Disclaimer: I do not own the anime/manga "Naruto" or "Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon (Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid)", and the only thing I own is this alternate/parallel story that I have written for fun.
Dragon Magnet
Chapter 2: The Ramen Debt
"Speaking"
"Thinking"
"Rasengan!" Attacks / Abilities / Jutsu / Ki / Magic / Techniques
Reading / News / Intercoms
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The silence reigning in the wooden cabin was sepulchral, broken only occasionally by the crackling of firewood in the fireplace and, more recently, by a decidedly unladylike burp coming from a small dragon woman.
Naruto stared at the pile of empty bowls with an expression that could only be described as a mix of cosmic horror and financial resignation.
"One hundred bowls..." the black-haired man muttered, his voice trembling slightly. "My winter reserves... my limited-edition treasures... all gone in less than an hour."
Ilulu, oblivious to the emotional pain of the former shinobi, patted her stomach with a smile of pure satisfaction. The warmth of the food and the strange healing energy this human had passed onto her made her feel oddly comfortable, a sensation the Chaos faction rarely offered.
"It was delicious!" Ilulu exclaimed, licking a remnant of broth from the corner of her lips. Then, her pink eyes locked onto Naruto, expecting some kind of praise for her voracious appetite.
Naruto snapped out of his stupor and shot a sharp glare at the dragon.
"Listen to me well, lizard," he said, crossing his arms, which accentuated the musculature beneath his black spandex. "In this world, food isn't free. And you just ate a small fortune."
Ilulu blinked in confusion. "Free? Fortune? I am a dragon. If I want something, I take it. Or I destroy it."
The room's temperature dropped several degrees. Naruto narrowed his eyes, and for a brief moment, Ilulu felt that same crushing pressure that had knocked her unconscious earlier. Her instinct screamed that she had said the wrong thing.
"We don't do that here." Naruto's voice was low, but it resonated with absolute authority. "If you're going to stay under my roof to hide from whatever scares you, you will follow my rules. Rule number one: You do not attack humans. Rule number two: You do not destroy my house. And rule number three..." He pointed at the pile of bowls. "You are going to work to pay off that debt."
"Me? Work?" Ilulu pointed at herself in disbelief, her large breasts bouncing with the movement. "I am Ilulu! The Great and Powerful! I serve no one!"
"Then you can leave." Naruto pointed to the door without hesitation. "But I warn you, if you try to destroy a city again, I won't be as kind as last time. And believe me, you do not want to see my unkind side."
The dragon swallowed hard. She remembered the pain in her back and this man's impossible speed. Besides, she was injured (though superficially healed, her magic was still low) and alone in an unknown world. Her dragon pride fought against her survival instinct, and surprisingly, the latter won.
"F-Fine..." she muttered, looking away with a pout. "What do I have to do?"
Naruto sighed, relaxing his posture. The pressure vanished, and he went back to simply being a tall, tired-looking man.
"For now, you will wash the dishes."
"Huh?"
"The dishes," Naruto repeated, walking over to a closet to pull out a blanket. "And after that, you'll sleep on the couch. There's only one bed, and it's mine."
Ilulu looked at the hundred dirty bowls. Then she looked at her hands, which still had sharp claws and scales.
"This is going to be difficult..." the dragon thought with dismay.
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Hours later, night had completely fallen over the forest.
Naruto was lying in his bed, staring at the wooden ceiling. He couldn't sleep. His senses, honed by years of wars and battles that no one in this world could imagine, told him that the "guest" in his living room was awake.
"Why did I bring her here?" he asked himself mentally. "Kurama would be laughing at me right now..."
The memory of the fox brought a familiar pang of pain, but he quickly pushed it aside. That was an old pain. Now he had a new problem: a dragon with the common sense of a rock and the power of a nuclear bomb.
Suddenly, his bedroom door creaked open softly.
Naruto didn't even turn around. "What do you want now, Ilulu? If you're hungry again, I'm warning you, there's only water left." Closing his eyes for a few seconds as he remembered his limited-edition ramen vanishing into a dragon's stomach.
