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Hidden Away Part One: Shards, Comrade, Rebellion
Alden-san 'Disclaimer'
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A/N: You're about to read
snippets of fics that never made it to ffnet. Fics I may have promised you,
fics I may have never mentioned. Here are bits of prologues, chapters, etc...
First upp, Shards, a fic I loved but it came just as I was losing my Naruto
inspiration...
- Shards, Prologue -
Vivid green boughs and
thick wooden trunks made up the surrounding forest. The air, usually pushing
past, in a refreshing wave of cool air, had become still and wet. The sky was
the colour of a healthy noon, blue with a bright sun directly overhead. No bird
chirped, nothing moved except two solitary, sitting figures. One male, one
female, both Konoha Shinobi.
Her skin was damp with
sweat, her breath caught in her throat and her skin tickling in anticipation,
of what she didn't know. Golden strands hung in front of one of her eyes, but
she pushed them away as she continued to be fascinated by the table in front of
her. A grid, inked onto the table's polished surface, provided a background to
the main focus.
Stones. Black stones, as
dark as a raven's wing, as a black abyss, as midnight. White stones, as white
as clouds, as cream, as snow. These stones, the ones that caught her eye so
effortlessly, caused an attraction that was almost magnetic. It held her
attention steadily, not letting her break focus. Go, possibly their culture's
most ancient game. A game of strategy, of brains, of war. It was hard to think
those two colours, the extremes of shade, could represent a bloody massacre so
acutely.
"Move."
His voice broke her from
her silent obsession, pulling her back into reality. She looked up at her
partner, whose hair obscured his face as he looked down at the board. His voice
had taken on the texture of gravel, rubbing at her nerves. Her hand rested in a
bowl of white stones, but... it was not her turn. She checked the numbers again
- it couldn't be.
"Shikamaru-"
"Just place your
stone," his voice, strangely quiet, cut through her like an icy knife. She
looked again at the board, at her bowl of stones, at the wall of hair that was
supposed to be her friend. But, there was something wrong.. It was Shikamaru,
but... there was something wrong.
"You're not going to,
are you, Ino?"
She opened her mouth to
protest this irritating command, one that made no sense at all, when she felt a
tugging. Her eyes gravitation across the board, back to the hand he rested in
his bowl of pitch-black stones. But... Her eyes weren't wrong. His hand...
"Shikamaru," she
managed to force out, though her throat felt like it was slowly constricting,. "Your
hand..."
Scales, like armour, had
covered the once-handsome hands of her lifelong friend. Green scales, so
repulsive and strange that they almost distracted her from the fact that
Shikamaru's hand' wasn't a hand at all. Her own hand seemed to spasm, her bowl
of white stones jerking and falling silently to the perfect grass.
"You won't make your
move, will you Ino? Because, you know whatever you do, I'll bite your head off
for it."
She looked up. The hair had
shifted, his head had raised, his eyes met hers. These eyes were black stones,
lifeless and dark. His face wasn't a human face, but reptilian, like a
dragon's. She shook her head, trying to stand, to escape, but they were dead. Pain
shot through them, and she glanced down. Shards of crystal had pierced each
leg, and she looked up at the monster in front of her.
"You were
troublesome."
The reptilian fist raised
up and smashed the board, causing the table to shatter and seemingly disappear.
His clothing had disappeared, and it was true - he was a reptile. It was a
reptile. It lunged forwards on top of her, suddenly the predator, pushing her
onto the ground, his teeth, it's teeth, ripping into her neck, her cheek, her
face.
Darkness.
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A/N - It was definitely
going to be pretty neat. There was going to be a first chapter full of these
dreams (as it is a dream), and she wouldn't know what was going on until
mid-chapter two, with a Prophecy, Sasuke returning, and a Beast she'd have to
slay. The choices I was looking at were Kiba, Sasuke and Naruto, her spending
the whole fic following clues until she knew it was one of them.
Up next was an ambitious
one, Comrade, which had definite themes. It went on a 48-hour format, and it's
still got everything planned, with an explosive finale. Here's thew beginning:
- Comrade-
"Hinata... I just made
a huge mistake..."
Sakura stumbled into
Hinata's apartment, almost tripping over herself. Her face, her arms, her dress
were stained with blood, and she was crying. Hinata gasped, pulling her friend
to her bedroom and lying her down, sitting on a chair. Sakura was sobbing, and
curled up on the bed crying. Hinata patted her on the arm.
"S-sakura-san...
W-w-what could you have done..." Hinata bit her lip and wiped at her own
eyes, confused. What could she have done, to cause this reaction? The blood...
