Halloween Story- Vampire fic

“Hey, watch it!” Karin snapped. She wheeled around to tongue-lash the idiot who had bumped her. “Are you-” She cut off with a grunt. Because she'd been about to say 'are you blind?' but the pretty, pretty face turned up at her had an expression of concern and milky eyes.

Whoa. That was a nice view.

“I'm so sorry!” The stranger bowed. “Forgive me.” The girl gave another concerned look in her direction- was it a look? Could she see?

“Alright.” She watched the other girl get caught in foot traffic, still off-guard.  

There was a scoff from her partner. “Keep it in your pants, Uzu-”

She kicked shin so hard that she felt it pop out of the knee joint. The moron made a satisfying sound of pain but managed not to fall.  

“Tch.” She tossed her hair back and kept striding.  

The loser she had been saddled with kept up, which was probably the best thing she could say about him. He certainly couldn't be accused of excessive brainpower. Kabuto was just fucking with her, wasting her time with this scum.

She gave one more thought to the strange girl. It wasn't a sexual thing at all, no matter what any dumbass said. It was that girl's chakra. Maybe she was blind, maybe she wasn't. Either way, she was definitely a shinobi with that aura. The size and strength of her chakra was nothing special- it was just… really pure. It was good.  

Most of the time, seeing chakra was useful. It let her keep track of large groups of people, made her nearly impossible to surprise, and it helped her avoid a lot of shit situations.

Sometimes it was just a gift.

She washed away the memory of those good intentions painted into air and got back to work. They didn't have all week to check the quality of the shit they were getting. She was the brains, and he was just there to carry things and make sure she got back safely.

It put her hackles up to be told to rely on some meathead, not least because he didn't like her any more.

Karu was some nobody with a bad attitude who thought previous experience as a resentful nobody in Iwagakure entitled him to a management role in her prison. He didn't know the village, he didn't have Orochimaru's trust- he was some nobody.

They got to the dropoff point and waited around for their guy to show up. He swaggered in with two buddies and yeah, from just a visual standpoint it was good that she had some big dumb guy to stand around and look tough. She sneered a lot and talked tough and got through it, but some people only responded to a moron with muscles.  

She rubbed the back of her neck and made a disgusted expression. Slowly, she checked her thumb for… yeah. What had been a bug before she squished it.

“Something wrong, sweetheart?”

Her sneer snapped back on. “Just that I'm spending time with a smelly loser who has no sense of volume. Back the hell off while this test runs. It won't go any faster if you mouth-breathe on me.”  

The supplier drew back, offended and just as stupid as ever. He kept talking, but she let it wash over her.

Something was wrong. She cast her senses around, trying to figure out what was pinging so wrong. It was like she was being watched.  

“Fuck are you doing?” Meathead got all up in her face. His buddies weren't any more chill.

“Calm down,” Karin said. She scowled, focusing on her surveillance. They were alone in the immediate area, except for pests and, like…. A dog, maybe? She looked further, stressing her limits.   

Meaty and mean got way up in her personal space and distracted her. “If you don't stop whatever you're going, we are going to have a problem.”  

“I already did.” Karin lifted one side of her lip in a snarl. And- the solution had finalized. She checked the color of the test strip… It was acceptable. She tossed her hair back over her shoulder. “This is fine. We'll take it.”

Her tall glass of dumb took the goods from his analogues, she passed over the money, and they split. The further they got, the more tension fled from Karin's shoulders.  

It would have been very, very stupid for them to attempt to double-cross Orochimaru. But people did things that acted against their best interests all the time.

She rubbed at her temples to ward off the beginnings of a headache.

At least her companion had stopped trying to talk.

Karin gave him a glance, just to make sure he wasn't doing anything stupid. But no, he was just focusing on lugging a big case of chemicals that might be useful.

The grass was very green today.  

They walked on. They had passed through that shitty little village in nowhere in the morning to withdraw the cash and they didn't need it this time. She'd planned the route herself and showed it to the twit this morning in case things had gone badly and she wasn't able to navigate.

She didn't need him to take the lead. But she felt a little weird and fine, he could have the joy of checking the sun against the skyline and figuring out where they were.

