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 Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 5:08 pm
Kiyoko was eating her meal quietly, watching the conversation unfolding. She noticed the nervous eyes cast her direction, but in true regal fashion, she completely ignored them. There was no reason to worry herself with them, especially not when they had nothing on her. It was well-known that she was a plant specialist aside from being a medic-nin. She just didn't need people to know that the plant she specialized in happened to eat people. A small grin.
Nikolai was humming under his breath, poking at his salad. "It happened again... This isn't just going to go away... You need to get help."
"Remember who you're talking to, Nikolai." Her musical reply.
A quick, worried grit of the teeth. "Yes, milady..." He forced his attention to Akeru and his keeper reluctantly. He felt like commenting, but knew that anything he had to say would just irritate Kiyoko...
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Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2009 8:04 am
Tappa tappa.
Light footsteps against the floor as Reimei approached the table and looked curiously at the food. All vegetables? Yuumei and doctor-san both picked out vegetables! A small pout, as the child looked longingly at the cafeteria's serving area, which apparently had teriyaki chicken on sticks...understandably, easily a favorite of children...
"Vegetables are healthy." Yuumei deadpanned, as if reading the child's thoughts, though wincing at the large teary eyes that greeted her. "No." She said, more firmly. "Besides, try this...the salad's really good."
He seemed to really consider the thought for a moment before... "OK." Said the child, before seating himself next to Yuumei. They were sitting across from Kiyoshi and Nikolai, at the end of a table (so Kuro could sit next to the child, on the floor). He gingerly took a fork and stabbed it into a tomato piece, before propping it into his mouth. He continued like this, eating for a short while...before his curious gaze fell on Nikolai. That's right...he had been unconscious when Yuumei first met Nikolai and Kiyoshi.
"Iwa's pretty cool." He grinned suddenly. But then his expression became a bit confused. "Unni, the villagers were wrong..." The pout became a bit more profound, as large amber eyes fixated on Yuumei. "They said 'Iwa's too dry for anything to grow' and 'plants can't...'"
That's not quite true.
The child shook his head, willing the voice to be silent. And began stabbing at his salad, more furiously.
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Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2009 7:41 pm
Kiyoko had gotten very good at concealing her choice of food. Although... She looked around at Iwa's patients... I might not have to she thought with a grin. She continued to cut pieces of her meal away and slowly chew the food as she savored the bloody meat.
"Life is everywhere... If you close your eyes, you can hear it speaking to you. But you can't be listening for it."
One of the first things she'd been taught. Life was shy. If you couldn't see it, then you couldn't listen to it. It will speak to you if it wanted to.
"Kuro... I wonder if you've forced yourself to conform to vegetarianism? Not that it's any of my business, but I don't think that that would be wise for one of your kind... We have plenty of meat." No doubt Kuro knew what she was eating. She really didn't go out of her way to hide it anymore, she just had some innate skill.
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 7:28 am
"It's ok, Kuro." Yuumei smiled, petting the large cat. "But cooked meat, ok? Raw meat isn't healthy." With the consent of his mistress, Kuro got up from seating position, heading for the front of the cafeteria.
Reimei looked unhappy. "Kuro gets to eat..." He muttered, still stabbing at his salad.
"Cuz you're an omnivore." Yuumei answered nonchalantly, before continuing with eating her egg and tomato noodle soup. "If you don't like salads, why don't you get soup, Rei-chan?"
The raven-haired child shook his head, before resuming to actually eat his salad. "Don't wanna waste food..."
"Good boy. A mixed diet helps you to grow, you know?"
Reimei stared at the vegetables.
Mixed?
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 5:03 pm
Kiyoko grinned as Yuumei spoke on the importance of cooking your meat. She finished her meal relatively quickly for how meticulously she was forced to eat it..
Nikolai looked at his Princess, smiling as she did. It was good to see her happy. It had been a long time... He had eaten the entirety of his salad, leaving absolutely nothing on his tray, and he took a deep breath before he excused himself and brought his and her dishes back up to the workers. He returned and sat down again, wondering at what would happen next.
Kiyoko interlaced her fingers and pondered just what might happen... Her sister was still alive... Which meant that they still had someone else to fill the throne. She honestly didn't care if it was still filled... It didn't make a difference... Although... She had to admit... Queen of the Takani would put her in a position to better her craft... Oh, well.
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Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 2:31 pm
"I met a strange guy earlier..."
Yuumei stopped eating. "You mean the brute who attacked you?"
Reimei fervently shook his head. "Uh-uh. He was...a kid." The boy stood up and began approximating a little above him. "He was about this tall, with long black hair and big, greenish-gold eyes." A soft pause. "It's weird...I never saw him before but he...acted like he knew me..."
Yuumei raised an eyebrow and quickly scanned through her memory of Oto's students. Nope. She didn't recall anyone matching the boy's description. "Eh...just might be some weird passerby. Don't pay too much attention to every little thing..."
"He came from the hospital." The boy continued. "That I'm sure of...it was when my head still felt really dizzy...I wandered out of the room for a walk...I thought the nausea will get better if I did... That other kid was coming from the landing above, where the nurses were saying something about a hole in the wall..."
Hole in the wall?
Was he talking about Lord Marcus' damaged quarters?
