An update...
Right, well. Here I was chugging on the road to finishing the third chapter of Not So Ordinary Day when I was derailed into exploring a new direction for the fic. Which, of course, meant that the work I'd done up to that point was going to go into the waste bin. So anyway, I figured if I was going to do that, I may as well go and post it up here for any and all to see, while I hobble along and see about re-doing this chapter.
And it goes a little something like...
"Hinata, you have to know that I need you. I can't live
without you in my life," Naruto whispered, enfolding her
small hands within his, as if he were cradling a delicate
flower.
"B-but Naruto-kun, I..." she hesitantly replied, her eyes
were cast to the ground demurely, unable to look directly
into the azure sun that would surely scorch her eyes blind
were she to gaze too intently.
With a yank and a yelp, Hinata was trapped in a tight and
warm embrace that made her heart ache. All the pent up
feelings that she'd kept locked away in her Pandora's Box
was unleashed in a single torrent that left not even Hope
behind.
"I'm so... happy," Hinata admitted through a developing
sniffle as her emotions were doing their utmost to leave
her choked up.
"Me too," a voice NOT belonging to Naruto answered.
Her whole body cinched up as the icy haft of dread's spear
ran her through. Hinata scrambled quickly away only to
stare in mute shock as the Sasuke Uchiha pinned her in
place with uncharacteristically caring eyes.
"S-Sasuke-kun?" Hinata said, confusion and nervousness
warring in her tone.
Arms wrapped around her affectionately from behind and warm
breath tickled her ears. "No, Kiba."
Hinata nearly screamed.
"Kiba--! W-what are you doing?" she asked, flustered.
"I won't let him have you," he plaintively stated, though
she could somehow tell he wasn't referring to Sasuke who
glared at them both with poorly disguised contempt.
Kiba tightened his grip around her almost painfully with
renewed desperation, possessiveness... longing.
Hinata was intimately familiar with all those feelings.
Which was why she placed a sympathetic hand over his, but
was sternly resolute, "We can't do this, Kiba. It's wrong,
and you know exactly why."
------------
Not so Ordinary Day
Chapter 3
By Rai-kun
Disclaimer: Naruto and its characters and settings belong
to Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, and Viz Communication.
------------
Hanabi Hyuuga was wrestling with her thoughts as a device
to stave off her growing restlessness. She was charged
with attending to her elder sister as she slept, and for
the most part, it was a dreadfully quiet and rather boring
task. The last few minutes though...
"Naruto-kun... S-Sasuke-kun..."
Hanabi recognized that she was no expert and that there
were still plenty of things she didn't understand, but she
was pretty confident that squirming around in bed and
moaning out the names of different boys...
"Kiba... we can't..."
Might have been a little odd?
"Adult stuff" is likely what it was again -- the special
tag she'd begun using to lump together anything and
everything that her father and sister were far too
uncomfortable of speaking about. Thanks to their clumsy
joint efforts, Hanabi had quickly developed an ear to catch
that sometimes there were two different conversations going
on at the same time. One for her ears, which she
understood perfectly well, and yet another in a foreign
tongue that only the older folks seemed to know anything
about.
Today for example, Ms. Kurenai brought her unconscious
sister home. After a brief chat was shared with Father, he
proceeded to thereafter lose himself in a tizzy. When she
had left the room for lunch, he was stalking the halls like
a tiger with its tail in a kink. He was acting about as
skittish as the time she asked him where babies came from.
Hanabi never did get an answer to that question, which
annoyed her to no end. The second daughter of Hiashi
Hyuuga wore her curiosities openly, unlike her elder
sister, and her dogged pursuits to sate her mind's thirst
were well known to all the occupants in the family
compound.
A daily prodding of her grandaunt had rewarded her a vague
admission that they came from cabbages. The weeklong study
of the leafy veggies that followed revealed no babies,
serving merely as more fodder to her general confusion.
Broaching her father on the matter had reduced the proud
man into a stammering wreck who yielded nothing useful, and
it somehow earned her extra studies that kept her indoors
for quite some time.
"Grown-ups are weird," Hanabi lamented with a sigh. She
wondered if she'd ever understand any of them. Confronting
them directly with the issue proved a difficult and dodgy
pursuit. Spying on them from the shadows proved no more
insightful either.
"What in the world is 'failed bird watching' supposed to
mean anyway?" she grumbled.
------------
Sasuke Uchiha was not an early riser, and he didn't
prescribe to the silly notion of being the early worm to
catch the bird. Wait, that didn't sound right at all.
