Author's note of Epic Proportions
Finally, things get interesting in this chapter :D these poor souls...what I only put them through...anywho.
Like I mentioned in the last chapter - He Who Reviews, Gets Special Mention
Thankyouthankyouthankyou to EdelHZ :D you kicked my writer's block straight out the window with that review! I won't let you down! This will be the best post-apocalyptic fic ever written, if it's the last thing I do! B)
And to all you other people reading this, you know you want to review! If you don't, I swear I will send Zabuza to eat you! Don't. Test. Me.
Enjoy!
**Chapter three**
It had been three months since the Konoha team had been sent to retrieve that girl, and still, no sign of her. Even Naruto was starting to complain. And when he started…there was no stopping him.
"Will you shut up already?" Sasuke growled, clipping his blonde partner over the back of the head after listening to his incessant complaining for the best part of two hours.
"But I'm tired!" Naruto whined, shoulders slumping under his thick blue sweatshirt. "And hungry! We've been walking for days!"
"And we're going to keep walking until we find the girl!" Sakura snapped, walking behind the pair. She adjusted the strap on her bright red sun dress and pushed her sunglasses further up her nose. "Now quit your complaining and move!"
Behind Team 7, the rest of the squad sighed. It had been a long three months listening to them bicker and squabble over the most trivial things. They wondered how Kakashi had ever managed with them at all.
The rest of the squad members sent along with Team 7 on the retrieval mission were Hinata Hyuga, Rock Lee, Sai, Shikamaru Nara and an unidentified Jounin from Grass who had been enlisted for helping the team transport themselves back to Konoha after finding and securing their target.
Shikamaru sighed noisily and clasped his hands behind his head as he walked. "Do those three ever stop fighting?"
"I'm afraid not," Sai responded. A slight breeze tousled his short black hair and highlighted the absence of his Konoha forehead protector.
They had all been instructed to remove their headbands and dress in the typical civilian clothes of the area they would be infiltrating, to minimize suspicion and avoid detection by any Akatsuki members they should happen across.
Shikamaru tugged at the neckline of the black T-shirt he wore. These damn civilian clothes were so…heavy.
"Troublesome," he muttered under his breath. Whether he was talking about Team 7 or the disguise he wore, no one could be sure.
Sai – without his oddly made clothes that made him so identifiable back in Konoha – looked quite comfortable in his black jeans and white long-sleeve shirt. Shikamaru didn't know how he did it. He hated the clothes he wore. They restricted his movement and were hot in the sun. Especially the black leather jacket he had on.
Hinata and the Grass Jounin were walking at the back of the group. Neither of them said much, and hadn't been all that talkative the whole three months they had been on his mission.
Hinata's blue-black hair was pulled into a high ponytail, and she wore a pair of dark sunglasses to hide her pupil-less violet eyes from normal civilians. She was dressed in a pair of faded blue jeans and a black halter-neck shirt. Her sandals slapped rhythmically on the tar road the group walked along.
The Grass Jounin beside her wore a grey hoodie and dark blue sweatpants. He had his hood up, shadowing his face from the others.
The group of eight were making their way to the last known location of the girl they were meant to be tracking – a mall, funny enough. The road they now walked down was in the middle of a residential area – well-manicured lawns and clean houses flanked the squad, and large metal contraptions on wheels glared at them from small caverns built into the sides of the houses.
They had been given no details about the target other than her physical appearance and her name. They didn't know why they had been sent to escort her back to Konoha or what the Hokage wanted with her. They had been sent on a mission, and all they were concerned with was seeing it through.
The dimly-lit restaurant was a hive of activity that night at the mall. Champagne bottles popped and people cheered. The entire restaurant had been booked for a single occasion, and nearly a hundred people were in attendance.
Shannon and Ashley were on the dancefloor of the restaurant, laughing and singing along with the other guests. It was a party to celebrate many things – Ashley's birthday a week prior, Shannon had just received her learner's driver's license, and Ashley's older sister Mischa had just gotten engaged.
The evening had been going great – people were having a wonderful time, the atmosphere was electric, and it seemed like nothing could go wrong. But, as the saying goes, nothing lasts forever. And the date of the party? The night of the 21st of December 2012. The night of the Armageddon.
It was around 10:30 pm when Shannon noticed something wasn't right. She had gone outside for a breath of fresh air and to cool off from dancing non-stop for two hours. The first thing she noticed was the considerable drop in temperature. It was the middle of summer, but frost was starting to settle on the grass outside. Shannon shivered in her sleeveless party dress and leggings, rubbing her arms in an attempt to generate some body heat.
Seeking warmth, Shannon made her way back inside the restaurant. She found Ashley slumped at one of the empty tables, grinning like a madman.
Her best friend turned her wide grin in Shannon's direction as she took the empty seat next to the redhead.
"Having fun?" Shannon asked with a wink.
"Oh, you have no idea!" Ashley laughed, throwing her head back and staring at the flashing multi-coloured lights on the ceiling.
Shannon laughed along with her for a moment, then sighed contentedly. "To think," she began, "that it's already been three months since we saw that crazy cartoon stalker."
