Hello everyone!! I now present you with the second chapter of Eye of the Osprey...This chapter is a bit overblown but I hope you like it!! As always, I sincerely am grateful for reviews, so please send those in!! As many as you want!! thanxxx...

--MC

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CHAPTER TWO

Something Suspicious

When the meeting finally ended (another hour later) and everyone went back to their homes, my father retreated into his room. I knew not to bother him. Well, technically, I never bothered him. I couldn't say I hated my own father, but I hardly liked him. And he obviously didn't like me. My father was stern and domineering, and sometimes I wondered if it had been my mother leaving that had caused him to sink into such an attitude.

The only time we really saw or spoke to each other was at dinnertime. Otherwise, I had grown up entirely without parenting.

No, that wasn't completely true. If it were, I would be a wild child who "wouldn't no nothing" and be proud of it. I had one adult in my life that meant a lot to me. My Academy teacher, Tenten, was like a mother to me. She had taught me everything about being a kunoichi, plus plenty more. Tenten had been wonderful; she'd forged a personal connection with me without making it seem like I was the teacher's pet. Sometimes, when I got lonely at home, I'd go over to her condominium on the fifth floor of a store building, where I was always welcome.

Tenten told me that my father had made her promise not to tell me anything about my mother, and, unlike Hatori, she kept her word. But she did tell me about how much she had abhorred my mother, when she had still been in Konoha, for being my father's lover. Tenten admitted to me that she had once loved my father. For some reason, this made an unspoken bond between us, and I knew I could turn to her whenever I needed a helping hand. I still went to see her sometimes, but not as often, since I'd become a genin and then a chunin.

As all my relatives filed out of the house after the meeting, I burned with curiosity at what Father had been talking about in the meeting, but there was no way I was going to ask him. I considered going to Tenten, but I didn't think there was much they could tell me about my father's history.

Once the meeting ended, I had to clean out the Cavern, like I did after every conference, though there was never much to clean because no food, drink, or unnecessary objects were allowed. But there always seemed to be dust somewhere, and, fastidious as I was, I couldn't leave it be. And, of course, the kids hadn't put away the building blocks and left the sheets on their cots messy, so I had to take care of that, as well.

Cleaning was sometimes annoying, but my father had made me do it ever since I was about three years old. Actually, father left all the household duties up to me. I mean, didn't I have enough to do as a shinobi? Housekeeping was a job for maids—with all our money, why didn't Father just hire a caretaker? But I had grown to not despise housework as much as I might have because it was so mundane, though I was extremely meticulous with my cleaning; I had been an extreme perfectionist for as long as I could remember. But scrubbing a floor made me feel down-to-earth, and dusting a shelf numbed my mind in a perfunctory way.

Plus, housework was insanely routine—which I liked. Food was always made with the same recipe, the floors were to be washed and the carpets vacuumed.

And no matter how many times the washing machine churned it up, the laundry always came out wet and cold. Just like life.

There were a hundred reasons for me to spite my father. He made me do all the housework and never told me anything about the mother I was supposed to be so much like. He didn't like me for not having the Byakugan and made me feel like a stranger in my own clan. Mostly, though, it was because he had hardly been a father, and I had never even had a mother.

And there was another problem: the person my father had turned me into in his raising-yet-not-raising of me. No matter how much I tried not to, I couldn't stop being cynical, pessimistic, and derisive, though I knew it would be my downfall one day. I credited my father for making me so aloof, as well.

The summer day ended as it always did. I put something together in the Beach, our kitchen, for dinner. I had been cooking for my family ever since I was six. I was even a perfectionist then, so I could follow any recipe put in front of me to the exact milliliter of soy sauce. My opinion on cooking was somewhat undecided, because it was necessary and the results could be tasty, yet it was always so messy.

But I always managed to put something edible on the almost-venerable (dust-free) table in our opulent dining room. When Hatori was home, dinner was much more amiable; right now he was off on an A-ranked mission. With just my father and I, our meal was taken in a cold silence.

Today, Father was especially reserved. Even his chewing was absolutely soundless. Sometimes I wondered what it was like for other kids—kids with real families—at dinner. My best friend, Anora Uchiha, had younger twin brothers, and her mother was probably one of the most sociable people I had ever met. And her father, though quite reticent, was always willing to help Anora train and sharpen her skills as a ninja.

Just as I was taking the dishes to the sink, my father said something almost too quiet to hear. His voice was pensive and melancholy, very unlike the commanding, peremptory attitude he usually had when talking to me.

I had my back to him and dishes and eating utensils in my hands, but somehow the whisper of his words touched my ears like a cool spring wind, and I could have dropped the dishes right there. I had never heard my father speak with such…emotion in his voice.

