(Aiki's P.O.V.)
Aiki was currently hiding behind her tree.
There was an intruder on her turf. One whose existence was somewhat of a paradox to her senses.
He made her feel angry and she wanted nothing more than to fight him and smash his head with a rock. But, he also terrified her and made her want to run away as far as she could and never look back.
She couldn't decide whether to Fight or take Flight and this ended with her staying frozen in place.
She rubbed her eyes once, and then twice for good measure. It was the first time in her life when two of the senses she had learned to rely on so heavily, contradicted each other so much.
She decided to risk one more peek from behind her tree, careful not to alert the invader that chose to intrude upon her dinner time and made a mental note of the information her eyes gathered.
"A boy, same age as me...or close...so maybe 5, spiky blonde hair and whisker marks on his face, clothes undamaged but nothing fancy. No boy our age would be allowed to come this deep in the forest, this late in the evening if his parents were looking out for him...must be from the orphanage. He looks goofy, he is too loud, he is clumsy because there is paint everywhere on his clothes, and he is out during curfew...so a proper dummy."
Aiki had enough experience of abandoning campsites and evading angry civilians that she could write a book on it at this point.
Beating up a dumb kid or running away from them was almost too easy for her. She had enough practice of beating up random kids when they threw rocks at her during her incursions into the civilization, and evading them when they would gang up on her.
What she didn't had the experience of, was pitting herself against a ninja, people with chakra denser than her usual targets.
She had learnt a lot about them through the library books and a little through the word of mouth of the people who would threaten her with setting the ninjas loose on her. She knew, almost at an instinctual level, that clashing with even the most average of ninja, would end with her getting destroyed.
So it terrified her, when her chakra sense screamed at her to run away.
The chakra inside the kid was denser than any she had ever sensed in all the time she could remember. If her senses were to be believed, the kid was an absolute MONSTER. One who could chew her up and spit her out with barely more effort than it would take for him to form such a thought inside his yellow head.
"Oh man! I knew I smelled food around here. This is awesome!" He made his way to her food and muttered to himself, "Weird, I could bet someone was around when I started following the smell...guess I was thinking too much."
Aiki knew she needed to do something and do it fast, so she decided to collect her thoughts and weigh her options.
She could run away from the monster wearing a kid's skin, but then she would lose her home (which wasn't that bad considering it was almost a monthly occurrence) when the kid went back and told the adults about it, and all her possessions not currently strapped to her body.
But she figured that running away was not an option for her this time, the blonde had a good sense of smell based on the path he took to her location and could also be a chakra sensor like her if his words were to be believed.
If he could track her camp so far away from the orphanage, then he could track her anywhere in Konoha.
She could stand her ground and fight, but what would that accomplish?
Even if by some odd miracle she ended up chasing him off, he could always come back with greater numbers and turn the table on her now that he knew her location.
Realistically the fight would end with her getting injured (if his chakra density was a measure of his strength) or dead, both of which were not conducive to her survival through the winter months.
She was brought out of her thoughts when the familiar growl of a starving stomach came out of the boy's belly and he rushed to her dinner and started eating without a care in the world.
With this, he made it personal.
There was little in this world Aiki could call her own and all of it was paid for with her blood, sweat and tears.
She resented the idea of losing it to some random dumb blonde pipsqueak. But what he had done was worse, he had taken from her without so much as sparing her a single thought! He did not care if she starved, he just took whatever he wanted and left her to her fate.
Just like everyone else, he too had denied her the right to exist.
What she felt in that moment was something greater than anger, it was indignation.
She made up her mind, only way forward was to attack. If the kid wouldn't respect her existence, then she just had to make him fear it.
From behind her tree she took stock of the situation, suppressed the fear her chakra sense was drowning her in, and formulated her plan of assault.
"Dumb bastard is too busy eating, wouldn't smell me with his nose full of MY food and shouldn't hear me over his horrible chewing noise. Shouldn't sense me either if he hasn't done it yet. Best bet is to use 'that' to take him by surprise, it always gets the kids crying and begging. Then I'll pack my stuff and run far away...maybe I'll take his stuff too, show him what it feels like!"
With her plan of action finalized, she exerted her control over the wind and prepared a trick she had picked up a few months back to escape a particularly angry crowd.
With a simple command from her mind, air surrounding her body enveloped it in a pocket that wouldn't allow any vibrations generated inside it to reach outside. This effectively rendered her completely silent to anyone that wasn't checking the vibrations of earth due to her footfalls.
