To a Different Beat [open]

Another person walked into the stand. He was young, younger than Koshu at least, and he ordered some food and a drink. Koshu was a bit too preoccupied with his paperwork for small talk. He had a few more bites and scanned down the paper, seeing what all he could try and cut from the expenses. "I'm an anbu..." he mumbled to himself. "Ugh..." He placed the paper down and ordered another skewer of pork. "Well I guess it won't fix itself." He took out a blank piece of paper and started sketching in expenses as he remembered from the prior years. Ninja tools, armor, food, maintenance...and he noticed the problem. There was a large portion of money that was completely uncounted for.

He crumpled up the paper he was sketching on and looked at the other. Someone must have been stealing something. It could have been food, or worse, weapons. Kusho sunk in his chair, if one of the kids hurt themselves his dream was basically shattered. His pork came and was placed next to him. With a polite smile to the server, Kusho began once more eating, staring at the paper before him. He wasn't stressed, it would take a lot more than this to stress him, he just wasn't necessarily in the spirits to be dealing with something like this on his day off.

Kusho tried to speak in between bites. "Hello," he said with a smile, "my name's Kusho." He normally was very polite, but this was his first meal of the day, and it wasn't necessarily morning. Since he felt like he dealt with the task at hand well enough, his mind was free to focus on other things...like his stomach. "You're not a shinobi?" He said, looking at the man's glove. "It's ok if you're not a shinobi, I'm not going to kill you or anything." He laughed after a brief pause, "What symbol is that?" He pointed towards the protector wrapped around the glove. "Is it something your grandfather gave you or something? I haven't seen it before."

He kept his smile as he took another bite of the pork. His ignorance of foreign villages was showing, it could very well just be another village's symbol and he would have never heard of it. He unstrapped the drum attached to his back and placed it on the ground behind him, giving him some more freedom. Truth be told, he completely forgot it was even on his back, though it was beginning to feel slightly heavy.

"900 years huh? That's some serious history it's got. Pretty interesting. It's probably priceless, right?" Koshu pat the drum behin him. "This is priceless to me. Not because it's really old or anything, it's just saved my hide a few times." Koshu smiled at the anbu comment. Although it was true that an anbu shouldn't reveal his identity to the public, Koshu was a new anbu, and calling himself an anbu didn't really confirm it. "I think I'll be fine," he said.

Finally realizing he had a drink in front of him, Koshu drank some of the tea in his cup, before he continued talking. "I doubt anyone in this village would do anything to me anyways. I've done a lot for this little village, and I haven't really made any enemies. If you become a ninja, you should probably remember that. You can get rid of a curse, a poison, and even a life, but when you get rid of an enemy, you're only going to get a few more." Koshu paid for his meal and strapped on the drum. "Want to follow me? It's not a long walk."

Koshu answered the question but didn't respond to anything else. "I just didn't want to stay here that long, figured I'd wander around town a bit." As Koshu walked, his drum sometimes lightly hit his back, causing a small beat to play. They called him 'Loud' amongst the anbu, which is why he wasn't too afraid of his identity being leaked. Koshu and Loud were essentially different people. Koshu was relaxed, nice, and easy going. Loud was loyal, doing what needed to be done to complete the mission at hand.

"You should consider being a shinobi. I see something in you, ya know." It was just casual conversation for Koshu, but he normally gave a compliment when he could. "You're a pretty smart kid, and I'm sure you're a good fighter. That relic might be telling you to fight." Koshu readjusted the drum on his back.

"Just taijutsu eh? That might not be as much of a limit as you think. See, the trick isn't covering up your weaknesses, it's playing to your strengths. Who cares if you can't do ninjutsu if one punch can level a mountain, right?" Koshu motioned towards the drum on his back. "I carry this thing around everywhere I go, so I have some pretty good strength. I used to be pretty weak though. I was almost replaced in my genin team, and I ended up being the only one to pass the chunin exams the first time through." Koshu gave a thumbs up to Allen.

"Besides, there's still more you can do than just hand to hand combat. You have swords, kunai, shuriken, smoke bombs...just because you can't perform jutsu doesn't mean you can't be a ninja. And believe me, the pay is great." Once again Koshu adjusted his drum, almost rhythmically. His eyes seemed to wander a lot too, but he managed to keep focus on the conversation. "If I was a Jounin, I'd take you in a squad easy. You don't need raw power to win a fight. Most wars are won before the first jutsu is used through nothing but strategy."

"Interesting." After a few moments of silence, Koshu just gave a smile to Allen. He began to grow suspicious of this boy. However, if the boy did have ties to Rina, it would be suicide mentioning it now. "Well, at any rate, you're definitely a special kid. You shouldn't let your skills go to waste, ya know?" What is it with this kid anyways? Most kids can't wait to be shinobi. His story just isn't adding up...oh well. He looked up and noticed a few birds flying over head. "It's going to be dark soon, ya know." After adjusting his drum once more, he gave a polite smile. "You wouldn't want Rina scolding me for not letting you leave, right?"

In his head, thousands of thoughts were flying around at once pertaining to this child. Clearly he had something special going on, but what? What could cause someone to lose their jutsu abilities? It couldn't be a curse, he didn't flinch when I brought up the subject. Could it be a sealing jutsu? Maybe some kind of spiritual sever or medical jutsu? He had a feeling he wasn't even on the right track, and all the reward for staying on course would be was satisfying curiosity. It probably wasn't worth it.