Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ History Repeats Itself: The Story of Rin ❯ Chapter 1

Chapter One 
 

      Rin ran. Fast.

      Her black hair fell across her face, her chest heaved, her crystal-blue eyes searched wildly for a place to hide. Sweat poured from her forehead as she stopped briefly at an intersection, looking at the identical stone-walled halls facing her before swerving to her right. She heard, through her thumping heart, the guards' light, quick footsteps that were quickly catching up to her. In a panic, she ducked into an empty guest room to the left, crouching in a shadowy corner.

      Hardly a few seconds passed before a single guard walked into the room, breathing heavily from the chase. Rin quieted her breathing as his beetle-black eyes scanned the room, although her heart rate seemed to grow louder.

      Her breathe caught as his eyes fell on her. She dived to the side as he lunged at her, landing hard on her back before she swept her legs toward his ankles, and he fell, throwing his hands out, catching himself with his face an inch from the ground. She was already getting to her feet when the guard reached to his belt for a knife. She crouched once again as the blade went flying above her, lodging itself between to stones in the wall, quivering from the impact, reflecting what little light that streamed into the room from the hall. Rin's hand went reflexively to the shuriken holster on her right leg, her hand smoothly drawing out a kunai knife, its blade glinting. She charged at the now-standing guard, screaming a battle-cry, cocking her arm back as she aimed for his throat. The knife was swinging for his neck when his hand shot up and caught her arm. He shoved his knee sharply into her stomach, and she was thrown back slightly. Using the momentum, she yanked her arm back and back flipped out of his reach, kicking him in the jaw in the process. Snarling, he ran at her, and she saw the chance to simply slip to the side, her back to the window.

      The window.

      Rin whipped around, ramming her elbow with as much force as she could muster into the window, the glass shattering, shards spraying everywhere and scratching her arm, drawing blood. Ignoring the small scratches, she added an extra kick, clearing the space of jagged glass still sticking out from the sides. She was about to slip through when, without warning, an audible twang rang through the room, and suddenly her arm slammed into the stone wall, and she was unable to move. She stared at her arm for a couple seconds before she realized that her sleeve was pinned to the wall by an arrow. She twisted around awkwardly to see a teenage boy of about her own age, maybe a couple years younger, holding up a polished short bow aimed at her, another arrow already knocked, a string pulled back to his ear. He narrowed his brown eyes at her, glaring at her through a pair of round, shiny glasses, glinting from the torchlight in the hallway. Several locks of shiny black hair hung over his face, thin, single strands blowing out of the way occasionally when he breathed. His chest heaved; sweat glistened on his neck as he held his stance. Rin watched him all the while.

      There was a short, awkward silence before the teen, glaring at her, jerked back his bow and finally let down before several more guards rushed into the room. That brought Rin back to the other guard. She turned her head to see him staring in what seemed like something mixed with fear and respect for the teen.

      “Prince Hikaru… that was amazing.” The guard said. The teen turned on him, growling.

      “I shouldn't have to be amazing. You should be able to handle this yourself, Ishida.”

      She growled when one of the other guards made to grab her free arm and jerked it back, punching him in the face. She was about to do the same to the next, but he was quicker than the last and caught her fist, twisting her arm behind her back as others pulled the arrow out of the wall and joined her wrists together, tying them with a chord.

      “Kenji, are you alright?” asked a guard that has just turned away from her.

      “I'm fine, thanks for asking,” Kenji muttered.

      His deep, chocolate, angry eyes followed Rin as they dragged her out of the room. One word formed in her head as she stared into them.

      Dangerous. 

*  *  * 

      Rin kneeled before Princess Koyuki.

      There was screaming and profanity flying across the room, but Rin didn't bother to listen. She knew what it was about, anyway. It was about what to do with her. Practically everybody had joined in the converse, except for a few guards and the boy she just recently learned was Kenji. He was simply leaning against the far back wall, glaring at her—or, at least, she thought he was, his eyes seemed unfocused—through his round glasses, fingering the fletching of an arrow he had taken out of his quiver.

      She could make a pretty good guess of what he wanted to do with that particular arrow.

      He abruptly focused his eyes on something behind her. He narrowed his eyes, gripping his arrows tighter, suddenly on guard.

      Out of nowhere, a kunai knife went flying across the room directly at him. His eyes widened and he crouched just as the knife went flying above him and hit the wall. The guards at her sides ditched their spots and ran to something behind her. The yelling went from angry to urgent, a few even into screams. Rin stood up and spun around to see several ninja coming in through the balcony.

