The Beginning of Bigger Things [Open Rp]

[Yamamoto Airi]

OOC: This is my first rp please let me know if I did anything wrong or this was inappropriate to put here.

Airi looked at herself in the mirror. She decided that she would hit the obstacle courses after her normal training took place. She had only been in the academy for a few short days and already she could tell that she was terribly far behind those that had been here longer. It made sense that the distance would be huge but it also holds true that there was a clear difference between those that had grown up in shinobi families and those that did not. She had seen kids that were three years younger than her soar across these courses like they were child’s play. If she wanted even a small chance of being noticed and catching up, she would need to put in all the work they did in a shorter amount of time.

Chakra levels were the reason the scouts had selected her but even she knew that without a semi-decent body she would never make it. Hence she figured she could learn control in the instructions and just grit her teeth afterwards doing the workouts. It did not take long for her to realize what a un-shinobi-like living she had up till now. Daughter of a small tea shop did not translate well when it came to speed or strength.

She had been shockingly surprised at how well she could keep her balance though…bless the small few talents.

Two hours of training with little to no knowledge of her surroundings filled her mind. She hit the dirt a lot…

“How does anyone even do this!?” She looked at the scaling wall that had almost nothing to grip onto. She had seen a few of the children scale this like it was nothing. No…like they were ninja. There was some kind of trick to it…she had not thought much of it before she had tried during instruction until all the “amazing” students went first. Once the gifted and trained ran through it was up to those like her to suddenly realize this wall was a major obstacle. It was presented early which meant if you could not pass it, it was a guaranteed failure. Fifteen feet of just massive stone.

She sat down in front of it and just glared at it. She moved her left hand to get her short black hair out of her eyes. She opted to not wear the hairclip due to worrying it would get lost. She was wearing a basic black shirt and pants. She was wearing the shinobi shoes since that is what she would be using when she did this in the real exam. So if it was not the clothing…then what about it was she not hitting right. The surface was stupidly flat.

Acting out was never her way to things. Eventually she started to just run at it. It was not until she eventually slipped and slammed her head into the wall that she fell to the ground. “Ohhh….Ahhhh! Aww…gezz…It hurts…” It was load mainly due to her shock. Anyone within a given radius of her location could hear it. She was bound to be embarrassed but only after she stopped rubbing her head.

She glared at the wall and said in a small voice, “You think you’re so powerful but I know you can be beaten!” It was the frustrated fury of a small child. She sat there though and rubbed her head.

[MFT WC: 566]

Topic Opened

 

[Omoi Tetsu]

For what was life, after all? Was it just suffering? Was there anything at all that existed beyond the soul crushing oppression of the universe and the laws that governed it? Tetsu dragged the rock out from under his rib cage, the same one that had shocked him from sleep seconds earlier, and ripped through his leaf reinforced tunnel to whip it as hard as he could down the nearby ravine. Why did he have to pull it out from under himself, instead of just rolling back over, a reasonable person might wonder. The fact was that he simply couldn't understand what that horrific pain had been, and when he discovered the root of his suffering, he lamented the fact that it was faceless, that he could in no way inflict the same punishment on it that it had inflicted on him. Throwing it, he thought, would be a cathartic release from it's tyranny. He was wrong. It only served to remind him of the folly of man, to believe that a single person could have any impact at all on the trajectory of their life, and their suffering. To believe there was such a thing as a reprisal that would heal you. Arrogant foolishness. He wanted to go back to sleep and forget about it, but he just couldn't. The aimless and faceless anger bubbled just below the surface of his skin so that even as he consciously tried to relax his eyes and mind, every little thought that rose up to the surface raised his blood temperature by just a few fractions of a degree, until his skin was hot. Also, since he had destroyed his tunnel, the sun was blaring in his eyes.

Without beating around the bush too much, when the boy finally conceded that renewed sleep would be impossible, a single question arrived and then lingered in his mind; who could he transmit his own suffering to? In a way, this was like the concept of paying a good deed forward. No one ever considered whether the people they were helping truly deserved it, and he wouldn't concern himself with such unnecessary questions either. The important concern to be tended to was that of unburdening himself of the load that had been thrust upon him at the day's outset. This would be a reckoning.

Fortunately, he knew what the quickest way to access humanity from his hermetic abode would be. A mere fifteen minutes walk rendered the academy visible; he knew this because the sounds of developmentally differently abled children punching wood could often be heard in the earliest hours of the morning. Up with the lark! They're parents must have told them. He was getting angrier just thinking about it, slowly allowing himself to forget that no one from the academy actually woke him up this morning.

