XxpuppetmasterxX and LilMzSunshine
Chapter 8: Deja-vu All Over Again
A/N: Wherein I get to make fun of one of my very favorite Naruto subplots. Not that I don't anyway.
Um... I assume that you have a basic grasp of how Neji's father died for this chapter... but I think that you must, or you wouldn't have gotten through the first chapter.
There's profanity... but it's not graphic, so I think I should be ok, rating-wise.
For the upper middle class, marriage is the only adventure left.
Kankuro smiled at the email Sunshine had sent him. There were days when he knew he was capable of killing her husband with his bare hands. The dumb bastard. He wondered if she was joking when she said she wanted to run away with him. That was the problem with email; there wasn't much way to tell when someone was serious. Not that it really mattered, because it wasn't like they were really going to elope or anything.
"Whatever, Neji, I could kill someone if I wanted to!"
Kankuro glanced over his shoulder as Hinata and Neji walked by, arguing.
"Keep telling yourself that, dear. Anyway, I'm sure that there are medic ninjas that don't kill people... oh, wait, to be a medic you have to be able to look at a shirtless man without fainting."
"Oh, I'm the weak one? How many notches do you have?"
"I've never had the opportunity," Neji said haughtily. "I would have no trouble taking a life if the situation arose."
"Some jounin you are."
"Yeah, some Hyuuga you are."
"Thanks, Mr. No-kills."
Hanabi appeared suddenly next to Kankuro's elbow. "This argument's going nowhere... Can I check my Gaia?"
"Hmm? Yeah, sure," Kankuro said, relinquishing the computer. He instead retreated to the room he and Hinata shared. He had long ago given up hope of keeping the computer while he was actually writing, so he had taken to scribbling down his updates in a cheap one-subject notebook. So now he retrieved it from inside one of his puppets, sat down on the bed, and started writing.
"I bet I can kill someone before you do."
"Sis, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard you say... you're gonna end up like Tsunade-sama if you keep stuff like this up."
"Shut up, Hanabi, this doesn't involve you. You're on, Hinata."
The irony that Hinata and Neji were talking about her ability to kill someone while he was contemplating LilMzSunshine battling her didn't really occur to Kankuro.
But, of course, he didn't know that the argument had begun when Hinata had mentioned killing the wife of her online lover.
"You're joking, of course."
"Well, yeah. Wait, what do you mean, 'of course'? I COULD kill her if I had the chance."
"Aw, Hinata, you're so cute when you're being naive."
"Whatever, Neji, I could kill someone if I wanted to!"
Kankuro was asleep when Hinata crept into the room and lay down on the pile of blankets they used as a spare sleeping space. Life was relatively good right now, she decided right before falling asleep. Even if she wished that XxpuppetmasterxX would show up in the middle of the night and kidnap her.
She awoke very late at night to find someone standing with one foot on her chest. Whoever it was seemed to realize that it had stepped on something, so it kicked her out of the way and found a firmer footing on the blanket inches in front of her face.
Kankuro woke up at about the same time because someone was groping around for him in the darkness. It was... uncomfortable. Especially when a small and fortunate sliver of moonlight struck the blade of the knife that this someone was holding.
Their free hand had found his throat, and was holding it as the knife moved closer to it. Kankuro was trapped. If only he could get his arms free from the sheet around them he would be able to grapple, but the knife was too close, if he moved, it would only move faster...
Hinata gulped and slowly moved her hand under the bed next to her. Something wasn't right... Her hand found the kunai she kept stashed there for just these occasions of mortal danger, and she curled her arm back slowly, until the weapon was positioned in the small space between the ankle and her cheek. She inched her face back as much as she dared to, and slashed the blade through tendon with all the strength she could manage.
It worked; she felt her weapon scrape against bone and heard the man scream.
The man released Kankuro's neck and dropped with a blood-curdling scream. He quickly disentangled himself and leaned over the edge of the bed to see, dimly, Hinata wrestling the man to the ground. He could see something metallic and probably quite sharp flash a few times, and then the larger shadow of the man fell still.
Hinata fumbled to her feet and flicked on the lights. "Y-you ok, Kankuro-kun?"
