His eyes shifted between the clinking shuriken as he tried to maneuver it deftly. The art of overlapping shuriken so that one became two, three, four or five ー his instructor had shown them a trick, and from three flicks of his hand rained twenty-five shuriken. At the time the massive volley had been nothing short of impressive, and the captivated Yozei still wished to acquire that skill. Despite how immediately after his instructor had noted that such a volley would and could be deflected by any Shinobi worth a damn. [break][break]
Yozei wasn’t worth a damn, and he didn’t even know how one could quantify a damn. Take, for instance, Sagiri ー she was someone he considered to be worth a damn, but he doubted she could stop a shower of twenty-five shuriken. Light brown eyes shifted to her person, a dangerous glint took to his eyes as he palmed the shuriken. The best opportunity to strike was always when they didn’t expect it. [break][break]
“Sagiri!” He called, his hand flicked in her direction and a whirling six pointed star flicked under the tunnel’s artificial light. Crystals mostly, there was a trick to it (Yozei figured it a jutsu) that let the chamber lights mirror the world above. And, only if you were raised in the underground could you note that the afternoon was upon them. [break][break]
“We’ve got our first mission!” Yozei said as if he hadn’t thrown a shuriken at her.
[attr="class","giritext"]It sailed past, breathless as the breeze. There was no need to flinch at his antics anymore. He never had the heart to aim her square and dead, and the day that he did, she supposed she would simply have to die.
It wouldn't be the worst thing.
Sagiri glanced away from her warped reflection that trawled the topaz asterisms. Gingerly, she reached out to pull the offending weapon from where it had weakly embedded itself in a nearby wall. It used to be that they couldn't make them stick. Even now, the academy days seemed far and away.
She walked over towards him, the basket hung over one arm bouncing as she did so. The belligerent blade was offered back, but her expression was glum—though no more downhearted than usual—at his words. "Do you think it'll be dangerous..."
Half-spoken knowing that she shouldn't voice such sentiments. Half of the mind that she couldn't help it. "I found a lot of medicinal herbs, but I don't think I'm ready..."
He hadn’t known Sagiri to be animated and he hadn’t expected anything but indifference towards his threat, but still, a part of him wondered why the metal had clinked together. Why his six pointed stars had come together so awkwardly and struck in the wall a ways from his target. Yozei glanced down at his hands for a moment before taking back his shuriken and asked himself, had there been a problem with the flick of his wrist? [break][break]
“Hopefully!” Yozei sprung, excited and optimistic as he retrieved the scroll from his pouch. He had always heard talk of how Genin are given grunt work, boring and often menial tasks (and while he understood boring, he had no clue what menial meant). “You won’t be ready until you try, Sagiri! And, I’ll get as many cuts until then, but look ー” [break][break]
The scroll unfurled and he brought it to Sagiri’s face, and scrunched beside her to read it himself (he hadn’t read it before because he wanted his first mission to be a surprise!) It had a fancy title The Thorne Identity and the gist of it was that they were to inspect a rice field and pick out a terrible weed (or something like that). There was a picture of this Thorne, and it was like a double edged grain. [break][break]
“I think this is one of those menial tasks, the kind that’s perfect for you Sagiri. You’re the smartest kid I’ve ever known.”
[attr="class","giritext"]“I’m pretty good at menial tasks,” she admitted, wondering if Yozei even knew what that meant. He wasn’t one to put her down so she would just have to do it herself.
Like two birds of a feather they stuck their heads together. Sagiri was a fast reader, so she waited a little before speaking. They stood roughly the same height. It seemed such a short time ago that she and the other girls had been taller than their boyish peers, but by now they’d all shot up past them. Except for Yozei for some reason - and the thought brought a faint smile.
“Well… I guess it’s not stem rot.” Pink tickled her cheeks at the praise. “It does sound pretty interesting! But you’ll probably be bored.” She could see it now: herself hunched over the rice fields in examination, Yozei passed out on a paddy elsewhere with a cricket on his nose.
She put her hands on her hips and tilted her chin high. “It’s important, though! People get really hungry during war. So let's do a good job.”
