Team Gai vs. Zombies [Naruto/WWZ]
Table of Contents | Part 2: Resting
Title: [TBD] Part 1: Searching
Fandom: au!Naruto, World War Z
Characters: Tenten, Lee, Gai
Word Count: 1,846 1,853
Rating: PG13-R. I don't know. Has some gore.
Summary: Tenten, Lee, and Gai are looking for Neji during a zombie apocalypse.
Author's Notes: Totally and utterly phoenix_melody's fault, though she'll blame it on askerian's fic. Also, completely unbeta'd. Did some cleanup of dropped words, verb tenses, and changed a few descriptors. Otherwise, it’s the same as before. -Mina 3.26.10 Comments accepted! XD;
2.28.11 - changed title from "Zombie Apocalypse AU [Naruto/WWZ]" to "Team Gai vs. Zombies [Naruto/WWZ]"
It wasn't the quiet that bothered her. It was the emptiness that filled the quiet that caused her nerves to unwind one sinewy strand at a time.
As they got closer and Tenten recognized more features of the land, she began to wonder if maybe she wasn't imagining things. Neji's family had always been prone to keeping noise to a minimum. She glanced to her other best friend, and much to her non-relief, the normally boisterous young man and his father were uncommonly quiet.
Gai saw her, and still managed his trademark "nice-guy pose" and teeth gleam, but the concern in his eyes...
She shook her head and distracted herself to make double-sure the safety on her single-barrel rifle was off, that everything was clean, and nothing looked jammed. Memories of the kids teasing her because her father was a weapons nut in addition to being an actual, honest-to-God blacksmith flitted through her head. They weren't laughing now.
Actually, no one was.
A shake of a bush caused them all to freeze. Her weapon snapped up, as did Gai's, ready to use. Lee's favored gladii appeared in his hands by magic, his usually cheerful demeanor replaced by focused intensity.
Another shake, and terrified blur of fur streaked away from them.
In the direction opposite of Neji's house.
Bad sign. Very bad.
Part of her mind chittered that they should follow the animal; after all, they had better instincts. The rest of her mind made her push on.
Eon after eon passed between each heartbeat, but nothing emerged. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief and...kept her rifle up. She frowned, looking at her hands, at gun sight--
--at the familiar, pale-eyed figure shuffling toward them.
Her heart leapt into her throat, and the air she inhaled sharply nearly choked her.
His shoulder-length hair was dirty, his blue-and-white pinstripe pajamas spattered with browned blood, except where it soaked the fabric, starting under his chin and spreading all the way down the shirt tails and onto the pants. His teeth were black with what she didn't want to speculate.
She exhaled, and squeezed the trigger.
The special silencer did its job in muffling the report, and she had a moment to see the rear of his skull explode in fragments as the head snapped back. The body crumpled and didn't stir.
Lee dashed forward, swords disappearing into the hip-sheathes. Gai kept his rifle up and weaved it side to side, covering him. Tenten did likewise and approached much more slowly.
"It's not him," Lee said quietly.
"I know." That's how I could shoot him. She still wiped at her eyes. Isamu had been a good friend, someone who liked to tease her to just this side of being offensive, someone who was almost never without his older twin brother
Lee checked the body. She saw him push a sleeve up, and found how from the hand-bones down, the flesh had been almost skinned off. Further up the arm, they saw brown-spotted bandages, and beneath those, the site of infection. A bite from a human mouth.
Her body suddenly went cold. "We need to keep going," she heard herself say. "We have to make sure."
She expected one of them to argue. The Hyuuga estate, a veritable fortress and arguably one of the safest places amidst this madness, had been breached. But they both nodded, and those achingly familiar smiles sprouted. And from that, the sun seemed all the more brighter.
"We'll find him, Tenten. It's a promise," Gai said.
"YOSH!" Lee exclaimed, earning him a glare from Gai hard enough to make the boy flinch. He recovered quickly and gave Tenten an enthusiastic nod. There was no doubt in his mind that they would find Neji, and that Neji would be okay.
Tenten carried this hope as well, but with each passing day it faded a little more with all the destruction and carnage and battles. Surely, if he was still alive, they would have seen some sign of him. Neji was arguably the smartest person in their grade. Actually, he was probably the smartest in the whole damn school and should already be in his junior year of college if he had decided to take it easy and not be such an over-achiever. He would know how to survive in spite of this. He would know they -- she -- would be looking for them. She knew he would have left them a sign he was okay, if he was. Not finding anything terrified her.
Finding Isamu turned into a ghoul terrified her more.
