Anatidaephobia: Curse of the Uchiha
By Adelly-kins
Authors Note: Randomness is good.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. It is owned by some Japanese guy, whose name I can never remember.
Warning: Pointless and plot-less; you read this at your own risk. Author is not responsible for any injuries you might incur while reading ficlet…thing that is this.
Having said that, and - hopefully - sufficiently scared you, please enjoy. :-P
The room was dark, nothing but the full moon's light illuminating the interior. It was a simply furnished room; a table – upon which were stacked neatly several pieces of paper, a cup in which sat several pens, and a simple photo frame – a plain, brown cupboard with no design carved upon it; a small potted plant sat in one corner of the dark room, and upon the neatly turned down bed lay a dark headed boy, who fitfully tossed and turned, apparently unable to find a spot comfortable enough to allow him to relax.
Suddenly the boy started up, his eyes darting around the dark room, searching for his quarry. He could feel it. Feel its eyes. It was watching him, so silent that he couldn't tell where it was, yet he knew – somehow, he just knew – it was here.
There! A rustle.
He threw a kunai, intending to slice it in half, forever ending its torturous reign on his life. He needed to kill it, wipe it off the face of the earth, erase its very existence; an existence that haunted him.
A swish, as the sharp edged weapon sped, at speeds faster than the normal eye could follow, towards its target…and then…a clang. His kunai had hit nothing but his bedroom wall.
No! Impossible! It was here, it was! He could feel its presence, yet somehow he could not sense exactly where it was.
Laying back, Uchiha Sasuke tried his best to fall asleep; sure that, once again, he could feel cold, unblinking eyes still staring at him.
-----
He sat up, suddenly on high alert, eyes darting to scan his surroundings. He felt it again; he was being watched.
There were several facts about Uchiha Itachi that were very well known in the shinobi world, and to his fellow Akatsuki members in particular, one of which was that it was nearly, if not completely, impossible to take him by surprise. He had, it appeared, some strange ability to be aware of his surroundings all the time, even when he was – or appeared to be – sleeping.
The first, and only, time anyone – to their knowledge – had tried to sneak up on him had been when Kisame, in an attempt to "lighten up the stuck up, red-eyed brat", tried to throw a balloon filled with ice cold water at the apparently sleeping Itachi. What followed scared the hell out of those who witnessed it. Ruthless killers, they may have been, but to see someone so young yet so capable of threatening to kill without showing any emotion had been disturbing, even for them.
Uchiha Itachi knew, at the last count, thirty ways to kill – both the painful, slow, and very bloody variety and the instant, painless, clean ones – a human and could, and would, do so without batting an eyelash. Kisame had barely escaped with his life that one time and for a long period after, never failed to keep his huge sword within arm reach when he was in Itachi's presence. No one – no one – ever sneaked up on Uchiha Itachi.
Yet something had managed to do so. Not for the first time, he felt its gaze; the gaze of his worst enemy, the gaze of the one opponent he could never seem to outrun, outwit, or – and this, he had tried many, many times – kill.
Slowly the door creaked open; inch by excruciating inch. He stared at the door, sure his enemy had finally – finally – decided to show itself; finally decided that the game should come to its climax…
…finally allowing him a chance to kill it once and for all.
Itachi readied himself. His opponent, he knew, was not one to take lightly. It had managed to evade him for years now, and that was no mean feat, as many of his old targets could attest. They were all – every last one of them – dead. Never before had he ever failed to complete a mission. Never before had any of his targets ever evaded capture and the subsequent death, be it painfully slow or instant and painless, that had awaited them.
Except for one.
A few more inches and he would be able to see his target. Three inches…two…one!
Itachi threw his kunai with all his might.
"Wha--Itachi, what the hell was that for?!?" Kisame, his shark-like, and now rather irate partner yelled as he attempted to pull out the kunai that had embedded itself into his forearm.
Itachi narrowed his eyes, searching again for his opponent but his eyes, the one feature the Uchiha were always proud of, coming up empty.
It had evaded him again.
-----
He leapt from tree to tree silently, the microphone in his ear directing him as to where he should go. Their prey had managed to escape the last ambush and was undoubtedly alert for further attempts to capture it. They would have to be doubly careful, their commander told them.
Suddenly the dark headed boy froze, fear coursing though his veins as he felt it again. The same gaze, unblinking and cold, as he had felt the night before. Somehow, it was here. Somehow, it had followed him and he had not even been able to detect it until it had decided to allow him to know it was there.
Whipping around he tried to find it, gaze sweeping over the forest but to no avail; he couldn't see it. Somehow it hid so well that all he could do was sense its gaze – from where, he didn't know – mocking him, always mocking him. Mocking the fact that he could never really locate it, mocking the fact that no matter how hard he tried, he never managed to evade his stalker.
