Division

Being a lieutenant in Starfleet wasn’t much of an accomplishment. Not everyone could do it, but a large enough percentage passed the tests and had the proper attitude that the rank meant next to nothing. “You’re a lieutenant? That’s nice. I know this admiral, and she’s got the nicest legs you ever did see…”

Second Lieutenant Shane ( Read more... )

[Memories]

There had been an explosion ten miles south during the night, a mission assigned to jounin who shouldn’t have received it for too many reasons, and it had gone exactly as anticipated. A special thing to impress and frighten the clientele, earning the payment and creating a reason never to stray from Kumogakure all in the two hours of ( Read more... )

Luck

Higa Naomi was born in the slums of Kirigakure no Sato to a whore and a bored shinobi. Nine months after their initial meeting, he consented to let Naomi take his name after her babbling mother tracked him down. Thirty years and ninety days later she will be strangled to death a few meters away from the ramshackle house she was born in. She ( Read more... )

Relations

Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

The words are meaningless, a stupid idiom that was interesting until it was explained. He wouldn’t know what they meant either, if Meizu hadn’t insisted on asking. The little idiot always has to ask, has to analyze every single detail of the world and make sense of it, even if it is a ( Read more... )

Family Binds

Blood comes out of his eyes in thin steams, a parody of tears, and slides down his cheeks on both sides, hitting the dust without a sound. The jounin above him is screaming, jaw broken and twisting her face in a way that is all wrong. Red lips bare small, straight teeth, and she spits on him, blood and other, sweeter things, and ( Read more... )

Poison

The rain had started about an hour ago, and showed no sign of stopping any time soon. The forest was dark, smelling wet and musky. The air was thick and cool, tasting of water near the back of his throat. It was heavy, pounding down hard from the starless skies above, more like hail than rain.

It washed the blood away well ( Read more... )

The rain had come early this year, heavy and cold, as such weather often was, but somehow, the sky was darker than Uchiha Madara ever remembered it to have been. He had seen many nights filled with rain, where the heavy clouds, though it was full and bright, hid the moon, and the chill was enough to make the strongest of shinobi, if not ( Read more... )

No one mentions Uchiha Fugaku’s name in the same sentence as a donton-jutsu. Almost taboo, almost dangerous, because shameful things can become motivation for homicide, and the wars bring too much of that for Konoha fighters to openly invite it. They watch what they say around him, and about him, if there’s even a slight chance it could come back ( Read more... )