Old Character Name: Oushi-Ouja Suzume
Old Village/Missing: Suna
OCR Type: Free Retire
Last Known Where-abouts: Recovering in Omni-Prime from unknown ailment.
Old IC Rank: MiT
New Character Name: Aria
Preferred Username: Aria
New Village/Missing: Suna
New BL/CA: Battlesmith
Main Branch/ANBU/Med-Nin: Main Branch
IC Rank: Chuunin/Jounin? (Village's discresion)
Character Age: ??? (Appears no older than 30)
Gender: Female
Sex: Female
Character's Physical Description: Aria's figure is that of a fit woman in her late twenties to early thirties. Her dark eyes are rarely dour and often seem lost in thought and distant She has a proclivity to changing her outfits and style, but frequently has longer black hair and prefers more loose blothing such as dresses whenever possible. Despite her frequent travels, her skin is a lighter tone, fair but not pale. The least feminine aspect of her is her hands. They are cared for and mostly smooth, but the palm and fingers are thick with callouses from many years of hard and dextrous work at a forge.
Character's Mental Description: While not quite optimistic, Aria rarely looks in the grim side of things. Instead she would consider herself a realist, but things around her tend to go in her favor more often than probability alone would account for. She is often blunt and straightforward with her comments and observations, unintentionally forgoing grace and tact in favor of plain truths. This rarely wins her friends, but she does make an effort to at least be favorable in the opinion of others.
She is frequently uncomfortable in the presence of newer and more advanced technology, even that which people of her alleged age should be intimately familiar, and is quick to point out any flaws or shortcomings of relying on newer methods that forgo tradition and established methods of doing things. Paradoxically, she is also very creative in her endevours and often looks to solve old problems in new ways, just not using more advanced technology to do so. She would more likely be found constructing a complex and obtuse mechanism or tool for something, rather than using the latest in technological trends.
She has, what some would call, an unhealthy obsession with weaponry. Specifically unique weapon designs, capabilities, forging methods, and the sagas behind them. Given the opportunity to forge a great weapon to exacting specifics for someone worthy of the effort, she would leap at the chance. However, the notion of wasting those efforts on lesser people and more mundane mass-production bores her and one would be hard pressed to convince her to do more than complain about the prospect.
Multiple Personality Application: NA
Character History: Aria is a bit of a mystery. This is not because of a desire to be such, but out of habits formed across countless years of life. She has lived in many places under many names, usually living in one location no more than a dozen years before circumstances, boredom or curiosity drives her elsewhere. In times long past she originally hailed from a remote region in the arctic north, her village far from most civilization. Since then, however, she has not considered any single place her true home.
Over her many years, she has learned a good measure of control over her ability to manipulate the weave of time, but she still does not know why she has the ability to do so, nor why she is separated from time's normal flow. It has saved her from questionable decisions and misfortune on more counts than she could ever remember, but even after this time she is still only self-taught through trial and error. Combined with that and her innate skill at working metals and other exotic materials, she has always found an easy home in anyplace that values a keen edge as much as it does a handful of coins.
Application for Battlesmith/Temporal Strider: (3125 Words)
She preferred the solitude, or so she told herself, but now as she made her way across the barren wastes at the eastern edge of Wind Country, she began to reconsider. Aria was no stranger to the unrelenting heat and the blazing sun that scoured most life from these inhospitable lands. The sun was the closest thing she had to a traveling companions over the many years that lay behind her, at least it was the only one that endured as others came and left. No, it was the wind and the sand that chafed her patience more than any other force, even more than those mindless husks she had dispatched the day earlier.
With every single step she came a new scathing sensation of sand between her feet and her sandals. It was true they allowed her feet to breathe and had been her preferred garb for as long as she could recall, but now with hundreds of microscopic rocks grinding against her skin and sliding between her toes with each movement, this too she began to reconsider. However, it wasn't just her feet that suffered. She was always a strong wind away from a face full of sand that seemed to have enough sentience to find every nook and cranny of her traveling garb. Light layers of white cloth that danced in the breeze that, like her footwear, kept her comfortable in the heat, but was a magnet for the very worst part about the entire country.
