MUHAHAHA
You can't escape it! Even during the holiday season, old fanfic will cut you down!
STRANGER THAN FICTION
CHAPTER 2: THE PLOT BEGINS TO THICKEN SLIGHTLY
As Hinata fumbled with the buttons, another person approached from the hallway. Her boss entered the elevator just as the doors glided shut. He gave her a smile and a wave. "Hinata! Hey."
"Kakashi..." she replied quietly, making a face and jumping slightly as the elevator started to move upwards. "Wasn't there... supposed to be a management meeting this morning? Aren't you sort of late for that?"
He looked at his watch, his one visible eye crinkling into a smile. "I was helping a Grade 6 class write the next big Broadway musical."
The senior manager of the National Observer, Hatake Kakashi, tended to give people a rather strange impression. This was due to a number of factors. His appearance, for one - he had stark white hair, an eyepatch, and wore bulky woolen scarvesthat covered the lower half of his face even in the middle of summer. His personality was another. Kakashi seemed to lack the ability to answer a question directly, speaktruthfully about himself, or joke without sounding completely honest.
It had come as a surprise to Hinata when she had discovered that she liked him quite a bit. It had come as an even bigger surprise when she discovered that he was an Empath and could read other people's emotions. Since then, due to a newfound amount of respect for someone with a similar power to hers, she had avoided reading his mind.
"That sounds very interesting," she managed, before the elevator doors glided open and he strode out into the office. She followed after him. "Um, I finished the ape girl story, so do you have anything else I should work on?"
Kakashi turned around to look her in the eye. "Actually," he said pleasantly, "I have a new assignment for you. I'd like you to write a story about the creature killing animals in Henderson Park."
"...Hm?" Hinata thought back to yesterday. Naruto had mentioned something like that, hadn't he? About a murder incident?
"Is this a true story?" she asked, temporarily forgetting the most important rule of working for the tabloids.
In response, Kakashi shook his head and made it clear that he was frowning behind his scarf. "All our stories are true, Hinata."
Despite the fact that she knew very well it was a lie, and had even made up some of the stories herself, he had such a brilliant poker face that she would have believed him in a second. "I'm sorry," she said, blushing to the roots of her hair. "I'll get right on that..."
Kakashi's frown turned at once upside down. "Good."
Hinata walked over to her cubicle, noting the brand new stack of paper sitting on her desk. She would never figure out when Kakashi was actually in the office to distribute these things. He probably spent most of his time figuring out creative new reasons for coming in late and leaving early.
A quick look over the research material revealed nothing much that she didn't know already. Within the past few weeks, several house pets and one person had been killed late at night around the Henderson area. The bodies seemed to have been torn apart and sprinkled with sand from the playground. There were no witnesses, and no other clues. The police investigation had made no headway at all.
This information left her with a lot of leeway for a story. Although she knew some people would find it a little morbid to be writing a fictitious article about a murderer, Hinata wasn't all that bothered by it. She hoped that the dead person wouldn't mind, but a job was a job, and she didn't think anyone involved with the case would believe the article even if they read it.
She took out a piece of paper and started scribbling aimlessly. What kind of story should she write? Since the sandbox had been involved, maybe it was a child... but she had just used that angle on the ape girl story. Maybe the sand was actually from the desert, and a mummy had escaped from a museum somewhere to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting public...
"Do you want some coffee?" asked Kiba from the doorway of her cubicle, so quickly that she barely caught the words. His hands were clenched by his sides.
Hinata shook her head with a cheerful smile, avoiding his eyes. She was fairly sure she knew what this was about. "I'm fine..." she said. "I, um, had some with breakfast this morning. But thank you anyway..."
"No," said Kiba, shuffling his sneakers against the carpeted floor. "Not right now. I mean, would you like to go and have coffee with me sometime today?" He quickly backpedaled. "Not as a date, if you don't want, just... you know."
