[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.
[attr="class","giritext"]Darkness grew across the curvature of the earth. Overhead, the sun’s volatile oranges permeated the flooded battlefield and atop the old, faded blood mixed with yesterday’s rainfall. It all ran like dirty veins between the pockmarked earth.
The skirmish had been several days ago and the bodies were already moved. Genin weren’t going to fight, of course; the reason the two girls meandered through the field was because a valuable plant was known to live early and die late in the aftermath.
Bloodroot, not to be confused with blood grass.
“Does the smell bother you, Aburame-san?”
Sagiri knelt over a mound, fingers tracking between the reeds for the scarlet tubers.
“I have things you could put under your nose so you won’t notice. Just let me know.”
[attr="class","giritext"]His voice held the kind of timbre fueled by an extraction simulated by intense emotions. That sterile, familiar manner made a bead of sweat trickle down her neck.
Sensei wouldn’t be like them.
His fingers drifted and set aside her collection. Ginseng and peony bark, wormwood flowers and kudzu. Some held obvious, if minor, tears and blemishes as they were pulled from the world. But he would find no material missing, even if they weren’t quality grade.
“Um, we just had to find a kind of rotting thorne in Ikeda-san’s rice paddies. It was a lot of busy work. I’m not sure if we can pick our missions, but I have this feeling Yozei tried to get that one for me…”
She wondered if Kobashigawa had his own pharmacopeia. She would like to make a drug book, some day. Until then, she didn’t know enough things to start forgetting them. “Are you working on something specific, Sensei?”
Uttered quietly to the door, only the dark was her witness. She tried again.
“Ahem. Sensei! It’s Sagiri. I’m sorry I’m late.”
Gingerly, the girl pushed open the door set into the side of the passage. The dusty blue of the tunnel’s crystals crept into the workshop first, mingling with her shadow second.
Her teacher’s laboratory was an undeniably eerie place to the layman. She passed by several spaces filled with apparatuses and specimens, her own eyes following her through the glassworks.
Sagiri set down her basket on an unclaimed table. “I have the herbs you requested. Some of them I wasn’t familiar with, so I hope I got them right. Um…”
She did talk a lot when nervous. “Yozei and I went on that first mission to the rice paddy, so I couldn't get here on time…”
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…”
[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.”
[attr="class","giritext"]She stared up at the stars like they were on course to strike her down. Somewhere over the fence with its paper lanterns lit like evenly-spaced jellyfish, beyond the rising vapor that coiled into the night sky, was a place where distant suns shuttered one lazy eye to observe people having fun. She could hear them with the faint splashes of water and the soft murmur of voices (occasionally excitable). Ordinary folk. No different from her. Old ones, young ones, rich ones, poor ones.
Sagiri unconsciously brought a hand to her neck. The snake scar was muted against the scarlet light, but to her it felt as bright as any flame.
The onsen was set into the side of a beaked mountain. It was a stretch of road she passed often heading to Otogakure and its wooden perimeter gave her pause each time. At ten years old she thought it would be nice to go. At twelve years old she vowed the next year. And now...
'It's just an onsen.'
Yet still she began to walk away. Maybe next week, next month, next lifetime. So preoccupied with her own worthlessness, she didn't even notice when something white dropped from above her: she just extended both hands out to catch it. Coarse, damp fabric. Craning her neck upwards for the second time that encounter she met the impish grin of a gold-furred monkey. Seconds later a whole troop emerged from the trees, several carrying their own trophy towels as they hopped over the fence.
"H-huh?" Was all she could say before shouting and screaming erupted from the establishment.
[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..."
The flower at the apex of heaven is splendid in color.
History: Born to a pair of broken-hearted refugees fleeing the Empire, Sagiri has led a miserable and difficult life. After being separated from her parents she spent her formative years being moved between establishments across the Land of Fire and then eventually forced into a late cohort of kekkei genkai experimentation—for children who would not be missed in this world.
With the end of Otogakure's previous rule she was released into the care of a tea house owner. In those briefly peaceful days she took an interest in the three arts of refinement, with a particular emphasis on the way of fragrance (kodo). But even such a girl has no freedoms, for she was made to enroll in Otogakure's academy after a series of unnatural incidents demonstrated her gift for genjutsu—implanted or otherwise—was rapidly outpacing her own experience and development.
Character: Sagiri is a timid and ambitionless figure. She is a kunoichi out of no personal desire but for the training so as not to endanger others, and this outlook severely dampens her abilities. She is a poor student at best. She is the weak link always.
Experimentation has left a massive, scaly marking that loops across the entirety of her body and the right side of her face, which is also the site of her eye replacement. Being an obvious victim of surgery, she has been subject to ostracism. She covers these features where possible with clothing and her headband.
Proficiencies
Taijutsu [Rookie] Born out of necessity rather than talent, Sagiri demonstrates the fundamental basics of taijutsu: picking herself up after being struck down, and not much besides.
Tantojutsu [Rookie] A well-concealed dagger suits her slender fingers well. There is no honor or flamboyance in the fights that plagued her childhood; if being unassuming is not enough, then a mobius strike will suffice. Only time will tell when her hands stop shaking at the thought of ending a life.
Stealth [Rookie] She is adept at fading into the background and escaping notice but not to an inhuman degree. She is simply easily forgotten, and spends her time observing others to satiate her wariness.
Olfactory Genjutsu [Apprentice] Sagiri's one strength is the prodigious grasp of genjutsu. She can quickly consume new techniques and uses what she already knows so naturally as to do so accidentally. She has trained herself to use a medium to help control her abilities: carrying around various bottles of perfumes and powders on her person that help structure the emotion of her illusions.
Kakigan (Experimentation) [Rookie] The orb of unknown origin transplanted in her right socket which she names her persimmon eye. At this time the kakigan simply views the world in hypersensitive detail: minutiae such as the twitch of muscles in the face or the shift in leafy patterns in a tree are much more noticeable. Sagiri uses this eye when looking for traps, searching for objects, or trying to get a better read on the body language of others. As a foreign element in her body it naturally comes with much more strain to use, prompting her to keep it covered in her daily life. And while it can help discern high speed movement relative to her level, anything beyond what she is capable of herself quickly overwhelms it into being unusable.
[attr="class","APP3"]
Fate (Grand Order)
Sagiri looks like Mochizuki Chiyome (Assassin of Paraiso).
