Author's Note: {Groveling at the audience's feet} I'm SOOOOOO SORRY!! I didn't mean to take forever!! Go on; kick the crap outta me!
{Audience feels ashamed and forgives Kaiyuga}
Kaiyuga: Well, that went better than I expected. I should do this more often.
{Audience beats up Kaiyuga.}
Kaiyuga: ARGH! Hey, if you beat me up you can't see the fanfic.!
Audience: O,O Oh, yeah! That's right! {Gets into their seats}
Kaiyuga: {Raises a hand over the podium to lift herself up from the ground}{Breathing hoarsely} Right…..here…..you…..are….. {Presses magic button and slumps back on the ground unconscious}
Audience: =.=; {Fixated on the screen (yeah, that's right! Got me self a plasma screen so that you're not looking at black and white anymore! Go me!}
Author's note: I don't own Naruto, but I DO own Eurecium!! He's my original character….well, bad guy, really….
"He rose up on his hind legs, looming over Takna with a malice flaring in his beady yellow eyes. Takna had nowhere to go; he either had to face the dragon or throw himself into the gorge that was brimming with lava. The denizen squalled at Takna, impatient at his delay. It charged, tongue flailing out like a snake. Takna waited until the last possible moment, and leapt up into the air. He then pulled out his blessed bow and drew back to fire at the vulnerable beast, but-"
"Aki!" The pen flipped out of her grasp as she cringed at the banging on her apartment door.
"Ugh. Goddammit, don't you know patience!? I was at the best part!"
"Unless you want to fail the exam, I suggest you get your hindquarters out here now!" Aki emphasized her sigh as she shut her writing journal and picked up her already armed arsenal- in- a- bag.
She slid the Tojo blade yo- yo harnesses on her forearms, and adjusted the straps on her backpack.
"Aki! Come on!"
"I'm comin'! I'm comin'! Hang on!" She went into her bathroom to get her meds. Apparently, after she had left the hospital, her stomachaches grew worse, but the doctors and she didn't know why. The pills they gave her lessened the pain. She called it "Naruto Aleve" as a joke, but that's really what they were.
Karma snaked around her heels, excited about what was to happen in a couple of hours.
"I'm warning you, Karma. This is no pleasure cruise. This is serious; someone could get killed. Hell, I know who!"
"Aki! Come on already!"
Aki sighed and slid her new headphones over her ears, and began to listen to Cait Sith's theme from FF VII. She bobbed her head to the beat as she unlocked the door to stand in front of Kakashi.
"Sorry I'm late?" Kakashi sighed and they left.
Walking along the way, Aki got bored, and actually started playing yo- yo with the Tojo blades, but only with the shield bosses. She didn't want to slice off her hand out of sheer boredom. Hey, at least she would get a little practice on how to use them, right? Her staff bobbed in its sheath peacefully with every step.
............
Kakashi was started to get annoyed at how a golden object flew past his shoulder every few seconds.
"Would you stop that?!"
"What?"
"It's bothering me!"
"Is anything the matter, Kakashi?"
"No." Liar.
Of course something was the matter! Ever since he came close to kissing Aki in the hospital, he had never forgiven himself for being so stupid! Wrong setting, wrong mood, what else!? A dark cloud appeared over his head, and Aki knew something embarrassing was eating away at him. She kept silent and continued her yo- yo thing.
…………
"Right. There's no turning back now." Aki approached Team 7.
Sasuke nodded, Naruto jabbered as usual and Sakura smiled as Aki came near.
"Let's go then." They went to the testing building where Phase 1 of the Chuunin Exam was to commence.
Even though Aki was a soothsayer in this realm, she was still nervous. She pulled out her headphones and switched over to Daft Punk's Cosmo Vitelli Remix of "Face to Face". She hardly took notice of the fight that was happening out of Room 207. She knew it was only a Genjutsu, and she grinned.
"What a lame trick." Everyone stopped and stared at her.
"What did you say?" One of the ninja at the door scowled at Aki.
She put on Stance # 7: The Smug Look. She placed a hand on her loose hip and shook her head lightly.
"Incasing this whole place in a Genjutsu; what a pathetic trick." As she said so, the room spun and the sign switched from 307 to 207.
The two nin glared at Aki and started towards her.
"If you want your noses cut off, then by all means, keep moving forward." Aki hooked her CD player to her belt and placed a finger of the trigger that released the Tojo blades.
"And what would a genin possibly do to us?" They grinned, but what shocked them was that Aki was grinning too.
"More than you can imagine." She took her stance, poised to attack the moment they strike.
(I have time, so let's have some fun. Naruto and the others are already downstairs facing off with Rock Lee, so this is my turn.) The crowd now surrounded her and the two nin.
