Also, I may give her a vice if I see fit. Anyway, onto the story.
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They walked into town. It wasn't a ninja village, so it was easy to get into. Nekomi asked "So, what shall we eat?"
"Ramen!" Naruto cried.
"Dango" Gaara almost asked.
"Miso" Haku said, her voice in between Naruto's and Gaara's.
"Barbeque" Zabuza stated, looking like he wouldn't budge on his choice.
Nekomi sweatdropped. She looked around. She had no idea what restaurant would have all that, if any did, so she randomly pointed "How about that one?"
They all looked. There was a restauraunt named Sumiyo's. Nekomi thought 'Now let's hope they have everything...' They went in and the place didn't seem busy at all. In fact, they were the only customers. She thought it strange at the time, but the place seemed nice enough. She picked up the menu and saw that the place she had picked was a rare variety place that served all the things they had wanted. 'Heh, I can't believe the random pointing thing worked. It worked well for Dan, but I've never had his luck...' Nekomi went into a memory of when she and her husband had first met and he was nervous, looking for a good place for them to have lunch. He pointed "Let's go there!" The place that he had ended up picking had become Nekomi's favorite restauraunt. He laughed "See, I told you I knew this town!" She laughed "That was luck and you know it." He laughed back. She shook her head and snapped herself out of her memories when she heard someone calling her name "Nani?"
Zabuza said "Earth to Nekomi. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." Nekomi tried for a smile, but only mangaged a half one "Just thinking."
Naruto cried "Let's get food!"
Nekomi looked in her pockets. No money. 'Kuso, I left my money in the scroll.' "Ano..."
Zabuza sighed "You left your money didn't you? Why do I have the feeling that this is going to take everything that I have in my wallet?" He looked at Gaara and Naruto especially.
A woman walked up from the back. She said "Hello, my name is Sumiyo. Do you know what you want?"
"Ramen" "Dango" "Miso, onegai" "Barbeque"
Nekomi said, apologetically, "I'm sorry, let me..."
Sumiyo said "Oh, no, I can handle that. Let's see, two bowls of chiken ramen for your youngest, four skeweres of dango and red bean paste for your middle son and two bowls of miso soup for your oldest. A plate of Korean barbeque and rice for you husband and for you... the special, perhaps?"
Nekomi shook her head in amazement. She said "That sounds great. What's the special?"
"House dumpling soup."
Nekomi smiled "Okay, all of that and two bowls of the special."
"Coming right up." The woman left again.
Nekomi realized that this would probably wouldn't leave her or the kids full, she wasn't sure about Zabuza and Haku, but she didn't want to strain Zabuza's wallet too much, even though she planned to pay him back. She saw the look he was giving her and said "Don't worry, I'll pay you back."
"Yeah, uh huh." Sooner than Nekomi had expected, the woman was back with the food. She had a younger man helping her. They lay the food out. The woman said "Meet my son, Ishigo."
"Hey." Ishigo greeted them. "It's nice to see some business in here."
"Ishigo..." his mother warned.
He placated "Kassan, I just meant that it was nice to see some faces."
"Hm." She went back into the back, seeming to accept his explanation for the moment.
Ishigo sighed and turned back to Nekomi and the gang. He said "We hardly get business anymore. We only get customers in when there are travellers." He lowered his voice "This restauraunt has been avoided by the people who live in this town. I think the people believe it is cursed."
"Why?"
Ishigo looked this way and that, then said, in a voice just loud enough for her to hear "Father."
"Explain."
Ishigo whispered "He was a Wara."
Nekomi gasped. "Was?"
Ishigo said, sadly, "He died about a week after...they all died. Mother said it was heartbreak. The village people think that anything related to the Wara clan is cursed now."
Nekomi remarked "You must take after your mother strongly. I have never seen a half Wara without black hair and green eyes."
Ishigo said "Well about that, it's a henge." He looked around again and said, quitely, "This is what I really look like." The young man shimmered and he now had black hair back in a ponytail and green eyes. When he heard footsteps he immediately took back up the henge. There stood his mother.
"Ishigo, what are you talking about?"
Ishigo stuttered "N..Nothing, Kassan."
She frowned at him "I heard henge..."
