"I feel I'm beginning to get too old for this…" the middle-aged man exasperated as he slowly shifted his body downward to a sitting position. The hill in the shinobi practice field gave one the best view of the surrounding area for miles. A sea of shadow-stained, spring-green grass flowed forth nearly a quarter of a mile, expanding into a lush forest of majestic oaks that withstood the test of time, nearly older than the village it surrounded. Casting his gaze eastward, a glistening stream, dividing the forest, caught the setting sun's last bits of light, making it dance along the surface, shimmering as it did so. The view westward was of the village; it's tall building that housed the kage and other influential members of the area cast a shadow on the surrounding structures, as if were a sundial. The breathtaking scene was all wrapped up in a bright orange-yellow sky that shifted into cherry blossom colored shades of pink. At its center lay the life-imbuing luminous orb, which-
"Daddy, Daddy, can we please go out to eat tonight?! You promised remember!"
The man's entranced state was broken by a small child who would obviously be called his kin, her eyes sharing the same blank opal expression as his own. He gave a soft chuckle and put his hand on his daughter's shoulder.
"Of course we can go, but do you mind if I invite a few of my friends along?" The father finished with a heartwarming smile, already aware of what the child's answer would be.
"The more the merrier!" The little girl exclaimed, responding to her father's facial expression with a toothy grin of her own. Edging his way back to both his feet, the child danced around him with excitement, until he grabbed her by the arm and lifted her into a sitting position, each leg on one side of his neck. The child threw her hands up in the air and giggled as her father latched on to both her shins to make sure she didn't roll down his back.
The duo eventually made their way into the city streets where its citizens had for the most part settled in for the evening. The dirt path roads were sparsely populated with a mixture husbands returning home, late from work, shinobi patrolmen, and others just out for a walk to get a feel of the cool , crisp evening air.
A rather good-sized wooden building, built like the first level of a pagoda soon came into site. Atop its double door entrance was a sign made completely of wood, a rather cartoonish figure of pig's face painted in pink lay on it.
"I can see the bar-b-que dead ahead daddy! Faster! Faster!"
The small child began to mover her legs forward, kicking in excitement. The pale-eyed man gave a smirk and clenched the girl's legs a tad tighter for precaution. His foot rhythm started to accelerate from a straight legged walk to a leisurely jog as the rows of buildings beside him soon started to pass by quicker. Upon entering the doorway, the father let his daughter down from his leg and grabbed her hand. The two approached the cash register where a short, elderly woman, no younger than seventy greeted them with a single-toothed smile.
"I have a party of three who has already arrived." He smiled to the woman, who replied with a hand gesture to a table in the back. The father nodded and approached his way to a table near the back of the restaurant, already holding three guests.
"Do you know how long we've been waiting for you Saikaku?" The only woman at the table commented. She looked to be in her early twenties. Her hair a long silky black was tied in a pony tail. She wore a vibrant red gi that covered up her bandage-wrapped grapefruit-sized breast. She looked down at the small child and opened her slightly tanned arms up.
"Sakurako! You've sure gotten tall. "
The little girl unclasped her father's hand and ran to the embrace of the woman, squeezing her as hard as possible around the neck.
"I told you I was going to be late, Aka. You'll have to excuse these old bones, they just aren't what they used to be." A gentleman at the table, robed in a deep blue gi, his face powdered white contrasting from his long silky black hair spoke out.
"Such an excuse is not meant for a man who has only reached the age of thirty-four. A ninja such as yourself Saikaku would still be considered to be in his prime." The gentleman who spoke, pulled his left hand up letting the sleeve, much longer than his hand, fall to his elbow. He picked up the conically-shaped rice hat on the table and invited Saikaku to a plush, pillow seat, placing the hat to his side.
Saikaku gave an affirming nod at his friend's gesture and seated himself around the two and a half foot table.
"Judging by your analysis Ao, then it must be my fighting spirit. As a younger shinobi, I guess I was more reckless, always looking for someone to challenge my skill. Over time and with the past events of my life, I've just settled a bit." Saikaku retorted to his friends response.
"But I don't have that feeling", the last figure at the table, a teenage boy, no older than fourteen, spoke out. His hair was a short and spiked brown, his body covered by his solid white gi. His eyes were his most outstanding and strangest feature by far. His right eye was a completely normal, with a brown colored, circular iris; However his left eye held within it a normally white colored pupil with a triangular shaped, blue Iris, dubbed by his fellow family members and associates simply: Tentou [Heaven.
"But Midori, you're still much younger than I. I'm referring to my night twenties, and you reached the age of jounin at thirteen. Trust me, as you get older, your thirst for someone who will really push you to your limit will develop. I can safely assume that everyone else here can agree with that. The other two jounin, Aka and Ao both nodded in agreement with what Saikaku said.
