Other side of the fence [Open]

[Darasu]

"KOGA GET BACK HERE!" He roared, running as fast as the muscles in his legs would allow him to move. And even though that was a decent pace in the leg comparison between him self and the wolf, he still couldn't seem to catch the pup that had been gifted to him by the wilds.

For the last two days since he had received Koga, the wolf cub had been difficult and stubborn much like its master. The two did not seem to blend well together yet, and it was causing a bit of a head ache. Nights were kept awake by chewed pillows and moon lit howls, and the days had basically been this.
Chasing him.

Darasu had been running after his pup for nearly fifteen minutes, and had been led into the darker area of Kumogakure. The buildings began to grow more grey, and lacked any life inside, just the growing moss and vines that began to creep upwards towards the sky. Few people were seen, and those that were seemed to have been out of the sun for months, pale and peeling skin or sickly hives could be caught at a glimpse as the young academy student ran.

Once he realized where he was exactly, he skidded to a halt at a four way alley intersection. Koga was no where to be seen.

"That wolf is gunna get me killed."

 

[Sugawara Hikari]

“I want you to get out of the house and make some friends,” spoke a stern but maternal voice.
After a brief interlude of panicked yelling and clanging pots, a young girl by the name of Hikari found herself tossed onto the ground outside. Hikari quickly got off of her bum and began dusting away the dirt from her black leggings, short tan skirt, and blue jacket that her mother had so unceremoniously picked out for her. She would have groaned audibly if she wasn’t half convinced that her mother would hear her wailing and chase her down the street. Normally, Hikari’s mother would let her read in the family library for as long as she wanted, which coincidentally happened to be always. But what was once a quaint and charming habit was starting to become reclusiveness normally not seen outside of crazy cat ladies. She was about to leave when her mother poked her head out and yelled, “Don’t forget this.” Hikari was knocked to the ground by a well lobbied launch of small coin purse and a scarf.

To her mother’s future displeasure, Hikari spent the bulk of the afternoon metaphorically drunk in Kumogakure’s bookshops. She raced from shop to shop piling up book after book until her knees almost buckled. Sometimes a shopkeeper would timidly asked the borderline raving girl whether she was sure about what she was doing, sometimes they would help her carry her purchases. Hikari lost sense of how much time she spent in those stores, or even where she was. There was something about books that made her go a bit lony. She loved reading about stories such as when a young prince Raiden saved the maiden locked in a high tower and guarded by 100,000 thousand of the evil king’s greatest soldiers, or how the fair maiden Sakura wrote a song so beautiful that her seven brothers who were lost at sea were able to find their way home. The young girl had always enjoyed reading about a wide range of topics ranging from the political origins of Kumogakure to the physical anatomy of do-

Suddenly, out of nowhere, she saw a wolf cub leap through the air and head straight to her. Hikari shrieked as the pup collided with her causing her to launch her several dozen books into the air. It was all over in the blink of an eye. Hikari didn’t know if she would live or di- was the pup licking her face?

 

[Darasu]

His feet skidded as he cornered an intersection at full speed, dust kicking up around him as his arms balanced him. When the cloud of dirt behind him had started to settle, it was jetted once again by his take off down an alleyway chasing his canine companion. At the dimness in the distance, he could see a girl about his age sitting down surrounded by books, and a small wolf cub licking her face.

What a dog.

Darasu slowed his speed as he neared the girl, and came to a final halt outside the radius of her paper-bound mess.

"Sorry about that!" He said quickly, as he grabbed the loving pup by the scruff of the neck and hauled it off of her. Koga gave a gentle yelp of excitement, and began licking at his master as if nothing had happened in the first place. The dog seemed to have either no concept of wrong doing, or a short attention span.

The young academy student then set the pup beside him and knelt down, helping the girl to gather her books. " Koga is a bit of a trouble maker." He said handing her the first pile, then the second pile of books.
By the third pile, he raised an eyebrow at the girl and studied her more closely. She had a small frame, and hair was close to his own age. His emerald eyes scanned all the books around them and he chuckled a bit.

" Bit of a bookworm are you? I respect anyone with a thirst for knowledge, but this is downright intellectual masochism." As he gathered the third pile of study material. Rather than hand her this throng of novels and reads, he tucked it under his arm. In the area near them, Koga could be seen dragging books together in a pile by lightly grabbing them in his jaws, and using all his muster and weight to drag them.

