The sloth takes on the world... I guess

The sloth slowly rose from the bed and looked around the room. He was alone yet again. He enjoyed spending time alone during the day and night. He didn't need to be around others, as they provided little benefit to him. He had spent some time with the locals to learn about their culture and the religion that some of them practiced. He would relax for a while before hearing Ren's voice calling out in his mind.

The message he would receive would involve a mission that Ren was entrusting him to perform. This was slightly odd, as usually, Kitsu received the missions, but today, he was the supposed lucky one.

When he received a telepathic message from Ren, his creator, Sakoshi Kurosawa, responded with an elongated, droning sigh emitted by the notion's accompanying burden of intense unwillingness. It was undoubtedly ridiculous. He was meant to purchase shoes. Shoes are to be used as weapons. The very idea encroached on the periphery of his being and was impertinent to his sensibilities—however, an implicit rule governed his life.

Regardless of how lazy he was, when a mission was assigned to him, mainly when it was delivered in the form of telepathic speech, he had to complete it. Only a little time, though. Sakoshi approached the day with little pace on his step. He moved slowly from his room to the exact location of his rendezvous with the customer, his progress as meager as the cloudbanks he could see from the tranquil hill beneath him. His typical light green eyes, which used to harbor a stern expression, now sparkled with ironic humor. He didn't choose between shoes for fashion or comfort; they were for combat, an idea so ludicrous that his detached mind found it humorous.

He watched the clients wear shoes, spearing from the stiletto heels, dancing with the wooden clogs that lauded their weight through the floor. Sakoshi provided hardly any input into the proceedings, offering a nod here, a shrug there, an expression of judgment in each dose, but always subtly signaling the decision to drift toward utility and safety in fighting because safety was critical, particularly with sabotage footwear guns. The insubordination, in principle, was strange to him, but he could admire a concept notwithstanding all the apathy.

Sakoshi demonstrated the basic movements to utilize these batty tools; each action was formidably centered upon balancing the disarray of assault and resistance conducive to each kind of shoe. The efficiency depended entirely upon his movements, most likely more sarcasm excluding his voice than his cadence, hinting with his apathy to necessity which ones empowered and which shielded rather than attacking or defensive.

The final pair of shoes was irrelevant to deadliness and solace, accomplished through apathy. Upon leaving the customer to master her new weaponized stilettos, he could not even help but appreciate the idiocy of the mission. It presented him with an apt erudition: even in a world as vast as theirs, the laziest benefactress could be fit to endure an abjection of expectations. He reflected after leaving for home, humiliated by his apathy. With everyone having shoes, Sakoshi owned a passive character, and besides, the path of the decent warrior never divulged to humor.

After the strange shoe mission, Sakoshi Kurosawa had once again settled into his preferred state of spiritual liberation. While he roamed the streets, a sudden triumphant interloper invaded: a bright and dynamic kite fought a solitaire battle against the backdrop of the sky. Its cord had broken, giving it freedom but no goal, an existence that Sakoshi viewed with a gentle sense of wonder at first, soon replaced by an unexpected sense of responsibility.

Its vibrant demeanor represented everything Sakoshi was not at the moment, slowly infiltrating the bubble of indifference he consciously built around himself. As always, Sakoshi's response to his unwitting new charge was marked by a passive effort. He caught the kite almost without attempting, absorbed the intricate craft on his surface and the imaginative scenes painted in joyful colors. This was the kind of object a child would own, filled with the fantasies of high flight and adventure. The prospect of searching for its owner was not invigorating. Instead, it was a slight impasse against the path of minimum effort he laid down before himself.