Why, she asked herself aloud as she spat out a grimy clot of sand from her mouth, did she ever decide to make her way to a village nestled away in a sea of the worst material on the planet? It was true that being hunted down by the Sound shinobi was bothersome, but did it really compare to this type of torture? If you traveled in a swamp you took the risk of venomous creatures snagging you in their fangs. In the mountains a single loose rock could spell the downfall for an unwary traveler. Those all were but moments in time that held as much sway over her as the wind that ruffled her hair. What could you do about a sea of spite whose only purpose in the world was making frail and flimsy decorations?
With another annoyed spit, the traveler crested atop a tall dune, looking outwards towards what seemeed to be another endless sea of the semi-solid waves. Aria peered down from her precipice, a heavy slant of nearly fifty feet lay ahead of her, likely resting atop a small hill that was positioned in a way as to create a near vertical wall of sand. As an idea came to her, she gave the drop an amused smirk, only to dislodge another bit of the grit in her mouth, quickly cutting her moment of amusement short. With another fruitless spit, she hopped off the edge of the sandy crest and over to the drop, bringing her feet up as she seemed to reach for an invisible disk beneath her feet.
Just before her feet sank into the loose sand, they clopped against the metal of a large irregular disk that suddenly sat beneath her feet. Within that instant she was surfing down the slope at ever increasing speeds, holding onto the shield with one hand as she worked to keep upright, lest she be tossed face-first into the hot and angry sand. Seconds passed and the frown on her face lifted, a moment of joy coming out of the many days of misery that had preceded this moment. It was rare to be able to travel this fast without leaping off of a cliff, and while snow was more enjoyable to be around, surfing on smooth sand seemed to work just as well.
As she sailed down the tumbling slope of sand, her mind drifted back to different times. Koriban was his name, and the two had been in love, or that too was something she had fooled herself into thinking. She remembered the feeling of cold wind blowing hard on her face as she gripped tightly onto his waist, screaming down the side of a tall mountain on an old rickety sled. She, like he had been, was young and foolish at the time. Immortal beings, or so the youths told themselves, heedless of risk or the warnings of others. She heard his frightful yell that was soon trailed after by her own as the pair sailed off the edge of the canyon wall. The young Aria had gripped tightly onto the young man's waist, as if the act might do anything to prevent them from crashing agianst the rocky wall at the other end of the crevace.
The impact was not what expected, and her arms crashed together as her love suddenly vanished from between them just a moment before her feet caught the packed snow below her, sending her into a painful tumble that ended with more twisted limps and a broken wrist. She was, however, the lucky one. By the time she pulled herself up from her daze, she had looked around to where she was in bewilderment, trying to blink away the pained tears. She didn't know what happened at the time, but she did now. She recalled looking off the edge of the cliff that she had sailed off moments before, seeing the smashed remains of the sled and his body lying in a mangled heap, coating the scattered snow at its bottom a horrific and yet mesmerizing red.
She knew what happened now, even though she still could not explain why. It wasn't even the first time it had happened, but narrowly avoiding a tumble you made or avoiding a snowball to the face that you swore hit you was nothing compared to your childhood friend and love lying in a heap dozens of feet below you. She toyed with many names over the many years that had passed since then, as she learned more control over the strange part of her. There was a time that she hated it, blamed herself for his death, for leaving him to die. As if she was at all to blame for his own recklessness. No, for every ounce of innocence and stupidity she had all those years ago, she had many lifetimes of experience and pragmatism to teach her to know better. Even with many times more knowledge than she had any right to have, she still was not perfect, however.
A jerking motion broke her from her reminiscing as her foot leaned just a bit too far forward, tilting the sharp front edge of the shield downwards. The slight curve took to the sand like a spoon digging into a gritty treat and practically stopped out from under her, sending her flying forward at a breakneck speed. Just as she was about to crash headfirst into the bottom of the sandy slope, she pulled upon her own timeline and found herself back just a moment before, pushing her heel back onto the shield. Within a second, she was smoothly sailng up the gentle slope of sand on the other side, as if she had never made the slip up at all.
This was how it usually went these days. The reasoning was still beyond her, but the results were undeniable. She had a chance to learn from mistakes as she made them, and then correct them as it they never happened. It was not perfect, nor was it far reaching, but it was powerful. She had even learned to extend it by tugging at the threads of others, to a smaller degree, but not everyone reacted as gracefully to being jerked through snippets of time. Reality disliked it even more. Sometimes people remembered what had happened, as did the physical reality around them, but sometimes it didn't. Aria could write down some vague rules and expectations, but learning through trial and error, even over as many years as she had been alive, left gaping holes in her understanding.
