The stupor of drinking alcohol never got old. The tingling sensation in the pit of her stomach and the general lightness of her whole body was definitely worth the occasional hangover. Sure, silly things were bound to happen more often than not, but it was a risk worth taking. After all, the purpose of getting drunk in the first place was to feel silly enough to do such things, to forget the current affairs of the world and embrace the moment as it was. Now, that all sounded like a rather nice way to view getting completely shitfaced in the middle of a dark forest in the outskirts of Kumogakure. It was quite a romantic description, even.

The truth of it, however, involved a tiny six year old lying in the grass, trying to make an angel in the dirt. There were several full-sized empty bottles scattered around the clearing. "I'm gon' fly!" she kept yelling into the void of the night. "Imma be an angel an' fly to Suna! Babies, momma's comin' for ya'" she continued. The rest of her ramblings were something along those lines. Gin had gotten to the point where her filters were completely gone and her words were slurred. Anyone overhearing her would likely think she was mildly insane, especially considering the age she looked. Either that or some abusive parent had gone out of the way to get the poor girl drunk.

It was funny, really. Over the past couple of weeks, she had gotten used to people staring at her as her tiny legs dangled off of a bar stool. All the while, she would sip colorful martinis until she felt buzzed. The bartender was beyond questioning it at this point. He had received one too many death threats and letters with detailed information about his daily routine and living relatives. He just added her drinks to the Raikage's tab and called it a day. Besides, the little girl left good tips.

After a while of simply digging herself further into the ground, Gin began to grow frustrated. She started rolling on the grass while grumbling unintelligibly. "Why can't I fly?! Why?! Why?! Why?!" she yelled in frustration. She was just about to take her anger out on the trees around her. As fate would have it, though, she would get to do so on a real living person. How lucky.

Those missions back at Lord Buma's manor were by far the most intense tasks that Kashizudoto had ever taken in his lifetime, battling off the lost souls serving the Black Dawn from infiltrating lands under the control of a Master of the Order of the White Lotus and proceeding to wipe out their nearby base of operations. It was also where he met his ultimate match: Zuko of the Black Dawn, who he battled passionately with a vigor that he believed could only ever be matched by that of his opponent; of course, neither of them won, but they were sure that they would meet again on the battlefield. During their fights, Kashizudoto felt like there was something in common between him and the mass murderer, some kind of burning passion inside them that they both wanted to fulfill but through vastly different methods. In fact, Zuko made his goal clear: to unite the world under his iron fist, through bonds of fear. Kashizudoto held the same kind of standards for his goals, although he wished to unite the world through bonds of mutual respect and trust, something that the Uchiha boy found "unstable" apparently. Somewhere... just somewhere in Zuko's heart, Kashizudoto knew that there had to be empathy. Why else could he be found with a tear rolling down his cheek during that one killing rampage that Kashizudoto saw? Surely he felt some guilt from mass murdering just to gain more soldiers for Black Dawn's army, even if he carried through with it on what seemed to be a daily basis. Why else would he dispel the Amaterasu when he had hit his enemy? Was it because perhaps he, too, felt some kind of silent understanding between the two as Kashizudoto did and wouldn't stand seeing the death of one who could sympathize with him? These questions all perplexed young Kashi, who knew that he needed to go out and train during his time in Kumo if he wanted to be competitive in his next face off with Zuko. Thus, he traveled to the outskirts of Kumo straight from Buma's manor in order to begin training in peace, but there seemed to be everything except peace there.

"I'm gon' fly!" he heard a high-pitched, disoriented voice screech. It sounded almost like an infantile girl, but... not as sane as little girls should be. Once he heard this, he would begin to run in the direction of the voice, hoping that it was nothing too major like a lost girl or anything.

"Imma be an angel an' fly to Suna! Babies, momma's comin' for ya!" he would hear the voice screech again from the same direction. What was she talking about? Babies? Momma? From what he could tell, it was a crazy infant, so why would she call herself a mother and refer to her "babies"? Creepy.

"Why can't I fly?! Why?! Why?! Why?!" he would hear a scream that he could confidently identify as a crazy little girl at this point. Why was a little girl out in the woods alone, and why the hell was she high? He would run into a clearing at this point, seeing liquor bottles scattered all around the ground and a little girl trying to make... dirt angels? This was really bad: an infant just got herself drunk.

"Hey, the tokubetsu jonin would calmly speak to the drunk girl, "Who are you and where are you supposed to be?" There was a reason he wouldn't ask "where are your parents?": he absolutely hated his own to their guts; they were the two "people" that he a bit of  could never imagine himself uniting with through respect and understanding because they seemed to have no capability for either of those. Perhaps just like Zuko Uchiha, Kashizudoto Sarutobi also wasn't purely committed to his ideology just yet; time would tell whether Kashizudoto would reconcile with his parents or whether Zuko would stop feeling the pain of those that he killed.

He would appear to the individual in his usual attire, with one notable exception: he would not wear his Konoha hitae-ate as he usually did since Kumo was a volatile area at the moment and getting caught up in that war would only be trouble. He wore a black swordsman's robe embroidered with gold on the edges, a gift from Master Piandao after he finished his apprenticeship. On his left hip was a bamboo sheath holding his Tentetsutou or Sword of Heaven, the black katana that Kashizudoto forged out of a meteorite during his apprenticeship under Piandao. Next to it was a fifty meter coil of wire, which had a variety of uses to Kashizudoto that ranged from setting up traps, to propelling towards enemies, to scaling walls without the Supernatural Walking Practice, to backtrack his steps when lost, to extend the range of his Dragon Fire Jutsu, and even to capture enemies in a lasso-like fashion. Underneath, on his left thigh, was a holster containing some basic projectiles: three shuriken and one kunai knife. Of course, he wouldn't expect to be battling this little six year old girl or face any resistance from her that would be serious enough to pull out any of his weapons, but he carried his weapons with him at all times like any dedicated Bukijutsu specialist.

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