The world.... the world never changed. Not really. Nowhere showed it quite as well as this bridge, this simple unassuming bridge over a river and by a mountain. Over one hundred years ago, something that looked almost exactly like this was destroyed after a meeting of the five kages. People had originally tried to keep it secret, mostly the members of the Uchiha clan who didn't want their savior to be insulted, to have the entire resulting war pinned on his shoulders. It was his fault, there was no two ways to look at it. Regardless of who's fault it was, that man had fought here. Fought one of the hokages, some crazed old man named Danzo, the sixth hokage. Very few people knew what had happened, who had struck first, but it was known that the bridge was destroyed. Because of that, people had gone out of their way to make one that looked exactly like it to honor the battle. It had been destroyed, but it had came back, if only in a different place, to tribute the original bridge.

Oh sure, they might be fighting with words rather than fists and chakra nowadays, but there was still an unspoken war going on behind the scenes. Villages didn't like each other, even if they were allies, and Iwa was one of the worst. It was like someone had broken a bottle of "conceited asshole", stirred it up and called it a village. Dengen had left it in a major mess, and everybody knew it. The only reason very few people said it was that everyone thought that they should have "respect for the dead". Respect for the dead? Phoeey, who cares about respect for the dead, it was not important, it didn't mean anything. Would someone be able to feel disappointed, sad about what someone said about them? If they were in heaven, they wouldn't have anything to complain about, and if they were in hell... well, they probably deserved a bit of disrespect if they were bad enough to end up in hell.

Or, at least, so thought Kaiten as he sat there on the bridge, his deck sitting in his lap as he looked through it himself, holding a few of the cards in his hands. They were beautiful, a real piece of work, and he used them to fight people with. Stupid people would likely say that that was a crime, that it was wrong for him to try and waste these wonderful pieces of art. You know what? Maybe they were right. They had been a gift from his father after all, one of the few things in this world from the old man that he actually had left. But, if he didn't use them, there was no point in their existence. Nobody should be made just to look pretty, and it was the same with artwork. Just because it looked good was not a good reason for something to exist. Everything needed a purpose, a place in the grand design. If it didn't have that, what would it have? Beauty redeemed nothing, not even this view. This wonderful, beautiful view of the river.

The Hanging Man: 530/2500