[Kuronmeru Enyo]

blood as black as the ocean

Enyo was frustrated, kicking rocks. He had not been able to get the fundamentals of the medical arts down. It was, by his clans merits and especially his families, a dud. A failure. He had been set on the medical track because he had not initially shown any prowess with the black blood, but now that he knew how to use that he seemed to fall behind in the medical. Frustrated, he was literally kicking rocks into a nearby canal, his nose occasionally scrunching with irritation.

As time wore on he eventually made it to a training ground, something he found to be of no use to him. But, in all of his frustration he figured - perhaps - he could find someone to badger. There were plenty individuals who were training in these things, usually.

So he wandered out looking around the grassy field aimlessly, wanting to find someone that looked... vulnerable to pick on. Of course, he could pick on someone older, someone stronger, but they didn't cry as easily and usually that was reserved for his stupid older brothers. They didn't cry either, but picking at them was a nice stress relief.

Enyo did eventually see someone.

"Hey you!" He started, not the most polite boy, but definitely carrying himself with a huge sense of dignity.

"What are you *wearing*?"

taneda risa

aeron at thq

[taneda risa]

THE SECRET IS NOT TO DREAM

The days had passed in a haze since her training day with Kyouka-sensei. When Risa got home that day, her dad had seen the state she was in—busted lip, black eye, swollen ear—and immediately took her to the mednin. She had a concussion, they said, but she would be fine. Just take it easy with the sparring until then. Her dad demanded to know who had hit her so hard, but she refused to say. She could be real stubborn when she dug her heels in, and eventually he had to give up on grilling her. Just sighed and told her to be more careful next time. Her split knuckles were bandaged and she had to wear more bandages around her cheek until her lip healed up, so she looked a mess, but she kept going to school anyway The weak are food to the strong. Someone worthy of my time. She couldn’t go in the water until the bandages were off, and her dad was still upset about the whole situation, so it was straight to school and straight home until she was feeling better. There was a shortcut she could take through one of the training grounds, damp grass cool against her bare toes. It would be nice to get home faster; her head ached, and she was still confused, still struggling to figure out what she needed to do. Who she needed to be. Hey, you! Risa turned, frowning. A boy was hollering at her, a little taller and older than her, with dark hair and the Kirigakure headband around his neck. One of the genin, a boy she didn’t know—what did he want with her? What are you *wearing?* She looked down at herself, confused, and back up at the boy. "Clothes?” Her frown deepened. Was there something weird about how she was dressed? Her heartbeat quickened, something sick and greasy snarling in her gut. "What do you want?”

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[Kuronmeru Enyo]

blood as black as the ocean

Enyo almost guffawed at her response, oh she had little claws? Little fishy with claws, it made him excited, perhaps a bit too much so. The smile on his warped mask twitched with excitement, tugging at the corners of his lips as he approached the girl with an uncanny and perhaps slightly terrifying speed - considering that he was walking - though there was always a very quiet sense of pace and dignity to how he walked. He was quick, but he did not rush. A prince did not rush.

"You call that *clothes*?" He overemphasized, almost spitting the words in the girl's face, as he looked at her, her face, and her outfit with impunity, contempt.

"Could use new clothes, and a new everything. Ugh, you got a face like a fish. You know we have great medical shinobi, could fix your ugly right up." He remarked with a scrunched up nose, unable to resist showing his feelings to the girl. There was no response to her, he did not answer what it was that he wanted from the girl. It did not matter as much his desire to fill out the boredom of his day, that mattered more, by a long shot.

The Kuronmeru leaned back a bit, sizing himself up against the girl.

"Maybe I can tear that ugly stuff off of you, then you'd have to get a new outfit." Would be funny to totally tear it all up in battle, how humiliating it would be for her to have to drag herself back home with a need for new clothes. Maybe just maybe through this, slowly but surely everyone would stop dressing ugly.

