Gothic Angst
AHeartThat'sNeverBeenWhole: Good evening! Today, we shall be exploring the poorly written account of a young rebel, a giant wolf, a perverted shinobi, and the village known as Konohagakure. Prepare thyself, 'cause this is gonna suck worse than when Jiraiya died.
Disclaimer: I no own any 'cept Ako-chan, who is my OC.
I only own the right to own the Naruto cast in my dreams... (sob)...
Naruto, Itachi, Kakashi, and Gaara: AMEN!!!
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Prologue: You've gotta be shitting me...
Ako stared out the tiny airplane window.
Clouds roiled below the wings like waves of white. Occasional birds dove and fluttered below. Vapor trails slid over the white painted wing.
Ako needed to puke.
"Mom. I need to go to the bathroom." She murmured to the severe-looking woman beside her. Her mother sighed heavily and nodded.
"Just get back quickly." She muttered to her daughter as Ako stood and inched past her.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah..." Ako muttered under her breath, making her way down the aisle to the bathroom in the back. She'd never ridden in an airplane, let alone a first-class one, but she knew roughly where everything was from watching 'Snakes on the Plane'.
As soon as the door clicked shut behind her, she let out a huge sigh and leaned against the wall, pushing her hair back out of her eyes.
Ako was a thirteen year old of remarkable proportions. She was a Go and Shogi prodigy, and a Rebel. Her long hair, though usually a coppery-brown, was died Abyss Black. A small shock of white fell forward, over her left eye. Her current outfit was all black, from a ripped and hole-filled black t-shirt over a black-and-gray striped tank to a pair of black too-large jeans, chains and spikes festooning her entire person.
She pushed away from the wall and leaned her hands on the sink, staring hard at her reflection. A striking visage, she'd been told many times over; Her father's Scottish and Chippewa blood was evident in her strong bone structure, and her mother's Japanese heritage showed in her large eyes and delicate features, making her a bit less than Pretty.
But Ako had her own special charm. Her mother, craving a new life, had taken her off to America on her first birthday, and registered her and everything so that she was an official resident of America.
"And now Mom wants to bring me to Japan to visit her family..." Ako growled under her breath. "How much more stupidity can my life take?!"
She looked up to glare at her reflection, and stopped.
A heart-shaped, delicate face gaped back at her. Pearly eyes stared into her own hazelnut-chocolate ones. A cap of glossy black hair shone gently in a light that definitely did not come from the neon in the airplane bathroom.
"...What the hell..." Ako whispered.
Unbidden, her hand rose, and her pressed her finger against the mirror, right beside the stranger's face. The reflection winced, but...
Instead of hitting hard glass, Ako's finger sank into the mirror, sending ripples across its surface.
Ako gasped and snatched her hand away. The reflection backed up, obviously just as scared as she was.
"What the hell is going on here?!" Ako demanded of the air, studying the girl in the mirror. Now that she took a second look... this girl... looked exactly like...
Ako's eyes widened.
"...Hyuuga Hinata." She breathed.
Hinata's expression was one of wonder and fear. "H-how..." she whispered back. "H-h-how d-do you kn-know my n-n-name?!"
"I..."
A sullen crack suddenly split the air, and instead of a reflection, Ako faced a dark opening, in which all light seemed to fade, flicker, and die. She stumbled back, but the maw of Nothing just keep spreading, and suddenly, it swallowed her, leaving her empty screams to echo in the empty chamber.
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Ako groaned.
Her head ached. Her entire body burned with weariness. She felt as though she'd run the entire length of Japan in three hours.
"Hinata-nee-chan? She's awake."
The high voice was rather cold and suspicious. Ako opened her eyes.
A small girl, wide pearl eyes disinterestedly locked on her face, nodded. "Nee-chan?" she called again.
Hinata came into view, a wet cloth in one hand and Ako's black leather studded dog collar in the other. She smiled tentatively.
