Tell Me a Story

Once he was finished with the laborious process of securing a stable source of employment for the foreseeable future (for all that was worth), Ashitaka decided to go on a little self-guided tour of the grounds before taking a look at his new apartment. Which is a fancy way of saying he went around window-shopping and gaping like a tourist. It was actually fairly remarkable how much of civilization he was exposed to in the five short years since he was taken in from the wilds. And the Heavenly Emporium seemed to take all of that in spades and pack it into a floating island the size of an average Clan District. He perused the curious, souvenirs, and other decorative miscellany with the childlike wonder that was probably the first age-appropriate thing he felt in recent memory. Before long, his "Heavenly Emporium" notebook was filled with drawings and detailed narratives of virtually everything he laid eyes on. Every random object was its own image and story, preserved for time untold in the pages of a little book, written in handwriting so neat it could be mistaken for typeset and sketched with remarkable capture.

But that meant he needed to get more notebooks, so he stopped wandering and started actively looking for a place that sold such things. Unfortunately, it was much easier to find places that sold pre-written books already laden with other people's ideas, observations, and fantasies than it was to find ones that sold empty books that could be filled. In fact, he didn't find what he was looking for until on a spur of irritated compulsion, he entered a place selling "office supplies" and found an entire aisle of the things. Relieved that this leg of his journey was nearing its end, he got a wheeled cart and basically emptied the shelves of the items he sought. Much to his delight, he was allowed to use the cart to take them to his apartment since the entire island was the Emporium, so after spending the 5,000 Ryo on writing paper, he started pushing it home.

He would stop every block or so and sit down to fill another notebook with more of the things he encountered. The names of buildings and their contents, streets and map sections; and of course the stories behind their construction and/or acquisition and histories leading up to this evening, if one of their workers was nearby to tell him. Naturally, that person's name, general appearance, speech patterns, resting stances, disposition, and talents were also included. He didn't have to pry too hard in most cases. People seemed to like telling him things, so he took notes. At the rate he was going, by the time he reached his apartment, he'd have at least 10 if not 12 completed books of information about everything in the Emporium according to everyone in the Emporium.

Sayuri had been having fun, relatively speaking, since her arrival at the Heavenly Emporium. What had started as an excursion to rid the area of bandits had ended in a blessedly blood soaked massacre. It had been so successful that she was still in a good mood and had decided to sit outside on a bench to draw. The fort she had been at had inspired her with many new ideas for her ice castle and she wanted to draw them out before they faded away. She sat with her legs crossed beneath her long white dress, one bare foot poking out and her notebook on her lap. Her hand moved furiously across the page as she drew, her face scrunching up occasionally as she tried to remember exactly what the ravine fortress had looked like.

She had washed herself clean of the blood and gore earlier, even changed into some fresh clothing since her other dress was beyond ruined. She was surprised that her long hair had even come clean, light as it was; it was always a delight to see it turn from pale blonde to red and back again. Sitting in the late afternoon sun her eyes began to grow tired as the light dimmed, and she would close her book with the pencil inside to mark her place. Rolling her shoulders back and sitting up straight she would examine her surroundings with her bright blue eyes.

There were more people here than she would have preferred. Alive ones anyway. But even she didn’t feel like testing the ‘neutrality’ law just yet. As she looked around at the various citizens and merchants her gaze would settle on a lone man holding a broom, sweeping endlessly at what appeared to be nothing more than time wasted. A look of hunger would darken her visage as she imagined making him eat the broom. It would hurt quite a bit she imagined, though she wasn’t sure how long he would be able to scream with the wooden handle blocking his airway and then piercing either through his airway or his stomach. She didn’t particularly care which it might end up in, she only wanted to punish the man for his lies. Peering around further she noticed a young boy pushing a cart full of notebooks. She would watch him curiously as he would stop periodically and speak with someone and then write at length in a book. She would keep watching him as he stopped and did this several times, heading it seemed to straight past where she sat.

It was hard not to notice when you were being watched. Especially if you were someone who went from being raised by wild animals to living the life of a ninja with a sought-after bloodline, and in neither case was even home ever safe. Most especially when you were a Sensor, always at least partially in tune with your immediate surroundings. As soon as he felt one specific person's eyes on him for five consecutive seconds, he activated his sensing field, quickly tracing the unique tension back to a chakra type he'd never encountered before. It seemed comprised of... Wind and Water? How fascinating. He was going to have to make a note of that one.

