A path that burns brilliant...

I remember two kinds of music.  The kind that absorbs through the skin - The song that plays a tune untouched by the trappings of the mind.  The second kind comes from within.  Forming like trees through buildings, rough and wanting.  Uncertain.

I later came to know that all music is created in this way.  That one cannot exist without the other.  Likened to a tree fallen in the forest, its breath and wake mark an irreversible change.

The notes that form, when and why not.  I grew used to seeing sound as a tailor of stories.  To feel one overtaking the other.  Such as the rower will know many differing currents before they reach the next pier.

I have loved to run.  To lead and to follow.  To see the faces of my peers as they crest the hill.  I came to know touch as the makings of a personality.  The source from which the unseeable song flows between.  Through my eyes I have seen many songs that I have yet to hear.  That there is much to learn before I can embrace another fully.

I am grateful for the chances I’ve been given anyway, and welcome the next.

To hold sound and ring true.

To understand that this world has been unknowable from the beginning, and continues to change.  I need fear no ending.

---

I looked up from my sketchbook to find my mother and father speaking with the landlord.  It’s been many years since the great fox attacked.  Many homes were lost and others fell into disrepair.  The latest wave was migrating toward ours in years to come.

I’ve never felt threatened in this way myself, so for now I’m content.  It seems more and more the house is changing.  I wonder sometimes if the landlord ever leaves, or if they’ve simply been a hidden member of our household the whole time.

I weigh my pencil against a corner of the page.  Slowly drawn back into the orbit of my craft.  The nuances of housekeeping dancing along the edge of my vision when suddenly the page turns.  My hand is shifting, and it’s by no account of my own.  I look up to see my father looking down across the page.

“What have you got there, squirt?”

“My~” In a daze, half question, half protest.  My father shares with my mother, and in turn seeks their third.  The expression of the balding man resembles my own, I turn my ear to the eves and my eyes to the shadows that walk.  Somewhere in those disappearing lines was the vision taken captive.

Slowly creeping back to myself, I look up to find my father looking at me.  His stature squared to mine despite the nervous handling of my sketchbook.  I smile back at him.

---

Somewhere along the way, the messages started to get confused.  Lines shifted.  Stances were taken.  Plots began to dictate the movements of my growing family and more and more I was taken to account before I could be bothered.

One day it was a sketchbook.  Another, it was a chore.  Then again it happened and there were entire peoples being swept under the rug.  I couldn’t be sure whether the responsibilities were mine anymore.  My parents worked long hours.  I grew accustomed to their absence, but then my days changed.  No longer at home but behind a desk.  No longer outings but a number of rooms and foreign ideas.

I found myself migrating to certain activities more than others, but nothing was familiar.  And then it was gone again.  The foreignness increased by an order of magnitude.  The phantom checks likewise multiplied.  I was pressed to exhaustion and when I finally did manage a breakthrough It was brushed aside in favor of chasing the others.

At that point my smile began to wane.  My trust no longer stood for these people and I turned my gaze to the tunnel I found myself being shown toward.  The path of the ninja fell within a strict set of rules.  I saw beyond those boundaries something respected as mine.  Voices muffled, but alive and musical.

I turned to ask to see them in, but I was turned back toward my parents.  The same song did not play in my home, and on deaf ears they voiced their worries.  Something about me was becoming restless and uneasy.  A song which was just too shy of being played.

In that year I began to study it.  A forbidden melody that opened doors closed off to me.  A draft leaked through my home, but foreign hands held the thresholds closed.  I reached out and asked to hear its name.

Aware of a double standard, I planted the seed of unity and waited for the storm to break.  The voices around me became angry, and I sang with them.

---

Pressure flared across the room.  Chakra flowed as emergency seals were primed.  The situation with the Vii boy had become untenable and - if it wasn’t resolved - would take a turn that nobody wanted.

