AN: Ah, hello. If you're wasting time reading this, I'm gonna let you know some things right off the bat.
1. I have to establish Tenten as a weak character, among many variations of other personalities. She's going to end up the most kickass one of them all, so bear with me. This chapter was torture to write...
2. I love a flamer, as well as constructive feedback. Just don't get belligerant about it; it's embarrassing.
3. I have some writing experience, and am not trying to step on any character's shoes.
4. If you see inconsistencies, please trust that I'm going to resolve it by the end. This thing is complete in my head, and getting written slowly.
... Yeah. Enjoy, I guess.
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We have too tell you how Squad 14 fell apart, before we can tell you if it ever came back together again. We'll look at the mission dossier, the offal report that's collecting mildew somewhere in the archives of Konoha's damned and done records. It says more than Kazeki will tell you, more than Suzuki dares betray aloud- and why the third member of their team was lost, almost as surely as the specific piece of paper is if you went to search it out; it's overshadowed by darker tales, more humbling disasters.
"C-RANK: ID #34521134
Squad: Minami, Izanagi- Yoshida Ryuuichi, Sabaku Kazeki, [noname] Suzuki
Contracted by: Konoha [Intercept suspected turncoat in Black Swamp district, Ame no Kuni, before possible rendezvous and information exchange]
Mission: FAILED
* Izanagi, killed; Yoshida, killed; remaining genin survive. Traitor nonexistent, appeared to be a trap. No known leads or motives, and no malignant parties identified."
Nowadays there's a big, angry slash through the part of the sentence about Yoshida, but that's the gist of it.
What the report does't't say is who killed Izanagi Minami. It does't tell you that the forest was dead and silent when they walked in, or why Kazeki gets shuddering pains through his shoulders to this day; it does't tell you why a member of Akatsuki was present when Izanagi was impaled, but was not the killer.
It does't tell Kazeki, Suzuki, or any other ninja child you're going to read about why their world had to fall down the way it did- and to tell the truth, there isn't really explanation for it that can be found on this earth.
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ARC 1
"Walk on Water or Drown"
"I heard there are going to be rookies!"
"Hmm," was Tenten's response. The weapons fled from her hands and found their mark, the resound of their impact soothing. The birds Neji was counting rose up from the trees not at this, but as a thick and unspeakably gawky teenager came meandering through the brush. Lee always looked stern, and thus looked always laughable. Tenten couldn't have imagined a worse combination of traits; her teammate was kind of like a garish and out-of-season Christmas tree, somehow unbelonging no matter how he was clad. Not that he made an effort to camouflage…
Tenten had a way of looking critically on others, if only to herself. She was fourteen and already knew everything.
And so came the walking Fashion Disaster- who proceeded to seat himself. There was a sickening crack, an odd squelching sound, and soon the forest rang with indignant cries: Lee had sat down on Tenten's backpack, causing her bento box to crack straight in half.
"DINGDONG!" she shouted with strange vehemence. "OF ALL THE PLACES ON EARTH TO PUT YOUR ASS-"
Although at first stunned by her rage, Lee quickly apologized as Tenten continued to yell over him. He was at the same time actively trying to both bow and wipe the unattractive rice stains and soy sauce from his skin-tight spandex.
"You're picking all of that up! There's gonna be ants now!"
"Tenten? Temper tantrums only make you sound more immature." taunted Neji's taut, monk-like voice.
Still pleading, Lee began scooping the sticky mess from the inside of her satchel: "I did not mean- ACK!"
"Get out of my bag, you creep!"
"I was just trying to-"
In jerking the bag from his hands, Tenten effectively scattered the meal even further; even worse, personal affects began to rain. Bandages, weapons, scrolls, and the paraphernalia of any teenaged girl went flying.
"NOW LOOK WHAT YOU DID!"
"I will-" Lee began, dropping down to scoop up the various articles. The first thing he picked up was, unbeknownst to him, a sanitary napkin.
