Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, the characters, concepts, names and related indicia. They are copyright (c) Masashi Kishimoto... This entire fic was taken down for heavy re-editting, but I left the first chapter up. It's not the whole fic! I have eighteen other chapters still being looked over byRikkii and me! So please don't think this is all I've written!
Tayuya tore away another piece of dry bread hungrily, wolfing it down before swallowing a large amount of water from a dark brown flask. She sat around a small fir along with four others. A few feet off there were two more fires, each with five young children sitting around them, none over the age of or fourteen, She was the second youngest at the age of nine, and the weakest.
As she slammed back as much water as she could in the shortest amount of time possible, a hand reached out and forcefully grabbed the rest of her small piece of bread, completely devouring it before she had a chance to protest.
"Too slow," said the boy, before stealing her water as well.
"Give it back you ass-wipe!"
She grabbed wildly for the flask of water, but the older boy simply stood and held it teasingly over her head.
"Little girls shouldn't swear like that, Tayuya," he said in an amused voice before draining the rest of the water and throwing the flask back at her. She caught it angrily and threw it aside. Drawing a rusted kunai, she charged wildly at him, bringing her arm around in a wide arc towards his chest.
The older boy turned slightly, catching her arm and using her momentum to throw her past him, narrowly missing the fire as she skidded face-down in the dry, cracked dirt.
"Lay off, Mikiri. Another dead kid is all we need right now," came a voice from one of the other campfires. Mikiri snorted and kicked her in the ribs before sitting down again. Tayuya coughed and pushed herself back up, her mouth a thin line. She looked back to the other campfire where a dark-haired boy, thirteen and a half years old and the second oldest member, looked down at at her. He was the leader of the group, and he would usually stick up for the younger members.
She sat up fully and brushed her flaming red hair away from her dirty face. Her stomach growled loudy as she moved back to her seat, shooting an angry glance at Mikiri, who stuck his tongue out at her tauntingly. She felt the anger inside of her begin to boil again, but managed to ignore it as she slouched off. When I'm stronger, I'll kill you, she thought.
Tayuya had lost count of the weeks, the months, the years since she had been picked up by this lonely group of outcasts. Most of them had run away or had their villages or families destroyed, and had also been recruited by their leader, Tori. Most of them were either gennin or acadamy students, with only a few jutsus learned, and two or three had no training at all and had had to be trained by others.
Wandering around the different shinobi countries had it's problems, avoiding patrols, anbu squads, hunter-nins and even the occasional missing-nin, so the group often stayed in the minor countries, the ones with no Hidden Village.
She moved slowly over to her temporary bed, which consisted of flattened grass and a small bag for a pillow. Winter was fast approaching, the time when they lost the most members, and they would be moving out tomorrow. They had to move to a new area to stock up on more food for the harsh period of time.
Falling onto the uneven grass, she snuggled up against her small, almost empty sac, ignoring the sharp stems as they dug annoyingly into her sides and back. It took her a long time to get to sleep, but she eventually managed to slip away.
"Hey! Give it back, fatass! Ugh," Tayuya ran into another child as she chased after an overweight boy who had stolen half of her breakfast, falling hard on her back. She looked up into the face of her leader, Tori, who held out a hand to help her up.
"Sorry," she muttered, looking down at her feet. They were supposed to move out after they ate, but she had gotten her meal stolen. Again. Tori sighed and turned, calling out to the boy.
"Hotaru!"
The large boy, oldest in the group with his fourteenth birthday just around the corner, halted in mid run, if it could be called that, and turned, still smirking. He tossed her breakfast, a small apple, up and down with one hand.
"If she wants it, she can come and get it herself," he called back. Tori shifted slightly.
"It's fine, Tori, I'm not that hungry anyways. Just let the fatass have his fun," muttered Tayuya. But her lie was uncovered as her stomach growled loudly. She looked down at her feet and kicked the dirt.
"Give it back, Hotaru," said Tori, lowering his voice.
Hotaru laughed and took a large bite out of the fruit. "I already told you, just let her do it herself."
Tori suddenly stepped forward, drawing a kunai and charging with incredible speed towards the older boy, who had no time to react before there was a kunai held to his throat, pressing into his skin and drawing blood.
"I said give it back, Hotaru."
Hotaru had stopped smiling and now stood perfectly still. The other thirteen members were watching intently. Hotaru snorted and held up the half-eaten apple, which Tori took and released him. Hotaru walked off wordlessly, rubbing his neck, as Tori returned to Tayuya.
"I'm sure you won't want it now... You can have this one, you haven't eaten properly in awhile," he laughed and held up a larger apple. "You use up any energy you obtain almost immediately chasing after others."
"Thanks." I don't need your sympathy, ass, she thought bitterly.
Tori walked off, quickly finishing the half-eaten apple, and Tayuya quickly ate her own, biting down as close to the core as it would allow. This happened every day, on top of her being the youngest, she was also the only girl who had been tough enough to survive through the frequent skirmishes and famines, and the only girl to survive through the harsh winters. Before last year's winter, they had had twenty-nine members, fourteen more than they had this year, and they had come out with only nineteen, Tayuya being one of the lucky ones.
She had no clue how she had managed to survive this long, but she guessed it was only because Tori had felt sorry for her and frequently helped her, which she hated. In this wandering group, life was difficult. They were constantly looking for food, sending out five-man foraging teams, and when they found food, it was accompanied by fighting to establish a pekking order of which Tayuya had always been at the bottom of. Always.