"Hey!" He yelled out at the first girl he saw pathetically trying to climb over the obstacle course. "You know that shinobi routinely jump from treetop to treetop just to go out for dinner, right?" He started throwing rocks at the wall in front of the girl, intentionally missing her, but only just so. "You can't even climb up a wall? You must be training for the medical track." He belted out a deep and petty laugh, beginning to feel better. "Do I really have to bully you to make you realize you should just give up?"

Was this too harsh? A decent person might consider these things, but you might also wonder how awful having your spirit broken was against the possibility of another person trying to murder you. There was some place for abuse in military training, even if Tetsu wasn't, say, professionally trained to dictate the manner in which soldiers were broken down and humiliated. Basically, he thought, anything goes. Plus, since he lived in a deterministic universe, he literally had no control over his arms as he was hucking rocks at the innocent child.

 

[Yamamoto Airi]

She was struggling as best she could but after a few more attempts at the wall she slowly began to realize that maybe it was not everything to just dig your nails in or gain a massive amount of momentum. Thinking about how absolutely easy some of the kids had made it, almost effortlessly, meant that she was missing something altogether. The world was not being cruel to her in any aspect…she was being stubborn. There was a library and people around who legitimately would teach her if she asked. She just felt like this would be more worthwhile if she figured it out herself. She could feel she was tired and the cold was started seep into her. If she kept moving she would be warmer.

I guess humans would not have come so far if they re-invented the wheel each time either. She figured she would give the wall a few more cracks before she was ready to wrap it up. As she was making a more loose and casual run she heard a voice call out. It made her skid to a halt. She almost messed up and ran into the wall again it caught her so off guard. She could feel her breathing just a little bit exhausted by the effort. In a quiet voice she mutter to herself, “I really need to work out more…”

She looked around, really people had been leaving her alone; maybe the voice would have nothing to do with her and she could go back to training. Though she threw that right out the window once the figure started to approach her. The man who walked up to her general location looked to be quite a few years older than her. The very first thing that stood out to her was the fact that this man looked very tired. He seemed to be quite muscular but also looked a bit unkempt. He seemed to have the air of someone who went against the grain as her father would have put it. Though maybe he was normal for Kumo.

The picture became clear quite quickly. He started to throw rocks at her. The first one that came clattered against the wall with more force then she would have expected. The sound made her flinch and she moved her head all too slowly to avoid it. She panicked, the whizzing still ringing in her ear and it would not stop there.

At first she thought maybe it was just a mild harassment. She kept her face down. He mentioned that shinobi hop from tree to tree just to get dinner. She wasn’t that slow. She knew she was not really making any progress. More rocks came so close it made her skin itch. She started to try and move away from the wall, small fear creeping into her eyes but he threw rocks to keep her near the wall. The realization came home pretty quickly when he mentioned she should just quit. She looked at him so puzzled by why he was doing this. Her confused expression clear as she looked at him.

She could curl up on the ground or cry for help. It was her first thought after escape was impossible. She looked around but she could barely focus with the pang of rocks. She had barely any thoughts at all, like a trapped animal. Would anyone even come help her? She guessed not. Shinobi were quick…if this was abnormal someone would have stepped forward. Was he some kind of local groomer at the academy? Not everyone could become a Shinobi…she had already seen one girl break down crying and was taken away, that girl had been her senior…would she turn out the same? The fact he said quit so quickly made this not seem like general maliciousness to her. Plus despite everything…he had not actually hit her. She was still freaking out but he was not hurting her. Her realization that flight was not happen made her shift into fight.

She quickly leapt onto the ground, scrapping her knees, and picked up a rock. While it paled in comparison she threw it at the man who was tormenting her. As she threw it she screamed, “What do you know!?” The rock would sail and just clearly miss. She can’t even remember the last time she threw anything. It probably landed nowhere near him, if it even made the distance. She was on her knees now with small tears in her eyes.

Her hands trembled and she shivered. She lifted up her hands to protected her face since she would not even be moving and yelled some more, “You did not give up so why should I!?” She sniffled a bit…she expected a little bullying by kids but not from someone older then her. She braced herself for what was to come.

 

[Omoi Tetsu]

The rock the girl had thrown had flown past Tetsu, leaving him in total shock. What did he know? Didn't it say something about the content of his character that he would even waste his own time and energy going out to a school he no longer even attended just to bully ten year old girls? And for what? Simply to find a person to lash out at because he had started the day on the wrong foot? Maybe he wouldn't have to even go so far out if he had a family at 'home' he could have yelled at. Truly, his failings as a person were all on display here. Was he really so pathetic that he would pick on the weakest girl he saw in the academy, depriving her of the opportunity to discover first-hand that she didn't have what it took to survive against people with actual talent? She may be in a ditch getting stabbed in a few short years, but no one, and he really meant no one, would dare insult her ability to fight before they killed her. There was such a thing as civility, even among enemies, and Tetsu was so abhorrent that he failed to meet even that basic criteria of decency. It wasn't like being so emotionally unstable as to cry at an insult might be reflective of her ability to function under pressure, she was only ten years old, after all, and wouldn't be going out into battle for at least another year.

