Hanging Out (With Kozai) [Open]

Kozai, as it seemed, had gone along with the little diversion to head to the small teashop rather well, much to Ayatsuri’s delight. By the time she had finished talking and in turn had listened to her companion respond, saying he did not now the story about the shop, they were just about there. He sounded maybe just a bit put out about not knowing the tale. She smiled at this too, turning slightly over her shoulder as she looked at the man, pushing her way into the shop with one arm and talking to him at the same time. ”Hm.” She paused the door hanging ajar. ”I suppose not many people do know about that tale.” She leaned a bit closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. ”This store is pretty small and they don’t get a whole lot of customers. The village doesn’t seem to be doing very well. But still, they make wonderful tea!”

She led the way in and over to a small booth along the right side wall, the service bar directly across from the two. The whole place was almost entirely abandoned aside from another couple, clearly on a date of some sort, on the far end of the store, near the door. They sat at a tiny table that looked more for show than anything and whispered quietly to one another, sipping from one large cup of tea and leaving the second empty and untouched. Ayatsuri rolled her eyes and giggled a bit at them before sliding into her seat, ordering some tea from a waiter who came up as she did. ”Oh, I hope you don’t mind too much. Their blueberry tea is really quite good and my favorite here. We could get something else if you prefer.” She hesitated for a moment, hoping she had not unduly stepped on the other man’s toes.

She glanced around the room, habitually scanning for any potential danger, before settling back on Kozai. He seemed… lighter perhaps? At any rate he stuttered less and looked a bit stronger, standing a bit taller and throwing his shoulders back more. Ayatsuri felt a wave of happiness come over her at the small development. Introvert or not, there was no reason that he could not have some friends. Well, he likely had friends, but he could always have more. The women felt herself smile calmly at the whole event, almost unreasonably pleased that she was able to have a conversation with someone in the otherwise mostly abandoned village. It seemed there were still a few good souls around.

The whole affair was going quite well, the conversation having opened up after entering the shop, two young people sitting down to a nice cup of hot tea. Ayatsuri could not keep the smile from creeping into the corners of her mouth, from touching her eyes and coloring her pale face slightly. Having gone so long with only those who lived and worked in her house, she was thrilled to find someone to spend a simple afternoon with, not training or delivering food or running missions, but just enjoying some nice company, some nice conversation, and some nice drinks. The waiter arrived shortly after the woman ordered, having ascertained that Kozai indeed did not mind about the blueberry tea. He dropped off the steaming pot, bowed, and then moved away.

”Oh I’m so excited for this, do forgive me! Oh and,” she reached across to the far side of the table, nearest the wall, grabbing a small jar of honey from the corner, ”here’s some honey if you like. It’s quite good in this tea, though I don’t always put it in. Hm… maybe you should have a sip first and then try some with honey? Unless you definitely want the honey, then just go for it!” She bubbled on, preparing her tea with a tiny dab of honey, preferring it not to become too sweet. When she finished she returned her gaze to the boy across from her, taking him in once more with her dark eyes. He looked, perhaps, just a bit disheveled, but then again she had caught him out of the blue, so maybe he had only recently completed some errand. No matter at all for he was here now!

”So tell me about yourself, if you would. I don’t mean to pry, but it’s nice to get to know people over tea, you know? I can start though, if you would rather. What to say what to say…?” She mused aloud for a second, stirring at her hot tea with a small rod before bringing it up to take a taste. ”Oh it’s very good today!” Her voice rose at this, not yelling, but filling with volume that the staff could hear, a few of the boys smiling and nodding at her. ”Oh yes. Well as you know, my name is Ayatsuri. My favorite color is… maybe all of them, but probably red.” She looked down at the dress she wore, a short thing which extended past her right knee but, on the left side, stopped at her mid thigh. ”And I,” her face grew serious for a moment, ”come from a proud lineage of samurai warriors.” She smiled once again. ”My dad likes to say that a lot, so sometimes I make sure to point it out to please him.” She leaned forward a bit, moving her face to meet with her raised mug to take another sip, eyes leveled on the boy across from her as she awaited his response, eager to learn about him.