She further covered her entire head and face with a piece of cloth with holes cut out for eyes, a mask of sorts she had fashioned out of a scrap piece of clothing she found in some dumpster.
Silently, she came out from behind the tree and made her way to the object of her ire. She knew he wouldn't look in her direction, he was too busy stuffing his face. Once she was firmly behind him, she wound up a punch.
She wished she could use her lightning control trick to stun him instead, but she had learnt it long ago that she couldn't control two elements at the same time. So if she wanted to use her stun attack, she would have to drop the sound elimination barrier around her, and that would alert her target of her presence due to her horribly noisy breathing.
"This will hurt, but you deserve it for stealing from me.", with this thought she let loose her hand and delivered a massive punch to the head of the blonde kid who was too busy decimating her dinner to see it coming.
It obviously caught him off-guard because it sent him sprawling on the ground as he dropped whatever little food was remaining.
He yelped in pain, clutched his yellow head between his forearms to protect it from further harm, and started flailing around in pain.
He regained his footing quickly (something which greatly surprised Aiki) and stood up to face her, face twisted in anger and pain. "WHAT WAS THAT FOR? WHY DID YOU HIT ME I WAS JUST EATING MY FOOD!", he shouted out and made his way to where he had spilled her dinner. "Oh no! It's all gone now...WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT THAT HUH?"
If Aiki could get any angrier she would turn red. She looked him in the eyes and shouted back, "YOUR FOOD? THIS IS MY HOME YOU WALKED INTO! YOU WERE SITTING NEAR MY FIRE! YOU WERE EATING OUT OF MY POT! I CAUGHT THAT FISH YOU ATE, I STOLE THE CARROTS YOU SPAT OUT, THAT WAS MY DINNER! YOU STEAL FROM ME AND THEN GET ANGRY WHEN I HIT YOU?", she caught her breath, "I AM GOING TO ENJOY SMASHING YOU INTO THE GROUND YOU THIEF!"
Her words seemed to have some effect on the boy whose face scrunched up in surprise and then panic as he tried to come up with something, anything in response. Finally he spoke in a much lower volume than before, "I didn't know it was your food...mask guy, I promise! I was just so hungry that I didn't even think it could be someone's dinner."
"So what I'm hearing is, you are a selfish brat who didn't even think that stealing my food would cause me to starve? Or did you think the food just popped into existence just for you? ARE YOU DUMB YOU BLONDE BASTARD?", she didn't hide her anger nor did she relax her posture, ready to get back into the fight when the right time comes.
This insult caused the blonde to fire up again. "HEY! YOU STOLE THOSE CARROTS TOO! WHO ARE YOU CALLING A THIEF, YOU THIEF?", he smiled with smug satisfaction. "I should just drag you off to Jiji, maybe then he'll make me Hokage."
This was something Aiki couldn't allow to happen. Whoever this kid's Jiji was, would most definitely come back with numbers to cause her problems. She decided the only course of action available to her was to beat him enough to put the fear of her in him and that would help her keep him silent.
"HUH? A brat like you thinks he can drag me off anywhere? I was only going to punish you for stealing from me but I guess I need to really beat the hell out of you to push anything into your thick yellow head." Saying that, she readied herself for battle and stood with her legs shoulder width apart and knees bent slightly.
It wasn't any of the fancy martial arts stances, but it was functional enough for her to either lunge at her enemies or run away from danger. Something she learned over the hundreds of fights she got into over the last year and a half.
She made a gesture with her hand, calling him to her. The kid seemed to understand what it meant. A challenge. So he came at her running with his fist cocked. His movements while not elegant, were backed up by an unexpected strength and speed. However, none of it scared Aiki.
She had used the time she spent talking with him and getting him riled up to gather the charges needed for her stun attack.
It was a trick that involved invoking her control over lightning and concentrating negative charges (if she was in contact with earth) or positive charges (if she was in air, with no contact with earth) on any part of her body she chose and then rapidly discharging them on contact with the target.
She had managed to cut down the charging time and increase the amount of charges she could gather by a significant amount compared to when she was just starting out but it still took her sometime to get it set up.
She ducked under the punch he threw, her choice to rile him up before the fight proved to be the right one. She picked up a stone off the ground as she recovered from her dodge (if she couldn't see one due to the snow, her backup plan was to gather a hand full of snow and press it into a ball.)
