A/N: Rewrite of "Ink", originally posted under another username.
Ink [Remixed
By bmwremixed
Three chuunin -Four jounin -One genin --- and two unsuspecting civilians.Ten human lives reduced to messy scrawls on a roll of rice paper.
Tsunade was in the middle of tallying the day's casualties when she went to reload her brush and accidentally knocked the inkwell over.
The black liquid slithered along the wooden desk, blossoming onto the rice paper, swallowing her hard work into a shadowy gullet. Desperate to try to salvage of anything she can from the ink ravaging her work space, upending containers of pencils, pens and brushes, swatting at piles of paper so neatly arranged before. They fell around her, the clatter of writing utensils jarring her ears while the papers slowly flutter to the ground.
But it's no use, the report was past salvageable.
This isn't the first time she's done this. The veins on the wood of her desk hold witness to this, blackened with the residue of past spills, refusing to succumb to even the most vigilant of scrubbings.
Tsunade's always preferred pens to brushes.
But
to the village council, being Hokage meant upholding the village's
honor, and honor meant traditions. And traditions meant writing with a
brush while there are perfectly usable pens next to you.
Tsunade believes maintaining tradition can go screw itself.
Her life is war. Her customs and tradition boil down to feeling heartbeats stamp themselves into a frenzy beneath her palms, watching stone crumble in her path, channeling anger, deflecting hatred, avoiding greed, guilt, pain and all that blood.It's blinking away the sweat and blood while climbing to her feet on a desolate plain in a distant country, staring a mirror of herself distorted by language, country, and heritage until the only semblance becomes their need for self-preservation and determination to win.
War is ever changing, ever evolving. One man invents a spear no shield can stop, and another man invents a shield to stop that spear.
And on and on and on until the two destroy one another, only to have their successors continue the pattern.
Tsunade doesn't see the point of obsessing over the past.
Tsunade doesn't see the point of writing with a brush.
Lalala...
comments? criticism? flames (which will be mocked)?