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flashback
南部的沼泽水国

There were nine of us that mornin'. Well eleven, technically, if yer countin' -- nevermind. Nine of us. It had been one of those nights. Nighttime in the bog is much different then normal nighttime, you see. And that night there'd been no moon, just clouds and darkness. The veil between this world and the next was thinner than Elder Shama's hair, so we were all weary. Our catch was real light that night - we reckoned that the game probably knew more about the night's thin veil than we did, bein' that animals pick up on that kinda stuff more than humans. We did manage a few salmon though.

We were all attentive and steady as we trekked through the night. All except for one - a woman. Her legs shook, her eyes swam, she struggled to keep up but her weak body made her stagger behind our group. Pregnancy and a black night in the bog had taken it's toll. She called to her husband and he turned and headed to her aid. Then the swamp began to shake. I could hear birds cryin' in the distance as they fled to the skies. We all stumbled and fell and could only watch as the swamp up and swallowed the woman whole. Literally, a stream of water rose from the bog, wrapped around her, and sucked her into the water.

Her husband got up and rushed into the water, and searched and searched, but there was nothin'... nothin' but fallen moss and swamp grime. The shakin' had stopped and everything had grown quiet - really quiet. I'd never heard silence like that. Still haven't. I split the silence when I screamed her name, screaming for the swamp to give her back. The water began to ripple, slowly at first but then violently. And then it rose from the water. A massive, faceless salamander - must have been twenty -- no, thirty feet tall. The man yelled to it "Give me back what you've taken, give me back my wife!"

The beast lowered it's head and opened its mouth. It's massive tongue extended and unwrapped to me. Held in it was the woman, and in her arms were two pale, red-haired, baby boys. It was --

"Wait, papa!" a child's voice interrupted. "Ain't no salamander bigger than ten feet in those swamps!" the voice added.

"Will you let me finish the story, boy." an older voice solemnly spoke.

"...I see what must be prevented."

While conflict could never truly be stopped, it's intrusion upon our land could be prevented. Kusagakure had been unofficially declared a battlefield by other, larger nations. We were a proud people, a strong people, but we had never had much luck defending from the nexus of two opposing, great nation forces. Regardless of the odds, however, we couldn't lie down and take it. I looked to Usio now, as something needed to be addressed.

"Prevented, Usio." I said with emphasis on the first word. "We must never wish our hardships on anyone else. If the whole world was doing that," I paused and gazed to Ujiyasu then. "then Chaos would be the product."

And the world would spend madly on.

"That headband -- this entire field, too -- they remain for a reason. They're remnants of days gone by, days that must not repeat. I'm trusting you two, as part of this team, to help me prevent the past from becoming the present. Can you do that for me?"

I listened intently to both of their accounts, solemnly staring at them and nodding when I felt it right to do so. The horrors that I myself had experienced in what were surely some of the darkest days in Kusagakure's history were often too much for a youthful mind to endure. I knew that well; I'd been plagued by nightmares for years now. But then I thought about these two. They were younger than I was back then and surely the horrors that they saw had damaged them even more than they knew.

"Our people are known for their resilience and with an abundance of Mokuton users residing in the village, reconstruction is a more than manageable task." I explained as I slowly paced forward another couple of feet before stopping. Lying at my feet, was a half buried object. I knelt down and picked it up and, worn and battered my weather and time as it was, I was still able to recognize what it was. I hadn't planned on finding something like this here, but luckily it would help solidify the point I was making.

"Although we can always pick ourselves up and move forward..." I started as I stood erect and turned to face the boys. "...we can never quite escape the past." I added, holding up an old, broken hitai-ate bearing an unrecognizable village's insignia - it wasn't one of ours.

"Tell me what you see." I said before I tossed the metal plate to Ujiyasu.