A Storybook Uzumaki
(Working Title)
Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon A Time or Naruto.
AN/ This is a small prologue, starting where the 1st season ended and got picked up in season 2, and magic has only just been returned.
Prologue: The Restless Winds of Change
"This is a very special place, Belle." Rumplestiltskin stepped forward, gesturing towards the stone well, hidden deep within the forest surrounding Storybrooke. "The waters that run below are said to have the power to return that which one has been lost." Leaving her side, he stepped up onto the stone border. Hooking his cane over the lip of the well, he fished around in his suit-pants pocket before withdrawing an ampule with a glowing purple substance pooling in the bottom.
Just enough for what he intended.
With no pomp or circumstance he removed its glass stopper with a small clinking noise before reaching out and dropping it into the well, where, after a moment, it landed with a splash in the waters below.
Almost immediately, a breeze gusted upward, buffeting the pair. Smile growing, Rumplestiltskin wrapped an arm around Belle's shoulder before pulling her back with him, away from the well as smoke, a rich purple in color, started to rise and billow out of the well, flowing along the ground like water, growing in size and speed as it spread.
More than a little worried, particularly after only seconds prior getting her memories back, "I-I don't understand."
"We're in a land without magic power, Belle…and I'm bringing it." Leaning closer to her, "Magic…is coming," he murmured, subtly gleeful.
A day later, not far outside the city limits…
Worn sneakers hit the pavement in slow, steady stride. Their owner, a lanky man, but solidly built man, dressed in light, warm clothing, a large pack upon his back as he walked down the quiet road. The leaf of a maple tree held twixt his lips by its stem, earphones in, he hummed an eerily haunting melody as he went.
As if he had all the time in the world.
He paused for a second at a wooden signpost, taking it in. Its construction, the wear, and, of course, what was written on it.
Storybrooke.
What an odd name. He guessed.
…
Mentally shrugging, he slogged on, not really caring how fast or slow he went, just that he would eventually get there. At his back, a strong wind urged him onward.
(At a very leisurely pace, about 2 mph, I would put him entering town itself about an hour later.)
The town screamed isolated community. Just one of those untouched settings where big-city life had no foothold. Where structures were several decades behind the times, but with accoutrements added to spruce them up closer to modernity. Places like this were becoming increasingly uncommon these days. Money issues usually turned them into ghost towns if they weren't immediately bought up by larger corporations for development.
If ever there was a place worthy of the moniker "hamlet"…
However…the Norman Rockwell image was kind of skewed by streets with scattered wrecked cars and torn pavement.
Last he checked…there hadn't been any twisters passing through the New England area.
(Think Vash walking into the saloon during the hostage situation…minus the bad dancing.)
AN/ Just another in the long list of story-starters that I have floating around my computer. Like with the rest, at least with this out there, I can post anything I do scrawl and add to it.