"Damn it," he grumbled disgustedly in a sleep heavy croak.
And thus Sasuke had yet another item to add to his list of
why waking up before your alarm clock broke various laws of
man and nature. Tackling big words and mentally trying to
fill out the "what" and "why" were poor arguments against
turning away from the comforts of his bed. So it was that
he performed the time honored tradition of rolling over to
hide under the blanket.
There was a moment of quiet. Surprisingly coarse snoring
issued. This was, of course, when his alarm clock chose to
ring. Thus it was by habitual reflex, Sasuke stabbed it
with a kunai that he kept tucked beneath his pillow.
It might be a good time to mention that Sasuke was the
owner of quite a number of clocks -- quite a few BROKEN
clocks, that is. The keen distinction there was very
important. He kept them all in a small, dark corner and
part of his nightly ritual before going to bed was to turn
all his new timepieces towards that end of the room, as if
to say, "That could be you."
This was just one of Sasuke's many quirks that nobody knew
about.
------------
Hinata groggily came back to the state of wakefulness with
all her proper paperwork, but it was still a rough journey,
she noted. It felt like she was trying to swim upstream
through a pool of hardening concrete, while pulling a boat
loaded full of a yeti carrying a crane and riding a bull.
She blinked at the oddity of that thought, then rubbed her
eyes and quickly yawned between which time she'd already
forgotten what she'd even be thinking about when waking,
which was just as well. It was still dark, but traces of
daylight were already showing through the rice paper of her
sliding door.
'Morning...?' Hinata mentally voiced, puzzled. She
wondered for a scant second if all the not so ordinary
events from yesterday had been imagined. When she draped
an arm across her face, Hinata winced on making contact
with a particularly tender spot on her forehead
Her eyes shot open wide.
"It wasn't a dream!" she exclaimed, jumping upright and
knocking skulls with something solid that was hovering over
her.
Hinata hissed; smarting from a slow forming knot that was
colluding with what was surely a purpling bruise. She
possessed enough wherewithals to look at her thrice-damned
source of trauma.
"Neji?" she said, surprised at his presence.
"Fnorglesmort..." was the muttered and muffled response she
could make out. He was rubbing his nose gingerly, while
giving her a flat stare.
"Um... sorry?" she offered. He nodded curtly, readjusting
himself to a more dignified poise, as befitting a Hyuuga.
There was an awkward silence, through which Hinata had to
raise her eye-level repeatedly at Neji to make sure he
hadn't fallen asleep or died rigidly upright from blunt
force trauma.
Neji was staring, seemingly gauging her reactions for some
reason, Hinata observed.
In reality, he was trying to piece together effective
advice against the romantic course Hinata had plotted, when
the early morning chatters of the family retainers could be
heard as they walked the hall.
"Did you see that Uchiha boy?"
"Mmm. He certainly does cut a nice image, doesn't he?"
"Oh, you! You're so bad!"
Neji ignored the rest of the conversation, allowing them to
pass beyond his hearing. He had more important things to
consider like... wondering what in the world that strange
noise was. Hinata had her eyes averted from him as she
distractedly gouged finger-sized holes in the threading of
the straw floorboard at her feet.
Neji raised a quizzical brow arcing high onto his forehead,
then as a test, "Sasuke," he said.
That one word sent Hinata on a crimson facial trip with the
deluge of musings that it brought up. The muscles around
Neji's left eye twitched spastically as she began carving
intricate little designs and tried hard to pretend she'd
not heard him. His hunch proved accurate, but it also
raised horrifying possibilities that he had to now explore.
"Shino, Shikamaru, Choji," he said in rapid-fire
succession, but then ground to a halt upon hitting the next
name on his mental list. "Lee...?"
She threw him a confused glance that allowed him to let out
a huge breath. Sagging visibly, his heart continued
beating once more and he forged on with far less dread then
when he'd started...
"Kiba?"
...but then dread, a pack of elephants, and a giant space
faring turtle jumped on his back.
Hinata made an odd hiccup noise then wiggled uncomfortably
in her seat like hardened jell-o.
Ah, yes. Bad things always came in threes, Neji recalled
Tenten mentioning to him once. And since now there were
two he decided to name off the last name on mind...
"Naruto."
The buckling of hardwood as delicate fist passed savagely
through straw then through timber echoed loudly in the
deafening silence that followed. Neji looked on in horror,
as Hinata looked ready to bleed out and die from the red
flush that attacked every square inch of her face.
