"Damn this lighting is terrible." I cursed under my breath as polaroid camera close to my eyes. The days forecast had been overcast with a slight chance of rain and for once the weatherman had actually been right. The sky was covered with dark gray clouds that loomed over town with a dull atmosphere of gloom and doom. And it wasn't doing anything for a photo shoot either. Currently I was standing atop the third hokage's giant stone head, camera in one hand and a swinging Konoha forehead protector in the other. I didn't even know why I came out today as long as the weather was being the bitch that it was. Maybe it was because most days I didn't trust the weather man, I mean who actually does during this springy-summery time of year. Of course today of all days he had to be right. 

It wasn't like I had much to do either. I hadn't even been a real ninja for too long, and a low level genin at that. It's not like I could do much. My mind wandered to things that I probably should have been doing, like training or doing missions or having more than one spar with a new rival that still seemed like he worked too hard. I retied my forehead protector back on my head, I had just taken it off my head earlier to feel the wind breeze though my died blonde hair. I had to smile at myself, remembering at how mom had freaked that one day I had come home a blonde instead of her dark haired brunette. It still looked pretty blonde, save for the areas that were now growing out and my real hair color could be seen. I thought about dyeing it again, but a crazier color, like red for fire or something cool like black. But me with black hair? Sounded a but too out there even for my tastes. I sighed and ended up sitting down to lying back on the head of the hokage. How fitting that the one I happened to be lounging around on was a Sarutobi like myself. The current Hokage was a Senju, but that's about all I knew about the guy. I didn't really care to jeep up with stuff like that because I never planned on becoming leader of all these Leaf shinobi. 

I ended up yawning and staring up at the grey blanket of clouds above me. Yep, I probably could be doing something more productive.

Earlier this morning I had the idea in my head that I was going to take landscape shots and instead I ended up going to the top of the hokages' heads for nothing. Well, they don't call me the prodigy goofball for nothing. This time time I just happened to be only acting like a goofball instead of having the intelligence of a prodigy.

Boredom ensued as no one else was around me. I was at the top of the hokage heads, and plus it was an overcast say so even while I had made my way up here earlier I had hardly seen a person outside. I had laid my camera on top of my chest, without caring to see what I would capture I held the little Polaroid up in the air and shot  about three useless shots in a row in any random direction. There was a flash of light each time that made me blink my eyes, and at the end there was a small whirring sound as each picture whizzed out of the camera. I probably either looked dead or just plain pathetic if anyone if they were to see me currently. I was a kid lying on the ground, hardly moving with a camera in the air, and random photos of whatever scattered about his presence.

654

Yoichi looked around, watching as a few people were milling around the site. The Hokage Mountain. Even with it being as overcast as it was right now, people and tourists still wanted to see the damned thing. Yoichi examined them, bored with the whole ordeal. He didn't even know why he was here, to be honest. He'd been walking, and just found himself near it, looking up at it. Perhaps it was just coincidence. Perhaps it was boredom. Perhaps it was curiosity, as to what that person was doing, standing on the head of Third Hokage. It was probably the last of those. He didn't really care, and he felt almost nothing for this village patriotically. He only cared about the history for the tactical aspect, and to learn from the mistakes of the former shinobi. No, he didn't care that the person was standing on top of the head of Hiruzen Sarutobi. He only had a small, vague curiosity. Perhaps he was the only one to notice him. In an effort to get used to his new Sharingan, Yoichi had taken to keeping it active as of late. So he'd been noticing things that others wouldn't or just didn't. He saw when ever someone littered, he saw whenever someone sneezed. He saw people trying to steal things. So when it came down to it, what some might have seen as a flash of lightning, Yoichi had noticed, it was quite different. And he had, indeed, noticed it was a camera flash.

Yoichi sighed. There was nothing better to do at the moment, after all, and he wasn't assigned any mission to complete, so he had nothing but time on his hands. Might as well see what this was about then. He jogged up the path that would lead him to the top of the mountain, so as not to waste time walking. Although, if he was going to be really expeditious about it, he would have just walked up the face of the mountain. Deciding he couldn't be bothered to do that, he just took the path. Once reaching the top, looked down, to reorient himself with a new view on the Hokage Mountain. He was honestly used to seeing it from in front and below, not above and slightly behind. He had a plain view on the kid who was taking pictures on top of Lord Sarutobi's head. It was an... interesting sight, to be honest. He looked bored out of his mind, or at least dejected, and was simply taking pictures.

