Kubo ♫ Kubo and the Two Strings (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bachido) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
legionworld2016-09-28 08:47 pm
bachido) wrote in legionworld2016-09-28 08:47 pm
Entry tags:
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Who| Kubo and whoever wants to meet Kubo!
What| The performer is out and about, getting to know his new audience.
Where| Crew Quarters, the Habitat Deck, any public spaces where a wandering minstrel might meet music . . . mappreciators.
When| Whenever
Warnings/Notes| n/a
There was a LOT of land to wander here, a lot of seasides and mountains giving way to cities like nothing Kubo had ever seen, and he'd seen a Temple of Bones protected by a skeleton demon, a Garden of Eyes lurking under a long lake. There were whole rooms of thrumming metal and strange noises and smells, people who . . . perhaps weren't stranger than anyone he'd ever met, but not everyone had met celestial monsters and cursed humans.
Kubo was enthralled by all of it.
The chance to play for a new audience, so completely outside what Kubo had ever seen before, was exciting. He had plenty of tales that he was prepared to launch into for, say, the entertainment of the villagers back home, but this audience was so new, it paid to get a feel for them a bit before starting. They wouldn't yet drop what they were doing to listen when he started to play, and he'd have hated for someone to miss out on the beginning of a story just because they didn't know they were about to hear one.
As he explored, looking for people, Kubo played his shamisen. Though he played with less intensity than he typically performed, the lively notes were crisp and confident and two sheets of paper followed him as he walked, folding and unfolding themselves into animals, dancers, warriors in competition, moving like living creatures abstractly illustrating the music.
The boy in the red beetle robes looked around for eyes to catch, and for the glint of a flying coin or two - he wasn't putting on a real show yet, but it paid (literally) to keep a sharp eye out.
What| The performer is out and about, getting to know his new audience.
Where| Crew Quarters, the Habitat Deck, any public spaces where a wandering minstrel might meet music . . . mappreciators.
When| Whenever
Warnings/Notes| n/a
There was a LOT of land to wander here, a lot of seasides and mountains giving way to cities like nothing Kubo had ever seen, and he'd seen a Temple of Bones protected by a skeleton demon, a Garden of Eyes lurking under a long lake. There were whole rooms of thrumming metal and strange noises and smells, people who . . . perhaps weren't stranger than anyone he'd ever met, but not everyone had met celestial monsters and cursed humans.
Kubo was enthralled by all of it.
The chance to play for a new audience, so completely outside what Kubo had ever seen before, was exciting. He had plenty of tales that he was prepared to launch into for, say, the entertainment of the villagers back home, but this audience was so new, it paid to get a feel for them a bit before starting. They wouldn't yet drop what they were doing to listen when he started to play, and he'd have hated for someone to miss out on the beginning of a story just because they didn't know they were about to hear one.
As he explored, looking for people, Kubo played his shamisen. Though he played with less intensity than he typically performed, the lively notes were crisp and confident and two sheets of paper followed him as he walked, folding and unfolding themselves into animals, dancers, warriors in competition, moving like living creatures abstractly illustrating the music.
The boy in the red beetle robes looked around for eyes to catch, and for the glint of a flying coin or two - he wasn't putting on a real show yet, but it paid (literally) to keep a sharp eye out.
no subject
He paused before adding, "Actually, I don't think my normal is anyone else's normal either. My mother was a Moon Princess, and my father was the greatest samurai warrior of all time, and for most of my life, we thought he was dead -"
He paused, realizing that these snippets of Sariatu and Hanzo's story were not exactly being told to their finest potential. If Mabel was going to hear the stories, she should hear them told well. "But, uh, what's a zombie?"
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At Mabel's vision of his mother's life based only on her title, Kubo shook his head, realizing that he might have given Mabel an inaccurate idea of his life by mentioning that his mother was royalty.
"No, it . . . I don't think it was like that at all," he said. "She never told me stories about the Moon, but I know it was a cold, cruel place."
He pushed aside his bangs, revealing his eyepatch. "Her father, the Moon King, took my eye when I was a baby," he said. "And cursed my father. Grandfather took away his memories of us and made him wander the farlands as a giant beetle. I never went to the moon. I don't think it would be a very nice place to go."