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aeron at thq

[taneda risa]

THE SECRET IS NOT TO DREAM

For all that she’d grown up underwater, Risa didn’t know much about marine life. If she had, then she might have known a thing or two about the blood of the tiger shark that ran through her veins—the blood of a ruthless, vicious mega-predator, one of the hungriest and most aggressive kinds of sharks to swim beneath the waves. In context, it would explain a lot. New everything. Facelike a fish. Ugly. The weak are food to the strong. Ugly. Ugly. Ugly. Risa screeched like a bat out of hell, and flung herself bodily at this mean, horrible, nasty boy who for some reason took precious time out of his day just to be awful to her. Maybe it was Kyoka’s training, or maybe it was her genetic heritage finally coming home to roost, but either way: this was not the cheerful, carefree girl that had entered the academy. This was a girl who was sick to death of everyone’s shit. With every ounce of effort she could muster she tried to kick the older boy directly in the shin, flexing the ball of her foot to deliver as much power behind the kick as she possibly could.

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[Kuronmeru Enyo]

blood as black as the ocean

Enyo had not expected for the girl to retaliate. People rarely did, they usually just broke down in some shape or tried to play it off cool. Of course, when they tried to play it off Enyo knew that they were still deeply bothered. It made him feel quite fuzzy on the inside for some reason to make others feel this way even if it was horrible in some manner of speaking. So when Risa screeched, snapped and lunged at him to kick him firmly in the shin? The genin was taken back, so shocked he was that he was too slow to respond to when she kicked him.

Full contact, right into his delicate shin. He was rather soft and well cared for after all - well at least he cared well for himself.

The impact was enough that even through his beautiful silken fabrics his skin cracked under the pressure and he felt it split. The girl had cut him, and though it did not hurt anywhere near as much as he was used to, it was still quite painful enough that his knee buckled momentarily.

Enyo, not one to look as if he had been caught by surprise for too long slowly forced himself to stand and soon realized that there was blood.

"Tsk... Now look what the ugly thing has done," He hissed with malice, but already he was focusing chakra to the laceration carefully pulling it up to the air to manipulate it.

"I have to teach you a lesson now."

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aeron at thq

[taneda risa]

THE SECRET IS NOT TO DREAM

Slick, sour satisfaction snarled its way through her gut as the boy’s knee buckled and it was clear that she had done some kind of damage. Good. She wanted him to hurt. The weak are food to the strong. "Shut up,” she said, and then again, louder: "Shut up! I don’t need your—shit—lesson! Fuck!” A litany of angry curses, strings of swears she had heard her dad or mom or Hato grumbling at one point or another, spilled out of her mouth: barely coherent, white-hot with rage, and utterly ignorant to the danger she was about to be in at the hands of this black-blooded boy, Risa was committed to the fight. Sure, her jaw still throbbed, and yeah, she still tasted iron in her mouth when she swallowed, but what was one more hit to take? What was one more indignity to suffer, if it meant she got to do something about it? Was she predator, or was she prey? Lifting her foot, Risa stomped down hard on the boy’s instep, then flung her head forward as hard as she could, trying to crack their skulls together—not caring how much it hurt her to do so, if it meant she got to hurt him more.

Kuronmeru Enyo -- 206

LAIKA OF THQ

[Kuronmeru Enyo]

blood as black as the ocean

Enyo exhaled hard as the blood was manipulated from where his leg was out from beneath his hakama and in a split second as the girl stepped in on him he used the momentum to fling some of that blood onto her own covered leg. It would be enough, it would be unlikely she would notice at all with it soaking into her trousered leg, but the blood would be there for Enyo to use - later...

Their skulls came together, crashing hard against each other and Enyo was not stupid enough to not adjust himself to minimize the damage done when he was ultimately rattled. He pressed his forehead down harder against Risa, a smirk appearing on his face as their faces were so close, flesh against flesh. The impact had made his teeth scrape hard against the inside of his battered mouth, torn up and bitten down on when he had worked to learn one technique that he loved now more than most others.

