>>5924069When speaking with Hotaru about it, she dispenses her wisdom: “Every person has a unique character to their outlook and thoughts. Maybe you could call it the orientation of a ninja’s soul? Some souls are better suited to certain scenarios, but every soul DOES have a situation where it’s the best possible driving force for a person to have. If a person feels paranoia in their bones, they’ll react to ambushes easier than someone whose soul is full of love and trust. When it comes to your soul, well, I can’t tell you what you should be doing. Only that you’ll improve when you identify your strengths and learn to apply them more broadly to cover for your weaknesses.”
“I understand. But that might take too long.” You say.
“If you weren’t fit to be a ninja, young man, you wouldn’t have graduated from the academy. Come... I’ll show you a jutsu. The Inu sign is the water sign, it forms the basis of many water jutsu. Perhaps the most basic expression of which is to move water…” She says, showing you the way to controlling water directly.
>You learn to Control Water, something of a proto-jutsu that can form the basis of more advanced techniques or simple tasks that don’t require a specialized jutsu. The principles of this jutsu were easy to pick up because they are already known to you through use of other jutsu.>This jutsu gives you general telekinetic control over water, but it’s not as strong or precise as a jutsu designed with a more specific purpose.—
You ponder Hotaru’s advice on the soul while you watch movies. What is the nature of a soul? What is the nature of YOUR soul? Not in the tacky descriptive sense of adjectives and labels, but in the real deep compulsion of your very nature. Maybe you were born for no reason, but there was something in you that colored everything you did. A deeper axiom of life that colored the flow of the thoughts in your mind, the actions in your body, and the direction of your attentions.
You liked a movie when it had a soul. Some kind of theme, obvious, implied, or buried. The idea of a movie that had something going for it beyond consumerist appeal, something beyond rote entertainment. You liked movies that meditated on a topic.
‘Birthday Party for Aiko’ is probably your favorite movie. It’s about an old civilian man whose wife has been murdered by criminals, and his grim, melancholy life after that. Despite the fact that he’s not strong and can’t do anything about it, he eventually resolves to take revenge by working hard and saving enough money to hire a shinobi to kill the criminals for him. His plans are ruined when his fields are burnt down by the same men who killed his wife, and in a mad rage he stabs the leader in the side with a scythe before being mercilessly beaten down by the armed men. As the old man lays dying by that bloodied scythe he catches a glimpse of sunset and his wife watching him as he passes on.
