[Fic] -- IWoT chapter 13
The wind rushed around him, whipping past his face and running through his hair as he leapt from branch to branch through the Forbidden Forest. Ordinarily, he would have savored such a sensation because it meant that he was free from the cold, stone walls of the school.
But now was not the time.
Something unseen pushed at the edge of his senses. His nerves were tense with anticipation, his blood was singing in his ears. His thoughts were running around frantically, proving to be more of a hindrance and distraction than of any help.
‘Comingthisway, comingthisway, dangerdangerdanger, when? Soonnowlater. Getreadeygetreadygetreadygetready.’
Naruto paused on the nearest branch as the wind shifted around him. He took the moment to scan the surrounding environment for any fluctuating chakra signatures and was relieved to find that while his teammates were a bit far off and tired, no one (at least from his side) was seriously injured.
Grunting with effort, he propelled more chakra to his feet and set off at the fasted pace he could manage without causing undue damage to the trees.
Because intruders were trying to invade Hogwarts…
Naruto ducked under a particularly dense tangle of sharp branches and continued unerringly on his way towards the rest of his teammates without pause. Some time during the course of his maneuvers throughout the forest, his hands had found their way into his kunai pouch and he was now running with an assortment of metal weapons at ready, a second’s notice from being launched.
…And he was under a contract to protect the school.
He didn’t know if his desire to fight to defend everyone was a good thing or not, because it was inevitable that a lot of blood was going to be spilt during this encounter. Looking down at his hand as he sped through the woods, he realized that his shinobi training had all but prepared his body to survive. Now it was the question of whether or not his mind was up to the deal.
He grimaced.
‘A lot of blood indeed.’
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And so concludes the 13th chapter of IWoTA!
Just kidding. I needed to get a quasi-important Author’s Note out, and FFN doesn’t allow AN-only chapters. So to hopefully catch people’s attention (and get hopes all worked up), this is the result - a brief glimpse of Naruto’s thoughts during the invasion I started at during chapter twelve. Of course, since I never finished that event, it’s unclear exactly when this scene is taking place.
As everyone has probably deduced by this point, IWoTA has been under some serious lack of updates. This is mostly my fault because I lost the original outline for the story and became uninspired over the course of the years. That, and upon reading my old version of the project, I was horrified by my writing style. (Imagine: the original, original version was much, much worse!)
And so, I’ve decided a while ago that IWoTA is in need of (yet another) revision. Now, the problem is that I don’t know what to do with what I’ve already posted of IWoTA. It seems a shame to actually delete it off of FFN, even though I cringe at the less-than-stellar material. However, replacing the previous chapters with new content doesn’t allow for (potential - hey, I can hope, right?) new readers to be “in” on some of the old jokes a lot of people seemed to like. Because face it - I won’t be able to incorporate everything in the new version, and that includes a lot of the humor that used to be so abundant in the previous twelve chapters.
But FEAR NOT! I have come up with a new (and, so my siblings tell me, “better”) outline that might help explain some of the glaring errors in the previous version. It still won’t compare to some of the more talented writers out there, but I can hope and try to do my best.
So the question is this: Do I make a clean break and create a new story, hereby officially dropping the original IWoTA project, or do I term the first twelve chapters (and, in retrospect, this one too) as “obsolete” and label the fourteenth chapter as the new “first” one?
Unless the overwhelming majority of the feedback says otherwise, I’m thinking about just adding chapters to IWoTA. People seem to be slightly familiar with the title and more inclined to keep tabs on it.
Yatsuka Hikagi
2008.I.04