Categories > Anime/Manga > Naruto > Alien Angel
Alien Angel
Inspiration for this came from a friend ( Kichiko-19), a David Bowie movie named Labyrinth, a song by 3 called ‘Alien Angel’, and my imagination from there on. Lyrics are part of ‘Alien Angel’ by 3, on their album Wake Pig. It is also found on the Metal Blade Summer 2006 sampler.
I do not own Naruto, or any of its original characters, They are property of Masashi Kishimoto.
Chapter 2
A bath and a noise in the brush
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Born in motion,
Though it is your only course.
Plunge the gaping edge,
Falling down to flesh and bone.
You could have been caught up in
All those empty odds.
Life, But not to wake,
Promises that I see you through.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Another homicide has been reported here in Konoha, this time a middling-high class family. The mother, father and aunt were brutally murdered and eviscerated, while the two children huddled in a dusty broom closet. The style is very similar to several other murders in the past year, leading crime scene officials to believe that they are dealing with the same group of extremely well-disguised individuals. The only difference in this case being that the children were spared, where in the other homicides, the children were murdered as well. This is all the information we are allowed to release at this moment, but we will have more at our 10 o’ clock airing later tonight. And now for our hourly news re - ”
This just in, a meteorite from last nights meteor shower has struck near home. Obliterating a country hill top, the chunk of space rock is about as big as a coffee table. It was discovered this afternoon by a local who had decided to take an afternoon stroll in the woods east of Konoha…”
A tall, blond haired man paced boredly in the living room of his rich, two storied house, a fuchsia towel in his slender hands as he dried his flaxen mane. He had only listened vaguely to the news report, more absorbed in trying to understand what his partner thought of it. The other man sat on the couch Deidara was pacing behind, a can of some carbonated beverage in his pale hand. His sleek, black hair was tied at the base of his neck and pulled over one shoulder so he wouldn’t be sitting on it. Itachi had gazed at the TV with a blank face, just as everything he ever did was met with that impassive stare. There was no sign that he had even heard the recorded words that blared from its two small speakers. Deidara could only stand his partners silence so long before blurting out the first words that came to his mind.
“Hey Itachi, yeah. Why’d you tell us not to do the kids too, yeah?” Deidara was only now brushing his hair out with his hands, damp locks of it going everywhere but where he wanted them to. His fingers were still trying to force some semblance of domestication to them when Itachi deigned to answer a full minute later.
“I have my reasons.” Was the Uchiha’s only reply, leaving Deidara exasperated. Giving up on his teammate, Deidara headed towards the bathroom to grab a brush when the doorbell rang. Sighing deeply, he went to answer it, knowing that Itachi wouldn’t. He reached the door and peered through the peep hole, just to make sure, even though he knew who was on the other side. Unbolting the door, he opened it wide and stepped aside so that his other teammates could file inside.
First was the broad-shouldered Kisame of filed teeth and rough blue skin, followed by the redhead Sasori and the oddly plant-like Zetsu. Hidan and Kakuzu followed shortly thereafter. As the last man stepped through the door, Deidara swung it shut on their heels and re-bolted it, this time engaging the secondary deadbolt as well as the chain that only allowed the door to open a hands breadth.
“Hey, Sasori-danna! Did you guys get our next location mapped out, yeah?”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I sat in the dank darkness beneath a concrete tier, my worn clothing sodden and wetly plastered to my shivering form. My teeth chattered incessantly, the ones in the front clicking together as I shifted my head to rest it on my knees. I could feel the rip in the no-longer orange fabric there with the skin of my jaw and remembered, vaguely, having torn it while scaling a chain link fence while being pursued by someone’s growling dog. Just one rip among hundreds. Just one more hole to let the chill autumn breeze in to swirl around my shivering body.
As I sat there in the scathing wind that was only barely blocked by the towering concrete, I thought back to last night and the strange stone that resided in my frayed pocket. I reached a hand into its depths and pulled out the thing that seemed to glimmer even here in this near-complete darkness. It was still warm to the touch, as it had been when I first laid my hand upon it. Even when it had rained just before down and I had been caught in the downpour, skidding as I ran through the mud and open forest in a dash for some sort of substantial cover, it had been warm as I held it within my pocket to ensure I would not lose it.
