The Konoha Project
By: Lone Ronin
Author's Notes: I'm not a huge Sci-Fi fan, I think the genre got a really bad rep after "Battlefield Earth", the 4th "Star Trek" Movie and the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy. But there is one Sci-Fi movie I really love and that is "Serenity", this idea came to me after watching it. I'm combining it with elements of "The Chrysalids", "Judge Dredd" and "Total Recall" that weren't completely awful too. Basically poor Neji is a powerful psychic trying to escape from a dystopia with the aid of his friends while fighting the side effects of a brain washing attempt. Did I forget to mention the Neji/Shikamaru yaoi? No? Good. Let's move on.
Disclaimer: My therapist has finally made me aware of and accept the painful fact that Naruto belongs to Kishimoto. Excuse me while I cry over this.
Chapter 1: Pieces of a Broken Life
They were dressed in the finest silk and cotton robes, surrounded by beautiful plants and the latest décor. The latest scientific publications and diagrams were posted on the wall, many with his name on them. Hyuuga Neji smelled lavender in the air as he stood next to his desk, staring at the teacher as the other students filed into the classroom. Everyone sat down and took out their digital notebooks and laptop computers, except for Neji.
"Neji-kun, please sit down. It doesn't matter if you won that prestigious award last week that gave us more funding. We're not going to work on the next breakthrough in that AIDS vaccine project you started until you show proper manners." The teacher said gently.
"No, I will not sit down." Neji answered.
"You are not my teacher, and I know we are not in the Genji School for the Gifted, in the Kyoto prefecture on Earth. These classmates and the research you speak of do not exist. We are in space at a secret lab and you are the head researcher. I will not live a lie, no matter how attractive you all can make it. I see through the illusion, I will not accept this perverted existence." He continued.
"Stop fighting us Neji, believe me, it will be much easier this way." The teacher said as the shock ran through Neji's body and the program was shut down.
"He's fighting the programming again!" the assistant shut it down.
Neji kicked and screamed in agony, he fought his bonds on the table so hard his bones would have started to break if they hadn't sedated and gagged him. He became aware of the cold sterile lab again and the various machines he was hooked up to designed to give him false sensory experiences.
"He should be as obedient as a puppy by now, what's taking so long?" Gaito demanded to know.
"Well, he is a psychic as well as a genius, Gaito-sama. We'll break him in, it will just take more time then usual." The head researcher calmly replied.
"You better hurry it up before Orochimaru-sama has our jobs."
"This is as fast as it goes."
"Excuse me, we're new around here, could you direct us to room 395?" a male computer technician asked as he and a female researcher in a lab coat approached them.
"You shouldn't be in here, this area is off limits to-" the head researcher began before the girl removed her tinted sunglasses and caused everyone to fall asleep with her gaze.
"Oh, Neji, what did they do to you?" Hinata quickly ran to the main computer panel and began deactivating the equipment he was hooked up to.
"Shino, how long do we have?" Shikamaru spoke into his wrist communicator.
"Be quick, I can't hold them off for too long. But don't be too quick, extracting him too fast from the bonds and brainwashing equipment could shock him."
"Neji, can you hear me?" a soft voice asked.
The first thing Neji saw as the gag in his mouth and the vice on his head was removed was the sweet and round face of a girl who resembled him in pale eyes and gentle beauty.
It wasn't another illusion, her could read her mind and knew she meant well. Her clothes under her lab coat disguise were worn and she was awkard, being weighed down with weapons and equipment. But even with the cloth keeping her hair back, her name came to him clear as day.
"You're Hinata." Neji said.
"Y-you, remember me?" she asked hopefully.
"Listen to me, I don't know how much you remember, but you have to trust us, we're here to help you." The male with her said.
He certainly didn't seem happy as he assessed Neji, but his anger wasn't direct towards him, but the people in the lab and what they had done to him.
"You're telling the truth, I can always tell." Neji answered before two more people who he somehow knew were on his side came running into the lab amid shouts and gunfire.
"Naruto? Kiba?" Neji asked.
"So you do remember us, I told you he'd never let those sickos totally brainwash him." Kiba said with a grin, showing off his fangs as Naruto locked the door behind them, shutting out security.
A girl's face suddenly appeared on a nearby screen.
"Naruto, hurry up! What's taking you guys so long? Shino can only screw up their system for so long, we're right above you!" she yelled impatiently.
"One sec, Sakura-chan, we just have to make an exit!" Naruto answered as he and Kiba quickly set a few grenades and threw them up to the ceiling where they stuck as everyone rushed for cover.
The ceiling blew open, allowing Lee and Tenten to quickly lowered lines to lift everyone up and into their getaway spaceship, the Kyuubi.
24 hours after the dramatic break in, the damage was still being assessed.
"Hey, who do you think you are? You can't just walk in here!" Gaito confronted a strange individual in white robes with a purple belt, pale as the moon, in one of the innermost parts of the research center.