      Out of the blue, a guard's body slid toward her on the floor, one arm covered in blood and a knife in his chest. “Oh, gosh, that's disgusting…” she muttered before she kicked a clean knife from his holster out onto the floor. She stomped on the pommel at an angle and the blade went shooting up in the air. She turned around and caught it behind her back. She stood to the side as more guards were slaughtered, struggling to saw through the cord tying her hands.

      She finally cut through them and brought her hands in front of her, rubbing her wrists. She glanced over Koyuki, who was trembling, frozen on the spot. Shaking her head in disbelief, she switched her gaze to Kenji, who had taken out his bow again, arrow knocked, whipping around wildly, looking for anything else that might be flying through the air towards him.

      Suddenly, a ninja that had just knocked out a guard broke free of the mob and charged at Kenji. Spotting him, Kenji pulled back his bow and aimed, before firing. His aim was true, but even so, the ninja had caught the arrow between his fingers and snapped it in half. Kenji's eyes widened as the ninja reached for his throat. His hands reflexively reached out to block him, but the ninja hit him in a pressure point on his shoulder, practically disabling his arm, and gripped his neck. He lifted him off the ground before throwing him into the corner. He slammed into the wall, his head hitting the stone with a gut-wrenching crack before he slid to the floor.

      Rin pulled back her arm, holding the knife and threw it with all her might.

      It hit the ninja square in the back, and he fell to the floor, blood quickly staining his clothing. Kenji remained slumped against the wall, unmoving.

      Rin looked around the room. Most of the ninja had been taken down by now, but there was still some racket going on. There was one ninja left. With a spurt of blood, the ninja sliced through three guards at once, all of them falling to the ground.

      He charged at Kenji, who was still dazed from his collision with the wall.

      Rin's legs were already moving before she was even fully aware of what was happening. “No!” she shouted. She watched as the ninja brought back an arm, shuriken in hand, before aiming and throwing it at Kenji.

      With a burst of speech, Rin threw herself into the shuriken's path.

       She screamed when it pierced her stomach, agony tearing through her entire body from that spot, her flesh ripping, blooding spraying. She had the air knocked out of her lungs when she hit the floor on her back, more blood spurting. Her mind still held shock at what had just happened, unable to absorb such a sudden and unlikely event.

      And she screamed like @#!*%.

      She didn't know how she could take the pain as it coursed through her. She could do nothing but scream and convulse in agony on the floor of the palace, all eyes on her. She didn't know it was possible for such pain to exist. This was beyond anything she could have ever imagined, yet it was somehow real now.

      Then her body lay still.

      Kenji stared, wide-eyed, in disbelief at what he had just seen.

      He heard a thump, and looked up to see one of the guards thrusting his sword through the assassin's body, also staring in shock at what the girl had just done.

      It took a few moments for him to find his voice.

      “We need a medic!” he shouted. When nobody moved, he barked, “Now!” Guards scrambled over each other to obey his orders. Nobody wanted to be within a ten-mile radius when Kenji got angry. There were already enough dead and injured as it was.

      Kenji looked to his left, towards the place where Koyuki stood frozen, slightly embarrassed at her, he spoke.

      “Koyuki! Are you alright? Hurt at all?”

      Koyuki turned toward him, shaking. She took a deep breath, calming herself. “I'm fine Kenji. It's you I'm worried about. That—”

      “I'm fine. My head hardly hurts.”

      His father stared. “Kenji, you're bleeding,”

      Hikaru ignored his father and instead crawled over to the girl. “Oh, @#!*%,” he muttered when he realized how fast the pools of the dark red liquid were seeping from her wound. She was losing blood. Rapidly. “Hurry up,” he growled, wondering how long it could possibly take to get a @#!*% doctor.

      “She saved your life,” Koyuki said, walking up to his son. Kenji didn't look up, and instead lightly touched her wound.

      “Do you think I don't know that? Do think she just committed suicide for recreational purposes?” He stood up, looking at Koyuki in the eye. She had changed a lot in the past nine years. She was happier, more energetic. And although her perspective on things and difficult situations was much more accurate after their meeting with Naruto and his friends, she still hadn't gotten many guts. Combat wasn't her thing, as opposed to her attendant. That clash he had had with the Snow Ninja had toughened him up.

      “Hikaru,” Koyuki said calmly, in warning.

      “I'm going to bed.” He jerked his thumb in the girl's direction. “I'll see her tomorrow if I'm feeling it,”

      “But, son, your head—”

      Kenji growled, “I'm fine. Not something I can't handle.”

      And Kenji walked right past him, around pools of blood and over dead bodies, never turning back once to look at the death that was supposed to happen to him that night. 

*  *  *