Hidden Away Part One: Shards, Comrade, Rebellion Alden-san 'Disclaimer'
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A/N: You're about to read snippets of fics that never made it to ffnet. Fics I may have promised you, fics I may have never mentioned. Here are bits of prologues, chapters, etc... First upp, Shards, a fic I loved but it came just as I was losing my Naruto inspiration...
- Shards, Prologue -
Vivid green boughs and thick wooden trunks made up the surrounding forest. The air, usually pushing past, in a refreshing wave of cool air, had become still and wet. The sky was the colour of a healthy noon, blue with a bright sun directly overhead. No bird chirped, nothing moved except two solitary, sitting figures. One male, one female, both Konoha Shinobi.
Her skin was damp with sweat, her breath caught in her throat and her skin tickling in anticipation, of what she didn't know. Golden strands hung in front of one of her eyes, but she pushed them away as she continued to be fascinated by the table in front of her. A grid, inked onto the table's polished surface, provided a background to the main focus.
Stones. Black stones, as dark as a raven's wing, as a black abyss, as midnight. White stones, as white as clouds, as cream, as snow. These stones, the ones that caught her eye so effortlessly, caused an attraction that was almost magnetic. It held her attention steadily, not letting her break focus. Go, possibly their culture's most ancient game. A game of strategy, of brains, of war. It was hard to think those two colours, the extremes of shade, could represent a bloody massacre so acutely.
"Move."
His voice broke her from her silent obsession, pulling her back into reality. She looked up at her partner, whose hair obscured his face as he looked down at the board. His voice had taken on the texture of gravel, rubbing at her nerves. Her hand rested in a bowl of white stones, but... it was not her turn. She checked the numbers again - it couldn't be.
"Shikamaru-"
"Just place your stone," his voice, strangely quiet, cut through her like an icy knife. She looked again at the board, at her bowl of stones, at the wall of hair that was supposed to be her friend. But, there was something wrong.. It was Shikamaru, but... there was something wrong.
"You're not going to, are you, Ino?"
She opened her mouth to protest this irritating command, one that made no sense at all, when she felt a tugging. Her eyes gravitation across the board, back to the hand he rested in his bowl of pitch-black stones. But... Her eyes weren't wrong. His hand...
"Shikamaru," she managed to force out, though her throat felt like it was slowly constricting,. "Your hand..."
Scales, like armour, had covered the once-handsome hands of her lifelong friend. Green scales, so repulsive and strange that they almost distracted her from the fact that Shikamaru's hand' wasn't a hand at all. Her own hand seemed to spasm, her bowl of white stones jerking and falling silently to the perfect grass.
"You won't make your move, will you Ino? Because, you know whatever you do, I'll bite your head off for it."
She looked up. The hair had shifted, his head had raised, his eyes met hers. These eyes were black stones, lifeless and dark. His face wasn't a human face, but reptilian, like a dragon's. She shook her head, trying to stand, to escape, but they were dead. Pain shot through them, and she glanced down. Shards of crystal had pierced each leg, and she looked up at the monster in front of her.
"You were troublesome."
The reptilian fist raised up and smashed the board, causing the table to shatter and seemingly disappear. His clothing had disappeared, and it was true - he was a reptile. It was a reptile. It lunged forwards on top of her, suddenly the predator, pushing her onto the ground, his teeth, it's teeth, ripping into her neck, her cheek, her face.
Darkness.
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A/N - It was definitely going to be pretty neat. There was going to be a first chapter full of these dreams (as it is a dream), and she wouldn't know what was going on until mid-chapter two, with a Prophecy, Sasuke returning, and a Beast she'd have to slay. The choices I was looking at were Kiba, Sasuke and Naruto, her spending the whole fic following clues until she knew it was one of them.
Up next was an ambitious one, Comrade, which had definite themes. It went on a 48-hour format, and it's still got everything planned, with an explosive finale. Here's thew beginning:
- Comrade-
"Hinata... I just made a huge mistake..."
Sakura stumbled into Hinata's apartment, almost tripping over herself. Her face, her arms, her dress were stained with blood, and she was crying. Hinata gasped, pulling her friend to her bedroom and lying her down, sitting on a chair. Sakura was sobbing, and curled up on the bed crying. Hinata patted her on the arm.
"S-sakura-san... W-w-what could you have done..." Hinata bit her lip and wiped at her own eyes, confused. What could she have done, to cause this reaction? The blood...