It wasn't that she didn't want to- she actually took a moment to consider it, as she had been for a while. Kiba was a great guy. He loved his dog, and his friends, and was almost like Naruto in some ways. But even though she lacked the resolve to shoot him down once and for all, it would still feel too much like she was leading him on if they went anywhere together. "I'm... a little bit busy today," she responded, pressing her fingers together nervously. "Um, but maybe some other time?"
Kiba nodded. Although he looked fine, the disappointment in his mind was so loud that she could hear it without even trying. "That's okay," he said, "if you're busy, we can just go some other time. Yeah." He grinned weakly, but Hinata had a feeling he wouldn't ask again anytime soon.
She felt sorry for disappointing him. It would be nice if they could go out together. She had never had a real boyfriend - there had been a brief incident in Eighth Grade where a boy had a crush on her for a few weeks, before he realized that her hair was naturally black and that she didn't write angsty poetry in her spare time. She had lost her virginity at the Prom to a guy who she had liked fairly well but had slept with mainly because she had felt that otherwise she would die a virgin. It had been nice, but not really nice. Neither situation counted as being in a relationship.
The future of her romantic life seemed just as boring. Although in her private heart she dreamed of someday telling Naruto how she felt about him, she knew that it was more likely she would forget all about him than that she would ever get a chance to ask him out.
Hinata sighed in a not-particularly-depressed way and focused on her story.
***
Her day had consisted of similar little events. After going out to lunch and hearing Sakura and Ino discuss how hot Sasuke had looked yesterday with fake enthusiasm, she had returned to work and decided that the mummy approach was probably the best. Before she could ask Shino to let her use the computer to type out her draft, she had realized that had stayed a little bit late and that she had probably missed Naruto's shift at the pet store.
Since she wasn't going to see him there, she had decided to forget about it and go grocery shopping instead. Although she didn't eat very much, she also didn't make grocery lists until the only thing left in the house was the salt. This made buying food a very general experience that usually took at least an hour. She had taken a bus to the store and grabbed a cart.
Hinata's taste in food was simple. If it didn't require too much effort to make, and didn't burn the roof off her mouth with hot peppers, she liked it. Since she wasn't a cook by any stretch of the imagination, most of the food currently in her shopping cart was frozen pizza and TV dinners.
Turning into the cereal aisle, humming tunelessly to herself, she reached for a box of Rice Krispies and jumped back in surprise when her hand brushed across someone else's. "Sorry!" she said quickly, blushing bright red, before turning to discover the identity of the person she had just touched. "...Naruto?"
"Hinata!" Naruto gave her a friendly grin, shoving a box of Count Chocula into his shopping cart. "What are you doing here? ...Well, actually, you're shopping, aren't you?" His grin turned slightly sheepish. "Dumb question. But I never thought I'd run into you here!"
Hinata took the Rice Krispies off the shelf and held them to her chest like a shield. "Small w-world, isn't it," she managed to squeak.
"Yeah, no kidding." He pushed his cart a little to the side so that people could still get by while they were talking. "So, what did you think of the movie? I'm... not really into the whole chick flick thing, but I guess you like them, right? How was it?"
"Predictable," Hinata replied with a little smile. "But I liked it." She wondered what kind of movies Naruto watched. Probably action and comedy. She couldn't actually check- the medication he took meant that anything other than the thoughts on the surface of his mind were difficult to read at best, and making the effort always felt too intrusive. Despite her curiousity, she would never dream of probing his feelings for her. She would only be disappointed. "It had a happy ending."
Naruto nodded. "That's great! So, um..." Whatever he was about to say next trailed off into nothing, as his eyes shifted from her to behind her at the front of the aisle. The look in his eyes turned stormy. "Oh, look, it's Sasuke."
Hinata turned around. Sasuke Uchiha stood there with a shopping cart in front of him and an unimpressed expression on his face. "Hey," he said, somewhat stiffly, walking down the aisle.
It took everything Hinata had not to giggle at the idea of Sasuke Uchiha doing something as normal as shopping for groceries. Out of respect to Naruto, she smothered the laughter and gave a small distant wave. "Good afternoon."
