The Song That Heals. [Open RP]

[Tsukino Dante]

Yeah, I would kill to be able to play as well as my character. xD

"Ugh... another dull day."

Dante was laid across the bed in his messy-yet-chaotically-organized room, it was a weekend evening and he had made no plans for himself so naturally he was fairly bored. Well, there was only one way that was going to change. The teenage Genin stretched his arms out and pulled himself to his feet, he made his way out of his room; on his way out he grabbed his favorite music instrument, an acoustic guitar, put it into a packpack-styled case, and strapped the whole package to his back. He also grabbed his knife and projectile holster and clipped them onto his belt (better safe than sorry, some really weird things can happen when a ninja goes out for a walk). Finally, he turned his headset on, just in case someone needed to call him while he was out.

"Hey, mom! I'm going out for a while! Just call my headset if you need me back home!" Dante called out as he made his way to the front door.

"Okay! Love you! God bless! Have a good evening!" came the quick reply, Dante smiled a little bit.

*20 minutes later*​

Dante sat on a wooden bench in a small park in the outer part of the district, peacefully taking in the scenery and fresh air (and indulging in a bit of people watching, he wasn't the only person who thought this park was a good place to be on a weekend). His guitar was leaning against the bench, right next to him; he reached over to it and picked it up. "Time for some music, I could use the practice! Ay?" he said to himself as he took the instrument out of his case and started to tune it. Once he was comfortable with the guitar's tuning he started to strum a song that he had learned by memory.

Scene Music​

He started slow, and eventually picked up the pace of his playing. As the song started to pick up in speed he closed his eyes and entered a meditative-like state, able to concentrate only on the music he was playing. This was what made him happy; a lot of things defined him, his swordsmanship and his ninja career especially, but music was the one thing that always made him happy. He loved to play.

Almost as soon as it had begun, Dante's song ended. His eyes remained closed as he contemplated his performance. Had anyone taken notice of him, was anyone listening to his music? He didn't care, he just wanted to play.

WC: 417
[MFT]

 

[Junan]

Walking home he heard some music. It was like someone had grabbed something which they'd found discarded and thought it was a good idea to play with it. Kushin looked around and there was some idiot sitting on the bench with a look of self-satisfaction clear on his face.

Every finger pluck made Kushin wince.

His top lip moved up in a sneer and there was suddenly a bad taste in his mouth as he quickly turned to get away from it. Perhaps humming could dull the noise. So he started humming MMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Then people looked at him weird so he stopped that.

Gah, but the damn sound hadn't gone away yet. So he looked about him. A kitten as cute as could be looked at him, wide eyes open, he could practically hear it purring as it looked at him. Looking around Kushin sent a small jutsu at it, lighting its tail on fire.

REEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW ah the sweet sweet sound of this kitty screaming and leaping around. That drowned out the music and placed the attention away from Kushin.

And so it was that Kushin made his way home that day.

[topic entered, left
S-Rank - 30 mins]

 

[Suzuki Setsu]

Tama stretched out on her bed half-awake. The punishment for sneaking into the Legation that one day and eating Kazuhiko’s lunch was basically to do a mission he assigned her.

“You need to start directing your energies to the benefit of the village, Mochizuki-san. Since you obviously can’t do it on your own, I’m going to direct them for you until otherwise stated. You will complete this mission, or so help me you will spend the next three years as a volunteer for live surgery practice at the Aesculapium. Have I made myself clear?”

Such a tightwad, it was only a few lunches, she had thought to herself. It wasn’t fair. They were the same rank, but he got to order her around?

“Bah! Fine, Pikichi! I’ll do it so leave me alone already!” she had said. Pikichi being the nickname Tama had devised for the ever-flickering chuunin. But she never said when she’d do it.

Sleepily, she pulled off her penguin-themed pajamas and started rummaging around her very messy room for her clothes. She found nothing clean, so clad in nothing but her undergarments she stumbled out of her room and down the hall into her brother’s room. Tomo always kept his room nice and orderly, so it was very easily for Tama to pick out one of his outfits and put it on. Being nearly identical in every way but gender was very convenient at times, and Tama didn’t see anything wrong with treating her brother’s wardrobe as a back-up for the times when she couldn’t find something to wear of her own.

Finally dressed, she moseyed downstairs to find something to eat. Nobody was home; both Tomo and her uncle were early risers and were already out and about, Tama was only able to wake up early when she was with the troupe on performance tours. She found a frying pan, eggs, and oil in the kitchen and proceeded to make her favorite dish of all time, fried eggs. Tama wasn’t necessarily a bad cook; she just had a limited repertoire of dishes. If she really liked a food, she would learn to make it. And become really good at making that particular dish. A few minutes later, Tama was happily chowing down on rolled eggs, fried to golden perfection.

After her satisfying meal, she proceeded to leave the house, figuring she’d head towards the Legation to get her required mission over with, although she was hoping to find something interesting to distract her along the way.

Then she heard music.

Stuff like that always intrigued her, it was the one performance-related activity that she couldn’t do no matter what. She could sing passably well, but
instruments were another story. The sound wasn’t coming from where the Mochizuki Troupe had their caravans and tents located, so this intrigued her even more. She went to investigate the source of the sound. On the way, she heard a cat scream as if its tail was lit on fire or something like that, but by the time she reached the park where both sounds had led her, the cat (and whoever might have lit its tail on fire, if such an event occurred) was long gone. But a young man was sitting on a bench in the park strumming a guitar, seemingly oblivious to the world around him.

“Where did you learn to play?” Tama asked, appearing suddenly in front of the young man, most likely startling him out of his reverie. Her boisterous demeanor, close-cropped hair, boyish outfit, and underdeveloped chest made it easy to mistake her for a boy. How would the guitar-playing man respond to the sudden interruption of his park practice?

