Kakesu tensed as the figure emerged before his vision, but when the face revealed itself to be an older teenager or young man he relaxed if only somewhat slightly as Benkei’s hands settled back down. His eye caught the hilt of a blade, true to the shionbi’s title. He kept his position against he back of the tree, leaning his back left foot against it.
Cute as a kitten? He is messing with me right?
“I think that’s why they chose me for the job, actually,” Kakesu replied rubbing the back of his head. “You’d be surprised though, all kinds of bad people out there that don't care for strays.”
He kept his demeanor regulated to a friendly smile, but his eyes were wide open like a scared rabbit. He wasn’t quite convinced he wasn’t in danger yet, and it was written in his body language. A cool breeze broke stillness around them and set fallen leaves adrift rustling past the gap between them.
“I hope I’ve not gotten so lost that I’ve wandered into your territory, I didn’t mean to trespass if I did- promise!”
- You no pinch!
Last Edit: Sept 10, 2021 19:05:02 GMT by Kakesu Aoki
“’Eeeey! That’s for sure!” Kakesu cheered as the fish stopped squirming, looking at the lifeless fish. He glanced at Yusuke’s eyes, noticing the change, and finding himself curious, indicated only by a brief pause and stare. Too polite to ask, he looked down at the fish. He hadn’t gotten a good look at what he had thrown until he saw it pulled out. It was the kind of thing shinobi carried… along with big money. Thoughts of home and his duty came to mind briefly.
He scrambled into his pack and started pulling out some lemon pepper spices that were sure to up the flavor profile and started oiling the pan and getting it hot. He also gathered an assortment of little gemstones and shells he had collected in hopes of perhaps getting Yusuke’s interest to make a purchase.
“You know how to clean a fish?” he asked, holding up a small filleting knife that was a bit crude with a wooden handle. If refused he’d start cleaning it himself. He was too hungry to teach the skill if the other wasn’t experienced or didn’t want to sully his hands.
Kakesu had become aware of the number of shinobi moving in and out of the area. It was a strange occurance to see all the different headbands, some familiar and some not. He wasn't privy to why they were all gathering or why they weren't killing each other, but it seemed like a once and a life time event. He had little left to peddle though, except for his skills.
He had tried his best to make a sign, but had to get help from another commoner. The writing nailed to a tree read
"Watur Lesins for cheep"
For him it seemed perfectly fine, the random characters meant nothing to the illiterate boy. He was gathered near a small pond near a crossroads that he kept observing people with headbands pass by. He had not had any takers yet, he had hoped to make money off of practicing suiton, so that he'd kill two birds with one stone... but people just laughed as they walked by, leaving him in low spirits. He sat with his back to the tree, with the sign above him.
Off the beaten path with a heavy pack on his back, Kakesu was far from a trained padfoot. Noticing him as easy as any other civilian. He stopped in his tracks, a soft whistling ending the moment it came in earshot of the voice that demanded his attention. He turned to face the forest in the direction of its source, unable to pick out the silhouette among the vegetation.
“Kakesu the lesser,” he said in his most professional tone. In some cases, politeness had saved him, but still he found himself backing up against the base of a gnarled tree many times his height. Giving some safety to his back. “Just a traveling merchant, my wares are useless to highway men.”
Partially true, partially a lie. He carried medicinal herbs from his home to sell but had bartered for all manner of things. Money, small ninja tools like kunai, bottled beverages, seashell, and gemstones. “I’ve given you my name, so how about yours, mister?”
He tried to sound confident, but he had been forced to flee from many a bandit on the road. There was a nervousness in his voice that he could not hide, and a small shivering as he scanned for the voice of the stranger.
Last Edit: Sept 9, 2021 0:15:20 GMT by Kakesu Aoki
Kakesu had turned his attention towards the waves, pushing chakra into his feet to push himself up towards the surface. He’d start riding the wave, his legs shaking as he wobbled trying to keep his footing which was much harder than it was on flat water. A wave in his peripheral vision broke his concentration and the young traveler wiped out, splashing forward for, and disappearing for a moment beneath the surface of the waves.
He emerged a few moments later, spitting a bit of salt water from his mouth with an exaggerated noise. He took in a deep breath and wiped his eyes, scanning for the figure that had beckoned to him with a hand cuffed to keep the sun from blinding him. His eyes fell on the fair-haired girl in the distance and he finally smiled and waved back to her before another wave battered him forward again.
