Hinata lay unconscious on the ground, the medical ninjas frantically surrounding her. "Back up! Give her some space!" one male medic exclaimed. The blonde boy looked anxiously at the Hyuuga's limp body before him, her white orbs half hidden under her pale eyelids. Naruto glared at the dark brunette a few feet away from him, the other boy's sensei still trying to calm him down. "What an ass swipe." he muttered darkly to himself. To fight someone weaker than him in such an unfair way. It made him sick. He watched as the thick mass of crimson liquid continued to dribble down the ill girl's chin, never seeming to stop.
The hyperactive ninja gritted his teeth together, his eyebrows narrowing. It just frustrated him! He dragged his hand through the small puddle of blood from where the young girl had once laid, the stretcher that she was now on already disappearing from the room. He clenched his fists as he brought his bloody covered hand in front of him, aiming it towards the girl's cousin, Neji. Everyone stared in awe at his next words. "I vow to win." Nothing but determination could be seen in his blue eyes.
Several yards away, leaning casually against the ebony iron bars that separated the other genin from the bloody sight, stood Kankuro, a tall brunette who was in his mid teens. Two other teenagers stood next to him: one a blonde female and the other an auburn haired male. The two beside him, who one could only guess were his siblings due to their close resemblance of each other, had dull expressions plastered on their faces, appearing bored as the Hyuuga's body was carried off on a stretcher.
Kankuro smirked in amusement while the blonde ninja continued to have a stare down with the agitated Neji. He chuckled. "I can't believe it! Little punk doesn't even know when he can't win against an opponent out of his league!" He began to mock the boy. Temari only nodded in agreement. They watched as the two ninjas finally unlocked their gazes from one another, returning back to their teams of three. 'I wonder when Gaara is going to go...' Temari thought to herself, glancing out of the corner of her eye to look at her younger brother.
Her breaths ceased when she noticed the sharp flare of his nostrils and his eyes widen. He suddenly turned his head away from her, his left hand gripping some of his hair tightly. 'Is he having an attack again?' she thought, a little alarmed now. 'If he doesn't suppress it back, he could ruin the entire mission!'
Kankuro, sensing something wrong, faced Gaara too. He frowned at what he saw. 'Eww. Don't tell me it's that thing inside of him reacting to the blood again.'
He heard someone call his name from up above and turned in the direction of the voice, his eyes pausing at a man with a sand shinobi proctor displayed across his forehead. He studied his teacher's words and movements for a moment before tapping Temari lightly on the shoulder. She looked at him inquiringly, appearing to have snapped from a trance of brooding thoughts. He came close to her ear. "Do you think Gaara is alright?"
She didn't have enough time to give back an answer. The next contestants' names were suddenly flashing brightly in yellow across the huge screen and the crowd went wild, blocking out her next words. Sabakuno Gaara vs. Rock Lee.
The brother and sister exhaled nervously as their younger brother appeared on the ground beneath them, specks of sand swirling around him. The jinchuriki's emerald eyes searched along the perimeters of the stadium, wondering where the hell his opponent was. "I'm waiting." he muttered impatiently. A flash of dark green was all he saw before the image of a male teenager with bushy brows came into his line of vision. The skinny, slender fourteen year old had a weird bowl cut for a hair-do and he wore nothing but a green jumpsuit, fitting his body a little too much for Gaara's liking in certain places.
Gaara sighed. 'This shall be a waste of time.'
Nobody took notice of the suspicious red head who sat in the corner of a bleak alleyway, facing a dirty dumpster. Her hands moved swiftly along the ground near a set of peculiar looking vials, performing hand seals every five seconds. A smelly substance wafted its way into the hot afternoon air from the vials while she worked, making the Uzumaki's stomach turn. "Gross! This smells like the butt of a skunk! If Kabuto was lying about this, so help me..." she was beginning to grumble to herself when suddenly, the liquids in the vials began to tip over unto the ground.
'Crap!' She started to place them back upwards when she saw the liquids begin to form a circle within each other. 'Is it supposed to do this?' she thought. She received her answer by the liquids glowing and suddenly evaporating into a thick cloud of smoke. A tube of pink liquid fell from the tiny cloud and she caught it in her hands.