His eyes followed the intrusive gaze back to its source and found those of a decidedly pretty, pale young woman. He would have assumed she was an Otsu had he not already felt the absence of that distinction in her chakra. That was a relief, but she was still staring, and living in a village where three-quarters of the population had weird shit they could do with their eyes and most of those being things like paralyzing him, inflicting psychological trauma, et al, and the others could poke holes in his chakra system with their fingertips; well as a rule being stared at tended to make him feel uncomfortable. So, being the mature 11-year-old that he was, he of course stared back. I will win this...

His participation in the impromptu staring contest was interrupted by a man with a broom. He could tell on sight somehow that the boy was a "good listener" and thus proceeded to regale him with what was set out to be a decidedly one-sided conversation about his job, his hometown and how Ashi should try to marry a girl from the area, and a lot of other things that most people weren't interested in hearing but which nonetheless spewed at each other because it did stave off the crushing silence that the unintelligent simply couldn't handle.

Sayuri was surprised when the young boy caught her gaze and stared back at her. He saw her, and that was something that did not happen very often. Her head would turn slightly as she regarded him curiously, besides his age she didn’t think he looked very much like he fit in a city of merchants. Like her he seemed more interested in the city itself than the people in it, at least based on what she thought he might be writing. Being that she was not in the habit of speaking with other people about their interests, and she’d only met one other person that wrote consistently in a notebook, she assumed the boy would be doing the same thing. Probably commenting on the architecture, using it as inspiration for some castle he planned to one day build. Sayuri had moderately fond memories of her time with Diana here a year prior, the unpleasant bits were mostly glossed over in her mind - replaced with the memory of sweetened tea and lemon bars. And of course the sharing of fantastic drawings of crystal and ice castles.

As she mulled thoughts of times past over in her mind she kept her blue eyes on the boy trying to figure out what he was doing. At least until her line of sight was rudely cut off by the liar with a broom. Her mind reeled with indignation, at the sheer audacity of this worthless human being to interrupt her as though she wasn’t even there. Her mind screamed with rage as she called to her Angel, cursing the very air this foul miscreant dared to breathe. She gripped her notebook tighter in her small hands, fighting against her nature as she considered how she should handle this. The Sayuri from a year before would have just melted into the background, hurt but content to be left alone. This one though, the one that had just come back from slaughtering dozens of wicked men wanted desperately to punish the liar. Her bright blue eyes would fade to white as ice overtook them and her rage simmered beneath her skin. She was never truly alone anymore, not in her mind, but in body she was. She knew that if she chose to punish this man that Azrael and Sero would not be able to help her. With a small defeated sigh she would turn her thoughts from retribution to a new course of action.

Opening her notebook again she would turn to a new page and in elegant cursive writing pen out a note; Is the liar bothering you? Carefully tearing the note from her book she would fold it, close her notebook once more and move quietly padding on bare feet over to where the boy stood. She walked deliberately around the phony with a broom, taking pains to ensure that she was out of his reach before approaching the boy and holding out the note to him. She would wait to see if she had managed to capture his attention and then offer a quick nod to indicate that the note was for him should he notice her standing there.

The old man droned on and on, and as he did, Ashitaka grew steadily more remorseful of his decision to embrace being a "good boy" and remain quiet and attentive when adults were speaking to him. Then the woman he'd caught staring at him before stood and approached the two of them, rolling up behind the custodian like a fog bank bearing down on a noisy raven, despite the swapped difference in their respective sizes. By the time she had moved within what would have been ordinary speaking range, the boy had stopped writing and was now simply holding his notebook down in front of himself and wearing a plastic smile that would have made any sales representative proud. The man, who had by this point begun repeating himself for the third time and treating Ashi like he was failing to understand something very basic and equally important, finally picked up on the woman's presence and began hitting on her. Apparently, he was oblivious or apathetic to the stark change in her disposition. The child was neither and subconsciously took a step back as his social assailant took the imminent proximity of a mountain lion for an invitation to try to pet it.

He found a folded piece of paper in his left hand, wondering how it got there while his right hand moved of its own volition to deposit the currently-unusable notebook in the section of the hand cart where he'd been storing the notebooks that he'd started writing in. It was notebook paper, and while he certainly had no shortage of it at this point, he didn't remember tearing out any of the pages. Since he wasn't the center of attention at the moment, he decided to seize the opportunity to open and read it. Although he was somewhat nervous about the prospect of being surprised by a particular seal that would activate with such a disturbance; he hoped that he'd correctly gauged that she didn't have the kind of personality that would do such a cruel and meaningless thing. And he was correct, it seemed. Instead of an explosion, there was, of all things, a note on the piece of notebook paper. What a marvel of an idea.