"Dunno. Maybe he's one of the shinobi around here." Yuumei mumbled offhandedly, as she finished her soup. "Or maybe one of the Academy Students? Who knows, you might've just found your first friend here..."
The boy puffed out his cheeks. "Yuumei is weird." He too began furiously finishing his salad. And when the last bit of it had disappeared from his bowl, the boy fixated his red-amber eyes on the Takani doctor. "...am I attending the Academy or not?"
Kuroshiro heaved a sigh. "Most probably not. To be honest, it all really depends on whether we can somehow gain audience with the Tsuchikage or not... But I heard funny rumors that he's rather...well...elusive."
"Elusive?"
For some reason, a distant memory of weird rock music floated into his head...
How strange.
Furiously shaking his head, Reimei looked at the tiger. "And what's a Tsuchikage?"
"The title for the leader of this village, Rei-chan. This place is called 'Iwa', one of the five great shinobi villages...well, technically four now...one got buried...but there are many more than just four shinobi villages in existence. How to put it... Like how civilians built their own villages, towns, and cities...shinobi villages are kind of like cities for those who utilize the Jutsu arts. Each village is within its own country, with its own damiyo, and this Earth Country and her damiyo Lord is protected by Iwa. And each of those village has their own 'Kage'."
"Sounds more totalitarian than a village..." Mumbled the child, frowning.
"You could see it that way. The power of each country pretty much is in the hands of its respective shinobi village. In essence, the village is the country itself...and makes alliances, treaties, and...such..."
"But...countries...they fight..."
Yuumei chewed thoughtfully on a piece of garlic bread. "Unfortunately, as long as the shinobi system exist, that will exist too. Yes, Rei-chan...being a shinobi would mean having to fight against shinobis. Well, maybe not directly as in the case when...two villages have a formal declaration of war. However, shinobis run missions. They have their clients, but that doesn't stop the opposing party from hiring shinobis either. The opposing party will just too submit a mission request, to a different village. Well...that's how inter-village feuding traditionally starts..."
"It's...stupid." He whispered, with downcast eyes. "Why do people have to fight against each other...?" His thin frame hunched. "Will I have to...hurt people...?"
Neither Yuumei nor Kuroshiro looked comfortable with the question...undoubtedly, both trying to come up with an answer but none was coming forth.
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 8:52 pm
Kiyoko with her wisdom was the first to speak. Kiyoshi knew enough about people to figure them out, but only Kiyoko was learned in the art of wordplay. It was odd how certain actions had become differentiated, but she didn't let that bother her. "Listen... A shinobi does not hurt people. We serve people. A ninja can exist for their own benefit. A ninja can kill indiscriminately. But a shinobi functions on the sole form of their nindo. There is no higher power than what drives a shinobi. If you do not want to hurt people, you will never have to. But think about this, young one: If a man can corrupt fifty men (a relatively small number of men.) And each of those men can corrupt twenty-five men, those new recruits being capable of corrupting twelve men, those being able to corrupt six men, those each corrupting three, and then each of those corrupting one man capable of recruiting yet another with the capability of corrupting one more man, you have at least five hundred forty thousand men. That's a rather large army. And each soldier in that army can corrupt one more person, doubling the size each time.... If you capture --not necessarily kill-- that one leader, the king of them all, you would have stopped the murder of millions of people, and would have been responsible for changing the entire landscape of the world for generations to come.
One person can make a difference (For better or for worse.) Whether you choose to make a difference or not, that's up to you..."
It seemed that Kiyoko might know something of these matters from personal experience. The army massed against her people pressed on her consciousness, and she looked to Nikolai for a moment before leveling her gaze on Akeru.
"Do you understand that? You are not hurting someone. You are helping millions. Even the greatest saint can be nothing more than a lowly devil if you wish him to be."
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Posted: Thu May 21, 2009 2:56 pm
Smiling at the child, Yuumei continued too, the slightest nod of her pretty head. "I think...the best and worst thing to ever happen was the founding of shinobi villages." A small smile crept across her lips, as she closed her eyes. "The best...because that had allowed shinobis to survive to this day..." Her voice trailed off. "But the worst, too...because...separation by villages had led to separation of philosophies, different opinion favored by different groups...each village promoting their own interests and no longer caring for the good of the whole, but rather...only interests of their own..."
And she grinned, suddenly. "What I like best about the Sannin rank...the restriction isn't just to stay within the village for the career. You're allowed to go out, to see the world...to see how other hidden villages are like. I think that is the most beautiful thing, to be able to see new people...see how they live...create new bonds while remembering the old...and perhaps..." Softly, almost a murmur. "...one step closer to preventing the strife of war from ever occurring again..." A soft pause.
"The world doesn't change because of one person. But that is how change is initiated, because one person had the gall to do it." Her eyes opened and deep crimson orbs regarded the boy. "You're fortunate, you know. Not all are given power from the beginning...shinobis envy civilians, but the opposite is true too. There are things you can do that someone else couldn't..."
"So...shinobis can be a tool for justice or destruction...? Then..." Gently embracing Yuumei, the child smiled. "...I would want to be a tool to protect those who couldn't do so themselves..." A soft pause. "I don't want to just belong to one philosophy...I don't wish...to be guided by that kind of discrimination...but rather..." His voice drifted off. "But rather, see people for who they are..."
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