Registering a distinct lack of his fist meeting the target, the boy turned around so fast that it was a miracle he didn't suffer from whiplash. Aiki thought she must have been right in her accusations against his intellect since he never thought of a new strategy and charged at her again with his fist raised high.
Leaving his face and body open was not a good decision, something Aiki showed him by chucking the stone in her hand full speed at the blonde's head.
The stone made contact but did little more than cause him to falter for a few seconds, his attention shifted from her movements and it created an opening for her.
She didn't really need a distraction to take him down, but it always paid to be cautious. Aiki exploited this opening of her creation to it's fullest extent.
She rushed him in the little time it took for him to get over the pain and focus back on her. Seeing her so close to himself, he raised his arms to defend but it was too late. Her fist charged with the stun attack connected with his upper abdomen and he collapsed.
The punch was fast enough to get him winded, but the sudden jolt of electricity running through his system had left his muscles temporarily paralyzed. Every attempt to breathe in air was met with failure till his nerves dealt with the electric overload.
She had planned it this way.
The pain and incapacitation of the blow were always a nice thing when it came to taking down a target, but the fear and panic that came after the blow due to the body not being able to get any oxygen for a while was what she had truly needed.
After all, it would be heaps more effective to convince the helpless kid in front of her to not leak her location, when the fear of death was dimming his already meager wisdom and his fighting spirit was crushed. It all went according to plan.
What didn't go according to her plan was her getting grabbed by the ankle and getting dragged to the ground. She turned around and was shocked to see the blonde brat almost recovered and showing no signs of giving up. In fact, his expression was even more stern and determined.
"You...*huff*...PUNCH LIKE A GIRL! I AM JUST GETTING STARTED! MY NAME IS UZUMAKI NARUTO AND I WILL BE HOKAGE ONE DAY! YOU WILL NOT TAKE ME DOWN!"
"Huh...so that's his name. Still, this is a problem...It will take me around 20 seconds to charge my stun attack again...but 20 seconds is a long time in a fight...I should try to keep safe till my stun attack charges. Not that it had any lasting effect on him...I don't know how that is even possible! Guess I'll have to go at it the normal way for a while." Having thought out the best course of action, she bucked her leg to get his hand off of it.
His grip proved stronger however and soon he was on her, raining punches down on her while she curled up to protect her vital organs.
There was nothing more she could do now. He was stronger than her so she couldn't push him away or shake him off, and her speed meant very little when she was already captured. She had resolved herself to grit her teeth and bear the pain while charges collected at her fingertips, her mind already trying to think of the best way to retaliate once she was ready.
The situation was disadvantageous but not hopeless, she didn't panic.
Aiki was never one to panic. She was smart and she knew it AND she had more experience of getting into fights than many twice her age. She could predict the flow of battle to some extent given her information base was good and the skill difference wasn't too great.
So normally nothing surprised her and she rarely panicked.
But she hadn't counted on Naruto not pressing his advantage and instead going for her mask.
Now, for the first time in a while, she panicked.
She thrashed and flailed but she wasn't strong enough to keep him from gripping her mask and slowly pulling it off of her.
With a final, solid tug, he fell back with her mask firmly in his hands.
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(Naruto's P.O.V.)
"YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD HIDE FROM ME! LET ME SEE YOUR FACE MASK GUY!", He quickly jumped up to his feet eager to see his assailant's face.
What he saw shocked him to his core.
A face that looked almost human, on a blotchy leathery bald head! A human's face if the nose and ears were melted like wax and sunk into the face before cooling and hardening, and then the entire face got roasted like the pork bellies Old Man Teuchi cooked every morning and evening.
The only indication that his assailant was a human was the green eyes that were locked with his blue ones.
It was his first time witnessing someone (he wasn't even sure it was 'someone' and not 'something') so damaged like the person in front of him.
He was an optimistic child, but his mind was simple...childish. No amount of optimism inside him could bring him to associate anything good with that face.
Out of his childish naivety, came his childish brutality.
Children can be brutal with what they say and this is because of their innocence. His childish brain, couldn't comprehend such a horrible fate befalling a good person, so it decided that the person in front of him must be someone bad, someone who deserved it.
He was shocked and afraid, and the first words that his mind conjured found themselves on his tongue before he even knew he was speaking, much less thought about what he was speaking.
"Y-You are a m-m-monster aren't you? Y-You must be living here in the forest alone because you did something bad!...YEAH THAT'S IT! I'LL TAKE YOU DOWN!"
