Gin felt a scream trying to escape his throat as he knelt, wounded, on the edge of his family home. It was burning before his eyes. He could see blackened corpses scattered about, the majority still smoking if not burning. A broken sob broke free before he could stop it and more soon followed. Finally, a high, keening wail escaped his throat. It was as if something broke within him, some wall that had yet to be breached.
Tears of blood slid down his face as his Clans gift, long forgotten, awakened. The white's of his eyes blackened, the normal poison green of his eyes bleeding to gold. The chakra ink in the designs around his eyes, a ceremonial task appointed when a child turns 7, as Gin had done not a week before, burned bright blue and burned itself permanently into his skin. The beautiful swirling patterns did nothing to lessen the pain in his eyes.
With another scream of rage, not knowing quite what he was doing, he thrust both hands forward and waves of wind, lightning, and Power lashed out from his body with hurricane force. It tore through the grounds, killing the flames and tearing up plant and building alike, only the bodies, by some stroke of fate, remained untouched. When he finally fell to the ground, exhausted, the only thing left was rubble and bodies, smoldering but no longer burning. With the loss of the chakra, the heavy black clouds far above finally released their burden in a torrent of rain that would last for days.
Gin forced himself to crawl to a shelter hidden not far from the entrance to the compound and curled up in the doorway, to tired to stand and open the door. He collapsed against the wood and metal door with a broken cry. Blazing eyes slipped closed as he fell into unconciousness.
There was a beeping sound coming from somewhere nearby. It intruded on his dreamless sleep and he fought to keep from waking, knowing what he would wake to. He blindly reached out in the direction of the noise and pushed there was a screech of metal and the smell of ozone before the beeping stopped with a tortured wail. The room was quiet for a moment before running footsteps could be heard. Gin frowned before opening his eyes.
He was staring at a white ceiling. He opened his mouth to call out but grimaced as his throat protested sharply, the only sound coming out a strangled gasp of wordless pain. He frantically looked around the room and was frozen in shock with the scorch mark against one wall above a fried heart monitor that was little more than a tangled mess.
ANBU, Hotaru (Firefly), was staring at the small silver-haired boy in wary fascination. The seven year old had just shot a lightning bolt from his palm with no handsigns and fried not only the heart monitor that had been hooked to him, but every electrical item in the room, and if the sounds from outside were to be believed, every other electronic device on this section of the Ward. He glanced at the nurse who entered the room when she gasped, having caught sight of the mangled heap of metal.
The small boy was also staring at the heap, mind obviously not engaged enough to realize he was the one who'd done it. Hotaru could see that his mind was working through it though. The seven year old had been brought here when a patrol had found him just inside the border of Water Country, outside of a burned down compound. The compound had been razed to the ground, only the burnt remains of bodies have destroyed by the heavy rain that had suddenly started up there.
From what the child had just done it could be assumed that he was a member of a Clan, but Hotaru was unfamiliar with one that could use lightning without Seals. Perhaps speaking with the child would net them more information?
Gin sat up on his bed as the nurse checked his vital signs. Another nurse was cleaning out the wreckage. He was trying to focus on the female, but he was distracted by the way she was glowing, as was an invisible figure off to one side. It was like they were rimmed in a dull white light. They weren't the only things that did. The scorched wall all but blinded, and the pieces of metal from the monitor that had been- that he'd, and wasn't that odd- destroyed gave off sparks of the light instead of just glowing. The nurse taking them out was removing them with heavy rubber goves to keep from being shocked by the lightning still arcing from the metal.
The nurse snapped a finger in front of his face to get his attention again. He turned his attention back to her and she lifted a small penlight up to look in his eyes. He let out a low whine as the light all but blinded him. He'd had a lowgrade headache since waking, but the light made it so much worse.
"Hmm..." the doctor said with a frown before writing something on her clipboard. She looked back up at him. "Alright, I need your name dear."
"Hayato Gin."
"How old are you Gin-kun?"
"Seven."
