This was so hard to write.
So hard.
The next morning Hisana is up before the alarm clock rings. For a moment she considers waking Sasuke, but then the boy won't be going back to sleep and it's only four in the morning.
Instead she turns off her own alarm, quickly checks Sasuke's, and then leaves the bedroom to get dressed. During the next hour she checks and re-checks her backpack, eats a quick breakfast and places about a hundred sticky notes all over the place to remind her cousin to eat his breakfast, that his bento and dinner are in the fridge, and to regularly check in with Genma.
She's still annoyed with the man, for planting a seed of doubt in her belly that's been spouting and crawling all over her insides. Her team is a useless thing to worry about, since there's nothing she could be doing about them anyway, and she thinks she already has the measure of her teammates at least.
Her sensei is still a big fat question mark, dancing in front of her face. It irks her, but it's not like she can walk up to him and demand he spill all his secrets. She hopes that the upcoming mission will shed some light on his character. Up until now, he hasn't interacted much with them, preferring to let them work things out between themselves. Apparently the jounin instructor isn't part of the team in his eyes – or not enough to take part in the teamwork exercises.
When she reaches the gates of Konoha she starts shivering. It's pre-mission jitters, she realizes; a mixture of excitement and dread. She's never been outside Konoha.
Only Sensei is waiting at the gates, both of her teammates are still missing.
They wait in silence for the boys and they leave in silence, only briefly interrupted as they sign their names into a little red book at the gates. She's gotten used to it by now and in the morning she feels it's preferable to idle chit-chat when her brain isn't entirely awake yet. After half an hour of walking it occurs to her that they should have asked where they're going by now. The dreadful little flower in her belly shudders as she realizes she's already been conditioned out of asking questions.
She debates asking, just to make a point, but something inside her head keeps telling her 'no'.
'It's nonsense.' – 'I'll know when we're there.' – 'Do you really want to risk a scolding?'
Before she can work up enough aggravation to override her own trepidation, Kohaku-sensei comes to a stop. They're in the middle of the forest; there's nothing here.
"Ahh … Sensei?" Sora finally says, "Is there something we might have to know?"
Kohaku-sensei forms a 'kai' and a genjutsu unravels in front of their eyes. There's a strange hole in the moss, just below one of the Fire Country's famous mammoth trees.
"This," their teacher announces, "is your final test for the first stage of your training. Your 'mission' lies inside this hidden compound. I've taken the liberty and ordered this mission myself; it will count as a C-rank, as it will possibly span several days."
"'Possibly'?" Hisana asks faintly. "'Hidden compound'?"
Dear god, she hopes this is not one of Orochimaru's former hideouts. It probably is.
"As I said," Sensei repeats patiently, "this is a C-rank; the compound has been cleared out and your mission is simple: find your way out. Follow me."
He ducks into the hole and there is a metallic noise of a heavy door opening.
Mitsuharu throws them a wide-eyed look, but follows the jounin.
"Oh," she hears him say, muffled through the moss. "Wow."
Now curious the other two follow them. There is indeed a big metal door and it opens into utter darkness. It's eerie; she can hear the birds chirping and there's warm sunlight coming through the moss, but there's a cold draft coming out of the pitch black and a strange, dank smell that reminds her of the sewers.
A small fire comes alive just in front of her eyes and she flinches back. It's Kohaku-sensei; there's a flame burning in his hand.
Behind him Mitsuharu looks completely out of his element. When she takes her first step inside the building seems to swallow the sound.
"I sure hope we're still getting paid for this," Sora whispers behind her. "Or I'll pee my pants for nothing."
"You stay right here," Sensei tells Mitsuharu, who goggles at him.
"M-me? Why?"
There's no answer, as Kohaku-sensei leads the rest of them deeper down the corridor. The further they get away from the door, the more the natural light starts to fade.
"Sora-san, this way, Hisana-san, I will come back for you."
And then she's alone in the dark, with only the sound of her own breathing and the rats for company. She's tries to remember which turns they took, but it's as if the air pressing down on her has erased all memories. She's not even sure anymore which way she's facing. She tries to feel for a wall, but only ends up losing her bearings entirely.
Hisana's never been particularly afraid of the dark, even as a child. She still can't help but strain her ears for the last traces of her team's footsteps. There's nothing, or is there?
There's a noise to her left – is it a rat? She kicks out, but her foot only meets air.
She shudders. How long has it been? She needs to pee.
Are those footsteps?
This time she's right; a light comes around the corner and stings her eyes.
"Come," Kohaku-sensei beckons and takes a left turn.
Having company now is nearly electrifying and completely distracts her from noting any more turns they make. When Kohaku-sensei stops, she nearly walks right into him.
"Hisana-san, all your flares please."
Startled, she hands them to him.
"Mission objective: find your way out," he says, turns on his heels and walks away.
For the second time she finds herself alone. Bracing for the paranoia before the last light has faded lets her keep a clear head.
She's not hearing anything – there's nothing to hear. Only the rats. 'Find your way out', he said.
Right now Hisana wishes she'd studied more katon jutsus; currently she's only proficient with one of them.
"Katon: Gokakyu no Jutsu," she whispers, trying to keep the chakra drain to a minimum.
She's converted the chakra too close to her lips; it burns like chili against her skin as soon as it leaves her mouth. A golf ball sized fireball shoots through the air, illuminating just for a short moment the room she's in. It's dirty, but empty except for a metal table shoved up against the wall. There's only one way out straight ahead.
