[Daredemo]

DaREDEMO Uchiha

    Well, there were certainly ways that the event could have gone better. Daredemo still had tears in his eye as he rushed out of the family meeting. Why must the Uchiha always argue and scrap. Why must old idiots refuse to listen to the younger generation. Why do hypocrites climb so high through the rankings of such a prestigious clan. All of this strife and turmoil caused by the exact people complaining about it in the first place.
    
    Why the hell should the adults make the decisions here? Yoshinobu clearly wasn't in a state to make decisions and yet he was given proper respect. And yet Daredemo himself was dismissed and ignored despite having a clearer head than his father ever had.

     The man had just left the BBQ before Daredemo did, but he was going drinking with his buddies. Daredemo was due at the temple in an hour. He'd have to be quick. He was running through the compound, with a beacon directing him straight to the family shrine. No matter what came next they knew that was the first destination on their list. No one was going to hold him back from what was promised to him again.

    Especially with his cloak now gone, Daredemo knew he needed something else to remember his brother by.

OWL

[Daredemo]

DaREDEMO Uchiha

    The shrine was empty for now. The house was empty as well. Daredemo was happy to learn that. The more time he had away from his father the better. The more time he had before his father got here the more time he would have to get what he needed from this place. 

    Not a hime. It had long lost the right to be called that. Not since Riku was alive had this place felt like something to actually live in. It was a place Daredemo was forced to sleep. Forced to work. Daredemo had no desire to live here, not anymore. Screw his father. Screw this clan. Screw this god damn shrine and the god damn dress he was forced to wear in its walls. 

    The Miko outfit in question stood hung up in the entrance hall. Mocking him. Daredemo scoffed under his breath as he pushed past it and went to his families private altar. To his brothers memorial. Daredemo kneeled before it and bowed his head. "Riku," tears swelled in Daredemo's eyes as he tried hard to think of what to say next. "It's been far too long since I came to talk to you. And I'm sorry for that."

OWL

[Daredemo]

DaREDEMO Uchiha

    Daredemo kneeled there speaking to his brother for awhile. About life, about his graduation from the academy, about how much worse dad had gotten. All of it just seemed to bring more tears to Daredemo's eyes. He couldn't stop himself. Why had he waited so long to say these things, why had he held himself back from this for so long? It was a lot to think about, but Daredemo knew he couldn't waste all of his time here. No matter how much he wanted to keep speaking, his father would return eventually. 

    "I'm sorry to do this to you again, bro, but I think this is the last time we'll talk for awhile." Pushing these words out was painful, but Daredemo felt they had to be said, "Dad's just... not gonna see eye to eye with me on this one. So I can't stay here any longer. But... I think it's time I finally took your present. Dad never had the right to keep it from me anyways. It was yours to give away. Not his."

    Daredemo lifted the blade from it's position at the front of the altar. This was it, no going back after this right? He bowed his head once again to his brother before raising up and turning away. He stood for a moment, hesitating. Why was he hesitating. He had left this room so many times before. Left this house every day... this was different though. 

    He took in a deep breath and stepped out. He went to his room and packed a small back. Some clothing, not much. Most importantly he carried his Hitai-ate in his pocket as he walked out of the shrine. Into the main hall, his last time walking through it's walls for a long time hopefully.

OWL

[Daredemo]

DaREDEMO Uchiha

    That damn Miko dress again. Mocking him hanging in the entranceway. Daredemo gritted his teeth. His hands gripped hard against the handle of his blade. He was already burning bridges right? 

    Daredemo pulled the blade and sliced the Miko once, twice, ten times, twenty times, fifty times before he had taken out enough frustration to re-sheathe the weapon. He took another deep breath, this one ending with a contented sigh and a small smirk as he continued to emerge from the place that had caged him for so long. There was little a better feeling that ripping that thing to shreds. 

    Daredemo looked overhead, the sun had moved quite a bit. The hour was drawing to a close. He needed to leave. He had been training to run. Now was the time to put that into practice it seemed. 

    The last time that Daredemo charged through the Uchiha Compound, smashing out of it's front gates, it had been to excitedly tell his friends about his new look. Today it seemed he was simply running from the compound itself. And no matter how fast he ran, it felt like he could feel the metaphorical sharingan of the compound staring daggers into him. The sphere of it's influence trying to grasp at his heels.

OWL

[Daredemo]

DaREDEMO Uchiha

    That only meant that Daredemo needed to run faster? No? Speed was of the essence after all. So Daredemo took a deep breath in. He thought back to last time. Pushing himself too far wasn't beneficial, but he felt like, after what he had done last time, he could push just a bit further than he had. His body was able to go just that tiny bit faster than it had last time he ran through the village like this.
    
