We're getting to the good part. I know that despite your faith in the story, you'd all secretly love for Kon to be put through a paper shredder.
Guess what? SHE WILL BE. This is probably going to be the only OC you've seen who... well, you'll have to wait and see. -grins-
"Okay, it was rude of me to call you just plain 'Gaara'. I totally understand that." He still wasn't responding. Had I crashed his brain or something? "Gaara-san, I'm here to check on you and your-"
"I wouldn't say anymore, if you want to make it out of this goddamn forest," a gravelly voice assured me from high in the willow-shaded canopy.
Wind, coming. Fan, my brain bit. A flash of canvas, dashed with purple moons like blank eyes, suddenly manifested behind me, it's broad, pine arms folding to reveal a tall young girl constituted of equal parts sulky and sultry. I had two words for Temari, the first time we met: ice, and woman.
"Seriously," she piped up, narrowing the turquoise eyes that her mother had given her. "He'll snap your neck if you keep babbling at him like that. He might still, depending on who the hell you are..."
"Oh, I'm Consuelo," was my dumb response. Brother and sister exchanged wondering looks, then simultaneously shot me a face that clearly said: and? Time to think of something, Conchita!
"Baki-sensei didn't tell you about me?" I begged, adopting a hurt tone. "And I thought I was so special, being especially asked by Orochimaru-sama to check up on you guys and all…"
"How do you know about Orochimaru! Who sent you!" Kankurou breathlessly snapped from his tree-top perch. I could hear Temari behind me sigh with exasperation.
"Relax, dipstick-" she snarled up at him. "She's obviously one of us- nobody would have been brave enough to walk right up to Gaara, otherwise." Obviously. "Baki-sensei probably wanted to test us or something- if she did a poor job of tracking us, we'd have sensed her and killed her. That is so something he would come up with…"
Displeased silence; I noticed a distinct lack of birdsong in this area of the forest. How had I been stupid enough to not realize what even the animals sensed? "Anyway," came my best wheedling, Kabuto impression, "- my orders were simply to make sure Gaara's siblings were alright. Somehow Orochimaru-sama figured that Gaara didn't need checking-up on…"
"So you're a babysitter." the girl spat. The ire kindled in her invisible face, stinking of charcoal- and then I was on the ground on my palms and knees; Temari had kicked my legs out from under me, and placed her sandal square on the small of my back to hold me still. I didn't dare react (phh, like I really could), but instead fell subserviently.
"You tell that transvestite snake-bitch and his four-eyed cronie that the Kazekage's children don't need to be overseen. We've got our end of the deal upheld, unless the Sound has decided that they don't trust us after all…"
"You might as well kill me now, if you expect me to say that to his face," I smiled. Really, in the face of it, what was the worst thing they could do? I was in deep shit now- maybe death would be my only option. My confidence had absolutely dried up, but I had to hide this behind my traitor-grin…and I did.
With a shove of her foot, I rolled free of the triangle of siblings; Temari's hands were on her hips, Gaara's hanging listlessly by his side. He seemed to only be following the conversation to discover if he would indeed get to break my neck.
"Then I suppose you don't want me to escort you to the Tower? Alrighty, guys. We'll talk later. Oh." I added, trying to stroll on jelly knees. "Tell Gaara-san that I'm necessary to the mission, so it might not be in his best interest to break my neck just yet."
I took stock in the small room that abutted the unsealing room: a shiny, obsidian panel held up the pear-shaped space, the rule for the chalky white bricks. I could see myself in this shimmering stone, and I took a good look. It might have been my last, after all.
After surviving two days in the hostile forest, I looked like a kitten found in a storm drain; perhaps it would have been in our best interests for Lee to take me back out and finish the drowning job. But I'd come for a purpose, knowing full well that I was nowhere near Chuunin level.
If one more person made it to the Exams, then there was a chance that Gaara might be paired to fight another person- and on the one-in-a-million chance that it was me, I would do whatever it took to keep him from hurting Lee. I was deluded by love; staring into a knowing glass, I refused to see any other alternative or way around fate. I had to have some reason for being here.
I took the fact that Gaara was lounging hungrily near my blindspot as a challenge.
I should have known that it wouldn't be that easy. If you decide to screw with fate in the smallest way, it has a way of kicking you right back down. Until he was striding up onto the spectator's deck with his team, I hadn't even realized that Yakushi Kabuto had failed to drop out.
And we're not even going to talk about what Gai promised to do to me when all the teams were asked to retreat to the spectator scaffoldings; he didn't scold me, just assured me that the rest of my life would involve complete and utter misery, mainly involving branding and being held underwater. That said, he was glad that Kurenai would get her fifty ryou and the entire Jounin bet pot back.
