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Prologue

It was raining lightly, enough to dampen clothes and sprinkle eyeglasses, but not quite enough to form puddles. The sun was hiding behind a thin blanket of gray, the whole city engulfed in shadow.

He knew he should head home. It was getting dark, not to mention that his parents would be worried sick. Scratch that. His mother and his stepfather would be concerned. Scratch that. His mother wouldn't be home and her bastard boyfriend wouldn't give two shits.

A screen door was pushed open with enough force to make it smack the outside wall and bounce back, but the preteen had already run through. People were yelling. The boy's cerulean eyes were wild and terrified and as damp as the grass beneath his boots, rapidly flickering back and forth in search of somewhere to go, anywhere. He clutched the thin coat tightly around his body with one hand, the other securing the old brown newsboy cap on his head as he sped off.

Still, he knew that he shouldn't hang around the park alone at night. His friends had gone home ages ago, leaving him to wallow on the swings, wasting time. Ultimately, he stood up and shook his spiky yellow hair, sprinkling bits of water on the ground.

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he hunched his shoulders and started towards the house. It was just a house, not his home, not since his mom's boyfriend moved in, and never again would it be until the man left.

At first he ran as fast as his shaking legs could carry him, but eventually his pace slowed as his stamina was drained until he was reduced to a trot. To the passerby, he was just another middle schooler hurrying home in the rain, barely worth a glance.

He was surprised to find the front door unlocked. His mom's boyfriend was a piggish man, but meticulous about security, always grunting about how burglars would break in and steal the tv, not to mention the stash of money he kept behind it.

The man kept a gun under his bed in case anyone should try breaking and entering on their house. But that was a lie. He kept it as incentive for following orders.

The boy's eyes were blurry from unshed tears, warping the images around him. The people going past looked like they were trapped in funhouse mirrors, and the ground curved beneath him. Too caught up in blind panic, he didn't stop to talk to anyone, which was just as well because they ignored him.

Peeking inside, he noted how quiet and dark it was, like the calm before a storm. Gulping, he stepped inside, fumbling around for the light switch. Thankfully real life isn't a horror movie where the lights mysteriously don't work, and the kitchen lamp flickered on.

He pulled his coat off and hung it up on the rack next to the door. It was remarkably quiet. He left his boots on. Moving slowly around the kitchen table, he peered down the hall.

The bathroom and his bedroom doors were closed, as usual, but his mother's room at the end of the hall was open a few inches, allowing a ray of shallow light shine through.

The rain was becoming heavier and thicker now, accompanied by shallow flashes of lightning and low rumbles of thunder. Turning into a narrow alley, he stopped next to a dumpster that reeked of trash, both artificial and human.

There was probably a body inside, like on the news the other day. Murders were common in Konoha, the unsolved ones outnumbering the solved ones by an embarrassing amount. Thinking of dead bodies made the boy clench his fists and squeeze his eyes shut.

He knew that he should probably just slip quietly into his own room and block the door with a chair, but his blasted curiosity got the better of him. Trying not to think of the phrase 'Curiosity killed the cat', he slowly, silently approached the open door.

Stopping at the crack, he looked inside but saw no one. "Mom?" He pushed the door open, wincing as it creaked, only to freeze when he saw the back of his mother's boyfriend, knelt beside the bed.

"S-sorry, I didn't—"He froze as the man turned, and his eyes shifted from the man's surprised face to the arm sticking out from under the bed.

By now, the blond boy was soaked, rain water dripping off the spikes of his hair and the brim of his hat. Tears flowed freely from his shiny blue eyes as he pulled his knees up to his chest and covered his face with his arms.

Body shaking with sobs, he stifled anguished cries. Now that he had had time to slow down his panicked system, the pain in his shoulder returned. He clutched at the wound, feeling the outside of his coat wet with something other than rain.

The fingers on the hand were slender and pale, nails painted a delicate lavender, but also caked with blood. A flurry of emotions flashed across the man's face— surprise, apprehension, fury. He slowly stood up, wiping his own bloody hands down the front of his cleverly colored red shirt.

Not taking his eyes off the boy in the doorway, he set his face in a grim expression and moved with surprising swiftness over to the door. The boy tried to move back, unable to speak for his fear, but his arm was caught by the murderer, who forcefully yanked him into the room and threw him at the bed.

The boy caught himself on the side but tripped over the protruding arm and fell to the floor, bumping into the side dresser with the lamp. Now having a view underneath the bed, his tearful blue eyes met the glazed green eyes of his mother.

Suddenly a police siren sounded, causing the boy to abruptly silence his sobs and look up, eyes wide. The siren got louder as it approached and an icy feeling of panic spread through him. Scrambling unsteadily to his feet, he raced down the alley, soaking his legs further as he splashed through all the newly-formed puddles.