"What's wrong?" Karma came slinking up next to Aki, "Cat got your tongue?"
The two suddenly charged, fists at the ready. Aki had already tapped the trigger and everyone jumped at the sight of the blades firing out of the once harmless shield bosses. She flung the spinning saw blades forward, and missed, but she had a trick up her sleeve.
The two nin were centimeters away from her, and had successfully dodged her blades, leaving her vulnerable. Aki jerked her wrists back, and the blades were now wrapped around the nin's bodies, poised to slice them into ribbons if they moved any closer.
"Ah ah ah!" Aki wagged a finger at them, grinning.
Since she would have won too easily, Aki released them from her clawed prison, and leapt over their backs as they tried to make a move for her. The two nin crashed into the human ring, knocking down stray genins. Aki shook her head, and switched her headphones over to Daft Punk's "Fresh". Nothing existed in her world as the beat pumped in her ears. She began bobbing her head in rhythm to the beat, watching as the two got up with glares plastered to their faces. She happily grinned as she bounced on the balls of her feet, her hands loosely behind her back. It was her way of giving her opponent a taunt.
They charged against, but this time used the "Divide and Conquer" method. Aki ducked the first guy, and slid aside as the second one miscalculated their hit, and slammed his fist into his partner's face. Aki was bumping her hips to the beat now, her grin growing by the second. The two had had it, and now charged with kunai. Aki tsked, and slightly dropped a shoulder at a time while listening to her music. At the last possible moment, Aki flung her Tojo yo-yos at a low hanging beam, and swung herself up and the boys crashed right into the door, knocking themselves out.
Aki triumphantly landed, her saws spinning back into their holster and the blades retracting back into the shield bosses. The genins gawked at Aki, both horrified and amazing. Aki fanned out her ponytail as she turned and left. One genin swore that he saw her pet air.
…………
"Aki! Where have you been?" Sakura took notice of Aki when she had slid open the door and entered where the rest of the testies were waiting.
"I, uh…had some bad traffic…" Aki turned and her heart stopped.
Everything in the room seemed to pause she her eyes locked upon the one person she liked once and hated now: Kabuto. What should she do? Should she freak him out by calling his name before introductions? What about his "connections"? Or should she play it out like the manga does, acting like the dumb fool? She decided to go with the third option, however stupid it may have been. If she had made the wrong choice, the manga series would have been a flop. So, she hoped she wouldn't get caught in here for her choices.
"So, we wait?" Sakura looked aimlessly around at the various genin that ranged from 15 to 64.
"I guess so." Aki sighed as she looked around, her arms hooked over her staff that balanced behind her shoulders.
Her observant eyes caught the three Sound genin, Dosu squatting in front of the other two. Aki grinned, and whispered his name very quietly. The mummy kid's head swung around frantically, looking for the person who spoke his name. Aki giggled, and made eye contact with his one visible eye.
The vibe she sent him made him quiver slightly.
(Oh, we're going to have so much fun, Dosu…) Aki's grin darkened.
…………
Kakashi was staring at the backpack that lay in his hands. Rule was that testers weren't allowed to bring in packs of any sort until the second trial of the Exam. Evidently, Aki hadn't gotten that memo, and was POed at the fact that she couldn't have her CD player to listen to. So, she had asked Kakashi to hold it for her, at which Kakashi secretly blushed, scratched the back of his head and agreed.
He was now squatting on the ground, holding the black pack in his hands. Checking to see no one was around, his curiosity drove him to look at what Aki had. He placed the bag on the ground as though it were a volatile bomb waiting to go off, and slowly pulled down one of the zippers.
Inside was a cornucopia of wonders. Kakashi decided to do a "Grab- in- bag" technique, and pulled out Aki's CD player. He stared at it with mild curiosity lingering on his face, turning over to see electrical tape over were the battery slot was. Scratching his bushy silver mane, Kakashi gingerly lifted the headphones to his ears and pressed every button before Play. He found the button, and heard a small beeping sound, and which a slightly twitched. He saw the silver disk come to life, numbers and blinking icons flashing on the microscopic screen. The number showed 4 on the screen, and Kakashi waited. Was it going to explode?
In a way, it did.
Kakashi was thrown back against the wall, trying to tear off the headphones. Aki always liked her music loud to get her high off it, and didn't think to turn the volume down. Kakashi finally got his fingers around the headphones wires, and plucked the stereos from his ears. The music still pounded through the headset, playing Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger." He clasped his hands to his aching head, trying to get rid of the rhythmic pain that pulsed in his brain.
"What is that?! A demon music box?!" Hastily finding the Stop button, Kakashi shoved the demon music box back into the bag, and became more cautious as he pillaged through it.