He had said it more to gather courage for himself and less to aggravate the monster. He had expected the monster in front of him to rise to the taunt and say something villain like. What he didn't expect to see was the light dim in it's eyes. That, and the tears running down it's face.
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(Aiki's P.O.V.)
What was it that she did wrong?
She had only ever stolen from others when she was desperate to survive.
She had never picked a fight with anyone who didn't antagonize her first. She had never killed anyone. Lately she never even spoke to anyone! She even lived far enough from civilization that nobody would see her face and wore a mask whenever she went to the library or to steal, sure she did it less to help others and more to keep her insecurities at bay...but she still did it.
Today too, she was just living in her 'home' when this Naruto bastard came crashing, stole her food and beat her up! He was the one who took her mask off! Why was she the monster in this situation?
"What did you call me?", her voice was barely comprehensible even to her, because of her unfortunate respiratory condition. If the blonde responded, she didn't hear it.
Why then, does everyone call her a monster? Was it wrong for her to want to survive? That can't be it, everybody wants to survive, she wasn't special. Was it because she acted and fought for her survival? That can't be it either or everybody who ever targeted her would be just as wrong as her.
Was it because she didn't want to feel ugly all the time and hid her face?
She knew she wasn't pretty to look at, infact she was ugly enough to crack mirrors. But she never wanted to be this way! She wanted to be pretty too like everyone else. She wanted to not be called a monster the moment someone laid eyes on her...was that too much to ask?
She figured it was.
Yes, that's what she was doing wrong. She was trying to be what she clearly wasn't.
She was trying to play human when she really was a monster. A monster that wasn't welcome in civilization, a monster that was the stuff of nightmares by visage and deeds. A monster with a black heart and vile whims.
Yes, she needed to no longer play a human and embrace becoming a monster. Maybe then she will carve a slice of this world out for herself where she could just exist without second guessing the merit of her existence based on it's impact on everyone else.
This epiphany however, could not stop the stream of hot tears that rolled down her bumpy cheeks. Each tear was the blood of dead hopes for a better future.
"You come to my home...you steal from me...you BEAT ME UP!...YOU TOOK MY MASK! AND SOMEHOW I'M THE MONSTER?", she burst out into laughter but it wasn't one born out of happiness, not with her tears flowing freely.
No, it was the kind that only ever emerged when a person in the moment of their greatest sadness, understood the absurdity of their situation. After all, one can only laugh in their greatest sadness when their life is a joke big enough that only God can play it, even if it was played at their expense.
"YES YOU ARE RIGHT! I AM A MONSTER...AND I'LL KILL YOU!", she screamed with so much intent behind those words that Naruto froze for a second. That's all she needed.
She launched herself at Naruto. It was tough for her to keep her fingers together due to the charge buildup on them so she flared them out and palmed Naruto on the same place she had hit him before.
He collapsed on the snowy ground again, but this time she did not give him a chance to recover. Before he knew it, she was on his back, pressing his face down as hard as she could while keeping her body out of the reach of his arms or legs.
"YOU MADE ME DO THIS!", she shouted as she put her hand on his back and exerted her control over the wind. This was a trick she had used on herself more times than she liked to admit.
It was the first trick she had ever pulled off with her elemental manipulation. Something she still couldn't pull off if her target wasn't directly in contact with her and ended as soon as the contact did.
She commanded the air to not enter Naruto's respiratory system and watched him struggle desperately to breathe.
He couldn't speak, but she knew what he was thinking.
She had done this enough on the few animals that would find themselves in her traps and knew when the panic heated into anger, anger boiled into desperation, desperation cooled into acceptance and acceptance hardened into death.
She could tell Naruto was somewhere between anger and desperation right now. Soon it will be over.
Except it didn't end. It got so, SO MUCH WORSE for her.
It started with him twitching a bit more than she expected, but that itself didn't ring any bells in her mind. It wasn't like she had much experience watching people choke to death.
Then came the growling and him throwing her off of him in a display of strength she knew he didn't previously have.
This sent her brain into crisis mode, but she reasoned it could be a desperate near death second wind he got. A cornered animal fought the hardest, she knew that fact very well. She figured she would just need to subdue him again before ending him.
Then as a visible burst of acidic fiery chakra burst forth from him, she remembered what her chakra sense had told her before she got herself tangled in this mess.
