trans_9 | Loud noises in the City [Open]

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Loud noises in the City [Open]

For the keen-eared to hear, there's shouting and loud voices coming from the lab opening cut high in the side of the Jedi Temple. Those new to the area, or possibly GLADOSed for an extended period of time -- in short, those who haven't learned to tune this sort of thing out -- might even be able to make out words, if they listened.

"No! That was not a command!"

"Command entered! This section of the laboratory is now being guarded against all intruders."

"Oh, for the sake of--"

"Warning! Intruder, leave the premises or face the wrath of arcane fury!"

"...I'm an intruder. In my own laboratory. You've got to be--"

"You have ten seconds to comply!"

"End instruction! Keyword: Sielwode."

"Keyword override is locked out for protection. You have 5 seconds!"

A few seconds passed.

"Why does it always have to end like this?"

A moment later, flame belched out of the laboratory opening, as a low thump heralded the fireball's detonation. Another moment later, the elf drifted out of the cut and to the ground, waving away the smell of brimstone and scorched defective golem with a miserable look on his face.

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"Golems are constructs animated by magic. They aren't intelligent, but they can be given commands, even fairly complex commands if the golem is advanced, and they will fulfill those commands scrupulously. When they work properly."

He shot another dirty look back towards his lab. "There's very little my lab can't withstand," he said, smiling as he looked back to her. "You should have seen the explosion when I was testing its stability. This was nothing."

Sakura wondered if he honestly believed hearing this was nothing was comforting. She shook her head, astounded. "Still seems like something, even in light of what you're saying." It also seemed pointless to pursue; he had a handle on it, and from what she could tell (to back up what he'd said) he wasn't injured.

Maybe mental, but she had a feeling half of everyone on this ship sounded mental to anyone they talked to. "What're you planning on making these golems for? Pending you get them to recognize your commands consistently."

It was true! That had only been a 10d6 fireball. The explosion he'd let fly for testing purposes had been ten times that strong.

"Numbers," he said. "The Ohm's major advantage is numbers. They are fairly weak individually, in my experience, and any level of overwhelming force can slaughter them, but for each one of us they have..." He reflected, realized he didn't know the number, and shrugged. "Enough. More than enough by far. My hope is that I can create enough golems to make even a marginal difference in that..." He exhaled and ran a hand through his disheveled hair. "But it's probably impossible. Still, I have to leave research undone."

That hand suddenly thunked his forehead with a smile. "And I'm being terribly rude, aren't I. Aibghalien Marsai, at your service, my lady," he said, with a razor-sharp bow.

Sakura nodded, going silent as she thought this over. It'd been similar back home, though she could only figure this was on a far greater scale and difference beyond Madara's estimated 20,000 bodies over the collected forces of the five shinobi nations, and the samurai. "Does anyone have an idea of their numbers?"

It'd be one place to start, at least. Knowing they weren't infallible as individuals helped too. Numbers were a problem, but there were ways to work around that issue. Technically.

Sakura snapped out of her thoughts at his introduction and accompanying bow; she found herself bowing in reflex. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Aibghalien Marsai, sir. I'm Sakura Haruno."

For all she fumbled over his name, she had tried valiantly.

He smiled at her politeness, and forgave the name-stumbling. People simply were bad at elven on this ship. He could live with it easily.

"Well... to give you a general idea, there are millions of people on this lone ship. There are other ships out there like this, no doubt with similar numbers. That many people, that many worlds... were trivial to the Ohm. Overwhelmed without resistance."

His expression was grim, but sympathetic. He hated to be the bearer of bad news, but it seemed to be all he was good at.

"Millions in those pods?" Millions was a number so far out of her conceptualization it was almost laughable. Even the four nations combined hadn't added up to a hundred thousand on their own; certainly, the shinobi population was much smaller than the civilian one, but millions of people... that felt like the population of at least her continent many times over. Possibly even her world.

"Surprise would have helped, but... numbers. It's hard to imagine how many of them there have to be." Or how fast, or how anything. So much of it was hard to imagine, but real nonetheless. It left her feeling nauseous.

"How many other ships?"

