Audio Slave [Open, NK (But I mean, no pressure)]

"In your home... I want to be... No, no. It's not really working.". Ryūka was sitting on the stone ground of a street, holding a notebook against his right leg, writing, scribbling, writing again. He was also spinning a kunai in his left hand's fingers. It might have sounded dumb when he told it to other people, but it legitimately gave him comfort, so it was not a habit he was thinking of dropping any time soon. "In your room, I... The 'want' doesn't work it's not strong enough...". He scratched the back of his head with the kunai, carefully, as he had scarred himself countless times while trying to scratch himself with one; as marks all over his body could prove.

Usually when he sat somewhere and started working on his lyrics, verbalizing them and thinking outloud while figuring out what worked best, he'd be asked to leave, scolded, or even shouted at until Ryūka chose to leave himself. The street he chose today hadn't been a problem yet as it was wide, and it was almost empty. There were just a few kids, all of whom looked like they were around 6 years old; playing some sort of game with a ball. Ryūka had paid close attention to it when they first started, but couldn't figure out the game they were playing, and then went back to working to his lyrics. They were using hands, legs, their heads to throw the ball around, and they didn't seem to a have a goal, or a way to score one; but one would randomly shout "SCORE!" from time to time, and others would disagree; no claim like that ever being accepted by the group. They seemed to be having fun at least, and the grown ups, watching from their balconies, didn't seem to mind the noise, as they didn't mind Ryūka himself. They did from time to time stare at him though, which Ryūka pretended not to notice, but did. He understood that they had a point, a young adult sitting by himself on a street that was otherwise crowded only by infants; saying random words (at least in their eyes, if  not Ryūka's), and taking notes.

"Second by seconds, forbearingly... Forbearingly? People don't use that word? Is that even a word?". He searched the inner pockets of his jackets, but couldn't find whatever he was searching for. "I'll check it out when I'm home I guess." he thought, going back to scribbling. He seemed to be on the middle of the notebook, the part that he had passed all seemed dirty, a lot of words and scribbles, and the pages seemed to be bent, partly cut, scratched, torn and the notebook in general showed a great deal of water damage. He then sighed, and flipped many pages from the left to the right, going back on his notes. "How did this one go? Oh right. Like... You reign. You reign. You reign. You reign.". He scribbled. "This is going nowhere. I'm just wasting time on this piece... Should I rip it off? I should rip it off.". He ripped it off. He had ripped it off anyway, from a singer at a bar, but at the time he was drunk so the next day, he thought that he had come up with the song himself. Only the chorus seemed to have stuck with him, however, so he couldn't 'come up' with the rest of it. He smashed the ripped off page, turned it into a ball, and threw it away. "Oh no, the back page." he then exlaimed, jumped towards the direction he threw the paper ball to. He grabbed it, opened it, looked at it and started copying the contents back into his notebook. When he was done, he threw the paper away once again. He kept on reading his notes.

Ryūka turned pages until he was at the very end of the book. Unlike the front pages, these were not for his own lyrics, but those by others that the Genin enjoyed, lyrics that inspired him. “Mama said I’d be fine. Mama said everything would be alright.”. Ryūka shook his head. “I… Mama is probably code for mom, right? I don’t think that’s someone’s name… I don’t know how to translate these lyrics to my life though. “Old man Nethero said” doesn’t have nice ring to it like ‘Mama’, and also, I don’t think it’d be any relatable for people listening to the lyrics.”. Nero scribbled the entire page, “Take no inspirations from here.” he noted underneath the ink mess that covered most of the page now. Then someone interrupted him. His possible motivations were enough to scare the young (debatable, but still) ninja. He was hoping it was just a random question from a random passerby. He did not dare raise his head at first, afraid it might be a teacher from the academy there to collect on months of Ryūka bothering them. 

"Side of the road?" Ryūka repeated, not raising his head to make eye contact, but instead checking around to see if the man’s statement was even accurate. He decided it was accurate enough to go along with (he was a critique of the unimportant), raised his head to take a look at the man, and answered, “I mean… It looked as good as many to just… sit and wait.”. He looked down at his notebook, made one last scribble, and put it away into the inner pocket of his jacket. He got up from the ground. He was trying to show manners, even though he didn’t really know what manners really meant to people around him, nor the general importance of it in the culture of Kumogakure. He called himself “technically a 2 year old”, and it showed on many occasions. His ignorance in the matters of day to day life and especially in the social life. When he was standing up, he offered his hand to the man, “Ryūka, Genin of Kumogakure. Can I help you with anything? I… Assume you’re here cause you saw the badge?”.

