Lullaby 2

Lullaby in the night
You will cry, little Ninja
close your eyes, rest your head,
for in morning you'll be dead.

Pleasant dreams, go to sleep
Place your head on the pillow
In your grave by the morn'
'neath the old weeping willow

Lullaby

Lullaby, and good night
Let your ears drift to dreaming
Quiet thoughts fill your head,
No one's sneaking near your bed.
Those soft sounds in the night
Are not ninjas invading.
Close your eyes, in your bed
Or you'll wake up oh, so dead!

中忍!

I finally made 中忍! It took many, many tries. They were, indeed Ninzya in disguise. Multiple groups, traps... I have nightmares just thinking about it. And to make things worse, at the end, a bunch of 上忍 were talking about me while I fought Ninzya after Ninzya. I know they were whispering about my weight... Just eat one extra sweet rice cake, and the whole village talks for a week!

In any case, I should get some rest. I'm going on a mapping and sneaking mission tonight. I hope that my drawing skills are up to the task.

Passed...

I passed the written part of my exam, after my second try. You see, I was trying to answer the questions correctly the first time, but that wasn't the objective - I even heard proctors complaining during the exam that it was too easy, and that they were glad that the exam format was changing soon.

Unfortunately, I was ambushed early on in the practical, and I fell for it. Next time, I will look at the bushes to try to tell if they are Ninzyas in disguise. Once my back stops hurting, I'm going to go out there. Maybe tonight...

Romance

After days of hiking through mountain trails, we've finally come upon our destination... the village of Romance. While it's very... Romantic (small), it has beautiful vistas (allowing for seeing enemies from kilometers away), wonderful sunsets, and something which my HoKage told me would get me thrown off of one of those beautiful vistas if I mentioned it.

So I moved in, now, and I'm starting to study for my exam... in my copious amounts of free time between sewing and hauling garbage.

I think I'll like it here.

Following the eyes

I've been so busy packing that I forgot to write. Green Eyes, Frowny, and Smiley are moving to a new village, and they asked me to join them. I'm surprised how much stuff the four of us combined have, and Red Eyes keeps insisting that we re-pack smaller and lighter. I've re-done my own pack 13 times today, and we haven't even left for Romance.

Speaking of romance, I noticed that Green Eyes was writing a flowery poem, but she hid it as soon as she noticed me. I wonder if she's into Smiley; he seems pretty cute. In any case, the Frowny One is yelling at me about my having packed too many 苦無; I should go.

Green eyes

Today I was assigned to watch the Ninzya Academy. How difficult could it be? I thought to myself... forgetting completely how much I used to torture the 下忍 back when I was at the academy. But on the other hand, at the time, there was only one of me.

Unfortunately, it seems that I became a role model - or more specifically, the highly exaggerated tales of my exploits became a role model for half the academy. I never tied a 下忍 up and hung them off of the top of the highest pole by their ankles.

Unfortunately, not only was that story floating around, they decided to try replicating that one... on me.... with an unfortunate amount of success.

Fortunately, a 下忍 with the most amazingly deep sea-green green eyes helped me out. Mind you, I had untied half the knots, so I probably would have gotten down okay by myself... in another hour or three... but the help was wonderful, as my feet had lost all their feeling half an hour prior.

We talked afterward, and it seems that she knows how to handle these kids fairly well. I think I'm assigned to the same mission tomorrow, so perhaps we'll divide and conquer... just like a real mission.

No More Branches!

My first mission as a Ninzya - and first, off, they team me with this strange-looking rubbery creature... what's that all about? Heck, it doesn't even have hands! In any case, I was ordered to take some rope, and...

tie some failing branches to higher branches.

Okay, I though to myself; I can do this. I went through the village, and meticulously tied dozens of weak or failing branches, for the use of other Ninzya, and near the end of the day, I returned for another mission (the sleeping Ninzya gets the bad missions!) and, by the time I got back, I was told that another group of branches needed repair.

So I went and did those, in the moonlight, I might add... watching my former classmates doing work which seems to be much nicer on their hands (rope burns hurt!) doesn't anyone else do maintenance around here?

Anyway, I finally got back from that, and was ordered on another mission...

The first group of branches I worked on needed work again because someone decided to do their 手裏剣 and 苦無 target practice on my ropes!

After finishing that again, I need sleep. Vengeance can wait.

The beginning

I finally did it! I finally graduated from my 忍者 Academy! I can't wait to start working as a fully-fledged 忍者. In my academy, I also learned 幻術 and 体術 and have pased my basic exams, so I can use each of them. Oh yes; I'm using the obscure language of English to encode this diary so that other 忍者 can't read it... I should start using English terms... Ninzya? Ninja? I wonder how they spell it in this language... I guess it dosen't matter too much; after all, virtually no one can read the important words.

I'm hoping to start working tomorrow. I wonder what awesome mission they'll put me on first; perhaps it will be spying - I like spying.