Hello all!
So, with the posting of this new chapter, I've decided to start a Reader Review thing (much like other authors do) to save time on replying to reviews.
I always feel really bad when I don't have enough time to reply to all of the awesome reviews you guys give me… So yeah! This idea was born! I hope it ends up working out!
Thanks again (a bunch) for keeping up with my story! :)
Reader Reviews for Chapter 19/ Recent Reviews
Sandtalon: Thank you very much! I really wanted to get Orochimaru's creepiness across; I'm glad I did! Again, I'm sorry about not updating quicker… I am ashamed… But I will try and updater sooner! That is, if I don't get writer's block again. XP Hahaha, I don't know; that sounds like a good idea to me! XD
TanakaInuTasha: Whoa, really? O.o Bizarre… Actually having one of those marks would not be fun. I'm glad you're enjoying my story though! I agree; suspense is a killer. But it's an author's best friend!
Kuragari Rya: Why, thank you! I do try! :)
Prescripto13: Thank you! I'm glad it was worded well. Fight scenes have always been kind of a hard thing for me, so I'm glad that this one turned out alright!
Sora Tayuya: Oh wait, it's not? *cocks head to the side confusedly* Darn. Better inform all of the other Kakashi fangirls. (XD) Thankies!!
KakashiKrazed: There really can never be enough Kakashi-sensei, can there? XD I'm glad you noticed that; I was trying to add in those hints of rebelliousness that the Sensei was still showing! Whew, that last part made me relieved! The whole point of that last bit was to kind of explain those things, and I'm really glad that was received! Thank you very much!
Kakashifangirlnumber1000: Why thank you! I'm really glad you did! Hope you'll be satisfied with this update! :D
Naruto shot up from his bed with a start, covers being tossed to the foot of his mattress effortlessly. The boy sat panting at the head of the bed, clutching onto the sheets tightly and taking a moment or two to take in his surroundings. Bed, dresser, practice dummy, closet, mirror, windows, empty instant ramen cups… It was definitely his room. He sighed.
He wasn't dreaming anymore.
"More of a nightmare than a dream…" The blond shinobi thought dryly, staring at his sheets with a blank expression on his face. He glanced at the clock sitting on his right end table. 2:09 A.M. He certainly wasn't getting much sleep. This was the third time he'd woken up that night. He'd be a complete zombie in the morning... Well, technically it WAS morning already…
Naruto looked around the room one more time, just to reassure himself that he was fully awake and not imagining anything. His paranoia had somehow significantly grown after having that same nightmare three times in a row, and it was really taking its toll on the Genin.
His gaze fell on the picture of Squad Seven that sat firmly on the end table next to his alarm clock and his eyes softened. A lump welled up in his throat that he had to remind himself to swallow back down again. Kakashi-sensei… For the third time that night, Naruto's thoughts had wandered back to his captive teacher. He wondered if they had left at all. The nightmares he'd been having had only reminded him of how far away the man was. Moreover, they had made Naruto's worry and frustration increase tenfold.
The boy hopped out of bed with a rough grunt, suddenly feeling antsy. He started pacing around the room, hopping that the process would alleviate the strange butterfly-like sensation in his stomach. Of course it didn't, because the more he paced the more he started to think.
"Why didn't Granny Tsunade put me on the team?!" He thought heatedly, grinding his teeth together, "Why couldn't she trust me with that?!" After a moment of more livid ramblings, the blond shinobi sighed heavily and unclenched his fists. With a suddenly forlorn expression, he fell back, landing on the foot of his bed with a creak and wobble. His empty expression gazed at the wooden floor beneath him.
Naruto hated not being able to do anything.
Even when he knew things were taken care of, and that there was a rescue team out looking for Kakashi, and that they were all extremely capable people (Tsunade had told him that four times that day), he just couldn't shake this feeling he had that something bad was going to happen… Something bad that he felt he should be the one to prevent. He didn't know why.
It was just his nature.
But there was really nothing he could do at this point besides just hope and pray that his sensei would come home alive. And it took the silence after Naruto's anger to make him realize that.
"Please…" He mumbled, lying back down on his bed and grinding his teeth together again, "Please, just let him come home… Let him be alright."
Sasuke threw another fierce punch at the training dummy obscuring the middle of his bedroom, causing it to rock back violently and then spring back up again. The hits continued in a fairly slow but steady rhythm, only stopping with Sasuke decided to exhale the breath he'd been holding in for who knows how long. He flexed his fingers as the dummy's tremulous form finally stilled and took to looking out the window with an icy and concentrated glare.
He'd been doing that for the past few hours.
He didn't know why he was doing it. It was ridiculous; he knew that much... Why did he keep looking out the window like that? Why did he feel some deep-rooted hope and almost certainty that any moment he would see a masked face smile and wave a hand casually in his direction from outside his window?
He wasn't worried. There was a search team out looking for him. He wasn't worried.