Tucked unseen from behind Hinata's paper screen were
roving, curious eyes that twinkled in burgeoning amusement
at what they'd stumbled across.
And it goes a little something like...
"Hinata, you have to know that I need you. I can't live
without you in my life," Naruto whispered, enfolding her
small hands within his, as if he were cradling a delicate
flower.
"B-but Naruto-kun, I..." she hesitantly replied, her eyes
were cast to the ground demurely, unable to look directly
into the azure sun that would surely scorch her eyes blind
were she to gaze too intently.
With a yank and a yelp, Hinata was trapped in a tight and
warm embrace that made her heart ache. All the pent up
feelings that she'd kept locked away in her Pandora's Box
was unleashed in a single torrent that left not even Hope
behind.
"I'm so... happy," Hinata admitted through a developing
sniffle as her emotions were doing their utmost to leave
her choked up.
"Me too," a voice NOT belonging to Naruto answered.
Her whole body cinched up as the icy haft of dread's spear
ran her through. Hinata scrambled quickly away only to
stare in mute shock as the Sasuke Uchiha pinned her in
place with uncharacteristically caring eyes.
"S-Sasuke-kun?" Hinata said, confusion and nervousness
warring in her tone.
Arms wrapped around her affectionately from behind and warm
breath tickled her ears. "No, Kiba."
Hinata nearly screamed.
"Kiba--! W-what are you doing?" she asked, flustered.
"I won't let him have you," he plaintively stated, though
she could somehow tell he wasn't referring to Sasuke who
glared at them both with poorly disguised contempt.
Kiba tightened his grip around her almost painfully with
renewed desperation, possessiveness... longing.
Hinata was intimately familiar with all those feelings.
Which was why she placed a sympathetic hand over his, but
was sternly resolute, "We can't do this, Kiba. It's wrong,
and you know exactly why."
------------
Not so Ordinary Day
Chapter 3
By Rai-kun
Disclaimer: Naruto and its characters and settings belong
to Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, and Viz Communication.
------------
Hanabi Hyuuga was wrestling with her thoughts as a device
to stave off her growing restlessness. She was charged
with attending to her elder sister as she slept, and for
the most part, it was a dreadfully quiet and rather boring
task. The last few minutes though...
"Naruto-kun... S-Sasuke-kun..."
Hanabi recognized that she was no expert and that there
were still plenty of things she didn't understand, but she
was pretty confident that squirming around in bed and
moaning out the names of different boys...
"Kiba... we can't..."
Might have been a little odd?
"Adult stuff" is likely what it was again -- the special
tag she'd begun using to lump together anything and
everything that her father and sister were far too
uncomfortable of speaking about. Thanks to their clumsy
joint efforts, Hanabi had quickly developed an ear to catch
that sometimes there were two different conversations going
on at the same time. One for her ears, which she
understood perfectly well, and yet another in a foreign
tongue that only the older folks seemed to know anything
about.
Today for example, Ms. Kurenai brought her unconscious
sister home. After a brief chat was shared with Father, he
proceeded to thereafter lose himself in a tizzy. When she
had left the room for lunch, he was stalking the halls like
a tiger with its tail in a kink. He was acting about as
skittish as the time she asked him where babies came from.
Hanabi never did get an answer to that question, which
annoyed her to no end. The second daughter of Hiashi
Hyuuga wore her curiosities openly, unlike her elder
sister, and her dogged pursuits to sate her mind's thirst
were well known to all the occupants in the family
compound.
A daily prodding of her grandaunt had rewarded her a vague
admission that they came from cabbages. The weeklong study
of the leafy veggies that followed revealed no babies,
serving merely as more fodder to her general confusion.
Broaching her father on the matter had reduced the proud
man into a stammering wreck who yielded nothing useful, and
it somehow earned her extra studies that kept her indoors
for quite some time.
"Grown-ups are weird," Hanabi lamented with a sigh. She
wondered if she'd ever understand any of them. Confronting
them directly with the issue proved a difficult and dodgy
pursuit. Spying on them from the shadows proved no more
insightful either.
"What in the world is 'failed bird watching' supposed to
mean anyway?" she grumbled.
------------
Sasuke Uchiha was not an early riser, and he didn't
prescribe to the silly notion of being the early worm to
catch the bird. Wait, that didn't sound right at all.
"Damn it," he grumbled disgustedly in a sleep heavy croak.