Ishigo gulped. Sumiyo knew her son well. She hissed "You told them! The villager's don't even know that you're your father's son. They think you're adopted!"
Ishigo tried to defend himself "They wouldn't strike me, for the same reason they haven't harmed the house."
She hissed "They no longer fear reprisal. Obscenities are on the walls each morning now. I have washed them off. A rock missed the window this morning."
The man now looked afraid, having been unaware of this, since he got up later than his mother after she had already taken care of this. He asked "Then why do we not leave?"
Sumiyo said "Where would we go?"
Nekomi looked at Zabuza, they weren't within direct hearing of the mother and son.
Zabuza understood her look "No."
Nekomi pleaded "But we have to."
"No we don't."
"Please."
Zabuza said "I thought you were worried about revealing yourself. Anyway, how do you know their story is even true?"
Nekomi thought back into the family records she had been forced to memorize years back as the heir to the clan, searching for a Wara that had left and never returned to the compound. A name surfaced. She said "Hanryo?"
The woman heard her and gasped, her eyes fixed on her, then she turned angrily to her son "Did you tell them?"
Ishigo looked startled "N..No! I did not! Honest, mother."
"Then how could she know?!"
Nekomi looked at Zabuza again, pleading with him.
Zabuza sighed. She wasn't going to give up on this. He said "Fine, but I still want my own bed."
The woman and man looked confused.
Nekomi said "The shades are down, but...a moment." Nekomi walked to the door and went through a few handsigns, then hit the door with her palm. The kanji for silence appeared. She said "Now then, everyone, drop your henges." They did.
The mother and son were shocked. Ishigo recognized the man as one of the members of the seven swordsmen of the mist, he didn't recognize the children, although he noted their strange hair colors. The woman had hair and eyes like him, was it possible...
Sumiyo recognized Nekomi immediately.. She fell into a kneeling position and pulled her son down into the same position. "Hime, you're alive."
Nekomi said "Please, get up.:
They rose. Sumiyo said "Princess Nekomi, I am honored to meet you. I know you from Hanryo's sharings. Please forgive my son."
Nekomi said "It is alright. I wish you to come back with us. I am going to create a new village."
Sumiyo asked "A new village?"
"Hai. It will begin as soon as I contact some other people I know."
Sumiyo asked "Waras?"
Nekomi frowned "No, I am the last Wara."
"Forgive me, I am sorry if my comment..."
Nekomi cut her off "Will you come?"
Sumiyo asked "Where will we stay?"
Zabuza answered, gruffly "At my house." He didn't like the idea of his house becoming more crowded than it already was.
Ishigo asked "Are you really her husband?"
Zabuza answered, with a frown "No."
"Oh."
Zabuza thought 'I don't like that 'oh'.
'I thought you didn't like her.' His inner self teased.
'Shut up.' He focused back on what Nekomi was saying.
"Is all that you own here?"
Sumiyo answered "Hai, we live upstairs."
"Gather everything you wish to take with you and bring it down here. I will seal it in a scroll for you." They went. Nekomi turned to Zabuza "Well, I wasn't expecting this, but there's another person to add to the village now."
Zabuza said "Two."
Nekomi replied "Yes, two. We need all the people we can get." She then noticed the look on his face. "What's wrong, Zabuza-kun?"
Zabuza blanked his face, though embarassed. He must have been caught staring "Nothing."
Nekomi said "You were letting off a small amount of killer intent towards Ishigo earlier."
"I didn't realize."
Nekomi rolled her eyes. He sounded half sarcastic. She said "Try not to scare people off. We're going to have hard enough of a time finding people."
"Hai."
Haku noticed that Zabuza looked uncomfortable. She asked, quietly, "Zabuza...toussan?"
"Nani?"
"Do you like Nekomi?"
Zabuza was shocked as he tried to think up an answer. He had never expected Haku to say something like that. He failed to come up with an answer he liked and grumbled "I better go check up on those two." He went up the stairs.
Soon afterward there was a scream and the sound of something breaking. Nekomi's eyes widened and she ran up the stairs with the children following her "Zabuza!"
When she got onto the sceen she noticed a broken window, but no glass and a pot that was smashed on the floor. "What happened?"
Sumiyo said "It's hiding in the room. It just startled me. Zabuza-dono tried to kill it, but he missed."
