Scene #9676: Natsuki Everywhere?!

Owner	Pose
Futaba Nuki	It's the end of a sunny day in Sotenbori, and Futaba's just about wrapped up with a long day of important festival preparation at the family temple. The banners are set, contacts have been called, and vendors know where to go. There's still rituals to rehearse and perfect, but her energy is already hitting its limit after the last... "Bleeh... How long have I been at this?" Futaba complains aloud to nobody as she sets a stone statue on the ground outside the main fence to the compound. She's already sent the others home for the day, partially because she knew they'd insist on replacing the statue if she dug it out while they were around, and partially because having fewer people around would give her more time to take it easy while wrapping things up. The temptation to slink off when nobody's watching her is strong. All it would take is a quick change of her hair to the wild orange style and her clothes out from her regal-ish shrine dress to the more comfortable hoodie and shorts combo, but something feels... Wrong about doing that. She doesn't feel like anyone's watching her, and nobody would notice, but something's still gnawing at her on the inside to not ditch just yet. She's not sure if she likes this feeling.
Natsuki Nuki	It's been a long day, hot and slightly humid, and so the work had been dragging slightly in the Osakan island bay heat, though a sea breeze kept things pleasant as long as one wasn't deep inside. The walls broke up the air, but also channeled it softly around the grounds of the house. On a day like this, working the grounds would almost be cooler and more tolerable than a day outside at play, or so mother would slyly comment now and then - before - and now the wisdom proved again simply true. It would have been easy to dive out, of course, nothing stopping Futaba from doing so but Futaba. She restrains, just for a while longer, resisting playing hooky on her duties until it was done. Perhaps it was the faint forboding that filled the air, the presence of the gentle 'you cannot rest while enemies are present' anxieties that heralded. . . Nothing, at least for the last hour of work. Nothing, until she tries to put the statue in the ground and finds that one is already in place. Was it there before? It had been a haze, and the statues are similar-enough... It is a stone statue of a large tanuki, set on a serpentine-wrapped black pedestal, with ruby-set eyes. When Futaba is caught trying to figure out how she got two statues out of the situation, the ruse becomes obvious when the statue's mouth grinds in movement to speak, and the air fills with the faint huyu-huyu-huyu fluttering of wicked birdsong laughter. "Slowing down at the end of the day, Futaba?" Statue-Nuki Natsuki asks, pushing up broad stone hat with a grinding slide and reaching forward to grab Futaba by the front of her robes and lift her by the tie of her outfit together as a work uniform. "Hoping to sneak off and do what you really want to do?" She wonders, faintly smug across stone cheeks.
Futaba Nuki	Maybe Futaba's been working too hard lately. It IS the end of the day, after all, and the days aren't getting cooler anytime soon. Sure, she could turn herself into an ice cube or something, but... Wait, why didn't she do that? Grumbling quietly to herself for not thinking about that sooner, Futaba resigns herself to just getting the work done sooner so she can ice cubify herself later. It's only then that she realizes that there's a statue in place already, but she's preeeetty sure she didn't put that one there. Or did she? Also, since when did the statues start laughing like Natsuki? And picking her up like Natsuki? And talking like Natsuki? Her basic survival instincts kick in briefly as her hand raises behind herself and starts transforming into a large slab not unlike a meat tenderizer, but she holds it back once all the brain synapses start firing and helping her realize what's going on. "... Natsuki!" With the connections made, the shine returns to Futaba's eyes, and her slab-hand reforms into a regular hand as she latches onto Statue-Nuki's wrists. "What're you doing here? Oh, when'd you get here? Dang, were you in this form the whole time?" She asks, more excited now than she's been for the past few weeks collectively complete with her tail and legs jiggling from side to side like someone cranked her physics up to 99 years old. "And I'll have you know I WASN'T gonna sneak off! For once." She replies with her own clearly smug grin. "If I did, this statue never would've gotten put here. Well, it woulda, but it'd take. Like. Two hours. You remember how slow the others are about moving stuff outta storage themselves instead of lettin' me do it." As always, she pantomimes while she speaks, releasing one hand from Natsuki's wrist to mini-forklift-ify that hand for emphasis.