And thus Sasuke had yet another item to add to his list of
why waking up before your alarm clock broke various laws of
man and nature. Tackling big words and mentally trying to
fill out the "what" and "why" were poor arguments against
turning away from the comforts of his bed. So it was that
he performed the time honored tradition of rolling over to
hide under the blanket.
There was a moment of quiet. Surprisingly coarse snoring
issued. This was, of course, when his alarm clock chose to
ring. Thus it was by habitual reflex, Sasuke stabbed it
with a kunai that he kept tucked beneath his pillow.
It might be a good time to mention that Sasuke was the
owner of quite a number of clocks -- quite a few BROKEN
clocks, that is. The keen distinction there was very
important. He kept them all in a small, dark corner and
part of his nightly ritual before going to bed was to turn
all his new timepieces towards that end of the room, as if
to say, "That could be you."
This was just one of Sasuke's many quirks that nobody knew
about.
------------
Hinata groggily came back to the state of wakefulness with
all her proper paperwork, but it was still a rough journey,
she noted. It felt like she was trying to swim upstream
through a pool of hardening concrete, while pulling a boat
loaded full of a yeti carrying a crane and riding a bull.
She blinked at the oddity of that thought, then rubbed her
eyes and quickly yawned between which time she'd already
forgotten what she'd even be thinking about when waking,
which was just as well. It was still dark, but traces of
daylight were already showing through the rice paper of her
sliding door.
'Morning...?' Hinata mentally voiced, puzzled. She
wondered for a scant second if all the not so ordinary
events from yesterday had been imagined. When she draped
an arm across her face, Hinata winced on making contact
with a particularly tender spot on her forehead
Her eyes shot open wide.
"It wasn't a dream!" she exclaimed, jumping upright and
knocking skulls with something solid that was hovering over
her.
Hinata hissed; smarting from a slow forming knot that was
colluding with what was surely a purpling bruise. She
possessed enough wherewithals to look at her thrice-damned
source of trauma.
"Neji?" she said, surprised at his presence.
"Fnorglesmort..." was the muttered and muffled response she
could make out. He was rubbing his nose gingerly, while
giving her a flat stare.
"Um... sorry?" she offered. He nodded curtly, readjusting
himself to a more dignified poise, as befitting a Hyuuga.
There was an awkward silence, through which Hinata had to
raise her eye-level repeatedly at Neji to make sure he
hadn't fallen asleep or died rigidly upright from blunt
force trauma.
Neji was staring, seemingly gauging her reactions for some
reason, Hinata observed.
In reality, he was trying to piece together effective
advice against the romantic course Hinata had plotted, when
the early morning chatters of the family retainers could be
heard as they walked the hall.
"Did you see that Uchiha boy?"
"Mmm. He certainly does cut a nice image, doesn't he?"
"Oh, you! You're so bad!"
Neji ignored the rest of the conversation, allowing them to
pass beyond his hearing. He had more important things to
consider like... wondering what in the world that strange
noise was. Hinata had her eyes averted from him as she
distractedly gouged finger-sized holes in the threading of
the straw floorboard at her feet.
Neji raised a quizzical brow arcing high onto his forehead,
then as a test, "Sasuke," he said.
That one word sent Hinata on a crimson facial trip with the
deluge of musings that it brought up. The muscles around
Neji's left eye twitched spastically as she began carving
intricate little designs and tried hard to pretend she'd
not heard him. His hunch proved accurate, but it also
raised horrifying possibilities that he had to now explore.
"Shino, Shikamaru, Choji," he said in rapid-fire
succession, but then ground to a halt upon hitting the next
name on his mental list. "Lee...?"
She threw him a confused glance that allowed him to let out
a huge breath. Sagging visibly, his heart continued
beating once more and he forged on with far less dread then
when he'd started...
"Kiba?"
...but then dread, a pack of elephants, and a giant space
faring turtle jumped on his back.
Hinata made an odd hiccup noise then wiggled uncomfortably
in her seat like hardened jell-o.
Ah, yes. Bad things always came in threes, Neji recalled
Tenten mentioning to him once. And since now there were
two he decided to name off the last name on mind...
"Naruto."
The buckling of hardwood as delicate fist passed savagely
through straw then through timber echoed loudly in the
deafening silence that followed. Neji looked on in horror,
as Hinata looked ready to bleed out and die from the red
flush that attacked every square inch of her face.
Tucked unseen from behind Hinata's paper screen were
roving, curious eyes that twinkled in burgeoning amusement
at what they'd stumbled across.