Ayatsuri watched as the man across the table added some honey to his drink, looking at it with a look of near reverence, as though the substance was something he’d never had before. Maybe he was unused to honey, or maybe he simply liked it so much that he always looked at it with such strange joy. No matter, for he seemed to enjoy the tea and the addition of honey. She listened intently as Kozai spoke, talking briefly about his status within the village and a bit of his work history, highlighting that he’d never taken any students and spent most of his time between training and carrying out missions for the village. It was a rather common story, ninjas being quite busy most of the time. The woman could relate.

”Yes, I understand. I spend almost all of my time training, so I don’t get to get out to places like this much. But you’ve never taken a student?” She mused over this for a moment, unaware that such a decision was even an option. Having paid almost no attention to the affairs of most shinobi, she had always assumed that the higher ranking ones either took on students of their own accord, like an unwritten rule, or that it had been some kind of village mandate. The boy spoke up once again, telling her his favorite color and a bit about his clan.

”A jonin though? You must go on some pretty important missions then.” She thought back to his mention of his clan. ”Konoha you say? I’ve never been, but I hear its lovely, though maybe a bit too warm. How did you end up here, so far from the Land of Fire?” She took another sip of her drink, observing the man across from her, trying to ensure that he was not too uncomfortable by the conversation. ”Oh, and yellow is a wonderful color!” She smiled brightly again, flashing her teeth at Kozai.

Oh dear.

It seemed she had accidentally stumbled into some awkward territory. She heard Kozai comment about his life as a ninja, doing seemingly menial work, and thought to herself about how similar that sounded to her own situation. She was not, of course, a ninja, not in the traditional sense at least, but she still helped out around the village, doing missions and acquiring money from odd end jobs. ”I know what you mean, with the animal control. I help out by doing missions around the village and stuff, just small things to help people out in my neighborhood, and this one man keeps losing his dog. I swear I’ve returned that poor creature to him more times than I can count. But I guess it isn’t so bad.” She allowed a small lull in conversation as she took another sip and Kozai continued to stir his tea.

”Oh my gosh.” Taken. Her eyes widened for a moment in horror. ”I’m so sorry. I did not intend to dredge up painful old memories.” She averted her eyes, staring at her teacup in a moment of shame. How rude of her to bring up something which could so easily have been painful for the boy. No, even worse: so many ninja had such awful stories of their childhood. She really should have known not to speak so candidly of this. ”At any rate, I’m glad that you’re here and ok. We might never have met if you didn’t end up as a shinobi of the village, and that would have made me sad.” She smiled once again, returning her eyes to the other boy.

She took another drink of her tea, thinking about other, safer topics of conversation. She’d listen to the boy’s past, but only if he wanted, and she had no desire to force him into something painful or uncomfortable. ”So have you any significant plans for the future? I don’t really have much planned out I guess. The village is very boring, but I don’t suppose I can just up and leave.” She looked over, out to the window behind her towards the entrance of the shop. ”And it is very lovely here. I think I’d like to see the world at some point though, you know? Maybe go see the Land of Wheat in the fall. Not forever, but just to see.”

She waited a while, thinking to herself about the day so far. The impromptu tea date had been going quite well indeed, the pair of friends meeting up randomly and quickly making one another’s acquaintances. It had been a bit rocky at the start, with Ayatsuri blaming herself in part for such difficult beginnings; Kozai had been rather unwelcoming, but she had found herself so wrapped up in her own head, so consumed by her own negative opinions about the village, that she could hardly bear the thought of yet another person proving themselves a social outcast incapable of even the most basic forms of human contact. But luckily, her worries had been falsely placed as the two were having a rather nice time out, enjoying some tea and getting to know one another. She smiled, genuinely smiled, as the boy across from her opened up and told her about his life, a bit about his past as well.

He seemed to have stopped responding though and perhaps he was just thinking. She waited longer, finishing her tea, and thinking to herself. Maybe she had been wrong. Maybe he was not what she was looking for. Maybe he was simply wasteful. In the wake of all the recent events, of her boredom in the village, of the corrupt nature of the politics and the run down state of the whole place, she had changed. She hated violence, hated fighting for no reason, but she no longer refused to partake. She’d vowed, in her daily training, to become powerful, to become strong. And he did have a lovely face. Her thoughts moved along to her puppets, her prized creations which she adored, perhaps even above all else. This boy, sitting across from her, lonely and seemingly afraid, had no one. He wasn’t from around here, had never taken a student, and was not good around people, something the woman could attest to. He went on missions which required no human contact, and no one was in charge of the village. No one would notice him missing. She thought harder to herself, weighing her options.

