Beyond a point of recognition, she wandered far past any location she had ever previously felt comfortable travelling. Long past the rivers where her father gathered water, further than the broad fields where her father had shown how to create traps to provide food. Those same animals now peered over to the small girl from a safe distance away, the hunter and predator roles now reversed. But none made a significant move towards her, the leering sense of danger still in the back of their instincts. The mothers were imprisoned between metallic teeth, children caught by the hind legs and roasted within the distance of their smell. Even more so than they mourned for their loss, did they not want to be the next victim.
Their presumption was wrong. The girl posed no threat and could have easily been wiped out by a couple snake bites. Sure, the creatures would have martyred themselves and passed from the burning sensation that followed the bites. But the girl would have similarly martyred herself as a lone traveller. But this fog of uncertainty kept her safe, travelling forward step by step.
But this uncertainty no longer existed in these lands, in the sandy dunes that now surrounded her in any direction she looked. The creatures now peering towards her from outside view had no missing mothers, no recollection of what their peers smelled like as they were being cooked. These ones knew not the past of the girl they tracked, and the shared in this lack of awareness.
Yasu's memories were limited. Her memories doubled with every fresh hill she mountained and each tentative step she took. Her head was bursting, though she wasn't sure whether this had to do with the barrage of new sensations or the dry tongue in her mouth begging for even a drop of sustenance. It was a plead that she had to ignore. She didn't have the heart to tell her shrivelled papillae that she wasn't sure exactly when she would next taste the freshness of water.
Her stomach was an entirely different story. Its protests were much louder and much more difficult to ignore altogether. It would scream and ache with every tumble she took, adding insult to injury. She was less understanding of her stomach, less willing to completely ignore the incessant howling.
"Shut up for a second, please!"
She had taken a peculiarly hard fall, reaching the top of a sand mound only to discover that the backside gave way to a cliff of sorts. A steep drop-off caused by the wind had come as a surprise to the young woman whose reaction time had to have been at an all-time low. Before she could even question the step she took onto unsturdy ground, she had given it most of her body weight. She landed uncomfortably on her side, spinning down the cliff that had to have been at least ten feet tall. There was nothing solid enough to tear through her skin. The uncomfortable sensation of sand and dirt entering her mouth and coating her hair with a thick layer of muck was debatably worse. And as she spat the waste back onto the ground, her stomach decided to pipe up again with an obnoxious screech of protest.
"Why spit it out!" It seemed to squeal, "Swallow! Give us the nutrients we need! Take a handful of decadent nutriment from the ground and satiate yourself! Satiate us both!"
"Shut up!" she screamed this aloud to nobody in particular, each word she spat containing at least a few specs of dust. But her interjection fell on deaf ears as her stomach grumbling continued, seemingly harsher now that it was getting the attention it wanted. It was an incessant white noise. Yasu hated it so much. "Shut up. Or else."
Not an empty threat, a threat immediately followed by a direct gut punch to herself. She wasn't strong, but it had enough impact to make her cough uncomfortably. And with each cough, even more dust escaped her lungs. Her stomach groaned again, but in a tone different from what she had heard earlier. She chanced another blow, slamming her fist against her flat stomach with as much force as she could muster. At this second blow, the groaning of her stomach finally ceased.
And for a moment, there was complete silence. For a moment, Yasu finally felt the relief of tranquillity, her ears only catching the gust of the wind. It was nice for a moment. For multiple moments though, it was agonizing. The sound of being wholly alone, solitude in its most natural state.
"I didn't mean that. I'm sorry." Yasu rubbed her fingers along her belly, offering sweet comfort to the only friend she knew. There was no answer. For the next few minutes, her stomach was eerily silent. She noticed the pangs of hunger were nowhere to be felt. Her breathing quickened. "Come on, you know I didn't mean that!" Still, silence.
Her colouring book remained at her side, buried lightly in a small pile of sand alongside her. She reached for the ripped and dirtied pages, risking a glance inside. An uncoloured page remained the last one that she had been avoiding.
It was the image of three ninja leaping between trees atop a village of treehouses. She imagined how she would have coloured it. The ninja would have been black, of course. They were meant to be silent stalkers, night members who moved as quietly as the breeze. She would have taken liberties with the trees and tree houses. Maybe someone living inside one of the tree houses was eccentric, having painted her home in a vibrant shade of lime green. Maybe her neighbour was similarly abnormal and took it upon herself to paint flowers and vegetables onto the wooden planks. Inside the houses? They were cooking steak. She had no doubt. They were cooking steak and washing it down with the juiciest navel oranges she had ever seen. They were bursting from the peels. Yasu could taste it clearly.
