A/N: It's like a cross between Hunger Games and Liar Games... only Primrose contested instead of Katniss, and Akiyama was never charmed to Nao's side. All sprinkled with the same moe of Mahou Shoujo, Higurashi, and Doubt.
Things die here.
Enjoy.
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The Shinobi Games
II.16.44. Player's target must be dead by the end of each round.
Hyuuga Hinata wakes up to the vertigo of turbulence on board, the creaks and groans of the walls.
The world is swirling. Same for her head.
She curls her body inwards, cheek pressed against the cushion of her hair. She snuggles to find some softness in her bed, warmth from the scatters of blankets rolled off yet again somewhere. Although there is light, her alarm clock hasn't sounded, and she does not want to crack open her heavy eyelids just yet.
She wishes it weren't a school day, or else she could drift back to sleep. But unfortunately, there is that paper due for philosophy, still incomplete. She recalls how time is running out, thanks to procrastination and her miserable lack of self-control, and an unease settles in. Okay, two more seconds, then get up, she mentally mumbles her command.
Hinata imagines herself rolling off the comfort of her bed, trudging five feet to the left to her desk. She powers her laptop on, about to add the final touch ups until she notices the document is utterly blank, the cursor blinking patiently. Panic settles in, and she remembers how she hasn't done it yesterday evening, but left it off till midnight, only to forget it completely. She frets, and wonders if by skipping breakfast with her sister, she might still get it done in time to catch the last express train to school.
Shaking with adrenaline to meet the deadline, she begins to type, her fingers never quite landing on the keys she wants them to, and she backspaces far too often in both frustration and nervousness.
Heading, conclusion, citations. What is Honor? Pull up the web browser, a symphony of rapid keystrokes, scroll down. Respect, dignity, glory.
Highlight, copy, paste. The origin of the terminology, the roots tracing back along the lineages.
Open new tab. A chain of links. Page after page of images and texts pop up and zoom in. A hurricane of a collage, a massive time-line whipping backwards: the 1988 elections, the airplane bombings, the world war, the honor killings and suicide brigade, the great opening, the holy crusade, the conquest of the last feudal lord, the era of the samurai, the age of the shinobi...
The age of the shinobi...
Shinobi.
Her eyes snap open. She jerks up, folds of curtain sliding down her breasts. Suddenly, the drumming in her head becomes all the more prominent, as does the aching in her body.
Slowly, an unfamiliar place phases into view. Wrong lighting, wrong wallpapers, wrong configuration of colors and space and everything that screams this is not her room, not her sister's room, not anywhere in her house or friend's house or school.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Where is she? How did she get here? Her eyes are wide and dilated in panic, mind scurrying for answers.
But her memory settles in, and pulls up a recent image of something matching in juxtaposition, but not quite there: the image of her assigned room for the past day or days or week. A queen sized bed headboarded against a wall, with an ugly impressionist painting of ships hanging above. An impersonal desk that contained nothing but a single calling card in one of the drawers. An old fashioned, four-paddle ceiling fan overhead that click-click-clicks as the wind beats the pull chain against itself.
The fan and its noise are the only things that match her memory with this scene.
The comforter and bedsheets pool over from the corner, the mattress stripped, brutally stabbed, and flipped. The lamp is toppled over on top of the backboard of the painting. The chairs are flipped across the room, empty desk drawers on top. There is nowhere to step without splinters of wood or fabrics or glass, everything broken and piled like the aftereffects of a tornado, or the trample of a juggernaut, but remains recognizable.
To further decorate the wreck, her clothes are torn, scattered everywhere and on everything except on her body. At the base of her feet is her Samsara 3000 laptop, smashed. The screen is cracked wide open, the wires hanging out.
The floorboards are streaked with scratches of red. Hinata stares at the blood at her heel, a light bulb shard embedded deep. The sight of it registers and brings a sharp pain up her nerves.
However, what seizes her attention is the sight of a small piece of fabric discarded carelessly at the bottom of the bedpost. Ice crawls into Hinata's veins, a breeze against her bare back, as she remains fixated on her underwear, touched and ripped at the side.
The remnants of her last thoughts linger:
What is Honor...
