An Inuzuka Kiba Love Story
Part One - Black Blood on Velvet
Rating: Young Adult - for little teen angst, language, and unrealized love.
"Ugly Girl, Ugly Girl! Yoko-san's an ugly girl!"
She was big boned, and tall, with a pretty face without the body to match. She wasn't petite like Sakura or Ino, and she wasn't the irresistible type that didn't speak like Hintata, she wasn't even cute. After all, her nickname in the village was "Ugly Girl."
Sometimes, Ayaka wondered why her parents named her that at birth, the meaning "Colorful flower" in a language she sometimes wished she never knew - not with the hurtful things her peers said to her, not with the remarks said only when her "too-wide-for-a-girl" shoulders were turned to face them. She wasn't at all colorful - save from her language at times when fury boiled in her veins - choosing rather to wear earthy tones, dark greens and blacks, as opposed to pinks and pastels. Those colors never really did flatter her naturally darker skin - hued somewhere between a light-bark brown and caramel - and her unnaturally black-green hair that fell just to her shoulders in a spiraled mess that she often kept pulled to the nape of her neck. What was the point of trying to be girly when you looked like shit anyway?
Her eyes - still looking back at Ayaka in the mirror just above her bathroom sink - were a rather attractive shade of jade, but Ugly Girl was sure to cover them up with a thousand pounds of charcoal colored eye shadow and liner to draw the attention away. She looked like an oversized raccoon - she knew that - and was more than often proclaimed as an uglier, female version of Gaara, but Ayaka didn't care much. The new Kazekage was an idol to her somehow - his silent strength and coldness gave her hope that maybe one day she'd be able to flush out her emotions as well. It would make things so much easier for her. For everyone...
She exited her bathroom in haste, pulling a tattered, black fish-net top over a dark-green muscle-tank. She didn't have much time to spend perfecting her appearance, only glancing at the full-length mirror mounted into the back of her bedroom door for a fleeting second before kicking on her shoes - black-cloth sandals with rubber soles her mother had bought for her in Suna when she visited there last summer. They kept her agile on her feet, able to move quickly and swiftly when she would turn or kick sharply, unlike the clumsy, wooden things so infamous for women in Kohana. Ayaka had more than once swallowed a mouth full of dirt when wearing those shoes.
She jumped up, crouching on the sill of her window with the grace of a feline - the act looking odd for her body-type - knees at her chest, left arm out to the side, fingers drawn around the outer, wooden part of the window her right elbow leisurely set on her knee. The sky was darkening with a mass of gray coming from the west, clouds twisting and turning within themselves. They would more than likely settle over the village in only a few short hours. Mentally, Ugly Girl calculated how much training she'd be able to get in if she went to the nearby forest - it wasn't as much as she would have hoped, but it was something.
And something was certainly better than nothing.
Ayaka jumped from the sill with ease, her form dropping a good hundred feet before the soles of her rubber shoes made contact with the roof of a nearby residential home. Had she dropped from the sky hard, she would have either broken a leg, or both, but she managed to control the speed of the air rushing around her as well as press her first channel of chakra into her legs to give her higher resistance to the shock. The girl bounced forward, doing an easy back-flip into the air before dropping to a small alley just besides the house, the pound of her heart suddenly jolting in her chest when she felt him, him as in her rival and somewhat best friend Inuzuka Kiba.
"Hey there, big butt," he called, his slightly hoarse tone beckoning her to him somehow, his grin untamable, "Ready to train some more?"
The question was random - they had agreed only to train together maybe once a week, and that had been fulfilled just yesterday - and it took her off guard. However, she couldn't ignore the sudden jolt of happiness that took over her mind in a second, long enough for her to answer.
"Sure," she grinned in return, her voice feathery, but somehow deep for a girl - like that woman Temari, the one Kiba's "friend" Shikamaru had spoken about so much. "Lead the way!"
Kiba took off with such an astonishing speed that Ayaka almost didn't see him fly by her in a fraction of a second, taking off towards one of the main streets in the village. Huffing, she raced after him, her steps quick and silent as she urged herself forward following him only by the feel of the Inu that he left by in his steps, the microscopic energy that lingered behind in the soil he stepped on so carefully. Not many people knew of this specific trait that only she - out of her entire family - had been gifted with, but it often came in handy when someone needed to be found or, when Ayaka simply needed to find someone.