Yasu often dreamed that the ninja would come to her and her father's cave. These ninja were just like the ninjas scattered throughout her colouring book and would come to the shelter to save the two of them. They would take her back to the hidden sand village, the one her father had told her stories about. She would taste the cuisine, play with the other children, climb atop the tall towers and feel the cool breeze across her cheeks. But these ninja never came. A part of her was hoping that she hadn't missed them, that she hadn't left her cave and deceased father just a day before the rescue was to be made. The thought made her want to cry, but she had no liquids in her body with which to form tears.
She brought the bland colouring book page to her nose, imagining that she could smell the wafting smoke of a dinner in progress. It was such an intense sensation. She could have sworn that the open fire was right in front of her when she closed her eyes. She chanced a taste of the page. Without opening her eyes, she stuck out her dry tongue and ran it across the tan paper. It tasted just like she imagined. Juicy, savoury, sweet. Delectable.
She forced her crusty eyelids apart and tore the page from the book. Wadding it into a small ball, she threw the paper into her mouth. The inside of her mouth desperately tried to coat a layer of saliva, but it lacked the liquid. Still, Yasu chewed the ball until it had broken into a million tiny pieces before forcing it down her throat with an exaggerated gulp. It smelled better than it tasted.
Finally, with the attempt at satiation, her stomach let out another growl. Yasu smiled, placing a shaking palm on the source of the pleasant croak. At least she wasn't alone anymore.
She allowed her eyelids to shut with an uncomfortable grit. She was asleep only a few moments later. Her stomach continued to croak. Yasu smiled. It was looking out for the both of them, keeping watch as she slept.
But her stomach was not solid nor robust. It did not have the wherewithal to keep at bay the snakes, lizards, and spiders that now approached her sleeping form.
Yasu was wrong. She wasn't fine. As soon as she had been sleeping for a few hours, the panging of her stomach dragged her awake. Yasu grumbled as she awoke, offended that something was pulling her away from the soft white sheets surrounding her. She halfway recollected the day's events in her sleeping stupor. She was in… Tenten's house. She was in her guest bedroom, sleeping soundly in a soft bed that had probably never been slept in before. She was covered in sweat. She needed food.
Half conscious, Yasu threw her legs onto the floor beside her and risked standing upright. Her blood equalizing throughout her body made her head pound for a moment, but it was not a sensation she wasn't used to. After a moment, she grumbled an incomprehensible protest and dragged her feet along the carpet and towards the living room.
Making sure to open and close her door as silently as possible to not awaken the softly snoring Tenten asleep in the other room, Yasu approached the kitchen. She opened the fridge with a frown. Nothing. Did Tenten not know what grocery shopping was? It was quite unlike a ninja to not have a week's worth of food available at any given moment. Still, maybe that was just Yasu's wishful thinking.
It took a moment for Yasu to locate the front door. She hadn't had the chance to survey the room's layout, a precaution she was now begrudgingly wishing she had done earlier. But once she located the path to the outside world, she unlocked the safety latch and pulled herself out into the cold outside air.
The sun had long since set, and the moon was high in the sky. It had to have been at least 3 in the morning. No sensible person should have been awake at this hour. To her surprise, though, Yasu took note of the various individuals stumbling down the street at a snail's pace. What was with these people? Why were they walking funny? Why did the words they spoke to their friends slur to the point of incomprehension? Was it some sort of Jutsu these people were under? And why did they smell so strongly of cleaning liquid and mouthwash when she walked behind them?
Letting her curiosity fall into the back of her mind, Yasu noted how all the people still awake were coming from the same direction. Wherever these people came from, she felt they were all coming from the same place. And the place they were coming from surely had food. So Yasu travelled against the current of curiously inebriated individuals.
"I SWEAR I'm not joking! He was all over me, it was PATHETIC!"
Yasu fell behind the pace of a duo of women in front of her. They smelled strongly of something artificial, something that made her nose purse. They were dressed in tight clothing that displayed each curve on both of their bodies. Their skirts hardly reached the middle of their thighs. Were they not uncomfortable?
"Naruto is just like that. You know he's harmless." A pink-haired woman spoke between laughs, waving her hand at the blonde beside her. "He's a flirt when he's had one too many."
"You're just saying that because YOU'RE the one he's usually ALL OVER. Don't get too jealous when he finally realizes he has no CHANCE with you and stops giving you all the attention."
"So he has a chance with you?"
"That's NOT what I said."
The two were giggling with each other and talking about something that flew miles above Yasu's head. One too many of what? Has no chance of what?
