Title: Predators

Notes: Second in my APRIL series of Nejiten oneshots. Originally in my catch-all collection "Flotsam and Jetsam" but I'm going to put this in its own series because I keep coming back to write more for this universe. It's such fun!

Kio came running into his family's cottage, his normally-tanned face pale with fear. His mother and grandfather, the only ones still in the house, looked up in surprise. Kio was the youngest son and thus the family shepherd, tasked with bringing the sheep out to pasture and back home everyday. He should have been out with the herd…

"Demons! Demon wolves!" gasped the boy.

Kio, unlike certain other shepherd boys, was not given to falsehood. His mother and grandfather bolted outside, armed with hastily-snatched-up kitchen cleavers, to see what the boy was speaking of.

And there were, indeed, demon wolves.

They stood only a short distance away, close enough to see that the beasts were of unnatural size: built more like tigers than wolves, eight feet long - at least! - from nose to tail. There were three of them. The largest of them was pure white, without patch or marking. Even his eyes, as he turned his massive head to look at them calmly, were a pale and unnerving silver. They might have thought him cataract-blind, but he was clearly tracking them by sight.

Right next to him was a brindle wolf, the smallest of the three but still scarily large and powerful. The coat was white on the belly and throat, dark-streaked sable everywhere else. This wolf looked the most normal, except that it bore a dagger in its mouth.

Lastly, and most horrifying, was a large golden wolf with three flame-tipped tails. It was this multi-tailed wolf that convinced Kio's family that the wolves were, indeed, demons. With a shriek, the family bolted indoors, chanting sutras.

The day passed. They could hear the sheep bleating peacefully. Finally, near sunset, when the farmer and his older sons would be getting back from the fields, they looked outside.

The sheep had been neatly herded into a fenced-off pasture, their vegetable garden safe. After counting, they could see a sheep and two lambs had been taken, but a golden idol had been left in return.

The wolves, they decided, had not been demons, but heavenly messengers. Years later, the village would still talk about the okami-kami who had visited.

Tenten smacked her chops with relish, her stomach full of mutton. She lay down, gnawing on a leg-bone, and wagged her tail slightly as Neji lay down beside her, his side pressed warmly against hers. A little space away, Naruto was playing pounce-on-crickets, his three tails glowing softly. Tenten gave a happy little huff. A stomach full of meat, packmates around her, and no threats around. What more could she ask for?

They'd been sent out by Hokage-alpha. Now they were headed back home, home to Konoha where the rest of their packmates were. It would be a long run, but she liked to run. She hoped they would get to hunt some real prey, though - fat sheep were delicious, but there had been no thrill in that.

"Naruto," Neji called. "You take first watch. I'll take second, and then Tenten will take watch until moonrise. We'll set off then."

"Right," Naruto called over his shoulder, eyes still intent on a particularly cunning cricket. He wagged his tails in acknowledgment.

Neji huffed slightly at Naruto's casual demeanor. Neji was squad-alpha on this mission, but Naruto had never been one to mind rank. Tenten wagged her tail in amusement, licking under Neji's jaw to make him feel better. Neji huffed again but relaxed as Tenten reminded him that she, at least, respected his dominance. Tenten could see Neji's tail twitch a bit in the beginnings of a wag, and counted that as a victory.

Tenten turned back to her bone, applying enough bite-pressure to crack the bone and expose the delicious marrow. She enjoyed herself noisily.

"Really, Tenten, you'd think you were still a puppy," Neji said, but his tone was fond.

After she'd finished with the marrow, Tenten yawned and pressed closer to Neji, settling in to sleep. Neji yawned back, draping his head over her neck and giving Naruto one last look. The golden wolf had taken a good vantage point on a rock and was scanning the area, ears pricked and alert. Feeling reassured, Neji drifted off to sleep.

They set off as evening fell, trotting off in single file. Tenten took point, Neji the rearguard. Naruto was in the center, which allowed both Neji and Tenten to keep an eye on the rambunctious wolf, and to easily follow him in case he went off-course.

