Background
Characters:
Naruto Uzumaki
Hinata Hyuga
Words you might not know:
Hand Seals
Hidden Village
Kunai
Shadow Clone
Rasengan
Hinata Hyūga sped through the forest. She had been on a D-ranked mission, delivering a civilian to his village. It had been a days travel away, and he was only a farmer, so they had assigned just her.
Why then was she running for her life now? She paused, panting behind a tree trunk as poisoned kunai flew past.
“Byakugan,” she whispered, activating her eyes.
Cautiously she scanned the forest. There, a hundred or so metres away were five approaching ninja. None of them wore any markings affiliating them with any hidden ninja village. But all of the had red bands around their arms.
Quickly she set up traps before finding a place high up in a tree to hide.
They approached.
“She’s here,” the closest one growled. “I can smell her. I can smell her fear!”
A rumble of chuckle rippled over the group.
BOOM
The first exploding tag detonated throwing two men back.
One by one the rest exploded around the ninja. Hinata didn’t wait. She bolted as fast as she could, trees collapsing around her.
“Only a small distance to our border, you can do it,” she whispered to herself.
The sound of cursing and crashing alerted her that at least two of the ninja were still conscious and chasing. She spun, slamming her palm into the nearest one’s jaw. A few quick blows and she shut off his chakra flow.
The second man landed in front of her. He was much larger then his friends, towering above her. No wonder the exploding tags hadn’t phased him. They traded a few blows, sizing each other up.
“He hits hard, but is slow and predictable,” she thought to herself.
Within seconds she shut off his flow of chakra too, before rendering him unconscious. Scanning the forest, she glimpsed the other three staggering to their feet again. She took off, detonating more exploding tags around her. Smoke and flying wood obscured their view of her as she leaped from tree to tree.
“Just a bit further,” she said, lengthening her stride.
Abruptly she came to a halt. In front of her stood ten rogue ninja, all grinning wolfishly at her.
“How many of there are you?” she cried out, distressed. The other three ninja closed in behind her. A couple of them were nursing cuts and bruises.
What she took to be the leader stepped forward.
“We are the Matikotsu!” he cried.
The men let out a cheer.
“We are a growing power,” he continued. “Soon we will be strong enough to become the sixth hidden ninja village. But first we need your eyes.”
“My eyes?!” she glanced frantically around, trying to see an escape.
“Your Hyūga family eyes,” he repeated, crossing the space toward her. “Don’t worry, we’ll make this fast.”
“Like hell you will!”
Tree’s transformed around them, turning in hundreds of Naruto’s. They flung themselves at the red-banded ninja, quickly and efficiently taking them down. A few formed a protective circle around Hinata.
“Naruto!” she gasped. “How did you know?”
Nervously he scratched the back of his head. “I’ve been keeping on eye on you lately,” he chuckled. “I just wanted to make sure you made it to our big day!”
“You’ve been spying on me?”
“Keeping an eye on you! It’s different,” he insisted. “Ouch!” The clone who had been talking to her disappeared. Hinata looked around to see what had destroyed it.
The leader stepped forward, twirling a kunai around his finger.
“You won’t take me down so easily boy,” he hissed. “You’ll need more then a few shadow clones!”
His hands flicked quickly through some seals. “Blade of Wind Hurricane!” he yelled.
A giant spinning vortex of blades formed beside him, sucking in Naruto’s shadow clones. It quickly slashed them all to pieces, save a few standing protectively in front of Hinata.
“Now which spiky-haired brat is the real one,” he said, taunting them.
With deadly precision he flung daggers straight into the hearts of the last Naruto’s. Each one disappeared with a puff of smoke. He grinned manically and jumped forward at Hinata, holding a kunai to her throat.
“You left her here on her own, boy?” he called out, laughing. “Her eyes are all mine now!”
“Are they?” Hinata asked, matching his grin. “Rasengan!”
Hinata turned and thrust the jutsu into his chest. He fell to the ground clutching the now bleeding hole in his stomach.
“I don’t understand,” he panted. “We’ve been trailing you for months! You shouldn’t know that jutsu!”
Hinata smiled. “I don’t,” she said. “But I do,” she transfigured in Naruto. “Hinata and I switched places back when her exploding tags were splintering up the forest” he explained.
The real Hinata came out from behind a tree. Without hesitation, she tied up the leader’s hands.
“You’ll be coming back to the village with us,” she explained. “You’ll get to enjoy the hospitality of our interrogation squad.”
“And you,” Naruto said addressing Hinata, “can take a break from missions for the next week. I don’t want you missing our wedding!”
“But I like you saving me,” she teased.
“Like you needed saving!”