The sirens echoed down the alley, harshly ringing in his ears. His only thought was of escape, instinct taking over intellect.

His mother's boyfriend snarled at him, but the pounding in the boy's ears blocked out the sounds. He back up against the wall, looking around wildly for some sort of weapon.

Then, stupidly, he watched, paralyzed, as the man reached for something on the bed— the gun. If the boy's eyes had stretched any wider, they would have fallen out of his head. The man casually aimed the gun at the boy's head, sure that his fear would keep him in place.

However, fear drove him out of it. As the trigger pulled, he scrambled to the right, crying out from the seemingly huge explosion and the pain as the bullet grazed his left shoulder.

He raced through side alleys and streets, trying to escape the sound of the pursuing sirens. A dark, dilapidated building loomed in front of him, the windows and doors blocked with wooden planks.

The bricks appeared to have survived some sort of explosion, and every single window was left with a spidery crack running up it, if it wasn't completely shattered. One of the first story windows hadn't been completely covered, leaving a small space that a smaller person could climb through.

Being exactly that sort of small person, the boy looked around cautiously before squeezing through the narrow space, cutting his hands on the shards of glass. At once, he was met with darkness.

With adrenalin pushing back the pain, the blond boy grabbed the lamp off the bedside table and hurled it at the man before he had a chance to reload the gun. He clearly wasn't expecting retaliation, and was therefore quite surprised when the lamp crashed into him.

He was knocked backwards, barely managing to maintain his balance, letting out a menacing growl. The boy, realizing this was his only chance, leaped at the man while he was precariously balanced, causing them both to fall to the ground in a wrestling fit; the man's grip on the gun had loosened, and the boy struggled to pull it away.

With twenty fingers trying to yank the gun in different directions, one had pushed the trigger. The BANG was followed by a stunned silence. Blood trickled out of the hole in the larger man's cheek as his eye rolled back.

Once his eyes had adjusted, he looked around the room he had entered. It was gray in the little light that filtered in, with pale spaces on the walls and floor where objects had sat for a long time before being pulled out.

However, there were still a few broken chairs and a small, sad table propped up by a large yellowed book. He suspected that someone had lived here for a while, but they must have gone judging by the thick layer of dust.

Now that the walls and half-boarded window blocked out the screaming sirens and dulled the drumming rain, the boy fell against the wall, slipping down to sit.

The boy threw the gun down and crawled away, disbelieving. Stunned and staring like a deer in headlights, he jumped out of his skin when the phone rang from the hallway. He gaped dumbly at the contraption as it rang before gingerly scuttling over the body and reaching for the phone with a shaky hand. He held it to his ear and pressed his back against the wall, still too shocked to speak. "Hello?" called the person on the other line. "This is Mrs. Yamanaka. What's going on there? I heard a gunshot. I called the police… hello? What's happening?"

The person spoke very quickly, obviously flustered, and the boy tried to explain. His mouth moved, but no sound came out, except for a hoarse "I-I…" He dropped the phone on the floor, ignoring the "Hello? Hello?" and dashing out of the room, leaving the gun where he had dropped it.

He'd killed his mother's boyfriend. Not that he had been a good man, far from it, but it was still murder. And his mother… dead. His fingerprints on the gun. His school delinquency record. More thoughts flashed through his brain. The police were coming, coming to catch him, to take him to jail. He heard about what happened in jail. Heart beating faster than he could ever remember, he ran into his bedroom.

He couldn't take much, only something very important. Snatching his wallet off his dresser, he was about to exit when his eye caught on a hat.

Squeezing some water out of his drenched yellow hair, he pulled off his brown hat, pausing to read the inside label. In faded permanent marker, someone had long ago written "M.N." Those initials were the hope he had held on to ever since he found the old newsboy cap in the back of the coat closet, hope that had become his reason for living after his mother's boyfriend had moved in.

The man made life living hell for both of them, but he somehow managed to bring in money, which was probably the only reason his mother hadn't kicked him out. Either that or the man had threatened her into letting him stay. Business before pleasure, or both at once in their case.

Boots thumping on the cheap linoleum floor, he pulled his coat on, barely managing to find the armholes. He was in the process of stuffing gloves into his pockets when the sirens came. First they were in the distance, like a long forgotten howl, but soon enough they grew closer until it was comparable to the screaming of a tortured animal.

The blue and red lights of police cars shined through the yellowed lace of the window curtains, lighting up Christmas patterns on the wall. Backing away from the front door, he quickly hurried to side door, which looked out on an alleyway where they took out the trash. Fumbling with the lock, he slammed the screen door open with too much force, sprinting out before the rebound hit him in the face.

He could hear people yelling.