Ironies and Things That go Bump in the Dark
Down the 'whatever-the-hell-they-are' hole
Riddick looked at the bottle of whiskey. 'Wanna play that game, Johns? Fine we'll play.' He grabbed the bottle and downed the last swallow filling it back up to the level it had been with sand. He put the bottle back where it had been and started back towards the crash site. While the big group was away he could steal some nessesary items.
He snuck closer to the site scoping out the scene. The jumpy british man was sitting on top of the ship under an umbrella drinking a bottle of whiskey. The male prospector was over a ways away digging a hole. The female prospector was in the ship. And the girl child that was pretending to be a boy was sneaking up on the jumpy british man.
Riddick watched amused as she put a boomerang at the britain's throat and whispered that Riddick would probabily get him right there and he wouldn't even see it coming because that's how good Riddick is. He stiffled a chuckle. The britian asked if she had run away from her parents or her parents had run away from her. She flounced off happy with her success and went to help the female prospector.
Riddick waited for about five minutes until the britain settled down. He tossed a rock over against the ship. It made a dull clang, stone against metal. The britain looked up startled looking worriedly around. He climbed down off the roof and went inside. Riddick could here the coward asking the girl to say that was her.
"Okay, that was me. What did I do?"
"Disturbed my fragile sense of security." He answered.
"She's been with me the whole time."
Riddick climbed up onto the roof of the ship laying on his stomach gazing over the side to make sure he wasn't visable from a distance.
He saw a survivor from the crash staggering toward the ship. And the male prospector was approacching from the other direction. He waited.
He heard the group talk, the survivor saying he didn't think anyone had survived.
Then a bang.
"I thought he was that murderous bastard. I thought he was Riddick." Zeke muttered.
Riddick sat up in the lawn chair and took a deep drag out of the britains whiskey bottle.
He took another drink then hid as the male prospector dragged the dead body towards the mass grave he had dug.
He watched the prospector go, eyes fixed on the O2 breather around his neck. He took an experimental breath. He would need it if he was going to continue moving around like he was. He slipped down off the top of the ship sneaking around the strange spires to stay out of sight.
He approached the area where Zeke was and waited until he jumped down into the hole. He snuck closer queitly, and grabbed his shiv in preparation. He heard a scream then several gunshots. He peeked under the tarp and looked down at the very bloody hole. He tilted his head curiously listening to the clicks coming up from the hole.
He turned just as the female prospector came around one of the spires and screamed at him. He turned to run. Better to avoid any extra trouble, when he could. Before he could react Johns jumped around the corner yanking his goggles off of his face. He sheilded his eyes rolling on the ground in pain.
He was kicked several times then he was hit in the head and knew no more.
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Sakura arrived just behind Fry and watched as Riddick was knocked unconscious.
Shazza was screaming for someone to kill that "mother fucker".
Sakura looked between Riddick and his clean shiv and walked back to the hole looking down at the bloody scene below. It couldn't have been him. Not without getting blood all over him. She had known people who could've done that, but Riddick wasn't anywhere near their level. Hell she could've done it but even she would've gotten blood on her weapon.
She looked down at the hole one more time remembering the last time she had seen so much blood. She had avoided almost all fighting after the death of her people. She still used her chakra to do other stuff but not for killing for a long while.
FLASHBACK:
She raced through the night, her vibrant pink hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck and hidden under a black bandana. Her face was mostly hidden by a black face mask remenisent of her old sensei's, only a small sliver of her face and her eyes were showing. She leaped through the tree as silent as the wind blowing through the leaves. She was on an assassination and retrieval mission. Naruto was getting desperate to retrieve the nessassary ingredients for the antidote to the poison. Half of the population had already died from the poison. The small children and the old people. Not to mention the ones killed by the Others' weapons.
She was heading to the base the Other's had set up, in Mist. They had destroyed Mist easily, it was weak from too many civil wars. They had destroyed Wave but Konoha ninja had managed to evacuate most of the civilians. She was almost there. She had been traveling all day and it was approaching her twentieth hour of travel. She had only taken a small break half way through, retrieving the cure was more important than resting.
She landed softly the pine needles stiffling the sound of her footsteps more so than they normally would've already been. She made a handseal, and with a poof a shadow clone appeared. It gave the original Sakura a look before sneaking forward into the compound. It crept forward silently slitting the throat of the two guards that were in front of the base.
