[Graded]Nocturnal

[HotelBravo]

Nocturnal

The village of Kumogakure was made of buildings that were like towers, each layer of the tower belonging to houses, shops, and businesses. This made the floor level of the village a place that felt more like an alleyway than a village street. It was a maze of paths and now in the middle of the night stars peaked through the gaps between the towers and hit the street. A beam of moonlight fell upon the village from the gentle smile in the sky and provided what light there was this night. Hanako who was a studious girl with an odd schedule, had felt the appeal of the cool night air and the stars in the skies glittering like electric sparks. She climbed up the residential tower that she had her own room in, the room that belonged to her grandmother before it fell to her. The building belonged to a friend of her grandmother’s and she had been allowed to stay even when her grandmother no longer was returning home.

Tonight she sat atop the building, atop the tower, looking down at the other towers and looking up into the night sky. It was a privilege that was almost reserved for Shinobi - for their acrobatics and gravity defying method of travel frequently brought them to such heights. Hanako sat upon the roof of the tower with a medical text in her lap and moon light spilling upon the pages giving her belongings a silvery glow. She turned the page as she read through the subject, which was a journal about some illness a person had gotten and the diagnosis and treatment recorded by the patient’s doctor.

Even Shinobi went to bed at such hours, at least typically. Hanako was someone who maintained an unusual sleep schedule. It wasn’t that she wanted to, it was just that sleeping was so boring that she only did it when she was tired, and the hours that she was seemed to change on a daily basis. So instead of sleeping tonight, she read through the text book. Then she paused as she looked down the height of the tower. She could feel the call of the void as the street. She stood up and balanced on the edge as teh street returned her gaze. A Morbid sense of Curiosity filled Hanako as she dangled her medical textbook over the edge. She wondered what would happen if she dropped it.

Then she let go, and watched with a passive expression of the book’s pages flailed in the air.

[Kanade]

Chiaki had taken the form of a cat that night, using the jutsu that she had seen Maido use many, many times over and making it her own. She had manipulated what she was: down to the last silicate part of herself. She was able to weave her bones, her sinew, her hair into what she wanted. So when she wanted to walk about without being noticed as anything other than a feline, she could just make herself look like, and be any form that she wanted. She kept the hyoid bone that she needed in order to speak though: that part of her she wanted to keep so that she could communicate.

Waltzing down the street, unable to sleep, physically because of her changes, she found this time of night a good time to be introspective, pensive, and well -- just be herself. She enjoyed walking past the shops, making note of their contents, making not of what she wanted to visit during the day hours, making note of the cost and seeing whether she had the ryo. She had put most of her ryo into Kumogakure no Sato Bank and Trust. Even now though, she had to tell the people what she was using and why. She was free, at least her freedom was more than those prisoners who were incarcerated in Kumogakure No Sato’s dungeons, but she wasn’t free. She felt the cage of the Raikage, the Emperor of the land of Lightning around her. Sure she could fly around her cage, but she couldn’t see the world, couldn’t spread her wings past the cage, and wasn’t able to do the things she loved without an escort. The firm hands on her shoulders, guiding her where to go, who to treat, what to say, what to do.

Her feline instincts told her to stop, her ears picking up as she picked up the sounds of pages fluttering in the wind. A book was falling and as it hit the cobbled stones that she was standing on she hissed at it and looked up to find, to her surprise, none other than Hanako-chan. She batted the book over to the side of the building and started her ascent.

It was easier with her ninja powers to climb the walls straight up, but would have given her away as a ninja and not just a cat, so she took to the drainpipe, clutching it with her claws made of the Megallium that she was known for. They flashed white in the moonlight as she made her way up to the first roof outcropping, then jumped to a balcony, stalked over to a lifted roof and slinked her way up to where Hanako-chan was. She wondered what the girl was doing at this time of night, and why she had tossed her medical book down, almost hitting Chiaki in the process.

Eloquently, she opened her mouth, about to speak the Genin’s name and instead let out a very feline call, “Nyan~!” to Hanako-chan. Then she blinked her golden-green eyes, and studied her pupil, her feline shape was that of a gray tabby, striped with a tan underside with black spots to match her stripes. She sat down and stared, as felines do, at her pupil, waiting for an explanation.

Jutsu UsedShow

Silicone~Iryotetsu jutsu: Henge form change.
D ranked Silicone jutsu.
After performing the correct hand seals the user can condense or expand their silicone and Megallium form to compact into smaller forms roughly 1/10th their size or up to 3x their size. This form must be a mundane shape, and the user does not gain any benefits from the change, though they can match their outlook to imitate what form they take (from a human's perspective.) They, for all intents and purposes become this shape, but do not change weight nor do they gain or lose strength, speed, or any other things from this form. This is usually used for infiltration missions and is a more advanced version of the Henge, requires an E-body, and requires that the user be a Silicone-megallium e-body.

[HotelBravo]

The pages flapped. They fluttered. She knew that it wasn’t because they were a bird fighting against the power of gravity, but her mind was drawn to how much it really did seem like a bird that was falling and flailing desperately to regain mastery of the air. Thunk. It hit the sidewalk far below and the force caused the bindings of the book to break and the pages and the cover to scatter across the street. Hanako watched the paper dance as the gentle breeze lifted them. The cover and some of the pages remained where it was. The library’s stamp on the inside revealed that it was not even Hanako’s book to destroy, but instead it was one that belonged to the library. There was the sound of the drainpipe groaning as something put its weight upon it. Hanako’s attention was then drawn to a small creature climbing its way up to her.