She was only a blur to the crowds of people she so carefully rounded, however - unlike Uzumaki Naruto - they did not run from her path, finding her too insignificant to worry about. Not that Ugly Girl cared herself, for she had never been one to raise a ruckus in a village she only so faintly knew. It wouldn't be worth causing trouble, as it wasn't worth being seen... having been a nomad for almost her entire existence, Ayaka had simply learned not to intertwine herself too deeply with those who she would leave whenever it was that fate pulled her from them. It was just less painful that way. For everyone...
However, she knew she was breaking this rule - even the tiniest bit - with Kiba, finding some girlish fondness in him that often kept her up at night when she would be better off sleeping. When she found herself holding her pillow to her chest like she (wished) she could him. The way her lips would come in a beginners kiss against that very same object, so softly, so mutely that it was barely a kiss at all, afraid that if she really envisioned it, it would come true.
And that was not something Ugly Girl was willing to risk.
After about fifteen minutes running, Ayaka found herself along the outskirts of a common training field used for the up and coming formal Shinobi of Kohana. She was breathing heavily when she came to step into the center of the field, sweat running between her shoulder blades and breasts, the start of her hair-line at her forehead glistening as well, making her onyx locks shine ever more hunter green in the sunlight. She listened, intently, for any give away of Kiba's position - the rustle of a branch, the unguarded step of a foot - and found only a deep silence that wasn't really meant for a place such as this. It was unnerving, and so very painful.
It reminded her of the minutes after her father's death. The creeping quiet that choked her even now, six months later, when she childishly let herself linger too deeply in her memories of him. Like Snow White in the enchanted forest, only, in this mess of black-hooded trees and evil, Ayaka knew she would not find sanctuary - for all she recalled clearly was blood, black blood against velvet.
"Here, big butt," the voice seemed to come at her at all angles, dangerously close and forbidding, even in a clearing as large as this. Simply on instinct Ugly Girl crouched down, all weight braced lightly on her thighs, as her arms came to gracefully fold out in the air besides her chest. Her fingers flicked rapidly in unison, in a series of light-quick hand signs that charged the static air around her palms before suddenly, that newly made energy illumined in her hands, forming and reshaping into twin daggers that fit perfectly within the inside of her hand, the light dissipating after a moment of brief reconstruction. Black-sliver metal inscribed with Japanese calligraphy glinted darkly in the last rays of the ever fading sun - two powerful, deadly, sacred weapons.
"Got'cha girlie," the voice laughed at Ayaka, as she distinctly felt a wave of chakra ripple through the soil at her feet, the animated image of Kiba running to the left of her body flaring to life in her mind. She winced from the intensity of it, it nearly blinding her from behind her eyes, but she managed to smuggle a smirk on usually drooped lips, twisting backward before Kiba's fist - now visible in the air - swiped across the place where her face had once been.
"Don't think so," the cockiness was never present in her tone, as she swiftly - the act seeming impossible in the awkward, nearly back-bending position she was in - threw herself forward, the dagger in her left hand disappearing when her fingers gripped Kiba's down-turned wrist in a half a second.
The Inu-lover muffled a curse.
Using the balls of her feet, Ayaka pushed herself up to standing position, using her weight to pull his arm downward as she pivoted a bit to side knocking him off balance and face first into the ground.
It was the first of many blows Kiba took to the head that day.
The fighting continued aggressively, lots of trash talking coming from the Inu-lover's over confident side. Ugly Girl managed to land a few good punches on his stomach and arms, but Kiba really got her when he managed to somehow duck down long enough to pull a near-ground spin-kick that knocked her right onto her back, much harder than she usually fell seeing as she tried to fight it, bruising her from tailbone to shoulder-blades. It knocked the wind from her lungs, leaving her to gasp air through her mouth in a very hysterical "fish-out-of-water" manner, driving Ayaka's immature sparring partner to laugh so hard he nearly fell.
"That was freakin' hilarious!" he managed to exclaim to her between long and hoarse laughs. He was mocking her so harshly that she felt it even despite the pain of the bruise. "It's so funny to see you actually fall, Miss. Extreme-Balance!"
