I live! I hope this chapter will calm those who were baying at my door for an update. I know I'm the worst and so slow xD. Also I lied, there was no one baying at my door, my door has been quiet and lonely... I do hope you enjoy this update. It's got some Ai past in it (childhood trauma ho!) along with some subtle hints on other things. *Evil hand rub*
I'd like to thank the people who reviewed, favorited, and alerted this story (despite its old last updated tag...) Thank you so much. Seriously, you all the best. I can't think of anything else I might have added, so feel free to ask questions (or anything that comes to mind) and without further ado~
Silver Streams
Thinking of Losing You is a Haunted Song
※
Ai stood at the top of the cliff staring over at the very long drop. Beside her stood an older man, also staring down over the edge, but with many less misgivings over the height of the drop.
She was only in this position because she'd done so well at water walking. Aoba had gone on and on – she'd officially decided he was a secret narcissist – explaining the proper way to build and distribute one's chakra when on water. During which she'd stared blankly at the sky over his shoulder, attempting to determine shapes among the few wispy clouds. When he finally grew waspish at her lack of attention, he sent her out to try for herself.
"If you're not going to pay attention, you might as well try. A dunk in the cold might help change your mind."
Making a derisive sound, Ai walked towards the glittering stream. As she moved, she pushed that bland liquid – Aoba had told her to give consideration to how her chakra felt between standard and nature-transformed chakra – chakra into her feet.
Abel, laying on the bank, clacked his tail against his ribs.
"I know," she said walking past. Her foot pressed down and her chakra dispersed, forming a solid-ish, platform under her foot. Ai continued to walk further onto the water, and while she felt like she was on an unstable floating dock, she managed to stay above the waterline.
Once she hit midway, Ai turned back to Aoba with a haughty look, canting her hip and resting her hand on it. "Well, how am I doing?"
"What the actual hell, Ai?" he snapped.
"If you think I'm going to embarrass myself in front of you by falling into the water and getting soaked, think again."
Aoba scoffed and flung a hand out to her like he was presenting her before a crowd. "Behold the power of vanity!"
Ai flipped her hair for added effect.
She'd die, and go far beyond, before telling him she'd practiced all night with a sink-full of water.
Given the length of the drop, she was pretty sure he was still peeved at her for her stunt.
"Are you sure this is smart?" Ai asked Aoba, worry making its way into her voice.
"Sure," he answered. "You know how to climb trees and walk on water." Yup, he still sounded bitter about the water-thing. "This is the next step. Using the correct amount of chakra during a descent on a cliff face you can create enough friction to slow your fall and –"
"Not die when you hit the bottom?"
"Yes."
Ai continued to stare out at the dizzying height. "I'm not sure this is a good idea."
"It's perfectly safe," he assured. "If you do get into trouble, I'll come to your rescue." Ai looked at Aoba to find him grinning at her. She gave him a sour look. "The best thing to do is to not hesitate, the more you do, the harder it gets." He shot her another grin. "See you at the bottom!" Aoba jumped over the edge, letting himself go at least half-way via free-fall before coating one hand and both his feet with enough chakra to reduce his descent to the point that once he reached to bottom, he practically stepped away from the wall at a walking pace. Looking up, he spotted Ai, still at the top staring down. "You can do this, Ai," he encouragingly called up.
Surprisingly, she immediately stepped off over the edge. He felt her chakra flare in distress, startingly loud, only making it a few feet before pressing her chakra coated hands and feet to the cliff-side, slowing herself minimally. Ai poured more chakra into her extremities in response and jerked to a halt so abruptly her feet slipped off the rock, leaving her dangling by her hands. Aoba winced at the pain she was probably feeling in her shoulders and elbows. The girl recoated her feet and managed to stick them back to the rock, clinging to it like a limpet only a few dozen feet from the top.
A slight buzz of chakra alerted him to someone else's arrival, which a slight turn of the head revealed to be Iruka. His eyes were trained on the figure of Ai clinging tenaciously to the cliff-side.
"I was in the next grounds over when I felt someone's chakra screaming in panic, which startled the hell out of me," as he spoke the tension eased from his body, "I thought it felt like Ai's though, so I came to check it out. I see you're only teaching cliff descent. She isn't enjoying it then?"
