Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ The Monster in the Forest ❯ Chance Encounter ( Chapter 2 )

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By: Missq

Once again there is pain as we make it our own, of the blood Red sandman coming home…

I’m really obsessed with a certain song by a band called Lordi at the moment. They won last year’s Eurovision song contest so they’d be familiar to most people. I think ‘Blood Red Sandman’ would be a good song to refer to Garaa with, I’m not quite sure if he’ll make and appearance in this story or not, I haven’t quite decided.

I started writing this one night after chapter one since I’ve eaten too much sugar, therefore not being tired. I don’t know whether I can see a future for chapter 3 yet. I’d like to thank you all very much for reviewing. I was feeling really dejected since nothing had shown up in my inbox, but I made me really happy to see them up on FF.net.

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A full six months had passed since the day when it was announced to the village that she was to become a student of the greatest Ninja in the village. At that moment she’d been bouncing with joy and anticipation of what was soon to come, but her hopes were slowly dashed as time when on, and things only began going down hill.

To start with everything had been simple and predictable. They had gone through basic training, and Sakura was thankful that it had been Tarou who was strapped to the log instead of her. Orochimaru seemed to have very little interest in promoting team work and often intentionally played them off against each other to see who would end up on top. Sakuke usually excelled in all physical situations, and with the help of her brains Sakura could usually avoid losing. But despite having skill above the average Gennin Tarou always ended up last. It made her wonder if Orochimaru was trying to single out the weakest and most useless amongst them.

Simple missions were next. But it was far below them for students of the great Orochimaru to train on low level D rank missions, and they skipped straight to C. They were hard and challenging for beginners, but some how they managed to pull through. Sakura would often find herself in a tough situation only to have Sasuke scrape through and obtain all the honour. It was obvious that team mates were only slowing the prodigy down, and that he could easily complete the mission without them. This only succeeded in making Sakura feel more useless and inadequate.

Before long she was assigned to help with Orochimaru’s experiments. It greatly interested her at first, until she discovered she was left to do most of the cleaning up and data analysis with Orochimaru’s young assistant Kabuto. He appealed to her at first, and she believed him to be a kind and sincere senior Gennin till she viewed him behind closed doors with Orochimaru. After a while she began picking up on the more darker elements of the older boy, and now felt uneasy in his presence. It was almost as though everything he said and did around her was some form of act, and she was beginning to feel that he didn’t really like her.

Despite spending hours staring at data she had no clue to what Orochimaru’s experiments actually were. She had been told time and time again that he was testing the effects of Jitsu on animals in order to create new and amazing techniques. But for some reason that data just didn’t add up, and she was feeling that something was defiantly amiss. If it were such a simple thing then why was she forbidden from viewing the procedure, or even allowed a summery of the method? Any attempts at investigation were quickly brought to an end by Kabuto who seemed to watch her like a hawk.

The next event was what brought all doubts of her teacher to life, and left her frightened to be in the man’s presence. To all outsiders the death of Tarou was believed to be a fatal accident which occurred by a talented student pushing himself too far for his great mentor. She was told by Orochimaru that Tarou had attempted a dangerous forbidden jitsu which resulted in a drain of chakra that eventually ended his life. Sakura found this hard to believe. Despite knowing very little of her quiet team mate, he was certainly a person who stuck to the rules and did only what he was commanded. What further fuelled her doubts was overhearing some of the older Jounin talk at the local ramen stand about how many of Orochimaru’s students seemed to meet with tragic ends.

It was clearly obvious that she had to get out and as further a way from her teacher as possible. With Tarou now gone she had become to weakest member of team seven and it frightened her just what Orochimaru could one day do. She knew that he would never touch Sasuke. He adored the boy to the point of one day making him the heir to Hokage. Ever so slowly Sasuke was also changing to be come more like the snake like man, and less like the boy she had spent half her childhood fixated about.

As much as she desired it she could not admit these doubts to anyone. After all, who would willingly accept bad facts or rumours about their most prized firth Hokage? The genius Orochimaru would never do anything bad against the village let alone kill his own student. It was a ridiculous statement, and she would be mocked to ever suggest it to another living person. Not to mention what her teacher would do if he ever discovered that she had suspicions about his dark behaviour.

