Nara stepped out of the meeting with the Romani and was met by her closest friends. "What did they say?" A red head about ninteen years of age with pale aqua eyes and an Ai tattoo in vivid scarlet ink over his left eye, asked in a curious tone. Next to him, his two older siblings shifted nervously.

"They said that they understand our need to move on, but they would prefer that we didn't. They feel that it might endanger them and their way of life."

"They aren't wrong." Someone else, a young woman with cat like green eyes and mid back length ash blond hair, said from her place in the tree above the red head. Nara sighed and lifted her hands to massage her temples.

Yugito was right, of course.

The Romani was a very tight knit group who guarded their lives and their secrets with lethal force if they deemed it necessary. It would only stand to reason that since they had taken Nara and her group in and adopted them as their own that they would feel that having them leave might somehow unhinge things. After all they were a dying people with dying traditions.

They needed as many people as they could get to help keep their traditions, laws, beliefs, exct. from dying out. That was why childless couples often kidnapped small children that had gotten seperated from their parents and adopted orphans like herself and her friends.

"So what will you do?" The red head asked.

Nara perked up for a second. "Well I think I've found a way to satisfy both my need to stop those people before the destroy some other hapless person's life, and bring in new people to continue the Romani traditions. It would mean taking a lot of people 'prisoner'- mainly woman and children. Many of the women would be married off as soon as possible. But it should be fine since the Romani aren't the type of people to abuse those weaker than themselves."

"And the shinobi?"

"We'll place a jutsu on them to restrict their movements and lay down some ground rules. Shinobi are good at taking orders, it's programed into their minds from an early age so I don't think they'll cause much trouble. But since there would be so many of them, Gaara, you will have to take a small group as your servants. Yugito, Killer Bee and several others will have too as well."

"I'm hating this plan of yours already." Gaara said in wry amusement as Nara paused in mid sentance and bristled a bit.

"I don't hear you coming up with anything!"

"That's because it isn't my home town." Gaara said with a smirk as Nara hissed at him like a cat. Yugito laughed and almost fell out of the tree as Nara shouted,

"You jerk! You could contribute more! After all it's the five tailed wolf we're after!"

(******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

He sat at the bar with several bottles of sake scattered about, listening to little snippets of conversation when he picked up on some people in the booth behind him talking about Reapers and how cool their job must be.

He snorted and poured himself another drink, his movements graceful and fluid as he heard someone say. "Man I would give my left nut to have such a job."

He found his hand trembling slightly as anger welled up within him. How dare they. How dare morons like these assume that Reapers had a great job. It was all nothing but bullshit being spouted out by brainless children in desperate need of an ass kicking.

He slammed his sake bottle down on his table, his mood no longer mellow as he turned slightly in his seat to glare at the men. They were all Jounin rank or less, all of them young. Oh I envy them that youthful stupidity.

The jobs given to Reapers weren't fun. They weren't cool.

And though the job itself was highly respected- there were drawbacks. For starters, a Reapers average life span was under a week due to the high risks of capture, death and even suicide.

Upon becoming a Reaper the person holding the title and rank was given a weapon of choice, and sent to the dentist wher a cyanide tablet was placed into a hollowed out tooth with a cap on it. If the job ever became too much- The Reaper was encouraged to use the tablet.

The jobs that they took consisted mainly of assassination. Genocide and murder. If they were told to kill innocent people then they had to do it no matter how much they hated it. If they left anyone alive it could come back to bite them on the ass in a bad, bad way. But there was one specific thing- an aspect of the job that no one knew about.

The people chosen to be Reapers...were all demon containers or had demon blood in them.

And now, he was next in line for the title and rank.

He took a shuttering breath and picked up his sake cup and quickly downed the liquid, ignoring the burning sensation in the pit of his stomach. He'd been drinking since early this morning when he'd been summoned by the Hokage and asked to take up the tittle of village Reaper.

No the person chosen for the title of Reaper should be pitied. Because there was no next week, next month, next year for them. No smiling family or lover to wave them off and wish them well.

There was nothing but an empty void that grew and grew until it consumed you.