Gai finally pushed them along, up the pathway to the estate. The path usually consisted of packed gravel that the groundskeepers kept smooth with daily rakings. It was churned now, the white pebbles slopping over the wooden frames into the grass. The heavy wrought-iron gates normally locked against the outside world were flung open, and the pristine white walls were marred with dirty handprints and bloody ones. And she could just see lumps before the walls, and inside the courtyard as well.
Her steps slowed, dread consuming her. She needed to know, she told herself. She needed to know. She just didn't want to know.
~
The fighting had started inside the compound. That much she could tell from the broken makeshift melee weapons, and the discarded actual throwing weapons, along with the sheer damage to everything. But the conflict must have drawn attention because some of the bodies were definitely not Hyuuga. But just how the family had been taken by surprise by this she didn't understand.
As they searched for Neji and for answers, they found a few more ghouls shambling around, searching for more to eat. She and Gai shot them before they could get too close. They found the eyrie, home of the prized birds the Hyuuga raised, trained, and bred. Tenten winced at how the bars of the cages had been pulled apart, the flutters of feathers and fluff and dried bird shit telling the story. They found the larders (she had to smile, no one called storage rooms larders anymore), empty of anything useful. That which had been left behind had been too bulky to move. The dojo's weapons displays had also been raided, the racks all empty. She took it as a good sign.
On purpose she kept from searching the rooms for last. One of them had a putrid smell to it. She readied her rifle and carefully stepped into the doorway.
A badly-eaten corpse would have stared back at her if it had had eyes still. Yellow-white bone shone dully in the fading gloom. Some of the scalp remained, as did the hair attached to it. The abdomen had been ripped open and the walls gnawed down, the organs missing, the ribs chewed and bearing teeth marks.
She might not have recognized who it was if not for little green dragon on the exposed ankle. Osamu. Isamu's brother.
Funny how something as simple as attaching a name to a corpse kicked in the gag reflex. Her stomach revolted, and she had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from retching then and there. She took a hasty step back, and collided with something that gave too much for it to be a wall. A hand clapped onto her shoulder and she let out an involuntary shriek.
"Lee!" she hissed when she had a little more control of herself, and clutched him into a desperate hug. "Don't do that!"
The scream had brought Gai within moments, his rifle trained on them. He relaxed when he saw no threat. "What happened?"
"I found Osamu," Tenten answered. She hated that her voice was wobbly.
Lee nodded and said, "Dad, the sun's going down."
Gai grunted. Nighttime was their nemesis. The ghouls were attracted to light and fire, and worse, they didn't need to see to be able to track. "Tenten..."
"Just a few more minutes," she pleaded in a rush. "We haven't even reached his bedroom yet."
The man she admired almost as much as her father pursed his lips, furrowed his brow, and then nodded. "Quickly."
She turned and walked with speed, but not so much as to thump on the wooden floors, and slowed when she saw that his door was closed. Closed doors were rarely good. More often than not they held nasty surprises behind them, especially if they were bedrooms.
Lee said her name quietly as he caught up with her. She tried to give him a smile of thanks for not letting her face whatever she had to face alone.
He approached the door first, gladii in hand. She moved so that she had a clear shot at the door. He inched the door open and she listened hard to hear over the pounding of her heart.
Inside lay Neji's room, pristine as any time she had ever seen it. Empty of people, dead or otherwise, and strangely full. It didn't look like anything was missing. Everything was in its place. The only thing out of place was the wire strung taut at neck-level. She frowned and shouldered her weapon. Lee put one of his swords way but kept the other at the ready.
She reached for the wire and let her fingers just rest on it as she stepped under it -- and over the one at just the height of her ankles -- and into the room. The wire was very well secured, being wrapped around two sturdy planks that had been subsequently over-nailed into the walls. The floor-level wire disappeared into small holes in the walls adjacent to the door-wall. She stepped to the side to allow Lee entrance to poke around as she continued to stay still and study everything.
Neji's pictures were still there. His books as well. The bed was nicely made as if he had only stepped out but would be back. Even the blue bird plushie she had won him at the dart game at last year's fair remained in its place of honor. For some reason, that hurt, and she crossed to it to pick up the ridiculous thing and caress the fake fur.
The tears came without warning or sound. He would have taken this with him, if he had managed to escape. That the bird was here, it could only mean one thing.
She scrubbed angrily at her face. Damn it, it was Neji. How dare he just--just--manage to get himself killed! That--that idiot! Still clutching the bird, she threw up her hands into the air and raised her eyes as well to cast her anger at Someone.
And laughed. Snickered, really, and had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from actually laughing.
"Tenten?" Lee asked. Then he also looked up, and grinned.
On the ceiling a large rope knot, and the outline of a trap door. Scrawled in less-than-elegant printing outside the outline, probably the result of writing from upside down while hanging halfway out the attic's trap door, was a simple message.
Don't forget the bird.
