A lone figure dressed entirely in a red hood and robe walked the dirt path slowly, toting a large brown duffel bag. They huffed in exhaustion as they shifted the bag on their shoulder, sweat dripping on the trail like dew. They made their way to the side on the path before dropping their burden and falling upon the ground, flipping onto their back and taking in heaving breaths. After a few minutes, the figure fell asleep where he lay, snoring wheezily through his nose.

Five bulky shadows fell upon them. A swift kick landed on the side of their head, effectively knocking them out of their doze.

"Hey, you! Rise and shine! Heh, heh, heh."

The biggest one took hold of the from of their robe, bringing the significantly smaller figure so close to his face that they gagged on the smell of the stranger's breath. The rest of the bandits surrounded them, smirking with self-satisfaction.

"Now, you won't mind sharing what you have there in that bag, hmm?"

"No, please!"

The hood was snatched off of the head of the victim, exposing the panicked face of a dark-skinned teenager with straight, shoulder-length blue hair and bangs. His voice was weedy, and had cracked when he said "please", indicating that the unfortunate traveler was smack in the middle of puberty.

Two of the bandits gleefully emptied the bag heedlessly, causing the victim to wince as his precious belongings fell upon the ground. The other bandits swarmed the fallen objects, probing and opening anything they found.

"Hey, there ain't nothin' here but pens and scrolls and stuff!"

"Hey, I found his wallet!"

"Mine now!"

"I found it first, it's mine! Go find your own!"

"Dirty thief, give it back!"

"We're all thieves, stupid!"

The young boy was close to tears as he witnessed the utter destruction of his wallet and the loss of his scrolls, which were ripped up as they appeared to have no monetary value. A tear traced his cheek as his expensive, beautiful assortment of calligraphy pens were stuffed up the noses and ears of brigands.

"Whoa, man! What's with all these quills?!"

"Naw, fool, they're pencils!"

"Don't be stupid, they're, like, those things you open cans with."

"They're, like, legit ink pencils, man!"

"They're my calligraphy pens," the boy answered quietly. "I'm a scholar from the Land of Bronze."

His comment was met with a sound clout on the head by the largest of the bandits.

"Nobody asked who you are, twerp. All we want to know is why there's only 200 ryo in your wallet!"

"Yeah, cheapskate!"

"What kind of idiot wastes money buying ink pencils?!"

"Quills!"

"Can openers!"

-

In the tree above the arguing bandits, Koe braced himself to leap to the poor boy's rescue. He breathed in, and out.

Okay. Okay! Here we go. You can do this, Koe.

Maybe.

Koe knew that Nariko and Kiiro were also in the trees somewhere, ready to unleash their new jutsu that they had spent polishing (and renaming, due to Sute's insistence) after they had escaped from the Mearisu Mansion. Sute was a good distance away, keeping a close watch on the monster girl from the tank. Koe chewed on the side of his cheek, pondering how hastily Sute had accepted his apology and immediately assigned 'training exercises' when Koe tried to mention the prophecy. Sute apparently didn't believe in such things, despite her occasional swearing 'in Benzaiten's name'.

Koe began to zone out, and was only half aware of his surroundings when the branch he was perched on began to creak.

Sute had insisted on leaving the Mansion as soon as possible, in favor of heading to the cave that was mentioned in the message relayed by the mutated girl. The road ahead of them didn't stop her from training them. Nariko was previously enthusiastic about assisting the victims of mugging, but it was so frequent an occurrence that it became tiresome as more bandits replaced the ones that Koe's friends scared off.

The branch began to splinter from Koe's weight, as Koe more deeply immersed himself in his thoughts.

Koe began to wonder about Sute's previous students. She claimed that she had failed them for lack of conviction, yet Nariko had told him that Chunin were unable to refuse students that were assigned to them. Did Sute cut them out of the program, or--

The branch sank deeper, nearly snapping off as it cracked like crumpled paper.

--or did her students quit?

The branch snapped off completely, and Koe screamed as he fell to the ground.

There goes my chance to catch them by surprise.

Koe fell on his back, right in the middle of the pack of bandits.

They stared at Koe. Koe held back a scream.

"Hey, boss?" asked one of the louts. "I think a kid fell out of the sky."

"Really? I didn't even notice!"said 'Boss' sarcastically.

"It's not that hard. Y'just gotta pay attention. See, when you look at 'im from here, y'can--"

"I can see him, you fool! Grab him, he might have more than 200 ryo."

'Boss' spat nastily at the scholar from the Land of Bronze.

"Look, Boss! There's another kid falling from the sky! It's legit raining freaking kids or I'm drunk, man!"

"What?"

The Boss barely had time to look up when Nariko took him out with an ax-kick as she fell from her position on the tree.