"It's not that..." Ilulu's voice sounded small in the dark.
The black-haired man sat up slightly, leaning on his elbows. His dark eyes gleamed faintly in the gloom, adapting to the lack of light.
"Then what?"
Ilulu stepped into the room, dragging the blanket he had given her. She looked much smaller without her aura of destruction.
"It's cold," she said simply. "And your... your energy is warm."
Naruto blinked. "My energy?"
"Yes. It feels like... like the sun." Ilulu took a hesitant step toward the bed. "We dragons need heat. The couch is cold."
Naruto sighed, running a hand through his spiky hair. He knew reptiles were cold-blooded, but he hadn't expected that to apply to magical fire-breathing dragons.
"You're not sleeping in my bed, Ilulu."
"Just in a corner!" she pleaded, with suspicious swiftness. "I'll make myself small! I promise I won't bite!"
Naruto stared at her for a long minute. He could sense there was no malice in her, just an instinctive need for warmth and, perhaps, safety. It had been a long time since he had sought that safety himself.
"Damn it..." he muttered, moving to one side of the bed and turning his back to her. "If you try anything weird, I'll throw you out the window before you can blink. And keep your claws away from me."
Ilulu's eyes lit up. Without waiting for a second invitation, she jumped onto the bed and curled up on the empty side. Instantly, she felt Naruto's body heat radiating toward her. It was comforting, much more so than the fire of destruction.
"Good night, Naruto-san," she murmured, closing her eyes and feeling safe for the first time since arriving in this world.
"Shut up and sleep, lizard," he replied, though there was no venom in his voice.
Naruto closed his eyes, wondering what kind of mess he had gotten himself into. He didn't know that, miles away, another dragon had sensed a familiar energy fluctuation and was looking toward the forest with suspicion.
Naruto's peace was about to get a lot louder.
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The Next Morning
Naruto woke up with a feeling of weight on his chest. At first, he thought it was sleep paralysis or maybe an enemy attack, so his instincts fired up.
He snapped his eyes open, ready to fight.
What he found wasn't an enemy, but a mop of salmon-pink hair buried in his chest. Ilulu, at some point during the night, had decided that "her corner" of the bed wasn't warm enough and had climbed on top of him, using him as a giant human mattress. Her arms and legs were wrapped around him like a koala.
"Mmm... meat..." Ilulu mumbled in her sleep, drooling a bit onto Naruto's black spandex.
Naruto tried to move, but the dragon's grip strength was absurd.
"Ilulu..." Naruto growled.
"Five more minutes, Mom..."
A vein throbbed on the former shinobi's forehead, and he thought of the following:
"Hiraishin!" (Flying Thunder God).
Pop.
Naruto vanished in a yellow flash, leaving Ilulu to hug empty air and fall face-first onto the mattress with a dull thud.
"Gwah!" The dragon woke up with a start, looking around in confusion with watery eyes. "W-Where's my heater?"
From the kitchen came the sound of a coffee maker turning on and Naruto's voice shouting:
"Get up! You have a hundred plates to wash before breakfast!"
Ilulu flopped back onto the bed, groaning.
"I hate work..."
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Morning had come far too soon for a certain dragon's liking.
Ilulu stood in front of the kitchen sink, looking with absolute disdain at a mountain of dirty ceramic bowls. Her hands, which still retained sharp claws and red scales because she struggled to maintain a perfect human transformation, held a yellow sponge with the same awkwardness as if holding an alien artifact.
"This is humiliating..." Ilulu muttered, squeezing the sponge so hard that soapy water shot out, splashing her face. "Gwah! It's attacking me!"
"It's not attacking you, you're just clumsy."
Naruto's deep voice resonated from the dining table, where he sat reading a local newspaper with a steaming mug of coffee in his hand. He wore a tight black sleeveless shirt that revealed his scarred arms, and gray sweatpants. He looked relaxed, but his black eyes tracked the dragon's every move.