At that point, she realized that neither Naruto nor Sasuke were paying any attention to her anymore. All their attention was focused on each other. The animosity rolled out from their minds in waves. "Um? E-excuse me?" she said, hoping to break the mood before it gave her a headache. Her words had no effect.
It was a matter of course that Sasuke and Naruto would have become rivals. They were complete opposites- whereas Sasuke earned respect and admiration without even trying, Naruto could never become popular no matter how hard he tried. The fact that Naruto had harbored a completely unsecret crush on Sakura had only intensified his jealously. Although Sasuke usually pretended to ignore him, it was obvious to anyone who could read minds that he was mad at Naruto too.
She was about to actually put herself between them to end the unspoken conflict when it was interrupted by another source entirely. "A traffic jam!" exclaimed another somewhat familiar voice. "What's going on - Naruto? Sasuke? Miss Hinata?"
Naruto broke out of his enraged Sasuke-induced trance and turned to the newcomer. He split into a grin. "Hey, it's Lee!"
Rock Lee grinned back, artificial grocery store lights glinting off his teeth. With his thick black eyebrows and round fishy eyes, he cut a bizarrely impressive figure. "Good to see you!"
Despite the fact that Rock Lee had been the one who ultimately got to go out with Sakura, Naruto liked him. Hinata did as well. He was difficult not to like. Lee, having no natural talents whatsoever, had ended up working twice as hard as everyone else to be half as good. But there was no denying that he was good when he worked for it. He had an unquenchable love of life that he threw into everything he did. Hinata sometimes thought that if she had met him before Naruto, she would have developed a crush on him instead.
"W-wow," she stuttered, grateful for the interruption. "It... really is a small world. Um, good afternoon, Lee..."
Sasuke took one look at Lee and wheeled his shopping cart around. "We probably shouldn't block the aisle." It was probably the most he'd said all day. "I'll see you all later."
Lee, who knew that Sakura had liked Sasuke but didn't resent him as much as Naruto did, nodded. "He's right! Let's not cause inconvenience to the other shoppers!" He grabbed a box of Wheaties and dropped them into his cart. "Miss Hinata, do you need a ride somewhere when we finish shopping?"
"Uh, a ride would be nice. I'll, um, need to stop off at home to drop off my groceries, but, um, would you m-mind dropping me off at... um... the corner of Shadow Clone and Richardson?" Hinata realized that she was still holding her box of cereal and placed it next to the milk in her cart.
***
"Hinata's here!" screamed Konohamaru as she walked up the porch steps to Aunt Kurenai's house. She barely had time to reach for the doorknob before the door was flung open and several elementary school aged children practically threw themselves at her. "Yo! What's up? You're late! Dinner's ready!"
With a smile, Hinata stepped through the small mob and removed her heeled shoes. She made sure not to push any of the kids aside as she padded through the hallway into the kitchen. "Hello, Konohamaru. Hello, Moegi. Hello, Udon. I'm sorry I'm late..."
Konohamaru was the ringleader of the group of foster children Kurenai and her husband Asuma took care of. He had arrived a few years before Hinata had left, but it was hard to imagine the house ever having been without him. Konohamaru, although something of a brat, was easily amused and spent his time trying to outdo the various stories of Naruto she had brought home from school. Moegi and Udon had quickly fallen into pace with him. Hinata felt closer to them- and to their parents- than she ever had to the Hyuuga family.
"Hinata!" Kurenai exclaimed cheerfully as she opened the door of the microwave. "We've been waiting! I called, but you weren't home, so I just got KFC. I hope you still like it." Unloading several cardboard boxes of chicken, she wiped her hands off on her jeans and gave her a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek.
"...I like KFC fine..." responded Hinata, tentatively returning the hug. "Um, I'm sorry I didn't get the call, I was out shopping for groceries... thank you very much for waiting. I guess everyone is hungry."
Kurenai snorted. "They can wait. Asuma and the kids were rooting around the kitchen a few minutes ago for snacks, so I think they're still okay, and Shikamaru hasn't complained yet- oh, Shikamaru's here! Is that a problem?"
