Industrious Times [IO, NK]

Fists like rain. Fists like stones. Fists like stars. Fists fell on her like thunderbolts from heaven, shattering her, tearing her to shreds. In that moment, in that season of pain, thought vanished like mist, and all dreams of the future disappeared. For people like her, for the people could not win, this was the only fate that awaited her. A swift, rushing sensation of pain, and then nothing. Then there would come the photos, the tears from the bereaved, and then she would be forgotten, just like the rest. Names and faces lost to time, the context and meaning behind them like so much dust in the wind.

Isaribi woke up screaming. At first, she was in high alert, startled by her unfamiliar surroundings. Then, as things came into focus, she laid back down as she recognized the room she was in. Right. This was Baliquis' sister's house. Or, as the woman would have her believe, her own house now, under the condition of partnership. After taking a few seconds to reorient, she got up, pulling on a plain white shirt and beginning what little she had of a normal morning routine. Basic hygiene, making the bed, all that sort of thing. After so long in prison, it barely took any thought at all. Some tasks were a lot harder with one hand, she had found out (and found out the hard way). Things were easier now, though some things were still daunting, like washing dishes. Maybe it was her fault for wanting to do it by hand, but it was how she had always done things.

With that done, she took a look around the place again. It still surprised her, a little, just how much of everything there was, space in particular. She would have been content to just live in one of these closets, much less the whole house. It felt kind of uncomfortable, not having to share a place like this with anybody. Not the bad, rotten kind of uncomfortable, just the unusual, off-balance kind. In her head, she knew this wasn't even really that large of a place, compared to some of the estates and church buildings. Yet, she still felt lost.

Isaribi padded into the kitchen and peeked in the cupboards. Holy fucking shit, look at all this. What did one person need all this food for? Well, she would need to do something with this, in case it started to go bad. With a glance or two, she sorted them mentally into group and got to work. Isaribi washed her hands and started cooking. Dry food, fried food, all kinds of stuff, really, mostly foods cooked to make the most of what would normally be limited materials. By the time she had spun up a week's worth of rations and meals, the sun was already high in the sky, the house smelled of savory food, and she had barely scratched the surface of the material she had to work with. Well, when you lived like she did, you normally didn't have this much to work with.

Isaribi peeked out of the window, looking at the sky before retreating further into the house. It took time to cook stuff normally, and with only one arm at her disposal, things took even longer. For a moment, she considered trying to contact a firebird to help her out around the place, but having a phoenix indoors sounded like a recipe for disaster. Once again, it was a time of scarcity, only this time it was a scarcity of body parts.

As she cleaned up after her morning of cooking, Isaribi yawned. Activities like this helped calm her nerves, which was something she needed quite badly. Nights like those were pretty bad, and the days were filled with all kinds of pressure and stress. Old habits from both criminal life and from prison had stuck with her, and being on a constant lookout for attackers or watchers gave her enough of a headache to need a good destresser from time to time. Dubious, perhaps, for a shinobi to have a pastime like this, but she could think of much, much worse ways to cope. She could think of a few good friends, hated rivals and some in between, wasting away or overdosing or dying of some disease. Well, she had this, and she was the one who walked away alive.

[WC 734]

She had had the same dream since her sister's body came to the temple, and she took the liberty to cremate it. Every time she closed her eyes, she had the same dream, no matter how many times she woke up, and she always woke up from it the same. The emotions it invoked did not subside instantly as a normal awakening would grant. They stung. They burned. They seeped in and turned to citric acid kindness. Every night she hoped she grew immune, hoped it didn't hurt so bad, hoped it dampened in intensity in any way. Anyway, at all. Every night she lived and watched the same cinematic and hoped for a different outcome on a movie she had watched a thousand times as if it was her favorite. Every night varied at which part she began to cry, but it was always a guaranteed reaction.

Her childhood played for her. The one she tried to lock away and keep at the small nightstand where her two friends were, under lock and key, played against her relentlessly and mercilessly.