So here was the great student of Orochimaru, resorting to training outside the village of Konoha in the local forest. She returned home everyday at sunset, but this was the only place where she felt free from the grasp of her teacher. He didn’t seem to really care that she was gone, and she supposed that he must have lost interest in her long ago and was now fixated in training the Uchiha prodigy.

She was at first tempted to join in training with Ino and her team, but she had spent so much time rubbing in how she’d been paired with Sasuke that the idea was simply impossible. Instead she opted to self train herself with scrolls from the local Ninja library which covered all the Gennin and chuunin basics. So far she had mastered tree walking with ease, and was ready to more onto water.

Sakura stared at the flowing stream beneath her with slight apprehension. Surely she could master this in one day like with trees, the concept was still similar. There was a slight current, but the water appeared shallow, so surely if she stuffed up she could just stand up and get out again. She unclipped all her Ninja equipment and dropped in on the ground beside her for safe keeping. Slowly she clasped her hands together in a seal and concentrated on sending the right amount of energy to her feet. All the while things about how freezing the water must be if she were to ever fall in.

With a deep breath she placed one foot out to step on the water, then another, to her amazement her feet remained slightly submerged up till her ankle, but she was still clearly standing up against most of the volume. She was almost about to cheer before her feet suddenly feel and she found herself completely submerged over her head.

Franticly she reached out with her feet to touch the bottom only to discover that she had gravely misjudged the depth, and the current was also far stronger that what it appeared from the surface. Swimming was not a skill Sakura had been taught since it was believed useless once she perfected water walking, and there were very little opportunity to practice in such a land bound country.

Franticly she began kick to keep her head above surface and to somehow fight the current that was slowly dragging her away. Water was constantly splashing into her face and down her throat, which made it hard to breathe.

Why on God’s Earth had she attempted such a stupid stunt by herself in the middle of no where? What was the point to trying to save herself from her evil teacher if she was just going to end up drowning in some tinny river in the middle of the forest? She should have at least brought someone to watch her, or practiced with a bucket of water. This was the price to pay for her overconfidence.

“ANYONE….. HELP!!” she screamed. Even though it was pointless, she could pray that someone was training near by. Unfortunately her fight against the current was becoming more fruitless as its power increased and she found herself being dragged away at a faster pace. She attempted to reach for the banks or anything to hold only, only to have her fingers scrape though mud.

Then all of a sudden she felt a tight grip around her wrist and the force of someone trying to yank her out of the water. Her saviour was not particularly strong, and it took them a great effort to pull her upwards. Once her head was above water she stared up at the blurry image of her rescuer who she could not distinguish though water soaked eyes.

At last they somehow managed to elevate her enough for Sakura to grab hold of the bank and drag herself free. She bent over couching and spluttering water, wet hair plastered to her face. Behind her she could see her abandoned Ninja gear a mere 10 meters upstream on the opposite bank. She must have looked like a true fool to almost drown in such a minuscule stream. The current that almost killed her also looked so weak and pitiful.

She turned up to face her saviour to almost fall back into the river with shock.

Crouched down on his knees and staring at her with both interest and concern was the Nine Tails Fox monster. She’d never once been this close to the monster that most of the village inhabits tried their best to avoid. He was far smaller that she imagined, with less aggressive features, but still cold and detached. From a distant she always imagined him to be large and ferocious, with fang like teeth and claws, but the only abnormal feature she could notice were the deeply etched whisker marks on the sides of his face. The boy was clad simply in a black T-shirt and Orange pants. His blonde hair was cut roughly and almost hung down to his eyes as though he wasn’t particularly skilled with hair styling.

‘Looks don’t matter’ thought Sakura. She knew exactly what he was and she refused to be put off by the deceptive exterior. Deep down she knew that the thing before her was the blood thirsty monster that once tried to obliterate her village. He probably only dragged her out of that river so he could eat her.

