Blackhaven18: I know you guys are going 'Finally!', but it's up and I tried to make is a longer chapter. So far it stands at a little over six thousand words, excluding the author notes.

(PS: You don't have to read the next three paragraphs, I'm just ranting.)

Internet is finally up and running, no thanks to the two first guys we had come out to hook it up.

The first guy couldn't figure out what was wrong and sent out the second guy the second day. When the second one made it out here, he said 'Might be the modem', notice the key word being 'might.' He came back out six hours later with a new one, as he didn't bring one with him- you'd think he'd have an extra on him just in case- and turns out it wasn't that.

The third finally pegged the problem as being 'crossed wires' and I posted this as soon as my connection was up and running. Oh, and all this was supposed to have been taken care of before we moved in.

Isn't life grand?

Disclaimer: I own nothing, but the dried lint in my pocket.

Flames will be used to heat my coffee.

Song used: Meant to live

By: Switchfoot

Chapter 12: Meant to Live

~Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock~

A groan echoed from the floor in the kitchen and a few minutes later a slight shifting followed.

'… Why's that damn clock so loud?' The thought rang out in Nate's head and he rubbed his temples, trying to dissuade the sound. Suddenly he stopped, realizing he was feeling the cold, hard surface of tile beneath him and not the softness of his bed. 'Wait…'

His gaze snapped open in surprise and only barely recognized the familiar white pastel ceiling above him. The very ceiling he himself often scaled to check, set, and reset motion sensor traps he designed himself.

'W-Where am I?' Slowly, he pulled himself off the floor, using the counter edges as support and checking his surroundings in a motion that was so ingrained he didn't even notice as he took inventory of the doors, windows, and areas large enough for him to sufficiently cover himself.

Escape routes and hiding places.

'Kitchen, but what was I doing…? Was I attacked?' A flash of silver on the counter triggered a déjà vu moment and he realized what he had been doing before he fell had been important, but couldn't pull the memory forth from the recess of his mind. 'Phone, I was checking my phone and then I… I blacked out? But what was I doing before?' He grabbed the thin cell and looked at the display screen, hoping to possibly renew the vacant gaps in his memory.

One missed call, C. Cullen.

Suddenly, the memories rushed back with such a force it nearly had him back on the floor. Only his tight grip on the counter kept him standing.

"Riven, you're working the ditch shift today," A large man holding a clipboard called out over the crowd of other worker's.

The sun was out that day, which might as well have been a supernatural occurrence in the town of Forks'. It was also warm enough to work without a shirt and hopefully regain that tan he had in Konoha. Without it he looked a little sickly, the pale complexion that Bella had was something he would never be able to pull off to the extent that she had.

The Cullen children also showed up. They had been following him from the school grounds, their curiosity finally getting the better of them. He was able to feel their presence and careened through allies and ambled over fences, just to toy with them a bit. If they wanted to find out what he was up to they would have to work for it.

Then by the time he knew it, his shift was over and he was heading home. He walked along the familiar curvy road path and that was when the first symptoms started…

"That's… that can't be good." He murmured, as he remembered how he zoned out the previous night after becoming entranced by the dancing headlights.

Nate reached for the pad and pencil nearby, usually reserved for his shopping list. "Alright, I need to start off slow. What symptoms did I have last night and when I woke up?"

After a few minutes he looked back down at his continually growing list:

Fainting

Dizzy

Swooning

Distortion (of reality)

Shaking (slight)

Tired

Confusion

Memory loss (Amnesia?)

Headache

"Wait a minute… I was feeling off even a few months ago. This has been going on far longer than I thought." He said as he recalled how he had behaved in his past and recent confrontations.

Weak

Pain

Throbbing of the limbs

Shortness of breath

Paranoid

Easily angered

The other symptoms had started off slow he realized and built of gradually over time. It would explain why he wasn't able to notice it until now…

Weak; his fist colliding with a boulder during training and drawing blood from a minor abrasion that in the past wouldn't have any sort of effect or if it did would heal over in a matter of seconds.

'That's another thing,' He scribbled again on the sheet.