"… AAAAHHH!! PUT THAT DOWN!!" Tenten shrieked. Before everyone's favorite green beast could react, however, the girl cuffed him sharply on the cranium. Stunned, he tumbled onto his haunches; papers of various natures scattered from his fall, which Tenten scrambled to catch as they floated gracefully to Earth. Trying to be helpful, Lee grasped one and looked down at it momentarily- only to be flung headlong onto the ground and danced upon. Neji would endure about two or three seconds of listening to this, before exploding.
Sure enough, Lee's pleas for mercy were soon cut off by: "WILL YOU KINDLY SHUT YOUR MOUTHES!?" (There! Let it be known that he could ask nicely for things!) The sound of Neji's special Baby-Kicking Mode engaging was enough to return relative calm to Team Gai- at least long enough for the guys to talk.
Neji and Lee had an excellent relationship, as we all know: Neji glared at Lee, and Lee just went around doing his own thing. This was the aforementioned Hyuuga's relationship with pretty much everyone, but so be it. (Neji was pretty bored with beating Lee up, unlike Tenten. He and Lee left each other alone, in that unconfrontational guy kind of way, until they needed to borrow money)
"… So what were you saying, Lee?" the lavender-eyed boy inquired softly. His Byakugan gazed, fixedly, into the tangled treetops above them all.
"There are going to be rookies in our midst!", he immediately yelped; he was also actively staring into space, picking the lint balls from his rumpled green bodysuit. One nostril was trickling blood, and his left eye was swelling rapidly.
"They have trained under Kakashi, and apparently returned from an A-rank mission in one piece!"
"Phh. Who cares?", was Tenten's instant reply; more kunai slammed the wooden target.
"Well, they must be something, if their sensei considers them eligible for the great Chunin exams!"
"Or maybe he's just another overconfident, bullheaded Jonin who wants to get his little burdens killed off!", she quickly shot back, her tone sharp with willful and childish frustration. If she'd had a little more substance, maybe you could have acknowledged her feelings. But alas-
"Tenten- take your angst somewhere out of my earshot." came the stern scolding of the boy whom she had once admired, once watched for any sign of vulnerability towards love. In the turn of his head and the irate set of his features, Tenten could no longer see anything endearing in Neji- or any reason for him to be superior.
"You're one to talk about angst! Why can you be rude to us all the time, but I'm not allowed to get a little cheesed off once in a while?"
"Please." Neji scoffed, completely disregarding her comment. "You're too juvenile to even converse with. Stop yelling, and maybe I'll acknowledge you…"
"You are being… kind of rude, Tenten." Lee broached, brow creasing; the limitless patience he normally possessed seemed to be under fire, and it just made Tenten angrier to see him morph; even the lowly, freakish Lee was looking down on her now.
"You- you guys are so full of shit!" exploded from her mouth, almost before the words fully registered in her mind; a torrent of anger was suddenly pouring from her, and she had no idea where it was coming from.
(Actually, she did.)
"I hate this team! I hate being here and, and-! " And then came out, desperate, pealing:
"Ryuuichi would understand!"
And before Neji could laugh, say 'oh, Christ' or even waggle his eyebrows; before Lee could do anything, she fled. It was all so ridiculous- she knew it, but the quiet, eking sorrow was becoming too much to bear. A little girl at heart, tired of carrying alone, Tenten ran. Birds screamed from the trees, and she no longer cared.
In the wake of her absence, Neji and Lee sat in silence for a few moments; there was only respect in Lee's, but Neji had quickly dismissed the incident from his mind.
"Neji, we should go talk to her-" Lee stammered.
"Why?" he snapped. "Her little boyfriend dies, and suddenly she cops an attitude? It's been a bloody year, and she's still carrying on-"
"But she does not usually act that way! Something is deeply hurting her-"
"Lee." the word shot, a command, from his mouth. "She has to get over it. No coddling is going to help her- no one coddled you when your mother and father died, did they? Do you snap at me and Tenten for it?"
The mention of his long-passed parents stabbed Lee deeply enough to silence him for a moment in which Neji rose, leaving him seated and staring at where his teammate's back had disappeared.
