The Past Comes Forth
Team seven had been excused from training for the day and no one had been able to convince Kagome to help with their training. She had seemed distant the whole day and had reframed from saying even one word. Kakashi had left ahead early for an important meeting that he wouldn't share anything about it with them.
"We should all have ramen together." Naruto said to Sakura and Sasuke. Sakura was ready to agree, but Sasuke who had been acting oddly for the past few weeks had other plans.
"I'm going to find somewhere to train." He said as he started walking away. Sakura may have been taking her training seriously, but she still being a twelve year old girl followed her crush hoping to have some alone time.
"Sasuke, could I help."
"Sakura go away, you're worse than Naruto." He said simply as he started walking away not even sparing a backward glance. His last words were playing over and over in her mind as she walked back the way she came and happened upon Naruto and his little friends. She ended up using an annoying little kid as an outlet for her anger and when he directed an insult at her bigger than average forehead she ran at him. As he was running away he ended up running into this really unfriendly looking boy.
"Ow, that hurt you little brat." The boy picked up the little kid (completely forget his name.) and allowed a sickening smirk to cross his features. "You should apologize, before something happens to you."
"Let me go you big bully." The little kid exclaimed as he tried to wiggle out of the hold the foreign ninja had him in.
"Don't count on it Ki-…"
"Hey put him down." Naruto held cutting off the foreign ninja mid-sentence. The boy scowled as he looked at Naruto.
"And why should I." He asked as he readied himself to throw the boy Naruto with some extra chakra induced force. He paused for a moment as a blur came from behind Naruto and headed towards him.
"Because if you don't I will be forced to break both the bones in your lower arm." Kagome said as she as standing near to him with her hand on his forearm. She was looking straight ahead not even looking his was as she talked.
"Well I guess that means I don't need to interfere." Sasuke said from his spot above in a tree branch. He was juggling two rocks with his right arm as he sat forward with his left arm draped over his leg.
"Just where do you little brats keep popping up from?" The foreign ninja asked debating on whether or not to take the girl holding his arm seriously. She didn't look like she was strong enough to break bone, but he also knew that looks could be deceiving.
"Wrong answer to have, on a very bad day." Kagome said as she tightened the grip of her left hand and a moment later there was a popping noise and the kid yelled out in pain. The little kid fell from the foreign ninja's now broken hand and would have fallen hard had Kagome not caught him with her left hand. She set him down gently and looked him dead in the eye as she squatted down to his level.
"Go find someplace out of the way to place, understand." She said as started to stand up again.
"Yes ma'am." The little kid said as he and his friends ran in the opposite direction, trying to get away as quickly as they could.
"Just what the hell is your problem?" The foreign ninja yelled as he gripped his arm tightly to his chest. The girl behind him had her fan at the ready in case there was more trouble then her brother could handle.
"Do you really want to know?" Kagome asked as she looked him straight in the eye. He looked like he was about to answer.
"Kankuro what are you doing." A boy with red hair asked from the branch on the other side of the tree that Sasuke was in. Everyone quickly turned to look his way, except Kagome who had turned his way the moment he arrived right before he addressed his brother.
"This bitch broke my arm." He said in an angry voice to his brother as he used his head to gesture towards Kagome.
"Excuse me, put do I honestly look like a dog?" Kagome asked in a mocking tone as she turned her now even more hardened gaze towards Kankuro. He turned red at her comment and everybody, except Gaara, either snickered or laughed. Kankuro looked like he was about to say something but yet again he was cut off.
"Kankuro, if you do not stop disgracing our village I will kill you." He said as he disappeared in a whirlwind of sand and then appeared again with his two teammates.
Sasuke dropped to the ground and watched as they started walking away.
"Wait, what is your name?" Sasuke was the one to speak as the sand trio stopped and turned towards him.
"Who, me." The blond girl asked as she smiled at Sasuke with a slight blush across her cheeks.
"No, the kid with the gourd strapped to his back." Sasuke said barely even acknowledging her, as he waited for the information he asked for to present itself.
"My name is Gaara of the Desert. I am interested in your name as well as the girl standing closest to you." He said as he made eye contact with Sasuke, the look in his eyes was almost enough for Sasuke to hesitate or turn away.
"My name is Sasuke Uchiha." He stopped as he looked at Kagome she made brief eye contact.
