“I am glad that you like it! I found it somewhere close t’ home, I think,” he said. He shared in Tooru’s excitement with a dumb grin on his face with his outh partially open. “I made the cord myself, but you can replace it with something more durable if you have it.”
His mouth closed and his expression rested as the basement was mentioned. He followed Tooru’s lead past several rooms. The small of old paper filled his nose as they arrived at the destination, flaring out along with his eyes as he looked over the collection of tomes that had been amassed. He brought his hands in front of his chest nervously as he looked at all of the books. When he heard the disembodied voice, he shuddered and put his back against a bookcase. It started to move and he stumbled forward clumsily, giving Tooru a toothy embarrassed smile before they began to descend down the stairs.
“As long as you’re sure you won’t get in too much trouble,” he said when they stood in front of the door covered in locks. As they entered each and every sign that Kakesu passed was a curiosity to him. He squinted as if he were trying to make out the lettering, but each sign was unfamiliar to him beyond recognizing the word food and the word cat jumbled in with other things that were beyond his literacy.
As they moved into the room with dirt flooring and Tooru began opening up dolls he would tilt his head to the side in alternating directions with each pop like a puppy. “There couldn’t be ‘nother one in there,” Kakesu said in disbelief, crossing his arms. “It is too small!” he protested.
“I’m on the road to sell things to bring back,” he told Tooru with a voice that drew into itself quietly. “Not suppos’ to return until I have a lot of stuff. Got to earn my keep and all. I’d probably eat better if I was a better hunter, or if I could spend more of the money I get from trading. I’d teach you about foraging, but sometimes I accidently eat the wrong kind of mushrooms,” he admitted.
Kakesu watched as Tooru unsealed a scroll. There was a look of familiarity in his eyes. “Oh! I’ve seen some people I’ve traded with doing that kind of magic before. It looks neat!” he said. “Never had it explained to me before. I’ll have to try it out!”
His first attempt at forming the seal of opening didn’t work, and even with some guidance it wasn’t budging for him, but he didn’t seem overly discouraged.
“It took me a while to figure out earth and water magics, so I am sure I’ll get it eventually, it’d sure be nice not to have to carry so much stuff!” he said as he took it and put it away into his bag. He placed the little cat figurine down on the table, but he thought that it might not be a fair trade for a demonstration and pre-sealed scroll for him to practice learning fuinjutsu with.
He started digging through his bag again, rummaging through different bits and bobs until he found something that he thought was pretty cool. He found an old koban coin that had the legal markings of the Old Land of Fire on it that he had crafted into a necklace with some plant fibers and a hole punched into the middle of it.
“What about this? Pretty cool huh?” he asked as he held it out as an offering.
Kakesu's name was asked, but he couldn't quite finish chewing before Mizutsune had started on scolding the man for making an assumption. Rather than interrupt, he scarfed down another bite of sandwich with a bit of a nervous look, seemingly confused about the whole ordeal. Then the attention was turned back to him as the Hozuki asked if he was homeless.
He snuck in one last greedy bite and then raised a finger up to indicate that he would speak once he finished chewing, his eyes falling back to another sandwich in the basket but fullness starting to settle in as he tried to hastily get the food in his mouth down. When he tried to swallow, some food got stuck in his throat and he rampantly grabbed for one of the water bottles provided in the basket. He practically ripped the lid off and started chugging the water down, then lowered his head and gasped a few times for air.
“I have a home, far aways away from here across the plains and into the for’sts headin’ towards the rising sun,” he said. “I ain’t been back there in quite a while. I’ve been far and wide and this is the best place I’ve found. The rain ain’t botherin’ me any.”
After saying that he performed a few hand seals that were not quite standard, like messy home taught somatic alternatives. He pulled some, but not all, of the water from his clothing.
“Kakesu the lesser. Nice to meetcha!” he said offering a handshake to the woman who fed him, who had his favor of the two so far for obvious reasons.
“Nin-joo-sue?” Kakesu said with a look of confusion. “Nope, I don’t know any ninja stuff, miss!” he said. He didn’t really understand that what he was doing was ninjutsu, if it wasn’t apparent.
He began making a few hand seals and some of the soil beneath the sand started to rise up in front of him to shape the sand into a little tower like one that might be made from a bucket. Afterwards he did a few more hand seals with the tides to pull a bit of the water to fill in a little “moat” around it.
“Per-tty cool huh?” he said. “I figured out how to do two kinds of magic, I bet you could do one too if you tried,” he said.