Sakoshi's journey through the village's heart, characterized by shady alleys and tiny homes shrouded in stillness save for his drudging footsteps, was a sight he encountered with no pride or loyalty. Yet, that pesky kite still drew eyes, its vibrant array of colors contrasting with the dim presence of its content holder. The word of Sakoshi's search slipped forward, and soon, kids were pointing and shouting their wonder, building something latent and individual into a communal search for a lost toy. He found the child amongst the island's nodes, a lovely little thing whose gaze upon the kite mirrored the latter's legacy in her bright eyes. Their reunion was mutual and underwhelming. Satoshi handed the kite over with a nod, accepting the child's slightly tight hug and her quiet, breathless words of thanks with the same frivolousness with which she took in the air she suddenly found to be carrying her favorite plaything home.

As he walked away, Sakoshi felt an odd twinge of content. Completing a task for no reason other than it had to be done hinted at the connections around him—the unshakable invisible threads he had built around himself, drawing him into the world where he lived. With the kite delivered and his business attended to, Sakoshi drudged back to the only world he could inhabit, his thoughts fluttering like dandelion fuzz through the specter of the quiet, still peace awaiting him.

So thus, a day already broken into multiple interruptions, Sakoshi Kurosawa's pilgrimage to solitude again transitioned into a nether being. The old hag's resonant voice further dashed the effects of his desire to become a mere phantom in the shadows of the island's continuous onslaught. It was nothing more than a simple request, but it came bones heavy with family, bond, and joy – I have selected a present for my grandchild's celebration; please take it to the requested address. A rope to something mirthful: Sakoshi's internal groan is left unvoiced, but he secretly admits to having one additional item on his undisclosed list of unexpected tasks. Yet a part of him – the same that did not voice its pleasure to return the kite – cannot deny the older woman either. He walks to her abode and picks up the rather large basket, exhaling when the measure of weight brings that of duty home to roost yet again. In the quick rustle of mysterious paper, he walks.

He walks quickly but without haste yet. The basket shifts now and then, mentioning the unmet greeting it carries. He walks into parts of Bladesurf Island he hardly ever does; each of his steps takes him further from acceptance and return. People looking at him cannot see the grips of darkness he has; they instead notice the wafts of the scents of bread and the flickers of red and gold from the ribbon around the bundle. They are stirred to him ever so slightly; he loses none of his shadow in their sight.

Today, Sakoshi Kurosawa is a proper medium's bearer, carrying both physical presence and soul love. Sakoshi hands off the basket at the daughter's abode, a mere passing of the package, yet one that made light bulbs alight in the young girl's eye. He regrets it immediately; he has decided to remove ties and be no longer a part of their world. However, he would be lying if he said it wasn't somehow warming. With the task fully grasped and the basket now in its' next owner, he moves back, his thoughts spewing north already. However, the cycles of today, wrapped, folded, and broken, have already been engraved. The small thanks echo behind him as Sakoshi walks away into the gathering darkness, a dissatisfied hurricane of hissing regrets and taking contumely warmth.

And so, in the quiet hours when the latest of his completed missions left Sakoshi Kurosawa yearning for solitude, he was beconedrey away yet again. This time, an elder of the village requested his presence – a task mentioned only in hushed whispers and vague textures of otherworldly, supernatural disturbances: the garden, a pride of the town and its sustainer, the theater of disrupting at night. There were many whispers of forest spirits – unseen and ever-elusive, and in the night, they traversed the garden, so said the elder. With Sakoshi's spiritual view of the world, his general lethargy, and his reputation for doing things at his own pace and in his way, he agreed to partake in the investigation task. He would rather avoid activities that required more effort than necessary, and the night-time wanderings were even more difficult for one so inclined to ease. Yet he offered the elder respect for his place in the village and the traditional tales of spirits that traversed the planet. And with a deep sigh, the elder who presented the task felt sluggish, and Saksoshi agreed. And so, he was commuted to a night of watching over the garden, investigating the elder's claims. As he kept it, the plan was clear: watch in silence and numbness. He shifted as little as possible, his form dark and blending perfectly into the shadows, just as he seemed to always blend into the background of the busy market. His patience, cultivated from a desire to put as little effort into anything as possible, served him well. The night was long, an effort of will, but he persevered. As the night went by, the source of the elder's fear was no otherworldly glow of gentle spirits. Instead, it was a much quieter, natural disruptor.

