Re: Black and Blue, but Red All Over

Tue Feb 25, 2014 2:42 am

The summoning Jutsu was unexpected, and when the edge of the Wakizashi met with the thick side of wood, Sora let out a disappointed grunt. They had ways to summon weapons out of thin air within an instant as well? Convenient. A freak turtle, the ability to appear in other places, and a way to make weapons materialize in a split second -- the opponent he faced wasn't something he had dealt with before. But that wasn't to say that it was the worst. He blinked, and felt the darkness last longer than it should. His ribs were on fire and the stab wounds in his stomach had opened up since his first attack. The chips of broken teeth in his mouth had managed to scratch the back of his throat and each time he swallowed he was brought back to alertness with shrill pain. But it allowed for his previous battles not to pull the veil over his eyes. It was both the worst and best feeling in the world, to succumb to unconsciousness. Instead, staring at the dancing image of his enemy confined within the dancing image of the room, he felt just alive enough to continue.

After all, he had been through worse.

For the Bokken to have blocked his sword strike, it must have had quite the bit of pressure placed downwards on it. It was difficult to put that much pressure on a sword and still be nimble with it. It didn't curve and weave to the will of the wrist when the arm was holding it down - and the Demon's strike was no frail blow. That was the opening. Hunter's back was now to the entrance of the room, while Sora's was to the window. The bed was to Demon's right, which goaded the Demon into sourcing his offense from the left, so that the natural motion of evasion would be towards the part of the room with the bed in it.

But this guy could appear anywhere in the room at will, could summon possibly another sword for his convenience, or he could use another Jutsu to debilitate Sora. The Demon was in corridor laced with danger. Each turn held with it a black box left to be opened. He applied more pressure on his sword as it pressed up against the Bokken. While it was not enough to overpower his opponent, it was enough to demand his attention. Without keeping his Bokken where it was, Demon's slash would continue down its original path, towards Hunter's abdomen. "Tch. Trash like you think you can change my name?"

The Wakizashi rattled with the pressure applied to it, unable to convince the Bokken to heed. A warm ribbon of claret found its way down his side, but he did not alleviate the pressure. An image flashed before his eyes, from another place in time. The Demon was crucified, pinned by spears to the side of a building while they sharpened the blade that would gut him in front of the city's people. He was the enemy to them, the assailant. Perhaps he was the enemy in the eyes of this village, as well. Some untamed beast that foamed and frothed at the mouth like a hound from hell. Hopelessness was no new feeling to Sora, not after all these years. "I'm not your friend!" The armed hand is not as fast as the unarmed one. Having applied pressure against Hunter's Bokken this entire time, goading him into applying enough counter-pressure to keep his wooden sword from slipping, perhaps he might not have expected the Demon's efforts to suddenly vanish. Instead, letting go of his sword, Demon's left hand shot right towards the right side of Hunter's ribs while his right hand blocked the Bokken from being used defensively.

While the attack might seem nonsensical at first, it was important to remember that the Wakizashi was still tied, by the hilt, to Sora's wrist, and thus when Sora's hand shot towards Hunter's torso, the sword would follow. With his feet, the Demon would push forward, taking advantage of Hunter's choice to remain seated. If using the sword as a whip didn't manage to land, he would quickly regain control of it, using his right hand to block free usage of the Bokken while the left hand stabbed forward as many times as he could before the burning in his shoulder made him stop -- and that wasn't too many times.

Pushing away and regaining his footing, Sora used the Wakizashi to help him stay standing.

"I don't know what your intentions are for wasting my time like this, but without even giving me your name... I can't trust you. And I'm not training with someone I don't trust." Those many years ago when he was pinned to the wall, awaiting his ritual gutting, he had done the same -- spit and yell at the authority in some attempt to redeem his sense of pride. It was easy for him to forget Tsuki's words, to forget to always be afraid of things that deserve to be feared. With one quick motion, he slid the Wakizashi along the floor towards Hunter. This time when he pressed his back against the wall, it was not forced by the electric numbness that coursed through his veins. Instead it was oppressed on him by the draining adrenaline, a feeling now replaced by the realization that his wounds had opened, his bruises had worsened, and his consciousness walked on a thin red line while the winds of pain blew constantly to try to make it fall.

The room danced on, and he felt his knees buckle.

