تــــــــــــــحــــــــــــريك الجـــــــــــــــــــبــــــــــــــال

Due to a lack of money I am forced to find a new source of income.

Well, today I got a call from a certain advertising company and they decided to hire me, I think.

It is still not quite yet certain (I think), since first I gotta go through a 3 hour training (for which I get payed) and then I start working. I don't know what will happen or how these things go, but according to a friend of mine who works there, its a pretty much done deal.


So, with College, Studying and a Job.....my free time will slightly be lowered and so will my activity.



Love, Marcus.

Rose sighed deeply as she walked slowly into a building known as the hall of hero’s. The building was a small Mausoleum built into the side sheer cliff wall in an out of the way park off to the side of the village in a spot that was frequented more by ninja then civilians due to the steep walkway that was one was required to climb to arrive here.

Instead of her usual bright red crimson cloak she was wearing a dark black one today as a symbol of her mourning. Taiho had said the time for doing that would be after rebuilding, but tragically even though the bulk of the reconstruction had been finished it seemed nobody had time to hold a proper funeral service.

Maybe after such hard times they wanted to forget what had happened and move on and Rose supposed she couldn’t blame them. She’d live thought enough hard times in the past to know what that was like, had things she wished she could wipe from her mind but would never be able to. But this was one thing she wanted to always remember as faces from the past ran thought her memories.

Rose recalled Rain smiling at her warmly and calling her dear while patting her head and Kasuga scolding her for being reckless confronting Sigma before giving her a reassuring hug. Slowly tears began to fall down her face as she wiped the dust off the much neglected wall. It seemed nobody had been to tend to this area since prior to the invasion.

Taking out a kunai which in fact had been given to her by Rain she slowly and painstakingly began to carve two more names onto the long list that was already on the wall. She didn’t have any bodies to bury so it seemed this was the least should could do. Finally after what seemed like hours due to her vision being impaired by her tears she finished and nodded with grim satisfaction at a job well done.

Kasuga Yuki
Rain Ryder

With another sigh Rose put down two packages below the freshly carved names. One was a batch of cookies just like the ones she had baked the day of the invasion, the ones she was going to give to Rain to thank him for the weapons he’d given her… the cookies she had failed to give him while he could still enjoy them.

The second package was a bottle of high quality saki since the Ice princess of kumo was infamous for her love of booze and frankly while Rose had idolized the heck out of her she didn’t know her well enough to have a clue on what else to get her.

Tears continued to flow down her face at the ignomity of it all. This was it after all the things these two great people had done in life all that was left of them was a scribble on a wall that hardly anyone paid any attention to. Sure Zancrow cared since this was his cousin and all, and a handful of other people as well probably did as well but that was the extent of it and it didn’t reach very far.

It was ironic really, for years all Rose had wanted to become was a ninja hero, had dreamed about becoming one for every day she was in the academy, but now after hearing Taiho’s speech at the exam she realized that being a hero was far less glamorous then her comic books had ever made it out to be.

“Hero’s don’t live long in our world. You either live long enough to become a villain, or fight long enough to die an unsung death. There’s no middle ground, this isn’t a fairy tale, some woven dream by the powers that be. We aren’t the main characters of some manga. We live the hand dealt to us, and if we so happen to change the world while we’re at it, then so be it” Taiho’s words from during the chunin exam rang thought her head again and again.

To her Kasuga and Rain where the apitmy of hero’, brave and strong and everything she inspired to be. But like Oji had said they had simply fought long enough to die an unsung death. She still wanted to live up to the massive shadows they had cast to make them proud of her in whatever heaven they had gone to, to become strong but how far in their footsteps should she follow?

Before, she had thought this had all been a dream she had slipped into. Being able to walk again, being super strong and fast, wielding weapons like a pro on her first try, becoming a ninja that all of it had been an elaborate fantasy she had concocted to escape the crushing reality of being eternally sick in bed. She would have walked to her death with a smile on her face over returning to that fate.

But now after living thought the hell that was the invasion she knew in her heart that wasn’t true. This life of her was no rhapsody. It was far too crushing and cruel to not be real, but that said it was not without hope. She had lost much but also gained in the process. She had found a brother figure in Zancrow, and she vowed before Kasuga’s grave to look after him for her as best as she was able.

It seemed she wouldn’t be able to become a hero like she had wanted to after all, At least not yet. She had too much to live for to join Kasuga and Rain now that affection for the prince had blossomed in her young heart. She could no longer devote herself to that cause because she had devoted herself heart and soul to him instead.

But if she couldn’t be a hero like she had planned did that make her a villain then for simply wanting to live longer? That didn’t seem right either when the reason she wanted to live was for love and when was love ever a bad thing? It hadn’t been one in any story she’d ever read which was a lot since she’d had time for little else while sick.

