Disclaimer: if you think I own either of these fab fandoms, you are mad. If I owned IC, Eragon and Arya would end up together in Inheritance and if I owned Naruto, NaruHina would be a large part of the storyline and Hinata would have built up the courage to go out and tell him how she feels after – or even before! – the time-skip happens, leading to some fluff.

AN - For simplicity's sake, everyone can understand everyone in this, unless they're speaking the Ancient Language or I specifically put the terms in. There is no language barrier between the normal English-speaking characters and the shinobi from Konoha. Happy? If not, then it's all magic! Magic is letting them speak to each other! Happy now?!

Eragon was meditating a little way away from the main Varden camp when his hearing of near-elvish sensitivity, for which he gave great thanks to the dragons at the Agaeti Blohdren, picked up a slightly muffled pop and a brief surge of energy in the forest on his left. His meditation-calmed mind brushed it off and put the mild disturbance aside to muse upon later, when he returned to his usual state of consciousness. He breathed in deeply and moved his mind to study the intricacies of the process a spider was using to weave her silver web.

"Oooof!" Naruto breathed out in a rush. That Rock Lee kid may have been skinny, but he weighed a ton. Being at the bottom of a shinobi dog-pile was not nearly as fun as it sounded. He shifted. Yup, that felt like a branch poking into the middle of his back and a sharp stone was pressing uncomfortably into the back of his head. He risked opening his eyes a fraction, only to be confronted with the not-so-lovely vision that was Sasuke's backside. He took a deep breath and shouted at the top of his voice.

"GET OFF OF ME!" was hurled at the pile of bodies on top of him at a volume that would have deafened anyone not in regular contact with Naruto. As it was, the main part of the heap suffocating him just sighed in exasperation and began to move. Slowly. At last, the only one holding him down was Sasuke, who had shifted the precise amount needed to give him the best leverage while giving the maximum comfort.

"THAT MEANT YOU TOO, TEME!" Naruto yelled at Sasuke who did nothing but wriggle on his teammate's stomach where he was sitting until he was unceremoniously hurled off when the blond-haired personification of hyperactivity decided to take matters into his own hands and summoned a couple of clones to throw the revenged-obsessed Uchiha off him.

"Hn," Sasuke brushed the assorted dirt, dust and leaf litter off his clothes from where he had landed on the forest floor. "Way to alert the entire country to our presence, dobe."

Meanwhile, the two jounin sensei had been in a huddle, discussing something that, judging by what could be heard from Gai's loud outbursts, was about scouting out the area, setting up a watch to look out for potential hostile forces and discovering where exactly they were.

Eragon opened his eyes and stretched, releasing the tension in his muscles gained from sitting down for a good few hours. He began to process all that he had heard and felt during his meditation, getting up and walking over to his tent. His smooth stride hitched as he recalled the hushed noise he had heard that had been followed swiftly by a sudden surge of energy. He immediately altered his path, sending a mental call to Saphira to ask for her aid in a potential confrontation.

I am on my way, little one, she reassured him, sending him a series of impressions of the sapphire-blue dragoness turning around from her hunting trip and flying back at full speed. He allowed himself a brief smile from the limitless warmth and love that flowed from her into him and vice-versa before closing his eyes and taking in a measured, unhurried breath, reading himself for combat with another magic user. He tightened his mental armour and silently ran through a checklist of all potential spells that could help along with the situations that he could find himself in which was quite long, given the limited information. The young Rider did not dare extend his mind to search the area the strange noise had come from in case he should find himself in mental combat with one or more strong magicians while a batch of soldiers was sent around to capture him even as he was occupied with the struggle to gain mastery over his opponent's thoughts. Silent as a cat, he moved through the foliage towards the origin of the mysterious disturbance.

It was Neji's byakugan that alerted them to the intruder. He had taken the first watch in their designated base camp, rather than suffer through Gai and Lee's seemingly endless rock-paper-scissors battles that were, for some reason, deemed more 'youthful' than drawing lots to determine who got which job. The rest had split up into small teams of two or three, leaving him with the unbelievably irritating Naruto and the useless Sakura who was rummaging around in one of the tents that Kakashi had unsealed from a seemingly insignificant scroll pulled out from somewhere inside his vest. Neji and Sakura hadn't needed to share a look to assign guard duty to the blond while they put it up because, after all, this was Naruto they were talking about. He signalled to Naruto in a movement that would, to an outsider, have seemed like a casual shift to get more comfortable against the log he was sitting on. He had his back to whoever who was trying to sneak up on them, so it was unlikely that he knew he had been discovered, especially as the person in question was behind a tree.