"What do I know?" The boy forced out another hard fake laugh, "Well, how to climb a wall, for one thing." He hesitated for a moment in making a stupid display of himself, but quickly pushed the reservation out of his mind and ran past the girl. As he was running, many of the children who were already worried got up and started to run away themselves, too. Why no adult ever came out to stop him from terrorizing the schoolyard was a mystery to him. It was possible that they thought it was better to expose these children to randomized adversity, but much more likely that they simply couldn't be bothered to care about it.

He ran up the wooden planks with grace and ease, only flinching for a moment at what felt like the pinched nerve in his side. He didn't want to expend this kind of unnecessary energy so early in the morning just to show a child up, but it was important to him that the girl really understood that he was better than her, and not just some random drunken hobo yelling at her from the treeline. His homeless antics were not random at all; he had successfully finished the training that she was struggling so pathetically with.

While he was running, he heard her ask why she should give up when he hadn't. He was thinking on the way to the top what a cool and smarmy answer he could give might be, instead of answering her honestly that he lived under a mound of leaves in the forest. "Because you're a lost cause, kid." The sun was at his back, casting a dramatic shadow over his face as his greasy hair flowed elegantly in the dramatic wind. He wished he could see how cool he looked in this moment, and briefly felt a pang of envy for the girl who would be so privileged as to witness the display followed by the slick put down that clearly demonstrated his own superiority. He was beaming at this point, basking in his own showmanship, when the wind picked up, causing the platform to wobble ever so slightly. Of course, he wasn't drunk, but it seemed like his balance may have been habitually compromised from long nights drinking in the forest, and he tragically lost his footing, completely ruining the moment. He felt his body start to rapidly tilt downward. 'This wasn't good...' The only thought he managed to squeeze out before his whole weight came down hard on his neck, folding him in a manner that immediately made consciousness difficult. Was this the end?

 

[Yamamoto Airi]

Edit: Sorry I did not edit it or re-check for grammar I was in a rush to finish this before an event. I promise the future ones will be better.

The man gave her a laugh in response to her question. It came off as course and forced. At least her response had stopped him from throwing rocks at her. She finally had a moment to look around and see some other students nearby. Apparently her plight had caused a commotion. No adult nearby only further confirmed that this was another simple weeding they were doing to students. She knew she was probably one of the lowest students but she would not be plucked so easily. When he rushed at her she flinched and gave out a small, “Eeeaaakkkk!”

She thought he was going to do something to her but instead he decided to prove what he said. Some of the children nearby started to flee at his movements but considering how tired she was all she could do was sit and watch. His ability to easily maneuver through the student obstacle course only confirmed her suspicions. He was a great degree better at this then she was. It made sense considering he was older but once again she noticed his movements were not hard but soft.

This was the first time she saw a real Shinobi move. It told he a lot, there was nothing to it about force or muscle. It was too soft and fluid. She thought back to her position. Why had she been selected? She showed abnormal amounts of chakra for a base citizen. Chakra must be what everyone is using to move. It suddenly all made sense…students would not graduate by their physical abilities otherwise how could some graduate in only a few months. She needed to start working on her control. She felt like she figured out a puzzle and this bully had been the one to show her. They must also be testing for ingenuity. Something she also clearly lacked.

When he mentioned that she was a lost cause he was at the finished part of the obstacle course. She looked at him and noticed something…what a weird initiation done by the school. Was this secretly a lesson instead? She had heard some horror stories about the classes but this whole situation did not make sense to her. She admitted that he looked rather happy with himself.

It was then that he fell. Unceremoniously like a doll tossed by a child. It shocked her so much that she let out a loud gasp. Most of the kids in the area cleared, others started to snicker a bit, and some just looked on blankly. She acted in a way that made sense to her. He was not moving and he certainly was in some aspects what she aimed to be. What if he was hurt?

So what if he was mean, so what if he tormented someone. Maybe it was his job, maybe he was just a sick person, and it did not matter. She did not want to see someone who she may work with in the future get seriously hurt in front of her. As she ran over she knew she was not supposed to move someone who was dazed but he was sort of still conscious. She reached out to help move him and make sure his neck was straight.

“Hey! Hey! Please tell me you are okay?”