Blood pooled delightfully inside of his mouth and now using the very proximity that Risa had created between the two of them, he would spit directly into her eyes which would blacken her vision as his chakra swirled with the black blood.

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aeron at thq

[taneda risa]

THE SECRET IS NOT TO DREAM

Her leg was suddenly damp, though Risa wasn’t cognizant of why or when that happened or what, exactly, it meant. Sheltered as she was, her only exposure to the Kuronmeru clan was in her brief interactions with Nomu, but she didn’t know the boy well and has no earthly idea of what his clan was capable of. She was soon to find out. Risa thought that headbutting the boy would knock him down or send him reeling ot something, but instead he just pressed his face closer to hers, a frightening smirk contorting his face. Before she knew what was happening, he spat in her face and she shrieked with disgust—but the spit wasn’t just spit, it was black and thick and dripping into her eyes. She scrubbed at her face, trying to clear her vision, but to no avail. She was well and truly blinded. "Get it off!” she screeched, clawing at her eyes. She felt sick to her stomach, utterly helpless in the face of—whatever this was, for whatever reason this random boy decided to be awful to her on this random day. If she were a better student, a smarter shinobi, would she be able to handle this? How would Asuka-sensei manage this? What would Kyoka-sensei do? She didn’t know, and she was too overwhelmed in the moment to figure it out.

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[Kuronmeru Enyo]

blood as black as the ocean

That would be when Enyo leaned away, rubbing now at the red spot on his forehead that appeared only worse due to his pale skin. He let out a huff in annoyance at the pain he felt, but it was all for the act to make sure his hits landed. He allowed others to hurt him, so that he could hurt them worse.

Risa rubbed at her eyes, but she would find that the harder she rubbed the worst her vision got. Enyo offered no physical assistance, just watched her struggle with a smirk still there on his features, delight like crystal reflecting the sun playing on his face. It was truly wonderful to see someone else suffer.

"Find some water, wash your eyes, ugly girl." That was the only bit of assistance he would offer. He wasn't going to lead her to water, though there was a decent sized pool of it here in the academy training yard - that was open to the public in truth - which meant if she were smart or knew where it was in proximity to herself she could stumble over and wash her eyes out. But it would take quite a bit of washing, and rubbing more would not earn her the effects she was hoping for.

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aeron at thq

[taneda risa]

Risa rubbed and rubbed and rubbed but the spit in her eyes didn't budge, and she was still just as blinded as she'd been a few seconds ago. She started to cry, bubbling over with big wet tears and great heaving sobs as her frustration and anger came to a sharp boiling point.

Ugly girl.

Any kind of sense would have told her to just run away. Run away like she had at that academy lesson, run away like after Kyoka-sensei had beaten her black and blue, run away like the pathetic coward that she knew that she was, too frightened and too timid to take a stand in her own defense or take up too much space in a room.

Sense had flown out the window.

Pure instinct sent her flying forward to try to tackle the boy to the ground—kick him, punch him, bite him, claw and scratch and tear at whatever she could get her hands on, despite being blinded, despite hardly being able to breathe for her wild sobbing. Though the action itself was chaotic and wild, each attempt to hit him was tight, mechanically sound in its practice, good form hard-won through long effort—and she wouldn't stop trying to hit him until she sincerely could not find him anymore.

[Kuronmeru Enyo]

blood as black as the ocean

Instead of heeding what Enyo had uttered - even if it had been paired with an insult - the girl felt riled and angered and upset. She was crying, which of course made Enyo's blood course faster through his veins with delight. But she was also like a vicious animal, a blind one. It was really both hilarious and pitiful to look at. She had good form - not that Enyo was particularly good at spotting it - but none of that really mattered. Because her form would not help the fact that she had not yet washed the black blood out from her eyes, making her unable to land a proper hit on the genin.

He was quick to simply move back and out of the way, a skip and a hop until he was well out of reach and even if she tried to get close he would just move out of the way. A spin here, a step there. Shaking his head the whole time.