“I hope I didn’t get the father of one of these kids angry…” Ryūka thought, “Or. Oh no… Is this about last week? I promised I would pay for their window and their table back. I hope this is not about that… I mean, wait. Even if it is, he can’t outright attack a ninja of the village out of nowhere, because of some personal issues. A ninja at ninja business at that… Kind of… I am technically strolling in this street… Even if I was sitting… I was, guarding the place? Making sure the kids were being left alone by strangers? Yeah that’s good excuse… Hopefully. Let’s see what this is about.”. “How about you, by the way, if I may ask? Might I ask you what you’re doing on the road? Also maybe how your day is going, if I get an extra question?”. Ryūka was already nervous, and it caused a mistake that would make him even more so. "Uh oh." he thought, "I hope that didn't sound too confrontational. Again though, he's not gonna attack a ninja, at least not in broad daylight. I should calm down, it's making everything worse.".

Ryūka was lost in thoughts. He was doubting his own words although none of them were lies, maybe some were things he was unsure of, or things Ryūka knew he didn’t know well enough, but not lies. “You’ve settled down before?” the boy asked, making it obvious that the choice of words had gathered his attention, putting an emphasis on both words “settled, down”. He started leading Damon down the streets if he followed, stopping if he did so instead. He listened to everything the other man told him. “I still have the smallest suspicion in the depth of my conscience that Damon might be here for the window I broke. Probably not though. It’s interesting. What does being a wanderer even feel like I wonder.”. Ryūka stopped for a second, raising his index finger like a student at the academy would to ask a question, saying “Sorry. A second?” to Damon.. He then took out the notebook, writing down just two words before putting it back into his jacket;

“Wander

Wonder”

“I’m sorry about that.” he then said, and presented the road ahead with his hands, once again starting to walk. “About the thing you’ve said before. I agree. It’s probably not that I am like this. It’s probably because I let myself be… This. I don’t know how to perceive the difference, nor do I know how to stop, if I ever have to. How do you do it?”. Ryūka asked perhaps the most important question (for him) he asked all day. After that, he chuckled, adding “Sorry, I didn’t mean teaching me Jutsu when I asked what you were willing to share. I meant stories. I do appreciate the offer though, and may take it maybe a few minutes later, if you’ll still be interested. I was sincerely asking about you. You look interesting. More than most people I’ve met anyway.”. Ryūka really meant it. Maybe it stemmed from the fact that he wasn’t a very social person, and didn’t know a lot of people well enough to know if they were at all interesting. When a wanderer from a foreign country happened to approach him though, that made Ryūka’s day; and maybe even changed his perspective a little bit, on meeting new people.

“It’s fine.” he added, “It may sound cruel from the outside, but I get what you mean. Honestly, I’m not very troubled about not having prior memories, not that much anyway. I took this as a chance to become a person, instead of worrying what kind of person the one in this body was before me. I don’t know if we’re even to be honest,” Ryūka said, smiling, “but mostly because I wasn’t keeping score.”. He looked back at the kids playing ball, as the two men were leaving the street (probably) at that point, “I’m just doing it for the hell of it. A good conversation is its own prize in my book.”. He looked at Damon, and then looked back at the direction they were going, “These burdens you were talking about… I don’t want to dig in too much, I think people usually don’t like it when I do. But what happened to your home, your family?”.

“Regretfully,” was the one thing Damon was able to say in response before Ryuka pulled out his notebook and wrote in it, stopping as he did so. He apologized, but it did not bother the Uchiha, instead waiting patiently with his hand resting on one of the blades hooked to his right hip, albeit in a non threatening manner. “Think about it like this. I can spend a week talking about how I’m going to solve a problem, or I could solve the problem without a word spoken. Typically the ones who talk the most do the least,” he paused before glancing over towards the genin, “No, er. No offense,” he said to the motormouth. “I meant more in regards to a kage or other position of power. I don’t trust in their words anymore, I look at what they do. That way it isn’t possible to be blinded by their lies while they stab you in the back for their own gain.” He allowed himself a small, cynical laugh at his own double meaning. Blindness.

