Notes: It's not "Calamities" – that one's been postponed for lack of inspiration. This one though hit me like a ton of bricks while I was zoning out in class like a delinquent and wrote it out on a scrap of paper which turned out be an important something. What luck.
Title: HERO
Summary: A civilian remembers the Yondaime as a kid.
A man is more than his legend.
When she is fourteen, her father's trees broke out in bursts of fruit, adding color – Red! Yellow! Purple! – to a field that had only ever been green. The abundance of the harvest has the whole family working, picking off the drupes and berries before they fall on their own.
On the third day, her father, finding the common sense that usually eluded him, hired a shinobi team from nearby Konohagakure to help.
She is unimpressed when they arrive – a big man with lines on his face and three brats younger than her. Genin – her father explains – kids who take on the most mundane missions and have yet to prove their worth in combat.
Callow as though they might be, they work efficiently, darting in and out between the trees, collecting the fruit twice as fast as she could on her best day while their sensei sits back and writes (and giggles uncontrollably).
On the second day after the ninja arrived, she is tasked to make them lunch. She is still making up a list of things to buy in the market when a blond head pops up at the window.
"If it's not too much trouble," He starts, grinning straight at her and filling her vision with blue blue blue. "Jiraiya –sensei wants ramen today."
"Uh, okay," She nods at him, still a little startled, and he is gone.
When she takes them lunch she does not notice the suspicious looks his sensei and teammates throw at him while he happily slurps up the noodles.
"Hey, what is your teacher always laughing about?" She asks him curiously the next day, when he goes into the house to deposit the next bag of fruits.
"Eh," He blushes ever so slightly and she quirks an amused eyebrow. "You don't really want to know…"
"Why – is it bad?" She challenges playfully. "Naughty?"
This time it's a full-on blush and her eyes widen. The kid sighs in defeat.
"Pervert sensei," they mutter together.
A sudden shared understanding and mutual grins of delight. She almost ruffled his hair.
It really wasn't anything special – a simple, sweet moment that could have been easily forgotten if not for the sheer presence of the boy she shared it with.
It ended quickly.
"Oi, Namikaze!" His sensei hollers. "Get your butt out here!"
The boy gives her a wide sheepish grin and runs out with a wink.
She chuckles at his absurdity and wonders how the affable kid ever had it in his mind to be shinobi.
Nearly a year after that day, when the fruit trees did not bloom as well, there are whispers of a war threatening to break out.
Shinobi teams are suddenly more active and taking on more dangerous missions than simple fruit-picking. Border patrols become more watchful and teams of ninjas wearing animal masks could be seen surveying the terrain.
Her father, in another moment of good sense, tells them to pack up. They were moving before they got sucked in into this awful, awful spiral of events.
War comes like a thief in the night, stealing everything you loved and everything you took for granted and everything you never even knew you had.
Even miles away from the fighting, she could feel its effects. Faces blur in her mind, always in gray and red: refugees, families, soldiers and shinobi, everyone doing what they could to survive.
Burning and bodies and blood. Loss and grief and hatred. Helplessness, desperation and hope that feels like a heavy stone in the gut.
This is war.
And it is in war that heroes rise and men become legends.
The celebrated Yellow Flash leads Konoha to victory.
The constant smell of fire and sulfur and metal and melancholy slowly vanishes from the air.
She remembers summer and fruits trees, bright colors and sunny smiles.
She may have lost many things, but she still had this. Her smile is a little less broken.
In time, she forgets and heals and remembers what peace felt like.
Peace felt like sunshine on budding flowers, like new friends that didn't disappear like mist in the morning, like the precious dreams of a better future.
She finds herself living normally again and stealing every moment of happiness she could get.
Then, the Kyuubi attacks. The killing intent alone spawns fear from miles around. The report of the increasing death toll breaks her heart.
But Konoha has its genius, its hero. And he is able to defeat the demon.
Great Yondaime. Brave Yondaime. Beloved Yondaime.
They speak of a man strong, great and dutiful and with a heart as vast as the sky.
But nobody speaks his name.
She hears the awed whispers of the shinobi passing through the small village where she lived.
It never crosses her mind that their hero, their martyr, could be the same bright-eyed kid who asked for ramen and snickered at his own teacher and felt like a little brother years earlier.
How could it – when she can't even imagine the Yondaime to be a mere man?
The legends are made perfect by forgetting the facets that made them men.
Owari
Next up!
Something. I don't know. I'm juggling ideas and waiting for one of them to fall on my head.