The chakra drain is still too big, she realizes. She can't quite place how long she waited alone in the dark, but she has a rather solid grasp on the time she's spent around Sensei's light. Hisana thinks they must have walked for almost an hour before the dark and about 30 minutes after. There might be shortcuts, but she doesn't want to assume so and end up being wrong. There's also Sora to consider and possibly Mitsuharu – she has no idea what Sensei ended up doing with him.
In any case she doesn't think she can keep casting jutsus. There needs to be another way.
She feels her way around towards the doorway, careful not to stumble over the door ripped out of its hinges and discarded on the floor.
She slinks through the opening, staying firmly pressed against the wall. It's gritty beneath her fingers and uneven. In some places the plaster is splintered in strange patterns, as if a fist impacted it at one point. There's been a battle here, she realizes.
In this new room the noise changes. She makes an experimental tap of her foot and the echo suggests something bigger than the last room. The hallway – she remembers passing through it.
There was another, bigger room before that, an assembly hall maybe.
Another noise rips her out of her thoughts. It echoes strangely off the walls; she can't tell where it's coming from. Rats, Hisana tells herself, this place must be crawling with rats.
Her heart is racing and she can't tell why. Does she go left or right? She thinks she has to go right.
She keeps close to the wall, occasionally touching door handles, and then suddenly touching nothing, as she meets a junction.
She can't remember a junction – did she go down the wrong way? Maybe it was left after all? No, it wasn't. She shakes her head to get rid of the insidious, irrational panic. Dear god, is she really going to let a little darkness defeat her? Switch walls – that's what she has to do; just keep going on the other side.
For a few disconcerting steps she loses contact with the wall, before her hand reaches the opposing one. The gap from wall to wall feels huge.
She was right, the other wall keeps going. There's a door at the end of it. It's locked.
Was it locked before? Did Sensei lock it when he left? How is she supposed to open it – kick the metal door in?
She ponders this problem earnestly for a minute, before realizing she still has her backpack. Her head is weirdly empty. Cursing herself she rummages in one of the smaller pockets until her fingers close around something that could be her lock picking set. She fumbles with it, until it snaps open, spilling its contents all over the floor. The sound seems so incredibly loud that she freezes. What was that noise? Not the spilling lockpicks – no something else. Were those footsteps? Impossible – she's alone down here.
No, no she isn't'. This could be Sora.
No, it's only been … about twenty minutes.
Not enough time for Sora to get anywhere near here. Carefully, quietly she sinks to her knees and lets her fingers flutter over the floor trying to catch the small metal pieces without scraping them over the rough concrete. It's only been twenty minutes – twenty-three – and already she's a mess.
It takes almost three minutes until a soft click echoes through the hallway. Hisana tries to open the door; it's heavy and it makes a terrible creaking, metallic sound.
Only a few inches. She only needs a few inches to squeeze through.
She presses her shoulders through first, canting her hips inwards like she remembers from the Academy. For a second she's stuck, ribs pressing against the heavy metal of the door with every breath. She empties all air from her lungs, sucks in her stomach and slides through the rest of the way.
Her backpack is still on the other side of the door, but that can't be helped. After another calming breath, she feels her way around the new space. Where's the next door? There's no door. It's a room, she realizes, a dead end.
It's been forty minutes.
Goddamn it, she'll have to squeeze back out. Back out where the noise is. There is nobody – there can't be anybody eventhoughsheheardthefootsteps because Sensei said so. It's not as if he would be lying, would he?
She presses her hand against her mouth to stifle the sound of her own breathing and tries to concentrate on any chakra that might be near. It's like a sixth sense, the awareness of a 'disturbance in the force' so to speak. As if being watched, only more obtrusive.
There is of course no chakra signature – because nobody's there. Or they're hiding.
It's no use; she needs to get out of here. The door isn't coming closer on its own.
She shifts back through the crack, this time more smoothly, picks up her backpack and starts searching the walls again.
60 minutes.
There's another door. It opens noiselessly, but as she steps inside, the sounds change again. She walks along the wall. And walks … and walks. What is going on, a genjutsu?
No genjutsu, she thinks angrily, get a grip already. A few minutes of darkness and you're going crazy. But the wall doesn't end; even a grudging 'kai' does nothing. She could cast another jutsu. One more, just to make sure it's not an illusion. She'd be revealing her position, making herself a target but … then she'd see that there's nobody there.
"Katon: Gokakyou no Jutsu."
Her small fireball shoots into the void and illuminates nothing. It's the assembly hall, and she can't even make out the walls.
It takes her two hours to get out of the hall. It eats most of her chakra reserves and tears at her nerves. The good news are that she's actually seen a rat now, and she manages to convince herself that she's not being followed. The bad news are she needs to take a nap now – and she'll have to take it standing up … because of the rats.
When she wakes up Hisana has lost all sense of time.
It's a constant succession of food, walking, sleeping, food, walking, sleeping. She doesn't know where she is anymore.
She's lost.
Fighting against the paranoia becomes harder and harder. It's only small things: she keeps kicking for rats but never actually hits one; there are footsteps seemingly echoing from everywhere; and sometimes she thinks she can feel movement in the air. She tries to ignore these gnawing suspicions, so it takes her by surprise the first time she actually feels something.
Someone is breathing. Someone familiar.
"Haru-san …?"