She smiled mischeviously, a giggle arising from her throat. "I did it! I really did it! I suppose I do owe you one, Kabuto!" she happily said out loud to herself. She jumped up from her spot and after doing several hand seals, made the remaining aftermath of the experience dissipate from the ground.
'Now Sasuke-kun will be forever mine.' She thought dreamily. She recalled his words from the Forest of Death where he had saved her from the bear. "See ya."
Her heart fluttered at the memory and a blush slowly crept on her cheeks. The only thing left was to find a way to make the Uchiha drink the potion, without knowing it. Her enthusiasm began to quiet down as she searched through her noggin for an idea while she walked down the streets of Konoha, to no avail.
"Dammit! And everything was going just fine-
Her words were cut off by a tall man bumping into her. "O-oh! S-sorry miss!" the seventeen year old murmured, the boxes that he had been carrying falling to the ground, scattering everywhere. Karin sighed, picking herself up. "I'll help you." She reached for a box, seeing the words "Yamada's Richest Donuts" on its cover. Her expression brightened when an idea occured to her.
"That's it! Food!"
"Excuse me?"
"What? Oh!-Nothing!"
After leaving the boy, she ran into a large building next to the ninja academy, knowing that it was the place all the genins would go after the tournaments to eat. She leisurely went through the enormous cafeteria, being careful not to be seen. She snuck into the kitchen while the head chef stepped out of the building for a smoke. She gazed at the meal that would soon be served for the day.
Fortunately, vegetable soup.
'Bingo!'
Sensing no one else's chakra in the room, she grabbed a tray from one of the tables. She popped open the tube and was about to pour its contents into the soup when she realized a name was etched at the bottom of the tray. Ino Yamanaka.
'You're telling me they have names labeling the trays?' she questioned.
She guessed that was reasonable, in order to ensure all of the shinobis got their food. She picked up multiple trays and observed their bottoms, waiting for her eyes to meet with the name Sasuke Uchiha. After a dozen or so, they finally did.
"Kami-sama must have favor in me today!"
She poured the liquid into the bowl, snatching a fork from a drawer full of silverware and mixing the potion in with the vegetables. The pinkness of the substance was quickly overcame by the thick, red liquid of the soup and it faded into its suroundings, becoming invisible.
Karin took a sniff of the soup. No pungent odor came inside of her nostrils. It was as if the potion wasn't even inside of the bowl!
All she had to do now was wait. The red head placed the tray back in its proper place before proceeding out of the door. With a little skip in her walk, she began to whistle. 'Sasuke-kun will soon be mine!'
Sounds of pain and tiredness came from the heavy metal doors as they were pushed aside, injured and weak genins entering the cafeteria. Some kids had remorseful expressions on their faces while others had worn out ones, both allowing soft groans to escape their - for some, bruised - mouths.
Their movements were slow as they all headed to the tables, finding their names under the trays and going off somewhere to sit. When most of the trays were gone, the chef and other employees began to look for kids who had still not found their food.
Three sour faced teenagers hunted through the trays with their sensei, appearing to have a hard time with discovering their dinner. The head chef tentatively went towards the small group, the one male with dark rings under his eyes making him feel uneasy, despite the large distance between them.
Marks and tears were shown on the one boy's clothing but other than that, the boy seemed to be in perfect health. Physically, anyway...
The genins' teacher turned to the chef as he approached them, seeing the chef say something. "Sorry, didn't quite catch that." he replied.
"I said, 'Are ya'll having trouble?' Do you need any help in finding your trays?"
"Yes, please."
"Can I have your students' names?"
The sand shinobi nodded his head, pointing at each one as he said their name. "Temari, Kankuro, and Gaara."
"Hold on a sec."
The chef walked to a list of papers on a desk and began to flip through them. His eyebrows furrowed.
"Hm...did you register them here for some food earlier? The dead line was ten o'clock this morning."
The sand shinobi scratched behind his neck, looking apologetic. "No, I am afraid not. But is there any way I can still get them fed? They haven't eaten all day."
"Well, I heard some of the genins got severely wounded and couldn't come here this evening, which means they won't be able to claim their trays. If you'd like, your team can eat off of the trays left over." the chef said.
"Thank you. We really appreciate that. Sorry for any inconveniences."