Specifically, it was a strange question written in a script as beautiful as its owner and seemingly rife with contempt for the only mildly annoying old man, leading the boy to cock his head slightly as one would expect of a puppy. Well, Ashitaka certainly didn't know how she knew he was a liar. Nor did he know why she would think he was if she didn't know. But a question asked begged answering, whether the answer he had was a good one or not. While their haunter's vapid flirtations meandered off into more stories about past events that may or may not have happened, and people that were at best likely only relevant to himself, he quickly wrote in his response and slipped it back to her. Compared to her flowing script, his own precise, almost cut-in handwriting looked all the more artificial.

The old man is bothering me, yes. It is what they do. To get mad at them for it is to get mad at the rain for falling on my head.

"Sir, please. It's becoming clear that I've taken up far too much of your time. It'd be terrible if you had to do a rushed job just because I kept you from your duties," he said as he poured more artificial warmth into his tone and in so doing felt something dying inside him that he didn't previously know was alive. He folded the paper back up precisely along the creases she put in it and distracted him with false concerns for his relationship with his shift manager while a flick of his hand would send the note paper spinning away from the group for a few seconds before it returned to pass directly in front of the woman's chest, affording her the opportunity to catch it if she so chose.

Sayuri was unsure what the exact repercussions would be if she became violent towards this man, and she wondered what exactly would constitute ‘violence’. She had taken great pains to avoid interacting with the broom wielder, and yet it seemed that she mistakenly pinned a note to her person with the words ‘Please bother me’ on it. So when a series of events occurred that she had not noticed she was both slightly confused and terribly enraged. At some point she had failed to notice the boy taking the note from her hand, or at least she assumed that was what happened based on the fact that he now had it and she didn’t. She mused that it was entirely likely that her attention had been too focused on sudden and very inappropriate comments from the liar. She’d had this problem before, in her mission with Tamwyn, and that had been. . . nearly fatal.

As she had stood paying attention to the boy, attempting to have him take the note from her, she heard the man’s monotone voice directed towards her. “Ay now, look what fell from heaven.” he would say with the slight slur of a person who imagined themselves as more charismatic than they actually were. She had already been bordering on violence before the man spoke, and now that he had, she would turn slowly towards him with a look of amusement on her angelic face and one blonde eyebrow raised. “Just like an angel, ye be.” he would say with a wink. Sayuri was a good deal shorter than the liar, the top of her head barely coming even with the man’s chest. His clothes were in disrepair and slightly soiled, as though he’d spent too many drunken nights sleeping in them on hard floors, overall his look screamed ‘laziness’. She could hear the protesting from the boy, and she would smile and let him finish before focusing all of her attention on the man who had dared to presume upon the sanctuary that was her person. She wouldn’t answer immediately, preferring to smile sweetly and slowly move up in front of him, there was just the tiniest hint of malice in her gaze as the brilliant sapphire blue faded to a snow white, frost seeming to form out of nowhere across them. The temperature around them would drop significantly and beautiful snowflakes would fall from the now overcast sky, sparkling in the light from the shops and homes on the floating island.

Turning her body so that her left side was out of the young boy’s view she would stand facing the obnoxious man. Standing on her tiptoes she would lean her palm against the sweeping man’s arm and direct her melodic and soft voice to his ear while she channeled hyoton into the hand that was touching him as two inch long claws of ice grew on her the fingers of her left hand. “There is only one Angel. My Angel of Death. And you are not him.” She would let her talons rest on the bare skin of his forearm, the man’s rolled up sleeves providing easy access to the sharp icy weapons. While the man was lazy, probably a drunk and clearly had no idea how to talk to people, he was not stupid. There was no mistaking the intent in the tiny Yuki’s eyes as her claws gently caressed the man’s flesh. The look of terror in the man’s eyes made her want to slice his arm open, rain his impudent blood down over the broom he was so intent on pretending to use. But she also desperately wanted to be able to return to Azrael and Sero, being locked in a prison or worse was not how she was going to accomplish that. With a quiet growl she would command him, “Now, begone”. And without hesitation he would drop the wooden handled broom and rush indoors, slamming and loudly locking the door behind him. With a smile she would turn back to the young boy just as a note came flying in front of her, which she would catch with her right hand and casually open and read before raising her still white eyes to the collector of notebooks. “Not a bother anymore is he?” she would say in a sweet voice as she dismissed the claws on her left hand.

