Our story begins on a beautiful morning. The sun was just about to rise; breaking the darkness that covered the world with reds and golds peeking through the gaps in the mountains and lighting the sky like a scene out of a play. The birds were chirping in the vast forests, bringing the firsts sounds to break the silence. At the coasts, the birds' songs were not quite as pleasant and the voice of a gull could barely be called song.
The village itself, which would only have looked like a fly's waste on the map if it had been on one, never slept. When those who lived the day began to get up, those who lived the night were just going to bed. With all the burning, red lights of the small village, people rarely took the time to enjoy the sun's rise.
Despite this day being a beautiful one, by all means, it was not a special day. Special days were rare in this small village. They had their festivals, of course, but for a place that prides itself with being one of entertainment, the festivities of those arrangements were just routine.

As a village divided into people of the day and people of the night, the regular citizens rarely paid any heed to those in the middle; the shinobi and kunoichi of their village. Their warriors and their guards; the ones that kept them safe from the wicked ways of the outside world and made it possible for the small village to remain one of entertainment by their own rights, rather than following the word of a larger village.

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For Haruka, this day was not special at all. No missions. No training. No nothing. Even if she had wanted to, there really was nothing for her to do. It had been months since her last mission and it had been the easiest one she had had for years.
Most of the time, she just got stuck guarding the village entrance. She was a chuunin already; she wanted some more excitement. Some of the other chuunin, she knew, trained kids at the Academy. Even that was better than guard duty. Heck, even working with her mom at the restaurant was better. She at least got to punch stuff in the restaurant. It was mostly dough, but still.
Sitting around, all alone, without anything to do but stare off into the horizon really gave a girl time to think. Sadly, Haruka was never much of a thinker. She was more of a sleeper. In fact, that brings us to the present setting.

As the sun rose and filtered through the leaves of the trees above, Haruka was awakened from her slumber by that annoying, flickering light. She groaned at the disturbance, throwing one arm over her eyes in a desperate attempt to stay asleep just a little bit longer without a single regard for the fact that she was supposed to be watching the “gate” for intruders. This was her third day; she was allowed to sleep.
Back when she had been in training, just a little academy runt, she had been taught that ninja should be able to stay awake for a week at a time, with an hour of sleep a day. Needless to say, she never really felt like following that rule. She needed her ten hours of sleep every single day. She was taught that a true ninja could go without food for three days, just as she was supposed to here at the “gate”, but she had never been a fan of that rule, either. Thus, her mother packed her food enough for a family of ten and yet Haruka always felt like a staved dog when she returned to the village.
Every three days, she was replaced. Someone else came, sat at the “gate” and guarded it. She had no idea if that someone followed the rules of not sleeping or eating, but she doubted it. Who in their right mind would do that, anyways? What if something actually [i]did[/i] happen? Then they would be tired and hungry and unable to do anything. Not that they were really supposed to do anything; they were supposed to run for it. Run back to the village and alarm the others. That's how it went. For a ninja, running at full speed, it would take just a couple of hours, unlike the full day the journey took at a normal walking pace.

After battling with the sun for a little while, Haruka finally did get up. She was going to be replaced and she knew that she would likely get in trouble if she had been fast asleep when her replacement showed up.