D o y o u b e l i e v e i n G o d ?
"
DRIP
D R O P
DRIP
D R O P
"
Dear God, let the rain fall.
L e t m e g e t t h r o u g h t h i s.
~OPERATION SHINOBI: EMOTION CONTAINERS~
C h a p t e r 1 : T h e A d o l e s c e n t S o l d i e r.
It was dark. A little girl sat hunched over a loose notebook made from what looked like hundreds of dirty parchments, some torn, others stained, some with messy scrawls and doodles along the sides. She fiddled with the raffia string that held the pages together, redoing the messy knot and thus securing the mismatched papers to their makeshift cardboard binding.
She slowly flipped the switch on her flashlight, narrowing her eyes at the sudden brightness. The light brought her green eyes to life, it danced in her dilated pupils and lit up the pale textured canvas that was her face.
Under the bright light, you could see her scars clearly. You could see how battle-worn this 11 year old really was. You could see the now barely visible gash that ran through the middle of her large forehead. You could see the various minuscule cuts that dusted her otherwise rosy cheeks. You could see the bruised chin and the eye-bags and the cut lip that made up her otherwise very pretty face.
This is why she prefers the dark.
She tightened the thin blanket over her tiny form and doubled over. Her left hand gripped the flashlight, while her right hand held firmly onto a broken pen. She pressed the tip of the pen into the parchment, dragging it across; once, twice, three times.
Still no ink.
'Damn. And I snatched this from that jackass Corporal too! Maybe Naruto could get me another one?' she thought to herself. 'No way. That douche is even cheaper than Kakashi.'
After much swearing and much scratched apart parchment later, ink somewhat flowed from the broken pen.
The girl's eyes brightened mischievously. She tucked a rosette strand of hair behind her ear and began to write.
We scavenged near the military dumping site today. Still not much to be found. Naruto found some leftover sandwiches in one of the bins and almost choked to death when he stuffed the thing down his throat. Lucky bastard. Can't blame him though, we were all starving, we haven't found any clean food for days. He offered the rest to me and Sasuke, nothing has ever tasted so heavenly. Who cares where it came from? It's edible. When Kakashi arrived, he made us stuff our fingers down our throats to vomit the crap back out. He says we can't risk anything when the Intruders are so desperate and with Operation Moon Eye already in progress. Sasuke says tha-
-Clank-
Within seconds, her flashlight, notebook, and pen were under that loose floorboard and her practiced hand was gripped tightly around the butter-knife beneath her pillow. She had the blanket set loosely around her figure, her eyes tightly shut, her brows furrowed. When she heard the door open, she immediately rearranged her face to that of a person taken over by deep, blissful sleep.
She could hardly remember a time when she didn't have to pretend to sleep peacefully. Heck, she couldn't even remember the last time she slept for more than 3 hours. The sound of sleepy sighs and loud snores her roommates made were enough to make her green with envy.
The girl could, however, hear the person approaching amid the snoring. Judging from the deep breathing and the sound of the stranger's footsteps, the girl concurred that the stranger was a male. His feet were dancing across the floorboards, jumping over the other sleeping children and tip toeing between futon mattresses. He was practically racing his way towards her.
Her grip on the butter-knife tightened.
He climbed on top of her.
She grabbed his arm and pinned him beneath her, the butter knife dangling over his shadowed face.
He struggled and squirmed, obviously trying to throw her off of him. Finally the stranger fell still and let out a long sigh.
"Sakura. It's me."
The girl's fierceness hovered over them for a moment, like a bubble. And just like that, a pop of realization, and it was gone.
"I'm sorry Sasuke-kun, but you scared me!" the girl cried, hiding the butter knife back beneath her stiff pillow.
The boy scoffed at her, then proceeded to glare when she merely gave him a blank stare.
"Ch. Sakura. Off me, now." he demanded.
"But Sasuke-chan, you're so warm and comfy." she replied with a smile.
Sakura was playing this to her advantage. She knew how much Sasuke despised human contact, and how he avoided it at all costs.
Plus, he needed to pay for scaring the crap out of her as well.