In the years that would follow, Lee would curse himself in his head for not chasing after her. He would swear on the dead son in his arms, and scream to the moon until his throat bled that he hadn't tried to save Tenten from the monster of her own insecurity. But he did let her run that day, far from where they could have reached out and pulled a weeping and aching young girl back to her senses.
Only he and Neji would know, when she was gone, how they could have rescued Tenten from the edge.
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Gaara lay quietly, like a cat in repose, at the top of an arroyo.
He had been walking in the desert for some time now, and had sat down; he wasn't fatigued, but his bones seemed to have been bleached. He had no more desire to walk, and instead lay down in his element.
He could hear screaming from the dunes nearby.
It turned out to be a small rodent, caught in the jaws of a dastardly and hellish-looking predator that resembled a lobster on steroids. Such were the products of this barren wasteland: beings which sought only to kill and eat, disappearing into the faceless sands once they'd had their fill.
The mammal was screaming, literally shrieking as the carnivore crushed it's back legs within it's pinscered mouth; one foot hung, limply, off to the side in a dislocated position. It's peals soared, again and again, into the thin, gritty air. With ominous silence, Gaara rose.
A slap of sand caused the predator to shrink away; another claw of sediment rose up, and smacked the creature so sharply that released the rodent. Over and over it tumbled, down the side of the dune, before slamming into a gradiated slab of sandstone. An unearthly shrill came from the thing as Gaara pelted it again and again with packed sand, huge bullets as heavy as iron. When black blood finally soaked the ground, he stopped and stared.
Huge ears shivering, the liberated rodent regarded Gaara from a hunched position; it's burnt-soufflé coloring almost camouflaged it against the endless landscape. There was no water for miles, lest you could suck it from the piney skin of the occasional cactus.
Gaara raised his hand; an extension of his will, the sand found it's target and smashed the small animal to an unrecognizable mass.
And he wondered whether it was his will, or if it was really worth it at all.
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The priests were gone; the sun had faded, and the temple was deathly quiet.
Revealed by the spark of a single match, the dark-haired girl simply bit her lip; cupping the warm flame though no wind pervaded, she lit a single joss stick before the altar. Cinnamon-sandalwood soon filled the thick air, and a child named Darkness shot a prayer out into the universe.
Naruto waited very quietly until the girl had disappeared; he hadn't known anyone else aware of the aged temple's location, this one which he sought out on his sleepless nights. Long after she was gone, he stood before the small, rock altar, smelling cinnabar and wondering what kind of ceremony he had invaded.
The night offered no one any answers.
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The log before him split in two, almost faster than he could acknowledge; he very nearly went cross-eyed trying to watch them, as their ends struck him squarely in the face.
Kazeki dipped earthward, and finally fell right out with resounding limpness. He was tired; tired of waiting, of fighting the same person every day, tired of itching to grow up and do something besides this. Itching to prove something.
The fight was over; Suzuki knew it. It's the only reason he'd been open long enough to take a full-facial blow. But she watched him stand, brush the dust off himself, as though waiting for something. It was always difficult to tell, in that only a few words passed between them on any given day: Suzuki was not given to excessive words, and Kazeki was done explaining himself.
But of Konoha's Genin, you would never meet another two who knew each other better.
They shared a parting nod, and then he was gone. Suzuki would do something, anything- it never occurred to him to ask her, until the next he saw her. The sun would rise and set on Konohagakure, and the bloody world would stop for no mouse. Shinobi would fall, empires would rise; the next generation of avengers would crawl back up, hearts set.
It had been a year since their sensei had perished, and Kazeki realized how weak he truly was.
A hawk was circling lazily above, a beacon which Sarutobi Asuma, Hatake Kakashi, and Yuuhi Kurenai would soon recognize. It hearkened the hunger under each Shinobi-hopeful's skin- the chance to excel, to burst from their bland existences and taste the true horror of the fight.
The Konoha Chunin Exams were soon to commence- along with the beginning of a true epic.
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