The strangeness didn't end with the manipulation of time and space, at least not space. She didn't know how long ago it was, but had that young man grown up to have had a family, with her or anyone, he would have had countless descendants be born, live and die, all without the ravages of time seeming to affect her at all. By now she had lost count, how many years old one was only mattered to the young and the very old, not to those who were somehow both at once. She was still in her prime, or at least she looked and felt it. Thirty, by her estimates, was when her own aging stopped, or perhaps slowed to such a state that it was indistinguishable from it. Aria wasn't immortal, or at least she didn't believe she was. In fact, a part of her still feared death, occassionaly having moments of fear that she would wake up as a shriveled husk that would die, with her dust blown away by a stiff breeze. It had not happened yet, but she was still very much mortal. Just that she somehow was sitting atop a raft on the river of time, able to bob up and down with gentle ease as other were washed downstream towards their timely departure.
With a sigh of annoyance, Aria brushed as much of the sand that had lodged itself in her clothing from her admittedly enjoyable escapade. She winced in annoyance as a flash of glare from the pristine metal shield in her hand reflected the sun's spite directly into her eyes. Turning it over between her hands, she stared at the thing. It looked as brand new as the day she finished it, careful engravings for a warrior long dead who fought in battles long forgotten. Aruvan, she recalled his name, and his trusty shield. She never gave this one a name, it was from her earlier days of smithing, and while it was not shoddy work, there were many more noteworthy creations of hers that came across the many years that followed.
She released the shield from between her fingers as it faded into nothingness. The shield was real, or as real as it could be. Aria's best explanation was that it was a copy plucked from a moment back when she remembered it best. This was the strangest aspect of her unique condition, or at least the most recent. Over the many years, she had tried many different crafts, soon discovered her proclivity towards creating things. She couldn't remember exactly why, but within two decades she was forging arms and armor that people from leagues across would speak of, and that was in her early years. Some of her best creations were still out there somewhere, and every so often she would come across them, eager to hear the tales they told firsthand.
What she could do now, however, was simply to pull it from that point in time and into the present, or that was how she best understood it. They were not permanent however. Perhaps they were they true object and after a few moments they were jerked back to their time period, or perhaps they were replicas, made from her connection to them all those many years ago. In either case, she could will them into existance, and then release them to fade away as quickly as they came. It wasn't only things she had made, but anything that she had a connection to or extensive understanding of. With as much time as she had spent with weaponsmithing, it was just much easier to make a connection with a weapon than it was with a piece of paper with words written on them.
With her moment of distraction gone, she lifted one sandal after the other and began to work her way across the dunes once again, squinting as the winds began to blow ever more sand into her face. A few more hours passed without issue or note until a sound from the distance grabbed her attention. It was a familiar one, a cry of fear, desperate for salvation from the heavens that would never come.
Aria herself might say that she had become jaded over the years, pragmatic and difficult to surprise. Often numbed to the harsh realities of the fleeting lives of others, but that was only half of the truth. She knew her weapons would kill people, and some of those she made arms and armor for would use them to kill a great many people. That did not bother her, but when it came to a life that rested just within her reach, she still could not stay her hand and do nothing to try and help it. So, without hesitation, she began to run off towards the sound as grunts and cries sounded just out of view.
It took a few minutes of work to make it across the shifting sands, but soon she came across the grisly scene. Two shinobi were facing off against perhaps a dozen or more of those mindless husks. She didn't know what they were or why they were attacking people, but they were not the first she had dispatched, nor would they be the last. The two shinobi were haggard and bleeding, one clutched the stump of his right hand, hiding behind the other who barely seemed to be standing on his feet. Behind the pair was the ramshackle remains of what must have been a caravan heading towards Sunagakure. More and more people were flocking there these days, seeking the protection that their shinobi could offer, but by the looks of it even the shinobi had a hard time dealing with the threat.
