Percieving With The Senses
Kimi No Vanilla
Nobody writes about Kankurou, so I decided to take a
break from torturing Kakashi and remedy that lack.
Amusingly,
Kankurou and I share a birthday (May 15th). Maybe it was
destiny.
;)
Sadly, this piece is a little rambly and
pointless, but I
look at it as just getting a feel for the character.
(Needless to
say, all the backstory is speculation on my part.) Set
somewhere
after the disastrous Chuunin exams, but before Naruto Part
2. There
may or may not be a followup
chapter.
Purple was for
royalty.
When Kankurou awoke in the morning, the
first thing
he did was tie back his hair and put on his makeup. He
wrestled the
unruly dark mess into a ponytail (Temari always called it
his rat
tail on those rare days where he wore it down, because she
was a
well-trained professional bitch) and then into a bun at the
base of
his neck, slicked his bangs back out of his eyes, and then
his face
was ready to be painted. A quick wash with a damp, but not
soaked,
cloth -- water was precious in Sunagakure and not to be
wasted --
and then he would take his mirror, apply his theatre white,
and
begin to draw the lines on. (Temari always teased him about
using
his standard-issue shinobi's mirror to primp like a girl.
He usually
responded that she could probably do with some more
primping
like a girl. She usually responded to that with a
whack from
the fan. Kankurou needed to learn to keep his big mouth
shut.)
He was the only one out of the puppeteers of
Sunagakure who was allowed to wear purple on his face,
because he
was the only one who was a son of Kazekage. The designation
had
never meant much in his life beyond his father's decision
to give
him to the puppet troupe in the first place, but it did
mean that he
got to use nifty purple makeup that clashed with his hair.
Far
longer ago than he could remember, when he had been 2 or 3
and a bit
of political maneuvering gave him over to be raised by the
troupe,
he was told that at the time they hadn't even had any
purple
facepaint on hand, and had hurriedly had to mix up a batch
just to
herald his arrival. The very same day he had received his
first
markings. He couldn't remember a morning where he hadn't
woken up
and immediately begun his makeup, and quite honestly he
felt more
naked without it than he did without
clothes.
Genkurou the
fox, a sly but dangerous and driven creature, had been his
favorite
pattern for several years with its dramatic slashes and
angry
points; but lately, all things considered, he had been
feeling
calmer, so instead he wore his namesake. Kankurou, the
other
Kankurou, had been a famous actor and a great puppeteer. It
was an
honor to be allowed to carry on his name.
Once in a
while he
wondered what his name had been before he had been given to
the
puppet troupe, but no one seemed to remember, least of all
himself,
and the one man who could've told him was now dead by the
hands of
the Sound ninja (a feat for which he had idly considered
sending
Orochimaru some servants or artifacts or a fruit basket or
something, but he'd figured he would just get back whatever
he sent
along with its deliverer's severed head, so he hadn't
bothered).
Kankurou had always been the curious sort, but still, he
didn't
suppose it mattered that much. He wasn't really interested
in
carrying on any name given to him by Kazekage, the
conniving old
geezer. Kazekage had just wanted to get rid of him, and
he'd done it
thoroughly.
Well, it wasn't like Kankurou had ever
minded or anything. He wasn't hurt that he
was the
invisible middle son, overlooked by all concerned in favor
of his
brash sister or his frankly terrifying younger brother. It
wasn't
that he cared that everyone pushed him to succeed,
yet never
expected him to amount to anything. It wasn't that he
resented that his personal triumphs and his quietly
prodigious achievements among his troupe were all but
ignored.
After all, you knew you were a truly good
puppeteer
when the audience forgot you were there.
When the
lines were
done and perfect, then came the color. He took up his
sponge brush
and began blotting it in, purple down his nose, over his
lips,
across his cheeks, around his eyes. The eyes were the hard
part. It
had taken many months of practice, as a child, for him to
master the
feat of keeping each closed eyelid perfectly still in its
turn, even
as the brush pulled across thin delicate skin and made him
want to
blink. When he was very young, he'd constantly colored
outside the
lines, as it were. But by now the process was second
nature.
Once he was done and looked like himself
again, with
the thick purple stripes coloring his expression, he went
to pull on
his clothes. Black shirt with the crest of the puppet
troupe, black
pants, black sandals, black gloves over the purple tattoos
on his
palms. The hood came last, fitted carefully over his head
and
obscuring his hair. And then he was, as usual,
invisible.
Puppeteers, he had been taught as a
child, wore
black because they did not exist. The audience was meant to
see only
the performance, the players and the stage, not the puppet
masters
pulling levers and strings behind the scenes. When Kankurou
fought,
the one who truly went into battle was Karasu. Against all
but the
most formidable opponents, the puppeteer should fade into
the
background -- unnoticed, safe, and free to collect
information. It
was a philosophy that dovetailed neatly with the
traditional ideals
of the shinobi, and Kankurou lived by it, not so much out
of choice
as because it seemed to be an inescapable fact of his life.
The
background was his place, and maybe it would always
be.
Someday, he thought, when he was getting old for
a ninja
and barely middle-aged for a regular man and when peace of
some
measure had returned to Wind Country, maybe he would retire
from the
shinobi business. Spend the rest of his days in the
theatre, perform
with the puppets and maybe even with himself -- he thought
he was a
decent actor, when it got right down to it -- and maybe
become the
second famous Kankurou of Sunagakure.
But that was
then and
this was now, and Temari was going to bitch at him if he
was late,
so he shouldered Karasu and headed out to meet with his
unit -- his
family -- whatever, and take on their mission for today.
Sunagakure
was without a Kazekage, and it would be a while before the
place was
returned to any semblance of normal (not that he was sure
he'd ever
particularly appreciated Sunagakure's version of 'normal',
but what
it could become with a new Kazekage remained to be seen);
right now
they needed as many young ninjas as they could get for
doing all the
dirty work. It would probably be an espionage mission;
their team
got a lot of those. Or possibly a 'kill everybody really,
really
dead and don't leave any evidence' mission. They got a lot
of those
too. Trivial stuff with someone like Gaara
around.
But
Kankurou didn't mind. Every performer needed a chance to
rehearse.
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