She was a master craftsman. She could make a person into a puppet. She could make this man into a puppet, if she wanted. She nodded to herself. Yes, she could do it. He’d been taken, as he said, but now was free. Yes yes, this could work. She just needed to figure out how exactly. She’d have to look a bit at the body, figure out what to keep and what to remove. She’d probably need help, if she was being perfectly honest, as while she was educated in the body, she doubted she had enough proficiency to properly modify one. Not like this anyway. Still, she felt confident that this was well within the realms of possibility. She could even replace his bones with hers, regrowing and adjusting them to match his frame. He was from a clan as well, an admission which did not generally come with some level of pride. Perhaps that too could be incorporated in some way.

The woman, watching the boy across from her, became uneasy as she spoke about the Land of Wheat, her eyes wavering as she took in the unmoving face of the other boy. She felt he no longer cared about the conversation, or maybe that he’d become trapped in his own nightmarish memory of the events that had taken place in the past. She could deliver him. She grabbed the pot from the center of the table, pouring herself about half a glass of refill, but the wavering in her hands, the product of her worry about the boy it seems, caused her to drop the cup, the mug tumbling down the few inches to the table, sending a bout of hot liquid at the boy. She flared her hands in front of her, moving from her seat almost immediately upon seeing what she had done. ”Oh heavens, of heavens what have I done? I’m terribly sorry,” she said, napkin in her hand after having moved round the table, standing at the boy’s right and dabbing at him with the cloth. The spill would have struck him in the chest and poured onto his lap and so she moved to attempt to dab some of it up.

”Oh I’m so sorry. I can be quite clumsy some times.” She said as more tea ran from the table. The store was almost entirely abandoned now, only a bored looking man remaining behind the counter, the single couple having since left the place. As she dabbed up toward the top of his chest, trying to dry up the scalding liquid before it burned his neck, a bone extended from her wrist, thin and deadly, aimed to pierce his throat, simultaneously silencing him both literally and metaphorically, before retracing once more. Her back, facing the bored worker, obscured all vision of the boy, and she would slap the napkin powerfully over the wound not a moment after she’d made it. ”Oh my goodness, we’ll have to go and get you cleaned up back at home.” She, with her left hand, pulled a stack of bills from her pocket and set them upon the table, turning over her right shoulder to thank the worker, who barely looked at her. Her back continued to block vision of the boy.

A set of threads then issued from her fingers, attaching to the now wavering man, likely unconscious due to blood loss. She grabbed another large stack of napkins and placed them over the first, masking most of the blood. Her talking blocked out any sound the boy could have made from his gurgling throat, preventing the sole remaining employee from even directing any curiosity at the pair. The threads attached to him then, granting her control over his waning body as she puppeteer him up and out of the seat, fluttering around him as though she were still fussing about the hot tea. The two walked out then, exiting through the back door, Kozai opening it for her, angled so that the worker could not, had he even attempted to, see the boy’s face. She then walked them back to her house, a short jaunt away, through vacant side streets. She recalled thinking of this earlier, of the abandoned nature of the village, and inwardly laughed to herself about it now. At least it was good for something, she figured.

Arriving home, she would store the body, long dead by now, in a small scroll in her workshop. She’d managed to avoid any spillage of blood, save for on the boy’s threadbare clothing, so little cleanup was required. From there, she calmed herself, meditating inwardly before eventually exiting this meditation and beginning to go about a few blade forms of hers, particularly that of the Iado form. In this new found calm, and in her great anticipation, she found herself able to fully master the form. Then, thinking over some new puppet designs and incorporating her bones, she began to grow bones from her coccyx, forming a powerful tail, before focusing her chakra powerfully to her bones and finding them even more powerful and durable that ever they previously were. She concluded her little time of training by developing a kind of poison by liquefying certain bone cells and storing them away for later, something she realized would be intensely useful in the further expansion of her art of puppetry. She looked around then, playing with her puppets and her own body using the miraculous strings which sprung from her fingertips.  

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