Post by Ðaio on Feb 11, 2009 0:12:51 GMT -5
courage
It appeared to Tendo Soun that every ninja in Konohagakure no sato had a similarity besides being ninja. This would be a heaping helping of tragedy in pretty much every background. Or, if not that, some exacting task set upon a poor soul, creating complexes that did absolutely nothing for their performance in the field (contrary to popular belief). In fact, it was almost as if people competed for tragedy nowadays with the cases he received. For instance, there was that one where a man quite frankly stated to him he sought "MILFs" like a pill, and thought his mother not breastfeeding him a good enough answer. It was only after Soun's prolonged stare that the man added his theory that not receiving a Suupaidaman toy for his third birthday could possibly be another large factor in his profound illness.
Incredible to know of what constituted for mental "disorders".
It was tiring as well, come to it. Soun wished he could take a break. Charged by the Hokage herself with rooting out the psychos from the sane ninja, from genin to jounin, each male to each female, he knew very well he could not. But though his energy chugged murkily, the Village of the Leaf's rich tapestry of angst and oddities was laid bare to him and the several other psychologists involved, displaying a few interesting characters indeed.
"Ey."
Soun surveyed the notes made of Daio from the initial encounter, hurriedly rebriefing himself. It was not really needed; the boy's story had been the most vivid he had encountered of all his cases. It was unfortunate the last session had to have been cut short.
"We gon' get started or what?"
"Ah. Yes." Soun smoothed his moustache down with an index finger and thumb, glancing over his clipboard at the genin who had just spoken-- Daio. As he looked at him, the psychiatrist was reminded once more of a suppressed spring. The feeling of motion without motion. That was Soun's initial take of the child, at any rate.
But others, perhaps, might go for the name. One would think it arrogant, but Soun suspected that the child truly did not know what it meant, unexposed as he was to education. For that matter, the psychologist doubted Daio could read more than a few characters of hiragana or katakana out of necessity. I might cover that in this meeting, Soun thought, clearing his throat. "I trust you've been well?"
"I been a'ight." Daio looked around, weighing the room again. The child's gaze stopped a fraction at a new addition to Soun's office-- a snowglobe placed inconspicuously near a stack of old magazines and newspapers-- and quickly moved on, focusing on Soun. It was astounding, the degree of strength with which the youth's eyes pierced. In the many cases assigned to Soun, boys his age fidgeted, their eyes everywhere and anything but powerful. Daio disabused him of that notion swiftly.
Soun shifted comfortably in the full-bodied armchair opposite the genin, a fatherly smile crinkling his cheeks. "Before we begin where we left off, are there any issues that you want to bring up?" he intoned kindly.
"Nah."
"Alright then. Now, we stopped during..."==========
Blackout.
The first thing Daio saw when he woke was a gentle, dappled beam of light. It shone through the sole window of the small room he occupied, illuminating the pastel colors on the walls and floors. He breathed deep, with nothing offensive provoking his nose-- the air was crisp.
It was as if a mutual agreement between him and his surroundings had been forged: working together for a feeling of freshness Daio hadn't experienced in some time. It might have been the smooth cloth that he now magically wore, the cool sheets of the makeshift cot he lay beneath, or the general cleanliness of the air that cleared his mind. But whatever it was, there happened to be a pressing matter of what had transpired. It must've been mere hours ago that the child felt Death's cold whisper brush the nape of his neck. And yet... Daio was alive.
Grrrrruughuuugh...
"Nn..." Daio weakly cringed, hand automatically going to his complaining stomach. Apparently, whatever that had put clothes on his back did not have the capacity to get rid of hunger. "F-Food..." he stammered softly, the same hand that sought to comfort clenching into a hard fist.
Almost as if that were a signal, two voices made their way close to the room's entrance.
"He shouldn't be moving about--"
"I have to test him--"
"This is cruel--!"
The door to the room swung open suddenly; a familiar man in immaculate fabric admitted himself, countenance turned away from another in white who stormed away.
Daio stared.
The familiar man glanced about the room, ignoring Daio's intent focus. He looked unremarkable, despite his slickly tailored suit, harboring a blunt nose, nondescript mouth, slanted eyes, a crewcut of black hair. Though he did appear to have a strongly muscled body, that was the only thing above average for the man. And yet, taking his appearance wholly, an image of authority and power was impressed on Daio.
Familiar...
