I know this chapter has been delayed but instead of making excuses I'll just let you get to it (:
Chapter 13: "The Darkness"
Sunnora awoke to the familiar darkness that she loved to surround herself in.
'Why am I still alive? I thought for sure I was good for dead'
She remembered of what felt like just seconds ago; she had been burned alive by some strange foreign event that certainly did not exist back at home.
Taking a look at the skin on her legs and hands she noted that it was as if nothing happened.
'This sure is strange, I'm positive that I would have at least some burn marks…anywhere' Sunnora stood up and looked around her body for any proof that she hadn't just imagined the whole ordeal. The idea that it had just been in her imagination seemed more likely every second she spent trying to find evidence to consolidate the initial idea but the facts were what they were.
'But I wouldn't fall asleep in the middle of a forest' looking around the area she noticed it was definitely not the same as she had remembered it.
'This is definitely strange, I don't remember this area at all, the landscape here is entirely different, there were mounds of broken trees there' she turned her body slightly, 'and tons of dirt stacked up feet high there' she turned her body the opposite direction, 'and a bunch of useless body parts belonging to that repulsive human there'. Beyond a couple of tall trees the gleam of sparkling water caught her attention. Rushing to the opening she cupped her hands together grabbing small amounts of water and washed her face and hands that had gotten quite dirty from her time here.
Sunnora was contemplating whether to search around the area for the familiar scenery and the man that looked like he had gone through a giant cheese grater when a voice caught her attention.
"Where the hell is that voice coming from?" she spoke to herself and frowned at her own voice when it hit her ears.
Her voice didn't sound as threatening and deep as she remembered and quickly realized the reason for this. Taking the top half of the cloth around her neck she pulled it up until it covered the bottom half her face in a mask. 'I only pull down the mask when I eat but always remember to pull it back up again, I just can't seem to remember what happened' she grimaced as she tried to recall the last few hours but gave up when she felt the start of a headache coming on.
The annoying noise that sounded like shrieking brought her attention back to her task. Walking briskly in the direction of the noise she spotted what looked to be like a couple of young teenagers. A grin appeared on her face as scenarios of these kids being slowly tortured to death and blood splattered on tree trunks flashed in her demonic mind. Her grin turned menacing and would have scared anyone if it weren't hidden behind the mask.
She watched like a predator behind a tree but quickly hid when she saw a spark of alert in the older looking human's pupil. It would be impossible for anyone else to notice but her demonic eyes let her catch the slightest sign of alert in his eye. It must have been nothing, maybe he remembered something he was thinking about but she didn't like taking chances. 'Damn he must be good, even a very skilled human could never sense me, guess I'll just have to hide a bit better'.
Lowering her hand to her pendent she pulled it from its silver chains and chanted a few words in front of the hovering object which allowed her to disappear in all five senses to any human. 'Now if I wanted to I could sit right next to them and they wouldn't even know I'm there, those stupid bastards!' she started laughing loudly, aware that they couldn't hear her and walked out from behind the tree, standing just outside the camp area where the four humans were seated.
"Ahhh~ Kakashi-sensei, why did we stop to rest!? I'm not tired at all, and if we waste time like this Team Gai will win!" Naruto stood up and continued to whine, "Team Naruto comes second to no one!"
"NARUTO! This isn't a competition, that is what Tsunade-sama said remember and we're TEAM 7" Sakura grabbed Naruto's collar and her fist was inches from his face.
"Not you too Sakura-chan and I was just joking" Naruto whined and looked defeated as Sakura released her grip on the blonde boy.
Naruto followed the pink haired kunoichi's line of sight and caught her glaring at their newest member.
"Sai-san what are you doing?!" Sakura leaned over the startled boy and grabbed the mission file that was now covered in inky doodles.
"Kakashi-sensei didn't let me bring my journal" Sai stated matter-of-factly reaching for the file again. Sakura pulled her arm away from his reach and glared menacingly.
"So you decided to scribble on our mission report?!" she crossed her arms and wondered to herself why she had to be paired up with these idiots.
"Yes…its paper".
Naruto watched from the sidelines with a giant grin as he awaited for Sai to get punched in the face any second now.
Sunnora stood next to the blonde haired boy and tried to keep her demon side in check as it forcefully tried to cut the boy's head off this very second, but she knew timing was everything.
Just as she was about to reach for her katana she heard a non-familiar voice.
"DYNAMIC ENTRY!" out of the bushes in a swan like leap appeared a man in a green jumpsuit with a bowl haircut, he was tall and with his appearance alone Sunnora was already mentally adding him to her kill list.
'Who the hell is this guy?'
Sakura clutched the paper with ease out of Sai's reluctant grip and walked over to the green beast jounin.
"Gai-sensei, what are you doing here?"
Kakashi stood from his seat and awaited the other male to speak.
