Name of Title: One Step At A Time
Type: Romance, Humor, Drama.
Author: Midnight Blue Raven
Characters: Naruto Cast with Hatake Kakashi and a fictional character as the main characters.
Category: Fanfiction
Rated: M (Rated for a reason!)
Status: On-going
Summary: Becoming a top lethal ninja meant sacrificing certain things, such as family, friends and love; she learnt that firsthand. When there seemed to be no hope for her, he steps into her life and taking one step at a time, shows her how to feel again, love again.
Hi everyone! I'm Rachel! And this is my first time writing a Naruto fanfic. I recently became a fan of Naruto and since I've been writing fanfics for 4 years, once I get addicted to something, I always get new ideas for more fanfics. lol. The title was inspired by Jordin Spark's song with the same name. Well, some of you may know me if you read Teen Titans fanfics.
Anyways, I hope you will all enjoy reading this fanfiction as much as I enjoy writing it. I would also like to thank Amarxlen for beta-ing this fanfic. Seriously, she nearly burnt me to a crisp when I first sent her my chapter. But I'm thankful as she's trying to prevent me from getting flamed by you guys. Enjoy!
01 / Clueless
Uchiha Sasuke pushed the door of the bar open as he stepped in. As usual, the bar was full, being the only one in this small village. The air was heavy with the scent of smoke, alcohol and other stuff he didn't want to find out. He slowly walked over to the counter, took a seat, and ordered some warm sake.
Sasuke was now 15 years old. He'd been freed from Orochimaru's control and had became a missing nin. Drinking his sake, he thought back to the death of his brother, Uchiha Itachi. It had only taken place about a week ago. Actually, many things had taken place in the previous few weeks.
When Uchiha Madara had told him about Konoha being the reason for killing his clan, Sasuke had vowed to make Konoha pay if it was the last thing he did. But trying to fulfill this ambition was harder done than said.
As of the moment, he had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. Madara had offered him the position of his brother in Akatsuki. He wasn't going back to Konoha and neither was he going to join the Akatsuki. He was still pretty clueless to what he was going to do. He'd spent the whole week drinking and going around the village, thinking of ways to destroy Konoha.
The door to the bar opened, filling the dark room with light from the outside. Sasuke narrowed his eyes at the sudden brightness and watched as a figure stepped into the bar. Not caring who it was, he turned back to his sake and gulped down a glass. He noticed the figure take the vacant seat beside him but disregarded it as nothing.
"One medium container of chilled sake." A woman's voice, soft yet full of authority.
The bartender looked at her as if she were crazy. No one in their right mind ordered cold sake. The taste was too bitter for anyone to handle. "Are you sure about that?"
"I like it chilled. Brings out the bitter taste." She answered shortly.
The woman placed her hands on the counter and Sasuke noticed the bindings around her wrist before her hands disappeared into the fingerless gloves, with metal plates to protect the back of her palm. A ninja, no doubt.
From the corner of his eyes, Sasuke studied her. Her long sleeved white coat, that reached her ankles, hid her attire and body, as well as her weapons. She had long, dark blue hair that was in a French braid and hung loosely behind her. A few strands of hair, that were too short to be braided, fell in front of her face, hiding the left side of it.
Sasuke noticed a hitai-ate around her forehead, but was unable to tell from which village she was, since he was watching her from the side. He sat up from his previous slouched position to try to peek at her hitai-ate but her voice stopped him.
"Uchiha Sasuke, I thought you weren't interested in other people's business." Her voice cut through the silence.
Sasuke's eyes widened a little as he watched her gulp down a glass of cold sake and exhale deeply. He quickly hid his surprise and only replied with a "Hn."
Despite his lack of reply, she knew she had his full attention. "Whatever Madara told you was a lie. Konoha is not our enemy."
Sasuke's brows furrowed. How did this woman know what Madara had told him? Was she spying on him? Moreover, why did she say our enemy? "How do you know these things?"
