It was a cloudy and rainy day in the land of Bakekuro. All the villagers seemed to have closed themselves up indoors to stay out of the rain, but one young blonde didn't seem to mind. She seemed to be dancing in the constant flow of the rain as she felt the wet grass underneath her small bare feet.
Nariko knew that it was only on rainy days like this that she would be able to run around outside without having to worry so much about being spotted by the villagers, though she would never dare to try playing too close to the village itself. She would usually just run around in the woods around her tree house that she has called home since she was old enough to walk.
Nariko loved these moments of playing in the rain. She could do just about anything; she could be her and not worry about being judged.
Nariko was at the age of 15 and her birthday was going to be in a few days. She knew that most of the people in the village would do something special on their "birthday" as they called it. They would all join together to laugh and eat sweets or play games and do something called "a birthday wish" when they blew out the candles. Nariko never did anything on her "birthday" because it never seemed like a special day to her, but at that moment she was hoping that it would rain on her birthday. If it rain on her birthday she would be able to actually be able to walk outside and enjoy, but more than anything, she wished it would snow on her birthday.
Nariko smiled to herself and thought how she would prefer that instead. It would never snow in Bakekuro so she never got to see it, but she saw pictures of it in books before and even used some paint she found to paint a picture of snow on one of the walls of her home. She didn't know if she was allowed to have a "birthday wish" but if she could, she would use it for that.
She didn't mind the worn out clothes she would find or make for herself. In fact, she'd never owned a pair of shoes. She was even okay with the fact that her old home was falling apart.
She would just be happy to see some snow just once. Maybe when it snowed it would make things better for everyone, and maybe the villagers might not hate her anymore. Because all Nariko really wanted was to not be hated anymore.
"Yuroichi!" Nariko had called out to her friend, Yuroichi, a small orange cat with bright yellow eyes, who was lying curled up on one of the branches of Nariko's house in a sad attempt to keep out of the rain. "Yuroichi won't you come down, please? We can go fishing for something for dinner!"
She looked hopefully at him to see if he would come spend some time with her. Nariko didn't have any friends, some of the animals that lived in the area seemed to like her, but she always considered Yuroichi her best friend because he was the only one who would always come visit her and spend so much time with her, even if he mostly came for the food she would leave out for him.
Yuroichi had moved his long bushy tail that was resting in front of his face to see Nariko's excited expression which he answered by moving his tail back down so he could go back to sleep. He obviously was not planning at getting wet any more than he had to.
When he had moved his tail once more to look at Nariko's face again, he saw that Nariko had given him that sad almost heartbroken look of hers and couldn't help feeling annoyed. He hated that look even though he knew Nariko didn't know she was doing it. He still hated it because it always made him feel guilty. It didn't help that she would normally change her eyes to look like his.
As Yuroichi began to stretch out his legs to start walking, he had decided that a few minutes wet wouldn't kill him, and besides that, he could get a couple of fish out of the deal.
He jumped onto Nariko's head and let out low sounding meow of approval that let Nariko know he decided to go along with her, as he jumped to another tree with a smiling Nariko right behind him. They both jumped from tree to tree like professional ninjas as they went on their way to the lake they normally do their fishing.
The group was on their second day of travel to the islands of Lightning country. Naruto and the gang had managed to make great timing on their mission and were now just a quick ferry ride away from their destination.
They were all waiting around for their ferry to get there, but the next docking wasn't scheduled to come for another four hours. They had missed the first one for the day because a certain Uzumaki had wanted to take a snack break that lasted two hours long! So now they were just waiting.
"I'm so bored! How much longer is it going to be until the boat gets here?" Naruto had asked for the third time in the past five minutes. No one was in the mood to hear him complain since it was his fault that they weren't on their way already.
"For the last time Naruto! The boat isn't going to be here until 1 o'clock! We missed the 9 o'clock boarding because of you so stop complaining!" Sakura said while landing a swift punch to the back of his head.
"Ow Sakura! Alright, I'm sorry." Naruto said while moving to sit farther away from her and nursing his now growing bump on his head.
"Alright everyone since we still have quite a bit of time before the boat comes back to port, let's use this time wisely. We are all going to split up and try to gather some more information about the island and for the weapon that we need to destroy. We can all meet back here at exactly 12 o'clock. Understood?" Kakashi said as everyone gave him a nod of confirmation and split up.
Nariko had her now dark yellow eyes focused on the fish in the lake. She was studying each fish's pattern of movement while she stood completely still in the middle of the lake. If you missed even the slightest movement, they would escape. When Nariko knew she was ready she began to gather chakra into her hands.
"There!" she said before making a hand sign that made 20 giant spikes of chakra poke out of the water with fish stuck to each one of them. Nariko felt slightly confident as she saw some of the results of all her training. "Alright that's one more spike than last time! I'm really getting better. Aren't I Yuroichi?"
Nariko looked behind her to see said cat staring at the water as well, but from the edge of the lake. In an instant he had swiped his paw into the water and brought a fish onto the bank. Yuroichi would always be the master fisherman.
After the two had gathered up their haul of fish, they started a fire to cook them all since it had stopped raining. Nariko was sitting on the ground close to the fire to stay warm while Yuroichi lay curled up in her lap. All of a sudden the two had heard rustling sounds coming from the bushes around them, but neither Nariko nor Yuroichi had seemed scared. Nariko had looked somewhat expectant of the sound while Yuroichi just seemed annoyed. It was some of the animals that lived in the forest that came from all around. "Who's ready for fish?" Nariko said holding up a cooked fish with her normal smile on.
This was a normal thing for Nariko and Yuroichi. Every once in a while, when Nariko would be out fishing, she would catch and cook enough fish for her and the animals in the woods and the animals would just follow the smell right to them.
