>>5972700>>5974793>>5972704>>5972705>>5972713>>5972714>>5972762>>5972784>>5972842>>5973076>>5974806>>5974808>>5974823>>5975157>>5975208You hesitate for a brief moment after the conversation has concluded. This was another one of those heavy moments in your life, but unlike others it wasn’t one that could easily pass without acknowledgement for a person of lesser intuition.
This was a moment of real gravity, a great and terrible moment that loomed before you like a dark mountain’s shadow, suffocating you in a black shroud while demanding that you climb to the top before you could see the other side.
You could just walk away, and these people would live.
They would live on as loose ends, risky existences that could cause any number of disastrous hypothetical problems.
Or you could touch the back of your neck, and these people would die.
They would die right here, right now, and you would have done your simple duty. A pure, monolithic matter of grim fact. It was what your duty compelled you to do. But it was also a decision that made you feel like you were standing on the precipice of some unknowable abyss, perceptible to you only as a deep, yawning darkness.
Still.
You don’t actually have a choice.
No matter what you thought or how you felt, there was a glaring, hard reality that you knew in your core: You are a ninja, you are a tool. You know what you are, therefore you know what you have to do.
Your hand reaches for the back of your neck, giving it a sheepish rub. The signal. Your stomach drops into a pit of dread as you anticipate what’s about to happen, and your mind is filled with a grim, nervous silence.
>+1 True Ninja.“Well? You just going to fucking stand there all day?” Bow says, amused. He even prods you hard in the shoulder to spur you into action. “Go on, get out of here. We don’t-”
He’s cut off by one of the other bandits screaming “What the fuck is that?!”
Your brain refuses to identify who. It wouldn’t allow you to risk perceiving them as humans anymore. It was for the defense of your own sanity.
You turn to look at what the bandit is referring to, momentarily feeling stupefied along with them. A giant crab taller than you are is barreling out of the woods sideways towards the bridge at human sprinting speed.
The bandit with the bow shoots it. The arrow bounces off the crab’s shell, doing absolutely nothing.
“Move BOY!” Your clone bellows, shoving you along towards the bridge, maintaining the ruse for a little longer.
You're grateful to it as it allows you to momentarily turn away from the action to sprint across the bridge for a better position. The bandits allow the two of you to pass as they’re more focused on mustering their initiative to mount a defense. A big mistake.
When you reach the other side you whirl around, taking in the situation for a split second while you weave the hand seals for Water Bullet.
