"Sorry," Kano murmured, an uncharacteristic quiet to her tone and the low slump of her body. The man she had bumped into - or rather, who had bumped into her - offered little more than an annoyed scoff before he moved on, Kano taking a second to right herself after having slid to the side from the impact. It was raining upon her, hair shaping into clumpy strands that mirrored the rivulets of water running down them. It stuck matted to her head and face, one side of her expression covered by heavy white while the other betrayed a tiredness to the generally vivid violet of her eyes. It was half-lidded, an arm lifting from the drenched too-big sleeve of her coat to wipe it closed. She stood there under the heavy pattering by the side of a cobblestone street, bustle around her dying out as the rest of the pedestrians smartly found shelter. They dove into their homes, closed the doors, rung warm laughter and conversation from inside.
Kano lingered still, body facing a door mere yards away. She didn't look at it. Couldn't bring herself to. She distracted herself in many ways; musing with the hem of her sleeves, toying her fingers around and against each other, scuffing her boot against the ground in muffled scrapes drowned out by the coming storm. For once, ironically, there was no lightning or thunder -- just rain. Just the rain that weighted her baggy clothes around her small frame, sagging until she no longer looked pampered and proud but small, wiry. One of those furless cats, her attire like wrinkles of skin. It wasn't flattering: and still she didn't move. Didn't know if she could, not today.
Things had been good lately. Her time with her friends, her "family", that group of kids she collected like fans that followed her everywhere within the village. She had even forged new friendships recently, companions who came to know her a little better than the rest of the world was allowed to. She was making money where she could - supporting her group with upgrades and small improvements to their facilities. A makeshift gate to keep strangers from stumbling into their hideout, a closed bin to keep stored food. Pillows, blankets, refinements for the kids that didn't have a place to go back to except for there.
Even the remaining vestiges of her ninja training were still -- ... well, happening. She wasn't exactly following a rigorous routine, let alone one that worked her out, but she followed up on anything she found the time or care for. Namely, lately, that was her mednin-in-training sessions. It was a hushed affair with a sympathetic tutor, allowing her to dodge the usually strict regime of what it took to be an MiT and instead devote the odd free time she could get away to practice. She couldn't let word get out that her, the Queen of Darkness (thought darkly, without the usual mirth), was specializing in the field of caring for and helping others. It wasn't that mednin weren't strong, respectable individuals, but it clashed starkly with her aesthetic as the Root of All Evil, and it might make some less savory rivals think she would be an easy target for a fight. She could still hold her own, she reasoned. If she needed to.
So she was doing well. She was happy, even, sometimes. She had her fun. She played her games. Others joined in, and some nights were even memorable against the mold of a life she was pinning herself into. It was these rays of light breaking through the roiling clouds above that made her not want to take those steps forward, into that house. It thrust her into a state of turmoil, a struggle against slipping back into how things were, really were, instead of remaining safely within the fiery confines of her game. These were the only times she couldn't keep it up -- she couldn't get that smile back on her face, not as her foot lifted and took one solid, muted step.
She swallowed, a heavy & shuddering motion of labor that left her mouth feeling drier then it had a minute before. Her face flashed between expressions of fear, of sadness, of exhaustion, lingering on the final state of weariness when she finally approached the door. She stood at the entrance, the arch of stone above her head keeping the rain from further wilting her poor state and instead gushing a river pooled atop it down her back. It flooded the heel of her boot, and still she stood without flinching away. Her toes flexed within their deluge -- and then her fingers, her arms, her shoulders. She shifted her back, finally, and lifted an arm to tap at the heavy wood. There wouldn't be an answer. There never was. She waited a few more seconds, knuckles leaned against the frame, and then she reached for the knob.
As she pushed into the foyer of this small, dark home, she seemed to regain enough vigor to surge forward to a small table into the wider room past the entrance. There she picked up a candle, raising a cold and shaky hand to spark chakra at the tips of her finger until enough of a flame caught to set alight the wick. She moved deftly from one candle to the next, lamps around the edges of the room lit by her forcibly steadying grip while her boots squished and leaked puddles with every step. She was moving noisily, her tempo hurried to light the place but lacking vivacity or any sort of notable emotion beneath it. Her quick movements were still punctuated by how she slumped and slunk about, trailing water wherever she went.