"Ai stepped off the cliff without a beat of hesitation actually," he replied cheerfully. "Then she panicked a short way down," Aoba's expression dropped. He looked back up to the blonde on the cliff. "Come on Ai, you can't stay up there all day!"
"You want to bet?" she shouted back, causing him to smile.
"Having a good weekend?" he asked Iruka.
Realistically, Ai would probably get an hour of cliff-side adherence before her chakra was drained too much to stick anymore. Though, thinking about it, with Ai's exceptional regeneration, she might get a bit longer than average. He'd at least wait her out for one before going up there himself, unless, of course, she fell, then he'd intercede right away.
"Better than Ai's," the other man replied.
A swear drifted down from above.
Up on the rocky cliff, Ai felt her heart hammering away at a mile a minute. The very brief fall she'd experienced had triggered uncontrollable shaking as adrenaline surged through her body in what felt like copious amounts. Every part of her was screaming that this was a bad idea. That she was going to die with a concaved skull and multiple broken bones.
"You might recall that you've done this before, Ai," Aoba called from below.
"That was three stories!"
"Three stories, two hundred feet, what's the difference?"
"One hundred and fifty-five," she snapped back. "If we're going with the average fifteen-foot story anyway." She'd also heavily relied upon the water drain, but he didn't need to know that.
"You're babbling! Come on, Ai, it's not that hard. Lessen your chakra flow, you're applying too much," Aoba coached. Ai shouted a choice pair of words back and sent him an accompanying rude hand gesture. "There you go! One out of four extremities down!"
"Goody, I get to embarrass myself in front of two people now." Ai grumbled mentally, noticing that another ninja had joined Aoba. "Okay. It's not that bad." She studied the distance. "Terminal velocity, depending on body position, takes at least fifteen-hundred feet to reach and is about one-hundred and twenty miles per hour. I obviously don't have nearly that far enough to fall to be able to reach that. However, there is plenty of distance that a bad landing will put my femur where my lungs are. Only need a bad fall for that. All right, all right, Aoba said he'd intercede if the worst happened and I'm sure he's got pretty good reflexes."
Ai took a breath, closing her eyes. "If he doesn't catch me, I will haunt him until the day my ectoplasm fades from existence."
Fiddling with her chakra, she lowered it until she felt her hold just barely keeping her up and then she let it drop.
As she fell, Ai felt strangely exhilarated, after a moment it was almost fun even. She maintained a decent slide, holding her chakra steady in her feet and adjusting what was in her hand to slow herself as she got closer to the ground. Despite that, she still hit harder than she meant. Ai recalled that after a drop one should bend the knees and 'grab dirt.' Not necessarily literally, but the premise was the same. She spread the force of the impact even more by tucking her shoulder and rolling as Aoba had taught her. Ai even managed to get back to her feet after one roll. Her momentum, however, would have hurled her face-first back to the ground if Aoba hadn't caught the back of her collar as she stumbled past, but that wasn't the point. She had successfully fallen down a cliff and hadn't died.
Ai turned back around and looked up the nearly two hundred-foot slide she'd just completed. "Ah, man," she moaned, flopping to her butt on the ground. Her heart was still rabbiting in her chest, but… it felt like a good rabbit, maybe?
"See?" Aoba said, "Not that bad, once you get the hang of it, you won't even think anything about jumping from a cliff in the future."
"I'm not so sure about that, but, yeah, I guess it wasn't so bad."
"Congratulations," Iruka supplied. "How do you feel?"
"You know that moment where excitement ends and terror begins? I am right there." Ai adjusted her position, putting her arms behind her and leaning back on them while stretching out her legs. She had a question, one she'd brought up to Aoba, but he'd shot her down. "Hey, Iruka-sensei, you're a teacher, right?"
With a soft laugh and smile he replied, "I am."
"Then I've got a question for you."
At her words, Iruka settled down on the ground with her. A glance at Aoba, had the other ninja joining them. "All right," Iruka said as Aoba began to sit. "Go for it."
"This is probably a weird question," she prefaced, "but are hand seals really necessary for preforming jutsu?"
Iruka glanced at Aoba as he let out a sigh like he'd had this conversation before. Which he had. "She's having trouble with hand seals," he said like it was an excuse for her dumb question.