The strange man placed his hand onto an identification tablet in the room, his identity and other information popped up on the screen.
"Oh, I'm sorry of course a person with S rank security clearance should have full access to here, Kimimaro-san." Gaito suddenly became very polite, realizing that if The Board had sent such a powerful official here, they had already found out about the break-in and he was probably on the verge of losing his job.
"You are a fool, Gaito. Do you realize what you have done? Hyuuga Neji was one of our best candidates, a prodigy and powerful psychic, one of the finest products of The Konoha Project. You just let his fellow Konoha escapees from the infamous intergalactic mercenary gang, Zodiac, break in, destroy millions in valuable equipment and take him away."
"Well now, that's not entirely my fault. An internal investigation has shown that his cousin, Hinata, used her entire family's vast wealth and connections as well as her own skills from her work in medicine to get the means and power to get him back. How was I to know that such a timid child would go to such trouble just to get back a disturbed individual?" Gaito made a pathetic attempt to excuse himself.
"Yes, wasting such precious resources simply for someone of similar genetic material or emotional connection, such is the power of love. However, that is not your only mistake, though it will be your last."
Gaito tried to explain himself, but Kimimaro cut him off.
"Your first mistake was failing to completely reprogram the specimen. My data shows only 30 percent of his fail-safes are securely in place, the rest can be easily removed with a skilled surgeon's knife, convenient for his cousin. Your third mistake was letting him escape, but you probably don't even realize what your second mistake was."
Kimimaro pushed play on a security monitor, revealing an old tape from a few days ago, of Gaito giving some senior officials a tour of the facility.
"You let people who know some of our most valuable intelligence and secrets stand in the presence of a psychic, just so you could show off and kiss their asses for another raise or promotion. Have you any idea how much our enemies will pay for those secrets? Did you ever read how in ancient Japan, men would throw themselves upon their own swords to avoid the taint of dishonor to their names? They called it seppuku. If you weren't so chickenshit, you would have done it by now."
"Well we all know how essential a sword is to an office, like a cell phone really, but I left mine at home today." Gaito's sarcastic reply didn't amuse Kimimaro one bit.
"That's too bad, otherwise there would be less incompetence in management if they cared more about honor." Kimimaro produced a blade from the skin of his lower forearm.
Gaito responded by pulling out a gun and shooting Kimimaro in the forehead at point blank.
"Who needs honor when you have a handgun?" Gaito asked.
"My bones are stronger then bullets, idiot." Kimimaro picked himself up and plucked the flattened bullet from between his eyes before flicking it away.
Gaito looked ready to shit himself in fright. His last action was to turn around and run in a vain attempt to save his skin before Kimimaro ran him through.
Neji wandered around aboard the ship, named Kyuubi, using his psychic powers to recall fragments of his previous life. Every new memory brought the pain of realizing what he had lost. He reached into the china cabinet and held a familiar looking tea set. He recognized himself as the memories of its significance flooded his mind, the emotions others had attached to it for him to read like little notes. He recognized himself, giving Hinata the tea set for her birthday, but he didn't remember what store he bought the set from, or what he ate at that party. He looked at old photos of his family and saw himself at his father's funeral, smelled the incense as it burned, but didn't recall the name of the Shinto shrine it took place at. He knew he had done these things, his psychic powers didn't detect any illusions or deceit. But he didn't feel any emotional connections. It might as well have been scenes from a movie he acted in, rather then real life memories. It was a struggle to feel any emotions, but he still could when he tried, Hinata hadn't been able to fix everything they had done to him.
He walked towards the sleeping quarters, trying to avoid prying into details of others that were too intimate. It was hard, there were strong emotions coming from the rooms. But there was one bedroom he was drawn to. He entered the familiar room and looked at the photograph sitting on the vanity. It was of himself and Shikamaru sitting together in Paris and smiling, his arm curled around Shikamaru in an intimate fashion. He held the photo and strained with his powers to read it. The picture was from their first date, but he had no memory of being on Earth, or how he got to all these places like Japan and Europe. How did they first meet? When was their first kiss? How did he have the means to visit all these places?
"Do you want to know the truth?" Shikamaru asked as he entered the room.
"Tell me everything." Neji answered.
"We call ourselves the Zodiac because we're from the stars and others see us as nothing but animals. We didn't know it for a while, but we are the products of a genetic research experiment called The Konoha Project. We were a space colony, privately established by wealthy businessmen to genetically engineer supreme human beings, create the next stage in human evolution. We were the children of those first 'experiments'."
"What's my relation to Hinata?"
"You are cousins. Your fathers were wealthy Japanese businessmen and twin brothers. They invested in the Konoha project and donated their genetic material, claiming that they wanted to live forever. The truth was they had reproductive problems and wanted children. Your father died when you were four under mysterious circumstances. Rumor has it that another major investor in the project had him assassinated."
"Who?"