The two women entered a bustling plaza of sorts. The number of people hustling and bustling along the sidewalks, overflowing into the streets, was staggering to Yasu, who had never seen so dense a crowd. Especially not at 3 in the morning.
The two women in front of her veered to her right and directly into the crowd. Yasu knew better than to follow. With how cramped the sidewalks were, there was no way she could get around without bumping shoulders and causing a scene. The last thing she needed right now was a group of people who had been suspiciously burned, grilling her on why she burned to the touch. She had dropped that bombshell on enough people in the past few days.
Still, from a safe distance beside the sidewalk and a few feet into the dirt road, Yasu continued tailing the two women from before. Why was she keen on following these two strangers? Because there had to be a reason they were dressed so beautifully, Yasu was hoping it was because they were going somewhere with food. Beautifully? Did she really just describe those outfits as 'beautiful'? She shook the thought from her head.
A wooden structure, one that stuck out in the streets like a sore thumb. It did not have the extravagant lights of the other buildings. It didn't offer a soundtrack of bumping dissonance into the outside. There was hardly any music, really. The sign in front of the building wasn't flashing bright, neon pollution of light. Instead, a few characters simply read "Shushu-ya." The two women entered through the front, and Yasu followed them a few moments later.
The inside was quaint. A few patrons held cigarettes between their fingers as they discussed topics Yasu had no interest in. A few others clinked their glasses together in loud celebration before drinking all the liquid down in a single gulp. A grimace followed. Did they not like the drinks? Why did the woman behind the counter continue to bring them more? Why not tell her to stop?
"The usual over here, please!" a hearty exclamation from the pink-haired woman as she leaned forward onto the counter. This caught the attention of a man behind the counter garbed in a slick black dress shirt. He smiled at the two women before nodding his head and mixing a couple liquids inside a metallic cylinder. Yasu wasn't sure why the movement of his hands captivated her so. He obviously knew what he was doing.
"Sakura, Ino! Always great to see ya." The man chirped happily, "A late start, huh? Or should I say an early start?"
"You should say nothing." Ino winked at the man, "Shouldn't everyone get a drink when they're thirsty?"
"A valid point, my lady." The man smirked before pouring the liquid from the cylinder into two clear glasses and placing it in front of the two of them. "Any special occasion for the drinks tonight, or this morning rather?"
"If you must know," Sakura piped up with a smile, running the tips of her pointer finger along the top of her glass, "Neji and Shino are coming back from a trip. They should be getting back any minute now. We're meeting them here. They're probably tired, but its been at least a month since we saw them last!"
"Shino and Neji! I was wondering why they haven't been here for a while. Good to hear they didn't find a new bar."
Ino laughed, "I don't think they'll find another bar in town that has drinks as cheap as you guys. Maybe they'll move on when you finally raise your prices."
"I think half the town will move on if we raise our prices."
"Fair."
Yasu had taken a seat a few chairs from the other two. She maintained enough distance to not make it completely obvious that she was tailing them. If they confronted her, it wasn't as if she had an answer for why she was following them. She could always lie, but she wasn't the best at getting away with that.
"I'll be back to chat in a bit, gotta make sure everyone has something." The bartender smiled at Sakura and Ino, leaving them to their drinks and taking a quick lap around the rest of the counter. He came to a stop in front of Yasu.
"I don't believe we've met, first time in here?"
Yasu took a moment before answering somewhat awkwardly, "Yea."
"Great! Always love to see new faces in here!" The man shot an infectious smile towards Yasu, who could only respond with a slight uptick of her lips. "What can I get you? First one's on me."
The first one's on what?
"Do you guys have any food?" Yasu questioned. The man's inquisitive glance let her know that this probably wasn't a common question he got at this hour.
"Well, the kitchen closed at around midnight." The man rubbed his chin, "but we do have some edamame in the back that I can bring out. Nothing too crazy."
"I'll take anything I can get right now." Yasu admitted with a cumbrous, short and dry laugh. She felt out of place.
"Sure. Those are complementary, so the free drink is still on the table. What can I get ya?"
"Water would be fine, please."
"Water?"
The man gave a hearty laugh before turning his head to where Sakura and Ino sat, "First time I've ever offered a free drink and they ask for water!"
"Water? That's so cute!" Yasu wasn't sure why this was so amusing, but Ino laughed at the word as if it were the funniest word she'd ever heard. Yasu had never felt more ostracized for wanting some water before.
"Hey now, maybe she isn't old enough to drink." Sakura chimed in, "How old are you?"
"17."
Sakura seemed a bit taken aback by the dry response. Yasu tried her best to match the cheerful atmosphere of the room, but it was difficult when she was half asleep and starving. Sakura shook off her momentary surprise, "Are you not from Konoha? The drinking age here is 16, so 17 is all good."
