[Open]

[lives2annoy.livejournal.com]

Ever since he'd talked to Aang and watched the guy swimming around with an imaginary dolphin, Marco had been kinda missing his dolphin morph. The dolphin morph was, without fail, always fun. And hey, Marco was definitely a fan of fun.

So he'd called up the pier over the ocean again, jumped into the water, and morphed dolphin. Marco clicked happily as the dolphin's bubbly personality rose up. He needed to play a game!

Angling his fins, Marco started swimming around underneath the pier, swerving inbetween the poles. He needed to go faster!

Comments

[lives2annoy.livejournal.com]

<Hey, anytime you need the Dolphin Express...> Marco said, before swimming along beside her, until the water was shallow enough that he'd be able to stand up in it. He concentrated on demorphing, and starting returning back to normal.

[encourage]

Sakura trudged toward shore once she had footing, wringing water out of her hair as she kept sturdy footing against the moving water. She looked back over her shoulder, puzzled again by the weird moment between being one thing, and being human again. It made sense -- and then absolutely didn't.

"Getting tired of the water already?"

[livestoannoy]

Having morphed back to normal by now, Marco shrugged and waded through the shallows to the beach. "Can't stay in morph forever," he said, choosing to stay vague about his reasons for demorphing. Sakura had seemed trustworthy so far, but that didn't mean that he'd be happy telling her all the minute mechanics of morphing yet.

[encourage]

If ever. Sakura said nothing, nodding after realizing she should probably react somehow to acknowledge she'd heard his reply.

"Is this based on anywhere from home?" She went to work on wringing water out of her shirt, eventually giving up as she decided it'd be simpler just to walk out of the Sensorium altogether. Or end the simulation. Did it work that way?

[livestoannoy]

Marco cocked his head, looking around. He hadn't actually concentrated on bringing up a specific beach, but now that he looked at it...

"Huh. Kinda looks like the one where my Mom goes sailing at a lot, actually."

[encourage]

"Sailing?" There was a faint idea of what he meant... very faint. She looked over the beach again. "It's a beautiful place."

[livestoannoy]

Marco shrugged. He'd never really been that concerned about whether a place was 'beautiful'. "Mom likes it, anyway."

[encourage]

She was still puzzling out why sailing was familiar. When it clicked, she thumped her closed fist in her other hand. "Aah! Sailing -- that's boating, right? Only with the..." she trailed off, then finished her statement after an awkward pause. "Canvas sails for harnessing wind power to move."

[livestoannoy]

"Uh, yeah," Marco said, sending Sakura an odd look. "What, did you guys just skip sails all together and go straight to motors on your world?"

[encourage]

"Motors on boats?" Sakura shot him back an equally odd look -- did he mean motors like what were in some of the 'vehicles' in the hangar? "Most of the boats I've dealt with you either rowed or poled along to navigate." Besides being from a land locked nation, she'd never seen the merchant ports in other nations, so sailboats themselves were a rare personal event.

[livestoannoy]

"Rowboats? You guys all use rowboats?" Marco said, staring. "Jeez, did your world get stuck in the stone ages or something?"

[encourage]

The amazing thing about talking to Marco was how Sakura could have no idea what he was referencing, but could still figure out some of what he meant simply because of how he referenced things. "Only in the Village Hidden in the Rocks."

[livestoannoy]

"And yet the rest of you haven't even discovered sails yet?" Marco snorted. "Not to mention, what kind of bizarre name for a village is that?"

[encourage]

"It's not bizarre. It's a Hidden Village in the Earth country. What else would you call it?" She crossed her arms over her chest. "Landbound nations wouldn't have a use for sails, let alone shinobi nations. Water's the only one dealing with trading on a large scale, and they're the ones with the hundreds of islands to move between, along with going further north and south along the coastlines than everyone else."

Not to mention, Sakura had no idea what countries exported and imported what. Fire was fairly land rich, supporting most of its nation on what it could grow internally, but trade was handled through civilian cities and the Lord, not the at-hire mercenaries the shinobi honestly were.

[livestoannoy]

"Earth country? You guys really aren't so good with thinking up names, are you?" Marco said, raising an eyebrow.

[encourage]

"It's an elemental affiliation. The Earth nation region is known for a higher occurrence of Earth-affiliated talent. Why have complicated names when it's more direct to keep it simple?" She raised an eyebrow in return.

[livestoannoy]

Marco tilted his head slightly, looking at Sakura. "Earth-affiliated talent?" he asked, more interested now in the mention of the abilities found in Sakura's world than their lazy naming practices.

[encourage]

Efficient naming practices. Sakura waited to gauge if he was really asking about this before she started talking. "Mmm. Back home everyone's born with an elemental affiliation. Fire, water, earth, wind, lightning... for most people it doesn't mean much, but even with those you notice certain trends."

[livestoannoy]

"And for the people it does mean something for?" he asked, vaguely wondering if this was at all related to the abilities that people had from that world with the freaky animals.

Except he hadn't seen Sakura flinging anything like that around. Either this 'elemental affiliation' stuff worked in some bizarre way to allow her to jump ridiculously high and smash walls with her first, or her abilities were separate.

[encourage]

She considered him, much more obviously deciding what she wanted to say. Sakura didn't really care that it was apparent; these particular details didn't matter so much to her, personally, as they did to everyone else important in her life from home.

None who were here. Maybe they never had been.

"It makes jutsu of that element easier to preform. Jutsu being techniques used by shinobi, pretty much exclusively. I don't think the samurai work with elements... though they might."

[livestoannoy]

"Right. So all the wall destroying and leap frogging is something a different kind? And...wait, samurai?" Marco blinked. It wasn't that the reference was totally left of field - pink hair aside, Sakura did still look like she could be from somewhere in Asia - but if she used the word Samurai specifically, did that mean she was from Japan? Or some weird alternate universe version of Japan?

Which meant...hang on. "What exactly are shinobi?" he asked.

[encourage]

She gave him an odd look, particularly since he wasn't questioning samurai. If he understood what they were, then... "Highly trained warriors largely isolated in hidden villages in the different nations. They interface with the Lord, and each nation's Lord has some direct influence over them, but they're a separate organization with separate politics. Having a hidden village means having access to a highly trained warrior population, should any Lord need it, though most the work any village does to support itself is in smaller services trades. Shinobi." She repeated the word, like it had more meaning at this point. "Also known as ninja."

[livestoannoy]

Marco had just been listening, nodding his head as he took note of the details...right up until she said the word 'ninja'.

Then he started laughing.

"You're a ninja? Seriously?" he said, in between shakes of laughter. "You have pink hair and smash entire walls, and you're a ninja?!"

[encourage]

Sakura tucked her chin in, narrowing her eyes. Out of many reactions she might have expected, laughter really wasn't one of them. "What's so funny about that?" She managed to turn her defensive posture into a slightly more neutral stance. "I couldn't do the latter if I wasn't, and how does my hair color have anything to do with seriously being a ninja?"

[livestoannoy]

"I thought were ninjas supposed to be subtle?" Marco asked, still laughing. "How are you supposed to hide from anything when your hair will just telegraph your every movement?"