Blind Leading the Blind

[Nick]

The pilot program was in an awkward spot. They'd been pushing for it rather hard back home in the empire, and so far they'd successfully been able to visit Lightning Country and even Fire Country, but with the advent of the war, things had slowed down significantly. Suna was supposed to have been next, but with a declaration of war from Iwa, it seemed unwise to send the pilot children into what was soon to be an active warzone. Suzuko didn't understand any of this, and while news of the war was public and newsboys on every street corner had been shouting about it, the international politics were not something she really got.

That didn't make this current situation any less confusing. With war actively being called, both villages were still present here in Pebble Country, for the most part playing nice with each other. Some of them seemed to be giving each other the cold shoulder, while others seemed to actively be choosing to be around each other, and while there were some dirty glares, it was strange to her how things were with everyone. Her empathetic nature couldn't possibly be thrown for more of a loop on what sorts of mixed feelings these people must have, having to enjoy a festival with people that they may have to try and kill in the upcoming war.

All this to say, Suzuko was very interested to talk to some of the ninja on either side. Many of the Iwa nin she saw were older, more intimidating, and when she worked up the courage to go talk to one, her willpower left her shortly before she could actually let words leave her mouth... Which is what left her emotionally exhausted, sweaty, and leaning up against the tent that had been set up for her and her puppet mechanic, when she saw... two Sunagakure ninja. They looked young, both of them fairly small and unintimidating... Her courage welled up again!

She walked right up to them, opened her mouth to talk... And immediately the words left her again as she noticed one of them was... blindfolded. This felt more awkward all of a sudden, and she was the one that made it awkward by standing there open-mouthed.

[Niro]

Ashura had taken it upon himself after finding the blindfolded Indra in the training grounds earlier to accompany him around the festival for now oblivious to the fact he could sense the souls around him and navigate just fine. Just so the boy wouldn't run into a stall. Or maybe so he would run into a stall. The Hizashi wasn't sure just yet before his thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a tall girl marching up to them with her mouth open. Ashura's face morphed into one of utter confusion before he looked between her and Indra and then back again before settling on her.

"You'll catch flies if you keep your mouth like that, Lady." Ashura finally blurted out and then threw a useless side-eye to his blindfolded companion. "You know her, Indra?"

[Ace Trainer]

The festival had been great for Indra thus far, in spite of his frustration of being blindfolded, much of the enjoyment had actually come from being forced to convert the passive sound of the souls around him into an active process so that he could navigate. Unbeknownst to him, Suzuko would be noticing the same thing he was as he listened to the hollow echoes of the souls around him. Living people's souls were very verbose like the dead were, but they still giggled, sighed, shouted and cried all the same. Some of them just...vibrated (for a lack of better word) with a sort of energy that Indra could get a sense of how they were feeling. So as he walked through the festival, each time he got close to a group of people he could really hear and feel the general tone of the group. Some of them tense, angry but accomodating. Others had an excitable nervousness to them, and some even more a sort of longing that Indra had a hard time explaining. All-in-all, this sort of people watching was something Indra was truly starting to enjoy.

And then another appeared, radiating something....and then a surge of what Indra could only assume as embarrassment. Ashura made some sort of smart comment, and then asked of Indra knew who she was. Instinctually, he shook he had no before turning to look at Ashura and cocking his head to the side, "How would I know??", he exclaimed.

Tugging on the blindfold as sort of a 'duh' to his companion, he'd turn to where he heard Suzuko and pointed at her, his finger ending up pointing off to her left, "who are you!", he demanded.

[Nick]

Suzuko continued to stare for a moment until Ashura broke her out of her trance. Her mouth shut almost immediately, and she awkwardly smiled, immediately starting to sweat. Had they continued walking without acknowledging her this would have been much easier for her to just walk away and pretend this awkward encounter never happened in the first place, but now it was unavoidable. "Uhh I uhhh uhh..." She said, intelligently, before a system reboot put her back to her factory settings.