‘Let it Snow’ (Yuki Weather Ability) -1 CP
‘Ice Talons’ (C-Rank Custom) -5 CP

129/135 CP

When the pale woman activated her exotic chakra, it was as though the man ceased to exist from his perspective. After all, he had just barely enough to be considered a living thing. The temperature drop made him shiver slightly, likely given how absolutely fond of the frost that plants were. But instead of trying to run or hide or fight, he simply stood and watched as she concentrated chakra into her hand while it was resting obscured from normal vision at roughly the sweeper's chest level. He heard her speak clearly of death and angels and between that and the man's mention of "heaven", Ashitaka found himself wondering just how expansive a paranormal pantheon he was dealing with. He thought that Otsusuki, gods, dryads, and bijuu were already more than enough for humanity to have to deal with.

But that didn't matter now, since the man had run off and the woman's attention had returned to him. And given that he was currently the only other person on the street, it meant that said attention was completely undivided. Not that he was afraid though, even given his track record in single combat in the past. He doubted she had the ability to kill him and if she tried it would be just another horrible scarring experience he would have to have lived through. Those had happened so frequently by this point that it was starting to get old. However, she spoke sweetly to him and he was reminded of how Ari's personality seemed to pull a complete 180 without indication as to how or why. This in turn left him wondering if this was just something that girls did.

"I suppose he isn't, at that," he replied although the smile he gave her was no less fake than the one he gave the old man. He hadn't smiled genuinely since his reunion with Chika, and after how that one turned out, he didn't think he ever would again. He pounded his chest a couple times and cleared his throat, seeking to reclaim the voice he lost at the Waterfalls Black Site as he tried to think of something to say to her now that they were speaking verbally and the distraction was gone. Deciding on going for the obvious, he formed a tiny pool of pure water in his hand and reached out to catch one of the falling flakes. He was sure that given the cold and presence of water in her chakra, it was probably snow. But it could have been ash, so it didn't hurt to be sure. It melted slowly after plunging into its transparent prison, giving him a chance to briefly observe its crystalline structure. "Snow, huh? That's a neat one."

With that, he flicked the water off his hand and went over to his cart of notebooks to pull out one of those he'd been writing in, but not the one he'd been filling with excerpts from the NPC's stories. This one had The Stag Emporium- Relevant Figures emblazoned on the cover in black marker and was filled, appropriately, with information on the important people he met here. Obviously, given that he'd been here less than a day, there wasn't a lot in it. In about twenty seconds, there was a sketch of the woman about two inches tall in the upper-left corner of the notebook page, and that was when he realized that something was wrong.

"Oh! I'm sorry... could I get your name, please?" he asked as he looked back up at her. "Your Snow Release is quite interesting, and I'd hate to risk forgetting you or keeping too many people from learning in the first place when I go public with my encyclopedia."

Satisfied with herself that she had managed to put the fear of her Angel into the miscreant, Sayuri would be much more congenial. Her white eyes had the barest hint of friendliness in them as she smiled down at the boy while he agreed with her. Sayuri had no concept of the duplicitous nature that forced a smile on the boy's face. She had known only fear, and there was no room for masks when surrounded by terror; so to her, his smile was simply a smile. She would watch curiously as the brown haired young man would create a small pool of water in his hand and use it to catch a falling snowflake. She had seen a lot of different reactions to her making it snow, but this was a new one. She would lean in closer to his hand, trying to see what he was doing and would watch as the delicate crystalline formation would melt away as it touched the water. Somehow watching her tiny creation fade away into nothing made her mournful, and her smile would fade as her snow white eyes would look from his palm to meet his eyes.

As he shook the water from his hand she would stand up straight again, before deciding she was tired of standing and gracefully lowered herself to the snow covered street. Placing her own notebook and pencil into her lap and the palms of her hands flat to the ground she would slowly lower them into the fallen snow, enjoying the sensation of the ice crystals against her skin. She knew it was cold, but she didn’t feel it. The cold had never bothered her. She would begin gathering a small pile of snow in front of her as she watched the boy pull out one of his many notebooks, from what she could see it was labeled with the words ‘The Stag Emporium - Relevant Figures’ She didn’t know what that was, but he started to write in it furiously, so it was clearly important to him. She had spent most of her life in silence so sitting there while he marked in his book without either of them speaking was relatively comfortable for her. She was absentmindedly working the snow in front of her into a shape. She didn’t know what shape yet as her hands were in charge of the creation, not her mind. But she was excited to see what she’d made and her smile would return as she would look down briefly at the palm sized man she had created. She liked the little ice statue, but something about it was incomplete, and then her eyes would light up as it dawned on her what was missing. Gently setting down the figure she would gather more snow and shape it into a tiny set of angel wings, and focusing her chakra she would carefully meld the two pieces together and willing the ice to harden and take proper shape. The snow would turn to ice in her hands, giving a sharp and brilliant clarity to the small angelic shape.