WC: 615
[MFT & Topic Entered]

 

[Tsukino Dante]

I was wondering when we'd get around to RPing with each other again.

Dante could feel annoyance even before he opened his eyes... curse you, vaguely supernatural Insight!!!! The young boy kept his eyes shut for a few seconds longer while he tried to remove the negative reaction from the front of his mind, it wasn't something he wanted right now. After a few seconds he was starting to calm down, and it was right then that he heard someone talking to him.

Okay, today was officially interesting.

Dante's eyes slowly blinked open, after scanning his surroundings for a few seconds his eyes honed on the ambiguous figure in front of him. He gave a small, welcoming smile. "Well, I had a tutor a while back, he lived in Mid-Seki. Really nice guy. Visited him every week until th-" Dante stopped himself right before he said the word 'accident', why did he almost say that to an absolute stranger? He felt like a bit of an idiot now; the smile on his face flattened out into a neutral expression. There was an awkward silence.

"Until about a year ago, I stopped going... might not have been a good idea." he said, the pronunciation of the sentence was notably more awkward and clunky than the last one. There was another pause as Dante put his guitar back to rest beside the bench, then he was looking back at Tama and smiling again. "I'm Dante, by the way. Nice to meet you." Dante said, his tone more fluid and warm now that he had rebuilt his composure.

Dante kept his attention on Tama for now; there was enough room on the bench that Tama could have a seat either close to Dante or on the other end of the bench if she wanted too, of course she could stay standing if that suited her, or just walk away now that Dante had answered her. Either way, the teenager would simply wait for Tama to continue the conversation.

 

[Suzuki Setsu]

He had been taught by someone else, a tutor. The word tutor brought bad memories to Tama’s mind. Most tutors that had been brought in to teach her had usually ended up frustrated with her overbearing personality, and general refusal to do anything she wasn’t interested in. Usually Tama would torment the tutor until they gave up and left. After a while her parents had stopped bothering hiring people and tried to teach her themselves.

There was a pause in his answer, a quick rewording of his sentence. A secret! Tama thought to herself, secrets were interesting.

She listened to the rest of his story as he sat down his guitar and introduced himself. “I’m Mochizuki Tama, star performer of the Mochizuki Troupe and chuunin of Kumogakure. And yes it is nice to meet me!” She said the last line with complete sincerity, for Tama did believe that by simply meeting her people’s lives were vastly improved.

“So why did you stop learning, you sound like you could have been a great side act,” this was Tama’s way of complementing people because she was the star of the show and it would be wrong for others to outshine her.

She stared at Dante, head tilted quizzically. There was no malice in her words, only pride with a hint of arrogance. Her eyes flicked between both Dante and his guitar, and the inner debate between which to pursue first her curiosity about what happened one year ago that caused Dante to stop learning and her longing to learn how to play an instrument was clearly visible to him.

There were a few instrument players in the troupe, but all had refused to teach Tama due to the aforementioned tutor torment she put people through when they tried to force her to do things she didn’t want to. This combined with Tama’s refusal to ask for help, caused her to try to teach herself, but she soon became frustrated with the whole thing and gave up. But here the potential opportunity to learn had presented itself again. And though Tama wanted to know what Dante was hiding, the desire to learn to play an instrument was strong enough to leave her at a mental standstill. One push in either direction would decide the argument within her mind.

 

[Suzuki Setsu]

Of course, no push would leave the young girl at a standstill rapidly losing interest in the conversation. When no response was forthcoming from the young man, Tama's eyes glazed over and her expression switched from curiosity and interest to bored and disappointed. She waited a bit longer before turning around to head back home, she needed to prepare for the blasted mission. She didn't mind doing stuff for the village, she just wanted to pick and choose what she did, not be assigned duties. It took all the fun out of missions. But the penalty for refusing was not good. She once had asked her uncle about it, and he had reprimanded her for even thinking of shirking her duty to the village.

Sometimes she wished she wasn't told to come here to Kumogakure, as fun as it was to be able to learn to control the wind, shoot lightning, and kick people through buildings the other end of the bargain was a real pain. If she had remained in the troupe as just a child performer, she could have easily shirked performances and practices whenever she liked. But she never missed practice, only rescheduled it to the middle of the night, so she could practice when nobody could hear her fail. And performances, Tama lived for performances, so she would never miss a single one. So in the end, she knew that as troublesome as all the assignments were, she would still do them. They were a way to showcase her abilities, much like a performance.

At that thought, flashes of the mission on the train came back to her, the dead soldier she had kicked into the washing machine, Makoro's crossbolts lodged into her chest, the other girl, Squishy-chan, or something like that, shot as well. She shuddered. Try as she might, she couldn't get those images out of her mind, and they only lead to images of the following mission barely after she had been released from the hospital. She had once thought that the whole shinobi gig was just that, a simple performance, actors that came onto the stage, "died" at times and then got up and went home after the show ended. She had learned that was not the case, she had killed people, people with families, people with loved ones. And in that second mission she had double-checked to make sure she killed them. She had no choice at the time, at the time she had just been a swirling mass of wind and light. A light that destroyed and guided her enemies to death. It was a lot for a young girl to handle on her own. So she just pushed it away, and it had begun to affect her performances too. Which was why she wasn't attending practices as of late.

With these thoughts in her head she began to run back home, at least a mission would distract her from seriously thinking about herself.

[Topic Left Unless Stopped]
[WC: 470]
[MFT]

 

[Tsukino Dante]

Since I ended up flunking out and taking an unannounced hiatus, the TL is uncontested. I'll post an exit later today.

Sorry for the hassle, maybe we can pick this up again once I'm feeling a bit better? -_-'