Vaguely, in the back of his mind, he registered the fact that his teammate, Uzumaki Naruto, had managed to find and catch the cat. Again. Their mission was a success. Uchiha Sasuke made his way back to the village.
-----
Kisame was nervous.
It was rare, contrary to popular belief, for Itachi to get into a mood. He wasn't, despite appearances, really the silent-mysterious-and-looks-like-he-might-kill-you-if-you-sneezed-in-the-wrong-direction type. Sure he had seemed that way when he first joined the Akatsuki, but the two had gotten used to each other – had been forced to, really – as Kisame had ended up paired with him almost immediately after the Uchiha murderer had been accepted into the organization.
Their relationship, though strained at first because of the water balloon incident – with Itachi constantly being suspicious of more potentially water-filled projectiles and Kisame generally keeping away from him and constantly checking to see if the Samehada was within arms reach – had after several assassination missions – which they often got because of Itachi's, ahem, reputation in that field – mellowed to a mutual respect, and later a sort of comradeship. After that, they mostly got along pretty well with each other. They both had quirks, but they were ones that the other could, and would, put up with without feeling the need to kill the other.
Unfortunately, when Itachi did get into a mood, Kisame knew that he should probably make himself scarce. And remove any breakable things nearby. There were only two things in the world that could truly affect that seemingly emotionless Uchiha. Pocky – which he absolutely adored with a passion which Kisame found rather frightening (and funny, but he was careful to not let anyone know that part, Itachi himself in particular) – and…something else. Kisame, come to think of it, never really found out what it was, but it affected Itachi to an extreme that made the shark-man honestly wonder if he even wanted to know.
The only clue he had were two muttered words, whispered one night by a distraught Itachi, who had thought his partner had been asleep.
"The Curse."
-----
Sasuke was getting really, really tired of this.
His performance during the mission and the subsequent training had been dismal, at best. He had caught, more than once, Kakashi-sensei throwing him odd and slightly concerned looks. Sakura, of course, had inquired loudly, her face obviously showing her worry, if he wasn't feeling well when he had let Naruto catch the cat. Despite it being a menial task, he usually counted everything as a competition between him and the blond therefore it was unusual for him to simply let Naruto succeed in a mission. Naruto himself had been quieter than usual, shooting rather confused looks at Sasuke many times, which Sasuke had found rather amusing, truth to be told.
He wasn't ill, not at all. Uchihas do not get ill. He was far to busy to get sick, anyway. He had training to do, training so that he could one day revenge his family and kill the man who had been the cause of his nightmare of a life.
It was just that damn feeling! Ever since they day they started teaching the students how to sense other things around them in the Academy, he had noticed it. The feeling that something was watching him. Always watching, never doing anything, never approaching, just simply watching.
It drove him crazy! Somehow, whatever it was, it managed to hide itself so efficiently that he could never tell where it was. Him – top rookie genin of the year and prodigy of the Uchiha! Well…okay, he was the only Uchiha left, but he was still a genius, dammit! He should be able to find this…this…stalker person…thing!
Many nights he tossed, unable to shake the fear that somehow, somewhere, something was watching him. It puzzled him, keeping sleep away as he lay in bed trying to figure out why he constantly felt it. That night was no exception.
Again, the feeling. Again, he felt the fear. Slowly, almost lazily, it crept up his spine and he shivered; not in cold, but in fright. Try as he might, he could never stop it. Slowly, slowly he could feel it driving him crazy.
Again, he whipped out a kunai, again a rustle, again he shot it at the sound, determined to find out what was spying on him yet knowing, somehow, that it would be useless; that he could never find it, never defeat it.
Smash! He had shattered his window. Again.
Sighing heavily, the sole Uchiha survivor still in Konoha lay back onto his bed, trying his best to ignore the feeling of being watched; the feeling that set his shinobi senses ringing in alarm. He could do nothing about it. He had tried many, many times, and nothing seemed to ever work. All he could do was try to sleep.
And that's when he heard it.
"Quack."
Ending Notes:
For those of you who are wondering and are too lazy to search (I know if I were the reader, I would be), anatidaephobia – as far as I know – means "A fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you..."
I kid you not.
Someone – can't remember who – sent me this random piece of information a while back and I happened to remember it and got this idea at 12am in the morning and it is currently 3:30am. Please excuse any misspellings, grammatical errors, or wrong sentence structuring.
I cannot say for sure if it is true, but it makes for one interesting plot bunny when combined with the two, rather emotionally unstable, Uchihas, ne?
Adel.
Added Disclaimer: It has come to my attention that the original idea for 'Anatidaephobia' is from a comic book - or something like that - called The Far Side. Well, I don't own The Far Side either.