"It's all right if you're not the best," Iruka said consolingly to her. "I know they don't feel entirely natural at first –"
"That's not the problem," she interrupted. "I just want an answer to my question."
Raising his eyebrows in mild shock he replied, "Then, yes. It is possible." He watched her eyes drop in thought. "But before you get carried away, you need to be very familiar with the jutsu you're preforming. It takes time and experience. There are some exceptionally skilled jonin capable of truncating the number of hand seals required for jutsu, but it's not easy, and even more rare, and far more difficult, is not using them at all."
Ai hummed, nibbling at her lip. "It just seems like a mnemonic device is all."
"In a way I suppose," Iruka agreed just before Ai started speaking again.
"You all are so used to using them, that you have to use them. I just don't feel like they're necessary." She'd once had this very same debate, many years ago, with two other ninja. Itachi and Shisui had been a bit more open to the idea that the use of hand seals bordered more on traditional than required. "Plus, from what I've learned, they give away all sorts of information on the jutsu you're about to perform. Don't you not want to do that?"
"That's true, they do, that's where stealth and speed come in. That said, let me emphasize an important point. If you don't use hand seals, your jutsu will either fizzle out because your chakra dispersed with no focused direction or never got started because you didn't build it up well. Worst case, your chakra erupts out violently, seriously harming you in the process. Keep in mind that you're predisposed to violent eruptions already. Don't put your cart before the horse, Ai."
She hummed again, tilting her head back and watching a solitary cloud drift by. "Does the sign itself even matter then?" Ai wondered more to herself than the two ninja nearby. "If I snap and see fire, wouldn't that be the same as associating the Tora seal with making a fire jutsu? I could call a jutsu bubblegum fun time, but so long can picture a rock wall popping up, it'd still work right? What does it matter what I say or do, so long as I know what I want to happen?"
Aoba snorted. "Your ideas are weird," he stated firmly before adding, "but I don't see why that wouldn't, theoretically, work."
"So long as you can dissociate in that way." Iruka added. "Trouble comes in the fact that when you say horse you tend to picture a horse, not a cat. If you start calling an earth jutsu water, it's bound to get confusing at some point and likely interfere with other aspects of your life."
Ai let her arms slide out, dropping herself to her back.
"Do I have to call it anything?" she wondered.
※※※※※
The child, zero-six-one, screamed and cried on the white floor, clawing at the back of his head, scoring bloody scratches. The dark, slowly weeping lines contrasted against his pale, pale skin.
There was always a Snap after a transfer period. Usually within the first few hours, sometimes, you could see who was going to days before, but seeing the cracks forming didn't stop the scientists from pushing until they broke and shattered. For some it took time for the information build up to be too much for the brain to handle. For others in happened in The Chair, but everyone knew they had Snapped because they never came back. Where or when it happened didn't matter, it inevitably took one of them every day.
And today it was in front of them.
A girl, zero-six-four, watched from the edge of her vision, not truly looking at him as his nails caught the cerebral port at the base of his skull, pulling and scrabbling blindly in a futile attempt to remove the plug.
She didn't know how badly it must hurt to want to rip it out, but it didn't matter.
It was not possible to do so.
And if you somehow did manage, it would kill you.
Not that that mattered either. He was already dead; he just hadn't stopped breathing yet.
The other children finished lining up, as they were all trained to do in such situations, just as the soldiers came in. Every child stared blankly ahead, ignoring the shrieking boy as one soldier grabbed him by his shirt and dragged him, still screeching and flailing, from the room.
"Look at the well-trained rats, they scurry so quickly to their spots as one of them dies. Which one do you think is next?" One soldier asked his companion still in the room.
"The girl," he nodded at her. "She's the last of her batch now. It's gotta be her tomorrow."
"Hear that, you little vat-rat," he grabbed her chin forcing her to look up at him. She didn't allow herself to focus on him, keeping his face blurry as she stared expressionlessly over his shoulder. "You're gonna be the next one on the floor screaming." He flung the hand gripping her out, yanking her from her feet and sending her sprawling to the ground.
Her arms went out to catch herself. Face stinging from the ill-treatment, she stayed, hands and knees, on the floor staring at the white ferrocrete. To get up without permission could be seen as disobedience. Defiance of superiors was an unwanted trait that landed you in the Recycler.