Tue Feb 25, 2014 3:29 am

Hunter looked at the man with the blood now running down his face. It was a different feeling, but the will of this man...Hunter would not accept no for an answer, after this. He listened after it took some time for Bob to finally speak, it seemed he did not like the new name that he was given. Hunter could tell that Bob was low on energy so he let him speak. It seemed he had a flashback as well in then in snapping back to the real world he yelled out at Hunter telling him he was not his friend. Hunter did not laugh or even smirk. He kept his stern face as he watched Bob attack him a final time trying to punch him and use the blade as a whip. Hunter did let out a sigh to this in which he let Bob land both the punch and the whip. However, due to his immense health and the fact that Bob had no REAL energy behind his punch neither of the attacks made even a scratch. IT was as if Bob had struck stone.

He then let Bob stand up and back away. Then letting him speak once more about Hunter wasting his time. Hunter could not help but laugh as he remained seated still on the floor of the room. The blood had dried on his face and it did not bother him in the least. When Bob collapsed and went unconcious is when Hunter finally decided to move. He went to his side and picked him up and laid him in the bed where he hooked up the rudimentary machines as he placed his hand to Bobs head. He then focused a large amount of Chakra into the body of his new aqquaintance. The Chakra would soon begin to work on speeding up his healing and would allow him to leave quicker in the end. Before he left though he had one more gift to give Bob. He took back his Wakizashi and then his Bokken, putting them both in their sheathes he sighed before laying the Bokken against the wall with a note attached.

"This is yours...by accepting it, you throw away your past. You can hold a grudge, be angry, want to kill me, I do not care, nor does it matter. If you wish to become stronger you will come to the location provided on the map on the back of this paper. See you soon.

Signed
-Your New Master"

Hunter then cleaned his face and the mess he made before he went to the door and summoned the doctors and nurses to look after the unconsious Bob. Hunter could not help but smile. This was his first REAL student, well...one with some real aptitude anyway. He left the Hospital and as usual tried to take a few of the nurses with him. As he climbed atop Slow Death he did not look back. He knew the man would wake up and inquire about his name, and surely he would find it...but he would have to earn the right to talk to him as an equal...This was the way of Bushido...the way of the sword. All swordsmen must live and die by this code, and all swordsmen must learn to be humble before they can be powerful...Including Hunter.

WC:551
TWC:2400

[Exit]

Gained (+12 Stats. Trading in for 600 Ryo, +24 Jutsu Points)
Memorized The Chakra of Demon

Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:56 am

He was elsewhere, suddenly. His wrists wriggled, sending waves of pain through his arms and when he looked to either side, the spears were still there, going completely through his flesh. The crunch of his bones when he moved was not something he could ignore, it was not a pain he could bare, and in helpless retaliation, he let out a loud and graceless roar. Blood from his mouth sprayed out into the open, summer air, and the people seemed to move away from where it fell. Was he so disgusting to them? In the scorching heat of the season, the people below wore thin veils of purple and maroon to keep the rays off of their face. Their skin, a shade lighter than his, wrinkled to peer up against the sun to see him, the spectacle.

He was given a simple assignment. It was to murder the Duke of Oyashira. He was a man known for his intellect, and had won some sort of Chess competition in his younger days. The fame he had gained through competition translated to political recognition when he won his primary elections. That was many years ago, when Sora lived in a far away land and a very different life. The Duke's name was Genbu, a young fat man with thick eye-liner. He might have resembled the villain of a book were he not a real man in the real world. And while Genbu did not have a perfect rise to power, his road was not marred with too many pot-holes. He continued attending Chess tournaments, winning most of them even as he aged and the new age of competition rose in the ranks.

A true prodigy.

But it was a few years ago during the Ducal elections that he took Oyashira by storm. Oyashira, referred in short as Oya, was a large metropolis for agriculture. In the middle of the desert they had made a city around an oasis, and managed to maintain it with their technology. In lands filled to the brink with sands, having access to water was more powerful than having access to ready death. Commerce flocked around them and they became the center of produce. It was practically the only place in hundreds of miles where livestock could be kept, and so their mode of business never ran dry in the same way that their oasis never did.

Genbu was their new leader, the one who would take them to the next stage of growth. The man had ideas that were not very palatable to the upper class. He wanted to expand the village's energy resource by incorporating the oasis, which was a publicly accessible resource of water. Up until then all of Oya used Wind Factories for their energy, not having thought to tap into hydraulics. So when Genbu suggested that one of the first orders of business he aimed to complete was to get the village off of the privatized Wind Factory trade and onto the nationalized oasis resource, he had made quite a few rich people very angry.

And that's why the Demon was there, on an assassination mission to take out Genbu, to solve a problem in the most primal of ways.