"I am not clumsy!" Ilulu yelled, turning around with her sharp teeth bared. "I am a Chaos dragon! I destroy things, I don't clean them!"
Naruto lowered the newspaper slowly, revealing a look that made Ilulu shrink back.
"You broke three plates in the last five minutes, Ilulu," he said calmly. "If you break one more, I'll add ten bowls to your debt."
The dragon paled. "More!? I already have to wash a hundred!"
"Then be careful. Chakra control... I mean, strength control," Naruto corrected himself, sighing. "Treat the sponge like it's a dragon egg. Gentle. Delicate."
Ilulu grumbled something unintelligible about "tyrant humans" and returned to her task. She tried to be delicate, but her claws scraped the ceramic with a screeching sound that made Naruto grit his teeth.
"By the way," Naruto spoke again, folding the newspaper. "After that, we're leaving."
Ilulu's eyes lit up, dropping the plate (which miraculously didn't break). "We're leaving? To destroy something? To conquer?"
"To the supermarket."
Ilulu's excitement deflated like a popped balloon. "Super... what?"
"Supermarket. You ate all my food." Naruto stood up, his nearly two-meter height casting a shadow over the small kitchen. "We need to restock. And you need clothes that don't look like they came out of a sadomasochism dungeon if you're going to walk among humans."
Ilulu looked down at her black cape and revealing underwear. "Humans like this. I saw it in their magazines."
"Not this human." Naruto tossed her a massive orange hoodie he pulled from a storage seal on his wrist. "Put this on. And try to hide those claws. If anyone asks, it's cosplay."
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City Center – Shopping District
The human world was loud. Too loud for Naruto's enhanced senses, and chaotic for Ilulu's simple mind.
They walked down the main street. Naruto wore his usual black hooded cloak to avoid drawing attention to his exotic appearance, while Ilulu walked beside him, looking like a little girl wearing her father's clothes. The orange hoodie reached her knees, and the hood covered her horns, though her tail suspiciously bulked out the back of the garment.
"It smells like a lot of things..." Ilulu complained, wrinkling her nose. "Smoke, sweat, cheap food..."
"Get used to it," Naruto said, scanning the perimeter out of habit. "And don't wander off. I don't want to have to look for you if you get lost or decide to burn down a building."
"I'm not going to burn anything..." she muttered, though her eyes drifted toward a candy store with predatory interest.
Suddenly, Naruto stopped dead in his tracks.
His instincts, perfected in the Fourth Ninja War and years of survival, screamed a warning. It wasn't killing intent directed at him, but it was a presence. A strong presence.
"Dragon..." Naruto whispered.
Ilulu froze too, her slitted pupils dilating. "Order Faction."
In front of them, stepping out of a butcher shop with bags full of high-quality meat, was a young woman. She had blonde hair tied in twin tails, wore a Victorian maid outfit, and emanated an aura of power that made the air around her vibrate slightly.
Tohru.
The dragon maid was humming a cheerful tune, thinking about how she would cook the meat for her beloved Kobayashi-san, when she suddenly stopped. Her reptilian eyes, orange and sharp, darted straight toward the pair standing about ten meters away.
Her gaze passed over Ilulu (whom she recognized instantly despite the ridiculous hoodie) and stopped on the tall man beside her.
"Ilulu?" Tohru said, her voice losing all joy and turning cold. "What is a Chaos dragon doing here? And..."
Tohru narrowed her eyes at Naruto. She couldn't read him. He looked human, smelled human, but his energy... was dense. Vast. Like an ocean compressed into a teacup. And there was something else about him, a latent sense of danger that made Tohru's invisible scales stand on end.
"Naruto-san..." Ilulu whispered, taking a step back and hiding behind the former shinobi's leg. "She's strong. Very strong."
Naruto didn't move. He maintained his relaxed posture, hands in his pockets, but his muscles were ready to explode into motion in any microsecond.
"Well, well," Tohru said, carefully setting the bags on the ground. "Have you come to cause trouble in my city, Ilulu? And you brought a human pet with you?"
