A/N - Hey, so here is another story I had a yearning to write. Post fics have always been my fav. There are so many ideas you can have on how things go, which is why it took me so long to figure it out.

But, this compliments to my infuriatting friend who managed to upload an absolutely jealous worthy post fic, and after reading hers I manage to grab ideas. I insisted that I wouldn't uploud it because copy kating isn't cool, but she insisted otherwise.

So here you have. Last new story I have to upload in the extravagent Port Bundle.

Enjoy! Tell me what ya think.

DISLCAIMER - I do not own Naruto

I heard once that there was a world before this. Where there were buildings, structures that we built, that reached the skies. Where you had the convenience of speeding down a road at speeds towards the hundreds in the rusted cars that infested the street. Where we all sat so idle and bored we actually built some sort of ship to touch the moon. I've heard it all before, it was all in the text books they hated us to read so much.

All of that seemed... believable. When I look around, I can almost feel how much more we had than this.

What I couldn't believe was the reality I lived in now.

No amount of living through this hell would ever help me understand how everything went so wrong.

Or how to stomach the fact that I've killed a person...

The ringing in my ear stopped at the call of my name. It snapped me out of whatever I was staring at, which was a limp body on the ground. Entering reality and managing to scrape past the dream I almost fell into, the nightmare I was living in.

"Tayuya!" They shouted again, desperate yet calm and urgent, "We have to go. We can't stay here."

I blinked, finally tearing the gaze from the dead body. My eyes focused then on my friend, who gave me a strained smile through the tension and impatience. Nodding towards me, he asked, "Are you alright?"

Nodding mutely, I stumbled towards him.

"Good," he said, snatching my hand while tugging as time slowly started to trickle at an alarming speed, "Then let's go. We need to reach camp before they find the body."

xXx

"I said, wake the fuck up!"

My eyes snapped open, hands immediately snatching at my knife that was always tucked beneath the waist of my cargo pants, but my wrist was caught mid motion. I yanked from the grip, but the hold held firm, giving me to realize where I was.

It wasn't the harsh enviroment that I expected, nor was there a dead body near my feet. Instead I was in my bed, rock hard as it was, with sleep caked in my eyes. Groaning, I sat up using only my abs while my wrist was still captive. Finally entering reality, I carefully pulled away from the grip.

"Jeez, you sleep like the dead," the voice complained as I slowly woke up.

"Probably because I'd rather be," I muttered to myself, running the remnants of my nightmare with my hands, "What are you doing here?"

My eyes fell to my friend who stood with his arms crossed. Grin on his face, he replied, "What do you mean? It's our squadrons time to go out to the fields to scavenge food." With a nod towards the window to prove his point, he added, "And we're almost late. So get dressed out."

X

The break of dawn wasn't the most appealing time to wake up. No matter how well trained I was, I couldn't get used to the eerie time frame where the world was a dark as my dreams, yet promising skimps of light broke the horizon in the distance. But it was the most efficient time to travel. Stumbling along for a full day let you arrive at your destination during the night, a perfect time for lowly thieves to rampage through the remnants of the hallow homes that were abandoned during the chaos.

"We should start heading out soon," commented my friend beside me. He stood with his back straight and eyes set on the horizon, tense with the prospect of what was to come.

His name was Kiba, the captain of our squadron. Since the moment I was put under his care, he's had a soft spot for me. While he beat the other lazy members, beat as in forcing hard labor or extra training on them, he always spoke to me in a manner of respect. It was as if, while he thought the rest of them were idiots, he came to his own conclusion that I didn't require such primal manners to train.

I think, before I came to his campaign, he was informed that my punishment for arriving in the first place was the simple fact that I liked to read.

And oh, how the capital hated those who read.

Glancing at me he grinned, promising foolishly, "I'll be sure to keep an extra eye out for books on our trip."

I gave him a roll of my eyes and rumbled, "Just be sure you keep a set watching your back. We could find more people out there this time. There has been a lot recently..."

"Head captain is getting antsy about it," Kiba agreed with a nod, looking back towards the horizon with his arms still crossed at his chest, "He thinks a colony is establishing near by."

"A colony that's more than 10 leagues away," I replied, though I knew that didn't matter to any of them. Frowning, I asked carefully, "Do they plan on forcing us to attack."

Kiba turned grim, "I honestly hope they think better of it."

He let the statement hang between us, but we both knew better. The capital found anyone a threat, no matter how far. And no matter how long our peace stretched, they always found a way to create more chaos and war.

I should have ran away with you while I had the chance, I whispered in my thoughts, thinking of the face from my nightmares.

The horn sounded, and from behind us the gates groaned open. Glancing over my shoulder, I sighed and turned around, peering out to the road that lead out of the nieghborhood. Kiba did the same, his hands dropping to fists at his side. Tightening his belt, he glanced at me.

"We're both making it back today."

The only time I allowed myself to smile was our rituals of promise each venture we were forced, ordered, to conduct. Pull slipping my lips, though hardly there, I agreed with a firm nod, replying, "Even if I have to drag you back myself."