They parted ways and the three teenagers began to rummage through the trays, hunting for names that they recognized didn't come back alive or were severely harmed during the tournaments. 'Found one.' Temari thought as she picked up the tray with Hinata Hyuuga's name on it. Kankuro grinned when he crossed paths with Rock Lee's, the very opponent his younger brother had just previously defeated.
Gaara continued searching, lifting up a tray of food before placing it back down to look under another.
Karin watched from behind a flower pot near them. Surprisingly, (and almost questioningly) no one had spotted her yet. She stared intently, watching the last male of the sand siblings pick up a tray. Her eyes bulged out of their sockets.
'Oh shit!' she thought, worried. Where the hell was Sasuke?! Why was this brat taking his tray?! Was he a dumb-ass?! Could he not read the name on the tray?! Sasuke-kun will...
Her eyes only seemed to get bigger as realization dawned on her. 'What happened to my Sasuke-kun?!'
She gulped when she saw the male return to his siblings. Their sensei said something to them. The three then departed off, heading in different directions. Karin rushed behind the one male with Sasuke's tray, keeping a safe distance from him in order to not be seen.
The person in front of her kept hopping from roof to roof very slowly, making Karin believe it had taken hours before he had stopped. He jumped to the ground and slipped inside of an apartment. Minutes later his sister arrived. Then, about five minutes later, his brother and his sensei came. 'Why did they split it up like that? Why not come in the same direction all at once?' she wondered.
It was very...interesting for them to do, to say the least. Something was up with this team... oh well. Her main focus was to get the bowl of soup from the mysterious sand kid! She performed a few hand seals, turning into a puff of smoke. A fly was now in the place of where she had once stood. She flew through a crack in the front door of the apartment, coming into a tiny living room.
"Alright. Everyone knows the schedule for the next few months, right?" the adult shinobi asked his pupils.
"Training in the afternoon and collecting information on the village at night, correct?" A boy with purple markings on the sides of his face, which if she remembered accurately was named Kankuro, responded back.
"Yes. Any more questions?"
Silence filled the air. "No? Then you are released to your rooms."
The siblings left. Karin buzzed her way to the room Gaara had disappeared into. He sat on the bed, putting the tray on his lap. He unwrapped the plastic spoon from the paper towel that accompanied the tray and stuck the spoon in the soup.
'Oh my god! What am I going to do?! I need that for Sasuke-kun!'
Karin laid out the possibilities in her head. She could either (one): Transform back into her usual self, attempt to perform some type of ninjutsu on him which will cause him to become paralyzed, and then steal the bowl by force. Or she could (two): Simply do nothing.
She was settling more with the latter since she knew that in a matter of seconds, Gaara was going to consume the potion, making its purpose go into affect. And if she were to appear before him, he'd...she cringed at the very thought of the outcome itself. Plus, potion affects aside, she didn't know what this boy was capable of. People seemed wary of him and his chakra had a very dark feeling to it, almost allowing a shiver to go down her spine.
She decided to just watch and see in the end, hoping Kabuto could help her again another time. Gaara stirred some of the vegetables around, looking suspiciously at the bowl. She arched an eyebrow.
'What's his problem? Why won't he just eat it already?'
He sniffed the bowl, pinching a green bean between his thumb and forefinger, studying it closely. Karin became shocked when she realized what he was doing. 'He's checking to see if it's poisoned.' She thought in awe. 'Where the heck did these people exactly come from?!'
He at last scooped a spoonful of the soup, bringing it up to his lips. He opened wide and sucked on the spoon. Karin's heart stopped. What was going to happen? Was he going to turn into something? Was the potion's affect still going to take place despite her being a fly?
Karin couldn't help but to get a little angry when she saw the boy appear to have not been affected at all after drinking the potion. He continued eating the soup, not uttering out a peep. 'Was the potion a dud?' Karin thought.
When the teenager was done with his meal he opened up his window and escaped into the darkness of the night, fitting in with it perfectly. Karin puffed back into her human form, following after him.
"Where is he going?" she muttered to herself. She was eager to see what would happen next. Perhaps he'd see a girl wandering the streets and fall instantly for her. She smirked at that. And when their wedding would take place, they'd have to thank her for it! She chuckled to herself. As if! This guy appeared to be a loner and with how her luck was starting to be, she was pretty confident no one would encounter the sand boy tonight. The potion lasted for only one hour. If no one were to bump into Gaara before the hour was up, the potion's affects wouldn't take place. But if he were to...