Sasuke exhaled again and pried his eyes away from the window he'd been staring so intently at. Though he had tried to convince himself that he wasn't worried about his sensei, he was. There was no beating around the bush with that anymore. Usually, one of Sasuke's better qualities was his knack for being able to stay calm in bad situations. However, when those situations involved the people he cared about, he tended to lose his cool a little.
Now would be one of those times.
Usually, Sasuke would go home after a long day and take out all of his frustrations on the poor training dummy that he had long since beaten the stuffing out of. It was a way for him to keep his cool during the day. And it always worked. Stress always seemed to just melt away when Sasuke did that normal routine.
But not this time… For some reason, this time, Sasuke's stress didn't alleviate at all… It was beginning to drive him crazy.
"Kakashi…" He thought sourly, looking out his window again despite himself, "Why did he have to bring YOU into this?!" His fists clenched together, and he felt compelled to start punching his training dummy again, "Why make you go through that kind of pain?!"
Sakura sat up in her bed, continually staring down at her crème-colored bed sheets for what must've been the last forty-five minutes at least. Her arms were folded on top of her knees and her chin rested down on her arms in an almost fetal position.
Her eyes were clouded up with sadness and unease, the likes of which she had no idea how to deal with. She'd been up like this every hour since she went to bed, and she felt that the tight feeling she had in her stomach wouldn't go away. It almost bordered on nausea.
Sakura wished that she would stop worrying, but it was hard not to… She'd never experienced a situation like this, and didn't know what to do to make herself stop worrying…
"Kakashi-sensei's life is at stake…" She thought miserably, clutching onto her arms, "And we… Can't do anything about it," She bit her lip, "I bet Sasuke and Naruto are upset about this too." Of course they were… If Sakura knew anything, she knew that those two boys couldn't sit idly by while someone they cared about was in trouble.
In the back of her mind, she wondered if they were getting any sleep tonight… She knew she wasn't.
With a sigh, Sakura gazed out her bedroom window at the moon whose light filled up the dark area she was in. Most nights, a full moon was a pretty thing to look at. But for some reason, tonight, it looked very foreboding… Maybe it was just the concept of darkness and nighttime that scared her tonight, though. The thought of bleakness completely void of hope.
Sakura shuddered involuntarily and buried herself under her sheets to attempt another vain try at sleeping for the fifth time that night.
Kakashi's mind only half-processed the fact that he was being carried.
Groggily, the Jounin tried to open his eyes… Nope; no good. Lids are still too heavy. He needed to rest more. Why was he moving? Why was someone carrying him? He felt an unexplainable and dull anger at whoever it was, because he was not in the best of moods right now, and them moving him didn't make it any better at all.
Straining his ears as he heard mumbling and the opening of a steel door, Kakashi just barely picked up a voice that he recognized. It was a woman, he gathered.
"Must be that one I heard the other day…" He thought tiredly, trying to remember what Masaru and Orochimaru had called her. Whoever she was, she was strong. Even in his weakened state, Kakashi could tell that she was expending very little effort while carrying him. She was probably a shinobi like all of the others he had run into around this place. He shortly wondered if she was as strong as Kenshin and Masaru.
Kakashi's thoughts were interrupted as the- what he assumed to be –steel door closed behind them and a new smell filled his already thick head. He tried scrunching up his nose and only succeeded in twitching it a little. Unlike most other ninjas, the first thing Kakashi ever noticed when he came into contact with new surroundings was smells. That way, he could commit each place he visited to his memory, just in case.
This was definitely a new smell for him.
This new room smelled stale and musty, but at the same time extremely potent. Potent of what, he couldn't exactly say. It was an odd mix of aromas that he had never encountered before, and it stung his nose… An odd sensation welled up in Kakashi's stomach.
Suddenly he was placed on a hard, cold surface. He felt a warm hand grab onto his wrist, stay there for a moment, then slide up to his hand. Kakashi reluctantly jerked a little when his wounded knuckle was grabbed onto. With a displeased grunt, the Copy Ninja's hand fell back down to the hard surface. The woman that brought him in mumbled some more about 'idiots' and 'wounds' and 'deathbed', but Kakashi's hazy mind couldn't quite pick up everything just yet.
He suddenly heard the characteristic snap of a bandage being pulled off of a roll and his eyes struggled to open all the way. He resorted to squinting. His gaze slid over to his left where the first things he noticed were a pair of piercing red eyes and a shock of orange hair.
The woman's brow furrowed, red lips taut as she set the roll of bandages down on an end table by where Kakashi was, "Well well… Can't believe you're actually up, Hatake," His name was spat.
His response was gravelly, but sarcastic, "You woke me up," He made a conscientious effort to glare at her with his glazed-over eyes.
The woman laughed without humor, "A smartass, huh?" She tore the cloth off of Kakashi's hand and tied the bandage she held around it so tight that it actually forced a grunt out of the Jounin, "You'd do well to watch your mouth."
Kakashi was mildly confused at how a wound that didn't seem major at all compared to others could hurt so badly when she tightened a bandage around it. But then again, this was an underling of Orochimaru. She was going to be stronger than the average shinobi, naturally. But those red eyes… Kakashi couldn't help but feel that there was some sort of deeper connection between her, Masaru, and Kenshin.