I stared into its crystalline depths and watched entranced with wide blue eyes as the colors seemed to swirl and loop and its warmth seemed to spread throughout my frozen bones. I was barely aware of my eyes drifting shut and my body falling to land curled up on my uninjured side before I was asleep.
I awoke hours later with the stone still gripped in my tight fist, yet I was dry and the wind had died down, leaving me relatively warm on the cool stone. I reached my free hand up and scratched a little at my knotted blond locks, the grime in them easily palpable to my touch. I was in order of a bath, now that there was enough sun visible shining beneath the stone and metal rows of seats above me to show that the storm clouds had cleared. I rose to my feet and walked towards the turn in this cement corridor that led to the great entrance that led back to the world of people and plants that I knew was outside. My eyes squinted as I neared the growing swath of sunlight at the end of the concrete tunnel, before I emerged into a world of light and sound. The ground squished beneath my taped shoes and birds flew in liquid song above as I surveyed the world that had turned green since the gray dawn hours when I had first entered the area beneath the abandoned stadium bleachers.
In a way, it was home there beneath those old and soon to crumble concrete bleachers. I had lived in other places, but never for as long as I had here. Maybe it had remained uninhabited because of the draft that swept through it during the winter months, or the crickets and snakes that took up residence during the summer. Unlike most people, I was glad to have them there with me. As long as I did not bother them, they did not bother me. And so what if I sometimes woke in the middle of the night to find a harmless bull snake coiled against the warmth of my stomach? At least there was something, animal or otherwise, that did not push me away.
I saw such a snake gliding through the damp grass and smiled at it as I headed down the weed grown path towards the city that had abandoned me and my towering concrete home. There would be fresh rainwater in the drainage canals, and I was in need of a bath and a wash for my unrecognizably colored clothes. My hand slipped into my pocket to deposit my treasure there as I walked towards the paved water channels.
I reached them without seeing another intelligent form of life and stripped myself of my clothes, lying them out on the bank and pulling out what meager pocket-goods I had. I laid these in a protected cubby off to the side where they wouldn’t be lost and stepped into the waist high slowly moving water. I pulled my shirt with me and began scrubbing at the grime embedded between its threads. After I had done as much as I could with that article, I laid it out on some wild bushes to dry in the sun and began to work on the next piece of clothing.
After I had finished those tasks, I began to wash myself, pulling up handfuls of smooth sand from the bottom to scrub my tanned skin with. Paddling back to my safe-keep cubby, I reached out and grabbed the small bar of plastic wrapped soap that I had found last week while digging through some junk someone had left in an alley beside their house. Why anyone would throw out perfectly good soap was a mystery to me, but I was better off for it, nonetheless. Maybe they didn’t like the scent. It was an orangey-citrus type scent, but I didn’t mind. At least I had soap.
I used it all over me, and I could probably say I was the cleanest I had been in years, what with having actual soap to clean myself with. The nice orangey smell was an added bonus. So was the way it loosened up the grime in my ever-soiled locks, allowing me to use a fork I had in my safe-pile to actually comb my hair with. I washed my hair again and marveled at the way it lightly and silkily flowed through my fingers, where before it had caught on my fingers in greasy snarls.
I raised my arm and noticed how much less muddy-looking my skin was now. Being careful to preserve my clean state as much as I could, I took my soap and climbed out, fishing the plastic wrapper from the ground and wrapping it as best I could over the slick soap bar. I laid it with the rest of my possessions and sat back on my heels at the waters edge to rinse the slippery substance off of my hands.
Just about as my hands were going to touch the reflective surface of the water, I stopped. There, staring back up at me from beneath the surface was a gangly, bronze-skinned, hollow cheeked boy. His golden hair reached down in damp strands past his shoulders and his blue eyes stared knowingly back at me. The matching scars on each cheek now followed the sunken lines of my face. So much different from the time, years ago, when they had been put there across the round cheeks I had once had. They had put those marks there to show me who I was, what I was. My thin hand rose to touch my face, and the doppelgangers followed.
They told me they did it because I was a monster, because something lived inside me. They said they knew because of the swirling and looping tattoo that occasionally showed up across the expanse of my stomach, now inverted from scarce meals. That’s how they said they knew, and then they hurt me and left me there in an alley to die a monster’s death. But I didn’t die. I survived.