Gaining momentum as she ran down the edge of another dune, Aria hurried towards the gathering as they tried to ward off a hungry mass of these husks. Between their ranks were nearly as many of their corpses, showing signs of being burnt or cut, but among them were a few decidedly human bodies. Reaching the base, Aria stopped herself and held out a hand as if gripping something invisible within her hand. She took a moment to ready herself as an older flintlock pistol shimmered into her hand, firing the next instant. The bullet took one of the husks in the side of the head, staggering it for just a moment before it continued to quickly shamble towards the shinobi. A loud explosion followed as pieces of its head scattered across the area, the explosive round detonating inside its skull.
Three shots followed it as these pistols materalized into her hand, fired and vanished. The shinobi, looked towards Aria in confusion, but their appreciation for the help was apparent, even behind their sand-and-blood covered expressions. The hopelessness that had begun to sink in just a moment before was plastered over by a newfound resolve as the odds went from impossible to just unlikely. The husks surged forward towards them and even the shinobi with the ripped off hand surged to the defense of the civilians. Aria was close at their heels, moving from swinging a massive blade through the torsos of three husks to crushing the skull of another between a pair of small ornate hammers. Each of the weapons had a story, a purpose and a soul, but Aria only knew some of them. Some were likely destroyed or lived at the bottom of a river, covered in dirt and rust, only to be revived for a single glorious moment before fading back into the annals of history.
The fighting was over quickly, and the trio made sure to dismember the remains of the bodies, as they tended to keep fighting despite missing chunks of their body, or even entire limbs. "We really appreciate the assistance back there," one of the shinobi said, wiping a smear of blood from the forehead protector that covered his brow.
"Y-yeah," the other replied with gritted pain. Now that the fighting had subsided, he was tending to wrapping his wounded hand, with what looked to have his thumb vaguely attached at the end. Aria looked to him with pity, wishing she had been here just a little bit sooner. That thought did not linger, as she knew better than to berate herself for things out of her control, a lesson that took many lifetimes to sink in. "Don't think we would- Agh!" He flinched as he tightened and tied off the bandage, which was already soaked through, "would have made it on our own. I don't know where they are coming from, but that was the largest pack we'd seen so far."
The first shinobi looked towards the caravan which were trying to recover from their losses, emotionally and physically. "I normally would never do this. I am sure it breaches some sort of protocol, but damned it all." He looked to Aria and gave her a grim but desperate look, "we need all the help we can to get these people to Sunagakure. It has been chaos across the entire country, if another one of these roaming groups show up, we may not make it back alive."
While the straits for these men and women were dire, for Aria this was actually a very fortuante turn of events. She had already been trying to make her way to the village. A certain someone she was hoping to find might likely be there, and with everything going on in the country, what better place for her skills to forge the legends they were made for? Besides, without these shinobi to guide her, there was a good chance she might wander the desert for weeks trying to find it. Maps were great and all, but landmarks in the desert are few and far between, and it was called a Hidden Village after all.
"I suppose I can be persuaded to guide you there, as long you put in a good word to the..." she paused a moment as she thought of the word. What was it that these shinobi villages called their leader? "Master of the village," it was as close as to a guess as she could make. She couldn't be expected to know what every single group in every country called themselves after all.
Sharing a mildly perplexed look, the pair nodded to Aria and made their way over to the caravan to help preparations. The bodies of the deceased still had to be tended to, and it was a interesting experience to see how these desert dwellers did so without any rocks or dirt to bury them with.
Clan Request: N/A
Old Profile: https://www.ninpocho.com/threads/oushi-ouja-suzume-wip.57315/
Old Training: Old Dojo: https://www.ninpocho.com/threads/suzumes-dojo.55737/
Special Usergroups: Sand Council
Old Stats: 600 All
Old OOC Rank: S
Stat Cut: N/A
New Stats: 600 All
New OOC Rank: S
Jutsu Mastery Swaps: No Swaps.
Other Refunds: None
Name of any Contract you currently own: Tsukumogami (Will spend the ASP to transfer. Request will come at a later date.)
Name of any Cursed Seals you currently own: N/A
Name of Kinjutsu you own: Dark Sage
Still actively roleplaying in any other threads? Yes
[/quote]
Approvals Needed:
Old Village/Missing: Suna
OCR Type: Free Retire
Last Known Where-abouts: Recovering in Omni-Prime from unknown ailment.