The kid in front of her, was not a kid, but a monster wearing the skin of one.
It was hiding it's fangs and claws but it could pull them out whenever it so pleased. And this wasn't a half-assed monster like her, a monster only in name but in reality just a little girl isolating herself from the world that hurt her too much.
No, this was a monster that reaped lives like a scythe does wheat. This was a monster that terrorized generations before hers and will keep doing it generations after hers. A monster whose wrath was akin to the wrath of nature, for it was no less than a force of nature.
She realized that she wasn't the hunter anymore. She was the prey, and the monster had just risen off the ground and had his eyes locked on her.
She turned away and ran as fast as she could, but barely after lifting the leg that would have taken her first step away from certain doom, a clawed hand caught it.
She didn't get to turn around before the grip on it broke her bone and the claws dug into her flesh, but she did get to scream. And scream she did, till she was lifted up and slammed on the ground.
The only thing that kept her spine and neck intact was the thick and soft layer of snow.
She saw Naruto slowly making his way towards her, eyes red, whisker marks more pronounced and jagged, teeth grown into fangs. He looked more of a monster than she ever did, and that was saying something!
Aiki was a smart girl and the irony of the situation did not escape her notice. She chuckled once, then twice and then burst out laughing.
"Why do you laugh? Are you that eager to die, whelp?", a voice she knew for a fact wasn't Naruto's emerged from his throat.
In between barks of laughter she slowly strung her words together, "You...called me a monster...but you are one too aren't you?"
The red eyes of her executioner still bore into her soul, but he made no moves, as if prompting her to speak her last till she was satisfied. Aiki knew this would be the end of her. She had often thought of her own end, she was no stranger to the harshness of the world.
She knew that the way she lived made sure that her life wouldn't be a particularly long or happy one. She was a smart kid and knew the situation she found herself in was ultimately inevitable.
But knowing something and accepting something are two very different things.
Her kid brain, no matter how smart, could not come to terms with the idea of her own end. Just because she knew it would happen didn't mean she accepted it.
No, she liked living and didn't want to leave the world quite yet. Though she would never admit it, even to herself, her subconscious knew it well...
...She wanted to leave her mark on the world, just like any other person.
She wanted someone to remember her. She didn't want to disappear from the world with no one to remember her and without having done anything of note.
Given the situation she found herself in, she figured the best she could do to fulfill that wish was to tell the demon in front of her the story of her life and hope that he would remember her. She wasn't confident that he would, and she had prepared no 'Final Words', so she spoke the first thing on her mind.
"Everyone told me I was a monster for as long as I can remember. Back in the orphanage, everybody liked to pretend I wasn't real...and when they didn't, it was to hurt me with their words or their actions. It went on for so long that even I started to think I was a monster. But now thanks to you, I know what a true monster looks like. I just think it's very funny that a fake monster like me is going to be killed by a real monster like you.", her laughter only got louder and more fitful.
"The fear of death has driven you mad, insect. But I too appreciate the irony of the situation." The demon's heavy, malicious laughter joined her own.
She laughed till she couldn't anymore and then she cried. The demon kept it's red eyes on her as if waiting for her to stop crying and make her move so it could strike her down, maybe it wanted to give her the death befitting a monster and not the scared and lonely child she was showing herself to be.
But that's exactly what she was, a scared and lonely child.
Over the years she had built walls around her heart. Walls that not only protected her from the cruelty she was subjected to everyday, but also hid her vulnerable heart from everyone. These walls were for protecting her from herself as much as they were to protect her from others.
The walls hid the way her heart would hurt every time someone wished death upon her, lest they get the satisfaction of hurting her. The walls hid the yearning that would rear it's ugly head in her heart whenever she watched kids playing together, lest she delude herself into believing it was possible for her to be a part of their happy lives.
The walls hid the way her heart would burn in the fires of self loathing whenever anyone called her ugly or a monster, lest her soul be consumed by the same fire.
But seeing her life move towards such a pathetic end...tears in her eyes, emptiness in her soul, pain in her heat, regrets on her mind and with not a single soul to mourn her after she is gone...these walls crumbled to dust, and for the first time in a long time, her heart was laid bare.
Her true self was revealed to the world and her executioner.
Yes, she was just a scared and lonely child. And she did what any child would do in her position...throw a tantrum.
She shouted out her resentments to nobody in particular.
"WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE ME SO MUCH? WHY DOES EVERYONE CALL ME A MONSTER? IS IT BECAUSE I'M UGLY? I NEVER WANTED TO LOOK LIKE THIS! I WANT TO BE PRETTY TOO! I WANT FRIENDS TOO! I WANT TO EAT AND SLEEP AND PLAY LIKE EVERYONE ELSE! WHY CAN'T I HAVE THAT? WHY DO I HAVE TO DIE?"
She raised herself off the ground enough to sit with her back resting on her tree, huddling closer to the small fire she had started earlier in the evening. She grabbed her bad leg with both her hands and folded it closer to her. White hot pain coursed through her body and she screamed out in pain...moving the broken leg was NOT a good idea.
Her pain turned to anger and she used it to push more of her words out. The demon in front of her felt significantly less scary now, his red...no...blue eyes looked sad upon hearing her words. He almost looked like the normal, dumb kid she initially thought he was.
"DOES EVERYONE HATE ME BECAUSE I STEAL? BUT THEY HATED ME EVEN BEFORE THAT! DO THEY HATE ME BECAUSE I GET INTO FIGHTS? BUT I NEVER HIT ANYONE BEFORE THEY ATTACK! IS IT BECAUSE I'M MEAN TO EVERYONE? BUT EVERYONE IS MEAN TO ME TOO! I DON'T WANT TO BE NICE TO ANYONE BECAUSE EVERYONE HATES ME!", she grabbed a fistful of snow and threw it at the demon in front of her as a display of her anger.
The demon, to her surprise, didn't end her for this show of aggression. It instead stood there with tears flowing from it's blue eyes and hands shaking.
Seeing him crying, Aiki too, couldn't hold back her tears. She had run out of anger and could no longer rage at the world and those in it.
All that was left in her was sadness, and all she had left to do was accept her end.
"Am I..really...a monster? That must be it! That must be why everyone hates me! I am a monster that just tricked herself into thinking she was human!", she concluded between choking sobs.
"I am a monster that's broken. I want to have friends. I want to be loved. I don't want to fight to survive everyday. I don't want people to beat me. I don't want people to throw stones at me. I don't want people to look at me and think I'm disgusting. I want to have my own piece of the world where I can be alone and I won't feel scared all the time. I...want someone to remember me after I am dead. That's why I have to die now isn't it? I am a broken monster and a fake human. Nobody can ever love me." She looked straight at Naruto as she said these words and saw him walking toward her with shaky steps.
So this was it then, he was coming to end her life. She had accepted it too. So she closed her eyes, tried to smile, stop her tears, and said her final words.
"Do it then, Naruto...Kill me now! But before that, know my name and remember it forever! That is the least you can give me in exchange for my life."
With her eyes still clenched shut, she waited for either a finishing blow or a response from him. When neither came, she continued speaking.
"I was Aiki of Konoha's Orphanage, and I was that for 4 years, from birth till the time I ran away from that prison last May. After that I was Aiki, the Demon Girl of Konoha, a monster, and I have been that ever since. That is my story, remember it after I'm gone...NOW DO YOUR WORST!"
The end she had prepared herself for never came.
When too much time had passed and the adrenaline that had rushed through her system in preparation for her demise had ran it's course, she slowly unclenched her jaw, cautiously opened her eyes, and saw an unexpected scene.
The demon...the kid...Naruto, was bawling his eyes out and leaning over her injured leg. He was trying to touch the injured limb but kept retracting his hand, as if scared to not make the injury worse. Aiki was very confused and a little angry at this turn of events.
"What are you doing? Why not kill me quickly? Do you want to drag it out? Hurt me before ending me?", she meant to shout these questions at him but in her hurt and exhausted state they came out barely louder than whispers.
"I...am..s-sorry! I...d-don't know what happened! T-that wasn't me...I a-am not a m-monster", he managed to choke out between his heavy and ugly sobbing.
"You are sorry?...After everything that happened...YOU ARE SORRY? YOU INVADED MY HOME AND TRIED TO KILL ME! WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU ARE SORRY?", she spoke out in confusion. She couldn't fathom why a demon like him didn't just end her! She couldn't wrap her head around the sudden change of his heart and figured it must have been a trick of his to get her to lower her guard.
"I AM NOT A MONSTER AND I DIDN'T WANT TO KILL YOU...THAT WASN'T ME BACK THERE!", the blonde kid shouted in desperation.
