HEYO!
I'm back now, and I survived both hurricane Rita and internet problems that I only recently fixed. Don't worry about it though, because I'm back and I'm better than ever. Thanks to all my reviewers. You keep me goin man.
I don't own Naruto. If I did, I would have tried to take over the world with it by now.
"Are you al right Sensei?" Tsuname, Tazuna's 28 year old daughter, asked sweetly, her soft voice full of genuine care.
"No, but I will be…in about a week…" Kakashi half mumbled from under his prison of blankets that were ever threatening to strangle him.
"The sharingan eye is an incredible power." Sakura said from his side "But doesn't the strain it puts on your body make you wonder if it's worth it?"
"Well, we took down the strongest of our foes, so we can relax for a while anyway." Tazuna said altruistically.
"Hey, Sakura chan, where's Reiko?" Naruto asked, raising a single eyebrow. Everybody knew that he was hoping the slightly manic young man wasn't lurking in the shadows, trying his best to be an imitation of Zabuza.
"He said he was going to go take a nap and hasn't come back." Sakura said with a slight smile, knowing that everyone's unease was alleviated.
"Why don't you go and get him, as part of a team, he needs to be here." Kakashi said, almost as if he were dreading the order.
Sakura went out to where she supposed Reiko might be. He had a strange habit of sleeping in trees. At least it wasn't as strange as his other habits, like playing chess with imaginary people and talking to rabbits and fixing pocket watches. She happened to find him sleeping on a branch of a rather large elm tree about ten feet in front of her. She quickly shimmied her way up and moved herself over to where he was.
"Reiko kun, it's time to wake up." Sakura said quietly, shaking him gently with both hands.
She was about to speak again when his eyes suddenly snapped open. Before she even knew it, he had her nailed to a tree with his altered senbon and had one hand holding her head up while holding his free arm ready to plunge another senbon straight through her throat. On his face was nothing but shadow down to his nose, making his eyes invisible.
"Reiko! Wake up!" Sakura pleaded, not really knowing what else to do "Please, it's me, Sakura!"
With a start, he suddenly looked up at her, shock written across his features. He quickly put the senbon away and began pulling the others out.
"Sakura chan!" Reiko exclaimed as he made sure she wasn't hurt "I didn't recognize you at first."
"You didn't recognize me?" Sakura asked confusedly "Why wouldn't you know who I am, and furthermore, why would you attack me like that?"
"Lets just say you look a lot like Medusa at the current moment." Reiko said as she laughed uncomfortably and scratched the back of his head. "We should get going, I'm assuming Kakashi sensei needs me for something."
Sakura shook her head for a second, making sure she wasn't hallucinating or anything. She decided that she wasn't after a time and went back in after Reiko, still not really knowing just what had transpired except that her life had been in danger. Almost immediately, she wished she hadn't because she entered in almost complete pandemonium.
"ZABUZA COULD STILL BE ALIVE? HELL YEAH!" Reiko yelled exuberantly "That sword of his was awesome dammit! I might just get a chance to steal it again!"
"Reiko…I don't think you're taking this news like you probably should…" Kakashi said, sighing as he did so.
"What do you mean? Zabuza's awesome!" Reiko said before making a fist and holding it out in front of him in a pose of declaration "From now on, I deem Zabuza as my mentor, even if we have to kill him."
"You are such an idiot." Sasuke said shortly before returning back to his cool and collected state of being.
"So, big bad Uchiha san speaks…" Reiko said with a smirk "I was starting to think you didn't have a voice."
"…" Sasuke didn't do anything, seeing that his insults didn't have nearly as much affect on Reiko as it did on Naruto.
"At any rate, I'm upping all of your training schedules." Kakashi explained with his calm demeanor.
"But Kakashi sensei, what will a little extra training now matter with what we're up against!" Sakura exclaimed worriedly "Our opponent is a ninja so powerful that with you Sharingan mirror-eye power, he almost defeated you!"
"But while I was down, who rescued me?" Kakashi asked, sitting himself up slowly, the motion defiantly taxing him.
"That was us, yeah, we're freakin' awesome. Glad to get some gratitude for that." Reiko butted in as they knew he would.