Which he did.

Neji was instantly on his tail, snarling. Tenten flanked him a step behind, automatically positioning herself at just the right spot to offer him support without crowding him or restricting his movement. Naruto bounded just ahead of them, blithely sure of their following and as unconcerned as if it had all been planned.

The rich, musky scent of deer filled their noses just as Naruto led them into a moonlit glade, where they could see a white-tailed deer leaping away into the surrounding woods.

The three wolves spread into an inverted-V hunting formation, Naruto dropping back and to the right to mirror Neji on the left. Tenten, lighter-built and more nimble than the two larger males, leapt forward, overtaking the deer and swinging round to confront it. She snaked from side to side, growling loudly, herding the deer back towards her packmates.

The deer, panicked, bounded in a new direction - more towards Neji than Naruto. Tenten ran after it, not aiming to overtake. Naruto altered his course to join hers, howling to add his own noise to the mix. Neji crouched down, supremely still.

When the deer got close enough he leapt, a single great leap that brought the deer down with a crash. Tenten darted in then, her fangs slicing through the deer's rear hocks just in case it tried to rise. It didn't, already letting out dying-agony cries even before Naruto landed squarely on it, breaking its neck.

Neji, as alpha, was first to begin feeding on the deer's still-hot meat. Tenten stepped in gracefully to join him, after Neji sent her a single inviting glance. However, when Naruto moved in Neji's head snapped up, and he snarled low and dangerous, baring bloodied fangs. Naruto backed away, more startled than afraid.

Tenten watched curiously, one ear pricked and one ear slightly back, while chewing on a particularly delicious part of the haunch.

"Aw, but Neji, I'm hungry," Naruto whined, tails drooping and ears going back.

"Does that excuse your randomly deciding to gallivant off the track? Without checking with us?" Neji snarled in reply, still refusing to let Naruto near the meat.

"I knew you would pick up on it!" Naruto protested, sidling away from Neji's side of the carcass and closer to Tenten's. "I saw the deer move, and, and…yanno, I chased! I had to. YOU chased it too, when you saw," he said accusingly.

Neji merely sniffed, not willing to admit how his prey-drive had activated and pushed all other thought aside when he'd seen the deer fleeing right in front of his eyes. He leapt over the deer and knocked Naruto to the ground, pinning the other male down.

"I am alpha!" he growled. "You don't start a hunt without my say so when we're on the trail, understand?"

Naruto snarled back in defiance, but his ears were laid back and he didn't struggle.

"Do you understand?" Neji repeated.

"Fine, fine! For the mission," Naruto finally whimpered.

Neji let him up - and then promptly knocked him down and pinned him again as soon as Naruto had regained his feet. Naruto whined.

Tenten, still savoring the warm meat, watched casually. She knew Neji needed to reassert his dominance to feel better, but would step in if the white wolf took it too far. Finally Neji returned to feeding, prancing back with his head held high and his tail cocked arrogantly. Tenten gave him an amused look.

Then she was distracted when Naruto crept near her, belly low and whimpering. His submissive behavior was way overdone, much more than even Neji expected. She knew why he was acting so puppyishly submissive, though, and conceded to comfort him as if he were still a cub, licking his fur straight and growling a soft, crooning lullaby. Naruto wagged his tail slowly as he enjoyed her attentions.

Neji bit back a growl, tearing at the meat with savage fangs.

It had been a normal day for Konoha, bright and sunny, civilians and shinobi alike outside to enjoy the weather. The wind blew gently through Konoha's many leaves, shaking a few blossoms loose to flutter down like bright raindrops. Children laughed and squealed; the deeper murmur of adult conversation provided a steady, cheerful backdrop.

That was why the silence that fell when three large predators suddenly appeared at Konoha's gates was so noticeable.

For a moment, humans and wolves gaped at each other. Then a middle-aged shinobi, veteran of the Kyuubi night, pointed one shaking finger at the three-tailed wolf and screamed.