A drunken broken question crossed the boy’s lips.  Someone stepped in, but the boy refused them with a shout, all but striking them with a gesture.  Torn between self-defense and discretion, the adult grabbed his arm.

The boy’s face morphed into something vicious.  Calls were made in the background and specialists were brought to the front.  The boy drew in on himself and retreated as though he were expecting to be struck.

It was possible that he had a reason to do so, but it would complicate things if he lost control.  The carrot and the stick approach.  A specialist stepped in to talk the boy down.  To hold his attention while others got into position.

Some for the sake of study and insurance to prevent anything untoward.  Others to restrain him in the event he was triggered.  From the beginning the situation was difficult to read.  The boy Vii didn’t seem to listen to the specialist at all, and his attention ranged wildly almost like a cornered animal.

But he was human too.  He lashed out at the nearest retainer, scowling them silly.  It was only after the third or fourth ‘flailing’ that somebody noticed a pattern.  He struck hands and reflexed toward himself. 

Finally someone managed to get a hold of the boy.  It didn’t last for more than a second.  With a deft movement beyond his years and another crude flail like that of a cat he was loose, and the next step wasn’t clear.

One step had failed once.  The next to try would have to be far more decisive.  The problem was, there were too many people nearby.  He saw them move, and he spotted the intervention from halfway across the room.  Chakra flared as people tried to get clear, but the boy bolted, and hands immediately flew out to bring him to a stop.

The boy had some kind of martial affinity.  He slowed as much as intended, but his wild movements were impossible to control.  One order came and said ninja rolled out to the side, paving the way for another to approach from behind.

The boy’s features tightened and his eyes swiveled to the space behind him.  He was too slow to stop the chop to the back of his neck.

But fast enough to disrupt it with chakra.  The boy’s eyes rolled back, his body twitched and he glided toward the floor.  Someone moved to break his fall.  Beneath the mess of staff, it was imperfect.  The boy bounced back like a cannon shell.  Back to a shell shocked staffer; front to a chunin.  The boy’s guard was so thick with yin chakra a member of the nara clan wouldn’t be able to pry it open with his shadow.

The Chunin shifted to bring up the chakra suppression seal.  He reached out to steady the boy as he prepared to invoke the seal.  At that same moment, the boy’s shield cracked.  Spiritual energy flowed through his arm and exploded through his limbs at the contact of another human being.

The Chunin hesitated, as though sensing that the seal would be ineffective.  The boy dropped toward the ground.  His guard softened and it looked as though he’d caught himself out.  This time, no one moved to break his fall.

The boy landed feet first.  Barely.  His outstretched arm - all that stood between his upper body and the ground - whipped about, glancing at the floor and lying across his chest.  The other flashed forward in a knifehand strike.

It hadn’t been the only suppressing tag in the room, and the boy had found the only other person in the room brave enough to bring theirs forward.  Said ninja flared their chakra in defense, and the two potent chakras caught the tag like a pinwheel.  Flaring with a soft amber glow, A ripple of intent traveled across the room.  Tension cut with a bare hand.

Several ninja moved to subdue him as active bodyguards; treating him as a threat to the staff rather than a student of the academy.  To the classroom door, they struggled to hold him.

“So what was his story?” The POV shifts to a professor in a lab coat.  His arms folded in tight in concentration.

“Oh~ my.  That~ J. Vii has been the quiet type.  Kept to himself since-” Movement at the door drew them both up short.  Moving out past the door, four shinobi were stumbling away from a boy who’s brown hair was writhing like grass in the wind.  His arms sank toward the ground where they met with a handful of green tendrils.  Green by the light at the end of the tunnel.  His skin darkened in anger and veins shifted across the surface of arms.  A laurel of hazy shadows formed from the academy itself shivered.  He seemed slimmer, taller, older, smaller.  Distant.  His back to the former occupants of the room.

“Do you really think you can keep me?” With that same breath, a man in black dropped from the ceiling and~