I had lived until now, hated as I was, an outcast of the only village I had ever known. My hand moved from my cheek and back down to touch the cheek of the other who stared back up at me. Their image wavered as my fingertips brushed the water, and I plunged my hands in, no longer wishing to see what a lanky creature I had become. I rinsed my hands and stood, stepping away from the water and grabbing my still somewhat damp clothes from the bush. I pulled them on, the ragged boxers and holey cargoes. Then the two shirts that I wore in cooler weather, the under one navy, and the top one and almost undistinguishable orange that as more brown than anything. Some of the holes were covered by the other, and some of them overlapped to let the air in, but at least it was something to wear.
I gathered my possessions and put them in my pockets, ready to leave when I heard a rustle in the brush. My head snapped up and I crouched my body low, ready to sprint if need be. I slowly moved myself behind a concrete embankment and peered around the side to watch as someone emerged from the bushes. The boy was around my age, 16, and pale to the point of being almost ivory. His midnight black hair stuck up at all angles in a carefully disheveled manner and his sable eyes were rimmed with the red of unshed tears. He moved and sat there at the edge of the water, his thin arms wrapped about his skinny knees as he stared blankly tearing at the water in front of him. He looked so sad there, so much like I always felt that I wanted to reveal myself then. But I restrained myself to watch.
He sat there for a few minutes without moving before he sat back and pulled up his shirt, revealing all the scars there. They looked like healed burns. He took it off and splashed his face with the cool water. It didn’t do much, but it took away a little of the redness around his eyes. It was then that I heard another slight crackle in the brush and looked to see a tall, silver haired man who was not at all old step out into the open. He wore a mask that covered the bottom half of his face, and a crooked headband that concealed his left eye. He looked extremely bored, but if you looked hard enough, you could see the worry that was in that lone eye.
“Sasuke - ” he said, gently, as he paced towards the distressed teen on the bank. He stopped a few feet away and just stood there silently. After a moment, the boy labeled Sasuke stood and pulled his shirt on, preparing to leave. That was when I knew I had moved too quickly to cover myself. The man’s head snapped to stare at my location behind the embankment and he glanced towards Sasuke.
“Come out.” That was all he said, but he said it simply. There was no anger in it, just resignation. Thinking for a moment, I considered my options. He would see me anyway if I decided to bolt.
I stood and moved cautiously to the side of the embankment, too wary too put myself in front of it where I could be cornered. The man looked me up and down as I stood there, slightly crouched for quick movement. Sasuke just stood there and regarded me blankly, all traces of emotion having left his face.
“Who are you? Why are you here?” the man asked me. It wasn’t as revealing as it sounds, though. I gazed at him for a good minute before I replied.
“Nobody. I don’t even exist.” I turned to walk away and felt a tight grip on my arm after I had only gone a dozen steps. I turned my head slowly, and quirked a brow as I noticed that it was the raven-haired teen who had grabbed my arm. He looked angry.
“Don’t fuck with me!” he snapped, his eyes flaring. “He asked you a question, and that’s how you answer? Nobody? Who are you?” The last came out as almost a snarl, but I could tell that my unfazed manner at his actions that he wasn’t as sure as he had been. I looked him in the eyes, one and one and said the next part slowly, venom dripping from my voice.
“You’d be better off not knowing. And anyways, I doubt the villagers would be happy with you associating with me. I’m their rotten little secret. To them, I don’t even exist. They hope that will make it true.” With that, I made to walk away again, but he grabbed my arm even tighter and pulled me back.
“Well then I’ll make sure you exist. Because I don’t believe in nobodies.” He grabbed me harder and began dragging me behind him towards the city. Behind me, I could hear the man sigh deeply.
“Sasuke, this isn’t the -” he began, only to be cut off.
“Shut up! I’m doing this whether you like it or not!” Snapped the unruly teen. Sighing again, the man addressed me.
“Well, I’m Kakashi. I may be his legal guardian, but when he gets like this, nobody can tell him what to do.” He seemed very resigned to the fact. I just stepped up my pace a little so I wasn’t being dragged as roughly.
