Wow...almost a year...like, nine months or something...hehe...missed you?
Sorry it's been a while, I was...uninspired, and ridiculously busy. School...(gags) And by 'ridiculously busy' I mean 'busy and lazy'. Yay.
Have fun? XD
Disclaimer: Naruto, still, is not mine. If it were...well, more interesting stuff would be happening now, obviously...
"Oh, do you think she will be alright, Neji-san?"
Neji twitched, and knew he was a fraction of a second from losing his composure. Not only was the beeping of the girl's monitor about to drive him insane, but Lee's constant talking wasn't doing his mental state much good, either. He sat in a chair against the wall as Lee paced around the room, and he swore he was getting anxious from watching him.
The pink-haired girl had been knocked out for three hours. Everyone was mad at them for spoiling their round of Haidu Siiku, but their curiosity about the weird girl (not to mention their suspicion) kept them alive. Lee was completely engulfed by the pink-haired girl's presence, and Neji had watched at least four nurses walk out of the room with annoyed or disturbed expressions on. (He was on the brink of joining them as well.) Though, he had to admit, he was curious about the girl. There were too many details and nothing to connect them. The cave, the charkas, the color those crystals were growing…not to mention, Lee's story had described demons. If there were truly demons – though Neji would scold himself for more than considering, let alone believing it – it added another detail that needed shading in. Now the girl's sickness was another possible variable in the equation…He sighed to himself, fiddling the crystal he'd picked up from the cave. He'd glanced over her body with his Byakugan, but other than being a bit low on chakra, he didn't see anything immediately wrong. Then again, he wasn't a doctor. He'd have to wait for her diagnosis to lift a bit of fog from the situation…
He heard the door slide open and glanced up to see who was entering, expecting a doctor or a nurse to check on the girl. Instead – to his mild disappointment – he found a familiar golden-suited bowl-cut jounin making his way through the door. "Gai-sensei!" Lee cried, piercing the sacred silence of the clinic. Neji resisted the urge to wince.
Luckily, a nurse had been passing by, and poked her head in the room. "Sir, please, keep it down. This is a hospital."
Gai chuckled, laying a casual hand on the girl's shoulder. "I apologize for my adorable student's volume. You know how hard it is for him to contain the youth coursing through his veins! Right, Lee?"
"Yes, Gai-sensei!"
The nurse twitched, rolling Gai's hand off her shoulder. "Don't make me toss you out again," she ordered before sliding the door closed.
Neji sighed. "Must we go through this every time we come here?" He ran his thumb over a smooth edge of the crystal.
"Aww, c'mon, Neji lighten up," Gai laughed. "It's only happened a few times…"
"Twenty seven," the Hyuuga growled, looking up at his sensei. "Might I inquire as to the reason of your visit, Gai-sensei?"
The change of moods was almost jarring to say the least. The grin had fallen from Gai's face, the chuckles dying in his throat. The normal playful air around him vanished, and the man turned with a regretful gaze toward Neji.
"…the Kazekage wishes to see you."
Neji's breath hitched in his throat.
"He's displeased that you didn't make your visit with him your first priority. He orders you to report immediately."
An awkward silence filled the room, only the beeping of the monitor echoing through their ears. Lee had amazingly enough silenced himself, at least for the moment, though Neji wished he would break the tension between them. Slowly, he stood, looking at his sensei with a hard look in his eyes. "Sensei…we don't know when she'll wake up; it could be any minute now. I've too many questions to ask her, I can't-"
"-Direct orders from the Kazekage," Gai sternly interrupted. "I'm sorry, my student."
Neji's nails dug into his palms as he let out an almost shaky breath. After a moment, he glanced at the unconscious pink-haired girl before slowly walking past his sensei and exiting into the hallway. Gai let out a sigh and placed a hand on Lee's head.
"We'll train tomorrow, my student," he said before turning to escort Neji. Behind him, he heard a stuttered "Yes, Gai-sensei!" before he closed the door.
"How can he make us WAIT!?!"
CRASH
Naruto's fist made contact with the wall, causing to shatter. "He damn well knows she can't be out on her own!" He grabbed a piece of rubble, crushing in his fist with a satisfying crunch echoing through the halls.
Sasuke grabbed the boy's wrist as he moved to smash the wall again. "Dobe."