And it was, in its way, a relief. No spirits to please, no entities to bargain with—not even a need to inform the elder of the device of the disturbances in the gardens, simply of their natural depth. And yet, there was a quiet warning in it, a reminder that the island toiled for so many years, delicately placed at a crossroads of human, natural, and spiritual. The following day, Sakoshi spoke to the elder. His voice was subdued; his manner apologetic; his entire presentation heart-warming and out of character.

The elder watched, disappointment and relief battling in her gaze, and then, in the end, Sakoshi received an extra allowance with no change in his expression; the extra duties had granted him that night under the stars to contemplate what he courted and now safeguarded. And, as he wandered away from the elder's home, where solitude reigned once more, and he saw only the glimmers of the garden's quiet, he knew the truth of that evening. There was a lesson to be learned; when spirits and people shared a world, a simple answer held profound truths. He wandered away quietly as the day broke; as the island woke, priorities shifted from man today, his thoughts a comfortable place to ponder.

In searching for the solitude that always seemed to be just out of his grasp, the heavens above conspired to amend his day with another accidental pursuit. A storm, here and now, brooding and rumbling, streamed across the countryside, chilling the air and darkness that swallowed the light. From yonder, the wordless plea of the nearby settlement seemed to find its way to Sakoshi, the plea he could not refuse due to the argument of his conscience. One of the buildings in the settlement above was facing a crisis. Its rooftop was ill-prepared against the storm, its contents were endangered – and those who occupied that structure were threatened and chilled.

However, despite being filled with characteristic unwillingness, Sakoshi's reply to the call was full of the notion that there was no time for waiting. In his struggle across the expanse of punished earth, each step was willed by his unconscious willpower. Sakoshi walked to that settlement and saw a barn with its roof torn apart. The problem was simple, plain, concrete, and creative, but the client did not need a professional touch; it required knowledge and not trade. Sakoshi calmly, reluctantly, once again sourced through his well of experience and the intellect that slept within his lazy exterior. His effort proved to be minimal – he sourced what he could from the settlement, and what he could not- he created.

The last ropes in place, confident their efforts would now sustain the building through the continued fury of the weather, Sakoshi afforded himself a smile, pursuing the daunting riddle. The job had been done. It wasn't one he appeared ahead to, but the skill behind his reaction showed itself to be work achieved for the toilet, not the foundation. It wasn't an excellent payoff into the night for a night-day, which had put them out of bedtime and time again, afraid every moment would be lost. But relatively under such conditions, it was more than sufficient. The vegetable stew and in-house heat the population provided as a reward were token rewards. Still, as a motion of their award, it was a tall agreement of their fun-felt in the remuneration from an individual source, unseeded but not unwantedly admired. The storm struck, yet it was in no range from the massive open barn capping him from the rainfall as time measured the feet and their propulsion.

Each riddle had occupied daytime as slippery off that medium of extrication, a distraction of difference; each had assessed a part of the whole and had opened before him to show the hundreds of gaps from how he discovered and how they had appeared. He hurt to lose from them while straight and quickly the flesh but grip every moment ever distant. Close yet forever away, that line. The rain cooled his trait, ensuring commitment in their expression of days not only to the pain's finish-loaded, to its home base, but to the secondary reason for his arms and so his dreams away from, against the howling of weather winding down pleasurably and tiredly excepted.

With the first rays of dawn painting the world brought to the brink by the storm's fury in the new morning's colors, Sakoshi Kurosawa returned to Ren's home. The exhaustion that could not be shaken with night's effort, a reminder of one's unwilling yet undeniable place in the lives of others, seemed to stay both in body and spirit. The prospect of peace, a day free of unexpected tasks or requests, was all too inviting. The way back was quiet, as the world had yet to fully awake from the storm slumber.

