Title: Weapons of War
Pairings: None
Rating: PG
Description: But there are always leftovers from war. Buried by a small layer of topsoil, or hidden under vines, or covered by moss. But they're there, for the next generation to see.
In the time of war, many shinobi weapons are made. The economy booms. The unemployed get jobs and the poor receive a slightly better pay. And this is all for the reproduction of weapons. Kunai, shuriken, katana, explosion tags, tripwires, and other weapons such as that would be made.
During war, these shinobi weapons are thrown at others. Guerilla warfare leaves them slammed into the ground, stained with enemy blood. Wild field battles leave them discarded on the ground, lodged within corpses, and nailed within trees, discarded supply carriers, and sometimes within stone itself.
Sometimes theses weapons are melted down by a mislead fire jutsu, or washed away by a water jutsu, or blown away by a wind jutsu, or flung away by earth jutsu. Sometimes these mislead weapons hit a target without the attacker intending on it to. But that's fine, just killing a little bit more. Sometimes it hits the attacker, which leaves them wounded. But that is how shinobi wars are: uncertain about everything.
But there are always leftovers from war. Buried by a small layer of topsoil, or hidden under vines, or covered by moss. But they're there, for the next generation to see.
The children of the warriors eventually cleaned up these weapons of war… The normal civilians of past shinobi would gather on a very special day; they had named it 'Cleaning Day', to do this task. It was not marked on the calendar, because it was not an actual event, but it was tradition, and it fell on the very same day a year after a major war.
The farmers, the merchants, the salespeople, the hotel owners, the blacksmith; they all gather up on that one field where the major battle was fought, and they would line up in a long line and just sweep the field. The farmers would bring their shifting machines to help gather buried weapons, while the rest shifted around the field, using their sharp eyes and gloved hands to shift through the dirt and look for these discarded weapons of war. They would search for exactly three days.
The end product of their search would be sent to the local blacksmith so that they would melt down the new supply of metal to make future weapons of war.
These weapons would be brought to the next Shinobi War, and would be thrown at enemy ninja. They would thunk into bodies, and they would dosu through flesh, and they would fwish through the air towards the enemy. They would eventually be buried only slightly under the topsoil, and be wrapped within vines, and be covered by moss. They would be left for the next generation to find and clean and be melted down so that more weapons of war would be used in the next Shinobi War.
It was going to happen, and it would continue happening.
The cycle would continue.
Creating of the weapon, killing with the weapon, abandoning of the weapon, searching for the weapon on Cleaning Day, melting of the weapon, and than finally creating of the weapon once again.
The cycle would continue until the end of time. It was inevitable.