The New Hikage in Town [Invite Only]

Changes. Changes had been seriously made.

What had originally been a plan to vacate the village upon her murdering the previous Hikage – possibly even coming back later and destroy it – had turned into Vivian taking over. It had been a split second decision that day by the gates after she had nailed the Hikage's head to a spike: should they run for the rest of their lives or stand and make something of this rat hole? The latter had been decided on, and quickly too. So, that was what she had done after presenting the idea to Sixx, Gen, Sui, and Espi. Of course, there had been a few people who opposed her 'reign' but they had been cut down too quickly to be stopped and the rest had bent to her will in the end.

Vivian wasn't a cruel leader of course: she hadn't taken over simply to rule the people with an iron fist. No, she had taken over to create an actual home, a place that was livable and enjoyable. The previous Hikage had done little to ensure the villages survival while the woman had ruled from the shadows and allowed fate to decide things. Therefore the village had become nothing more than a cesspool for violence and other nefarious activities. Drugs and crime ran rampant – or had.

Vivian wouldn't make those mistakes. She planned on being among the people, counted as one of them, not lording over them and demanding respect. The first thing that Vivian had therefore done to assure the people of this was to begin cracking down on crime: what little shinobi that were left had been given the strictest instructions to ensure that even the smallest bit of thievery was punished – within reason of course. Drugs were no longer tolerated either and many were locked up because of it. The punishments handed out were strict but fair; her way of allowing the people to see that while she was cracking down she also wasn't a monster about it.

Following crime being cracked down on she had begun to fix up the shops and homes within the village: shops were no longer boarded up and they had even started to get a rise in merchants returning. With the wave of crime quickly coming under control they felt safe once again to begin selling their goods – something the village was in need of.

The more days that had passed in her effort to ensure the villages survival the easier the people seemed to take to the young Hikage. Oh, she still expected a knife to one day be plunged into her back, but what kage didn't? The people were opening up to the idea of Vivian, becoming hopeful once more that despite her age and lack of experience she could do the right thing to provide for them, to protect them.

It was Vivian's goal.

When Vivian wasn't busy working on the village as a whole she was busy working on the shinobi remaining: ranks had been shifted, assignments had been given. Slowly, but surely, money was being brought back into the village so that it could again thrive. It was a tiring and sleepless task, but Vivian had accepted the challenge. With these changes also came her own addition to security: Sixx had been given a serious upgrade, time to train, and ANBU status – if she could trust anyone with her life it was her best friend. The bunnies had likewise been taken care of: and Vivian had opened her home to them, Sixx, and Espi. She found little point in her having the Hikage residence to herself given how large it was – there was more then enough room for them to all live together comfortably without killing each other, if of course they accepted the offer.

And so, that was where Vivian's thoughts were – her nice warm bed – as she rifled through another pile of paperwork that was neatly stacked on her desk. Espi, thank god, had become her personal secretary and the girl had done wonders in keeping Vivian's headaches down to a dull roar instead of a raging beast like it would have been otherwise. A glance at the clock that hung on the wall showed that it was almost one in the morning. A yawn pierced the quietness of her office as she laid the paper she had been attempting to read back down: the words were blurring together at this point. 'How long has it been since I last slept?', Vivian thought to herself as she leaned back in her chair. She knew she couldn't continue on like this forever – eventually she would need a break or she would break – but there seemed to be so much more left to do and so many more problems left to solve.

Her stomach roared to life then and she looked over to the closed container that housed the lunch she never had had a chance to eat – dinner too had been skipped. Had breakfast? One good thing was coming from all of this: she was torturing herself so much lately that her addiction to pain hadn't flared up in over a week.