"O-of course not," stammered Hinata, shaking her head vigorously. Shikamaru was Asuma's nephew, and he had ended up coming over for dinner a lot while she still lived with them. Now he worked at Tim Horton's and lived at either Ino's or Chouji's. He mainly ignored her, but he was a nice boy despite his utter lack of motivation in life. "He still comes over, then...?"
Kurenai began loading the chicken onto plastic plates, retrieving a bowl of cole slaw from the fridge. "Oh, absolutely. He plays chess with Asuma all the time now. Would you mind going to the living room and calling them for dinner?"
The TV next to the door was playing sports on mute. Shikamaru and Uncle Asuma sat hunched over the chessboard like old men... hunched over a chessboard. They were so deep in concentration that they barely noticed Hinata entering the room.
She flicked the television off, and Shikamaru turned to her with a glare. "Hey. We were watching that."
"...It's dinner time," she replied with a shy shrug of her shoulders. His tone of voice didn't bother her- Shikamaru always sounded like that, angry or not. She was used to it by now. "Um, who's winning the game?"
Asuma got up off the couch and stretched his arms out wide. "He is." Enfolding Hinata in an awkward bear hug, he turned to Shikamaru and sighed. "Do you really want to play the rest out? You've obviously got me anyway."
"In five moves, if I'm lucky," the young man replied as his eyes scanned the chessboard. Few people noticed Shikamaru's intellect, since he didn't use it for anything other than games and avoiding work. "Sure, let's have dinner... why did you order out, anyway? Isn't the point of inviting people over for dinner that you're going to cook it yourself?"
They reached the table and sat down- Hinata with her napkin smoothed down on her lap, Konohamaru and his gang piling into chairs. Asuma looked back at Shikamaru and shrugged. "If you want our cooking, you're welcome to it. I won't touch anything she makes with a ten foot pole."
"Thank you, dear," Kurenai replied with a dangerous smile. "I guess the strychnine in your coleslaw was a good idea after all."
After several seconds, Hinata let out a muffled laugh. "... pass the forks, please?" It was good to be back here. She always felt more comfortable when she was at home.
***
When dinner was finished and the few reusable dishes had been cleared from the table, Kurenai offered to drive her home. She usually would have walked- it was still light out, and her apartment was close - but she thankfully accepted. Shadow Clone intersected with Henderson somewhere down the road, and it was best to be cautious.
This caution was the reason that her first actual mistake had been ignoring the fine dusting of sand on the carpet beside her door.
Hinata knew there was someone else in the apartment the minute she stepped inside. Her first impulse was to run. She quickly discarded that idea. She didn't know anyone else in her apartment complex, which left her with few places to run to, and in the shoes she was wearing the intruder would likely catch up to her anyway.
They were in the living room. Fortunately, this meant that they couldn't see her walking very slowly into the kitchen. She slid a carving knife out of its block on her counter. It probably wouldn't do her much good if they had a gun, but it would make her feel a little more confident.
She took a deep breath and strode into the darkened living room.
The figure she saw sitting on the couch was a little younger than her. He had greasy red hair and pale skin, covered in sand and mud. His clothes were dirty and torn. He looked like a street kid who hadn't slept in years.
He turned to face her and opened his pupilless eyes. They were bright green, and seemed to look through her to the wall.
Around his body, in the air, sand was rising in swirling tendrils.
"Hello," she said quietly, hoping she wouldn't startle him into any sudden moves. Terror was rising in the pit of her stomach like an ulcer. Mummies were nothing compared to this. At least they weren't real. "Please don't kill me."
The boy stood up from the couch. "Why not?" he asked. His voice was cracked and oddly toneless- it suited him, she thought blankly. She was too scared to even brush over his mind. "I want to kill you."
He took a step forward. Hinata took a step back and sideways. The sand pooled at his feet crept towards her.
It was at that point that she tripped over the movie case for Maid in Manhattan.
"Is that a movie?" asked the boy. He pointed to the video, which had scattered to the far side of the room. The sand pointed with him.
Hinata nodded.
"Put it in," he said, blank green eyes turning to the TV. "I want to see it."