In her dream, she stood and watched the scene of her and her sister, perhaps 5 or 6, having mischievously snuck out. Bali hated this dream as she watched her younger self lift up a board on their family estate's floor. Geni dropped into the darkness underneath, and Bali followed soon after, closing the floor behind her. The moment before, their mother threw open the door, looking for them and her native tongue lashed out at the empty room for the both of them to come out and take accountability for sneaking off. In this replay, Bali and Geni sat next to each other in the dark, intense, frozen silence as they heard their mother walking around and opening things in the room before their eldest sister entered and began another unlikely distraction- "I can't believe you!" Their eldest sister screeched, and they heard the footsteps of what was, most likely, their mother whipping around to face the new contender and the softer footsteps of their older sister, "You can't make a decision like that!"

"You have no right to question me; your job as a child is to listen!" Their mother snapped angrily in her thick, accented, uncommon tongue, "You and your sisters will obey and do as I command."

"No!" Their sister shouted defiantly as the younger Bali tugged on Geni's sleeve and began to partially crawl away, holding a bit of the other girl's sleeve to help guide her twin sister in the dark. They used the sound from the continuing argument between their kin to cover the sounds of them escaping, "They're children; you shouldn't be forcing them into your religion! You have sons. Put them instead!"

"Men do not belong in religion." Their mother snarled back as Bali and Geni hastily crawled towards a light on the far end of the crawl space, "Men can't think without a woman's help; it is our duty to uphold." The argument faded, and as the words faded, the vibrations and the energy of two unyielding creatures verbally sparring for dominance remained. When they reached the light which led out to another part of the estate property. As the two girls slipped out and got back onto their feet, Bali's younger self grabbed her sister's hand and moved forward as her current counterpart fell to her knees, panting and gripping her chest. Her screams for the reel to stop were ignored, and she once more knew to exist as mute in this replay.

"Zumi?" Geni asked, and her younger sister Bali looked back, "M-Maybe we should go back-"

"Stop!" Baliquis begged as the memory hit its crescendo, "I can't take it anymore!" She screamed hysterically as the scene played on with her younger self and her younger sister, watching and feeling the same feelings she did when she lived these memories as she did now with the pain they brought,

Her younger self squeezed her sister's hand, "We'll be ok." Bqaliquis covered her ears as she panted and groaned in the emotional anguish it all brought, but it didn't stop the memory from playing in her ears and her mind, "We're always going to be ok cus there's two of us, and we're the same person." She watched as her younger sister smiled shyly, "No matter what, we'll be ok."

Then the cinematic hit its peak, and her younger sister's neck was snapped with an awful sound that audaciously echoed before the head twisted around to look back at her- but Baliquis forced herself to wake up at the last second to reality.

She lay in a puddle of her own sweat, drenched in the same cold sweat she was every time she had this dream, panting as her heart raced. Tears streamed down her face as she worked to calm herself down, to use the cool night air to remind herself that it had been a dream. To remember that she woke up in reality. She threw off the covers and got out of bed but looked back to where she had been lying. The sweat spot alone took up the whole side of the bed she had been sleeping on…she would have to do something about that. However, right then, Baliquis wasn't concerned with her bed or the sheets as she got to her pedicured feet and walked to the hanger where a robe rested quietly. She pulled it down, wrapped it around herself, closed it over her nakedness, and tied the sash first, but it always seemed no matter how hard she tried, there was no way to stop the robe from parting over her bosom and allowing a degree of unfettered view. She put on a smaller pair of slippers, walked over to the door leading to the courtyard, and slid it open to hopefully air out the room.

Standing in the cold makes things easier but looking outside? Even if it was cold, the sun was rising. Fuck. She closed the door almost as quickly as she opened it and wheeled away from it to go to the bathroom. Turning on the shower was a promise of momentary relief as she took the robe off and stepped in to wash herself of the night sweats and the nightmares. Washing her hair and massaging small circled into her scalp and her temples calmed her as she closed her eyes and focused on her breathing to bring her body back in pace and into line. She wanted more. She wanted the night terrors to store and it to be soon; lord knows how much longer she could handle this. Washing her hair, body and face helped wake her up and obviously helped get her clean, but the oppressive pain of the nightmare was slower to subside as if it was almost there to remind her of what she was doing things for or some phantom pain. Her chest felt tight and knotted no matter how hot, or cold the water was, how much she scratched once she got out, and whether she massaged the area or not. After getting out and drying herself off, the only thing that seemed to help was to calm down and focus on her breathing.