The woman didn't seem happy about saying this next statement, "Can you flip yourself onto your stomach?"
Needless to say, the question surprised Kakashi. He eyed her curiously, "Depends. Why?"
She looked even angrier, "Are you really that foolish?" She punched his bandaged hand with enough force to where it looked like she wasn't even trying, but still earned another grunt from the man lying on the table, "Even in a half-dead state, you should be able to figure that out."
His thoughts wandered to his cut back, and he realized with a start that it was seriously flaring up in pain. His fists clenched and he looked at the woman again with a scrutinizing expression. She was… Going to treat his wounds?? That didn't make any sense. His brow furrowed again.
"I suppose it would be cliché to tell you not to try anything," He said in almost a whisper as he slowly turned onto his stomach with a grunt every now and then.
She scoffed, beginning to rummage through a separate shelf and grabbing various bottles, "Please, Hatake. In your current condition, what sort of serious threat could you pose to me?"
He chuckled, a short and humorless sound, as he sat staring at the wall opposite him. Though the idea of his enemy helping him didn't sit well with the silver-haired Jounin, he was in no mood or condition to be fighting it, as the woman had so kindly pointed out. He needed to heal as soon as possible, so this may actually end up working to his advantage.
Besides, he was essentially at this woman's mercy here… There was no way he could escape, and if he tried, he knew she would apprehend him. She didn't seem like the kind of person who took rebellious behavior well anyway…
Soon, the woman came back over to Kakashi's steel table, placing various bottles and package down on the end table by the roll of bandages. Quickly and seemingly methodically, she tore off a huge chunk of cloth from the man's shirt back. He tensed, startled by the sudden action, but didn't say anything. The part of his shirt that she'd ripped off was already damp with blood anyway. Truthfully it was a relief to not have as much stickiness obscuring his back.
"Keh," The woman scoffed again, tearing off a sheet of a wet towel of some sort and rubbing it carefully along the long cut on Kakashi's back. It must have had some sort of medicinal or alchohalic properties to it though, because it burned like hell when she applied it, "Masaru; that fool… He didn't even consider the blood loss that he would put you through. Just look at this mess. What would he have done if you'd gone and died?" Her rant ended with a quieter but more intense, "Lord Orochimaru would've been most displeased."
Kakashi's brow furrowed again as he gritted his teeth to keep from hissing out loud at the strong stinging sensation he was feeling. Suddenly surprised, he realized that his mask was back on.
Now this confused him… He knew he had torn down his mask after his brawl with Masaru earlier to cough up some of the blood that had been choking him, but he never recalled putting it back on. Did she do that? He tried to glance up at the woman again, but the position he was in made that neck movement way too awkward.
She had stopped rubbing his wound with that burning towel and now began to clean off the rest of the stray blood on his back. The Copy Ninja remained baffled by this. At first he was livid that she had seen his face; a privilege he gave to none of his living enemies. Then he was confused by her actually moving the mask back into place. Usually people that you knew were trying to kill you weren't that honorable. With another start, Kakashi's mind thought of something else; the most plausible reason he could think of.
A grim smirk crept onto his face as he came to the realization that the woman didn't move his mask out of some deep-seeded noble feeling. He was somehow slightly satisfied with the fact that she had to move the material.
"You moved my mask back up; how noble of you," He said hoarsely with barely hidden sarcasm, noticing the motion of her hands stop abruptly, "Quite becoming of an underling, don't you think? Or… Was it just too much for you to handle?"
With an incredibly frustrated and slightly embarrassed sound, the woman pressed down on Kakashi's wound so hard that he gasped in pain. She shortly continued her work- albeit more roughly-and he could practically feel the waves of heat coming off of her.
"I told you to keep your damn mouth shut," She hissed venomously between clenched teeth.
Kakashi's smirk didn't disappear despite the pain he was now in. It was so worth it, "I don't like you, and you don't like me," He thought, "And I'm not going to make this easy for you."
It was the least he could do, since every pessimistic notion in his head told him that he would have to fight even harder from now on. Now until…
Whenever, or if ever, he was to be freed from this hellhole.
Author's Note:
Yes indeedy! Kakashi-sensei's amazing good looks are just TOO much to handle! Even for the evil chicks! XD
And I am SO SORRY you guys! It's been waaaaay too long since I updated last, and I sincerely apologize for that! Once again, I had the most awful writer's block!!
I couldn't think of what to do with Sakura there in the beginning for the life of me, so I'm sorry if it came across as less than graceful. (Quite frankly, I don't like writing for her much… She's not one of my favorite characters. XP)
But I hope this chapter lived up to your expectations! It wasn't very action-packed, but more action and plot will be coming! And why is Yuuka treating Kakashi's wounds?? *mysterious* ;) Also, this was longer than my chapters are usually, so I hope you're all happy with that!
R&R! Thank you all so much for being so patient with me! :D Take care!