"Neji used his byakugan to track you because we thought maybe you had gotten lost" Gai smiled at the team with a wide teeth showing grin. "He pointed the direction and I'll guide you to the sight, it's quite horrendous"
Sakura smiled a polite smile and spoke for the group, "we weren't lost Gai-sensei, we were just taking a break as Kakashi-sensei recommended"
Gai furrowed his eyebrows and looked over at his rival, "Kakashi, why did you decide to take a break? The sight of the attack is just five minutes away from here"
…
All three teens turned to glare at the silver haired male. Kakashi began sweating and smiled sheepishly at the hostile kids that made up his team.
"Is that true Kakashi-sensei, why?-"Sakura frowned and walked over to the male who was about to move away but wasn't fast enough to avoid her grip on his vest.
"H-Hey!" Kakashi shrieked as Sakura stuck on of her hands in the man's vest.
Naruto, Gai, and Sai glared harder when they saw the little red book in Sakura's hand.
"heh-heh I needed to finish that chapter before we started the mission, it was getting really good-"
Naruto ran over to Kakashi and started yelling at him when Sai and Sakura started packing some of their stuff and walked over to Gai who led them to the sight.
Sunnora glared at the ridiculous spectacle in front of her eyes and decided to follow the green clad man as well.
'He's probably leading them to a bigger group of people-' the demon in her wriggled with anticipation of the bloodshed that was to come.
She smirked when she saw the saddened expression on this 'Kakashi' guy's face when the pink haired brat decided to give the book back to him when and only when the mission was finished. 'He's going to be too preoccupied with getting his book back to notice my presence'.
Sunnora knew she couldn't stay in this hidden mode for long, at most maybe another twenty minutes so the fact that this human was more preoccupied with other things really had her more at ease.
They arrived at the scene and inspected the area, Neji, Tenten and Lee had already documented and inspected the area thoroughly.
Neji was the first to speak when the pack arrived.
"Don't touch anything. We have to leave this place exactly how we found it" Neji's line of sight never left Naruto as he watched him like a hawk, ready for him to mess up somehow.
Sunnora walked around the landscape that the others were surrounding with a huge grin on her face.
'This is where I almost killed the brat who stabbed me' Sunnora took in the tall trees, the blood soaked grass where she had cut off some boy's arm and the black blood she had shed just a foot or two away from where she was standing.
She was about to reach down to touch the blood her demonic side demanded but was cut off when she almost fell back as some annoying blonde boy ran past her.
"Neji don't tell me what to do! I'm not going to lose to your team; we're going to find that attacker first!"
"Naruto, don't be ridiculous…this isn't a game"
Naruto pouted and looked around the area, nothing really standing out to him.
Neji waited for Sakura to grab Naruto out from the middle of the scene and continued to speak.
"Yes- well we evaluated the scene and I used my byakugan to inspect the area around and it seems this is the only place the fight occurred. If you read the report it seems there were six individuals, four males, two females walking home from target practice. Two of the males started sparring with swords and it seems that out of nowhere some senile girl appeared"
Sunnora was paying close attention to the brunette as he spoke, she had never been referred to as 'some senile girl' and she really wanted to rip off that pretty head of his right off.
"According to one of the girls that was with the group the attacker cut off one of the boy's arm off with her own katana, seems that the blood there is proof that that is in fact true" Neji paused and glanced to the direction of the red blood on the grass.
Tenten crossed her arms and looked puzzled, "but what I don't get is how she appeared out of nowhere, I mean there were six of them, it's very hard to appear without anyone noticing, unless she was invisible or something ridiculous like that"
"Don't be silly Tenten-san that's impossible, maybe she was just really fast like Gai-sensei" Lee smiled and gave a thumbs up sign to his teacher who did the same back.
"Anyways-…it seems that after some arguing and taunting she decided to attack the rest of the group but the other boy with a katana stabbed her in the chest before she had a chance" Neji paused and looked at the black liquid on the grass.
Everyone didn't know what to make of it.
"So she's injured then right? If she was stabbed then we can conclude that she's either dead or in critical condition somewhere-"Sakura spoke but still eyed the black substance skeptically.
"Yes that is also what I believe, but I don't see proof here that she was stabbed-"
Naruto finally spotting the black substance spoke up, "Hey! What's that there?" he got closer and stared down.
"Don't touch it Naruto, we're not sure what that is-"Sakura held the boy's collar and pulled him back.
"Well that's all the report says, after that it seems the five of them ran off while she had collapsed in pain, must have been from her injury".
Sunnora frowned at the words, 'I wish, you brat…if that was all I would have definitely killed them' Sunnora stood from her seated position on the grass and ran a hand over her chest where she had been stabbed.
She had heard enough of their stupid theories and decided she wanted to shut them up for good.
Placing her hand behind her back she looked at the figures in front of her and contemplated on who to kill first but frowned when her hand failed to come in contact with the demonic katana.
Un-strapping the holster from her back she inwardly cursed when she noticed it was empty.
'WHAT THE FUCK! Where is it!?' Sunnora had only ever lost her katana once before and had learned a special chant just for it when she was younger, guess it would work here too. She grimaced when she recalled that it took tremendous energy to use the chant mostly in this realm. Face palming she regretted using her disappearing chant in the first place. Now she had to tail these people without her invisibility just to regain the energy needed to get her katana back.
