(no subject)

[cloudpotter]

[Apropos of nothing, towards the end of the return mingle...]

I'm in need of someone who wants to learn to become a ninja.

[This will surely end well.]

Comments

[vrepit_no]

All right, you're the exception, then. How much tv did you watch?

[Teasing? Him? Naaaah.]

[ninjayeehaw]

Ninja council did their best t'try an' impose on us, mind you. Yakki here just about fought them himself fer our right t'go rampagin'!

[cloudpotter]

Frivolity has no place in legislating. I won't listen to a council that has no understanding of the rules they're setting.

[except he totally did. for like two minutes. he probably definitely would have exploded at them afterwards if Jiraiya hadn't interfered.]

In any case, Chairman Jiraiya's corrected their impositions. They're not something we have to concern ourselves with any further.

[cloudpotter]

[....bUT THAT BASICALLY SUMS IT UP.

Yakumo is floundering, just a little. He doesn't know if Shiro is asking after teaching techniques or ninja techniques, so he's opting to answer for the latter since Shiro already summed up the former.]

Kinji mostly copies others' good ideas. [SHAMELESSLY, SHIRO. KINJI DOES IT SHAMELESSLY.]

[vrepit_no]

[He was definitely asking about teaching techniques, but that works too.]

Hey, if it helps you win... You learn from each other, right? Help each other find faults and fix them as a team?

[This is endlessly amusing to him, given what Kinji's told him.]

[cloudpotter]

Training together and improving upon each-others' faults is one thing, and as a ninja stealing techniques is another. Neither of those are what I'm referring to.

[did you know that he only started developing 'cowboy' ninjutsu after Yakumo showcased his magic ninjutsu, Shiro. did you know that nobody else was doing it until then. did you know that Kinji's supposed jewel-in-the-crown technique was just a lasso. did you.

...one year later, and Yakumo is still offended at Kinji's gall.]

that icon is gold jfc

[vrepit_no]

[How old are you again, Yakumo? This all sounds very much like a certain team of teenagers he knows.]

Are ninjas supposed to have different techniques? There's no baseline or learning what you all discover?

[ninjayeehaw]

A lot less than I reckon yer imaginin'. I grew up in a ranchin' town, Shiro, if half the day wasn't spent chasin' cows it was helpin' out Nanna. [Not his own, just the old woman he lived with.] Didn't have no time fer tv.

[vrepit_no]

No... that's what I was thinking. [Definitely grinning.] You didn't have any exposure to ninjas before they showed up. Lots of other American kids did - mostly via television.

copying him even in icons,,, god kinji how could you

[cloudpotter]

[Yakumo is a grown adult man who very shamelessly told his cousin to "write your name on it next time" when he was told off for kill-stealing.]

Different schools create and maintain separate techniques, and knowledge. In our case, the Igasaski style creates techniques based upon shuriken fueled by Nintality. Only those who become part of the Igasaki school will be privy to those techniques. Other ninja clans will have techniques based on scrolls, or movements, or other hidden methods. It isn't impossible for a ninja to infiltrate a rival school to steal their techniques, but doing so is incredibly dangerous. Even in the modern age, ninja clans aren't widely known for their mercy.

[vrepit_no]

Hm. Sounds a lot like global militaries. You can't know what toys we have in case we have to face you on the field.

So what's the issue with people within the same team using one another's techniques?

[cloudpotter]

Like I said, that isn't the issue.

[Maybe it's better just to show him. Yakumo isn't very practiced with memory sharing, so it's a bit of a stop-start to begin with, as he pulls up a veritable montage of Kinji 'copying' him.

It starts off innocently, and surprisingly on-track for the purpose of demonstrating what a copycat Kinji is. There's a person either side of Yakumo, and they're all leaning in, boggling at the Kinji before them. He had smooth, slick hair back then; pressed down beneath the leather cowboy hat. From a depressed slump on the ground, Kinji had risen with the beeping of an alarm from his phone. A frog alert croaked on the screen, the words "YOUKAI DETECTED" blaring in red. And Kinji had sprung up immediately, delight replacing depression, suddenly completely cured of the blues that had seized him -- and with a cry of "YAHOO! No time for being depressed!" he'd left, a bright spark in his eyes. As if. He were the one whose job it was to dispatch youkai. (Spoilers: he was not.)

A few moments later, Yakumo's own alert went off. The croaking of a frog sounded from the frog-shaped gun he and his teammates carry, and there was no time for confusion about the stranger's blatant rip-off because there was an enemy that needed fighting.

