Greetings all and welcome! All rights to NARUTO go to its respective owners. This plot, Nouka Homugi, and any other unrecognizable characters are property of moi, Caw of the Crow. Enjoy, my friends!
Within the Garden
Chapter One: The Monster in You
"Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no…"
A young girl paced back and forth among rows of tomato plants, nervously pulling at the inky stands of hair that hung loose from her ponytail around her face.
Step, step, step, turn.
Step, step, step, turn.
Step, step, ste—
The anxious adolescent halted mid-stride to cautiously peer around one of the tomato stalks. Disproportionally large, dusky eyes grew even wider in panic. A strangled peep of fright piping from between her trembling lips as she stumbled backwards.
Yes, she unfortunately confirmed, it, whatever it was, was still there.
As terrified as she was, the raven-haired lass had still come to the conclusion that to prevent any further harm from coming to either her or her grandfather's tomato plants, then she would need to investigate the situation with a more hands-on approach than trembling defenselessly behind vegetables could afford.
So, naturally, she did what any other sensible young lady would do in her situation: she dashed into the house to grab the broom.
Brandishing her makeshift weapon, she stalked through the rows of tomato plants with all the stealth of a peg-legged walrus towards her target.
Gently brushing away the leaves of the plants as if it were the touch of a lover, she finally staggered into the row hiding the grotesque intruder. She held the broom at arm's length, dark orbs flickering between either end of the broom attempting to decipher which side could more accurately help her determine just what in the hell was sprawled out before her. Ultimately, she decided to investigate with the business end of the broomstick, determining that, should the creature awaken, she would much prefer to have the wooden handle in her hand than the bristles if it came to blows.
Warily, as if she were tasked with defusing a paper bomb, she stood as far back as possible while still being able to brush the bristles against one of the monster's claw-like wings. The wing twitched ever so slightly, and the girl spooked forgetting that she was supposed to be amidst a level-headed investigation of the creature that looked like a demon incarnate, and proceeded to wield the broom in an attempt to perhaps bludgeon the fiend to death. Considering her precision was nowhere near satisfactory, it appeared that all that she managed to do was awaken the monster from its slumber.
And, boy, with those hypnotic crimson eyes drilling impassioned holes though her skull, did it look angry.
Then the beast gave a guttural roar before charging straight at her.
Did she say angry? Well, she meant absolutely and uncontrollably pissed off beyond all reason.
Forget "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned", it should have been "Hell hath no fury like a murderous bird-monster-man who just went two rounds in the ring with a farmer's broom."
Terror bursting through her veins and a faint beginning to lick at the corners of her vision, the girl did what she deemed to be the most logical thing to do in this situation…she bowed at the waist and introduced herself.
"H-hello, my name is Nouka Homugi! What a puh-puh-pleasure it is t-to meet you! P-Please don't hurt the t-t-t-t-tomatoes!"
At least, the Nouka child thought, if she were to die, then perhaps she and her killer could exchange names. That is, if the monster ploughing towards her even had a name or could even speak for that matter. At any rate, she could still plead for the livelihood of the tomatoes.
The piercing cry of a thousand birds was her answer.
And then silence.
Blinking in shock as she was suddenly left in quietness, Homugi straightened from her bow. She inhaled a sharp gasp, clutching the broom handle closer to her chest. Taking shaky steps forward, the girl wished that she had just run into the house and locked the doors behind her while she still had the chance.
The monster had paused, those horrible eyes still pinned to her, and was heaving globules of blood down the front of its shirt. It was then that she realized it was wounded. Even injured, it still looked no less ferocious. Yet, now that she had properly seen its face, the little gardener could not help but to be drawn to it.
It?
No, it was a him now.
That face, though covered with sickly gray skin and marred with unnatural looking markings, was undoubtedly human. Not even the feral expression peeking through a mane of blue hair could hide that fact. Even more startling, was that he appeared to be quite young, his features not yet blemished with the creases and wrinkles that years of hardship brought. Perhaps, he might have possibly been her age.