"I... I killed someone, Hinata..."
Hinata's eyes widened, her voice caught in her throat . Finally, after what seemed like forever, she asked, shaking as Sakura writhed on the bed.
"What do you mean, Sakura-san? Who? Who did you kill?"
Sakura shook her head
"No-one... Right? Chuunins are nobody's, just cannon fodder, right? Just there to die anyways..." Sakura shook her head from side to side.
"Who, Sakura-san?" Hinata was beconing frantic. So many people they knew were chuunin level... Hinata herself was a chuunin now. Sakura was a chuunin, now. All of their friends were chuunin now.
"Sakura-san, tell me, please! Who was it? Kiba-kun? Did you hurt Kiba-kun? Or Naruto-kun? Tell me!"
"Hinata, I...I can't believe it... I killed-"
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A/N: It's short but it gives you the over all idea of what the mystery was going to be. Now, anyone remember Gogyou? The five-part writers group that had the one chapter of it's story Treaty of Five? We tried the same format, different fic, called Rebellion. One of the genin was fused with a demon, and it caused the end of Konohagakure. So it followed Naruto and Gaara (after escaping from the Akatsuki), Tsunade and someone else. And who did I play? The charming villain of the next piece...
- Rebellion -
"I won't tell you where he is, asshole."
The woman, strapped to the wall with thick chains, struggled to detach herself. Her eyes met her captor's, and she almost growled, golden strands falling over her dirty, scratched face. Her breathing was laboured, her chest heaving. Hate filled her eyes.
"Ino... We can do this the easy way, but... even though it sounds cliche..."
She saw him loom from the darkness, stepping out of the darkness, his hand reaching out around her arm, his claw-like nails digging into her arm and cutting into it, letting blood well up on the surface of her skin. It dripped to the already-bloodstained stone floor. She screamed as his fingers pressed into her flesh, crushing her bone effortlessly. She stopped screaming, and looked at him, his calm face almost enough to make her sick.
"... Or we can do this the hard way. Ino, you know me... But my way of putting loved ones, my allies, before my mission? That died years ago. And you're barely anything but an annoyance to me now. Tell me where he is, and I may let him live when I find him... Or you could be responsible for his death..."
"Bastard!" she screamed, the pain in her arm overcoming anything else. But she was a shinobi, and the first rule of being a shinobi was simple: You can scream, you can yell, but you can never talk. Never give away anything that could be useful to the enemy. "You can RAPE me and I'll never tell!"
"Oh, I'd like to put that to the test..." Her eyes widened as she stared at him in horror. "But I'm not a monster, Ino."
"Yes you are. You're the fucking definition," she said. She'd laugh if she didn't feel like the strain would kill her.
"Not that kind," he said, looking into her eyes.
He was serious. Well, at least there was something decent still left in her old classmate. She could see what had happened to him... Overambition, a stupid mistake...
He was a demon, or almost. He'd stumbled across some ancient summoning scrolls or something and kept them from the Hokage, translating them in secret. Once they knew, it was too late. The demon he'd summoned had sealed itself in his body, pulling out the traits of another ancient connection of his clan.
The man in front of her now was, technically, half-demon. He was ruthless, angry and powerful beyond belief. She couldn't tell if any of the boy she'd known was still in there. If it was, it was deeply intrenched in the demon's madness.
His hand trailed up a tear in her shirt up to her underarm, quickly moving to tickle under her chin. "I will find others. What was his name, Chouji, the other teammate of yours? I killed him month ago, shoved my hand through his chest. I can still feel his organs pulsing on my arm-"
Ino went insane, struggling and biting and screaming. The man stepped back as she screamed all kinds of obscene threats.Finally, he swung his hand forwards, grabbing her face and pushing it towards the wall, his hand covering everything but her mouth.
"Tell me where he is, and you can stop this. I'll leave the rest of our classmates, the rest of the survivors from our late village live. I promise. Don't, and you're dead, and they're dead, and he's dead. It's on your shoulders, Yamanaka."
It was her choice, she could just tell him...
He was lying.
"You'll never find him, asshole."
"That's not nice, Ino... Well, two can play the mean game," he said, turning around and heading towards the door. "Kill her."
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A/N That's the one that made this an M rated 'fic'. Anyways, I think those are all the snippets I have currently, the shorter ones at least. In Pt. 2, I'll show you some other ones, longer snippets and snippets of some of these that go beyong the intro. Bye for now!
- Alden