Child’s Play

[Norisuke Kujo]

There was quite an odd sight in the park.

Not the egregious sort, that you’d notify the police for, but definitely not the kind of event that you’d walk toward and intervene on. It was just the sort of thing you...let be.

Unless you were equipped to do otherwise.

WHAP
WHAP
“AUGH! Fuckin’...damnit all...fuck...”
WHAP
WHAP
“Come on!”
WHAP

Some delinquent academy student—not even a genin by any extent—was having a spat with a tennis ball launcher.

The green, sometimes blasted open balls were sprawled around on a section of the great, grass rectangle space in the park. Like an invisible wall had formed, parkgoers had gone (at minimum) 60ft away from the spectacle.

Kujo Norisuke, gauntlets equipped, was swinging fists and attempting to catch the fast-moving projectiles. Based on the few amounts of damaged balls, he’s had some successes.

...but as for his face, one of his eyes are reddening and swelling at the lids, and a bruise right on his nose and dried red streaks indicates that he’d been also failing. Red marks that match up with the curved patterns on the balls also are scattered around his face, neck, and chest.

Though the menacing, tooled segments of armor on his arms have been through some abuse, as Norisuke anticipates the next ball, and lunges his guarded forearm to deflect it.
“Fuck yeah,” his celebration blinding him as the exact second later, one socks him right in the mouth.

“ShhhhHHHH....” On the absolute verge of just shouting, he has to refocus, his throbbing lip awakening him to the second vengeful ball, which he strikes out of the air.


Despite all the drama and theatrics...it’s still some teenage schoolkid letting a tennis ball machine shoot at him.

 

[Osuteno]

A rather cute scene was slowly moving down the sidewalk as a pair of twin toddlers were holding onto the hands of what appeared to be their young mother.

This trio was Osu and his two daughters, the white haired Yukiko, and the black haired Karasuko. They were four years old and very excited because Osu was getting off from work much earlier these days and had more time to take them to their favorite places. Today that was the park.

The twins hummed happily as their dad bought them matcha ice cream cones and sat down at a bench. ““Thank you for the ice cream Sensei!”” The Twins said in unison before digging in. Osu on the other hand coughed in surprise.

“Sen-Sensei? Girls I am daddy.” Osu actually felt a bit of a pain in his hearts at this.

The girls tilted their heads in confusion. “Kiri-Niisan and Siu-Neechan and all those other people call you Sensei though daddy?” Yukiko said with some apparent confusion.
“And you teach us a lot of stuff Daddy-Sensei.” Karasuko said with Yukiko nodding at her words leaving Osu at a bit of a loss.

“Well you two can just call me daddy, and it would make me really happy if you do.” Osu really tries to emphasize this.

Karasuko thought for a bit before asking, “What about when Kiri-Niichan calls you Osumama?”

“Please don’t copy him,” Osu said firmly.

Yukiko has her own question, “Auntie Saeko said when you and mommy leave us with a babysitter, mommy says a bunch of things while making you happy. Does she also call you-“

“Let’s go by the bookstore on our way home and pick out a new storybook,” Osu interrupted, deciding to lock ‘Auntie Saeko’ out of the apartment.

What a day! The park, ice cream, and a new storybook! The twins were in very good moods. They soon left Osu at the bench to play as he still had paperwork to do and ventured off into the park to people watch while enjoying their ice creams.

It didn’t take them very long to decide who to watch.

“Kiko, Kiko, do you see an idiot?”

“Yes, yes, Suko, I do see an idiot.”

The four year old girls were not very shy to state their true thoughts as they walked past the social barrier and walked closer to the target of their amusement.

“Suko, Suko, look at how beat up he is! He doesn’t look very reliable does he?”

“No, no, Kiko, he doesn’t seem very reliable at all. Very unmanly.”

If the boy couldn’t hear them before they certainly were in listening range now.

