HELLO! Thank you for clicking on this. You should read it and then click another button and review it because that would make you a really cool person.

Uhhh, this first chapter might be like suuuper long but I'm pretty sure all the ones after this are gonna be shorter, so bear with me please:).

This is my first story in a really long time, and I hope you like it!

-Rachel

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Here's this instead!

Manami was just thirteen years old that day. Before then, her father, sister and she had been a happy, average family. Besides not having a mother around the house, there was nothing out of the ordinary about their everyday life. Manami's father, Akimitsu, was a professor at one of the academies in the land of the water, their home. Aiko was her younger sister, by five years. She was eight then. They lived in a small and cozy cottage towards the outskirts of the hidden waterfall village, overlooking the beautiful blue sea that Manami once loved so dearly.

Manami's father and sister were the only people she ever cared to be around. After her mother died, she had become reclusive, and slowly one by one, she let her friends slip away. This never bothered Manami, she didn't mind being alone. She didn't mind a lot of things after her mother died. She just did what she was supposed to do when she was supposed to do it, not having a rebellious bone in her body. When she was at school she was a quiet student, and nobody ever bothered to talk to her anyways. She was invisible to the world around her- and that was the way she liked it.

Accept for her once expressive bright green eyes, which were now dull and cloudy, nothing ever stood out about her. When she went to school, she kept her wavy blonde locks tied up in a tight bun, not wanting the attention she knew they would bring. That's why her father always said he had first fallen in love with Manami's mother; because of her hair. Manami always laughed when he mentioned this, for what a silly thought, falling in love with someone for their hair. This was the only trait she recieved from her mother, and she was grateful for that. Aiko, on the other hand, looked like her mom in every aspect. She had her large blue eyes the color of the sky on a clear day, and her fair, delicate skin that glowed when she was outside. Unlike Manami, she kept her hair down all the time. Manami once questioned her about it, when she had accidentally gotten bubblegum stuck in it. Aiko refused to have it cut out, and so Manami was stuck trying to comb it out. When she asked, her younger sister just answered simply that she is happy that she has something to remember her mom by, for she never did get to meet her. Sometimes Manami hated her for that- she didn't know what she had lost.

They were happy though, the three of them together.

One summer, the family decided to go on vacation to Konoha, for they heard once that it was beautiful there in the summer. They travelled on the safest route to the beautiful village by taking a boat across a small strait that connected their home to the other lands. They walked the rest of the way on foot, stopping in various other villages along the way. When they finally arrived, they booked a hotel room. It was a nice hotel, and the people at the front desk were very kind, smiling politely when little Aiko rambled on and on about this and that when they were checking into their room. They were going to stay there a week, then return home.

That was the plan.

On the last faithful day of their trip, they were going to stop by the little market down the street to pick up some provisions for the road before they would leave. On the way there, the sky started to darken into an angry grey that worried the small blonde girl. She hoped there wasn't going to be a storm; they'd have to delay their travels for another day. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy the beautiful scenery of the fire country, it's just that she was feeling a little homesick, and longed for her own bed, not one she had to share with her sister, who by the way, happened to snore (another wonderful trait of her mother's- Akimitsu tried to pass it off as being charming, but Manami was not convinced).

There was also a nagging feeling in the back of her mind that kept telling her something was off here. She kept shaking it away, but it was starting to make her anxious.

They passed a green open field with a couple of ninjas-in-training practicing throwing shuriken, their leaf village headbands glinting in the sunlight. The group stopped to watch for a little bit, and little Aiko gazed at them with awe. She was only 8 then, and already she knew what she was going to be when she grew up. She told her older sister everyday- "Mana, you just watch, I'm going to become the greatest ninja on earth!" Her eyes always gleamed with determination when she talked about becoming a ninja, and Manami never doubted her. Once Aiko had something in her head, she would not stop until she had it. Looking down at her sister, she groaned. They wouldn't hear the end of the leaf village for a month.

"Come onnn Aiko, we gotta go before it starts raining!" Manami said, glancing up at the sky again. She pulled her father and Aiko's hands and dragged them away from the field.

"Oh no, you're right, it does look a bit cloudy out here doesn't it?" Akimitsu said worridly, looking up too. "It'll be fine, dad," Manami assured her father, even though the nagging feeling was coming back again.

Still on the road to the store, they passed an oddly dressed man with a hair cut that looked like he just put a bowl on his head and snipped around it. He was fashioning a revolting army green jumpsuit. Manami pushed Aiko playfully,

"When you grow up are you gonna wear funny clothes like that too? 'Cause I don't know if I could stand having a sister that dressed like that everyday!"