"Would you like some help carrying these? I'm Darasu." He said with a friendly tone, using his spare right hand to extend an offer to aid the girl to stand.

 

[Yamada Naoki]

Naoki sighed silently to himself. It was a sigh of boredom, and maybe just a little bit of frustration. This "homework" that he'd been given was nothing of the sought that he'd expected. Why did he even have to know how to calculate the trajectory of a thrown object? This wasn't something you learned through study, it was something you learned through practice, through gut instinct, or at least that's what he thought to himself in-between moments of scribbling away furiously at the scrap of paper he held in his hands.

"This is just impossi…" He began to mutter to himself at a time when he was feeling ready to give up. That's when he heard the shriek though, it sounded like a girl's shriek, and it was enough to snap him out of his own misery. The commotion led him to poke his head outside of his second story window. He feared the worse, after all this wasn't exactly the friendliest part of town. What he saw though was, in fact, a pleasant surprise. It wasn't the mugging he had been expecting, instead it was two children and they both looked to be around his age. They seemed normal enough, except for the fact that they were carrying a libraries worth of books. There were so many, more than Naoki had ever seen in one place, and not just books, but a wolf pup as well!

"Is everything all right down there?" He eventually called out after having taken a moment to gawk at the pair. There wasn't much to see of him, not yet anyway; it was just his head sticking out from the ramshackle building, with his usual yellow headband keeping back his hair.

 

[Sugawara Hikari]

In blink of an eye, her worst nightmare came alive. A portal opened in the slums of Kumogakure and Hikari watched as the outstretched tendrils of an unspeakable abomination reached out to her as if intended to engulf her in a pit of blackness and despair. Unintelligible alien language resonated maliciously with its arcane and eldritch pronunciations expressing ideas unfathomable to the human mind. Hikari watched helpless as a chorus of the damned joined into an infernal disharmonious crescendo of pure baleful evil. She was corned in a world of unnameable horrors, all with the goal of making her gentle soul the appetizer to their inevitable global feast. Hikari was doomed.

Or she would have been if any of the above was anything other than the result of her overactive imagination paralyzing her with fear at the sight of a relatively simple social situation. Hikari had apparently been tackled by the rambunctious and hyperactive wolf pup owned by a boy that had now come to her aid. Her crystal blue eyes watched him cautiously as he helpfully began gathering her small trunk of books while talking about his pup Koga (“what kind of a name is Koga for a puppy?”). She was happy enough to let the scene play out except that he did what anybody else in the world would do in that situation: he had the audacity to introduce himself and try to help her up.

Hikari struggled to speak, concerned that she would accidentally blurt out something that would make her sound very foolish. ”Y-yeah. I’m Hi-Hikari.” She blushed beet red for stuttering during a simple introduction. The young girl grabbed onto Darasu’s hand (although he would note that she was mildly shaking) before helping herself up. She felt like like goo and wondered if she would topple over. In a sudden rush, she began dusting her clothes and making sure that everything was still properly on to avoid looking more like the fool she felt like. Hikari took a deep breath and fumbled around with her glasses to assuage her anxiety before she spoke. She always felt comfortable speaking to her pets, parents, librarians, and even certain shopkeepers, but always felt stupid in front of people her own age. In what seemed like an eternity but was actually only just a few seconds, she followed up her previous statement, ”I like books.”

If there was any blood in her body, it was now in her face. Hikari shone brilliantly like the red tomato she felt like. ”I like books? Why would I say something like that!? she thought as she fought the urge to break out into a full fledged run. Hikari might have teared up from embarrassment if she wasn’t spooked by the sound of another voice permeating from the ether. And just like that, she shrieked again and collapsed on the ground.

 

[Darasu]

As the girl picked and dusted herself off, Darasu keep one eye on her and one on the pup at his vision's edge. The small cub was still lost in his own world, gently grabbing the mess he had spilled and piling them up. There was no way Koga knew what a book was, or even that these volumes of knowledge and tree were valuable. All the pup knew was that they were the source of every thing right now, primitive intellect just told the cub to keep gathering these values.

Darasu had gathered another handful by the time that the long haired head had poked around the corner and asked if any assistance was needed. Before the young academy student could answer, there was a loud ping of noise at his peripheral that caused his acute senses to go into a caution state.
His eyes and arms moved with alacrity as the girl began to fall back towards the ground, but before her knees could be scraped to match the color of her face, the young Inuzuka intiate was able to catch her waist with his un-burdened arm and save her the pain.