"I don't know, honestly. The only thing we've heard about them are from is from some people we met on a mission. Less than nine, probably not more than three or four. To be honest, it's something of a moot point; we've never met them, and possibly never will. As much as I'd like to believe our salvation might lie in the pooling of the crews of all those ships..."

He exhaled, shrugged, and said what he thought, even if it was something cynical and bleak. "Until I see some evidence otherwise, I have to believe that our efforts, here, alone, are all we can rely on. So I have to do what I can."

He looked up at the last trickles of smoke still oozing out of his lab. "Don't worry, though," he said, with a smile. "The only person at risk from my experiments is myself. I wouldn't risk anyone else's."

Cynical or not, it made sense to Sakura. If you couldn't get in contact with these other ships, and if they were dealing with anything approaching the miss-match situation Stacy had going for a crew, then it stood to reason that you had to act as your own self contained unit. Depending on others -- other ships, at least -- seemed unwise.

"Taking you at your word," she said, looking up in the same direction as he had, "Then even you risking yourself can count as too much." She didn't intend to sound censoring; far from it, knowing what it was to do everything you could. Putting yourself at risk was par for the course.

... There was a lot in this that was feeling very par for the course. "Good luck smoothing out the kinks."

"Possibly it does," he admitted just as easily.

"But I know people here who have friends, even family, on this ship as well. People they love and cherish, who they'd be lonely and miserable without. If putting my life at risk means that those people aren't separated forever, then that is worth it. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I saw someone broken from loss, and knew that I could have prevented that loss, but didn't, just because I was afraid of losing my own life."

Sakura found herself watching Aib-- goodness, she was going to have difficulties ever saying his name properly. She watched Aibghalien quietly, thinking how much like the people from her village he sounded like right then.

"I can believe you wouldn't let a fear like that keep you from doing what you needed to." It wasn't something she could say for everyone, not even herself at times. At least not when she was younger. "Let's just hope it doesn't come down to that. Not for the golem's sake. I'm beginning to think it'd be a pretty big waste of talent."

"Thank you for the compliment," he said with a smile. "To my mind, there's greater talent in forming bonds with others, and working with others to become greater than the sum of the parts of the team, than there is in any amount of strength alone. I used to be able to do that, but... it seems here, I'm alone with my research.

"But the golem research isn't going to kill me," he added with a sudden, almost boyish grin. "The closest I came to that was accidentally solidifying a planar barrier in the middle of the lab. I haven't managed anything quite that lethal again."

"Planar barrier?" More terms that only had a vague meaning to Sakura; barrier was implied, but what planar meant in particular, she didn't know. Shaking her head, she looked back to Aibghalien. "You might be alone with your research for now, but it doesn't mean you always will be. I don't really think people who can make bonds that get people to work together to achieve something larger than themselves ever lose that skill. They might not alway see it working in the same way, but it's still there."

Like with Naruto. Even when his light and warmth weren't drawing people to him actively, they still responded to him like he was. When they weren't distracted by how much of an idiot he could make of himself.

"This, I think, requires a visual aid."

The wizard gestured, speaking a few words, and around them abruptly appeared a rather large image (http://gallery.burrowowl.net/index.php?q=/image/6902.jpg).

"The space we occupy presently, and that which all of our worlds occupy or occupied, is the Prime Material Plane. Immediately adjacent to this are the Ethereal and Astral planes, and passing through them allows one to reach the Inner or Outer planes, where the fundamental forces of the cosmos are made manifest. The planar boundary is what separates our plane, the Prime Material, from the other planes. The planes are not actually located in a physically different space so much as they are... well, laid over it, like layers on a cake. To breach the planar boundaries is to open a passage from this plane to a different one. The main intention of such an action is either to visit the upper plane, or, as I was attempting, to call something back from it."

He lowered his hand, though he didn't dispel the image. "Unfortunately, some aspect of our current situation prevents planar gateways or summonings from forming. So much for a celestial host to help sweep the Ohm away."

Sakura had been startled when the image had appeared, making her miss half of what he said next as she tried to force herself into accepting that there was nothing inherently dangerous about this sudden apparition, and that it was, in fact, the visual aid for a concept she didn't understand, and thus worth studying.