TO BE CONTINUED
(NO COMMENTO.)
STRANGER THAN FICTION
CHAPTER 2: THE PLOT BEGINS TO THICKEN SLIGHTLY
As Hinata fumbled with the buttons, another person approached from the hallway. Her boss entered the elevator just as the doors glided shut. He gave her a smile and a wave. "Hinata! Hey."
"Kakashi..." she replied quietly, making a face and jumping slightly as the elevator started to move upwards. "Wasn't there... supposed to be a management meeting this morning? Aren't you sort of late for that?"
He looked at his watch, his one visible eye crinkling into a smile. "I was helping a Grade 6 class write the next big Broadway musical."
The senior manager of the National Observer, Hatake Kakashi, tended to give people a rather strange impression. This was due to a number of factors. His appearance, for one - he had stark white hair, an eyepatch, and wore bulky woolen scarvesthat covered the lower half of his face even in the middle of summer. His personality was another. Kakashi seemed to lack the ability to answer a question directly, speaktruthfully about himself, or joke without sounding completely honest.
It had come as a surprise to Hinata when she had discovered that she liked him quite a bit. It had come as an even bigger surprise when she discovered that he was an Empath and could read other people's emotions. Since then, due to a newfound amount of respect for someone with a similar power to hers, she had avoided reading his mind.
"That sounds very interesting," she managed, before the elevator doors glided open and he strode out into the office. She followed after him. "Um, I finished the ape girl story, so do you have anything else I should work on?"
Kakashi turned around to look her in the eye. "Actually," he said pleasantly, "I have a new assignment for you. I'd like you to write a story about the creature killing animals in Henderson Park."
"...Hm?" Hinata thought back to yesterday. Naruto had mentioned something like that, hadn't he? About a murder incident?
"Is this a true story?" she asked, temporarily forgetting the most important rule of working for the tabloids.
In response, Kakashi shook his head and made it clear that he was frowning behind his scarf. "All our stories are true, Hinata."
Despite the fact that she knew very well it was a lie, and had even made up some of the stories herself, he had such a brilliant poker face that she would have believed him in a second. "I'm sorry," she said, blushing to the roots of her hair. "I'll get right on that..."
Kakashi's frown turned at once upside down. "Good."
Hinata walked over to her cubicle, noting the brand new stack of paper sitting on her desk. She would never figure out when Kakashi was actually in the office to distribute these things. He probably spent most of his time figuring out creative new reasons for coming in late and leaving early.
A quick look over the research material revealed nothing much that she didn't know already. Within the past few weeks, several house pets and one person had been killed late at night around the Henderson area. The bodies seemed to have been torn apart and sprinkled with sand from the playground. There were no witnesses, and no other clues. The police investigation had made no headway at all.
This information left her with a lot of leeway for a story. Although she knew some people would find it a little morbid to be writing a fictitious article about a murderer, Hinata wasn't all that bothered by it. She hoped that the dead person wouldn't mind, but a job was a job, and she didn't think anyone involved with the case would believe the article even if they read it.
She took out a piece of paper and started scribbling aimlessly. What kind of story should she write? Since the sandbox had been involved, maybe it was a child... but she had just used that angle on the ape girl story. Maybe the sand was actually from the desert, and a mummy had escaped from a museum somewhere to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting public...
"Do you want some coffee?" asked Kiba from the doorway of her cubicle, so quickly that she barely caught the words. His hands were clenched by his sides.
Hinata shook her head with a cheerful smile, avoiding his eyes. She was fairly sure she knew what this was about. "I'm fine..." she said. "I, um, had some with breakfast this morning. But thank you anyway..."
"No," said Kiba, shuffling his sneakers against the carpeted floor. "Not right now. I mean, would you like to go and have coffee with me sometime today?" He quickly backpedaled. "Not as a date, if you don't want, just... you know."
It wasn't that she didn't want to- she actually took a moment to consider it, as she had been for a while. Kiba was a great guy. He loved his dog, and his friends, and was almost like Naruto in some ways. But even though she lacked the resolve to shoot him down once and for all, it would still feel too much like she was leading him on if they went anywhere together. "I'm... a little bit busy today," she responded, pressing her fingers together nervously. "Um, but maybe some other time?"
