Starring:
Date: July 19, 2012
Summary:
Kazeodori visits Asao while Asao is doing his favorite hobby, Creating clocks.
"Spare Time - Tick Tock Disaster"
4-A room in Puppeteer HQ
Asao was on the first floor. While he was a chuunin, he didn't have any sort of higher security and as such he did not have access to anywhere else. So his office area was a small 10' by 10' area that had various parts and pieces of puppets arranged in detailed spots sitting on top of scrolls that had even more detailed notes on them. The center of the room was a small desk that Asao currently sat at. In front of him was a wooden frame that had a small door on it. The guts of the clock was on the desk before him, parts all over as he worked on putting it together. Tokkan stood in the corner, leaned up against the wall, his ticking drowned out by everything else in the room. Yes, this room showed the reason why Asao wore a headset.
Kazeodori had been informed - by means of a courier bearing an enveloped addressed to a friend, who delivered said message to Kazeodori's father, who shouted at Kazeodori from the first floor of the house - that he was needed outside the Puppet Brigade HQ sooner rather than later. As in right now, his father informed him, after Kazeodori had yet to rustle after several minutes. Dressing himself with several huffs of disgust (because he'd had nothing to do today, and so was much looking forward to relaxing away the morning by sleeping), the young boy had found himself standing outside the Puppet Brigade, in the swift, chilling, winter morning air, chattering his teeth away to nothingness for seemingly no purpose. Not being one to easily idle, the youth - having waited an insurmountable 15 minutes or so - found himself, having never before been inside the Puppet Brigade HQ, inside the reception hall of the Puppet Brigade HQ, which, perhaps owing to the early hour, was barren save for an inexhaustible ticking echoing from within the interior.
Kazeodori peers as far as he can manage into the origin of the sound, not sure if he wants to subject himself to such endless repetiton, but too curious to resist.
"Hello…?"
A puppet, one that looked to have no one around, would drop down lightly from out of the shadows. Straightening and turn, the puppet revealed itself to be a giant mechanical spider and it had none of the noise common to Asao's own puppets. Finally, it's mouth opened as the multitude of eyes would rotate to focus on Kazeodori. "Greetings, Suna Shinobi. You have an appointment with someone within the HQ?"
Asao within his office was continuing that work on the clock, springs and gears were starting to assemble in the wooden frame, two small figures made out of sculpted stones were being set up on a rail line, the figures were going to be what came out when the clock would chime and potentially interact with a bell on the clock that was still to be installed.
"AHHHH!" would come the very loud, very noticeable eruption from Kazeodori's lips as the spider puppet slunk into view. Once, however, the strung wood beast would keep its calm - would not wind and gobble up the young boy - Kazeodori would, with his hands on his knees and his heart in his mouth, reveal the intent of his coming into the HQ.
"No, I… whew, you scared me," says the boy, finally straightening up, coughing his voice clear again.
"No, I was supposed to meet someone outside, but they didn't show. So I ca,me in here to get out of the cold, and then I heard a very… familiar ticking, and I was just seeing if it was who I thought it was."
The boy stops talking a minute, offers a short cough and two raised eyebrows, his own orbs peering back at the puppet spider.
"So… is it?"
For sure, nowhere else has Kazeodori ever heard such loud ticking, such precise, infinite ticking, as when Tokkan (and thus, Asao) are nearby. A wonder that the boy would wish to engage - or even sniff out - the other, who, for much of the pair's relationship, has been an enemy. It seems, as the days grow long again, and the nights short, that Kazeodori is… coming around?
The spider's reaction was that of any other sort of machine, no response to the yell. Once the boy spoke up, it's head would slowly rotate to the side, as if it was thinking about Kazeodori's request. The head would click back smoothly to the right way up again. "Ticking. Subsection, clockworks. Chuunin Asao. Assignment is office 4-A. First floor, third hallway. Is your appointment to meet Chuunin Asao?" The spider would shift, multiple legs clicking on the floor as one came up much like a person's hand would to point out at the hallway. "Go that way. You will find him quickly enough by the clicking."
Asao had finished building some of the gears for that clock's internal machine. The parts would carefully hook within the proper spots within the wooden block, clicking into place carefully. Now that the internal parts were together, they started moving, one spring was pushing them one way, which wound another spring the other way, causing a sort of see-saw movement back and forth, giving it that perpetual motion. Based off of those parts moving, he could continue the work on the clock, giving it the more common details everyone else would recognize as a clock.
The boy grins.
"Ah, yes, right. That's his name. Thanks," he offers, pedaling his own legs down the indicated corridor.
"First floor. 4-A," the youth mumbles, calling out - as he makes his way along - the respective consecutive rooms.
"1-A."
"2-A."
"3-A."
(A peek into this one reveals a darkened interior, with clumbs of shadows lurking and lumped in the corners.)