Still examining the surroundings reservedly, the man abruptly spoke. ""You're finally awake." He paused, apparently appreciating the designs of the room's wallpaper. "The doctors were sure you were going to die. Extreme dehydration and lack of nutrition. I'm guessing the IV did the trick, though. They wouldn't've taken it out of the room otherwise..." He suddenly locked gazes with the child, intense, drilling, seeming to know that the terms, while exotic for youth, could not be the cause of Daio's confusion. The man also seemed to know of Daio's hunger, because in the next moment, he lobbed an apple over.
Daio caught it with difficulty, grappling with the weight. He drew his brows together quickly, eyeing the man with a frown as he tore into the fruit. Record player... He dropped the remains of the fruit to the side. Record player... "Shigure...?" he forced out. The man's-- no, Shigure's-- eyebrows rose slightly, surprise twitching the corner of his lips. He offered nothing more than the following:
"Let's walk."
Daio looked at the man's blank expression with unsure, untrusting eyes, but cautiously began to inch out of bed. He tottered when his bare feet touched the ground, knees wobbling and almost giving way. Leaning against the headboard of the bed (which began to appear more and more comfortable by the second), he looked resignedly at the poker face and bolstered what little strength he had to slip on soft sandals and blindly drag himself behind the only lifeline he had out the door.
The bright lights of the wide corridor he found himself in halted his momentary progress like a well-placed punch to the gut. But as his pupils adjusted, Daio's lips began to part in the astonishment that only a child could have.
"Whoa..." Large eyes attempted to absorb the antiseptic images right off of the threads of reality. Hospital...? Daio pondered gravely, knowing of such things from the street grapevine. However, hospitals were legends... along with peace of mind, plentiful food, and general wellbeing.
Yeah. Couldn't be a hospital.
But...
What else could be composed of off-white plaster, which coated walls as far as you could see? What other edifice could deaden sight and smell so deftly?
The monotony was broken only by the brown solidity of the many doors of the many rooms down and up the hallway. A heavily muscled man in nothing but trunks was calmly pushed atop a gurney, professional-looking people in sterile white handling the affair. Despite his obvious pain-- from what Daio could see, his right arm had three awkward, wrong angles, while both his legs seemed to jut forward at an odd arch-- their pace did not quicken, almost like they were desensitized to such things out of routine.
"Hospital..."
"More or less." Daio started in surprise as the man spoke from right next to him-- hadn't Shigure been a few yards ahead? "No diseased here, though. Just ineptitude." Another injured person passed them; not so badly wounded as the last, but with a considerable limp and compact-looking bruises decorating his rock of a face. "Let's move on." Shigure immediately turned to the left and pressed forward once more, not bothering to shorten his long strides for Daio's weakened scramble. He did, however, favor those who murmured deferential-sounding things in passing with a nod.
They soon finished the length of the corridor and then some, passing through another juncture to a flight of stairs, which took Daio some time to complete, a pair of burning legs and lungs his reward. But the end came-- and at the end were two elaborately carved slabs of timber serving as doors. A dull roar escaped through the minute cracks, like the sound of a stormy ocean. Or, at least, that's what Daio imagined the sound to be. And as Shigure pushed the right door open, the child thought he might be correct.
The dull roar became an explosion of sound and activity... and dark. People with sheafs of paper hustled back and forth past people with odd headpieces hunched in their chairs, facing odd boxes with glass in their centers, some color-filled, some filled with mottled gray and white. A long dashboard covered the space below the boxes, levers, dials, and slides all being pushed and prodded by the hunched people. Without as much as a "wait here" Shigure left Daio to examine what they were doing.
"Feedback's a little funky in Speaker 11 East Section, check the balance--"
"Somebody attempted to jack somethin' from Food Stand 3C, just been arrested by security--"
"Camera's panning on the Fire Lord-- Susano, hurry up and put the subtitle on the screen--"
"Alright, everybody, main event cue-- cut to Tou in a minute after the Watuberutu Sake commercial plays."
"Commercial's on, audio and visual's working on all four screens in the arena-- broadcast signal's sending out fine as well."
Relative silence fell as everybody took a breather, a few deciding to strike up quiet conversations. Daio swiveled in place, dazed by the abrupt transition from chaos to order-- his gaze happened to land on one of those colored boxes, a muted buzz barely caught from a dangling headpiece.