He found some normal stuff: a bundle of scrolls, blank and filled, a spare kunai and shuriken here and there, but then the abnormalities came back. He saw three notepads covered in writing, a leather bound book with a strange looking writing utensil (ballpoint pen) attached to its side, a stack of books that had to be read backwards, a strange portable camera, a normal picture camera and three overturned photographs. Kakashi started out with the photos first. In the tiny stack, Kakashi looked at the top one to see a cute black kitten staring at him. The one underneath was one that made him think.
It was Aki, but unlike he had seen her before, she was smiling. Not any smile, but a passionate smile of jubilance; something he hadn't seen blossom in her face. What amazed him (and possibly scared him) is how Aki looked. She looked normal in his eyes, but the two people in the picture besides her looked…weird. Inhuman, almost.
He turned it over to see a date that made him jump:
Aki and Friends
6/26/2004
2004?! Kakashi tried to ignore the numbers as he went to the final picture, and became shell shocked at what he saw.
It was him!
What was he doing in her backpack?! Kakashi was planning to take the picture when he remembered something; it was her bag, her stuff, not his. He had to respect that. Taking one last look at the photos, he neatly tucked them into an inside pocket of the pack, and continued looking at the pieces of Aki's life. He took out a notepad, and flipped through a couple of pages, until one sentence caught his eye:
"The brighter a light shines, the darker a shadow becomes…" Eurecium grinned darkly, his vampire fangs resting on his lower lip.
At that point, Kakashi was entranced as he read on, flipping page after page. He had devoured through the three notepads in under ten minutes, his shoulders dropping when there was no more and it was cut in a middle of a sentence:
"He then pulled out his blessed bow and drew back to fire at the vulnerable beast, but-" Kakashi sighed as he put the three notepads back into the bag of wonders, and then lifted up the journal.
He had no idea what he was holding in his hands.
…………
Aki sat on the ground, her eyes closed as she intook the sounds and scents that were infesting the room.
"Aki?" She didn't respond.
"Uh, Aki." Her brow furrowed.
"Aki?"
"WHAT?!" She didn't mean to explode, but she had a shot patience level.
"Ummm, you're glowing." Sakura was blushing as she pointed out that little tidbit.
Aki looked around to see dozens of eyes staring at her, puzzled behind mask, headband and shadow. While concentrating, Aki didn't know she had released her chakra flow, allowing it to consume her outline in a brilliant blue and gold display that formed something between a Japanese Long and a Phoenix.
"Heh heh…." Aki scratched behind her head and sweatdropped.
Aki had to learn about the On/Off switch on chakra when she was meditating or being creative. She got up, stretched out, groaned at the pain in her stomach and moved to the back wall. If she had X- ray vision, she and Kakashi were back to back, separated by a half an inch of wood. They could have been miles away from each other for what each end was experiencing.
…………
Kakashi stared, wide eyed as he read each journal page with great caution, fear and confusion. One caught his eye:
"Day 3: Oh boy...
I don't know how much I've steered this manga off course, but what's worse, I'm becoming more cartoon than human, but is this really reality? What is reality? Is it like beauty? 'In the eyes of the beholder'? I've gone so far into this place that I may just be living a lie. Well, that's partially true. I still can't bring myself to say to Kakashi, or anyone for that matter, that I'm not really from this realm. Am I an illusion....? Could it be...that I might be...dreaming this whole thing up in a desperate attempt of escapism..?
Okay, scratch the dreaming bit. But how is it...that in two days, I'm almost as powerful as Kakashi, EVEN though I'm injured? Too much RPing? Jujitsu practices? Maybe, like I said to myself before, Tit for Tat. My skin condition for power. My skin is so fragile that if I get too many cuts, I'm dead. Literally.
One got his attention rather easily. This one made his heart race:
Day 6: Here we go…Okay, what can I deduce? First, it IS possible, seeing for myself, that someone can trade realms, BUT it is TOTALLY, COSMOSICALLY COINCIDENTAL!!! Second, certain things switch with the Traveler, as I name them, seeing that I'm the first. Third, life is still at risk no matter where you go, even if it's La- La Land (insanity can get the better of you after a while). Fourth, I KNOW I'm not insane, but this is pretty crazy to begin with. Fifth, it's basically reality here, even if the Traveler is unfamiliar with it. Sixth, where I am, I'm messing with fragile and messy things, so Travelers have to be ABSOLUTLY careful with their actions (think time- space continuum.) And last, (I guess) goes with personal life. It's highly UNLIKLY that a Traveler will make a lasting relationship in a different realm, because they are probably going to leave in a short amount of time that is not of their choice.
At this point, Kakashi slammed the tiny leather book closed, and spun the leather cord back around the silver dragon button, his breathing uneven from fear. She was telling the truth?!
He should have known what he was holding in his hand.