"Fukazawa, Suzuko! Akibushi of the Heart Empire!" She said bowing over and over again, lowering her head nearly to the floor with every word she said, responding to Indra, no longer stammering. "It is nice to see, err, meet ninja from Sunagakure!" She said, regretting her choice of words immediately. "I was hoping to talk to you two about... well, your village, I suppose..." Suzuko laughed awkwardly, still sweating up a storm. "Do you two, uhh, have a few minutes?"

[Niro]

Ashura just rolled his galaxy-like eyes at Indras response before starting up to say something stupid in response before the girl finally found her voice and piped up by rattling off her name, rank, and village while bowing like it was going out of style.

What the hell? Utterly confused by the display of apology as were others who glanced at the girl as they continued to walk by.

"Nice to meet you too, weird Heart lady." Ashura replied while signaling for her to stop bowing with his hands. "Sure? Let's get out of the middle of the road though. Follow me!"

Ashura got behind Indra and begin to push him in the direction of a stall a few dozen meters down the road that turned out to be a shaved ice stall. Finally in line, Ashura turned back to Suzuko finally ready to answer her questions.

"What d'ya want to know 'bout Suna?"

[Ace Trainer]

Suzuko introduced herself and Indra tilted his head to the side, "Ak-I-Bu-Shi?", he repeated out loud, not quite sure what to think about it. "Well, nice to meet ya Suzuko Akibushi, I guess.". He couldn't help but feel a little cautious, partially because he couldn't really see her. But, it was strange to him that some foreign girl approached the two of them, of all the people she could have chosen. Part of him was on guard and couldn't help but consider somehow she would know he was the Soul Genma host....perhaps this was the danger of them being here.

Asking questions about the village wouldn't help, but before Indra could say anything about that, AShura was behind him shoving him in some direction until they were in some sort of line. Indra listened closely, trying to find some sort of deception or bad intent in her soul but didn't sense anything immediately, not that he was any good at that at this point anyways.

"Yeah, what do you want to know? We're not spilling any secrets though.", he said sharply.

[Nick]

"Akibushi is the... Well, nevermind..." She said, stammering away still and trying to figure out how to phrase things so as to sound not suspicious, which likely made her sound slightly more suspicious when she had nothing to hide about the whole thing which caused her to sweat more and seem more suspicious -- It was a vicious cycle. "N-no, no secrets, hahhh..."

She followed the pair of Suna nin off the beaten path and the lower number of people was helpful for her concentration as there were less threads leaving her body to slip onto other people and confuse her emotions with her own. She took a closer look at the two now that she had the barest moment of breathing room to bathe in the brilliant aura of the both of them. They were both young, around her age, and at least... one of them was cute, even if the other seemed a little unkempt, and the whole... blindness thing... felt awkward. She'd had classmates that had working steam prosthetics before, and that hadn't bothered her so much, but the blind boy in front of her felt different somehow.

"Haha, sorry, uh... What uhh... What are your names...?" She started off simply, trying to break the ice, mostly on herself since both of them seemed pretty warm, even if Indra's demeanor was a little more harsh. "I wanted to ask about the, uh, well..." She gulped. This really shouldn't have been so hard to talk about. "Well I've never been to Wind Country, but I think we've been invited as part of a training thing..." She cleared her throat. "I just kinda wanted to know, uhh... What'sGoingOnWithThisWarThingNobodyIsReallyTalkingAboutItAndIt'sKindaWeirdWithThisFestivalGoingOn." All in one breath without stopping, she finally blurted it all out. Well, at least she got it out instead of stuttering everywhere, this time.

[Niro]

Ashura blinked at Suzuko as she spat out her words altogether and had to think over what she said and pull them words apart in his head before a look of realization finally came over his face. Well, before another look of confusion overtook that one. His brow furrowed as he tried to piece whatever information he knew about the topic together but there wasn't much. As genin, plus jinchuuriki, they were kept under lock and key. Information was a privilege they weren't granted.