"I know because he told me the same thing a few years ago." She finished the rest of her sake and took out a few ryos and placed them on the counter. "Well, my time is limited and I need to get going. But remember what I told you, Konoha is not our enemy."
Sasuke was more confused than he had ever been. He couldn't understand anything at all. "You can't leave yet. I demand you to explain everything to me!" He demanded as he grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards him until they were mere inches apart, but she effortlessly pulled her wrist out of his grasp. He noticed that she was still avoiding eye contact for some reason though.
"I think you already found out too much on our first date." He couldn't help rolling his eyes. She was so full of herself, probably smirking at him. "I'll explain more thoroughly on our second date."
All through their conversation, he noticed that, not once had she looked at him. He didn't even know how she looked. "Wait, what makes you think I'll want to meet you again?" Sasuke was however, unprepared for what he was about to see next.
"Because I know you want to find out more about the assassination of the Uchiha clan; who really ordered your brother to kill them." She paused for a brief moment. "Go back to Konoha. I'm on my way there myself. If I find you there on my arrival and you are still interested in finding out, then I will tell you everything that I know. But I have to warn you though, I have a lot of errands to do first and you might have to wait for a while before I turn up in Konoha." Sasuke gasped as his eyes widened noticeably.
She had turned to look at him now. And he finally saw the symbol on her hitai-ate; the leaf symbol. But that was not what had surprised him, nor was it her beautiful face. What had nearly thrown him of his chair with shock was neither of them. No, the thing that had taken him by surprise was her eyes. Because staring straight at him were a pair of……… Sharingan.
There were three tomoe in each eye, proving that she had reached the highest level of her Sharingan and all the tomoe were spinning lazily in both eyes.
Before Sasuke could find his voice and the will to say anything, she broke the silence once more. Looking at the still dazed Uchiha, she finally said what she had come to tell him.
"I hope to see you soon in Konoha."
5 years later
A strong gust of wind blew over the desert. It was nighttime and the temperature was dropping as expected of the desert. A lone figure continued to move through the never-ending sand. The figure was cloaked and the hood concealed the person's face.
As the figure neared the edge of the forest, which was the border of the Land of Wind and the Land of Fire, the tree branches around started to shake vigorously. In the blink of an eye, two silhouettes jumped down for the branches and stood before the cloaked figure.
Both of them had kunai and shuriken holsters, meaning they were ninja and their hitai-ates proved that they were from the village hidden in the sound. One was a woman and the other, a man, who threw off his cloak as he spoke to the cloaked figure standing before him.
"Well, this is a surprise. I thought you'd be taking a break by now and we wanted to attack you while you slept."
"You should know by now that I don't sleep that much." The cloaked figure replied, and the voice hinted that it was a woman.
"Too bad then, we're going to have to take you down and carry you back to Orochimaru."
"If you had expected to win, I think there was more of a chance to take me down back in the desert. But here, in the woods, your chances of winning are low. Not that your chances were high in the first place," the cloaked woman spoke as she pulled back her hood to reveal a pale, emotionless face and two sapphire blue eyes staring back at them through her dark blue strands.
"Why don't you just come with us? I'd hate to scar that pretty face of yours," the sound kunoichi spoke for the first time since their encounter.
"You'd be considered lucky if you could even touch a strand of my hair without dying," the woman with the blue hair retorted back. "Shall we start then?"
Soon the two sound ninjas found themselves targeted by a large number of shuriken coming form every direction. They quickly evaded all of them and turned towards the blue-haired woman. She had already discarded her cloak and stood calmly before them.
"Really, is that all you've got? I was expecting more from an experienced jonin such as you," the male sound ninja spoke. A dry chuckle erupted deep from his throat, showing that indeed, he was amused by her attack.
In a flash, the female sound ninja appeared behind the woman and tried to take her by surprise. But the moment her kunai came in contact with her victim, the woman turned into water and only a puddle remained before her.
