Foosha: Oh my god I finally did it. I hope you are proud of me, because this guy took wayyy too long to do.
Vash: Stop being lazy.
Foosha: Fuck you.
Nicky: Foosha doesn't own Naruto or other reference-y things.
Back at base…
"It's been a week… are we just going to forget about them, hm?"
Sasori glanced at his blonde companion for a moment before returning to the repairs he was conducting on his puppet. "Why does it matter? They were just two obnoxious obstacles that we had to cooperate with. Nothing of importance."
Deidara shifted in his seat, absently folding the clay in his hand, his face looking somewhat puzzled. "I feel like we owe them though and we made a promise, hm."
Sasori scoffed. "We have already spared their lives. I think we should be considered even."
"I guess you're right, yeah…"
"Of course I am, brat."
The blonde sighed uncertainly before placing his blob of clay on the table.
"Tobi misses the girlies!" Tobi shrieked while clobbering Deidara off of his chair.
"God damnit Tobi, get off of me, hm!" The blonde shoved Tobi roughly to the side so he could sit up.
"Tobi is sorry, Tobi just wants the girlies back…"
Sasori gave him an apathetic look. "I don't understand why you two feel so attached to them."
Tobi hopped a little in an impatient manner as Deidara suddenly shot up, looking flustered. "Pfft! I'm not "attached" to them, yeah! I just feel like I have a debt and I don't like feeling like I owe someone something, hm!"
"How could you feel like you owe a debt, when you don't? And what exactly do you propose we do about it? I hardly believe that anyone else in the Akatsuki really wants to go find them," the red-head scoffed.
"Tobi is going to ask Leader if we can find them!" And before anyone could interrupt, he was already gone.
"This is ridiculous," Sasori continued his rant, "if you two do this, I want nothing to do with it." Deidara glanced around the room, avoiding his partner's eyes.
"Well…uh… gotta go, yeah!" The red-head looked up to where Deidara had been only to see him slip through the doorway.
"Fools…"
Meanwhile…
It's been a while since Vash and Nicky had gone "missing". The police scoured the city area for any signs of the missing girls. They received reports of them being seen earlier with some shady looking men. The search had been ongoing, but some had given up, presuming them to be dead. Their families were devastated, still clinging to a hope that they were alive and safe somewhere. Of course, only one knew the truth.
Since the incident, little Rin had been quieter than ever. Without Nicky to watch her, her parents had to take her to a high class daycare, where she would do nothing but sit by herself, drawing things that no one could quite make out.
Her parents worried about her, and decided to try to be home more often to be there with her for comfort.
No one knew the real reason for her strange behavior.
It was around eleven pm at her household, where Rin laid awake in her small bed, her dark eyes glued to the ceiling. Her mind was far too busy for her to fall asleep even at such a later hour. What had happened to her babysitter? What about Izaya? Were they okay? Should she tell her parents? The police?
She turned over on her side. These were not things a child should have to worry about. Perhaps she should just forget. But the words that came from her mother earlier that day would not leave her head. She replayed the conversation between her parents in her mind again.
"It seems strange, darling, how much it's changed in our neighborhood these past few months. And to think it all started out with a simple box."
"Indeed."
What had her mother meant by that? Surely she didn't know anything about the strange cat/men that had invaded Nicky's home. That didn't make any sense. Rin had thought it was just a coincidence until she heard her father bring up something similar a little later. They had been arguing about something in the kitchen.
"Well I don't know how to fix that and I'm definitely not going to try. I'll have to ask my mother about it next time she visits. It shouldn't be opening up randomly like it has been. She's supposed to have complete control over it, at least the entrance in this house."
Rin frowned to herself. That had definitely been a suspicious conversation. Especially bringing up her grandma. What did her grandma have to do with the portal Nicky and Vash fell into? Maybe she was just jumping to conclusions.
The young girl shook her head to clear her thoughts, turning over to her other side in the process and squeezing her eyes shut. She'd just have to worry about sleeping for now. Nothing she could do at the moment anyway until she found out more information. And with a lazy nod, her mind fell into a hazy state.
Vash's POV
"Ow-ow! That hurts! Do you really have to do tests every day? It's not like we'll spontaneously turn into giant monsters or something!"
The nurses ignored my outcry and placed the couple of blood vials on the small table. The week had been filled with Nicky and I becoming experimental candidates for medical procedures. Since we didn't have "chakra", they had to make sure we were normal people, as normal as we can be that is.
