- I'm not dead.
Teachers and Students
1 - The first time Hatake Sakumo asks his son to fetch
him his sword; Kakashi is four, quite clumsy, and obviously not the shinobi his
father is. Though Kakashi cries when he cuts himself on the sharp edge of
Sakumo's tanto, he still listens when he then presents his bloodied palm
to his father and Sakumo asks him: "Do you know why I keep my tanto
sharp?”
Kakashi will shake his head 'no'. Sakumo will get a misted look in his
eye, shake his head, and then tell his son: “The duller it is, the easier it
will be to sharpen.”
The metaphor is lost on Kakashi until he looks at Team Seven -- namely
Sasuke and Naruto. When the team splinters and Sasuke defects, Kakashi wonders
which of the two were the sharpest part of the blade and whether he'll
cut himself yet again when he gives up on both of them or if could get
away unscathed by training one of them to kill the other.
2 - Autoeroticasphyixation. A long, long, long, long word that, at its
heart, means that you will get off at the last moment of your orgasm by suffocating
yourself to the point of almost-unconsciousness; the effect of doing so
supposedly making your orgasm a thousand times better and making the come-down
that much sweeter. Anko knew nothing about this strange fetish until she
came of age underneath Orochimaru's tutelage, but since then she has practiced
it a total of three times -- the first, of course, being the night that she
survived having the Curse Seal placed on her body. Orochimaru came into her
room under the cover of darkness, the minutia of a thousand different plans and
schemes flashing through his amber-gold eyes. When Anko asks why he is there,
Orochimaru presents her with a small snake and tells her to disrobe. She is
fourteen when she looses her virginity to a snake of all things. Orochimaru
is on his second body. What she gains from that night is nightmares of thick,
coiling serpents crushing the life out of her an a small, unnoticeable
serpent-tattoo around her ankle.
Years later, during the Leaf-Sound war, Anko ruminates on the night and
thinks that she never thought Yakushi Kabuto was such a sentimentalist until
the day she met him and found that he to had a snake tattoo around his wrist.
3 - In the Fire Country there is a stretch of blasted
land called the "Grave Of The Fireflies." It is so named
because every year during the month of October, thousands of fireflies flock
there to mate, lay their young, andthen die. The entire
"ceremony" occurs, strangely, in the same week-long period in which
the Kyuubi no Kitsune attacked Konoha and was summarily defeated by the noble
sacrifice of the Yondaime Hokage. Though not celebrated formally, those
who knew the Yondaime while he was alive treat the day as such and flock to the
Grave to leave a small lantern at the gravesite.
The first time Jiraiya takes his new student to that place he says:
“This is where your father died.” Naruto will look at him strangely, say:
“...But the Yondaime wasn't...”
Jiraiya will put his hand on Naruto's head and say nothing else. They
stand in silence until the sun sets. Before they leave, though, Naruto can't
help but think that the fireflies looked so beautiful just before they
died.
4 - Unbeknownst to many of the Akatsuki, Kisame's
physical talents are not derived from his bloodline or any sort of misbegotten
'genius'. He owes, nigh-completely, both his magical blade Samehada and
his unmatched skill with it to the man who taught him how to wield such an
ungainly blade -- Momoichi Zabuza, the Demon of the Mist and the previous
wielder of the Shark-Skin blade.
When he leaves his village for the last time, Kisame doesn't know which
is worse. That he stole Samehada or that he left with it to
follow Zabuza's ideals, not his own. All the Akatsuki left for a reason,
Kisame left because he was running scared.
It is quite ironic, then, the Uchiha Itachi left Konoha for quite the
same reason.
5 - In the near-future, when Gaara first uses Shukaku's
chakra to its fullest extent, he will remember three things: the color black,
the color yellow, and then, the color red. Lots and lots and lots of red.
Ironically, that is exactly how Naruto will explain the attack back to him and
it will be the first time either agreed to never use their full-strength
against an opponent they did not want dead, least of all a sparring
partner.
Gaara won't know whether to be disappointed or happy that Naruto was
mature enough to suggest the idea first. He can't quite get his head
around that idea of Naruto ever changing that much. Naruto will just
shrug and say the seven words that will scare Gaara more than he has ever been
scared before in his life:
“The Fox has a thing with dying.”
- Finis