The boy brushed of her frightened and hatful glances as though he were accustomed to it. He took to his feet, coldly turned his back toward her, and began to silently walk away.

Sakura was confused till she noticed a pile of chopped wood a distance away that looked as though it had been dropped in a hurry. She watched silently, not daring to move, as he slowly begun picking one log up after another. It looked to be too much for the monster but he managed to balance it fine once finished.

If she wasn’t scared to death of the thing before her she would have warned him about the large stone directly in his path. Predictably he soon tripped and comically fell, sprawling his efforts all over the forest floor.

He looked quite dejected for a moment, and immediately glanced over at Sakura to check if she was watching, cheeks red in embarrassment. He quickly sat up and began to act in a way that resembled either defeat or sulking. Sakura did the only thing possible at that moment.

She began to laugh.

Sakura was incapable of stopping herself, and even though she knew she should be fleeing for her life for acting in such a way towards the monster, she just didn’t care. He looked like such a kid instead of the demon she’d always imagined. How was it that she’d spent most of her time trembling in fear of something that didn’t even have coordination? He was just….. nothing.

Instead of going rabid and ripping her throat out as she expected, he soon begun turning a further shade of red. This only fuelled her insane looking laughing streak. God knows how long it had been since she’d even been able to smile, let alone find anything funny.

Sakura then proceeded to roll over onto the ground, clutching her side which now had a stich form the sudden lung activity.

The boy sat up trying to plan his next move. There was a girl laughing at him, nothing like that had ever occurred before. He was accustomed to people screaming and swearing at him, but what did it mean to be laughed at? It had only taken a single moment of foolishness to destroy his cold frightful image that succeeded in making people back off and leave him alone. Did he really appear so pitiful now that he was simply a joke?

He looked back at the water soaked girl to see what she was doing. He had seen her once before looking a lot prettier at Orochimaru’s announcement, but he’d payed very little attention. What was a student of Orochimaru’s doing all the way out here? Was she sent here by the snake bastard to take him back?

To his sudden surprise he found her missing in the area she previously occupied. He retuned his gaze forward to see the pink haired girl before him picking up his firewood.

“Here let me help you with these,” she smiled as he jumped back in surprise. He looked almost as though he was expecting her to run off with his efforts

“Thank you,” he muttered under his breath as he begun slowly searching for pieced that had rolled off to god knows where, all the while trying to avoid eye contact with the girl.

A few minutes latter she presented herself before him with her arms full of wood smiling kindly. “Here,” she said as she began piling them into him arms one after another. Out of no where she began laughing again.

Sakura couldn’t help herself, he was even shorter than she was, and with his worn clothes he looked like such an orphan. They way he also refused to look at her was comical. It was almost hard to believe that the shy boy who stood before her was the same monster she’d learnt about in school. Unless she knew otherwise she would have been incapable of making the connection. It just felt so foolish to spend most of her life fearing something that wasn’t the slightest bit frightening at all.

“Thank you,” she smiled. “For saving me.”

The boy nodded before quickly turning to make a hasty exit away from the once thing he just couldn’t understand, anyone being kind to him.

“I’m Sakura by the way,” she yelled out after him as he began disappearing into the distance, still giggling to herself.

The boy paused for a moment before he turned to face her. Out of nowhere the wind suddenly picked up to blow autumn leaves dramatically behind him. The shyness was gone from his face and he looked directly into her eyes with such strength that Sakura could feel something stirring within her.

“I’m Naruto.”

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And that concludes chapter Number Two. Tell me if this is hard to make sense off, I just don’t want to hand out the plot on a silver platter and a lot of things will explain themselves as the story goes on. Such as why Oro is Hokage, and the fate of Tsunade and Sarutobi.

I used to write lots of Japanese dialogue in my stories, but after spending some time in Japan I find it easier to just write completely in English or Japanese. Also with the Japanese I know most people wouldn’t understand, and it would just slow the story down. Plus I’m finding it painful to write in Romaji, it either Japanese script or nothing.

There might be a chapter 3.. um…maybe

Missq