Pain sparked behind her eyes. She checked the sole of her boot quickly to see if she had stepped in something but whatever was weighing them down was impossible to see.

“You're not as bright as you think you are.”

She took too long to process that.

The thug was looking down at her from his vantage point way up there. Up there? There. She was on her knees?  

Karin gave a befuddled look down at her legs. She wasn't sure why they were doing that.

“Honestly.”

She cried out. After that, Karin understood that it was because someone had kicked her. Her ribs were on fire.  

“You're nothing special.” He bent down in front of her. She processed his face in parts- wide eyes, uneven smile, red patches of dry skin.

Karin realized that she hated him. “You poisoned me,” she said.  

“Sure did.” He kicked her again. “That's for earlier. Hey, uh.” He was way up in her face. “I ain't stupid, I know I can't kill you. But I get to be the one bringing this back to the big guys. And they'll think it's pretty funny.” His voice was down low, so no one a foot away would have heard. “No one likes you, bitch. Have fun crawling home with your tail between your legs.” His big hand was on her head and

something tore him away. Karin was processing too slow to know what was going on but she was tentatively approving.

That sound was – alarming. Karin roused enough to sort out what it had been. It was … feminine, that was the issue. It sounded like a girl. Young. And meathead was – was not just big. He was strong. And clearly a little smarter than she had thought.  

She focused, boiling up her chakra to boost her up. She needed to be able to think. The more chakra she used, the redder anger made her sight. That worm- nobody- he had dared mess with her and he was standing over someone small and dark and still and nice and the niceness was getting small-

Karin exploded up and out in a way that she didn't know she could. Something came out of her and threw the bastard, it propelled him into the air and bored right threw him and then into a tree.

And that was a little tiring. She got small again.

She managed to haul her bones over to check on the girl who had gotten in the way. Oh, she thought. Maybe she said it. The girl was getting smaller. Karin clumsily put her arm in the girl's mouth, trying to help out a buddy. Girlfriend didn't get the message. She just laid there. Her niceness was going away.  

That makes me sad.

Wait. Something was happening.  

Karin lifted her arm to frown at it, wondering if maybe she'd done her helping. No. The skin was still- she scowled at it. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't nice. She pulled her sleeve down.

The niceness stopped, a sweet yellow hovering over the girl's skin. Just. Staying there, when it ought to dissipate and die.

It grew out. Karin watched, fascinated and increasingly lucid as the poison burned out of her enhanced, kickass Uzumaki body.  

It was the shinobi girl she had seen in the morning, for sure.  

“You're dead,” Karin said, feeling more interested in the anomaly than offended at the unpredictability. “Do you not know that?” She leaned over

The girl's eyes bulged out. Veins were outlined around her pretty, pretty face. Her chakra lashed out, fearful but still so nice, so Karin didn't flinch back. “What?” Her voice was so small.

“You're dead,” Karin told her, because this was unique. “Are you usually dead?”

She was silent, and the little bit of color in her face fled. “Oh. Oh, no.” The dead girl struggled up and away, scuttling backwards. “This is bad.”

“Can't be much worse,” Karin said. She watched the other girl back away. “You're already dead.”

The response was a choked cry. The girl shook her head. “I- am. Oh, no. They're going to kill me.” She landed wide, white eyed on Karin. “I can't go back. It would be my father's responsibility to-”

Wait, what. Holy shit, your dad will kill you?

She must have said that aloud, because the other girl nodded. Her breath was ragged.  

“Shit.” Karin considered it, struggling to her feet. “Are you… alone?”  

“My team is nice, but they won't have any say. Clan business. Oh no, oh no, oh.”

She reached out for the other girl and managed to catch a hand. She squeezed it reassuringly. “It'll be alright,” Karin said. She spared one glance to the corpse of her supposed comrade, the no-doubt ruined chemicals on her person, and then looked back to her new companion. Girlie was a lot more interesting. “Let's go, then.” Karin scanned the area. “We'll get out of the area and then we can make a long-term decision.”

Orochimaru would forgive it, when she explained later.