Ashley's laugh sprang up again, louder this time. "We gave him the slip, alright! They couldn't find us again after that, whoever they are."
"Thank goodness for that much!" Shannon grinned widely, slapping her hand down on Ashley's in a lop-sided hi-five.
They sat there for a moment or two in companionable silence, the heavy base beat of the music reverberating in their ears. Ashley suddenly sat up, frowning.
"You feel that?" she asked, turning to look directly at her companion.
"Feel what?" Shannon asked, frowning as well.
"I thought I felt a tremor or something…" Ashley trailed off, looking down at the ground.
At first Shannon didn't feel anything. But then, she slowly became aware of an increasing vibrating sensation coming from the wooden floor beneath her.
The girls looked at each other, worried expressions on their faces. The area they lived in had never experienced earth tremors before. The vibration in the ground continued to increase, until the glasses on the tables and the cutlery on the plates were jingling and clinking together.
The tremor showed no signs of stopping – plates crashed to the floor, and people screamed and bolted from the dancefloor when one of the lights came crashing down, littering the ground with shards of glass.
A wooden beam from the ceiling cracked and caved inwards, bringing down a good chunk of the ceiling and roof with it. People screamed and ran outside to escape being crushed by the collapsing building. Shannon and Ashley stumbled into the parking lot seconds before the entire roof of the restaurant came crashing down.
The two girls could only stare in horror as the earthquake continued to intensify and tear down the building before them.
Trying to swallow down her fear and fight down the panic trying to claw its way up to the surface, Shannon roughly took hold of Ashley's shoulders and shook her, snapping her out of the trance she seemed to have fallen into.
"Ash! Go find your parents, find Mischa!" she shouted over the noise of people's screams and snapping concrete.
She waited for Ashley to nod before Shannon turned to leave. She was halted when Ashley desperately grabbed her wrist. "What about you? Where are you going?"
Taking her best friend's hand and gently prying it off her wrist, Shannon smiled reassuringly at Ashley before replying, "I need to find my mother. Don't worry, Ash, I will find you."
And with that, she kicked off the heels she was struggling to stand in and dashed off, leaving a panic-stricken Ashley to run the other direction in search of her family.
Shannon dashed around the outer perimeter of the shopping centre, desperately calling out her mother's name. Josephine hadn't been at the party because she had been working late at the store again. Stumbling when a particularly violent tremor shook the earth, Shannon fell to her knees. She cried out in pain when the rough asphalt tore through her skin, and concrete dust rained down on her from the collapsing building above, powdering her whole body in a coat of grey.
Gritting her teeth and pushing herself to her feet, Shannon dashed inside the collapsing building. She had to find her mother, at any cost.
The shop was on the second level of the mall, so Shannon was constantly dodging around and jumping over gaps that had fallen out of the floor. She screamed when another long metal beam came tumbling down from the ceiling, puncturing straight through the floor. She didn't break stride though, and merely swerved around the chunk of metal.
"Mom! Mom, where are you? Mom!" Shannon's voice was hoarse from screaming and calling out her mother's name over and over again.
The teenager skidded to a halt to avoid plunging into yet another gap torn into the floor. Then entire building shook again, and Shannon's stomach dropped sickeningly as the floor began to sink. She froze, panicking, knowing there wouldn't be enough time to move.
Another scream was torn from her burning throat when the floor caved in beneath her feet.
But before she could plummet through the gaping chasm, a force hit her from the side and propelled her to solid ground. Shannon hit the ground heavily, the wind knocked from her chest. She looked around wildly for any sign of the thing that had hit her. She cried out when a pair of strong arms hauled her to her feet. She whipped around to see a boy, not much older than herself, with brown hair pulled into a spiked ponytail and dark brown eyes looking down at her.
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her after him through the crumbling building, towards a jagged hole missing from the wall a few meters away from them.
"My mother! I can't leave her!" Shannon protested, trying to tug her wrist out of the stranger's grasp.
"We need to get out of here!" the boy growled over his shoulder, pulling her more forcefully behind him. "I'm sure she made it out when the tremors started!"
Trying to choke back tears of fear and panic, Shannon let the boy drag her with him as they bolted over the swaying and buckling floor. With one last frantic tug, the strange boy managed to throw both himself and Shannon through the hole in the wall seconds before the entire building came crashing down on itself, dust billowing out from underneath the immense weight of steel and concrete smashing to the ground.
Shannon, dimly aware the stranger was still gripping her wrist tightly, coughed weakly and tried to push herself to her feet, but could only manage to get her upper body off the ground before her arms gave out and she flopped back down again.
Next to her, the boy groaned and shook his head. A pair of boots suddenly blocked Shannon's vision, and the last thing she head before she blacked out was a voice high above her saying, "Shikamaru, I don't think I've ever seen you move that fast before."
Ooooh...cliffy...
Till next time, kiddies! :D
*EDIT
I was just reading through this again, and was a little embarrassed to find spelling errors :/ I can't improve this story if you guys don't tell me what's wrong. Please review! If not for my sake, then for yours - I want people to enjoy reading this :)