She got dressed in a clean, fresh uniform and put on a new black face mask before putting on her getta and going to the tranquility room to face the second half of her recurring nightmare. When she opened the door is when she saw it again. Her twin sister's ghost was standing in the room and going through the motions of prayer. Baliquis tried to ignore and walk past her; however, her sister danced on the edges of Bali's senses as she moved in the space out of the corners of her eyes. "What do you want from me?" Baliquis asked into the room and turned around to see she was gone again. Her sister was the most elusive of all the ghosts that came to Baliquis. "What do you want?"

"Maybe not leave your new friend in a dusty old house?" A familiar voice echoed, and Baliquis sighed but nodded,

"Yeah, that's- that's fair," Bali said and turned to the doors for the tranquility room, unlocking them and opening them for the general public, and Hana stood in the hallway outside of them already. Thankfully, Baliquis had put on enough makeup to cover her body's facial response to her sleep-speckled nights. The moons under her eyes that had begun to form weren't so bad to those who couldn't see them. "Ah, good morning."

"Good morning!" Hana said excitedly, "I wanted to let you know there's a team on standby ready to pull the things out of the home?" Bali hesitated, "We have a room set up for Lady Genosis's things as well… if you would be inclined to look through them." No. No, absolutely the fuck not. She most certainly wasn't ready to look through things, but she was ready for the things to be pulled from Isa's new home and brought somewhere within the temple, at least. The less chance of someone messing with her sister's things as if them sitting around for years wasn't enough, "They're working on getting new furniture in too, and a handyman is waiting to look over the property." Then Hana said quietly, "They're just- waiting on you."

"Right." Baliquis said and nodded, "Then I…will leave and go over there then…Do I have access to my own salary?"

"I'm sorry?" Hana asked, and Baliquis repeated the question, "Oh- well- You should…." Needless to say, they both took the time to make sure she had some money to take with her, "So, is there anything else?"

I'll be buying some things to help the new tenant settle in. I'll sort out the lease later, but the last time I saw her, she was missing an arm. So when I come back, I will let you know if we need to send out someone medically inclined to the property, I would like her well taken care of." With that said, Baliquis spent most of the day going over paperwork until the sun started to go down; then she called it a day and pulled on a dark coat over her mesh undershirt and white, chained-together kimono-esque top, but even her coat was black, faux-fur tripped about her neck, above a clasp of Hoshigakure's star, and its black length dropped to her knees where it ended in another circlet of black faux fur against a charcoal body before she left the temple and headed over to the house. Its front yard was still overgrown- the most unkept on the block- and she saw the team of workers waiting for her near the home, so she stopped by them to inform them of her plan: to speak with the resident inside and maybe get Isaribi to come with her somewhere else so that the crew could take care of the leftover things and look over the home. Once that was taken care of, Bali turned away and went to the home, pushing her nervousness and unease from being on the abandoned doorstep once more aside. She came here with a goal and a plan, and she needed to follow through.

Baliquis started it by knocking on the door. If Isaribi opened it, she would smile against her black face mask and vocalize, if there was no interruption, the best greeting to someone new that she could possibly muster, "Good evening; I was wondering if you were free- if you aren't busy- to maybe spend some time together?" Hopefully, Isa would be agreeable and if she was let in then Bali could take the opportunity to speak with her about her intentions for the both of them to leave so that the crew might take to their own duties in their absence and things be sorted before they got back.

[ WC: 1,998 ]

Isaribi had just gotten back up and began another task when there was a knock at the door. She secured the oven and turned to the entrance. In the absence of a dehydrator, she had ended up drying out the contents of a bag of red chilis (the extremely spicy variety) in the oven instead. She had never really liked the mild kind, and these had been in the clearance section at the store. All she needed to do was dry them out before it was too late, and she could keep them in the pantry for years to come.

As she neared the door, her chakra senses reached out, finding a large signature on the other side. Any paranoia that she might have had, though, was quickly dispelled as she realized who it was. For the first time in a long time, her thoughts were not plagued by fear or paranoia. While she certainly hadn't been expecting a sudden visit today, she didn't find herself preparing for an ambush, or something like that.

"Yeah, gimme a second!" Isaribi rummaged around in one of two cardboard boxes for a pair of familiar black warmups, and pulled them on, joining them with the white t-shirt. Again, slower with one hand, but not nearly as hard as it used to be.