He was still making fun of Ugly Girl.
Pushing herself up to her elbows, she let out a low hiss, feeling somehow violated. She thought he was her friend. She thought that he maybe wasn't like the rest of those kids their age in Kohana, that he was kind, that he was different, that he was worth her opening - even a crack - her heart to.
Ayaka could deal with the name "Big Butt", playing it off more as a tease than an actual insult, but "Miss. Extreme-Balance?"
That made her feel like something out of a terribly graphic and bloody horror movie.
"I'm not abnormal! I'm not a freak! I'm not, I'm not, I'm not!"
However, a coward she was.
She booked, took off running in whatever random direction she could find that didn't involve him in her way. It was better this way, if she just left before she broke her own heart by yelling at him in some preteenish way - despite the fact she was seventeen. Better yet, it was better if she left so she wouldn't do anything stupid, like kiss that stupid, beautiful grin off his face. It was just better this way. For everyone...
"Yo, where ya goin'?" he asked the question like he was hurt, as he caught her around the waist after he raced up next to her just before she got out of the clearing. She looked at him through narrowed eyes, feeling goose pimples rise on her skin when his fingers gripped the fabric of her fishnet and tank sticking to her sweaty ribs to keep her from going anywhere. They were eye to eye - Kiba only being a half an inch taller than she, though the brunette often proclaimed he was at least an inch higher than she, if not more - green meeting brown, like the forest they were standing in. Alone.
It was that last thought that drove Ayaka's heart into her throat, lodging itself in her voice-box to keep her from uttering even a single, stupid or smart word to him.
"What's wrong with you?" he asked - another question of his she would leave unanswered - his slightly upturned eyes narrowing as well, though not in the anger that Ugly Girl's were currently in, but a strange sense of curiosity that made a odd half-frown cross the brunette's lips. "Ya scared or somethin'? That I'll beat ya too badly!?"
She couldn't hold his gaze, the shame of her internal paranoia making her seem filled with ever more self-doubt and pain. So, she looked over his shoulder, an automatic and deep frown etching into her face as she tried to will the heat from her cheeks - though it wouldn't be easily seen on her already dark-tinted skin - as her mind focused on the warmth on his hands on her waist, of the way his fingers were so entangled with the cloth of her shirts.
He looked at her for another long moment, before throwing his head back in a loud, long laugh that left Ugly Girl feeling more self-conscience than she did before. He dropped his hands.
"What?" she choked, managing to swallow her heart.
"You're weird as hell," he laughed again, starting to walk away, "You try and run away and I stop you 'cause ya can't just go runnin' from a fight, yet you didn't even fight me off!"
'Maybe I'm glad you stopped me...'
Just then the sky opened up and poured down on them.
"Storm's here," Kiba smiled, raindrops sticking to his eyelashes and hood.
A growl came from his over-sized coat, just at his chest, as a violent kind of extra fist tented the jacket just at the base of Kiba's throat. Ayaka inhaled sharply, feeling a sudden current of fear run up her spine in a reverse chill - from her stomach, to her head.
"Kiba-" the girl started to choke, feeling small inside her non-petite body, just as Akamaru poked his head out from beneath the zipper, long ears falling across the Inu-lover's chest, narrowed eyes squinted at the ever rain that would - the dog could feel it - soon be coming down in sheets.
Had be been there all along?
"Akamaru," Ugly Girl managed to sigh, before a clap of thunder made her instinctively duck down, arms over her head as a loud, childish whimper came from somewhere in her chest. Emerald eyes widened as she mentally kicked herself in the ass. Had he heard her? Much less, did he think she was some kind of wimp for being so afraid of a thunderstorm?
"Yo, let's go before it gets worse, big-butt," she heard him yell through the roar of the rain. Ugly Girl felt a harsh tug on her shoulder.
And soon, she was running, Kiba's hand attached to hers in a grip that could be compared to something like death. Akamaru was growling and barking by their side, keeping pace.
The way Kiba's fingers cupped her hand made Ayaka feel something that she had never felt before, something that she couldn't put a name to.
Though she frowned inwardly at this weakness that tugged innocently at her chest, she was physically smiling until lightening came in three jagged bolts that landed only feet from her, making the girl flinch and trip into the grass - the muddy grass.