Kankuro's eyes darted to the bloody body on the floor, then to the bloody young woman standing at the door. "I– I'm all right, I guess. Are you ok?"
Hinata smiled shyly. Kankuro blinked. He was sure that it was just because his eyes hadn't adjusted, but he could have sworn that she blushed. "A few scrapes, but I'm all right. Thank you."
The couple both considered each other.
"So..."
"Um..."
Hinata tapped very quietly on her father's bedroom door. "Um... Daddy?" she whispered, pushing the door open a sliver. She heard an almost sentient grunt, and took this as a greeting. "I killed a man."
"... is it Kankuro?"
"Um, no, someone else."
"Oh... fine, I'll be right there."
Hinata returned to her room, where Kankuro was still sitting on the bed stunned.
"Well, I guess my father's coming... and maybe my mother, if we can wake her up."
"Ok," Kankuro nodded blankly and the two of them went back to waiting for the appearance of Hinata's parents. The overhead light was bizarrely bright in that way that lights seem to be very early in the morning, and it made the scene seem sterile and surreal, and therefore Kankuro decided that this wasn't actually happening.
"What do you mean, she killed a man? Was it Kankuro? Because I don't think that's worth waking me up at three in the— OH MY GOD!"
For Hinata's mother had just walked into the room and seen the bloody corpse lying next to the bed.
"Oh my god! BABY!" she turned to her daughter and latched onto her, alternately hugging her and running her hands over her skin, looking for cuts. "Oh my god! Baby, baby, are you all right?"
Kankuro's head turned to the side curiously. He couldn't imagine his mother-in-law being affectionate, especially towards Hinata, who was clearly the least favorite of the three children that she and her husband were legally responsible for. At least, he had always assumed she was her least favorite.
"Hinata, you could have died!"
"I'm all right, mama, don't worry about me," Hinata whispered back as her mother kissed her.
"But I do worry, baby! Don't you ever ever ever die on me!"
Hinata's father, on the other hand, had taken one look at the body and muttered some explicative under his breath.
Kankuro was still blinking uncomprehendingly at the door, and, as if to make sure that he had something to look at, Hanabi and Neji walked in, wearing pajamas and not looking too alert.
"Why's mom yelling?" Hanabi asked, rubbing her eyes tiredly. "Did something happen?"
"This had better be good," Neji muttered. "I was having a dream where my family didn't suck."
"You were not," Hanabi muttered.
"Prove it," Neji drawled. "Ok, I give up. Why's there a dead guy on the floor?"
"I killed him," Hinata explained, twisting a hand free from her mother's grasp and holding it out as if expecting money. Neji blinked at her.
"You owe me money... our bet, remember?" she prompted.
"I don't have it on me right now!" he cried. "I didn't think you were going to kill anyone tonight! Damn, talk about competitive... So, what village is the stiff from?"
"Stiff doesn't seem quite appropriate," Hanabi mused. This was her first dead body. "More like the Warm-and-Bloody."
"Don't be so literal," Neji said, sidling over to her. "Say, Hanabi do you still keep your money in your sock drawer?"
"Dad! Neji's trying to steal my money so he can pay off a bet that he lost!"
"Not now, Hanabi," Hiashi snapped tensely, nudging the body with his slipper.
"You always take his side," she muttered sullenly.
"I'm not 'taking his side', I just don't want to deal with it right now, ok?" he said, gingerly turning the body's head.
"If he's from Cloud, I'm gonna have an aneurism," Neji muttered sarcastically, seconds before Hiashi flipped the corpse over so that the assembled Hyuugas and Kankuro could see Cloud's insignia clearly etched in on the body's headband.
"You've gotta be fucking kidding me," Neji and Kankuro muttered in unison.
"Oh boy," Hinata's mother sighed. "Not again."
"...did I screw up?" Hinata asked anxiously. "I– I didn't see—,"
"There wasn't anything else you could have done, Sweetheart," her mother assured her, although she looked unusually grim.
Hanabi was watching the scene unfold with mildly-confused interest when Neji grabbed her by the back of her ducky pajamas. "Come on, we've got to go," he whispered, loudly enough for everyone to hear, dragging her out the door.
"Why?"
"Because I've been here before, and it doesn't end well for one of us."
"Shut up and stay where you are!" Hiashi snapped a them.
