Hi! This is my first multi-chapter, so sorry if stuff gets awkward. I'm still trying to learn the format.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto (and I don't want to. Okay, maybe I do a little.)
As Sasuke Uchiha stared at his reflection in the train window, the rain from the storm outside dripped down his mirrored cheeks in a mockery of tears. The windswept clouds colored the evening sky, turning it the hue of midnight. The howling wind drowned out the more cheerful noises of the other passengers, and a ghost conductor kept trying to punch his ticket. All in all, it was not the best way to start a trip.
It had been planned as a summer long family trip, but Sasuke's parents had backed out last minute. They had cited something to do with work, but he believed that the real reason lay more along the lines of not wanting to be far from his brother in his worsening condition. His parents owned and ran a large hospital, where his older brother, Itachi, currently resided in the premium white padded cell of the psychiatric division.
"May I please see your ticket?" The ghost conductor was back again, wearing a uniform indicative of an era at least fifty years prior.
Sasuke held his ticket in the air wordlessly, not looking at the specter. The conductor reached for it, but drew back with a confused look when his hand passed through the paper.
"I'm sorry..." He trailed off and walked a few steps before asking the same question of another passenger, who ignored the specter. The bemused expression returning to his face, he repeated the apology before moving on to the next passenger.
Oh, yeah. Sasuke Uchiha could see ghosts.
It was a power linked directly to the Uchiha bloodline. In fact, Sasuke had only discovered a single other person with a similar power: a man named Hyuga, whom he had met while interacting with same ghost. If Sasuke's father was to be believed, the power was a gift to ease the - well, not lives, but existences of the departed. Sasuke had once believed the same thing, until one fateful day when everything changed. It was the day that Itachi, Sasuke's beloved older brother, snapped under the pressure of the 'gift' and went insane.
Sasuke had been ten, young and impressionable, and the event had scarred him. Itachi had even tried to blind his younger brother, and succeeded in taking his own sight, before he had been apprehended and brought to the deluxe hotel for crazies. Since then, Sasuke had regarded ghosts with a kind of passive aggressive animosity, not quite anger, but not the awe he used to think of them with. Almost eight years had passed since that day, and it still haunted him so much that Sasuke had refused to even say his brother's name since the incident.
The spectral conductor finished his round and came back to Sasuke, asking for a ticket, which Sasuke again proffered wordlessly. There were three main kinds of ghosts: the kind that haunted their home or place of work, or another place that was important in their lives, the kind that haunted the place where their bodies were buried, and the kind that haunted the place where they died. The conductor was the first kind, a type of ghost called a specter that acted out a simple action over and over, unable to let go of living. They were the most prolific and least dangerous out of all three.
Ghosts that haunted their place of rest were called figures, and they were slightly more dangerous than specters. They possessed rudimentary powers of telekinesis, but usually were only a threat if their resting place was disturbed. Most commonly found in either Christian church cemeteries or family plots, figures cared so deeply where they were buried that they were unable to leave it after death.
The rarest kind of ghost, the kind that haunted the scene of their own death, was the most dangerous. Either the victims of horrific accidents or violent crimes, hatred and anger kept these malignant spirits, called draugrs, present after their demise. Their strong emotions allowed them to hone powers of telekinesis and experiment with corporeality, giving them the power to greatly affect the living to the point that they could actually kill someone. The older a draugr was, the more time it had to hone its powers, and the more dangerous it was. It was one of these draugrs, a serial killer named Orochimaru who had died during his attempted arrest, who had finally pushed Itachi over the edge.
There was a direct correlation between the age of a ghost and its level of power, no matter the kind. That being said, there was an age beyond which ghosts lost their powers and faded away, unable to support their mind without a body and keep sane any longer. Only perhaps five to ten percent of people became ghosts, and half of those, usually the specters, faded before twenty-five or thirty years had passed. Figures could last up fifty years, depending on their level of attachment, and draugrs could stay present for over seventy-five if they harbored particularly bad emotions pertaining to their death. That meant that this spectral conductor was long overdue for rest.
"May I please see your ticket?" This time, Sasuke looked directly at the ghost and smiled pleasantly, raising his ticket high enough that the conductor could reach it with his puncher without having to grab for it, which would inevitably cause it to pass through the paper. The specter's eyes grew wide, and he extended his puncher with trembling hands, catching the ticket in its jaws and clicking it shut, punching a small hole.
"Thank you. I think you've done enough work. Why don't you rest now?" Sasuke asked quietly, fixing his gaze squarely on the conductor.
Tears formed in the specter's eyes. "Thank you," he whispered. "I just needed to punch one more ticket..." Then he began to blur around the edges, and dissolved into nothingness.
Sasuke lowered his ticket, noting its flawless state and ignoring the strange look he was getting from the woman across the aisle. He was used to it.
This was going to be a long trip.