A part of him knew he should not share his story with everyone, but… but that old, innocent aspect of him nagged in the back of his mind. You want to be a legend, a voice that was his, but higher pitched cried out. Share your story. Let it spread. Damon breathed deeply through his nose as he came to a stop. Wordlessly, he pointed his index finger at the boy. Ephemeral.

The world faded away to darkness. As Damon spoke, faint lights began to appear in the sky before revealing a massive sea of stars in the heavens, shining down on Ryuka, who now stood in a cold desert. The deep voice of the Uchiha came from seemingly every angle, “Your interest piqued when I said I settled down, right? Well… I wasn’t quite honest when I said no rank. I’m a former jounin of Hoshigakure, the Village Hidden in the Stars. A city my father and I should have never settled within.” The sky turned darker, the stars converging in the distance into a fire climbing ever higher in the distance, approaching rapidly as the boy could not move. The image of a shop came to fruition, its description changing along with his words, the fire steadily rising in the background before it encompassed him entirely. “The village is known for its religious zealots that hate shinobi.” Faceless men beating an older one. “Zealots that killed him just for moving in and opening a shop in order to support my dream of becoming a famed shinobi, one you hear of passed down for generations to come.” An inky darkness took over Ryuka’s view, modern day Damon in his black kimono appearing within the vision, gesturing to the skies with his outstretched left arm, moving it across his field of vision in an arc from his right side to his left in order to encompass the vastness that he wished his legacy to contain. “But they crushed that dream, burned the house down and killed the only family I had.”

“But I kept going. I pushed on to honor his sacrifice and to make sure it wasn’t in vain. I rose through the ranks to chuunin, embarking on missions, making friends along the way.” The figures appeared once their descriptions were spoken, a younger version of himself, “Notably a boy with white hair,” who appeared to his left, “a boy with dark hair, and lastly” the boy appeared to his right, alongside “a dog that could perform taijutsu as crazy as it sounds. But then… but then that dark haired boy died.” The trio smiled together before the childish figure of Akio vanished, the dog whining and the two Uchiha panicking, “And the village I had been protecting decided to cover up his death and hide it from his family. From us.” The figures of Yurei and Damon grew smaller as dark figures rose, silhouettes of the ones that wronged them. “Through a series of unfortunate events, the white haired boy and I were able to find out from a guard who later killed himself out of guilt, only to nearly be killed ourselves by the very man that killed our friend.” The fiendish stitched apparition of Kenshin appeared, freezing Ryuka in place with fear.

“this world could burn and I would do little more than rejoice”

He faded away to a long distance view of the palace in Hoshigakure, flanked by the silhouettes of a large, burly man, a teenager who stood with unearned confidence, and a girl whose meer posture was too cheery for her actions. “The kage was involved. As was his deputy and a number of others. All schemed against the white haired boy and I, and we couldn’t stand it there anymore.

“The village that appears as the most holy and divine is the closest place to hell on earth.” Ryuka was yet again swallowed by darkness.

“After that, we fled. There was too much collusion and attempts to thwart us at every turn. I had been staying at the white haired boy’s house, only to nearly be killed by his own mother. But-” he paused, the vision not displaying the events but instead showing a landscape of dark pillars clashing against an endless dark sky, before continuing, “-that’s not my story to tell. You’d have to ask Yurei yourself,” he said, the name slipping. “He had made friends here in Kumo, back when shinobi of this village had visited Hoshi, so we came here for the time being. Whether that village knows of our departure or not is irrelevant to me. Knowing what I know about them, they’d sooner have us back dead than alive.”

With that, Damon lowered his finger, and Ryuka would find himself standing in the same spot they had before, the only difference being that several tears had shed from Damon’s eyes. He took a deep, albeit shaky breath. The boy seemed to have something to say for everything, so the Uchiha would allow for him to speak.