"Try all you like, you still can't see." He hummed playfully, but there was no kind tone to his voice. It was playful in a menacing sense, a mocking way. It was to get her more riled, or maybe to get her to give up from exhaustion.

taneda risa

aeron at thq

[taneda risa]

THE SECRET IS NOT TO DREAM

Despite all her fury and effort, muscles screaming with the strain she was putting herself through, Risa’s tormentor remained just out of reach. As hard as she listened, she heard his footsteps against the hard-packed earth, but couldn’t tell exactly where he was going or what he was doing—he stayed elusive, robbing her of even the tiniest bit of vindication that her effort was worthwhile, that she was going to achieve anything with her blinded swings. She was pretty sure he was still there, but after a point she’d gotten herself completely turned around, and it wasn’t until her foot abruptly sank into a pool of water that she realized she’d ended up way off from where she’d started, with absolutely no sense of where the boy was. She stumbled, unable to right herself before she toppled over into the water. Just like that all the vitriol left her body, leaving her to slump, submerged as much as she was able in the pool, hoping beyond hope that if she just stayed underwater that maybe the boy would think she’d drowned and just go away. Risa rubbed her face, trying to scrub the spit away from her eyes. Her tears dried up as her vision slowly cleared, leaving her feeling hollowed out—numb, exhausted, and wondering what the point of it all even was.

Kuronmeru Enyo -- 223

LAIKA OF THQ

[Kuronmeru Enyo]

blood as black as the ocean

Enyo let out a laugh when the girl somehow managed to get herself into the pool of water and actually - literally fall into it. He didn't run to save her, people who lived on these islands and certainly Kirigakure no Sato shinobi all knew how to swim. She wasn't a shinobi, but he couldn't imagine the academy had fallen so severely as to not teach future shinobi to do something so basic as to 'how to swim'.

The girl however never tried to pull herself out of the pool of water, she was just somewhere in there. Enyo wondered then if she had drowned or didn't actually know how to swim... Or maybe she had just given up so bad she wanted to try and sit at the bottom of the pool? Well, either way he didn't have time for someone who was such a loser that they would give up in the middle of a fight.

The positive was that she was likely capable of seeing now with all the water running over her eyes. Enyo stood there a moment longer to see if she would pop up, and when she did not he just shrugged and left the area entirely. Back to the clan compound, maybe he could con someone into giving him a snack before dinner time.

[exit]

taneda risa

aeron at thq

[taneda risa]

THE SECRET IS NOT TO DREAM

Risa didn’t know how much time passed. She was vaguely aware of the passage of time in that she thought sunlight was filtering through the water at different angles, but it was hard to tell its exact position, and even if she could see it she wasn’t too confident that she knew what hour it would be anyway. Needed to brush up on survival training. Just like every other kind of training. She didn’t fall asleep, exactly; she was conscious, aware of muffled sounds from the surface world around her. But minutes and hours ticked by in a despondent haze as the scene replayed over and over in her mind. The weak are food to the strong. How many times would she try to stand up for herself, only to be beaten back into the dirt? Bruised, broken, humiliated? Ugly girl, crybaby—no matter which way she cut it, which refraction of watery light shone on the timeline of her miserable education, the end result was a slow progression of failure stacked on top of failure. She’d wanted to hurt the boy. She’d liked hurting him, for the barest moment that had lasted. Her body felt good, strong—she knew her execution of her techniques had been textbook-perfect, she’d practiced them long enough. She was stronger than she used to be, faster, more agile. Still wasn’t good enough. The bandages round her knuckles and cheek grew soggy and loose; she tore them away and tossed them to the ground as she finally pulled herself out of the pool. The boy was long gone; the sun was starting to set. Her dad would be expecting her for dinner. Risa realized belatedly that she didn’t even know the boy’s name. Her hands and head hurt, her eyes stung—but she squared up with a training dummy and went through her drills, motion by motion, punch by punch by kick by kick, until her muscles were screaming and her dad came out to drag her home. [fin.]

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LAIKA OF THQ