Old IC Rank: MiT
New Character Name: Aria
Preferred Username: Aria
New Village/Missing: Suna
New BL/CA: Battlesmith
| Custom Class: Ancient Arms HP: (55+15) x 600 CP: (40+15) x 600 Class Bonus: Kinjutsu (if approved); +10% Chance of inflicting Called Shots (Class Point Card) High: Melee ACC Average: Ranged ACC, Ninjutsu ACC Evasion, Gen Save Low: Genjutsu DC |
IC Rank: Chuunin/Jounin? (Village's discresion)
Character Age: ??? (Appears no older than 30)
Gender: Female
Sex: Female
Character's Physical Description: Aria's figure is that of a fit woman in her late twenties to early thirties. Her dark eyes are rarely dour and often seem lost in thought and distant She has a proclivity to changing her outfits and style, but frequently has longer black hair and prefers more loose blothing such as dresses whenever possible. Despite her frequent travels, her skin is a lighter tone, fair but not pale. The least feminine aspect of her is her hands. They are cared for and mostly smooth, but the palm and fingers are thick with callouses from many years of hard and dextrous work at a forge.
Character's Mental Description: While not quite optimistic, Aria rarely looks in the grim side of things. Instead she would consider herself a realist, but things around her tend to go in her favor more often than probability alone would account for. She is often blunt and straightforward with her comments and observations, unintentionally forgoing grace and tact in favor of plain truths. This rarely wins her friends, but she does make an effort to at least be favorable in the opinion of others.
She is frequently uncomfortable in the presence of newer and more advanced technology, even that which people of her alleged age should be intimately familiar, and is quick to point out any flaws or shortcomings of relying on newer methods that forgo tradition and established methods of doing things. Paradoxically, she is also very creative in her endevours and often looks to solve old problems in new ways, just not using more advanced technology to do so. She would more likely be found constructing a complex and obtuse mechanism or tool for something, rather than using the latest in technological trends.
She has, what some would call, an unhealthy obsession with weaponry. Specifically unique weapon designs, capabilities, forging methods, and the sagas behind them. Given the opportunity to forge a great weapon to exacting specifics for someone worthy of the effort, she would leap at the chance. However, the notion of wasting those efforts on lesser people and more mundane mass-production bores her and one would be hard pressed to convince her to do more than complain about the prospect.
Multiple Personality Application: NA
Character History: Aria is a bit of a mystery. This is not because of a desire to be such, but out of habits formed across countless years of life. She has lived in many places under many names, usually living in one location no more than a dozen years before circumstances, boredom or curiosity drives her elsewhere. In times long past she originally hailed from a remote region in the arctic north, her village far from most civilization. Since then, however, she has not considered any single place her true home.
Over her many years, she has learned a good measure of control over her ability to manipulate the weave of time, but she still does not know why she has the ability to do so, nor why she is separated from time's normal flow. It has saved her from questionable decisions and misfortune on more counts than she could ever remember, but even after this time she is still only self-taught through trial and error. Combined with that and her innate skill at working metals and other exotic materials, she has always found an easy home in anyplace that values a keen edge as much as it does a handful of coins.
Application for Battlesmith/Temporal Strider: (3125 Words)
She preferred the solitude, or so she told herself, but now as she made her way across the barren wastes at the eastern edge of Wind Country, she began to reconsider. Aria was no stranger to the unrelenting heat and the blazing sun that scoured most life from these inhospitable lands. The sun was the closest thing she had to a traveling companions over the many years that lay behind her, at least it was the only one that endured as others came and left. No, it was the wind and the sand that chafed her patience more than any other force, even more than those mindless husks she had dispatched the day earlier.
With every single step she came a new scathing sensation of sand between her feet and her sandals. It was true they allowed her feet to breathe and had been her preferred garb for as long as she could recall, but now with hundreds of microscopic rocks grinding against her skin and sliding between her toes with each movement, this too she began to reconsider. However, it wasn't just her feet that suffered. She was always a strong wind away from a face full of sand that seemed to have enough sentience to find every nook and cranny of her traveling garb. Light layers of white cloth that danced in the breeze that, like her footwear, kept her comfortable in the heat, but was a magnet for the very worst part about the entire country.
