3rd String | Getting Home Late | [Language: slightly warped Japanese]

[dance_mypuppets]

Characters: Kankuro and anyone who cares to help out
Setting: Between Floor 15 (workshop) and the elevator
Format: Starting with action, will match
Summary: Kankuro stays too late in the workshop -- oh boy, time to head back to the dormitory at night.
Warnings: Will update as appropriate.

[It's a bad habit Kankuro has always possessed; he starts tinkering with his puppets, and the next thing he knows, it's nighttime -- and he knows, by now, just what that means. Getting back to the dormitory to get a proper sleep is going to be... interesting.

Good thing he's finished up his new work -- and time to take his newly upgraded pretty for a spin. It's Kuroari that's gotten the upgrade treatment this time; she usually doesn't get to take center stage here in the Tower's environment, so he's curious to see how she does.

But once he sets foot outside the workshop, he almost immediately finds himself face-to-face with one of the bigger bads the Tower can throw at him.]

Fuck! Little bastard, you were waiting for me, weren't you...

[The language, if anyone hears him, is understandable Japanese, but heavily accented and just a little... off, as though it were a divergent dialect from no part of Japan anyone's heard of.

This isn't the way he likes to jump into combat! Approaching from a distance is his style, so he has to get out of the way of swiping claws before he can even think about bringing his puppets properly into things.

Anyone else out late willing to help out an ambushed ninja?]

Comments

[tohko_amano]

Tohko grinned. "Of course I love reading! I love books more than anyone and I know more about them! After all, who else can tell you what the origins of Peter Pan were, or how weird the first draft of that story was, or why Bulgakov burned his first draft of The Master and Margarita in despair, or the history of The Great Gatsby or why No Longer Human is a semi-autobiographical novel, or how long it took Hemingway to write The Old Man and The Sea?!"

Once you got Tohko started, it was hard to get her to stop. She gushed about her knowledge, forgetting for the moment that she had a dagger to get back.

[dance_mypuppets]

Well, Kankuro assumed those were books -- none of them sounded even remotely familiar to him. But then, he wasn't much of a bookworm, either. Plays, now, those he devoured, but usually with more of an eye toward performance than for simple pleasure of reading.

He grinned, though, and let her ramble on for a while, a little amused by all the enthusiasm. After all, he did the same thing with his puppets when so inspired. Not that he had been since arriving in Animus, but still...

[tohko_amano]

"And I highly doubt there are many people who could solve a murder-mystery using nothing but their wits, luck, and books! I even helped stop a girl from committing suicide once by talking about books! So, that's why I'm the book girl!" Tohko finished her rambling. While she loved to talk about her knowledge, she did know, due to experience, how long to ramble on for.

"Then again..I guess you have a pretty large love of puppets and acting if you're fighting with them. Maybe you're Kankuro The Puppeteer?" Tohk joked.

[dance_mypuppets]

The offered epithet made him chuckle. "Something like that, yeah," he agreed, his voice rich with amusement. "Although if my village does decide to award me a title, I hope it'd be more creative!" Still, though, he patted Karasu's head affectionately. "They are my best friends, though."

Which was still true, even if Temari mocked him like hell for it. A grown man -- by ninja standards -- still claiming inanimate objects as best friends? But Karasu was a part of him.

[tohko_amano]

"An interesting title would be nice. I'm just a simple lover of books, so I've just always gone with a simple, memorable title." Tohko nodded as Kankuro patted his puppet's head.

"I understand what you mean. Even nowadays, The Little Prince still makes me smile..and I look up to characters like Margarita and Sophie. They may not be perfect, but they're good characters who try their best."

[dance_mypuppets]

"Heh, I know a few characters from the old plays like that," he agreed, "and their examples are worth looking up to. A lot of stories -- for stage or page -- are meant to teach, yanno?" And he looked up to some of the great puppeteers, too, but that was something of a sore point, all things considered. Sasori...

[tohko_amano]

"Exactly! They can teach us, inspire us, make us think, challenge what we believe, hurt us, help us, be examples as what not to do, show us that we don't want be be like that character..there are quite a few ways characters, be they on the stage or the page, can be used!" And Tohko was happily gushing again. She was the book girl for a reason.

[dance_mypuppets]

Man, she sure called herself a book girl for a reason! Kankuro grinned. "Still, for a bookworm, seems like you're a pretty good hand in a fight. I suppose you learned that out of a book too,huh?" Making a joke of it; in his view, you couldn't learn to fight except by doing.

[tohko_amano]

Tohko chuckled and scratched her head nervously.

"While that would have been a pretty cool trick, I didn't. While I love adventure stories and action books, reading about killing a guy and living is much different than actually doing the deed. When I got here, I heard that there were monsters that roamed the halls at night, and one of my roommates, Saber, was willing to teach me swordplay. So, I took up her offer and found these daggers later with a friend. I did pick up a few tips on killing from murder mysteries though." Not that that was a good thing to normally know, but it did come in handy around here.