Tayuya finished her apple and cast the incredibly close-cut core away before heading towards a nearby stream to refill her flask. They would be heading out in a few minutes, she guessed, and she had to pack up. Kneeling down by the small, muddy stream, she filled her flask and looked down at her reflection. It was not a pretty sight. Her skin was covered in smudges of dirt and her bold red hair was dulled by dust and bits of twigs. It was uncerimoniously flattened by a brown, cloth helmet as it reached just past her shoulders, falling messily across them. Her light brown, almost yellow eyes glared back at her fearlessly and her eyebrows were almost constantly furrowed in anger about one thing or another. Shoving the stopper back in her flask, she stood and headed back.
She shoved her few belongings, an extra shirt, a Cloud head protector and small bracelet she had made awhile back, messily into her backpack and shouldered it, stalking off the the meeting circle. Most of the other kids had already arrived and they waited, talking quietly among themselves. Tori stepped forward, a smaller boy who was almost always present with him stood a few feet off, to his right.
"Today we will head west for about a week and a half, back to those forests to go look for some more food. If there are any villages on the way that none of us belonged to, we will stop to raid them if possible. I will take team three and lead, followed by team one and then by team two. We will stop at noon and we will set up camp every day at sunset, but we should be up by sunrise. Let's go."
The group of kids assembled as they had been intructed. Tayuya was on team two, and was stuck at the very back, making her the last one in line. She hated it, she was always last, always the worst, always at the bottom. But she strived for power, and knew someday she would be at the front, she would be the leader, the one to boss the others around.
The talking ceased as they began to move silently trough the sparse vegitation of the almost dead forest. Most of the trees had lost their leaves already. The one thing this band had learned was the importance of travelling in silence, as it had cost them many lives before. The only thing they could do if they encountered an opponent was to run away usually, unless there was only one weak one. Tori made all the decisions.
Tayuya was knocked down by Mikiri, who had tripped her for the fun of watching her fall on her face. She fell from the branch she had been on, landing almost ten feet below painfully. He laughed quietly, before leaving her behind and continuing on with the rest of the group.
"You fucking asshole! What the hell was that for?" she hissed as he turned and left.
Tayuya pushed herself up, wincing as her ankle snapped in protest, before falling back down. She lifted her pant leg and examined it. It was purple and blue and there was a large swollen lump on it, she had either sprained it or broken it, she didn't know.
Tearing off a strip of her already ripped up shirt, she wrapped her injured ankle tightly before standing again and shakily picking up her fallen backpack. West, she thought. Tori said west, so just keep going until you catch up again. I swear I'l rip that asshole Mikiri apart when I get back.
She stumbled slowly off in the same direction, warily watching over her shoulder for anybody or anything that might be stalking her. Her ankle twinged painfully with every step as she continued along through the windy morning.
Tayuya could no longer feel her left leg, the whole thing had gone numb a little while after sunset. The temperature had also fallen with the sun, and she had put on her extra shirt overtop of her normal, torn up one. She limped slowly through the darkness. One thing, possibly the only thing, she was good at was navigating in the dark. Not by using her eyes, but by using her ears. She had an incredible sense of hearing and if she made a slight noise, she could place the position of objects around her by listening to the way her sound bounced off of them.
It was late, past midnight, and her eyelids were heavy. Finally, a little off to her right, she saw three flickering lights, campfires. She turned slightly, avoiding a bunch of trees in the darkness, and began limping towards the fires. But a few feet towards the distant lights, she tripped and fell over something and felt a warm liquid seep over her legs and her injured left ankle.
Tayuya panicked, feeling for where she had injured herself again, but finding no such place. Her ankle was still in the same condition as before, and as she moved her hand past it she brushed up against a number of blood-covered hairs. Squinting in the darkness, she made out the shape of ayoung deer which had apperently fallen and broken something, dying from bloodloss perhaps.
The first thought that made it's way into her mind was meat. She rummaged in her weapons pouch, drawing a small kunai and working open the animal's stomach, spilling more blood on the ground. She removed her jacket, exposing herself to the cold once more, and began piling strips of bloody meat onto it, stripping the dead animal of everything, including it's organs. I can't get stronger by living off of rotten fruit and stale bread, she thought bittery.
She then tied up the jacket and, replacing her knapsack, she resumed trudging towards the camp, weighed down by the extra weight in her right hand. It took her fifteen minutes to make it all the way there.
Looking out from the trees, she saw Tori sitting with Mikiri and speaking quietly. She stepped out from the tree cover.
"You fucking asshole! Look what you did to my ankle! I had to walk all the way here with a broken ankle!" she yelled angrily at the astonished boy. Tori sighed in relief, before noticing the tied jacket which was dripping blood and bulging.
"What's that?" he asked, indicating the jacket. Tayuya dropped it before him proudly.
"I found a dead deer, so I took all the meat and carried it all the way back so we could eat it," she said.
There was a sudden whoosh as thirteen other kids trampled over her to get at it, all trying to rip away the jacket at once. Someone knocked her over and stepped on her broken ankel, resulting in another painful crack. Tayuya's eyes welled up with tears of pain.
"Get the hell off me, shithead!"
"Stop it! Everybody wait!" This time it was Tori. The crowd dissapated, each person clutching pieces of meat protectively.
"Put them back," said Tori, now standing. There were mumbled complaints as they did so.
"First of all, Tayuya gets first choice, since she was the one who found it. And second, the rest has to be smoked and stored, so go back to your campfires."
The rest of the group stormed off angrily, grumbling. Tears were running freely down Tayuya's pale cheeks by now as she grimaced in pain, making no sound at all. Tori came up to her, followed by the smaller dark-haired boy who seemed like his shadow. He knelt down and examined her ankle, removing her bandages and tearing his own sleeve into strips, re-bandaging it more securely.
"Which piece would you like, Tayuya?" he said softly. Tayuya pointed to a medium sized strip of meat and he lifted it, piercing it easily with a long stick and propping it over the fire. Tayuya sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. I'm gonna be wasted tomorrow, she thought.