Why, she asked herself aloud as she spat out a grimy clot of sand from her mouth, did she ever decide to make her way to a village nestled away in a sea of the worst material on the planet? It was true that being hunted down by the Sound shinobi was bothersome, but did it really compare to this type of torture? If you traveled in a swamp you took the risk of venomous creatures snagging you in their fangs. In the mountains a single loose rock could spell the downfall for an unwary traveler. Those all were but moments in time that held as much sway over her as the wind that ruffled her hair. What could you do about a sea of spite whose only purpose in the world was making frail and flimsy decorations?
With another annoyed spit, the traveler crested atop a tall dune, looking outwards towards what seemeed to be another endless sea of the semi-solid waves. Aria peered down from her precipice, a heavy slant of nearly fifty feet lay ahead of her, likely resting atop a small hill that was positioned in a way as to create a near vertical wall of sand. As an idea came to her, she gave the drop an amused smirk, only to dislodge another bit of the grit in her mouth, quickly cutting her moment of amusement short. With another fruitless spit, she hopped off the edge of the sandy crest and over to the drop, bringing her feet up as she seemed to reach for an invisible disk beneath her feet.
Just before her feet sank into the loose sand, they clopped against the metal of a large irregular disk that suddenly sat beneath her feet. Within that instant she was surfing down the slope at ever increasing speeds, holding onto the shield with one hand as she worked to keep upright, lest she be tossed face-first into the hot and angry sand. Seconds passed and the frown on her face lifted, a moment of joy coming out of the many days of misery that had preceded this moment. It was rare to be able to travel this fast without leaping off of a cliff, and while snow was more enjoyable to be around, surfing on smooth sand seemed to work just as well.
As she sailed down the tumbling slope of sand, her mind drifted back to different times. Koriban was his name, and the two had been in love, or that too was something she had fooled herself into thinking. She remembered the feeling of cold wind blowing hard on her face as she gripped tightly onto his waist, screaming down the side of a tall mountain on an old rickety sled. She, like he had been, was young and foolish at the time. Immortal beings, or so the youths told themselves, heedless of risk or the warnings of others. She heard his frightful yell that was soon trailed after by her own as the pair sailed off the edge of the canyon wall. The young Aria had gripped tightly onto the young man's waist, as if the act might do anything to prevent them from crashing agianst the rocky wall at the other end of the crevace.
The impact was not what expected, and her arms crashed together as her love suddenly vanished from between them just a moment before her feet caught the packed snow below her, sending her into a painful tumble that ended with more twisted limps and a broken wrist. She was, however, the lucky one. By the time she pulled herself up from her daze, she had looked around to where she was in bewilderment, trying to blink away the pained tears. She didn't know what happened at the time, but she did now. She recalled looking off the edge of the cliff that she had sailed off moments before, seeing the smashed remains of the sled and his body lying in a mangled heap, coating the scattered snow at its bottom a horrific and yet mesmerizing red.
She knew what happened now, even though she still could not explain why. It wasn't even the first time it had happened, but narrowly avoiding a tumble you made or avoiding a snowball to the face that you swore hit you was nothing compared to your childhood friend and love lying in a heap dozens of feet below you. She toyed with many names over the many years that had passed since then, as she learned more control over the strange part of her. There was a time that she hated it, blamed herself for his death, for leaving him to die. As if she was at all to blame for his own recklessness. No, for every ounce of innocence and stupidity she had all those years ago, she had many lifetimes of experience and pragmatism to teach her to know better. Even with many times more knowledge than she had any right to have, she still was not perfect, however.
A jerking motion broke her from her reminiscing as her foot leaned just a bit too far forward, tilting the sharp front edge of the shield downwards. The slight curve took to the sand like a spoon digging into a gritty treat and practically stopped out from under her, sending her flying forward at a breakneck speed. Just as she was about to crash headfirst into the bottom of the sandy slope, she pulled upon her own timeline and found herself back just a moment before, pushing her heel back onto the shield. Within a second, she was smoothly sailng up the gentle slope of sand on the other side, as if she had never made the slip up at all.