Naruto raised an eyebrow under his hood.
"Pet?" Naruto repeated, his deep voice cutting through the street noise. He took a step forward, deliberately placing himself between Tohru and Ilulu. "You have a very big mouth for someone dressed like she's about to dust, lizard."
The silence that followed was absolute. The people around kept walking, oblivious to the monstrous tension brewing in the middle of the sidewalk.
Tohru smiled, but it wasn't a kind smile. It was the smile of a dragon who had just been insulted.
"Lizard?" Tohru tilted her head, and a faint wisp of smoke escaped her mouth. "It seems your pet has no manners, Ilulu. Perhaps I should teach him his place before dealing with you."
"Try it," Naruto challenged, his black eyes flashing with a glint of blue chakra. "But I warn you, the last one who tried to 'teach' me ended up washing my dishes."
Ilulu gulped. "This is going to end badly..."
The air on the shopping street seemed to grow denser, as if gravity had suddenly increased only in that small circle of three people.
Tohru, the Dragon of the Chaos Faction (turned devoted maid), narrowed her orange eyes. Her smile widened, but it didn't reach her eyes.
"Try it?" Tohru repeated, her voice dropping an octave, taking on a guttural tone that vibrated the bones of nearby passersby, though they ignored it like a passing truck. "Human, you have no idea who you're talking to. I am Tohru, the dragon who brought calamity to the gods of my world. You are just... a bag of meat with an expiration date."
Naruto sighed, scratching the back of his neck with an indifference bordering on insult.
"Blah, blah, blah. Do all dragons have such long speeches?" he asked, glancing sideways at Ilulu, who was trembling behind him. "She said something similar before I knocked her unconscious."
The mention of Ilulu's defeat caused Tohru's eyebrows to shoot up. A human defeating a dragon? A Chaos dragon? Impossible. Ilulu must be weakened, or this human was using some dirty trick.
"I see... then I'll have to educate you."
In a blink, Tohru vanished.
To the normal human eye, she simply faded away. To an expert martial artist, it was a blur of supersonic speed. Tohru didn't attack directly; her target was Ilulu. She planned to shove the human aside (probably breaking several of his bones in the process) and grab the little dragon by the neck.
However, Tohru's world came to an abrupt halt.
An iron grip closed around her right wrist inches from Ilulu's face.
"What...?"
Tohru stared in disbelief. Naruto hadn't just reacted to her speed; he had moved before her. His tanned hand held the maid's pale wrist with a force that, to Tohru's horror, was causing her pain.
Naruto stood there, his black cloak billowing slightly from the air displacement. His eyes, formerly as dark as coal, now bore a vertical slitted pupil, glowing a deep red for a fraction of a second before returning to normal.
"I told you not to touch her." Naruto's voice was a cold whisper, heavy with a Killing Intent (Sakki) so dense that Tohru felt as if the air had been replaced by steel blades.
The dragon maid instinctively tried to release her magic to counterattack, her horns beginning to manifest under her headdress, but the pressure emanating from this man momentarily paralyzed her. It wasn't magic. It wasn't divine energy. It was... pure will for battle. The feeling of someone who has killed and seen death so many times they have become old friends.
"Let me go, filthy human!" Tohru growled, throwing a punch with her free hand toward Naruto's stomach.
Bam!
The sound was sharp, dull.
Naruto didn't even flinch. He had caught the second fist with his other hand, stopping the impact with the same ease one stops a tennis ball.
"You have strength," Naruto admitted, his feet sinking slightly into the concrete of the sidewalk, cracking it. "But you lack technique. And discipline."
Ilulu stared at Naruto's back with wide eyes. She knew he was strong, but seeing him stop Tohru—the legendary Tohru—without breaking a sweat, rewrote her understanding of reality.
The tension was about to escalate. Tohru opened her mouth, a small ball of magical energy beginning to form in her throat, ready to fire a point-blank dragon's breath, caring little about the city.
"Tohru! Wait!"
A female voice, tired and completely normal, broke the spell.