Immediately his face matched the flush color of the stuttered Hikari's. He didn't like touching people. In fact, he didn't like people much at all, they always seemed over puzzled and fixated on things. But in his own reaction of intuition, he had tried to help her and now found him self carrying her weight with the brace of his own.
This reaction alarmed him, and because of his own fluster he quickly set her down where she had been intended to fall and took several steps back.

"I'm sorry!" He said to her quickly and embarrassed , and returned his attention to shuffling the books in his occupied left arm.

Koga was ever more the puppy, and left his book gathering fascination to happily run over to Hikari. His tongue hung out his open maw as he ran over to her, and quickly began licking her face again as she slumped where she was.

Darasu returned his attention to the enigma face around the buildings edge. "Maybe we do need help!" He foolishly called across the torn alleyway, He was a shinobi in training,and should have been completely independent of others, but physical contact out side of combat was not his gig.

Somewhere in the relatively close shadows, their confusion was heard. Shuffles and murmurs would have been noted by a skilled ninja.

 

[Yamada Naoki]

What a strange pair. That's what Naoki thought to himself whilst watching the events unfold from the comfort of his own tiny room. They seemed very different then the children that he'd grown up with. Those children had all been very energetic and carefree, but these two appeared somewhat awkward and reserved in their movements. To be fair though, he found it difficult to figure out exactly what was going on; he couldn't properly hear the words that they exchanged amongst themselves, but there was certainly no missing that second shriek and he didn't need the eyes of an eagle to catch the girl suddenly collapsing.

It was at that moment that Naoki, fearing the worst, leapt from his second story window and out onto the terracotta shingles of the building's roof. Almost as if it were a child's slide, he rode the tiles on his butt until he was dropping to the streets below and landing in a crouch at the bottom. From there he took off in a spring down the street and within seconds he was beside the pair, staring down at the girl with a look of concern.

"What happened? Is she okay? Does she need a doctor?" He blurted out, almost too quick to be understood. Doing his best he tried to assess the situation. His gaze moved quickly between the three of them: the girl, the boy, and the dog. He even spared a moment to look at all the books that had already been gathered into a pile but it seemed silly to think that they had anything to do with the current situation. Out of everything, there was one little thing that stood out above all else.

"Are you two sick? Do you have a fever?" That was the first thought that came to mind upon noticing that both of them were particularly red in the face.

 

[Sugawara Hikari]

The tiny girl didn’t know what to think. Her mind had temporarily gone blank from embarrassment. Ever the fool, she had been spooked to the point of fainting simply because of an unexpected voice. As a result, not only was rescued by a total stranger, but another person had seen her make a fool of herself. Once again, she might have cried if it wasn’t for the fact that she felt the young pup lick her face. All she could do in those few seconds that she worked to catch her breath, was stroke the wolf’s soft and silky fur and think about how she could possibly recover from this.

She turned to the newcomer. His eyes appeared to gaze upon her like an inquisitive scientist attempting to coax the secrets of nature from thorough study. Hikari hadn’t really heard what he had said but she could tell from the tone of his voice that she was concerned. After all, why wouldn’t he be she quickly though, she had just freaked out for no discernible reason whatsoever.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself and introduce yourself, spoke her inner voice. Hikari knew that she was spending a little too much time paralyzed by her social anxieties. Whether she liked it or not, she had to react, at the very least to prevent any further judgment against her. She quickly rearranged her glasses while she thought about what she would say exactly. Come on, you can do this. The young girl cleared her throat before she spoke.

”I’m ok. I’m sorry for being such a fraidy cat,” Hikari gave a weak smile while she continued to pet the oblivious but joyful wolf pup. Self-deprecation? That’ll win them over, responded the silent self-doubt. Hikari had the unfortunate tendency to self-deprecate in order to reduce expectations in difficult encounters. Her mother had scolded her often about it and her father had tried to convince her that she was both smart and lovely enough in her own right, but time and time again she found herself relying on the familiar crutch. Forgetting something? Hikari’s blue eyes opened widely in realization. ”My name is Hikari, she spoke in a quick voice.

In a hurry to prevent any further embarrassment, she stood up. At her tallest, Hikari loomed in with an underwhelming 4’7’’ and 80 lbs. soaking wet. Her brown hair had been ruffled by both the sudden collapse and the wild tackle but still shone brilliant as a result of the meticulous care. Hikari once again brushed her tan skirt, black leggings, and leather boots clean. She turned to Darasu and had begun to thank him ("Thank-") when she finally noticed that her trove of books was on the floor. Even worse, she noticed that the small pup had chewed on a few rare picks. Hikari adorably wailed as she dove for the books and began frantically stacking them up again.