Slower healing

Pain, shortness of breath, and throbbing limbs could all be categorized in the same area. These days he would easily become sore and tired during the simplest of tasks. His previous stamina had taken a hit too, he would be breathing hard after running ten miles when he used to run twenty and even thirty if he was feeling up to it. His strength seemed to be diminishing as well, when he lifted heavy items he was often left with an almost empty, throbbing feeling in his limbs. As if the bone all but disappeared.

Easily angered; how he nearly attacked Edward in the music store, thinking it was someone trying to catch him off guard to kill him. He could clearly remember wanting to snap the neck of the impersonator, wanting to watch the man writhe on the ground, trying to breathe through the blood invading his lungs. Nate wanted to see the man die in a pool of his own blood for even thinking of toying with him in such a way.

His entire body still just as the ending tail of that last thought winded through his head, slightly horrified with himself. When had he ever wanted to witness such a thing? Even when something like that was required of him during a mission he always made sure to make his enemies death swift, but now it was almost as if he didn't care for human mortality. His thoughts were becoming almost… sadistic, cold-blooded, and evil.

His body shivered on its own accord at the thought and he brought the pencil in his hand back down to the paper.

Blood thirsty

'I… I need to research this some more. Maybe the medical books Tsunade left can shed a little light on this… but I need to deal with Carlisle first… Oh, shit. Today's Thursday, I was planning on calling in sick tomorrow…' He bit his lower lip in thought; if he called in sick it would explain his absence today as well. 'Alright, that sounds good. Now to call Carlisle…'

Carlisle Cullen looked over the note from Nate again and back to the piles of books he retrieved from his vast library. He had read and reread the description Nate had left him in the letter about the Volturi's 'guests' and each time he couldn't shake the feeling of recognition.

The two smallest of the three had been clad in dark brown cloaks for most of the journey until they divested them at the entrance. According to the letter there appearance was reminiscent of old men, with their frail, bent over bodies, loose, folded skin and bald head. Nothing that was too odd. It wasn't until both simultaneously looked up into the patch of trees to their observers did they see that something was severely wrong with their first assessment.

It was the eyes, an almost caramel color that darkened to black and bled into the white's of their eyes, consuming it completely. They didn't have the characteristics of a vampire nor of any wolf and they obviously weren't human, but what in the world did that leave?

The third was the largest of the trio, being around six foot five and he too wore a dark cloak. When asked to show themselves he raised a hand to the others' and they immediately followed the silent order. From this one action it was clear who the leader was. He didn't do anything odd until after the meeting, when all three of the head of the Volturi: Aro, Caius and Marus escorted them to the door.

When the group was all set to go, their cloaks back on and their packs handed back to them a rookie vampire made a mistake and if the guests didn't react the others' would have.

Being new, he was far stronger then his sire and the others' more experienced than he was. He pushed his luck when he spoke of the guests when their backs were turned and it was with that disobedience that his life ended.

The large man didn't even spare him a glance as what was seemingly his belt unraveled from his waist and dropped to the floor, the suns rays glinting almost ominously off the steel coating it had. It wasn't until it was completely unraveled that the wolves realized his 'belt' was attached to the base of his spine and a large, black stinger was at the end.

The newly discovered tail, around three inches in diameter, laid itself in coils on the ground, looking around nine feet long and when the vampire turned away it lunged with incredible speed to wrap around the man's torso. The stinger plunged itself into vampire chest cavity and forced its way in deeper, before quickly retracting and once again and stabbing deep into his forehead.

The vampire crumpled into a heap at the man's feet and the tail retracted. The others' who escorted the trio the rest of the way out never said a word after that.

Carlisle sighed as he finished leafing through another book, still unable to find what he was looking for. If only he could remember exactly where he read about them…

He let his head fall into the palms of his hands in thought. It was in a book of mythology as well as religion, he knew that, but most of the books he had were falling apart. Some were thrown when they became too deteriorated to read anymore and in this weather it happened more often then he would like. He prayed the book he was looking for was not one of them.

"I wonder if it's in the attic." He said out loud, thinking to all the books he and his wife wrapped to protect them from the moisture.

Only the oldest books were placed into the trunk upstairs and it would explain why he wasn't able to find it among the other books. He quickly made his way up into the dusty room and finding the maroon trunk wedged between Edward's old records and the family's outdated clothes they couldn't bear to part with just yet.

A thick layer of dust slid from the lid when he lifted it open to sift through the contents inside. After a few minutes his hand came into contact with a thick book and upon unwrapping it saw the title and the author's name.