Looking down, Yoichi leapt onto the head of the Third, to get a better view of the kid. He was young, somewhere around the age of 13. Perhaps just recently a genin, or not having been one long, judging by the age of the kid. His hair was dyed blonde, although Yoichi's eyes could pick out the roots of brunette rather easily. To be honest, it looked almost intentional, or at the very least, it was a terribly done job. Either that, or it was just starting to grow back in now, and he'd not touched up the roots. Other than that, there wasn't much remarkable about him. He had a camera, and his headband swinging from his hands. A really basic hoodie.

Yoichi, in contrast, looked identical to the way he always did. All of his piercings were in, as he rarely took them out. His right ear has three studs in the helix. His left ear, slightly gauged with a curled and twisted bone-like piercing. He wore a simple dark-gray jumpsuit that many of the shinobi of Konoha wore, and a dark blue vest emblazoned with the Uchiha clan crest. Rather than the open toed sandals, he wore his black combat boots. He had a belt with utility pouches for his kunai and shuriken. His forehead protector hung down near his neck, and his eyepatch covered his left eye, patches of scarring showing under it.

Sighing slightly, Yoichi sat down. "What are you doing up here, Kid? I'm not very patriotic, but I somehow doubt that many people really like the idea of some kid just laying down on the Lord Third, Hiruzen Sarutobi, god amongst shinobi, Hokage twice in his lifetime, yada yada." he said, rambling on about what people said of the man. Yoichi had some respect for the former Hokage as a Hokage, but at the same point, he was dead and irrelevant. People talked about him as if he was some sort of a god or something. It got to be a little annoying, if you asked him.

WC: 769
TWC: 769

Just as I was lying there, minding my own business of doing nothing, some guy decides it's a good idea to jump up right besides me. I groaned aloud, it probably was a cop trying to tell me that I couldn't loiter around on top of the Third Hokage's head. If I did manage to get arrested, or at least escorted home, that would add to the ever growing list of things that made my mom not proud of me.

I looked up, relieved to find it wasn't a cop, but also surprised to see a guy who looked like he belonged in a  metal rock band instead of the ninja world. He had piercings in both ears, a gauge in one, combat boots  on his feet and wore enough dark clothing to give him a doom and gloom Aura darker than our currently lovely weather. Plus he had an eye patch, complete with scars that weren't completely hidden by said eye patch. He didn't seem to have malevolent intentions, but he did stare me down for a good long moment. I also saw the Uchiha crest on his dark blue vest, and the combination of "uchiha crest + eye patch and scars = a certain very famous Doujutsu defunct on that eye" entered my head. Or maybe the guy just liked to cause pain to himself, he did have all those piercings, it could have been a possibility. I concluded with the former. 

The guy ended up sighed and sitting beside me. Well, maybe the appearance was more scary than his words. "What are you doing up here, Kid? I'm not very patriotic, but I somehow doubt that many people really like the idea of some kid just laying down on the Lord Third, Hiruzen Sarutobi, god amongst shinobi, Hokage twice in his lifetime, yada yada."  Though he basically was telling me to get off the monument, it was more like he was going through the " correct" motions of what someone should do if he just happened to see a kid loitering on top of the Third Hokage's head.  

I decided to sit up, photos that had landed on  my chest slide down to the ground. I gave a lopsided smile at at the guy. "You know when you say it like that it really makes me want to leave." I joked when he was done going on about the Third Hokage. "But I guess that gramps would say the same thing. And I also highly doubt that the third would like one of his descendants lounging around on top of his head." So I let a little hint about how I might've been a Sarutobi myself. It was true that my great grandfather Sarutobi, as the traditionalist as my mom, would highly dislike my actions as well, but neither were here at the moment so I didn't really care to move. Now that someone was telling me to go, it only encouraged me to stay. Though it didn't really seem like the guy was all that motivated to get me to leave, considering that he had just decided to sit down beside me. I relaxed and laid back down on the ground, using one of my hands as a head rest. 

My eyes drifted to a picture which had landed conveniently beside my head. I picked it up with my free hand and held it up with two fingers to the Uchiha beside me. "Whaddya know... Looks like I got a snap shot of your pretty face." It wasn't a direct shot of his face, more like an odd angle from the side behind. He was looking away,  the overcast clouds in the background. It was dark because of the clouds, but somehow, with his piercings and onyx hair, scars and eye patch, the dark clouds were actually a fitting backdrop for the way he presented himself. Overall it actually wasn't a bad shot.The picture probably was how the guy had noticed me in the first place, from the flash of my camera. I saw that he wasn't as old as I previously thought. At most just about five or six years older than me, with probably just about that much more experience at being a ninja. He might've been a chunin by now, maybe not.  