Natsuki Nuki	The doofus lack of comprehension threatens to overpower Natsuki completely, seeing her trapped in a loop of complete idiocy -- or would, if the menacing aura didn't begin to condense about her and see her statue-form animate more darkly-shaded and detailed, fingers bulking from cute statue-paws to tigerclaws as fight insinuation nearly becomes combat reality. She'd do that too! Oh, she would. "Yes! Stupiiid!" Natsuki barks sharply, rattling Futaba particularly for the extended note and easing just so the glow can rattle around to steady and her neurons don't get too jumbled. "I've been here! For a while! It'd have been great hours ago when everyone was here, but nobody inspected the clearly evil statue the whole time! So now I have to force the issue and I'm not happy!" She complains, waving her arm simply so the attached Nuki can get rattled again for her terrible old person physics. "You so totally were, totally asleep at a job." Natsuki continues to uncharitably insist, not buying Futaba's story one bit and unhappy when Futaba goes for the smug grin while attached to her tigerized statue arm. Closing hand, Natsuki shoves off Futaba out onto the street before the gate, stepping off her false statue-platform and snake-tail peeling up off of itself in loops and coils and following after. "So usually, it's hooky, but tonight, you're just sticking it out to be smugly helpful?" Crossing arms into challengingly dissatisfied pose, and between Futaba and the house now, the shifting stonework-Nuki closes etched-moving eyes and emits a 'tch'. "I don't remember teaching you that. Must've been dad. How about I smack it out of you, and you can do it right after? Huh?"
Futaba Nuki	it "AaAaAaAa you should've said somethiiiing!" Futaba's voice comes out all wobbly like she's been replaced by a sheet of corrugated metal during all that shaking, her initial excitement steadily shifting towards more relaxed relief. Should she be worried about why Natsuki's actually here? Maybe, but Futaba's never had that great of a survival sense around her sister ever since she left. Her brain's probably compensating for something. "Anyway! I noticed ya now, soOoOoO!" Hanging on for dear life, the younger Nuki horks as she's put back down roughly, rolling back a few times and stopping in a perching sort of crouch. Reaching up to her hair, Futaba runs her hands through it a few times exagerratedly until it turns into the usual orange ponytail she normally wears outside of the temple. "I mean, it was super temptin' to take a nap. Or veg out. But I've been good for a long while now!" She chimes in while hopping onto her feet, idly jogging around Natsuki to get a better look at her sister's statue form animation budget. "After the last couple o' times you've seen me, I've been buckling down extra hard. We're all caught up on festival prep, the next one's shaping up to be all don-" She pauses, looking over at the statue she was going to put where Natsuki was just a minute ago. "-almost done, and even dad's been...!" Futaba's upbeat tone dies down rather quickly, and she frowns as she recalls how distinctly unhelpful he's been. When was the last time he even tried to speak to Natsuki? "... Nah, you'd know if it came from him. Aaanyway." Correcting her expression with more of that usual grinning and eagerness, Futaba stops her jogging in mid-step while still facing Natsuki with one knee still up in mid-step. "What do you wanna show me, then? Is it somethin' to do with the statues, the steps, or what else? I've got nothing else goin' on tonight!"
