A loud bang that sounded out of nowhere, brought Rin back to the present. She looked at the clock and realized that it was almost 6:30pm. She must have dozed off, because she had remembered returning to the apartment at 4:30pm. She quickly went to freshen up and went to meet her friends, leaving a note for her brother that said "Meeting Mayumi and Haruto for dinner. See you after!"
Their usual meeting place was actually a cross roads for many people, Mayumi and Haruto were already there when she reached the area.
"You're late!" Mayumi told her, as she arrived.
"Hey, this place has changed a lot since I was last here, I didn't expect so many diversions, you know," Rin defended. Haruto just looked on at the 2 of them, not saying a word. There were only 2 reasons why he would do that: either he was very hungry, or he just couldn't be bothered. In this instance, it was the former.
"Will you 2 quit it? I'm starving!" Haruto announced to the 2 of them and started to walk of in the direction of a Donburi shop that they used to frequent. This shop was quite out of the way, and not many people come to this place, so they had no problems getting a booth seat. Mayumi and Rin took one side, while Haruto took the other side. They ordered their food and started sipping on tea while waiting for their food.
"So, how was your trip, find anything?" Mayumi asked her.
"I think I found out a little more than I could handle." Rin admitted. "I really don't know what I'm going to do now."
"Did you find out who your parents were?" Haruto asked, sipping tea.
"Yes, but there are still some things that I can't figure out. I even managed to find a diary of one of my mother's relations, but I haven't exactly read it yet." Rin said.
"Why?" Haruto pressed.
"Hey, I was really scared. Especially since my father was a ninja that specialized in a forbidden jutsu that has long since been forgotten. And my mother is a vampire! I would never have believed it if I hadn't seen the evidence for myself." Rin said.
"Which was?" Haruto asked.
"I saw her picture, I look exactly like her, and there was a note there… for me," Rin added.
"What? How could that be?" Mayumi asked her, not quite believing what she was hearing. "How could that letter still be there?"
"I think she knew that I would come looking for her, she left me a letter and a photograph. It was an old and creepy mansion that none of the locals ever dared to enter." Rin explained, as their food arrived. "They say that whoever goes in is never seen or heard of again. That's why they are afraid to go in."
"So was it as spooky as how they had described it?" Mayumi asked her, as Haruto took a bite out of his Gyu Don.
"Surprisingly, no, in fact, I felt so at peace when I went there. It was as if someone was welcoming me home. I never felt anything like that before and I knew that even if no other place wanted me, this was the one place that I could stay and call it home." Rin said, feeling a slight chill down her spine. The mansion that she spoke of was big enough to actually be called a palace. It didn't look like any traditional buildings in any of the villages. It was surrounded by a moat, with the only way to the place was via a bridge and what was apparently the front door. It would have been grand and stunning when it was first built, but now, it was a little shabby.
The hinges of the main door had rusted and was shut tight. She actually had to go in through one of the broken windows, once inside, she saw the biggest hall that she had ever seen in her entire life. It was huge! It could easily contain the entire Shinobi headquarters of Konoha. She could see, from the dim light, a chandelier hanging from the ceiling. It was amazing, but her night vision had always been good, and her eyes adjusted to the dim light conditions almost immediately. There was a staircase that led to the upper levels of the mansion, and she took it. On the second level, were what seemed to be endless corridors, and an extensive number of rooms. Whoever had built this place must have been filthy rich. It was practically three times the size of the underground complex that she had been to in the Village of Earth. It had taken her months to actually finish exploring the entire mansion.
It was after a few days of exploring the house that she realized that this place once housed vampires. Lots of them too. It took her a couple of weeks to actually find what she was looking for. It was a room to the South that seemed to somehow attract her there. She opened the door and went in, it was a bedroom. The bed looked like it had been slept in and that whoever it was had left without packing it again. There was a dresser to one side of the room, with a mirror. She wondered why there were mirrors there, since vampires didn't really have reflections anyway, but it was there, nonetheless. On the dresser, was a hairbrush, and next to it was a photograph. In it was a man who was standing next to a woman, who was seated. They seemed to be the exact opposites of each other. Where the man had sharp features, the woman had much smaller and petite features that made her look somewhat like a child, or a very young woman. She didn't seem like she was any older than 18 or 19. The man on the other hand, looked like he was almost 30. He didn't have a beard or a moustache and his hair was cut really short, so much so that you would have thought him to be bald. She reached out to take the photograph from the table, and noticed that there was a letter just below it. It had her name on it, and she was slightly taken aback as to how her name could have been on that letter.
"So, what did the letter say?" Haruto asked her, he was almost finished with his donburi and was going for another round of tea.
