Quoth the Raven
is a crossover fanfic between Naruto and Tolkien's Legendarium, written by thatdamnuchiha on Archive of Our Own.
The Rookie Nine of Konoha are used to weird things constantly happening to them. So waking up in the woods, as toddlers with weird pointy ears? They can survive it, no problem.
The problem might be these elves who are rather insistant on taking them to safety.
Contains the following tropes
- Blood Knight: Sakura jumps on the slightest excuse to punch the other Rookies and is extremely proud of stabbing her assailants' ankles to the point they're noticeably wary around her.
- Cassandra Truth: Chouji, Hinata and Naruto suggest the grown elves might just be worried for a bunch of orphans stranded in the woods and seek to help them out of genuine care. The other rookies dismiss their opinion as too optimistic because the shinobi world doesn't work like that.
- Childless Dystopia: Part of why the rookies are wary of the elves comes from the utter and complete absence of children every time they spy on the processions — what exactly happens to them, if they're not with the grown ups?
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: The Rookies Nine immediately assume the elves are bent on catching them because they have a powerful bloodline limit or to erase the stain of bastardry clean. This is what shinobi clans do, after all. They don't adopt orphans just to love them, that's not how the world functions. Obviously the elves must be the same.
- Entertainingly Wrong: The Rookies are too paranoid to believe the elves are not trying to catch them for nefarious purposes, when it's obvious to the readers — and confirmed by the author — that the elves are losing their minds with worry because there's a pack of feral, starving kids in the woods and they need to take them to safety.
- Hero Antagonist: Let's be frank, the elves are quite justified to relentless pursue the kids to be brough back to Rivendell — what kind of grown up would abandon a bunch of toddlers to freeze and starve in the woods?
- Locked into Strangeness: Several of the Rookies wake up with hair and eye colour very different from what they previously were. It makes for a confusing awakening until everybody introduces themselves.
- The Mind Is The Plaything Of The Body: Having transmigrated in elven toddler bodies subtly start to influence the Rookies, giving them interests they didn't have before and turning them more whimsical and playful.
- Minor Living Alone: The Rookies having survival training help them to withstand one winter in the woods, but the elves rightfully freak over their situation and they ultimately concede they cannot go on when Shikamaru falls sick.
- Racial Transformation: From human to elven for the Rookie Nine. And Akamaru becomes a wolf pup, too.
- Sadistic Choice: When Shikamaru falls prey to a fever, it's either staying in the woods and potentially letting him die, or bringing him to the elves in the hope they will heal him instead of murdering him.
- Savage Wolves: In winter, the Rookies have to kill a wolf trying to attack their fortress to get at them. It's hard since they're tiny children with nothing but wooden blunt spears and a single knife.
- Supernatural Golden Eyes: Part of why Sakura suspects "the pointy-eared people" from not being your run-of-the-mill clan is her new eye colour, because there's limits to what you can do with a mere kekkei genkai.
- Trapped in Another World: Sakura realizes something might be wrong with their surroundings when night falls and she cannot manage to find one single familiar constellation.
- Would Hurt a Child: Since the shinobi world has no qualms using Child Soldiers or outright murdering a bastard kid to prevent a leak, the Rookie Nines are extremely worried about the elves killing them all.
