Why We Fight: Asuma
A series of shorts on why our ninjas... are ninjas. Spoilers some of them up to recent manga. I'll put an asterix () in the chapter title when there is one so you can pick and choose. Multi-part fic. Many shorts.
Warning: a one instance of severe language in here.
Asuma fights because not only is he good at it, he enjoys it. The adrenaline rush, the anticipation, the blows connecting, the hum of his chakra along his signature blades. The half-grin on his face as he slashes out with his knuckle-knives is the best expression his face knows how to hold.
He doesn't parade it, but Asuma loves the fact that he's good enough to be considered an elite Jounin - particularly since he's managed it without enduring the major mindfuck trauma that seems to characterize the rest of them. Sure, he fought through the war, and yeah, he lost people he loves, and he's not immune to bouts of melancholy and pain same as anybody else. A ninja's life is hard, but its his and he can take the blows that come with it cos he's got a level head and two good legs to stand on. He's also got the ability to still go home and see his family, drag his friends out for a drink, and hang out like a normal guy. He knows he's lucky to be able to do that, but he sure as hell doesn't begrudge himself that much because he fought for that right and he always will. It's why he fights too.
Because of all that, Asuma is the kind of ninja Konoha was meant to produce - level-headed, loyal, lethal, and able to live like a human and a ninja without too much trouble in the conversion. And Asuma knows it. It just strikes him as strange and a little worrying that so few of his colleagues share the title; some like Kakashi and Anko have been traumatized so badly it amazes him that they can walk around like normal people.
Oh yeah - they can't.
But Asuma can still sit and play a lazy game of Shougi with Shikamaru, tease Ino about what article is sooo riveting in that girlie magazine she can't look away from, and sigh with a funny satisfaction as he watches Chouji pack away another week's worth of his wages in barbeque pork. And he lets his students be normal people too. The kids screw up because of that sometimes, and it worries him a little (okay, alot) but he understands that they're kids and kids make mistakes and have the right to a life - it's what he spent his early years fighting a war for and he'll be damned if he takes it away from them.
He's a normal guy, for the most part. And these are by a million miles the most normal of the kids to come out of this graduating class. Everyone underestimates them, like they tend to underestimate him, and that suits Asuma just fine. After all, ninjas are supposed to be surprising and isn't everybody surprised that Ino boldly led her team into battle against Orochimaru's homicidal minions in the Forest of Death for the sake of Team 7? Isn't everyone amazed that Shikamaru was the only one out of over a hundred applicants to be promoted to Chuunin rank? Isn't everybody shocked to the core that Chouji managed to kill a man that not even ANBU could touch during the invasion in single combat?
Yes, they are, but Asuma isn't because he knows these kids are like him. And just because he's not prodigal, not from a famous family or possessing a kenkei gekkai, not genius crazy either for damn sure; doesn't mean he can't serve and protect Konoha and excell doing it. So now as Asuma watches Ino battle it out with Hyuuga Neji (whose uber-genius, Byuukugan-wielding, elitist ass she is kicking, if he doesn't say so himself) in the semi-finals of her second Chuunin exam, he can't keep that same half-grin he gets when he fights off his face. He supposes that's because when his team fights, a part of him is fighting too, and it looks like he's managed to teach these three unaspiring, unpromising and underachieving kids some of why its worth the fight.
Because Konoha's the only ninja village in the world that let's its ninjas, it's raison d'etre try to be human too. And maybe not everybody makes it, maybe not everybody can, but for those who can -people like Team 10 and like Asuma- if that's not worth fighting for, nothing is.
This chapter dedicated to the unaspiring, unpromising, underachieving people who decide to never let that hold them down.