"I'm...not really sure. We're just genin, they don't tell us much. I don't think the village itself is really doing much or worried with how far away the fighting is. Plus those people are barely Wind, right? I doubt the Kazekage cares when he has other things going on in the village that requires his attention." Ashura pondered on the situation. He had heard of more veteran shinobi being shipped off to the front lines but it wasn't like the village had fully mobilized.

"Oh! Names, right. Those are important. I'm Ashura and the blind-but-not-really guy here is Indra."

[Ace Trainer]

Suzuko asked for their names, and Indra made an incredulous sort of look, lots of questions from this one, as if asking someone's name wasn't a totally normal thing for someone to do. Then to ask about the war! A nosy one this girl was. Crossing his arms in an act of defiance, Indra seemed shocked when Ashura not only told her they didn't know much, but outright stated that the Kazekage himself probably didn't care, "Oi! Ashura, what are you doing! She could be some sort of spy.", he made a motion towards her, or at least 'towards' her, his gesturing not exactly on point. "Of course Kazekage-sama cares deeply about everywhere in Wind. If the Sun touches the Land, Kazekage-sama nurtures it with Her light.", Indra toeing the line as a good genin, and jinchuuriki, should.

"Not-so-blind?", Indra huffed, "I'm blind enough for it to count, lady, don't you worry about the details.", he attempted to correct. Without being able to see her, Indra probably didn't realize that Suzuko wasn't even as old as he was.

In an attempt to redirect, Indra would huff once more, "Alright our turn for questions. Hmmm. Whats going on with "the Heart Empire"?", boy, what a question, air quotes included.

[Nick]

She nodded at their names, they seemed odd to her, she hadn't met anyone else with similar names in the Heart Empire, or even here yet at the festival, but then the only person she'd met from Wind Country was Rio, and her name was also quite odd to her.

She thought about Ashura's statement for a moment, and that fit in line with what a lot of the traditionalists of Heart thought about ninja. Suzuko felt odd about it, the way they were taught in school was that every part of the empire belonged under the same banner for a reason, and that every part was equally as important... Which made Indra's contradictory statement all the more confusing. She blinked, getting clearly directly contradictory messages from the both of them. Was Suna caring about the land, and more importantly, people that were under attack, or not?

"I see..." She said, immediately cringing at the fact that she'd said that to a blind man, and also she didn't actually see, but maybe if she got the two talking more the messages might become more clear. "Does that mean the Kazekage has the responsibility of nurturing the whole world...?" She asked, clearly ignorant to any of the teachings of the religion of Sunagakure. "That sounds like a lot..."

She blinked at Indra in a confused state. Ashura came off as lower class just in the way he spoke, but Indra reminded her more of the nobility that she'd grown up around, a righteous indignation filling the air of everything he did. She looked up and to the right as if trying to think of an answer to his question, the air quotes making it only more confusing, so she wasn't entirely sure how to answer. "Well..." She said slowly, thinking about what she even knew about the empire at large. "I think there's been some kind of peace reached with Water Country, though I don't think the specifics have been decided yet... I think there's some kind of official meeting happening here about it, since it's neutral ground and all."

There was a short pause. "Oh!" She said, a smile crossing her face as if she just remembered something important. "Several of the students are supposed to be trying to visit the major countries! I think we're going to Kumogakure after the festival...? Maybe we'll be able to visit Wind Country!" The smile remained for just a moment, before she thought that through a bit more, and the fact of war would make it difficult to visit. "Ah, or perhaps some of the Suna students will be coming to visit Xincha...?"

[Niro]

Ashura heard Indra's warning about keeping his mouth shut but that didn't mean he was going to listen to it. A spy? Really? Heart was part of the alliance, there was no way some girl like this one who could barely spit out her words could be a spy. Spies were cool, suave. Nothing like Suzuko here. Plus, why would a spy focus on some no name genin who wouldn't know anything anyway? At least a chuunin would have a better grasp of real deployments.

"Exactly! It is a lot. He's too busy thinking about the bigger picture, how to win! Losing here and there won't mean nothing when we punch them right in the mouth!" Ashura proclaimed with a cocky grin on his face and his closed fists on his hips and chest puffed up with pride. What he had said maybe wasn't the best thing to spout off in the middle of a war; trouble would be awaiting him had he said that back home.