"Ah, here we are," states the youth, taking a stance outside the room marked "4-A." The boy stares at the door, and hears, with the faintest of leans and the closest of ears, the muffled, perpetual tick. Not only, mind you, the normal one associated with Tokkan, but seemingly Tokkan exponentially grown. Kazeodori shakes his head. How that boy Asao doesn't having a hearing problem, or - worse yet - a tic of his own, is beyond the Genin. Regardless, the youth smiles, reaches out a hand for the door, and with a whip of his wrist, flings open the door.
"Surpriiiiiii-AAAAAH!"
For the ticking, so muffled behind its enclosure, now - being set free - is tremendous and all but overwhelming for the young Kazeodori.
Asao starts to put the face on the clock when the door swings open. He looked up from the clock to peer over at the now cowering Kazeodori, a shake of his head given and one of those chakra strings was sent out. It would flicker around the door's corner and latch onto one of the ear muffs that was on the wall. Pulled off of the hook, it'd float over to hover in front of Kazeodori. "You may wish to use that. It is the reason they are there, afterall." Asao looked at the clock, then over at the genin, a moment's focus as he'd reach out to charge chakra into the scrolls, causing the resulting silence, except for Tokkan's singular ticking, to be almost as deafening. "Next time, I do recommend putting them on first."
As the deafening subsides with the placement of the headphones, so too does Kazeodori's ability to hear the mild voice of Asao. All the Genin can see is that the other is certainly talking, but what he's saying… well, that's anyone's guess. With the ticking so sweetly subdued, Kazeodori has no qualms about entering the workplace, his interest leading him right up beside Asao, watching carefully as the Chuunin examines, rearranges, cleans, and so subtly places all the pieces of the contraption that he's working on. Wishing to know more - perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of friendship, perhaps because he has completely forgotten that he was supposed to meet someone outside - Kazeodori puts his lips right near the ear of Asao's headphones, and says:"
"WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON? IT LOOKS INTERESTING!"
Asao would watch Kaze for a second before he would indeed return to work on the clock. So delicately the fingers of his were in setting the final micro gears. Everything had to be aligned properly or else it'd-
"GAHH!!" Falling out of the chair from Kazeodori yelling in his ear, he'd thump to the ground a moment. This of course, scattered parts for the clock with a tinkling sound that seemed to go to every corner of the room. Shaking his head to clear it, Asao looked up at Kazeodori confused. "Sasoki-san, why did you yell in my ear? The mufflers are suppose to only stop the ticking wave length. Or did I grab the wrong one?"
Tragically (maybe?), the pieces to the clock drop along with the boy. That, however, doesn't stop Kazeodori from chuckling at the sight of the Chuunin falling out of his chair. He does offer a hand to the older boy, a smile on his lips. He still can't hear what the other is saying though, and - as with the blaring of his last words - states, rather matter of factly:
"I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
Isn't it odd how people feel the need to raise the level of their voice - regardless of how others might hear it - just so it may be heard by themselves? It's as if, were they not to hear their own voice, they might not believe that they were, in fact, speaking. Kazeodori, thus inclined to be one such person, stands now with his hand outstretched, a playful grin on his lips, and all the good intentions of a mischievous friend. Things, it would seem, have changed quite drastically for the two teammates. That is, if you don't pay attention to the fact that there are now delicate clock pieces strewn across the floor.
And of course with the uncanny accuracy of one who didn't think to look where they were going, there was the softest of 'crunch' under Kazeodori's foot. A soft sigh given, Asao would take the offered hand to climb to his feet and with a flick of the chakra string, remove the ear set that Kaze had put on. He was going to be one of those people that had to hear himself to know he was talking. "Sasoki-san, please, watch where you are stepping, hai? The pieces are brittle glass and I think one is now broken." He'd look around for a moment, before shaking his head slightly with a shrug and look back to Kaze. "Welcome to my work shop. Is there something I can help you with?"
Kazeodori lifts up his sandal-covered foot, wincing as he sees the minute devastation beneath it.
""Ahhhh… sorry, Asao."
The Genin glances behind himself, and takes a few furtive steps backwards, away from the miniscule carnage. He finds himself back in the doorway, and so leans against a side of the doorframe.
"But no… nothing you can help with. I'm supposed to be- oh, crap!"
Kazeodori whirls around, glancing out at the now-full sunlight pouring into the hall from the well-ripened day.
"Gotta run!" the boy shouts, waving a farewell arm in the air as he hurries back down the corridor from whence he came. He had, in fact, forgotten all about the meeting he was to have — the whole reason he had come to be here in the first place. Ah, yes, what friendship is blossoming between Asao and Kazeodori, for only a true friend would disturb your workplace, crush the thing you were working on, and flee just as rapidly as he'd come. What friends indeed.