'Dante's Inferno'

'Dante Alighieri'

Sighing to himself in relief he brought it back to his office and began to carefully turn the pages of the musty book.

He was a few paragraphs into Canto 17 when he found what he was looking for and before he could leave another message on Nate's cell his wife appeared in the doorway, "Carlisle," she said, "Nate just called. He wanted me to say he got your message, but he needs a couple of days off for… familial reasons and left us the number for Jacob's cell phone."

"Alright, thank you Esme." He gratefully accepted the number and dialed it before he did anything else.

(Yeah?) The voice was whispered on the other line and Carlisle knew he was taking a risk doing this while school was still in session, but unfortunately this couldn't wait.

"Hello Jacob, I'm sorry for calling while you're in class, but I needed to set up a meeting between you and I. It has to do with the Volturi and what possible actions we could take… that and I think I may know what they're meeting, if the description Nate gave me is anything to go by." He rattled off quickly, but slow enough for the wolf to understand.

(Seriously? Alright, I can fake a seizure or something and be over in a little bit. Hang tight.) The line went dead and Carlisle placed the phone back in its cradle.

He looked back at the open book on his desk, the illustration filling up one of the two visible pages. The intricacy was certainly something, the works of today just didn't have the same feel to them these old works had. It was there in its small crosshatchings and subtle shading. It was the text about the creature though that had his full interest.

CANTO 17

"BEHOLD the monster with the pointed tail,
Who cleaves the hills, and breaketh walls and weapons,
Behold him who infecteth all the world."

Thus unto me my Guide began to say,
And beckoned him that he should come to shore,
Near to the confine of the trodden marble;

And that uncleanly image of deceit
Came up and thrust ashore its head and bust,
But on the border did not drag its tail.

The face was as the face of a just man,
Its semblance outwardly was so benign,
And of a serpent all the trunk beside.

Two paws it had, hairy unto the armpits;
The back, and breast, and both the sides it had
Depicted o'er with nooses and with shields.

With colours more, groundwork or broidery
Never in cloth did Tartars make nor Turks,
Nor were such tissues by Arachne laid.

As sometimes wherries lie upon the shore,
That part are in the water, part on land;
And as among the guzzling Germans there,

The beaver plants himself to wage his war;
So that vile monster lay upon the border,
Which is of stone, and shutteth in the sand.

His tail was wholly quivering in the void,
Contorting upwards the envenomed fork,
That in the guise of scorpion armed its point. (1)

"Thank you ma'am, I'll be sure to let you know about my dad's condition." Jacob said with as much weariness in his voice he could muster and nearly cringed at the sympathetic look on his teacher's face.

He hated lying like this, but sometimes he had no choice. After Carlisle called he ended up calling his father during his bathroom break and together they came up with a story that would allow him to leave campus for an undeterminable amount of time, leaving it open ended enough to allow for leeway if needed.

As it was, the story they told was that Billy needed to go in for some surgery. Jacob expressed that he would like to be nearby if his father needed anything. They conveniently left out whether it was minor or major surgery.

"You take your time dear; I'll send one of your friends with your homework so don't worry about that. Drive safe now."

"Of course, thank you."

He stepped outside into the cold air and shed his jacket once he reached his car. It was too damn hot to be wearing the thing anyway. Putting it into gear he pulled out of the parking space and started the journey to the Cullen home.

"No, no, no even this doesn't sound right, there's got to be something else." Nate groaned as he crossed off another ailment from the books given to him by Tsunade.

For the better half of the morning he worked his way through two books of possible poisonings and infections he could have contracted while being here, but nothing came up.

"At this rate I might as well just send a letter to Baa-san. At least then I'll more then likely get an answer within two months…" He said, the statement dripping with sarcasm. He picked up the next book and cringed slightly at the title,

'What Ailments Should You Know About as A Ninja?'

'What am I four now?' He thought and cracked open the thin book regardless. 'Chapter one: How to deal with fevers, pass. Chapter two: How to properly bandage and treat a wound, double pass…Let's see, nothing, nothing, nothing, no-wait a minute.' He brought a finger up to chapter 10, the second to last chapter in the entire book when the title caught his eye. 'Chapter 10: Chakra Poisoning, what it is and how to deal with it. Well, it's worth a shot.'

