Koyuki Azumaya perched on top of Nishizawa Tower, the darkness of the night shrouding her shinobi face, her green ponytail flowing in the wind. A feline smile crossed her lips as she looked to her side and said "It feels good up here, doesn't it? A nice relief from that crazy heat down there… huh, Dororo?" The blue keronian by her side gave no answer but a faint nod. Instead of gazing over the sparkling city and the planet he loved like he usually would, his sky blue eyes strayed to his feet. Though Dororo rarely showed any emotion on his masked face, something in those eyes screamed empty. Koyuki's smile faded. She didn't know what, but something was bothering Dororo. She wanted desperately to help him, and she had a feeling she knew what it was. "Dororo… Did something happen with your friends again..?" She asked, reaching over to put her hand on his shoulder. "No," Was his only cold, dull answer. Koyuki's eyebrows creased at his blunt answer. Usually, when he was depressed, he was ready to spill everything out. But for a while, Dororo hadn't been himself at all. Uninterested, blank, and more silent than usual, he didn't try to become involved with anything having to do with his platoon for weeks. Sadly, none of them had tried to contact him. Koyuki felt annoyed by this. Surely, your closest friends should care enough about you to worry when you didn't show, so why weren't Dororo's doing that for him. He would for them, she knew.
"Maybe we…should go see your friends? We haven't talked with them for a while. I'm sure they're probably—"
"No," Dororo's lifeless voice interrupted her suggestion. Koyuki looked at Dororo with concern for a few seconds, more worry flooding her chest, but eventually decided to look back at the alit city, glowing in the night. Dororo turned and walked further toward the middle of the tower silently, almost unnoticeably. "Dororo? Where are you going…?" Dororo stopped and turned back to his ninja partner. His voice choked when he whispered. "Home," and vanished into the wind.
In Dororo's mind, he had given up on trying to be what he knew he couldn't be; There. Present. Significant. He was sick of being forgotten of by the people he called "friends". He told himself, to ease the pain of it, that he wouldn't let them go; rather let them pass by without him. Because he knew they would. Until something came along, if it ever did, to lead him to believe otherwise… then maybe he'd consider trying again. Just a bit of hope was all he needed, and though he knew Koyuki did try her best to just that, he couldn't deny that it wouldn't be enough.
The blue ninja sped through the night, the air passing his face quickly, blowing the gray cloth that hung from his cap around his face gently. Stopping on top a street lamp that shone over the the house of the Hinata family's backyard, he peeked through the back sliding glass door an observed the group. Eating dinner with the entire platoon, they sat laughing next to their pekoponian companions. Nothing seemed amiss with them. They didn't feel, he could tell, that a seat at the table was empty. That an extra seat even needed to be reserved. A single silver tear slid down his face as he whispered blankly to himself, "Isn't something missing…?"