The boy’s sudden exclamation would cause her to look up at him with a raised eyebrow. Her name? No one ever wanted to know that. With a cavalier shrug she would offer her first name to the boy. “Sayuri.” As he continued she would grin at his mention of ‘snow release’. It was close, and she could see why someone might make that mistake. There was quite literally snow on every available surface within her view, and to her snow and ice were one and the same. She would look at him questioningly as he mentioned an encyclopedia though. She knew very well what that was, and she wasn’t certain she wanted to be included in one. “Why would you write about me?” She would ask with a look of suspicion on her face. Since no one normally took notice of her, to find someone that suddenly took a great deal of interest was concerning. There were things - many things - that she needed to keep secret. Most of which she was sure she could keep from him or anyone simply by not saying them out loud. But she didn’t know what information could be gleaned without her assistance. She would wait for him to answer her question, gently cradling the tiny angel in her arms.  

‘Let it Snow’ (Yuki Weather Ability) -1 CP

128/135 CP

"Sayuri. Seems appropriate. It's a pretty name," he said, noting the lack of Clan Name (Probably has some kind of grief with them, like virtually everyone I've met outside of the Uchiha. Myself included. Doesn't that kind of defeat the point of Clans?) but not looking up at her as he wrote her name down and began to fill out the rest of her information based on his observations. Her estimated height and build using his own for reference, then when he started with an Occupation entry, she got aggressive. Some people had an "honest face", but this woman had an honest everything. It was bizarre. Almost as bizarre as her asking a question he'd already given her an answer to.

"I said, 'Your Snow Release is quite interesting, and I'd hate to risk forgetting about you...'" he trailed off as his hand went to his throat, confirming, of course, that the pain in it was only a phantom from his memories. He was pretty sure that he had fully physically recovered from that particular failure, but the living body was a tricky animal and regeneration seemed to follow its own rules that precluded his knowledge or consent. He flipped to a fresh page and tore it out, moving it to the front of the notebook and writing on it to resume the written communication the two of them had established earlier. He brusquely offered her the paper, too worried for courtesy.

Can you hear me? Are sounds coming out of my mouth when I speak?

It was a terrifying thought, but it would explain everything. The only people who responded when he spoke since the incident had super vision and their eyes on him. Not that people were especially inclined to listen to what he had to say, anyway. But that didn't explain his conversation with Prince Okane. Granted, for the most part the man seemed to be talking at him like most adults did, but there were things that he could only have said if he heard him speaking. Right? And he didn't appear to have a Dojutsu.

He suppressed a yawn. He always felt extra tired whenever winter hit, sometimes sleeping for days straight, and of course it felt like winter was hitting pretty hard right now with the snow woman filling the area with her cold. He lost track of how long he'd been forcing himself not to shiver. He wanted to ask her to stop doing that, but he felt like it'd be rude. And rudeness was something this conversation absolutely didn't need. Still, falling asleep while talking to somebody would probably be even more rude, and- he had to suppress a cough as the air continued cooling, shocking the moisture in his lungs. Ashitaka decided that he was definitely going to have to ask her to stop chilling the area, regardless of the offense she took to it. He'd do it as soon as she replied to his note.



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[Sensing Technique -0.2 CP

234.4/235 CP]

As the young man commented on how her name was pretty, Sayuri would grimace. She thought the name was many things, but pretty was not one of them. She had so many names now though that it hardly mattered. Daeva, Princess, Monster, Demon. . . the list went on. ‘Sayuri’ was the name that had been chosen for her before she had known who she was, a name derived from the hope of failed parents, locking her into a life of drudgery as a dutiful member of a clan that was equally uninspired. One day she would change it, one day she would stop the incessant lies that spilled forth from the masses of dead bodies that didn’t know their place yet. The thought would bring a smile to her face, only interrupted by the boy’s insistence on repeating his question to her. As though that was an answer.

For a brief moment all she could think of was ripping the boy’s throat out for his rudeness. All thoughts of behaving were gone, and in her mind's eye all she could see was red. The sweet and delicious ruby colour of blood being spread through the streets, crawling through the snow. In times like these she usually had Azrael to stop her, to calm her with his genjutsu. But at this moment she had nothing to focus on but the tiny ice figurine she had made. Without a second thought she crushed it in her hand, the two pieces separating into wings and body. The former colliding with her palm and digging in, making an uneven slice into the meat of her hand that fortunately drew her attention.

