界王和 - Missing Boy

Missing Boy:

TWC: 2,113:

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Almost right off from handing the distraught thief over to the bounty office did Kai then walk to the bulletin board to see what he could next occupy his time with. He was expecting something a bit more intense in an exciting way, but perhaps the lesson should be learned that it might always be worse than you expect. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. That was a nice proverb that surfaced to his mind, acknowledging both ends on a spectrum of hope and despair. One must know the realities of chaos but keep the ideal of the peace you wish to experience. It was a hard thing to ponder and remember with his current situation, being out of sorts and at the mercy of forces who care nothing for you but to see you cry out in despair, compounded by the fact that those same forces took everything that could have supported you and burned it all down. Kai knew he needed a nap, and reactively opted to pull out a job off the board and get himself outside so he could clear his mind.

In a clearing by a small fire, he inhaled his grass to help wash his brain of what wouldn’t serve him before reading up on the details of his job. His understanding accumulated to this paper being a ticket to allow him to cash in a prize for finding some kid lost in the woods. Ooh and authorities couldn’t find him either, interesting. Kai had no special skill with tracking or sensing people, but he had exactly two things on his side that would let him get the job done; the first being too much time and the second being the piece of paper in his hand being the most guiding light he could find outside the one beside his mouth. As far as he was concerned, it was much more of a qualifier than any badge could ever give. As for the actual skills in tracking people down, they were simply crutches for shinobi who endured the grind by searching the dark and dreaded woods the old fashioned way. The absurdity of Kai’s views of conventional wisdom were rooted in subversion, and so gave him a smile and a chuckle, letting him know his mood was good and he was ready to go.

Something distracted him before searching for the boy in earnest, almost like a weight in his pocket was letting him know that it had to be attended to. He pulled out that card he received just a night ago, a nameless card that depicted a golden carving of a stylized eye, though there was more than just light reflected off the holographic printing. A light seemed to shine from within the center of the iris, indicating something, Kai was sure, but no indication of what. He got up and just before he pocketed his  card he paused at the sight of a looming figure standing across from him from the fire. The figure stood perhaps 7 feet tall, and he wore a mask that covered the top half of his face, adorning the same eye on his forehead as the one on Kai’s card. His lower face revealed him to be beardless, only showing a smile with too many teeth. The rest of him was obscured in a large black cloak mingled with the darkness, the light revealing in a way that made it seem like he was backed up by the shadows themselves.

”Well met, fellow gamer.” he said in a monotonous voice. ”I see you have picked up the first piece of the puzzle. You are well on your way to learning the intricacies of our little hobby.” he took a step forward and something under the right side of his cloak was rustling around, thankfully it was his arm doing who knows what to detangle itself. ”I am Masaishi, you may call me an amateur of this game, I have loved it for a very long time. What is your name?” he spoke monotonously but his face added a layer of glee to his words, which slowed down as he ended his sentences like a rolling rock coming to a halt.

”Kai.” he replied with a simple hand shake. The best approach when it came to these kinds of encounters was to be very careful with your words and give nothing more than asked of you, lest something you know nothing about takes something as precious to you as your words. The hand shake lingered eerily long and the end of it was followed by a pungent silence. The man breathed in deeply through his nose, closing his mouth completely for the first time, it gave Kai the suspicion that he said even too much by giving his name. The silence that followed was somehow even longer, as if Masaishi was trying to see how long he could hold his breath. He gave a sigh but with it, no relief.

”I can tell that you have only begun recently.” he deduced correctly. ”You are but a burgeoning babe, too young even to have your own set of weaponry. Truth be told, the one card you hold there is not even good for legal play.” Kai used his entire hands to shrug this off, he figured a card with no text on it would be, at worst, a demonic booty call. ”What you need, good sir, are some of your own cards.” he paused and there was another rustling of the cloak, and out he pulled a small cube with what seemed to be purple cat designs all over it. He popped it open and revealed a stack of sleeved cards, no doubt this was his deck. ”It takes forty to make a complete deck, fifteen make your extra deck, and fifteen for your sideboard. That’s seventy. You can make it with just your forty cards but your plays will be limited.”

”Interesting. Where do I get the best of them?” Kai said curtly.

”Like all things worth seeking, that is a question best answered by your own experiences and observations, rather than relying on the goodwill of strangers.” he replied. ”If you can find organs and weapons as you’ve done before, the cards will reveal themselves to you in due course.” Kai gave only an exaggerated frown of displeasure as a response.