The grouped chatted on for nearly another ten minutes before an adolescent girl wearing a soft pink kimono and a bunned-up hairstyle set down a plate of a random assortment of swine meats on skewers. She returned minutes later with a wooden tray holding five steaming clay mugs of oolong tea. She handed the tray to Midori, who in turn took one of the cups and placed beside his plate and handed the tray off to Aka on his right.
"So Saikaku," she spoke while passing the tray off two little Sakurako. "You never really told us why you left Konohgakure, and moved here to Kirogakure, the village hidden in the crossroads." She finished in a nearly inaudible speech from the pork she ripped off of thin, wooden stick.
The Hyuuga looked up, slowly taking a deep breath of discomfort. "I'd rather not get into the entire details, but once I left my position as the head of the Hyuuga clan and applied for the Ambassador position here. Seeing as how there was also a large group of Hyuuga who wished to move here, the Hokage and Kirokage felt that I was the best candidate for the job, and well. Here Sakurako and I am." Saikaku ended, looking at his daughter with comforting eyes.
"That is understandable, considering this village is known as a neutral, peace-keeping village of all the shinobi countries. You being here, also means that it is in Konoha's best wishes to keep peace amoung the vill-"
"AAAAAAAAH!" The ear-splitting yell of a teenaged waitress interjected Ao's monologue alerting causing the entire group to shift their attention to Saikaku's left.
"You little bitch! I am one of the Fire Country Daimyo's personal guards! How dare you say that I am anywhere near immoral enough to lie about paying my bill!" The man shouting a samurai in a completely black kendo skirt and gi with red trim kicked the table over, hitting it hard enough to smash into a nearby guest, smashing plates along with it. The waitress, in an attempt to back up quickly slipped and fell to the floor, landing on her rear, holding the tray over her head in fright.
"Excuse me sir!" A voice called out behind the samurai. Saikaku, stood with in his white robe on with black trim, glaring at the sword wielding guard. A visage of complete disgust strewn across his face, he spoke out in a stern manner. "It is incredibly rude for you to create such an uproar in this quiet restaurant. On behalf of all of the guests, I'm going to have to ask you to kindly pay your bill and leave the establishment." The guard's mood seemed to shift from simply angry to beyond the point of reason.
He latched his thumb of one hand to his sheath and hilt and drew his sword with the other. The samurai kicked off the ground with incredible speed, holding his sword horizontally in front of him, both hands grasped firmly on the cloth-covered handle. Saikaku closed his eyes for a moment, allowing him the short time to gather his chakra. As he opened them, the energy in his chakra system began to circulate making the pathways near his eyes become readily visible underneath the skin.
The samurai reached Saikaku, his voice in a battle rage, slicing with his sword in one lightning-quick, horizontal stroke. The Hyuuga jounin ducked backwards, the sword clipping the tips of a few of the ends of his spiked hair. Falling back into a somersault, the jounin's hand's lit up with a brilliant light, before he kicked off of the ground launching his own attack.
"Remember. I warned you…"
This is the first story that I've gotten in the spirit to write in a long time. I run a naruto role-playing site and I got the idea to make a story utilizing all of the character's on the site. I don't mean to sound mean, but I haven't been to fanfiction in about a year, but I came back recently two days ago and I was reading stories and summaries to find that nearly everything I found was some form of love story with the whole NaruxSasu or NaruxHinata, and so forth and so on. It really pains me because some of the stories [names will be left out. seemed simply atrocious, and weren't even set in a semi-narutoverse timeline. Well I better shut-up before I anger someone. I will say that there were actually a few that I did enjoy reading. This story unlike many of the others based on naruto, does not consist of any of the canon character parings because their are no canon characters in it whatsoever. It takes place in the fictional village of Kirogakure [The Land Hidden in the Crossroads, a village in which is known for it's neutrality and use of peace agreements to calm wars in the shinobi world. A multitude of different ninja culminate their and make their living. Up until now, I've only used character's who I have created for the site, however in the chapters to come I would like to start using some of the member's characters and then utilize my site's Arc as the main storyline for this piece of work. I would love to get comments and criticism on the story from anyone. Spam reviews will be reported and deleted however.
If you would like to know more about my site, It's called Kunai Knights: A Naruto Role Play and can be found at the website: s4.invisionfree. com/KunaiKnights.
if you would like to contact me, my MSN/Windows Live/Yahoo Instant Messenger ID is: ddrfanmik at aol. com
Inconclusion Thanks for taking the time to read my story and I hope you throughly enjoyed it. I hope to post more chapters to this if I get a few people who would like to see more of it.