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- Isaribi UchihaCitizen
- Stat Page : -
Ryo : 0
Isaribi had been told that learning a new language was just a matter of immersion. Stick around for long enough in a foreign land, and you picked up a thing or two, idioms upon which to build an understanding of that land's language. Writing, however, was an entirely different matter, even if it was for a language she already knew. Every little squiggle on a letter could change its entire meaning, and of course, there was the bullshit context surrounding each one. She glared at a page that displayed the letter "e", supposedly the most common letter there was, and listened as the bored-looking teacher in the front explained to a bunch of kids much younger than she was about how many different ways you could use the letter. Sorry, lecturer, not teacher. This wasn't some school for kids, though it kinda looked like it to her. This was some kind of remedial lecture that the archives carried out with frightening regularity, for the purpose of increasing literacy, or something like that. Whatever, it was free, so she figured the embarrassment was worth what little she might learn from some neatly dressed soyfrog like this guy in the front. She grinned a little at the thought of the guy hopping up and down.
Evidently, her musings lasted till the end of the lecture, and she got up to leave, taking in the vast antiquity of the archives (despite the fact that it was only a few years old at this point).
[WC 251]
Evidently, her musings lasted till the end of the lecture, and she got up to leave, taking in the vast antiquity of the archives (despite the fact that it was only a few years old at this point).
[WC 251]
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- Isaribi UchihaCitizen
- Stat Page : -
Ryo : 0
Spacious but untrustworthy was a great way to describe the archives. It was quite large, with some of the tallest ceilings Isaribi had ever seen outside of the cathedral, as if the late archivist was still issuing a challenge to the religious authority. The architecture of the place, though, wasn't welcoming. Oh, it might seem that way on a first glance, but the more you looked around, the more clearly it seemed to her that the old archivist was a cruel man. Every bend, every hallway, every small element of design was here to make you feel paranoid and afraid in the most subtle ways. If this had been, like, a sketch or a project or something like that, Isa would probably have thought it funny. You know, kind of like a prank. This, however, was one of the largest and most important buildings in the village, and a vast repository of knowledge (for shinobi in particular). She frowned as she had another look around. Was that something he had kept in mind? Had he also been making moves against the shinobi, in ways the Jaws could have never understood? Well, there was no knowing now. The gap between human experiences was wide, especially when one of the parties was dead.
Even the art that he'd chosen to place here was strange. The stained glass windows were close to recognizable scenes, but there was always something so off about them that making out exactly what they depicted was pretty much impossible.
[WC 251]
Even the art that he'd chosen to place here was strange. The stained glass windows were close to recognizable scenes, but there was always something so off about them that making out exactly what they depicted was pretty much impossible.
[WC 251]
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- Isaribi UchihaCitizen
- Stat Page : -
Ryo : 0
For example, that one, there, was that a fire, or was it a crowd assembled in worship of some profane god? Maybe there were eggheads with art degrees out there that found these things simple, but to her, this place was just as confusing as the writings it contained. Just going up or down an elevator here was an experience in discomfort, the hallways that the elevator doors opened into looking exactly the same, and all. Come to think of it, Isaribi wondered how working here must feel. Maybe people did get used to it, but for people like her who had been raised in clusters of buildings designed to foster community and a sense of sharing and comfort, this place felt like someone had taken that concept and hidden a danger inside it. Hell, maybe it was a statement. Maybe the old archivist had been a man with that level of ego, someone who wanted it to be known to all those smart enough to figure it out that HE was the hidden danger in the village, that HE was the one making the scary moves that not even the Grima could figure out. The more she thought about it, the more she liked that conclusion, even if it wasn't necessarily the right one. It fit with how she saw people like that: people with a lot of power (some might say, too much) and nobody to hold them back. The Unchained, as one of her elders and betters had labeled them.
[WC 253]
[WC 253]
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- Isaribi UchihaCitizen
- Stat Page : -
Ryo : 0
She hoped that in the end, it was that ego that had gotten to him, though again, she would never know for sure. Well, anyway, she was moving along, following orders and attempting to gain the fabled talent of literacy. Admittedly, a tiny part of her hoped that she wouldn't be successful. With every passing day, following these bullshit orders, she grew more and more distant from her routes. Thought she hated to admit it, even with her body more whole than it had been in years, she felt less and less complete internally. Again, she found herself reaching a conclusion that she would never be caught dead telling someone else, maybe not even Baliquis: she needed other people. She didn't need their feedback or their approval exactly, she was strong enough to stand on her own. However, suffice it to say that one of her worst fears was dying alone, surrounded by nobody who knew her or cared about her. In that sense, did she also have something of an ego? Bah, maybe a healthy one. Who wouldn't want to spend their last moments with loved ones? Or was that just her rationalizing her unhealthy fantasies? God fucking damn, but she needed to stop thinking about these issues and stuff them back into whatever box they arrived in.