"Well, it apparently my mother's name is Fiona, or that's what she had signed off as anyway." Rin said, and continued to take another chunk out of her Oyako Don. "She said that she was sorry for abandoning me, but she didn't have a choice. She asked me to forgive her, and that she hoped I would be happy with whatever I was going to do and to put my…ah… 'gifts' to good use."
"Did she say anything about your father?" Mayumi asked, finishing her food as well.
"Very little, I'm afraid." Rin said, and took a sip of tea. "But she did tell me where to get information on him, and that was quite useful. I had even managed to get my hands on a manual that talks about that jutsu."
"Hm? I thought you said that everything was destroyed?" Mayumi asked her.
"I thought so too, but apparently not, it was very well hidden and if that letter hadn't told me where to look, I would probably have just passed right by it." Rin told her friends, finishing her rice. The letter didn't exactly tell her that there was an underground complex either which made things seem a little overwhelming for her when she found out about it.
"So, what exactly has been bothering you then?" Haruto seemed to ask out the blue. "I'm sure you have returned to find the answer to your final question." Rin blinked at him. She had forgotten how he always had a knack of hitting the nail right on the head.
"Ah…I'm thinking of quitting as a shinobi." There, she said it. "Then I'll just live somewhere else, away from all of this, so that I can't hurt anyone anymore."
"What? How could you even think of such a thing?!" Mayumi wanted to knock some sense into her old friend. "Are you going to just throw all that you've learnt away?!" At this moment, Mayumi was making a ruckus and all those who were in the shop stopped their meal and stared at her. After a moment of silence from the entire shop, Mayumi realized what she had done, and Haruto decided that it was time for them to change locations. He paid the bill and the three of them hurriedly left in the direction of the central park. Not many people would be there at this time of the evening, so it was quite a safe place to go to discuss such things. Mayumi couldn't believe what she was hearing at all, but Haruto didn't seem to have so much trouble accepting it. Perhaps it was because he was partly expecting something like this to happen?
"I know it's hard to think of it, but this jutsu is really dangerous, and I don't want that kind of incident to happen again," Rin said, with enough determination to actually have Haruto slightly taken aback. The incident had happened over 2 years ago, and was what started Rin's quest for her past in the first place. Not many people even remember it any more, but that obviously wasn't the case with Rin.
"Rin, it isn't your fault, you had no idea that something like that could happen." Haruto tried to advise her.
"Yea, besides, if anyone of us had known about your abilities, I'm sure that Hokage would have done something already." Mayumi added. They were seated on swings, while Haruto just leaned on the beam that is part of the main structure for the swing.
"You don't know that," Rin countered." It's such an old technique, it has probably already been forgotten by time if it wasn't because of the appearance of a freak like me…"
"Hey, you are NOT a freak, ok? You are human who knows what it's like to he happy, to be sad, and what's it like to be loved." Mayumi told her.
"I don't even know if I AM human!" Rin was still very upset about this. "What if I'm not? What will happen if I turn into a vampire like my mother? Will I have to go around drinking blood just to survive?"
"Rin…"Mayumi didn't quite know what to say, except that she was certain that there has to be a way to control her abilities, and used them for the purpose of good. "If the shinobi of that time could have trained that ability and used it to fight against other factions that wanted to use it for evil, then there must be a way to overcome it. I know there must be…" There was a long pause, as everyone seemed to be lost in their own thoughts. The reunion hadn't quite turned out how she had wanted it to.
"What about Ibiki? You're not going to avoid him forever, are you?" Haruto said, and Rin practically froze. Ever since Haruto had transferred to the Anbu, he had slowly come to know the man who was in charge of the torture and interrogation squad. Morino Ibiki may look intimidating to many, and many would believe that it would be impossible to think of him as someone who may care for another person, but he does. "Not even going to say goodbye?"
"I don't know how I can possibly face him again," Rin admitted. "I suppose you could say that that was the most difficult answer for me to find out. I don't know how I'm going to tell him about all of this."
"But Rin, he loves you, you know that, don't you?" Mayumi asked her.
"Not anymore, especially not after what I've done." Rin retorted.
"I think you'd better talk to him before you make that decision," Haruto warned her, and she turned to look at him in surprise, but Haruto wouldn't explain any further. It was infuriating! Haruto obviously knows something, but being the person that he is, he has no wish whatsoever to be involved in anyone's personal matters.
"Haruto…" Rin whispered. "It's not like as if I don't have any feelings for him… I just don't know how I'm going to face him again."
"Whatever it is, I really think that you should talk to him," Haruto told her in total honesty. "No matter what the answer is."
"I'll try," that was all she could promise him.