Isaribi opened the door, and the warm smells of cooking washed out into the street. Familiar food for folks all over the village, though maybe not the ones Baliquis was used to. It was stuff not unlike street food or the kind of thing you could find in certain kitchens, the kind that most people wouldn't deign to enter.

As for Baliquis herself, she was perhaps just a little overdressed for the occasion? Isaribi's heart sank a little. Was she here in some kind of official capacity? Was it really that abnormal for people of her status to just drop in? The more Isaribi knew, the more she realized she didn't know. Alternatively, this could just be the other woman's casual wear, in which case, Isaribi was even more out of her depth. Well, whatever. Worrying wasn't going to change shit.

"Uh. Yeah, sure, sounds good to me." Great start. Isaribi tried again. "Good timing and all that; I just finished cookin' up a storm." She opened the door wider and stepped back so Baliquis could enter.

Isaribi moved over to the oven and checked it again. Not bad. She reminded herself to come back to it in about fifteen minutes, and closed it up. Fondly, she thought of all the things she could do with that stuff. Grind it up, put it in soup, soak it in oil, add it into sandwiches, the possibilities were endless.

She would have told Baliquis to ignore the mess, but there was no mess to speak of. The floors of the house were still mostly bare, and the walls still unadorned. Isaribi had few belongings to begin with, so there wasn't much to make a mess with in the first place.

"I was thinking", Isaribi said, as she sat down in a plastic chair she had definitely not nicked from an abandoned construction site, "if you wanted to hang out, we could like, go to a flower park or somethin'? It's free, unlike, you know, everything else in the village." The theatres were for rich people, the bars were for rich people, the restaurants were for rich people, et cetera. Alternatively, they could just hang out in this house, but she suspected that Baliquis probably wouldn't like that. Probably. For some reason, she felt like talking to Baliquis was a really good idea. She wanted to tell her about that errand run she did the other day, or maybe about that coomer soyjak she met in that restaurant. Errr, on second thought, maybe she should leave that out. Talking shit about shinobi behind their backs tended to leave people facedown in alleyways with knives in their backs.

But this, this was good. Having someone to actually talk to after years of isolation and hatred, cooking real food for the first time in what felt like forever? Things could definitely be worse. Hell, at least she wasn't getting the shit beaten out of her in prison. Come to think of it, how had Baliquis' morning been? Isaribi would have asked, but at this point in the conversation it felt, just a little awkward, maybe? She couldn't even begin to imagine what a day in her life might look like.

After suggesting where to go, Isaribi shot Baliquis an awkward half-grin. Not reassuring, in the slightest, but it was more inviting than giving her one of Isaribi's typical concrete-like glares. Even if it actively reflected how she felt internally, Isaribi was all too aware that the face that what she presented to the outside world was still a mask.

[WC 813]

The younger girl had opened the door and seemed somewhat pleased, if not awkward, "Uh. Yeah, sure, sounds good to me." What is 'awkward'? It took a few moments for it to click in Baliquis's mind that she should have given some forewarning to coming or come better prepared so there was less awkward tension. Did Shinobi have a particular way of greeting one another? Either way, the warm and mouth-watering smells that came out of the house were much more attractive than that greeting to Bali as she wondered what produced the smells or where they came from other than the house.

Was this what it was like? To have a friendship? To have somewhere to go that wasn't so cold and lonely, but it's unfamiliar and stark opposite? To go somewhere where the inhabitants were happy to see you rather than tense and stiff when you walked into the room? Coming to a place warmed with an oven's head and a home-cooked meal? It seemed pretty nice, and it seemed…so comforting. Maybe this was that place?

Maybe this was that one place outside of the small room in her heart where she could be herself without putting her 'mask' on, at her most authentic and purest form? With Isa, is there to be the other person she showed this form to?

"Good timing and all that; I just finished cookin' up a storm," Isa said and opened the door wider, then stepped back so Baliquis could enter- and she did. Bali made sure to shut the door behind her and watched Isa move to the oven and open it- a new waft of the smells coming from the appliance- before she closed it. Baliquis took a moment to look about the inside of the house a little more. The floors were bare, and the walls were unhindered, but it was still 'warm,' or it didn't feel as cold and solemn as it was when she handed the home over. It seemed… as if it was waking up. She could sense it, and she smiled behind her black mask at the thought that something which had laid claim then dormant was beginning to awake again. How wonderful.