The scene transition is not smooth - Yakumo's still getting the hang of this - and suddenly there's a huge bison-shaped mecha vehicle screeching in front of them, a skyscraper-sized Rodeo at the handles. And Yakumo is confused. He's in the cockpit with his four cousins, he's at the seat of their frozen combined mecha, and suddenly there's this guy in his knock-off copycat mechas stealing the show.

The insults just pile up from there. The time Kinji had butted in on Yakumo's fight against a youkai, brazenly announcing that he would take care of it --(which earned him a burst of flame fired from Dragomaru's maw. In Yakumo's defence, if Kinji hadn't gone and gotten in the way he wouldn't have gotten burned. What was completely unacceptable was Kinji's follow-up response of lassoing Yakumo and his mecha, preventing them from fighting. In light of that behaviour, Yakumo's resulting action of using magic to turn Dragomaru into a kite and flinging Kinji and Rodeomaru into the enemy made perfect sense. And so did using a tornado to finish off the enemy. Kinji should have gotten out of the way faster if he didn't want to get caught up in it.

And then. And then. There's a memory -- all Yakumo was doing was pointing out that Kinji was easy (in English) to read, lulling them into a trap (also English, despite every other word being Japanese). They'd only met him the day before when he'd professed a desire to kill them, and then he'd spent the morning cooking them breakfast, doing their laundry, and cleaning their house. Of course it was a trap.

But instead of confessing Kinji had then had the gall to try to correct Yakumo's pronunciation. When Yakumo was the one pronouncing it the proper, English way!

Shiro, there is literally five minutes of scenery flashing by and clothing changes and location changes and at one point they're on a stage in front of a live audience and this whole five minutes, five minutes, is just Kinji goading Yakumo with "easy". Some of these flashes of memory have taken place as recently as yesterday.

Yakumo has clearly gotten distracted somewhere along the way - he has not realized he's veered completely off-course into 100 Times Kinji Was The Absolute Worst, Shiro Can You Believe This.]

[photonicfighter]

[You shouldn't go asking for students if you're not prepared to get someone earnestly taking you up on the offer, Yakumo.]

Wonderful! Where should we meet up?

[And her tone gives no indication that she's picking up on his sudden uncertainty.]

[ninjayeehaw]

[ahem.

Yakumo.

You realise Kinji can see all of this too, right?

Because as the series of memories progresses, Kinji has literally no shame.

He just starts getting smugger. The 48+ Easy argument has him beaming IRL.]

[cloudpotter]

[he feels you there and Yakumo doubles down, the stream of memories continuing. Look at all you've done, Kinji. Look at it. There's the time you got both of them frozen into Bison King Drago, the time you both got stuck in the walls, the time you tried to snatch the Chouzetsu changer off of him, the time you showcased 'cowboy ninpou' on a broadcast to a worldwide audience right after Yakumo'd demonstrated his mahou-ninpou mix--

---oh, right. That was his point here. That Kinji is a shameless copycat.

Yakumo buckles down on that memory, focusing on Shiro again. Can you believe that after two years apart, Yakumo had shown off his newly developed magical ninjutsu techniques -- and then Kinji had shamelessly taken the idea of a collaboration and mocked it?! By creating a lasso made of Nintality and calling that a technique?!

The worst. The absolute worst. Kinji wouldn't have bothered doing that if he hadn't watched Yakumo's mahou-ninpou mix first.]

[finalizes]

I doubt that it is not related.

You could at least try. If it doesn't work or you don't like it, you can still decide to not do it again.

[runs]

Well, I already have a good base in stealth, but I never mind adding to that.

And all kinds of fighting stuff that you can do without being too close by for too long is good, too.

[runs]

[...That's pretty much her area and skill set, too. Sounds like she could add from it.]

And which parts of that would you teach?

[helborn]

Uh huh. So then what was it? You decided suddenly you want to start up ninja schools independent of each other rather than together?

[Just the most dry tone he can manage.]

[morethanashadow]

[It's ok, he gets the idea, anyway.]

So is this a bet?

[verdeleonessa]

Sign me up for some ninja training.

[ninjayeehaw]

More'r less.

[morethanashadow]

Cool.

I'm in if you guys need someone.

[naturaltwohands]

Indeed. Sometimes it is best to hide and avoid a fight.

From what little I have heard of ninjas, many of the lessons in stealth are similar to those that drow teach their fighters. ... Although I'm afraid that the techniques would be used in hunting and ambush, not avoidance. Still, I find uses in them.

[rustyhonesty]

Great. I'll look forward to training.