Yasu opened her mouth but came up short of a response. Where could she say she was from? A cave? A forest? That she had been broken out of a market by three ninja in the middle of the woods? That would surely go over well. She settled with, "I'm not from Konoha."
"Where are you from then?" Ino turned her head questioningly, "I don't think I'm familiar with your accent."
Yasu grimaced. Hoping to avoid further grilling was useless. Thankfully, before she could answer, there came the sound of the front entrance opening once again.
"Shino! Neji!" The attention was driven away from Yasu in less than a second. At the arrival of two tired-looking men, Sakura and Ino completely forgot about Yasu's existence. Yasu took the opportunity to crawl into her proverbial hole. With the bartender commenting that her edamame and "water" would be right out, he also left her to her own devices. He made sure to put extra emphasis on the "water" part.
Ino and Sakura stood from their seats and hugged the two fatigued guests. One was garbed in mostly white cloth, a heavy jacket covering most of his upper torso. He also had a curiously long wrap of bandage covering the entirety of his right forearm. The other was draped in black, the collar of his coat covering most of his face and the dark glasses he wore covering the rest. They both wore bags around their legs. They were ninja. Yasu could tell.
"So, how was it?" Ino asked as she pulled away from the tight hug she had wrapped Neji inside of. The playful atmosphere was still there, but the area around them had become tense.
"Not well." Shino answered the question dryly.
"Did something happen?"
"Something had happened." Neji corrected, "That much was obvious."
"What do you mean?"
"The place was abandoned like we assumed it would be." Neji sat at the bar, and the bartender wordlessly brought a drink. "But it hadn't been abandoned long."
"Half the equipment was still in use. Nobody was there, but they hadn't left that much earlier than when we arrived." Shino spoke up as he took a sip from the glass that had just been placed in front of him, "There were things in there I wouldn't wish upon anybody. Body parts. Dead things."
Just what had Yasu stumbled upon?
"That sounds rough." Sakura placed her elbows on the counter. The cheerful atmosphere from before had all but disappeared. "Just what is Orochimaru planning…."
Orochimaru?
Just the sound of his name sent a visceral reaction throughout Yasu's form. A chill ran down her spine. A bead of sweat fell from her forehead. The edamame that she snacked on had lost its salty flavour. It had been months since she heard the name, but even then, it was too soon.
"Sasuke wasn't there either, if you were wondering." Neji interjected with the thought on Sakura's mind before she could even speak it aloud. "So don't bother dragging Tsunade through the mud about not letting you come with us."
Sasuke?
The name made a pit of bile approach the top of her throat, but Yasu just managed to choke the liquid down before it spewed all over the counter. It had been months since she heard the name, but even then, it had been too soon. Much too soon.
"I'll let Naruto know." Ino spoke as she placed a supportive arm across her back as Sakura sunk deeper into the bar counter. A brief silence fell.
The conversation was much less exciting past this point, discussing things Yasu had yet to learn about. Political things. Something about a new Hokage, something about a new district. Gradually the mood lightened until it was as if they had never spoken the name of 'Orochimaru' or 'Sasuke'. But Yasu couldn't forget.
There was an itching in the back of her head, a lingering discomfort that kept Yasu's face contorted. Why were these four discussing the two most disgusting people Yasu may have ever come into contact with? Part of her wanted to grill the four of them, but another part knew she would just be examined right back.
The thing that had rubbed her the wrong way the most was Sakura's reaction to the news about Sasuke. She was disappointed at his not being there, wherever 'there' was. And she wasn't disappointed in a way that was indicative of anger, no. She was disappointed in a way that a friend would be disappointed at their friend not showing up to their birthday party. What was her experience with Sasuke? How did they know each other? Was she on his side?
Yasu grimaced outwardly and lightly spat towards the group. Her fascination for the two women quickly turned to anger that Yasu could hardly control. She wanted to grab their faces and squeeze as hard as she could. She wanted to hurt them. She wanted to burn them. She had to leave.
Without so much as a thank you for the nourishment, Yasu left the bar without another word. She wouldn't forget about this. She had a feeling this was hardly even the beginning.
Whew! First new chapter in A YEAR and it only took a day and I might even start the next one tonight as well!
I'm surprised at how easily the ball kept rolling even though I'd been away for so long.
Mystery? Intrigue? I hope you are ;)
More to come soon!
But before I call it, don't forget to leave a fav, follow, or review if you dig it so far! I'm very flattered by the love the reworked chapters have gotten and I hope you enjoy these new chapters just as much :)
-Kommli