"I was thinking." Isaribi said, and Baliquis stopped eying the house and looked back at Isaribi, "If you wanted to hang out, we could, like, go to a flower park or somethin'? It's free, unlike, you know, everything else in the village." That was quite thoughtful of the younger woman, and Baliquis wondered what would happen if they spent more time together than they had.

Would they bond organically and naturally? Would they become 'thick as thieves? Could there be a time when Baliquis could rely on the smaller woman and vice versa? Could there be a time when their friendship could be regarded the same way people looked at her in the temple hallways, yet it remained unyielding? She hoped so. Isa gave her a lop-sides, half-grin, and though Baliquis didn't show it on her face, she softened a bit as the first thing that came across her mind was 'cute.' That awkward little attempt at a smile was cute.

It reminded her of her sister when she would get in trouble as a child, and she gave something similar in a kind of sad, sheepish smirk. To show she felt terrible but wasn't remorseful enough to repent. How charming.

"What a wonderful idea." Baliquis began, "I have not been to a flower park, but I did come here to fulfill my part of the promise." She said and smiled, which looked more or less like her just closing her eyes with a smooth uptick since half her face was hidden by her face mask,

"I was hoping you would be interested in going shopping." Baliquis said, "I intended to use some recently allocated funds to help furnish your new home- and while we were out, have my sister's old things taken out. There are a couple maintenance workers too, to check the pipes and make sure there's no need for them to come back-" Baliquis raised her hands from under the clock and clapped them together excitedly,

"It would make me happy if we were able to fill this home with things that make it your safe space and sanctuary; Perhaps you would be so gracious as to let me live vicariously through you by putting a stuffed animal or two in here?" Baliquis said a bit too excitedly before she calmed down, "I hope you will forgive me if I am being too direct…as I said, I do not have any friends outside of my temple, and I suppose I am much too excited. I forgot you were cooking dinner, so that is my oversight."

[ WC : 796 ]

Bah, of course she'd never been. Why get something for free, when you can pay and get double the fun? At least, that was how Isaribi understood it. Even if something could be had at no price, that was nothing compared to what you could get in exchange for a decent sum of money. That, in a sense, was what Hoshigakure was, and what it had been even before the shinobi came and rooted themselves as an institution. Isaribi's distaste for it was a lot more mild than it had been when she was a kid, after all, it was just something that she had come to accept. Still, just because she had to put up with it didn't mean it was a good thing.

"Oh, this isn't dinner." Isaribi decided that if they were going to head out, she'd need to suspend whatever she was doing with the oven, and shut it off. Fancy thing, that. Hell, all the appliances in here were things her family had only dreamed about. It was kind of nice. "Just stockin' up for the week, you know what I'm saying?" She pulled a plastic container and showed it to Baliquis before putting it back into the fridge. Fried stuff with more stir fried stuff. "Don't need it to keep forever, just long enough that I can spend a week being busy without having to cook." Not lazy, just practical.  

She was a little worried about Baliquis' impressions, though. Had Isaribi not quite done enough? She didn't know why this was worrying her. It wasn't like she needed the other woman's approval or anything, right? Well, no, but she did WANT it. After all, had they not bled together? Well, Isaribi was the one who had bled, but it was a goddamn figure of speech. To her, that was important, it was significant, even if it wasn't *real*. It wasn't something that would last beyond her short, already mostly spent life. But she wasn't cold (at least, not THAT cold). She could think of the most direct, ruthless way to attack someone, and yet still believe with the greatest conviction, that the bonds formed in battle were harder to break than almost any other.

"Anyway, I figured I'd wind down a little after cooking, but we can go shopping too, if you want." She dug around some more in a weighty cardboard box for a few seconds. "I dunno your schedule, really, so you can decide what we get to first, yeah?" Isaribi left it was a question, 'passing the ball', in a sense, for Baliquis to pick up. She herself wasn't the kind of person to try and make a friend conform to her own needs like that, at least, not while they weren't in any real danger. Time of crisis, though, called for a different kind of batter for a different kind of cake.

