Well….This is my very first story posted on so be kind, and please be advised that all flames will be fed to my cat, because I don't give a damn.
All characters, chakra, jutsu, and anything I may have failed to note belong to Masashi Kishimoto. Who is a far greater genius than I could ever hope to be.
The character Avari belongs to me. So there. Well, here goes nothing, I hope you enjoy!!!
Attempts At Uncertainty
The hardened fist of Avari Kunami slammed down on the unsuspecting alarm clock at exactly 2:33 a.m. The impact didn't quite shatter it, but something inside it snapped, and the red digital display, which usually glared the time angrily at anyone who cared to look, went blank. Avari sighed, and swung her legs out over the side of her bed, and rested her feet gingerly onto the cold hard-wood floor. It was dark in the room save for the small rivulet of moonlight shining through the partially closed curtains, but it was enough to shed light on her dark hair and nearly pearlescent pale skin. She closed her eyes wearily, blocking out her room and hiding her cerulean blue eyes from sight. She sighed heavily, and stood up, heading towards the bathroom connected to her bedroom, knocking the broken alarm clock into the trash on the way there.
She had awoken like this every night for the past three months, the screams of her nightmares fresh in her ears, as though her memories had been lying in bed with her, waiting for REM sleep to set in, so they could pounce. At first they had frightened her, and she would wake up tangled in her bed sheets, soaked in sweat, and having to explain to her alarmed father that she was indeed fine, and that she was sorry for waking him. (Even though this was totally unnecessary. Hatake Kakashi being who he what he was, he was no stranger to nightmares.) By now, however, she was just curious to know what they meant, and why they kept waking her up in the middle of the night, leaving her restless and alarmed.
She blundered into the small bathroom, squinting irritably as the halogen lights hummed to life. Rubbing her eyes, trying to keep the images fresh in her mind, she reached into her shower and spun the knobs to her preferred setting, then shrugged out of her pajamas and waited for the water to warm sufficiently to be livable. She knew better than to think she was going to get back to sleep, so she might as well get up and prepare for the day. She stepped under the hot stream, allowing the water to wake her and clarify her thoughts a bit. The room came into sharper focus as soon as the water hit her, and she sat down in the bottom of the shower, and stared at the faucet, deeply in thought.
The dream was always the same. She was always a small child, and she would find herself lying on top of a hill, in the middle of the night. The moon was full and huge, almost blotting out the rest of the sky, and it illuminated the other figure standing a few feet away from her. She would stand up, and walk to this woman, tugging on her pants the way a child that wants to be picked up instinctively knows how to tug. The woman would oblige, but her face would always remain hidden behind her hair; all but her mouth, which would curve into a pretty smile…very pretty, except for the long, almost translucently white, delicately pointed teeth protruding from gently curved lips. Suddenly, the hill they were standing on would erupt from cool moonlight to the raging, angry blaze of fire, and the cool summer night breeze would be heavy with the stench of blood. And still the woman would stand there, smiling her serene, mostly hidden smile and hold the child against her in a steely, unyielding grip. The smaller Avari would squirm, protesting to the woman's grip and trying to escape the mayhem that had erupted all around them, but the woman would not let go. Instead, she would pull Avari close, whisper words that she could not hear, or rather, that she could not understand, and then pain would scream from every inch of her body, and she would wake sweaty and aching and thoroughly disoriented.
She sat, recounting this to herself for the uncountable thousandth time, until the water stopped feeling warm and just felt wet, and then she pulled herself, defeated and still sleepy-eyed out of the shower, and towards her closet. She pulled on her usual outfit, a pair of loose-fitting black cargos, a plain mid-sleeve shirt, her sandals, and Hitai-ate, which she tied smartly around her neck. She shut off the light, ran her fingers through her short, choppy hair and made her way to the kitchen. Fortunately, because her dad loved her, (or more likely to keep her from burning anything), the coffee pot was already set up with the proper amount of grinds and water, and all she had to do was push 'power.' This she did with all the weary familiarity of anyone who has walked the same path in their darkened house many times before, and then pulled herself up onto the counter, waiting for the dripping to stop, and signal the coffee ready to drink.
Some minutes later she was filling up her coffee cup, which declared "Konoha's finest!" in bright, preachy pink letters. The rest of the pot she poured into a thermos and set inside a warmer, so Kakashi would have something to drink when he woke up some hours later. By that point she would already be holed up in the ANBU corps. Training facility, beating away at what was left of her assigned training dummy and awaiting her team's orders. She finished her cup of coffee, still perched comfortably on the kitchen counter, and then slid off, and placed her cup softly in the sink. She scribbled out a note telling her dad that she wasn't dead or kidnapped, that she had just gone on, and would see him later. This was purely a formality by this point, a polite gesture, because she had been getting up and leaving like this since the nightmares started, and they were both well aware of her new schedule by this point.
She slipped on her traveling cloak, and stepped out into the chilly November morning. It was still in the dead hours of morning, since only an hour and half had passed since she'd woken up and broken her clock, and the air was as crisp and biting as was to be expected of fall in Konoha. She flipped the collar of the cloak up to keep the biting winds away from her face, and set off towards the Black Ops building, her footfalls echoing back to her with a soft 'skif,' through the empty streets.