Or at least that's what these soldiers had told them on another one of their crueler-than-usual days. The Recycler, the name they gave to where all the vanished children went. Where if you didn't work out the first time, they broke you down, literally, and made another batch to try again. True or not, it didn't matter, just like a lot of other things, because those who were too willful still disappeared.
And were probably just as dead as those that Snapped.
Anything undesirable was taken away.
Knowing that, Zero-six-four had to fight the urge to curl her hands into fists.
Shiny black boots stepped into her field of vision, too close to her face for comfort.
"You wanna make yourself useful while you're down there, vat-rat?"
The door whooshed open.
"Kimbly!" A voice barked, full of threat. "Step. Back."
The boots vanished from sight.
"You are not supposed to interfere with the assets." The stern voice lectured. "You screw up the trials, I'll make sure you regret the day you were posted here. If I see you mistreat them again, it will be your head on the block, do you understand me?"
"Yes, sir."
"Get out. Both of you."
Once the door shut behind them the man sighed. "You can get up now," he told the girl. She pushed herself back up to her feet as the other children began to relax.
There were a few guards that didn't hold the children's superior intellect, or genetic perfection, against them and took their jobs as defenders seriously. Those who thought a hidden stubborn streak might just be what was needed. Naoki was one of them and blessedly, he ranked high enough to boss a lot of the troublemakers around.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
Her face soured. Looking at the door she snarled out a particularly nasty insult she'd heard the soldiers use.
"Sadistic jackasses," a boy, Zero-eight-six, agreed more tempered in his words.
"What have I told you about your language?" Naoki wearily asked.
"To say it behind their backs and to make sure they're gone." Her child-mate grinned, dark eyes flashing gleefully as his itched the dark fuzz growing in on his head.
They were now the last two from their batches, older than the others by a few weeks, and they were expected to die any day now. The older died and gave rise to the younger and stronger.
"That wasn't exactly what I imagined you'd take away from my earlier lecture." He didn't sound happy, but when his hand landed on her head, ruffling her five-day-old peach fuzz, she knew he wasn't upset.
As if to further prove the point, Naoki's hand dug into his pants pocket, pulling out a clear bag filled with white cubes. At the sight of them the other children perked up, a buzz of excitement filling the air.
It was another one of the nice things about Naoki, he snuck them sugar. It always came in the form of fake and granulated, but sweet was sweet and each child got one.
Anything more and the scientists would probably pick up the intake on their tests.
He emptied them on the table in the center of the room. The others rushed forward to get their own portion, but she and the boy stayed where they were. Naoki knelt down to their level, taking the girl's hand, he flipped it over and placed a hard cube on her palm. He repeated the action with the boy. Once both had been delivered, he looked directly into their eyes, first the bright blue of the girl then the nearly black of the boy. "Don't let me catch you in the vents again."
The two children exchanged a look. "You won't catch us," the boy stated to the older man, to which he only hummed. Pushing off on his knees, he stood tall and moved for the exit. The girl was watching him leave when a bang echoed behind her. With a jump she whirled around.
Everything was silent now, everyone was gone, except for the dark-haired boy. He was slumped against the white wall, dark eyes staring out, sightless. Red, so bright against his skin, skin that had never seen sunlight. Red ran down his face, staining his black eyes crimson.
Another disturbance, had her turning again.
Naoki, his skin turning grey and cracking, mouth open, but soundless. His arm stretched out, hand reaching for her. In his palm a bright stone shimmering green, red, blue.
He toppled and the moment his knee hit the floor, he cracked even more, his body disintegrating before her.
Ash and stone spilled to her feet.
With a sharp inhale, Ai woke and found herself staring at a pristine blue sky. She'd been waiting in the field for the Aburame father-son duo to arrive. She'd meant to practice, but between the soft, cool breeze and warm gentle sun, she must have dozed off. Not a hard thing to do, it was a perfect day.
Slowly exhaling the breath, Ai let her eyes slip closed once more. She hated startling awake, but waking slowly wasn't much better on most days. Sometimes, in that moment between sleep and waking Ai finds herself worrying she'll open her eyes to that white room, laying in that horrible chair, and feeling the plug sliding out of her brain. She'd heard them talking about attempting to implant life experiences once, whose to say that this isn't what that is.
Ai jolted upright, legs curling up as her hand went to the back of her neck and scratched fervently at the scar there, it was itching maddingly.
