Now it's possible you won't believe a word I say. I'm not the type to make up stories though, and I'm not one to lie to people's faces, at least not about something this serious.
When I was seven years old, my entire family was killed by vampires. My mother, my father, and my two sisters were sucked dry from their throats by an entire horde of them, and they were far from the debonair, good looking ones you read about in trashy romance novels.
They weren't blood-sucking monsters either.
They were some horrible, monstrous mix that both repulsed and attracted me. Their beauty was overwhelming, and their violent way of moving and speaking were like and unspoken threat.
They had been savage, but their movements were so precise and coolly calculated that I didn't know what to do. I was only seven, and had been previously sleeping, my younger sisters curled against my sides.
I remember sounds, crashing, yelling and the horrible slurping sounds as my mother was drained outside my bedroom door. My father was screaming, a hysteric and horrible sound that made me freeze, even as cold hands pried my sleeping siblings off the bed.
They made no noise, but their eyes were both vicious with hunger, and sad, as if they hated doing this, but had to anyway.
I somehow escaped their noticed and slipped off the bed, and ran into the hall. My mother's body, her red hair dark and matted with blood almost made me freeze before my father's tortured screams echoing from the kitchen goaded me towards the door. I needed to escape, to run and never stop.
I made it to the street as a car pulled up. People in black, people with guns running, hurrying. The vampires were all either killed or rounded up and subdued. I stood and watched them load the prisoners up as a man in black placed a blanket around my shoulders. The vampire I focused on was blond and had one electric blue eye and another one so deformed I couldn't describe it. He grinned at me, a mocking twisted version of a smile, and some of my sister Kana's blood slipped down his chin.
All at once, my stomach rebelled; I started crying, and passed out when nothing but air came from my stomach.
--
I awoke sometime later in a room I was unfamiliar with. The walls were painted a green similar to my father's eyes, a minty jade green like new leaves and wet grass. The carpet was thick, soft, and white. My mind casually noted I was wearing someone else's clothes. The door opened just as I started questioning my whereabouts.
She had gold hair, and gold eyes with flecks of amber. Her hair was tied into two pig-tails in the middle of her head. Her face was both beautiful and intimidating, a frown seemingly plastered unto it.
"You are Sakura Haruno, age seven, daughter of Rinko and Taro Haruno, correct?" she asked me, her tones clipped and almost harsh. I could only nod in reply.
"Good. Your mother, father, and sisters were killed by an entire horde last night, because your father is, was, a scientist. He was working on a cure for the disease that causes vampires, to, well, exist."
I nodded again.
"It's highly contagious, but, as of yet, can only be passed by the blood. Those infected crave iron and protein and become overly sensitive to light and sun. Even though it's a terrible disease, certain members of the infected community feel that it isn't wrong to kill people for their own survival, and subsequently killed your father. Do you understand? I know you've been through a lot, but I think you'll be a good agent one day."
I nodded a third, and final, time. I understood that vampires killed my father because they were sick and didn't want to be helped, and that I was expected to become part of the people who tried to avenge him.
I looked back up at her, and smiled. From the look of pity and half-horror that momentarily appeared on her face, it must have been a pretty messed up smile, but, that's all I was back then.
I was pretty fucking messed up.
--
Five Years Later
--
"Sakura." Tsunade called from the doorway, this was my third patient today, and she was afraid for the men and women out in the field today, but she didn't want anyone to know. I know her almost as well as I know myself. I smiled at her to reassure, and finished bandaging a woman's slashed arm. I wrote down a few notes on my chart, and headed for the hallway.
The past five years have been a blur of training and studies. I've made a few friends, or a semblance of friends, and even been on a few practice missions. My friends Naruto and Ino, both blonde and obnoxious, were with me, and they were so loud I couldn't hear myself think, let alone hear where our target (really a senior member of ANBU in disguise) coming up in front of us. For the sake of the mission, I knocked them both unconscious and took care of the target myself, both incapacitating and "healing" the agent in under five minutes, leaving me bruised, with a broken wrist, and a very proud, and very angry Tsunade.
She had been taking care of me ever since the murders, and with help from my father's research, had developed the "cure". It caused the virus to become a harmless case of the flu, or at least a semblance of it, if it came in contact with a normal human. It could be used as a defense for up to two months, and was used frequently before missions, and after applied to an infected subject, it could make them completely harmless over the period of a month.
Their symptoms would slowly decrease, and the last to go was sensitivity to the sun. It was the miracle cure of the world, and it was all thanks to Tsunade and my dad.
I walked past her, a grin plastered on my face. It was the smile I used around patients, the fake, overly happy one. I passed an attending on the other end of the hallway, and paused by a window overlooking a courtyard. The smile slid from my face in an instant. I sighed and leaned into the cool glass. My head ached. I was only twelve damn it. I wanted to play with dolls and teach Kana and Suzuki how to climb trees. Images of days with my family slid into my head, making me dizzy with how happy I used to be.
I wanted a lot of things, but for me, wanting did nothing. We were all going to die anyway. The least I could do was make it a little better for all of the little sisters in the world. So the grin went back on, and my heart sunk down farther into me.
--
I tended to keep to myself. After the whole knocking them out on the mission thing, Naruto and Ino wouldn't talk to me for months. I didn't actively try to seek them out, I was too busy studying or practicing. But I heard later from my friend Tenten, who liked weapons even more than me, they were very mad and studiously avoiding me. I didn't really care either way. I didn't like being close to people.
Sure, I was probably afraid of them dying if I became too attached, my whole family had been murdered, but in my line of work, people died everyday. Anko from the berserker squad was killed last week when she and her teammates were taken by surprise by a rouge horde. My first trainer, Iruka had been dead for three years, after an assassination gone wrong.
But I was twelve, and heading towards adulthood. So I sucked it up and reached out to people. Naruto and Ino became my new family. Ino and I could share everything, even her strange obsession with boys, whom I only regarded with a mixture of slight interest and obvious dismissal of their awkward gangly movements.
However, when my first period came, I felt horribly lonely. I had no mother to tell me about the strange changes in my body, from the funny hairs everywhere to the strange changes in height. I suddenly felt huge and awkward, and my once unnoticeable temperaments were suddenly broadcast to everyone. I felt unusually unbalanced and started seeing my once annoying and childish year-mates as guys, not as the weird little boys I beat in target practice everyday.
I'm not going to lie; I'm one of the best. I can shoot the farthest, run the fastest, hit the hardest and kill without batting an eye in the simulation room. I was getting cocky perhaps; I think I needed more of a challenge.
So Tsunade sent me on my first real mission, with a nice guy named Kiba and a quiet one named Shino.
They were a couple months older than me, and had already been on several missions of the same rank. We basically had to administer the cure to a recently infected human, and try to stop the symptoms from showing.
The mission went badly though. The patient had progressed farther into the infection than originally thought. Kiba was attacked and lost a finger when it was torn form his hand. I don't think I'll ever forget his scream. In a panic, I blanked out and went on auto-pilot. Shino informed me later that he thought I had gone mad, because I had started stabbing the vampire with the bayonet on the end of my rifle. I had been screaming, this horrible look of sick pleasure on my face. Shino didn't talk to me again, not for a full year. I had gone into counseling, but I didn't remember anything but Kiba's awful screams echoing in my head.
At that moment, he had sounded just like my father as he died. Had his finger been ripped off too? Or had it been something much, much worse?