Gallery
A Naruto Fanfiction
The kid is back ladies and gentlemen!
Chapter One:
Night Watch
The beautiful curtains caught the moonlight in an eerie manner as the young woman sat huddled in the corner. Her skin was pale and held bruises from the strong arms that gripped her and shook her fiercely in anger, leaving volatile red marks darkening to purple.
Tears slid down her cheeks as the clock ticked down the minutes to another day of noise and schedules, nobody caring if you made it on time or if you died trying.
Sakura Haruno was a girl to be envied.
She was a famous model who took the fashion world by storm with her feminity, dominating all of the worlds designers and making a mockery of those Amazons, women with miles of leg and bigwig hairdos that would look hokey and artificial on the average women, of which they would turn to Sakura and be amazed.
She was what the working woman aspired to be. She wore the barest of cosmetics and the simplest of clothing, showing off her body to perfection while being modest. Her hair, a fair shade of pink, always hung off of her shoulders, swishing about her hips in a sassy sashay.
She was the woman with a wonderful home, a glamorous job, and a famous boyfriend whom adored her every waking moment, or so the tabloids uttered in a mocking tone.
In truth, she was minutes away from hanging herself.
She spend three years in college trying to earn her degree as a councilor only to leave it all behind for a playboy who promised her money and love, two things she was starving for all her life.
Her mother was a poor woman, working two jobs just to keep food on the table and Sakura in clean clothes. She was a cashier at the grocery store and a janitor on weekends, not able to gather a better job because of an ongoing blood disease.
She pushed her daughter to aspire for greatness, whether it be as a desk clerk or the President. She never put down her dreams and never told her that she was less of a person for doing something she loved. She knew her daughter would not fail herself, and that was the most important thing to keep in mind when it came to her beliefs.
Sakura balled her eyes out when she had to drag her mother into their old station wagon after her collapse. At the time her mother was spewing blood and she was but a mere thirteen. When the doctors met them outside, they were shocked to see a shaken girl and bloody body in a car covered with shrubs she ran into speeding down the streets.
The doctors took every precaution to save her mother, hooking her up to monitors and drips while trying to drag Sakura out of the room. Sakura fought them like a rabid dog, kicking, screaming, and biting them for the sake of reaching her mother's hands. When they gave up on the hysterical young woman, she crawled to her mother's side, howling as if she were the one poked and prodded.
Her mother tried to console her and grip back, but was lacking in too much blood and could only look on as her daughter screamed, stopping only when her voice died.
Her mother had been dead for ten years now, and the pain was still the same.
Crying until her eyes were red and scratchy, she crawled from her space, wincing at her bruises as she reached for her cell phone, pink and glinting in the diaphanous darkness.
Ino stretched, warm and fulfilled as she climbed out of bed, hoping not to awaken the sleeping figure beside her.
She had had a wonderful day filling new appointment slots in her portfolio and ordering in expensive roses from Peru. Life as a wedding planner was certainly a bliss to behold.
A soft whimper woke her out of her reverie and prompted her to move to the room just beyond the adjoining door. In this room was a myriad of blues and creams with the picture of fluttering birds and angels, surrounding a small bundle of curly blonde hair and dark, cerulean eyes.
Mikomi, her little ray of hope, was the one thing that got her up in the morning. His smiling face and sweet baby smell tickled her nose as she took him into her arms, swinging him about gently, swaying to a tune she murmured to him.
He was born to her six months ago and never gave her a moment of trouble. He was as much a joy then as he is now and had none of the traits that attracted her to his father, whom now was burning a hole into her back.
"My son seems to grow like a weed. He'll be running his own business at this rate."
"You wish! My child is going to be someone who appreciates the beauty of a flower and not only the land it grows upon."
Arms wrapped around them both and swayed them a little, overlooking the moonlit sky.
"Never say never."
Ino frowned but said nothing, holding onto her son all the tighter.
Temari stalked the streets, bundled up in a faux fur coat as she made her way home. Her hair, corn blonde, was hanging about her waist; a rarity considering her profession as a world-renowned Lady fighter.
Temari grew up raising her brothers in the rural areas of Suna, teaching them how to take care of themselves assuming she met the unfortunate end that their parents did. In Suna, there was a hit out all people over the age of twenty-one in order to find the elusive band called Children who happened to move onto the major jobs around that age. In order to take the greatest of precautions, the government enforced this rule in hopes that it would scare the rebels into submission.
It did not. So the bill went into effect.
Many people died that very day by every technique legal, and a few supposedly hushed up by the papers. It made the new generation unsafe and many began to migrate out to neighboring towns and cities, having to pass strenuous tests to be sure they were not members. Oftentimes the tests gave out false information and you were killed on the spot.
