AN: Well, I liked really liked this. :3 But please, review and tell me what you think! This one is SEQUEL'D. Look out for something along the lines of 'Drive' or whatever (the prompt I wrote after this. :3)
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, but I do own you. Now bow down and call me master, bishhh. ♥
Innocence
He saw quite an interesting sign the other day at the Lost and Found place in the middle of Konoha (near Ichiraku Ramen). In the small but cluttered window, right at the top with all the dust that no one could really reach to put up there, here had been a little note.
Now really, that was nothing to be worried about at all, nothing to be amused by. But it was in such big letters that Iruka couldn't help but notice it… And people put notes up all the time. For instance, "lost: my daughter's hamster; will pay good money for a new one" "found: black wallet; fair amount of money in it, will gladly keep it if no one claims :)" "lost: my arm, goddamnit" "lost: Izumo's virginity; finally!" "found: someone's arm; who's is it this week?" and the list got sillier and sillier. Every week at least someone would claim to have lost or found 'your mother' or some variant thereof.
Anyway, that wasn't the point. He usually liked to look at the notices to see if he could help with any of them, and some of them could be funny (mostly just irresponsible though, so he should really stop sniggering at the penultimate one), but this notice… Made him think.
"Lost: Innocence.
Reward: Priceless."
He didn't recognise the handwriting – it wasn't Kotetsu's spiky scrawl, Izumo's slanted scribble or Kakashi's childlike attempt to put letters onto paper (Iruka was quite sure that the poor man found it quite hard because handwriting on his reports really was completely unreadable) so it wasn't one of the main three contributors to the 'not-serious' notes on the board… But Iruka wasn't entirely sure that it wasn't serious. In any case, it didn't look like any handwriting he'd seen so far on a report, so perhaps it was one of the Accademy students (no, he wasn't sure that more than two of them knew enough letters to write a note like that) or perhaps one of the genins.
It made him think for a bloody long time; that note. If it really was a child who had written it, then why shouldn't it have been real in a sense? After all, it was practically true of all the children he'd met. They were all training to become ruthless killers, to be quite honest.
He was helping them to become ruthless killers.
He was a ruthless killer himself, if he worked by the same logic.
Now if that's not losing your innocence (all virginity associations tossed firmly into the back of your dirty mind), then what is?
But what a horrible image it was to think about. Losing all naivety, all fascination and gullibility with the world. All carelessness, to be a ninja was to never be careless and what is left of innocence if you can't just let down your guard just once? All of their childhood, what could have been if the world hadn't torn it apart when they lost their innocence at an age when they hadn't even known half the letters in the word.
All of the children in this world, he realised as the thought sunk heavily down to the pit of his stomach, had pretty much had their childhood and innocence and freedom ripped from them without a second to give their consent. Their parents were all killers, the paths of murderers had already been laid out for them – most of them didn't even have parents any more to at least help them walk down those paths, to stop them tripping and crying every night like… Like…
As he continued to walk back to his small apartment, Iruka noticed, with a little unease, that that note could very well been speaking for him.