Neji froze. "Fuck."
"All right, now that I've got your attention... what are we going to do?"
"GIVE THEM NEJI!" Hanabi shouted, trying to edge behind her cousin. "He's an orphan and nobody likes him, nobody'll even notice he's missing!"
"No, throw them the midget!" Neji said, yanking Hanabi out from behind him and pushing her forward. "Her soul is fresher!"
"Stop it, you two! This is serious."
Hinata's mother bit the inside of her lip. "We're fucked, Hiashi."
"Don't I know it. Any ideas? Hinata?"
"Yeah, there's an idea!" Hanabi said brightly. "Give them Hinata!" Neji giggled and elbowed her for making him do anything as undignified as giggle.
The others ignored them. Hinata tapped her fingers together. "They're the ones breaking the treaty... I don't see why we should be the ones who get screwed," she whispered.
"Personally, I've never seen the problem with turning Uncle Hiashi in," Neji shrugged. "Show of hands, who would really be heartbroken over it?" Aside from an angry glare from his uncle, he received no response. "See, what did I tell you? If we'd done it 15 years ago, none of this would have happened, and this poor child molester would still be alive."
"He's not a child molester," Hinata said, pouting just a little. "Anyone breaking into my room in the middle of the night and mistakenly groping my husband is just plain a rapist. I am a woman, Neji!"
"Yeah, yeah, why haven't you and Kankuro ever–,"
"NEJI! HINATA! Shut the fuck up while I figure out how we can get out of this, preferably without throwing anyone to Cloud...again."
Hanabi tugged at Neji's pajama sleeve. "All right, I know this story ends with a dead branch that they figure no one will miss... so..." She formed a fist. Neji looked at her, puzzled.
"Should we report this to Hokage-sama?" Hinata asked, ignoring, like the rest of the family, her sister and cousin. "Maybe she'll know what to do..."
"If she's not too hung over," her mother muttered. "Frankly, we know more about dealing with this crap than she does. Anyway, it's best to have a game plan before you go bringing in outsiders who will try to tell you what to do."
"We can't let them get away with this twice in a row."
"As much as 15 years in between attacks can be considered 'in a row'."
"But..." Hinata whispered, "We need to tell somebody... right?"
"Rock Paper Scissors, Shoot!" Hanabi called.
"Paper covers Rock."
"Two out of three?"
The others ignored them. "Well, of course we need to tell somebody..." Hiashi muttered, looking very unhappy about the thought.
"Rock Paper Scissors, shoot!... Rock, Paper, Scissors, shoot!"
"If he didn't have any identifying information on him, it means he was acting on his own, outside of his village, so they can't make an incident out of it," Kankuro said. He knew, because as the son of the Kazekage, he learned useless legal and political information as a matter of course.
"But he IS wearing identifying information," Hiashi said, somewhat impatiently. It was three in the morning, there was a dead body in his daughter's bedroom, and two of the children he was legally responsible for were playing a game to decide who lives and who dies. "He's got his headband on and everything."
"Not after we take it off and get rid of it," Kankuro shrugged.
From: LilMzSunshine To: XxpuppetmasterxX
Subject: What a night
Puppy,
Why am I writing to you at 4:30 in the morning? Well, it's a long story.
I had a little... adventure tonight. I'll give you the full details later, I just thought that I'd throw you a head's up; the story arch will be changing a little bit. I definitely want to put this into the next chapter... I hope it doesn't throw you off too much, but it's far too exciting to leave out.
My whole family's up right now... Except Mr. Sunshine, he's passed out on the couch (our bedroom is... under construction). I think he deals with stress a little differently than I do. My cousins are playing Soul Caliber to decide which one of them would be missed less if one was to mysteriously disappear. My mother just got done slapping bandages all over my limbs, and she and my father are both having a strong drink. Or twenty.
This leaves the computer to me! XD I'm having a sudden burst of inspiration, so I'm mostly typing. The next chapter will probably be posted before you wake up.
I'm sorry for the teaser-ish-ness of this, but I need to change some circumstances around what happened tonight, and I don't want to give out too much information before I've decided what to let leak. It's not that I don't trust you, but better safe than sorry, right?
Your secret ninja admirer,
Sunny