The ones who talk the most do the least. The words echoed as if in an empty cave, in Ryūka’s empty head. It hit way too close home. Ryūka didn’t get offended though, he didn’t get angry at the man. He just fell into a spiral of thoughts, but it would have been more comfortable for both of them than if Ryūka worded them verbally. He was right, the boy, now even maybe considered a man, was 2 years old. He only knew books. Only knew words, speech. He’d never been outside the village. At least not in his 2 years, he didn’t know what his body had done before. It was a very weird feeling, living as a 2 year old person in a body that was considered adult. Sometimes when he saw 6 year old kids running around, Ryūka had the urge to ask them if he could join, but he knew how weird that would have sounded, and seemed. So, being torn between the person he had the instincts to be, and the man he was expected to be; he was overwhelmed and started retreating, reading everything he could find on his caretaker’s shelves.

By the time Ryūka’s head was back at the present, Damon had started his next sentence, about lies and politics. Again, of a world that Ryūka literally didn’t know of yet. He took the man’s words with great respect. Surely he knew better than the 2 year old introvert. Then the man raised his finger towards him. That motion allowed confused Ryūka. Why was the man just pointing at him out of nowhere? Had he done something weird, or wrong? Was there something on his shirt? Was there someone behind him? Before Ryūka could theorize further, or ask, he felt the reality fade away. A space-time technique? That was what Ryūka assumed. When Damon’s voice started coming off every angle though, he assumed he was put under a Genjutsu. “God. I wish I paid more attention to class when they taught us about the Genjutsu Release… Instead of writing. Wait. Time flows differently in thoughts right? Does this mean I’ll get a really long time to think of new rhymes and poems? I guess I’m gonna be stuck here forever, or until Damon gets bored. What would he put me under a Genjutsu anyway? Oh, maybe he was a secret Jounin of the village here to put me through a secret second Genin Exam? Oh he’s talking.”. When the voice started talking, it became quickly obvious to Ryūka that he didn’t mean to use the Genjutsu to harm him, but tell him… Hopefully…

“Hoshigakure?” the Genin thought, as he heard that name, “I’ve read about that place. There wasn’t much interesting information though. Except for the fact that it was apparently a religious place? I don’t remember a whole lot about villages other than Kumo to be honest.”. Ryūka listened to the whole story. It was overwhelming. He had read stories like these, well, in story books. He never for a second thought that there could be people living lives like those. It was… Scary, even if he wouldn’t have liked to admit it. But between the visions Damon had showed him, the scariest one was the man. The man Damon said killed one of his friends, and almost killed him and his other friend. Maybe it was the way Damon was showing him, and in real life, he looked like a regular man. Maybe Damon was adding a few of his thoughts on him onto his image. Ryūka didn’t know. For all he knew, this demon existed, somewhere in the world. Hoshigakure. Yeah, Damon had already told him that a few seconds ago. But all Ryūka could think of at that point was the man’s face.

“The Kage, his deputies?” Ryūka could barely muster to say, not knowing if these words would reach Damon in the real world, or would stay in his thoughts, here in this Genjutsu (though he didn’t know if Damon could hear his thoughts in this Genjutsu Dimension. He didn’t wonder too much about that, the story being told to him was so overwhelming his mind didn’t wander as usual. “Yurei?” he repeated, thinking for a second Damon used that name like Ryūka was supposed to know who that was. He didn’t. The white-haired boy. Boy? Was he young? Younger than Ryūka perhaps? He was probably not younger than 2, but maybe 18. The visions faded away, being replaced by that of Damon in the streets of Kumo. Ryūka assumed this was the real world again. “The kage and his deputies?” he asked, once again, “That sounds… Like a conspiracy.”. For the first time in a long while he didn’t know what to say. Maybe at a time Damon was actually looking for one. He needed to let that whole story sink in. His expression was one of a man broken down, he almost looked like he was crying even though no tears were coming out. He stepped towards the man to give him a huge hug. The voice in the back of his mind told him not to do it, and that the man could probably kill him for that, or perhaps put him in an eternal Genjutsu, but Ryūka didn’t know what else to do. He was a 2 year old. Hugging was his first instinct on many occasions. Hopefully, that didn't get him killed. But dying for attempting to hug someone would have been the most fitting way for him to go. Even he knew that, even if he wasn't looking for that outcome.