Natsuki Nuki	"I didn't mind watching until the end of the day." Natsuki begins, almost mild, before shading darker. "Until you started slacking off! Sent everyone home and didn't even notice you had a whole extra there waving with you!" --- In the flashback, Futaba and the large Natsuki (statue nuki) both wave with the same arm, and several people notice the extra waving and start leaving more quickly. Natsuki returns to stationary by the time Futaba turns, and then it's... Waiting for the rest of the early afternoon with an oranging of the sky and a growing miasma of menace from the buildingly frustrated statue yokai. --- Futaba races around Natsuki wearing the shape of a Dramatically Drawn tanuki statue, the tigerization of the arms by her anger manifesting stiff stone bristles of 'fur' in stylized waves that gutter dark lines and shadows, and obsidian claws tip thick dark-wrapped hands. Otherwise, she's guardian deity rounded and simple, the 'base' of her statue having reconfigured back into her obligate curse-tail and having zigzagged into violent rune of a snake staring back at Futaba in static and self-supporting material, able to be looming death totem for free and heavily confusing her image. A big tanuki is still one of the forms Natsuki can take, statue and all, but she would no longer claim it as "hers". On all sides observed, two eyes glare at Futaba menacingly, accomplished by her tail having an unusual number of eyes as she's orbited, moving to change zigs and zags and leans only when not being observed by Futaba, uncannily shifting into a new configuration only when she's not looking. The esteemed and dreaded Nue, terror and disaster, had not been even called by her father after their last fated encounter, and it bothered the oldest sister deeply. If he had been around being a villain about it, it would have been easier to stomach, but the dispassion was a different sort of emptiness. She had been asking, really, if they still talked. They did. Natsuki taps bicep with stone finger and rises masked brow. "You've been working hard enough I don't really have much to grouse about, which..." "Pisses me off even more!!" She explodes, throwing her head up and venting it, before coming down. "There's nothing to learn about the statues! I could tell you about how dad sucked or which specific step of the dance you blew last festival and why that curse is stuck to the old lady so bad, but you just have to do your job and be happy about it - forever! Forever, Futaba, so if this is just something you're ha-ha lazy about, it's not something we work out in a night!" There's a complex wad of something in Natsuki that doesn't want to come out, refuses to, festers, and perhaps as a curse must fester in her. It couldn't be removed - it hadn't been solved yet - and so she drew on the unlimited well of her own resentment to slake her thirst for closure, and grew drunk on it. "You're right," Natsuki assures, looming, as she takes Futaba's shoulders with stone paws. "I'd know." Like the mallet before - tenderizer-like! - Natsuki rears back stone head, and drives it rubber band crack forward into Futaba's head, flattening the cartoon 'nuki and leaving her standing over the blooming crater of force left in the wake of the impact with an etched-on look of supreme, desperate frustration. "So I'm gonna have to figure out what part of you got so smug!!" Exclaims the statue demon. "All tucked in with dad and everything! Slack-jawed! It's about how you act about it!"
Futaba Nuki	"A whole extra...?" Futaba strokes her chin as she considers what Natsuki could possibly mean. She stays in that pose while the convenient flashback occurs, pursing her lips once she realizes why everyone seemed so eager to leave all of a sudden. "... Huh. I reckon they were just in a rush to get on home." All of them, all at once? It's not the first time she's seen everyone in a rush to leave, but she's pretty sure this week's grocery sales aren't until Saturday. Either way, the flashback does its job, and the younger Nuki lowers her arm to her shoulder for a light tug and wince. "Well, better now than never! Huhuhu... Oh?" It's the eyes. Even though the curse-tail's eyes are part of Natsuki, Futaba's never quite seemed to get along with them in particular. She stares right back at those eyes, noticing that the changes are occurring at some point without ever catching onto when specifically. Maybe it's because she's often flashier and more deliberately visible with her own changes, but she's not about to back down from... A staring contest? A glaring contest? What is it they're doing, anyway? It is probably unclear, but she keeps on staring back right up until Natsuki speaks up once more about her semi-recent work ethic. She should feel happier about Natsuki noticing that she's been working harder, but it doesn't give her that jump start to the heart she was hoping for once she hears that. Instead, Futaba's variably-proportionally-sized brain latches onto what's riling up Natsuki, and also at getting headbutted right into the ground. It's that headbutt, even, that starts to put some more things together in her head. Instead of popping back up like she usually would- --- In a flashback, Futaba's just gotten flattened by Natsuki for doing something stupid. She blinks thrice whilst in a perfectly circular shape, pops back up like a scrunched up tube, then wobbles from side to side with badly-imitated accordion noises. --- -Futaba just sits up slowly, her outside-orange hair re-replaced with her natural brownish-gray tone. "Nnh... It'd be way easier if I WAS happy about all of that. I KNOW I screwed up the dance, and you saw it. You know that none of them said a thing about it? Heck, you're the first person besides me that's even brought it up!" She snaps back in a far less put-on voice than the one she's been using and normally does, although the anger in her tone doesn't sound like it's directed towards Natsuki. "For all they care, I could've just showed up and they'd still be quiet everyone if I messed everything else up." She mutters, pushing off the ground with her tail and clicking her teeth once when their father is mentioned again. "I thought buckling down like everyone else was pushing me to do would've changed something, but that's not working, either. So...!" She exhales, then rubs her forehead with another frustrated noise. "I don't know. Even the hero stuff hasn't been feeling right for a while. You ever get that feeling with all your... Big money business stuff?"