With all the speed of a tortoise, she knelt beside him bringing her broom up between their bodies and poked his gray-skinned cheek with the end of the handle.
The monster—no, the boy—swatted at her weapon, blood flying from his chin to land as little "plip-plops" on Homugi's sunburnt cheek.
"GET…" –a pained gasp— "…THE HELL AWAY…" –a hiss of air pushed from between clenched teeth— "FROM ME!"
Oh, so he could speak.
Homugi frowned. She almost wished that he could not. He was so very rude. Though, what was she to expect from this…oni…?...tengu…?...whatever he was? Perfect manners and a little chivalry?
Unlikely. Unlikely, indeed.
"Hey!" Steeling her nerves, the girl whacked the intruder wither her broom once more, "W-W-Watch your language!"
He pulled back further, sloshing blood onto her worn boots. With mesmerized eyes she watched as he collapsed to his knees, the strange markings on his face receding and those horrifying wings disappearing from sight. Suddenly, a much wounded, very human boy was now in the creature's place.
Homugi balked tossing the broom aside before rushing over to catch him as he swayed precariously from side-to-side, "W-Woah! Oh, wow. You're a mess."
Hazy eyes, the same coal color of her own, attempted to focus on her face as she placed his head in her lap.
"…Itachi…"
Now that he looked much more like a teenage boy than a vicious beast, Homugi's ears were blessed with a gentle breath of a voice. Slowly he lifted his hand and brushed his bruised knuckles against the wisps of hair that framed her face. It was a tender, agonizingly longing gesture.
To her credit, the little gardener girl did not become enraptured with his delicate features or become flattered with the sudden fascination he seemed to hold for her. This was because she knew this venerability was not meant for her eyes to witness. She could not help but to wonder just what this boy was seeing now, what face that he appeared to so desperately want to see was being imprinted on her?
Then the word he spoke registered.
"Itachi…" This time Homugi grunted, unware that it was a name, "Did you…just call me…a-a-a-a weasel?"
Incensed, she spread her knees apart and let his head fall with a resounding "THUNK" to the dirt.
On impact, his eyes became focused once more and those gruesome red irises returned. Although he remained looking fully human, he glared up at her from under long eyelashes, lip pulled back in a condescending sneer. Clearly, whatever delusion he had been having was over.
For a moment the hand that was extended towards her face blurred and a weapon, obviously held by a trained hand, was now aimed at the space between her eyes.
The girl squeaked in alarm and slipped backwards onto her bottom. The shock that settled in the pit of her stomach came less from the fact that this boy was endangering her life again and more from the fact that she knew the name of the weapon. Silver metal gleaming even in the shade of the tall tomato stalks, it was a kunai that threatened to end her life.
Their signature weapon.
Oh, so he was one of them.
Now she knew for certain that she beheld a monster before her. More than a monster, really. Garbage like his kind did not deserve that weak of a slur.
The word sat bitterly in her mouth, too dry and too foul than she could bear to swallow.
A shinobi.
"Y-You certainly are a rude guy, huh?" Homugi grumbled even though her voice wavered as she went cross-eyed looking at the point of the kunai.
She wondered for a split second if the shinobi could hear the change in her voice, the unrivaled disgust daring to spill out from every word.
"Where did you hear that name?"
She realized those harshly enunciated words must have belonged to that wretched shinobi-tengu-lightening-boy, apparently unaware that she had heard it just moments ago from his own lips, and was prepared to reply with an evasive question of her own when she was interrupted.
"Mugi-nee-chan!"
Ignoring her precarious position, Homugi's body acted of its own accord at the sound of the small distressed voice, and startled at the cry, instantly shooting to her feet.
"Uh, yes..?" The brunette shouted back from over a dozen rows of plants.
A little head of chocolate brown hair peeped out at her from the sliding backdoor of the traditional Japanese-style farmhouse, a tiny dot in the distance.
She prayed that her little brother could not see the stranger wielding the weapon behind all those tomato plants from that distance. Either away, she unconsciously shuffled to the side in hopes of covering up her "guest" from his saucer-sized eyes.