The only thing that two boys heard was an audible, adorable, but mildly pained, "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! He chewed on Miyazaki's A Thousand Winds and Takahashi's City of Clouds!" Hikari got up again and ran straight at Darasu before she made a leap to take him down.

 

[Darasu]

The newcomer came with concern and eagerness to help, but Darasu felt that he was all good minus the embarrassment and lack of control of his own animal. The pup seemed content in the girl's arms as she relaxed, and the long raven haired boy asked about any medical attention they may need.

"I'm not sick, just flustered at that lil' guy" He said pointing to the cuddled wolf cub, who was totally content with life. He then introduced him self to the new arrival and asked for a name in exhcange, before he returned his gaze back towards the girl who had now risen to her feet, straightening herself up and dusting off a second time.
Koga, who had been set down, padded off comically to lay down and watch from the coolness of the shade.

Darasu folded his hands together behind his head and stretched in that manner, while Hikari began to gather the small collection of piles that Koga had gathered. Seconds later there was another wail of noise from the girl as she seemed defeated by a chewed book, and his expression dropped to even more failed than before.

"Oh man, I'm sor-" He was cut off mid sentence as he was taken off guard, Hikari rushing and tackling him to the ground with both hands, pinning him against the cobble road beneath them in the rough district. Darasu turned deep red again from the close proximity, and chewed on his words mentally before speaking.

" I - I can replace them Hikari!" he blurted. Money was not an issue with him or his family, but it was the principle of the matter. If his wolf went around destroying everyone's stuff, he would remain in social solitude as he had been forever. The wolf was his responsibility, but it was also his sacrifice in situations like this.

His head then turned to his pup who was a few yards away, wagging his tail like a jerk at the scene. The cub was smart enough to know what he did, he understood words well enough.

Darasu then thought of a way that he could repay the girl. " In fact, you can raid my family's library. Nobody really goes in there anymore, so you can take as many books as you'd like!". It was true, in the west wing of his family's estate, there was a library that could rival most studious venues. His mother's clan had been gathering books for centuries, and there was a three story building dedicated to the collection that had been gathering dust for the past five years.

Turning to the new arrival while still on his back, he asked "Do you think thats fair?" Trying to get a third party perspective on the mistake he had made.

 

[Yamada Naoki]

Naoki gave a soft little sigh accompanied by a shake of his head. It was all very confusing. One moment saw the panicked girl flat out on the ground, and in a flash she had Darasu on his back while she ranted on about a book. He wasn't quite sure what to say, and at this point it seemed that involving himself anymore in their affairs, more than he already had anyway, could prove to be hazardous to his health.

It's just a book, isn't it. How valuable can it be? He dare not say what he thought out-loud, less he face Hikari's wrath, but the entire situation seemed a little bit silly. What mattered was that they were both okay… well they weren't sick at least, whether Darasu would remain healthy had yet to be seen. Now though seemed as good a time as any, lest he be drawn any further into their quarrel. He took his first step back, readying himself to make a quick turn and an even quicker getaway, but of course it wasn't meant to be. Try as he might to avoid inserting himself any more into the scuffle, Darasu's question had placed him in a somewhat awkward position.

"Well… erm…" He stammered while his eyes took on a wide and bewildered expression. Now it was his turn to panic. It felt like standing in a minefield, one wrong move and the consequences could be dire. Out of desperation he looked about his surroundings. Perhaps there was a way to distract the both of them? Definitely not the books, they were the cause of the whole mess. So was the wolf pup… but still, it was certainly cute. That might just work.

"I… I erm… I've never seen a wolf when it was young!" Naoki managed to get out in a stutter. With a stiff and somewhat awkward gait, he hurried over to where Koga sat wagging his tail. He went down to a squat and proceeded to pet the pup gently on the top of its head.

"They were always big ones back where I lived… and they'd keep stealing the chickens. B-but I bet this one would never do anything like that." The irony of what he said wasn't entirely lost on him. Koga might not have been stealing chickens, but he had certainly done a number of Hikari's books.