"It doesn't matter where you drink it," A man was shown sitting on a toilet. "When you drink it," An alarm clock sounded off at three AM. "Or how you drink it!" A mouth fumbled over a shot positioned strategically in the tight space between two peach-colored balloons. "The only thing that matters is WHAT you drink! Drink Watuberutu Sake, the finest sake in the land!"
The child blinked and rubbed his eyes rapidly as a sentence flashed at the end accompanied by a rapid voiceover too quick to catch-- like "Drink" something "ately". Daio frowned deeply, still rubbing one eye. "They need to fix that... nobody will be able to see the last part," he said, drawing his eyebrows together worriedly. He didn't expect to be heard.
"Who is this kid, Shigu-pon?" a man grinned, coming forward from the back of the room to clap Shigure's shoulder. He had a kind face, the kind of eyes that gleamed with mischief, and the kind of mouth that one would expect to be filled with laughter constantly. A cleanly tailored blue suit was draped over a leanly muscled frame. "Is he an illegitimate child of yours? I must say, he is prettier than you."
Shigure merely glanced at the man sideways, arms crossed, response slow in coming. "Hello, Yusuke-kun," he said finally, turning his gaze back to a colored box.
"Ah! So cold to your best friend," Yusuke griped, the sad words overshadowed by his good-natured grin and manner. "Are you not going to tell me who the kid is--?"
"Go-san!"
"Right, I am coming," Yusuke answered, throwing a glance at Daio as he strode to the one who had called his attention. "You called me for this? So trivial..."
Daio couldn't help but notice the sidestepped question (obvious as it was) and frowned. He looked about his surroundings, the awe of the moving pictures pushed back into a dark recess of his mind as caution took the fore once again.
Why am I here...?
While it was better than the street, the child dimly recalled a saying that Arai had been fond of using.
Out of the pan and into the fire...
Daio also remembered a story of sweat shops set up all over the land, manufacturing everything from clothing to petty weaponry-- with the help of young kids. Could this be something like that?
"So, what is your amazing secret, kid?" Daio looked around in confusion before making eye contact with Yusuke, who had presumably solved whatever problem had come up without any trouble. "What made you so irresistible that Shigure (word has it, anyway) plucked you off the street?" Yusuke grinned that easygoing grin again, tilting his head. "Are you from Konohagakure no sato?" He snapped his fingers. "That is it, I bet-- you probably have some fantastic bloodline ability and he bought you from your family!"
"N-no..." What's a bloodline?
"No? Why, then, would he scout you..." Yusuke stroked his chin before slamming a fist into a palm. "You really are his illegitimate child! Yes?" As Daio, dumbfounded, slowly shook his head, Yusuke took a pained breath through his teeth. "Then perhaps--" And again, he was cut off, this time by another outburst from the headpiece.
"Good evening, wonderful inhabitants of Otafuku Gai! For your viewing pleasure-- we preseeeent-- OUR MAIN EVENT! A grudge match for the ages-- the stuff of legends! The two sole federations of their ilk, the unstoppable TFA, the immovable Artists of Discipline, clash in the need to prove their organization, their philosophy, their honor-- their POWER!" Daio looked to the side at the pause, glad for an excuse to avoid these odd questions. But a few questions of his own came-- where had Shigure gone?
And... what was this...?
"And heeeere aaaaare... the REPRESENTATIVES!" The box's image zoomed out for an overhead view, displaying a packed capacity crowd in the stadium. The stadium itself was circular, large if perspective was any indication, with very thick walls separating the audience from the inner portion. The ground of the inside was covered by grass, which was torn up in most places. It was fairly nondescript-- but still, the people clamored. For what, Daio wondered. "Coming from the East Side of the TFA Coliseum, the top fighter of the Artists of Discipline, weighing in at two hundred and twenty pounds, six feet four inches, and hailing from the Mist Country iiiis... TAKAMURA MIIITAAA!"
A powerfully built man in white trunks leaped headfirst out of the mass of roaring citizens at the cue, landing on the turf with a smooth somersault that followed into a one-knee crouch. Electric blue hair similarly leaped off of his skull, a shaft of shock amid the tame green of the arena. Daio examined the scars that ran across his chest with interest during the close-up, craning forward--
"Coooooming from the West Side of the TFA Coliseum, the leader and general manager of the TFA, weighing in at one hundred and ninety-three pounds, six feet two inches, hailing from the Fire Country, the man himself... SHIIIGUUUREEE!!"
The noise from the crowd became deafening.
Daio gaped.