Tohru froze. The magic in her throat dissipated instantly, and her expression of murderous fury was replaced by one of sheer panic.
"K-Kobayashi-san?"
A young woman with red hair, glasses, and a slouched posture that screamed "underpaid office job," came running over from the store next door. She was carrying shopping bags and looking at the scene with a mix of confusion and resignation.
"What are you doing?" Kobayashi asked, looking at Naruto and Tohru's locked hands, and the cracked pavement beneath their feet. "Fighting in public again? I told you not to draw attention."
"B-But Kobayashi-san!" Tohru whined, trying to break free from Naruto's grip (who let her go the instant he saw the threat had ceased). "This human attacked me! And he's protecting an enemy!"
Naruto dusted his hands off as if brushing away dirt. "You attacked first, lizard. I just defended my... tenant."
Kobayashi adjusted her glasses and looked at Naruto. Her dead office-worker eyes met the former ninja's dark eyes. There was a moment of mutual understanding. They both recognized in the other the aura of someone who has to deal with problem children (or dragons) on a daily basis.
"I'm sorry about her," Kobayashi said with a sigh, bowing her head slightly. "She gets a little too excited sometimes. I'm Kobayashi."
Naruto observed her for a second. He sensed no malice in her. In fact, he felt a strange calm.
"Naruto," he replied dryly. Then he pointed a thumb backward, where Ilulu was still hiding. "And she is Ilulu."
Kobayashi leaned over to get a better look at the small figure behind Naruto. "Ilulu? Another dragon?"
"She's from the Chaos Faction, Kobayashi-san!" Tohru interjected, stepping between her master and the other two, arms outstretched. "She's dangerous! She tries to destroy the world for fun!"
Kobayashi looked at Ilulu. She saw the giant orange hoodie that fit her ridiculously, her hands clutching Naruto's pant leg, and the fearful expression on her face. Then she looked at Naruto, who had a protective hand hovering near the girl's head.
"She doesn't look very dangerous right now," Kobayashi commented in her usual monotone.
"I have her under control," Naruto said, his tone leaving no room for argument. "She's working to pay off a debt. If she causes trouble, I'll handle it. But I'm not going to let your maid kill her in the middle of the street."
Tohru huffed, crossing her arms and looking away, clearly annoyed but obeying Kobayashi's presence.
"Well," Kobayashi sighed again, feeling her back pain acting up. "Do you live around here?"
Naruto nodded vaguely toward the mountains. "Far away. In the forest."
"I see." Kobayashi dug into her pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper, scribbling something on it. "Look, if you ever have trouble with... dragon stuff, maybe we can help each other out. Seems like we're in the same boat."
Naruto took the paper. It was a phone number. He looked at it curiously; it had been a long time since he'd used this world's technology, but he knew how it worked.
"I'll keep it in mind," Naruto said, putting the paper away. "Let's go, Ilulu."
"Y-Yes..."
Naruto turned around, his cloak billowing. Ilulu followed closely, shooting one last fearful glance at Tohru before sticking to the former shinobi's side.
As they walked away, Kobayashi watched the tall man's back.
"That guy..." Kobayashi muttered.
"He's rude!" Tohru exclaimed, fuming. "And he smells weird! Like fox and ash!"
"No," Kobayashi corrected, thoughtfully. "I was going to say he looks very lonely."
Tohru blinked, surprised by her master's observation. She looked back at the figure disappearing into the crowd. Now that she mentioned it, that man's back radiated a loneliness that rivaled even what Tohru had felt before meeting Kobayashi.
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Back at the Cabin
The trip back was silent. Ilulu didn't dare speak until they were inside the safety of the wooden cabin.
Naruto set the grocery bags on the kitchen table and began pulling out the ingredients: vegetables, meat, eggs, and unfortunately for Ilulu, no sweets (because she had put them back).
"Naruto-san..."
Naruto paused, holding an egg carton. "What?"
Ilulu was standing in the kitchen doorway, fiddling with the sleeves of the orange hoodie.
