Last time on The Shinobi Sumo League!


I have THE BEST ORANGE JUMPSUIT.

...

Yeah, that sucks.


Shaking myself out of those depressing thoughts (You are not Sasuke!) I walked through the door of my apartment, barely even noticing as it fell to splinters behind me.

Thank god for the Shinobi Fund.

Jumping once, I allowed my Ninfield to expand and break through the floors beneath me until I reached the ground level. The building manager started screaming at me, but I ignored her and walked out into the streets of Tokyo.

It was night.

What the fuck.

Oh wait. Doyobi.

Nevermind.

Leaving my unspeakably unbest apartment behind, I walked down the streets of Tokyo, the ends of my Konoha-Stable headband fluttering behind me. It was November, and there was snow covering the ground. It wasn't THE BEST snow, though, so it all melted around me. Even the cold just seemed... muted somehow. Like it wasn't real.

This late, in this district, the streets were almost empty, only bothered by an occasional car, a wayward traveller. Sometimes a train would pass by, returning from it's last stop.

And sometimes there was only beautiful, beautiful silence. Silence was the best. In a city like Tokyo, it was unnatural.

Thus, cherished.

Even when it was false.

Shinobi. We're a breed apart, except we aren't. We're deified, and loathed. We are heroes who are villains, monsters become saints, memories made real.

Shinobi. We are humans who are fundamentally and immutably not.

Shinobi. The terrifying thing about us... Is that anyone can become one of us. And when it happens in a public place, it's never pretty. I read about this little girl- Haruno Sakura, I think her name was. She killed her family and everyone else on the Yamanote Line after she woke up. When she finally snapped out of it, her personality had changed severely. She had gone from a carefree kid to a battle-hardened warriror- *snap*. Just like that. Faster, even. But it wasn't enough. When she came to in the hospital, after learning what she had done, she took a knife to her throat.

Only, the knife wasn't THE BEST. So it broke on her.

And she was one of the lucky ones.

I stopped, looked up into the sky as the painfully white moon peeked out from under the clouds. Everything was still and silent.

The world felt dead.

And,

And-

...

Shit.

And I was relieved.

The world felt dead, and I was relieved.

Che. I hate snow.

I really fucking hate snow.