"I... I killed
someone, Hinata..."
Hinata's eyes widened, her
voice caught in her throat . Finally, after what seemed like forever, she
asked, shaking as Sakura writhed on the bed.
"What do you mean,
Sakura-san? Who? Who did you kill?"
Sakura shook her head
"No-one... Right?
Chuunins are nobody's, just cannon fodder, right? Just there to die
anyways..." Sakura shook her head from side to side.
"Who,
Sakura-san?" Hinata was beconing frantic. So many people they knew were
chuunin level... Hinata herself was a chuunin now. Sakura was a chuunin, now. All
of their friends were chuunin now.
"Sakura-san, tell me,
please! Who was it? Kiba-kun? Did you hurt Kiba-kun? Or Naruto-kun? Tell
me!"
"Hinata, I...I can't
believe it... I killed-"
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A/N: It's short but it
gives you the over all idea of what the mystery was going to be. Now, anyone
remember Gogyou? The five-part writers group that had the one chapter of it's
story Treaty of Five? We tried the same format, different fic, called
Rebellion. One of the genin was fused with a demon, and it caused the end of
Konohagakure. So it followed Naruto and Gaara (after escaping from the
Akatsuki), Tsunade and someone else. And who did I play? The charming villain
of the next piece...
- Rebellion -
"I won't tell you
where he is, asshole."
The woman, strapped to the
wall with thick chains, struggled to detach herself. Her eyes met her captor's,
and she almost growled, golden strands falling over her dirty, scratched face. Her
breathing was laboured, her chest heaving. Hate filled her eyes.
"Ino... We can do this
the easy way, but... even though it sounds cliche..."
She saw him loom from the
darkness, stepping out of the darkness, his hand reaching out around her arm,
his claw-like nails digging into her arm and cutting into it, letting blood
well up on the surface of her skin. It dripped to the already-bloodstained
stone floor. She screamed as his fingers pressed into her flesh, crushing her
bone effortlessly. She stopped screaming, and looked at him, his calm face
almost enough to make her sick.
"... Or we can do this
the hard way. Ino, you know me... But my way of putting loved ones, my allies,
before my mission? That died years ago. And you're barely anything but an
annoyance to me now. Tell me where he is, and I may let him live when I find
him... Or you could be responsible for his death..."
"Bastard!" she
screamed, the pain in her arm overcoming anything else. But she was a shinobi,
and the first rule of being a shinobi was simple: You can scream, you can yell,
but you can never talk. Never give away anything that could be useful to the
enemy. "You can RAPE me and I'll never tell!"
"Oh, I'd like to put
that to the test..." Her eyes widened as she stared at him in horror. "But
I'm not a monster, Ino."
"Yes you are. You're
the fucking definition," she said. She'd laugh if she didn't feel like the
strain would kill her.
"Not that kind,"
he said, looking into her eyes.
He was serious. Well, at
least there was something decent still left in her old classmate. She could see
what had happened to him... Overambition, a stupid mistake...
He was a demon, or almost. He'd
stumbled across some ancient summoning scrolls or something and kept them from
the Hokage, translating them in secret. Once they knew, it was too late. The
demon he'd summoned had sealed itself in his body, pulling out the traits of
another ancient connection of his clan.
The man in front of her now
was, technically, half-demon. He was ruthless, angry and powerful beyond
belief. She couldn't tell if any of the boy she'd known was still in there. If
it was, it was deeply intrenched in the demon's madness.
His hand trailed up a tear
in her shirt up to her underarm, quickly moving to tickle under her chin. "I
will find others. What was his name, Chouji, the other teammate of yours? I
killed him month ago, shoved my hand through his chest. I can still feel his
organs pulsing on my arm-"
Ino went insane, struggling
and biting and screaming. The man stepped back as she screamed all kinds of
obscene threats.Finally, he swung his hand forwards, grabbing her face and
pushing it towards the wall, his hand covering everything but her mouth.
"Tell me where he is,
and you can stop this. I'll leave the rest of our classmates, the rest of the
survivors from our late village live. I promise. Don't, and you're dead, and
they're dead, and he's dead. It's on your shoulders, Yamanaka."
It was her choice, she
could just tell him...
He was lying.
"You'll never find
him, asshole."
"That's not nice,
Ino... Well, two can play the mean game," he said, turning around and
heading towards the door. "Kill her."
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A/N That's the one that
made this an M rated 'fic'. Anyways, I think those are all the snippets I have
currently, the shorter ones at least. In Pt. 2, I'll show you some other ones,
longer snippets and snippets of some of these that go beyong the intro. Bye
for now!
- Alden