"Kill what?"
"A snake. It must have gotten in through the window that was broken earlier this week..."
Nekomi stopped listening at the word snake. A snake? She scanned the room, not moving, until she saw it. It was among some clothes, looking straight at her, swaying it's brownish green body back and forth. Nekomi's eyes widened and her breath caught in terror. 'Snake' was the only thought her logical mind could come up with and she was frozen to the spot.
Zabuza saw Nekomi's look and asked "What's wrong, Nekomi?"
Nekomi stuttered "S..Sn..Snake..."
Zabuza thought 'She's that afraid of snakes?' He saw her body start to shake and frowned. It made sense with what she'd gone through with that snake bastard, but he wouldn't have guessed that she would be so paralyzed by it. This time he took out a kunai and hit the snake with it, killing it. He threw it out the window.
With the snake gone, Nekomi was once again able to move and breath. She sat down, still shaking, trying to recover from the ordeal. Her heart still raced. She practiced the calming techniques she learned from meditation, but her concentration was shot to hell and so were her nerves. When Zabuza put his hand on her shoulder she nearly jumped out of her skin.
Zabuza said "Hey, it's ok, it's me. Why didn't you tell me?"
She looked at him with tearful eyes, not trusting herself to talk.
"Any more secrets?"
She shook her head no. Zabuza expected that she probably had other things she wasn't telling him, but he wouldn't force it out of her. "Have you always been afraid of snakes?"
She shook her head no. "Just since then?" She nodded, then held her hands up. She had done this before, when she wanted them to meet in his mind or her mind. Zabuza wondered what she wanted. He grew worried for a second. She hadn't been speaking, did it make her go mute or something? He sighed "Yours or mine?" She pointed weakly to him. "Fine, but you know I still don't know how to do it, you'll have to." She nodded.
Sumiyo realized that the princess was 'sharing' with Zabuza and would probably not want to be disturbed for a few minutes. She was disturbed by what she had just seen and saddened by it, for the Nekomi that her late husband had described was not one that held such a paralyzing fear in her. The massacre must have scarred her for life, and no wonder. She led her son and the other children out "Let's give them some time alone. I'll make some more food."
Naruto said "But, I want to stay with kassan."
Sumiyo said, gently, "She'll still be up there. They need some time to talk right now." She went around gathering ingredients. "Now, are you still hungry?" Sumiyo fixed food while the four sat there. She came back out when she finished to find the younger children talking about the incident.
"It was scary. I've never seen Kassan so scared."
"I've never seen kaasan scared at all."
"I wonder what they're talking about. How do you talk without using your mouth?"
Gaara said "In dreams."
"In dreams?" Haku asked.
Gaara said "Yeah, Kassan talks to me in my dreams."
"But they're dreams."
Gaara frowned in frustration that he wasn't making his idea very clear "I mean real dreams."
Sumiyo was amused at the child's concept of sharing. Then she frowned. The event had evidently upset the princess greatly, she would most likely want to forget about it. She said "Listen now." She had their attention. "No one is to mention this again, what happened in that room a few minutes ago."
Naruto asked "Why?"
Sumiyo thought of a way to explain it to him "Because reminding her of it might make her scared again, or sad, ok?"
Naruto frowned. He didn't want to see his kassan scared again "Oh. Ok, I won't talk about it anymore."
"That goes for the rest of you too." They nodded and swore to never speak of it again.
Meanwhile, upstairs...
They were in Zabuza's mind, beside the ocean, it seemed, but not the cliffs. Zabuza said "Now, talk to me," more gently than he usually spoke.
The gentleness was all it took for Nekomi to break down crying.
Zabuza was alarmed. It always alarmed him when Nekomi cried. She was the strongest person he had ever known, but when she cried, she seemed so weak...so vulnerable... He said "Nekomi, it's over, it's ok." He hesitantly put his arms around her, not really sure what to do. She turned and cried into his chest. He said "It's gonna be okay. You wanna talk about it? I'm assuming you brought me here for more than crying" Zabuza said, trying to lighten up the situation.
Nekomi choked over her words as she sobbed "How ca.can I..b.be a fi.fighter l.li.like t.th.this?"