With her idol and teacher to be gone at first she’d tried to deny reality but soon snapped out of it in order to support Zancrow from falling into an emotionless abyss that even now he teetered on the edge of. Then she had been angry, Angry at them for leaving her, angry at the world for taking them away. But she loved them too much to stay angry forever. As a nautrally bubbly person It just wasn’t in her dna.

Now she was just willing to bargain for them back. She’d be willing to trade nearly anything other then the few friends that remained if only the doctor and the oni would return to her. She had read so many comics where the hero would raise from the grave to make a return so why couldn’t that happen here?

She had heard whispers once or twice about people coming back from the dead before. Tales of legends past like the sage of six paths literally being able to bring back the deceased where so frequent that at least some of them must be true. Maybe just maybe if she could find the right method it wasn’t too late to make a difference.

“I swear I won’t let it end like this. I will find a way to change fate and bring you back to us. Kumo just isn’t right without you here.” Rose vowed to herself meaning ever word not realizing how utterly futile such a quest would be since she wasn’t exactly playing with a full deck of cards, especially after her recent break down from losing her precious people.

Sadly her psych profile had burned up along with her medical records and with both Rain and her handler for infiltration training gone nobody was left who knew just how…off she was. Sure she was full of innocence but because of that she had to potential to go full on psycho. Right now the only thing keeping her in check and stabilized was the presence of Zancrow and Taiho in her life, may god help the world if something happened to either of them or if Taiho rejected her.

For now at least this was as close to her lost ones as she was going to get as even she was self-aware enough to kno she wouldn’t be bringing them back right away. No she needed someone who could work mircles to do that, someone like Dr. Rejiko to help her. Curling up into a ball beside the offerings Rose continued to cry and sob until she finally fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

Rose ran through a graveyard occasionally looking behind her back as she went. Behind her was Rain and Kasuga shuffling along like zombies with rotten pieces of flash falling off half their bodies exposing their skeletons as they stumbled but oddly where able to keep pace with her never falling too far behind.

“Join us…. Joins us.” They repeated in a loud moan over and over again. No matter how fast Rose went she couldn’t get away from them, and unlike with the proctor at the exam she shouldn’t fight back since all of her weapons seemed to be missing. Finally inexplicable Kasuga caught up with her and placed a bony hand on her shoulder.

“AAAAHHH” Rose screamed as she snapped awake to find herself on the cold floor of the Mausoleum. Taking a compact mirror out of her pocket she opened it to find her face smudged from all the crying she had done the night before. She sighed, wanting nothing more than to leave and get something to eat but her work here wasn’t quit done yet.

Moving to the opposite side of the room she came face to face with the list of people who had gone missing in action. This was a separate list then the confirmed dead simply because there was still a small hope that some of them might still be alive somehow even if the odds where incredibly slim as only a small handful of names had ever been crossed out.

Reverently she ran her hand across the last name that had been added to the wall Raitetsu Shinatora. A name that had been carved by Kasuga herself only just days before they first met in person. She’d never met this man before but anyone that was special to Kasuga was special to her so she took a moment to stop and prey for his return before she began to add more names herself to the stone.

Lolth
Yonechi

When she was done she stopped to take a moment to remember them. Lolth was a jounin, a teacher who was supposed to meet Rose for an assignment at the red barrel inn. A teacher who had never showed which had resulted in her getting assigned to Rain instead. Rose didn’t know much about the woman other then she liked to wear a lot of red, just like herself. It was a shame they had never gotten to meet.

And Yonechi, poor poor Yonechi. He was only a gennin who should have been safe in the shelters with the civilians. He didn’t deserve this, to have no trace of his existence but his name on the way and a single photograph they had taken together upon completion of their first mission together, Rose’s first mission overall after graduating from the academy.

It was a silly d-rank to catch a stray cat at the hospital, a cat Yonechi had encouraged her to keep so that she wouldn’t be lonely in her small apartment anymore. Something she was quite grateful for. He was supposed to be her teammate and now he had simply vanished from the earth.

It was considered rude to leave offerings for the mia so Rose simply lit an incense candle for them instead hoping the smell would help guide them home and they hadn’t already joined the others in the underworld.

With a sigh Rose picked herself up and put her kunai away. Her work was done here, at least for now. But it would not be the last time she came to this place. No she would return to give them regular updates on what was happing in her life and how the village was and how her progress on her quest to resurrect them was going.

“Until next time guys.” She said with a wan smile as she left the crypt behind and made her way down the steep hill back down in the village proper. All those tears had made her work up quite an appetite and she needed to get her stomach filled before she moved on to her next mission.

[exit]