"Bijuu!"

Chaos erupted.

Neji, Naruto and Tenten fell back together, forming a defensive circle so that their backs were not exposed. Tenten's tail curled through the center of a fuuma shuriken, holding it high and ready to hurl at a target. Naruto's three tails were now blazing with foxfire, sparks floating in the air around them. Neji's pale eyes were filled with chakra, his Byakugan tracking all threats.

"Where is the pack?" Naruto yelped, backing up further more to feel his packmates' reassuring presences than for defensive purposes.

"I don't know," Tenten yipped back, hefting her shuriken. "I don't know…there are so many two-legs here! I don't understand…"

Neji growled lowly, his eyes straining to the farthest reaches of his range. "I can't see any other wolves…and the Hyuuga clan grounds have got two-leg structures on them. The two-legs have built all over Konoha!"

It was lucky, everyone agreed later, that Hinata had been there. For one thing, her Byakugan could see the unusually developed and complex chakra system the three wolves possessed - the chakra systems far more like shinobi's than nin-animals.

Moreover, as Neji's cousin and frequent sparring partner, she knew his chakra system's little quirks and traits quite well. It was well-known that the better Hyuugas could identify shinobi by their chakra systems alone - that shinobi chakra systems, if you looked closely, were as unique and variated as fingerprints. Hinata knew Neji's system. And because Tenten was so often with him, Hinata knew hers too. And Naruto's strangely large, potent chakra system - Hinata, who had watched him so often, so long, and so intently, in such secrecy, knew his best of all.

So when she saw three wolves with her cousin's, her friend's, and her Naruto-kun's chakra systems, she actually came to the right conclusion immediately.

The second good thing about Hinata being there was that where Hinata was, Kiba was not often far behind.

"So let me get this straight," Tsunade drawled, settling her chin on her crossed hands. "You're saying that somehow, the team I sent out on that emergency A-class have been turned into wolves."

"Not quite wolves," Tsume corrected her. "We checked them over and their conformation and scents, not to mention their sizes, don't quite fit wolf definitions. But they're closer to wolves than to dogs - or foxes," She raised a meaningful eyebrow. "So let's call them that."

"I can confirm that their chakra systems are perfect matches for my nephew and his teammate, and closely resemble the Uzumaki boy's from what I can remember," Hiashi Hyuuga, the third member of their little group, added. "If they aren't Neji, Tenten, and Uzumaki, then someone has mastered chakra system replication, as well as how to implant them into members of different species perfectly."

"Considering the Inuzuka-style Human Beast Combination techniques exist, I am more inclined to believe the former theory," Tsunade said.

"They remember us, and Konoha, but…differently," Tsume noted. "They actually recognize me and Kuromaru, but they're confused as to why I'm 'a two-legs' now. Same with Kiba and Hinata. Also, they've been asking for you by name - your names in canine, I mean. Which is strange because I thought only Inuzuka dogs had developed language to such an extent. Neji insists on asking for his uncle, and when he does he always mentions daytime - sun at highest height, is a better way to express what he says," she said, looking meaningfully at Hiashi. "And Naruto is demanding his 'loved elder', his "mooring rope'. He calls you baa-chan, doesn't he?"

Hiashi blinked once, which was a show of major emotion for him. Tsunade didn't bother to suppress her soft, affectionate look for the boy she had adopted as a little brother/nephew.

"Tenten is calmer than the boys - she says she's sure we'll all figure out what's happened and everything will work out, and she hopes no one will worry her green-teacher and her rock-brother," Tsume added. "Although I think she means is that we'll all turn into wolves, which is what they remember us as."

Kuromaru said, in his deep voice, "I don't necessarily think she's wrong to want that."

Tsume snorted at him.

Tsunade had formally asked, as Hokage, that Inuzuka Tsume shelter three of her shinobi for the time being. As Naruto's affectionate baa-chan, and as a woman really very fond of all the so-called Rookie 12, she had asked Tsume to keep an eye on them as a personal favor, while she and Shizune and Sakura worked on figuring this conundrum.