"Don't fucking TOUCH ME-"
"Naruto."
Naruto froze, his breath caught in his throat as Sasuke's nails dug into his skin. "…Listen to me," the boy growled, his irises bleeding a deep frightening crimson. "I don't know what the hell Kakashi is thinking…but if we leave her out there for a week there's no telling what could happen to her…" He tightened his grip on Naruto's wrist. "I'm not staying put doing nothing while she's out there, not for that long…"
The blond ripped his arm from Sasuke's grasp. Unconsciously, he ran his fingers over the crescent-shaped marks left behind. "…so what, you wanna leave now?"
"And risk Kakashi beating the shit out of us?" Sasuke scoffed. "He's already on top of us, he'd catch us in a heart beat…" He crossed his arms, lowering his gaze and tapping his fingers a few times in thought. "…three days, we'll leave then." He looked back up at Naruto. "In three days, Kakashi will back off, he'll think we've decided to agree with him…then we break for it."
"You sure that'll work?" Naruto asked, concern lacing his words.
"It'd better…" he murmured more to himself than Naruto. "If not…Sakura…"
He left the sentence hanging.
Because neither of them wanted to even consider what could happen…
Sasuke turned to leave, but stopped. His foot had bumped against a patch of pink crystal on the ground. He stared blankly at the gems…before he glared.
Their color was fading.
…Was she…
…dead?...
Everything was white…she was practically blinded. This certainly wasn't her room…the hall…the forest…in fact, it was the same color as –
Her eyes opened completely from their previous squinting state, gasping as she fully awakened. That boy! All of the memories from yesterday came flooding back, and she instantly regretted waking up as a headache coursed through her skull. She squeezed her pressure points in attempt to rid herself of it and a groan escaped her lips.
"Rise and shine, sleeping beauty."
Her body jolted in surprise, not expecting anyone else to be around her. She pushed herself up, still holding her head, and looked to see who was accompanying her. Next to her, she found a boy who looked about as drained as she felt sitting by her bed. "Took you long enough," he muttered to himself before he cracked into a loud yawn.
"PINK-HAIRED MAIDEN!!!"
She jumped and screamed in surprise as a familiar golden-clag boy raced to the other side of the bed, grabbing her hand. "Oh, fair maiden, at last you've awakened! Oh, I've been so worried for you! When you passed out, I was afraid for your life, for if you were to turn ill I know not what I would do!" He continued bubbling-over with worry, much to the overwhelmed pinkette's dismay. In the background of his youthful cries of worry, the beeping of her heart rate was steadily rising…
Conveniently, a nurse happened to be walking by.
The door swung open. "Lee!" she spat out her scolding as she stormed into the room, "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times that this is a hospital!" The woman grabbed Lee by his golden arm and dragged him to the door, grumbling angrily all the way. "For the love of the Kage, I should just ban you from this damn…"
"A-Ah, pink-haired maiden, I shall see you again!" Lee cried as he was dragged from the room. He grabbed the door frame to keep from being dragged away – "I shall count the moments!" – but soon the room was filled with a heavy, awkward silence as the boy was whisked away.
Shikamaru sighed, taking this chance to look over the girl in bed. The unevenly cropped hair, the dirt-covered skin, the way her shoulders hunched…along with her ridiculous hair color. Pink? He almost chuckled to himself. If this girl were a kunoichi…she'd probably never get taken seriously enough to complete a mission…or be assigned a mission…
"C-Can I help you?"
Shikamaru's eyes lazily made contact with hers, searching and piercing through. He saw her uncertainty and her fear, and knew how to take control of the situation. "I'm here," he groaned, shifting to make himself more comfortable, "to interrogate you." He heard her breath hitch, and he held his hands up. "Look, I don't wanna be here either, and I'm not gonna drive bamboo under your nails, I'm just gonna ask a few questions, and it'd be easier for the both of us if you just answer." He glanced down at the clipboard in his hand, flipping a page over and p utting his pen to the paper. "Okay…first off, name?"
He was greeted with silence, much to his annoyance. He let out a groaned sigh and looked back up at her. "Listen, the sooner you answer-"
"It's customary to give your own name," the girl choked out, fisting her sheets, "before asking for another's."
Shikamaru blinked. He hadn't quite expected that…obviously this girl didn't know how else to react. She didn't seem comfortable saying those words…they probably weren't even her own.
