Kat
It felt like a ton of bricks had slammed into her skull. She didn't even dare try to move an inch let alone open her eyes for fear it would get even worse.
What happened?
Last she remembered, Chase and Chloe were bickering then fell asleep after a few episodes of Naruto.
What did I do after that? She tried to force herself to remember yet nothing but a blank came to mind.
Her ears perked up at a sudden voice close by and she forced herself to concentrate on what they were saying, in hopes that it would give her some sort of clue as to what happened.
"..."
Her head screamed in protest at the slight movement and she flinched, the harsh throbbing becoming more painful. She would've screamed if she could've, but there was nothing else for her to do but lay there helplessly and endure the pain until it stopped.
Seconds turned to what felt like hours. She lost count and somewhere in the midst, finally succumbed to the darkness just to not endure it any longer.
"SHE STOPPED BREATHING!!"
::
sometime later
"Nnnghhh..." She groaned, the familiar pounding in her brain still throbbing but not as bad as before. She winced and tried to slowly open her eyes. She let out a hoarse cry of joy as her body obeyed her this time and her eyes fluttered open. It was blurry for a few moments, but after blinking a few times, things slowly began to come into focus.
Plain white walls surrounded her, with nothing but a door on her right and a few plain pictures plastered on the wall of inanimate objects. But what caught her eye, was a long metal pole that stood a few feet away from her. Her eyes traced the long wire that was attached to it, to find a needle poking into her arm.
I'm in the hospital?
Her heart skipped a beat at the thought. She swallowed, but forced herself to stay calm, irrational thoughts quickly closing on her.
She didn't know why she was here. She didn't even know where she was. What she did know though, was that she had to find Chase and Chloe. Maybe then she'd get some answers. But for now, she forced herself to shut down on any thoughts of even thinking it was a hospital.
Her hand shook as she slowly swung one leg over the bed and grabbed the IV pole. Her steps were hesitant, grasping the pole tightly for support as she forced herself to trod to the door, ignoring how her muscles throbbed in protest.
By the time she was near the door, she already broke into a massive sweat as if she were running a marathon. She paused, leaning against the door frame to catch her breath.
Her ears perked up at voices coming near the door, quickly getting louder as they got closer. By instinct, she rushed to go behind the door and clenched the IV pole tightly in her hand, yanking the needle out of her arm and brandishing the pole as a weapon of sorts.
The door slowly opened, and she held her breath as two figures came into view.
The nearest to her was a man sporting blue hair. In other words, her victim. Without a second thought, Kat slammed the IV pole onto him, and pushed him into the second figure who let out a cry in surprise. She grabbed the needle, and stabbed the second figure, as the first clenched his head in pain.
"Agh!" The second figure let out a cry of pain, but Kat didn't even flinch. She grabbed the IV pole once again, and to ensure they wouldn't follow her anytime soon, slammed the pole onto both of their heads.
"Nothing personal. I just don't belong here," She said, although they were already knocked out cold. Whether it was to convince herself what she did was okay, or her version of a apology, she didn't know.
Adrenaline coursed through her, as she ran through the door and ended up into a long hallway. She ignored the gasps of people around her and screams, dodging and pushing whoever was in her way.
An incoherent yell sounded through the hospital as deafening alarms started blaring, everyone panicking everywhere she looked. However, they all seemed to rush to what looked like an exit ahead.
That was her ticket out.
Kat pushed through the suffocating crowd without a care, throwing herself out into the open, quite literally.
She gulped in breaths of air like a dying fish, gasping.
Finally out of those walls. At that realization, she was able to slowly calm her racing heart down, and relax.
She looked around, to see which way would signify her way home. Her eyes widened however, as large shaped buildings met her view, nothing like the small buildings that harbored stores like the bustling city she knew.
The people bustling around her looked nothing like she was used to either. If anything, they seemed like...a cartoon?
"What the hell?" Kat blinked multiple times to make sure she wasn't just seeing things.
Just where in the hell am I?
"Hey! You!" She called out towards a man among the crowd, who turned rather confused until his eyes fell on her. "Where are we?"
He cocked his head to the side and stared at her in bewilderment.
"Are you deaf?" Kat mocked, motioning to her ear.
