Inner Explosions [A Naruto Fanfic]

Chapter Fifteen, yeah!

Yoru’s eyes were wide as she raced through the trees, strangled gasps escaping her lips. She hurried away from the shadowy figure behind her, wanting nothing more than to forever escape his callused, roaming hands. Her feet were cut and bloody, and she knew none of her ninja training could help her here.

She tripped, and felt as if time had slowed. It suddenly sped up and she fell with a hard thud, her head colliding roughly with a tree root. She let out a strangled gasp of horror and hurried up and began to run again, her eyes glowing with terror and pain. Yoru glanced over her shoulder, noting how far away the criminal man was behind her. She was startled at their close proximity and sped onward, hoping for safety.

She collided with a man who towered over her, dark eyes gazing down at her emotionlessly. Yoru let out a terrified whimper which ended with a painful squeal as she fell backward. She got up and hurried in another direction, hoping for the life of her that the second man didn’t want to hurt and touch her the way the first man did.

Yoru screamed as she came face-to-face with the first man. “Come here, girlie. I promise it won’t hurt...” The man giggled. Yoru’s eyes were impossibly wide and showed a terror on a new, higher level.

“Please...” She whimpered, “Don’t come any closer! Leave me alone!” The girl climbed a tree and ran through the boughs as quickly as she could. The man below her cursed at her and began to climb slowly, trying to reach where she was, where the branches became slender and flexible. Yoru continued to hurry away, climbing to the top of the tree and launching herself from treetop to treetop as she held in what felt like burning tears.

The second man, who’s dark aura was instantly recognizable, watched with a bemused frown. (A/N: bemused means confused. Amused is funny, or humored. Just to clear that up.) He wondered why the girl was running from the man and appeared next to her in a murder of crows. The girl started with fright at his sudden appearance and scooted as far back as she could on the tender tree branch, fearful of his dark eyes and the weak boughs. “Why do you run?” He asked.

Yoru’s glowing eyes held unmasked terror, along with exhaustion and an unspeakable amount of pain as blood trickled from a gash on her scalp. “He’s going to hurt me. He wants to do... things to me.” She whimpered. “Things that hurt and feel bad and wrong and ugly.” The man’s eyes darkened as they began to glow an eerie red and he stared at the clumsy figure who had followed the girl.

A terrified silence ensued and the dark man jumped from the tree. Yoru squeezed her eyes shut tightly, trying to fend off the cold and the fear as a scuffle sounded below, and then a hard, body-shaking thud. With her sensitive hearing, Yoru could tell that the two men were talking. The first man was speaking in a pleading and persuasive tone, perhaps begging. The second man was speaking in a hushed tone, his voice low, cold, and threatening.

Yoru crawled to the tree’s study trunk and wrapped her arms around it tightly, trying to imagine it was someone who cared for her. Her late foster family and ‘sister’ were at the very back of her mind, hidden behind worried thoughts of what the two men could be doing. She squeezed a few tears out of her eyes and brushed them away hastily, not wanting to show her weakness although she knew it was clearly evident. A warm hand softly gripped her upper arm. Yoru let out a shocked gasp as her eyes flew open.

She calmed slightly as she spotted the emotionless man. His face was stony, but his eyes whispered of a secret sort of warmth. The man, who she now recognized as a boy not too much older than herself, met her fearful eyes evenly before he drained himself of his cold exterior. “He gave you quite the scare, didn’t he?” The older boy said. Yoru shuddered visibly and nodded a bit.