Chapter 2 Loner
The new face
The sound of birds was the first sound Avery heard when she woke up. She had always hated birds 'singing'. She thought they were much to cheerful to have any amount of real intelligence.
She moaned in displeasure and realized she was leaning against something that was solid, rough and most definitely not her bed. At this she jerked awake and looked around taking in her surroundings.
She seemed to be in a large forest, and was on the ground leaning against a tree on the edge of a small clearing.
"You're finally awake."A voice said to her left startling her and causing her to release a small yelp and whip her head towards the sound.
There she found was the man that saved her from falling to death, crouched next to her.
"How are you feeling?" His voice was smooth and very calming, much to Avery's surprise. She had expected to be fearful of this stranger whether he had saved her life or not, his looks alone would make anyone uneasy.
He had long silver hair that stood up in a diagonal lean and he wore a mask over the bottom half of his face with some sort of headband slanted over one of his eyes, so she could only see a very small part of his face which would put anyone on guard. Then there was his clothes. He wore a sleeveless vest with pockets and a collar that went up to his jawline but was open in front of the neck. Underneath his vest he wore a simple blue long sleeved shirt and blue fingerless gloves with metal on the back of them. Then he wore blue sweatpants that went just below his knees and the skin below that was wrapped in bandages until you got to his shoes which were high top sandals with an opening at his heels and his toes. Truly he looked very odd.
"I am fine, just a little confused."
"Could you tell me how you got up that high?" He asked.
She shook off her unease and concentrated, trying to remember anything after grabbing her sock monkey that could have lead up to her fall. Surely there had to be some other event that would make sense out of the situation. But try as she might there was nothing she could remember.
"One moment I was grabbing Alphonze from under my bed and the next I was falling."
She knew how crazy it sounded but there was nothing else to say.
"Who is Alphonze?"
Avery tensed, telling people about her sock monkey that inspires her creative mind was not something she ever enjoyed doing as usually it ended badly for her. "Um... he's...just a thing i have." she hoped he would just drop the subject however knowing her luck he wouldn't.
"A thing?" his one visible eye crinkled as though it was asking its own question. "So Alphonze is an object?"
"He is my stuffed animal." Avery said quickly, almost mumbling, trying to get this over with as quickly as possible.
"Ah." Avery felt her face flushing at his tone and hoped that the ground would swallow her up just to get away from this awkward situation.
"Well what is your name then? My name is Kakashi Hatake." he said smoothly transitioning from a subject that obviously embarrassed her to something a little more comfortable.
"My name is Avery Williams." She was happy he did not push the Alphonze thing but was caught off guard by his name. Kakashi Hatake was not a name she had ever heard before. In fact she had never heard anything like it before. He spoke English well enough and did not have any recognizable accent so perhaps his parents were a little eccentric. She had heard plenty of odd names in her life.
"Avery could you tell me where you're from?" Kakashi asked.
"Cedarville." Avery replied while searching her pockets trying to find her cell phone. Not remembering what happened prior to her falling from what seemed like the middle of no where and hundreds of feet in the air made her wonder if she had finally cracked and gone crazy after having to deal with the stupidity of her fellow college mates. Finding her cell phone would at least give her the ability to call for help or even see what time it was or even the day granting she could get signal where ever she was.
She was vaguely aware of Kakashi asking another question but she was more concerned with the fact she did not have her cell phone or anything else she usually kept in her cargo pants pockets.
She looked at Kakashi to ask if she could borrow his when she noticed the small bit of his face that she could see was scrunched up in confusion.
"I have never heard of a place called Cedarville. Is that perhaps a district in the village you live in?"
"No. I don't live in a village i live in a city called Cedarville. It's in the northern part of California, not very big, by Alkali lake. Where are we anyway?" Avery stood up and slowly took a couple of steps looking into the tree line trying to see if she could see a town or road nearby.
Kakashi stood up as Avery did and put his hands in his pockets trying to make sense of this woman he had found falling toward the ground.
He had been coming back to Konoha after training and heard screaming. When he located the source he was surprised to see a woman falling, easily, a hundred feet in the air towards the ground. He took in the situation trying to see any traps that could be waiting for him to take the bait and seeing none jumped to her rescue. He knew as soon as he caught her that she was not a ninja. Not only was her body not the that of a warrior but the way she reacted was not the one of a person hardened by the life ninja's lead. With her not being a ninja the only possibility of her even getting up there was if a ninja put her there.
This theory, however, was very unlikely as a ninja could have easily killed her in all sorts of fashions before resorting to putting in quite a bit of effort into getting her up in the sky in the first place only to let gravity do the rest.
He decided to let that issue to rest as he saw her start to climb one of the trees nearby. He was very impressed at the speed and agility that she scaled the tree. She was halfway up its large branches when he decided to follow her just in case she decided to have another panic attack and pass out again.