She could not have this shinobi being seen. He had proven himself to be far less than harmless by the stunt he had just pulled, and Yuta was at that age of childhood where curiosity became second nature over common sense and self-preservation.
Yuta stomped his feet, clutching the door, "Mugi-nee-chan, help!"
"What is it, otouto?" Panic raising in her voice.
"I'm so bored that I think I'm gonna diiie!" Of course, the typically hardships of a seven-year-old.
An almost comical silence followed his ill-timed complaint.
"Is that all?" Homugi struggled to keep the irritation out of her voice. After all, she had much more pressing matters to attend to than nursing her little sibling's short attention span.
The little boy flailed his arms around erratically, "What'dya mean is that all? I told you I'm dying!"
My, he is always such a melodramatic child.
"No scrapes or bruises, then?" She might as well humor him for a bit.
Yuta drawled out a long, "Noooo."
"Bumps on the head?"
"Nuh-uh." He shook the aforementioned uninjured head.
Homugi heaved a sigh as red eyes settled in the back of her mind, "Otouto…have you seen any shinobi around today?"
"I haven't…" Yuta gasped excitedly stumbling out of the doorway with pint-size fists raised in the air, "Are some around, though? Show me! I'll fight them off for you!"
"NO!" Homugi gave an uncomfortable, high-pitched laugh feeling crimson irises heatedly trialing over her back, "No shinobi here!"
The youngster squinted out at her, dark eyes suspicious.
"Hey…what's wrong with you? You're…" Yuta's young voice cracked as he seemed to have trouble finding the right words, "…kinda jumpy. Stop being so weird."
Oh yes, as usual, he was quite the sweetheart. Bless him.
The girl nervously wiped the sweat from the back of her neck. She could not help but to pondered as to why that teenage shinobi had not done away with her yet. After all, he had seemed so keen on the idea just minutes ago.
She had to end this soon, lest the anxiety send her to an early grave,
"Just go back inside, okay?"
Yuta opened his mouth, the promise of another whiny 'But, Mugi-nee-chan' resting on the tip of his tongue.
His elder sibling cut him off, "Go back inside. I'll be in there soon, and I promise to entertain you all you want. Just a bit later, all right?"
The younger of the two screwed up his face into an unpleasant pout. He gave in indignant snort, which even at her distance, Homugi could hear. Eventually, he mumbled something along the lines of "but, that's what you always say", but nevertheless acquiesced to his sister's request sliding the door shut with a resounding "THUD".
Once she was sure that her brother was secure within the house, a shaky breath she had not known she had been holding crawled its way passed her lips.
Stiffening her shoulders, fists balled around the fabric of her gardening apron, Homugi faced the shinobi once more. She was surprised by what she saw. So much so, that she knelt to get a closer look.
The kunai sat lax in the shinobi's grip, the fingers curled around the hilt keeping it aloft seemed almost like an afterthought. Those unnatural-looking eyes of his seemed far away, once again caught in a time and a place she was not privy to see for herself. The question he thought suitable to threaten her over earlier, seemed all but forgotten now.
Strangely, it almost seemed as if he had been put into a trance by observing the interaction between her and her nuisance of a brother.
"Sooo…what brings you here?" Seeing the potential danger draining away in his sallow face, Homugi began awkwardly, swallowing the bile in her throat. Whether it came from fear or revulsion, she was not quite sure. Either way, she had been taught to always be polite, even when she felt completely adverse to it.
The silence was so thick that she wished he would cut it with that kunai of his.
Instead, quite surprisingly, he slashed it wide open with his words.
"I just killed someone who might have been a friend."
Wow. That was…heavy. What a wonderful way to introduce yourself, she thought, leaning a little further away from the boy, who, apparently, was a murderer.
"Oh," Homugi murmured unsure how to proceed, "Well, that's got to be rough."
The boy stared at her incredulously, his eyes slowly returning to the murky color that mirrored her own.