He turned to the appropriate chapter and began reading the text. It only barely went over some of the symptoms, but as it was, he had all of them. He reached down and pulled up a medical dictionary turning to 'Chakra poisoning' and quickly read through the definition.

Chakra Poisoning: a condition brought on by excess chakra in one's system. It can be caused by multiple reasons, such as: Tied chakra lengths, or simply not expelling the chakra from one's system. Though, recent studies have led medical doctors to believe it might be passed down from family member to family member. It is not infectious like the flu or the cold. If the chakra is not expelled from the system it could cause irreparable damage to the body and eventually death.

'Tied chakra lengths must mean knotted lines that run the chakra throughout my body. It would certainly stop it from expelling all the way I suppose.'

More intricate symptoms were listed at the bottom and Nate mentally ticked them off in his mind as he went down the list.

'All of them… I have all of them. Mood swings, dizziness, dazes… it's all here.' He thought and opened another book to look for possible treatment, besides just expelling his chakra. Only one thing was listed,

If symptoms persist after deteriorated chakra is gone from the system, seek medical attention.

Nate sighed, if this didn't work…

'No, this will work. I know it will.' Nate closed his books and made his way out into the forest a good ways away from his home and sat down, crossing his legs. 'Well, here goes nothing.' He brought his hands together and forced it from his body, seeing the familiar bluish tendrils whip around him…

A car door slammed just outside of Carlisle's home and he went to meet Jacob on the front deck, making sure to bring the book with him.

"Alright, you said you knew what those things were in the letter. I've already guessed their not vamps', shifters', or humans. So, let's here what you've come up with." He said as he sat down on one of the patio chairs.

Carlisle dropped the book onto the table in front of the wolf, "Skip to Canto seventeen and read about nine paragraphs in."

Jacob eye the book and cracked it open grimacing when he saw the words, "I never did like reading stuff like this, could never figure out what they're saying." He chuckled.

"If there is something you don't understand just ask me. I only want you to go over the description of the creature."

Jacob nodded and read over the passage, growing tense at what he was reading. When he was done he flipped back to the cover of the book and looked at Carlisle with apprehension.

"That book… was written in the early fourteenth century and was first published in 1314. The one you are holding is translated into English and I think it's the ninth or tenth time it's been republished." The vampire answered and looked at the book, "I can assure you this is no joke."

"Hold up though. I think I remember hearing something about this book, doesn't it like, talk about hell and stuff?"

"Yes, it speaks of hell, heaven and purgatory. I was going to tell this to you when both you and Nate were free, but I felt this was too important to wait." Carlisle said and Jacob nodded.

"Of course, I'll leave him a text."

"You wouldn't happen to know of these familiar reasons of his do you? If there's something I could do to help?" The vampire asked and Jacob looked nervous for a moment.

"…Nah, I just think he… needs some time off." The wolf answered, "I really should head home now, but I'll swing by on Saturday when Nate's here, if that's alright?"

"That sounds fine, goodbye Jacob."

"See ya'."

Nate gasped as the bluish tendrils suddenly retracted and he leaned back to lie on the ground, completely exhausted.

'… My headache's gone,' He noticed and slowly got to his feet, testing his limbs experimentally.

The first thing he noticed was how more energized he felt, it was as if he took his previous energy and multiplied it by ten fold. 'I-It worked…. It really worked.'

"Man, I haven't felt this great in months!" He exclaimed and ran the length back to his home.

The Next Day:

Esme paced in her kitchen thinking back to the phone call from Nate. He really had a wonderful family and she would hate to think anything ill happened to them.

"Esme?" She heard from the living room and made her way there. Upon reaching it she saw Emmett giving her a quizzical look, while everyone else feigned non-interest. "You alright? You've been pacing for the past few hours and that's not even mentioning how flighty you've been." She inwardly smiled to herself. She could always count on Emmett to be blunt.

Rosalie discreetly sniffed the air that wafted behind her 'mother' as she was the closest to the door. "Do I smell… muffins?" She asked and Esme gave a small smile at being caught.

"Yes, I also made a batch of cookies and some lasagna as well." She conceded and flopped down into a nearby chair, "I… sort of thought I should bring something over to Nate and his family… you know, just to see if he's alright."