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You don't wanna know, man.She nodded at his first question, assuming it was more a question of how magical they were. They weren't flying Hellspawn demons or anything. They were just regular corpses, after all.His story drew rapt attention from Mabel though. At his explanation of his eyepatch, she gasped, covering her mouth with one hand so that her next question came out slightly muffled.
"But why would he take your eye?! Is there a freaky moon potion that uses baby eyes?" Super sensitive.
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It was a heavy, heavy subject - and by the sound of it, Mabel had heavy subjects of her own that she was ready to cheerfully blaze a trail past.
Oddly enough amidst all this talk of dead people and grandfathers stealing eyes, Kubo was suddenly comforted to have met someone who was prepared to do that. He didn't have many friends, because what would he have talked to the children in his village about? His murdered parents, his father's cursed decade in exile, his mother's advancing illness as he cared for her, lonely and afraid, in his cave by the sea - AND catching fireflies in the mulberry fields, skipping stones on the water, sailing a boat made of leaves across the Long Lake?
Maybe here, people with beautiful and terrible experiences like his were a little easier to find. And beautiful and terrible experiences were always better when you didn't face them alone.
"I'm glad he didn't," Kubo added, smiling again at Mabel. "I like having my humanity. If he'd taken both my eyes, we probably wouldn't have even started talking to each other, and then I wouldn't get to learn what a date was! OR a zombie." He paused. "Or a school, or science, or what your cities are like -"
THERE WAS VERY LITTLE FRAME OF REFERENCE.
no subject
With her sometimes bad luck and level of desperation when it came to romance, there was usually already a big 'BUT' forming by this point in conversation. 'BUT he's a merman', 'BUT he's already in love with his puppets', or 'BUT he's actually a stack of gnomes'. This time though, it seemed different. They were both making the best of weird and unrelatable situations.
They were kind of on the same wavelength... Except for the part about him not knowing anything about dating. Or modern society apparently. But those things didn't matter!
"Listen, I am going to tell you all about those things! Well, maybe my brother can tell you about science, and I'll fill you in on the other stuff. But that'll be later, because we're here!" She announced, waving airily to the mess hall entrance.
"This is the place where you can become a star!"
no subject
He was getting the hang of this, communicating across such a WIDE barrier of culture and experience!
He smelled food, and recognized a gathering place where he saw it. He brightened, looking around at the crowd of people.
"This will be a great place to perform," he agreed. Then, taking a deep breath, considering, he pulled his shamisen off his back, looked around the room and settled his gaze on Mabel.
"What sort of story do you think I should tell first?"
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And it definitely was a great place to perform. Mabel had already heard a bit of his music, so it wasn't like he'd totally have to force people into being his audience. He was already great! But, she knew how fickle audiences could be. The fact that they'd be stuck watching until they finished eating couldn't hurt!
There was just one thing.
"Before I answer that, I just have to check something." She moved closer and pulled up one of his sleeves. YEP. JUST AN ARM. PHEW. "Okay! I think you should tell a story with adventure, and romance! Maybe with some mystery too, if you can!"
no subject
He shrugged off the oddness and positioned his fingers on the shamisen. "Well - this is really the only romantic story I know," he said, with a little shrug and a smile. "But there's plenty of adventure. I think you'll like it."
He struck a few loud initial notes on his shamisen, and a flurry of paper flew from his pack, the colors spinning in an eyecatching whirl before landing neatly on the floor in front of him.
"If you must blink -" Kubo called, in his best attention-getting, performing voice - "Do it now!"
His papers leaped to attention as he began his song, and his story, in earnest.
"The Moon King, in his palace in the sky, saw all that mortals did by night, and judged them harshly for it," he began.
White papers flew over his head to fold together into a pockmarked, hovering origami moon. With a flash of improvisation, he eyed the lighting elements in the cafeteria, and sent blue paper spinning around the room to cover the lights, shading him and the paper moon temporarily in a nighttime blue.
