AN: Pray excuse me for the variance of paragraph-spacers; I didn't have time to scratch my watch or wind my butt this week, let alone battle MSWord... Nevermind that my in-class doodles are backed up the wazoo for posting on dA...
I love this chapter of the series, because you can write about it a hundred times and find some new way to make profound metaphors. And did anyone read this week's update? Sarutobi was so cute!
The arena that day roiled with hushed excitement; only Suzuki came to watch Naruto, since Kazeki had been out late stalking some boy he thought was Ryuuichi (That had ended with a trip to the police station, with her having to vouch for his mental instability before the kid dropped charges). To either effect, he slept in; Hirako came and hung out with Hinata, getting her unsmiling chaperone Kiba to laugh, but Kayoko went to scatter Shuchun's ashes; she was doing it against Hirako's wishes, and had been waiting until he'd let go of the damn urn.
Dosu was busily stalking his to-be opponent (poor Kazeki), but the rest of Naruto's friends and some of his enemies had turned out to see either Neji make mincemeat of him or Neji in fourteen pieces across the ground, depending on who you asked. It was your basic average day at the Coliseum, with the lions versus the Christians. The days went on.
And the deaths in this competition meant as little as the fluttering of a single leaf.
----
They let the pair in, even if they were 'fashionably late', as Gai would testify. Lee was still looking rough, unable to fit his bulky casts and splints into his favored spandex. Gai saw the little disappointments like this only because he knew Lee, not because he complained or showed them; but in doing all he could to ignore what the medics had told him, that Lee would never be a Shinobi again, Gai did reveal his guilt in a superfluous compassion towards the injured.
The Lee Fan Club had split up slightly, since Suzuki had plunked into training long hours alongside Kazeki; Gai insisted upon it, to which Suzuki made no response except with her eyes. She and Lee were right buddies now, as thick as if they'd known each other for ages. They played raucous games of Scrabble wherein injuries resulted, and got in trouble more than once for racing wheelchairs down the halls. Gai laughed to see their sport, knowing that being silly and carefree was healing a part of these kids. Suzuki shared her meat buns with Lee, now. (Everyone felt the benefit of Suzuki being social and more humanistic, .)
When Gai had wandered off to pep-talk Neji, the two friends stood staring skyward. Lee could have forgotten his crutches as the wind ruffled his hair; he had missed being outside.
Neither of them mentioned the other day, when Lee had collapsed in the hospital yard doing push-ups. Suzuki had been unable to stop picturing wilted violets since, and she hurt in her heart as she hadn't in a long time. She felt embarrassed to see him fall, to have stood by Sakura and Ino while they waited for crabby Katoh to return. She knew his obsession, now, with becoming stronger; but she also knew that a small amount of doubt resided in both Gai and Lee's hearts, and they were trying their best to keep that knowledge from each other. It was an odd limbo, so Suzuki said nothing. As she always had.
Well, nothing except: "My parents are dead."
Lee startled with that adorable little anime sound affect only he can replicate (squee), and turned to her with a wince. "What?"
Suzuki gazed at the sky longer. "They died trying to get me away from our village."
After some quiet, Lee asked her what on earth she was talking about; meanwhile, his own head was swirling with recollections of a life that had been taken from him by forces beyond reasoning.
"Our village was under the thumb of this Shinobi gang- see, I'm from the Land of Waves. My father and mother worked for the fish factory, and I was a little nothing. I would have been nothing. But the raping and looting just became ridiculous, and the adults- some of them decided to escape to Ho no Kuni by the river. In the end, the gang guys found out, and started hacking people up to scare the rest of us. While the others made a stand, lots of parents lashed the small children to the rafts, and sent us adrift. The one guy cut off my father's arm as he pushed me away. I remember that, and where the river met the bay. Coming to Konoha."
"My father died on a mission." Lee regaled somberly. "I always thought he was brave, but then someone told me that he had been running away. He was hit in the back with a Fuuma shruiken."
"That's dumb." Suzuki replied sympathetically, glancing over at him. After a minute: "Guess both our parents were pretty stupid."
"A7s7tegshGts!^F--EXCUSE ME!?" came the overly-emotional response from her companion. Lee had entered Fledgling Gai Mode, and had somehow scrounged up the social perception to realize that saw that it was time to have one of those Come-To-Jesus talks. That no propaganda might alter the new Springtime of Youth! "If I were you, I would be falling down and thanking them every day! How can you dare decry their munificence like that!?"
"…I- I've been a really terrible person. They wouldn't think I was worth saving, if they knew me today."
"… Suzuki, that is ridiculous." he said, the fire and brimstone leaving his voice.
