felinecharms

[Kakashi at eighteen, Jounin, ANBU captain and all-around shinobi badass is wandering about looking for a certain blonde.

Oh, did I mention that this Kakashi is from a world where he has nearly been demoted to the role of babysitter by his still-living Sensei and Hokage?

Oh right. Not babysitter. "Personal guard" of the Hokage's lone heir and sole surviving family member.

Amazing how a four year old can sneak by some of the most elite shinobi in the village of Konoha.

A very exaggerated sigh is heard from him as his charge continues to evade him.]

I told him I was no good with kids...

[So what if Naruto was a special case. Kids and Kakashi just didn't mix well. The teen shakes his head at nothing in particular, pulling a familiar orange book out of a hidden pocket.

Talking to yourself may be a sign of insanity, but Kakashi's long stopped caring about things like that.]

Might as well get some reading done while it's still quiet...

[The room Kakuzu enters is pretty well-lit, for once. Thinking on it, he hasn't been back to this stupid place in a long time...oh, the sheer idiocy of whatver being could come up with a world like this. It was like a neverending maze that, frankly, wasted more of his time then a certain albino zealot.

Anyway, he enters the room and wanders to the center of it, looking around at various things. It looks like a very comfortable living room, and there's a couch, a fireplce, a table with a few books and a newspaper on it, a rug on the floor, a bowl of fruit at the table on the other end of the couch. And it's winter, judging by the snowflakes cascading outside the large window, framed by velvety burgundy-colored curtains. Kakuzu reaches out to pick up the newspaper, but his fingers go right through it. An illusion.]

...hm.

[ he's somewhere quiet. an outdoors-type room, cruel irony considering the nature of the dressingroom. there's a small pond, and a rock in the center.

kabuto, never a fan of the spotlight, simply sits at the pond's edge. he stares hard at the water, at his reflection. one could almost claim he was lost in thought, were he not of quick enough wit to keep near-perfect track of his surroundings.

this place, and the foresight it has provided him regarding Orochimaru and Sasuke, has taken a toll on him. kabuto isn't necessarily used to thinking for himself, as much as his double- and triple-crossing would suggest otherwise. he's always been at the behest of some higher power, and now he's faced with too many questions to process at once:

where to go? who to follow? who to trust? well, that last one is simple. trust no one but yourself. ]

"But who- ... am I, I wonder?"

[ and suddenly, breaking the un-room's solemn tone, he laughs to himself. what a childish question. he supposes, however, that he isn't too much unlike a lost child. 'shall i simply live in each moment?' he wonders. his expression is caught between a smile and a frown, his brows furrowed from frustration(or is it trepidation?) despite his lips curling into a sheepish grin.

the environment, the feeling he gives off.. is best described as 'real'. until this point in his life, Kabuto was a puppet at best. he silently wagers that these moments are his first true moments of 'life'- his first experiences to refer to entirely as his own.

will you break the returning silence? ]

[A dull glow of a light can be seen as the rather porcelain-faced shinobi of ROOT is in a dark den of a room.

Within the room there are many scrolls and books. Sai seems to pay no mind as he is very interested in the content of literature he is reading.]

We're going to keep this short and sweet (Frank and birthday vgifts will be back next week). You've probably seen the updates to our main menu. Don't be alarmed. You'll find everything you need, just in slightly shifted format. Just so you know, we based these changes on input from both experienced and new users who were not familiar with LiveJournal. Our goal was to reduce barriers to usability and make LiveJournal more accessible and easy to navigate. Please note that this is a work in progress. We welcome your detailed suggestions in feedback. We thank you, in advance, for helping us improve your LiveJournal experience.

We've updated the global navigation menu:

Here's a quick breakdown of what you'll find where:

• Scrapbook can now be found under Profile (thanks for your feedback, btw), along with Settings, Stats, and Edit Profile.
• You'll find all the tools you need to post and update entries under Journal, which includes posting and editing entries, managing comments and tags, and customizing your journal's style.
• Friends contains all of your friend settings, from filtering your Friends page to adding, removing, and finding new and existing friends on LiveJournal.
• Under Communities, you'll find links to manage your communities, accept community invites, and create new communities.
• Explore includes search features, RSS feeds, Question of the Day, and FRNK radio.
• Under Shop, you'll find links to upgrade or give a paid account, buy virtual gifts, purchase LiveJournal merchandise (like T-shirts), and view your payment history.

LiveJournal Mobile update:

We've enhanced LiveJournal's mobile site to improve usability and load times. We've made more of LiveJournal's features accessible via mobile, including posting comments, uploading photos, reading and commenting on friends' posts, finding and messaging friends, and more. We look forward to reviewing your feedback and recommendations for future improvements.

