Here To Stay

You Wanted Me to be Afraid, But You Didn't Even Know What Fear Was

      Two rounds later Kakashi and Sasuke came back. Something was off about them. I didn’t have a lot of time to analyze their behaviors though.

      Kakashi couldn’t even say a word to me before I was being called down into the makeshift arena.

    I sigh heavily as I make my way down. The person I am to fight was a boy with a cocky smirk. He seemed to be from Grass. I didn’t pay attention to his name. 
   
      “Begin!” Our instructor coughed roughly.

     The boy ran at me, throwing shuriken and kunai. I blocked the weapons with a kunai, and narrowly dodged a jab.

     I blocked another jab and went in with a cross, clocking him in the chin.

    He grunted and tried to sweep my legs. I jumped up and used a Kawarimi no Jutsu with a kunai he had thrown.

     I took his momentary confusion as an opening and attacked his back. I got his shoulder blade before he turned and got my side.

    It went on like this for a while. Before we were panting in exhaustion. 
   
     The boy clocked me in the cheek and I reeled back. He cocked a smirk. Sneering he decided punching each other could wait.

   “Is this all you’ve got? Your team must have carried you through the forest. There’s no way you made it with the way you are!”

    I spit out a glob of blood. 

     “Last I checked you’re just as beat up was I am!”

     He sneered again and went in for a kick but I blocked and turned the tides on him, knocking him to the ground.
He quickly gets up as I go to kick him while he’s down.

    With his superior body strength he manages to take me to the ground and I cry out in pain as he stomps on my back.

    My already hurt back.

   Pain radiates off of the spot like waves of burning heat. It licks at me as I try to roll over. My shoulder gives out and I feel the wound open. 

      “You are nothing! Just a bug under my foot! Waiting for me to squash you!”

     He stomped on my back again and I brought my hands to my mouth. Biting my fist I tried to stop the scream.

   Why can't I move? Everyone’s watching! Kakashi’s watching! Yet I can do nothing. Nothing but lay here and cry.

     “You are weak! Pathetic!” He gave a cruel chuckle.

    “They are all watching you lose, watching you fail!”

       There are yells throughout the building but they are nothing but white noise. My vision blurs as pain schorches through my body. I bite my knuckle until it bleeds. 

   ‘Such a pathetic doll, so easily broken.’

    Zabuza’s words crash into my mind.

     “I’m sorry sweetheart, am I scaring you!” He laughed maliciously.

    Orochimau’s evil smirk flashed before my eyes, their laugh curling around my ears.

    The boy kicks my back again. He flips me over and I stare up at him wide eyed.

   This boy thinks that he scares me.

    Compared to Zabuza and Orochimaru, this boy is nothing.

     I grit my teeth and steel my mind. I grabbed his foot as he tried to stomp on my stomach, quickly turning I threw him to the ground and rolled to my feet. 

    ‘This boy doesn’t know anything about fear and weakness!’  

   He got up and I threw multiple kunai in a circle around him.

     He looked at them and laughed, “Your aim is a little off!”

    I smirk.

   “What are you smirking at? You are nothing, look at you! Your shirt is nothing but a bloodied rag!” He seethed.

     I looked at my shirt and realized he was right.

     Glaring I grabbed the soaked and torn material and ripped it off.

    He was shocked as I threw the material to the side. Thankfully my bra was perfectly fine and the heat from my back subsided at the cold air. 

      I took his surprise as an opening and performed a Kawarimi no Jutsu. Now in my new position I attacked him.

     I did this again and again, as fast as I could.

      Eventually he fell to his knees. I appeared behind him and attempted to hit him once more, but he looked back and suddenly I wasn’t fighting him anymore.

     I was in a world full of red and pain. The stars bled while the moon fell. I was being stabbed, beaten, and choked. I couldn't tell up from down or right from left. I only knew pain.

     I closed my eyes and felt myself slipping away before I snapped them open again.

    This wasn’t real. I was in a genjutsu.

  I thought back to Orochimaru.

    I grabbed a kunai from my pouch and sliced my arm. 

     Suddenly light flooded my vision and the boy was swinging his arm down with a kunai. I blocked the assault and he paused, shocked. 

    “Do you know the Demon of the Mist? Or how about Orochimaru? You don’t know fear! You don’t know weakness! You know nothing of terror! Zabuza taught me pain! He taught me weakness! Orochimaru taught me fear! Blood curdling fear!” My voice was loud and firm.

     My eyes blazed and the boy stepped back. I backhanded him and he fell back shaking.

     “You don’t get to talk to me about fear until you see your own death and stare them straight in the eye!”

    The boy crawled back and I snatched out a scroll from my pouch.

    Eric gave it to me when I was young. He would help me practice with it when he had the time. When he died I stopped using it. 

      I opened the scroll and used the blood running down my arm to unlock what was stored inside.

   I dropped the scroll and then dropped to my knee. Pulling a large sword out of the scroll I raised it into the air.

      The boy tried to get up but I kicked him back down. He tried to scramble out of the way but I threw him onto his back.

    “Who’s afraid now?” I roared out, watching the boy quake.

   I swung the sword down in a powerful swing. Aiming for his neck. 

    “I surrender! I surrender!”

     I stopped an inch away from his neck. The boy had tears running down his cheeks. Snot dripping from his nose. He looked stricken with fear, white as a ghost.

    I removed the sword from his neck and walked back over to the scroll as the referee called the match.

     I tucked the scroll into my pouch and turned back to the boy. He was still on the ground shaking. As I walk over he starts pleading and crawling backwards.  

    “You wanted me to be afraid. But you didn’t even know what fear was.”

    I glared down at him then continued to walk.

    "Now you do."

I made it a whole ten steps before I collapsed as adrenaline wore off and my back crippled me.

   Nurses ran over and helped me onto a stretcher.

    Right before passing out I saw the shocked faces of the competitors and their Sensei’s.

  Then everything went dark.