"Congrats, fish-face! Ye jest got dunked on by the one an' only Sonic Style Nariko! An' as fer ye--"

Nariko spread her left arm out while adjusting the visor on her nose, and grinned as a perfectly sane girl would on her birthday. Except she wasn't sane. And her birthday was in the spring. And she was a ninja.

"--a special gift from me ta ye! Me first Sonic Style Jutsu!"

The confused bandits began to clap enthusiastically. The one that had first noticed the falling children whistled and shouted, "Surprise! I love surprises!"

"Sonic Style: Sonic Breath Blast! Pah!"

"YAY, SURP--!"

Nariko popped air through her lips with such force that the surrounding bandits were launched into the trees around them or farther onto the dirt path.

"Take it away, Kiiro!"

Kiiro somersaulted out of his tree before falling in a graceful swan dive and formed hand signs at lightning speed. With his robe and flowing, long yellow hair that caught the sun as he fell, there was no doubt about it--

Koe really had to work on his entrances.

"Water Style: Plasmic Water Tongue!"

Water sprang out of Kiiro's mouth in neat streams the instant that he landed on the ground. The water wrapped around each of the baffled bandits, binding them so well that Koe thought he heard the sound of cracking ribs. The water appeared to be gelatinous, nearly solid as Kiiro pulled the ends of the Water Tongues out of his mouth, yanking on them, and using them to swing the bandits over his head and slam them on the ground behind him. Then he dispelled the jutsu and left the bandits there knocked out, while the poor scholar cowered behind a tree in fear.

Nariko ran right to him, crushing Kiiro in her abnormally strong arms and leaving Koe all by himself. Koe hesitated, watching them for a few seconds before timidly approaching them.

"Ye was great, Kiiro! Firs' ye flipped an' then ye took 'em out, and it was jest plain awesome!"

"Heh, it wasn't that great. It was nothing special. It's hardly even worth mentioning, really."

Koe leapt upon that statement, eager for a way to wriggle into their conversation.

"Y-yeah, it c-c-could've been way better. M-maybe y-y-you can do it with your eyes c-c-closed, or backwards, or--"

Koe stopped when Kiiro turned to glower at him.

"C'mon, Nariko, we should go find Snakey-sensei now that we're done here."

Nariko snickered, following him and chatting with him like she used to do with Koe when they had traveled together. They left Koe all alone, surrounded by unconscious bandits and shreds of scroll paper. Koe looked down at the ground. He felt hurt in a different way, in a way that spread from his chest to his throat, making a lump in it.

Koe heard sniveling sounds, and he looked over to find that the poor scholar had curled up in front of his poor, mistreated calligraphy pens. He ventured closer to him before kneeling down beside him and warily touching his shaking shoulder. Koe was all too familiar with tears, and yet he felt awkward trying to comfort him when he himself was unable to handle his own sorrow at times.

"H-h-hey. You okay? I mean, a-are you hurt? I mean. . ."

Koe had no idea what to say to the scholar, opting instead for falling into silence and sitting beside him with his hand on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, I just--I mean, this is my livelihood--these guys just trashed my whole life--"

The scholar sniffled, rubbing his face with the sleeve of his robe.

"I just, I never had anything other than--than this--no dream aside from what I had in that bag--nothing but my book and my poems and my art and my poor, poor pens!"

Koe remained silent, unable to look the boy in the face as he wept. Instead, he bent down and began picking up the pens and scraps of paper. He retrieved what was left of the wallet and 200 ryo, replacing everything in the brown bag. When he was halfway done, the crying stopped.

"Forgive me--being foolish--thank you--really appreciate--"

The scholar's talking lapsed with emotion, and he began to pick up his livelihood from the ground. Koe placed the brown bag carefully in the scholar's shaking hands.

"Really, I wish that I could thank you more. You're a good kid, y'know?"

Koe scratched the back of his head and looked away.

"Don't th-thank me. K-K-Kiiro's the one who did the most."

"That's where you're wrong, kid."

Koe lowered his hand.

"What d-do you mean?"

The scholar wiped his face with his sodden robe sleeve.

"What I mean is that, well, beating up bad guys is all well and good, but it doesn't pick up after itself."

"What?"

"Fighting usually has the purpose of breaking something. Not that it doesn't come with good intentions, but something is usually destroyed in the process. Like minds. Like calligraphy pens. Like hearts."

The scholar looked pointedly at Koe, and Koe felt his face warm for some reason. Maybe he was sick or something. That had to be it.

"There are a lot of good fighters out there. But see, sometimes people shouldn't want to be the ones that break things to make room for other things. Sometimes, people might want to prioritize, and fix things instead of utterly destroying them."

Koe thought about why he had become a ninja. He had wanted to be safe--no, he had wanted something, anything other than being hunted or killed. He had thought that he had been given the one option: to train under Sute and become a soldier of the Branch Rebellion. But now that he thought about it, he wanted to ask himself, the intruder in himself: Who are you, and what do you want? The problem was that neither side of him knew. He couldn't even tell one side from the other.