"My name is Kagome Higurashi. Are you here for the chunin exam?" Her voice was empty as if she was just a shell of a human walking among the living. The kid seemed to pause to either take in the information or to decide whether or not he should bother with an answer to her question.
"Yes we are and I hope to meet you during the exam." Gaara said as he turned and started walking away with his siblings following closely behind him.
"Kagome, what was that about?" Sakura asked as she looked towards her friend with worry on her face. No one had ever seen Kagome act like that, not even during battle. The Kagome standing in front of them was empty and more than a little scary. In the time since they became a team she had started warming to them and they found her to be caring and compassionate, they also found that she had one hell of a sense humor. They all had the felling that something was extremely wrong.
"Today is a bad day that is all." Kagome said as she started walking back in the direction she came.
"What is so bad about today?" Naruto asked as she stopped and turned to face them, her empty gaze was replaced by one of pain.
"Today is the anniversary of their death." She said as looked down to the ground, she clenched her fists and her team saw the blood that dripped from where her fingers and dug into her palm.
"The anniversary of whose death?" Sakura asked as she took a step towards her friend.
"The anniversary of the last of my blood family was six months ago, but the anniversary of those I had chosen to love and had made my family and of those I had sworn to myself to protect, is today." She said she turned so that her back was towards them, her teammates heard her whisper something as she started walking away from them. No one knew what to say or what to make of what Kagome had said. So after a few minutes of just standing there they all walked away in their own separate directions.
The next day at the team meeting place.
Sasuke, Sakura and Naruto arrived at the meeting place at the same time to find Kagome already there, reading her book while leaning against the bridge.
"Hi, Kagome." Naruto yelled as he went to his usual spot to think and wait for Kakashi. Kagome closed her book and put it in her hip pouch; she then drew her sword and smiled.
"Hello Naruto, tell me have you been practicing the moves I told you to? It's been three weeks and its time to test, the same for you Sasuke and Sakura." She said as two clones jumped in front of them to start training for the day. Sakura was using a new boomerang called Hirourkotes that Kagome had given her after the trip to the wave. She was swinging it as was the Kagome clone and when they were close enough they used taijutsu against each other. Both Sasuke and Naruto were fighting Kagome using the same stances while fighting the Kagome and the other Kagome clone. Then after two hours of training Kagome pulled back along with the Kagome clones and they disappeared as she sheathed her sword and they took the hint that it was time to rest before Kakashi arrived.
Exactly thirty minutes later Kakashi showed up and told them that they had been entered in the chunin exam, and then he had to explain to three of the four genin what is. That was when things got soft and mushy, after a huge from Naruto, Kakashi left them to their own thoughts.
"Do you think were all really ready?" Sakura asked as the words Kagome had spoken to her replayed in her mind again.
"Sakura you are no master, but your skills have improved at a great rate. If you aren't ready then none of us are ready so relax and I will see you tomorrow at sign up." Kagome said with a gentle smile as she started walking away.
"Stop right there, Kagome." Naruto commanded and she stopped and looked at him along with Naruto and Sakura, they all just blinked at him.
"Excuse me." Kagome said with a look of utter confusion.
"All four of us are going to celebrate over ramen, and I won't take no for an answer." He said simply. Sasuke shrugged and Sakura ran over and gave a tug on her arm as they all started walking towards the ramen shop. When they arrived they found four empty seats and everyone ordered, excluding Kagome.
"Come on Kagome what flavor do you want?" Naruto asked as Kagome looked over the menu.
"I don't know, I haven't eaten ramen in a really long time." She said as she continued reading down the long list of flavors.
"How long could it have possibly been a year or two, just order already?" Naruto exclaimed as he sighed dramatically.
"I haven't had any ramen in seven years and back then it was just some cheap stuff that I warmed up for a friend." She said and then she paused for a moment before she sighed.
"I'll just have whatever Naruto is having." She said as she put the menu back in its place, the old ramen maker just nodded and went to work getting their orders ready.
"Wouldn't that have made you four years old?" Sakura asked as she glanced with curiosity at her teammate. Kagome paused for a moment and thought quickly for an idea on how to get out of this situation.
"Yes it would, if you don't mind I would rather not talk about it." She said simply as her mind continued working on ideas out of the mess she found herself in. Luckily she was saved by the arrival of the ramen; everyone sat eating in silence for a few moments. When Kagome was done she quickly gathered her money and paid the ramen maker and left while the others were still eating.