The pain from the jagged cut was exquisite and she would stare down at the wound with fascination as blood slowly seeped out of it. The calming effect was noticeable as one moment her eyes had been filled with murderous intent and the next it was as though she were intently studying an artist painting a lovely pastoral scene. As Ashitaka held out another sheet of paper she would raise her eyes to look at it, her hands in her lap as blood dripped onto her white dress. His words were odd to her, a curious thing to ask and questions that she had often screamed inside her own head as the world passed her by. Something close to sympathy would flash across her features and she would raise her white eyes to meet his. “This one hears you.” She would say solemnly, remembering the words that Azrael had spoken to her, to help heal her and to reassure her that she wasn’t alone. She hated the idea that someone else was ignored, that they felt lost like she had. She barely had a kind bone in her body, but she could empathize with the sentiment. “It isn’t snow. It’s ice.” She would say to correct him, she had meant to leave it, to allow the error. But even though it was encased in ice and madness, she still had a heart and it hurt for him.  

‘Let it Snow’ (Yuki Weather Ability) -1 CP

127/135 CP

The woman's whirlwind of emotions incited a complementary one in the boy. When she grimaced at the compliment, he remembered how she reacted to the man's pitiful flirtations and felt sorry for her, imagining that she thought every nice thing said to or about her was a lie. Then she seemed to find some kind of resolve and smile, and that brightened him up as for a moment he admired her inner strength. The very next moment, she turned on him in response to his repeated statement, and the bracer over his left hand snapped into the form of a kite shield as the one in his right grew a long katana blade with an inverted edge and its tip hooked slightly over his knuckles. When she broke the statuette in her hand, the shield and weapon blackened as chakra flowed into them, but her attention was no longer on him. She had cut herself when she broke the figurine and he was torn between helping her treat it and retaining his defenses, a position maintained by the way she looked at the splattering blood.

The note he'd written had fallen to the floor before her, and apparently in the midst of his search for enforcers looking to prevent a fight from breaking out on the hallowed grounds of business, she had read it and her personality changed again. She was soft again, empathetic and sincere as she told him that she could in fact hear him. The words promised immense relief but instead brought only confusion, largely because the woman was like a bitter wind. He took a deep breath and decided to stop letting emotions dictate the tide of their interactions. She apparently came to the same conclusion because she actually corrected is mistaken identification of her Release.

"Thank you..." The sword and shield retreated back into their homes and in the place of the former, a gunbai fan was formed, which he used to sweep the snow off his notebooks. Then that vanished too, and he plunged his hand into the curb snow-covered street and sidewalk, and ripped out some grass that had been growing between them. He scattered this grass (and more importantly its roots) over the notebooks, then made some hand seals and aimed both his palms over the cart, feeding his chakra into the plant matter. It grew and expanded, then took the form of a book shelf at first and a moment later a library fit for dolls with a steep roof and walls to protect his notebooks. Once he was satisfied with his work, he turned back to her. "Do you want me to stop the bleeding?"





_______________________________



[Techniques Used:

Sensing Technique: -0.5 CP
Hand Tool Manipulation Technique x3: -3 CP (UA)
Chakra Duet: -10 CP (UA Penalty, Senju Wood Reduction)
Four-Pillar House Technique: -3 CP (UA)

CP 217/235 (No stat changes)

Still sitting on the ground as she had been since she’d first begun crafting her delicate figurine, Sayuri moved the shattered pieces of ice off to the snow covered ground beside her. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Ashitaka had armed himself, but as usual she did nothing with that information. She had no real sense of self preservation, no actual fear of being harmed in any way. She had just recently sat in the center of a bandit fortress and had simply expected that her mission partner would keep her safe. Or not. It was a fearlessness based in madness, she was usually not noticed and had somewhere along the line begun to believe that this was akin to not being touchable. It was a skewed perception that was likely to end in her death eventually, and on that day she would likely be confused as to how it had led to it.

She would idly move her gaze from the blood pooling in her hand and onto her gown and up to watch the boy as he made his weaponry disappear and began an elaborate series of techniques with the apparent intention of taking care of his notebooks. Rising from her position on the ground she would make her way over to the bookshelf-like creation that he had made, moving around it and peering at it in awe. She found it sad that the boy could make such beautiful things and it seemed as though no one appreciated them. “This is beautiful. . .” Her words were quiet as she breathed them out, she had never seen the like before and her fascination for the blood on her hand was momentarily transferred to his creations. As he asked her if she would like him to stop the bleeding she would look down at her hand and then slowly back up to him. She really didn’t want him to, but the longer she stared at the blood the more difficult she knew it would be to remain peaceful. She also didn’t want to further perpetuate the idea that he was in some way unwanted, that his skills weren’t appreciated. So she would hold out her bleeding hand towards him and smile again. “If you want to.”