"I'm not sure I entirely understand," she said, taking the image in with wide eyes. "But it sounds like if would have been something else if this planar summonings gateway thing could have worked. Celestial hosts live... where, on here?"

"Well, this is basic planar mechanics summed up in a paragraph, so I may not have explained it clearly," he said, with an apologetic smile. "But I do answer questions."

And she had asked one, so he pointed to the lower part of the diagram, specifically the one labeled 'Upper Planes'. "I'm speaking very generically of 'celestial hosts', when really I mean any upper-planar being that serves the fundamental cosmic force called 'good'. To be honest, it wouldn't be any mechanically different to call up a host of demons or devils, but I have ethical objections to that, as I suspect many others on the ship would."

"Demons are beings from beyond the Prime Material Plane? They're not created by the people living in the Prime Material Plane, that is."

She turned from examining the diagram to examining him, picking this one detail out as something of personal interest.

"Just so," he said with a nod. "They are not the only creatures by far who live out there, of course, but demons are of extraplanar origin."

"This all sounds a bit like how summoning works where I'm from, though the theory behind it isn't so... extensive." There were different 'planes,' in a manner of speaking, but it wasn't a consistent rule for all summons. A few lived actively, even exclusively, in the ninja world. Others lived exclusively elsewhere, being called in to preform specific tasks and departing immediately afterward.

The Shinigami came to mind, and she frowned. "It'd make things a bit too easy, huh? If we could call out into someplace else and find something that could take on the Ohm, just like that." She clapped her hands, taking a step back from the projected image.

"I think even the gods themselves would quail before the Ohm," he said, then added scornfully, "not that I think they're good for much anyway."

He lifted his hand, then closed it into a fist. The image contracted abruptly into a white crystal, small enough to fit into an open palm easily, which hovered before Sakura almost expectantly.

"All I can hope to do is try to even the odds just a little bit. There must be a way."

Sakura reached out to poke at the hovering crystal, curious. "There will be," she said, sounding sure of herself. Maybe she was borrowing on Naruto's idealism, but if there was anyone she should borrow from, Naruto was it. "If it hasn't been discovered yet, it will be. By you, or by anyone working so hard for an answer."

"Take it," Aibghalien said as she poked it. "Squeeze it in your hand and it will bring the image up. If nothing else, it'll be a pleasant novelty, but I like rewarding curiosity."

But then he chuckled. "I like your optimism, though. Out of curiosity, where do your skills lie?"

She looked back to Aibghalien, resisting the urge to ask if he was sure. The hand she'd used to poke the crystal tentatively wrapped around it. This magic was fascinating in a way she didn't know how to fully digest right now. Maybe she would in time.

She'd spend time examining the image, if nothing else, to better understand what it represented.

"I'm a combat medic," she said at first, feeling the weight of the crystal in her palm. "A medical shinobi, if the word shinobi means anything to you. I'm trained to be at the front lines, and make sure the people I'm with make it back alive, to the best of my ability."

It was a more straightforward response than she'd given to anyone else yet, though she hadn't been around for long enough to be telling much of anyone anything.

"It's not a term we have on our world." He'd studied enough languages in his time to be confident in that. "But what you describe sounds like a cleric on my world -- a skilled armsman who channels the power of the divine to heal and aid his friends and hinder his enemies."

He considered his memories for a moment, then smiled. "The one I worked with was a good companion. The world owes much to his skill."

"It's not so divine for us -- for me." She smiled apologetically, if she wasn't sure why. "Healing chakra is self-generated. In theory anyone can learn, with the right training and control." Theory didn't pan out so often, considering the time necessary to teach someone what was needed to be a medic stretched over years, but the potential and possibility was there.

"At some point, I'll need to talk to the people who work in the Medical Bay." She shrugged, unsure what it meant as far as fitting in to the way things worked here on Stacy.

He looked at her for a moment, a playful gleam in his eyes. "I think I like your way much better. All of the benefits of the clerical arts, none of the necessity of gods mucking about, causing trouble and exploding themselves. If you ever give classes, I'd be interested."

He'd slot that in between his experimentation and his attempts to learn alchemy. Amazing how not needing to sleep could free up a man's day.

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Loud noises in the City [Open]

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