Soon it was brightened, illuminating all of the house save for a bedroom near the back. That rarely got use so it could go ignored. The place was small, admittedly, but it could be cozy ... if you wanted it to be. If you lived here and kept it up and worked to fill it out with color, and happiness, and warmth, it could be very nice. Otherwise, it was just ... dreary. The kitchen was clean but empty, some half-open cabinets with scattered untouched dishes and a fridge quietly humming in the corner. There would be food inside if she peeked in, Kano knew, but too much then what should be left by this visit. It was never taken at the pace it should be. There were small tables and cabinets around the edges of the room, dwindling out as you got closer to the center. Picture frames here and there that Kano didn't have the heart to glance at.
She pushed forward into the middle where an unlit fireplace stood against the wall and a figure sat on a lone chair, glasses littered over its end table. Kano took another unsteady breath as her shaky legs bent her to the firepit, swiping a candle over its mechanism to almost immediately flare it to life. She stayed crouch for a moment longer, goosebumps and hair standing up across her arm as the heat washed over her and she could feel the presence sitting still behind her. Another low breath, and she turned to look at it from the corner of her eye.
A woman, greyed and thin and sunken, dwarfed to the size of a toy by the size of the chair compared to her own. Her hair was thin and in wisps down her face -- she was beautiful once, the height of her cheekbones and the fullness of her lips could tell that much of a story. Here, though, here - now - she was practically a corpse. Her skin was leathery and tight, pulled over her face in an almost frightening visage if the look in her eyes wasn't so ... dead. Far-off. Lost. She couldn't hurt anyone like this, could barely lift a finger for more then a moment that would cause a gruesome shudder. The woman's mouth attempted to move, pale lips opening and closing, and Kano flinched back from a sound that never came.
Another low breath, lifting herself from the ground to turn and better address the woman with an awkwardly loud tone and a crack in her voice.
"Hey, mom."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
She had to get better. She had to get stronger. The dabbling she had been doing in medical techniques wasn't enough. She didn't just need to learn how to heal ; she needed to be powerful, powerful enough to fix everything - to fix anyone - to fix her, the woman abandoned outside the village walls, placed in a family-owned home so that her father and step-mother didn't need to see her and be sad.
Kano seethed as she ran, heavy movements punctuated with loud stomps and the cracking of both stone and wood in odd increments. She jumped from rocks to trees, flitting between boulders and forestry, carving desperate destruction in her wake. She was letting loose in a way she was never allowed within the village. There was no control here, no guise or game or secrets. She was nothing but wild, feral energy, pure angst & anger given form within a method only a pre-teen could accurately manage. A genuine tantrum, the tantrum of a scarred and terrified and royally pissed thirteen year old with a surplus of magical power she never had a real chance to expend.
Her mother had been a wonderful woman, once, and yes, beautiful; it didn't seem like that long ago, but Kano was much smaller then than she is now. The changes came fast but plateaued at an agonizing state. It was as if watching her decrepify before their very eyes -- she contracted an illness, first in her brain that messed with the way she could perceive her surroundings and her memories, and then it came for her body. It was almost easier, then, compared to when she'd forget where she was or Kano's name. She just stopped being able to move effectively. She struggled to take care of herself, to eat or bathe, and at some point her husband - Kano's father - couldn't bare to do it. Kano tried what she could for as long as she was able, but as the months passed it looked like nobody could do anything but draw this tragedy out. They got her help, in a way. A caretaker would visit and check her vitals, keep her afloat, keep her heart beating in the broken-down shell of a woman hidden away. She had been moved when her father remarried years later, and now Kano was the only person beside the volunteering mednin that would still see her. She checked in as often as she felt she was able to, shamefully avoiding it for months on end before breaking down again. She kept groceries in the fridge, money on the bedstand. The first was rarely used and the latter, never. She still kept coming back.
She still didn't give up.