This was how it usually went these days. The reasoning was still beyond her, but the results were undeniable. She had a chance to learn from mistakes as she made them, and then correct them as it they never happened. It was not perfect, nor was it far reaching, but it was powerful. She had even learned to extend it by tugging at the threads of others, to a smaller degree, but not everyone reacted as gracefully to being jerked through snippets of time. Reality disliked it even more. Sometimes people remembered what had happened, as did the physical reality around them, but sometimes it didn't. Aria could write down some vague rules and expectations, but learning through trial and error, even over as many years as she had been alive, left gaping holes in her understanding.
The strangeness didn't end with the manipulation of time and space, at least not space. She didn't know how long ago it was, but had that young man grown up to have had a family, with her or anyone, he would have had countless descendants be born, live and die, all without the ravages of time seeming to affect her at all. By now she had lost count, how many years old one was only mattered to the young and the very old, not to those who were somehow both at once. She was still in her prime, or at least she looked and felt it. Thirty, by her estimates, was when her own aging stopped, or perhaps slowed to such a state that it was indistinguishable from it. Aria wasn't immortal, or at least she didn't believe she was. In fact, a part of her still feared death, occassionaly having moments of fear that she would wake up as a shriveled husk that would die, with her dust blown away by a stiff breeze. It had not happened yet, but she was still very much mortal. Just that she somehow was sitting atop a raft on the river of time, able to bob up and down with gentle ease as other were washed downstream towards their timely departure.
With a sigh of annoyance, Aria brushed as much of the sand that had lodged itself in her clothing from her admittedly enjoyable escapade. She winced in annoyance as a flash of glare from the pristine metal shield in her hand reflected the sun's spite directly into her eyes. Turning it over between her hands, she stared at the thing. It looked as brand new as the day she finished it, careful engravings for a warrior long dead who fought in battles long forgotten. Aruvan, she recalled his name, and his trusty shield. She never gave this one a name, it was from her earlier days of smithing, and while it was not shoddy work, there were many more noteworthy creations of hers that came across the many years that followed.
She released the shield from between her fingers as it faded into nothingness. The shield was real, or as real as it could be. Aria's best explanation was that it was a copy plucked from a moment back when she remembered it best. This was the strangest aspect of her unique condition, or at least the most recent. Over the many years, she had tried many different crafts, soon discovered her proclivity towards creating things. She couldn't remember exactly why, but within two decades she was forging arms and armor that people from leagues across would speak of, and that was in her early years. Some of her best creations were still out there somewhere, and every so often she would come across them, eager to hear the tales they told firsthand.
What she could do now, however, was simply to pull it from that point in time and into the present, or that was how she best understood it. They were not permanent however. Perhaps they were they true object and after a few moments they were jerked back to their time period, or perhaps they were replicas, made from her connection to them all those many years ago. In either case, she could will them into existance, and then release them to fade away as quickly as they came. It wasn't only things she had made, but anything that she had a connection to or extensive understanding of. With as much time as she had spent with weaponsmithing, it was just much easier to make a connection with a weapon than it was with a piece of paper with words written on them.
With her moment of distraction gone, she lifted one sandal after the other and began to work her way across the dunes once again, squinting as the winds began to blow ever more sand into her face. A few more hours passed without issue or note until a sound from the distance grabbed her attention. It was a familiar one, a cry of fear, desperate for salvation from the heavens that would never come.
Aria herself might say that she had become jaded over the years, pragmatic and difficult to surprise. Often numbed to the harsh realities of the fleeting lives of others, but that was only half of the truth. She knew her weapons would kill people, and some of those she made arms and armor for would use them to kill a great many people. That did not bother her, but when it came to a life that rested just within her reach, she still could not stay her hand and do nothing to try and help it. So, without hesitation, she began to run off towards the sound as grunts and cries sounded just out of view.
It took a few minutes of work to make it across the shifting sands, but soon she came across the grisly scene. Two shinobi were facing off against perhaps a dozen or more of those mindless husks. She didn't know what they were or why they were attacking people, but they were not the first she had dispatched, nor would they be the last. The two shinobi were haggard and bleeding, one clutched the stump of his right hand, hiding behind the other who barely seemed to be standing on his feet. Behind the pair was the ramshackle remains of what must have been a caravan heading towards Sunagakure. More and more people were flocking there these days, seeking the protection that their shinobi could offer, but by the looks of it even the shinobi had a hard time dealing with the threat.
