Something. [Invite Only]

"So we aren't under attack. That is just a thing that exists in space; it's generally always there, but we don't see it often because it's usually cloudy here. Any questions?". Nero looked to the group of kids sitting and listening to him, still in awe by the sun. They were constantly looking at it, then looking away because their eyes were getting hurt, and then looking again. "Curiosity." Nero thought, "I can't blame them. I do the same thing regularly. Well not with the sun, but to be fair it's rarer to these little kids than some of the things that hurt me, that I should have seen coming.". Nero waited for a few more seconds, and seeing as there was no answer, continue, "Okay, great. Now go play.", they started running in every possible direction. Nero shouted behind their back "AND DON'T LOOK DIRECTLY INTO THE SUN!".

Once the kids have left, Nero started walking around, looking for something to do. He didn’t have any plans that day, and even when he had one he wasn’t great at staying loyal to them. He walked by his friend Kite’s house. He almost had the urge to walk over and knock for a second, before remembering that Kite was taking care of a dog Nero brought to his house, and Nero wasn’t ready to take the dog back just yet. Her owner was still nowhere around after all. “Oh yeah.” Nero thought, “That.”. He then kept walking, “Anyway, I’m sure that problem will go away by itself…”. He walked through streets, ran through them, jumped through, skipped through, he even crawled through an unexceptionally busy one since everyone in that street happened to be carrying some stuff on their shoulders for some reason, not leaving much space at his height. “Someone must be moving…” he thought, while crawling through a forest of legs; “Or maybe even multiple people. Wait.”. He stopped. “Why didn’t I just climb a building, or just walk down a different street?”. He kept crawling, “I never think before I act. Dammit.”.

When he was at the end of the street, he got up. A few of the villagers who noticed him get out of the sea of legs (for obvious reasons) just stared at him. Some of them seemed to be indifferent to his actions. One of those people, an old woman, went “That’s the boy I was talking about the other day.”. Three old women sitting with her collectively went “Oh.”. Nero looked kind of sad, “What?” he asked, not in a confrontational, but a disappointed tone. He tried to dust off his jacket with his hands, and then looked around. He then looked around again. He looked at the street he came out of. “Where was-”. He started pointing at his surroundings and thinking. “I… I’m lost… Again…” he said, once again mixing up the feelings of thinking and speaking out loud. He looked at his choices, there were four street he could walk to. One of them was the one he came out of, The Leg Street. Nero pointed there, and once again thought out loud, “Okay, not that… Let’s see…”. He kept looking around and thinking.

"Lost?"

The single emotionless word rose from Asami's lips and through the rumble of the crowd to where the taller boy from the academy stood. A few paces behind him, the young chuunin—having many times experienced them herself—knew the telltale signs of confusion; talking to one's self, looking this way and that, and pointing in random directions. Yes, the tall boy checked all the boxes, he had to be lost. Well, that or Asami misread the whole situation, which, frankly, was a definite possibility and would not be the first or last time she'd do such a thing.

For her part, Asami was far from lost. She was, however, delaying the inevitably of having to return to her empty home. It had nearly been a week and she had finally found the courage to return. She knew the route by heart, for she had followed it many a time in the impenetrable morning darkness. This time, however, she would not return to the smell of pancakes on the stove or the dulcet tones of her father as he read the news aloud to her mother. No, there would be nothing save for a house full of happy memories tainted by ghosts of the dead.

And yet she had to go.

Unlike the first time the taller boy would have seen her, Asami wore the trappings of her new rank. Layered over a long-sleeved blue shirt, a chuunin flak jacket encased her torso while tights of dark black stretched halfway down her calves. Naturally, however, he might recognize that her headband still hung about her neck, the bags under her eyes still marred her face, and the bandages on the left side of her face remained. Interestingly, she also carried a leather-bound book under her left arm—a memento from her most recent visit to the library.

Oh, how times changed.