"Trust me." Kakashi said with a smirk "The skills I teach you now will only tide you over until I get better."
"Training? WOOHOO!" Naruto yelled in excitement, heading toward the door and not even waiting for Kakashi to get his stilts.
After they shot Naruto up with anti-depressants, otherwise known asSakura's fists, he calmed down enough to understand the exercise that lay at hand. They were tree climbing using chakra concentrated in one's feet. Sakura was already the best at it, but she stayed and trained with the boys for a time anyway. They couldn't tell if she just wanted to be around Sasuke, or she pitied them.
Naruto was barely sticking to the tree at all, Sasuke was using too much chakra, and Reiko…well, he was somewhere in between. He would run up for a while, and get further than either two boys, and then all the sudden fall off without any warning. Needless to say, he was a little bit more beat up than the other two.
In the evenings, all three boys would come in extremely bruised and hungry. In unison they would eat their food as fast as they could, and then throw it up in buckets that had been previously set up for this purpose exactly.
"So, how's your training been going?" Tsunami asked as she served the food to three exhausted boys.
"It's great!" Said Naruto exuberantly with a big smile on his face like always "I can tell I'm getting really strong. Next time we fight Zabuza, we'll take him down for sure!"
"Why do you wear yourself out for no reason?" Inari, Tazuna's grandson suddenly yelled at him, completely enraged at something or other "You act all cool, and talk big, but big strong guys like that are always too much for people who are weaker than them! They'll destroy you!"
"Shut up." Naruto said tiredly as he laid his head on the table "There's no way I'm gonna lose to them."
"Just watching you ticks me off!" Inari yelled at him, his anger not yet quelled "You go running your mouth when you don't know a thing!"
With a sudden movement that even Kakashi didn't see, Reiko suddenly had the boy by the collar and was holding him off the ground at eye level. His eyes were burning with something nobody had seen before. His whole aura was completely different. A sinister air hung about him now, only recognizable by Sakura, who experienced it when she had woken him up that one evening.
"Just what the hell makes you think you know about pain?" Reiko asked through gritted teeth.
Everybody in the room was completely frozen at this behavior. They were caught so off guard that they just didn't know what to do. The only person who so much as breathed was Inari, who was trembling with fear.
"You bitch and you moan about everything, but have you ever taken up arms against that which pains you!" Reiko asked, pulling him closer to his face and yelling directly into his wide eyes "You're nothing but a damn weakling! You make me sick to my stomach just by having your filthy presence within any of my senses! It's trash like you that gives the entire human race a bad name!"
By that time Sakura had Reiko in a throat bar from behind and Kakashi was trying to free Inari from his grasp, but neither seemed to be able to. It was as if his muscles were suddenly reinforced by steel. Naruto was almost in the same shock as Inari. Sasuke was actually trembling from the evil aura that hung in the air, but would of course never admit it.
Suddenly, as if his body suddenly deflated, he let Inari go of his own free will and fell backwards into Sakura. Inari backed away with tears in his eyes before he just ran out the back door. It was then that everybody turned to Reiko, who couldn't even support himself without Sakura's help. He was holding a hand over his eyes, which seemed rather odd.
"Someone get me a rag please." Was all he managed to mumble out. Tsunami immediately went and got a cold cloth, which she handed to him with trembling hands.
Without another word, he took the rag and stumbled out of Sakura's grasp, towards the washroom. For the rest of the night, they never saw, nor heard anything indicating that he was there. For all they knew, he was completely dead.
Reiko was passed out in the middle of the woods. Since the incident with Inari, he had been training alone. He had already gotten the tree climbing exercise down, but was just training other things now. He wasn't exactly sure where he was or when he passed out. His consciousness drifted through another plane as his body did it's best to heal itself.
While he was sleeping, he felt the presence of another enter the clearing. It took a while for him to register that the entity was getting closer and closer to him. By the time he finally realized it, the person was right on top of him. It took another second to snap his eyes open with his senbon ready. It took almost no time at all to stay his hand as he looked upon the being in front of him.