"Hn. Fine." Sasuke replied coolly, before grabbing her by the waist and pulling her closer to him.
Sakura definitely did not expect that.
"Ugh! No you perve, get off!" Sakura half-yelled, half-whispered while throwing herself off of him. She sat as far away as she could from the boy, but as they were still on the same futon, he could easily lean over and their shoulders would brush. She pulled her knees to her chest and scowled at his bemused face.
The smirk he gave her was irritatingly infectious.
"You asked for it, Haruno."
By the time they were under her ratty blanket and the flashlight was turned back on, his smirk was plastered on her face too.
"Couldn't sleep?" she asked the raven haired boy. With the flashlight on, the dark circles under his eyes and the odd paleness of his skin wasn't too hard to notice.
"Hn. Nightmares."
"Operation Moon Eye?"
"No, Itachi."
"Oh."
While she contemplated what he just told her, Sasuke's long fingers reached over for Sakura's notebook. He quickly freed it from her grasp and scanned the page she had been scribbling on. Sakura, realizing her mistake too late, had gone a very deep shade of red. She was desperately attempting and yet failing to grab it back from him.
"Sasuke! That's private!"
Sasuke merely turned his back towards her, and flipped through the whole book. He would pause here and there to sigh dramatically and raise his eyebrows at her, making her even redder with embarrassment and fury. This seemed to only encourage the Uchiha to embarrass her further, for the sight of her flushed face never failed to amuse him.
He remembered a time when a red faced Sakura meant a tear stricken, snot covered Sakura. She would cry easily back then, back before the war and the trauma and the hurt.
Back before the deaths and the lost and the hopelessness.
He figured that now, with so much to grieve for, she just got tired of being sad and decided to be angry instead. She worked off her anger in her training sessions, she concentrated her pain into each blow she delivered. Sakura had put her feelings into a metal safe, screwed it shut, and watched as it floated away to the part of her mind that she had sworn to never visit.
Feelings are for the helpless.
Tears are for the weak.
A mind is for memorizing strategies, not for empty thoughts and daydreams.
A human is a warrior, not an emotion container.
But in spite of it all, Sakura managed to stay human. She managed to feel and yet be empty. She managed to hope and to have faith and yet, not to dream. She managed to stay a child, and yet grow up.
Sasuke still wasn't sure wether this was to be considered an improvement.
"Sasuke, please."
"No."
"Bastard. You give it back right now!"
"Make me."
-Thud-
Sakura held the notebook above her head in triumph, while Sasuke used the flashlight to examine the fresh blue bruise on his shoulder; the result of contact with Sakura's iron fist.
Definitely not an improvement at all.
"If you wanna read it so badly, you could have asked, Sasuke-kun," said Sakura as she picked up her pen and continued to write.
Sasuke watched her hand move across the parchment, her words dancing under the brightness of the flashlight. He spotted his name a couple of times, each scrawled 'Sasuke' was like a friendly wave, a reminder that this girl was in fact more than a warrior, that she was his friend, that she cared enough to include him and her friends in this childish documentation about her daily life and meaningless things; as if all of this would be something she'd want to look back on in the future.
He couldn't explain what he felt at that moment, under the ratty blanket with her. If he would compare it to another feeling, he'd say it felt as if he was feeling… grateful.
"You're writing about the mission today," he stated while fingering the peeling paint that made up the dirty walls next to her futon.
"Yes. And you. And that thing you said about survival of the fittest. Do you really think the government is considering killing off Area 35/139E?"
"Hn."
"But the military base here is one of the best on Planet 3!"
"Don't you mean Earth?"
"Sasuke, we don't know wether that legend Kakashi told us is true."
"His story checks out. Here, I found this in the Document Chamber."
Sasuke gestured to his pocket, and Sakura's eyes widened with childish delight.
The boy reached into the hand stitched pocket, (which was sewn into his cotton pants to hide the large hole that Naruto made) and took out two thin pieces of metal, which were held together by tubes filled with white liquid.
He extended the tubes, the white liquid becoming more opaque as he did so. Soon the small metal resembled a glowing, hollow cube. Sakura handed him the flashlight, and moved closer to him.
