(Warning: Bad language and violence that some people may find upsetting)
A cold, dark room. On one side there was a rusty stove and a kettle on the worktop beside it. On the other side of the room stood a simple table and one wooden chair, both notched and peeling with age. Various tools were scattered on the tabletop: a screwdriver, a crowbar, parts and pieces of an electrical nature, transistors and the like. On the floor rested a black backpack that contained a girl's entire belongings. This was all she owned in the world.
It was the time of night when reality begins to shift and distort. Thoughts become deeper and more abstract, and something hardly feared in daylight grows with terrifying intensity within the stifling shadows of the night. From 3am until dawn, this is the realm that rules. This is the hyper-reality of twilight that drugs the conscious mind into submission, allowing the unconscious mind to unfurl like the bud of a night-dwelling flower. Silence enveloped that world, thick and heavy. Inescapable.
In the centre of the room was a small bed. In it rested Naoko, deep in sleep. Her small body was wrapped in thin covers, forming a cocoon-like bundle. She was curled up in a foetal position. Her eyelids flickered. She was dreaming…
Darkness. For a while it seemed unbroken, but gradually pale drifting shapes became visible. Snowflakes. They fell softly and silently to the ground, twirling and dancing before they met their resting place. A small girl tiptoed through the snow. She smiled as a fluffy snowflake landed on the tip of her nose. It was around 6pm, but at this time of year it got dark early. The girl approached a house. The home she shared with her family. But as she moved closer, she became tense. Something felt wrong. She stood on the tips of her toes to peer through the window and pressed her hands against the pane of glass. She gasped. Dark figures moved around the room. Someone had broken in.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness she saw her mother. She was on the floor. A large man knelt over her body, his hands wringing her mother's throat. He was strangling her. The veins in his hands stood out as he squeezed with a crushing grip. The girl's mother made a feeble attempt to remove the iron grip around her neck, but lack of oxygen made her weak. Her face contorted frighteningly.
The young girl watched the horrific scene in terror. She wanted to scream, to cry out, but the only sound that left her was a hoarse whimper, almost inaudible. She noticed a crumpled shape in the doorway. Her father. He convulsed and was hacking up blood. His limbs were twisted, jutting out at odd angles. There were stab wounds all over his body, and a deep gash in his neck. Dark figures stood around him, and she could hear shouts, but couldn't tell what they were saying. Then a large boot came down hard to stamp on her father's face. The young girl brought her hands up, clawing at her ears, trying to block out the sound it made. And the choking, gurgling noises coming from her mother. Tears spilled down the girl's cheeks, her face twisting in sheer terror.
"Daddy…" she whispered
Suddenly, her mother's wide eyes turned to the window and she saw her daughter. The mother began flailing her arms desperately, signaling to the girl. Her mother's lips formed silent words as the life was choked from her body.
"Run Naoko…"
And she did. She ran, hacking and sobbing, stumbling over the frozen earth.
"Mother". She dragged the word out of her body again and again, like a mantra, as if trying to organise the mess of her mind.
She ran and ran, until the cold air ripped in and out of her lungs painfully. Finally, her small body failed her and she crashed into the snow. Still she tried to move, attempting to drag herself with her hands. She gave up, her body wracked with grief and exhaustion. She turned to look behind her. No one had followed. In the distance, she saw her home, engulfed in flames.
Naoko slammed her body upright and looked around the room in a panic, now wide awake.
"Just a dream…" she muttered.
Her body shook violently and she broke down in sobs. Hot tears soaked her hair, her hands and face, the sparse bedsheets. Her hands wound their way into her hair, twisting desperately. Her fingernails met her palms. She didn't feel the pain.
She wept in the frozen room, which was so cold she could almost see her breath. Gradually she calmed down until she could cry no more. A cruel silence seized her.
She finally dragged herself out of bed. It would be morning soon. She may as well get up and start working, she thought. She couldn't go back to sleep now, not after the nightmare she'd just had.
She dressed herself quietly, gathered her tools and left the room. The room itself was awful and insanely cold. It was the room that the Council had designated for her to stay in while she worked in Suna. It was in a small separate outbuilding at the edge of the Council grounds. She closed the door and made her way to the main Council building.
Morning
Gaara made his way through the corridors of the Suna Council building. It was 9:15am. In his mind he replayed the scenario with his siblings at the dinner table last night:
Gaara and Kankuro were sat at the table. Gaara was quietly munching on a chocolate chip cookie. It was his fourth. God forbid anyone finds out that their fearsome Kazekage's favorite food was chocolate chip cookies. Temari was at the sink, washing the dishes.
A mischievous grin flashed over Kankuro's face, indicating that he was about to say something stupid.
"Hey Temari, Gaara got faced off by a girl today…teeheehee" he cackled.
Temari
raised her eyebrows. Gaara shot a fierce glare at his fool of a
brother…If looks could kill…
Kankuro cracked up laughing.
"Hahahaha…Gaara…your face…" he spluttered out. He managed to control himself and continued. "Come on, you loved it. You could have cut the sexual tension in that room with a knife"
Temari had her back to them, but her shoulders were shaking, indicating silent laughter. The thought of Gaara being sexual was hilarious to the two of them, and they knew he became embarrassed whenever the conversation turned to sex. This made it funnier. Kankuro continued to make fun of his little brother.
"Come on Gaara, you have to admit she was pretty hot. You'd do her, right?"
That was the last straw. Temari collapsed into the sink, shrieking with laughter.
"Kankuro, you're a fucking idiot" Gaara growled viciously. Gaara's inability to take a joke just made it more tempting to make fun of him. Temari decided to join in. She struggled to force back her laughter and sidled up next to him, stroking his fiery hair.
