A/N: I take back what I said before T-T I lost the manuscript for this chapter so I wasn't able to upload it until I found it, which took me just about forever since my room isn't....um.....well, let's just say it's not the most organized room the world has seen. To make up for it, I extended this chapter by quite a few paragraphs. In fact, I added two new sections. Hopefully, that'll keep the enraged readers off my back...........
And um, I also got kinda sidetracked making a Naruto website. Anyone wanna see it, go to
~ h t t p : / / d e v o t e d . t o / h a y a t e ~
(Blame it all on that!!) and sign my guestbook while you're at it! ^^;;;
Argh! Finally! Ten chapters into this thing, I'll be damned if I can't sit still and write a serious chapter for once!
CHAPTER 10: WHO IS THIS GIRL, ANYWAY?
"...There are some questions that I must ask you."
The strange girl who they had rescued earlier abruptly took on a serious edge, making her seem suddenly older. Again, he wondered how old she really was. At first he'd thought her a child--a strange child--not much older than his students themselves, but now he wasn't so sure.
The only thing he was sure about was something his students would undoubtedly agree with as well; that this girl was hella confusing.
And it wasn't just because of the language barrier, either.
Of all the his twenty-six years as a Shinobi of Konoha, Hatake Kakashi had never met anyone so completely and utterly confounding as the illogical creation of nature sitting before them right now. Even Naruto at his worst didn't give him such a headache.
Still, years of experience and his keen insight had made him a good judge of character, and up until this point he had sensed nothing malicious or hostile about this girl. Since her actions were puzzling and paradoxical and her behavior was nothing short of erratic, giving him no clue to her ultimate goals or true intentions, he would just have to go with that gut instinct for now.
He uncrossed his arms and sat down in the other vacant chair, sensing that the gravity of the moment required him to sit down and talk eye to eye, quite literally.
It was to be expected that their host would start asking questions about them sooner or later, and frankly, he expected that it would have been much sooner. After all, she'd just taken home three strangers whose names she didn't even know.
Even so, there was a guarded undertone to his voice, for all the casual air in his response. "Of course, we understand completely. We'll answer your questions as well as we can."
Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura understood with the look that he gave them that he meant he would answer all the questions, while they kept silent and listened.
The girl smiled faintly. "Thank you, Hatake Kakashi-sama," she said, effectively startling them all.
What the...?!! Sasuke glared at the girl, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles were turning white. All of the warning signals in his mind were going haywire, and it took all of his self-control to keep himself still and maintain an appearance of being undisturbed.
Naruto had gone so far as to have already stood up with one hand in his shuriken holster and one foot stepped towards the strange, dark-haired, dark-eyed girl before he managed to stop himself, barely.
Sakura's face was white, and from the side of his vision Sasuke saw Kakashi's visible eye narrow ever so slightly.
"Who the hell are you?!!" Naruto demanded. "And how...h-how did you know Kakashi-sensei's name?" he asked through clenched teeth. "We never told you!"
Slender white fingers cupped a ridged, bamboo patterned mug, gently tracing the grooved lines on it. Unconcernedly, the girl took a long sip of tea. "The same reason why I know your name, Uzumaki Naruto-san." She said softly, not even flinching at his menacing tone and posture.
She looked up and met his gaze squarely, and the boy was surprised to see that her eyes were unnaturally bright and clear, not the same eyes of the lost, bewildered girl they had prevented from being impaled by Sasuke's kunai earlier. "And Sasuke-san, you can stop eyeing me like I'm dinner," she added. "It is to my knowledge that the Uchiha clan is not a clan of cannibals, and even if it were, I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't want to eat one of the insane." Arching an eyebrow delicately at their looks of surprise, she added, "Isn't that what you were all thinking? Don't say you weren't. You aren't wrong, you know," she remarked. "I am completely crazy, because I just happen to make more sense than everyone else." She paused, seeing that they were now more confused than ever.
"Didn't your teachers ever tell you that crazy people are just people who see the world in a clearer light?" she asked, and continued before they could answer. "Well. that is to be expected."
Unsure of a word, she paused to look it up in the small dictionary she still held in her hands, and continued. "Happily, the degree of my mental instability isn't the main concern right now, though you may wish to worry about it later," she said dryly. Then she grew serious again.
"The main concern for now...is you four." She waited for that to sink in. "That's right. You four are my main concern. I promise to explain it all later, but I need you to truthfully answer the questions I'm going to ask you, or else I cannot help you." Without giving them a chance to agree or dissent, she spoke again.
"Are you three graduates of the Ninja Academy of the Hidden Village of Leaf?" she asked, targeting the question at Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke.
As one, the three nodded, though somewhat hesitantly. It seemed a harmless enough question.
The girl smiled again, more warmly this time. "Thank you. Have you three ever been to the Country of Wave?"
Another nod.
The girl paused a moment, then asked, "Have you also encountered a man called Momochi Zabuza when you went there?"
That elicited a more noticeable response. She watched in silent amusement as her four guests attempted to conceal their shock with varying levels of success, from Naruto's jaw-gaping look of outright surprise to Sakura's frozen wide-eyed expression to Sasuke's tensed shoulders and white knuckles to Kakashi's perfect nonchalance of one who could well have been sleeping through her entire interrogation.