He was still very much not used to have any sort of freedom. The plans to leave this place had given him and his sister hope, but in the end, they'd decided to stay. Why? He wasn't entirely sure; he just knew that he felt... safe, with the strange people that had helped them escape the forced captivity they'd languished in. Or he had, rather; Sui had not returned to him for long enough to be harmed by his lack of decision years before; he'd allowed himself to be caged like an animal and had almost become one, before she returned to him and reminded him of who and what he was. Vivian and Sixx and Espi had shown him that good people still existed in the world, and that small revelation had sort of... endeared him to them. Something about them all... his instinct told him to trust them, and he relied on his instincts had saved him enough times for him to rely on them. Sui claimed to be comfortable with the decision, and he couldn't even consider that she would be lying to him for any reason.

He still didn't find sleeping to be easy. He'd never really... slept, for the years between when that happened, and now; so even now that he felt slightly more comfortable with his lot in life, he was having slight issues adjusting. He'd snuck out of the room he'd been given to share with Sui; they refused to sleep apart for any reason; and was making his way across the building toward where Vivian was working late into the night yet again. Reaching the door, he knocked gently, hard enough to be heard, but not hard enough to be disruptive, before opening the door just enough for his slight form to slip into the room and close it behind him. He wasn't exactly sure why he was there; he just felt like he needed to be there at the moment. Maybe because he felt like he could help in some way? Or he just... felt the need to be useful somehow; he knew she was working herself sick, and he didn't like that at all. He moved across the room silently, until he was standing in front of her desk with his head dipped a bit; he still had problems looking people in the eye when he wasn't in 'protect Sui' mode, his ears where dipping forward in that tired/perpetually sad kind of way he had about him. "Take a break... you're going to make yourself sick..."

Vivian had been in the middle of rubbing her eyes, attempting to get the blurriness out of them, when a soft knock caused her to look up in time to see Gen slipping into her office. If her late hours had taught her anything at all it was that Gen slept as little as she did; if not worse then her. At his words she sighed softly, tiredly, and nodded in agreement. He was right, she was on the path of making herself exceptionally sick if she continued doing things the way she had – and right now the village could not afford a sick Kage.

”You're right. I've been pushing myself too hard. There's just so much more left to do.” She looked to the stack of papers in front of her and neatly fixed them before putting them off to the side of her desk: there was no point in trying to do anything further tonight with them, considering she couldn't read them.

She then turned her attention back to Gen. ”Couldn't sleep again? How's your sister doing? How are you handling all of this for that matter?” She hadn't seen Sui in a few days due to how busy things were – though she worried about both of them a lot. The ANBU hadn't bothered healing Sui's injuries, but Vivian had fixed that of course the first chance she got – there was no longer a mark left on Sui. This also meant, however, that she knew exactly what had been done to the girl during the past three years. The fact that the girl had trusted her to heal her at all had been amazing; and it wasn't something she was going to risk taking for granted.

"We don't need sleep... not like normal people. We're.. not totally human, you know that. I can go days without sleeping, and it not effect me." They'd proven this time and time again; he just didn't need sleep, really. Short cat naps kept him perfectly rested; twenty minutes here, ten minutes there, every other day or so, and he was fit as a fiddle. "Sui is settling in. We where so ready to be done with this place... but we trust you enough to stay. We'd rather not be alone anymore, and given we have nothing to go back to, anywhere you are is the closest thing to a home we have. It helps having Espi around, too. Sui and I have never had friends... she's bonding with Espi in that sense."

His ears shifted a bit, one would twitch up then settle, the other would twitch a few moments later in the same manner. It was a passive twitch, he didn't even realize it happened anymore. "I'm to the stage of being able to adapt to anything, after all this. Or... not adapt; but accept, I guess. After all they put me through, after everything that happened, it was either learn to live, or waste away. Not much of a choice..."

Vivian nodded: she had noticed that they were completely human when she had been examining his sister – though, she had no intentions of spreading that kind of information around. In fact, there hadn't even been a proper report filed: she didn't want them targeted anymore then they had been – it was her way of protecting them. Vivian found herself momentarily wishing she could get away with as little sleep as they got: of course, even that would have been better then what she had been getting the past few days.

