2018-04-30 - The First Step
| Title: The First Step | |
|---|---|
| Summary: In which Kasagami faces the difficult part, with some help. | |
| Who: | |
| Where: The Araki Estate | |
| OOC - IC Date: Mon, April 30, 2018 - Tues, April 14, 2015 | |
<Pose Tracker> Kasagami Araki [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
Swish. Swish. Swish.
Thus goes Kasagami Araki's wooden training nodachi in her dojo. She well knows just how dire the state of things are for her Estate. But the girl is stubborn. The termite infestation has mostly left the dojo alone, and so she's training as hard as she can today. Three short posts have been set up, and there's a rotating beam besides. Kasagami pushes herself to the limit as she dances from the first, to the second, to the third post. A single strike each as that turning post with it's alternating blunts of wood come for her. First a swift strike from the tip, a hop back and she hangs in the balance. A two-handed strike down, and Kasagami wobbles but hops to the last short post.
She carries through the motion, spins, and raises up the heavy wooden blade that requires both of her strong arms. The longest rotating wooden 'sword' smacks close to the hilt, and the young woman's physical skills finally give out. She overbalances, and is sent towards the floor with a loud thud and her training sword falling out of her hands. It's a good two foot fall. Breath is knocked out of her.
She rubs the wood-based lasceration against one wrist. Dressed in traditional samurai training garb, it's a rough lesson. Whump. It takes her a second or two to start standing up from the impact.
<Pose Tracker> Setsuna Meioh [Infinity Institute (U)] has posed.
After discovering the great estate house itself entirely empty as opposed to almost completely so, it is easy enough for Setsuna Meioh to guess the second most likely place to find Kasagami Araki. Maybe even the /most/ likely... She arrives at the dojo entrance and stands tall in the door frame and watches as the one she seeks goes from post to post. Impossible for her not to admire such skill and athleticism, as expressed by that dear form.
Admiration does not dispel the concern in her gaze, there even before Kasagami overbalances and takes a hard fall. Then, though, she unfolds her arms and crosses the dojo floor barefoot, her heels stowed neatly at the entrance.
"Training again?" Setsuna asks as she nears, her dark floral day dress flowing to a halt after she does with a swirl of fabric around her calves. She's an easy arm's reach away.
"Come in, Kassie. I'll wrap that for you." There is something on the senshi's mind, and the pensiveness conveys in her voice. "You've been at this a while, now. Days. Take a break. Come in. We can figure out what comes next."
<Pose Tracker> Kasagami Araki [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
"It's fine!" Offers Kasagami Araki stubbornly. She sounds dazed, winded, and really that was a terrible fall for even someone so skilled as her. Her body shudders, and Kasagami shoves herself to her feet. She tries to look away from Setsuna. That day dress flutters, and Kassie manages to smile. She pulls herself up out of stubborn defiance.
Her wrist is reddened, and the young woman brushs off her hand gently. She winces every time, thanks to the fall. A smile.
But it's /Setsuna/. She waves her wrist, and then leans up and flexes. Surely she'll be fine. Surely!
A small pause. "I will take a break when I achieve perfection!" Suddenly shouts Kasagami. Even as her arm shudders, she looks back to Setsuna, smiling, and the young woman looks /tired/!
She laughs just a bit. And then she wobbles from one foot to the other.
And then she pauses. Exhaustion starts to set in. She really /looks/ at Setsuna.
A brief pause. Her arm hurts. She offers it to Setsuna.
Days. Take a break. She shudders.
A single look.
"...Where can I start to figure out where to rebuild? I want to be a King! To.." Pause. To inspire. Eri has her pondering.
A gulp.
She slowly starts to try to get up.
"Where do I go from here?" Finally asks Kasagami, as she slowly gets up. Her wrist still aches, as she wobbles.
<Pose Tracker> Setsuna Meioh [Infinity Institute (U)] has posed.
"It is not fine," Setsuna counters, as calm as Kasagami is riled in that moment. She sees the winces as well as the smiles, the weariness behind the bravado. "You are running yourself into the ground, Kassie. But you're running in place."
The wobble pulls Setsuna forward like she's on strings, ready to catch the athlete if she falls -- but Kasagami rights herself. Instead, she takes that arm as it's offered. She uses both hands: one to support Kasagami's forearm with a cupped palm, the other feathering about that angry red mark to assess.
Gentle, but firm, that touch.
"Mmmh, this will want some ice. Maybe you can achieve perfection in a day or two, when the swelling goes down." A brief smile, but it slides away at the earnest questions.
And then she half crouches as the other young woman moves to get up again, moving one arm to slide round Kassie's waist if she'll allow it -- the touch somewhere between careful and familiar, and wholly supportive. She's thinking as she does so. Setsuna has one answer, if not /the/ answer, she just has not decided how to give it.
In the end she opts for directness. Once Kasagami is up Setsuna keeps supporting her, stays close, and looks her in the eye.