Zabuza said "Calm down, I can't understand you." He sighed and let her calm down a bit. He decided that now would be a good time to tell her he had seen one of her nightmares. He said "Nekomi, I saw your nightmares, by accident, when I showed you the cliffs."
"What?" She looked up at him and asked hoarsely. "You..."
Zabuza interrupted "If I had been what you had been through, I'd probably be afraid of snakes too, but Nekomi, you're the strongest fighter that I've ever met, so what if you're scared of snakes, everyone's scared of something and anyway, if a snake comes up, I can kill it, right?"
Nekomi was surprised that he had seen one of her nightmares and found his awkward attempt at cheering her up to actually been working.
Zabuza said "So we'll just stay a team and then we'll be undefeatable, right? I'll deal with the snakes and you can deal with everything else..." He paused "That would be kind of boring actually, could you pass some of them over my way, sometime?"
Zabuza's chatter was distracting her away from her previous thoughts. She said "Sure."
He said "Finally, you're talking normal. I was afraid you'd gone mute or something."
"We're still in your mind you know. I could be mute."
Zabuza's face showed signs of alarm again "You're not, are you?"
"No, I was just in shock. I'll be okay when I come back out."
"Don't do that! You had me worried!"
Nekomi smiled, though it was a tired one. This gave Zabuza hope, however. He said "Well, I guess we better go back out, I bet the brats are wondering what's going on."
Nekomi frowned "I..."
"They'll be fine. They're kids. Kids recover fast."
"Okay..." They went out.
Nekomi was still facing Zabuza. He said "You got your shirt wet. Let me get it." He knew she had a shirt on underneath the kimono like top that she wore when they were just training sometimes. He reached over.
She said "I've got it." She pulled it up to take it over her head, then Zabuza noticed some of the cloth had gotten caught on the cabinet behind her. She reached over to fix it "You're stuck," He brushed by her side to get at the string. She flinched away like she had been burned, but she was still caught. "You're still stuck on that thing, let me..."
Nekomi said "No, I've got it."
Zabuza reached over again "What? You've got a top under it, I can see it. It would be easier if I fixed it." She had gotten tangled up worse with it. She flinched again when his hand brushed against her side, trying to get at the thread that had caught. Now he was concerned "Are you hurt or something?"
He turned around to look at her side "You're not bleeding...Is it sore or something, there? What if something didn't heal right?"
"It's not that."
"You jerked away when I touched you."
"I'm fine."
Zabuza finally realized what it must be "I can't believe it. You're ticklish?"
Nekomi was blushing now. "I am not, my side is just...sensitive. That is it."
"Is it now?"
"Yes, and I believe I smell food, Ja." She cried quickly as she saw a curious look in Zabuza's eye. She took off down the stairs.
Zabuza thought 'I would never have thought she'd be ticklish. They train their kids up from infants, don't they? How could her skin still be sensitive after all that. It doesn't make any sense.' He smiled. That was just another mystery that made Nekomi, Nekomi. Although, unlike the snake one, this was one he was interested in investigating.
'Where did that thought come from?' He thought
His inner self popped in 'You know you wanna.'
'I do not.'
'Do so.'
'Do not.'
'Do so, you can't stand to see her upset, mr. Joke guy.'
'Is mister Joke guy the best you can come up with? What are you, six?'
'Admit it.'
'I admit nothing.'
'I'm just going to keep bothering you until you do.'
'Argh! Fine, I don't like to see her cry, okay? Happy now?'
'Yes'
'Then go away.'
'Nope.'
'Why?' Zabuza asked, aggravated.
'Because I like annoying you.'
'Argh!' Zabuza thought 'Shut up!' He shook his head, relieved that sort of thing didn't happen when Nekomi was there. She'd think he had lost it. Maybe he had.
'Lost it for her, you mean.'
'I thought I told you to shut up!'
'Fine, fine, geesh, you're always so mean...' his inner self went away and Zabuza gathered himself and went downstairs, prepared to pretend none of what had happened had just happened.
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Oh, this was a longer than usual chapter, wasn't it? So, what'd you guys think? Good? Don't forget to R and R. Ja ne.
P.S.
Let me know if you have any ideas for vices or weaknesses that Nekomi should have in fitting with her character. I want her to remain a strong character, but I don't want her becomming a Mary Sue.