I sighed in annoyance for what had to be the hundredth time that day. The nurses chatted quietly to each other before waving our guards to come escort us back to our rooms. I looked to my right to see Nicky passed out, again. The guards entered the room, and upon seeing Nicky passed out, her guard rolled his eyes before lifting her dead weight. I jumped down from the medical gurney and followed them out, my guard trailing behind. Thankfully, earlier in the week the nurses had been nice enough to get some new glasses for me so I was now actually able to see things clearly.
We need to find a way out of here. I can't handle this anymore and I'm pretty sure Nicky can't either. They might end up killing us anyway, so we have to try at least! The problem stands though… how?
Moments later, we arrived at our bedroom/cell doors, which were conveniently across the hall from one another. Nicky was awake now, but strangely quiet and obedient. The guards opened our doors and lightly pushed us into our prisons before closing us in. I let out a determined breath and began to formulate an escape plan.
Nicky's POV
I had given up. We were going to die here. I could just feel it. And there was nothing we could do to change that. I slowly glided over to my bed and flopped onto my back, zoning out as my eyes stared at the ceiling blankly. I briefly thought about my life back in my world, though I didn't linger long on those thoughts since I had already mourned over the fact that I'd probably never get home. Now I was at the final stage of my denial: acceptance. I had accepted my fate and had given up on trying to fight against it. That's the way I usually face impossible tasks, after all. Giving up.
After an hour or so of nothingness, my mind got bored and switched to thinking about random stuff. What if I was a ninja born in a ninja world like this? That'd be pretty cool. I'd kill things and stuff. I'd be pretty badass. Yeah… I could do that. I nodded my head subconsciously to the thought.
Suddenly, I heard a light knocking sound. I sat up slowly and looked around, confused. Stepping down from my bed, I padded over to the door and opened it quietly, seeing my guard standing there with his back to me. He turned his head slightly when he heard the door open and gave a stern look.
"Uh… did you knock? Or am I crazy?"
His facial expression didn't change.
"Get back inside your room or I will have to force you in."
I huffed in protest.
"Fine fine. It was just a question." I closed the door and went back to my bed, scratching my head. "I swear I heard knocking…"
Knock knock
Whipping my head around, I quickly realized that the sound was coming from the window. I rushed over and opened the curtains, my eyes widening when I realized there was someone knocking from outside, and even more when I realized it was Vash throwing stuff from the window below. She noticed the curtain move and waved her hand frantically. I quickly opened the window and lowered my voice so the guards wouldn't hear.
"Vash! What the hell are you doing?! You're going to get yourself killed! You crazy-"
"Woman, shut up and let's get out of here. Do that bed sheet thing that's on the movies and get in this window! Hurry!" And then she was gone. Okay. I got this. I've always wanted to try this. Hooray for minor motivation!
I quickly skipped to the bed and removed the sheets and bedding as quietly as possible, tying the ends together and one to the leg of the bed.
"I hope this bed is heavy enough to hold me… and my knots are okay… it's not that far down though… right?"
Peaking down from my window I noticed the window Vash was in was about seven feet away. See? Not bad at all! You can do this!
I nodded my head reassuringly and after positioning myself on the window sill, began to lower myself down very slowly, trying to reach the other window with my foot so I wouldn't have all my weight on the sheets. Vash's head appeared again, looking urgent. She was probably worried about us getting caught. I took this as a hint to hurry and finally let go of my window in order to climb down farther, but instead I froze and gripped to the sheet tightly. I looked down at Vash again as she tried encouraging me to move by waving. I shook my head quickly and held tighter to the coarse fabric. Nope! I don't think so!
Once I had finally decided that I couldn't just hang in that position all day, I reluctantly moved towards the window beneath me, touching down with my bare feet. Vash moved aside as I clumsily maneuvered my way inside, landing on a hard counter space with a 'thud'. I glared at Vash, ready to yell at her, but instead was interrupted.
"You know we needed to try to escape. There's no way they will keep us alive here and we both know it."
I looked down, eyebrows furrowed. She continued.
"This was the only thing I could think of and for some reason it's been working so far. So snap out of your depression. We have to finish this or there's no way out. Ready?"
"Yeah. I'm ready now, but uh… where exactly are we going to go from here?"
"Well, we just have to be quiet and sneaky…"
"…well that sounds impossible!"
"We're out of options, Nicky. We have to try at least."
"Fine… I'll pretend I'm Solid Snake then."
She rolled her eyes at me and proceeded to hush me with a finger to her lips before motioning to follow her to the door. This meant that it was my turn to start the spy music soundtrack in my head. Dundun dundun dundun dundun dunana, dunana, dunana, duna! Dunana, dunana, dunana, duna!
