The various food stalls and shopping stands of the Market District passed Kaiji Kyudoka by as he strolled down the street, nothing in particular catching his eye. It was a fine day, sun high in the sky, gentle breeze wafting about, clouds lolling across the horizon. He walked at a leisurely pace, no goals in mind, concepts lazily buzzing about in his head. "It's so... nice out," he said sotto voce as to not draw attention to the fact that he was in fact talking to no one but himself. "Not quite as nice as the forest, but there's something in the air, something about the way these people are mulling about and tending to the duties of everyday living, it's just... I can't explain it." A thoughtful smile crept across Kaiji's face. "I'm willing to bet that each and every one of these people have friends of their own, others to talk to and enjoy the companionship of... That's probably why they all look so... happy. Shopping with friends, having a bite to eat with friends, engaging in gossip-sharing with friends, ahh..." words falling away like autumn leaves. I could be a good friend to someone. In all the novels I've read, the protagonist more often than not has friends that help them, guide them, laugh with them... Kaiji was no longer conversing with himself like a madman, and had switched to voicing his thoughts within his head and not aloud. "Pffft," he scoffed. These... people, they probably still consider me an outsider, not a true Leaf shinobi. No one'd ever want to be he friend of an outsider, it's, it's... illogical. Who knows if I'm worthy of trust, or a chance even? A-and what if, what if they only like me for my eyes? I have to... have to protect these eyes. They're my destiny, my worth, more important th-than my life. "No," he suddenly spoke, not caring whether or not anyone heard him or what they thought of him, "No, making friends, that's a risk I don't know if I'm willing to take." Kaiji was still traipsing through the Hidden Leaf's local shopping centre, when he felt the tug of invading memories taking hold of him. "Friends, huh," he mouthed, stopping on the spot.


A five year old Kaiji Kyudoka sat placid in his parent's paltry garden, picking at weeds and scooping dry soil into his hands before dumping it back out again. He didn't know many words yet, which was odd for a child his age, and thus he repeated the same thing over and over: "Dirt. Dirt, dirt, dirty." Kaiji's mother looked on from the kitchen's wide window, absentmindedly doing the dishes, but missing spots of food here and there, being more concerned with her son than anything. She fretted over the boy constantly, consistently, wondering what had she done wrong during her pregnancy and how long before he'd be like the other children of the small village. While she worried, Kaiji echoed "Dirt, dirt. Dirt," neither laughing nor smiling, just toiling with seemingly no intent whatsoever. The woman staring from the interior of her home tried to focus more on the act of scrubbing the plates, silverware, and glasses, but her attention was scattered and as a result of this, a glass slipped from her soapy grasp and fell to the linoleum floor, shattering into piece upon piece of sharp shards. "Dammit!" she cursed, released from the spell of worry that her son put her in. From the loam, Kaiji paused his dirt-related duties and look up from his post, hearing the shriek of his mommy from the house. He began to stand, hobbling up from his former seated position. Noticing this, his anxious mother yelled "Kaiji no! Go away, stay away!" intending to keep the child from entering and injuring himself on the myriad razor-sharp slivers of glass. Her words frightened Kaiji to the core, not of the situation, but of the one who had spoken them. He didn't have to be told twice. Kaiji Kyudoka turned tail and ran, tears the same transparency as broken glass streaming down his face.

The only other location the five year old was remotely familiar with was the playground about a block away from his place of residence. Kaiji's village was not a large village, and the playground was very basic in its composure, sporting a single, rigid metal slide, two sets of swings, and a rickety plastic contraption that was better left untouched. Still sobbing from fear and out of breath, the lame young boy climbed beneath the slide and assumed the foetal position. His tears eventually dried up but Kaiji stayed, hunkered own and shivering.

"Oi, whatcha doin' down there? That's not how the slide works, ya know?" Where had the voice originated, Kaiji wondered. Oh no, was it his mommy again, was she here to punish him for being too close to the house still? Regardless of the voice's owner, Kaiji shrunk down even further, trying to make himself invisible if that was even possible. "Helloooooo? Did'ya hear me or do your ears not work so good? I said, you gotta slide from up here. Watch me," the disembodied voice said. Kaiji felt the slide rumbling, and despite what his mind was saying, slowly, he unfurled from his balled up position and ventured out of his safe space beneath the playground toy.