Unfortunately for him, they had been prepared. The Chess player had made the King's Gambit, hiring his own spies and sending them off to his opposition. So by the time Sora had arrived, he was expected and captured with ease. And for the first time Genbu showed aggression to the public. Up until then he had been the silent mastermind behind this new era of success that he wanted to usher in. The people were ready to trust him in what he said because of his success in politics and chess but now... now when he had shown to the village what a traitor looks like... he had morphed into something else.

As Sora looked down at them he saw the fear in their eyes. Right before them, this man was changing. It was an unfortunate side-effect that Sora was the object that represented this change. The first of many, surely. And somehow he chose to focus on a small boy standing at the front. His mother was behind him and she was watching Genbu as he paced to his left and to his right. But this entire time the boy, who must have been no older than six, was watching Sora hang there. He was mouthing something under his breath, and for whatever reason, Sora focused on those silent words.

A prayer.

With a scream he awoke in a hospital bed, in the dead silence of night. His chest heaved to and fro and the smell of dirt and sweat hung thick in every direction that he looked. The window was open, and outside the blue mist of dreams floated along the village's surface like an afterthought. He remembered the man with the green hair, with the swords that appeared from nowhere, and the turtle that could dismantle a chair. This was the new breed of competition. He had seen and suffered through many different shapes and sizes of enemies, people that could see the future, change the past, and grip the present with their hands soaked in war and terror. His path was never rid of people more powerful than him.

He wrapped his arms around his knees, seeing the note that lay to his side. The wooden sword reminded him of his own. He wished he hadn't broken it. He wished he hadn't allowed it to be broken. Beads of sweat that pitter-pattered down the sides of his face moved with the rhythm of his heaving breaths. To refuse to adapt was to concede to defeat.

'A l l p o w e r t e n d s t o c o r r u p t , a n d a b s o l u t e p o w e r w i l l c o r r u p t a b s o l u t e l y . H u m a n s a r e n o d i f f e r e n t t h a n a n i m a l s w h e n i t c o m e s t o t h e l a w s o f n a t u r e ,' were his thoughts, and it didn't make sense why he was remembering those words. It was what he screamed out to the citizens of Oyashira when they cheered for his dismemberment. Genbu had a great way with words, and he reminded Sora of a snake -- able to twist and squeeze the truth until it was of a palatable shape. And then he would shove it down your throat and you would be convinced that you enjoyed it. A l l p o w e r t e n d s t o c o r r u p t , a n d a b s o l u t e p o w e r w i l l c o r r u p t a b s o l u t e l y . He had read it somewhere, back when he was of Royal lineage and his name was synonymous with heir and power. It seemed like another time that he had learned of the ill that comes with gaining untempered control. ' T h e y w i l l g r o v e l a n d g r o w l a t t h e s i g h t o f d a n g e r , a n d t h e y w i l l r e i g n a n d r o a r a t t h e t a s t e o f d o m i n a n c e .' The people did not like what he was saying, but the did not scream and dull out his voice. Instead they were afflicted by a deathly quiet, and they watched the bloodied spectacle of a man speak his mind.

After all, how much could Sora possibly do, pinned up to the wall and battered, his face barely recognizable through the lumps of maroon and purple. 'T h e y c a n n o t h e l p t h e i n n e r d i r t y a p e t h a t m a k e s t h e m w h o t h e y a r e . W e a r i n g c l o t h e s a n d w r i t i n g b o o k s d o e s n o t c h a n g e t h e f i l t h y s o u l t h a t w a s g r a n t e d t o u s b y G o d . W e l i v e o u r l i v e s p r e d i c t a b l y , f i g h t i n g w a r s a n d k i l l i n g i n n o c e n t w o m e n a n d c h i l d r e n , b e c a u s e t h e h e a d o f t h e p a c k h a d t o l d u s t o .' By now Genbu had whirled around, leering at him as one does an annoying dog. He yelled something out, and it seemed comical at the time. The fat man acting as though he were a thug had made Sora laugh, and he laughed in vain as the blood seeped down into his lungs. This made Genbu only angrier. Seeing him act that way, or at least, seeing him react that way only encouraged the Demon. It was a chink in the man's armor, a move on the board that he had not considered. Or was it true that he had assumed his sway over his people was permanent. After all, Genbu the prodigy had been born with the trust of his people. They saw him as some golden egg that they did not want to tamper with. He had been trusted from afar for so long that finally when his enemy had come in close and attacked his credibility, it felt weird and unnatural. 'W e s h i t a n d e a t a n d s h i t a n d e a t l i k e r a t s i n a m a z e b e c a u s e o u r m a s t e r s s a y s o . T h i s i s t h e f a t e o f a l l d e s p i c a b l e a n i m a l s , a n d i t i s t h e f a t e o f o u r s .'