Kiba helped her up, laughing again, taking her elbow in his hand, "Damn, this is goin' take forever, isn't it?"
If it prolonged that soft, nearly pleasant tone in his voice then Ugly Girl would make sure it did.
"My mom won't care, Aya," the Inu-lover assured with a sigh, as the dark-haired girl shivered at his doorstep. "She won't even be home tonight."
"But I don't want you to get in trouble," Ugly Girl insisted, eyeing the expensive sofa that loomed just feet from the step-up walkway where Kiba was already standing, his shoes off and Akamaru somewhere inside. The house was beautiful; not exactly screaming of wealth, but it was higher end and reeked of comfort. However, it wasn't exactly homey to her, she felt like an alien to the smells and sights, like she imposing on the very walls.
But most of all, she felt like her presence alone disrupted the very balance of the house, like she was parasite in the perfectly healthy body.
"I won't," he promised, his tone rough, like he was sick of it - sick of her, "Like I said, she won't even be home tonight, she's out with my Aunt, having some," he drew quotation marks in the air, "female bonding time."
The way he said it made Ayaka giggle, despite the warnings going off in her head, the fight or flight reaction making her tense and her stomach jump up and down like it was skipping over a God damn rope.
"Plus," he added, with another heavy sigh, "You just have to stay until the rain lets up. I don't want you to have a panic attack outside. Then ya can go."
He was making her leaving casual, like he was warning he wouldn't force her out when the rain stopped, but he'd like her leave and somehow, Ayaka was okay with that.
She stepped through the threshold, arms tightly wrapped around her abdomen.
She was so wet she was dripping, her hair sticking to her face and neck, her once raccoon eyes running down her cheeks in tear-drop stains of gray.
"You look cold," he said after an awkward moment of silence passed between them, standing next to each other in the middle of the living room. "You can get a shower, or somethin', if ya want, to warm up, or whatever."
Ayaka could tell it was hard for him. Hell, it would have been hard for her too.
That's one of the things that she and Kiba had in common, she noticed, they both didn't know how to deal with other people, choosing rather to avoid them than to deal with them straight on. It was just so much easier that way. For everyone...
"Sure," she smiled, trying to polite.
He led her to the bathroom - which stood just against the back of the living room through an oak door. It was a modern and American-styled, that opened at hinges on the left side, swinging inward. The Inu-Lover flicked on the light before turning to a small closet just to the right, pulling out a large, green towel and matching washcloth, tossing them to Ayaka despite the fact her arms were still around her waist. She fell forward in her steps to catch them, her hands gripping the fabric in time before it hit the floor.
Kiba gave her a pointed look, "You really are a klutz."
There was no playfulness to his tone.
"Sometimes," she smiled, weakly, entering the bathroom with a small nod of her head, push the door shut with a light push of her foot, whispering, "Thank you," before using a little more weight to click it closed.
Placing the towels on the toilet - its top seat already up - Ayaka avoided her reflection in the mirror while she surveyed the bathroom - it was really very small, and painted a strange crimson color that screamed blood to her.
She pushed away the memories of pa, and thought of Kiba.
Shivering, Ayaka hesitatively stripped down to her birthday suit, her front two teeth digging her into her lower lip the entire time before jumping into the shower, an arm pulled across her breasts in a half-assed modest cover-up for the walls of Kiba's bathroom as she pulled/forced the shower-curtain closed as quickly as she could.
She felt a certain kind of safety in the semi-darkness that the red-flowered curtain radiated into the bathtub, blocking off most of the light that would expose her for the true Ugly Girl she was felt she was. Turning on the water with a pull and a flick of the wrist to the left, she braced herself for the spurt of steaming liquid that hit her head on. She grounded her jaw, dropping her arms to her sides, ignoring the curve of blubber that she felt behind her forearms at her hips - that bothered her more than the over-hundred-degree water that was burning her skin; attempting to will away that awkward, almost "eyes-on-back" feeling that was engulfing her because she was naked, and Kiba was only in the next room - a hundred feet away, a wall away, a door away.
Panic suddenly rose in her chest with the danger that she might have forgotten to lock the door.