Chakra flared to mismanaged life around her dashing, punching, kicking form with every new action. Kano wasn't inherently attuned to destructive natures -- fire and lightning didn't really come to her, compared to the more nurturing or natural focii of the remaining three. She relied largely on earth, but wind for her outbursts and water for adaptability didn't cause her much trouble to shape. She was grounded within her soul, giving form to something good and kind and protective: but that didn't exist right now. She snuffed the breeze from the branches of a tree, lightning arcing in bolts from her arms and fire beneath her feet to leave scorched prints. She didn't even try to direct or control it, only pump out every bit of energy she had coiled up inside of her in whatever fashion her anger could conduct it. She wanted to exhaust herself. Leave nothing left inside of her.
It could be said this was a ninja's way of crying a cry that had been building up for far too long, but there were tears, too, in Kano's eyes. They were streaming in angry streaks from the side of her stare, fevered limbs barreling forward with a specific if unrefined destination in mind. This visit she had tried, really tried, to do something for her mother -- but the soothing chakra she curved from her fingertips didn't even make a dent in the woman. She sat there for an hour with no change, just depleting herself for nothing but frustration. This was better. This was healthier. This was louder, and scarier, and it made her feel powerful, powerful instead of so, so helpless.
And it wasn't all she was doing today. No, this steeled her. This gave her the drive, the instinct and recklessness to throw herself into one project she hadn't ever been sure enough of before. But, no, no, she needed power. She needed so much more power then she had alone at this moment. This wasn't enough, this was nothing, nothing at all, if it couldn't help her. So she'd get help. She had studied - her, Kano Kushinada, the Queen of All Evil and the least applied ninja she knew - had read mountains of books upon books at a shy day in the library for something that could give her a leg up. Something else she could work with, that could spike her power to higher levels and assist her in everywhere she was falling flat. Fairly, that felt like most areas of her life, lately, no matter how many times she accepted her stagnation. She could still only do so much for the people around her.
Deep in this forest, within a clearing by a brook, spiritual beasts were said to linger. Creatures that could offer aid and companionship and power, for a price or on a whim. And today, now, Kano had resolved -- she would do just about anything for this, if they could help. If they could raise her to a level that would actually support everyone she cared about, from her friends to her group to her mother. Anything to alleviate these awful lives they all lived.
She would hunt, and she would find.
[ 2381/1500 WC ]
[ Discovery of Contract of Random Choice - Card Used ]
Kano lingered still, body facing a door mere yards away. She didn't look at it. Couldn't bring herself to. She distracted herself in many ways; musing with the hem of her sleeves, toying her fingers around and against each other, scuffing her boot against the ground in muffled scrapes drowned out by the coming storm. For once, ironically, there was no lightning or thunder -- just rain. Just the rain that weighted her baggy clothes around her small frame, sagging until she no longer looked pampered and proud but small, wiry. One of those furless cats, her attire like wrinkles of skin. It wasn't flattering: and still she didn't move. Didn't know if she could, not today.
Things had been good lately. Her time with her friends, her "family", that group of kids she collected like fans that followed her everywhere within the village. She had even forged new friendships recently, companions who came to know her a little better than the rest of the world was allowed to. She was making money where she could - supporting her group with upgrades and small improvements to their facilities. A makeshift gate to keep strangers from stumbling into their hideout, a closed bin to keep stored food. Pillows, blankets, refinements for the kids that didn't have a place to go back to except for there.
Even the remaining vestiges of her ninja training were still -- ... well, happening. She wasn't exactly following a rigorous routine, let alone one that worked her out, but she followed up on anything she found the time or care for. Namely, lately, that was her mednin-in-training sessions. It was a hushed affair with a sympathetic tutor, allowing her to dodge the usually strict regime of what it took to be an MiT and instead devote the odd free time she could get away to practice. She couldn't let word get out that her, the Queen of Darkness (thought darkly, without the usual mirth), was specializing in the field of caring for and helping others. It wasn't that mednin weren't strong, respectable individuals, but it clashed starkly with her aesthetic as the Root of All Evil, and it might make some less savory rivals think she would be an easy target for a fight. She could still hold her own, she reasoned. If she needed to.