"Go on, then."
Sasuke gingerly placed the flashlight beneath the cube, shining the light on the underside of the prism.
Instantly, a large holographic globe appeared from the cube. It filled the space between them, lighting up the thin blanket over their heads. As they moved further away from each other beneath the blanket, the hologram expanded.
"I can't believe this hologram transmitter still works. Oh, wow. Is that Planet 3?" asked Sakura in disbelief, turning her head to face Sasuke.
"Earth," he corrected her. "Before the war."
The image before them was breathtaking. The cube was bobbing up and down , turning slightly to the left each time it hit the glass lens of the flashlight. The hologram seemed lifelike, it was turning slowly before the two children, it's colours reflecting off of their awed faces.
Sakura could see the rocky textures of the mountains, the green lands surprisingly not littered with debris. She could see actual living trees; rich with fruits and green leaves. She could see blue ocean, clearer than ever, with water flowing calmly in some places and crashing down as waves in others. She could see the beautiful underwater metropolis, made up of coral and colorful sea creatures; many of which have been extinct for years.
A large blue fish leaped out of the water, before diving back in. She recognized it from her old 'Fables and Myths' storybook. It was a white whale.
She could see the tiny people walking freely, greeting each other, giving friendly waves. None of them were wearing oxygen masks.
"Sasuke, what's that white floaty thing?" she asked.
The boy furrowed his brows, squinting at the colorless airy liquid she was gesturing to. It floated gracefully, lacing the Planet's blue sky.
"Clouds," he replied confidently.
"Aren't clouds brown?"
"Not back then, no."
"It's beautiful."
"Hn."
Sakura reached out for the globe, her approach gentle and slow, almost as if she was afraid she would scare it away. She attempted to stroke the ocean, but her fingers just passed through the hologram. She held her hand there for a moment before retracting it back and sighing.
"Look," Sasuke said, attempting to cheer Sakura back up. He pointed to a spot on the hologram. "Area 35/139E."
"No it isn't, it says T-O-K-Y-O. Tokkie-yo. Tokyo..." Sakura fell silent for a moment. Then suddenly, she gasped sharply.
Sasuke raised his eyebrow at her, urging her to finish her thought.
"TOKYO!" Sakura exclaimed, as if the five-letter word was the answer to all their problems.
"...Aa."
"Don't you see Sasuke?" she started, gesturing wildly to the holographic globe. "Remember what Kakashi told us? Before the war started, and all the land stealing, each Continent had an actual name. There was uhm, Americana? America. That's where North and South are now, I think. Africa, Australia and Earlobe? Eurode. Uh…"
"Europe?"
"Yes, thank you Sasuke-kun. Europe. And last but not least, Asia. That's where Area 35/139E is located."
"You mean, Land N/EH?"
"Yup, Asia was what Land N/EH was called back then. And back then there were countries in the continents, states in the countries, cities, towns, and villages in the states. Each Area had it's own distinct name and identity. Back then, land was for living on, for raising families, for sharing, for walking on. Not for taking, like it is now."
The two children fell silent, each of them deep in thought. The globe and the hologram transmitter continued to spin before them, until the flashlight beneath it flickered, and then it was gone, and the two were left in the dark.
Sakura came out from under the blanket and gingerly pulled it off of Sasuke's head. Then, she stretched her arms high above her head.
"I think, I'll sleep now," she said between stifled yawns. She rested her head on the stiff pillow snuggled into the blanket for warmth.
"Sakura…"
Sakura turned to look at Sasuke who had a somewhat sheepish look on his face, and smiled.
"Don't I always say yes?" she asked him, gesturing to the spot next to her on the futon.
He climbed in next to her, and shut his eyes tight.
"Goodnight Sasuke-kun."
"Hn."
A/N: Here it is guys. The first chapter. The idea popped into my mind after watching a war movie, and to be truthful I've always been attracted to the idea of a third world war. Like, what will happen to the human race now? I know, I know, DEPRESSING THOOOOOUGHTS. So anyway, leave a review will you? I'm really trying to improve my writing skills, so any constructive criticism will be much appreciated. ARIGATOU. :)