Privacy Outside the Village

Tonou was hastily making his way outside the village in the dead of the night, hoping that no one would notice or want to trail him. Under his arm was a large package. It was covered by his cloak. Finally making his way outside the village into an under ground cavern in the dunes, he hastily unwrapped the package.

Mianyi was out in Suna late at night taking a long walk to help clear her head when she saw someone moving quickly and with purpose through Suna. Although she's off duty, her status as a ninja prompts her to not let this go unnoticed so she starts to slink behind the figure in the shadows. It doesn't take her long to realize that she is tailing Tonou of all people.

She briefly considers whether or not she wants to keep following him, since it's entirely likely he would realize she was tailing him and confront her, but her curiosity wins out. She follows him out of the village and into the dunes, realizing with some alarm that neither of them should be out here at this hour. She has on an evening cloak, suitable for walking around in Sunagakure at this hour, but out in the dunes she shivers under the stiff wind. Still shivering, she approaches the underground cavern and peers in, hoping Tonou doesn't realize she's there. But he's so much better at being a ninja than her, he'll probably find her.

Tonou is too focused on what he is doing to notice Mianyi behind him. The often perceptive Tonou is digging into this package and removing wooden pieces. Some of these pieces have pipes, shuriken, kunai, and poison pellets inside. As he is unwraps each peace and puts it on a small table he hah previously brought in, it becomes obvious these are pieces to a puppet. The cavern room is decorated with candle holders than lighten up the cavern pretty well.

Mianyi shivers as she crouches just outside the cavern, watching Tonou. It dawns on her that what he has are pieces of a puppet and she smiles to herself. She had been wondering what his interest was in puppets lately. Ever since they had caught that thief in the storeroom, Tonou had shown up now and then with a puppet on his fingers to play with.

She remains just watching in the periphery, too shy to step forward and reveal that she followed Tonou and was spying on him. Besides, giving herself away like that would mean she would have to explain herself, and it would probably take more than a sentence to do so.

Tonou began to piece together parts of the puppet. It was more intricate than he had thought. Piece by piece it was coming together, but some of the seals and pieces required chakra too properly lament and seal. Tonou was getting tired, and just about worn out before his puppet was nearly complete. The majority of the puppet was hidden in front of Tonou. Finally wiping a bit of sweat from his forehead he began to pull out string and fasten them to different parts of the puppet. "So close..."

Mianyi keeps up her stalker act, shivering a bit more when a particularly cold gust of wind blows across the dunes. She is not inside the cavern far enough to be protected from it. Although she is curious about what Tonou is building, she doesn't feel like revealing herself and having to explain her presence to him. Besides, admitting that she was, well, stalking him, is kind of embarrassing.

She stands from her crouch intending to slip back off into the dunes and back to Sunagakure, but a muscle cramp from the cold results in her stumbling and falling over in the sandy dune, although not into the cavern at least. Still, she's far more visible if Tonou were to look over at the cavern's entrance for any reason.

Tonou shifts uneasily at the noise. He leaps out of the cavern entrance, kunai in hand. "Mianyi... Come in." Tonou realizes it can't be helped, she is already out here and there is no sense in her staying cold. After all through all their missions Tonou has come to the conclusion that the two of them are going to be intertwined from here forward.

Mianyi cringes inwardly as she's found out. She really shouldn't have followed him. Or maybe she should have left earlier. Anyway, she should have done something else so she wouldn't have been found out like this.

She stands up and follows Tonou in silently, still shivering a bit but warming up once she's out of the direct wind. She focuses on the puppet, not touching it, but examining it from a bit of distance in quiet. Her fixation on the object should be indicative enough of her curiosity.

'Puppet':

OOC: The puppet that looks like Tonou is the puppet in the thread.

Tonou walks over to his puppet and sits it on top of the work bench. He then pulls out a kunai, cuts the inside of his hand open, and then places it on the seal on the back. The puppet shifts. Tonou then pulls nearly invisible string, infused with his chakra, to make the puppet jump upward and stand on the table crouched. There is a deep scratch on the side of the puppet's face like that of on Tonou's face.

"I think I'll call this one Kaze..."

Mianyi watches the proceedings silently, but with clear interest, especially when Tonou cuts his hand and seems to christen the puppet with blood.

When Tonou manages to make the puppet move, she makes a surprised, "Oh!" and clasps her hands together, not out of fright but happiness that Tonou successfully made it move. "It's beautiful," she says quietly.

"Taijutsu has limitations. We saw that in Kusa. Puppets are built off of imagination. There are no limitations there." Tonou makes Kaze walk up to Mianyi and shake her hand. Kaze then jumps backwards on top of Tonou's shoulder. After words he flips down and lands in an attack pose. "I'm going to ensure that you an I never get hit in battle again." Tonou subconsciously raises his hand to his touch his scarred face, Kaze does the same.

Mianyi breaks into a smile and laughs as she shakes the puppet's hand and watches it's antics. Her good mood dampens considerably when Tonou mentions getting hit in battle and touches his scar. Sheepishly she looks down at her feet and mutters, "I am sorry about that."

