Anko was already running up a tree at the queen.
Naruto grinned darkly and if it wasn't a combat situation Anko would have stopped to gape when a pair of insect wings burst from his back and he launched himself up after her.
From there things went down hill quickly for the queen as the problems her lack of speed caused even with her prediction were made apparent, she just couldn't keep up with them and couldn't hit them with either her bullets or acid. It wasn't long after that Naruto finally got the killing blow, her having been sent to the ground and him using his web to retrieve the broken tree and pierce her into the ground from above with it.
This time now out of a combat situation Anko didn't retrain her jaw drop, nor the green tinting of her face as the boy promptly started eating the corpse.
Naruto meanwhile was nearly bouncing in glee
Ability [Reinforced Web Creation] learned
Ability [Advanced Thread Wielding Arts] learned
Ability [Web Bullets] learned
Ability [Acid Spit] learned
Ability [Spider Sense] learned
Jackpot!
He then remembered he wasn't alone and face the kunoichi that had helped him
"Umm, hey I'm Naruto, nice to meet you I guess