Kubo continued playing. Grey and black papers flew out of his pile, folding themselves into intricate origami figures of twin women. Their black capes billowed and their wide-brimmed hats shaded stark-white faces, indented with permanent, curling smiles. The origami women would have seemed sinister even without the eerie blue shadows.
"Jealous of his power, the Moon King sent his cold and beautiful daughters to kill any mortal who dared become strong enough to challenge the Heavens," Kubo went on, as the origami women circled his playing stage, spinning paper scythes and chains too intricate for mortal origami, the figures moving with all the skill of real warriors. "No one knew where to expect the Moon Sisters, only when, for they only came by night. And no one knew how to defend against the Moon Sisters - only that of the three, the eldest was the coldest, the most deadly - she who shone the brightest of them all!"
The blue paper shades whipped away from the lights, the paper moon exploded, and an origami figure of white paper, clothed in a golden flower seemed to emanate its own light, as the white paper that had been the moon gathered around the cafeteria's lighting elements to reflect that light onto the eldest Moon Sister. The woman in the golden kimono landed between her sisters, gentle as a falling leaf, and drew a paper sword from her flower gown.
Kubo kept playing as he told his tale, his intricate music energizing the tale of the Moon Sisters and their great power, their implacable skill. Time and again, the sisters came down from the heavens to kill one lord or another. Some were evil and groping, their threats to the Moon King real and oriented by greed, but as many noble and virtuous, good leaders fell to the Moon Sisters - great people whose threat to the Moon King was imagined, or made out of anger that the Moon King should hang over the land of Mortals forever, commanding their deaths at his whim.
The Sisters in Kubo's tale could not be swayed from their duty to their father, not by bribes, not by pleas, and not by the skill of any mortal warrior. Paper heroes and villains alike fell to their cold blades, as paper stars whirled overhead in the passage of centuries.
"The Moon King had chosen the next mortal to fall," Kubo said, having brought his audience through one exciting battle after another, each one a decisive victory for the Moon Sisters. "It was none other than the greatest samurai who ever lived, Hanzo, Lord of the Beetle Clan."
Kubo wove a new thread of song into his paper drama, as red paper flew from his pile to form the figure of a samurai, his intricately woven paper armor emblazoned with a beetle crest. Even in paper, Kubo gave the warrior a great power and presence that he hadn't afforded the others who fell before the Sisters.
"Hanzo's insolent quest for the Sword Unbreakable lead him to the Hall of Bones, and it was there that the Moon King decreed that the bones of the Samurai should remain," Kubo went on. Red paper shaded this scene, surrounding the samurai in a dark and threatening atmosphere as Hanzo crept, carefully, towards an enormous hand of bones, upon which lay a single paper sword - but the samurai halted as brilliant white light fell again on the golden-gowned eldest of the Moon Sisters. "The eldest arrived first, to carry out her father's judgement!"
The paper figures fought, and this time, one mortal warrior alone held a Moon Sister at bay. There was no sign he could defeat her, but their battle was fiercer than the others, longer, a skilled brawl that was as near to a battle of equals as the Moon Sister had ever fought.
"Long was their battle," Kubo said, as the paper figures came together in a tense clash. Kubo held the warriors there, in a tense balance, stretching out the notes in his song, but there was something more stirring in the direction he took the song. "Until, locked sword against sword, the Moon Princess saw something she had never seen before. She saw a smile on the face of her enemy. The Sword Unbreakable lay forgotten as the samurai said four words that changed everything - 'You are my quest.'"
Kubo released the threads of the old songs, the tension and tempos giving way fully to the more tentative emotions he had only suggested in his music before.
"The Moon Princess looked into the eyes of her enemy, and felt the warmth in his gaze - all the compassion and love that one human can feel for another. She saw his humanity - and it was more powerful than anything the Moon Princess's cold, eternal realm."
The figures ceased to strain against each other, the Moon Princess lowering her sword, accepting the samurai's touch as he put his paper hand on her arm.
The paper figures floated higher, slowly dancing as they fell in love. "For his four words, the Moon Princess spared his life - and with those words, he gave a life to her."
The paper samurai and moon princess swirled overhead, untroubled by the rest of the story to come of their union. Kubo, smiling gently, his expression touched by a wistfulness that, even then, was nearly grief, drew to the end of his song.