“I'm glad to hear that Espi is helping make things easier; after what she went through in Yokuchi she needs all of the friends she can get and it worries me to think I'm not there for her as much as I should be.” Vivian shifted in her chair, getting more comfortable. “I dunno if Espi bothered to tell you two yet what happened but when she was graduating from the Academy some criminals attacked her village – and one of them targeted her graduation. A lot of her friends were attacked and killed in front of her, and then the criminal attacked her with a vicious Genjutsu that locked her into what was her own mental hell. A few years later Yokuchi's ANBU came into her home in the middle of the night, slaughtered her family in front of her after calling them traitors to the village, and then used a Genjutsu on her to ensure she wasn't part of their conspiracy. It's why I'm glad to hear that everyone is getting along and settling in well. Sometimes a friend can make all the difference...”

Vivian paused there; thinking. She had never bothered with her own revelation – only Sixx knew of what happened to her... but perhaps it would help them to understand why she knew what it was like to go through a personal hell at the hands of another. “I guess I know that from my own personal experience. When I was younger I was kidnapped and tortured... I'm not sure how long I was gone, but when I came back I was a mess: mentally and physically. Sixx helped with that. In more ways then I don't even think Sixx knows.” She knew this would likely help them to understand why she was so willing, a perfect stranger, to help them in their time of need – she knew hell, and had walked perhaps not the same path, but damn near.

"She hadn't, but we'd never ask. What happened in the past is the past; if you share the information, it's a show of trust... and trust is hard to come by. Sharing it is something you only do when you can, with those you're willing to risk it with..." The more he found about about the people they where with now, the more he realized just how freaking horrible the people of the region had been treated. For them, living so far out in the deep woods, they'd been completely unaffected until the slavers appeared; no one in charge cared about the deep woods so long as the logging camps kept up production; the locals could live however they wanted so long as they didn't stop the resources from flowing into the city.

"The more I find out... the more I realize that I might have had it easier in some ways... If not for this seal on my chest... I made it out physically intact, anyway. The mental scares are nothing like what Sui has, most of them are healing now that we're together again. I still have the nightmares when I do sleep... but I wake up enough to realize that she's right there... and they fade away into a dim memory again. I don't have to check myself to figure out if she's real or not, now. It's almost stopped feeling like a dream; but I don't know if that's a good thing or not. Once the dream fades... is reality any better for those like us?"

He chewed on his lip for a moment, ears slowly twitching in that way they did, "I don't even know why I'm telling you this. You're too tired and stressed to want to listen to my childish philosophizing." One of Gen's stranger quirks; his language skills. His vocabulary was insanely skewed; he barely knew words that would have had him held back in any sort of school setting, yet at the same time he could pull these giant, complex themes out of thin air like it was nothing. A side effect of how they where raised; out in the forests your learned what you needed to survive; you learned plants and animals and things like that, not pretty words. Once he came to the village, they taught him ninja arts and the related subjects, but gave him no other schooling. His only exposure to academics was a few books that he was given by the more sympathetic handlers, and listening in to the ANBU talking around him. He picked up, subconsciously, everything spoken around him, his memory for sounds was amazing, and his hearing was even better, so it was hard for him to not listen in.

She had woken up as she sometimes did throughout the night when her dreams became a little to real; only this time she found that her brother wasn't there. It didn't immediately scare her: she expected that perhaps he had gone to the bathroom, or to grab something to snack on. However, when he hadn't returned within five minutes or so Sui decided to go looking. Not bothering with fanciful cloaks or the like she simply removed the thick and warm blanket off of the bed she had been sleeping in wrapped it around herself. The pajamas she was in had built in 'slipper boots' so she wasn't worried about needing shoes.

There was one place she could think that Gen had gone: to Vivian's office. She wandered there as quickly as possible, keeping the blanket pulled tightly around her. She wasn't stopped of course: anyone around knew fairly well who she was and that she had personal permission from the Kage herself to be where ever she essentially wanted to be.

She stopped outside of Vivian's door but didn't knock; she reached a blanket covered hand out to the door, opened it, and stepped inside. ”Brother? Vivian?” She shuffled over to her brother and leaned her shoulder against him. She looked over to Vivian and tilted her head, frowning: the Hikage looked tired. "You need sleep, Vivi.", Ah yes, she had picked up on Vivian's nickname.

