disclaimer_I don't own Naruto. Please don't be jerk-wads and sue
note1_thanks Bruhaeven for looking this over (and putting up with my AC:Complete seizure)
i. Introductions
i.e., The Craptastic Situation
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Hide-and-seek is a horrible game, especially when you're the genius hiding in the cabinet. By the time the seeker is hollering "ready or nooot, here I cooome", your bangs are plastered to your sweaty forehead and it feels like if you wrung yourself out the perspiration would just waterfall out of your twisted body. Speaking of twisted; there's also that wonderful acute scoliosis afflicting your spine due to the way you've pretzeled yourself into the puny space.
Like I said: genius.
Anyways, those are all just comparatively mild inconveniences. The worst is the lack of air and how unexpectedly dark these cabinet spaces are. It's not even just dark; it's black, like spilled ink black. Matte black. So black your-ears-throb black. You get the picture. And you're all scrunched up in that blackness, trying to breath quietly through your mouth because there's not enough air but you can't be too loud either or else you'll be found.
It's like being blindfolded and shoved into a sauna that's built into some six year old's Barbie Dreamhouse dollhouse: really, really small and really, really cramped. My neck is cricked in three different places and I'm afraid my disk is slipping because the human skeleton is definitely not made to bend this way. Plus I think I'm killing myself by just breathing.
The air is getting heavier and I suspect sixty percent of what I'm inhaling is carbon dioxide because I'm a stupid eukaryote and it makes me wish I had one of those stupid bonsai trees in here to synthesize some stupid oxygen because I'm slowly being killed by my own stupid mitochondria. Damn you, Krebs Cycle.
When I catch myself wishing I was a prokaryote so I could do some nifty anaerobic respiration and not be seriously inconvenienced by this whole lack of oxygen thing, I begin to suspect that I'm probably a little delirious. And then I think "cool" because I've never been delirious before, which then makes me realize I really am going off the deep end.
By now, even the most stubborn hiders would have probably risked cracking open the door just a smidgeon for some seriously needed ventilation. But every time I was tempted, I see that wild, helloooo there grin and the industrial sized scissors in his hands and I endure. The fear of giving myself away dropkicks my discomfort of slow asphyxiation to the back row, so I don't move and my brain is getting high on my self-produced carbon dioxide while I feel like I'm being crushed in the clammy embrace of a morbidly obese, shirtless man who is sweating. Profusely.
And I know I already said "the worst" but I don't really care. Because you know what's really the worst? Like, what sucks even more than being a eukaryote in a tiny, closed off space without a bonsai tree? It's being a eukaryote in a tiny, closed off space without a bonsai tree and being absolutely scared shitless.
Because fear just takes everything to The Next Level. Now, not only am I being suffocated beneath a fat man's rolls, but it also feels like the Energizer Bunny is using my chest as its new bass drum: bam bam bam bam bam bam bam. And I'm probably developing claustrophobia. I don't know if I passed out yet because it's too dark to tell whether I'm conscious or not and my head is spinning except I can't see anything spin and then everything feels like it's whirling and I'm whirling and tumbling in this inky-matte-ear-throbbing black bam bam bam and I can sense hysteria lying in the outer edges of my thoughts, crouched in predatory anticipation with its tail twitching and giving me with that wild, helloooo there grin and waiting and bam bam bam bam industrial scissors and bam bam bam I'm terrified.
Outside I think I hear the click the metal push handle being pressed and it's like someone hit the pause button. My breath stops in my throat and I think even my heart stopped for a beat or two. I think I prayed. Then there is a whump as the door is flung open and hits the doorstop and some one's bare feet are slapping against the speckled-white linoleum floor. Suddenly the pink bunny is back with a vengeance: BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM.
Yeah, hide and seek is a pretty horrible game. Especially when you're the genius hiding in the cabinet in the Rec. Room of the psych ward and Mr. Crazy Pants is the seeker and loosing means possible death by scissors.
And my mother couldn't understand why I didn't want to volunteer here.
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Author's Notes:
1. Yaaay for kreb cycles! I HATE KREB CYCLES.
2. That was Sakura's POV if I didn't make it clear enough
3. If you're going to take the time to add this to your alerts list, you might as well take the 2 seconds to review. you know, just sayin.
edit_a reviewer very helpfully pointed out that it would be nice if I defined a few of the biology terms (sorry! blame it on Sakura's big head?) Thanks Shinigamigurl!
1. Prokaryote: to keep it simple let's just say that they're basically bacteria and they can carry out this process called anaerobic respiration in their bodies that let them survive without oxygen. Hence Sakura wishing she could be a bad-ass prokaryote
2. Eukaryote: the domain that we and every living organism that is not a prokaryote is classified under. Eukaryotic cells need oxygen to survive. The oxygen is processed by the eukaryotic cell through the Krebs Cycle. One of the byproducts of the K. Cycle is carbon dioxide (which is why we breathe out CO2).
3. The bonsai tree: plants = oxygen. If you haven't gotten that far in your education yet you're probably not old enough to even be reading this story in the first place...
4. This is like a whole unit on biology so I'm sorry for my crappy explanation. Hopefully it makes things a little clearer?
5. Bio-buffs: I KNOW. But just for the sake of brevity, I could only explain this much. Go clutch your bio text books and please turn a blind eye.