This story is the amazing birthday present I have made for my friend and fellow anime fan Amanda. I tried writing something else at first but soon realized she wouldn't actually like what I had been working on. So I made this, and it's late by nearly an hour since I said I'd probably have it done by 6 and it's now just about 7. Hope you like it, and Happy Birthday! Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, or any of its characters. Cloud, the dog, and the storyline are mine though.
* * * * * *
The animal shelter was unusually quiet that day. Tenten stood behind the counter reading a magazine about horses. Day's End horse rescue of the month was an two year old quarter horse gelding that had been adopted nearly four months ago by a family who already had a pair of gypsy horses. Duncan had been nearly starved to death by his previous owner in a shed that was hardly ever cleaned, but the animal police had taken out of there, and Day's End had taken him in. Their goal was to take in abused and unwanted horses and work with them so they could become adoptable. This particular horse was only with them for two months before he was adopted the Clincorts. His owner was their nine year old son Rein, and the picture showed the two practically grinning at the camera. Mr. C. said he was surprised at how gentle Duncan had turned out.
"He lets Rein's younger cousins walk around him like they're the most normal things in the world. If we took him to a daycare and just tied him to the fence and left him there, I'd bet there'd be kids just hanging off him by the end of the day and that horse would be asleep." Tenten smiled. The quarter horse looked a whole lot better than what he had used to when she was there. She volunteered at Day's End every now and then, mostly during the winter since they were generally most shorthanded then, and had been one of the people working with Duncan. Just half a year out of the horrible place he had come from, and he looked as good as any other horse who'd been loved all his life.
'Good for you Duncan.' Closing her magazine, she glanced up at the clock. Four minutes to closing time, but she didn't move to start packing up. Sometimes people came in around that time to ask to look at the cats or something, and it happened often enough that she'd learned to wait for them. Sure enough, some random guy she'd never seen before in her life came in and asked if they had any good cats. She said they had a lot of good cats, just depended on what kind of one you wanted. One that didn't mind dogs, it didn't have to be cuddly or okay with kids because he didn't have kids that would cuddle the heck out of them, and he didn't have a wife that he might be having kids with in the future. He did have two dogs though.
"Looks like any of the cats would be alright with that as long as you kept them in a seperate room for the first few days so it can get aquainted with your dogs from behind a door instead of face to face." Tenten replied, and the guy smiled. He went into the hall with all the cats and came back saying he'd get the one in the middle of the second row on the right. It was a tortoise shell that had bitten everyone that had picked it up. When she told him, he just shrugged. It was a cat. They went through all the paperwork and she was waving goodbye to them not a minute after the time they were supposed to close.
"Whew, aren't ya glad it's Friday?" Utaki asked her as they swept up and made sure everything was in its place before locking all the doors.
"Yeah, this has been a really long week, no joke." The bernet agreed and the green haired girl nodded at that statement.
"Seriously, I can't believe how many adoptions and new animals we went through. And every time I turned around there was this old woman who kept asking about her lost cat. At least we get a break now." Both her and Tenten only worked weekdays and left the weekends to some other poor souls who had less homicidal reactions to being constantly mobbed. They waved goodbye to each other and started walking off.
"Bye Ten." "See ya later Uta." The bernet headed up to the busstop and caught hers just before it left. She'd been cutting it close lately with all these last minute adoptions. Her house was only two blocks away from where she got off. It was a lovely little thing, cream with dark green trim. One story with an attic crammed full of things she hadn't gone through yet. She'd inherited the place from an older cousin she hadn't known she had until she'd gotten a letter saying she'd died and left her something in her will. It wasn't as creepy to walk past the pictures in the hall of a girl who could have passed for her double anymore, at least not when she was too tired to notice them, which had been happening more and more frequently. The house was great though. It was clean and full of plants and wooden furniture that she might have picked out herself.
She grabbed her mail and walked in through the little gate into the phenomenal garden surrounding the house. There were roses and ivy climbing up trellises up the side of the right wall and all sorts of beautiful flowers and herbs in the edges and all around. Even in the grass there were wild strawberries woven in. They were very bitter, but they were good for making canned preserves(since you have to add a ton of sugar to the mix anyway) and they gave off a wonderful scent. Her favorite plant was either the lilac bush in the corner, or the strange blue rose that she'd only seen flower once that was planted underneath her window.
"Hey Mask, I'm home." Tenten called as she slipped her shoes off and put them to the side. Mask had to be the single best thing about this. Her cousin had to have been a very lucky girl to have a dog like her. A golden retriever mix that was a dark chocolate brown and sweeter than anything. Tenten looked around in confusion. Mask didn't come to greet her at the door, that wasn't like her.