The hyperactive blond leaped up from the fire Sasuke had made with a very controlled fireball. "I'm gonna go see if Kakashi-sensei's found something to eat, Neji!" he was out of the clearing almost before he finished speaking and ran off to confer with two clones he had made earlier for precisely this situation. He and the clone switched and the original ran to ambush the person Neji had seen while one clone returned to Neji and the other ran off to inform Kakashi before dispelling itself.

Naruto moved through the trees more stealthily than anyone who was in contact with him for more than ten seconds would have believed possible. Before long, he was looking down at the man who was spying on them. He grinned; although it had not been determined whether he was hostile or just a curious woodsman, that was no reason why he couldn't freak him out a bit. Sending more chakra to his feet and lower legs, he walked around the branch he was standing on until he was upside down, drawing on the exercises Kakashi had put Team 7 through in the Wave. He drew attention to himself with a loud cough, arms folded and, for what was possibly the first time in his life, a serious expression on his face.

Eragon had found a tree to sit behind, choosing to preserve his energy for the potentially upcoming fight rather than go in to the strange people's camp with the light rays bent around him; it was a very taxing spell. There was no sign that the two could use magic, so he felt safe to send a call to Saphira, asking where she was, and to Arya to ask her to come to his aid in case they should be more than they appeared. He was drawn out of his silent communication by a loud cough. Not betraying the surprise he felt, he extended his mind to search for the cougher and encountered a weak wall of thoughts about a man named Kakashi who was on his way. Effortlessly, Eragon broke through his mind and discovered as much about him as he could without alerting the boy to his presence. Once his search was over, he withdrew and looked around only for his eyes to widen in shock as he caught sight of a strange form of dress that was so brightly orange, it was near-blinding to his sensitive elven eyes, especially when compared to the muted greens, browns and greys of the surrounding forest. He blinked, then shook his head slightly in disbelief.

"How did you come to be up there?" he asked the upside-down boy.

"It's easy. No big deal," the blond replied off-handedly, belying the difficulties he had encountered when learning the method. He had to restrain himself from smiling wryly when he saw the strange man's expression, so similar to his own when Kakashi had first demonstrated the technique on their first C-rank mission.

"But you are a mere child," Eragon gasped, having checked the blond's species, only to find that he was human, visibly at least.

"Hey!" Naruto's cool façade broke for the first time. "I'm a legal adult!" he pouted.

Legal, yes. Mental? No. Saphira, to whom Eragon had been relaying the conversation between himself and the blond boy, observed.

How long until you get here? He asked the dragon.

Look up!

Saphira lowered herself onto the ground as close to as Eragon she could manage without hitting him with her wings by accident. Naruto, on the other hand, was not so lucky. One of the spikes on her wings clipped his chin, making him lose his concentration and tumble to the ground, flipping just in time to avoid hurting himself on landing, but too late to make it look like he had descended of his own choice. Eragon could not stop the smile tugging the up corners of his smile at seeing the disgruntled expression on the face of the blond, swiftly replaced by disbelief as he stared at Saphira.

"I believe," Eragon calmly stated as the blond scrambled to his feet and backed away from the dragon slightly "That we have the advantage. Tell me your name, intentions and the identity of your travelling companions."

Naruto's only response was to throw out a few kage bunshins and to move into a ready position, hands slipping into his pockets to finger his kunai anticipatorily. Eragon was taken aback at the sudden appearance of the multiple copies of the blond, wreathed in smoke. He instantly altered his original assessment of the boy and launched a full-out attack on his mind, only to be surprised at the ease with which his mind slipped into his opponent's. Swiftly moving from one piece of information to another, he learned that the clones could be dispelled by one blow and that, so long as he could not move his hands, this boy named Naruto would pose no threat. With little strain, he immobilised him and, dancing from one clone to another, put the bare minimum of force into each hit and wiped out the identical horde. He turned to face the boy – Naruto – and prepared to ask his questions again. He had barely opened his mouth when Saphira's spiked tail swept the clearing, only just giving him enough warning to evade the strike.

The white-haired man and dark-haired boy now sprawling on the floor weighed down by Saphira's paws, her talons digging lightly enough into their backs to let them know that she could press just that much harder, were not so lucky.