Um, yeah, you know, we agreed to keep all this, um, stuff under wraps, right? For safety reasons. I mean, come on, the minute people know who the Five Mysterious Warriors are, they'd be on 'em (us) like fleas on a dog. 'Specially the press, but really, we wouldn't be able to walk down the street without bein' mobbed. And do you know how hard it'd be to prevent people getting hurt or worse? You can't fight in a crowd of autograph seekers. And then you'd have people wanting interviews and people wanting endorsements and all that kind of crap. I can see it now, Ryo doing commercials for charcoal- "Get X-brand, it lights almost as fast as I do!" Ha. We didn't get into this racket to become celebrities. 

And don't get me started on the politicals who'd try to weasel some kind of support out of us. We're called Ronin- means Masterless- for a darn good reason. We're not accountable to any particular government or any single leader- 'cept Ryo, of course, and even that's open to discussion whenever he's down for doing something particularly out-of-his-mind crazy. (Fortunately, that doesn't happen as often as it used to, now that nobody goes throwing energy-matrix-balls at us anymore. Yes, I know it worked, but it was still a nutty thing to do.) Our point for being here is to deal with the Nether Realm, in whatever form it takes, and since the Nether Realm's been trying to do Earth in for a millenium or so now, that means we gotta keep a global perspective. We can't let ourselves get tangled up in red tape (though Dais' webs are arguably worse, it still would be a major burden and reduce our effectiveness by....oh... 90%?)

There's also the minor but very important matter of not letting the Dynasty or what-all-ever get their ugly hands on people we, as civilians, care about. And the other little matter of having everyone wonder if a bunch of kids is really the best task force and shouldn't the specialized adults- say the army, nevermind they got their heads and their asses handed to them the first time they tried it- take over the job? Ha again; the armor wouldn't work for them anyway.

Besides that, I'd have to explain to my folks... nothankyou.

So you see we had a couple really good rationalizations for keeping everything secret, not even counting the fact that the Ancient himself kept everything pretty well secret for about nine-hundred years...and then a certain person, who I won't name but whose initials are blue-headed genius, suddenly suggested we write our memoirs.

My reaction to that was basically, "The hell?" And I was not the only one. We, ah, discussed it for quite a while, and the word 'crazy' came up repeatedly.

So why am I writing this? Eh, well, the clincher on the debate went something like, "It would have been a huge help to us if there'd been more accurate records kept. We might not've had to fly by the seats of our pants so much, and we would've had a much better idea what we were up against. We didn't know there were more than five armors, or what their powers were, or that we could unite- heck, we don't even know how the four got corrupted or if there were other armor bearers before us. The Ancient made the armor and then so far as we knew, that was it 'til it came to us. And we won't have it forever- we should give the future generations something to reference."

Ooooo-kay, so, there's a good point there. Before all this started, information on the yoroi was more or less nil- these days, of course, there's a couple thousand different theories floating around, most of which are totally wrong, and some of which are right for all the wrong reasons. It's kind of amusing to read that stuff, actually, but maybe it would be a good idea to get an accurate edition out. ...Not that anyone's gonna pay much attention to it, come to think of it. Even if we walked into a publishing place in full armor and offered it to an editor, they'd probably be skeptical- apparently that's been done before, by certain costumed attention-getters. We'll probably have to wait until the fuss dies down. Another century or two, at this rate...

Hmm.

Makes me wonder... The Ancient was over a thousand... Talpa was theoretically eternal... and the Warlords are about four hundred-ish... now there's a thought to bring up at dinner. Y'know, I kinda don't relish the thought of being a Ronin for centuries. Though if we are, it's a good thing I get along with- I mean, it's a good thing we all can put up with each other now. Time was, there was a good bit of tension between certain individuals. Personality conflicts, you might say, 'til we learned how to allow for it and value each other anyway. 

And getting back to the subject, I suppose if we do end up being our own 'future generation', it'd be handy to have everything written down so we can look it up if we need to. I imagine the memory gets a few holes in it by the time you're 179. If not sooner. 

Eh? Oh, hush.

Someone just said mine had a few holes well before I hit 17; I blame getting bonked over the head too much, first by my brothers and sisters and later by the Warlords. ...Cye, go read over someone else's shoulder, willya? You'll get your turn at this soon enough. ...Well, blame the terrible trio, they're the ones who took forever and a week to finish up.

Right. Now, minus observers...where to start? Okay, Yokohama. 'Cause I was born there. Lived there, grew up there, learned everything Ma could teach me in the dojo, and despite certain rumors, learned how to cook pretty darn well, thank you. When your Dad runs a restaurant, it's kind of inevitable. Anyway, enough explaining. Down to business, and I will try really hard to keep from going off on tangents...but storytellin' ain't exactly my strong point, so try and be patient if I ramble, 'kay?