Half an hour and a lot of getting lost later, Vash and I somehow managed to find our way to the front entrance. We miraculously didn't run into any guards the whole time we stumbled through, but during the last stretch we were faced with a front desk clerk and two door-guard-ninjas. Vash slowly turned around and motioned for us to back track, which I happily obliged. We ended up closing ourselves into a small kitchen on the second floor.
"Well, now what?" Vash grumbled, absent-mindedly opening the refrigerator door like we used to do back home. It's kinda weird that they have basic electricity thing with ninjas… I don't even know.
I glanced around the kitchen and noticed a window. My stomach growled.
"We could probably get down from that window if we find more sheets… but maybe we should eat first, I'm fucking starving." At this point I give few fucks for what happens next, and if I'm going to die soon anyway, I might as well eat first.
Vash gave me an incredulous look.
"That's… a really stupid idea."
"Well just think about it. Once we get out of here, I highly doubt we'll be able to eat again anytime soon with no money. We should at least have a snack. And we might die anyway so, what the hell?"
"Okay fine, but if there isn't anything in here that we can grab and eat fast, then we leave. How come I'm the one who has to take charge of this escape?"
I ignored her question and continued my search for sustenance. "Okay, okay. I'll check the cupboards."
Of course there was only unprepared ingredients. I wish I had crappy Mac and Cheese right now…
"Hey, here's some rice balls. Looks like it was someone's lunch or something."
"Gimme."
She unwrapped one for herself and tossed another to me, which I somehow caught. Usually in this situation, Vash would probably object to taking someone random person's lunch, but we were in too much of a hurry to worry about that. I quickly unwrapped my rice ball and took a huge bite, savoring the bland but satisfying taste, when the kitchen door flew open, revealing King Gaara himself along with his guard brigade.
I froze mid-chew. I'm sure we were quite the site, scarfing down rice balls all hunched over and ravenous looking. We did miss lunch though… so I'm pretty hungry.
Gaara gave a hint of an exasperated stare, but quickly reverted back to an indifferent expression.
"You two… are some of the stupidest people I have ever met. There is no doubt in my mind that you are not shinobi, however, we will be relocating you to do more extensive tests. Your loss of chakra is unexplainable with our results and we do not have the technology to assess it more thoroughly here."
The guards behind him stepped forward. There were two on each of us, gripping our arms firmly.
"We've prepared the necessary supplies for your trip. You will have a party of escorts that will transport you, since you'll clearly need the protection."
I swallowed the rest of the rice ball and smiled sheepishly. Our new "escorts" began to pull us forward, following behind Gaara as he led us out the front entrance. A hot wind blew the hairs away from my face as I squinted away from the bright sunlight. I then began to bounce up and down on my feet realizing that not wearing shoes was a terrible idea in extremely hot sand.
"Wait-wait, are we leaving now?!" Vash exclaimed from my left.
Suddenly, three more ninja-guards popped up in front of us.
"I'll take that as a yes," I said under my breath, noticing the backpacks they were carrying. "Hang on, we have to trek through the desert in these casual clothes? Shouldn't we have something a little more heavy-duty? And I could really use some shoes!"
I tugged at the ends of my quarter-sleeve shirt. It was lightweight and white in color. My lower half consisted of tan cargo-like capris, matching the sandy landscape. Vash was wearing something similar except had forest green pants. They were actually also capris, but she's short so… yeah.
A bulky man walked up to us, whom I recognized as the cat man we had to fight a while ago. Oh great. He eyed us hesitantly before giving us each a thick, navy vest and navy ninja-looking sandals. Oh sweet. Now we'll look more like ninjas! But… this is going to be really hot to wear… I immediately slipped the shoes on and was met with relief from the molten ground.
"…Thanks," Vash replied quietly, probably intimidated, but still feeling obligated to be somewhat polite.
Gaara turned to the cat-man and said some things quietly before coming back over to us.
"If either of you make any trouble during this trip, you will be immediately escorted to jail. You will be treated as criminals until they've decided to deem you trustworthy. I assume you wouldn't want that."
We shook our heads. He nodded to cat-man.
"Go then. It's a three day journey."
Cat-man nodded and signaled for the men to follow his lead. The guard in front of me knelt down.
"Get on. You'll be too slow if you walk." I nodded and grabbed onto his shoulders, hoisting myself up and securing my position. "Make sure you have a good grip. If you fall, it will be your own fault."
"Y-yeah. Okay."
In a blur we were flying. Well it seemed that way at least. I closed my eyes to shield them from the sting of sand and wind. At first, it was exhilarating and my adrenaline was pumping from how fast we were moving, but after a while it seemed to steady into a predictable rhythm, lulling me into a near meditative state. I was tired, but that's the time when my brain seems most active.