As for shopping, Isaribi knew just the place. She pulled a light jacket from the box and threw it on. There was this sick second hand goods store she had loved dropping by as a kid, and she hadn't been back to it since she'd gotten out of prison. Maybe she could recapture some semblance of a normal life by checking it out - is what she would have thought, if she was a fucking moron. By now, she knew that was impossible. All she was going there for was to pick up used furniture for the house. Rugs, chairs, a table or two, all that shit. Why waste Baliquis' charity when she could just save a ton and get some slightly dented goods for less than half the price?

[WC 611]

“Oh, this isn’t dinner.” Isaribi said as she moved over to the oven and shut it off, “Just stockin’ up for the week, you know what I’m saying?” As the younger woman pulled out a plastic container from the fridge and showed it to Baliquis, and though she nodded- Baliquis did not ‘know’ what the hell she was talking about. Leftovers? Stockpile? She knew the words but did not practice them, and it slowly dawned on her how privileged she might actually be. “Don’t need it to keep forever, just long enough that I can spend a week being busy without having to cook”

Oh, actually, that was pretty smart and very rational- Baliquis wasn’t expecting that sort of practicality from the younger woman. Still, when they had met, she was planning on sleeping under a bridge, so it seemed like survival was one of Isa’s priorities. Wonderful. That would work so well with how she planned to advance in her endeavors.

“Anyway, I figured I’d wind down a little after cooking, but we can go shopping too if you want.” Isa said as she paused to rustle around in a box for a bit, “I dunno your schedule, really, so you can decide what we get to first, yeah?” Isa said, and Baliquis mainly smiled to herself. She was thankful for the mask covering her face as she spoke up,

“I do not know where to go… in all honesty.” Baliquis told her, then looked up at the ceiling, “I believe I have only left the temple… twice? One of them was the night we met, in fact.” She told the younger woman, “The other time was a few years ago; I snuck out of the temple to see my sister participate in a “Chunin Exam” I think it was called? I had to sneak back afterward.”

Then she looked at the oven, “Truth be told, I have had a high position in the temple for… quite some time, and it is expected of me to always be there. All instances of me leaving the temple usually included a chaperone of some sort.” Baliquis said, “I would prefer things to be much different…even you mentioning stocking up is something I’m not familiar with… probably because I have never lived on my own.” Baliquis said and then voiced, “I was just barely allowed to walk over here alone; however, both points had escorts, so to speak.”


“I- I would like to go shopping… I’ve never really been, and I’d like to see and learn things from your perspective since you are ‘free’... and a gilded gold cage is still a cage.” Baliquis said, “I would like to know what it’s like- not as someone trying to experience the world you live in, but as someone working towards living in it too. Soon. I trust your decision on where you’d like to shop and where ever you would like to go afterward. I will savor my moments out of my cage regardless.” She assured me and added, “And maybe I can find some things to take back.”

[ WC: 516 ]

*We all live in cages*, Isaribi did not say. That wasn't to say, of course, that it hadn't been on the tip of her tongue. It was practically habit for her to lash out with little jabs like that, and she found herself glad that she still had some restraint left. It was remarkably easy for her to be vicious to people. Words could be just as harmful as knives, if not more so. The right phrase issued at the right time could push someone off-balance, enough to ruin their focus and get in a killing blow. She felt her mood improve further, and considerably so.

Still, Baliquis' effort to try and be more relatable grated, just a little bit. Why people couldn't just accept the infinite gap between human experiences was beyond Isaribi, but maybe people just weren't as resigned to it as she was. The irony of calling an ex-convict "free", though, was not lost on her, though it was more funny than anything else. While she was certainly awkward and spiny in the way she interacted with other people, watching Baliquis stumble around like this was gave her some perspective.

"Yeah, for sure." Isaribi started pulling on some socks before slipping into a pear of remarkably beat-up shoes. "I know a nice place only a few blocks down that way." She jerked her thumb, indicating a direction that headed directly into one of the more rocky parts of town. "Folks used to go to places like that for furniture all the time; I'm sure we'll find something." And if not, they could just come back the following week. Their stock tended to turn over faster than you expected. Already, her eye was roaming the floors, plotting out spaces for a coffee table (if they had one, which was likely) and something nice on the walls.