"What do you think that was about?" Sakura asked as she watched Kagome make an amazingly quick retreat.
"I have no idea." Naruto said as he ordered another bowl.
"It's painful to remember." Sasuke said as he finished his bowl. Sakura and Naruto looked at each other in surprise; Sasuke didn't normally talk when they were able to drag him over for ramen.
"What do you mean?" Sakura asked
"Remembering the people you loved and thinking of their deaths is always painful." Sasuke said as he paid and started to leave.
Someplace farther away with Kagome, near midnight.
Kagome stared at the moon or at the place it would be if it wasn't the one night of the month where the sky was black. She remembered how the old shard hunting group would live around the lunar cycle, if they had ever been attacked at this time of the month dome would have surely followed quickly. She sighed in sadness as she remembered how that was the one night when Shippo would play tricks on Inu Yasha or make fun of him without backlash. She almost laughed as she though of the huge pink blob that always seemed to be his favorite form.
She looked over to her left as she saw Kakashi jump onto the roof. He slowly walked over to her and then when he reached her he sat down with only around eight inches between them. The distance was meant to give her some sense of space even though she doubted he was going to leave without whatever he wanted.
"You had an early dinner with the rest of the team and then you disappeared. They looked for you from right after you left until nine. That was five and a half hours that they couldn't find you, they were worried. They managed to track me down and asked for some help in finding you. They said that they asked you about your past and you left hastily. Want to tell me what's wrong?" He spoke in a gentle tone looking up at the empty sky the whole time. She decided she would tell him in a nutshell what happened; of course she would have to change a few things.
"I came home from the fields one day and found my whole had been murdered. I wasn't alone though; there was a group of people who I had known for a long time in truth I don't have many memories of the time before I met them. I was young and they took me in, one of them was named Inu Yasha and he was loud brash and had an obsession with ramen. I used to have to eat some everyday because he would refuse to eat anything else; I loved him like a big brother. Then there was Sango, her whole family had been murdered by this guy named Naraku, this guy even had her little brother under his control. She was set on revenge when she first joined the group, she started seeing how maybe just helping others and saving lives would be enough to uphold her family name and make her family proud of her in the afterlife. She became one of the strongest and one of her life goals was to kill her brother, so that he wouldn't have to live with the memory of all the crimes he had committed.
There were only three others in the group; one was Miroku who was a monk with some perverted habits. He always played the peace maker; he kept the group together and also kept fights from irrupting between Inu Yasha and how ever would make fun of him or call him weak. Kirara was the pet cat of Sango," Kagome paused decided whether or not to give much more information on her demon cat friend, "Kirara was a fire-cat demon and she protected us whenever things got over our hands. Whenever there was fight going on Kirara would normal stay back and look after the last member of the group and I. The last member was a kid named Shippo, he was always the trouble maker of the group and he was the closest person I had to a real family member. There was a fight with the Naraku guy I mentioned, it turned out that he had messed almost everyone's life in the group. There was a curse on Miroku and it passed on through his family and it was Naraku who started it. The woman Inu Yasha loved had been killed by Naraku. It was all for some stupid jewel that carried some weird abilities. In the end it was Naraku who killed him and it cost them their lives to stop him.
At times Naruto reminds me on both Inu Yasha and Shippo, so I try not to spend too much time alone with him. Sasuke is almost like Sango; he is just farther gone on the road of revenge than she was. I feel like I can get along with you and Sakura because you don't have any big similarities to my old friends. Well you do have your perverted book that Miroku would most likely have loved." Kagome wiped away a few tears that had fallen as she started to get up. She hadn't even taken a step when his arm reached out and grabbed her wrist.
"They aren't your old friends, they won't go anywhere. They most likely owe that to you, you taught them some handy skill and they have excelled. If you need to worry about anyone it should be yourself, your teammates may just work you to death with all this training they asked for." He said with a smile at least it looked like a smile it was hard to tell while he had the mask on. Kagome looked him in the eye and nodded as she started walking back towards her apartment again.
Kagome was upset that she had let her memories upset her like that; she wouldn't be completely rested for the start of the in eight hours if she didn't get home soon. She also tried to focus on some of the things Kaede had taught her. She needed to let her past rest in peace.