My first indication that everything wasn't going to work out was when Akado and Sasuke were first called to brawl…just like in the series. Shishi Rendan was born; I watched Lee's wide little eyes peal with jealousy, and watched Sakura squint and act like she was incontinent or something. Geez. I might have been a fangirl, but at least I wasn't the obsessive stalker of some stupid-ass plagiarist… Sasuke was such a stupid-ass plagiarist, in fact, that I'm sure nobody blamed me for doing what I did: as the medics hopped up the steps to carry his writhing little worm-body to the medical bay, I had subtly moved closer to the stairs. Just as the white-clad extras mounted the landing, I stretched out my arm and yawned; my joints just couldn't help it. What I did was cuff Sasuke square in the face. "Oh, I'm sorry! My arm just kind of- you know- swung. Are you okay, Uchiha-san?" (You know you wanted to do it, too)
The matches persisted in their orderly order, exactly paired. Standing between Gai's leaden thigh and within range of the inviting plushness of Lee's (mercifully unharmed) neck, it became clearer and clearer to me that only one match could be mine- and just as Naruto came stomping up, all light and airy with victory over poor Kiba, my worst fear was realized. The scoreboard flashed: KON VS. YAKUSHI KABUTO, and blinked as if it were 'Loling' at my abject horror.
You will forgive if I say plainly that I could have shit myself with terror; I could have, but that certainly wasn't going to help keep me alive. I'd long been a fan of Grey's Anatomy, and Doctor Burke's best line of all was what I hung desperately on to: "Screw the odds." If there was the smallest chance that I could survive, I had no choice but to take it…even if my stomach was trying to escape my body in preparation for 'Killin' Time'.
As I took my place across the arena from Kabuto, I cast one glance back up at the two, green-clad apparitions screaming for me from the protected platform. For them; for them, I was willing to face down the odds: for the chance to be with the people who had loved and encouraged me, in these times to come.
Granted, Kabuto was supposed to drop out to avoid suspicion- but I would find later that Orochimaru had noticed the odd number of participants and notified Kabuto last-minute that he was to fight in the Preliminaries. My own data-stat card was completely empty; Orochimaru wanted him to gather intel on every up and coming Konoha Genin, myself included. Poor devil…Orochimaru couldn't have known that I wasn't worth even putting on a card...
I could: barely hit a running target, suck water out of grass (THERE'S a skill), control a whip of water with the tensile strength of, say, yarn, and draw onto my hand a thin film of water from the air around me. Sounds like the match of the century, huh? But what Kabuto didn't know was my secret weapon- and that's that I had no real secret weapon! Convoluted, yes; miraculous, even more so.
I was ready, when Gekkou called time. From Lee I had learned that speed was an extremely versatile weapon, and the one thing I was was fast. The chakra-flow exercises with Gai had rendered me almost able to match the speed of Neji and Tenten, second-year Genin, without tiring out my already-fixed stamina. Running in the Forest had boned me up on adrenaline, but that could only last so long; I'd just have to hope that my luck held out. And isn't luck half of being a Shinobi, after all?
Kabuto's sweeping kick was forcibly hackneyed; he couldn't show too much strength, or risk revealing his true level of power. He would definitely stick to taijutsu, then. I dodged his kick, one that Lee had thrown me off my feet with, at full power, countless times. It was like skipping rope; I landed just as his heel swept past, and immediately kicked into the bend of his knee. The stress to the tendon was enough to at least make Kabuto flinch, even though there was virtually no power there; I think he might have even paused with wonder at how weak the blow was. It was no problem for him to shift his weight, however, and deliver another unflinching kick that could have certainly leveled me.
I had no idea what to do- so I jumped backwards, snatching the foot that was about to turn my nose into pulp, and held on. When he jerked back, I went sailing along with it; scrambling like a frantic monkey, I hugged onto Kabuto's thigh and did something that even now I laugh at: I bit him, in about the spot where diabetics inject insulin into their hips.
His arm flailed behind, snatching at my ragged clothes. Having been in public day care for most of my kindergarten days, I at least knew how to bite well; I clamped down as I never had before, and his tugging only succeeded in scraping my teeth along his lower back. What I was doing was unprecedentedly primitive- I can only imagine what the Jounin above were thinking, let alone Kabuto, who was nigh upon their level at the tender age of eighteen.
Kabuto would use some secret potion to try and stop me, I knew, because an overt ninjutsu display could blow his cover; poison made the most sense, and of course a medic would have some. I knew that he would avoid Shizune's Poison Mist technique later in the series, meaning that his blood had no forced immunity; as long as I didn't meet his eyes, so he could utilize the technique he had on the Rain ninja, all I had to fear were poisoned kunai- which he promptly drew, at that moment. Drawing his lips against the pain, Kabuto savagely twisted his arm around in some impossible, contortionist draw and made to stab into my calf. All I could do was let go, which sent me tumbling onto the ground on my head; Kabuto whirled around and threw his weight to stab, but one awkward leap sent me flying straight between his thick legs. I somersaulted past him while he, to avoid stepping on me, tripped and very nearly fell onto the ground with me. When he gained his footing, though, there was nothing but killing intent in his crouched, panther form. Kunai hungry for flesh to rip, he bounded straight at me.
