Birthright (Kazuhiro)

There was a sharp kind of pain in his chest the more Koan spoke of Yaju and what he would have wanted, a pain far worse than the slash of kunai or the bruise from a kick. This pain started somewhere beneath his rib cage and then moved to sit uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach. Arata hadn't spoken of his teacher in well over a year, no one had let him. When his mother wasn't busy blowing off her sons and travelling the world, she was pretending to be some godsend queen to the hapless people of Hoshigakure. His brother had openly denounced Yaju and would not speak of the great Kage. there was no one to listen to Arata...

And now finally he could speak his mind, he could remember his teacher the way he wished to remember him with no one offering corrections or clarifications. Had Arata been older, wiser, understood that many knew his teacher better than he did, he would have made allowances for the different points of view. As it was, he was still a stubborn child insisting that his reality was the only one that existed.

To say that you renounce your mother...he would roll from his grave just to punch you in the face and tell her you are sorry

"THEN MAKE HIM!" The boy yelled, unable to control his emotions any longer. It hurt to hear Koan talk about his teacher that way, and there was nowhere for that hurt to go but out into the world. "Make him come back! Make him alive again! But you can't because he's gone! He's gone and it's all her fault!" Arata would take any number of punches to the face if it meant he could have his teacher back, but they all knew that would never happen.

The face off was interrupted by Kazuhiro as he quietened both the fox and Arata, looking over to the other boy and insisting he didn't want to breed hatred. "Hatred isn't the worse thing to breed, Kazuhiro," the dark haired boy replied. "The worse thing to breed is weakness. Your father wasn't a weak ninja but my mother is. Under her, you will grow weak as did I for so long. it was only when i decided to take the reigns in my own hand that I grew strong."

Shaking his head, he added. "You think she would look after Kazuhiro. Do you know I haven't since her for eight months now? She just up and left one day, with a small note telling me nothing except to eat my fucking vegetables." The expletive slipped from his mouth for the first time, and for the first time, there was no one to chide him over it.

"She'll leave you on your own too. Probably to go off and hide in some cozy little hole, safe from harm. And that is not the kind of life my sensei would have approved of no matter what else you say. I will never turn my back to you Kazuhiro, you are my brother. And I know you will seek me out one day after you tire of her."

With that, the boy looked sadly at the fox and its master. He bore them no ill will, in his mind the fault would always lay with Akihana. She was the reason his own brother would not come with him, the reason the foxes were no longer in support of the boy they had practically raised.

It was all because of that bitch.

Koan sighed softly. He couldn't understand why he wouldn't listen to reason yet he knew that it would come in time. Patting the young boy on the head he offered one more word of advice before walking past him toward the village," We do not hate you...We still consider you and your mother apart of our family despite her...leaving us. We all have to cope with out loss somehow...some people move on. Some people forget. But we know that your mother...would never forget her greatest friend. For now, we will see whether or not he comes out the way you say he will...and then in time the two of you can look each other in the eye again." The foxes eyes departed from Arata for a second before motioning to Kazuhiro.

Within moments he began to walk toward the village, his eyes scanning backwards for one last time," I hope you continue to live strong Arata...and see life how Yaju truly saw it...," it was all he had to say at the moment as the boy and his fox slowly began to disappear onto the horizon. One thing was for sure..Koan would need to meet with Akihana immediately.

(Exit?)

Arata wanted to yell some more, to pound his fists on the sand until Koan relented. All the childish urges coursed through the young male only to be underlined by something much sadder.

His family was finally turning his their back on him.

Arata hadn't felt as alone in the last two years without them as he did now, with Koan essentially telling him he was wrong. A shadow of anger sparked in the boy, contorting his face into an ugly grimace. "Yeah well, fine. I'll see you soon I expect when you realize I was right."

Not giving them the chance to see how they had hurt him, the child turned his back to the duo, taking the opposite path leading away from all he'd left behind while they took the path to Haven.

As it turned out, their paths did not intercept after all.

(Exit Arata)