Heavens. Sasuke looks like he's about ready to butcher me for dinner and stew the rest of my bones for breakfast, she thought wryly.
"I'll take that as a 'yes'," she managed to say with a perfectly straight face. However, that face softened into one of sympathy when she asked her next question. "Did you also meet a boy called Haku?"
The looks on their faces told her all she needed to know.
She hadn't really wanted to bring that up, but she needed to make sure. She was silent for a few more moments, her eyes gazing steadily at Sakura. The younger girl's glossy light-pink hair flowed past her shoulders and down her back. That was a clue in and of itself, but again, she needed to make sure.
"What is it?" Sakura asked, a little self-conscious.
The girl merely shook her head. "You have very pretty hair" was all she said before she turned to face Kakashi. "I have just one more question," she said softly to the gray-haired man. "Have they taken the Chuunin exam yet?"
"Yes, sir! There's been another case, Hokage-sama!"
The man who was looked up to by hundreds as the leader of Konoha village looked up wearily. "Who is it this time?" he asked, already dreading the answer. He seemed to have aged twenty years over the past two nights. Ever since the disappearance of Kakashi and his students, ninjas from all over the village have been reported missing, most notably from the Hidden Leaf Anbu Squad who were always roaming about.
"Reporting to Hokage-sama, it's a civilian this time, sir. Just one. Satou Kazami, forty-two years old, a farmer living near the foot of the Hokage Mountains. His wife reported that he went out for a smoke last night and never came back."
"I see." was all the Hokage said. " You may leave now, Aoba."
The bespectacled Jounin acknowledged the dismissal with a respectful bow before exiting in a puff of smoke.
The Hokage sighed and exhaled his own puff of smoke, removing the long-stemmed pipe from his mouth and rubbing the barrel absentmindedly with his thumb. That would have been the fourth case since Kakashi. Things were not looking well. Not at all.
"I see." The girl said seriously, brows slightly knotted and face slightly scrunched up as she digested this peice of information. Despite her grave expression, she suddenly resembled the likes of a very young child trying very seriously to understand adult matters that was totally beyond a child's area of comprehension, but attempting to nonetheless.
"But now that you mention it, it should be about the time of the year..." Kakashi said thoughtfully.
The girl nodded again, eyes wide, and Kakashi had to resist the urge to reach out and pat her on the head like his dogs.
"Okay," she said. "Now you can ask me whatever you want."
Naruto didn't need any more encouragement than that. "Alright! And it's about damn time, first off, how the hell do you know all our names?!!" He demanded.
"N-naruto!" Sakura protested. "Don't be so rude!!" But I want to know why she knows our names too...
"And could you tell us the name of this place? We're kind of lost," Kakashi put in.
"Kind of" lost? thought Sakura, feeling her temper rise dangerously. We're in some the-gods-know-what weird place with people so different from us that they scream when they see us and don't even speak our language, and we're "kind of" lost? URRAGHH! WHY did I get assigned to the same team as these kind of people? She thought, despairing. Ah, oh well, at least I'm with Sasuke-kun...I'll just have to endure everything in the name of our beautiful love! she sighed and looked at Sasuke dreamily, her hands clasped to her heart. Sasuke-kun, you are my strength, my hope, my salvation! As long as you're with me, I can withstand anything! she thought adoringly. The black-haired boy, however, didn't seem to notice her staring at him.
The girl offered Naruto a fruit tart, which the boy accepted shamelessly, before answering. "Well, if you don't mind, I'll answer your sensei's question first, because it'll explain why I know a lot about you guys. To answer your question, Kakashi-sama...well, I don't think giving you the name of this place would mean anything to you, but I will tell you where you are. You are in another world."
"Another WHAA---?!!" Naruto choked and spat, chewed-up fruit tart flying everywhere, and mostly in Kakashi's face.
"Another world," the girl repeated, using a piece of tissue to wipe up the stray bits of half-chewed food on the table and floor, and handing another piece of tissue to a vexed-looking gray-haired Jounin. "You four are not of this world. I don't know how you got here, because you're not supposed to. You don't exist in this world. There are no ninjas here, people don't have chakra, people can't use ninjutsu, and the closest thing to genjutsu are computer-generated holograms."
"But then how...you....no chakra? How is that possible?"
The girl gave Sakura an understanding look. "It's an entirely different world, so even thought it may come as a shock to you, it is normal to us here. But although our worlds are seperate and different, for you to have been able to come to this one, there has to be a connection between this world and yours." She hesistated, before leaning over and reaching under the couch to retrieve a book. She handed the book to the pink-haired girl. "In this world, you guys are all comic-book characters."
Sakura flipped through the pages hesitantly while Naruto clamored around her, trying to get a good look at the book.
The girl subconciously held in her breath, nervously waiting for the pink-haired girl's reaction.
Sakura's eyes roved aross the pages, green irises slowly growing bigger and bigger. Finally, she all but threw down the book on the glass coffee table and stared incredulously at her host.
"They made me look fat," Sakura said flatly.
A/N: ....I am evil.