"Where do you go? Back to Ohtori, Kassie. You go back, and show them you will not be kept down." Gentle, but firm, that voice.
"This... is not training. Not really. You know that. You are hiding in this dojo."
<Pose Tracker> Kasagami Araki [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
Twitch. Even as she rights herself, Kasagami greets Setsuna with that weary look. She doesn't respond. Instead she simply glares!
But the wobbly Kasagami is caught by Setsuna, and so she's pulled forward. Like a weary marionette, a touch to a forearm, a touch to the other, she's held up and Setsuna regards her own self-inflicted wounds.
Ice. Swelling. Kasagami Araki peers back stubbornly with one good eye at Stetsuna Meioh with the kind of defensiveness that only one who is truly both arrogant and yet willing to inspire with /ambition/ can manage. She reaches down for her fallen wooden blade, and hauls it up above her head.
'This is not training. Not really. You know that. You are hiding in this dojo.'
And then she swings.
Once. Twice. Thrice.
Kasagami nearly tips over but holds on. She laughs. Kassie lets go of her wooden blade.
"Don't think I'm hiding!" Comes the weak retort from Kassie. The blade slides across the wood of her Dojo. A pause. And then Kasagami Araki shudders.
"...Am I?" A pause. "Then let's both show that Ohtori underestimates both of us!" Offers the young woman before she stops.
She shudders. Setsuna is right. A pause.
"....Where should I go? What does Ohtori have for me, now that I..." Won't be kept down. Pause.
One final pause.
"Setsuna-chan, do you think I can really change the world?" Kasagami asks of her lover.
<Pose Tracker> Setsuna Meioh [Infinity Institute (U)] has posed.
Garnet eyes follow as Kasagami takes the training blade back up. Having said her piece, the senshi waits, her only movement a folding of arms over her chest. Tired muscles heft the crafted length of wood over their heads and she watches -- not their weary twitch, but Kasagami's face.
The powerful, skilled warrior brandishes her weapon on high, all stubbornness and arrogance roused. If the edge is wood and not steel, the arm and will wielding it are no less intimidating for that difference.
Three swings -- the air whirs, split thrice, and stirs around them from the force of displacement. Long strands of evergreen rise behind, light and shining, pulled to a sinuous wave by the near overhead passage of the training blade.
Setsuna stands tall, without flinch or falter, as she ever has in the face of Kasagami's fury. Not untouched: as her love laughs and drops the blade, as she shudders, Setsuna's eyes share trust, and the depths of her caring. But her arms remain folded as her hair settles back down over her shoulder, locks still displaced to one side.
"Ohtori has your first step. It is a small one. I know you want to take this whole thing on now, somehow, but... it's no youma, to be taken down in one great battle, Kassie. You have a long path ahead of you. And you begin with one step. The first one, the hard one.
"Going back to classes. To the dorms. Picking back up again. It is hard, but because it's /you/... I know you are up to this."
That was the easier of two very difficult topics. The other, they have not spoken on since that day back in the cafe, when their paths diverged so painfully. When the senshi confessed her lack of understanding of her love's life ambition.
So Setsuna pauses, too. Her gaze drops by fractions. She studies the other young woman's chin, her lips, traces the line of one shoulder before returning to that steel eye. Truth. She just told Kassie to do the hard thing, how can she not do the same?
"I believe in you. I believe in your brave soul, in the passion that drives you. I believe in the goodness of your heart. You... have told me so much, but then again so little, about your goals, Kassie. What you're asking... how meaningful is my answer, before I understand what you really mean by the question? You deserve better than that from me. Someday... soon. We can talk about it, perhaps." The last part is said gingerly.
"But you've already changed the world, as far as I am concerned." She unfolds her arms and flutters a little gesture, a patting, over her heart. "It is a different place with you lighting it up, Kassie." A smile, small. "First things first. School, then the world."
<Pose Tracker> Kasagami Araki [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.
'First things first, School then the World." That alone has Kassie pausing. She's at once alone upon the Dojo,ignoring the infirmity of the wood below her. A twitch of her brow and she really peers at Setsuna.
Teeth grit. If it were just a single battle, if it were just one or two or ten-thousand youma? That would have been an easy task. But the thought of going back to class, to once again living in the dorm and living among the many souls that make up the classes of Ohtori?
A hard thing indeed! Even as Setsuna asks what she means about her own goals? Kassie chokes, even as she lays out from dropping her own sword. A cough, and she's upon her feet.
"We both deserve better than our answers. If it's for you? I...will go back even if it hurts!" A slight pause. And then arms reach, to trace along Setsuna and end in a gentle gesture towards herself.
"No. I haven't changed the world just yet. But there are still those I love!" Kasagami praises, and then she peers to Setsuna slowly, her gaze softening.
Her laugh is long.
"School...then the world, huh?"
She almost sounds afraid as she follows Setsuna's lead.