---
TWC: 315

"Lost?" Nero repeated, looking around to see who that word came from. From the tone of the voice, he assumed it wasn't one of the old ladies, and it probably wasn't the creepy old man Nero was just looking for the smallest reason to tell on to his upper ranked co-workers. His eyes settled on the girl his eyes somewhat recognized, but his brain was lagging behind. "Wow..." he continued, "That's a lot to put on someone out of the blue... I mean I guess, kinda? I want to become stronger but to what end? Rank up? Then what? Again? There's only so many ranks. And what do you even get with ranks anyway? More money? I mean sure money sounds nice but it can't buy happiness, I asked a few shops around. - Just saying you don't need to check, apparently they can't import that stuff, I don't know why. And sure I guess higher ranks mean more popularity but I don't even like popularity... I guess you could say I'm lost, yeah... I don't know... You aren't?".

Nero realized that the girl might have meant him being lost on the streets (which he was as well), but it was too late to back down now. If there was a game Nero liked more than the Blood Games, it was the game of chicken. "Yeah." he thought, "This is a deep conversation now... I mean, I guess. Is that what 'deep' is? I hear a lot of book shop owners saying that word but I haven't actually read any of the books they're selling so I'm not sure what that word means exactly. I don't know. I'm really confused either way. Also, where have I seen this girl before and is the clothing she wearing- Oh no. Oh no... You look like you're 12, girl. Please don't be a Jounin. God please don't be a Jounin. Can genin even get flak jackets? Can I? If I can, should I?". His head started to get hot, a few drops of sweat moved down from his head down to his eyebrows. He kept his smile up through that motion though, then cleaned the sweat off with the back of his hand, and kept smiling. "You're thinking too much Nero... You know what happens when you do that... Just try to focus on a few things, if one thing is way out of your limit. The girl, the talk, uh... What were we talking about again? Oh right, being lost. Did I already kill that conversation anyway by being weird and taking her question the wrong way? I don't know, I guess I'll see...". 

Thanks to the human mind being able to think more than a million times faster than they were able to talk, Nero had barely finished his answer to the girl's one word question. So before she even had a time to answer, he had the opportunity to add, "I'm sorry if that was too much... I have a tendency to get overwhelmed by things.". He raised his hand to a level they would both be comfortable enough for a handshake, and introduced himself, "It's Nero by the way, though I'm not sure if I might have told you that already. You look familiar. Local celebrity maybe?". He once again ended with a genuine smile, his eyes almost looking like they were closed.

Eyes of impassive slate peered up at the tall boy as he stumbled his way to a response. Perhaps a few weeks previously the young girl would have loosed her airy laugh and clarified what she meant by such a cryptic question. Today, however? Well, today she neither laughed nor clarified. Instead, she pursed her lips in poorly concealed annoyance and waited for the boy to formulate a halfway coherent response. She didn't need or want to hear his philosophical musings—she had only stopped because, as a chuunin, she felt it her duty to better the village and helping the lost was right up there with saving cats from trees. Anyways, weren't older people supposed to be good with words?

"Asami Miyamoto," she did not take the boy's hand and instead offered a shallow bow with her introduction. "Where are you trying to get to?"

Her normally sing-songy voice fell flat and emotionless. She lacked the will to put energy into her actions anymore. After all, what was the point? It didn't really matter in the end. One day she could be walking the streets of Kirigakure and the next she could be at the bottom of the sea along with her parents or in some shallow grave in a foreign land. Life after the Chuunin exams felt different and not worth living. Even the vibrant crowds of Kirigakure that parted around the mismatched pair did little to charge the chuunin as they once did.

It felt as if her actions were no longer her own, she had become merely a spectator in her own story.

