The Boy in the Team
Chapter Six
Lies fill the world. Masks placed on faces smile and laugh to tasteless jokes. Grim looking grimaces hide behind tightly lipped smiles.
She stood hidden beneath a tall and leafy branch, holding on with chakra slightly coating the underside of her thumbs.
People smiled and called her a hero, before whispering behind her back with venomous words filled with jealousy.
She carefully closed her eyes, letting the noises of the forest slowly drift away from her ears. She was looking for the other noises —a breaking twig, a light breath, fabric rubbing against skin.
Naruko liked this —the light thrill of being the hunter and the hunted, in a sort of eternal swap between prey and predator. She could see Kakashi in her mind, squatting and making his steady way towards her while avoiding the traps she had carefully placed.
She had asked why the Kyuubi was in her. Her mother hadn't answered. Her father had grimaced and looked away.
Quietly, Naruko tensed her fingers around a steel wire. She could swear Kakashi-Nii was slowly creeping forward, trying to reach her position. He'd probably be any second now from jumping down on her, trying to place a kunai to her throat.
She had heard Sasuke fighting off Kakashi. She didn't understand Uke-chan's objection to using his sharingan. If she had eyes like those, she'd use them to begin with —and really, how cool was it to simply have to point the eye at someone to get them in a Genjutsu?
It was easy to see the benefits of being a golden cage. The problem was that all cages hang from a hook.
She flexed the steel wire a second later. Kakashi came down from above her ready to slam a kunai in her back —metaphorically, of course. She doubted Kakashi-Nii would actually deliver the blow.
Naruko's Kage Bunshin disappeared in a puff of smoke, replaced with a trunk of explosives as the rest of the traps sprung one after the other.
Her real-self exhaled in relief, before giving a nod to her other four clones. They dashed into action then, explosive tags primed to their bodies. The first clone exploded in a flash when a kunai struck its neck, covering the advance of the other three.
She knew Kakashi had avoided the trap —it was obvious, really— so she knew he'd be ready for another strike.
She had no time for friends. She had to learn to control her power after all.
The second clone avoided a volley of senbon needles, but fell prey to an explosive tag on a nearby branch. The subsequent explosion levelled the tree, leaving behind but a scorched stump.
She couldn't trust those smiles, because half hid jealousy, and half hid greed.
The third clone found itself struck by a shuriken in the left eye, exploding in the middle of a clearing.
She was the centre of everyone's attention, yet they kept her at an arm's length.
The fourth clone chose to self-detonate in the end, letting the tags run their course.
After all, there did not exist a jail that couldn't be breached.
She hissed in frustration as she moved away from the spot, the noise of the explosion covering her footsteps. She unclasped a bundle of steel wire, tying one extremity to a kunai. She flung the weapon against the nearest tree, before planting a set of explosive tags on the wire and jumping down.
Her hand held on to the wire, before her ears picked up the noise of a branch breaking. She sent chakra through the wire, not wasting a moment of time and twisting her body in mid-air ready to strike. Of course, Kakashi hadn't followed her in a straight line, so her twisting did nothing but allow him to hit her on the side with a punch.
She groaned in frustration, feeling her body pushed back in mid-air. She flexed her legs to land on a nearby trunk, before jumping back in the fray kunai glinting in hand. It hit with a metallic 'thunk' Kakashi's, before she continued her flight, landing on the next tree.
A volley of shurikens nearly hit her, making her gasp and lose her bearings for a single second .In that second, Kakashi flickered right next to her and gripped her by the neck. Kakashi slammed her down on the ground hard, before a kunai plunged deep in her stomach.
She screamed in pain, blood seeping out of her mouth.
"Argh! Ka…" the next, she cursed her very self.
"Kai!" the illusion disappeared, but by then it was too late.
She stood tied to the central wooden pole, with Kakashi in front of her smiling widely.
"Too late!" Kakashi smiled brightly, "Really," he shook his head. "You were supposed to do it the moment we exchanged glances."