Nariko began to pass out fishes to everyone from the large mother bear and her cubs to the owl in the tree, whom Yuroichi felt was always trying to mock him.
As everyone finished their fish they left leaving the duo to finish their own fish by themselves. Nariko, who had finished eating her fish, looked up and began to admire the stars. She never had many chances to look up at the stars like this, and sitting here looking at it now with Yuroichi just felt so nice. It almost made her feel like that night so many years ago had never happened. The night of the accident.
It all came back to her in the look of a dream since she had just come into existence and her conscious mind wasn't fully awake. The six men from her past, the scientists, had come to check on her to make sure everything was going according to schedule, as they planned.
Nariko's pale, unmoving, naked body was lying on the hard, metal table. Her long blond hair lay underneath her and reached just past her hips. Her dark gray eyes stared blankly past the men experimenting on her to the blinding light on the ceiling.
She never knew what they were doing but she knew that it would involve many needles, cutting, stabbing, and the part she hated the most was the tubes.
Nariko was able to take everything else since her body was able to heal itself almost instantly after every cut, but could not stand those tubes. They would take these long tubes like hoses and stick them into the back of her neck to pump all sorts of chemicals and other things into her body.
Nariko hated the feeling it left in her. It always felt so strange and cold, and left her with this strange high energy sensation that felt unnatural and not right. This was the life she was created in and these people were her creators. This was what her life was like every day. Today, unknown to the poor Nariko would be different, however.
The scientists were doing the usual test that they would do any other day, but today they all acted different, like they were rushing through everything. They seemed excited about something, like a kid who had just heard a secret and were just bouncing off the walls, ready to tell someone.
After they had finished with the last test, they all gathered around her with very creepy grins on each of their faces while one held the horrible tubes she hated so much. Nariko still didn't move; she couldn't if she wanted to. She wasn't tied down or anything, but she couldn't move, because she never had.
"Well, hello, Nariko." The main and oldest scientist said to her, Nariko remembered the others calling him Junichiro. "How are you feeling?" He knew she couldn't answer her but, some of the scientist would still speak to her not like she was a person, but the way someone would talk to their pet , or even an inanimate object. "Today is a special day for you. You can tell that. Do you know why it's so special?" he asked again knowing she still could not speak.
"Today is the day all of our hard work finally comes to life." A second scientist proclaimed.
"The day we've been waiting years for now." The third scientist said as the others all nodded in response.
"Also, today is the day you finally get to get up from your table Nariko." Someone had whispered into her ear. This time it was the fifth and youngest scientist to speak. His name was Daisuke and he was different from the other scientist as Nariko noticed. It wasn't the way he acted or anything, but really the way he looked at her. He would always look at her like a prize or a priceless little doll, as if she was made for him to do with as he wanted.
He was the one that unsettled her the most. The thought however of finally being able to get off of this cold hard metal table, did peak her interest. She supposed it might have shown in her eyes somehow because Daisuke's small smile had turned into a full on grin.
He always seemed to be the one to notice any subtle change in her. Like when they would be inserting the tubes into her neck he would fake a subtle attempt at comforting her, all the while with that same chilling grin on his face. "Are you ready? It's going to be quite a ride." he said.
He turned to look at the other scientist and nodded at them. As two of them left to do something, Daisuke came and stood right next to Nariko and pick her up and holding her bridal style in his arms, as Junichiro began to insert the tubes into her neck.
Daisuke then walked her into another room that was completely black with something in the middle of the room started to glow a bright orange. Someone had closed the door behind them and was followed by someone in front of them lighting a row of candles. It was then that she saw it a large tank suspended in the middle of the room with a bright glowing liquid and a strange circle or writing on the ground.
Daisuke had walked Nariko towards the tank as all the other scientists stood in a line in front of them with a look of anticipation. Daisuke had slowly begun to drop her into the disgusting liquid and smiled as her face began to sink underneath. Nariko was starting to feel strange. It entered from the back of her neck again and felt it spread through the rest of her body.
As the feeling began to grow inside her, it seemed that the orange liquid that Nariko laid suspended in was reacting to it as well. The liquid started glowing brighter and brighter and Nariko's body began to jerk and spasm in response.
After a few minutes of this the liquid started to turn black while Nariko's now dark orange eyes started to glow, and after that, everything vanished.
First there was a loud crash, sounds of painful screams, loud roars that sound like it came from some sort of beast, and a dark laugh that sounded vaguely familiar. But what stood out most was the pain. It was Nariko's first experience with pain and it felt like it all came at her at once.
When Nariko had woken up from that strange state, she had surprisingly sat up all on her own for the first time. She had looked around her to see the building she had always been in completely destroyed and some of the familiar faces of the scientist and other people in pieces on the ground.
Nariko had stumbled to her feet, like a baby who was just learning how to walk. She walked a little and crawled some until she felt like she couldn't go any farther and passed out from the exhaustion.
After that day she had met the villagers for the first time, and even then they did nothing but stare at her with enraged eyes and chased her out of their town, and they have treated her like that ever since.
Nariko still had nightmares about those days, but no matter how bad it was, she never cried. Nariko had never cried once in her entire life. Whether it was back in the lab or one of the times the villagers came to torture and abuse her she never once shed a tear or fought back. She started to wonder why that was, but to think if maybe she had never felt the level of emotion a person would feel that would make them cry, or maybe she just didn't have it in her to cry.
Nariko began to stand up and proceeded to put out the fire. As she began to wake up the now sleeping Yuroichi, she noticed how late it was and began to think it was in her best interest to hurry on home, before any of the villagers came out to look for her. As she began to look around she began to hear the shouts of the villagers getting closer, followed by the light from their torches.
"Too late." She whispered to herself as she stood up with her eyes cast down to the ground getting ready for the torture that she knew was about come.
