Sasuke Uchiha Learns to Ride a Unicycle

For some reason unknown to even him, Sasuke Uchiha, black haired and dark-eyed, was attempting to learn to ride a unicycle. While he was generally successful in whatever task he set his mind to, his efforts to mount the one-wheeled machine were proving fruitless. For the fifteenth time that day, he attempted to take control of the reckless vehicle.

“Dammit.”

Sasuke teetered off the unstable platform, landing deftly on both feet.

“How does that dumb bastard do it? I’m a more powerful ninja than he’ll ever be, and yet I can’t master this infernal machine?”

He again mounted the narrow leather seat, placed his feet on the pedals, and carefully, slowly, attempted to balance the solitary wheel as he wobbled back and forth. His next fall was not as graceful.

“Fuck!”

The unicycle crashed into the dirt with a clatter of light metal. Sasuke’s blue coat was covered in brown dust.

Underneath a nearby tree, Sakura was sitting, reading a book. “Why are you doing this to yourself?” she asked, looking up from her novel.

Sasuke muttered something indiscernible under his breath.

“You need to speak up, I can’t understand you.”

“Because Naruto said I couldn’t,” he said more clearly. Sasuke picked up the unicycle once more, and once more sat atop it, desperately trying to focus his energies into not falling onto the ground. He could balance deftly on the narrowest branch, and yet he couldn’t hold this silly machine upright? For once, it seemed he had discovered a method that worked. The cycle shivered like a narrow birch in a strong storm, but he managed to make a single pedal forward, then another. A smug grin grew across the edgy ninja’s face. But it was not to be. Whatever nonsensical logic underlay this universe continued to work against him, and the single wheel caught on a tiny pebble, and he crashed face first into the hard packed earth.

Sakura covered her mouth with a hand, holding back a chuckle as Sasuke dusted himself off. His face was beet red with anger, and a trickle of blood ran from his forehead.

The ninja looked at the crashed unicycle with a pained look of sheer malice. “Goddammit!” he roared. He kicked the unicycle into a pile of its wrecked brethren and shot it with a fireball. The air filled with the acrid scent of molten metal and burning rubber.

A squeaky trumpet honked twice. “Sasuke, my friend!” Naruto said in his chainsmoker’s voice, wheeling by on his unicycle, a black and brass bike horn held high and blaring. “Why do you look so glum? Couldn’t learn to balance, huh?”

“Shut the fuck up, Naruto,” Sasuke said. “One day, I’ll be the most powerful ninja in the world, and it won’t matter that I can’t ride a unicycle.”

Naruto laughed. “It might not matter to the rest of the world,” he said. “But it’ll matter to you.”

It took Naruto six weeks to recover in the hospital after Sasuke beat him within an inch of his life.