"What happens when you were told something once in your life, and you were so sure it was true…and then, life hands you people who tell you that what you had been believing for so long was a total fallacy; that it's completely untrue…what should you do…?"

I wasn't sure if he was truly asking me. I didn't respond.

After dinner I retreated to the Riverside, my room, like I always did, and entertained myself there until it was time for bed.

The next day, I woke up and went to the Academy, as I did every morning, to find out if there was a suitable mission for the next day or two. Today I rendezvoused with Anora, and we found a C-ranked mission where we had to bring a wagon of goods to the southern port. The mission would take five days, max, so I reported home, told my father (who didn't really care anyway), and packed some supplies for along the way. Then I brought out my handsome gray stallion, Stormheart, and rode him back to the Academy.

Anora and I harnessed Stormheart and her little speckled horse, Rose, to the wagon, and we hopped in. We could have taken the goods by foot; it might have been faster considering how quickly shinobi could move, but we preferred carting it. It took a day and a half to get to the port, and we spent the second half of the second day hanging out in the town there, after making sure our goods were in the right hands.

We stayed the night at a hotel before riding our horses back up to Konoha Village. We took two days getting back, taking our time and admiring the summer forest, though the heat and mosquitoes were extremely irritating. We arrived in Konoha in the evening; it was almost dark as we said goodbye and rode back to our houses.

When I got home, I groomed Stormheart and put him in his stall with a full trough of hay and a molasses bran mash before letting myself in the house through the back door, which led into the Forest, the dining room. Strangely, everything was dark and there were no signs of life. Usually, at this time of day, my father would be lounging in the Prairie, training in the Jungle, or up in his room, the Mountain, but no matter where he was, there would be some kind of light on in the house.

Slightly afraid of what I was going to find, I went to the kitchen in the Beach, opened the refrigerator, and was surprised to find no stashed leftovers from tonight's meal. Nor could I find anything from last night, or the one before that, for a matter of fact. The most recent dinner remains were at least three days old and already starting to spoil. This was definitely strange; had my father been away, too? But he would have left a note, I thought. Even if my father didn't really love me, he always made sure I knew where he was in case of danger. Like me, he was quite the perfectionist.

Where was my father?

I closed the fridge, afraid to touch anything else, including the light switch. "Hello?" I called out into the darkness. No response, just my own voice stabbing the silence. I couldn't have been more frightened had my breath been steaming in front of me because of coldness. Thankfully, though, the temperature seemed regulated.

I warily crept into the Prairie, and noticed, to my annoyance, that there was a thin layer of dust on the coffee table. But everything else was as normal as it ever could be. The same went for the Jungle (training room), and for the Sea (bathroom). I even checked the closet in the Forest, but there was nothing suspicious or even the slightest bit different in there.

Mounting the stairs, I flinched at every creak. Upstairs was as dark as downstairs. I first went to the Riverside, my bedroom, and sighed with relief to find everything exactly how I left it. I checked the Ocean (upstairs bathroom) and the Marsh (Hatori's bedroom), but everything was serene and ordinary.

The Cavern had always been kind of foreboding and creepy, but it was even more so today as I squeaked open the door. There were no windows in this room, so I couldn't see by moonlight as I had while I was checking the other rooms. Cautiously, as if it were wired to a trap, I flipped on the light switch, but all I could see in the poor illumination that the one light on the ceiling provided was the mahogany conference table and chairs and the file cabinets in the back. With a sigh of relief, I turned off the light and left the Cavern.

The only room left was my father's bedroom, the Mountain. The only time I had been in here was when I was four or five, and Hatori had dared me to open the closet with my mother's things in it. Of course, I had found it locked, and had been heavily chastised by my furious father. Since then, Hatori and I had felt as if the Mountain was forbidden, but I declared to myself that tonight was an exception.

The chrome doorknob was cold and smooth under my palm as I slowly creaked open the door. My father had a magnificent floor-to-ceiling window covering his back wall, and moonlight spilled onto the floor, giving the hardwood a luminescent sheen. Everything was intact and ordinary…except for the bed. There was no one in it, but the sheets were tousled and messy.

I immediately made a mental note of this as something suspicious.

One of the few similarities between my father and myself were that we both would not tolerate anything other than immaculate order. We were both perfectionists—that was the one thing I had noticed through all my years. I couldn't stand to see a messy bed, and I didn't think he could either. It might even have been Father who taught me how to scrupulously make my bed every morning. And even though I didn't know all of his habits, if he was anything, my father was not a hypocrite.

To anyone else, the sheets might have been overlooked as a one-time slip-up…but my father did not slip up—ever. Suspicion rose in me, and my breath came in short gasps.

That was when the doorbell rang.

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There--are you just dying to read more?? Well, sorry, no Chapter 3 up yet...but come back soon and maybe it'll be up!! thx again...

--MC