[Nageku]

It had taken something like four months to arrange this meeting between Nageku and her, one of the few ladies this village considered a medic that was not constantly riding on the coattails of Ryu who was now long since gone with the wind. The reason Nageku had requested this guest lesson of the academy though was for pure show of power over Touwa, the little bastard had gotten enough on Nageku's bad side once that he wanted an in to one of his parents. The head of the academy was a bad target for the sort of threat or boon he could serve, but his mother? Well that was a blank slate that he had no knowledge on other then that she was a very skilled surgeon. A surgeon that had no way to scalpel stone as far as the young man was concerned. So today the two were to have an anatomy lesson where he would learn far more about the human body - a boon overall to the quality of his sculpting given his focus being on quantity. The concepts of only controlling a few of his wordless minions a bore to him personally. He wanted an army to bid his command, not a single powerful soldier. In one of the caved exits of the academy with a view just behind one of the village's numerous waterfalls a group of large stones and finished versions of the self-portrait puppets with four arms stood in a variety of poses. His tools chiping and smoothing away at yet another stone. This room having been left abandoned for years it had turned into one of his two depositories for his puppets. His focus on the carving.

[tokonatsu yukari]

The Yamakira were a brutish, nasty group, and Yukari held little opinion of them other than that they were brutish and nasty. The boy Hotarubi had assisted Touwa in some lesson or another, and so he had received something of a pass to her mind, but his twin brother—this Nageku that she was meant to be tutoring today—had sowed no such seed of respect. The details of Nageku’s outing with Touwa had not been disclosed to her, and it was thanks to this ignorance alone that she had even shown up to the lesson. A favor for Tadashi; the boy needed anatomy lessons for his puppets, or something along those lines, and she had to throw her husband a bone every once in a while. The repository was abandoned except for the numerous sculptures that had been carved there, each clearly made in the likeness of… Hotarubi? Or no, she supposed, it must have been Nageku himself, the markings clearly differentiating him from his twin brother. "An interesting concept, if remarkably narcissistic,” Yukari said, examining one of the completed sculptures. The structure of it wasn’t awful, but it was clearly the work of an amateur—someone creating art based on observation instead of concrete knowledge. "I was told you’re using these for puppetry?”

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[Nageku]

A voice came from behind and below his head as the woman had entered. Not that she had actually made this unknown to him, Nageku hearing her voice before anything. Half way through having carved out a torso and arms in a rough shape for the lesson to come. Having been bored he had figured he would at least need to do that much for this to go anywhere near well. Pausing as she entered Nageku would set the chisel and hammer on a table and reach down to his waist, pulling his sculpted earthen body into the open chest yukata that he always wore. Turning he gave an appraising glance towards the woman, evaluating her own looks before taking a completely disinterested look. Woman were always the less desirable shape for modelling, too thin, too small, too fragile-looking. Even his own mother, for all the respect he actually had for the woman, had a disgusting shape to her body that he hated. Tadashi at least had a bit of muscle on his body that made him approach an acceptable appearance, but his wife? Incredibly hidious, this had to be where the little twirp got his bad looks from. "Narcissism would require this to not be the ideal shape for a puppet, but thank you for noticing that I do in fact have a wonderful form. I'll take that as a compliment," Nageku would state without so much as a grin, the sarcasm dripping. His voice so incredibly similar to Hotarubi's, but that was a given since they were identical twins by all records, "But yes, these are for puppetry."

[tokonatsu yukari]

Yukari looked at Nageku as though he were a puppy that piddled on the carpet—with a mixture of disgust and resignation. Disappointment would require that her expectations had been elevated to any degree; perhaps fortunately for the young man, she expected little and less of him, and his pithy sarcasm only served to cement her low, low opinion. "Fascinating,” she said dryly. "They’re amateurish at best, but it’s not a terrible start. I’ll need to see one in motion to understand the full depth of what you’ve gotten wrong, but—” She withdrew Kyuusai from her sleeve in a swift motion, using the Life Blade as a glorified pointer to illustrate her observations as she made them. She tapped on the shoulders and triceps of the completed statue, drawing lines of musculature that were incorrectly placed as she narrated precisely what was wrong with them; the irregular length of the arms compared to the torso, the disproportion of the implicit skeletal structure beneath the flesh that was carved. "To understand correct anatomy, you need to understand the skeleton, and how it works in conjunction with the layers of tissue attached to it,” she said. "Now demonstrate how it moves. I suspect the joints are misaligned, but that’s more difficult to discern in stillness.”

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[Nageku]

Oh she seemed to not quite understand how rocks worked. That was fine, he expected incompetence when it came from anyone related in any way to Hotaru Tadashi. He was a poor instructor, and his wife apparently couldn't even understand that rocks did not naturally bend. Was he supposed to put them to motion when he hadn't even been given the clearance to learn the style of puppetry he was explicitly working to learn? It almost made him want to laugh if it wasn't utterly ridiculous given that she was supposed to be a jounin. "In case you failed to notice, these do not carry joints like normal. Golem Style Puppetry causes stone to actively shift within its own shape and range of motion, and the bastards here won't let me study it until I get the all-clear. Ridiculous if you ask me, but, of course, you likely find that to be incompetency as well if you can recognize my work," The youth would state back to the woman, tracing the explicit curving of the arm with a hand as he spoke. Seemingly unbothered by the insults to his craftsmanship as if it were only natural that it was still only 'ok'. "If you can't use the statue though," Nageku would start letting the loosely draped clothing of his Yukata fall back down the the waist belt to hang, "My body that they are modelled after should do just fine. As I understand the technique causes puppets to act very similar to the Yamakira without some of our more unique tools."

[tokonatsu yukari]

Yukari’s already chilly demeanor cooled considerably as Nageku persisted with admirable stupidity in back-talking her. Her lip curled with disdain, utterly unimpressed by his excuses and shoddy explanations. "If you are unable to perform even the most fundamental technique required by your self-professed area of expertise, that is hardly my problem,” Yukari said, ice-cold. Kyuusai squeaked in the back of her mind, a quiet warning for her to restrain herself, be patient, be kind. She ignored him, resolute in her irritation. "Do you wish to learn correct anatomy, or do you wish to make excuses as to why you do not need to learn correct anatomy? If it is the latter, then I have no desire to waste my time any further. Whatever foolish pursuit of ninjutsu makes up your body’s composition has no bearing as to whether or not it is in realistic human form, and its ability to shift within that form does not mean that its joints are not hideously misaligned.” With Kyuusai in hand, she sharply rapped the scalpel against Nageku’s shoulder and elbow, pointing specifically at the shape of the ball-and-socket that made up his shoulder and the theoretical tendons that would make up his elbow. "It is clear that through whatever technique that makes up your earthen body you are able to instinctively form the correct human anatomical shape. Drill that instinct into your mind as knowledge, and apply its use externally.”

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