"Huh? It's a water clone!" She shouted to her partner to alert him as well.
The male ninja started looking around and finally sensed his prey's chakra. She was hiding on a branch of a tree to his right and he ran and kicked the trunk with his chakra, making the whole tree shake. And then, he threw a few shuriken towards the higher part of the tree.
The blue-haired kunoichi jumped from her previous hiding place to another tree, understanding the fact that the sound ninja had found her hiding place. She quietly landed on the ground and did some hand signs.
The two sound ninja turned to their right to find a huge fireball coming towards them straight on. They quickly evaded it and threw more shuriken in the direction from which the fireball had come. Then the female of the two took out a flute and starting blowing air into it, which caused large waves of vibrating air to exit from the other end.
The blue-haired woman cursed as she evaded the vibrating waves, but doing so had allowed a shuriken to strike her in her exposed, bare arm. She quickly pulled it out and threw it towards the ground. "Now, you've done it! No more games." She yelled to no one in particular as she performed a large number of hand seals.
With that said, before they could say anything, the two sound ninjas found themselves enclosed in large bubbles of water. From the corner of their eyes, they noticed the woman walking towards them.
"How do you like my special jutsu?," she spoke as her victims started struggling and grunting for air in their water prisons. "I modified the water prison jutsu. This one disables and absorbs all your chakra and no hand signs will work while you are inside it. That'll teach you to mess with me again."
She watched as her victims attempted to break out of her hold. Finally, when she was sure that they were going to die from lack of air, she released the jutsu and let them fall limp to the ground.
The male sound ninja still had strength to look up at her face, with nothing but fear in his eyes. He coughed up water from his mouth before speaking in a rasp voice. "But how? There's no water outlet around here. We'd made sure of that."
The woman standing before him let out a chuckle. "I told you that your chances of defeating me were low in the forest. Look around you," she spoke as she waved her hands mildly around her. "This is a forest, hence it is full of plants and moisture. I could turn the moisture back into water or I could extract the water from inside of the plants."
Letting her gaze stop on the ninja's face for a few seconds, she sighed. She couldn't even travel from one village to another without getting attacked by the enemy. She motioned for him to get up and he did.
She didn't feel like killing them while she had an advantage. It seemed wrong to her somehow. She quickly engaged in a battle of hand-to-hand combat with him. But the already exhausted ninja could not keep up with her and soon found himself in a death grip.
Swiftly, with her chakra-induced fingers, she gave a slight pressure on one particular place of his spine, earning her a small crack before he fell limp to the forest floor. She had learnt during her training that if the right amount of pressure was applied to this certain point, the bone segment in that place would fall out of the spine, hence snapping any vital arteries and veins under it, giving the victim a painless death.
She quickly repeated her action with the unconscious kunoichi beside him and then reached for her discarded cloak. Replacing it around her figure, she pulled the hood back up and continued her way through the forest.
First off, all of the main characters around Naruto's age group will be 20 years old. I'm sure you all know that after adding 5 years to Sasuke's 15 years. Kakashi will be 34 years old.
Next up, when I said the woman in the fanfic had blue hair, try imagining Hinata's hair color but a bit darker. Almost looks like black if you're looking at this woman in a dark room.
Well, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Please leave reviews, telling me what you think or if you have any questions at all. I'll try my best to answer them so long as I don't have to reveal the rest of the plot. Actually, I don't have much of a plot yet. lol Still making it up.
Disclaimer: This work is pure fiction. Any featured celebrities, people, books, or entertainment media sources are borrowed for fictitious fan writing only. There is no malicious, offensive, or libel intent to any person, those associated with the person.
©Midnight Blue Raven, 2008. Distribution of any kind is prohibited without the written consent of Midnight Blue Raven. 2008. Distribution of any kind is prohibited without the written consent of Midnight Blue Raven.
09/24/2008.