“I won’t get bored!” [break][break] He said in protest. There wasn’t no way he would get bored on his first mission ー even if it wasn’t the danger he wanted. At the very least there was a chance he could cut himself on the thorny rice, ridiculous as it was. “One day,” Yozei began in a pensive tone. “We’ll be fighting in wars and I wouldn’t want to go hungry then, or have to eat bladed rice.” [break][break] The thought caused him to lick his teeth, blood spilled from his gums and the very real taste of iron on his tongue. He snapped the scroll shut and with it gone went the thoughts and imagery. “Sagiri! For our first mission, we have to do our very best, okay?” Yozei grinned and bumped her shoulder with his, and promptly bounced to the rice paddy field, and he warned as he remembered an important tidbit of what he just read: “We got until the sun goes down too.” [break][break] It was already midday and to say that their mission was already off on a late start was something of an understatement. Oh well, next location, a rice paddy field!
A few more words spilled out unbroken from him but those she dwelled upon. It was an off-handed comment by Yozei, but wasn’t that quite ingenious? All the skirmishes along the border involved shinobi hacking each other apart. She’d seen some of those limbs from afar. Sabotage would be much less violent.
Sagiri blinked at the little bump. “O-Oh! Till sundown? Um-”
Even if she did gently admonish his airheadedness, he was already off. “W-wait for me!”
“This is old man Ikeda’s farmland.”
She peered past hilly paddy fields, wondering if she could spot his tasseled straw hat. Orange bloomed across the reflected pools, punctured by the greenish shoots. “Do you know him? He was very nice to me, back when… um…”
He knew his way around the Land of Rice as well as anyone ー it was his home afterall, though his father and mother were always in conflict about it. His father had no intention of laying roots here, that's what he always said, which was an odd thing to say because he wasn’t a gardener. And, his mother tended to agree because she argued with him time and time again. She always got the last word in too, and he remembered those words: [break][break] There’s power here. [break][break] Back to Sagiri, Yozei knew the lay of the land but Sagiri seemed to know people. “Old man Ikeda.” He repeated and offered a grinning, “Nope! But, isn’t everyone nice to you Sagiri?” [break][break] Yozei stepped back to (struggle) peer over the paddies of the field for this old man ー nice old man Ikeda, but his brief attempt had only been met with failure. He wasn’t any taller than Sagiri (she was taller, actually) and the thought of both of them walking through until they found him made him suddenly impatient ー there had to be a better way. The thought came to him, and he acted quickly! [break][break] A short sprint to Sagiri ended with him leaping in the air onto her back, hands pushing down on her hair to steady himself. The childish kekeke left him as he scanned the fields (for until he was allowed on her shoulders). In his quick cursor scan, he thought he spotted something in the distance, something orange that stuck out like an eyesore in the fields of green. “There!” He would shout pointing a finger in the direction.
[attr="class","giritext"]"But, isn’t everyone nice to you Sagiri?”
The smile wavered. Unconsciously, she adjusted the headband that slung over the side of her face. It’s all in your head, they would tell her, lips curled in amusement.
Turning away for just a moment was all the time he needed to pounce on her back like an indigenous tiger. She stumbled forward a bit, the breath knocked out of her small lungs: “H-hey!” All she could do in the wake of his gremlin laugh and hair pulling was blow her own strands out of her face in indignation, and making sure he didn’t fall.
“Shouldn’t I be the one on top?” she mumbled to herself, ever resigned. “I think I’m lighter…”
But Yozei gave her a direction, and she obediently trodded along like a trusty steed. Past several squares of fields and with care not to slosh about too much in the ankle-deep water. When they came close enough to their market she stopped suddenly. It was too late to crouch among the rice screen like she was urged to, but her fingers tightened on Yozei’s legs as the strange man turned towards them.
He wore a big smile as Sagiri carried him through the paddy fields ー if it were one of his brothers they would have dunked in the water. His sisters would probably have said that being a Shinobi is more serious than that ー Sagiri was nicer than them all in that regard. [break][break]
The man was old (older than his parents at least) and had one of those aged and tired faces that comes after a life of manual labor, and a striking set of eyes that judges everything and is grumpy. Before Yozei could prompt his surprise the man’s eyes had judged them both and said promptly: “This ain’t a playground for kids. Get the hell outta here, I got work to do.” [break][break]
“We’re Shinobi, mister!” Yozei shot back and proudly tugged his headband forward, and gave a light tap of Sagiri’s. “Today’s our very first mission!” At this he heaved and ho’d himself forward and off of Sagiri’s shoulders. He landed and crouched in ankle deep water and stayed there posing after finishing: “And we’re here to save this paddy field!” [break][break]
Very much unamused by Yozei’s antics, the old man instead looked to Sagiri mostly in the hope that she would take away the kid she was babysitting.