Carlisle couldn't help but chuckle, "That sounds great Esme, I've been wanting to check up on him as well."

"Oh, me too, me too!" Alice chirped from the couch and dragged Jasper to his feet.

"So, I suppose this is going to be one of those family things?" Rosalie muttered and frowned.

"It's common courtesy to check up on neighbors and see if they need anything Rosalie," Edward commented and placed a bookmark to mark a page in the book he was reading. "It's the least we could do."

"Of course I know that, but dropping by unannounced? That seems rude to me." She muttered and grabbed the proffered container of cookies given to her by Esme.

"We'll only be a few minutes." Esme said and darted out the door.

"If you insist," Rosalie sighed and followed, along with the rest of the family.

Nate downed the last of the bourbon he bought from a nearby store and chuckled when he remembered the store clerk didn't even card him. With a simple henge and he took on the appearance of a thirty year old, brown haired, green eyed man. The clerk didn't even know what hit him.

"I suppose that's the benefits of living in this clueless society. Hell, with all their technological advances you'd think they'd be able to pick up on the vampires', and shifters'. Then again… I'm probably expecting too much of them." He hiccupped and placed the rather large empty bottle onto the bare table with a clatter.

He had purchased the second to largest bottle on the shelf, knowing he would need something strong to feel any of the effects. That, along with one of the bottles of sake Jiraiya stashed in his bag was sure to keep him under the influence. Even a few hours would be a reprieve.

He poured the liquid into a small dish and brought it to his mouth just as the doorbell went off. Swallowing it and placing it back onto the table he rose carefully and ambled towards the door, careful not to break anything in his home along the way.

"Wonder who that could be…?" He said and swayed for a moment before placing a hand onto the door knob to steady himself.

The door opened and his bleary gaze looked out.

There, standing in his doorway was none other than the Cullens'.

"Dude, you think he's been crying?" Emmett asked when Nate opened the door and Rosalie jabbed her elbow into his ribs.

/Konbanwa, Nanika atta?/ Nate said and most of the Cullen's looked at each other in confusion.

"Huh?" Emmett responded, voicing everyone's thoughts.

/Douka shita no?/ Nate gave them a confused look and Edward stepped up recognizing the sound of the language Nate was speaking.

"Nate, you're speaking in Japanese. We can't understand you."

The blonde nodded and replied, /Gomenasai/ His brow furrowed in thought and the others' sighed in relief when he spoke again. "Sorry, sometimes it's… difficult… to keep from slipping back." He replied, his voice still heavily accented.

"Can we come in Nate? We brought food for everyone." Alice broke the silence with her question and Nate wasn't quick enough to hide a wince. "Nate?"

"… You guys sure know how to time something just right, don't you?" He murmured, "Sure, I'll be right back."

The family watched as he nearly collided with a nearby end table on his way into the living room and followed kept their gaze on him to make sure he wouldn't collapse when as he walked to the living room.

The family glanced at the bare walls and Edward was able to pick up on a thin wire stretching along the underside of one of the upper windows.

"Is there a reason why there's like, no family pictures or paintings at all in this place?" Emmett asked as he looked down one of the hallways.

"I see what you mean, it's almost like… he's the only one who lives here. Emmett, get back here!" Rosalie hissed when she saw him opening random doors and looking into the rooms.

"… There's nothing in these rooms. Esme didn't you say the bedrooms were on the first floor?" He asked instead and she gave a brisk nod. "Only one of them is occupied and Nate's scent is all through it, the other two though? There's nothing but a few boxes here and there."

Emmett walked back to the living room in case Nate went looking for them and saw the blond come out from the kitchen, staggering slightly.

"You're drunk?!" Emmett declared as he realized why Nate was acting so funny and Nate raised a brow, he threw and empty bourbon bottle it into the kitchen trash and returned as the rest of the family sat down, an inquisitive look on their features.

The blonde didn't answer, but merely gave a shrug of the shoulders and sat down on the couch, pouring a spicy smelling liquid from a white bottle with Kanji. He leaned back and sipped from the dish, eyes closed, savoring the flavor on his tongue.

"Nate, you do know the drinking laws in this country state you have to be of twenty-one years of age to drink don't you?" Carlisle asked, eyeing the large white bottle he saw Nate pour the liquid from.