Kiba nodded. Although he looked fine, the disappointment in his mind was so loud that she could hear it without even trying. "That's okay," he said, "if you're busy, we can just go some other time. Yeah." He grinned weakly, but Hinata had a feeling he wouldn't ask again anytime soon.
She felt sorry for disappointing him. It would be nice if they could go out together. She had never had a real boyfriend - there had been a brief incident in Eighth Grade where a boy had a crush on her for a few weeks, before he realized that her hair was naturally black and that she didn't write angsty poetry in her spare time. She had lost her virginity at the Prom to a guy who she had liked fairly well but had slept with mainly because she had felt that otherwise she would die a virgin. It had been nice, but not really nice. Neither situation counted as being in a relationship.
The future of her romantic life seemed just as boring. Although in her private heart she dreamed of someday telling Naruto how she felt about him, she knew that it was more likely she would forget all about him than that she would ever get a chance to ask him out.
Hinata sighed in a not-particularly-depressed way and focused on her story.
***
Her day had consisted of similar little events. After going out to lunch and hearing Sakura and Ino discuss how hot Sasuke had looked yesterday with fake enthusiasm, she had returned to work and decided that the mummy approach was probably the best. Before she could ask Shino to let her use the computer to type out her draft, she had realized that had stayed a little bit late and that she had probably missed Naruto's shift at the pet store.
Since she wasn't going to see him there, she had decided to forget about it and go grocery shopping instead. Although she didn't eat very much, she also didn't make grocery lists until the only thing left in the house was the salt. This made buying food a very general experience that usually took at least an hour. She had taken a bus to the store and grabbed a cart.
Hinata's taste in food was simple. If it didn't require too much effort to make, and didn't burn the roof off her mouth with hot peppers, she liked it. Since she wasn't a cook by any stretch of the imagination, most of the food currently in her shopping cart was frozen pizza and TV dinners.
Turning into the cereal aisle, humming tunelessly to herself, she reached for a box of Rice Krispies and jumped back in surprise when her hand brushed across someone else's. "Sorry!" she said quickly, blushing bright red, before turning to discover the identity of the person she had just touched. "...Naruto?"
"Hinata!" Naruto gave her a friendly grin, shoving a box of Count Chocula into his shopping cart. "What are you doing here? ...Well, actually, you're shopping, aren't you?" His grin turned slightly sheepish. "Dumb question. But I never thought I'd run into you here!"
Hinata took the Rice Krispies off the shelf and held them to her chest like a shield. "Small w-world, isn't it," she managed to squeak.
"Yeah, no kidding." He pushed his cart a little to the side so that people could still get by while they were talking. "So, what did you think of the movie? I'm... not really into the whole chick flick thing, but I guess you like them, right? How was it?"
"Predictable," Hinata replied with a little smile. "But I liked it." She wondered what kind of movies Naruto watched. Probably action and comedy. She couldn't actually check- the medication he took meant that anything other than the thoughts on the surface of his mind were difficult to read at best, and making the effort always felt too intrusive. Despite her curiousity, she would never dream of probing his feelings for her. She would only be disappointed. "It had a happy ending."
Naruto nodded. "That's great! So, um..." Whatever he was about to say next trailed off into nothing, as his eyes shifted from her to behind her at the front of the aisle. The look in his eyes turned stormy. "Oh, look, it's Sasuke."
Hinata turned around. Sasuke Uchiha stood there with a shopping cart in front of him and an unimpressed expression on his face. "Hey," he said, somewhat stiffly, walking down the aisle.
It took everything Hinata had not to giggle at the idea of Sasuke Uchiha doing something as normal as shopping for groceries. Out of respect to Naruto, she smothered the laughter and gave a small distant wave. "Good afternoon."
At that point, she realized that neither Naruto nor Sasuke were paying any attention to her anymore. All their attention was focused on each other. The animosity rolled out from their minds in waves. "Um? E-excuse me?" she said, hoping to break the mood before it gave her a headache. Her words had no effect.