So she was doing well. She was happy, even, sometimes. She had her fun. She played her games. Others joined in, and some nights were even memorable against the mold of a life she was pinning herself into. It was these rays of light breaking through the roiling clouds above that made her not want to take those steps forward, into that house. It thrust her into a state of turmoil, a struggle against slipping back into how things were, really were, instead of remaining safely within the fiery confines of her game. These were the only times she couldn't keep it up -- she couldn't get that smile back on her face, not as her foot lifted and took one solid, muted step.
She swallowed, a heavy & shuddering motion of labor that left her mouth feeling drier then it had a minute before. Her face flashed between expressions of fear, of sadness, of exhaustion, lingering on the final state of weariness when she finally approached the door. She stood at the entrance, the arch of stone above her head keeping the rain from further wilting her poor state and instead gushing a river pooled atop it down her back. It flooded the heel of her boot, and still she stood without flinching away. Her toes flexed within their deluge -- and then her fingers, her arms, her shoulders. She shifted her back, finally, and lifted an arm to tap at the heavy wood. There wouldn't be an answer. There never was. She waited a few more seconds, knuckles leaned against the frame, and then she reached for the knob.
As she pushed into the foyer of this small, dark home, she seemed to regain enough vigor to surge forward to a small table into the wider room past the entrance. There she picked up a candle, raising a cold and shaky hand to spark chakra at the tips of her finger until enough of a flame caught to set alight the wick. She moved deftly from one candle to the next, lamps around the edges of the room lit by her forcibly steadying grip while her boots squished and leaked puddles with every step. She was moving noisily, her tempo hurried to light the place but lacking vivacity or any sort of notable emotion beneath it. Her quick movements were still punctuated by how she slumped and slunk about, trailing water wherever she went.
Soon it was brightened, illuminating all of the house save for a bedroom near the back. That rarely got use so it could go ignored. The place was small, admittedly, but it could be cozy ... if you wanted it to be. If you lived here and kept it up and worked to fill it out with color, and happiness, and warmth, it could be very nice. Otherwise, it was just ... dreary. The kitchen was clean but empty, some half-open cabinets with scattered untouched dishes and a fridge quietly humming in the corner. There would be food inside if she peeked in, Kano knew, but too much then what should be left by this visit. It was never taken at the pace it should be. There were small tables and cabinets around the edges of the room, dwindling out as you got closer to the center. Picture frames here and there that Kano didn't have the heart to glance at.
She pushed forward into the middle where an unlit fireplace stood against the wall and a figure sat on a lone chair, glasses littered over its end table. Kano took another unsteady breath as her shaky legs bent her to the firepit, swiping a candle over its mechanism to almost immediately flare it to life. She stayed crouch for a moment longer, goosebumps and hair standing up across her arm as the heat washed over her and she could feel the presence sitting still behind her. Another low breath, and she turned to look at it from the corner of her eye.
A woman, greyed and thin and sunken, dwarfed to the size of a toy by the size of the chair compared to her own. Her hair was thin and in wisps down her face -- she was beautiful once, the height of her cheekbones and the fullness of her lips could tell that much of a story. Here, though, here - now - she was practically a corpse. Her skin was leathery and tight, pulled over her face in an almost frightening visage if the look in her eyes wasn't so ... dead. Far-off. Lost. She couldn't hurt anyone like this, could barely lift a finger for more then a moment that would cause a gruesome shudder. The woman's mouth attempted to move, pale lips opening and closing, and Kano flinched back from a sound that never came.
Another low breath, lifting herself from the ground to turn and better address the woman with an awkwardly loud tone and a crack in her voice.
"Hey, mom."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
She had to get better. She had to get stronger. The dabbling she had been doing in medical techniques wasn't enough. She didn't just need to learn how to heal ; she needed to be powerful, powerful enough to fix everything - to fix anyone - to fix her, the woman abandoned outside the village walls, placed in a family-owned home so that her father and step-mother didn't need to see her and be sad.
