Categories > Anime/Manga > Naruto > If Only
Author's note: A quickie about the ANBU. Pretty much inspired by the fact that no fic author can seem to decide on what mask anyone wears, alternately assigning animals based on heritage, personality, summoning animals, or just whimsy. Personally, I think that whimsy makes the most sense for a bunch of assassins bent on preserving anonymity. Yet I also have a romantic attachment to irony.
So, anyway, borrowed Shikamaru and Neji. No lawyers mind, do they?
~ ~ ~
Shikamaru discovers that when you enter the ANBU, you get assigned a mask. The spooks wear the masks, and the mask becomes the legend, not the spook. It’s a way of separating yourself from the world, he’s told. It keeps the bad memories at bay. It was the porcelain bird that poisoned those little girls. The striped cat suffocated the defenseless cripple. The mask did it. Not you.
Nevertheless, sometimes bad things happen, and it gets turned the other way around. The blood blotched dog mask of Hatake Kakashi sits in a very special place on the highest shelf. Neji tells Shikamaru never to take it down. Bad things have happened to people who took that particular mask up after Kakashi-sempai was done with it.
Shikamaru thinks very, very carefully at night, and makes a point of changing masks every month or so. He doesn’t want to get known by only one mask. It’s much less troublesome to take different guises than create a glaze and porcelain murderous facial adornment. Maybe, one day, he’ll change the legacy of the ANBU, if it isn’t too time consuming. Ha. And maybe one day Naruto will become hokage. Finding pictures in the clouds was much less troubling.
So, anyway, borrowed Shikamaru and Neji. No lawyers mind, do they?
~ ~ ~
Shikamaru discovers that when you enter the ANBU, you get assigned a mask. The spooks wear the masks, and the mask becomes the legend, not the spook. It’s a way of separating yourself from the world, he’s told. It keeps the bad memories at bay. It was the porcelain bird that poisoned those little girls. The striped cat suffocated the defenseless cripple. The mask did it. Not you.
Nevertheless, sometimes bad things happen, and it gets turned the other way around. The blood blotched dog mask of Hatake Kakashi sits in a very special place on the highest shelf. Neji tells Shikamaru never to take it down. Bad things have happened to people who took that particular mask up after Kakashi-sempai was done with it.
Shikamaru thinks very, very carefully at night, and makes a point of changing masks every month or so. He doesn’t want to get known by only one mask. It’s much less troublesome to take different guises than create a glaze and porcelain murderous facial adornment. Maybe, one day, he’ll change the legacy of the ANBU, if it isn’t too time consuming. Ha. And maybe one day Naruto will become hokage. Finding pictures in the clouds was much less troubling.
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