At least having her arm back made day to day tasks easier. Still, throwing off years of prison and housework using only one arm was going to take a little while to get used to.
[WC 254]
At least having her arm back made day to day tasks easier. Still, throwing off years of prison and housework using only one arm was going to take a little while to get used to.
[WC 254]
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- Isaribi UchihaCitizen
- Stat Page : -
Ryo : 0
Prior to this, even cutting vegetables or riding a bike was kind of difficult. She'd been able to do it, after a while, but, it had never quite been the same as it was before. Now, she found herself with her left arm just kinda hanging by her side, doing nothing while she did tasks with her right. It was a bizarre experience. It was like that phantom pain that used to plague her life all the time, but in reverse, if that made any sense. Her arm was really there, it was just that sometimes she just... forgot. Foolish of her to think that she could just get her arm healed and have her problem solved. That was never how the world worked, and she knew that. There were no shortcuts, no easy ways out, and any solution that looked like one would only cause more complications. Now, she was thinking about bogging her schedule down with, what, physical therapy? Was this some kind of sick joke? Less than two years to go, and that wasn't something she could afford to waste time with. Now, she had a choice on her hands. Risk not being in peak physical condition and go ahead with the plan, or simply make the time for the therapy to be done, and risk losing out on her window of opportunity. Once again, Isaribi found herself at another crossroads, at another decision time.
She opened up a book at random and flipped through the pages, still unable to read the contents.
[WC 256]
She opened up a book at random and flipped through the pages, still unable to read the contents.
[WC 256]
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- Isaribi UchihaCitizen
- Stat Page : -
Ryo : 0
The words were, of course, incomprehensible, but the pictures were nice at least. Isaribi wasn't fucking stupid, and the sharingan had some decoding function to it, and though it couldn't enable her to read a text, it could give her important context, the kind only a serious thinker could get without it. It felt, maybe a little bad that she had to rely on her ocular prowess like this? No, not really. Maybe others thought of their doujutsu as a legacy from an ancient bloodline stretching back thousands of years or whatever, but to her they were just an extremely useful, irreplaceable part of her toolkit.
With a helpless little sigh, she shoved the book back into the bookshelf and turned to see a librarian or assistant or whatever giving her a flat stare. Jesus christ, but they creeped her out, with their emotionless gazes and utter lack of affect. Now that was the kind of shit that made her just want to warp out and get the fuck out of there. However, she held it together and gave a very fake grin before removing the book and placing it into the appropriate shelving cart. The folks who worked here were notoriously meticulous, and Isa only got that way when she was about to take on something important. In her normal life, though? What was the point? Being extra anal about everything felt like a lot of stress for very little benefit in the end. That being said, she did try to keep her place clean.
[WC 256]
With a helpless little sigh, she shoved the book back into the bookshelf and turned to see a librarian or assistant or whatever giving her a flat stare. Jesus christ, but they creeped her out, with their emotionless gazes and utter lack of affect. Now that was the kind of shit that made her just want to warp out and get the fuck out of there. However, she held it together and gave a very fake grin before removing the book and placing it into the appropriate shelving cart. The folks who worked here were notoriously meticulous, and Isa only got that way when she was about to take on something important. In her normal life, though? What was the point? Being extra anal about everything felt like a lot of stress for very little benefit in the end. That being said, she did try to keep her place clean.
[WC 256]
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- Isaribi UchihaCitizen
- Stat Page : -
Ryo : 0
Getting sick meant having to go to the hospital, and going to the hospital meant financial ruin. So, people like her had a habit of keeping a fastidiously clean household. The chores had been harder to do with only one arm, but now she could do even better, and on a salary no less. Now she could sweep and mop her floors about five times faster than she could before, and she didn't have to rely on the funny firebirds (not actually that funny) to help her at all now. Self reliance might have been just something to appeal to the ego, but it definitely FELT good, at least. So many part of life were completely out of her control, so taking charge of what little she could was fulfilling. Isa suspected that she wasn't the only one who felt that way, either. Ever since she met Baliquis, she noticed that that other woman relished opportunities to get out and do normal, mundane things. Were the lives of the rich really all that bad? Isa frowned and revised her thoughts a little. Maybe not bad, but with that much wealth and power came a ton of expectations, and she knew well how expectations could crush someone beneath their weight. Responsibility and obligation... as far as she was concerned, there were two ways to deal with them: to fulfill them, or to escape them. The kind of village she wanted to live in was the kind where normal folk didn't have to make that choice at all.