… the title of the paper she submitted a month ago. Seventy eight out of one hundred scores. Too much historical citation, lacked analysis, said her professor. Her neighbor classmate, Sakura, had given her words of encouragement and a sympathetic smile, of which she uneasily returned, then strolled down to the dining halls in disappointment.
It's just a draft, she repeated Sakura's words to regain some spirit. She can go home and correct it for a few extra credit. But the revision must be due soon, and she will be humiliated if she turns it in late with the sorry excuse of I overslept.
She should wake up now.
There is that paper due.
She should wake up now.
Wake up, wake up, WAKE UP.
Creak.
Hinata jumps in alert, as the turbulence swings the front door ajar, its hinges squeaking. The crack faces her, reveals a section of a narrow, ill-lit hallway with rows of mauve doors, all identical except for the room numbers on golden plaques.
Her heart is pounding, and she remembers it is not safe.
Her mental mantra slowly changes from wake up, wake up, WAKE UP to get up, get up, GET UP, until a second creak jolts her numb. A second creak that suspiciously is nothing like the moans and groans from the walls during turbulence. Instead, this creak is the cr-creak of floorboards undergoing a see-saw motion, bending under the weight of a moving body.
Hinata makes no movements. She waits for it again.
Her stomach drops when her expectations are fulfilled. There is another cr-creak, a steady pattern coming closer. Someone is walking down the halls.
But who?
Who?
Does it matter who? Get up, get out, her mind shouts at her. HIDE, move, move, MOVE.
All that matters is that this person is shadowed in the corridors, while she is exposed in a doomed, trapped room with the fan spinning, every sconce brightly illuminated. Without a doubt, the light has pooled out into the halls, and she will be seen.
She must move. Her body shakes in panic, understanding of the fact. But her brain is too blank to tell it how or to where.
Her eyes dart over to the adjacent wall, the door leading to the bathroom. It is too far, and closed. It will be impossible to get there in time, nor can she do so without making a noise, especially when the footsteps are less than a few meters away.
The closet? She whips to the other side, and find the door unhinged, kept from collapsing by a turned over wooden chair.
The bed is her third target. But there is nothing but bare metal coils and springs.
Her head whirls between the three options, the outside sounds now a step away.
She instantly drops her head back down, praying the fan and footsteps muffle any noises she makes, praying she has not acted too late and the person has not seen her move. She snaps shut her eyes, forces still her limbs, stops breathing. It only magnifies the sound of the last step that stops directly before her door.
He gives a push, and it swings open wider, revealing all corners of the room. It takes all of her willpower to stop the trembling in her fingers, force down her breath.
Hinata does not know which is louder in the silence: his breathing, deep and even, or her heartbeat, booming like amplifiers.
He doesn't move, paused. Her body feels laser scanned in full scrutiny. Seconds seem to tick like the slowest of pendulums, tracing a full torturous 120 degree arc before lugging its weight back. Her throat and chest burn and contract with every drop of oxygen depleted, her lungs crushed into a little dried up raisin.
Please leave.
Please leave.
Please- her finger twitches slightly. She mentally pleads it's her imagination, straying far away from the dreaded thought that he caught it in reality.
Oh no. Please god no, please.
Please, just look away and leave-.
There is a sound.
It is confirmed to be sound of the turn of a heel when the next creak is beyond the door, the next a little further down the halls.
He is walking away, down the tunnels. The pace is slow, but continuous. Her nerves vibrate lively in intense anxiety once more, not of doom now, but of hope.
And yet, as desperate as Hinata is for air, she waits until she can no longer hear the footsteps. Only then does she dare release the tension in her arm, draw a desperate breath, her chest expanding in relief. She can live another second, get out of this room, find some help or somewhere to hide, figure out what to do, reach safet-
"Alive after all."
The voice is cold, monotonous, and distinct enough to chill her bones, string poison up to her heart.
Hinata eyes flicker open against her will, body stunned in a state of cardiac arrest.
It escaped her mind. The possibility of two people walking down the halls, one whose massive weight bent the world underneath him, and another, a ghost to the senses.
Uchiha Itachi is still standing in front of her door, and he doesn't give any preamble when he pulls the trigger.