'Kiba won't come in, he'll hear the water on for the shower,' Ayaka told herself, claming down, stepping from the water and to the small space just at the opposite the shower-head, fingering through the random shampoo and conditioner bottles that littered a too-small shower-basket suspended by a hook mounted into the top tiling surrounding the bathtub. Shrugging - the causal gesture reminding her of the place she was in - she picked a random bottle smelling of something she recognized, but couldn't name, squeezing a palm-full of the contents into her hand before messily applying it her hair.
'What was Kiba thinking?' she wondered, fingers massaging her scalp. Was he annoyed that she was here? Yeah, he'd invited her over, but that was just because of the way she'd whimpered and ducked their entire run back to the village - like the lazy coward she was. Some emotionless Ugly Girl she was! She couldn't even keep that boy from seeing right through her fear!
Ranking her fingers through her hair, just before ducking into the over-heated water, Ayaka promised she'd - no matter what - never allow her guard to drop that much ever again.
She washed up quickly with a non-smelling bar of soap and the washrag the Inu-lover had thrown at her, before knocking off the water with a push, lingering for a moment in the steam surrounding her in the bathtub, before pulling the curtain back enough so that she could exit, immediately grabbing for the towel awaiting her on the seat of the toilet.
Wrapping the puke colored thing around her torso in haste, Ayaka inspected the condition of her clothes - which she'd placed near the heater on the floor just next to the toilet beneath the sink - only to find that her shirts were still dripping and her pants were still so damp that Ugly Girl knew she wouldn't be able to fit the cloth over her hips.
Sighing, she sat on the toilet with the top-seat still down, knowing she'd just have to stay here until her clothes dried enough that she could put them on. Her emerald gaze lingered from the soaking pile on the floor, to the sink - to find with surprise - dry and warm clothes just staring at her.
But they weren't hers, they were Kiba's.
"Oh God," Ugly Girl half-groaned aloud, smelling the subtle hint of him on the plain, gray shirt she pulled from the neatly folded pile first, staring at it with wide eyes. "But I just can't wear his clothes!"
No, it was too dangerous. If she wore his clothes - even if it was just until her own dried - she would do something stupid, she just knew she would! Ugly Girl just had a horrible habit of doing things that made simple things awkward. She'd probably smell his shirt, or something, because he smelled so damn good sometimes, and she'd freak him out. Then he'd go around singing how Ugly Girl smelled his shirt and how gross it was. Then the whole town would laugh and laugh and laugh at her, and she'd never be able to show her Ugly face to anyone ever again. But then again, maybe if she disappeared it would just be easier. For everyone...
Not wanting to really spend the next couple of hours - or at the least one - in Kiba's scary colored bathroom, Ayaka pulled Kiba's shirt over her only slightly dampened bra, and his threw over-sized pants - big enough that the crotch nearly came to her knees unless she rolled them two or three times at the waist - over the black-colored boy-shorts she had been wearing earlier, it being the only thing that was completely dry out of her whole outfit!
She ran her fingers through her matted, overly-curly hair as she stared into the mirror - against her own will - her unpainted, emerald eyes staring back at her dully. This would be the first time anyone besides her mother saw her without any eye makeup. This would be the first time that anyone besides Ugly Girl herself saw her with her odd hair not brushed and around her shoulders.
Anxiety gnawed at her insides.
What would he think of the real Ugly Girl?
When suddenly, a thought exploded in her head as she looked down at the clothes she was wearing. They hadn't been there before she got in the shower...
All the color drained from her face...
Kiba had come in the bathroom, while she was NAKED!
She nearly fainted from the stress it placed on her fluttering heart.
Feedback = Posting of next and final chapter. ^_^
*Rocks back and forth, from heels, to balls of feet* Please, proceed to the results! There's a cute pic of Kiba!
*Luffles Kiba*
So, what do ya think? This is new for me, I've never really tried to write a fanfic like this before - with the character being very self-concious and such. I've tried to use my own feelings to help humanize Ayaka but I don't know if it's working or not. As you can tell, she's both a little depressed and a little paranoid, but she has a tendency not to trust people. She'll flower in the next and final chapter, I promise!
But my HUGE concern is simply: "IS KIBA IN CHARACTER!?" At least just a little bit?
Rate/Message/FEEDBACK-PUH-LEAZE!
THANKS SO MUCH FOR READING! ^_^