He grinned boyishly, as he was known to do, and waited for the tall spiked wooden gate to open fully.

The moment it did, we and the rest of the squadron began to jog towards the horizon.

X

The reasons, as most of our ventures, for stepping out of the colony's protection was for finding practical goods that could help the colony in any way. Each week, one squadron out of the seven known as SCAV, were sent out to do the bidding of providing for our people within the protection of the walls provided by the capital. While long ago we learned out to make or grow most of the basics ourselves, at special prices and rations you could get what we managed to find outside the wall.

The hunt for food, clothing,, medicine, and any other materials we deemed necessary didn't always last for a full day. Depending on how far we traveled, and how much we had to carry back, it could take two or three, or more days if the captain saw fit. Because of this, SCAV was a select group of individual that didn't have to do the daily chores within the walls. And depending how fast an expedition was, we'd have days off at a time.

For that we were separated, apart from the rest of the colony. We were treated as well as any known figure head, acquiring special privileges and meals. Alcohol at the gallons for free, electricity without paying rations per hour, meals that competed with the head of the colony himself.

The colony knew it was important to keep us happy, so they strived to do so.

The glory and grand came with it's fouls and wrenches. The reason so few people volunteered, along with those punished into it like me, and the reason we had barely enough for seven squadrons, was because the expeditions were dangerous. If animals weren't the problems, it was the extraordinary shifts in weather. Twice, I had seen the terrors of a tornado right before my eyes, and twice I knew the feeling of being utterly helpless as it ravaged the world around it. But thunderstorms and dust clouds weren't our only issue, it was also people.

People who were not apart of our colony, people who have not stumbled upon our esteemed 'sancturary'. They were people of the land, living from empty house to empty house, attempting to get by simply by being a tribe of nomads. Sometimes they were not dangerous, idle threats that wandered by carelessly whenever we stumbled upon them from a distance.

But some were dangerous and as savage as we might seem encountering them. Ready to kill as we are, and blood shed was almost always unavoidable.

And recently, though we had managed to evade them, more and more people started to appear. What once used to be a rare occasion and good story to tell was occurring more and more. With uneasy stomachs, we knew it was only a matter of time.

But under captains orders we kept most of our encounters a secret.

We were trained as well as the soldiers in the colony, but we didn't have their luxuries. They squandered within the wall, getting the same privileges as us and more, for protecting it's makeshift neighborhood borders.

After running our first three miles, we took a break at one of our rest spots we had scattered around the abandon town. It was one of the smaller houses that wouldn't draw too much attention from curious wanderers. Even if they did find it of interest, they wouldn't have found much. The things of value were hidden in places such as underneath the floor boards or crooked into cramped dark corners of closets.

"Make sure you drink up," Kiba announced as we all settled down within the house, "We have another league until we are half way, and possibly two good miles after doubling that."

We did as we were ordered, just as we always did. No one could find the energy to chatter about idle things. When we were outside the nieghborhood, we were tense. Alert. It hadn't been the first time we've found people so close to our borders, and we doubted it would be our last.

Jogging three miles under forty minutes at a steady pace with the equipment and bags on our backs wasn't too hard of a feat, but it wasn't comfortable. Maybe if it had been a bit warmer outside, if the wind didn't stab at any skin showing or air clawing at our lungs, it would have been easier. But it was nearing winter, and our radius of scavenging was becoming too close of a suffocating circle near the colony. During any other season, we covered twice the distance in less the time.

"You ready?" Kiba asked with a nudge.

I blinked back to life, realizing I had been staring at the floor with my canteen in my hand. Standing up, I stuffed it back in my bag and nodded, "Yeah."

"Alright," Kiba said with a grin, "But stop drifting off like that. You'll get us all killed."

He tossed it out like it was a joke.

Truth of the matter is, it was very likely if I didn't get it together.

xXx

No amount of living through this hell would ever help me sink into this reality we lived in. Where everything seemed backwards. Where the books I read felt more real than the world I lived in. Every time I thought it was different, every time I thought I had managed to slip into reality, I realized I was still floating in the past the words on the paper painted for me.

I wished I could escape the grasp of those books, escape into the world I actually lived in, so I couldn't be broken down more and more. But each moment I managed to convince myself I finally understood how much pain real life held, I'd realize I never knew what true pain was.

True pain was lying beside my feet, another body just like in my dreams.

With someone yelling to me we had to go, that we couldn't stay.

True pain was having every bit of life I had left in me suddenly draining and escaping as I stared, ignoring the screaming. Ignoring their efforts to drag me away. Falling to my knees and holding the body in my arms. Forcing myself to contain that slipping consciousness so I could focus using every ounce of my strength to get the body over my shoulders like they taught us in training.

True pain was forcing myself to follow the orders of the shouts, blindly escaping with them as they led the way back to the colony when all I wanted to do was lay there, limp.

That's what true pain was.

"Both making it back today," I muttered under my breath, teeth gritting as I strained under the extra wait, "Isn't that right, Kiba?"

He didn't answer.

He didn't boyishly grin like he always did.

Instead he silently relied on me to drag him back home, like I promised.

At least one of us was alive to keep it.