"Do you have any allergies?"
"No."
"Any medical conditions?"
"No."
"Do your eyes usually look like this?"
Gin frowned.
"Like what?"
The woman walked out of the room for a minute and returned with a small handheld mirror. She held it up so that he was looking into his own eyes. He stiffened in surprise, leaning slightly forward in shock and curiosity. He slowly reached up to touch the skin beneath his eyes, vaguely surprised that the markings on his skin from the ceremony were still present. He realized they were blackened scars when he felt the raised skin of scars. He stared into his oddly colored eyes before frowning, trying to imagine what his eyes used to look like.
There was a twisting feeling of swirling in the backs of his eyes before they suddenly whirled counterclockwise and bled poison green with white scelera. He had to blink rapidly at the sudden bout of dizziness that came with it. The nurse quickly reached out to steady him and he sat straight carefully until his balance returned. The faint glowing he'd been seeing disappeared entirely. The woman put the mirror aside and pulled out the penlight again. This time he didn't flinch, it was just a penlight.
The nurse was writing down her findings on the clipboard when Gin spoke again, fidgeting with the sheets.
"Did anyone else make it?"
The woman looked back at him with a saddened expression before shaking her head no. She patted his knee with a sorrowful look before exiting the room. Gin stifled a sob and lay back down on the bed, curling into a ball of misery. He couldn't close his eyes. All he'd see were the bodies: mothers, fathers, children, all of their dead eyes staring back at him from burning faces. He couldn't banish them like stray thoughts, they kept working their way back in, twisting and turning like a grotesque slideshow on the back of his eyelids. He didn't open his eyes when someone covered him up with a blanket. He didn't even move.
Silent tears slid down his face, soaking into the pillow, but he never made a sound.
Asuma puffed on his cigarette as he watched the young boy, Gin, turn the Shogi piece over and over in his hands. The child was too quiet, but that was expected from what they'd learned. His entire Clan had been massacred. From the word he'd heard, and was spreading across the Village, they had attempted a Coup on their ruling Village while Gin had been away with a Village Jounin on some coming of age right. The Jounin had left him a mile or so from the compoud to walk the rest of the way. Gin had found the remains of his Clan.
The boy finally placed the piece down and Asuma moved his own piece after a few moments before returning to his thoughts.
The only upside to this child's tragedy, for Konoha at least, was that the muttering from the Uchiha Clan had gone silent. Fugaku had come to the Hokage and admitted to plans of a Coup among his Clan's Elders. The Hokage had imposed Sanctions: Non-Uchiha added to the police force, the Clan was moved back into the Village Proper- not off in it's own little corner, the Clan children being integrated with learning groups from other Clan's and young children from Civillian families who were headed for Shinobi schooling.
The boy placed his piece again and Asuma contemplated his next move as his thoughts turned back to the boy. No one was sure what to do with him. Water didn't want him back. The Hayato Clan had been nomadic until the generation before last, Water was anti-Bloodline, and they were entirely unaware of the boy's Bloodline, and from all accounts it was either brand new or newly awakened. No reports of it having existed in the Clan before him.
Gin, when questioned, had no clue what the Bloodline was, or even how it worked. It had apparently awakened when he'd found his Clan, so they weren't sure how it awakened either. Testing had revealed it produced a higher than average tri-chakra affiliation of Lightning-Wind-Water. When focused, however poorly the child could focus right now, it had the effect of C-4 converted into a hurricane blast. It also tended to cause quite violent storms when used in excess.
Asuma made his next move and Gin bit his lip before picking up another piece and flipping it over, over, over in his hands as he contemplated the board.
The boy was smart, no doubting that. He was intelligent, in a way, like the Nara were. It was quiet, but it was there. Asuma needed only look at the game board to see this. He was losing, badly, but he could see that strategy was involved in his defeat, even if he didn't understand the strategy.
There was a knock on the door and Asuma called out for the person to enter.
Gin placed his piece before looking over his shoulder to see who had come in.