It was a matter of course that Sasuke and Naruto would have become rivals. They were complete opposites- whereas Sasuke earned respect and admiration without even trying, Naruto could never become popular no matter how hard he tried. The fact that Naruto had harbored a completely unsecret crush on Sakura had only intensified his jealously. Although Sasuke usually pretended to ignore him, it was obvious to anyone who could read minds that he was mad at Naruto too.
She was about to actually put herself between them to end the unspoken conflict when it was interrupted by another source entirely. "A traffic jam!" exclaimed another somewhat familiar voice. "What's going on - Naruto? Sasuke? Miss Hinata?"
Naruto broke out of his enraged Sasuke-induced trance and turned to the newcomer. He split into a grin. "Hey, it's Lee!"
Rock Lee grinned back, artificial grocery store lights glinting off his teeth. With his thick black eyebrows and round fishy eyes, he cut a bizarrely impressive figure. "Good to see you!"
Despite the fact that Rock Lee had been the one who ultimately got to go out with Sakura, Naruto liked him. Hinata did as well. He was difficult not to like. Lee, having no natural talents whatsoever, had ended up working twice as hard as everyone else to be half as good. But there was no denying that he was good when he worked for it. He had an unquenchable love of life that he threw into everything he did. Hinata sometimes thought that if she had met him before Naruto, she would have developed a crush on him instead.
"W-wow," she stuttered, grateful for the interruption. "It... really is a small world. Um, good afternoon, Lee..."
Sasuke took one look at Lee and wheeled his shopping cart around. "We probably shouldn't block the aisle." It was probably the most he'd said all day. "I'll see you all later."
Lee, who knew that Sakura had liked Sasuke but didn't resent him as much as Naruto did, nodded. "He's right! Let's not cause inconvenience to the other shoppers!" He grabbed a box of Wheaties and dropped them into his cart. "Miss Hinata, do you need a ride somewhere when we finish shopping?"
"Uh, a ride would be nice. I'll, um, need to stop off at home to drop off my groceries, but, um, would you m-mind dropping me off at... um... the corner of Shadow Clone and Richardson?" Hinata realized that she was still holding her box of cereal and placed it next to the milk in her cart.
***
"Hinata's here!" screamed Konohamaru as she walked up the porch steps to Aunt Kurenai's house. She barely had time to reach for the doorknob before the door was flung open and several elementary school aged children practically threw themselves at her. "Yo! What's up? You're late! Dinner's ready!"
With a smile, Hinata stepped through the small mob and removed her heeled shoes. She made sure not to push any of the kids aside as she padded through the hallway into the kitchen. "Hello, Konohamaru. Hello, Moegi. Hello, Udon. I'm sorry I'm late..."
Konohamaru was the ringleader of the group of foster children Kurenai and her husband Asuma took care of. He had arrived a few years before Hinata had left, but it was hard to imagine the house ever having been without him. Konohamaru, although something of a brat, was easily amused and spent his time trying to outdo the various stories of Naruto she had brought home from school. Moegi and Udon had quickly fallen into pace with him. Hinata felt closer to them- and to their parents- than she ever had to the Hyuuga family.
"Hinata!" Kurenai exclaimed cheerfully as she opened the door of the microwave. "We've been waiting! I called, but you weren't home, so I just got KFC. I hope you still like it." Unloading several cardboard boxes of chicken, she wiped her hands off on her jeans and gave her a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek.
"...I like KFC fine..." responded Hinata, tentatively returning the hug. "Um, I'm sorry I didn't get the call, I was out shopping for groceries... thank you very much for waiting. I guess everyone is hungry."
Kurenai snorted. "They can wait. Asuma and the kids were rooting around the kitchen a few minutes ago for snacks, so I think they're still okay, and Shikamaru hasn't complained yet- oh, Shikamaru's here! Is that a problem?"