    Daredemo put one foot in front of the other and pushed his legs the hardest he ever had. There was no need to delay. He had nothing waiting for him, but he had nothing to conserve himself for either. He wasn't working the shrine today. He wasn't working the shrine ever again. That was the decision he had made today. Wether his father liked it or not.
    
    It was incredible to Daredemo what he could do when he put his mind to it. Leaving the clan was just one thing, but he seemed to be running at speeds he had never reached before. Wether anger was driving him to go faster, wether fear was the culprit, or wether it was simply Daredemo himself that had inspired this improvement seemed irrelevant in the moment.

OWL

[Daredemo]

DaREDEMO Uchiha

    Where were they going? Daredemo had already been running for what seemed like half an hour before he finally asked himself that question, and the moment the question popped into his head it was as if his body was reminded of the exhaustion it was supposed to be feeling. Daredemo went from the full adrenaline of his escape from home to the crushing reality of how out of breathe he was.

     The dichotomy was certainly one that Daredemo was prepared for, it wasn't his first time running through the village, it would be far from the last. Daredemo shook his head as he tried to catch his breath and look around the area. There had to be something around here to peak his interest. He did see a ladder leading up to one of the roof tops. Maybe a higher vantage point would help him decide?

    Daredemo quickly ascended to the top of the roofs. It was a pretty tall building, not nearly the tallest in the area but still. He got a beautiful view of the Village. Even from here he had no hope of seeing the whole thing, seeing building after building stretching out in front of him. It was honestly beautiful in a way.

OWL

[Daredemo]

DaREDEMO Uchiha

    Daredemo liked being up here. It was different seeing the shinobi village like this. It made it all seem so much bigger. Sure, it had always been big, but Daredemo felt like for a long time they had really only explored some small parts of it. There was so much to explore, to learn. Daredemo knew from his time spent with Itsuki and Miroru that there was a big world outside the villages walls, but the world inside it already seemed so big.

    Maybe Daredemo should explore more of it from this angle. They had been getting faster. All they needed to jump from roof to roof was the forward momentum right? The jump would be important too of course, but charging forward at full speed had to be a big part. Daredemo backed all the way to one side of the roof, looking across the entire roof to the building on the opposite side to where he stood. 

    No hesitation. Hesitation meant fear. Fear meant mistakes. 

    No hesitation meant running full speed ahead. It meant just going. So that's what Daredemo did. He shot out of the gates at the same blistering speed he had been managing for awhile on the ground. His feet got to the other edge of the building so quickly it was almost shocking to Daredemo. But that just meant the jump came sooner. He leapt through the air, jumping the gap.

OWL

[Daredemo]

DaREDEMO Uchiha

    There was no ground below Daremo's feet. Well, none close enough to matter. Three stories was a long way to fall. It was too late to worry about that, though. But why could Daredmo think of it at all. It was as if time itself was slowing down to let him think hard about how stupid of an idea this was. 

    And then he felt wood beneath his feet. The unmistakeable feeling of ground beneath his feet. Daredemo had made the jump. He was on the next roof top over.

    "Waooooh!!!!" Surely if someone had the angle to see Daredemo, they would quickly turn to see the source of the high pitched screech of excitement that sounded. Pumping his arms, smiling wide, practically dancing until he felt his foot slightly slip. 

    Even the slightest of feeling of slipping found Daredemo quickly getting more distance between himself and the edge of the roof. It took him a few minutes of breathing and celebrating to really let it sink in. He did it. 

    Could he do it again? There was no reason for the boy to think he couldn't. He was bouncing on his feet before bursting to a sprint once again. He leapt the next gap, landed on the next roof, leapt the next gap, landed on the next roof. Repeat on repeat as he leapt from roof to roof.

OWL

[Daredemo]

DaREDEMO Uchiha

    He didn't even fully understand why he felt such joy from such a simple activity, but he couldn't keep running, leaping, landing. It was a joy to see so much advancement in himself. He didn't think he would have been able to do this a year ago. If he kept pushing himself, kept trying to get faster, what else could he do? 

    Daredmo didn't entirely know, but he knew that for now he just wanted to run until he got too tired to do so. And that's precisely what he did. He had lost track of how many roofs he had jumped across, how far from the compound he had gone, how long he had been out here. None of it mattered.

    He had nowhere to be, no one to see. He only stopped when he felt like he needed to, and as he stood catching his breath he decided to look at his new surroundings. He hadn't realized where he had been heading, but as he searched he saw a building fairly close by. The Hokage mansion. An ideal for the village to look up to. A goal that Daredemo still held deeply in the pits of his stomach. Maybe he couldn't change the Uchiha from within. But he could change what others saw from the outside. 

    He knew what his purpose was.

OWL