"He's known as Orochimaru. He wanted to live forever and saw the Hyuuga family as being the last of many things that had been in his way. They had been fighting each other for financial control of the Project. He thought that nothing could stop him afterwards, he had founded The Project in hopes of finding a way to live forever and make super soldiers for himself. They created a fantasy world for us, cut off from the outside world, we believed we were ninjas in a sort of ancient feudal Japan. Our psychic abilities were explained as being magic, we were trained to be killers. They wanted assassins and puppet rulers, expendables they could manipulate from the shadows to take the blame and enforce the will of the wealthy and elite.
But our colony declared independence from earth. The elder of our colony, Sandaime, was from earth, but he was also a kind and good man. He told us the truth, rallied our families and declared us human beings with rights, not guinea pigs. But he paid dearly for his devotion to us, we were attacked and crushed as rebels and traitors to Earth. We were all forced to flee the colony and were separated from our families. They're either dead, or slaves, or worse. Only Hinata's father is still alive and not in hiding, the two of you got lucky, he knew the right people and passed you both off as his own children, educated you abroad. That was where we met.
The rest of us wandered and struggled to get by, posing as normal people until we crossed paths again. Our genetic alterations made us gifted, stronger, faster, smarter then most. It let us stay hidden for so long and find the skills to survive. We decided to stay together, we had nothing else left. Orochimaru had found our identities at last, we're still his legal property, we're fugitives hiding in the outer bounds of space. It's the only safe place for us now, of course, we're grading on a relative scale.
Naruto's our captain, he's loud and annoying, but he hasn't let us down so far. Shino is our pilot and an expert programmer. Kiba, Tenten and Chouji are our engineers, they maintain the ship, our equipment, our vehicles and our weapons. Ino is our cook, she also cleans the ship, she's a weaponry expert too. Sakura and Hinata are medics, they both attended medical school. I did accounting school, so I keep track of our finances, or at least I try. You and Lee are our best fighters, you two usually lead our raids. "
"How did I end up in that torture chamber?"
Shikamaru shifted uncomfortably and hugged Neji from behind. Neji put his hand on Shikamaru's.
"You wanted to visit your father's shrine on earth 2 months ago, you were always so close to him. We begged you not to go alone, but you said you would be careful, that you wouldn't get caught. Sasuke was the one who gave you away, we don't know what he was promised in return. Naruto and Sakura won't let us say anything bad about him, but no one has mentioned his name since you got caught."
"I was there for a month?"
"The longest month of my life?"
"I lost all track of time. I feel like I've forgotten so much. But I can still remember some glimmers, of my past." Neji's statement hung in the air.
"There's one more thing I want to know." He added.
"What that?" Shikamaru asked.
"Have we ever-?"
Shikamaru led him to the bed and they sat down facing each other and he felt it. This was where they were first intimately involved, where they lay together afterwards, exhausted and wound together. Not knowing what to say, Neji slipped his shirt off and lay next to his lover, gently stroking his face.
"Naruto, I'm hungry? Can't we get some meat at the next space port? Or even some vegetables? We've been eating ramen for the last 2 weeks." Kiba complained.
"You said it was either we get the new engine part or we eat good and you voted for the part. Just suck it up and make sure our equipment is okay! After this raid, I'll…uh, I'll buy you guys a whole roasted pig if it'll make you happy." Naruto said hastily.
"Naruto, I finally managed to navigate to the wormhole, we should arrive at the port soon." Shino, their pilot, informed the captain.
"Why did it take so long?" Naruto asked.
"That old software makes flying the ship twice as hard, I had to reconfigure it so it would be compatible with Kiba's halfway repairs to the navigational equipment."
Naruto looked ready to tear his hair out before he a quiet knock came from the door behind him.
"What!" Naruto finally snapped as he flung the door open.
"Oh, hi Hinata-chan, sorry I'm a bit busy right now." The captain promptly blushed and softened at the sight of his girlfriend.
"Naruto, I know we really need the money, but I don't feel right about asking Neji to do this so soon after Sakura and I treated him." Hinata said shyly.
"Come on Hinata, he was always a pro. Even if he doesn't remember everything, he's still a psychic, that's gotta count for something."
"I know, but he's not the same as he used to be."
"Well, you still did a good job of patching him up, I'm not gonna be too reckless after all we went though just to get him back. Besides, we really, really, really need this money. Shino says the software's on the fritz again, Kiba says our engine really needed new parts two days ago, Sakura says we're down to our case of medical supplies and even I'm getting tired of eating ramen. I'll bring him back safe, I promise." Naruto kissed her forehead.
Author's Notes: Anime axiom #34569, Section b) In anime, sword beats gun, always.
More to come later, kiddies. Here's the characters and their respective animals.
Rat Shino,
Ox Lee,
Tiger Naruto,
Rabbit Sakura,
Dragon Neji,
Snake Sasuke,
Horse Hinata,
Ram Shikamaru,
Monkey Tenten,
Rooster Chouji,
Dog Kiba,
Pig Ino.