Open Laughter Lost: When Words Cut Deeper

[Chikamatsu Suisen]

The afternoon sun beat down on the residential district's dusty streets, casting long shadows between the buildings. A small crowd of Academy students had gathered in a circle, their excited chatter creating a bubble of noise that would inevitably draw adult attention soon.

At the center of that circle, Chikamatsu Suisen was on his back for the third time.

"Okay, okay—time out!" The blonde homunculus held up one hand while pushing himself up with the other, his crimson eyes watering slightly from the hit he'd just taken to his nose. "Can we talk about this? I said your hair looked cool! COOL! Not like a windblown mess!"

The Hokkyoku boy—taller, broader, and currently much angrier—stood with his arms crossed. Even standing still, there seemed to be a breeze constantly swirling around him, kicking up small dust devils at his feet.

"You think you're so funny, don't you, clone?" The Hokkyoku student took a step forward, wind whipping his white hair dramatically. "Always making jokes. Always disrupting class. My father says homunculi aren't even real shinobi, they're just heartless creations meant to change bed pans at the Omni Prime Medical Facility. You're just... stuck. Forever ten years old, forever a student, forever pretending to be human."

The laughter in the crowd died down a bit at that.

"Oh come on, that's not even fair! You've got a wind affinity and I've got—" Suisen patted his pockets frantically, but his voice had lost some of its usual cheerfulness. "—lint! I've got pocket lint!"

"See? Even now you're joking. Because that's all you can do. You'll never grow up. You'll never graduate. You'll never be anything more than what the evil Overseer made you to be—a failed experiment that doesn't even age."

A few kids in the crowd shifted uncomfortably. Someone whispered something about Sora.

"Somebody should stop this..." a girl muttered from the crowd.

"Are you kidding? This is getting intense," another student whispered back, though they sounded less excited now.

Suisen scrambled to his feet, taking what he hoped looked like a fighting stance, but his hands were shaking slightly. The seals on his arms tingled, his chakra wanted to respond, to summon those chains he'd been practicing with. But what was the point? Even if he won this fight, would it prove anything? The Hokkyoku boy would grow taller, stronger, older. And Suisen... Suisen would still look ten.

Forever.

"Listen, buddy... what if we just—"

"What? Make another joke? That's all you are, clone. A joke that doesn't know when to end."

A concentrated gust of wind slammed into his chest, sending him stumbling backward into the wall. Sand and dust swirled around both fighters as the Hokkyoku boy advanced again, but this time Suisen didn't immediately try to get up.

"Get up, clone. Or are you too artificial to even fight back? Too fake to feel real pain?"

Suisen's hand touched one of the seals on his arm. He could feel the enormous chakra suppressed beneath it, the same spiritual energy that had consumed Sora, that could burn him away into nothing if these seals ever failed. He was powerful... really powerful but fragile all at once. Real and artificial. A person and a thing.

"I'm... I'm not fake," he said quietly, more to himself than to the Hokkyoku boy. But even as he said it, doubt crept in. Would he really never age? Would he be stuck in this body, watching his classmates grow up and move on without him?

Was he really a person if he couldn't even do that most basic human thing, grow up?

 

[Sabaku Rika]

Rika was on her way home. If she could even call it that, she rarely went home; it was a place to sleep and store books. Her tunic was a bit dusty, smudged with mud from training, and her cowl was loose. Her black hair had been retied up in a high ponytail recently, but still stuck out in spots. She couldn't be bothered to fix it properly. She had a bag with a few meat buns inside. She held it with just a finger, swinging it half-hazardly with each step. Today had been a long and painful day; she was sore and tired.
Then she heard laughter, other kids, maybe younger than herself. She glanced over to see a ring, kids surrounding a blonde. "Ah, the good ol' days," she muttered to herself with a slight look of disgust. She'd been there, once, that's when she learned that showing her power got punished. She never took it, the bullying. She was clannless, parentless, strong, marking each checkbox to get bullied. She could ignore this kid, let him get his due, maybe he'd learned to look out for himself.
But her feet were already moving. Rika walked up to Suisen, and grinned widely.
"Yo, need a hand with theese wanna be nobody's?" She asked as she tilted her head and pointed her thumb towards the Hokkyoku boy. She didn't bother looking at him, her back towards him as she positioned herself between the boy and Suisen. Her posture was relaxed. Man, I shouldn't even bother with these brats.... Rika thought to herself, even though she herself was only 12 and fresh out of the academy. She still had a lot to learn and grow.