Kano seethed as she ran, heavy movements punctuated with loud stomps and the cracking of both stone and wood in odd increments. She jumped from rocks to trees, flitting between boulders and forestry, carving desperate destruction in her wake. She was letting loose in a way she was never allowed within the village. There was no control here, no guise or game or secrets. She was nothing but wild, feral energy, pure angst & anger given form within a method only a pre-teen could accurately manage. A genuine tantrum, the tantrum of a scarred and terrified and royally pissed thirteen year old with a surplus of magical power she never had a real chance to expend.
Her mother had been a wonderful woman, once, and yes, beautiful; it didn't seem like that long ago, but Kano was much smaller then than she is now. The changes came fast but plateaued at an agonizing state. It was as if watching her decrepify before their very eyes -- she contracted an illness, first in her brain that messed with the way she could perceive her surroundings and her memories, and then it came for her body. It was almost easier, then, compared to when she'd forget where she was or Kano's name. She just stopped being able to move effectively. She struggled to take care of herself, to eat or bathe, and at some point her husband - Kano's father - couldn't bare to do it. Kano tried what she could for as long as she was able, but as the months passed it looked like nobody could do anything but draw this tragedy out. They got her help, in a way. A caretaker would visit and check her vitals, keep her afloat, keep her heart beating in the broken-down shell of a woman hidden away. She had been moved when her father remarried years later, and now Kano was the only person beside the volunteering mednin that would still see her. She checked in as often as she felt she was able to, shamefully avoiding it for months on end before breaking down again. She kept groceries in the fridge, money on the bedstand. The first was rarely used and the latter, never. She still kept coming back.
She still didn't give up.
Chakra flared to mismanaged life around her dashing, punching, kicking form with every new action. Kano wasn't inherently attuned to destructive natures -- fire and lightning didn't really come to her, compared to the more nurturing or natural focii of the remaining three. She relied largely on earth, but wind for her outbursts and water for adaptability didn't cause her much trouble to shape. She was grounded within her soul, giving form to something good and kind and protective: but that didn't exist right now. She snuffed the breeze from the branches of a tree, lightning arcing in bolts from her arms and fire beneath her feet to leave scorched prints. She didn't even try to direct or control it, only pump out every bit of energy she had coiled up inside of her in whatever fashion her anger could conduct it. She wanted to exhaust herself. Leave nothing left inside of her.
It could be said this was a ninja's way of crying a cry that had been building up for far too long, but there were tears, too, in Kano's eyes. They were streaming in angry streaks from the side of her stare, fevered limbs barreling forward with a specific if unrefined destination in mind. This visit she had tried, really tried, to do something for her mother -- but the soothing chakra she curved from her fingertips didn't even make a dent in the woman. She sat there for an hour with no change, just depleting herself for nothing but frustration. This was better. This was healthier. This was louder, and scarier, and it made her feel powerful, powerful instead of so, so helpless.
And it wasn't all she was doing today. No, this steeled her. This gave her the drive, the instinct and recklessness to throw herself into one project she hadn't ever been sure enough of before. But, no, no, she needed power. She needed so much more power then she had alone at this moment. This wasn't enough, this was nothing, nothing at all, if it couldn't help her. So she'd get help. She had studied - her, Kano Kushinada, the Queen of All Evil and the least applied ninja she knew - had read mountains of books upon books at a shy day in the library for something that could give her a leg up. Something else she could work with, that could spike her power to higher levels and assist her in everywhere she was falling flat. Fairly, that felt like most areas of her life, lately, no matter how many times she accepted her stagnation. She could still only do so much for the people around her.
Deep in this forest, within a clearing by a brook, spiritual beasts were said to linger. Creatures that could offer aid and companionship and power, for a price or on a whim. And today, now, Kano had resolved -- she would do just about anything for this, if they could help. If they could raise her to a level that would actually support everyone she cared about, from her friends to her group to her mother. Anything to alleviate these awful lives they all lived.
She would hunt, and she would find.
[ 2381/1500 WC ]
[ Discovery of Contract of Random Choice - Card Used ]