”Come find me when you’ve assembled your best. I look forward to facing the Champion of the Golden Games!” Masaishi declared, and with a quick blinding light he was gone, leaving Kai with a pang of annoyance and shame. He stared at his card for a minute and seriously considered throwing it into the fire before getting up, pocketing it, and continuing his search.

An hour or two searching around in the wilderness had Kai thinking heavily on the feeling of regret, regret that he hated the sun so much he wouldn’t even wait until it was light out to make this any easier on him. A little bit of regret went into only learning one way to really search for people and that was by focusing and honing in on the presence of other people’s chakras, which he could only do up to 10 meters. He was also able to extend his threads out like feely tendrils but it didn’t seem like it would do all that good. Kai considered the possibility of using his threads as extra limbs for climbing for dense areas like the forest, rich in accessibility in all three dimensions he could use the height of the canopy to help him search for his mark. He took a deep breath to calm himself, he needed to relax for his experiment, he already conditioned and developed his abilities for such a thing and the only thing to do was to test it. He loosened the stitching around the scars he cut himself along his back, allowing the tendrils to slither out like curious snakes from the opening of his robes.

Ooh the feeling, his central nervous system was clearly not that of a normal humans, Kai knew that for a long time and his recent readings confirmed it, but it was still not a sensation that Kai was used to. He focused his chakra into his threads to liven them up, anchoring them to the surrounding trees above and into the earth below, pushing with some and pulling with others, he found himself suspended in the air. ”Oh this is just sick.” Kai said quietly to himself as he darted up the canopy aided by his threads.

He enjoyed the feeling of suspension, the thought that he was an entity moving through the air would add a bit of esotericism to the way he presented himself. Though if Masaishi was anything to go by, coming from the dark surrounded with black appendages that had you floating around like a ghost was probably not the friendliest first impression one could make. Kai could argue against that, however, he would appreciate the upfront honesty of a monster presenting itself. Perhaps that elephant in the room could have the spotlight on itself and leave with satisfaction so more interesting conversation could be had, the kinds of talks Kai feels like a world of blood was unable to foster.

The technique proved fruitful, in tandem with his newfound ability to sense chakra, he was able to pick up on something on the fringes of his periphery. He stopped and Kai swung with the sudden stopping of his threads, having to grab onto them to ground himself and lock onto his mark. He retracted his threads and approached past a few bushes and found a sort of clearing where in the center sat a young boy sitting on the ground. The moon was grateful enough tonight to reveal to Kai that this boy had a deck of those cards in front of him, deconstructed and laid bare on the ground in a solitary inspection. Kai moved to about five meters away from the lad before he would get his attention.

”Excuse me, uh, Takahashi?” Kai called out. The boy almost froze at the sight of his cards, as if he was caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar. ”I’m Kai, nice to meet you, I’m here to take you back to your parents, they’ve been worried about you.”

The boy known as Takahashi was still for a moment, almost tensing up for some reason. Kai came closer to get a better look at the boy with weird cyan colored hair that vaguely looked like a mushroom. His face was scrunched up and tears were rolling down his face and near his cards. Through tears and a broken voice he spoke. ”I’m not ready to go back yet, I have to beat him.”

”Beat who?” Kai asked.

”That bastard that took my sister. A man with a mask bearing the Shadow’s Eye. He lured her into these woods with promises of games and I tried over and over again to win her back but--” he let loose as if it was spring loaded from his chest, something he kept inside himself for a very long time. It ended with him sobbing over his cards, obviously he meant the shadowy man Kai found earlier, and he held a new disdain for him, as well as a relief that he was not so polite to him. ”I’ve tried everything I could with this deck but he’s got an answer for everything I do! It’s been years and I haven’t won a single game against him.”

”Masaishi?” Kai asked.

”Yeeesss.” Takahashi almost hissed out as he slowly turned to Kai. ”Are you a fellow gamer?”

”I’ve only got this and it’s not even legal.” Kai explained as he pulled out his card bearing almost exclusively the Shadow’s Eye.

”Oh shit.” Takahashi said. ”Okay here let’s get out of here and I can drop some fat lore on you, my friend.” he gathered up his cards and almost bounced up to a standing position, as if being shown the card had given him new life. They spent the rest of the night navigating through the woods back to Takahashi’s parents, who invited him to stay for the night while Takahashi would explain his situation and the Shadow’s Eye to Kai.

Kaiowa wrote:
332 for Temporary Paralysis [1,000/1,000] Part 1
1,781 for Elemental Investiture [3,314/5,000] Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
+4,000 Ryo
+20 AP.

Approved!