-Neji
Table of Contents | Part 2: Resting
Title: [TBD] Part 1: Searching
Fandom: au!Naruto, World War Z
Characters: Tenten, Lee, Gai
Word Count: 1,846 1,853
Rating: PG13-R. I don't know. Has some gore.
Summary: Tenten, Lee, and Gai are looking for Neji during a zombie apocalypse.
Author's Notes: Totally and utterly phoenix_melody's fault, though she'll blame it on askerian's fic. Also, completely unbeta'd. Did some cleanup of dropped words, verb tenses, and changed a few descriptors. Otherwise, it’s the same as before. -Mina 3.26.10 Comments accepted! XD;
2.28.11 - changed title from "Zombie Apocalypse AU [Naruto/WWZ]" to "Team Gai vs. Zombies [Naruto/WWZ]"
It wasn't the quiet that bothered her. It was the emptiness that filled the quiet that caused her nerves to unwind one sinewy strand at a time.
As they got closer and Tenten recognized more features of the land, she began to wonder if maybe she wasn't imagining things. Neji's family had always been prone to keeping noise to a minimum. She glanced to her other best friend, and much to her non-relief, the normally boisterous young man and his father were uncommonly quiet.
Gai saw her, and still managed his trademark "nice-guy pose" and teeth gleam, but the concern in his eyes...
She shook her head and distracted herself to make double-sure the safety on her single-barrel rifle was off, that everything was clean, and nothing looked jammed. Memories of the kids teasing her because her father was a weapons nut in addition to being an actual, honest-to-God blacksmith flitted through her head. They weren't laughing now.
Actually, no one was.
A shake of a bush caused them all to freeze. Her weapon snapped up, as did Gai's, ready to use. Lee's favored gladii appeared in his hands by magic, his usually cheerful demeanor replaced by focused intensity.
Another shake, and terrified blur of fur streaked away from them.
In the direction opposite of Neji's house.
Bad sign. Very bad.
Part of her mind chittered that they should follow the animal; after all, they had better instincts. The rest of her mind made her push on.
Eon after eon passed between each heartbeat, but nothing emerged. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief and...kept her rifle up. She frowned, looking at her hands, at gun sight--
--at the familiar, pale-eyed figure shuffling toward them.
Her heart leapt into her throat, and the air she inhaled sharply nearly choked her.
His shoulder-length hair was dirty, his blue-and-white pinstripe pajamas spattered with browned blood, except where it soaked the fabric, starting under his chin and spreading all the way down the shirt tails and onto the pants. His teeth were black with what she didn't want to speculate.
She exhaled, and squeezed the trigger.
The special silencer did its job in muffling the report, and she had a moment to see the rear of his skull explode in fragments as the head snapped back. The body crumpled and didn't stir.
Lee dashed forward, swords disappearing into the hip-sheathes. Gai kept his rifle up and weaved it side to side, covering him. Tenten did likewise and approached much more slowly.
"It's not him," Lee said quietly.
"I know." That's how I could shoot him. She still wiped at her eyes. Isamu had been a good friend, someone who liked to tease her to just this side of being offensive, someone who was almost never without his older twin brother
Lee checked the body. She saw him push a sleeve up, and found how from the hand-bones down, the flesh had been almost skinned off. Further up the arm, they saw brown-spotted bandages, and beneath those, the site of infection. A bite from a human mouth.
Her body suddenly went cold. "We need to keep going," she heard herself say. "We have to make sure."
She expected one of them to argue. The Hyuuga estate, a veritable fortress and arguably one of the safest places amidst this madness, had been breached. But they both nodded, and those achingly familiar smiles sprouted. And from that, the sun seemed all the more brighter.
"We'll find him, Tenten. It's a promise," Gai said.
"YOSH!" Lee exclaimed, earning him a glare from Gai hard enough to make the boy flinch. He recovered quickly and gave Tenten an enthusiastic nod. There was no doubt in his mind that they would find Neji, and that Neji would be okay.
Tenten carried this hope as well, but with each passing day it faded a little more with all the destruction and carnage and battles. Surely, if he was still alive, they would have seen some sign of him. Neji was arguably the smartest person in their grade. Actually, he was probably the smartest in the whole damn school and should already be in his junior year of college if he had decided to take it easy and not be such an over-achiever. He would know how to survive in spite of this. He would know they -- she -- would be looking for them. She knew he would have left them a sign he was okay, if he was. Not finding anything terrified her.
Finding Isamu turned into a ghoul terrified her more.
Gai finally pushed them along, up the pathway to the estate. The path usually consisted of packed gravel that the groundskeepers kept smooth with daily rakings. It was churned now, the white pebbles slopping over the wooden frames into the grass. The heavy wrought-iron gates normally locked against the outside world were flung open, and the pristine white walls were marred with dirty handprints and bloody ones. And she could just see lumps before the walls, and inside the courtyard as well.