"Is there something wrong?" Shino's voice came from her left.
"Should there be?" Ai returned, looking at him. He was alone and, feet silent on the grass, made his way closer to her.
He watched her intently, replying in an even tone. "You appeared to be sleeping before abruptly sitting up and now you scratch at your neck as if it will remedy a problem." At his observation, Ai stopped scratching and removed her hand. Her nails were filled with the torn off skin, but bloodless. Though, her neck burned from the treatment, no doubt it was red and angry.
She now knew how badly it needed to hurt for one to be driven to rip the head-jack out now.
Staring at the ground for a few seconds Ai found herself unable to look at Shino as she confessed in a soft whisper, "Somedays I feel like I'll wake up and I won't be here."
Shino's gaze, unseen by Ai, turned curious. "Where would you be?"
His question left her silent for another moment. "Hell, I guess. Or at least my version of it. That white room."
"Oh, what a cold, dark world it is to walk through, alone, with a fear-filled head."
Ai frowned at the words in her head, hand twitching in an ungranted want to rub at her temple.
Watching her from behind dark glasses, Shino contemplated the girl before him. "She's not much different from you or I, Shino." His father once told him. The words had left him with more questions, but when he asked one, his father had smiled gently and left him to consider what he had been told on his own. The Aburame valued independence in all forms.
He had heard all the rumors of Ai. From the strange to the mundane. His father had shared with him of her difficult situation within the village. Now, sitting before him was the biggest enigma he'd ever come across, but she had just handed him a piece to her puzzle.
Beside her, Abel shifted, lifting his head to look at him. A wave of movement within him, his kikaichu, shivered up his arm and down his back.
He could see now, perhaps she wasn't as different from him, or his clan, as he had first imagined. An heir to a new bloodline, disliked and feared, but wanted.
No, perhaps coveted would better describe her position.
Or at least his kikaichu certainly thought so, given their excited buzzing and crawling in his arms. They stilled at his command.
"Sorry," Ai muttered pulling her legs up and tucking her face into her knees, muffling her next words. "That probably makes me sound insane."
Shino was momentarily taken aback. Where had she…?
"Ah, my apologies. I had not intended for my silence to be interpreted as such." He said as he sat on the grass. His folded knees formed a ninety-degree corner to her. "I cannot say I understand your feelings, having felt nothing similar myself. However, I can understand the idea of instability. Your situation has changed rapidly multiple times, the belief of it doing so again, negatively, is not unwarranted. That said, perhaps you would find more fulfilment in giving to the living instead of drowning yourself with the uncontrollable."
Ai wanted to snort, but didn't want to undermine Shino's efforts, so she held off. It was the oddest way for someone to say she should be more concerned with the present and not be so hung up with the past. Then again, maybe if he had said it to her like that, she'd have punched him in the throat.
Well, maybe she wouldn't, but she'd have at least thought about it for a second or two.
Plus, Inoichi had said something similar to that already.
Actually, thinking about it, Aburame the Senior had as well.
That only confirmed the whole she-was-a-mess theory didn't it?
"But if you do find yourself in doubt," Ai's hand twitched as something, somethings, crawled across it. Causing her to look at it. A number of black beetles trailed behind each other, forming a continuous figure eight. "If you wish, I will do my best to remind you where you are, if it will help ease your worry."
Like some sort of buggy pinch test?
She couldn't help but smile a little at that, resting her cheek on her knee, her face towards Shino, but still watching the steady march of the beetles.
His action may not seem like much to an outsider, but Ai had learned, both from the father-son duo and the Aburame she'd seen around, that physical touch wasn't really their thing past family. They also didn't often share or show their insects to anyone outside of the clan, their teammates and fellow ninja, or their enemies who soon wouldn't be saying much. What Shino was doing was great expression of trust. Or an extreme effort of comfort towards someone she wasn't sure would call her more than an acquaintance.
"I'd appreciate that," she said truthfully. Relief loosened the tight grip anxiety had on her muscles. "They're not eating my chakra, are they?" The thought popped out of her mouth not long after it formed. Which wasn't great, because as the beetles spread their wings to take off, she realized how that sounded.
Quickly, Ai slapped her other hand down on top of them, catching at least a few.