A harsher waver rolled in and washed his little tower down, the sand around its base collapsing in on itself.
“Dang it,” the boy said.
Last Edit: Oct 28, 2021 18:07:24 GMT by Kakesu Aoki
Kakesu finished nibbling on his fried good, when a stranger in a white coat appeared. Finished chewing and gave the man a friendly wave while he nibbled off little bits of leftovers that remained on the little skewer.
“It all seems pretty magical to me mister, the rain don’t bother me none!” Kakesu said with an upbeat voice. “I’ve never eaten so good than being in this place!” he said glancing left and right with a hand out to imply that he meant the entire city.
After a few moments a woman approached with a basket that she promptly handed to him. His face lit up with excitement as he peered inside as he began going through it. Although he had just eaten, the road and lack of consistent meals had left him a scrawny lad and his body jumped at the opportunity for more sustenance.
“Thank you!” he said. “See,this place is great!” he said before taking a sandwich to his lips. He wasn’t used to bread, it wasn’t something he had very much in his travels, but it was pretty good.
The food was distracting to him, and as she inquired if the two were related he wasn’t really paying attention. He gave her a thumbs up with his mouth full of food to imply he agreed with whatever she was saying while his mouth sang with the flavors of the most modern city in the world. “Mhm!”
It might have seemed like he were agreeing that the man was his dad, but he was really just hyper focused on eating and was trying to look greatful and polite.
He laughed at the thought of trekking back into that strange place with Tooru. “I shoulda, I started gettin’ a bit braver with that kind of thing lately,” he said as he felt the coins in his pocket that he had taken from the purse Ms. Makoto’s nice dog had brought to him. “Finder’s keepers seems like a good philo-osophy.”
He went silent and mouth flattened over the course of the rest of the conversation.
“Family,” Kakesu repeated as he continued to gaze over the city in all of its splendor. There was a softness in his voice, like perhaps his breath was taken away from him. He turned back to look at the boy of similar appearance with a very dissimilar life. His smile was a bit meek for a moment but replaced with his normal grin shortly after. “Yea that sounds like a good idea. I’d love to see your house if it isn’t too much of a bother.”
As they arrived at the peak his eyes would widen further as the expanse of city became even more apparent. He shook his head no, but found his breath taken away by the site. He would take in everything that Tooru could point out to him with a good deal of interest, even when he didn’t even understand what the meaning of certain things were.
Arriving at Tooru’s home, again Kakesu was impressed, though perhaps not as much as he was at the tower. “I sort of expected you all would have one of those big tower buildings per family,” he said with a laugh as he wondered just how many people lived in this city.
The hanging bones on the way inside the house caught him by surprise, but they were actually somewhat familiar to him as his own family had hung bones as a means of alarm. He wasn’t sure if they served the same purpose here or not.
He stepped carefully behind Tooru avoiding run ins with all the clutter. His eyes were scanning all the cool things lying about, taking note of what they were for the sake of his own curiosity. “Haha, yea it is super cramped in my house too,” he said but kept his eyes from Tooru as he spoke it. He let out a sigh as they left the room and continued exploring things with his eyes.
When the food arrived, he looked down at the plate that was laid before him and his mouth began to water. He looked up at Tooru with a mouth agape. “This is so much, are you sure this is just for me?” he said with surprise. Assuming there was assurance, he would start on the steak without putting much seasoning on it at all. Just the luxury of fresh meat was nice to him. “I used to have fresh meat sometimes at home… father’s a good hunter…”
As he ate there was a small tear that rolled down his eye. He wiped at it and continued eating.
“S-Sorry,” he said. “I haven’t had anything but mushrooms in a few days,” he said with a light laughter.
He tried a little bit of everything that Tooru had brought for him, finishing up a lot more of the proteins than anything else. His body had been crazing it. For a person from the forest his eating habits weren’t too bad. He ate slowly and didn’t stuff himself like a barbarian, although he had a bad habit of making sounds of joy as he ate.
“That- was delicious!” he said patting his tummy. There was still probably a quarter of the food left on the plate, but he couldn’t think of eating anything more than that.
“So, you’re a shinobi, right?” he asked. “I always thought that was really cool. I like to collect those throwing star things,” he said. He reached into his bag and started to place his collection on the table. He had a few from the Hidden Stone, one from the Hidden Sound, and one from the Hidden Mist that was tarnished with rust. They were all roughly the same concept but had slightly different sizes and cuts to them.