The deaf man stared at her for a moment, before his face turned beet red and he started shouting a incoherent slur of words at her. It would've been fine had it just been too fast for her to understand. But as he continued rambling, it finally hit her.
He wasn't drunk or deaf or crazy.
She couldn't understand him.
She sunk to the floor, ignoring the man who now was the one staring at her as if she was crazy. And maybe she did. She was in a place she obviously didn't recognize. Everything was completely different. She understood no one's chatter around her.
Even now, as she stared at her hands, she didn't even recognize who she was. Her hands glared right back at her, rather than the rough calloused hands that showed evidence of her experience; creamy white skin was there instead. And the weirdest of all?
They resembled something straight out of a cartoon.
A shout grabbed her attention, and she turned, only to find five masked figures surround her and one of them reached out towards her. They said nothing, only grabbed her and she didn't even bother fighting back, the shock of everything had left her in a numb state.
She glanced blankly at the curious gazes of the people surrounding her and her eyes locked onto one who looked familiar. He held what seemed to be a towel to his blue hair and she recognized him as her victim.
He seemed to stare at her in hate, but his face softened when he saw the tired look on her face.
He mouthed something, but of-course, she couldn't understand.
Kat raised her arm and pointed towards her head. "I've gone mad," She chuckled dryly.
She turned after that, not realizing the look of surprise on the man's face as the person holding her began to lead her back inside the hospital.
They entered the hallway, which now seemed to be in a disarray as everyone in the room parted quickly to give them room until they reached the room Kat previously fled from. This time, however, there were chains against the bed which she can only assume were placed for her.
She was proven right, when they set her down on the bed and began to clasp the chains around each of her wrists.
The mysterious group then vanished from sight as if they were never there in the first place. It didn't matter though. It's not like they were going to talk to her.
So when the door opened shortly after, she didn't even bother to look up and instead gazed at the footsteps blankly that stopped a few feet away from her.
The old man stared at the girl thoughtfully, as he puffed onto his pipe. She didn't even make a slight movement to register she heard them come in.
She had, inevitably, as quoted by Gai's bewildered team, "just fell from the sky" quite literally. And hasn't woken up since. Her breathing had resumed, but she still didn't wake up even then. The logical thing would've been to consider her brain dead. But for some reason, Hiruzen didn't have the heart to declare an innocent he had no knowledge of as dead.
So imagine his surprise, when one of his chunin ran in with a panic and told him that the girl had escaped and took down one of his own.
Gazing at her now, he wouldn't have believed such a child as her had caused such a panic. And the reports of her harassing one of the civilians, only added onto his disbelief.
The civilian had stuttered that she spoke in a language that resembled nothing like their Japanese. But who in this world didn't speak the language?
No. That wasn't the question he should be asking.
The real question is, who was this girl? And what was he going to do with her?
"Sir," One of the shinobi behind him cleared their throat, almost hesitant, "I don't mean to be rude, but you don't have time to be here all day. When do you plan on letting the Ibiki and the Yamanaka handle her?"
"She's obviously an unstable threat, Lord Hokage," Another agreed.
"Not yet," said Hokage replied, much to their cries of protest, "She's just a child."
"Who took down chunin," The first shinobi, argued. "Wouldn't the logical thing be to—"
"I said, not now, Anko," He turned, and stared at the female shinobi who opened her mouth as if to say something else, but upon glancing back at the Third Hokage's steely gaze, decided against it.
"Yes, Hokage-sama," She mumbled.
Kat blinked, having prior zoned out when their discussion about her started, but she tensed when she heard a familiar term.
"Hokage-sama?" She whispered, her eyes wide as she slowly looked up.
The Third Hokage turned to her in surprise, not having expecting her to speak, much less say a word they actually understood.
"Yes, child does that mean you can understand us after all?" He asked, meeting her shocked gaze.
But the girl's blue orbs merely blinked at him in reply. She was frozen, her gaze switching from him, to the shinobi behind him staring at each one of them.
It happened way too fast for him to even anticipate. One minute she was staring at them in shock, the next, she began screaming, fumbling with her chains and slamming her hands repeatedly onto the bed rest, not even caring that caused the skin in between her knuckles to split open.