Other important changes:

• You can lock comments to prevent further commenting on a post, while leaving existing comments visible.
• We replaced the "Tell a friend" link with a new "Share This" widget that lets you share LiveJournal posts on other social media sites, including Facebook, Digg, Twitter, etc.
• We changed some of the icons on entries (you can hover over the icons to view descriptions).
• You'll see a Tag count on your Tag management page.
• You'll now see the 10 most recent vgifts on your profile page. To remove vgifts, left-click on the vgift and choose whether you want to remove the vgift from your profile or delete it entirely.
• We've added options to help you control receipt of vgifts, which you'll find in My Stuff under Edit Profile. You can now enable vgifts from friends or everyone and disable anonymous vgifts.

We've got your fix:

• UPDATE: Rolling several updates into one listing here -- 1) Scrapbook should be back and working again. 2) The problem with the Update Journal page in IE6 and IE7 should be fixed now. 3) The problem with the userpic add-on package pricing has been fixed and refunds issued to anyone who was overcharged while the erroneous prices were in place.
• Non-conforming images will now be automatically resized for custom mood themes.
• Line breaks no longer count as two characters against your entry's character limit.
• We fixed a bug on the Manage Tags page so you can clear all tags and add new tags.
• We corrected the UI for the update.bml page so it displays properly in IE8.

Thanks again for joining us. Frank and company will be back next week!

[Madara was sure he was dreaming.  First, he found himself in a strange hallway with hundreds and hundreds of doors all around him.  Then, upon opening one of these doors, he found himself in what seemed to be the forest right outside the area in which Konoha was being constructed.]

[And, strangely enough, no matter how long he walked or in what direction he went, he never seemed to make any progress.  Despite the fact he started moving off in one direction, he would somehow find himself in the same location several minutes later.  It was as if the forest was trying to challenge him.]

[Perhaps it was one of Hashirama's tricks.]

It looks like I'm going to be late for that meeting...

OOC:  Young!Madara, if you didn't figure it out!  Village is in the middle of being constructed and none of the silly Hokage picking business has occurred yet.

We're finishing up a few odds and ends before our next major release. Our mighty Ops guys continue to slay spambots and balance load times on a highwire without a safety net (which is kind of tough dressed in full ninja gear). Down on solid ground, we're celebrating this week's virtual birthday party with a warm toast to pants. If you can rearrange the letters of your favorite city, state, and/or country (feel free to combine these elements) to spell one of Frank's favorite treats (e.g., pants, wire, paper, etc.), he'll send you over a can of whipped cream to top it all off (provided you return the empty can for his midnight snack)! And, with that, let the word scrambling commence!

Stuff you should know:

We're still working on the delayed/missing notifications issue. Sorry, we're frustrated too. We'll keep you posted. Last week, we became aware that a recently-implemented script was overwriting affiliate referral fees for some of our users. Once we confirmed this, our Ops team quickly removed the script. Please be aware that, while we may beta-test other affiliate scripts down the line, we will take greater measures to ensure that no existing user-referral arrangements are impacted in any way. While we plan to stick to a weekly news schedule, if we have a release in between regular newsletters, we'll post here to keep you informed. You can also check lj_releases for current release information.

To our paid users, we send squirrels in love!

If you have a paid or permanent account, you can send five free Squirrels in love vgifts through Monday, March 15th at 4pm, PST! You'll see both the free and the $0.99 squirrels displayed until they've scurried off to their new homes. Please send only one vgift at a time. In other words, you'll need to complete check-out and start a new order for each vgift you send. If you're not receiving vgifts (from friends and/or Frank), you may have disabled them. To enable vgifts, visit Edit profile (under Profile), scroll down to the bottom of the page, and select 'Do not disable' from the drop-down menu. Have fun!

Help is on the way!

We're pleased to announce the winner of our first charitable vgift poll, Doctors without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières, which provides critical medical care to under-served populations around the world. Priced at $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of the proceeds we raise from the sale of this vgift (we'll cover credit card fees). We invite you to start recommending nonprofits for our next fundraising drive at ljnewscontests. We'll take suggestions through the month and post a poll in the news during the first week of April to let you choose the recipient. We thank you, again, for your passion and generosity.

We've crowned a header

Congratulations to ohterlus for submitting the winning header, which will go live next week and keep us leafy through mid-April! You can submit designs for our next header contest at ljnewscontests now until March 31st. We'll post a poll in the news to let you decide which header will sit at the top of LiveJournal from mid-April to mid-May. All artistic interpretations are welcome. The winner will get a $25 LiveJournal gift certificate. All other contributors will receive $5 gift certificates. Our heartfelt appreciation for sharing your talent and creativity!

For this week's winning photo and more adventures with Frank & Meme, we'll catch you under the cut!

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