“Hey, where are we going?’ I asked.
Inspiration for this came from a friend ( Kichiko-19), a David Bowie movie named Labyrinth, a song by 3 called ‘Alien Angel’, and my imagination from there on. Lyrics are part of ‘Alien Angel’ by 3, on their album Wake Pig. It is also found on the Metal Blade Summer 2006 sampler.
I do not own Naruto, or any of its original characters, They are property of Masashi Kishimoto.
Chapter 2
A bath and a noise in the brush
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Born in motion,
Though it is your only course.
Plunge the gaping edge,
Falling down to flesh and bone.
You could have been caught up in
All those empty odds.
Life, But not to wake,
Promises that I see you through.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Another homicide has been reported here in Konoha, this time a middling-high class family. The mother, father and aunt were brutally murdered and eviscerated, while the two children huddled in a dusty broom closet. The style is very similar to several other murders in the past year, leading crime scene officials to believe that they are dealing with the same group of extremely well-disguised individuals. The only difference in this case being that the children were spared, where in the other homicides, the children were murdered as well. This is all the information we are allowed to release at this moment, but we will have more at our 10 o’ clock airing later tonight. And now for our hourly news re - ”
This just in, a meteorite from last nights meteor shower has struck near home. Obliterating a country hill top, the chunk of space rock is about as big as a coffee table. It was discovered this afternoon by a local who had decided to take an afternoon stroll in the woods east of Konoha…”
A tall, blond haired man paced boredly in the living room of his rich, two storied house, a fuchsia towel in his slender hands as he dried his flaxen mane. He had only listened vaguely to the news report, more absorbed in trying to understand what his partner thought of it. The other man sat on the couch Deidara was pacing behind, a can of some carbonated beverage in his pale hand. His sleek, black hair was tied at the base of his neck and pulled over one shoulder so he wouldn’t be sitting on it. Itachi had gazed at the TV with a blank face, just as everything he ever did was met with that impassive stare. There was no sign that he had even heard the recorded words that blared from its two small speakers. Deidara could only stand his partners silence so long before blurting out the first words that came to his mind.
“Hey Itachi, yeah. Why’d you tell us not to do the kids too, yeah?” Deidara was only now brushing his hair out with his hands, damp locks of it going everywhere but where he wanted them to. His fingers were still trying to force some semblance of domestication to them when Itachi deigned to answer a full minute later.
“I have my reasons.” Was the Uchiha’s only reply, leaving Deidara exasperated. Giving up on his teammate, Deidara headed towards the bathroom to grab a brush when the doorbell rang. Sighing deeply, he went to answer it, knowing that Itachi wouldn’t. He reached the door and peered through the peep hole, just to make sure, even though he knew who was on the other side. Unbolting the door, he opened it wide and stepped aside so that his other teammates could file inside.
First was the broad-shouldered Kisame of filed teeth and rough blue skin, followed by the redhead Sasori and the oddly plant-like Zetsu. Hidan and Kakuzu followed shortly thereafter. As the last man stepped through the door, Deidara swung it shut on their heels and re-bolted it, this time engaging the secondary deadbolt as well as the chain that only allowed the door to open a hands breadth.
“Hey, Sasori-danna! Did you guys get our next location mapped out, yeah?”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I sat in the dank darkness beneath a concrete tier, my worn clothing sodden and wetly plastered to my shivering form. My teeth chattered incessantly, the ones in the front clicking together as I shifted my head to rest it on my knees. I could feel the rip in the no-longer orange fabric there with the skin of my jaw and remembered, vaguely, having torn it while scaling a chain link fence while being pursued by someone’s growling dog. Just one rip among hundreds. Just one more hole to let the chill autumn breeze in to swirl around my shivering body.
As I sat there in the scathing wind that was only barely blocked by the towering concrete, I thought back to last night and the strange stone that resided in my frayed pocket. I reached a hand into its depths and pulled out the thing that seemed to glimmer even here in this near-complete darkness. It was still warm to the touch, as it had been when I first laid my hand upon it. Even when it had rained just before down and I had been caught in the downpour, skidding as I ran through the mud and open forest in a dash for some sort of substantial cover, it had been warm as I held it within my pocket to ensure I would not lose it.