It might have become obvious he was hoping to get more shinobi gear to add to his collection with the things he had to bargain. It was his polite way of starting up negotiations.
Last Edit: Oct 28, 2021 6:39:11 GMT by Kakesu Aoki
Kakesu had managed to wander off on his own inside of the big city after meeting with Tooru. Well, maybe wander off wasn’t the right term, but that was a tale for another day.
With a fistful of change that he had acquired back in the Land of Fire, he approached a cherry red merchant stall that smelled of meat, grease, and batter. He spotted the fried treat on his initial trek through the city and after having gone on several wrong turns down different alleyways he had finally made his way into the market area.
He wasn’t quite sure what he was eating. It tasted like beef, but it had batter around it and was very rich and salty. He was somewhat used to the salted taste because he used it to preserve his own meals on the road.
He noticed while he walked and munched that he looked sort of out of place in the city. His clothes were made for keeping hidden in the forest, and many of the people here were better dressed for the rain. His clothes seemed to just absorb the water and kept him drenched and darkened the green into more of a dark and drab color.
He found a nice awning outside of an old theater that looked abandoned. He decided to take advantage of it to get out of the rain and better preserve the warmth of his treat. He couldn’t help getting the feeling that he was being watched though.
Last Edit: Oct 30, 2021 6:39:24 GMT by Sharp: Topic is full now!
“I um… I couldn’t read em, must have been writing in some strange language,” he fibbed. He couldn’t read any language, so how could he have been sure. “It seemed like the kind of place that they didn’t want people in. Whoever it belonged to. I bet they had some cool things to trade for though.”
Or take…
Upon mention of trading some of his things, he lit up with activity as he started to dig through his bag. He pulled out a maneki neko cat figurine that was black and white and could fit in the palm of his hand. It held a paw up in greeting. He presented it to Tooru with a grin on his face. “I got this really far to the east,” he said. “It was in a village with a lot of hot springs, which had a lot of old people, but not a lot of people my age. They were pretty nice though, I bought this there hoping to trade it. I’d honestly trade it for a hot meal. I haven’t been home in a long time, and I usually have t’ eat whatever is in the wild. Maybe you have somethin’ to spare at your house. Wait do you live by yourself?”
As the elevator reached the top and the doors opened up into the overlook, he lost track of the conversation for a moment as he felt the weight of the great height that they had climbed to. Even as someone who had climbed mountains before, the sheer drop down into the cityscape below made his mouth fall ajar.
Still, he showed only a small hesitation, he eventually walked right up to the railings and looked straight down with his chest hanging halfway over.
Kakesu glanced over with his mouth slightly ajar in surprise as Tooru seemed to dismiss the business as the norm. He looked at the lift with a bit of confusion at first, until he saw an adjacent lift moving upwards. Childlike wonder continued to be written on his face as he took a step inside the strange moving closet.
“I am from well… the for’st,” he said. “Somewhere in between Tsuchi and Hi no Kuni, I think. We don’t really pay mind to those kinds of things.”
As the elevator began moving, he braced against the wall for a moment. He wasn’t afraid of heights, having climbed many slopes with the help of doton to make the ascents, but the mechanical movements brought on by the unseen lift operator came as a surprise to him. Without knowledge of how it worked it seemed like some sort of magic must have been at play.
“I’ve been all over and haven’t seen something like this before, too many stairs to climb I reckon,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. He thought to himself trying to think of some sort of wonder that he had come across that might match up with the marvel of this city. “This one time, I accidently wandered into a tunnel with some strange patterns on it. It went really far down, and eventually there were electric lights sort of like what you see in the city around here.”
“I’d sure appreciate it, I ‘magine I’d get lost runnin’ around here all by myself,” Kakesu admitted. “You mean we can go up on one of those big things? That sounds funner than getting lost, that’s for sure.”
He continued forward, following the lead that the shinobi gave him. As they walked he responded to the other question. “I wanted to see what kinda people lived in a place like this, the man with funny mask was pretty weird, but I guess it can’t be so bad with a nice person like you around.”
There was a smell thick with fired food as the passed some simple stalls on the way to the skyscraper. He looked over all the food options, seeing some food that he recognized and others that he did not. The people out and about often had umbrella they carried opened up. His ears could hear the sounds of music playing over strange devices hanging from low points of skyscrapers, speakers that had covers installed to keep the rain off: not that he knew what they were.