"Thank you," she said softly, looking at the floor. "For... defending me. Tohru is strong. She could have killed me."
Naruto looked at her for a moment. The image of the scared little dragon briefly overlapped with memories of his own past, of scared children in times of war.
"Don't thank me," Naruto replied, turning around to start cooking. "You still owe me a hundred bowls of ramen. You can't pay me if you're dead."
Ilulu looked up, surprised. She saw that, although Naruto's voice was gruff, his shoulders were relaxed.
A small smile formed on the dragon's lips.
"Fine! I'll wash the dishes! But I want meat for dinner!"
"There will be meat if you don't break anything."
"Deal!"
As the aroma of dinner began to fill the cabin, and night fell over the forest, the strange pair of a displaced ninja and a chaos dragon found a routine in their shared loneliness. But they both knew the encounter in the city had changed things.
The dragon world now knew Naruto existed. And peace was about to get a lot more complicated.
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End of Chapter 2
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Uploaded: 03/16/26
Updated (Corrected): ?/?/?
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Omake 2
The sound of falling water rhythmically hit the bathroom tiles. Hot steam seeped out from under the door, carrying with it the scent of soap and... natural energy?
Outside the bathroom, a small figure moved with the stealth of a predator (or at least, she thought so).
Ilulu, the Chaos Dragon, was pressed against the wall next to the door, her pink eyes gleaming with a mix of mischief and intense curiosity.
"That human..." Ilulu thought, biting her thumbnail. "He's strong. Ridiculously strong. He must have some secret under those black clothes. Maybe hidden scales... or a mark of power... or maybe an extra tail."
Her dragon mind couldn't comprehend how a simple "hairless ape" could withstand her attacks. She had to see it with her own eyes. She had to find his weak point.
"Just a peek..." she whispered to herself. "For tactical research, of course."
Very carefully, Ilulu reached for the doorknob. Her claws glowed faintly, ready to melt the lock if necessary, but to her surprise, the door was unlocked.
"Ha! Careless!" she celebrated internally. "Humans lower their guard when they clean themselves. Grave mistake."
Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, she opened the door. Steam billowed out in a white wave, clouding her vision for a moment. Ilulu squinted, trying to focus on the tall, muscular silhouette standing under the stream of water at the back of the room.
She could see the broad back, the defined muscles of the shoulders, and...
Suddenly, the temperature in the bathroom dropped drastically.
"Hmm?" Ilulu blinked.
Naruto's silhouette vanished. He didn't move, he simply faded into a cloud of white smoke with a dull sound: Poof!
"Eh?"
Before Ilulu could process what had just happened, a deep, dry voice resonated right behind her ear, making her jump and bump her head against the doorframe.
"Did you lose something, Ilulu?"
"KYAAA!"
Ilulu spun around quickly, her heart beating a mile a minute. There, standing in the hallway, completely dressed in his black spandex and drying his hair with a towel, was the real Naruto.
The dragon pointed at the empty bathroom and then at him, stammering. "B-But... the water... you were...?"
Naruto raised an eyebrow, looking at her with that stoic expression that made her nervous.
"Shadow Clone," he said simply. "I always leave one to shower first to check that the water isn't poisoned or that there are no traps. Old habit."
He leaned in slightly toward her, invading her personal space. Ilulu, the dragon who had destroyed cities, stepped back, intimidated by the mere presence of the ninja.
"And it seems the trap caught a perverted little dragon."
Ilulu's face turned as red as the scales of her original form.
"I-It's not what you think!" she yelled, waving her arms. "I just wanted to see if you had scales! Or scars! Or...!"
"I have a lot of scars," Naruto interrupted, turning around to walk toward the kitchen. "But if you want to see them, you'll have to earn that right. Now, go do the laundry. That will be your penance for trying to spy on a decent man."
Ilulu stood frozen in the hallway, humiliated and confused, while the sound of the water in the bathroom (where the clone had reappeared) continued to mock her.
"Damn human with weird techniques..." Ilulu muttered, kicking the floor. "And damn sexy clones."
End of Omake 2