It all started a couple of days ago. Yuka, Seitaro, Yuuta and I had just arrived back from our trip to the mountains.
"Hey...it's the Pink Sea! We're home!" cried Yuuta in triumph. "And I didn't get us lost this time!"
"This time." I snorted, reminding him of what had happened.
He stopped us outside Poniko's house. She was a good friend of Yuka's.
"We should say hello!" Yuka smiled at Yuuta. "Thanks for stopping here,"
"I knew you'd bug me about it."
Yuka got out and hurried up to the door. I followed close behind. "Oi, Seitaro! Aren't you coming?" I called.
"..." he hadn't heard me.
I sighed and turned away as Yuka knocked on the door.
It swung open, showing us an empty hallway.
"Poniko?" Yuka sounded a little uncertain as she stepped inside the house.
No reply. Not even the bark of her strange dog.
"Has she gone away somewhere? Like we did?" Seitaro suggested, suddenly appearing behind us.
"No...she would have said something..." Yuka whispered, brushing her blue hair out of her eyes.
We left Poniko's house in a rush. We all wanted to find out what had happened to her.
"Do you think Toritsuki will know what happened to her? Should we visit her house?" Yuka asked worredly.
"She probably won't answer. Anyway, it doesn't look like anyone's home over there." Yuuta added, staring in the direction of Toritsuki's house.
"I think we should go straight to the apartment building. Madotsuki is one of Poniko's best friends. She'll know, for sure." Seitaro decided for us.
We spent most of the journey in silence. Suddenly-
"Guys! The lights in the apartment aren't on! We'd be able to see them from here," Yuka gasped.
"What the hell's goin' on?" I snapped. "Poniko appears to have left, along with her dog. Toritsuki doesn't seem to be home either. And now the power's gone out in the apartment? This doesn't add up!"
"But...remember when we were on the way back from our trip? We saw those planes flying above us...we assumed they were going or coming back from some sort of airshow thing...but they didn't have their lights on, remember? And they were flying quite low..."
"There's only one thing that fits in with all this..." Yuuta murmured, stopping the car. "But I need to make sure."
He turned up the volume for the car radio. All that could be heard was static.
"Try another channel." Yuka suggested.
All we could hear was static.
"Turn it off! It's bugging me!" I snapped.
"Shut up, Rin. This is important." Yuuta retorted.
I kicked the back of his chair, hard.
"Ouch! Rin!"
I snorted. "What proof is there? There might just be a power outage! Poniko could be staying with Madotsuki! Toritsuki could be at the cemetary, like she always is..."
"Well...it's pretty obvious the radio stations aren't working...Not that we have many." Seitaro said. "That's one more thing that fits our theory."
"Do you think..." Yuuta didn't finish his sentence.
"It all seems to fit. The planes, the radio stations, Poniko, Toritsuki and the apartment building...I think it must be true...Rin, Yuka, Yuuta...we may have been invaded."

There was no time left. We had to get out of there, fast.
I turned and fled from the building. I could hear only my heavy breathing, the pounding of my heart and my footsteps, slapping on the ground. A new sound was added to this. It was short and sharp and seemed to ring through the night.
"Rin! Help!"
That cry had sounded awfully like Yuka's. I realized then what the sound had been-a gunshot.
The ghost of the gunshot echoed across our town. The town that was being invaded. The town which, up until now, had been my home.
Right now I'm hiding out in the 'witch's forest'. It's rumoured that a young girl who lives here, Ellen, is a witch.
I hope she is. Maybe a witch will be able to help us get out of this situation.
But back to the beginning.
While I was running, I couldn't tell if there were people ahead or in front of me. My only instinct was to get the hell out of there, and fast, without worrying about anyone else's safety. It was selfish, but it was my only thought in the rush of panic and adrenalin.
Behind me were more gunshots. The shooting had really started up now. This was all happening as I sprinted past the swamp.
"Rin!" came another cry. I spun around. There was a girl, Ayumi, I think her name is, running towards me. Behind her was an idiot going by the name of Tohma and another two people. I couldn't see them properly at the time.
"Shaddup and get towards the trees!" I yelled at them.
Luckily, they heard me and all split up as we reached the edge of the forest.
By now the soldiers had given up chasing us. They were back at the apartment building, taking care of the people they had already captured. But we could never be too sure.
"Ayumi!" I hissed to the blue-haired girl. She was pressed against a tree near mine.
"Wh-what is it?" she whispered, looking absolutely terrified. I didn't blame her.
"Head towards the center of the 'witch's forest'. We can camp out there until morning. Tell the others," I whispered as I gazed around through the trees, trying to spot someone. Bright yellow hair told me Tohma was also close by.
"Tohma!" I called softly. Well, as softly as I could manage.
"Huh?" he grunted. "Rin?"
"Head towards the middle of the 'witch's forest'. Don't ask, just run."
He nodded hesitantly, then turned and fled.
Coward, I thought.