"I didn't mean it like that." Wide-eyed she looked to Shino. "Just, uh, they don't feel itchy I mean. I was just wondering if that's what it meant." Tiny beetle wings fluttered against her palm.
"The sensation varies depending on number and how quickly they consume the chakra." He elucidated calmly. "That you can sense only a few doing so is impressive and alludes to a high sensitively, which you likely knew."
"I have attachment issues." Shino stared at her and the beetles between her hands stilled. "'Cause I'm good at knowing when chakra is leaving me… That was funnier in my head." She really wished she could see more of his face. Expression was super telling on knowing what people were feeling.
The boy beside her only hummed slightly in acknowledgement and continued with his dissertation. "You do not need to concern yourself with my kikaichu stealing your chakra, in the time we have spent together, I believe I can now prevent them from doing such again." As Shino spoke, Ai lifted her hand from the beetles she'd managed to keep from leaving. They crawled about, but otherwise remained well behaved.
During a number of their meditation sessions, Shino had had a few of his bugs go AWOL in furtive attempts to get their fix of her chakra. It was in those moments Shino had been the most ruffled she'd ever seen him, apologizing and sending his bugs back to their rooms like misbehaving children – or whatever equivalent they had. But his father had always seemed mildly amused, so Ai had assumed in the long run it was harmless bug flirtation, like when a bee flew way too close to your face – or maybe they were just junkies.
She set a finger down in the path of one. It stopped and sniffed the blockade with its mandibles – or something like that Ai was sure. "They can have some if they want it." She then remembered who she was talking to and looked up at him. Crap, she'd done it again. "No, wait," she slapped a hand over her mouth, muffling the swear that followed. "That was probably rude, wasn't it? Hayate was always telling me my chakra manners were terrible."
"Not so rude as peculiar." He affirmed, watching as the girl carefully gave a beetle pet with her fingertip. "It is well known that our kikaichu, as well as some other species, eat chakra as food. Ours are fed with the host's chakra, and in battle, they may be fed with our opponent's. The peculiarity arises in a neutral party offering to feed them. The idea of having one's chakra consumed is an uncomfortable notion to most." He paused, then added. "They are not wanting for sustenance."
"Ah," Ai hesitated. "I didn't mean to imply you're starving them." Shino shook his head, denying the notion. "It was just a passing thought, I guess." Ai herded the beetles on the back on her hand so they were in a group. Their passivity in allowing it and not just ditching was interesting to her.
"You are not bothered?"
"Huh?" Ai looked back up to the boy beside her. "Oh, no. I like bugs well enough. I confess I get iffy when the leg counts gets to eight or more. And I'm not overly fond of them flying into my eyes, but to be fair, I feel that way about anything flying into my eyes."
"That's," he trailed off a moment, "not quite what I meant."
"What'd you mean then?"
Shino just shook his head. "I think, had you been taken in by the village earlier, you'd have made a good Aburame."
Ai made a confused sound. "Does it work like that?"
"The clan had to originate somehow, and the accepted theory is that it arose due to the kikaichu preferring the chakra of certain individuals above others." That was exactly how it occurred, but clan secrets needed to remain such. "But such an adoption into the clan has not taken place in numerous generations."
The grin Ai spared him was rueful. "Some things are best done young, I get that."
Knowing what he did of her past, he imagined she understood quite well. Older bodies, set in their ways, were not often as adaptable to extreme changes to their stasis.
"Perhaps we should turn our attention to the reason we are here?"
"Right, meditating." Ai let herself flop backwards, closing her eyes and spreading her arms out on the grass.
"I believe that position is more conducive to sleep than meditation."
She cracked one eye open to look at him. "You gonna rat me out, Shino? I thought we were bonding here. Plus, who says I can't meditate like this?"
The boy let out a soft sigh. "Do as you please."
Ai grinned, closing her open lid once more.
Today had was still a nice day, despite that horrible memory/dream she'd had. Laying here, feeling the breeze on her skin, it almost felt like the old days. She could nearly hear Shisui loudly debating with the so quiet Itachi, that it sounded like he was conversing with himself.
She quietly began to hum to herself, not even realizing it was Danse Macabre, and that as the song pulled her further into her own mind, Abel pick up the tune, his metal body thrumming gently.