Sakura ran forward quickly hiding in the shadow of the base as her clone continued in killing all the soldiers she came across. She paused at the door of the place they were using as a lab. She used on of the key cards she had taken from the guards' dead body to open the door. She slipped in and froze in shock.
Strapped to metal tables were several teams worth of genin. Five girls and ten boys. The boys were more beat up than the girls but they were all beat up. She moved over to them scanning them for what was wrong with them. They had all been poisoned with different agents, all similar to the poison currently effecting most of the shinobi world. She put her hand on one of the girl's head. The girl genin moaned weakly prying her eyes open to stare blearily at Sakura. The genin's eyes fixed immediately on Sakura's headband which was wrapped snuggly over her forehead. "Kill us. will be a mercy." She pleaded weakly.
Sakura stared sadly at the girl. "Are the other's conscious?" She asked softly.
"We all drift in and out. We usually wake up when the scientists come in, either we wake up ourselves or they force us to wake up using their drugs." She replied her voice weak and pained.
"Please kill us." One of her male teammates had woken up. They were wearing the headband of Kumo.
Sakura studied them before sighing. "Here." She finally replied pulling out a pill and putting it up to their mouths. "Suicide pills. They're made for spy missions where they can't be caught at any cost."
Both of the awake genin took the pill in their mouths. "Thank you." The girl said. "Bless you." The boy added. Then they both swallowed them, nothing happened for a second then their eyes glazed and a small smile appeared on their face then they were locked in that position as death took them.
She moved over gently waking each of the other genin. There were four more from Kumo, three from Iwa, and 6 from Suna. They all greatfully accepted the suicide pills she offered. They all died with small smiles of relief on their face. Sakura sighed sadly before sealing the bodies away in storage seals. Three scrolls, one for each of the different village with genin. She sighed sadly looking around the sterile lab. It was gleamingly clean, the complete opposite of the actions that were performed in that lab. She created three more clones with a silent poof, they all began hurriedly searching the lab for the antidote.
They found the reference for the antidote but to reach it she would have to go onto the computers. She was unfamiliar with computers, she couldn't do it by herself. She created one more clone and sent it out to retrieve one of the scientists alive. Five minutes later the clone returned with a scientist stripped down to his boxers to avoid having him have anything to call for back up.
"You will retrieve the formula for the antidote." Sakura stated plainly, her voice in a monotone that promised that she was willing to do anything to get that antidote. "Or I will show you how those children felt when you tested numerous painful poisons on them." She finished threateningly.
"I won't help you monsters." He declared in a false brave voice.
"You call us monsters? You are the ones who invaded our lands, poisoned our people, destroyed our villages, attempting to subdue us, destroy our economy, destroy our way of life. And you have the gall to call us monsters?" Sakura snarled menacingly.
"You are monsters. Your way of life involves killing for money."
"Like yours doesn't? What are you doing to conquer us? Planting flowers? I don't think so. You have been torturing children to create a poison for the purpose of complete genocide. We didn't attack you first. You attacked us. You are the instigators in this war. You are the ones that caused all the misery our people have been going through the past two years. You are the monsters. Not us."
"Its different. We're protecting our way of life." The scientist replied.
"And we aren't? Our way of life is the shinobi way of life. You tried to force us to give up our way of life completely. To completely destroy our economy just for some prissy people who sit on large comfy chairs to feel that they have done their best to 'stop violence in the world.'."
The scientist shook his head in sadness, positive that he was right and she was dillusional and just a murderer trying to justify her murders.
She also shook her head, these people were so egotistical and high and mighty. They were worse than her people could ever be. They had caused more death in two years than in all the shinobi wars combined.
She pointed her hand at him casting a genjutsu. It was mostly a compulsion genjutsu. He would see himself in a lab with the rest of his co-workers. He would see himself ordered by his superior to pull up the information on the poison they used on the shinobi. She watched as the scientist typed on the computer bringing up pages of research. "Print it." She ordered her genjutsu making it come out sounding like his superior's voice. He hit a few more buttons and a machine across the room whirled to life, spitting out sheets of paper. Sakura examined the notes quickly making sure all the information she needed was there. She nodded to her clone who quickly slit the scientist's throat then dispersed with a whisp of smoke.