Three days. That's a long time of running. It's strange that I didn't even object to it.
The seriousness of the situation continued to weigh down on me, give me flares of severe anxiety and yet I still had given up, my small amount of motivation I got from the "escape" was gone. A temporary depression set in. Or at least I hoped it was temporary.
"At least I escaped a kind of prison. That's pretty cool."
Somehow the guard below me heard what I said.
"Actually, we knew what you guys were doing. We just assumed that you would eventually give up and go back to your rooms."
Well, lame.
I gave a "hmph" sound before zoning out into other thoughts.
It's crazy that in this whole experience with the Akatsuki, I've changed my anti-social personality into one where I actually feel like I miss being around so many people. And really, overall I feel like I've become more mature after having to care for so many adults at once. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not, but I suppose I'll find out eventually.
I adjusted my sitting position a bit, turning my head to the other side.
I really do miss being around them though… I wonder if they ever made it back? Or maybe they are still stuck in our world. Hopefully not.
With the Akatsuki
"Well, I'm still not sure how or why it happened, but you're definitely not a puppet anymore. The portal must have altered it somehow, permanently," Kakuzu mumbled, massaging the bridge of his nose and leaning back into his chair.
"I still don't understand how this is possible," Sasori grunted in annoyance. Deidara glanced at his partner.
"Guess you'll just have to get used to being human then, yeah."
"Shut up, brat."
"Alright. Let's discuss this promise we've made," Pein resounded. The rest of the Akatsuki looked to him expectantly, arranged neatly around their meeting table. "Sasori, you can address your problem at another time if you feel so inclined, but I believe that we've already agreed that there is nothing we can do about it right now."
Sasori grumbled something under his breath and turned his attention to Pein. Konan cleared her throat.
"Shall we continue then?"
"Right. We've had a few days to settle in and get back into the pace of things, so I think it's time that we find those girls. They helped us when we landed in their world, now we need to help them in ours. I don't think they will survive long without help. Hopefully, they are still alive now." Some of the members looked down at the thought. "But I believe they are still alive. We landed not too far from Sunagakure. I can only assume by how well they patrol their borders that Nicky and Vash have already been picked up and taken into custody. Knowing them… well… they may still be alive."
Hidan slammed his fists onto the table, pushing himself to his feet.
"Well then why the fuck should we waste our time trying to find them if they are probably already dead? It's a fucking waste of time!"
"Very well then Hidan. You will be one of the ones to bring them back."
"What the fu-"
"Konan, Zetsu and Deidara will accompany you. It shouldn't take more people than that. Zetsu, try to scout ahead and report to Konan if you find anything. Now go!"
The ninja instantly dispersed into clouds of smoke with the exception of Zetsu who sunk into the ground.
Nicky's POV
As I lay on my side, gazing into the campfire until my eyes saw spots, I tugged lightly on the loose rope from the binds around my wrists. I couldn't stop thinking about how filthy my hair was, with laying on the dirt and having had sand and all sorts of insects blasted into it during our travels. Even so, I was far too tired to sit up. Vash seemed calm and collected on the opposite side of the fire, sitting cross-legged, her tied hands resting in her lap. She also seemed transfixed by the light and warmth of the flame. The escorts sat scattered around the campsite, some sleeping since it was probably close to midnight or something. Who knows anymore really? Cat-man and another guy were the two on watch at the moment.
"I'll stay awake… 'cause the dark's not takin' prisoners tonight…"
I started singing Twenty-One Pilots' Ode to Sleep quietly to myself, in hopes of bringing some sort of comfort. After asking one of the guards earlier, I found out we were going to Konaha. With my small knowledge on the show Naruto, I wasn't sure if this could turn into a good situation or just make it much, much worse.
"Hey."
I looked up to see Kankuro signaling to some of the other guard ninjas. A couple of them quickly disappeared, while Kankuro stood anchored down in his position, set into a more "battle-ready" pose. The remaining guards easily awoke from their slumber and were on high alert. I rolled forward onto my stomach and used my near useless arms to push myself upwards. Vash looked concerned and was about to say something, but decided against it, and instead gave me a nervous look.
Suddenly, a white object floated through the air on a light breeze and landed in front of my lap.
"A paper crane…?"
Foosha: Sorry for the cliff-hanger! I already started the next one and this seemed like a good place to stop.
Nicky: Please review. We love to hear from you!
Vash: It makes our suffering more bearable.
Foosha: Oh yeah, and Sasori is randomly human. Hooray? Yes. Random, I know. No one seems to care though, poor guy. Sorry about any grammar/spelling mistakes. I edited this at 1am.