Her steps slowed, dread consuming her. She needed to know, she told herself. She needed to know. She just didn't want to know.
~
The fighting had started inside the compound. That much she could tell from the broken makeshift melee weapons, and the discarded actual throwing weapons, along with the sheer damage to everything. But the conflict must have drawn attention because some of the bodies were definitely not Hyuuga. But just how the family had been taken by surprise by this she didn't understand.
As they searched for Neji and for answers, they found a few more ghouls shambling around, searching for more to eat. She and Gai shot them before they could get too close. They found the eyrie, home of the prized birds the Hyuuga raised, trained, and bred. Tenten winced at how the bars of the cages had been pulled apart, the flutters of feathers and fluff and dried bird shit telling the story. They found the larders (she had to smile, no one called storage rooms larders anymore), empty of anything useful. That which had been left behind had been too bulky to move. The dojo's weapons displays had also been raided, the racks all empty. She took it as a good sign.
On purpose she kept from searching the rooms for last. One of them had a putrid smell to it. She readied her rifle and carefully stepped into the doorway.
A badly-eaten corpse would have stared back at her if it had had eyes still. Yellow-white bone shone dully in the fading gloom. Some of the scalp remained, as did the hair attached to it. The abdomen had been ripped open and the walls gnawed down, the organs missing, the ribs chewed and bearing teeth marks.
She might not have recognized who it was if not for little green dragon on the exposed ankle. Osamu. Isamu's brother.
Funny how something as simple as attaching a name to a corpse kicked in the gag reflex. Her stomach revolted, and she had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from retching then and there. She took a hasty step back, and collided with something that gave too much for it to be a wall. A hand clapped onto her shoulder and she let out an involuntary shriek.
"Lee!" she hissed when she had a little more control of herself, and clutched him into a desperate hug. "Don't do that!"
The scream had brought Gai within moments, his rifle trained on them. He relaxed when he saw no threat. "What happened?"
"I found Osamu," Tenten answered. She hated that her voice was wobbly.
Lee nodded and said, "Dad, the sun's going down."
Gai grunted. Nighttime was their nemesis. The ghouls were attracted to light and fire, and worse, they didn't need to see to be able to track. "Tenten..."
"Just a few more minutes," she pleaded in a rush. "We haven't even reached his bedroom yet."
The man she admired almost as much as her father pursed his lips, furrowed his brow, and then nodded. "Quickly."
She turned and walked with speed, but not so much as to thump on the wooden floors, and slowed when she saw that his door was closed. Closed doors were rarely good. More often than not they held nasty surprises behind them, especially if they were bedrooms.
Lee said her name quietly as he caught up with her. She tried to give him a smile of thanks for not letting her face whatever she had to face alone.
He approached the door first, gladii in hand. She moved so that she had a clear shot at the door. He inched the door open and she listened hard to hear over the pounding of her heart.
Inside lay Neji's room, pristine as any time she had ever seen it. Empty of people, dead or otherwise, and strangely full. It didn't look like anything was missing. Everything was in its place. The only thing out of place was the wire strung taut at neck-level. She frowned and shouldered her weapon. Lee put one of his swords way but kept the other at the ready.
She reached for the wire and let her fingers just rest on it as she stepped under it -- and over the one at just the height of her ankles -- and into the room. The wire was very well secured, being wrapped around two sturdy planks that had been subsequently over-nailed into the walls. The floor-level wire disappeared into small holes in the walls adjacent to the door-wall. She stepped to the side to allow Lee entrance to poke around as she continued to stay still and study everything.
Neji's pictures were still there. His books as well. The bed was nicely made as if he had only stepped out but would be back. Even the blue bird plushie she had won him at the dart game at last year's fair remained in its place of honor. For some reason, that hurt, and she crossed to it to pick up the ridiculous thing and caress the fake fur.
The tears came without warning or sound. He would have taken this with him, if he had managed to escape. That the bird was here, it could only mean one thing.
She scrubbed angrily at her face. Damn it, it was Neji. How dare he just--just--manage to get himself killed! That--that idiot! Still clutching the bird, she threw up her hands into the air and raised her eyes as well to cast her anger at Someone.
And laughed. Snickered, really, and had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from actually laughing.
"Tenten?" Lee asked. Then he also looked up, and grinned.
On the ceiling a large rope knot, and the outline of a trap door. Scrawled in less-than-elegant printing outside the outline, probably the result of writing from upside down while hanging halfway out the attic's trap door, was a simple message.
Don't forget the bird.
-Neji
Table of Contents | Part 2: Resting