He crawled out of the water and approached. Bare chested with his trousers rolled up over his knees and waterlogged. He was thinner and less muscular than shinobi were. A civillian through and through.
“Oh hi, I didn’t see you there,” Kakesu said as he got closer, goosebumps raising as the breath of the sea met his wetted skin. “I hope I didn’t bother you, it’s okay if I use the beach here?”
Last Edit: Sept 7, 2021 12:54:07 GMT by Kakesu Aoki
“Kakesu,” he responded, offering Yusuke a half-salute with a grubby right-hand brushing against his auburn hair. “That’s a far distance, Yusuke. I hope- Oh!”
A pull at the end of the line! Kakesu stood up as the rod began to arch forward. His breathing stopped as he began pulling the line back and fixing the strand beneath his arm: a necessity for his rudimentary pole that lacked a reel.
He backed up as well, coming closer to Yusuke as the water rippled and a small shadow began to show in the water. In closer proximity the minty smell of the aloe that Kakesu used as a hygiene product would be more apparent, as would an underlying scent of sweat from his well-traveled clothes.
It was a larger fish, and he was having trouble with getting it out of the water.
“Hold onto this!” he said shoving the rod into the hands of Yusuke as he kept a cinch on the line already pulled. He focused chakra into his feet and began stumbling over the water, tugging the line with a green bass jumping in and out of the water as it was pulled ever nearer.
He lost his footing a bit and began sinking down but was right on top of the fish now. He clamped his hands on the end of the line and pulled it forward before stumbling back towards shore and falling on his ass in a foot of water. He had a grip on the squirming bass, but it was trying to wrestle free!
Last Edit: Sept 4, 2021 20:16:23 GMT by Kakesu Aoki
Kakesu turned quickly to the sound of a voice behind him, cutting the whistle of his tune short. His eyes held a startled look revealing he had been caught completely off guard. Within a moment his anxiousness melted away into a smile.
“There might be, for a helping hand,” he said as studied the dark-haired person standing before him. A bit older than himself, and when he stood a bit taller more than likely. He looked back over at the water, hoping that a fish might have tugged at the line.
If he was a bandit, he probably would have just killed him, right? Still, he looked at the water and began planning an escape path over it briefly just in case. He drummed the fingers of his left hand over the fishing rod as the smallest bit of anxiety crept back in.
“Fire could use some more wood, mister. But what brings you out here in the woods, you aren’t lost are you?” he asked. He got lost all the time on account of not being able to read many words. He had gotten so use to it that when he did know where he was in relation to the road, he was proud of it. This was one of those times; or at least he thought it was.
A nice little settlement rested in the nook of two hills overlooking the coast, with little fields of grain growing tall and dancing in a warm breeze that turned a lazy windmill watching over the hovels. The sky was cloudless, and the smell of sea salt made for a pleasant journey for a certain carrottop traveler wearing a simple earthy green with worn boots. On his back a leather pack jingled with the sounds of bits and bobbles he had collected from trading with the people there.
Kakesu’s feet were taking him to the beach. He thought that maybe he might be able to get some cool shells to peddle to folks living far from the ocean for a profit. That was the excuse anyways. As soon as he got to the water though it was a different story. Boots flung off and everything, but trousers discarded on the seemingly empty beach.
He ran for the break of water with a silly grin on his face, for fun he pushed chakra into his feet and began walking across the water for several paces. When he felt himself beginning to stumble with his chakra he jumped up and belly flopped into an incoming wave. Submerged for a moment he was pushed back up by the currents. A little under shoulder deep, he pushed his wet orange hair from his forehead to look around.
I usually do my plotting in discord nowadays, so I'm not going to make a formal plotter per say. Instead I'll list out some wishlist threads I'd like to do with Kakesu.
❧ Traveling with shinobi escorts through dangerous bandit infested territory.
❧ Wilderness hang outs and survival situations.
❧ Learning how to hunt game with a bow and arrow.
❧ Bartering for odds and ends (the sillier the better).
❧ Learning how to read.
❧ General coming of age type threads.
❧ Unexpected perils.
I'm always open to flesh things out in discord or PM, but I also like taking vague prompts and running with them to see what happens!
