Red Cancer
By Anna Semenets, 2005
Intro
She didn't help when the demon came. She didn't want to, and she had plenty of good reasons. Nobody even expected her to come, but she did, just to watch; to watch the blood flow. When the Hokage sealed the demon away, something struck the girl and her blood hissed at what it saw. The girl wished that she could kill the Hokage herself… Slowly.
Kakashi wasn't really nervous about his new task. The new Hokage seemed smarter than his predecessors in dealing with the girl, but nobody could come up with the perfect plan; a lot of it depended on what side the coin would fall on.
The girl was the village's worst nightmare. In fact, it could be anything's worst nightmare, maybe even the devil's. Everyone in the village knew about her, either as a criminal, a monster, the devil himself or just as something that's out there. The little children who might have been too young to hear the bloody stories pointed at her if they saw her in the streets. She would stare back coldly and the children would sense her terrifying power… and they would most likely start to cry. But the parents wouldn't blame her. If they did… well, you can guess that, can't you?
Why weren't the kids scared of the monster that their parents purposely avoided eye contact with? Well, maybe it had something to do with the fact that she was merely a 10-year-old homeless girl. Except, that made it all the more terrifying to the people who knew about her. Her features were delicate except for her messy hair and ice-cold eyes. If you look at them for too long, you get cold inside and goose-bumps climb up your back and arms.
Kakashi was wondering if he will be able to get away if the girl didn't like him. She killed countless Jonins in self defense against the previous Hokage's plans. She wouldn't decide to space him just because he planned on saying something other than "By the name of 4th Hokage, I shall banish you to Hell!" Many never even finished the sentence.
The girl has recently begun called herself Nienna. She even learned how to write it: NI-E-N-NA.
Kakashi watched from a roof as the girl ate her only meal that morning and day; two small meat sausages. She ate them without showing any hunger: steadily, slowly, more concentrated on her thoughts than the food. But she ate once a day not because she was limited. She could steal the whole meat store if she wanted to. She just… never seemed to want… never seemed to need any more.
Nienna's eyes moved smoothly down from the sky to the roof corner from which Kakashi watched. She watched the empty spot for a few minutes, chewing. Then she swallows and bit carelessly out of her food once again.
Her curse was everyone else's… And the next shinobi will learn it like the previous did.
END of INTRO