Hey everyone. Thanks for stopping in.
This is the first in a trilogy. Naruto content is light for the first story, but it's in there regardless. Therefore, I must say that I don't own Naruto. If I did, I probably wouldn't be writing fanfiction for it.
Feedback is always appreciated. Questions? Comments? Concerns? Feel free to contact me.
Disclaimer: Content is rated for mature adult (MA) audiences only. Reader discretion is advised.
-Nyroc
It takes me a few moments to remember how to breathe. The numbers have been called that seal our fate. I should have been prepared for this, but I still feel like the world has dropped straight from beneath my feet.
"It's your turn, little shadow."
The teasing hiss behind me shakes me from my stupor and I have no choice but to step forward. The hatred in those words make me want to turn and kill the girl who spoke them. I'm not a killer. I've never been a killer. Still, I wish I had been paired up with her. I wish I had been paired up with anyone else.
The snow is cold enough to numb my feet as I walk through it, moving to the designated area that's been cleared. It's a flat expanse of stone, cleared of snow and bordered by crumbled walls. It is far from the prying eyes of my classmates. Rocks lay strewn about. It used to be a place of worship, but up close I can see that the grey is stained with copper and brown.
It's the color of aged blood that has seeped deep into the stonework. If I cracked the rocks open, they'd probably be red all the way through.
My heart drops down into my belly.
We aren't going to fight each other to demonstrate our skills.
We're going to fight to the death.
I look over at him and watch as the realization hits him, too, and dread seeps into his eyes.
I'm not a killer.
I've never been a killer.
But even if I was, I don't think I'd be able kill my best friend.
They did it on purpose. The numbers weren't random. They did it on purpose. They did it on purpose.
The sharp-eyed woman standing atop the crumbling pile of ruins crosses her arms over her chest.
"Begin."
We have no choice but to begin fighting as soon as time is called.
There is no hesitation in Hiretsuna.
Somebody yells words at me that I don't know. After my eyes get used to the bright I stare at the man without a clue of what I'm supposed to do. He stops yelling at me a minute later and just grabs my shoulders again, then shoves me forward. I climb up wooden stairs on my hands and knees because the chains on my ankles make it hard to walk.
I'm on a raised platform made of wood that puts splinters into my feet. It's a little like a stage, but not the same. It's not as nice. The crowd of people below me yells things at me in words I don't understand. Soon the yelling turns to just two people shouting back and forth at each other. One man stops his shouting, and the man who pushed me earlier yells something at him. Then he pushes me back down the stairs, and I see another girl a little younger than me going through the same thing.
The pushy man makes me walk to a place with a fence making a circle around it. There's a fire in the middle. I want to get closer to that fire. The air has been cold since they took me off of the boat. I trip a bunch of times to get to the line that I have to stand in to get to the fire. My hands seem even colder the longer I have to wait, because they know that they'll get warmed up soon.
I'm a little surprised when two big men grab me by the arms, which make my hands hurt where the metal chains are digging into my skin. How am I supposed to get close to the fire to warm up my hands this way? It's almost like
All of the sudden I can't see anything because the back of the shoulder of the arm that I write with hurts so bad I can't do anything but kick my legs and scream and try to get away. And then the men let me go and I run into the fence and I hold it and I cry because my shoulder is on fire and I'm going to die because it hurts so bad. I wish something would make it stop. I keep screaming and crying and I hear more footsteps behind me and more yelling and more words and then
When I wake up, I'm in another little room that has three walls made out of rock and one wall made out of metal bars going up and down. This room isn't as dark as the other one was and it's a little bit warmer here, but not that much. The room is empty. There's no bed, no window, not even straw. My hands and feet are still cold. The chains aren't on my hands and feet anymore. My head hurts in the back like when I bumped it on a rock when I was little.
My shoulder still hurts like fire. I turn my head around to look at it. There's an ugly bumpy blister there, like when I burned my finger on the tea pot when I was littler, but it's bigger than when it was just on my finger. It's a circle with two lines going back and forth across it. It covers the whole back of my shoulder, to where the skin pops up in the middle of my back when my arm moves. It's ugly and it hurts even more when I move my arm. I figure out that if I lay down on the rock floor underneath me, it's cold and it makes it not hurt as much. What did I do to deserve this?
I don't get it.
I stay in the little dark room with the metal fence for a long time before a grown-up man opens the fence and pushes a boy inside with me. A little bit longer and he pushes in two more girls. Then the big man leaves and the four of us just stare at each other for a long time.
The boy talks in words that I don't know. One of the girls talks back to him with the same words. From what I can see in this room with only a little bit of light in it, they both have brown hair and I can't see the color of their eyes, but maybe they're brothers and sisters. I have a big brother, but I don't want to think about that right now.
The other girl doesn't get what they're saying either, so she looks at me for a long time. She has dark-colored hair and light-colored eyes, but that's all I can tell. Maybe she knows how to talk like I do.
"What's going on?" I ask her.
She shakes her head at me and lifts her shoulders in an up-and-down way. My big brother used to do that. He said it means 'I don't know.'
"I'm Kurai. What's your name?" I say to her.
She shakes her head at me again, then crawls across the cold floor to where I'm at and opens up her mouth in my face. I scream.
Her mouth is dark and she smells like blood. Her tongue is just a little stump at the back of her mouth. I've never met anybody without a tongue before.
The boy pulls her away from me, and she screams at him and holds her shoulder. I see that she has the same mark there that I do. So do the other two children there with me.
The boy tells me something with those strange words and noises. I don't get it. I tell him so and he covers my mouth with his hand.
Oh. I guess he wants me to be quiet.
The big man walks by the wall of metal bars, pushing more children like the four of us. Some are bigger, some are smaller. All of them look sad and are wearing the same kind of rags that we are. I stay quiet until they pass, then look up at the boy again.
His eyes are bright, bright green in the dark cell. It's almost like they're glowing.
I stare at him for a long time until the hall outside is quiet and and the room starts to go cold. Then, he scoots over to where I'm sitting with the girl who can't talk. The other girl who I think is his sister crawls over too.
The girl who doesn't talk watches me. I stare back.
"Do you know what I'm saying to you?" I ask her. Her head moves up and down. "What's your name?"
She looks down at the cold floor and starts to write kanji in the dust there. Her name is Kotori. Little bird. It fits because she's littler than me and she looks kind of like a bird.
I put my hand on my chest and look at the other two children. "Kurai," I tell them. I point to the quiet girl. "Kotori."
The two of them look at me like I have blue skin and five arms. Then, slowly, the other girl with brown hair puts her hand on her chest.
"Sileny."
I nod my head up and down at her. Then I look at the boy.
He points to himself and tells the others and me, "Ataeru."
That's a funny name, but I don't tell him that. He won't know what I'm saying anyways.
Then the quiet girl Kotori moves over and cuddles up into my side like I used to do with my big brother. She's shivering. I put my arms around her and cuddle back. It gets really cold in that room, really fast. I close my eyes and lean back against the cold rock wall and try to sleep.