‘Let it Snow’ (Yuki Weather Ability) -1 CP

126/135 CP

She didn't react. There was neither an instinctive flinch nor a disciplined spike in readiness in response to his own. Ashitaka had no idea what to do with that. As someone who was outright feral until a few years ago, the idea of a person with no animal instincts was as alien to him as the color B minor. Even the undead puppets of the alien god-thing that could obliterate him with a thought had, however fleeting, moments of panic and rage in response to his actions. This woman had nothing, despite appearing fully human. The sheer abnormality of her absence of reflex was terrifying and strange, but the boy kept any signs of such feelings from reaching his face and body. The barest hint of fear was an open invitation to predators to make their strike.

Instead he focused on the things she did do, and say. She liked his miniature library, which was nice, but the whole reason he made it was to protect his notebooks from her snow. "Thank you." Although seemingly unfazed by the horrible violation of the sanctity of her body that was her blood spilling all over the place, she did accept his offer to make it stop. As she held out her hand to see how he'd do it, he spawned in his own a tiny clump of a dry moss and a blade of slightly sticky grass about half a meter long. He pressed the former against her wound and wrapped it in place with the latter. Then he pooled water in his hand and used it to rinse from hers the blood that had already escaped.

"For people like us, our blood is who we are," he said seriously. "It's irresponsible and dangerous to go spilling it all over the place. The vultures might find it and come to demand that our insides belong to them. And there's like, thousands of vultures. Maybe thousands of thousands."

He released her hand. He wanted to convince her to value herself, but he had no idea how. This is the kind of thing that adults were supposed to help her with, and he wasn't an adult.




__________________


Sensing Technique -0.5 CP
Four-Pillar House Technique -1 CP
Spice Shaker -1 CP

214.5/235 CP

Sayuri watched with interest as a bit of moss and a long blade of grass appeared in Ashitaka’s hand. She could make anything out of ice and snow, but this young man seemed to have power over plants. She allowed him to place the piece of moss on her wounded palm and wrap the sticky blade of grass around it. As he created water and used it to rinse the blood from her hand she would frown, but allowed it nonetheless. She was loath to see the beautiful red liquid disappear from her skin, but she resolved that she could always open it back up later if she wanted to. Her whole purpose in allowing him to heal her was to ensure he didn’t feel ignored.

She saw him take on a serious demeanour and she would study his face as he spoke. He seemed far too young to be that serious, and she wondered how long he had been ignored for to end up this way. And as he continued explaining the dangers of blood being demanded a thought occurred to her that caused her to frown once more. “Who tried to take your blood?” His insistence that someone would come and ‘demand that our insides belong to them’ made her think that he had reason to fear that outcome. She certainly didn’t. If anyone came to take her blood she would probably let them, and spend the time enjoying herself thoroughly.

As he released her hand she would hold it up closer to her face, inspecting what he had done. She had never seen healing like this before, though in truth she didn’t have much experience with healing at all. She knew how to do it, seen others do it, but she was not in the business of keeping blood inside people’s bodies. Her own included. As her mind began to work the snow around them would slow, her focus shifting to an idea that calmed her madness briefly. Having someone to care for, and to care for her had been the turning point in her life. She had no longer felt alone or ignored, with Sero and Azrael she had finally felt like she belonged somewhere. The tiniest spark of empathy lit in her frozen heart and she would look at Ashitaka imploringly. “You could come with me you know. You could belong, away from the vultures.” She had no way of knowing whether her assumptions about him were even correct. She only wished to spare someone else from the same years of suffering she had endured.

In reaction her question, Ashitaka's eyes widened, then narrowed and darted about slightly as he tried to sort out the meaning behind it. Here she was again, asking him things he thought she knew the answers to. He didn't know what to do with that, not even able to angry because he was just so confused by this woman and her strange behavior and apparent thought processes.

"What? Lady, if you're not seeking to hide your nature from Bloodline Hunters and Organ Harvesters, then why are you so jealously hiding who and what you are?" He watched her inspect the treatment, and was perplexed that her reaction was more mystified than critical. Her behavior in general led him to think that she was more like a child than he was. She acted like every experience was new. Which only amplified the emphaticness of his response to her offer. "No."

He suddenly remembered Nyg-sensei's breakdown over his having rejected a similar offer, and internally cringed. He kept forgetting how sensitive adults were. After a moment, he softened his demeanor through sheer force of will and tried to explain himself more gently. Staring at the ground, Ashitaka spoke slowly as he gathered and sorted his thoughts.