"No, it's not! I've done what I've done!" she burst out, before curling in on herself and quieting. "I didn't help my sensei when she was dying. I was being- selfish. Stupid. I took Minami-sensei away from Gai-sensei because I just… I didn't… Kazeki hates me now, and I don't blame him. I ruined everything, and not even because I was scared..."
"… These are debts indeed, Suzuki. But I know that Gai-sensei could never hate you- and whether you think you were worthy or not, these sacrifices have been made. You owe these loved ones, Kazeki and everyone else you know, the honor of living with gratefulness, and kindness towards others."
The smile that bloomed across her face was slow, stiff with lack of use. "… I haven't done that."
"Then start." Lee replied, smiling vaguely. Then he pulled a meat bun out of his pocket; he ignored the tears in her eyes, understanding how it felt to hear your pardon for the first time, and offered her half of it. When she said thank you, he knew that it was for more than the food.
"So who do you think is gonna win?"
"Naruto, without a doubt!" Lee responded, shaking his head. His leg hurt, and the sun fell behind a cloud.
----
"Are you nervous about tomorrow, Gaara?"
When Temari asked him, he told her no; when Kayoko asked, her soft voice made him admit, yes. A little bit.
----
There was a significantly better turn-out for the Gaara/Sasuke match. Like, three quarters of the village. (This offended me so much in the series.)
Everyone was clamoring, having seizures, or hawking something. Kiba was having a ball, tripping people and stealing hot dogs (you know it was like going to a baseball game: mania, horrid bathrooms, and overpriced alcohol). This would make Kabuto's Fluffy Feather no Jutsu extra affective, but before we go into this darker chapter, let's note that someone else was having a semi-important discourse moment.
Imagine, if you will, a soft-faced young girl with jet black hair waving gently in the melodramatic shojou wind; her small hands clasped against her miniscule breasts, lips pouted and pert. This is what Gaara saw after he'd made a bloody milkshake of the two Shinobi who had stopped him in the hall (mere appetizers), when he glanced back up to see if Kayoko had shown up. The expression on her face made him wonder- but it wasn't distracting enough to keep him from wigging out and going full-on Ichibi, of course.
Orochimaru's plot awoke; the Snake Cerebus and the Spirit of the Sand arose, and Sandaime entered the hall of his destiny; the high walls which had once shielded a tender purgatory of innocent Genin, a disconcerted village with no reason to fear, were breached; eddies of ill-will and even the forms of hideous nightwalkers would continue to stroll through these gaping holes, even once the barriers were rebuilt, even once all of those children of war and all things defied by our hearts had walked so far that they were sure nothing could find them. But they would never be strong enough; they could only brace, each against the other, and hold back the dam as evil flowed with the unstoppable nature of floodwater, attempting to drown everything they knew. They could only die knowing they had protected what was then theirs.
When that was all you could have, it was worth keeping in the absolute. And that's why they chased after Gaara, went fleeing into the thick of hell the way they did. Because nothing would ever be the same again- so come what may. It was coming anyway.
----
"Shit, shit, shit, shit…" Ryuuichi chanted in his head, hands flying through seals. Something had stunk in the arena- and it wasn't just the overflowing toilets. Why on earth would they have sent him here if they knew Orochimaru was going to pull a stunt like this- whatever the hell Orochimaru was. Talk about a weirdo. Never mind that creepy voice, coming from a female corpse…
He was going to ask Kisame-sensei about all of this if he got out of here alive- and stomp on a garden snake for the heck of it. How do you get rid of a little snake, anyway, let alone a big one? He'd never liked them; something about their lack of limbs just creeped him out. All he could think as he watched the three-headed monster crushing buildings was: yuck.
These apathetic thoughts drifting happily in his head, Yoshida Ryuuichi stretched his long arms and removed his outer cloak; with a slight flourish, he strolled up the stone steps and, finding the row in which Kazeki was seated, draped it over his old teammate's face (that'd give him something to freak out over). Little whack mobile. You could almost sorry for him… but he was too good to waste time on things like sympathy.
He knew what was coming, besides the demonic summonings of the feminine yet fearsome Orochimaru; he knew Itachi and Sasuke would meet, knew how far Sasuke would have to go to meet only the pathetic half-truth. He knew that Nagato was cooking away at the real demise of Konoha in his misty homeland. And he knew there was nothing for him here.
But as he rose, Ryuuichi paused; and for the first time in a long time, he realized that he was wrong.
----
This.
When Sakura leapt between the fallen Sasuke and a hellion made of suffocating desert breath, this was all that existed in her mind.
This is why they care, Suzuki- because they're waiting for me to stand up for them.
----
AN: And now, time for hatred. Suzuki is my brainbaby, and I want your strictest reviews on how I depicted her here. I thought her (ahem) contributions would balance out the angst from which she spawned; I promise that by the second arc, she'll be paying back her social debts.