She sent out several more clones out to scout the way out then followed them. She snuck out of the metal building and with another handseal created nearly twenty mud clones. The clones all turned and marched back into the base. They would cause as much damage as possible while also being a distraction so she could get out of there.
Unfortunately she walked right into the middle of a group of new soldiers drilling. They shouted surprised turning their guns to shoot at her. She moved out of the way with a quick burst of chakra throwing two hand fulls of kunai at the soldiers killing ten soldiers with that one motion. She cast a genjutsu making the rest attack each other with their guns. The genjutsu only worked for a short ammount of time but by the time they came out of it, nearly nine tenths of the soldiers were dead from either Sakura's first wave of weapons or by "friendly fire". Sakura quickly finished the last of them with well placed kunai and shuriken.
The clearing was a massacre area. Blood coated the bark of the trees, saturated the ground. No grass would grow there for years after this. Even if the rain washed away the blood. As if hearing her thoughts it started raining. The water ran in rivlets down the exposed part of Sakura's face and she tilted her head back at the refreshing feeling. She looked at the area one more time before jumping up into the trees and racing back to her village. She had obtained the information she needed.
That was the last mission she would take on the field. She would spend the rest of the war trying and failing to create an antidote with the plants she had when she needed totally different plants.
END FLASHBACK
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Sakura pulled herself out of her memory, and moved to where the group had taken Riddick. She entered the hold just after Johns left. She moved back into the shadows when she heard someone else coming.
"So where's the body?" Fry demanded.
"Not going to answer?" a long pause.
"Why don't you tell me about the sounds you told Johns you heard?" another pause.
"Just thought you should know there's a debate wheither or not to leave you here." Fry turned to leave.
"You mean the whispers?" He asked in a purposely low voice, huskiness crawling into his speech.
"What whispers?" Fry suddenly asked.
"The whispers telling me to go to the sweet spot. Fourth lumbar down, the abdominal aotia. What a gusher. Human blood has a metalic taste but if you cut it with peppermint schnips it goes away." He said lowly messing with her head.
"Want to surprise me with the truth now?" Fry asked with false bravado.
Riddick chuckled. "You people are all so scared of me. Most days I would take that as a complement. But it ain't me you gotta be afraid of." He answered.
"Show me your eyes Riddick." Fry ordered.
"You gotta come closer for that." He replied.
Fry took two steps forward she was still three feet away from him.
"Closer." He goaded.
She took another step and a half forward and he lunged forwards his eyes snapping open just as he reached the end of his chains. He was putting his full weight against the chains and was only centimeters from Fry's surprised face.
"Cool! Where can I get eyes like that." Jack spoke up.
"First you have to kill a few people." Riddick said only glancing at her for a second before locking eyes with Fry again.
"I can do it." Jack replied eagerly.
"Then you got to get sent to a maximum security slam where they tell you you'll never see the light of day again. You dig up a doctor and pay him twenty methol Kools to do a surgical shine job on your eyes." He answered.
"So you can see who's sneaking up on you in the dark." Jack exclaimed excitedly.
"Exactly." He answered.
"Leave!" Fry snapped at Jack. And then as if sensing how harsh her voice was repeated softer. "Leave Jack."
Jack poutingly made her way out of the hold.
"Cute kid." Riddick comented.
"Let's keep him that way." Fry said. "Now seriously, did you kill Zeke?" Fry demanded.
"Have I killed people? Sure. Did I kill Zeke? No, you've got the wrong killer."
"He's not in the hole, we looked."
"Look deeper."
Fry glared at him and left.
Sakura stepped out of the shadows.
"Was wondering when you would show yourself." Riddick commented leaning back against the metal he was chained to.
"Seemed you were a bit busy flirting with Fry." Sakura answered wryly.
"Me, flirt?" He asked incredously. "I was messing with her." He corrected.
"Seemed like flirting to me." Sakura commented shrugging.
"So what are you here for? To demand I tell you where I stashed Zeke's body too?" He asked.
"No. I'm not stupid enough to think you managed to kill him without getting a drop of blood on you. Even a Kage would have trouble with that with a hand to hand weapon. It would be possible if you used a throwing weapon, but seeing as you still had your shiv in your hand and its not made for throwing its a bit impossible for you to do." She answered nochalantly leaning against the wall of the hold opposite of where he was chained.
She looked up suddenly. "I have to go. The idiots are arguing about which of them will go down the rabbit hole." She said moving towards the door. "I'll be back when they find out that you didn't kill Zeke." She added before leaving.