She reach out just to slightly touch his face. “Do not go to sleep!” She had no idea what she was doing and was too panicked to ask someone to go find help.

 

[Omoi Tetsu]

There was a small voice calling out from the depths of Tetsu's mind, telling him he ought to remember the tail end of a thought he had recently let slip through his fingers. What was it? What could it have been? With each passing second, it seemed like it was moving further away from him, but at the same time, the urgency seemed fabricated. There was nothing, at face value, that demanded his attention in the world around him. The white sheen curtains rippled and occasionally flipped their corners playfully in the Summer breeze as the sunlight crept up the enormously fluffy white blanket the boy was buried under. All the walls, the furniture, every inch of the room seemed to either be painted white or otherwise created in the absence of colour. It was a strange design choice for the boy, to be sure, and he certainly wouldn't have set something up like this himself, but, nonetheless, he was resting in a room he knew was his own, still disoriented enough by sleep that he couldn't be bothered to question how he ended up in a place like this.

He knew he probably should have been getting ready to get up too, but each time the breeze blew, or he turned a little, he seemed to sink an inch or two further into the blankets, to the point now where he was at least two feet lower than the edges of his white bed frame; the blankets all around him holding him in their embrace without warming him up too much. It was too perfect, and all he could hear from outside was the distant sound of children playing and laughing mixed in with the sound of rustling leaves from the trees just outside his window. Still, as he craved that sweet and endless sleep, one of the voices from outside was a little too close to the window. It weirdly sounded right next to him, even though he couldn't make out any of the words.

"Hey! Hey!" What was this bullshit? He suddenly remembered the flaws in his perfect little world, wishing he had moved to a neighbourhood that wasn't always so busy at all hours of the morning. "Please tell me you are okay?" Why wasn't it quieter? Were they really going to keep up all that racket right outside his window?

Almost all at once, he could hear the background sounds of the outer edges of the forest with crystal clear precision; sounds from a different world, all the while hearing a low resolution and muffled voice say "Do not go to sleep!"

The boy woke up immediately annoyed, eyeing the girl touching his face, the annoyance immediately turning to confusion as his eyes frantically darted around trying to understand his new surroundings. His head hurt, and the earth he was lying on felt like concrete with a phantom spike jutting out from it and into the organs below his ribs. As his mind sought frantically to organize the memories it could salvage that would place him at this particular place in time, he was immediately beset by conflicts of interpretation. He didn't feel hungover, trying as he was to map that interpretation onto his present circumstance. He vaguely recognized the child too, and it was that recognition that would forcefully update him on where he was.

No, it wasn't possible that he had just finished humiliating himself, and to think that only moments earlier he could not possibly have found himself in a more comfortable circumstance. He desperately wanted to project the rage of his current embarrassment on the girl in front of him, but he was still too disoriented to come up with any coherent thought that allow him to successfully perform the slight of hand he needed to to convince the child that she was the one that ought to have been embarrassed in their current circumstance. Instead, he quickly attempted to brushed the girl aside with his arm, yelling out "Get off me!" To the girl as if she was crowding him. He would brush off the fresh dirt he found was lightly caked onto him as he stormed back into the forest, to continue his peaceful forest troll's life. That he still did not perfectly understand his current situation was irrelevant, he could sort out the floating memories in his own time. Right now, the only thing that mattered was his dignified escape.

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OOC: Topic left. Sorry for the giant delay, got caught up in holiday stuff, you know how it is.

 

[Yamamoto Airi]

She had been so concerned. He really had lost conscious and that just made things worse and worse. She had no idea what she should be doing and the feeling was annoying. She felt so useless in everything. The man woke up with a start and as he slowly began to come back to the world she gave a small sigh of relief. She really wanted him to be okay because if nothing else he was someone she was trying to catch up to.

Though the way he looked and acted caused her to pout. He just simply got up in a huff and told her off. As he walked away like a baboon the girl got up and brushed herself off. She glared at him and said, “YOUR WELCOME BAFOON!” This did not really make her feel better.

She was tired and she looked back up to the top of the obstacle course that the man had crossed so easily and she gave a small smile. He did help me a little, and if nothing else…she needed to get better. She would need to show him up one day and really let him have it. If I improve enough he will have to accept that I am not a lost cause.

She turned and yelled more, “YOU HEAR ME! YOU’VE ONLY MADE ME MORE DETERMINED!” She blushed as she noticed she was basically yelling at no one, and other kids were starting to stare. She quickly moved over and started to grab her things. She needed to look into the academy library and start figuring out how everyone was moving so effortlessly. That would be the real trick to progress her training even further.

With that handled…she made her way into the school.

[Topic left as well]