Do you remember that song they used to play in the ANBU?
I bet they don't play it anymore. I'm sure they don't. I'm not surprised, afterall, I'm the one who introduced it to everyone.
Of all the things that first made me feel belonged to the ANBU squad, it was this, so of course they have had to dismantle it by now. You must remember it still. It had no rhyme and no reason but the words that came out were so accurate of a job description that I almost thought that I made a friend in you with the song. Everyone trusted me from then on, I was the youngest ANBU, but I knew how all of the strings were played.
Yet was severed by me. Don't get me, wrong, I have no regrets over it. I just wish I had that song still.
All I know by heart to it after all these years is the small part that went like
"Kid, see the psychiatrist, room 604."
And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, kill, KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin' up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and he started jumpin' up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sergeant came over, pinned a metal on me, sent me down the hall, said "You're our boy."
Do you remember that? I don't think that was what bought you in the song but I was certainly sold out. Alice's Restaurant. That was it. It wasn't really about Alice or a restaurant but all the hell they went through with officials.
But it created a bond, with you, with everyone. It's gone now, right? We're enemies.
It's dark outside. It's much better now that the damn sun set. You're still asleep in the grass, I'm still sitting here next to you but the stars are out.
You must be wondering by now. No, the sticky sweet coating on my hands isn't your blood. Don't worry. A kid wandered too far from home. Wandered over here. You can find his mangled body over there in the bushes if you want to make sure I'm not lying.
But I suppose you'd just trust my word on that one. That smell, that reeking rotting smell of flesh and bone and blood burnt and broken and exploding all over the grass and nearby shrubs…smell of satisfaction, of victory, of undeniable death.
Do I enjoy my new career too much? I wonder sometimes.
You stir again. Good, I was getting impatient. Waiting most of the day can do that to someone. Your eye opens again, a little more alert than before. The warm sun must have caused a little bit more lethargy than you normally dispense. Your head tilts upward, eye meets perfectly with my hands before anything.
You had to of smelled that kid. Smelled his blood.
You say nothing. I return the silence while brushing the blood off of my fingernails. I don't need to look at them to know there's burnt umber and crimson liquid glued to the indigo nail polish coating. Who's to say a man can't wear nail polish? If I cared about what people thought about me, I wouldn't have become a nukenin.
"I see you never got over your nasty habit of staring at people." Touché.
"Maybe I stare because people wear masks to hide insecurity." You reiterate the silence as reprimand while glancing up at my eyes momentarily before shifting your head even further back to stare up at the sky.
You have a lot to say to me.
There was a lot of tension in the air the last we met. You had your companions, which I know come before everything to you, and I had my goal to retrieve the Kyuubi. I went easy on you that day. You know that too. I could have eliminated you the instant you were bound to Tsukiyomi. But I didn't.
I still don't know why.
Fact of the matter is, the last time we talked, we really, honestly, talked… probably was about six years ago. Before I ran away and wiped out my clan. Before you quit the ANBU and took up teaching. Before the third died and I joined Akatsuki. Before Orochimaru pulled together the country of sound with our temporary help. And hell, I probably don't know what's been going on with you. I know you're involved with Sasuke, which I also want to know how that came about.
But… I suppose first things first.
"And the sergeant came over, pinned a metal on me, sent me down the hall, said "You're our boy."
Your head immediately is brought down to me. I suppose you haven't heard that in forever either. You look a little startled, but it passes just as quickly. I'll take that as you recognize it.
Maybe there's hope yet. For what, I'm not sure.
"Didn't feel too good about it."
Ahh, that's right. That was the following last line. I forgot voluntarily, the verse was just as good to me without it.
But I guess not to you. You could never go around killing people like me. Not in this way. Not without your means of reason, your means of justice, which is kind of a vague theory as it is.
"None of us thought you would be a music person." The air is cold and you sit up, wrap your thin muscular fingers around your arms in an attempt to keep heat inside them. Still chilly I see.
"I'm not."
"We figured that out a bit too late apparently." I wanna kill.
I felt a smile break its way through.
"Apparently."