The Sixth Wish
When Tenten awoke from her week and three day long coma, she awoke to a window halfway open and curtains blowing gaily in the wind. She was inside of another old but scrupulously clean hospital room. A lone plant stood on her nightstand. Something seemed odd about the room, though.
She continued looking around, trying to pinpoint what it was. Aside from the odd fact that no visitors or nurses or doctors were anywhere near her, the room was much bigger than it had been the last time. She struggled to sit up, amazed to find her body felt like lead. She glanced over at the two beds that were lined up next to her, and was then fell back onto her bed, horror having sapped her strength.
Neji and Hinata were next to her. Hinata seemed fine; she merely looked as if she had been taking a nap, free of medical equipment and breathing softly. But Neji's appearance was worse. He was tied to any number of medical appliances- an IV hung above his head, slowly dripping fluid into his arm—a monitor stood by his bed, showing his heart rate and beeping as quietly as a drop of water falling into a sink. Something near him hummed, and Tenten feared it was a lung-and-heart machine, the kind that you only use when you can't breathe on your own and your heart can't beat on its own. His face was scrunched into a look of pain, yet he sat as still as a ghost.
A noise on her side made Tenten turn back to Hinata once more. She was waking up, too. She scrubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and glanced around, seeing Tenten.
"Oh! You're finally awake," She said happily, failing to stutter in Tenten's presence. "That's great. Well, kind of. It's not really great at all what's happened to us. You should have seen Hiashi's face… It was…" she trailed off, looking for the right adjective but not being able to find one suitable. Either it was such a bad face that she can't think of a respectable term for it, or Hinata wasn't as healthy as Tenten had hoped she was.
"What… happened?" Tenten asked, although she already knew: The plant hadn't just dragged her down this time. The plant had dragged the real Hinata and Neji into the alternate reality as well, although strangely enough their personalities had still been different in the alternate world. …Had Hinata been dragged in earlier, so she already believed it? Was she still in that personality? And if so, would Neji still be…
"Apparently someone from a different village- Tsunade already has suspicions but won't say for sure- has been trying to take out the ninjas they think are dangerous, one by one. You had been hit by the first attack, and when that didn't get you they came at you again, but this time they got Neji and me too," She said, somewhere between solemn and excited.
"Wait. That doesn't make any kind of sense!" Tenten yelled, suddenly fearful. Different visions flashed through her head—a war between a faultless village and hers—people dead because of what she did, littering the streets—houses on fire while infants cried and clutched dolls, mothers horrified and fathers dead—a lifetime of warfare over something as stupid as a plant! "If they wanted to take out ninjas, why me first? Why not just go straight after Neji, or Naruto, or Sasuke, or Sakura, someone who is actually a prodigy, actually strong? Why would they have to pick us off with something like a coma-inducing illness?" She asked, hoping there was no answer.
"Well, picking us off would be a lot more effective than actually fighting us and being endangered, don't you think? And I figure—even though Tsunade won't say what she thinks—that the ninjas are weak against long-distance attacks. Why else attack one of the only long-distance battlers in our town? Or maybe they can't handle fighting with weapons. You are, for sure, the only weapon specialist in our entire village, Tenten," Hinata said, her tone saying instead, 'You should already know this.'
Tenten frowned. She didn't very much like this new-Hinata's personality. This Hinata is warped. She isn't even the alternate-universe personality that she previously was, she's just gone insane. Tenten leaned over to Hinata, closing the gap between them by a few more inches.
"Did you… by any chance, have a very… real feeling dream while we were in a coma?" She asked. Hinata's eyes widened, then she shook her head.
"I guess it felt pretty real, but it wasn't like I was walking around or anything. I was chained to a chair and I had a pretty nice talk with this weird voice."
Wait, what? "A voice?!" Tenten was taken aback.
"Yeah, a voice. It asked me all sorts of questions, like why I was who I was, and why I was so meek. It made me see that being so hesitant isn't helping me at all. Being kind hasn't really helped me at all."
"Hinata! Your kindness is one of your best qualities! There are so many ninjas who just kill without mercy, or kill once and can't be kind. You can be kind and merciful, and merciless on the battlefield… That's ideal!"