"Seriously? Well, that explains why the clerk at the first store threw me out. I had to disguise myself to get the bourbon at the other, but the sake was a gift." Nate said off-handedly, and seemed to take another deliberate sip. "Sorry, but I've been drinking on this particular day since I was thirteen. It's the one day I get drunk off my rocker and it's sort of a tradition. Please don't tell chief swan on me." Nate begged in a falsetto voice and Emmett laughed.

Nate watched the room spin some more before they answered and everything seemed to have slowed and he knew he wasn't going to be able to get back up. Instead he lay down on the two-seater couch he was on, his head resting on one end and his calf's supported up by the other. His arm was thrown over his eyes in attempt to block out the light most likely.

"But surely your parents don't allow this? Do they even know?" Esme uttered, horrified to think they would let their young son to do something like this.

"Nah, I doubt they would have cared anyway," Nate said, the words already gone from his mouth before he could retract them. 'Well, damn, must be the liquor.' He thought and glanced at Esme's shocked face, wondering what he was going to say now. "I'm drunk; it's not safe to listen to what I say at the moment." He decided.

"W-What did you mean by 'would have'? Why the past tense?" Esme asked and waited for an answer. When none came she noticed Nate's breathing had evened out.

He was asleep.

"Well, that certainly was rude." Rosalie muttered and crossed her arms, while Jasper's eyes widened slightly.

"He's in so much pain, Rosalie." He murmured and the family gave sympathetic looks to the blond on the couch, "But it runs to deep for me too pick up on the cause."

"That's so- wait, where's Emmett?" Alice asked and she looked around for her lug of a brother, realizing that at some point he had vacated the room.

Emmett looked over the locked door again. To break it down or not to break it down, that certainly was the question. It would leave too many marks, but then again the suspense was killing him. He grabbed the door knob and jiggled it again and chuckled in an almost perverse manner as a thought came to his mind.

He used his finger nails and placed them under the hinges, pulling them from the wall. Before long he was able to just lift the door away from wall and allowed inside.

The room was a study.

High ceilings, pure white walls and rows and rows of books cases, some in languages he only saw on anime shows advertised on the television these days and he couldn't understand a lick of it. However he was able to notice some of the books for what they were, the anatomy books and plant books were the most obvious ones as were the medical ones.

"Hmm… I never pegged that one as a book worm." He said in a thoughtful tone. He leaned further into the room and the wall to the left caught his attention. It was filled with multiple photographs and the grin on his face suddenly became devious, "Bingo."

"Emmett, what the hell are you doing?!" He heard the sentence hissed and looked up to see his wife as well as the rest of the troop.

"Heh, hey guys." He replied sheepishly, "Oh, I'm just… hanging around."

"I heard you trying to unlock this door. Did you ever think that it was locked for a reason?!" Rosalie went on, but Emmett had tuned her out, nodding only every once in awhile and when she was done speaking he said.

"I know Rosie, but I found where he hid his pictures. Problem is I don't see any that has the description of his parents that Esme gave us. See?" He pointed his finger to the nearby wall, "I'd say he's about twelve or thirteen when he's wearing that orange jumpsuit looking thing. Man, Alice would maul him in a second if she saw him wearing that thing. In the one's where's he's wearing a more toned down orange and black I'd say he's around fifteen or sixteen."

The family moved closer to see the pictures Emmett was pointing at.

"Wow, he looks really young in these pictures." Alice said and tried not to wince at the jumpsuit Emmett pointed out. 'That thing should be demoted to dish rag.' She thought.

Edward glanced over them, feeling a sense of longing wash through him. It had been so long since he had seen Naruto like this, so… carefree. There were multiple pictures where the blond was grinning like a loon and making faces at the camera as his friends either laughed or groaned in the background him.

"Hey!" Emmett laughed and pulled small frame from the wall, "Check out this one!"

Edward stared at the photo for a moment and couldn't help the grin that spread across his face. There was Nate, in a blue pajama set, the top half of his face wrapped in bandages and a large pad taped to his right cheek.

One thing was for sure, he had to have been sleeping to have pulled that look off, what with his mouth wide open, drool collecting in the corner of his lips and his head tilted back. There was a very attractive woman with long dark hair that was kissing his left cheek with a soft, almost loving, caress.