"It doesn't matter that you didn't beat them all to hell. At least, not to me. Because you see, I think that power like that's kinda scary, to be honest here. Not that I don't appreciate it. But what's the point, really, in destroying something and not picking up the pieces. 'Cos the way I see it, the pieces are sharp, and can hurt someone almost as much as the original problem could." 

Koe turned the thought over in his head, inspecting it in his mind. 

"I-I-I guess I n-never thought about it that way."

The scholar firmly clapped Koe on the shoulder.

"Just mull over it a bit. You'll get it someday. Just don't forget. Here, I'll even write it all down for you."

The scholar selected one of many calligraphy pens that were placed inside the bag, and drew out the largest scrap of paper he could salvage. Koe watched in awe as he skillfully wrote down all that he had said in beautiful kanji, then turned the paper around and rewriting it in hirigana. When he was done, Koe took the words as if they were precious artifacts.

"Th-thank you."

"My pleasure. I thought about giving you cash, but all I have is 200 ryo."

"It's o-okay, you shouldn't h-have!"

The scholar held his hand out to Koe.

"I'm not a rich guy, but I know how important words are. So I'll leave you with words and a name. I'm Kihoruda."

Koe took his hand. His finger was callused where he leaned his pen.

"M-my name's Koe."

Kihoruda took his hand out of Koe's, smiling as he turned around to resume his travels.

"If you ever need a good word, or a hand that's good with a pen, then you know who to go to. If you need money, then forget it."

They both laughed, and parted ways with smiles.

--

Sute was right where he had left her, with the hairy mutant girl on a leash. Nariko and Kiiro were talking about something that made them laugh as soon as Koe approached.

"Watcha got there, Koe?"

Koe looked at the folded words in his hand before putting it in his pocket.

"A p-piece of p-paper."

Sute looked at him suspiciously before looking away again.

"We should head out. The girl says that we're close."

"Yes! Close! Believe it!" said the girl.

Reunited with his group, Koe stayed close to Sute, trying to keep Kiiro's awesome feats out of his head. Despite what Kihoruda had said, Koe still wished to do something half as good as what Kiiro had done. Unlike Kiiro and Nariko, Koe had yet to complete his Metal Style Jutsu. And while they had obviously had training way before meeting Sute, Koe quickly discovered that his stamina, strength, and chakra level was much lower than theirs. Sute had said that it was natural for a first-timer, but Koe was anxious to catch up.

If only I hadn't fallen out of the tree. . . I could've at least headbutted those guys.

The shadows chased away the sunlight, and Koe and the others were walking in the darkness. Koe didn't care what Sute said about ninjas operating from the shadows; he was afraid of the dark. After enduring more of Koe's pleas, Sute finally unsealed a glow stick from a scroll and gave it to him.

"Dun dun dun don, don-duuuuuun. Dun dun dun dun dun-dun dun don-duuuuuun."

Sute's face twitched in the green light from the glow stick.

"DUN dun-dun DUN don dun dun-dun-dun, dun DUN--"

Sute finally snapped, turning around and glaring at Nariko.

"Nariko, can you cut it out already?!"

Nariko covered her ears and chanted, "DUN-DUN-DUUUUUN DUN! DUN DUUUUUUUN DUN! DUN DUUUUUUUUUUU--!"

A white snake (green from the light of the glow stick) crawled out of Sute's sleeve and wrapped itself around Nariko's mouth. Koe saw Sute-sensei visibly relax.

"Thank you, Taiyaki. Forgive me, Nariko, for losing my patience."

"Mfff mmmmf!" said Nariko.

They continued walking, and Nariko made friends with Taiyaki the white snake. She pulled his coils off of her face and began her usual chatter again.

"Oi, sensei. Why do ye name yer snakes after foods?"

"To discourage them from eating annoying humans."

"Oh."

A high-pitched giggle echoed around them, and Sute immediately drew her staff into a defense position.

"Get behind me, all of you!"

Koe, Nariko, and Taiyaki drew closer to Sute, but Kiiro instead leapt forward. Sute tried to snatch him back, but he evaded her grasp and began to form hand signs. Koe didn't recognize the jutsu he cast.

"Water Style: Water Splitting Jutsu!"

Sute lunged for him again a second too late.

"Kiiro, stop!"

The water jutsu lurched back at them, blasting Kiiro back at them and soaking them to the bone. Sute looked at her sodden scales and then glared at Kiiro.

"Your helpfulness is quite apparent, thank you, Kiiro." she said coldly.

The giggling returned, and a small figure approached them like a growing shadow.

"I admit, I was impressed that you managed to find me so soon. Until I noticed the Jonin. Then I wasn't impressed. Especially when I saw that you also brought two others along, but hey, what does a doll know?"

The ninja doll had returned.

Please vote and/or comment.