"No, it isn't. Look, I've already made up my mind, if you want to talk about it you can take the drug again and try and find your own voice to talk to," Hinata said, not trying to disguise the hiss in her voice. She turned over in her bed to face Neji's, instead. Tenten continued trying to whisper to Hinata to avail. At last it seemed Hinata had fallen asleep.
But… a voice? Tenten hadn't heard a voice in a long time. The last voice was the one… from the strange shop? No, after her third wish, when she had barely come out of her coma. That was it, wasn't it?
Was it?
It wasn't, was it?
Was it?
Maybe something had been done to her brain. She couldn't think clearly; it was like trying to sift through soup. It was disgusting and made her feel like she had eaten something that would feed on her insides. She had changed Hinata accidentally. But if this new Hinata was happy, should Tenten have the authority to change Hinata back?
Not just that, but Hinata had talked to a voice for a week. Long enough to change her entire outlook on life… The fact that the voice could do something others had been trying to do for so long but had failed to do… It scared her.
She turned over and fell into a dispirited sleep, trying not to let a voice invade her dreams.
When she next awoke, it was morning. The fourth day from when she had made her alternate-universe-shift-to-the-real-world wish. Odd, for some reason.
Hinata was up and reading a book on her bed. She pointed wordlessly to a plate of food on Tenten's nightstand, as if daring Tenten to speak. Instead Tenten hungrily devoured the food, as if she had been a lioness eating her first catch in a month. Then she stepped off of her bed, and hobbled over to Neji's.
He looked hollow. And porcelain, like a doll. His eyes were closed, but his face was still pained. She reached over to touch him. He wasn't cold, but it didn't feel like he was warm, either. He was room temperature. The monitors told her he was still alive, but she didn't believe them. This was not Neji that was normally alive. This was Neji who was being kept alive, painfully, not actually living. Just a body pretending to live.
"They're not going to…" She began, breaking the thick silence that had spread over the room since she had gone over to Neji. Hinata pretended as if she had noticed just now that Tenten had gone over to Neji's bed. "… Pull the plug?" Tenten finished indifferently, shocked that she hardly cared whether he lived or died.
Hinata just shrugged. "I don't know. Way I see it, that bed's been empty for days."
Even though her words were harsh, Tenten halfway agreed. But still, it was Neji. He was still, technically speaking, alive. There was some way to save him. Was he talking to a voice, too? Was he in an alternate universe he didn't want to leave? Or had Tenten's alternate reality bring an alternate reality Neji to the surface? An alternate Neji, of the dead variety.
That stupid little plant. She hurtled towards her bed, her stiffness and heaviness no longer mattering in the wake of her anger. The stupid little plant was sitting on her bed, as if mocking her. The stupid son-of-a-bitch.
She grabbed the tag on it, turned it over and saw nothing. She snatched it off, crumpled it, and threw it into the trash. She shouldn't wish anymore. She couldn't even wish for a new Neji, could she? That would just bring in a different one, not her teammate, not her friend. He couldn't be fixed by wishing, magic, illusion, whatever this plant did. Tenten needed to find a way to undo her wishes, and wishing wouldn't help. She turned to run out of the room and was stopped by a nurse. A nurse who was abnormally strong, and lifted Tenten and placed her into her bed. Sakura pulled down the mask that had covered half of her face, and pulled off the cap that had hid her vibrantly pink hair.
"Sit. You must eat. You must sleep," she said, mechanically.
"You're not Sakura, you robot." Tenten said venomously, not at all in the mood to be coddled.
Sakura hissed, then nodded. "Right. Well, they said you'd be out of sorts, but you're alive." Her eyes briefly glanced towards Neji, as if trying not to.
Suddenly Tenten saw inky blackness invade her field of vision, and fell into an uncomfortable rest.
An eerie song was playing from somewhere. An eerie, creepy song, the kind that sounds like you should be at a carnival, but hidden underneath that song were several moans and groans, and odd feelings of this-is-not-good. As if a child had laughed, but it wasn't a good laugh. A laugh of malice? A laugh of evil and revenge.