"O-of course not," stammered Hinata, shaking her head vigorously. Shikamaru was Asuma's nephew, and he had ended up coming over for dinner a lot while she still lived with them. Now he worked at Tim Horton's and lived at either Ino's or Chouji's. He mainly ignored her, but he was a nice boy despite his utter lack of motivation in life. "He still comes over, then...?"
Kurenai began loading the chicken onto plastic plates, retrieving a bowl of cole slaw from the fridge. "Oh, absolutely. He plays chess with Asuma all the time now. Would you mind going to the living room and calling them for dinner?"
The TV next to the door was playing sports on mute. Shikamaru and Uncle Asuma sat hunched over the chessboard like old men... hunched over a chessboard. They were so deep in concentration that they barely noticed Hinata entering the room.
She flicked the television off, and Shikamaru turned to her with a glare. "Hey. We were watching that."
"...It's dinner time," she replied with a shy shrug of her shoulders. His tone of voice didn't bother her- Shikamaru always sounded like that, angry or not. She was used to it by now. "Um, who's winning the game?"
Asuma got up off the couch and stretched his arms out wide. "He is." Enfolding Hinata in an awkward bear hug, he turned to Shikamaru and sighed. "Do you really want to play the rest out? You've obviously got me anyway."
"In five moves, if I'm lucky," the young man replied as his eyes scanned the chessboard. Few people noticed Shikamaru's intellect, since he didn't use it for anything other than games and avoiding work. "Sure, let's have dinner... why did you order out, anyway? Isn't the point of inviting people over for dinner that you're going to cook it yourself?"
They reached the table and sat down- Hinata with her napkin smoothed down on her lap, Konohamaru and his gang piling into chairs. Asuma looked back at Shikamaru and shrugged. "If you want our cooking, you're welcome to it. I won't touch anything she makes with a ten foot pole."
"Thank you, dear," Kurenai replied with a dangerous smile. "I guess the strychnine in your coleslaw was a good idea after all."
After several seconds, Hinata let out a muffled laugh. "... pass the forks, please?" It was good to be back here. She always felt more comfortable when she was at home.
***
When dinner was finished and the few reusable dishes had been cleared from the table, Kurenai offered to drive her home. She usually would have walked- it was still light out, and her apartment was close - but she thankfully accepted. Shadow Clone intersected with Henderson somewhere down the road, and it was best to be cautious.
This caution was the reason that her first actual mistake had been ignoring the fine dusting of sand on the carpet beside her door.
Hinata knew there was someone else in the apartment the minute she stepped inside. Her first impulse was to run. She quickly discarded that idea. She didn't know anyone else in her apartment complex, which left her with few places to run to, and in the shoes she was wearing the intruder would likely catch up to her anyway.
They were in the living room. Fortunately, this meant that they couldn't see her walking very slowly into the kitchen. She slid a carving knife out of its block on her counter. It probably wouldn't do her much good if they had a gun, but it would make her feel a little more confident.
She took a deep breath and strode into the darkened living room.
The figure she saw sitting on the couch was a little younger than her. He had greasy red hair and pale skin, covered in sand and mud. His clothes were dirty and torn. He looked like a street kid who hadn't slept in years.
He turned to face her and opened his pupilless eyes. They were bright green, and seemed to look through her to the wall.
Around his body, in the air, sand was rising in swirling tendrils.
"Hello," she said quietly, hoping she wouldn't startle him into any sudden moves. Terror was rising in the pit of her stomach like an ulcer. Mummies were nothing compared to this. At least they weren't real. "Please don't kill me."
The boy stood up from the couch. "Why not?" he asked. His voice was cracked and oddly toneless- it suited him, she thought blankly. She was too scared to even brush over his mind. "I want to kill you."
He took a step forward. Hinata took a step back and sideways. The sand pooled at his feet crept towards her.
It was at that point that she tripped over the movie case for Maid in Manhattan.
"Is that a movie?" asked the boy. He pointed to the video, which had scattered to the far side of the room. The sand pointed with him.
Hinata nodded.
"Put it in," he said, blank green eyes turning to the TV. "I want to see it."
TO BE CONTINUED
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