Avery was determined to get to the top of the tree and see where she was. Surely there must be a town nearby or at least something she could follow towards a town like electricity wires or something along those lines.
She was not going to wait around helplessly for Kakashi to help her out. Avery firmly believed in relying on no one else because in the end they always let you down.
As she reached the top branches which were still easily large enough for her to stand on and see over the tops of the trees the sight she saw was breathtaking. There was a city nearby however it looked nothing like any city she had ever seen. If she had to choose something she would say it was Asian in it's influence but it was a blend of old and new and something about it drew her in.
"That is the village hidden in the leaves" Kakashi said next to her. Avery only barely registered his words as she caught sight of a monument that looked an awful lot like Mount Rushmore but with different people's faces. It was absolutely beautiful and she knew that somewhere she had seen that mountain face before.
Avery needed to get to that village. Something was pulling her towards it as though there was something there calling to her very soul.
She scurried down the tree and at the bottom she looked towards Kakashi ready to bid him farewell and head towards the town. But then a question came to her and she figured she might as well ask since soon she would not have this person to answer her questions.
"Kakashi where are we? You said something in the tree but i didn't catch it."
"We are in the land of fire on the border of konoha." Kakashi was on edge. The air had changed when they had been in the tree, it had gotten heavier and almost charged. However when Kakashi had climbed down the tree after glancing around to see if there was anyone nearby the air had cleared.
"Sorry, where is the 'land of fire'? Is it in America?" Avery was getting worried. Something was bothering her with the way the city looked and the way Kakashi was dressed.
"I have never heard of a place called America." Kakashi could feel the air begin to get charged and heavy again. The shadows around the small clearing almost seemed to flicker and pulled out a kunai moving to stand in front of Avery.
When Kakashi pulled out the weird looking knife Avery was reminded of the fall that Kakashi had saved her from and then the most definitely non-human way he had jumped through the trees. How could she have passed over that? She had been so focused on the fact that he saved her that she forgot the impossibility that he was.
'Wait'. Avery suddenly connected the dots. This man knew nothing about America or anything else she talked about. This place was nothing like anything she had ever seen before. She had read about these things happening in so many books she should have seen it sooner. She must have slipped into a parallel world.
She could also be in coma, or dead.
Avery was going to assume she was in the first scenario as the other two were...unsavory.
But if she was in a parallel world she would most likely never get back to hers. Her family and friends her whole life lost in a single moment. She was all alone.
Her heart clenched and she wanted to wail and rage at the injustice. No she did not agree with her family all of the time but they were still her family. And she suddenly regretted every harsh word she had ever said. Her family would never see her again and they would never know how she felt about them.
A whispering entered her ears and she felt her anger grow and wanted nothing more than to strike out at something to release this sudden anger. Something inside her snapped and she let the whispers drown everything else out. The pain, anger and sorrow all gone and the only thing left were the voices caressing her and keeping her safe from herself.
"Avery." Kakashi was looking at Avery seeing that the chakra that was thickening the air was coming from her.
"Avery you need to calm down" Kakashi did not feel any chakra from her earlier so this development made him weary. He should have been able to sense at least some of it seeing how big it was now and it was only continuing to grow.
"Calm down? I have been sleeping for so long. Why would i calm down when i have only woken up?"
The voice that came out of Avery's mouth was laced with layers other voices as though it was many people speaking at once instead of just one. At her voice the shadows around the clearing that were just flickering seemed to crawl across the ground towards Avery.
Kakashi performed his summoning jutsu and with a puff of smoke Pakkun was there. Pakkun was a small brown pug like dog with a headband just like the one Kakashi wore.
"Sup Kakashi?" Pakkun asked.
"Go get some help. I think this woman is a jinchuuriki." Tattoos had crawled up her neck to the left side of her face. Her teeth had lengthened into fangs and her eyes almost glowed a golden color when before they had been a forest green color.
"You got it boss" Pakkun ran away quickly to get help for his friend.
With Pakkun gone Kakashi got ready to deal with the demon Avery was becoming. Kakashi knew about demons and vessels of such demons because his village was attacked by the nine tail fox and since then he wanted to be prepared however he doubted he could take on a jinchuuriki on his own and hoped the help he had called for would come soon as the demon was watching him with an attention that bothered him greatly.
"Well now that i have gained my bearings and given you plenty of time to call for help like a coward i hope you last at least long enough in a battle with me to entertain me until your 'friends' arrive. The demon lunged towards Kakashi and he prepared for the battle he knew would be a difficult one.
A/N: Alright so this chapter signifies the ending of the rewriting portion of this story. I am much more proud of this than what i had written before and i can not wait to see where this story goes.