Part of Ode to the Nobody.
Summary: There's a girl who sits behind the missions desk in the Anbu building. She may and may not be a person. She may and may not have a name. "...important enough to be noticed but never significant enough to be anything worth hopes and dreams." Abstract fic.
As mentioned above, very abstract fic... all based on imagination, speculation, and the thought of maybe.
An idea that's been floating vaguely in my head for a while, finally complete.
May and may not be faintly influenced by The Man in the Bowler Hat. Probably not really, 'cause the concepts are really quite different. =wry smile= I wrote it without that poem in mind AT ALL, and only realised the faint similarity after deciding on the title. (:
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The Girl at the Missions Desk
There's a girl who sits behind the missions desk in the Anbu building.
They know she's a girl because she has a quiet but distinctive voice, crisp and young and sharply intelligent.
No one remembers when she started working there, allocating missions and taking reports. But she's good at it, and everyone knows that.
She becomes a constant in their ever-changing (ever-disappearing) lives.
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There are many types of missions for Anbu.
Assassinate. Protect. Slaughter. Defend. Poison. Patrol. Spy. Guard. Abduct. Rescue. (Retrieve.)
And assigning these missions is no easy task.
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She observes.
Boar stares too hard, speaks too harshly, and his breathing is shallow. There is a tension in his shoulders and an eagerness in his voice when he speaks of the now-dead bandits. He has become too used to blood and killing.
Rescue/retrieval mission of Crane, with her newly-recovered rookie squad. (He quits after the retrieval, and she lets him.)
Owl's written report is utterly illegible. Rat's oral report is curt and furious. Badger has been dead for two months. Cat quietly requires never to be made team leader again.
She assigns Cat two months of solo missions, places Rat under the notoriously strict Eagle, and sends Owl to the silent Bat's team.
Weasel is silent.
Guard duty, alone, three weeks. (He disappears after the last day, leaving behind the bodies of his kin, drenched in cooling blood and cold moonlight.)
Bird has yet to break out of the blind naïveté of a rookie.
She gives her three terrible solo missions, then assigns her to Cobra.
Lion's team stumble in, without Lion.
She kicks them out and sends them straight to the medics.
Wolf is the picture of professionalism, calm and skilled and efficient. He stands tall and straight as he delivers his oral report, a single scarlet-drenched figure stark against the plain colours of the room. (None of the blood is his own.)
She gives him two weeks of break and another two weeks of nothing but training the hapless rookies. (She ignores the protest he does not voice.)
Lion turns up out of the blue and collapses, bleeding all over her table.
She drags the medics in, and cleans up the place after he is transported to the hospital.
Tiger requests solo missions, after all his teammates died. It is too soon, and his voice is too flat.
She thinks for a while, and assigns him one, then removes his name from the active shinobi list after he leaves. (He dies on the mission. His attempt to betray Konoha failed.)
—She observes, and acts accordingly.
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Danzo doesn't scare her. He can't do anything to the Anbu, because they're not his. (She likes to think of them as hers, sometimes, and herself as theirs. It's a silly notion.)
The Anbu are the Hokage's, and they are Konoha's. Danzo gave up the right to be Konoha's the day he started trying to make Konoha his.
She laughs at him because even though Root is his, he'll never understand why they keep dying.
He'll never understand how he lost one of them to Uzumaki Naruto and his Will of Fire, either.
(It's all very simple, she thinks, and rolls her eyes. Naruto is Konoha's.)
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Ironically, right now she may be the best choice for the next Hokage – in terms of practical skills, at least.
If Danzo is Hokage, he will be ruthless and assign any missions he deems necessary.
Danzo believes he is doing what is best for Konoha.
And the failure rate rises. Death rate rises. Suicide rate rises. Disillusionment. Madness. Despair. Mutiny.
The ninja strain, crack, and break.
—And Konoha falls, crumbling from the inside.
If Kakashi is Hokage, he will be efficient but humane, trying his best to suit the missions to his shinobi.
Kakashi has his beliefs, his own morals, and he follows them.
And the success rate rises. Survival rate rises. Suicide rate falls. Cooperation. Support. Efficiency. Teamwork.
But there are still too many failures and deaths, because things happen and you can't always prevent them (he thinks he should have), people die and you can't always save them (he thinks he could have).
The Hokage strains, cracks, and breaks.
—And Kakashi falls, because he can be a strong shinobi and a great team captain and all, but never Hokage and he knows it.
If Naruto is Hokage—
...but then again, there is no if. He will be, but not yet. Because he is not ready.
Naruto believes in himself and everyone else and he wants to do what is best, not just for Konoha but the whole world. But he cares too much and feels too deeply, for his ideals are still firmly in place.
It is impossible to predict what Naruto will do when he is Hokage, in the future. It is just as impossible to know what the Naruto of now will do if he suddenly has to take up the post. Because that's how he is – Konoha's most unpredictable shinobi.
Right now he does not know how to assign missions, how to make decisions that can result in disaster, how to send people out to their deaths.
But then again he does know how to carry out missions to get the best result, how to make decisions that avert disaster, how to help people and change people and save people.
Maybe that will be enough.
—The only way to know what kind of Hokage Naruto will be is to see how, when he is. And believe in him.
If she is Hokage, she will do what she does best, with more efficiency than anyone else.
She knows how to organize and utilize shinobi... but she does not know how to lead. She cannot inspire people and make them follow her; she cannot take a position under the spotlight.
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She only assigns herself solo missions – short, simple, and brutal ones, which start after the last Anbu sets off on a mission and end before the first one comes back from one. The other Anbu all ignore the faint scent of blood that lingers in the room afterwards.
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She knows she will always be just a figure in the background and the shadows, important enough to be noticed but never significant enough to be anything worth the beautiful hopes and dreams that still exist, somehow, in bright eyes and eager voices of those who dare to believe.
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There's a girl who sits behind the missions desk in the Anbu building.
One day she won't be there anymore, and she thinks there won't be anyone left to remember her – but that's fine, 'cause how do you remember a nameless person anyway?
But the Anbu will remember her, because they know she isn't nameless. Her name may and may not be the symbol they all wear with fierce, protective pride, as they fight for what is theirs.
Maybe. Maybe not.
But they'll remember her all the same.
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Who is she, really?
She isn't Konoha, not exactly. But she still is, in the vaguest sense. Perhaps in some senses a representation of the shinobi and kunoichi in the background, who aren't Hokages or the Sannin or Sages or Copy-nin or anything like that, but they're still Konoha.
...Huh. There may be more similarities to The Man in the Bowler Hat than I thought. But still hardly any actual likenesses at all, really.
Hope you liked it – or at least found it interesting and unusual – despite the abstractness. (:
~rakku^^