Hola! Um… this fic is kinda random for me. It's short and practically done already. The idea came to me, quite literally 30 hours ago and I just felt like writing it. It's just something that I'm doing cause I have writer's block on 'Last' so if it's not that great, I already know and there is no reason to flame.

Also, I swear to God… I'm not venting emotions on this story. I have a very good relationship with my folks… I also don't have it in me to commit murder.(oops! Spoiler!) It's just my vivid, sadistic imagination running wild. Perhaps I was a bad person in a past life. In this life, I'm a writer… go figure.

Story takes place a long time after the manga. Italics are internal thoughts.

Chapter 1: Discovery

"Mina, what are you doing sitting in your room again?" The middle-aged blonde stood in the doorway to her daughter's room.

The seventeen year old looked up from her reading and glared at the woman. "I thought you were going to start knocking before you just walk into my room and berate me for existing."

This was the current state of their relationship. Mother would ask a question; Mina would take offense. Unfortunately for Mina, her mother was not a pushover. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find anyone willing to stand up to the former Sand ninja. Anyone with half a brain knew better than to attack her. Given that prerequisite, it's no wonder the genius of the Leaf village is the one that managed to tame her. But that romance is a different story. Just know that from it came three bundles of joy. The first-born son, named Asuma after their father's childhood sensei; the youngest, a boy named Aki for his bright intelligent eyes; and the middle child, Mina.

"Berate you? …Berate you!" Mina's mother huffed. "All I wanted to know is why you are endlessly sitting in your dark room, all alone, and not outside enjoying the sunshine!" She took a step inside the room but stopped short when she realized her threatening presence would have no effect on the girl. "Fine. Be that way. I'll just have your father come over here and drag your ass out." The woman turned and marched out of the dimly lit room, shouting for her husband, "Shikamaru!"

"Fucking whore…" Mina muttered to herself as she quickly stashed her piece of choice literature out of sight. She was obsessed with dark, supernatural things. Her father hated that. Once he caught her reading a book about the 'old gods' and the animal sacrifices that their worshippers used to commit; she had never seen him so furious. It scared her given that her father rarely even spoke. He was the quiet, genius type and to see him snap like that… it was unnatural, but only served to incite Mina's lust for knowledge not of this world.

"What is it now, Temari?" She heard her father's voice just outside her door. Slow and drawl as ever.

"It's your daughter. She won't come out. Drag her out here before she turns into a vampire."

"Ah geez…" He slid open the door. "Do you have to use that terminology?" The man flicked on the overhead light and walked over the edge of his daughter's bed. "Mina… honey. Your mom and I would really like it if you would just go outside for awhile. The fresh air and clouds will do you good." Another thing about her father; despite his genius, he seemed to think that clouds were separate from the air.

She took a breath and bit her lip to stop herself from getting into an argument with them. There was no way she could take the both of them. At least if she went outside they would stop talking to her. "Fine." Mina shot up from her bed, the long braid of her hair nearly whipping her father in the face, and pushed past her mother in the hall on her way outside.

"What's that look for?" Shikamaru turned sideways to avoid it.

His wife was glaring daggers at him, as if it were his fault that their daughter hated them. "You know what that look is for."

--

"Fucking parents… fucking life… fucking fuck fuck fuck." Mina didn't stop when she reached the backyard patio. Instead, she kept walking straight out into the woods behind her family's estate. Only Nara's were allowed there and she could count the number of them on one hand, not including herself. She wasn't paying attention to where she was going. In all honesty, she didn't care. It's not that she was reckless with her life. She just wanted more out of it than she thought was humanly possible, so why bother?

The blonde haired girl stopped to catch her breath. "Christ… where the hell am I?"

It was dark in this part of the forest and she was wondering why she had never come here before. It was secluded. The air was cleaner and smelled only of dirt, similar to a graveyard and wholly unlike the air near the house that constantly had the scent of different flowers or some Sand village specialty that her mother was cooking.

Mina wasn't actually concerned about her current whereabouts. She knew that she didn't make any turns and could just walk straight back to where she came from with her eyes closed and hands behind her back. But the eerie tranquility of the spot urged her to sit and relax awhile.

She leaned back against a tree and slid down to its base. It's too quiet here., she thought as she listened to her own breathing. There was not a single animal in sight. No deer silhouette in the distance, no raccoon scratching behind the bushes, not even a single insect chirping in the treetops. There was no evidence of life except for the occasional sound of the wind blowing through the upper leaves of the trees that all but completely blocked out the sunlight.

Next to her were some stones. She picked them up and started throwing them at the open patch of dirt in front of her. Strange how something so simple could make her relax. Mina started to throw them harder and harder, trying to bounce them off the ground and into an abandoned woodpecker's hole in the tree opposite from her.

It was entertaining for her and she did manage to get a few in thanks to her strong right hook… just like mommy dearest. The idea of sharing anything with those people instantly sickened her. Whether Mina liked it or not, she had her mother's looks and her father's mind… the best of both worlds as some might say. Her older brother had dark hair but wasn't much in the thinking department. He took after their mother and became a powerhouse with his fuuton jutsu. Her younger brother was the ultimate genius and shining star of the family. Only problem was he might as well have had ADD. He would become endlessly bored with whatever his sensei could come up with for him to do and then he would take off pulling pranks and making jokes, running all over town.

Mina was a balance, not that she would let anyone discover that about her. She quit being a ninja two months after she graduated the academy. She said, 'It's a bother. It's not what I need to be doing with my life.' That was nearly seven years ago and she had yet to do anything with herself. She managed to hack some decent taijutsu off of her elder brother and whenever the little runt would stay still long enough, she would grasp a few basic ninjutsu like transformation, substitution, and shadow clone from her younger brother. There was also the family's own Shadow Possession Jutsu, but that was taught to her before she even graduated the academy by her father. He wanted all three of his children to be masters of it, whether they wanted to learn it or not… which was the case for Mina.

'THUD' 'thud' 'THUD' The rock would bounce hard off the ground, then softer off the bark of the tree, then hard again as gravity brought it back down to the dirt.

"uuuuuuuuuuuah"

Mina raised an eyebrow at the small dirt clearing in front of her. D-Did the earth just moan? She felt stupid the second she asked the question but upon hearing the faint sound again she couldn't deny what she swore she was hearing.

Slowly, she crawled forward and put her ear to the ground. There was no sound. She pounded her fist into the dirt once, then twice in a row and listened silently again.

"uuuuuuuuuuuah"

She gasped and stood up straight, eyes still glued to the earth beneath her feet. "What the hell? W-what could -possibly- be down there?" Her anxiety pushed her into a pacing motion. "Can anything survive that deep down? Well, clearly. I mean, what else could be making that sound other than something that's alive? Maybe it's an underground stream. No. It responded. It's sentient." The flickering light bulb above her head burned steady.

"It's intelligent. Human? No." She shook her head back and forth. "Humans can't survive that kind of pressure." She stopped pacing and kicked at the ground, which earned another moan from the 'sentient' being. "This ground is solid. It hasn't been over turned in years." The young woman turned and walked a small distance away to get a wider view of the dirt clearing. "What's intelligent, not human and can survive underground for years?" She mused taking in the situation. "I'm not quite sure. But I want to find out." A wicked smirk played across her face.

Reviews are always appreciated. :)