I am a shinobi, yes. What is more, I am a chuunin. Yet I do not give my whole heart and soul into it. My service to Konocha is in something else all together, for you see, I am also an artist.
You may wonder why Konoha may need an artist. Well it doesn't. Not really. But Konoha needs masks. And these I provide. I make them, the ANBU masks, the hunter-nin masks, I have made them all, and no two are the same.
I remember every mask I had ever made. I remember exactly the way my fingers molded it into the perfect shape. I remember exactly each and every design I put on the pure white of the mask. Some bold, some fleeting, some regular, others asymmetrical. Words, words, words. Words cannot depict the way that fresh paint, red usually, though there were exceptions, looked on those brilliantly white masks.
I remember every mask I had ever made. Not only that, but I know who wears them. No they don't tell me but I am usually there when they receive them. They don't usually even know that it is I who made them. I always watch closely when they put those masks on. They usually do it so carefully, this one time.
I try not to think of those masks in use, smeared with mud, speckled with blood. Chipping, even braking. When a Hunter or ANBU dies on mission they have their name carved onto the monument, but their masks, cracked, chipped, broken in two, are brought to me. Covered in blood, and mud, and vomit. They never clean them. After all, a mask, like a headband, is a personal thing. Only the owner may clean it. And I. I may clean them. So each time they bring them to me I do, and after I finish cleaning them I hide them away. I can not throw them away, so I hide them, for their owners are no longer alive and the masks themselves are dead. I keep them all stacked away in a large wardrobe in the furthest corner of my studio, and in a large wooden trunk that stands by it. The wardrobe is full by now, all of them hanging from little hooks, or resting on the single shelf inside. There is still room in the trunk, but it has been getting full lately.
I try not think of those masks in use, dirty and broken, because then I might get strange ideas, I might put less effort into them next time, I might not try as hard to make them perfect. And they have to be perfect.
The hunters, the ANBU, they have no individuality, they are not allowed to. So they throw away their individuality and in return I give them porcelain masks. That is why the masks have to be perfect. The masks are their only individuality, so I might just as well make them as beautiful as I can.
I remember every mask I had ever made. No two were ever the same. Except two. I think that the Kyuubi boy will become an ANBU one day, on his way to becoming Hokage. I have already made a mask for him. And it is a mask identical to one other I made. A mask just like the Yondaime's. A lion.
1) I know it's wierd. I really hoped you liked it..
2) Yes, a lion. Gomen. But he feels like it
3) So does anyone know, are those masks made of porcelain, that was my guess, considering how easily they broke but I don't know really.
DISCLAIMER: The world of Naruto belongs to, and is copiright of, Masashi Kishimoto, author of the manga Naruto.
