-1 Author's Note: This is my first fanfic. I wrote it with my awesome cousin and one of my best friends. I think it's pretty good. It's mainly adventure/action, but there's some romance thrown in too. The first chapter's pretty boring, but it gets better, honest. ;)
Also: I'll be getting a Xanga soon, and anything you want to know about any of my OCs/stories will be on there and possibly on Deviantart as well, because I draw.
I walked toward my house, eager to get home. I'd just finished a stupid D-rank mission that I hadn't even wanted to do. But my family was running low on money, and my father and I had to do all of the missions we could, no matter how pointless, just to get by.
A couple of streets from my house I saw smoke drifting through the sky. I couldn't see the source very clearly, but I was pretty sure it was coming from somewhere around my house. I quickened my pace, curious about where it might be coming from.
As I turned the corner to go to my house, I spotted a crowd of people outside my house and realized the plume of smoke was coming from my house. The crowd was buzzing with chatter. Most of them weren't shinobi, but I spotted Shikamaru and Choji when I got closer.
I ran up to them. I was worried now. I couldn't see the fire; it must have been coming from the other side of the house.
I ran up to Shikamaru and put my hand on his shoulder. "Shikamaru!" I said.
"Midori!" he exclaimed. "I thought you were inside!" His tone suggested that my friend was very relieved to see me.
"Yeah. We thought you were home. Haven't seen you at all today." Choji said. As usual, the chubby Genin was ravenously devouring chips.
"Well, I wasn't home, as you can see." I snapped, anxiously trying to see over the heads of the other people with no avail. "What's going on here?" I asked.
"We don't know. The back of the house is burning; the fire started a minute ago. I'm pretty sure it's your dad's room. It's probably some sort of fight." Shikamaru replied.
"Well, hasn't someone done anything about it?" I asked, growing tenser and more worried every second.
"Yeah, some ANBU went in a little while before the fire started. If they don't come out soon though I think I'm going to go alert-" Choji began.
He was cut off by a scream of agony from the house. It sounded like a boy-a small boy. My heart skipped a beat. My brother Daichi. I shoved through the crowd to get to the house, ignoring my friends' protests.
I wrenched the door open and slammed it shut behind me. When I saw what the interior of the house looked like, I wasn't surprised. I'd expected it to be like this. However, I still felt a jolt when I saw it.
All the furniture was disheveled. Books were strewn all over the floor, ripped and floating in pools of scarlet blood. The mats and chairs were slashed open. I could see kunai embedded in the wall, often accompanied by blood that resembled splatters of red paint on the wall. The table was smashed in two and was completely singed. A small plume of smoke was coming from it, but I could hear crackling from upstairs and saw smoke drifting down from upstairs.
Gaining composure, I walked up the stairs, careful not to stab myself with the sharp, cracked railing. The smoke got thicker as I got higher up. By the time I turned the corner to go o my father's room, my eyes were watering and I had trouble breathing.
My father's room was burning, just like Shikamaru had said. The wall farthest from the door was pretty much gone, and the flames had started devouring the other walls too. The room was so full of smoke I couldn't see very well. I could make out three dark shapes on the ground ahead of me. As I moved closer to see what they were, my stomach flipped over and threatened to regurgitate my lunch. The mangled bodies of three ninja were on the ground. A pool of crimson blood was beneath them, slowly getting bigger as the corpses' wounds steadily exuded blood.
Two of them I recognized as ANBU by their masks. They weren't in as bad shape as the third one; they looked like they'd been killed quickly and hopefully painlessly.
I couldn't even recognize the third one. It was face down and contorted in very disturbing and unnatural ways; many of its bones must have been broken. It was completely covered in blood, and its left side was scorched and blackened. The wounds were so deep that I could see the fractured, ivory-white bone and the innards. Some kunai and shuriken were still embedded in its back, sides, and various other places. Feeling queasy, I gingerly turned the corpse over. I at least wanted to try to identify it before leaving.
When I saw who it was, I almost couldn't believe it. This bloody, distorted corpse floating in the scarlet pool before me was my father.