"I don't know about anyone freely coming and going from Suna right now with the war. Maybe we'll come visit you guys instead since your fighting seems to have wrapped up. Who knows when Wind Country will be totally safe again?" Ashura wondered aloud. Ever since the war had been declared, he'd been training to be more serious about his training but it was hard some days to work out and push past limits in the suffocating heat of the desert. Even as a Hizashi, the heat was overwhelming.

"I've never met a Kumo ninja, even while we've been here! Sometimes I think they're myths..." He prattled on as the lined moved forward to the vendor.

[Ace Trainer]

There was obviously very little attempt on Indra’s part to mask his emotions, but the blindfold probably helped in preventing the rather incredulous look that Indra had on his face from being quite as obvious. ”The whole world? Does the sun rise in the east? Set in the west? Of course! If the Her Light touches the land. Kazekage-sama was chosen by The Sun! It just so happens that she basks Wind Country in her light more than anywhere else.”, he put his hands on his hips, ”Because we are chosen”, a bit of attitude. Indra seemingly wasn’t ver good at making friends.

Ashura suggested they’d be punching the bad guys in the mouth and Indra did something of a fist pump in support of the notion, ”Yeah! With all this power we’ve got n—“, he cut himself off, stammering for a moment, ”For this uh…iron banner, if you know what I mean.”, he seemingly got smaller, being quite while Ashura and Suzuko finished talking. The mention of Kumogakure shinobi was interesting, so this random girl from Heart was getting to go to all the villages and countries? Seemed like something a spy would be doing. But then to suggest that some students could come to Xincha? What even was that?

He made a look of mild disgust, ”Xincha? Is that some sort of ninja village? Why would we want to go there?”, straight to the point.

[Nick]

The young girl bit the inside of her cheek as Ashura questioned when Wind would be safe again. She hadn't put much thought into THAT side of the war, and the grander consequences it might have. Between Kirigakure and Heart hardly anything had happened at all beyond a show of strength from both, but as she thought back to her history lessons of the last great war, so much had changed. Her own home country, denoted on her tags as the Holy City of Towers, no longer existed. Its population was split between Kiri and Iwa as a large portion of its members revolted against themselves, which led to her mother sending her away to safety elsewhere. Could such a thing happen to Sunagakure as well? Would this war wipe it off the map? Would anyone even remember Sunagakure years from now if it was gone? So few people already knew about the Holy City of Towers, being the small country it was, but surely a ninja village being wiped off the map would have further ramifications...

Her musings distracted her so, but she still managed to pay attention to what other things were being said by the odd pair before her, even if she didn't have time to parse all of it properly. Suzuko nodded as she learned more about the religion by their statements, but it seemed the matter was so much more complicated than most of the Heart Empire's own religious beliefs. Spirits of the fields, the plow, the sword, all gods in their own right, and as Suzuko thought about it, were her Youkai really all that different either? Was their great Sun god simply one of the same spirits they believed in, but so much mightier by nature of being the sun itself?

"Heart would welcome you with open arms!" She said confidently with a big smile on her face, seemingly not put off by Indra's rudeness at all, and if anything it likely endeared him more to her, that haughty nobility something she employed herself quite often. As Indra asked for more, though, she tilted her head a bit, trying to think of how best to explain it. "Xincha is... Well, we don't have a ninja village, or a hidden village! Our capitol, Xincha, is where most of our samurai are trained, and it's... Well, it's huge!" She looked around at the iron banner festival around them and put her arms out. "This festival is small in comparison! I guess I don't know how big Suna is, but I bet Xincha is bigger!" She said with a certain smug confidence, as if that were some kind of point of pride, or even a competition against the two Wind Country natives.

"I bet you could learn a lot there! Maybe even more than you could learn here! There's an awful lot of people from an awful lot of places, in some ways it's like visiting ten countries for the price of one!" She said, having only been to two countries in available memory, herself.