The scars and the eye patch still caught my attention, did he get them from a mission? Some missing nin that he picked the wrong fight with?  It was interesting to say the least but I knew it wasn't my business to pry. Everyone had his own stories and his own secrets to keep.

"You can keep it if you want." I said, offering the picture to him. He looked like the type of guy who didn't really enjoy sentimental crap, but it was still a pretty good looking shot of him.  It would most likely be my only good shot of the day as long as the clouds decided to be they way they were. And damn, I was really hoping to get a good scenic view of the village from the hokage heads.

WC 868/1522

This kid sure was something else. Even after being startled as he was, he only responded with that lopsided grin. Yoichi rolled his eye sarcastically. "If it really made you want to leave, then you wouldn't be here, now would you? You and I both know you don't intend to leave. Not that I particularly care. I was more curious as to who was up here, than I was on getting them to leave." he said. "But that's neither here nor there. Anyhow, you're a descendant of Hiruzen Sarutobi? Interesting. Then you're one of the Sarutobi clan. Famed and esteemed throughout Konoha purely because of their connection to one of the Hokage's of the past. Tell me, did you inherit the Will of Fire, or are you simply trying to find your place in this world?" Yoichi asked, somewhat curious. It wasn't often he ran into a Sarutobi. He liked quizzing the future shinobi of Konoha. Finding out more about them. He wouldn't forget this one either. The Sarutobi were rather powerful as a clan.

Yoichi was looking at some of the pictures that were on the ground. Quite a few of them were blurred, from a moving camera. Others were of nothing in particular. It was a waste of film, to be frank. Then the kid said that he'd caught a picture of Yoichi. Not sure whether he was being sarcastic and calling him ugly, or referring to the scar which marred half of his face, or was genuinely calling Yoichi's face pretty (Although, he wasn't sure which of those was worse) Yoichi turned his gaze to the picture. It was actually somewhat decent, although, photography was Yoichi's cup of tea. He had no eye for it, or the art behind it. The kid offered the picture to Yoichi, who decided to keep it. He needed something to remind him of who everyone he met was sometimes. Always some sort of memorization skills, for seeing familiar people. He linked the photo in his mind to this kid with the camera, to the Hokage monument, to the Sarutobi clan.

"Thanks for the picture. What's your name kid? I don't like referring to people purely as kid. I'm Yoichi Uchiha. Been a genin for only a short amount of time, but that's neither here nor there. Probably going to get promoted to Chuunin soon. My shinobi skills are developing quicker than most would expect. Perhaps it's just an Uchiha thing, or my sharingan helping me learn quicker. Who knows." Yoichi shrugged. He decided he'd introduce himself after all. It tended to get people to open up. He offered a smile, that wasn't unkind. Yoichi was almost emotionally blank inside, but he knew how to fake being happy, or concerned, or any emotional state. Only a master could read his false emotions, and even that was done after careful scrutiny. He had a good poker face. Shogi had just helped him hone it.

"Now that I think about it, why were you up here in the first place? Picture taking is all fine and all, I suppose, but you could have gotten a better view from the top of the summit. Or was it just that rebellious side of you that made you want to take pictures on top of the old man Hiruzen? Or was is simply that he's your ancestor, so it's your right to do so?" Yoichi inquired. Morbid curiosity was coursing through him. He didn't actually care, he just wanted to know because why not? Wasn't much else to be doing today, unless Lady Risu summoned him for anything. It was overcast and a boring day. Hell of a day off.

WC: 617
TWC: 1386

Yoichi nodded. The reasoning made perfectly fine sense to him. Although, his mannerisms were slightly weird. He had an actual camera with him, so why he would pantomime with an invisible one was slightly beyond him. He listened to him as he spoke though, giving him the same courtesy that was given to himself. Yoichi found it rude to interrupt people, so he generally let them speak, and then spoke at some length himself. He frowned upon people who interrupted things. Yoichi's general policy was one of politeness. People tended not to notice sometimes, and anonymity was nice when you're a shinobi. Regardless, his mind did slightly wander, although he picked out the key points of what the kid was saying. He'd come up here for purely a different perspective in his pictures. Not simply a village view, but instead, a view as if from the eyes of the Lord Third. It was worthy of any photographer's time to look at things through a new eye so to speak. As a wielder of the sharingan, and as a Shogi master, Yoichi could relate. Sometimes, looking at things in a different eye showed a whole new world of potential, so to speak.