Last Edit: Oct 22, 2021 1:23:01 GMT by Kakesu Aoki
The song of cicada filled the air. A stagnant smell clung to the notes over a pond slick with algae. Through the murk, the stillness of the pool was broken by the ripple of a line cast into the water.
On the other end was a boy twiddling a reed between his teeth hunched onto a log pulled from the surrounding woodlands far off the beaten path. In his hands, he held onto a wooden rod with his feet hiked up on a leather backpack stuffed to the brim with his belongings, with a bedroll hanging from its bottom. Beside it, his cloak cast aside lazily to battle the day's heat.
He began to whistle over the tone of the choir of insects as he watched the water carefully. A nearby kindling had been built and encircled by stone, with embers the same shade as his hair waiting for him to prepare a meal.
Light smoke billowed over the canopies of trees, an unintended signal to his location to a trained eye. Kakesu’s eyes, however, remained watching the silty waters in search of shadows. His stomach grumbled, craving more than the berries that he had been sustaining himself on.
Last Edit: Aug 31, 2021 23:54:10 GMT by Kakesu Aoki
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Last Edit: Aug 31, 2021 23:04:37 GMT by Kakesu Aoki
Kakesu is the grandson of a shinobi who chose to live a simpler life after escaping the flames of the empire. He grew up in woodlands on the borders of Iwagakure and Otogakure’s lands in a small community. His family lives off the land, foraging nuts and berries for food and herbs for medicine. Kakesu has served as a forager since he was a young child, at first under the guidance of older children living in the co-op, and later on his own or guiding one of his seven younger siblings.
Kakesu has recently been given the important responsibility of acting as a trader. He exchanges surplus herbs around different territories, and barters for goods to bring back to his people. His limited ninjutsu abilities are well suited to travel, and so is his adventurous heart. With each trip he grows more bold, and he has made it a personal goal to see the entire world with his own eyes.
✾ Engaging A wandering purveyor of medical herbs and a collector of commodities and knickknacks, Kakesu was chosen for his job because of his savviness in social situations. He pays good attention to social queues and wants to give a good impression of himself. He is less naive than one would expect from a young person.
✾ Good Natured Kakesu is geniune and helpful. He doesn't like to see people suffering and is charitable enough to help others without expecting repayment for good deeds. He is particularly fond of animals and enjoys trying to make companions of them. He knows better than to let people take advantage of him, but he will sometimes take unneccesary risks to help a stranger.
✾ Unlettered Kakesu is not formally educated and didn’t have much use for reading and writing as a forager. Now finding himself traveling the world he wishes that he had bothered to learn, but he is too embarrassed to get help with it. Signs pointing to different locations are useless to him. He knows how to navigate by the stars to get home but finding his way to a specific location is difficult.
✾ Adventurous For better or for worse Kakesu often sticks his nose into places that they don’t belong. He often gets distracted with his goals in favor of the intrigue of abandoned places and new experiences. His nature often sends him off in random directions.
✾ Flighty Leading a nomadic lifestyle Kakesu doesn’t spend too much time in any one place. Leaving a situation for greener pastures tends to be his preference when things get tough. He is quick to make acquaintance and quick to disappear back into the wilderness from where he came.
Proficiencies
⌬ Earth Release [Apprentice] Kakesu has been taught to hone his potential to manipulate earth. He is capable of channeling chakra into his feet in order to climb upwards against solid surfaces confidently. He is able to sparingly raise up small berms of earth, enough to create waist high cover that a single person could crouch against to get cover or to boost themselves up with. There are few benchmarks that he has achieved in using doton offensivly. He can shape soft soil into hard pebbles, but is not particularly atheletic or well trained in throwing them.
〄 Water Release [Rookie] Suiton came just as naturally to Kakesu as doton did. He can walk across surfaces of water long enough to trek across a small pond. Beyond this he can also pull moisture from his clothing in order to dry himself and water from well hydrated vegetation in order to help him in survival siutations.
♨ Mokuton Potential [Dormant] Kakesu was born with two chakra natures, and he has the potential to combine them to form a brand new element: wood release. Although he has started down the path of learning about his chakra natures. He was lucky enough to have had a living relative who helped him to understand what his dual natures mean, but they have passed away before he could reach the level of mastery required to harness this power.
[attr="class","APP3"]
Fate/Extra
Kakesu Aoki looks like Archer.
Last Edit: Aug 29, 2021 15:44:19 GMT by Kakesu Aoki