Still in the dark, Tenten emitted her own light. It was strange, though. She still couldn't see. What was the point of light if there was nothing even in the darkness to see? She had no time to ponder this, as ahead of her the light turned to a faint purple. She began to run, slowly, like someone had grabbed onto her ankles and she couldn't lift them past a certain point. Like there were dead bodies on her being dragged behind her. She chased the purple light, while the children laughed as if they were murdering someone, and while the eerie song played as if she should be enjoying this somehow, in a twisted way. And in a very sick, inhumane way, she was.
"Come to me…"
Tenten woke in a cold sweat. Come to me? Come to you where? The purple from the strange shop, that was for sure, that she knew for sure. But… the purple shop. It had vanished. There was no way she could. She looked around, saw Hinata sleeping fitfully next to her, saw Neji in the same position as he was last time. She saw a ray of moonlight shine through the window, and then her gaze found the plant. She lingered on it, tempted. Then she stood, walked to the window, and climbed out.
The result of that trip was her walking around town in the dead of night, half-naked in a hospital gown, looking for a shop that wasn't really there. She raced through the streets—her hair out of her buns, having come loose at some point, she wasn't sure when—and chased a shop that didn't exist anymore in the real world. It probably existed in quite a few alternate realities, in a few different universes, but for Tenten it only existed in her mind.
She had forgotten how badly she had been affected by the coma, and the adrenaline of finding a way out of the horrible hole she had dug herself into washed away. She fell, unable to move, but aware of everything that was happening to her hapless body. The crash after the adrenaline, something that most people feared, something that should never be felt. Her mind was active, but she was paralyzed. It began to snow lightly. Her nose was covered with frost. She could feel snowflakes melting on her bare legs, feel every inch of the hairs on her body standing up, goosebumps now littering her body like salt littered the ocean. She was shivering so badly it appeared she was convulsing. She was drooling; it looked as if she was frothing at the mouth.
Someone found her lying there and took her to the hospital.
After the fifth day was spent in therapy, Tenten awoke on the sixth day, battling spirit out of her. She had one day left. What if she just chose not to wish? That would be simple enough… but it wouldn't save Neji. She would have to find some other way to save him, then. Hinata had been free to go, but Tenten, having been influenced by the drug/illness/illusion twice in a row, was now exhibiting terrible signs: fever, seizures, convulsions, mass delusions. Never mind that all of the things she was experiencing were real, not mass delusions. Never mind that she had been unable to move in a snow storm for three hours before being rescued. Never mind that she hadn't had a seizure, instead her fight-or-flight system had caused her body to shut down temporarily…
Once again in the inky blackness, Tenten began to march forward before there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Purple, for sure, but she knew it would show up sooner or later. She was still trapped, but this time she could feel the individual fingers on each of her ankles. She didn't want to look and see the dead bodies, the undead bodies, whatever held on to her. She plowed forward, and this time, when the purple light shone at the end of the tunnel, children came along with it. Dead children, with hollowed eyes and pale skeleton-bone faces, children in suits and dresses, faceless children with no hair and with hair and with leering smiles and horrible, horrible children with thoughts that came out of their heads and tried to get into Tenten's. Horrible, horrible children were horrible.
Unable to face them Tenten turned around to see two bodies rising out from the ground, leering at her in an unexpressive way that only said that she was as unwelcome as a giant slab of deer meet in the dead of winter when given to a hungry traveler that had been trapped on a mountain for weeks. They leered at her, faceless versions of Neji and Hinata, dead bodies clinging to her. The Neji was as alive as a brainless clone, the Hinata was merciless. Tenten cried out; Neji held her down and Hinata's hands closed around her throat…
The final day of the wishing had come. Tenten was exhausted; she had no drive left in her. She wondered if, continuing like this, she would end up as dead as Neji was. Neji, who was still 'alive', living as if dead.
The day passed by easily, Tenten lost it like you lost water when you tried to hold onto it in your hands. It passed through her mind and body, she didn't feel it or think about it or respond to the people who tried to talk to her. There had to be a way to reverse what happened. Had to be.
The clock turned to eleven as Tenten drifted into her sleep.
Unfortunately, Tenten hadn't made a wish.
She had had no idea what would happen when the clock struck twelve.
As you can tell, it has now moved from Humor to Drama. Thank you. Please review, lovely reviews are lovely indeed.
EraTomo