---
TWC: 584

"Okay, she's not having it.". He pulled his hand back. "Nice to meet you, Asami.". "What's with the coldness?" Nero thought, "Wow my parents would have probably loved her... Wonder what they're doing... No. No, Nero. Focus. Wait she said something. What was it?"."I... Don't really know..." Nero answered to her question. "Does the name Asami ring a bell? I feel like I've heard it before.". "You didn't really but it the first time, but I guess I meant it, whatever I said. - Even I don't remember. - I don't know, looking for somewhere to be, maybe?". He really was, he was being crushed under a sense of worthlessness and his lack of direction in life.

"Are all Jounin like this? Maybe it's that she's a Jounin and younger than me. Honestly, if I was a Jounin at 14, I wouldn't take 20-something Genin's seriously either. Damn it, Nero. I'm the one always making everything a rank thing. Maybe it's not a rank or age thing at all. I need to stop with that.". He noticed then that his smile was gone, "Great now my mood is kind of down as well... Who's gonna cheer us up now?". Nero looked left. It might have seemed weird from the outside, but he was looking for a punchline. There was none. "Well," Nero thought, "she's not running away, (not yet anyway) so the least I can do is be as nice as possible, I guess.". "And you? Are you on some Jounin business?". "Oh wait. Maybe she's actually doing her job and she thinks I'm 'needing ninja support' levels of lost? Maybe I should clarify that. But if I do, it might sound like I'm just trying to send her away. Like a 'If you're actually worried by the way, it's alright. I've got it, don't let me bother you.'. Oh. It does sound like I'm trying to avoid her. Shit. Now what do I do? I don't want to steal anyone's precious ninja time... Anyway, Nero, let it go for now... If she says she's on Jounin business, I'll be nice and say I wouldn't want to steal her time. If she's not on Jounin business - wow I've used the words 'Jounin business' a lot today, even if it's mentally - there's no problem to begin with.".

The boy's further incoherent babble only resulted in Asami raising a single disapproving eyebrow. She really didn't have time for this. It wasn't that she had anywhere pressing to be, but rather that she could be doing anything with her time and here she was trying to parse out a straight answer from someone undergoing an existential crisis. Was this what her dad meant about the cost of one's time? Though thoughts of Kenchi were still painful, his strange sayings and advice kept returning to his daughter's mind despite her best efforts to block any memory of her parents from her mind. After all, remembering hurt and she had no want to bring further harm to herself than she already had thus far in her short life.

It is my fault they're dead...

This insidious thought dogged the chuunin of late. It jumped and darted around her consciousness waiting for when she least expected and then it hit her, it hit her hard. If she had never gone to Konohagakure her parents never would have tried to surprise her and they'd all still be alive. Yes, it was her fault for going to the chuunin exams in the first place, it had to be.

"Chuunin, not jounin, chuunin," she corrected the boy's mistake with a curt shake of her head. "And no, I'm not working right now. I was just returning home for the day actually."

She readjusted the book under her arm ever so slightly.

"Sooo..." a small bit of emotion crept into her voice as she elongated her 'so'. "Are you sure you don't need any help finding your way?"

For better or for worse, Asami's manners had yet to leave her. Otherwise, she would have accepted that the boy was beyond her ability to help and been on her way. Instead, she found herself trapped by the polite conventions that her parents raised her with.

---
TWC: 906

"No," Nero answered, "I don- Okay maybe if you could just point me in the direction of the training grounds that'd be enough. Sorry for the inconvenience.". At this point even Nero was getting bored with this. It was his fault though, he started it. He looked at the girl, confused and somewhat hurt, deep down though his face only showed the boredom that matched hers. He wanted to ask at the start, but his father's advice had kept him from doing so. "I..." Nero regretted the word as soon as it had come out of his mouth, but it was far too late now to back out, "Do you...". He still tried to resist it, trying to turn this question into any other, "Ask her about her day... Ask her if she knows Hayate... Ask her if she's ever killed two people by pushing one into the other... Ask her anything else, just don't ask her...". "Are you alright?". "YOU IDIOT.".