“Is it always so busy?” Kakesu asked. Even though it was just a normal day, the number of people out and about were more than he was used to seeing in an average town. “Do you ever get lost?”
Last Edit: Oct 11, 2021 23:56:03 GMT by Kakesu Aoki
Kakesu wouldn’t say anything in response. As Benkei had ascended alone, fear had driven him to use his surface walking to start climbing up and avoiding the stairs themselves. When he peaked up over the side of the stairwell, he was the swordsman stabbing and killing the strange being.
He slid back down the stairs and got back into the place he was standing before, a tear coming down his eye that he wiped away before the shinobi returned.
He walked outside following Benkei as they came back out and escaped the stench of the hovel. There was a gruesomeness to it all, and he felt like he was in a waking nightmare. He was silent for a good while.
“What the hell… was that?” he suddenly asked in a raised tone. He thought he knew the answer, but he didn't want to believe it.
Last Edit: Oct 11, 2021 18:08:25 GMT by Kakesu Aoki
“Oh thank you!” Kakesu said. He quickly scrambled to stuff his things back into his pack: a good number of medicinal herbs inside of cloth bags needed tied back up, a couple of strange jade crests he picked up somewhere on the road, wooden carvings but no carving knife, little woven bracelets, and other odds and ends. His hands were quick and he got it all packed away, swinging it back over his back.
He turned and noticed the other boy was still around him. He nodded as he realized he was being escorted and followed them into the city. He gave a small laugh and returned the smile to them with his eyes shut.
“Well I din’t even know I had a cousin in Ameg-amega-... the city!” he said. His voice didn’t seem to have any sarcasm in his voice. Whether that meant he actually believed it or if he was just really slick about his joking was for the other boy to decide.
He turned his attention back to the city, his eyes gawking the towering buildings and blinking at all the lights. It was a sight to behold. He couldn’t believe that he was here. Not even the rain drops getting in his eyes could stop his moth-to-the-flame gawking.
“Wow! You live here? It is even bigger up close!” he said. Just as much as the stranger was captivated by the world outside of this place, Kakesu imagined what it must be like to make this place a home. Each building probably had a different story, just as many as the paths that he had walked along the world’s trails. “I am Kakesu, what’s your name?” he asked without taking his eyes off the city for a second.
“Well thanks Miss Makoto!” Kakesu said. “This one’s on the house, just tell your friends about Kakesu’s traveling empor-Re-um and magic lesson school.”
He yawned a bit and started making his way back over to the tree where he was resting his back on before. The nice sum of money he had swiped from the purse was payment enough. When he slumped down he looked over to the woman and smiled, although there were some small bags formering under his eyes.
“It was real fun to play with your dogs,” he said in a soft voice as he leaned his head back, his eyes blinking rapidly.
Only moments later, a small snore began to rumble from his lips. He had managed to tire himself out for the day, and he had little fear of sleeping in the wilderness. His mind would race with dreams of having a dog of his own to play fetch with, and later turned to a nightmare about a woman with an ugly purse chasing him around.
Kakesu’s hood draped over his hair as he moved with nervous excitement towards a place that he had long dreamed of visiting. A vast cityscape that he had often peered at in the distance. It was a place that his folks thought was sinful, but that did little to satiate his curiosity about it. He trudged across an open plain through mud and rain to get there.
His first obstacle to entry was a checkpoint that stood on the outskirts. There were other travelers gathered under an outdoor weather shelter with a glass roof. Lines of tables were present as everyone was made to remove their belongings for search. Shinobi in white uniforms with rebreathers over their mouths and noses patrolled the ground, stopping occasionally to sift through people’s goods for weapons. The sound of muffled radio traffic that followed them around was alien to young Kakesu.
He looked around confused, staring in ignorance at the instructions printed on the wall. Someone eventually came and began rummaging through his stuff, but he wasn’t carrying any sort of weapons.
“What is your lot number?” the man checking his things asked through his rebreather, his voice sounded metallic like a radio transmission.
“My what?” Kakesu asked in confusion.
“Your lot number,” he asked again, pointing at the sign.
Kakesu squinted at the sign, pretending to read it. “Uhhhhh K? K-234?”
“What, are you messing around kid?” the guard asked.
Kakesu looked like he was in some trouble with the security. He looked left and right with eyes begging for help from the other travelers, or anyone really. He couldn’t read, so he had no idea what to do.
That sounds great! Maybe the trouble they unseal is in an undercity/sewer type thing, but we can get things going and move towards the peril midway through.