I stared into its crystalline depths and watched entranced with wide blue eyes as the colors seemed to swirl and loop and its warmth seemed to spread throughout my frozen bones. I was barely aware of my eyes drifting shut and my body falling to land curled up on my uninjured side before I was asleep.
I awoke hours later with the stone still gripped in my tight fist, yet I was dry and the wind had died down, leaving me relatively warm on the cool stone. I reached my free hand up and scratched a little at my knotted blond locks, the grime in them easily palpable to my touch. I was in order of a bath, now that there was enough sun visible shining beneath the stone and metal rows of seats above me to show that the storm clouds had cleared. I rose to my feet and walked towards the turn in this cement corridor that led to the great entrance that led back to the world of people and plants that I knew was outside. My eyes squinted as I neared the growing swath of sunlight at the end of the concrete tunnel, before I emerged into a world of light and sound. The ground squished beneath my taped shoes and birds flew in liquid song above as I surveyed the world that had turned green since the gray dawn hours when I had first entered the area beneath the abandoned stadium bleachers.
In a way, it was home there beneath those old and soon to crumble concrete bleachers. I had lived in other places, but never for as long as I had here. Maybe it had remained uninhabited because of the draft that swept through it during the winter months, or the crickets and snakes that took up residence during the summer. Unlike most people, I was glad to have them there with me. As long as I did not bother them, they did not bother me. And so what if I sometimes woke in the middle of the night to find a harmless bull snake coiled against the warmth of my stomach? At least there was something, animal or otherwise, that did not push me away.
I saw such a snake gliding through the damp grass and smiled at it as I headed down the weed grown path towards the city that had abandoned me and my towering concrete home. There would be fresh rainwater in the drainage canals, and I was in need of a bath and a wash for my unrecognizably colored clothes. My hand slipped into my pocket to deposit my treasure there as I walked towards the paved water channels.
I reached them without seeing another intelligent form of life and stripped myself of my clothes, lying them out on the bank and pulling out what meager pocket-goods I had. I laid these in a protected cubby off to the side where they wouldn’t be lost and stepped into the waist high slowly moving water. I pulled my shirt with me and began scrubbing at the grime embedded between its threads. After I had done as much as I could with that article, I laid it out on some wild bushes to dry in the sun and began to work on the next piece of clothing.
After I had finished those tasks, I began to wash myself, pulling up handfuls of smooth sand from the bottom to scrub my tanned skin with. Paddling back to my safe-keep cubby, I reached out and grabbed the small bar of plastic wrapped soap that I had found last week while digging through some junk someone had left in an alley beside their house. Why anyone would throw out perfectly good soap was a mystery to me, but I was better off for it, nonetheless. Maybe they didn’t like the scent. It was an orangey-citrus type scent, but I didn’t mind. At least I had soap.
I used it all over me, and I could probably say I was the cleanest I had been in years, what with having actual soap to clean myself with. The nice orangey smell was an added bonus. So was the way it loosened up the grime in my ever-soiled locks, allowing me to use a fork I had in my safe-pile to actually comb my hair with. I washed my hair again and marveled at the way it lightly and silkily flowed through my fingers, where before it had caught on my fingers in greasy snarls.
I raised my arm and noticed how much less muddy-looking my skin was now. Being careful to preserve my clean state as much as I could, I took my soap and climbed out, fishing the plastic wrapper from the ground and wrapping it as best I could over the slick soap bar. I laid it with the rest of my possessions and sat back on my heels at the waters edge to rinse the slippery substance off of my hands.
Just about as my hands were going to touch the reflective surface of the water, I stopped. There, staring back up at me from beneath the surface was a gangly, bronze-skinned, hollow cheeked boy. His golden hair reached down in damp strands past his shoulders and his blue eyes stared knowingly back at me. The matching scars on each cheek now followed the sunken lines of my face. So much different from the time, years ago, when they had been put there across the round cheeks I had once had. They had put those marks there to show me who I was, what I was. My thin hand rose to touch my face, and the doppelgangers followed.
They told me they did it because I was a monster, because something lived inside me. They said they knew because of the swirling and looping tattoo that occasionally showed up across the expanse of my stomach, now inverted from scarce meals. That’s how they said they knew, and then they hurt me and left me there in an alley to die a monster’s death. But I didn’t die. I survived.