The cat stalked towards her, and Hanako watched it curiously. It stopped not too far from her and cried out to her. ”Cat.” Hanako said while pointing at the cat. She stood and stared at the cat in silence while the buzz in her head hummed. There were a thousand things going on in the head of Hanako and the one that came out is the simple observation that she had made. Somewhere in there feelings and thoughts that she didn’t understand were trapped behind her lips. Feelings that she couldn’t express with her face and body only that they were painful and she had no way to share them. ”I will tell you a story.” She answered after a moment of strange silence.

She sat down upon the roof and patted her lap. ”You should get comfy first. It is cold in Kumogakure and it is a long story.” Hanako watched the cat, waiting to see what it would do. She did hope that it would come and sit in her lap and listen to her tell it a story. She didn’t really know how to interact with cats any more than she did with People. She knew somewhere that cats didn’t understand language and that you had to speak to them with your body language. Yet, where did that leave her? The knowledge of this did not give her the answer of how to approach this, so she did so the only way she knew how. She patted her lap again encouragingly.

[Kanade]

Swishing her hips and her tail following suit in the air a bit she walked hither and thither, as a cat would, not enjoying being called like some common dog, but she decided to humor her disciple. Perhaps it was because she wanted to make sure that she was in tip-top shape, or perhaps it was because she expected Hanako to explain why she almost brained her sensei-turned-cat. Regardless, she sauntered over finally, a look from her feline slitted eyes and she flopped against the genin’s leg with a sigh, which came out of her feline self as a sort of grunted huffing noise. She had meant to lean against Hanako’s leg, but instead pushed it out of the way as, she had forgotten, she still weighed the same, though she was more compact. Grumbling, she righted herself, twisted and turned a couple of times and decided to go into cat-loaf. Curling her tail around herself for warmth and looking up at her disciple with a feline, ‘well, get on with it’ look.

She tried to not look annoyed or bored, but she didn’t know how else cats looked, so the feline features settled into their usual annoyed stare as she waited for her disciple to start talking. She really had grown fond of the girl, and had decided that Hanako speaking her mind was a boon more than a bane, and she enjoyed the fact that she didn’t have to sit and second guess every little expression on her face as she usually just blurted it out the moment that she sat down, or stood up, or moved, or examined a wound.

One ear twitched at that last memory as she stared out across the tops of the roofs, the cool mountain air was refreshing, as she had given herself nerve endings, the body’s natural system to let the CNS know when there was danger and to give the body urges to make sure that it didn’t damage itself. Though dulled in her elemental body, she still had them, and she had also given herself all of the natural organs, with all of their natural functions. It was because of this that her tiny cat stomach decided to chime in with a ‘grrl?’ noise.

[HotelBravo]

Hanako eyed the cat as it moved towards her and pushed her leg out of the way. It was a shock to Hanako but then the creature seemed to be satisfied with circling the spot a few times before ending up in a comfortable position. The cat wore the bored expressions that all cats wore, although Hanako couldn’t tell the difference. The beastie looked out into the night across the mountain village’s towers and out into the night sky. Despite what one may think - Kumogakure was still very much awake. It wasn’t the wakefulness of the day however. It was different. Where humans marched the streets during the day, creatures like this cat prowled the night. This cat, and Shinobi. As Hanako sat still her senses were honed and she could listen to the tell tale sound of sandals skipping across roof tiles, and the sound of crickets and the chirps of bats. She could feel the chill of the cold wind in the Mountain air. The tranquility was disturbed only slightly by the grumbling of the cat’s stomach. Hanako pulled out a field ration of canned fish and pulled the tab and lifted the lid and set it before the cat as a peace offering.

”This place is very different from Hanamura. That is where I am from. I lived there with my Papa and Mama and all of my siblings and Granny too. You could smell the sea there. People always had trouble with me. It felt like I could never do anything right. Everyone was always angry, but I loved them still, and I know that Papa and Mama loved me even if they would get upset. Granny said that they just had a hard time understanding me sometimes. A bolt of lightning set our house on fire and I got separated from everyone but Granny. She said she would take me to Kumogakure for my education - but I sometimes wonder if Papa and Mama are doing okay. Granny made me go to school - but then she stopped coming home, and now I am all by myself and I don’t know where my family has gone. Like you I think, isn’t that right cat? I felt many things before but I never felt as lonely as I have here. It is a cold place in Kumogakure, not just temperature but I feel it in my heart sometimes. I don’t want to be alone. I want Granny to come back and I want Mama and Papa. Granny told me to listen to my superiors no matter what, but now she is gone and do I still have to listen to them? It just hurts being by myself. Sometimes when I’m busy I can forget about the feeling, but it always comes back at times like this.Its boring… Thats why I dropped the book, because I was bored and wanted to see something interesting. It wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would be though”

Hanako picked up a pebble and flicked it so that it tumbled off the roof. She watched it fall as if it was some kind of Rube Goldberg machine. As it clittered to the ground, Hanako abruptly leapt from her spot and ran down the wall using the Wall Walking technique. She began to chase the pages of the book and haphazardly stuff them back into the cover of the book.