He rolled his eyes before making eye contact again, seizing the situation. "Nara Shikamaru."
She gulped. "Haruno Sakura."
He raised an eyebrow. "…Really."
"What?"
"Weird name."
"I-It's actually relatively popular in Fire Country…"
"So you're from there?"
She let out a small intake of break. "Y-yes," she admitted after a moment.
He shrugged, jotting things down. "Whatever…" he muttered. "Birthdate?"
"March 28th."
"Age?"
Pause. "…What's the date?"
"Mm…April 8th," he muttered. A small, almost broken laugh was the reply he was greeted with. He raised a brow. "What?"
She shook her head sadly, looking up at the ceiling. "I just…turned fourteen…"
"Did you," Shikamaru muttered to himself, uninterested. "Congrats." He noted how important her statement seemed to be, at least to her. He observed as she ran a hand through her hair, fingers separating the uneven locks of petal pink. Suddenly, her eyes widened, and her other hand shot up to her head. After feeling around the top of her head, she frantically looked around the room, nearly falling off the bed as she searched. "Where…"
He groaned. "What are you doing…"
"Where's my hitai-ate?" she panicked, looking unter her sheets.
"…Hitai-ate?"
Her eyes shot up to meet his, sensing his disbelieving tone. "The only thing we took," he explained, "was a blood sample. You didn't have your hitai-ate when you came in."
"B-but that's impossible," she stuttered. "I had it on, I took it with me-"
"So you're a kunoichi."
She faltered, before ending her panicked search and looking down at her lap. "I…was…"
Shikamaru frowned. A missing nin? A kunoichi stripped of her title? This girl could either be a threat or a waste of his time…not that she wasn't already. "Past tense…hm…" he commented. "What village did you hold loyalty to?"
…
…
…
"…Konoha."
The sound of a whip cracking shot through the Kazekage's tower. The sickening echo of the leather chord meeting flesh made lesser stomachs churn, but one crack lead to another, and another.
The Kazekage nodded as the torturer glanced at him. He nodded in return, before turning back to his victim.
"Nineteen."
Crack
Neji let out a gasp of pain – barely biting back a cry – as another welt began to form on his back. He bit his lip as the nin behind him let out a final "Twenty" and another crack rang through the room, sending fire through his body. With his punishment served, Neji collapsed from his position on his hands and knees and welcomed the cold floor to chill his skin. He had deserved it, by Suna's standards, he knew. He had promised the Kazekage he would check in the moment he returned to Suna. By ignoring this detail and choosing to play Haidu Siiku, he'd disobeyed him. Any other village would be horrified by their level of "abuse". While Mist was well known for having the most brutal training…
Suna was known to have the most brutal punishments.
Neji heard as his shirt was tossed carelessly to the floor in front of him. He slowly reached forward and clutched the cloth in his fist, ignoring the white hot pain burning across his back. He heard as his sensei approached him and assisted him in standing, and he softly gasped in pain as his arm was moved around the man's shoulder, stretching his skin…or what was left of it.
"I hope you have seen the error of your ways," the Kazekage's voice echoed through the room.
Neji bowed his head in respect. "Hai, Kazekage-sama."
The Kazekage nodded his head, dismissing them. Gai bowed slightly, so as to not cause Neji too much discomfort, and turned to leave. The Hyuuga let out shaky breaths, trying to focus on anything but his torn skin… "The medic nin is right outside, Neji," his sensei assured, pausing as Neji visibly winced.
Neji grunted in reply. He felt like his back was on fire…but he could take it. If this pain were unbearable after the past year of training and seclusion…he deserved this. "I'm fine," he muttered as they neared the exit. "I'll be better…in a few days…"
"Hyuuga."
Gai stopped, but avoided turning and causing Neji more discomfort. "…Hai, Kazekage-sama?"
"I hope you know, you will be responsible for that girl you brought into the village."
"…yes, I will take full responsibility for her."
"Hm. Very well. You may go."
With that, the two exited the Kazekage's office, letting out synchronized sighs of relief. "This way," Gai said, guiding Neji toward the medic nin's office. Neji almost groaned…Suna's medical procedures often left his wounds stinging for weeks, due to the sand mixing with the cuts. He just wanted to return home as soon as possible…
Though something told him his destiny would only lead him through more twisted paths once he got there…