"Mask?" She whistled lightly. "Here girl." Mask gave a small bark where ever she was. The dog was never good at barking. Her cousin, presumably, had trained her out of it. Tenten went to the back of the house and whistled again. Another bark, she was in the backyard. That wasn't right, she could get in perfectly fine through her doggy door. Tenten grabbed a knife from the kitchen before walking out. Something was wrong.
Her dog was over by the larksbur bushes, staring intently at something in them. Tenten kneeled beside her, scratching her neck.
"What is it girl?" The she saw it, just a bit of brown that was darker than the stems of the bushes, and a bit lighter than her dog. Brushing back the plants, she was shocked to see a beaten and bruised guy lying unconscious in the shadows. Instantly she was checking to see if he was alive. Yes, he was at least that. Sighing, she held out the knife to her dog.
"Would you put this back on the counter for me?" Mask took the knife gently by the handle and walked inside with it. Tenten shook her head, Mask's understanding of what she asked her to do still surprised her. Getting an arm around his shoulders and one under his knees she picked him up with a grunt. He was about her age and pretty heavy for how he looked. Mask was right there with her walking them in. She closed the door and locked it using her teeth before trotting to catch up with them, tail wagging lightly that her human had decided to bring the guy in. Tenten set the guy down on the bed in the guest room. She couldn't really help him too much because you didn't bandage bruises. The guy was in pretty bad shape, one of the local gangs must have gotten him. At least he hadn't been shot.
She couldn't put her finger on it, but he looked vaguely familiar. That couldn't be though, since she was certain she'd never seen him before.
Maybe passing by on the street or something...
The dirty long brown hair was the big thing, she wasn't going to check his eyes since that might wake him up, but where had she seen this guy? He looked to be about her age, and he wasn't wearing the sagging pants or the hoody ensemble that most guys her age did nowadays. Brown pants that actually fit, and a plain white kimono shirt, at least, there was white showing through the dirt... Maybe what he was wearing was reminding her of someone? She left him alone with Mask sitting next to the bed and walked around. It helped her think sometimes to do so. Her feet wandered around and carried her back to her room. The same one that used to be her cousin's. She'd changed hardly anything about it other than putting her things in it. It had already looked almost just like her old room anyway, and she liked the small differences. Living here made her wish she'd known her cousin instead of just inheriting her house when she died. Even her clothes were her style, some of them she even had, and they had been the same size. Everything fit her. But there was only so much you could about someone from their house, and she'd never met her cousin. It made her sad. The exact moment she let out a sigh over that, a picture on the desk that was slightly behind one she had put up caught her eye. She could have sworn it glimmered for an instant. It was of her cousin and her weird, but nice, neighbor Lee, and some other guy. He looked sort of like a younger version of the guy she'd just brought in, same long hair at least. She hurriedly took it out of the frame and looked on the back.
'Me, Neji, and Lee at the lake.' It said. Tenten ran next door with it and knocked loudly on it. Lee opened it quickly enough, but he was notably surprised that it was Tenten. She normally didn't knock like that. Without letting any time pass for hellos she held up the picture.
"Lee, is this guy still a friend?" She didn't need to point, there were only three people in the picture. Lee's eyes went a little wide.
"Maybe you'd better come in." He stepped aside and motioned for her in. There was obviously a big story behind the answer, and it wasn't the sort of thing you'd tell just standing around at your door. Tenten shook her head.
"Just tell me if he is or not, Lee." The urgency in her voice made him take a deep breath and nod.
"Yea, he's a friend... but, he's been missing since we took the summer we took that picture. Nobody's seen him in years."
"If you saw him again, would you be able to tell if it was him or not?" The question hit him like a bag of bricks.
"Of course I would! Us three were nearly inseparable since kindergarten! How could I not-" Then he remembered the girl standing in front of him wasn't Cloud, and he realized she wouldn't know any of that. 'Of course she wouldn't know...' He had no time for further thoughts because Tenten grabbed him by the arm and ran him back over to her house. Mask came up to greet them, only because Lee was there too. Her tail whipped the air windly for him and he grinned at patted her head. Tenten stood outside the room Cloud used to let him and Neji stay over in after they'd stayed up until past three in the morning watching movies together. Cloud's cousin looked and moved and spoke too much like her. It was unreal, even know he still saw Cloud waving him over to her.
"Lee, is this Neji?" She asked worriedly. He looked past her and his heart nearly stopped. The third member of the terrible trio, was lying right there after four years. (disappeared when they were 15, they're now 19, Tenten's 17 or 18) Lee started crying, and choking on air lightly. Tenten looked upset too, and hugged Lee. He cried for Cloud again, just like the day he'd found out she disappeared too. It only took the police three months to decide she was dead. It didn't make sense for them to do that when other people went missing for years and years and they never said that, but not with Cloud. Their area had so many people ending up dead from the gang wars(like an average of two a month), she was dead to them as soon as no one saw her for two months.