"They fled the Hall of Bones, fled the Moon King's sight and hid themselves with powerful magic. Their time together would be short, but even a little love is real," he said. "And the end of that story is the beginning of another, for all stories have an end, but there is no end of stories." He strummed the cord that brought his paper swirling back into his pack, leaving the cafeteria a nearly empty stage again. The storytelling boy bowed to his audience, and then, to Mabel.
"What did you think?" he asked. "Not a lot of mystery - but I can make up some mystery stories for next time, if you want to hear some."
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When he took his bow, she jumped to her feet to begin applauding and whooping. And when he finally asked her opinion, she grasped his arm excitedly.
"It was... PERFECT! The lights and the music! And it was so romantic! Ugh!" She cried, shaking his arm in her fervor. She had a sort of nagging question about the performance, but... It kind of seemed like something that might ruin the mood. So, she stayed swept up in her enthusiasm and filed it away for another time.
"You're an amazing storyteller! I bet you're already a star back home, right?"
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Hence the lack of ego. The quality of Kubo's storytelling wasn't a matter of pride alone (although that was involved, certainly - he liked doing well what he liked best.) It was a matter of eating that night or not.
"I'm glad you liked it!" he went on, as if he hadn't just casually mentioned that he was basically impoverished AND spending what money he had to feed himself AND the guy who'd carved out his eye when he was a baby. Mabel wasn't the only kid who could be casual about terrible circumstances. "The lights were a new trick. We don't have lights like this back home. I'll definitely use them again."
He surveyed the cafeteria with approval, noting the lighting elements he'd missed, already planning future stage blocking. Yes, this would do nicely for his future shows.
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"I think there's something else about this place that you're really going to like, Kubo!" She grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around to face the counters.
"All the food is free! And trust me, you can have as much as you want. Even ice cream! And there aren't any adults telling you to eat vegetables first!" Not yet anyway.
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But the most important one!
"What's ice cream?"
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"Okay, whoa! Hold everything!" She exclaimed, linking her arm in his. Explaining it wouldn't do the trick. She was going to have to show him, by dragging him over to the counter to see the flavors!
"What kind of food did you like back home? I mean, every flavor of ice cream is good, but the first one you try should be the best!"
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"I really like salmon," said Kubo, with no idea that this was the least helpful piece of information to volunteer when selecting an ice cream flavor.
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"Wait, I have an idea!" She said as she began to steer them away from the counter and back to one of the tables. "You wait here, okay? I'll brb!" She turn to head back to the counter, then stopped looking back over her shoulder to elaborate. "That means I'll be right back!"
And she would! After returning to the counter and obtaining no less than ten cups of ice cream ranging from normal flavors like chocolate and strawberry to the weird future ones like blorpleberry and the green one that was in an alien language no one knew how to read apparently.
She placed the tray on the table in front of Kubo, then flopped into a seat across from him.
"TASTE TEST!! And now we have to eat all of these!"
no subject
When Mabel left Kubo at the table, he waited patiently, excited though he was to try whatever it was that Mabel thought he HAD to try just then. It was really kind of her to go through all this effort on his part, helping him find a place to perform, showing him where to eat, introducing him to new foods and customs -
When she came back with no less than ten cups, Kubo's mouth dropped open at the bounty. "They just gave you all of that? For free?" he asked, in disbelief. He reached for one of the cups, the vanilla one, and drew back his hand in sudden surprise. "It's cold!"
He finished picking the cup up, finding a spoon nearby and recognizing that it must be for eating the semi-solid, cold stuff. Kubo took his time, curious, testing the texture of the ice cream with his spoon. When he tasted a bit, his eye went very suddenly very wide.
"It's so sweet!"
The look he gave Mabel was astonished, as he tried a few more bites of the ice cream, blinking in sheer disbelief at how good it tasted. He would have happily eaten the whole bowl, if there weren't several more to try.
He tried the strawberry. "This one too? Are they all sweet?"
He'd never imagined so many different flavors of intense sweetness! The revelation on his young face said that Mabel had been right, so right, to introduce him to ice cream with this urgency.