Lastly, she rooted around for a backpack and pulled it out. Why use an interdimensional pocket when you could just have a sack to tote shit around in? It also attracted less attention from other sensors. Isaribi slung the backpack over her shoulder, and made sure everything was in place. Forgetting something at this stage would be so fucking embarrassing.

"Well, you ready?"    

[WC 371]

Baliquis smiled politely and nodded, “Yes, I’m ready!” if Isaribi left home, Baliquis would pull the door behind her so that Isa could lock up the house and Bali could follow her to the thrift store she was speaking about, “Just leave it unlocked.” Baliquis said to Isa quietly, “So the movers can do their job.” To mark this instruction,Baliquis turned away from her and subtly gestured one of the men on standby to come over, and as they left the small courtyard one of the movers met up with Baliquis. He kept pace as she voiced, “Begin moving the items on the list provided to you, but also reach out to the maintenance worker on standby. You have half an hour to get everything done and lock the door behind you when you are finished. You may go.” The worker nodded and fell back to regroup with his team as the two women left fro the thrift shop.



It was- well- an experience. Yes, that was the best way to put it. Baliquis going to the thrift store was ‘an experience. She had pulled money aside, and she still had it for hopefully whatever Isa wanted, and judging from the look of the place? Baliquis could probably buy the whole store and its contents with her pocket change. That wasn‘t the point. The point was that Bali was excited by everything.

She was excited by the preowned aspect of everything and anything. Could people just trade out their stuff? And get new stuff? Or turn in their older things and new things? Granted to an outsider Baliquis was clearly mistaking the term and definition for ‘consignment shop’ and ‘thrift shop, ‘but that didn’t matter. That wasn’t the point. The post was that her entire inside buzzed with excitement and something she probably had not felt in a long time- joy. Happiness. Her frosty exterior and body language did not mirror this change or denote it- it would have, had she spoken at all behind her black face mask or if people could see under her black, faux-fur trimmed cape. Every practiced step was unhindered; every breath was still the same, but inside she was charged and buzzing softly like an old lightbulb in a long-neglected street light’s plastic covering.

Her mind began to twitter and flitter with ideas and motivation, she began to grow- ambitious, and she noticed the internal arrival of ‘joy’s seemingly friendly cousin: hopefulness. It was dangerous to have, but she did not mind, and she did not think that Isa would bring her here to do harm or- Sage forbid- murder her among all the other hand-me-downs. Imagine it, Isa just handing her down to the second-hand floor and leaving her there? How ridiculous, but still, there was always the possibility of it happening. It would be a fool’s notion that it was forever unaccounted for, and she knew that more than anyone. After all, Baliquis leaving the temple had always been a possibility that no one was open to, and here she was in a thrift shop.

She poked around at clothes, picked up a thing or two for herself, and even considered picking out some pieces and articles for Isa. Would she like them? If Yumi was here, would the three of them go to places like this together? Knowing Yumi, her friends would be more accessible and organic with Isa than her own, as Yumi had always been easier to speak with and be around. Nozomi wondered if she could be like that too, but then it dawned on her- she could try.

Yumi might be gone, but Yuki remained somewhere in the dimly lit alleys of the Red Light District, moving and slumbering like a python in those traditional-paper-door lined hallways with their tatami mat floors and their clay-tiled roofs. Yuki had to be friendly to have her clientele and keep them coming around, so trying to take this opportunity of rekindling a friendship with her sister would be for the best. After all… if it was just them, they needed to stick together, right? In addition, if Baliquis were going to move more into the Shinobi world, she would have to do something she never did before: move out and live independently. It was extremely intimidating as a prospect.

Ikazuchi had been kicked out of the family estate for many years and lived alone. Even though Geni left the temple and moved into that housing development, Bali had worked to ensure the temple met her needs. However, Bali still lived on the temple grounds in the chambers she had been living and residing in for many years, so she would have to move out at one point.

Suddenly she had a new look at all the things in this store. No longer were they shiny and new trinkets and articles of wondrous splendor she had never experienced or seen before- even if they were second-hand- they were now opportunities. They were now ways and pieces of her future she could begin collecting. Pieces she could begin squirreling away in the same storage room her sister’s belongings would live in cardboard boxes. She could keep these trinkets and things here to herself, and when she moved, she could carry them into the new home- perhaps that would be an excellent start topic to speak with her sister again? The prospect of asking her to help find somewhere for Bali to move to and what she should or should not be doing or looking for. She didn’t know anything and needed all the help she could get without someone realizing she didn’t know what the hell she was doing.