Sunnora got far away from the group and chanted her invisibility chant backwards, already feeling energy drift into her. She felt nervous, a foreign feeling to her, and unsettled her greatly. 'You'll have your weapon back soon; just follow them until you can use the tracker chant'.
"Where the fuck is she?!" Hidan looked around the empty landscape and looked for the half dead girl he had left here just an hour ago.
'ugh- this is why I don't have partners, they keep disappearing' he tried to calm himself down and closed his eyes for a moment 'maybe this isn't the right spot-' Hidan fell on his back and laid down looking up at the stars.
"I give up-"
He felt that little voice in his head nagging him on about leaving her to die and got up.
'I don't care-I shouldn't care, she's just some annoying girl' he crossed his arms and saw a stream up ahead. Hidan was about to flip out but made up his mind that this probably wasn't the right place anyways, it would have been really stupid of him to go twenty minutes out of his way to get water when there was a stream right here after all…
Taking off his robe and the rest of his clothes he stepped inside, wincing each time his tired muscles dipped into the water. It was late and he really had to get to the closest town for a goodnight sleep, he almost genuinely smiled when the idea of a relaxing sleep filled night floated into his mind.
Most of the dirt came off his body without difficulty but the hair was the hardest to wash. The mud was caked on so deep in his skull that if anyone saw him they'd assume he was a brunette.
Light blue irises peeked from behind thick tree trunks, Sunnora felt ridiculous for being this cautious but she felt vulnerable without her weapon and on top of that the silver haired male with the apparent reading obsession seemed to unnerve her greatly.
She could feel her energy slowly returning and couldn't wait to use her tracking chant to get her katana back. She wanted to kill all of them already, mostly the annoying loud blonde boy and the prissy brunette. Sunnora eyed them from afar and saw as the weird silver haired male with a similar mask covering his face as her own did some weird hand signs and from a poof of smoke appeared a couple of dogs in blue vests.
"Pakkun, it's been awhile" Naruto stepped forward and greeted the small brown dog.
"Naruto, it's nice to see you're doing well" Pakkun looked from Naruto to Kakashi who then began to tell him the situation.
Sunnora didn't like all these dogs present, she always disliked those creatures, and she knew their scent tracking skills always hindered her in some way.
"Pakkun, we're not entirely sure what that black substance is on the grass, but I think it has to do something with the attacker we're looking for, can you check and see if you can get anything?"
Sunnora inwardly panicked, she knew that if that dog got a scent of her blood then he would definitely catch on to her location. This situation was getting out of hand and that rarely happened.
'This isn't good I have to do something..she immediately turned around and started sprinting in the opposite direction, she was furious at the way she was acting, weighing her options she knew that even without her katana and half her energy she could still go back there and kill them all off but this feeling was strange, this feeling of being pursued when all her life she had been the one pursuing. Shaking her head from her thoughts she used some of her demon energy and ran as fast as she could.
"WHAT THE FUCK!?" Sunnora screamed as she was knocked off the limb she was using to move forward and landed on her back roughly.
Her back throbbed with pain and she came in contact with the ground. Wincing for a second she looked up and noticed she wasn't the only living person there, a boy about the same age as the kids she was running from stood in front of her.
"I am so sorry, please let me help you up", he extended his arm and waited for the girl to get up.
Sunnora was about to kill the boy who thought that a simple apology would suffice when not even his death would suffice but an idea made its way into her head that she just couldn't turn down.
Removing the mask that covered half her face she looked up with a smile at the boy and extended her arm, clutching onto the boy's as he pulled her up. She winced as she stood and put all her weight on one leg. "It's quite alright; it was my fault as well for not noticing where I was looking".
"No, no, it was entirely my fault, seems my mind is too preoccupied with tribulations that I didn't notice what was right in front of me, I really am sorry, how's your leg?"
'Of course it's all your fault you moron…I didn't just decide to knock myself out of a tree'
"Well no worries, I'll be just fine and my leg hurts a little but I'm sure I can get home if I grab on to the tree trunks for support", Sunnora hated every word she spoke but knew this act would pay off very soon.
"May I ask, where are you going? A young girl like yourself shouldn't be out wandering around these areas, it's unsafe, there are bad people everywhere"
Sunnora almost lost it when a loud laugh threatened to escape. 'If only this idiot knew he is the one in danger'
"Well I was heading north, my uncle lives there", Sunnora knew she had to be going in the same direction as the boy for this plan to work…'just a little more'
"If you're okay with it may I escort you to your uncle's place? I really can't have you walk home in the state you're in, and if anything happened, it would be very difficult to escape with one leg, please it would relieve my consciousness for doing this to you".
Sunnora inwardly grinned, everything was going as planned.
"Oh thank you very much; I would appreciate it greatly if you did that for me"
She smiled and let the boy grab onto her shoulder to hold her up as they walked.
"How rude of me, I haven't even introduced myself yet, I'm Shikamaru"
"Sunnora"
…
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