Either way it meant death.
Temari shivered. She had to flee the city on the eve of her birthday and made her brothers promise that they would do the same when the time came. She kissed them both, something she didn't do often, and stole away into the night, having no idea where she was to go, but knew she had done the right thing.
Though she may have chosen the wrong method in attaining it.
His hands were cold and his eyes were calculating, but his promise was firm. In exchange for the one thing she vehemently told her brothers never to give so freely.
And now, years later, she found herself one of the most revered fighters in the boxing realm and has earned much respect in that no one dared sneeze in her presence, yet the victories couldn't fill the void of missing her brothers and the fear that they were not able to make it out of Suna alive.
Forcing back her tears, she crossed the bitterly cold streets on to the apartment complex she called home, while her heart howled out in pain for another.
Hinata sighed over the mug of cocoa as she stared out at the moonlit sky, a myriad of thoughts dancing about her mind like snowflakes.
It was not the first time she was alone on such a night, but it was not without deserving it.
She came from a large family where closeness was not a virtue. As a child she longed so much for those times where the father would hold his children close and tell them of stories where he was a boy and the trouble her would get into. And then she'd wish of the mother handing out fresh-baked cookies and giving her children kisses.
Of course this was all a fairy tale.
Her mother died the very day she was giving birth to her, which made her father bitter and spiteful toward her. Her brother abused her, hitting her every chance he could get, which was usually when her father couldn't hit her. The family kept it within themselves, determined not to be made a scandal of. They ran in the most elite of circles and were disgusted when Hinata made the choice to become a nurse, a low-paid drudge of the medical world.
In tears, she graduated from high-school and worked her way through the nursing program at the local college, having been disowned by the entire Hyuga dynasty.
At least, until a hand reached out and saved her from falling. Giving her the choice of exchanging money for her soul, a price that seemed too good to pass up at the time.
Now she lived in a small, beautifully decorated apartment with a nice car and clothes at her beck and call. Her family would see her attending galas with the sourest expressions on their faces and her colleagues would drool over the trinkets she was allowed to keep.
Still, all the baubles in the world could not protect her from the lonely Christmas nights or the cold bed she slept in, but made her feel all the emptier in how she got here.
Ten-Ten cursed loudly, swinging her flannel jacket over her bare arms and rushing to her old pick-up on the other side of the lot, hoping that Neji left something warm on the stove.
Life as a mechanic wasn't the hardest thing in the world. In fact, the little woman loved the roar of a freshly tuned-up engine, especially if it was nurtured by her hands. She made this her living at the age of three, when her father would carry her to his garage, teaching her the ins and outs of the art closest to his heart.
Smiling at herself, she remembered how her mother would stare in horror as she would bound in, grinning in the victory of learning a new technique while her father would smile sheepishly and proudly claim that her daughter was better than ten sons and she couldn't be more beautiful than if she were a princess.
The happy time she spent with her parents was cut short, as her mother was conquered by breast cancer and her father from carbon monoxide poisoning. She rabidly pursued the young man aiding her father that day and beat him to a pulp, stopping only because her father would have been disappointed at the sight.
Frowning once more, she made her way to her pickup and slammed her backpack onto the seat. She wouldn't think of this today.
But her mind didn't know that and began assaulting her as she sped on home, thinking now of how she saved her father's business and the crawling feeling she got every time she touched the door.
Her father built the building from the bottom up and was very proud at this, for he was one in a long line of men that made for themselves. He told his daughter that the legacy was now hers, and that she should share it with her children and her children's children for years to come, so that they never forgot the family name and the strength and pride that came with it. It took only a short time for the company that "supposedly" owned the land to swoop down upon it like starving animals, demanding the land back. Ten-Ten fought with the will of a rabid animal, refusing to move from where she stood and was facing jail time. Her husband of, then, two years, told her to give up the fight and rebuild, but she ignored him, knowing how he detested family pride.
But another's voice was louder, and she couldn't ignore it if she could.
The man was educated, telling her every angle he could attack the situation and win back what was rightfully hers.
For a price.
She shivered, thinking how she paid that price whenever the wind blew and how her husband was none the wiser, adoring her and respecting her will to fight now that she managed to win back her father's land. The victory was horribly empty now.
The phone rang and rang until a husky voice answered, in which Sakura promptly hung up. She could not admit her weaknesses just yet. Not yet. She settled for curling up into a ball on her bed and taking some pills, lulling her into a lengthy, muggy sleep.
Note: The Night Watch painting by Rembrandt is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.