 

[Chikamatsu Suisen]

Suisen looked up at the older girl who'd just stepped between him and the Hokkyoku boy, his crimson eyes still watering from the last hit. For a moment, relief flooded through him - someone was helping, someone believed he was worth defending.
But then the Hokkyoku boy's words echoed in his mind again. "Forever pretending to be human." "A failed experiment." "A joke that doesn't know when to end."

"I... I don't need—" Suisen started, his voice shaking. But it wasn't from fear anymore.

The seals on his arms began to glow, faint at first, then brighter. The chakra beneath them pulsed, responding to his emotional turmoil, to his anger, to his need to prove that he was real, that he mattered.

"Oh, now the clone needs a babysitter?" the Hokkyoku boy sneered from behind Rika. "Can't even fight his own—"

"I SAID I DON'T NEED HELP!"

The words came out louder than Suisen intended, and with them came power.

Chakra erupted from the seals on his body - not uncontrolled, not burning him away like it had Sora, but focused. Directed. The Battlesmith core within him responded to his will, and suddenly the air around Suisen shimmered with manifestation.

They bloomed like chikamatsu flowers made of pure energy and manifested metal - elegant, deadly constructs that hovered in the air around him. Petal-like blades of chakra-forged steel, each one glowing with that same crimson light as his eyes. They spun slowly, gracefully, like a garden growing in fast-forward, each "flower" a weapon waiting to strike.

The crowd gasped and stepped back. Even the Hokkyoku boy's wind died down as he stared.

Suisen pushed himself fully to his feet, and as he did, more of the chakra-flowers materialized around him. His blonde hair seemed to catch the light of his own chakra, almost glowing white in the intense energy. The seals on his arms burned bright, working overtime to keep his power controlled, channeled, useful rather than destructive.

"You said I'm not real," Suisen said, his voice no longer shaking, each word accompanied by another weapon-flower blooming into existence. "You said I'm just a copy. Just a failed experiment."

The puppet weapons spun faster, their chakra trails leaving streaks of light in the air like falling petals.

"But you know what? Even if I never grow up. Even if I'm stuck like this forever. Even if I was made in a lab instead of born..."

He extended his hand, and the flowers responded, their petals opening to reveal the sharp edges within.

"...this is REAL. What I feel is REAL. And I'm done apologizing for existing!"

The Hokkyoku boy stumbled backward, his eyes wide as the chakra-flowers bloomed around Suisen. The confident sneer melted off his face, replaced by something that looked a lot like fear. The wind that had been swirling around him sputtered and died.

"I—I didn't—" he stammered, taking another step back. His hands came up defensively, no longer formed into fists. "You're not supposed to use jutsu outside of class! That's against the rules!"

The crowd had gone completely silent. No more excited whispers, no more cheering. Several students had backed away from the circle entirely, clearly not expecting the "class clown" to have this kind of power.

"Holy crap," the girl who'd suggested stopping the fight whispered, her eyes reflecting the glow of Suisen's chakra weapons.

"Is that—are those puppet weapons? How does an Academy student even—" another kid breathed in awe.

"He's the Overseer's son," someone else murmured. "Of course he can do that."

"My mom said the last homunculus exploded from too much chakra," a nervous voice added from the back of the crowd. "Maybe we should—"

The Hokkyoku boy's face flushed red, embarrassment mixing with his fear. He'd just gotten completely upstaged by the kid he'd been calling a "failed experiment." His pride wouldn't let him run, but his survival instincts were clearly screaming at him to get away from those spinning, razor-sharp chakra constructs.

"This—this doesn't prove anything!" he said, but his voice cracked. "You're still—you're still just—"
But even he couldn't finish the insult. Not with those crimson eyes blazing and a garden of deadly weapons hovering in the air.

 

[Sabaku Rika]

Rika tilted her head as the blonde boy, Suisen, started to say he didn't need her help. She sensed something was off, the boiling point had already been reached. A chill run down her spine as she sensed the surge of chakra. She stepped back, her eyes widened as she watched Suisen, and the petals appear. Crap dammit, now I have to intervene... To bad I can't sit and watch them duke it out... She thought. If she didn't intervene then she'd get in trouble, if only she had just ignored the situation. She'd be home eating her meat buns, and reading a cheap book. She didn't like playing hero, and she couldn't see herself as a mentor either. But she had no choice but to step up, and step in now.

"Woah, woah - kid," Rika started and raised her hands up, one hand still holding the bag with the meat buns. She stepped in front of Hokkyoku boy, essentially ready to block any attack. She wasn't sure what he meant by failed experiment, or not being real, being real, or the possibility of never aging. That was far out of her grasps for knowledge. She thought all that sort of stuff was fiction. She wasn't sure how to approach this, but it was too late to walk away now.