He looked up into that sky and felt the first pang of hopelessness, then the next. Blood in his eyes had made his left eye hard to open, and fuzzed the vision in his right, but he could tell that the sky was going to be clear for quite a while. If they killed him here, there would be no rain to cleanse the filth from his corpse. The ravens and crows would come and consume him along with his sins. He remembered Takayama Saaya's voice, his mother's, as though she were right there with him, her arms wrapped around him as it had been when she died. He voiced what she had said out loud, to the people of Oyashira. 'N e v e r f o r g e t t h i s , S o r a , b e c a u s e w h e n i t c o m e s t i m e t h a t y o u a r e f a c e d w i t h a n e n e m y s o l a r g e y o u c a n n o t s e e t h e t o p o f h i s g r e a t n e s s , y o u m i g h t f o r g e t t h a t h e i s h u m a n .' He was screaming now, and the people below had began to murmur. Perhaps they saw reason in his words, or maybe they heard the words of a dying man and the superstitious side of them had considered giving it more weight than it deserved. But Genbu saw the turning of the tides. None of them had been warned of this execution, and Genbu had spent all morning justifying it. While they had been convinced of this act of violence by the noon, now they seemed less sure. It was to be expected from people whose demeanor had so easily been swayed. Of course they could be twisted back into their original shape, made to believe that what they had been convinced to support was in fact murder. 'Y o u m i g h t f o r g e t t h a t h e i s m a d e o f t h e s a m e f l e s h t h a t y o u a r e . A n d y o u m i g h t f o r g e t t h a t h e t o o c a n b l e e d w h e n h e i s c u t o p e n . E v e n i f n o o n e e l s e b e l i e v e s , y o u m u s t r e m e m b e r t h a t w e a r e a l l h i d e o u s c r e a t u r e s b o r n t o d i e , a n d r e g a r d l e s s o f w h a t w e s a y o r h o w w e s a y i t , w e ' r e j u s t b i d i n g t i m e u n t i l w e ' r e s h i t a n d d i r t a g a i n .'

He pulled the small monitor chords out of his skin, wincing with the pinch that each of them left with. Pulling himself to his feet, he allowed for the feeling to regain itself along the surface of his skin. Weakness was all that Sora felt, and cold. Fate was odd to have landed that Shinobi in his room, someone out looking to prove his strength. But it was perhaps a gift in disguise. Looking again at the note left behind the Demon realized that this was a new frontier. These lands, these countries ruled by Shinobi did not have the same magic that he had met before. They did not have the seers the ghouls the dragons nor the monsters from before. They were their own breed of warfare.

Given that he had extended this offer, it could only mean that he was looking for an apprentice. Perhaps a student to teach, someone to bring up under his wing and use as a tool later. Picking up the Bokken, the Demon moved to the edge of the room and looked out of the window. Were there really these sorts of people, who became addicted with the idea of nurturing talent that they went about goading it? Perhaps this was the sort of dependency that this civilization brought about. It wasn't hard to fathom. 'E v e n i f n o o n e e l s e b e l i e v e s , y o u m u s t r e m e m b e r t h a t w e a r e a l l h i d e o u s c r e a t u r e s b o r n t o d i e , a n d r e g a r d l e s s o f w h a t w e s a y o r h o w w e s a y i t , w e ' r e j u s t b i d i n g t i m e u n t i l w e ' r e s h i t a n d d i r t a g a i n .' The Bokken in his hand felt weak, compared to the metal that he was used to, but he held it like he would any other sword. It would be something he had to get used to until he could craft another blade. The man that had made his last one was nowhere to be found, perhaps died, likely captured and tortured, and that meant he would have to play by these peoples' rules. He would have to buy their artsy pieces of shit and pretend like a skinny little sword was enough to cut the kinds of monsters that he had seen.

With one swift motion he struck the wall next to him with the wooden Sword, feeling the vibration through his arm. The healing had been faster than expected. He had training to do, and a whole new world of Shinobi to learn to combat. While it wouldn't be easy, maybe with the help of his mysterious green-haired benefactor, he could get a step up on the competition.

[Exit, TWC: 6600]

Tue Feb 25, 2014 2:39 pm

approved exit for Demon

Gain

33 stats, 66 jp)

Tue Feb 25, 2014 6:23 pm

Approved