Gaining momentum as she ran down the edge of another dune, Aria hurried towards the gathering as they tried to ward off a hungry mass of these husks. Between their ranks were nearly as many of their corpses, showing signs of being burnt or cut, but among them were a few decidedly human bodies. Reaching the base, Aria stopped herself and held out a hand as if gripping something invisible within her hand. She took a moment to ready herself as an older flintlock pistol shimmered into her hand, firing the next instant. The bullet took one of the husks in the side of the head, staggering it for just a moment before it continued to quickly shamble towards the shinobi. A loud explosion followed as pieces of its head scattered across the area, the explosive round detonating inside its skull.
Three shots followed it as these pistols materalized into her hand, fired and vanished. The shinobi, looked towards Aria in confusion, but their appreciation for the help was apparent, even behind their sand-and-blood covered expressions. The hopelessness that had begun to sink in just a moment before was plastered over by a newfound resolve as the odds went from impossible to just unlikely. The husks surged forward towards them and even the shinobi with the ripped off hand surged to the defense of the civilians. Aria was close at their heels, moving from swinging a massive blade through the torsos of three husks to crushing the skull of another between a pair of small ornate hammers. Each of the weapons had a story, a purpose and a soul, but Aria only knew some of them. Some were likely destroyed or lived at the bottom of a river, covered in dirt and rust, only to be revived for a single glorious moment before fading back into the annals of history.
The fighting was over quickly, and the trio made sure to dismember the remains of the bodies, as they tended to keep fighting despite missing chunks of their body, or even entire limbs. "We really appreciate the assistance back there," one of the shinobi said, wiping a smear of blood from the forehead protector that covered his brow.
"Y-yeah," the other replied with gritted pain. Now that the fighting had subsided, he was tending to wrapping his wounded hand, with what looked to have his thumb vaguely attached at the end. Aria looked to him with pity, wishing she had been here just a little bit sooner. That thought did not linger, as she knew better than to berate herself for things out of her control, a lesson that took many lifetimes to sink in. "Don't think we would- Agh!" He flinched as he tightened and tied off the bandage, which was already soaked through, "would have made it on our own. I don't know where they are coming from, but that was the largest pack we'd seen so far."
The first shinobi looked towards the caravan which were trying to recover from their losses, emotionally and physically. "I normally would never do this. I am sure it breaches some sort of protocol, but damned it all." He looked to Aria and gave her a grim but desperate look, "we need all the help we can to get these people to Sunagakure. It has been chaos across the entire country, if another one of these roaming groups show up, we may not make it back alive."
While the straits for these men and women were dire, for Aria this was actually a very fortuante turn of events. She had already been trying to make her way to the village. A certain someone she was hoping to find might likely be there, and with everything going on in the country, what better place for her skills to forge the legends they were made for? Besides, without these shinobi to guide her, there was a good chance she might wander the desert for weeks trying to find it. Maps were great and all, but landmarks in the desert are few and far between, and it was called a Hidden Village after all.
"I suppose I can be persuaded to guide you there, as long you put in a good word to the..." she paused a moment as she thought of the word. What was it that these shinobi villages called their leader? "Master of the village," it was as close as to a guess as she could make. She couldn't be expected to know what every single group in every country called themselves after all.
Sharing a mildly perplexed look, the pair nodded to Aria and made their way over to the caravan to help preparations. The bodies of the deceased still had to be tended to, and it was a interesting experience to see how these desert dwellers did so without any rocks or dirt to bury them with.
Clan Request: N/A
Old Profile: https://www.ninpocho.com/threads/oushi-ouja-suzume-wip.57315/
Old Training: Old Dojo: https://www.ninpocho.com/threads/suzumes-dojo.55737/
Special Usergroups: Sand Council
Old Stats: 600 All
Old OOC Rank: S
Stat Cut: N/A
New Stats: 600 All
New OOC Rank: S
Jutsu Mastery Swaps: No Swaps.
Other Refunds: None
Name of any Contract you currently own: Tsukumogami (Will spend the ASP to transfer. Request will come at a later date.)
Name of any Cursed Seals you currently own: N/A
Name of Kinjutsu you own: Dark Sage
Still actively roleplaying in any other threads? Yes
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Approvals Needed:
- Core Ability Approval
- Kinjutsu Approval