"Sorry," Homugi muttered rather insensitively, tugging uncomfortably at a few strands of her hair, "but isn't that kind of the norm for a shinobi?"
She watched as he froze at her inquiry, the emotion darkening in his eyes. She marveled at how a face could be so unexpressive, yet hold eyes so tumultuous. Once again the raven-haired intruder appeared not to be in the present with her.
For a moment, the girl wondered if his spaciness might be a symptom of blood loss from several heavily bleeding but unseen wounds. Honestly, she hoped that he would not go into shock while in her presence. That would really dampen her already sour mood.
"Yeah," When he finally broke the silence his voice betrayed the torment he felt at the realization, despite that his tone was rather matter-of-fact, "It is."
Again, quiet.
The sun shone harshly from the barren sky. Wind blew tickling their cheeks as stands of their dark hair fluttered to-and-fro. Tomatoes swayed in the breeze, almost dancing away from their stalks. Somewhere not so far in the distance, crows cawed. Watching. Waiting. Wondering. Who would make the next move?
And yet, while the world around them continued to move, neither child dared to budge, anchored in unspoken words and unshared emotions.
The female was the first to move, untying the kerchief from her head. She approached the boy across from her with caution, the glint in his eyes just as guarded as her own. Though her face was stony, the quaking of her hand gave away that she was truly terrified.
"C-come here," Homugi commanded returning to her stuttering, "Let me see your wounds."
The nameless stranger leveled her with a patronizing glare, "I don't need help."
Homugi stopped with her nose scrunched up in distaste, "You don't need help or you don't need my help?"
"Hn," was his eloquent reply.
Ignoring his taunt, she still advanced. Although a frown now marred her sunburnt features, "Besides, this isn't for you, stranger. It's for the plants. I've nursed those tomatoes from seedlings, and I won't have your blood sloshing all over the place threatening their health."
It would seem that he was stunned into compliance, because he let her wipe the cut along his brow and secure the handkerchief around his profusely bleeding forearm.
Homugi, pulling back for a split second, glanced up at his disgruntled face, "Did you…did you do it on purpose?"
It seemed as if the youth was going to ignore her inquiry, because a beat of silence passed before he grunted, "Did what?"
"Did you kill him on purpose? Your friend," The girl moved away admiring her handy work with a critical eye.
She did not expect an answer. In fact, she expected that the gall of her question might even send him back into a flurry. However, after his lips moved, Homugi wished she had minded her own damn business.
For someone who seemed so intent on keeping the silence between them, the speed at which he spoke his one-word statement was much more telling than the admission itself.
Short and sweet, he spat out, "Yes."
How typical. Shinobi really are the scum of this world.
"Okay," Homugi nodded far too nonchalantly for the situation, "I guess we ought not try to make friends then. I am rather keen on living."
"What is wrong with you?" The boy snorted derisively.
Gaining a bit more confidence as he stuffed the kunai that had formerly been aimed in her direction back into its holster on his leg, she deadpanned, "I'm not the one who murdered someone."
"Pfft," Though the shinobi turned his head away, face as blank as a Noh mask, it almost felt as if he were saying, 'touché.'
With the steadiness of a drunkard, the shinobi shifted himself onto his feet. Following his lead, never one to allow a potential enemy to see her in a position of weakness, Homugi righted herself as well. Standing less than a foot from one another, the girl took a surprising note that she stood just slightly taller than him.
What a tiny little killer, she mused, probably all the more reason this friend of his did not see his fate coming.
Then suddenly his back was turned to her, and he was taking slow, steady steps towards the forest tree line that framed one side of the tomato garden. Clearly, he was attempting to make his exit. Unperturbed by his lack of 'goodbye', the gardener shrugged and picked up the discarded broom laying at her feet.
When she righted herself, a flicker of red and white caught her curious eye.
One of the flaps of material stubbornly hanging on by a few threads, which had likely been torn by those horrifying clawed wings he had displayed earlier (speaking of which, what had triggered the transformation to dispel them in the first place?) fluttered into its rightful position laying against the shinobi's back. It revealed an odd symbol on the back of his tattered shirt.