[Niro]

Ashura wasn't sure about what Indra was saying about The Sun but if he was sure about it, then Ashura didn't pay too much attention to going against what he was saying to the girl. He wasn't one to listen too intently during history lessons so it wasn't like he could even really refute what Indra was saying anyway. For all he knew, it WAS the truth. Ashura's attention was drawn away from how poorly he was educated about his home's history to Indra's slip of the tongue. He shot the other boy a look and then felt foolish as it couldn't even be seen due to the blindfold he was wearing. The more he thought on it, however, Ashura wasn't even sure if Suzuko knew what a Genma was. If she didn't, then did it really matter if they slipped up?

The claim their city was bigger than Suna, however, immediately snapped Ashura out of his inner thoughts. "No way! Suna has been around for like...forever! It even goes into the desert in some places, there's no way Xin'cy or whatever it is is bigger!" Ashura proclaimed as he puffed his chest out and crossed his arms over it. This girl had no idea what she was talking about!

"More learning?! No way! All we've been doing is learning and we just got out of the Academy, I'm done with learning for now. It's time to live a little! Fight some bad guys, make some rivals!" He went on about, his arms moving from across his chest to miming an action sequence against fake bad guys. "Please, by Her Light, no more learning!" Ashura fake sobbed as he hung on Indra's shoulder and shuttered at being trapped in the Academy once again.

[Ace Trainer]

It was clear the young shinobi was taken aback when Suzuko suggested that Xincha was bigger than Suna. Bigger than the Sun's chosen land? That was unlikely. Indra had traveled a fair amount with his mother and father growing up, and not a single city or village they had been to came anywhere close to the size of Suna. So to suggest that this random new place for this new 'empire' was bigger was...well offensive! How dare she. Indra's face reddened a little, but before he could say anything Ashura would chime in echoing what Indra had already been thinking, resulting in Indra giving an aggressive nod in agreement. "Wayy bigger!", he repeated.

Indra and Ashura, for all their differences, were quite the same as well, because the notion of more learning was not something that interested him. Partially, Indra knew the opportunity wouldn't exist. He had begged a fair amount to get approval to go on this journey, and even now not far off he could hear the quiet whispers of his handlers stalking to pair of them and making sure they didn't get into any trouble. Allowing them to travel to another nation, especially one young and growing like the Heart Empire, was virtually nonexistent. Regardless, he wouldn't ask, especially if it meant more school.

"Look lady. You're probably just trying to trick us into going there so you can steal our brains or something.", he huffed. "Sunagakure teaches us everything we need to know, I'll tell you that much.", he crossed his arms again, the blindfold he was wearing slightly obscuring the defiant look in his eyes.

Turning to Ashura, Indra let another huff out, "You hang out with your new friend and learn whatever you want. I'm going to go.", he took several steps backwards, bumping into a stack of crates, "Good luck in your travels or whatever lady. Maybe I'll see you in Suna sometime and you'll get to visit a real Great Village.", he stuck his tongue out at her teasingly before turning and rushing off.

[Nick]

Suzuko did not take as well as she gave, and as the two Suna natives pushed back on her claims that Xincha was probably bigger, she looked shocked and offended in a way that only a teenage girl that thought she understood the world could. She looked more offended by this than by the claims that she was trying to trick the pair into being able to steal their brains. The fools. If she wanted to steal their brains, she wouldn't need to trick them, she'd simply do it! Maybe approaching two of them at once was a bad idea, because she certainly felt bullied right now, as if Misaki were around somewhere.

With a pout on her face, she opened her mouth to speak up, only for Indra to start taking off and bump into a crate. She turned to Ashura with a more concerned look on her face. "Do you need to...?" She asked making a gesture towards the blind man of the pair, indicating that she understood if he was leaving, too. As the pair took off, she stared off at them for a moment, before thinking back on to what Ashura had said earlier, cupping her hands around her mouth, and shouting after them. "This makes you two my rivals, you know!" She yelled, before sighing, and turning around to take off and enjoy the festival a bit more personally.