"LET ME OUT!" She yelled, thrashing when the shinobi shot to sustain her and force down the bed. She glared right at the Hokage with a startlingly fierce look in her previously empty eyes, and continued yelling incoherent things he couldn't understand.
"This isn't real! None of this is! Where's Chase and Chloe!? I'm not crazy! I'm not crazy! I'm not crazy! I'M NOT CRAZY! LET ME GO AND LET ME WAKE THE HELL UP!"
At this point, she didn't even care if no one can understand her. All that was in her mind was that she had to force herself to wake up before she went insane and actually believed this to be real.
Any sense of judgement was thrown out the window once her eyes locked onto the familiar "Konoha" headband, and she went from a state of shock to a state of hyperventilation. And most of all, a suffocating urge of getting out of there, immediately.
"Can we take her now!?" Anko growled, struggling to control the girl's arms. As young as she was, she was a hell of a nuisance. And Anko was quickly getting annoyed with doing nothing more but trying to control her.
The Hokage snapped himself out of his stupor, and forced himself to look away as he sighed, already knowing Anko's method of being able to "take her," but let himself utter a "Yes."
That was all it took for Anko, as she grinned and in one swift motion, released one of her snakes who bit Kat's leg. Kat gasped, but almost just as suddenly, went limp as her eyelids felt too heavy for her to keep open.
She tried to force them not to close, but drowsiness clouded her judgement, as she felt her consciousness quickly slip away.
That didn't stop the last phrase from being uttered, however. One everyone in the room recognized.
"Naruto..."
"How the hell does this little bitch know about the Kyuubi?" Anko spluttered. The other nearby shinobi glared at her for uttering the forbidden term in front of the Hokage so easily, but said Hokage didn't even try to chastise her this time.
Because, more or less, Anko had spoken what he and probably everyone around them were thinking.
Just how does a outsider have knowledge about their Jinchuuriki? His actual name to be exact?
Hiruzen didn't know the answer to that, or anything about the girl as a matter of fact. But he did know one thing, as much as it pained him to admit. Anko was right.
The logical thing now was, in other words, to let the Konoha Torture and Interrogation Force handle this. For although she was just a child, knowledge of the Kyuubi wasn't just known freely. And this meant that she was a bigger threat than he had ever would have anticipated, as well as too dangerous for him to turn the blind eye.
As much as he wished he could.
She was just a child. A very frightened and confused one.
The Third Hokage sighed, massaging his temples, and reluctantly turned as if not to see them carry the unconscious girl in his arms. He knew if he dare turned to look, the overwhelming guilt would wash over him.
It was at times like this, that being the Hokage was the worst thing that could've happened to him.
Yes, he was supposed to protect the village above all else and have their best interests as his priority.
But weren't the innocent children supposed to be the ones protected above all else?
Because he knew, as soon as he had given the "okay" to letting them take her into Ibiki's unit, one of the innocent children, much like the many that he had sworn to protect, would more than likely never be the same again.
Her whole mind would be stripped naked to a stranger, her most precious memories and worst secrets.
And such a horrible thing of having your privacy so violated, he would never have wished on no one. Much less a child.
I'm sorry.
-
well, this was a rather...depressing start. most would be like, "yeehaw! i'm in naruto i wish its not just a dream!" and get accepted by the Hokage into the village.
but this isn't your typical naruto fanfic is it? i know everywhere it starts as a go happy, accepting Konoha welcome for the usual OC...but i'd like to keep it more..."realistic." if you really think about it, a person never seen or heard of, with no understanding of their world, wouldn't be so easily welcomed. a village wouldn't be so well protected if they easily let everything slide. caution would be the first instinct, and you can't depend on one person's personal soft spot to breach that.
as much as the Third is a softie when it comes to children, he wouldn't be hokage if he wasn't forced to think of his village first.
so #sorrynotsorry, i don't regret how this chapter turned out and i don't regret making it a little harder for Kat to reach her "happy" home. because this? is just the beginning for our dear kat.
till next time, on "iii: reality lies vs. dreams of truth!" where we see just what will become of our dear character when she's thrown headfirst into Ibiki's interrogation specialty!
[2,734 words, pretty proud of myself.]