"Awww…has Gaara got a little girlfriend?" she cooed in a sweet, patronising voice.
Gaara frowned and pouted slightly, in a sulky childlike way, although he wasn't aware of it. Temari saw and cooed at her little brother even more.
Gaara pulled away from her sharply and stood up to leave the table. He'd had enough of this. He smacked his brother upside the head as he walked past, knocking Kankuro off his chair and leaving him in a heap on the kitchen floor, still laughing. Gaara stamped off to his room.
Kankuro and Temari loved to wind up their little brother now there was no risk of Shukaku killing them. He was a regular target. You could say they were just making up for lost time.
"I think I hit a nerve there" said Kankuro.
"Or…maybe there's some truth in it" Temari replied with a wink.
Gaara snapped out of his flashback and continued pacing down the corridor. He'd grown to love his siblings. But they were still idiots.
He was shaken out of his thoughts by the sound of children. He frowned. Those damn kids from the village have sneaked into the building again, he thought. So much for security. They were congregated at the end of the corridor, peeking into the technical room, giggling.
"I WON'T TELL YOU AGAIN!! NOW PISS OFF!" The Kazekage recognised the voice; it was the stormy engineer from yesterday.
Suddenly, a blinding flash of light leapt through the door, crashing into the wall. The children screamed and squealed, running down the corridor and laughing like lunatics.
"AND NEXT TIME I WON'T MISS!!"
Gaara's eyes widened…was that…a bolt of lightning? What the hell was going on?
He walked towards the door. The children looked up at the Kazekage and gulped. They'd been busted. They were in big trouble now. They shot off in the other direction, disappearing down some stairs, no longer laughing.
Gaara turned and looked through the door silently. There was the engineer on the floor, curled up with machines. She worked away, screwdriver in hand. She had one of the generators in pieces, and a cable wrapped around one leg, although she didn't seem to notice.
"Damn kids" she muttered to herself.
She was on all fours, her shapely bottom facing the door where the Kazekage stood. He stared. Afterall, he was an 18 year old male. She started humming a little tune to herself, occasionally moving her hips to the rhythm. That didn't help…Gaara continued to stare. The things people do when they think they're alone, he thought.
The engineer clicked something into place and flicked a switch. The machine shuddered into life and began to hum. But after a few seconds it ground to a halt.
"Oh fuck" Naoko muttered curtly, still unaware she was being watched.
She extended an elegant hand to the machine and a spark of electricity sprang from her fingers. The machine started up again. She seemed satisfied with this and rose, now kneeling. She turned around.
"SHIT!" she cried, jumping when she noticed the Kazekage watching her. "Oh it's you" she said more calmly, recovering from her shock.
He ignored her rudeness. "That electricity that came from your hands. It's a Kekkei Genkai, isn't it?"
She stood up, unwinding the cable from around her leg and dusting herself off. There was a smudge of dirt on her nose.
"It is" she replied.
"Explain it to me" he ordered.
She chuckled. Polite or not, he gets straight to the point, she thought.
"I inherited it from my father's clan. The Imamura clan. I can bend electrons to my will and manipulate the electromagnetic field around my body…"
She paused, extending an arm. A spanner on the floor trembled, and then rose, floating up through the air towards her, before landing firmly in the palm of her hand.
"…One result is magnetism" she looked at the Kazekage. His eyes betrayed a hint of interest. She continued.
"I can also create electric currents, controlling the voltage to my desire, from a mere spark to a full scale bolt of lightning, as you saw earlier. I can borrow energy from the atmosphere around me too"
"Like in a storm?" the Kazekage asked.
Woah results! she thought gleefully.
"Yeah, like in a storm. There's always tons of static electricity in the air before and during a storm, and I can channel that energy"
"Hn" he said, impressed with her explanation, although his face didn't show it.
"Cool, huh?" she chirped. She finished with a beautiful smile.
Gaara almost smiled back. Almost. He managed to stop himself and he frowned instead.
She tutted at him, slightly annoyed. People were usually amazed by her abilities, but this guy looked almost uninterested. Even so, she decided she liked him. She had no idea why, but she wanted to find out more about him. She set back to work.
"It must have been you who scared those kids off, right?" she giggled "Do you realise how intimidating you are? You really shook me up yesterday, y'know. But don't tell anyone I said that, ok? I have an image to maintain" she winked.
"I see" was his simple response.
She decided to shut up. Conversation was obviously going nowhere with this guy.
He watched her work. She moved fluidly, fixing some parts, dismantling others. A look of delicate concentration caressed her face. She reached up to smooth back her hair.
Gaara's heart started to beat faster. Why is that? he wondered. This girl seemed to have some sort of effect on him. He decided to try his hand at conversation. He wanted to hear her voice again.
"Where's the other girl?" it came out in a growl.
"Oh, you mean Yuki? She's in a room down the hall, surveying the headsets"
"Did the Council designate rooms for you both?"
She looked a little pissed off at that. "Hmm. If you can call them rooms…they're more like prison cells. And they're so fucking freezing its unreal"
Gaara frowned. The useless old fools must have put the engineers in one of the outbuildings, instead of the warmer main building, he deduced. And it got cold out here in the desert at night. REALLY cold. He made a mental note to himself to chastise the Council members for their inhospitality. He walked towards the door.
"You're leaving, Lord Kazekage?" she said, sounding almost disappointed.
His eyes pierced her. "I have things to do…"
"…and call me Gaara". He left the room.
Her mouth dropped open in disbelief before forming a satisfied smile. Progress!
"Gaara" she whispered, smiling dreamily.
A/N: All reviews will be rewarded with my endless love and appreciation ;)