The photo was also signed in both English and Japanese.

'Naruto Uzumaki, never give up on becoming Hokage.

Fujikaze Yukie.

"No way! He knows Yukie!" Alice squealed at the thought. "Oh, this is definitely her." She said as she looked over the picture, "She's one of Japan's best actresses ever!"

"I wonder who that is?" Rosalie murmured as she looked at the next picture depicting an older Nate with his arm wrapped around the girl's shoulder in a friendly way. She had to be about five foot one with long blond hair that reached to her waist, and striking pupil less eyes a soft purple in color.

She too was very beautiful.

"That would be the priestess Shion." A voice called from the door way and everyone turned to face the man that was able to sneak up on them. "She's how I knew about your abilities Alice."

Her head whipped so fast in Nate's direction he could have swore her head snapped off, "Please explain?" She whimpered and stuck out her bottom lip before he could blink.

'The pout, it's that damn pout!' He growled in his mind, already feeling a twitch coming on."That so has to be cheating." Her eyes seemed to have watered, "Fine, she has an ability remarkably like yours. Only she's able to predict someone's death, which is, I guess sort of seeing into the future."

"That… is so cool!" Alice chirped, "How did you find out?"

"A group of friends and I were hired by her and her followers. The second she saw me she said that she saw my death occurring on this particular mission. Something about being taken out by some enemy and then seeing my friends standing around my grave." He looked at the ground as if he was imagining such a thing.

"But… you're not dead." Emmett dead panned and Nate nodded.

"How eloquently put," He muttered, "For her entire life she predicted the deaths of those around her and was never wrong." His eyes seemed to glow for a moment, "As far as I'm concerned if one more person tells me I've got to follow the script of some pre-written destiny I'm going to snap. I told her I wasn't going to die, that I wasn't ready and at first she laughed at me. Well, I guess I should have expected that if she was right for seventeen years of her life." Suddenly he smirked, "Only, I was the first to prove her that Uzumaki Naruto makes his own life."

"Sweetie… why isn't there any pictures of your father and mother?" Esme asked as she looked over the wall once again, thinking she may have missed something.

"…" Nate seemed to close up again as his face became completely neutral. He stilled as he didn't seem to know what to day. "… I'm sorry." He finally settled on and looked away in an ashamed manner. "Truth is… my parent's have been dead since I was three hours old."

Esme gasped and the entire room went silent at the revelation and although Rosalie seemed sympathetic as well, but something else was on her mind.

"So, you've been lying to us?"

"More like… omitting the truth, the people posing as my parents' were there merely for appearances; as it is, I'm supposed to kind of lie low. An emancipated minor draws to much attention, too much for my liking. I never meant to lie to you." Nate said, his voice bordering on a whisper.

A clatter behind them brought their attention back to Edward who stood their staring at Nate, the picture he had been looking at lying on the ground. "I… I thought you had been adopted." He said.

"You knew?" Rosalie asked.

"He… when we first met he told my family and I he was an orphan, but never really delved further than that. Hearing Esme speak about Mr. and Mrs. Riven I just assumed he had been adopted as we had."

The room grew silent again and Nate sighed, running a hand through his already messy hair, "I'm sorry you had to see my drinking habits and then hear that pitiful story, but I really need to be alone today. It's… sort a day of mourning for me y'know?"

"Of course Nate… we're apologize for intruding." Carlisle spoke up and escorted his family back to the front of the house.

"Don't… worry about it. I probably shouldn't be drinking like this anyway, but thank you. You came to see if I was alright, didn't you?" The blonde suddenly asked.

Emmett chuckled from the back of the group, "That's what friends do right?"

Nate smiled, "Yeah, thanks for that. Surprisingly, you lot have managed to cheer me up, excluding Emmett of course." He retorted playfully, ignoring the indignant shout of 'Hey' from said vampire. "I'll… see you tomorrow, right?"

"Of course, until then Nate." Carlisle replied and the family moved back to their respective vehicles.

Blackhaven18: Alright, chapter twelve is up! Whew! I apologize about the wait, it's been a very tiring week.

(1) An excerpt from Dante's inferno, by Dante Alighieri. Not mine, but will play a semi significant role in the story later.

~TBC~

Konbanwa- Good evening

Nanika Atta- What's up?

Doushita no- What's wrong?