She'd returned to the Hokage Tower, but Hiashi had stayed. Tsume looked at her old teammate. Unlike their children, she, Hiashi and Shibi hadn't been teammates very long; Hiashi had been pulled out by his demanding father, set to Hyuuga clan duties long before tradition mandated. Shibi and Tsume, talented clan heirs that they were, were in high demand and shuffled from team to team as needed rather than allowed to stay as a single under-strength unit. But she had always remembered her genin days fondly - yes, even with as much of a supercilious bastard as Hiashi was, and how goddamn close-mouthed Shibi was.

"He remembers me," Hiashi murmured, gazing in the direction the three wolves had run off with his Byakugan. He could see Neji's eyes looking back at him out of a white wolf's face. He shook his head with a sigh, letting his eyes drop back to inert.

"You are his parent, basically," Tsume observed, watching him wince. It was true though, for all the reserved distance that Hiashi tried to maintain. They even looked and smelled alike, those two. She wondered what Hiashi would look like, as a wolf. Probably very close to what Neji did….but less rangy, more massive in the chest and flanks - a complete alpha, white as winter, settled into the full of his strength and size. She smiled.

"You'd make a fine wolf, I think," she said idly, and Hiashi stared at her in confusion.

The Hyuuga clan mounted guard on the three wolves, of course; not only was Neji their young prodigy and Tenten a friend of the clan, but Naruto was a jinchuuriki. The Konoha council wanted a round-the-clock Byakugan vigil to make sure not even the slightest hint of Kyuubi chakra was involved in the whole debacle.

(Hinata took as many guard shifts as she possibly could.)

There wasn't so much as a hint of fox, although everyone was mystified by the way Tenten would randomly have a weapon in her mouth or her tail or hanging over her shoulders. No one ever saw her summon them, or get rid of them, and she certainly wasn't hiding them in her fur.

There was an unforeseen benefit to this arrangement. The Inuzukas, who were needed to communicate with the wolves and on whose lands they were staying, soon made friends with the Hyuuga guardsmen. The relationship between the two clans overall were strengthened as a result.

As Tenten had said, everything did work out. It took a few weeks, a lot of research, T&I hauling in prisoners for bits of information, a lot of cross-clan collaboration (ranging from Nara medical research to Yamanaka mind-jutsus to Akimichi dietary expertise to Aburame clan scrolls), along with some very impressive work from Tsunade and her apprentices, but eventually they were turned back into humans. The Inuzuka puppies cried when they couldn't find their two new favorite playmates (Neji was not a favorite).

They did retain a few souvenirs of their experience, like a tendency to grow wolf-ears and tails when distressed.

Also, the fact that Neji had decided Tenten was his mate and seemed inclined to stick to that notion. It was especially funny considering he had never mentioned anything of this to her while they had been wolves, and she was as shocked as everyone else the day he announced it to Konoha at large.

The Inuzukas in earshot applauded him.

Notes:

Hiashi means "spreading fire" , "daytime" or "position of the sun"

Tsunade means "mooring rope" , according to the Naruto wikia.

I had lots of fun with this. I watched videos of wolves, and read stuff, to try and get a feel for how they might react as wolves. For example, I learned that lighter-built female wolves do often herd prey towards heavier males, and that who is alpha is not necessarily tied to who is biggest, strongest, or oldest. I learned that wolves can be very playful, and that they mourn their packmates if they're lost. Obviously this fic isn't very accurate in how wolves do act, because they're not wolves, they're shinobi-wolves, but I still had fun finding facts to shove in.

I had lots of ideas of where this could go. Originally I was going to have the whole of Team Gai and Team Kakashi, including Sai, Kakashi and Gai, turn into wolves. And then I thought what if all of Konoha were wolves to begin with, or if every ten years some of them turned into werewolves, or stuff like that. I think I'll probably return to this AU someday. But like with "Familiars", I have written down about every idea I had for this particular AU so I decided to end it here.