The kid laughed though, at the irony of his statement. Although, there was more irony than he realized. The old man was considered to be the top of the Shinobi power. The Hokage was one of the strongest, of course. Lord Third had been a powerful man, regardless of how Yoichi's view may have been on him. But the mind was also a powerful thing. So to say he wasn't on top, but on his head, was still to say that he was on top, at least in his own mind. Yoichi's thoughts were difficult to read, but he found the notion amusing and chuckled softly to himself. The kid didn't even realize it, but he'd scored some points in Yoichi's book.

Then he addressed more of Yoichi's questions. INtroducing himself, Yoichi now had a name to put to the face to put to the picture to put to the hokage monument. Sarutobi, Itazura. An interesting name, one that Yoichi hadn't heard before. He knew no other Itazura's, so remembering him would be a simplicity in and of itself. Like Yoichi, he elaborated on his status as a shinobi. Unlike Yoichi, he hadn't really done anything about his status. Yoichi was closer in level to a Chuunin than he was a Genin. Good to know, that meant that Yoichi was probably superior in skills as well as intelligence. If he ever found himself the enemy of this boy, he could more than likely statistically beat him. Considering he'd already beat a Chuunin from the sand village, a genin from the Leaf wasn't an issue. Although, it was doubtful they'd have to fight. It was just a passing thought in Yoichi's mind.

And then, the next answer was a given. Yoichi'd been slightly sarcastic when he'd asked about the Will of Fire. It was kind of their entire thing, after all. Much like the Byakugan and the Hyuuga, or the Sharingan and the Uchiha. The Abarame and their bugs. The Inuzuka and their ninja hounds. It was simply their inherited talent. Of course, the kid's final statement and actions were rather amusing to Yoichi, who smiled amused. "Sure, simple fire tricks are simple. That's something I never really understood. Anyone with a proper Katon chakra nature can do that, and more. Perhaps it's merely because the Uchiha clan has an affinity for fire, but I've always found the Will of Fire to be somewhat of a joke. Should have called it the Will of the Leaf. You all do have such a tremendous respect and protective nature for this village, which is certainly remarkable, and admirable." Yoichi said, chuckling.

WC: 640
TWC: 2026

After a while, Yoichi had deemed it that he'd been here long enough, wasting plenty of his time. Sitting up, he stretched out his arms, audible cracks echoing from his joints, as they'd been stationary for quite some time. Nodding to himself, he looked over at the boy. From the looks of things, they'd simply laid there silently for quite a while. From what Yoichi could tell, the boy had simply fallen asleep. He smiled softly at the naive young boy. There were many things he needed to learn still, and the first thing of which he'd need to learn would be that as a Shinobi, he couldn't afford to simply trust those he met enough to fall asleep like that. "Oh well, I suppose he is in the sanctity of his own village. One day, the balance here will be greatly upset. It'll be at that time that he needs to decide where he'll place his allegiance. With the old way of command, the so called Hokage, Sousetsu Senju, or with the only true leader that can bring this village into it's full power. Lady Risu's rule will be absolute, but these genin can either be assets to our cause, or more bodies to be placed against us. For his sake, I hope it's the former. I'll kill anyone I need to, but cutting a young life short is still cruel, and not something I relish in doing."

Standing up completely, Yoichi dusted off his pants, as the top of the Hokage's head was rather dirty, considering it was made out of the stone of the mountain. Looking off into the distance, Yoichi could make out the distant sun, breaking through the clouds. There was light for the first time today. The light was almost a beacon of hope for Yoichi. Hope that one day, the true power he sought would be enough to break through the dismal darkness of the world around him. Without a further thought to the boy laying on the top of the Kage's head, Yoichi leapt off of it, using the other Kage heads to lower himself swiftly to the ground. Yes, it was high time that he got on his way. His body wouldn't get any stronger while laying down.

WC: 379
TWC: 2405
Training:
Strength- D --> D-3 [1175/1175]
Speed- D --> D-3 [1175/1175]
Remaining WC: 55
Exit Thread-