The words came out of his mouth gently but with a lot of hesitation and restraint. It was a question Nero hated being asked, and hated asking. There has never been a time in his life where he was sad, and then not, when somebody asked him that question. He had flashbacks to the time everybody kept asking him if he was alright, after his best-friend died in front of his eyes. He still blamed himself for it, which he was kind of right to do since he did cause her death even if it was unintentional; but it didn't help thinking that way so Nero always tried to think of something else, but end up there once again. The sight of his friend crushed under a bear came before Nero's eyes. The thing that probably made it worse was the girl standing in front of him, who was about the same age as her when she died. 

"Dumbass. Asshole. Why would you do that? If she's okay, that just brings the mood down, and if she's not, you just bring attention to it and make it worse. And you know that. You've felt that, you've been exposed to that a lot of times. And you've still done it. Instead of learning from how others have treated you, you're just replacing them and treating others the same shitty way. That cycle will never break unless you break it. You dumbass.". He took a deep breath, "It's okay... Maybe she doesn't think the same way. Hell it can be taken different ways. Maybe you meant 'are you alright with pointing me at the direction of the training grounds?'. Yeah, that's what you meant. You dumb asshole. ".

Am I alright?

Of course, I’m alright.

Asami wasn’t alright. How could anyone be ‘alright’ after going through what she had? Forced to fight in a tournament for the entertainment of others, wounding her first opponent, and then having the blood of a friend on her hands quite literally. Lastly—and on top of it all—when she came home expecting to hide away from the world and never have to deal with the ups and downs of life again she finds out her parents are dead.

No, she certainly was not ‘alright’. At best she was depressed and at worst? Well, at worst she was dangerously unstable. And, while many might call instability a Mist ninja’s greatest strength, Asami’s instability manifested as her greatest weakness to date. However, there was only ever one answer to Nero’s question that the small girl’s pride would allow for.

“I’m fine.”

Her face contorted itself into an involuntary frown contradicting her words rather spectacularly. Asami, for her part, had completely forgotten about the training grounds question. Her thoughts fell into a flurry of broken emotions. She’d done such a good job holding it all together, but now that someone confronted her she found her once solid resolve shattered. So, perhaps given her state, the chuunin might be forgiven for not reacting immediately to what happened next.

“Stop, thief!!” A nearby shopkeeper bellowed.

No sooner had the words reached Asami’s ears than she found herself falling to the ground. Pushed from behind by the supposed thief, the chuunin hit the ground with a thud—Nero had unwittingly created a lapse in the girl’s situational awareness. A slim man scampered over her body and past Nero holding a bag of…something. Wherever the thief was going he was going there fast and with Asami on the ground the task fell to Nero to protect the citizenry of Kirigakure.

“Stop him!”

The shopkeeper screamed once more in desperation as the thief zipped away into the crowd.

---
TWC: 1237

"See? She's fine. Quit digging.". Nero couldn't, however, take a step out of this conversation for some reason. "What's with that face? Why is she making that face?". Nero's "Walk away. Walk away before you make things weirder.". But weirder things became. It happened in seconds. First, all of a sudden, the girl just out of nowhere started falling. "What are you doing? Who does that?". Only after that did Nero realize the man that had pushed the girl and was moving past him. Nero's eyes darted between the fleeing man, and the falling girl. After they looked at each of them swiftly about 3 times, Nero had to make a decision. "Now this is the kind of bullshit they have to be teaching you at the academy." he thought, as he tried to grab the girl's hand to pull her up. He was too late. The girl had already hit the ground. And now the man was already past her. 

