Gone [Naruto fanfic]

#1

I leaned back against the tree trunk and looked up at the dark, starry sky. Frogs croaked, crickets chirped, insects buzzed and a gentle breeze sent small ripples traveling across the pond. The surface of the water almost perfectly mirrored the sky above and the silhouettes of the surrounding trees.

I fiddled with the pocket knife my dad had given me, opening and closing it absentmindedly as I looked out at the water. The sound of light chatter echoed behind me and off to my right, coming from the people in the two separate clusters of newly put-up tents.

My younger sister and I had come by in the afternoon to help setup the campsite for the summer camp, though we weren't actually going to participate in the camp itself. I was getting too old for it, and my sister was busy with some schoolwork she wanted to finish before she joined me in college. There were only a handful of us who were setting up, but we were all good and longtime friends.

I sighed as I placed the knife back into the pocket of my cargo pants. Socialization didn't come to me as easily as it did to my sister, which was why I was standing alone in the dark as opposed to talking with the other girls. But I didn't mind too much. Sometimes I found solitude to be comforting.

If it had been any other night I would have said that everything was peaceful, but my thoughts were anything but.

Spring semester had been over for several months now, and even though I was hoping to relax during the summer, college was the only thing I could think about. I was only seventeen, and the spring semester at the community college had been my first. It wasn't that I got bad grades or anything, in fact, I had done pretty well. There was something else that was bothering me.

-Who am I?

Everyone else seemed to know exactly what they wanted to do with their life, or at least had a general idea. But me? Nope, everything was just a jumble.

-Geez, why can't everything just be simple and clear-cut? Here you have to worry about your career, house, insurance, taxes, money, blah blah blah...but if it were an anime world, things would be so much easier. Like in Naruto, you become a ninja, you take jobs, you find a place to live and generally just try not to die. That's it. None of the shit we have to deal with here.

Gazing out at the water, I let my thoughts wander and attempt to solve the unsolvable puzzle that was life for the millionth time.

Suddenly, a small, pale blue light shone on the opposite shore of the pond several feet in the air. Whipping the knife out in a flash, I flipped it open, then squinted to try and get a better view of the light. The spark of blue suddenly shot forward at blinding speed, headed straight for me. I barely had enough time to twist my head before I heard a loud thunk.

Small tremors shook my body from terror. I glanced at the glowing object which was now embedded in the tree where my head had just been.

It was a shuriken. A frickin' shuriken!

The throwing star was engulfed in some kind of pulsing blue energy. After a few seconds it faded away.