“He was so proud of hitting that ball, pfft.”
“But then the next hit him in the face, pfft.”
““Hahahahahahahaha”” https://youtu.be/zu1jLDtgIuI

Yes the girls were definitely amused by this kid making a spectacle of himself. However they had unwisely walked to the side. As the boy hit the following ball in frustration, it began heading in the direction of Karasuko. Neither of the girls really paid the ball any mind while they are their ice creams, and before the ball had even travelled half the distance between Norisuke and Karasuko a thin red thread seemed to drop from the sky, piercing straight through the middle of the ball and several feet into the ground, causing visible cracks on the surface.

Neither of the girls were surprised despite their daddy being several hundred feet away, with his nose in paperwork, after all mommy always said daddy would never let anything bad happen to them.

The red thread started retracting with the ball remaining precisely where it had been in the air until the thread was completely removed, and it fell straight to the ground. Yukiko picked it up and offered it to the silly boy in front of them. “Your ball has a hole in it but it should still work.”

 

[Norisuke Kujo]

Who was calling him an idiot?!

Norisuke whirls around, fist out—and then draws it back immediately, fast enough one wouldn’t notice he’d been getting ready to sock someone much taller at all.

As a ball strikes him in the back, he winces, still staring at the ball offered up to him by two, stone faced girls. He dematerializes the menacing armor before taking it back, wordlessly.

“Yeah, I guess it—“ At the sound of another thunk from the machine, he twists round to slug his arm, grazing the projectile with a sloppy precision that’s hardly trained to defeat such nonexpected attacks, but still knocking it off course, a red spot and burn on the bare hand he’d struck it with.

“...What do you kids know about manly anyway? Don’t you have a mom or dad to go bother?!” He barks over his shoulder, as he slips up in countering two balls, but striking the third square on the face.

 

[Osuteno]

“Pffft, look Kiko, he can’t focus long enough to remember the machine will keep pitching even when he turns around,” Karasuko said while hiding her mouth as if her facial expression ever actually changed.

“Pffft, that isn’t very nice Suko, you shouldn’t make fun of unfortunate people. It isn’t his fault he was likely born this dumb,” Yukiko said also hiding her mouth behind her hand as if she were actually smiling.

““But yes we have a mom and dad,”” they said in unison while continuing to eat their ice creams again.

“But mommy and sens- daddy work very hard to provide for us,” Yukiko said solemnly.

“So we let them have time to work and rest by finding people to toy wi- to play with because we are good girls,” Karasuko nodded.

““Waist.

As for what we know about manliness, momma said to compare all boys to daddy, and you don’t even reach one out of one hundred.

Easily distracted.

Right Shoulder.

Quick to anger.

Weak.

Rough to look at.

Inexperienced.

Nose.””

Just as the twins said the body parts they mentioned were precisely where the balls were heading. They were too small themselves to even begin thinking about hitting them away, but at the very least they could tell trajectory of each ball as it left the machine. They went back to eating their ice creams and would start casually mentioning where Norisuke would get hit next if he wasn’t careful as if it were a game.

Meanwhile, not too far away, Osu was flipping through several sets of documents simultaneously as the red ‘threads’ turned the pages and signed his approvals, all while subconsciously keeping track of the twins. They were quite fragile, so even without meaning to, he had become quite overprotective of them. Physically, the girls were below average for the children of Shinobi around their age, Yukiko in particular was weaker than most regular children, but they did inherit the quick mind and intelligence that allowed their father to become a fully trained doctor when he was eleven and earn him that ridiculous nickname Biblioprince. Rather, Osu sometimes commented Yukiko was probably smarter than him and Karasuko only fell a little short. However, they were… odd. So odd in fact that they really couldn’t manage to make friends and no sitter would come back for a second job. They spoke rather strangely at times, had a penchant for starting trouble, and had odd ideas about things.

So yes, they were both quite intelligent, but both would struggle greatly in comparison to their father if they went on to become Shinobi. For now however, the toddlers could have plenty of amusement making fun of people like this beat up person before them.