She was like an angel in his dark world. Around her, everything was the same as always. Hellish. But she…none of the delusions he normally suffered seemed to affect her. He looked deep into her black eyes, gazed upon her milky white skin and red lips. He could catch a smell of her raven black hair that fell around his face. As she smiled at him kindly, some pain inside of him seemed to go away.
"You'll catch your death of cold if you sleep on the ground like that." She said to him, her pure voice singing through the air like a kunai.
Reiko didn't reply for a long time. He merely stared at the beauty in front of him and contemplated what she could be. Could this be a trick of the hallucinations? No. His gut instinct told him that she was real enough.
"What's the matter? Are you hurt or something?" The deity asked him, her voice alleviating all things wrong in the outside world.
"Are you…" Reiko began, not sure if he should ask what was on his mind. "Are you real?"
The girl merely smiled again and touched the side of his face with her soft gentle hand. Her touch sent electricity up Reiko's spine. His fingers twitched slightly.
"I'm as real as you are silly." She said to him, not caring about his strange question at all.
In the next hour he had picked several armfuls of different herbs and weeds that the angel had said were medicinal. For Reiko, he was happy, yet cautious. Surely this girl was too beautiful to be true.
"Did I get enough for whatever it is you need them for?" Reiko asked with a smile as he set the plants down in front of her.
"My goodness!" She said, slightly surprised at the astounding quantity of herbs he had gotten "This is plenty. With all of these, I could probably open my own hospital."
"It was some job you took on, so early in the morning like that." Reiko said as he sat down in front of her.
"You're one to talk!" She said jokingly "What were you doing here in the middle of nowhere at the crack of dawn."
"Me? I was just doing some training." Reiko said coolly, not wanting to blow it by saying something stupid.
"Really?" She asked "That headband…are you some sort of ninja or something?"
"Why, yes, I happen to be a shinobi of Konohagakure." Reiko said with a smile, scratching the back of his head.
"What would you be training for that would make you pass out like that?" The girl asked gently.
"I'm training so that I can be strong enough to overcome what I must." Reiko said, his smile turning into a smirk.
"But…" She stammered, clearly confused "You look so strong and manly already! Why would someone like you need more strength?"
"Because I'm merely an insignificant speck of a shinobi compared to what I need to be." Reiko said, looking off into the distance "I haven't even begun to see how insignificant I really am…"
"Are you doing all this for yourself, or for somebody you care about?" The girl asked gently.
Reiko looked at her confusedly for a second, not really understanding what she was going on about. With a quick look at her face, she decided to explain what she meant.
"When people are protecting something precious to them…" The girl said with a weak smile "They can truly become as strong as they must be. So I ask you this: Do you have anybody special in your life?"
Reiko thought back through his life, looking at all the people he had met and everything he had done. Nobody in particular stood out. Nothing he had was especially dear to him, except maybe his parents, but he could tell this was different from that.
"No…" Reiko said finally, looking down at the ground "I don't have anybody very special to me…I hope that I might one day though…"
"Well when you find them, I'm positive you'll become stronger." The girl said, picking up the herbs and standing up "I'm sure we'll meet again someday."
"I think I'd like that very much miss." Reiko said with a smile, while still sitting down.
"Well you should know then…" She said as she turned and walked off "I'm a boy."
Reiko smirked to himself as he walked off. He didn't believe that for a second. Just as she left his sight, however, he found himself in the same hell that he always lived in, the darkness always threatening to devour him.
ALLRIGHT! REVIEWER RESPONSES!
Shang: yeah...Me and the laws of physics never agreed very well. But I'm pretty sure if the wave was big enough and moving fast enough, which it probably wasn't, the sword would be able to act as a surfboard. It was just entertaining so I threw it in.
Blu Rose: Ah, thank you for your enthusiasm. Now I just have to concentrate on what I'm going to 'doe' with the later chapters.
TwilightSoulTaker: Thank you for both the praise and envoking the wrath of the squirrels. We're all insane to a certain extent, and if it takes a man a fortnite to walk a mile, how many apples in a barrel of grapes? There's probably more purpose in a kitkat wrapper than in that last sentence...
READ AND REVIEW FOR THE LOVE OF SOFT DRINKS! KEEP ON TRANGLIN!