Tenten looked back over at Neji. That was one of her cousin's friends, what had he done to warrant being in this condition? Disattaching herself from Lee, she got out some blankets from the top of the closet and spread them out over him gently.
"He's really beaten up, we can't really do anything for him until he wakes up." Lee looked at her sadly. Cloud would've already checked for broken bones and set and wrapped them if there were any. Poor Tenten was still a stranger.
"I guess." Lee mumbled. Neji was back and alive, but Cloud hadn't come back with him. He had been hoping she'd gone after him and they were together whereever they were. But there was the Hyuuga, and though it made him happy his friend had come back after all this time, he still wished he'd come back sooner. Then maybe the right girl would be in this house to welcome him instead of-
"How long has he been gone?" Tenten asked staring at Neji. Mask brushed her head under he hand and she looked down and smiled, scratching her left ear and then rubbing the topp of her head. Lee was surprised at how docilely Mask was taking it. She always hated her ears being touched, but here Tenten was doing just that and the dog was actually enjoying it instead of trying to rip her arm off.
"Only a few years." Lee replied, walking out. She'd have to learn for herself. Tenten blinked when she heard the front door close. 'Exit stage left much?' Lee had been pretty nice to her for the short while she had been his neighbor, but he did do this sort of thing sometimes. One minute he would act like he was going to tell her all about everything and the next minute he had up and left. The way he looked at her sometimes gave a hint to the reason. Her stupid face looked too much like her cousin's. Looking back at Neji she yawned. Great, all she knew about him was that he used to be friends with Lee and Cloud. Other than that, he could be a wanted serial killer or some crazy nut job that had busted out of an asylum for all she knew. In that case, Lee could very well be the same. At least the dog was being clear in her opinion of the injured guy. 'I love you, I love you, I love you, YAY! He's back!' Was pretty hard to argue with. Tenten figured if she got stabbed in her sleep because she let him into the house, at least the dog would still have someone to look after her. Yawning again, she left the room, leaving the door slightly ajar for Mask to get in and out and went to get ready for bed. She took a shower and changed into some green pajamas with panda bears all over them, brushed her hair and teeth, and went to sleep.
/////Early the next morning./////
Tenten had brushed her hair again and put it back up into her normal buns. Mask seemed back to normal, following her around the house everywhere trying to get into anything she touched or happened to look at for more than three seconds. The teenager was making scrambled eggs in a skillet on the stove, enjoying the sunrise shining through the kitchen window. The sky was bright clear blue, barely any horizon clouds around the sun, and those would disappear when it got later in the day. It was going to be a beautiful day to be outside, maybe she'd take Mask for a walk or something since it was Saturday.
While she was off in her own thoughts, she didn't notice the shadow creeping up behind her. What she did notice, was the two arms that wrapped themselves around her and the tired heavy head that moved to rest on her shoulder. Her dark brown eyes shot over to the face, hoping to see someone familiar and not an axe murderer(she sometimes forgot to lock the back door). Luckily, or maybe not so luckily, she saw a pair of pale white eyes with a vague lavender tint to them staring back at her.
"N-neji." She said both slightly stuttering from shock and in a light breath of relief that it probably wasn't her time to die yet. That relief was kind of short lived when she realized he wasn't planning on letting her go any time soon. Her jaw dropped when she felt him kiss the side of her head gently. That'd never happened before, and although her brain was squeaking bits and pieces of protests of how that was a bad thing, and she really really needed to clarify who she was, like she had when she'd first met Lee(he ran up and tackled her in a bone-crunching bear hug), all she could get out was;
"Did you want some eggs?" He let her go and she got another plate out, dishing the now done food onto the plates and handing one to him. He got forks out of the drawer they were in without even having to search for them. 'Well, he's never been here before has he?' Tenten asked herself sarcastically and accepted her fork. They sat down at the table and started eating in silence. She kept trying to think of a good way to tell him who she was, but the words kept dying in her throat. One thing was for certain though, she definitely looked way too much like her cousin.
* * * * * * *
Oh dear, looks like Neji's a bit on the confused side. Poor little Tenten doesn't know how to tell him! Why he ever know that Cloud has gone missing? Will Lee ever explain anything to Tenten? Is Cloud really dead?! Find out next time on; Whatever this Show's Called! (but only if you liked it enough to want to know the rest) Days End is a real horse rescue and rehabilitation place, they really do a lot of good so if you like horses you should totally look them up.
-Mask the Magic Fox