ᗰOᑎᔕTEᖇ [🧡 ᑎᗩᖇᑌᕼIᑎᗩ 💜] [Ɱҽէąʍօɾքհօʂìʂ] Bσσƙ Oɳҽ

Song

Chapter Forty-Seven

Song

May 17, 2010

"Ino! Ino what happened?! What's wrong?!"

Befuddled and enervated, Naruto turned bleary eyes towards the panicked voice, barely able to make out who it was beneath the shrill screams.

Choji..

It was Choji shouting.

Head throbbing bad enough to burst, Naruto struggled to clear the fog from his brain. His clenched teeth left his jaw aching, and his bones felt stiff yet brittle. He felt seconds from collapsing, a beat away from meeting the hard tiled floor with no way to buffer his fall. Sucking in shaky breaths, he willed his tall form to unlock, to push the deep seeded pain to the back of his mind.

He refused to give in to the urge to flop to the floor.

He was still the head of this team, he still had responsibilities to uphold, and more so than any other reason, Ino was his friend. For her, for everyone, he needed to push through the tide carrying him towards feebleness, coaxing him to ceding to the weakness in his limbs. With nothing short of a Herculean effort, he propelled himself into motion, forcing his legs to function, intending to join the concerned Akimichi in his bid to discern the health of the psyche kunoichi.

An iron grip at his middle held him in place.

Lee.

"Naruto-"

"I'm good, Lee," the blonde replied, cutting the question short, "let go."

Despite his reassurance, it took him more than a moment to lock his knees the moment he was free. His head was pounding now, made worse by his drunken swaying. Dizziness rose, threatening to send him careening to the ground. Another scream echoed through the chamber, snapping him clumsily back into action. Naruto staggered over to the screaming woman, his muddled brain trying its best to reinforce the wobble in his legs.

Choji knelt on the dirty tile, Ino's writhing form anchored within his meaty arms. Even through his glassy gaze, Naruto could see the strain in his grip, the amount of strength being used to restrain the hysterical woman.

"Ino, can you hear me?" Choji shouted, "whatever you saw, it can't hurt you! It's over now, you're alright!"

She couldn't hear him.

And she was far from alright.

She was in a nightmare.

"I'll get something to calm her down!" Yua shouted, ready to rush from the room and locate one of the medics on staff.

The sudden quieting of screams stopped her at the threshold.

Unnatural quiet, a choking stillness swept the room as the group stood transfixed within the strangeness threading through the staring people among the chamber. This silence should have been heartening, it should have left those that cared about the Yamanaka relived that the fit seemed to becoming to an end, and yet...

There was an underlying tension filling the empty space.

A sixth sense that something was very wrong.

The hair at his nape stood on end.

Whispering static teased his skin.

Ino sucked in a sharp breath and held it, her teeth snapping together with enough force to make him cringe. Her feminine jaw tightened, her teeth started an awful grind and the delicate muscles along her body locked. Her pretty blue eyes, tear stained and dilated, slowly widened before freezing into a stare that was both sightless and unnerving.