Journey of the Three Failures

Chapter 22: The Box

Journey of the Three Failures

Twenty-Two: The Box

Part One: Foreboding

Naruto ナルト

"Hinata? Ooiiii, Hinata!"

"Huh...?"

She turned, her lithe form in black outlined by the grim silver of the clouds. A striking beauty, she looked back after one lupine ear stirred to my friendly call, revealing the pale, pale cream of a curious porcelain face, a blink of white eyes, a soft part to her inviting lips that inevitably lent the barest suggestion of the sharp canines that rested in shadow behind them. Her body turned, her silken tail hanging gracefully motionless. The foot and toe that held her serenely aloft were poised so delicately upon the low branch that she seemed in that instant perfectly liable to drift weightless and float away from there on the passing breeze as she stood, her eyes on mine, one hand's light fingers absently draped over the trunk at her side.

"What is it?"

I closed and opened my mouth mutely before snapping straight and alert, a hand rubbing my neck as I chuckled a moment. "It's just... you've been staring off into space over there for a few minutes. I was wondering if you're feeling okay."

She smiled, a simple quirk of the lips and sparkle to her eyes dissolving the cloak of ghostly beauty to smoothly establish in its stead one I was well more familiar with. "I'm fine..." she answered. "The air is heavy, that's all. It smells like rain is on the way."

"Good news for the land," I remarked. "The farms especially could use it... Either way, we'd better get ready. We plan it right, and we'll have the rest of Sound's prisons down within a couple of days at most."

Hinata nodded. "Of course–,"

She shrunk with a yelp, starting as a buffet of wind caught her from behind and set silken strands of midnight hair whipping. The gust caught me as well, and I turned to see it race through the grass as a vast, jaggedly rippling wave.

I whistled. "Looks like some crazy weather is about to go down." I had appeared beside her on the branch, a steadying arm around her shoulders, and now looked to meet her eyes up close. "Let's get back to camp, ne?"

Her voice was quiet. She blinked, troubled. "Yeah..."

Neji ネジ

Finishing what little paperwork I had at the end of the day took little more than a quarter of the hour. That completed, I left my office, walked down the steps of the Hokage tower, and continued on into the village's bleak and quiet streets. Early evening though it was, the grim sky blanketed all in a shroud of shadow.

I halted in the middle of an empty street; a moment later the first drop of rain pecked my forehead. I remained unmoving as more and more fell, eyes on the ground before me as the rainstorm grew and rolled.

Then, flinging my arms out, claws wide, head back, I convulsed with rage, sending a wild surge of thrashing, cursed black energy shooting from my body as I hacked my claws at the air.

Damn that woman... I seethed, fists shaking. I swear...

"Neji-sama," my shadow said, coming to my side in concern. I met her eyes with a command in my own. Her face flushed as she stepped closer otherwise unflinchingly, letting me grab her and bury my fangs so sharply in her neck that she nearly cried out. I drank greedily; when I released her, she was not only dazed with pleasure but groaning and weak. She fell to her knees, curling up under the rain, and wept deliriously within a prison of joy even as she shivered.

I swear, filthy Cat...

If you take from me what is mine...

Hanabi ハナビ