"Rin! Let's go! I can't find a-anyone else!" Ayumi's voice wobbled a little as we ran together.
Every now and then I was whipped in the face by a branch, but it didn't matter. We needed to get as far away from the town as possible. At least until morning.
After about two minutes of running straight through the forest, I smacked straight into Tohma. He was standing in the middle of a clearing.
"You idiot!" I spat at him, stumbling into a tree. "Warn me before I'm about to crash into something, shrimpface!"
"How was I supposed to know?" he complained, pouting.
Ayumi skidded to a halt just ahead of me, panting. A few moments later two more people arrived in our clearing.
"Viola?" Ayumi gasped. "I thought you were shot!"
"I just got away," Viola clutched at her side.
Another boy stood next to her. He looked close to tears, but that may have been because of a large cut across his face.
"Satoshi!" Ayumi's voice rang out yet again.
"Do you know everyone?" I snapped.
"Satoshi's in my class, at school," she explained.
I thought back to the soldiers pouring out the building, Seitaro, Yuka, Yuuta and I being separated...and the bullet which had probably struck Yuka.
"I know we've been invaded...but...what the hell went on back there?" I said.
"The soldiers were guarding that building," Viola explained. "I was just being escorted in there with Tohma, Ayumi, Satoshi and a few others...that's when you and a your friends arrived, Rin."
Our group fell into silence. I had a large backpack on, and there appeared to be an abandoned one on the ground.
"I picked it up while we were running," Satoshi spoke for the first time. "It had fallen off when a girl running behind me was struck down." he sounded slightly shaken.
"Yuka!" I exclaimed. "That was my friend Yuka! Was she alive?"
"I don't know..." he whispered.
I shook my head to clear it. "Yuka and I had the two packs on the way back. Seitaro and Yuuta were either too lazy or carried 'em when we first left. I can't remember. That means...we should have four tents and four sleeping bags. Along with our leftover food. We brought a lot."
We all set to work pitching up the tents and setting up the sleeping bags.
"We won't be here long...only for the night, right?" Viola asked me.
"Yeah. We won't need to start a fire. This isn't serious camping. Unless we're far far away from where we should be. That'll be thanks to Tohma!" I snapped, glaring at him furiously.
"It ain't my fault!" he glared straight back. "You could have told me to keep running, but you just stopped in the clearing!"
"Don't argue! We need to get along if we're going to survive this!" Ayumi protested.
I snorted and turned away, unpacking some of the food.

The next day had almost as much excitement as the next. That was when Ayumi came up with the idea of writing all this down. I was nominated as the writer, as I had nothing else to do for the rest of the day and no one else could be bothered. They seemed to think that since I was the oldest, I must be the best at writing. I'm not so sure about that.
But they forced me to, so in the end a pencil and a roll of paper was shoved at me and I got writing.
I'd finished writing down the first little bit when we heard a gunshot. Ayumi, Viola and I all froze. Satoshi and Tohma were, at the time, out looking for anyone else who had escaped from the apartment the night before.
"Those idiots!" I exclaimed. "They must have gone too close to the town! Quick, pack everything up before those dumb soldiers reach us!"
We packed up everything pretty fast. Faster than we had unpacked it, and a lot faster than Yuuta and Seitaro could.
Just as we were about to leave, Satoshi came bursting into the clearing. Tohma was nowhere to be seen.
Satoshi answered our unspoken question. "He's been shot. Now run!"
Everyone's eyes filled with panic as it dawned on us what was going on.
I grabbed one of the bags and ran for my life. Satoshi took the other and off we went. I heard the thumping of the soldiers' feet behind us. They sounded quite far away. The packs were slowing Satoshi and I down though. It wouldn't be long before they caught us.
But suddenly, the footsteps stopped. I whipped around quickly, and caught sight of a rabbit darting through the bushes. I heard a laugh then a gunshot. I continued running, getting as far away from there as possible. They didn't follow us after that.
We all stopped beside a large pine tree.
"I want to go back and find Tohma." Viola said immediatly. "We can't just leave him behind. Especially since he's been shot."
The rest of us silently agreed. We rushed back towards the spot Satoshi and Tohma had been. Satoshi and I headed towards a river while Viola and Ayumi checked a small clearing.
"Wh-what's that?" Satoshi exclaimed suddenly. I followed his gaze to a pool of blood. It was hard to see, as the blood was drying and blending in with the colour of the ground.
Looking further, we spotted some sort of trail leading through the bushes. Satoshi and I followed it in silence. We'd all heard the gunshot.
"Do you think's he's still...alive?" Satoshi whispered.
"I dunno! I don't think he coulda survived that bullet wound...but yeah...I dunno."
"...I hope he is."
"Me too."
Tohma's body lay half in the water and half on the bank of the river. It seemed he had attempted to drag himself towards our 'camp' so we could tend to his wound. Of course, he hadn't made it that far. Satoshi turned on his heel and sprinted back to find the others. I just stared at the bullet wound in Tohma's back, wondering how we would survive this war.