Riddick watched her leave with a thoughtful look on his face.
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Sakura joined the group just as Fry volunteered to go down the hole.
"No." Sakura objected bluntly.
"Why not?" Fry demanded turning to her.
"One everyone needs a captain." Sakura started listing looking her directly in her eyes. "Two I can heal from any injury. I've hand limbs chopped off and they regenerate in minutes. And three, I say so and I can kick your ass with one finger and heal you back to perfect health with the other." She finished bluntly.
Fry and most of the group looked about speechless at her words.
"Cool!" Jack commented.
"I guess that settles that." Johns said.
They gathered the rope they had prepared for the spulunking expedition. Sakura clipped the rope to her belt easily tugging firmly to make sure it stuck well. Imam took the other end and stood at the mouth of the smaller hole. "Two tugs means pull me up. One means I need more feed. Any more than that means I'm in trouble." Sakura instructed.
Sakura checked her kunai and shuriken making sure they were in easy reach along with a wazashi she had hidden under her clothes. She pulled her wazashi out examining the edges with a buyer's eyes. She accepted the flashlight offered by Johns. She clipped the wazashi onto her belt then put the flashlight in her mouth as she forced her way into the small hole. As soon as the hole openned slightly she moved the flashlight to her hands and started moving in a crouch instead of a crawl her eyes darting at the shadows caused by her light, and the patches of darkness that wasn't lit up.
She reflexifly clenched her hand on her wazashi when she heard a click. She looked around cautiously. Her light landed on a scythe-like tail before it was quickly pulled into the shadows. She continued moving the light around and it landed on a boot. She moved over to the boot quickly and picked it up only to drop it in shock. Zeke's boot with's Zeke's foot still in it.
'Time to get out of here.' She thought backing towards the way she had come. Only to hear something move behind her to block her way she turned around to see a few purple creatures blocking the way. She clenched her wazashi in her hand and with a lightning fast move slashed it across one of the creatures' throats. It exploded in a shower of blue blood the head falling to the ground. Several of the creatures immedeatly fell on their dead counterpart. The rest immedeatly went for a try at Sakura. She managed to kill four more and made a path through the creatures back into the wide open cavern where the light filtered down into the cave through the spire.
She stood in the light waiting for the creatures to come to her but they didn't. They didn't like the light. She felt a pull on the rope around her waist and immedeatly cut it with her blood soaked wazashi. She took several more warning swipes at the creatures managing to kill at least three more as she started up the spire. She jumped up towards the top of the spire landing on the wall about a third of the way up. She began running up the wall with her chakra control. Several last desperate ones took a couple more swipes at her but she quickly killed them too. She was completely drenched in their blue blood. Once she reached what she deemed as surface level she used a chakra enhanced punch to break through the stone wall of the spire.
She clambored out combered by her wazashi and her soaked clothes. She sighed heavily as she walked over to where the group stood. Imam was holding up the cut end of her rope and the others were looking worried.
"Sakura-sensei!" Jack cried out suddenly seeing her approaching.
The rest of the group turned to stare at her.
"What is that?" Fry asked staring at the blue blood on her clothes.
"Whatever those creatures down there's blood." Sakura answered.
"Creatures down there?" Johns asked.
"Some sort of flying creatures. They had scythe shaped heads and tails. They have no eyes. And they seemed phobic of the light. They're also cannabalistic, as well as carnivorous." She answered.
She turned to go back to the ship. "I hope we find some water soon. I don't think I can stand being covered in this shit for very long." She muttered disdainfully.
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She walked over to the hold where Riddick was being held followed by Fry.
"Suppose you've found out I'm not the biggest threat here." Riddick observed.
"No shit. You're not even the second biggest threat." Sakura said.
"Okay, I get the creatures you found are the biggest threat." Fry said "But what's above Riddick besides that?" She asked.
"Me, of course." Sakura answered easily.
"You?" Fry asked.
"Yes me." Sakura answered.
Riddick shrugged at Fry's questioning glance. "Frankly I don't really want to find out which of us would win. She would at least injure me quite a bit." Riddick admitted easily with a shrug.
Fry looked at Sakura as if she had never saw her before.
Johns came in. "Do you mind if I talked to him." Johns asked Fry and Sakura.
Fry nodded easily and left.
Sakura shrugged leaving the room after Fry.