[WC 256]
[WC 256]
The author of this message was banned from the forum - See the message
- Isaribi UchihaCitizen
- Stat Page : -
Ryo : 0
There wasn't anything left for her to do here today. Any further study she attempted on her own would be useless, at least without the help of other people. If Baliquis didn't help her, though, she would have to resort to some other method of learning how to read. it would be terribly embarrassing, but she could do it if she had to. It wasn't really even a hard choice, this time, it was just something that had to be done. Increase her own literacy, thereby following the kage's orders, thereby increasing her own opportunities. Maybe fulfilling obligations wasn't all that great in her mind, but it sure beat doing nothing. In the meantime, she could start on her REAL work: infiltrating the council and courts' structures without being noticed. Getting in there was easy, it was just a mundane institution after all, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was staying out of sight of the other shinobi and especially those motherfuckers in the church. The word on the street was that whoever ran the Archives now wasn't making any big moves, at least not in their direction, so she could push that worry to the back of her mind for now.
As she left the library, she considered her options. It seemed to her that using genjutsu to modify perception in the short term was useful, and now that she had access to a more powerful form of true stealth, she could slip in and out of secure locations with no issues.
[WC 254]
As she left the library, she considered her options. It seemed to her that using genjutsu to modify perception in the short term was useful, and now that she had access to a more powerful form of true stealth, she could slip in and out of secure locations with no issues.
[WC 254]
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- Isaribi UchihaCitizen
- Stat Page : -
Ryo : 0
The stealth really was something she couldn't use elsewhere, as no shinobi would mistake her for a anything else after the first few times, if they had ways of detecting her, which they definitely did. Eventually, enough people get used to it that they would develop some means to catch her, or set her up like a rat in a goddamn trap. Well, in the interest of not having such crises occur, both she would have to go about this very, very carefully. Things like this would only really drift the shinobi's way because of some other factor. In that case, she would just have to come extra prepared, and be ready for those factors. Today, perhaps, was just the start of that preparation.
Isaribi descended a flight of stairs onto the street level, and waited for another tram. This one, in particular, took her toward the palace. Not the offices of the unseen university, she would rather not be caught hanging around there again. No, this one was the REAL palace, the residence of the council and what had been the royal family. There was the key, she thought. A weakness in the system. Find a weakness, and exploit it. Wasn't that the approach to almost everything?
As the tram neared its destination, she started to ply her brain a little. Sure, she couldn't read, but she could plot escape routes, and potential safehouse locations, among other things. After all, she would probably not be able to maintain that stealthy state for that long.
[WC 255]
Isaribi descended a flight of stairs onto the street level, and waited for another tram. This one, in particular, took her toward the palace. Not the offices of the unseen university, she would rather not be caught hanging around there again. No, this one was the REAL palace, the residence of the council and what had been the royal family. There was the key, she thought. A weakness in the system. Find a weakness, and exploit it. Wasn't that the approach to almost everything?
As the tram neared its destination, she started to ply her brain a little. Sure, she couldn't read, but she could plot escape routes, and potential safehouse locations, among other things. After all, she would probably not be able to maintain that stealthy state for that long.
[WC 255]
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- Isaribi UchihaCitizen
- Stat Page : -
Ryo : 0
To be clear, the area around the palace was quite different from the area around other large, prominent complexes in the village. For example, the neighborhoods around the Unseen University were kind of like her own, kept poor by historically unfair policies and by the raw presence of shinobi passing through them. Like she had mentioned before, the shinobi were kind of like a gang unto themselves, providing protection to those who could pay, and suppressing those who could not, and more often than not, people like her fell into the latter category. This inevitably kicked off a cycle, descending to greater depths of poverty and disenfranchisement.
Around the palace, though, things were different. While civilian police and queensguard were stationed here, their main offices were located elsewhere, which sort of did the opposite to the surroundings, turning them into a rich and sought-after area for people to purchase property in. Indeed, these were the houses of well to do businessmen and the nobility, in particular. This, in turn, further discouraged the police from patrolling this area, and the cycle spiraled upward, making the lives of the rich even easier than they had been before. It was pretty obvious, too, just by looking around at this place. Houses here didn't have the crowded, dense, familial quality that living spaces in her area had, and neither did they have the stark, identical same-ness that those box houses in middle class suburbs did either. These mansions (for they were, indeed) were works of individual architectural genius.
[WC 254]
Around the palace, though, things were different. While civilian police and queensguard were stationed here, their main offices were located elsewhere, which sort of did the opposite to the surroundings, turning them into a rich and sought-after area for people to purchase property in. Indeed, these were the houses of well to do businessmen and the nobility, in particular. This, in turn, further discouraged the police from patrolling this area, and the cycle spiraled upward, making the lives of the rich even easier than they had been before. It was pretty obvious, too, just by looking around at this place. Houses here didn't have the crowded, dense, familial quality that living spaces in her area had, and neither did they have the stark, identical same-ness that those box houses in middle class suburbs did either. These mansions (for they were, indeed) were works of individual architectural genius.
[WC 254]
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