SHMACK! The knife connected with the cold, chrome sheen of my hitate-ate. I had purposely tied it loose, and now, holding one end, I could use it as a quasi-defense weapon (I didn't dare try my luck with a hand-to-hand kunai battle). Kabuto threw up a hand and snatched the plate when I attempted to bitch-slap his flushed cheek with it again; his grip was for naught, though. As soon as his fingers clamped on the headband, I released the cloth and locked my fingers over his own, which encircled the kunai knife. I was literally hanging from his wrist, my feet off the ground. When the next hand sought another knife, I dropped and breathlessly zipped behind him once more. Kabuto had to twirl to follow me, now armed with poison-bleeding knives in either hand. He would anticipate me going between his knees again, throwing down one of the knives between his feet as he whirled; if I had made that move, I would have been stabbed through just from the force with which he threw it. A burst of that Water-chakra, however, blasted me high over Kabuto's head. I tumbled on empty air, aiming to kick straight down on his head. Of course he threw the remaining kunai straight for me, and this was the miracle I can't account for: the point of the knife struck the rubber bottom of my sandal exactly vertical, displaying Kabuto's prowess of aim but also completely avoiding my tender little tootsies. I flipped, snatched at the knife to avoid landing on it; I could see the shuriken glittering between the stalks of his gloved fingers. All I could do was-
The shuriken thudded into my flesh with the dull song of steel conquering this weak realm. Only one point sticks you, so the pain from shuriken is immediate: deep, like an inch-wide thorn shot, straight shot into your flesh, and carrying the full weight of the other three, tumbling points. The arch of my arm had at least protected my eyes- I had brushed the stinging edges of the flying weapons, slightly diverting their paths. I could feel an icicle stuck in the numb flesh of my cheek; blood already drawling into the curve of my collar bone, and a star stuck in each shoulder; the stars were buried by two points in my abdomen. But I could also feel the emptiness of my palm- the hand I usually favored. I could feel the vibrations of the kunai knife, which had stayed true to its mark (its target had been holding still, focused on raining shuriken upon me-).
Kabuto had not expected me to be ambidextrous.
He had no choice but to stop- to receive the antidote from his shuriken pouch and uncap the battle-ready syringe; a true Tokubetsu ninja, he had even planned for being stabbed by his own poisoned weapons. But- and this part I swear to God was luck- when he stepped backwards to get away from me, he completely forgot about the knife he had thrown, still stuck up to its handle in the arena floor. The loop of his pant-leg wrapped on the circular handle-tip, and- it being stuck so steadfastly into the ground- Kabuto lost the precious instant he needed to inject himself before the poison took effect (I had no idea how swiftly it would work- I was bullshitting this whole routine, mind you, trying my best to anticipate his prehensile mind-). The mighty traitor of my village felt his limbs turn into spaghetti from his own elixir; his eyes unfocused, and Kabuto could only twist as he fell to prevent the knife from penetrating deeper. I had barely penetrated the skin of his abdomen- but the best medical-ninja known to our generation could surely devise a toxin that would disassemble an opponent from the merest scratch.
For my victory, I'll tell you that I didn't get applause. The Third Hokage had dropped the pipe from between his teeth, dumbstruck; Gai and Kakashi, side by side, couldn't have looked more different and yet their slack jaws conveyed the same look they'd held when Naruto won his match with a fart. Never before had the Daimyo in attendance or the Jounin of the various countries been so insulted by having to watch such an unimpressive, uncoordinated battle; Naruto's fart now seemed wholly honorable. I'd won, but my lack of talent had been glaring; I'd used no ninjutsu; barely scratched my enemy; and was bleeding from head to toe, with shuriken still sticking out of my flesh.
The medics hustled out as soon as it became apparent that Kabuto couldn't rise on his own; they dithered around, making observations about what kind of powerful neurotoxin Kabuto could have used, until Kabuto's enraged snorts finally indicated to them that perhaps they should simply inject him with the antidote lying two feet from his fingers. He leapt up seconds later, massaging the tooth imprints on his lower back and glaring sheer death at me.
I couldn't even catch my breath, or gather the strength to pull his shuriken out; I was shaking visibly, shuddering as if in a convulsion. The arena swam; I had won. I won.
And that Lee…god bless him… I heard a single pair of clapping hands ring out once, twice, statacco, and then his cheer. I turned around to catch, over my shoulder, the green-clad boy applauding my futile, phyrric victory. Too dumb to know any better, Naruto raised a fist and rallied Lee's cry. I'd made it halfway across the arena before the medics caught me and began dragging me off to daub my wounds with paint-thinner-smelling stuff. This place; I wanted to stay here forever with them, on the side of winners and up-and-coming heroes, survivors.
Unfortunately, it was at that moment I remembered that one of the boys I loved most at that moment was about to travel to opposite shore.
Click for the maiming of the OC, plz. -