Nero could have helped the girl up, but that might have meant the thief could run away. "Stop him.". The man had an insignificant amount of chakra, at least as far as Nero could tell. If he let the guy go, he might have disappeared completely. Nero mumbled, "Sorry.". He turned around, and used the Flicker Movement technique to speed up, to make up for the fistance the man had put in between himself and the two ninja. "You asshole." Nero said to the guy, as he ran behind him. He trailed the thief for a short time, until they were in a relatively un-crowded area. When there was an empty line in between the two, Nero used the Body Flicker Technique to push himself towards the man, and stumble into him. They both fell down. Nero landed on hands, so it was relatively easy to get back up. But as soon as he did, the thief was at his face, attacking him with what seemed to be a dagger. (Nero wasn't sure; since when you're being attacked with something that looks sharp, you don't really take the time to study what it exactly looks like). "How did he get up so fast?" Nero thought, as he did his best to dodge the dagger.

He was fast enough to get his face out of the way, but not fast enough to get out of the man's range entirely, as the dagger went slashing past his right shoulder, making a somewhat shallow cut to his skin. "Oh no." he thought, "My jacket.". Then Nero looked a little bit closer, realizing the thief wasn't holding the bag anymore. He looked ahead, towards the direction Asami still was (as far as Nero know, he couldn't really see her anymore, as she was either still down, not there anymore, or simply not tall enough to stand out in the crowd). There was another man, running that way, holding the bag. From the back, he looked a lot like the man Nero was following, but also the man that was still attacking him with a dagger. The man now tried to stab Nero in the chest. Nero jumped back, and shouted "ASAMI! HE'S COMING THAT WAY!".  Nero took out his fairly heirloom from his ninja pouch, the Character Development, and got ready for a fight.

Again, don't know if this is necessary but:

The whole thing felt like a dream she had a few days back. One moment she was walking in the woods and the next she was falling through the abyss. This time, however, there was no abyss, only cold unforgiving concrete waiting to embrace her. Hitting the ground shoulder first, Asami felt a now familiar jolt of pain shoot through her body. The leather-bound library book lay by her side and for a moment the young girl half considered staying on the ground. This halfhearted consideration was, however, soon burned away to nothing by the first strong emotion the chuunin had felt since returning to Kirigakure, anger.

As she lay on the ground, anger-fueled adrenaline began to course through her veins. Of course, there was the rational anger one feels when they are attacked without warning, but there was also something that went beyond her current situation. This particular anger sprang from an irrational place deep within her that rebelled against the injustice of the world she found herself in. Both rational and irrational streams of anger galvanized her once shattered mental state and sharpened her senses. Despite the foreign feeling of anger, she somehow felt more in control than before as if the push from behind had given her the chance to find her way out a mental and physical fog.

With her mind clear all it took was Nero's words to spur her to action—she had to act.

Not even sparing her book a second glance, the chuunin sprung up from the ground, spun around, and gave chase to the thief's accomplice. To the untrained eye, it would appear as if Asami disappeared from where she once stood only to reappear atop a nearby building. Then, in the next moment, she returned to the street. Ducking, weaving, and running all worries left her mind only to be replaced with a single thought, apprehending her target. She felt normal, like, really normal.

Unfortunately, her return to normalcy was short lived as the accomplice took a wrong turn into a dead-end alleyway. When the male tried to turn around he found the diminutive form of Asami blocking the way. For half a second the two figures stared at each other no doubt trying to size the other up. Thankfully, there wasn't much of Asami to size up, so the tall man acted with the assumption that he could easily evade and overpower the young girl—his first mistake.

Lowering his shoulder the man charged with the intent of laying out the chuunin and continuing on his way. Unfortunately for him, Asami was much too quick. With a single step, she allowed the large man to dash past her. In doing so she also managed to snag the bag he carried in his off hand and next thing the man knew he was lying face down in the concrete, not unlike Asami had been naught a minute or two earlier. He also, given the sickening crunch of bones, had more than one broken rib—he wouldn't be going anywhere.

Well, it would be more appropriate to say that he shouldn't be going anywhere. Asami, however, had plans for him and led him out of the alleyway at kunai point back to where she and Nero initially met. Hopefully, the taller man had not encountered too much trouble. After all, she probably couldn't bear having the blood of another Kirigakure shinobi on her hands so soon.

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TWC: 1812