"Um, h-hello. Y-you are that girl I saw in the mirror, yes?"
Ako nodded and forced herself to sit up, holding her aching head.
"Er... yeah... sorry for the scare, I just... waitaminute." Ako looked up sharply at the two Hyuuga girls. Then she looked around, her terror mounting.
This wasn't the airplane. This was a spacious Japanese-style room, complete with pallets and a low table with writing materials scattered on it. Several silk Japanese wall hangings showing the Hyuuga Gentle Fist technique hung where the best light was.
Ako paled.
"...This isn't... this isn't your clan house, by any chance... is it?" she squeaked.
Hanabi nodded. "Yeah. You practically flew out of the mirror. Nee-chan made me swear that we wouldn't tell Daddy or Neji-nii-san."
Hinata blushed. "I-I didn't want them t-t-to throw you out, n-not when you were still unconscious. S-so we're just going to tell them we found you in the forest and didn't want to bother them."
"Of course, they'll be angry with us either way." Hanabi grumbled.
"Y-yeah..." Hinata agreed sadly, "B-but at least they won't think you're an assassin."
Ako gaped at the two sisters.
"...Do you know how I can get back? Because if I don't, my mom's gonna come looking for me, and then she'll find that weird warping portal thingy, and then we'll both be stuck in here..." All the complications, everything that could go wrong, flooded Ako's mind.
"P-portal?" Hinata asked, breaking through Ako's Armageddon.
"Ah... didn't you see?... It... sucked me in, I guess..." Ako frowned at the recollection. "Or... well, how else could I have come here?..."
"By the way," Hanabi said suddenly, "What's your name? You know nee-chan's name, apparently."
"Oh." Ako blushed. "My name's Ako."
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Ako sat before the head of the Hyuuga clan, forcing herself not to fidget. Her legs were starting to cramp, even though she'd only been sitting there for a few minutes. The hard-eyed man before her kept glancing her way as he spoke in low tones to the elders of the clan. Hinata and Hanabi sat on either side of her.
"So." Said the head of the clan finally. Hiashi, Ako reminded herself, His name's Hiashi. "You are Hunter Ako?"
"Um, yes, sir." Ako stammered, wondering how to tell these people that where she came from, the family name came last.
"Hmm." Hiashi didn't take his eyes off Ako's nervous face. "...Hinata-chan tells me that she and Hanabi-chan found you in the forest during their morning walk."
"I..." Ako's mind scrambled for the words that Hanabi had so carefully drilled into her just minutes before entering this room. "W-well, I wouldn't know if that's exactly what happened, I mean, I was passed out... I was just visiting my aunt, and then I got lost, and... and..."
Hinata had said that a few tears wouldn't be amiss. All Ako had to do was remember her mother's anxiety in arranging this trip, the good byes she herself had given her best friend, Anna, the fear that something might happen and she wouldn't want to leave, and her eyes began to burn. She sniffled and ducked her head, swiping at the tears angrily. She hadn't cried since god knows when. She'd thought it would be hard to start crying.
Hiashi's expression had gone from cold and calculating to faintly surprised and uncomfortable. The rest of the council showed even less emotions, though the traces Ako spotted where of anger, disdain, distress, pity, and even, on one oddly young council member's face, a pinch of fear.
She growled at herself and pressed both hands to her eyes before she let herself continue. No sense in giving up the tough rebel act, she told herself. "I'm sorry. As I was saying... I was visiting my aunt, over in the land of snow-"
"Without an escort?" someone interrupted.
"I may not look like much," Ako said with a hint of a smirk, "But I can lay out a good-sized guy in three hits. My dad was a kick-boxer."
"Kick-boxer?" Hanabi murmured inquiringly. That hadn't been part of the plan.