Not only did she need to find her own place, but she also needed to begin working on herself and another thing that unnerved her: alliances. Baliquis was dependable, reliable, and highly loyal, all qualities she sought in whoever she planned to make friendships and alliances with. She was admittedly nervous about starting anything up, and then she was nervous about the friendship not lasting long enough; however, she needed to take chances. She needed to keep trying where she could.

Baliquis abandoned idly, looking at clothes she wished were in her size, and found her way over to Isa again to start more conversation, stopping near her to look at whatever caught her eye, “I really like it here; it’s so refreshing.” Baliquis would say,

“Concerning… being a shinobi, are you aware of any types of techniques or ways for us to stay connected to one another, perhaps in case of combat?” Baliquis asked thoughtfully, “I know we haven’t known each other long, but we seemed to complement each other during the fight. I thought our goals and ambitions aligning would be in our best interests to stay in contact with each other easily.”

[ WC: 1,143 ]
[ Mid thread claims, Total WC so far: 2,455
Claiming 1857 WC and putting towards Chakra Insight to fully claim ( 143 / 2000 ) -> ( 2000 / 2000 )
143 WC from here
Remaining WC after claim: 598 ]

OOC edit, 1-18-2023:

Baliquis wrote:[ WC: 1,143 ]
[ Mid thread claims, Total WC so far: 2,455
Claiming 1857 Wc and putting towards Chakra Insight to fully claim ( 143 / 2000 ) -> ( 2000 / 2000 )
143 WC from here
Remaining WC after claim: 598 ]

Approved for Bali's Mid-thread claim

Isaribi wasn't so much concerned with the clothes as she was with finding some solid fucking furniture. She vaguely remembered that the people she grew up with had a bad tendency to browse - that is to say, they took fucking forever to get anything done in places like these. Once they were in, she could bet solid money they'd spend hours just looking (not even buying, LOOKING) at shit they would never end up buying their whole lives. As much as she would have liked to say that it didn't bother her, it fucking pissed her off. Where she was concerned, there were better things to do than ogle wares for half the afternoon.

It was with this attitude in mind that Isaribi stalked past all the bullshit that she was not, in fact, interested in. Baliquis, of all people, seemed charmed to be here, which Isaribi thought strange. From her own point of view, she couldn't imagine why somebody would like buying stuff from this place, if they had better options. The only reason she was here was because, well, she didn't. The other woman probably just liked this stuff because she'd never set foot in a place like this before. Again, it irked her, though she couldn't quite put her reason why into words.

Her mood worsened, even as she picked out some pretty decent pieces for the house. She hated feeling this stupid, this inarticulate, but admitting to it somehow felt even worse. After all these years locked up, one might have thought that her sense of pride had been utterly squashed, but here it was, flaring up again. Baliquis hadn't really even done anything wrong, Isaribi was just temperamental today. She was frustrated with something, clearly, but was either unwilling or unable to just get it out and deal with it.

As she stacked the pleasantly cheap (and mismatched) furniture onto a flatbed, she managed to catch Baliquis' question, and gave it serious consideration. While she could think of a few options, she didn't think any of them would be to the other woman's liking. For a moment, she considered devising a method by which she could simply track her across a vast distance, but she felt like having some suspicious-looking grouch being able to detect her every maneuver would not make Baliquis particularly happy, and her being unhappy would make the next part very, very difficult.

"Uh, yeah, I guess. There are a few options I can think of. We could find a guy who slings communication seals, or something like that. I don't know of anybody myself, but I'm sure I could find someone if I looked hard enough. We could set up something we could use to get in touch face to face too, maybe." She hauled the flatbed to the front, slapped down some dubious looking currency, and waited as the cashier went through their process. "You know, like, summoning? I've connected with people like that in the past, and it works well, as long as you can establish ground rules for when you're supposed to use it." She didn't mention, of course, the criminal and terroristic activities of those people, but Baliquis didn't need to know about those details.    

[538]