Disclaimer: Naruto (c) Kishimoto and probably a bunch of other companies whose names I don't know. No material profits being made here.
A/N: Short (and hopefully funny) ficlet written for the 500themes community at Livejournal. Enjoy! ;)
Night Terrors
The world turned purple all of a sudden and Obito ran for it.
The dry grass crackled under his feet as the husks of dead trees were morphing into gnarled humanoid monsters all around him. Every time one came to life and pulled its roots out of the dirt to chase after him, a horrible shuffling sound that chilled his blood filled the air.
The young Uchiha was cursing himself for being late this once. If only he had made it to the house in the centre of the forest on time, he would have been able to stop the faceless man with the black cloak from spilling the tea and poisoning the land. All he could do now was try to outrun the zombie wildlife and hope that he found the blue fountain with the antidote before he tired himself out.
Somehow, he knew exactly where he had to go to find it. On his way, he passed by a lot of other blue fountains (navy, turquoise, cyan, ...) but the right one never seemed to come.
It felt like he had been running forever when a red-eyed squirrel jumped out of the purple darkness, straight at his face. The little critter shrieked in his ears and sunk its claws in his hair, and no matter what Obito did (pull, twist, bang his head against one of the few trees that wasn't moving) it clung on. He tried to keep running, but its furry, smelly little body was so close to his face that he couldn't see where he was going.
It wasn't long until the boy felt something slimy wrap around his feet and haul him upside down.
The squirrel let go of its prey before it could get trapped too and Obito realised that he had been caught by a sea of slithering vines. They were crawling down along his body to swallow him and turn him into one of their own: a forest zombie.
Obito wriggled and struggled and strained against the binds, but they were fast around his body and quickly squeezing the life out of him. He cursed and shouted with what little oxygen he had left, and pleaded his parents and his classmates, who had strolled into the scene just below to admire the show, to cut him loose. No one lifted a finger.
The vines finally reached his head and, as they wrapped around his eyes, purple faded to black.
Obito woke gasping for breath back in his bedroom, sweat trickling up his neck and dripping from his forehead. For a moment, he had to think about what was wrong with that picture.
Some badly smothered chuckles drew his attention down, where his two older brothers were holding on to one end of ninja wire. The other end was tied around his ankles and criss-crossed their shared bedroom's ceiling in a pattern that Obito remembered seeing in an Academy textbook that was designed to maximise the weight one was capable of lifting.
He scowled and glared at his siblings but saved all the curses he felt like throwing at them for some other time when they wouldn't wake up the rest of the household (and neighbours - Obito had really good lungs) and get grounded for a month.
Sometimes, he hated having ninja for older brothers.