Next to her, Shino paused, feeling Ai's chakra suffuse into the air. He listened partly to the tune the two were creating, but also to his kikaichu, which were dutifully reporting that Ai's chakra was pulsing gently to the music.
※※※※※
A few days later found Ai once more at her work desk reading breath-takingly boring reports, which, honestly, sometimes sounded like ridiculous rumors. Aoba's head was propped up on a fist and his face was so still, Ai was beginning to think he was asleep. It wouldn't surprise her if most of the people in this room had learned to flip pages in their sleep.
Jaw cracking in a yawn, Ai picked up the next report in her stack and began to skim for key words. One caught her eye and she went back to read it over for better context.
"Here's something," Ai called Aoba's attention to her. She began to read from the report. "Tanzaku castle was destroyed, upon inspection of the site, nothing was found to reveal the perpetrator. The only witnesses are four panicked tourists who reported the destruction was caused by a giant snake." The word snake had barely finished leaving her mouth when Aoba snatched the sheet from her hands. She let go fast enough to avoid the papercut but still gave him a nasty sneer.
Reading it for himself, Aoba stood. "I've got to report this."
"You know, too many things get crushed by giant animals in this country!" She raised her voice as she spoke, making sure it got to Aoba as he strode from the room. "Rude," she muttered. Grabbing a single chopstick, she speared a hunk of now cold chicken from their earlier lunch and popped it into her mouth.
She ignored Iwaizumi's disgusted look at her manners.
Credits:
Set Me On Fire – Flyleaf
Danse Macbre - Camille Saint-Saëns
It occurred to me, a few days after posting this, that I might should clarify something. I used the term 'genetic perfection' in Ai's flashback/dream. I wanted to say that this is not the case, it was a goal that wasn't reached by the scientists that worked on the children. But they still held the children up as 'perfect.' Think... they aimed for Captain America, but fell short, yet made it past Red Skull stage. (also no super strength etc.)
This is completely unstory related - just as I was writing where the story headed but then I didn't like how it felt, though I think the scene is still kinda cute.
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"The desire to be somewhere else isn't uncommon in adolescents." Ai smiled at that, finding it amusing that he spoke as if he isn't one of those 'adolescents' himself. "And, I suppose, given your numerous involuntary relocations, it stands to reason a phobia of finding yourself somewhere else isn't unreasonable." A small, amused huff escapes from Ai's nose. "Is there something amusing?"
"I'm sorry," Ai glanced at the boy diagonal to her, laughter dancing in her eyes. "It's just… you talk like an old man." Shino's brows furrowed. "It's kind of adorable actually." At those words he looked away from her. Ai leaned forward, trying to catch sight of his face. "I'm sorry, please, keep going. Cheer me up."
"I appear to have already accomplished that task."
In other story news: A short scene from... some chapters ago, I think? - Back when Ai didn't have ramen with Naruto and Iruka, but ordered some and left them to pay the bill.
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Just After Ai Has Left Ichiraku Ramen
"Ah," Naruto stood up, looking after where Ai had fled. His blue eyes were filled with worry. The amount of caring Naruto could hold and give away always impressed Iruka. He didn't know how the boy could do it. Naruto's concerned gaze turned to him. "Did I say something wrong? I was trying to be nice, like you asked."
"No, Naruto," he attempted to comfort. "You didn't do anything wrong. Ai… Ai just has a hard time letting people in. She's got it in her head that nobody wants her around and when they do, something bad will happen."
"So… she's afraid of making friends?" Naruto hopped back onto his stool, giving Iruka his full attention.
"Yeah you could say that. The last couple years she's been pulling back emotionally and after Hayate," Iruka sighed, "well I'm worried she'll shut down completely."
"She's lonely," Naruto whispered.
"I imagine so."
Naruto's eyes became charged at his words. His fists thumped on the countertop and he looked Iruka directly in his eyes. "I'll do whatever I can to help! I will become her friend!"
Iruka laughed at Naruto's exuberance, but still ordered solemnly, "Don't push her too much Naruto, she doesn't take very well to it." He put his hand on the blond boy's shoulder. "And I bet if anyone can help Ai, it's you."
"I'll be the best friend in the world to her!" he shouted, causing a number of passersby in the street to pause and look at the shop in curiosity.
Iruka, with eyes that threatened tears, smiled. "I'm sure you will."