I had lived until now, hated as I was, an outcast of the only village I had ever known. My hand moved from my cheek and back down to touch the cheek of the other who stared back up at me. Their image wavered as my fingertips brushed the water, and I plunged my hands in, no longer wishing to see what a lanky creature I had become. I rinsed my hands and stood, stepping away from the water and grabbing my still somewhat damp clothes from the bush. I pulled them on, the ragged boxers and holey cargoes. Then the two shirts that I wore in cooler weather, the under one navy, and the top one and almost undistinguishable orange that as more brown than anything. Some of the holes were covered by the other, and some of them overlapped to let the air in, but at least it was something to wear.
I gathered my possessions and put them in my pockets, ready to leave when I heard a rustle in the brush. My head snapped up and I crouched my body low, ready to sprint if need be. I slowly moved myself behind a concrete embankment and peered around the side to watch as someone emerged from the bushes. The boy was around my age, 16, and pale to the point of being almost ivory. His midnight black hair stuck up at all angles in a carefully disheveled manner and his sable eyes were rimmed with the red of unshed tears. He moved and sat there at the edge of the water, his thin arms wrapped about his skinny knees as he stared blankly tearing at the water in front of him. He looked so sad there, so much like I always felt that I wanted to reveal myself then. But I restrained myself to watch.
He sat there for a few minutes without moving before he sat back and pulled up his shirt, revealing all the scars there. They looked like healed burns. He took it off and splashed his face with the cool water. It didn’t do much, but it took away a little of the redness around his eyes. It was then that I heard another slight crackle in the brush and looked to see a tall, silver haired man who was not at all old step out into the open. He wore a mask that covered the bottom half of his face, and a crooked headband that concealed his left eye. He looked extremely bored, but if you looked hard enough, you could see the worry that was in that lone eye.
“Sasuke - ” he said, gently, as he paced towards the distressed teen on the bank. He stopped a few feet away and just stood there silently. After a moment, the boy labeled Sasuke stood and pulled his shirt on, preparing to leave. That was when I knew I had moved too quickly to cover myself. The man’s head snapped to stare at my location behind the embankment and he glanced towards Sasuke.
“Come out.” That was all he said, but he said it simply. There was no anger in it, just resignation. Thinking for a moment, I considered my options. He would see me anyway if I decided to bolt.
I stood and moved cautiously to the side of the embankment, too wary too put myself in front of it where I could be cornered. The man looked me up and down as I stood there, slightly crouched for quick movement. Sasuke just stood there and regarded me blankly, all traces of emotion having left his face.
“Who are you? Why are you here?” the man asked me. It wasn’t as revealing as it sounds, though. I gazed at him for a good minute before I replied.
“Nobody. I don’t even exist.” I turned to walk away and felt a tight grip on my arm after I had only gone a dozen steps. I turned my head slowly, and quirked a brow as I noticed that it was the raven-haired teen who had grabbed my arm. He looked angry.
“Don’t fuck with me!” he snapped, his eyes flaring. “He asked you a question, and that’s how you answer? Nobody? Who are you?” The last came out as almost a snarl, but I could tell that my unfazed manner at his actions that he wasn’t as sure as he had been. I looked him in the eyes, one and one and said the next part slowly, venom dripping from my voice.
“You’d be better off not knowing. And anyways, I doubt the villagers would be happy with you associating with me. I’m their rotten little secret. To them, I don’t even exist. They hope that will make it true.” With that, I made to walk away again, but he grabbed my arm even tighter and pulled me back.
“Well then I’ll make sure you exist. Because I don’t believe in nobodies.” He grabbed me harder and began dragging me behind him towards the city. Behind me, I could hear the man sigh deeply.
“Sasuke, this isn’t the -” he began, only to be cut off.
“Shut up! I’m doing this whether you like it or not!” Snapped the unruly teen. Sighing again, the man addressed me.
“Well, I’m Kakashi. I may be his legal guardian, but when he gets like this, nobody can tell him what to do.” He seemed very resigned to the fact. I just stepped up my pace a little so I wasn’t being dragged as roughly.
“Hey, where are we going?’ I asked.
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