Tonou stares at Mianyi for a moment. The amount of time the two have spent together has grown on him, as much as he didn't want to admit it. He turns away and tends to tightening his Chakra String. "You are equally responsible for me being here as for the scar being here." Tonou rarely gave out compliments. But that was about as close to one as it was going to get.

Mianyi isn't sure what she was expecting by apologizing, nor is she sure why exactly she did. It just felt like the sort of thing that she had to finally get out and say to him since she feels responsible for the injuries he incurred during that fight. A bolder kunoichi would say that Tonou deserved it for his reckless decision to pursue information beyond their initial task, but it is not in Mianyi's nature to think such things.

Instead she shuffles her feet a bit unsteadily before awkwardly offering, "It's a very nice puppet. I look forward to seeing it in combat."

Tonou turns his head towards Mianyi. "Good. You can see it now. Let's train." Tonou walks past Mianyi and exits the cavern. He finds a flat ridge in the dunes and sets Kaze down, waiting for Mianyi to come up as well.

Mianyi stares after Tonou as he heads out into the dark dunes. "…"

She trots to catch up to him and his puppet, looking around at them and their surroundings for a moment as if unsure what is going on. She then takes up a defensive stance with a kunai in her hand and waits for Tonou and his puppet to make the first move.

Tonou looks down and Kaze. Flexing his hands he can feel Kaze movements as if it was an extension of his body. Kaze lunges forward at Mianyi, firing two small senbon from underneath the sleeves of each arm. Kaze then dives leaps into the air and curls into a ball, attempting to strike Mianyi.

In the darkness of the night out on the dunes, Mianyi has a difficult time seeing the thin slivers of senbon that are ejected from the puppet's arms. She's aware that something is coming, but it's hard to tell what. She moves quickly to the right, since staying in one spot would be foolish, and manages to avoid the two senbon by sheer luck of moving at the right time. She tries to duck and roll under the follow up attack, but is hit by the puppet landing, so her execution of this is less than graceful and she takes a good thump.

Mianyi half rolls, half scoots away, enough to give her some space to make a mini tornado and send it at the puppet, letting it pick up some sand and try to pick up the puppet as well to toss it away from her. If she can get it a bit aways, she'll throw a kunai at it. It's too dark for her to aim well enough to try and strike a joint and potentially disable a limb, so she aims for it's body to do damage. Just after she throws it, she suddenly regrets it, since damaging it would mean doing harm to Tonou's beautiful creation.

Kaze is sent backwards a good fifteen feet from the mini tornado, but over-all seemed unscathed. In fact, if anything, he seems faster. "Kaze... wind." Kaze doesn't just seem faster, he is faster. Tonou flexes his right knuckles, causing Kaze to move to the left, side-stepping the incoming kunai. Kaze then lowers his mouth, and unleashes a tennis-ball sized gust of concentrated wind right at Mianyi. The tennis-ball sized wind attack will give a good thump if it lands, but nothing to damaging.

Mianyi knows the meaning of 'Kaze' but she was not expecting, well, that to happen. She frowns slightly as her wind release jutsu appears to just power up the puppet, although inwardly she thinks that is a very clever idea. She rolls away from the small gust of wind. Out here she is able to think logically, knowing she is in no danger with Tonou here and this being a friendly spar. She throws a shuriken experimentally at the puppet to see if it's movements are slower after it used that attack. Maybe it used up the chakra it absorbed from her attack?

Kaze does seem a bit slower after the release of the attack. Kaze takes the shuriken full force, but it simply lodges in Kaze and continues his movement toward Mianyi. His arms raise, hidden behind the long sleeves, and suddenly extend out of the sleeves doubling in length in attempt to grasp Mianyi.

Well, it looks like Mianyi can't use her ninjutsu techniques against this puppet, seeing as how he absorbs wind nature chakra. She highly doubts that poison is something that would work against an object that doesn't need to breathe, so that leaves taijutsu and physical blows.

She crouches low in preparation for the puppet's oncoming attack, but is startled to see it's arms suddenly reach for her. She uses her position low to the ground to help launch her away, although sand is a poor platform for such jumps. One of the elongated arms succeeds in grabbing her ankle as she jumps away, bringing her to the ground. In response she tries to twist around the arm, looking for a joint at which to bring her hand down hard in hopes that will gum up some of it's workings and let her free.

Kaze releases and leaps backward, except the leap is beyond human. It manages to leap all the way back to Tonou. [color=purple]"Thanks."[color] One word, one meaning. The spar was over. He knew what he wanted to work on and what to fix as he busily begun messing with Kaze's various contraption. Middle of the night, in the middle of a sand dune, and still he busily worked trying to adjust certain components.

Mianyi gets up and brushes some of the sand from her cloak. She looks curiously at Tonou, hard at work already out here in the dunes in the middle of the night. Quietly she walks over to where he's working in the dark. "We should get back to Suna."

"Go then. I will be back later." Tonou lifted Kaze and carried him under his arm back to the cavern below. He had more work and testing to do, and would probably spend the night in the cavern messing with his new puppet. Tonou was starting down the path of a puppet master, and Kaze, his own invention, would be the strongest puppet to had ever graced the Earth. He would see to it.

End Thread