"Yep." Ako's smirk grew. "I didn't have an escort because we don't have any money, and I'm no use to a caravan unless it's in someone's bed," she made a face as pretty much everyone gasped indignantly, "And my cousin, he was a samurai, my cousin got into a fight and got himself killed. So I just told myself I'd come home without anyone else. And I did pretty good, until I got lost looking for a shortcut."
"Hanabi-nee-chan and I found her while looking for some flowers we remembered grew out along one of the deer trails." Hinata added boldly, shrinking slightly beneath the stares of her family. "W-we thought, m-maybe she needed some h-help, a-and we brought her b-b-back."
Hiashi looked from his unusually bold daughter to Ako, who was trying to look bored and tough instead of nervous and shy. Then he turned to Hanabi, who looked cool and emotionless and jaded. "Hanabi-chan, what say you? Is this story true?"
"It's true to a fault, sir." Hanabi replied. "Hinata-nee-chan wanted to go find some flowers that SHE remembered, and I just came because I was bored. She convinced me to help her bring Ako-san back."
Hiashi nodded, and turned back to Ako. "...We shall need time to think about this." He said finally. "You may stay with us until we decide what to do with you. Hinata, Hanabi, you are in charge of her."
"Yes, father." Both Hyuuga girls said, standing and bowing. Ako stood and bowed as well before flicking a salute at the head and grinning briefly.
"Thanks, Hi-kun." She said, and trotted out after a shocked Hinata and a smirking Hanabi.
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Ako sighed.
Hinata had given her some of her old clothes (The younger girl had bigger boobs... TT0TT), which Ako was currently cutting to size. The black gloves in her hands were losing their fingers rapidly, and a small pile of modified (cut-up) pants and shirts sat beside her. Ako had kicked off her sneakers, preferring to go barefoot rather than even wear any socks.
Absently, she snipped the last finger off the gloves and pulled them on. They fit like, well, gloves. She smiled, tossed the fingers into a basket filled with trash, and stood. The door to the guest room she was currently occupying opened out into the garden, where Hanabi was practicing fighting arts under Hinata's watchful eye. Ako padded out onto the wooden deck to watch.
The little girl spun on her left heel, slamming her right foot into a log stood on end. Almost the minute she impacted, she flipped over and slammed a fist into the bark, making a dent. Instantaneously, her left leg lifted, curled, and snapped out, thunking dully on the wood. She flipped again, fighting a silent, still enemy, going so fast that she was almost a blur. Ako watched, entranced.
Her mother had often claimed that the Old Blood, as she called it, flowed swiftly and strongly through her and Ako's veins. She had often told Ako the story of how her eight-times-great-grandfather had been the last of a long line of secret practitioners of what was known as the 'sacred rites'; forms of fighting that had been outlawed since before Japan had first been populated. These practitioners had been known to those who knew of them as 'shinobi'. Ako, of course, having grown up in America, had no clue what the title meant. But her mother had always said it respectfully, almost reverently; there was no doubt that shinobi were special to Amehime Hunter.
And now Ako watched with fascination as a girl she didn't know except from manga performed martial arts that Ako had never seen, even in the anime, and she felt her blood burn, and excitement rise til it pounded in her ears, and she traced each move before Hanabi even completed the last-
"Ako-san?"
Ako blinked, snapping back to herself. Hinata was looking at her with concern and a touch of fear, as if she knew what this strange girl with a strange accent thought. Ako tried to smile. "Ah... s-sorry. Just... lost touch there, for a minute..." she laughed nervously, rubbing the back of her neck. But she saw the bushes move a few yards from Hanabi's practice area, and the cold gleam of pearly eyes. Watching her.
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8D OMFG, it's here!!!
I hope you enjoyed reading this, because I certainly have and will enjoy writing this story!!! X3 Oh, and if you're against Naruto-characterXOC...
Run away now. Ako is not just an observer. X3
(P.S.: 'Ako' means 'my child' in Japanese, but I thought it suited Ako-chan. X3 She is, after all, my child. ;D)
(*The world loves you*)