Chapter Three: The Girl and Her Dead Dolls

"Oh crap! Oh crap! I'm more late than Kakashi-sensei on a good day! Believe it!" Naruto cried out, rushing through the busy streets of Konohagakure. He decided to take a shortcut through the park to his meeting destination. As he was half way through, paying no mind to the dog walkers and the elderly women feeding ducks, a certain young lady sitting on a park bench caught his eye. Nothing was particularly special about her: a girl with long black hair knotted into a messy bun, yellow eyes, black Victorian dress, and dolls. Five to be exact.

An unseen fate prevented Naruto from preceeding forward once her eyes caught his. That same fate drew him closer, as he begun to walk to the girl. He stopped dead in his tracks once he was in her front view.

She was currently occupying her time with a particular doll; short brown hair, blue eyes, black clothes, but stopped her work when Naruto reached her, while the remaining four (looked like three priestesses and one normal girl) laid limp next to her thigh on the bench. She set the brush that once dragged through the hair of the blue eyed doll on top of the others, and stood up before him.

"Hello," she spoke.

He remained silent.

She placed the doll in front of his face, her eyes meeting his equally blue ones. "Have you seen this woman?"

He remained unreplient, studying her self confident and malicious coy face, only shaking his head. Something about this woman seemed eerily familiar.

"I see. Heed my warning young man, she is a venomous vixen, without a doubt. Watch yourself." With that, she quickly gathered her remaining dolls, and took only a few steps in the opposite direction for the exit. But when Naruto finally regained more self control over his body, and turned his head to her direction, she had vanished. Suddenly, the sky above, became overpowered by dark clouds, and in the distance the warning clash of thunder struck. Who was she? Naruto queried. The black lotus blossoms in his white knuckled grip shivered, though the wind currently wasn't blowing, making Naruto even more curious. The voice of that same woman found its way into his psyche: You're late. As if on que, the rain poured down and the lightening majectically clashed with the surface of the planet.

Angerily, the down pour showed no signs of letting up anytime soon. "What is it, my beautiful planet?" Ayame asked the grey heavens. Without further ado, she moved forward from her once standing point in the courtyard of the New Temple of the Earth, heading for the hero's resting place. When finally she met the statues there, after enduring the relentless two mile walk through the muddy up hill dirt road, she read the stone marker buried deep into the ground, visible enough to read the enscripture texted hundreds of years before. Falling to her knees, she read it aloud: "'And let he who finds the holy lotus blossoms be released from his weariness of battle, for the sacred event of atonement will again arise, and be greatly enhanced through a more miraculous power, as the goddess will rise once again.'"

For a long time, the quote never made much sense to her, but now after seeing the child with the flowers, it began to clear away its fog. Staying on her knees in the black mud, she looked to the clouds once again, placed her hands into the praying position, and prayed, did she pray, for mercy when the boy, and anyone else who may be dragged into this apocolyptic battle. And for the planet, as well.

Naruto never made it to training that day. He turned for home, and phoned Kakashi on his cell phone, proclaiming he was too ill to make it in. Boy, did he really have a knot in his stomach and a pounding in his temples. The picture laid next to his head on the pillow, turning it sideways every now and then to look at the image. If Iruka-sensei was around, he would come by to Naruto's apartment, cheerful and kind as always, holding up a plastic bag of take-out ramen in all sorts of flavors, and stay with him till he feel asleep, sometimes staying all through the night watching over his young friend. He missed it, and intended for the ritual to continue, though the moment was lacking talking and ramen. And Iruka in body rather than spirit. A knock came from the door, startling Naruto from memory lane. He jumped to his feet and ran to look through the peep hole, seeing Sakura Haruno on the other side. Oh boy! A cute girl coming to my place with ramen! Without taking another moment, he opened the door to greet her, maybe stealing a kiss (if he were lucky and Pakkun could fly, of course). But all he saw when the door creaked open was still Sakura, but she sat upwards against the wall opposite his front door in the hall, body devoid of all blood and turned a grey color, eyes stuck open and rolled back, mouth agate, dried blood splattered randomly throughout the outer of her skin and clothes. He fell to his knees, shaking like a leaf, when some circular symbol he'd never seen before appeared in his head, along with the mysterious girl's menacing eyes boring deep into his soul, screaming out "Hiraku!" in an echo. A thick, yellow substance forced its way out through his mouth, the chunks especially hard to cough up, a great deal of saliva pouring along with it. It splashed and spread all across the wooden public floor, and once the ordeal finally ended (it took literally three minutes for the vomit to pass through) he collapsed to unconsciousness, falling into his mess, his breath causing the liquid to bubble along his open mouth, some reenetering. The omen, vision, or whatever the hell it was disappeared, and all was quiet once again.

Naruto came to forty-five minutes later, laying his back and staring at the ceiling in his bed. Beside him on a nearby chair sat Sakura, wringing out a wet cloth in a large bowel filled with what he assumed cool water on his bedside table. She glanced over, seeing his eyes open, a smile of relief spreading across her lovely face. "Naruto! You're awake! Kakashi-sensei!" she called towards the front door, Kakashi on his knees cleaning Naruto's regurgitation from the hallway. He had finished, carrying arm fulls of soiled paper towels, smiling at his weak pupil.

"Thank goodness." You couldn't see the lower half of Kakashi's face due to his mask, and his right eye was covered by his leaf village head band, but his one exposing eye spoke the truth from behind his masks and from his true feelings.

"Did I really puke that much?"

"Yeah," he paused to chuckle, "Never knew you had it in you."

"We knew Iruka-sensei use to come over and keep an eye on you when you were sick, and now that he's gone, we were just worried…" tears began to weld up in Sakura's eyes. Naruto couldn't help but grin at Sakura's expression of love, slight as it may be.

"Thanks guys, I appreciate this."

"What do you think could be wrong?" asked Kakshi, sitting on the corner of Naruto's bed after disposing of the dirtied paper towels, Sakura reclaiming her spot in the chair.

He flashed back to the strange symbol and the face of the girl he met earlier, especially the girl's face. Eyes glowering right in his, though it was seen in his mind, pupils blacker than eternal darkness, skinny and vertical in their placement, gold against blue. He shuddered. "Not sure, probably just the stomach flu."

Sakura placed her hands on his naked shoulders (he just noticed, they most likely removed it, considering he fell into his own oils) and erged him backwards. "Sleeo now. We've arranged it so that we can stay over night, just to be sure. Lady Tsunade will be here in the morning. Just sleep now." Kakashi nodded in agreement, however Naruto felt like protesting; wanting to stay up with his friends a little longer. Once his head hit the pillow, it was lights out and he quickly fell asleep.