Homugi squinted, was that red and white blob an uchiwa?
Recognizing the small fire-nurturing fan, the girl sucked a distressed gasp through her front teeth.
The sight of that damned fan brought an onslaught of terrible memories with it.
Blood. Blood. Blood. So much blood.
A necklace stark against an ivory neck, too pale to still be living.
Tendrils of hair spilled across a wooden floor like ink matted with ruby-red life juices.
A grin brighter than the sun full of empty promises and unmet dreams.
The Nouka girl's stomach churned and churned as she was ripped from the past and brought back most startlingly to the present. As her vision cleared, she picked up on the fact that the shinobi who had been blessedly stalking away from her had come to a standstill. Panicked, the gardener realized that the shinobi had just barely turned back at the sound of her strangled cry, red eyes she now knew to be Sharingan activated once more.
She needed to get him out of here. NOW.
"I wasn't able to get a name out of you this time, so…" Homugi tilted her head just slightly to the left and managed to smile around her queasiness, "Forgive me, stranger, next time, okay?"
However, she was certain that with those horrible eyes of his the shinobi could see straight through her flimsily transparent friendliness. No sincerity lay behind her words. More than anything she wished to never cross paths with him or his kind again.
However, her babble seemed to appease the boy she could now pinpoint as one of the cursed Uchiha, as he turned to resume his tottering stride.
As soon as the blue of his shirt faded into the shade of the trees, Homugi threw herself onto her hands and knees, and emptied the contents of her stomach into the dirt.
She had lived. Somehow, most miraculously, she had come in contact with a shinobi —not just any shinobi, but an Uchiha— and made it out alive. It was a first in her family, after all.
The sound of a door being thrown open sobered Homugi quickly.
"Mugi-nee-chan!" the same squeaky voice that had called out for her earlier shouted into the early twilight, "Are you talking to yourself again?"
"I wish," she slurred, wiping her mouth with her apron and standing up on wobbly feet.
The girl righted herself and waved at the indignant figure of Yuta, "Ah, otouto, I thought I told you to wait for me inside!"
"Meh," the child ignored her admonishing tut and crossed his arms behind his head, "Gramps is snoring so loud I had to open the door. You try being stuck in there with him playing the nose horn all day!"
The older of the siblings grimaced knowing all too well of the strength that lay behind each of their grandfather's snores. In fact, even at her distance, she could hear each powerful snort resonating out of the open doorway. The child did have a valid grievance.
"Hm, I do see your dilemma," Homugi hummed, "I guess you better come help me water these plants, then. Bring the watering can with you."
An overly excited smile flashed across Yuta's face. He disappeared into the house for a moment before reappearing to bound through the rows of tomato stalks, sloshing watering can in hand. Just before the boy came to an abrupt halt in front of his sister, the girl quickly tossed some dirt over several splotches of blood that were the only evidence a shinobi had ever been in her presence earlier this afternoon.
Yuta sniffed and peered around his elder sibling with a face that was plainly disgusted, "Ugh, some animal barfed in the garden again."
Homugi's cheeks glowed with mortification at her oversight, realizing her brother must have been eyeing her earlier handiwork.
"Uh, right…" The girl used her hand to steer the child away from the sick, "Maybe we should start further down."
The two Nouka youngsters set about tending to the plants with a practiced ease. Hearing Yuta's carefree laugh as he mischievously splashed her with water lessened the tension in the girl's shoulders. For the first time that afternoon she felt at peace.
However, Homugi could not keep her eyes from surreptitiously scanning the tree line for what she felt like would be the inevitable return of the demon-eyed shinobi.
Author's Note: So, there you have it, the first chapter of Within the Garden! A mighty thanks to all of you wonderful people whom read this chapter through to the end. Feel free to favorite, follow, and review for future updates. Please let me know what you think, so I decide whether or not to continue writing the woes and triumphs of Homugi, a civilian tomato farmer caught in the middle of the tumultuous world of shinobi. Your support is appreciated, thanks again!