Vivian couldn't help but to agree with Gen's statement: the people were treated horribly, and the worst part about it all was that it happened because no one was held accountable. Vivian planned on changing that. People would pay for their crimes: people would learn quickly enough that you didn't mess with Fubuki people without consequences. ”Don't worry, Gen... I often ask myself the same question. Reality can sometimes be harsher then hiding in your own mind and living among false images and fantasies. But, I believe that, despite how hard it is to deal with, the truth is always better. Reality is better.”

And then she heard the shuffling of feet outside of her door before it was opened without a knock: there were only a select few people brave enough to get away with that – brave, or otherwise they knew she would never harm them. Sure enough Sui entered in and went straight to her brother. She too commented about Vivian's need for sleep, while also using her nickname. ”Yes, I know. But, what about you, Sui? Are you alright? I thought you'd be asleep right now...”

He leaned into his sisters shoulder, "I couldn't sleep, sister. Don't worry about me." Vivian beat him to the question of why she was awake, so he didn't ask it himself. He allowed her a chance to answer, before moving back to what he and Vivian had been speaking about. "A harsh reality with a chance to be changed is better than a never ending dream of static pleasantness. That's all I can allow myself to have hope for, right now. If we can affect change in this land, then it was all worth it; even if none of us can ever be 'normal' again." Not that normal meant anything to a rabbit boy. His idea of normal and other people's idea of normal were completely different.

Moving beyond the heavy subjects, "Maybe we should all head to bed. You and Sui definitely need the sleep, and even if I can't fall asleep tonight, a chance to rest is always welcome."

”I started to have a nightmare; but I woke up..”, Sui responded softly as she tilted her head a bit and rested it on her brother's shoulder. She was handling this calmly though – at least more so then she had in the past: there was no screaming, crying, shaking. She was calmer; even though she was practically clinging to her brother right now. ”I'm okay, though..”, she added, trying to keep either of them from worrying.

She then fell silent, listening to what was obviously the finishing of a conversation before her brother mentioned that perhaps all of them should go back to bed. Sui nodded in agreement and looked towards Vivian. ”Come on, Vivi... go to sleep. I don't want you to get sick. Please.~” She frowned a bit, looking concerned and worried.

Sui wasn't worried much about her own sleep – she took plenty of naps to make up for it. But the Hikage was always busy, always working, and she didn't even take naps during the day to try and make up for it.

Vivian couldn't help but wholeheartedly agree with Gen's assessment. If her own suffering, her own torture and past issues, could lead to better things for the village as a whole? Then in a way it made it worth it in the end. It gave her a lot to think about, but she pushed it out of her mind for now – she didn't need more thoughts and emotions added to her already over flowing plate.

Her attention shifted easily enough anyway as Sui explained that she had started to have a nightmare but had woken up – she still could remember when Sui had first agreed to stay in the large house that had been given to Vivian simply because of her position: there had been many sleepless nights those first couple days. Many times of waking up to Sui screaming until her brother was able to calm her. To hear that she was able to wake up from a nightmare... well, that was better then having to suffer through it.

Vivian stood slowly and yawned. “You're right. Let's all go get some rest... the rest of my paperwork can wait until tomorrow.” She didn't want to worry Gen and Sui anymore then what they were about her – and she especially didn't want Sui worrying about her when she was still having the random nightmare here and there herself.

Nodding softly, he took his sister's hand, "Yes. Rest sounds good." He was almost sure he wouldn't sleep; but the chance to speak with Vivian had cleared his mind, he hadn't realized that he'd been troubled really, he was so used to just existing that he'd lost that ability to know himself well. Time would restore that, but for now he was as much a creature of instinct as he was properly sentient in the classical ideas of the concept. "Good night, Vivian." He'd wait for Sui to say anything she wanted before moving off with her back to their bedroom, and to the chance for some rest, if not some actual sleep.

-Exit-