“That’s true. Why WERE you following me? I thought you were with Kakashi-Sensei on an A-Ranked mission.”
“We got back early” he chuckled. “I was on my way to meet you when I saw them waiting. I figured I may as well join in the fun.”
“It was pretty funny watching his face when he realised the Hinata in his arms was you!” she admitted.
“Hey!” the leader growled, lying on the ground. “Stop making fun of me, and take me to your damn interrogation squad! I’m bleeding to death here!”
Add they all lived happily ever after. Cept the bad guy, who died.
Hi Che
ReplyDeleteThis was a good story overall. I like the pacing and the setup. Was completely caught off guard with the twist and it came as a nice surprise at the stories climax.
I was a little put out with the amount of pages I had to read to full understand the story. The links at the top helped but I felt that you could of added in some of it yourself.
What I mean by this is the object of the bad ninja's designs seems to be Hinata Hyūga eyes. Why are they special? When you say she activates her eyes, what does that mean? What gets activated? The X-Ray vision? The zoom? The 360 view? (I learnt that from your links) And how if they were cut out of her head can the still work? A simple bit of explanation I think would help here.
I assume this story takes place after the delivery of the farmer and not before as you dont mention him again and that the delivery was successful. You dont make that quite clear and it took me reading the whole story before I understood that. I think it was that you used present tense and it would if helped to use past tense here or simply add in something about coming back from a mission.
There was I think a mistake with the line "But all of the had red bands around their arms." Was the "the" meant to be a "them"?
The only other thing I guess I could mention was that the story seemed quite discriptionless (is that a word?) Though I could read and mostly follow the story, there wasn't much in the way of anything tactile. Brief descriptions were given, but I would of liked to of heard more about the forest and fighting. It was like watching a tv someone had burred. I could get most of the jist of what was happening. But no sense of touch, sound, feel or taste of the environment or the battle. By this I mean where had the traps come from? what were the traps? Oh there bombs we are told several paragraphs later. What does the vortex look like? color shape? feel of wind on skin?
Several words you use like "kunai" and "jutsu" I didn't understand. I assume they are knives or swords of some kind but I am still not to sure.
I would suggest that you try to read this as a person who doesn't know the source material and try to look and see if there is maybe on or two bits of info extra you might put in to help a novice to 'Naruto' out.
I know I am asking to much I guess as we are meant to keep it between 800 and 1000 words and maybe I am being way to nit-picky. I did enjoy it. Please do not take what I have said as anything bad or horrid, It's not my intent. I just get confused easily.
Hey Troy :)
ReplyDeleteThanks massively for those comments.
I completely agree that it's descriptionless. And I will now definitely go back and add more in. Especially after my last creative writing class where the lecturer talked about inspiring the five senses in the reader.
As for the kunai etc. I thought about that at the start. When writing fanfiction, usually it's for people who are also passionate about that subject. And they'd get bored if I went about explaining all these things they already know. But I know you guys are a different audience, so I can go back and explain that a bit more too.
Thanks for catching that type :D
And excellent point about her eyes.
Thanks :)
Hey Che,
ReplyDeleteGreat story; I found it very well paced, with an interesting twist towards the end.
Not being familiar with the world, I was slightly confused by what 'kunai' and 'jutsu' meant (but as you mentioned above, this is a fanfic so I’m not really your target audience).
The background links you've provided at the beginning are helpful but also quite a lot to read before you even start to read the actual story, so maybe you could work a little background info into the story itself.
But once again, great story! I'm really impressed, and hope my comments are of some use :)
Sorry if I’m repeating a lot of what Troy has already said.
Your writing is very imaginative/creative. I like the way the writing is set-out - separating your sentences. However, this doesn't necessarily make the writing easier to follow. There are too many ideas. Even if you're a ninja story fan, there needs to be more storytelling, instead of cramming in heaps of ideas (as creative and wonderful as they are). I got a similar sense like Troy about the TV thing, I felt like I was reading the script of a TV pilot, which is cool - just a very fast-paced action fantasy. You are a very good writer, may be too good for such a short piece of writing. Your writing is probably suited to being stretched out into a novel.
ReplyDeleteHey thanks guys for your comments :)
ReplyDeleteThey're appreciated and I will work on it :)
@ Liv, Yeah I actually haven't written much shorter then a novel before haha, but it's good to learn. So I'll have a go at editing :)
Hi Che,
ReplyDeleteIt's a well paced story with good imagination. It has a twist at the end. I enjoy reading it.
In the forest fight, if you could shorten the explosion part, describe how they approaching and how they fighting. I think it will make the story more vivid.
Thanks Minchi :) will do
ReplyDelete