 

[Sugawara Hikari]

She was seething. She was furious. How could he!? He was raising an irresponsible book killer! How long had those copies lined those dusty shelfs before a young girl with a voracious appetite for literature appeared. How many hands had caressed the spine and eyes devoured the contents of those books until a rogue animal had thoroughly savaged- ”l-library?

Hikari’s rage was quickly cut off by Darasu’s mention of a family estate, library, and recklessly favorable terms. She may have begun a rampage that would have been the talk of the town if not for those wonderful words. She was a shy girl, and she was even smart a majority of the time, but Hikari had a major weakness for books. In the blink of an eye, she imagined herself being whisked away to a strange but beautiful ancient structure. A series of masked librarians took her by the and began dancing across the meticulously arranged and decorated archive. In her fantasies, she flew through the library with joy in her eyes as she discovered every book known to man. Hikari was unable to keep herself from smiling dreamily as she got off of Darasu. She almost floated away in a dancing motion as she headed to her fallen books.

”That sounds delightful,” she said with a melodious tone. She almost bounced as she gathered the placed the remainder of her books in her book bag. This is neither the time nor the place to discuss how it was possible for Hikari to place book after book into a relatively normal sized bag. Without a care in the world, she tossed the unbelievably heavy bag at Naoki.

”I’ll need help carrying the books. You don’t mind do you?” she asked of Naoki while still lost in her dreamlike phase.

 

[Yamada Naoki]

Wham. It came as a complete surprise to Naoki when he was suddenly struck on the side of the head by Hikari's book bag. The poor boy went down like a sack of potatoes. He'd been laid out on in the middle of the road, staring up at a sky that seemed to spin around him in circles. It took him a moment to overcome his disorientation. He still wasn't in a rush to get up just yet, but the weight of the bag was starting to make breathing a tad difficult, and so, with a pained groan, he hefted the book bag off to the side. When he sat up, he did so rubbing his head where he'd been struck, knowing full well he was going to have a nice, big bump on his noggin.

"Y-you don't have to be so rough!" He complained out loud, but he knew Hikari wasn't paying attention. It was obvious to him that she was lost in her own little world. There wasn't much use in arguing, in fact, he feared what might happen if he dared try. This girl was crazy strong and, well… just plain crazy it seemed!

"Yeah, I'll help carry some," He said with a smile, but his voice was one of resignation. With both hands he heaved the bag onto his back, but not without a good deal of grunting and groaning (more than was really necessary), to at least get across that what she was making him carry was unbelievably heavy. The weight of the load left him hunched over and a little bit shaky in the legs, but he wasn't ready to topple over just yet at least.

What a day… I try to help someone and I get made into a personal servant. He mused silently to himself.

[I figure we may as well continue without Darasu. Duno if he'll be coming back.]

 

[Sugawara Hikari]

Hikari got up and turned away from the comatose Darasu who had resigned himself to his fate. The girl regained her composure after being sated but she was presented with a new problem. Although she had been momentarily distracted by the wolf pup’s damage to her own books, even she couldn’t deny that she may have bought more tomes than she should have as demonstrated by the sounds of books colliding with a human body. Although she was eager to pore through Darasu’s library, she doubted that her mother would be so understanding.

”We’ll have to go later. My mom might be mad when she sees what I bought,” she told Darasu. It was true. The Sugawara’s were a clean people, or at least her mother was. Librarians work wonders in keeping their residences as immaculate as they are orderly. However the sole exception had always been Hikari’s room. Hikari’s room, for the lack of a better word was a blight on her organized mother's structure. There were books everywhere. Towers of them. They didn’t just fill the shelves, they adorned every aspect of that room from the shelves, walls, and floor. It wasn’t uncommon for Hikari to fall asleep on a small mound or knock a pile over while she was rushing out. Hikari’s mother was frustrated but had long given up fighting her daughter about it.

She got up walked over to the young boy who had joined them during their more hectic moments. ”I’m being extremely rude, aren’t I?” she asked without hesitation as if was a character trait that can't be effectively utilized without killing pacing. "My name is Hikari. Thank you for helping me carrying my books.” Hikari was about to point and indicate which direction her home was in but it dawned upon her that her surroundings were quite confusing. Gone were the vibrant colors and lively surroundings that typically adorned the Seki district. Her eyes became wide as she slowly began realizing that she had accidentally gone further into Kumogakure than she was allowed to. Her father had always warned her against venturing into the Cronopolis because of its seedier reputation. Hikari looked over at the helpful but strange boy.

”Wait, where are we?”