"I wasn't staring at you!" Naruko groaned. "Come on! And why am I the only one tied!?"
"Uhm…well, somebody unearthed my Uchiha-plant," Kakashi remarked. "So I'm waiting until someone decides to try and save you. If one of you fail you all fail after all! That's what being a team is about."
Naruko sulked. "That's unfair!"
"Well, then just free yourself!"
Naruko narrowed her eyes to slits. "You placed something on the back of the wood pole, didn't you?"
"I might have asked something of the sort, maybe," Kakashi acquiesced. "It's sort-of the tradition, you know? Someone always gets tied to the pole."
"And I had to be tied to it because?"
"Uhm…it felt right," Kakashi shrugged and returned to his orange-covered book.
"Gah! Come on! Uke-chan! Where the hell are you!? Come and free me please! Kakashi-Nii is being mean!"
"Ehm," there was a nervous call out, which actually made Kakashi stare at the completely visible, outright in plain sight and without even a weapon out Shinku Haruno. "I had a question…"
"You understand this is survival training," Kakashi retorted.
"Yes but…isn't the clock broken?"
Kakashi smiled. "Oh? Nope, doesn't seem like it:"
"But there's…the shadow right? Doesn't it mark…"
Kakashi threw the kunai, which slammed against the ground, a few inches away from Shinku's feet. The boy yelped as he made a frightened jump backwards…from behind the wooden poles. The 'Shinku' speaking with Kakashi charged ahead then, while the 'real' one exhaled and made a break for the pole.
"Ehi! Watch out, there might be a—"
A flash of light, a light pressure against his chest, and Shinku ended up rolling on the ground as the pole exploded outwardly.
"Trap," Naruko finished lamely. She dusted off the shards of wood from her shoulders, breathing in deeply. "Now my jacket's ruined," she mumbled.
Her back felt slightly cold, but she supposed it had simply to do with being sticky with sweat.
Shinku, on the other hand, opened his eyes blearily. He had a kunai stuck in his left shoulder.
Frowning, he slowly grabbed and pulled the weapon free.
The tip was red.
"Oh."
He stumbled back on his feet a moment later. It didn't actually hurt —then again his head was ringing. His eyes moved towards Naruko —who appeared none the worse than before, since the trap was probably 'aimed' towards a would-be rescuer coming from the back— and then towards Sasuke.
The silver-haired Jounin was easily fighting off the Uchiha, without even breaking a sweat.
"Ohi, you all right?" Naruko asked moving closer.
"Ah…yes?" he answered.
"Aren't you bleeding?"
"I…don't even feel it," he mumbled back.
"You're probably in shock," Naruko nodded. "Just…don't worry. I'll go and help Uke-chan. You try and find a moment to come on in from the back and we'll be all set."
Shinku nodded numbly. He didn't actually feel pain. Even his fingers, which were hurting like hell before, now didn't hurt him at all. If being in 'shock' was about being pain-ridden, then it was a wonderful feeling.
"Ohi, snap out of it soon eh," Naruko snapped her fingers in front of his face. "I said, do you have explosive tags?"
He shook his head.
"Ninja wire?"
He shook his head again.
"A kunai?"
He offered his own.
"You realize that makes you weapon-less?"
He frowned, before nodding.
"I'll just have to go with my Taijutsu then."
He just numbly nodded back again. It was starting to piss her off.
Naruko would have much liked to slam her teammate's head on the ground by then, but that wouldn't have shown 'teamwork' at all.
Well, he was the dead-last of the class in the end. She grumbled, before conjuring a couple of clones. "Keep an eye out on him before he falls dead or something."
The clones nodded, and then she was off.
"Ohi, boss!" one of the clones yelled.
"What?" she asked.
"Your back! You're bleeding!"
"Just a flesh wound!" with that said, she dashed back in the middle of things. Really, what was her father thinking, putting in her team someone who couldn't even stand the sight of his own blood?
Author's notes
I'm back from larping.
Dead-tired, but back.