"I can't leave them behind... my weaker cousins, my village, everyone who depends on me..." He thought back to the time he was little. And even in more recent memory when he heard the murmurs in the streets. Nobody loved his Senju Clan for anything more than their blood, because the clan never gave them anything to love beyond their blood. As the orphan prince of this clan, he of course suffered at the crossroads of the worst elements of these two facts. "My clan has a reputation of cowardice. In spite of our great power, they have never sought to lead. And in times of great trouble, they could always be counted on to disappear into the woods in which I was found. I'm going to fight that reputation, and I can't do that if I become like them."

It was a great and terrible burden placed upon him as the Head of a clan older than history, perhaps even civilization. But it was a weight that he'd bear to the best of his ability. Under his domain, the name of "Senju" would be one borne with pride, not fear. No amount of their historical running and hiding had ever stopped the Blood Hunters from pursuing them with endless hunger for the power that might be obtained by ripping apart Ashitaka and his relatives. And these days, they were so near the brink of annihilation that it was rare for two Senju to see each other. So there was no choice left but to fight, and to leave upon this world marks that will not be forgotten should they pass. There were only two such marks that Ashi knew of: great acts of creation or destruction. And as far as he could tell, destruction was so popular lately as to surely go by unnoticed.

So he created. He built. He brought life into this world. He healed, where it fell within his limited ability. The world was bound by an endless and spiraling cycle of negativity, and in his desperation to see something positive in it, he chose to be a light in the endless darkness. Even if he had to be as dim and lonely as a star in the night sky, surrounded by an endless sea of blackness, that would still be better than if he wasn't there at all, or if he was contributing to that empty cold darkness in which everyone else around him suffered.

The young man’s response to her question about who had tried to take his blood was, in a word, confusing. She wasn’t sure that he’d understood what she had asked him, but her agitated mind left little room for her to ponder it. Between the pain and the blood and the interaction with the lying man earlier she was having trouble sorting through her thoughts. Even the small bit of empathy she had felt towards the boy with the moss was fading quickly under a veil of red. The boy’s emphatic ‘no’ caused her to blink and stare in stunned silence.

She was not used to being told no. In fact she couldn’t recall a time in her adult life when she had ever been told that. Her brow would furrow in obvious confusion as she tried to comprehend the boy’s answer. “No?” Saying the word out loud didn’t clear anything up for her and so she would listen quietly to his explanation for the word. It did sort of make sense, not wanting to leave behind his family. She would never leave behind Azrael and Sero if she was still alive to make that choice.

Satisfied that he perhaps wasn’t alone after all she would nod once and then gaze sadly at the quickly dissipating snow. She had stopped her channeling and her eyes were now their brilliant blue and the residual heat of the sun-warmed ground and nearby buildings was slowly melting her magnificent handiwork. “Stay then. If you change your mind though, or if the vultures come for you, come find me in Kirigakure.”

"I appreciate the offer, Sayuri-hime. But if it's not too much to ask, do you think I might visit under less dire circumstances? Like a friend might?" he asked coyly, as though he had any idea how friends regularly interacted. Truth be told, given how his interactions with "friends" have gone up to this point, he might have to just make up entirely new conditions for how the word was defined. Of course, that did burden him with the solemn duty of figuring out what to do together. "We could have tea or something, and maybe do puzzles!"

He could tell that the conversation was waning, though. Her last suggestion sounded a lot like parting words. That, combined with the fact that she was allowing warmth back into the area, indicated that she wasn't keen on sticking around for much longer. Ashitaka felt guilty for how relieving that promise seemed to be. He really didn't like the cold. He stretched, then gave Sayuri the most polite bow he could manage.

"Anyway, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day, Onee-san. You seem like a nice lady." he said by way of goodbye, then placed his hands on his cart and started pushing it towards the nice apartment Okane assigned to him. He wasn't aware of it yet, but all of the notebooks had already been soaked through and ruined, meaning that he was going to have to buy even more somewhere else.


[Exit thread.]

Sayuri would nod at the young man, a curious look forming on her face as she was called a princess. People kept calling her that, and she wasn’t one, but she was starting to think that maybe she should call herself that when making introductions. Princess Sayuri did have a nice ring to it. She would offer a smile as he asked if he could visit her as a friend. She didn’t have many friends and she rather liked the idea of adding one more to her collection. “Of course. I would like that. Make sure to dress for the cold though. I don’t like when my friends freeze”

She would curtsey in return to the boy’s bow, something she’d read in many of the books she read and she thought it was a fairly princessly thing to do. “I hope to see you soon Sapling.” She had no name to refer to him by, so she was left with the duty of providing him one so that she could reference him by it in the future when she retold her adventures to Azrael and Sero.

She would walk away from the boy and his cart and to her temporary room within the Heavenly Emporium. It had been an interesting day and she needed to make her way back to her home in Kirigakure to share everything she had learned.

{Exit Thread}