"H-hello," he meekly said, voice trembling, mind working at 110% to remember some of the words his parents had tried to teach him. Before Kaiji's eyes, another kid stood at the foot of the slide. It was a girl, at least he thought she was. Her hair was shorter than his long, dark pink locks, and straw-yellow in colour. It was tied up in a squat ponytail. She had green eyes, magical green eyes, that sparkled in the dusk. The girl's outfit was plain, a beige shirt and jean skirt, and Kaiji noticed the fact that she wore no shoes. Still scared, but a bit intrigued, he spoke again, struggling to form a proper sentence. "Wh-what're you c-called? Name, yeah, mine is, is Kaiji."

She answered immediately, ignoring his clumsy speech. "Sachiko. I'm Sachiko. Nice ta meet'cha," the girl grinned widely, extending her hand in greeting. Sachiko held her hand out for what seemed like forever, and it began to droop. "Heeeey. Hey Kaiji, you're 'sposed ta take my hand," and without missing a beat, she took his hand in hers and manually shook them, showing him just how it was done. "There, see? Nothin' to it." That smile, that everlasting smile that Kaiji was drawn to, persisted upon the strange girl's face, failing to dim in the slightest. Kaiji was dumbstruck. He felt this feeling, a weird weight bearing down on his chest as if he'd been winded by a great and powerful blow.

"N-n-nice to, to meet you t-too," he said, stuttering worse than he had ever done before.

"Ya know, you're a weird one, Kaiji. But ah I like you, let's you and I be friends, 'kay?" Sachiko said through her perpetual grin. Kaiji Kyudoka could only nod at this. It had all happened so fast. The earlier even with his mother no longer mattered, or rather, all traces of the fear and sadness that it had brought about were now gone, replaced by something new, something different. Kaiji smiled, trying to match the expression of Sachiko.

"Friends, huh."

| Present Day - 11 years later |

"Sachi..." The name resonated with Kaiji. "Sachiko," he repeated. "Why did I... What made me forget you? Sachiko, she was my friend. I had... a friend. I had a friend!" Kaiji said perhaps too excitedly, as passers-by stopped to stare. "And that means, if I was able to make a friend when I was just a boy, then making one now should be a piece of cake. Yes! It's clear now, only, there's the issue of why did I forget dear Sachi? A-also, I can't remember anything else about her..." Kaiji's excitement was short-lived. Those memories that he'd recaptured left him in a state of want. "I'll try harder, Sachi, to remember you, to not forget you again. I promise." Kaiji clenched his fists and started walking again. "In the meantime, I am going to do it. I will make a friend, just watch me world." A beaming smile, not unlike the one he'd flashed Sachiko so many years ago, graced Kaiji's face. "Wait for me, Sachi. Wait for me."

WC: 1480

The remainder of the day went by uneventfully. Kaiji Kyudoka sat on a bench at a combo food stall/open air restaurant, taking small bites of a vegetarian kebab. No one that he immediately recognized as a fellow shinobi had entered the vicinity while he watched and waited, and although his face was outwardly an emotionless mask, inside, he felt awfully disappointed. "So... nothing today, it would seem," Kaiji said, every syllable laced with a small sigh. "I'm not really surprised, can't expect ninja to lollygag around the Marketplace all day long, ehem," he coughed, the irony of it palpable. "Should I leave for now? Find somewhere more appropriate to make some shinobi friends? Urgh!" Kaiji stood from the bench and left the half-eaten kebab along with some change upon the small table. He was having trouble focusing. That recollection of memories he'd been bombarded with had left him thoroughly shaken to the core of his very being. And not only was he confused, Kaiji was frustrated, with himself, with his inability to remember, with the not-home that was the Hidden Leaf.

"It's possible that Dad would know. Maybe I should send him a letter or something, get ahold of him and update him on progress, too? I'm sure he would be pleased to know that I've unlocked and harnessed the power of the Takamegan's first stage!" Out from Kaiji's pants pocket he pulled a crumpled sheet of loose leaf and a pen. "Now, what should I write? I mean, I know what I want to tell him, but it's the how that is troubling me. Dad's got a certain aura about him, so I have got to word this in just the right way, or else he may not reply and I'll be just as lost as ever. Hmph!" Kaiji pondered over the subject matter carefully before deciding on the perfect words. "Well, here goes nothing," he spoke, putting the pen to paper and starting his composition. It went as follows:

Spoiler:

Kaiji put the pen down and searched the market for somewhere to purchase an envelope. Once he had located one, he addressed it for his childhood home where his Father still lived, and sent the message on its way via an avian whose purpose was to deliver letters and the like. "I just pray that what is contained in that envelope sates Father for the time being. I'd have for him to reply with something nasty, or even worse, not reply at all." Writing a letter home to his Father had put Kaiji Kyudoka in a brooding mood. In his mind, his thoughts went wild, zipping and zapping in a frenzy. "Sachi..." That name, that still frame of her face, her smile, all kept coming back to him, but in tidbits and insubstantial fragments. "Why does... why does the memory feel... tainted? Like it's wrong to think about, like, like I'm not supposed to be remembering her. Agh! I think it's even causing me pain when I try to delve deeper! Wh-what happened!?" Kaiji was raving like insanity had gotten hold of him, and being mildly aware of this, the young, pink-haired archer dove into an alleyway to avoid the strange looks he was starting to receive. "Sachiko, please, wherever you are, I... I need help. I can't d-do this on my own, and I have little hope that Father will be of help, seeing as this is unrelated to my training. Just..." He dropped to his knees from the agony of it all. "Just help me to remember..." The feeling that someone was turning the dial on a dimmer switch struck Kaiji. His head was swimming, he felt ethereal as his vision, the vision he had strove for an finally somewhat achieved, darkened.

| Flashback - 8 years before |

"Kaiji c'mon! What's taking you?" The voice belonged to a girl, aged 8 thereabouts. She sounded impatient, and the aforementioned 'Kaiji' picked up on this, quickening his pace as he sped towards the tree house they'd build together last summer.

"Aww, Sachi, you know th-that I can't run so fast..." The dark pink-haired boy was huffing and puffing heavily as he finally cleared the last stretch. "Huh, huh," he panted, "What's so 'portant that you called me out here anyway, I was reading," he frowned, cheeks puffy and red.

"Oh phooey, Kaiji, I just dun get the your whole fascination with readin'. Where's the fun in words and all that junk? Ya know, you used to like playin' in the dirt, that's where the real fun is." Saying this, she launched a fistful of dirt directly at Kaiji's head.

"H-hey!" the boy cried, making a desperate attempt to shield himself by throwing his thin arms up across his face, but ultimately failing. "Sachi, oh you..!" He scrambled to grab a clod of dirt in order to go on the offensive, but another shower of detritus hit him.

"Ha!" Sachiko shrieked triumphantly. "See how much fun this is? A bajillion times better than dumb old books." The children's dirt-chucking war lasted about half an hour before they stopped to rest against the trunk of their tree fort. By this point the two of them were covered head-to-toe in shades of brown and flecked with mud, pebbles and other small bits of debris. Kaiji had to come clean, in a manner of speaking, this was in fact a lot of fun, and although he had a deep love of reading, the feeling of playing in the mud was unmistakably exhilarating. Suddenly, shattering the silence, the girl spoke, though her tone was inherently different than the previous one she'd been using. "Hey... Kaiji? Can I... Can I tell you something?" She was speaking devoid of the typical confidence her words tended to exude. Kaiji perked up at once, and despite the fact that subtle things like intonation and emotion escaped him most of the time, he recognized that something was off.

"S-sure, yeah, of course Sachi. What is it?" Kaiji said, attempting to keep his stutter in line so as to appear brave and prepared for whatever it was she had to say.

"Kaiji..." she took a long pause, bottom lip quivering and magical green eyes glittering. "Kaiji, you know I'm not—"

| Present - 8 years later |

A cold sweat, like condensation from a glass of ice water, covered Kaiji in his entirety. He gasped for air, clearing his throat over and over and over to ensure that there was nothing lodged in his throat, which is how he felt upon coming to. "You're not what!? Sachi, what aren't you!?" He felt panic, a different sort of panic than one normally feels such as when faced with an unfamiliar situation. No, this panic made his heart hurt and barred his eyes from focusing. It felt like he may keel over at any minute dead."I need... I need to go lie down. Yeah, I think that's what I'll do. Tomorrow, I'll do something to clear my head, but right now, I just..." He didn't finish the thought. His breathing was rapid and deep, the effort exhausted him. Kaiji felt like he'd just run for miles, across a field of grass and wildflowers, towards a wooden shack atop a tree.

[EXIT]

WC: 1507
Total: 1480 + 1507 = 2987

Training: