A LITTLE CLOSER TO HOME

Chapter 1

Sara's POV

It was the last period of the last day of school. My best friend and cousin, Ricki, and I reluctantly dragged ourselves into math class; desperately hoping that time would miraculously fly by. Winter holidays were literally round the corner, we could almost taste it.

"Hey Sara, so it's a deal right? After this, we run to Sogurt, then to your house and finally, a well-deserved round of Naruto marathon," Ricki grinned as he turned around in his seat to look at me.

I nodded, smirking slightly, "no one is stopping us."

Both of us are avid Narutards and both of our favourite Naruto characters are from the Akatsuki. His was Hidan while mine was Deidara.

After what felt like three hours of math, school was finally over! The moment the bell rang, I threw all my books and whatnot into by bag, stood up and brisk walked out of the classroom, with Ricki right on my heels. We wove in and out between the people in the hallways, hastily waving and bidding good bye to our friends. Stepping out into the cool autumn air, I breathed in deeply.

"Now this is freedom," I stated, stretching my arms.

"Nothing feels better than having two months of holidays to look forward to," Ricki agreed.

He reached out and tugged at my sleeve, "Let's go, Sogurt's waiting!" I laughed but followed after him. I don't know why but despite him being a guy, he was a fan of Sogurt like me. But I shouldn't stereotype.

Sogurt was only a few minutes' walk away from school, so we reached there rather quickly. Soon we exited the shop with a cup of froyo each. I got a mix of original and blueberry with a topping of Oreo bits. Ricki had a mix of red velvet cake and chocolate with chocolate chips. As we slowly walked down the pavement towards my house, he posed a random question.

"Ne Sara, what do you think is the life of the Akatsuki like?" he asked thoughtfully.

I raised an eyebrow, "what do you mean?"

"As in, how do you think they behave normally when they are not on missions or whatever?" he explained, while poking around his cup of froyo with his spoon.

"Ah," I smiled, "who knows. Maybe they will show a side of them that nobody else knows."

"Hmm, that's possible."

After that we fell into silence. It wasn't awkward, it never was. We knew that the other was deep in thought, and we respected that fact. All of a sudden, a gust of strong wind blew towards us. I growled softly; I hate it when the wind was so annoying.

"Gah, this is irritating, stop it already!" Ricki yelled, pushing his bangs out of her face. But instead of stopping, the wind picked up speed.

That's when I realized that the wind was not blowing in only one direction, it was going in circles. Now that was really weird. However it did not stop there. The air around us became grey, like there was dust in there. I looked around and gasped. The grey-ish wind was now surrounding the two of us, like a circular wall preventing us from seeing the outside.

Then, I felt my feet leaving the ground. I was being lifted into the air by the wind! Floating in midair, I turned to look at Ricki. He was in the same predicament as I was, except that he was screaming his head off. If we weren't in that situation, I would have face palmed. I reached out and grabbed his outstretched hand; the two of us held on to each other tightly.

When we were some distance off the ground, the wind got even stronger as it tried to force as apart. I gritted my teeth and held onto Ricki's hand tighter. It was no use, I could feel his hand slipping from my grasp. The moment we separated, the wind pushed us further and further away from each other. I could hear Ricki's screams fading off into the distance. Suddenly, I felt light-headed and before I knew it, I was out.

I was forced awake by a sudden jolt of energy that coursed through my body, like an electric shock. I groaned, lifting up my hands to rub my eyes; my butt felt so sore and my head was throbbing. I realized that I was lying down on my back, with my backpack still strapped onto my shoulders. So I was kind of lying down on my backpack.

I cracked open my eyes, the grey wind was gone and the sun was shining brightly again. Slowly sitting up, I massaged my temples with my fingers. I looked around. I was sitting on some sort of grassy field with one or two lone trees. There was a rocky wall on my left and never-ending grass and sky on my right. I was sure this wasn't where the wind "attacked" us; looks like I was transported somewhere else.

I twisted by body around to get a better look, and that's when I spotted them standing some distance away from me.

Two men. Two very familiar men.

This is my first fanfic, hopefully it was ok :) Guess who the two mysterious people are ;) I will continue to write the second chapter and update as soon as possible. Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or the Akatsuki, but I do own Sara and Ricki.