"I'm not! Daddy tell her I'm not." She said in a determined pouting voice that she recently learned how to use against her poor father to her advantage.

"Of course you're not honey," He said. Then, crouching down to her level, he whispered, "you're just going to dye your hair like that guy." He smiled, and pointed, his eyes crinkling up in the corners.

Manami looked over, and indeed the man next to the green jumpsuit guy definitely had grey hair. He didn't look old or anything, just kind of silly. It stood straight up. Maybe he was going for silver or something, Manami thought. He also wore a black mask over his mouth and a black Konoha headband tilted to the side to cover up his left eye. The too men looked like they were having a tense discussion with eachother, and they kept looking around, like they were making sure nobody else was listening to them.

"AM NOT!" Aiko screamed. Akimitsu picked her up in his arms, assuring her that she was going to do no such thing. Tears were already forming in her eyes, and Manami could feel a fit coming on. She shushed her sister, still staring intently at the ninja men in the funny outfits. There was something weird about them- the way they were speaking to eachother, afraid someone would hear. The grey haired one was facing her direction, and under that mask Manami could sense he was worried about something, just by the expression in his eye. He glanced at her, gave her a look, then he was expressionless again, and Manami looked down, embarassed.

When she looked back up again, the man was nowhere in sight. Manami blinked, confused, then turned to tell her father about the weird encounter, but he was no longer beside her, nor her sister. Manami often caught herself in trances such as this, where she would lose sight of reality for a moment and sort of space out.

Looking around again, she spotted her father holding her sister a little ways down the street, standing in front of a beat-up looking ramen stand. They were smiling at someone inside of it, talking cheerfully about something like the weather, or what kind of ninja academy there was there, and how old kids could start in it. He was probably bribing Aiko with a bowl of ramen, so she would quiet down. Manami laughed to herself- he was so weak when it came to his youngest daughter.

Akimitsu turned and waved her over, smiling. Manami smiled back and was walking slowly, taking her time. She was in no hurry to hear her sister whine right now. Manami looked back up at the sky and closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the slight breeze on her skin as she walked. She frowned and realized she didn't even bring a jacket on this trip, because the stupid weather was supposed to be nice! Now she was probably going to be soaked to the bone if it started raining and all she had on was a tank top, great.

When she opened her eyes again, she zeroed in on a man dressed in all black, walking behind the ramen stand. Only Manami could see him from her angle, the rest of the people in the fairly busy street oblivious. Manami watched as the tall mysterious man carefully took out a small piece of paper from the inside of his long dark trench coat, and smoothed it on to the side of the little booth. He turned and looked at her for a second. There was a large scar that crossed diagonally across his face, and his eyes were a brilliant green. He was big- bigger than her father and one of those ninja from earlier combined, yet still the world around him paid no attention; it was like he was invisible.

The man wore his hood up, giving him a sinister look. She caught his eye. For the rest of her life Manami would never be able to forget the slight smirk he directed at her then, the playfullness in his vibrant golden eyes. This was just a game to him; her and her family were nothing but silly little tourists that happened to be in the completly wrong place at the completly wrong time.

She knew nothing at the time of the ninja art, besides what her little sister told her from the numerous books she read. No, Manami had no idea that the small piece of paper inscribed with characters she didn't recognize that was stuck just feet from her father and small little sister was a paper bomb, meant to destroy anything close to it.

Confused, Manami looked at her smiling father on one side of the ramen shop, waving at her, and then back at the smirking and hooded green-eyed man, hidden from everyone elses view. Her smile faded and she took another step foward towards the scary figure. She gasped when he gave her one last smile, winked, then silently dissapeared in a puff of white smoke.

It was all in slow motion. Manami was looking at her little sister's face. Aiko was fixed on the bowl of ramen being handed to her when her father gave her a kiss on the cheek as if to say, "there, all better?". And for a moment, a single fraction of a second, everything was as it should be. All that mysterious man nonsense was in Manami's head, no need to worry. Her smile returned.

Then she blinked once,

and her world was on fire.

OK. Phew.

This is my first story I've written in like a super long time, and the stories I wrote a super long time ago sucked. Sooo, please review and tell me what you think, and if you have any suggestions at all, or advice or whatever, that would be pretty awesome. You can be mean if you want I guess, whateva. And also tell me if this format is ok, like if I should make the paragraphs farther apart or something? K cool.

Oooo, I'm excited for the next chapter. It's gonna be awesome. READ IT.

Thanks!

-Rachel