"I DON'T BELIEVE A WORD OUT OF YOUR MOUTH YOU BASTARD! IF YOU DON'T WANNA HURT ME THEN GO! GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM! RUN AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE! I HATE YOU!", she shouted out equally loudly.
Naruto looked at her with a shocked expression on his face, his blue eyes wide and lips quivering trying to come up with the right words to say to make it all better.
"B-but your leg...it's hurt...you need to go to the hospital or you will die! I WANT TO HELP!", he tried to reason with her.
His attempt at reasoning was met with a clump of snow thrown at his head.
"SHUT UP! WHOSE FAULT DO YOU THINK THAT IS? DON'T TRY TO TRICK ME! I DON'T BELIEVE YOU AND NO DOCTOR WILL HELP ME! GET AWAY FROM ME! LEAVE ME ALONE AND GO! AND NEVER COME BACK!"
Seeing his attempt shot down so brutally, he started crying, turned his back on her and ran away.
Seeing his form becoming smaller and smaller as he ran further away, a new thought came to Aiki's mind.
"Was he really trying to help me at the end? He could have killed me if he wanted to with that power of his, but he didn't...he even ran away when I told him to. Did I really just chase away the first person that ever tried to help me?"
"No! That can't be! He tried to kill me! I tried to kill him too...but that was because he invaded my home! Yeah...he was my enemy. Nobody will help a monster like me"
The latter part of her thoughts made sense to her, it was the right decision for her to demand he leave forever and never bother her again...but a small part of her, a part she always wanted to keep hidden, clung to her initial thoughts. It was enough to make her cry.
That night...hungry, injured and exhausted...she cried herself to sleep.
She didn't wake up till late afternoon the next day. And surprisingly, her wounds didn't hurt as bad as they did the previous night.
She looked down at her leg and saw it wrapped in clean white bandages and her broken bone supported and steadied with a wooden stick tied under the bandages. What's more, there was a bunch of food wrapped in a cloth placed near her side. There were enough dried herbs, dried vegetables, dried meats, and hardtack to last her for months!
She got over the pleasant surprise quickly and came to the obvious conclusion...Someone had not only tended to her injuries when she was asleep, but had also left her enough supplies to last through the time it would take for her leg to heal.
She tried to think how this seemingly kind act could actually be part of a greater plan to harm her...but she drew a blank every time. Treating her injury could only be good for her and why heal her leg only to poison her later?
She was finally forced to conclude that someone had shown her kindness...But it didn't really make her happy when she had no face to connect to that act of kindness. She was grateful, but she would keep herself from getting happy until someone did something good for her WHEN she could see it.
As the sun got lower, she got over the events of the previous day as well and realized she was VERY hungry.
She scooped up some of the fresh snow and dumped it in her pot and started a fire with some wood she picked up from the days worth of firewood she still had left. She needed to soften up the meat and hardtack before eating, they were too salty and hard to eat without boiling them first.
She felt some semblance of peace and relaxation as the smell of her latest meal reached her nose. "Yesterday was THE WORST! I never want to live through that again...at least today is good!", she thought with a faint smile on her face and eyes taking in the beauty of the twilight sky. Her mind was already trying to distance her from the events of the past.
Alas, the day got much worse for her.
A group of teenagers emerged from the trees in front of her, their faces twisted in cruel smirks and their hands holding blunt improvised weapons. Aiki felt cold sweat running down her back...this was not good.
"Lookie here fellas, that there really is the dumb 'demon' bitch that be running around in these here parts lately! Bummed her leg looks like it...SAY FELLAS! WHAT DO WE DO TO LAME HORSES BACK AT THE FARM?", a particularly dumb looking one (which was saying something since none of them looked particularly smart) among them spoke up.
She knew her only option, if she wanted to survive, was to run away. But she couldn't run on a broken leg.
"Shoot 'em is what we do, put 'em out of their misery!", someone among them answered.
This was it then...there was no escape and they would certainly kill her.
"Holy! She raked in a big haul, lookit all that grub!", another said while pointing to the food she had received last night.
The first bit of food she had received out of someone's kindness and it got her accused for stealing, she would have laughed if she wasn't sure it would get her killed sooner.
"Ah say we put her down and...liberate...them supplies", another one shared his opinion.
"Ain't that a great idea! What do y'all say fellas? Up for some...community service?", the first one, apparently their leader, spoke up and everyone shouted their agreement.
Aiki could only stare at them and her leg in frustration, prepare to survive even a second longer, and pray for a miracle to save her life.