”Perhaps it would’ve been better if we had…” Jo muttered under his breath as the gates boomed shut behind him. Ren still hadn’t said anything. The way she was acting, she might not say another word for the rest of her life. She never wanted to kill, never wanted to be a shinobi, actually. Most of the kids in the Academy class were there against their will; taken from their quiet, comfortable lives after they’d tested positive for the ability to mold and produce copious amounts of chakra. Jo and Ren had both been members of that demographic. Sure, there were those that
wanted to be shinobi in their class; mostly those that came from shinobi parents, or one of the great clans. For the most past, however, the children had no choice. Jo and Ren had watched one-by-one as their classmates fell. Some to exhaustion, some to failed experimental training or mutation; a few even took their own lives, unable to stand the constant pressure and grueling physical conditioning. Jo remembered one who had killed himself during a written examination. The boy simply stopped writing, stared at the point of his pencil for a moment, then thrust it into his jugular. He was dead long before the medics could get to him; but it wasn’t his death that haunted Jo the most. It was the relaxed smile that the boy wore as he did it; a smile that lasted even after rigor mortis had set in. Was death so sweet a release from this life?
Jo’s memories flashed back to the images of the dead marsh agents that fell by his hand, a wave of nausea turning his stomach. He blinked as he realized that he and Ren were no longer walking together. She had turned down the road leading to the apartment she shared with her mother without so much as a have goodbye. Jo wondered if he’d ever see her again, or if she’d follow that boy into Oblivion.
More memories came back to him as he walked aimlessly, never once looking up from the pavestones;
”As far as the actual killing stage, it is usually completed in the heat of the moment, and for the modern, properly conditioned shinobi soldier, killing in such a circumstance is most often completed reflexively, without conscious thought. It is as though a human being is a weapon.” Nara Bii-Ryu said in his lecture on killing over four years ago…
</I><I>”Don’t let this Academy, or your commanding officers, or anyone else take from you your humanity; or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Do you understand?”
The soft, sweet voice of his academic advisor rang through his mind. He had killed those men so mindlessly, so mechanically. At the time, he didn’t even have to think about what he was doing. Had he lost his humanity in the Academy? Was he just a killing automaton? Then, the voice of his father broke the surface; his words echoing the night he had told Jo about his first kills when he had been a Medic for the Imperial Army and their M.A.S.H. was raided.
”Just remember, son. When you’re out there, you do what you have to do; but you come home to your family, alright?”
Jo only realized where he was when his knuckles rapped the front door to his parents house. It only took a couple of minutes before the door opened, revealing his father in his pajamas and robe.
”Who the hell-“ His father started, his eyes adjusting to the orange glow of the streetlights as his sleep-muddled mind contemplated who would even be awake at this hour. When he saw his son, he froze.
Their eyes locked, and his father knew. Jo didn’t have to say a word. They stood there in the street light, two men, each fighting the same demons, each knowing the pain the other was going through in intimate detail; both knowing that there was nothing one could do for the other to make that pain go away. For a long time, there was silence. Jo finally cleared his throat and spoke.
”I’m home…” No other words were necessary as the two embraced right there in the doorway, both sobbing unashamedly. For a moment, Jo wasn’t a shinobi. He wasn’t a soldier, a tool, or a weapon. He was a fourteen year-old boy who had just killed three fucking people. Killed them because they were from another country, killed them because those were his orders, killed them because if he hadn’t, then he and Raiden knows who else would also be dead. He was just a boy, and his father was just his father. Years of combat experience, years of busting his balls in his career; none of it mattered when your child was in pain. It was pain that he knew, a pain that would never truly fade, a pain that couldn’t be healed with soft words or a band-aid.
After a moment they both went inside. Jo’s father poured him a drink, and they talked until the sun came up. Jo recounted most of what happened, and his father respected him for omitting the classified information. They spoke of lost youth, of lost innocence; and of the honor of coming home alive.
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