Gaara came to a halt on a random roof and sat down. He looked up at the night sky. Karin gazed with him, admiring the stars' beauty. They stayed like that for thirty to forty-five minutes when Karin suddenly heard the boy shift uncomfortably on the roof, knocking off something. He began to mutter out words and he covered his head in his hands. She could no longer see his face clearly.
'What the...?'
The boy then disappeared. She got up from her seated position, glancing urgently around the roofs near her. She tried to sense his chakra. She couldn't feel anything besides the people sleeping soundly in the houses below her.
She closed her eyes frustrated. Dammit! What could she do?!
The loveless boy had been sitting on the roof silently when he had smelt it. The fresh smell of blood. It had been so enticing, the salty, sweet smell hitting his nostrils on full force. He had began to feel it again. The itch. The want. The thing he most needed in his life. The need to kill. The need to feel... alive.
Blood lust became the only thing on his mind and his vision became hazy. He began to feel the usual sharp pain strike him on the sides of his forehead, pounding hard. 'Feed me, Gaara. Feed me. I'm hungry, Gaara. Let us both feel... ALIVE.' A voice demanded from the back of his mind.
"Yes, mother. I'll quench our thirsts. Our hungers." he replied back aloud. Clutching the sides of his head where the pain refused to subside, he headed straight for the place where the bloody scent was coming from.
Hinata Hyuuga slept on the hospital bed, dreaming of commercials. Her family hadn't even bothered to check on her to see if she was OK. The only people who had even seemed to care was her sensei and teammates. They were the ones who came to visit her and gave her get-well cards and flowers.
They were so nice. She was very grateful for them. She wished she could be stronger though, so they wouldn't have had to visit her in the first place. Their was blood still oozing out in certain places of her body, something which could've been entirely avoided if not for her weakness. But it was very little, prompting Hinata to not inform her nurses or her teammates of the small, looked-over detail.
If only she had known what not telling that little detail would result to. Sabakuno Gaara stood on the side of the bed facing Hinata, watching her chest heave up and down. He couldn't see her face; her raven locks were in the way.
He could already feel his hands covered with her warm blood. But he needed her looking at him when he did it. He wanted her to see his crazed face when he engulfed her completely in his hands and sand. He maneuvered the sand unto the bed, encircling it around the girl's waist and wrists. He turned her on her back, her wrists chained down to the sides of the bed by his sand. He parted the hair of curtain from her face and...
He arched an eyebrow. For some peculiar reason, he honestly didn't feel the urge to kill her any more. He became astonished to find his sand already taking its place inside of his gourd. She just... couldn't be killed. He cocked his head to the side, curious. Actually, now that he thought about it, the girl was kinda cute. Maybe even a little more than cute... He suddenly shook his head vigorously. What the hell was he thinking?
He was the infamous Gaara of the Sand. People feared him. Hated him. He hated them too. He murdered people to have a meaning in life. To feel alive. So why is it that he couldn't kill this one fragile girl? Why was her blood still pulsing through her veins? Why was her heart still going pitter patter against her chest?
She should be lifeless underneath him, eyes wide, and her blood and intestines every where. He has killed others similar to her before. So why? Why...
He snapped out of his thoughts when he heard someone coming near the door. He snuck out of the window from where he had came, going back to his apartment. What the hell was going on with him?
A/N: Please excuse any errors in this chapter. It is 3:37 a.m. and I am tired. I dedicate this story to my friend Dotchi13, who was the challenger that I accepted this challenge from. This will be rated T for now but I promise in future chapters it will be rated m for certain reasons. They are kids for now so the rating won't change most likely for a few chapters. This will follow the manga/anime but of course, their will be some changes. This hints at NaruHina for that^ reason so if you don't like it, don't read. IT IS GAARAHINA! But obviously I got to get Hinata away from liking Naruto. The potion was a love potion, if no one got it by now. :P Review/comment, fav/follow(if you will), and I accept criticism but NOT flames! I will cut you just as deep. And really, even though fav/follows are cool, I only really care about reviews. They will determine how fast I update(well, besides Dotchi13 :3). I hope you like Dotchi! :D Thanks. ~ Sandman out