"I see you don't need help, but Listen, I don't understand what you went through, lab experiment, or what not, I believe your real. You don't need to apologize, or prove anything, especially not to some snotty sand dweebles. Don't let these losers get to your head- are they really worth wasting the chakra for?" Rika said in a calm tone. She then smiled, "but I gotta admit, that's a pretty cool technique. I haven't seen anything like it," She commented as she looked at the puppet weapons. She heard the whispers from the crowd around them, but didn't dwell on them since her focus was on Suisen, and trying to calm the situation. While she would love to watch a fight, and see these puppet weapons in action, she knew this wasn't the time or place. She couldn't allow a kid to get meat grinded on the street by some fancy puppet weapons.

 

[Chikamatsu Suisen]

The chakra-flowers continued to spin around Suisen, their deadly petals glinting in the afternoon sun. His chest was heaving, not from exertion but from the emotional storm raging inside him. Rika's words cut through the anger like a splash of cold water, and for a moment, the weapons wavered in their orbit.

"But..." Suisen started, his voice still carrying that edge of hurt and fury. "He said... they all think..."

His crimson eyes flicked from Rika to the Hokkyoku boy cowering behind her, then to the crowd of students who were staring at him with a mixture of awe and fear. The same kids who'd been laughing at him getting beat up were now backing away like he was some kind of monster.

Just like they'd probably looked at Sora... Right before her Genin exams, before she burned away to save their classmates.

The realization hit him like another gust of wind to the chest. This wasn't proving he was human. This was proving he was dangerous. Different. Other.

"I just... I just wanted them to see..." His voice cracked, and the flowers began to slow their rotation. "I'm a real person... I'm not just... just some thing that my dad built in a lab."

The seals on his arms pulsed brighter as he struggled to pull the chakra back in, to make the weapons disappear. It was harder than summoning them had been, his emotions were still too raw, too tangled. A tear fell from his eye.

"Sand dweebs," he repeated quietly, almost tasting the words. Despite everything, the corner of his mouth twitched. "That's... that's actually pretty good."

One by one, the chakra-flowers began to dissolve, their petals breaking apart into motes of light that faded into the air. Suisen's blonde hair stopped glowing as the intense chakra output decreased. The seals on his arms continued to burn, doing their job of containing what remained.

"You really think it's cool?" he asked Rika, his voice smaller now, more like the kid he was supposed to be. "The weapons, I mean. I've only done it a couple times in training. Never when I was actually... mad before."

The last of the puppet weapons vanished, leaving just Suisen standing there dusty, bruised, and looking very much like a ten-year-old who'd just had the worst day of his short life. Blood trailed down from his nose. He wiped at his tearful eyes with the back of his hand, smearing dirt across his face.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, though it wasn't clear if he was apologizing to Rika, to the crowd, or to himself. "I didn't mean to... I just... he said I wasn't real and I..."

His shoulders slumped, all the fight draining out of him as quickly as the chakra had come. Without the anger propping him up, he just looked tired and hurt and very, very young.

"Can we just... can we go? Before someone tells my dad I almost turned a classmate into confetti?"

 

[Sabaku Rika]

Rika watched closely, she didn't look it, but she was tense. She knew this situation could escalate fast. Sympathy was hard, this felt like one of those dam tests she had to take. She knew emotions were dangerous, a flaw, something she still was learning how to control, but she at least had a decent grasp on it. She almost forgot what it was like, not to long ago when she would cry, when she let words get to her. They still do, but she would rather eat a cactus than to let others see they got to her nowadays.

As the flowers dissolved, and Suisen apologized, Rika relaxed, slightly, and lowered her hands. She let out a breath she didn't even realize she was holding. His words, the sound of his voice, so fragile, it made Rika feel something, she wasn't sure what it was, but it was unpleasant. Maybe pity, empathy? She wasn't sure. She didn't let it show, while internally she felt uneasy, outwardly she smiled.

"Yeah, I say what I mean, and I mean what I say," She replied, then she casted a look towards Hokkyoku one last time, she gave him a subtle glare, before looking at Suisen. She grinned widely and shifted her weight. "As far as I can see, you're bleeding, so you must be real. I don't know science mumbo jumbo, but I know power when I see it." She explained with a shrug. As he asked if they could get out of here, Rika nodded and stood straight.

"Good idea, let's walk and talk, leave these sand dweebles to their sniveling," She said as she jerked her head to the side and started to walk. The crowd she didn't pay any money to. The bullies, the bystanders, this stuff was too common. She knew she wasn't any better, but she wouldn't admit that. "I'm Sabaku Rika by the way,"