The path, at once familiar ground and elusive unknown, showed signs of the previous night's wrath yet refused to be tamed. Sakoshi walked it at a measured pace, thinking of the solitude enveloped in Ren's humble abode – not the loneliness but company. The sense of relief was palpable as he finally returned to the one place that felt safe to him despite the intricacies of his relation to it. Ren's home, a place of bond and aloofness, offered Sakoshi the quiet relaxation he sought. It was a rare place where he could put down the weight of his daily duties, people's expectations, and thoughts. Ren was about knowing Sakoshi's return and, quite likely, the events that transpired during the day.

There was no need to speak about it; Sakoshi's desire to relate experience was instantly understood. He found a corner to his liking and let go, the tension bleeding from him. In the coziness of a place he called home, he could think of the day past, of the people he saw, and the brief moments of camaraderie and respite his internally withheld manner did not allow to acknowledge. The rest of the day was spent resting his body and mind. The missions, the tasks, the unspoken roles – all that was a thing of the past, a memory that would shape his way in subtle manners. As Satoshi Kurosawa nested in the calm only Ren's home could offer him, the world continued its eternal dance of disorder, order, distress, and accomplishment. But for a day, the one day, Sakoshi allowed himself the peace he earned, a warrior within life's storm, and finally ceasing the fight and embracing the solitude in which he thrived.

An all too familiar ritual defined Sakoshi Kurosawa’s return to Ren’s home, a set of actions that, despite his sluggardly appearance, were all but signs of reverence for the sanctity of this place. First, his approach to the entrance was marked by a lengthy pause – a mere glance followed by an unspoken transition from the world of missions and duties to the sanctuary of repose and singularity. As he slid the door open, his touch was light and practiced, the scent of sweetened wood, parchment, and a shadowy reminiscence of incense rolling out to meet him. The smell of home, history, unwritten tales, and hard-won peace. He carefully removed his footwear and placed them where they belonged, as customary. It was a relatively simple act, yet it held meaning – a symbolic gesture of shedding the daily burdens and ushering the world beyond the threshold where it belonged. He resumed his walk with a soft tread, the light pouring through the paper windows and painting the walls gold. There was not even a semblance of a thought as Sakoshi made his way to his room.

Once in his room, Sakoshi proceeded to retire to bed. He opened the shoji to his room, and the airy sliding sound barely disturbed the peace in the house. The room was largely empty or superficial, reflecting his simple needs and life from the futon in the middle of the tatami floor. His folding of the clothing was calculated, and aside from that, he placed them with meticulous care that betrayed the nonchalance that usually accompanied his actions. It was part of the ritual. Offering to the woman a day would bring to the man he would be with the morrow.

Before lying down, he took what felt like minutes but what could have been moments to sit upright at the foot of his bedding. His back was straight, but his shoulders were relaxed, his eyes closed, and his attention inward. It was a passing, a change from the world of the physical to the world of the spirit. The bed signaled that. The new world of the spirit was his for the take, and he was not yet ready to lay claim. The passage was only a moment. Consciously, he drew the gap. Lastly, Sakoshi settled into the futon. The bedding was familiar, as they had been for the countless nights he had retired for bed this way. The pillow’s plushness and the blanket’s warmth surrounded him, and in the dark, he felt a final muscle relaxation. His breath evened out, deep and steady. The room held a calm, and it was almost a prayer—a refuge fit for a fighter of the lines.

And so, in the quiet of Ren’s home, Sakoshi slipped into sleep, his mind and body enveloped by the peace he had been yearning for. The trials of the day, unexpected travels, and small shared looks were all forgotten, melting into the certainty of rest. And somewhere amidst it all, Sakoshi found the courage to face another day of unanticipated trials, another cycle of uncertainty, and the constant knowledge of himself.

WC: 3260
TWC: 3260
EXIT

Claims:
Completion of 5 E rank missions
+10k ryo
+50 AP
Both doubled from Beloved Presence

WC Claims:
+20 Speed (Bringing it to 45 and maxing stats)
+1500 towards Third Eye (Complete)
+1500 towards Chakra Mask (Complete)