trans_9 | carefully executed maneuvers (bendytimed before clone plot) [closed]

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carefully executed maneuvers (bendytimed before clone plot) [closed]

Time was difficult enough to figure out on ship when she was having a good day. The mild hangover she'd had this morning (drinking water and forcing herself to down slop from the mess hall had kept it mild) had morphed into a milder headache and light sensitivity that had mostly faded by the time she'd picked up her omnicomm and run across Lash proposing some kind of celebration.

It was in the sensoriums, which was anything but good in Sakura's general opnion, but as she stared down at her omnicomm yet again, she had wondered if it would be a decent distraction to keep her mind off the stupidities of last night and early in the morning. If nothing else, given that she wasn't expected in MedBay today, it would fill in some time before she heard back from Marco. So she'd gone. What was there to lose?

It was only later, after she'd excused herself from the sensoriums and everyone within them, that she realized why she probably hadn't heard from monkey boy. Staring at the desk in her room, she looked between the omnicomm she'd just set down and the one that was on top of a book.

The slow realization that the omnicomm she'd thought had fallen out of her pouch last night hadn't fallen anywhere. She hadn't had her omnicomm with her. She'd walked off with someone else's omnicomm from where Marco lived. With her luck, it was probably Marco's omnicomm.

Sakura shouldered her satchel once more and raced down the stairs. If anyone was around to see her, she probably looked amusingly out of sorts, still dressed for the beach and heading back out within minutes of finally getting home. It didn't take long to make her way over to his residence, relying on shinobi speed to cut down on travel time. She came to a stop at the front door, running her hand through her hair to get it to calm down before she knocked. Best to get this started. By now, she owed a few apologies.

I am never drinking again.

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Sakura responded by hitting the water with one hand, rather expertly sending water splashing toward Marco's face. It was a response to his looking away, like pointing out his own inexperience was a bad thing. Maybe it was! Guys were sensitive about weird things, and he'd been more sensitive than she was most this -- thing.

"That has everything to do with my job. But if it'll make you feel better? Fine."

Muggy as it was, she still felt ridiculous standing up anymore. He wanted some turnaround with sharing? Then he'd get some. Sinking down into the water, she pushed further back, heading toward the deeper waters.

"One of our earliest missions around Konoha was retrieving the Lady's pet cat. As far as I can tell, that cat regularly escapes just so genin teams can be ordered to track the poor thing down to be smothered in love by our esteemed Lady. Pretty amazing, isn't it? A cat retrieval mission."

Marco stepped back, shaking his head a little from the water. Well if that was how she wanted to play it, then he was going to splash some water back in her direction too.

"Right, so...after I mention a deadly mission where we could have all been discovered and killed, you decided to share a a cat finding story. A cat which is apparently the generic kiddy mission. Nice. Real nice," he said dryly. He hadn't really minded the way she'd avoid saying anything before. But before, he'd been doing the same thing. And for the most part, they'd been even. Now after melting clock, and everything that had happened there, she'd managed to end up knowing more about him than he'd have been comfortable telling someone he'd known for ages. They weren't even anymore, and Marco didn't like it.

Some of the water managed to hit her. Sakura wrinkled her nose, ducking under the surface of the water and resurfacing somewhere to the left. "If you want better answers, Marco, ask better questions." She knew she sounded tense. No matter the reality that she did know more about him than he did about her, it didn't make her comfortable.

Sharing was primarily something you didn't do, not verbally. Not talking about past. If maybe we should. We shouldn't have to learn about the past by digging through records. We shouldn't be that isolating as to forget why things have happened the way they did.

Marco scowled, sinking under the water a little himself, right up to his neck. How to even know which ones where the rights ones, when he hardly even knew enough to know where to start?

There was something that she'd mentioned in passing a few times though. "What about your teammates?" he said quietly. "What are they like?"

Edited 2011-06-21 12:36 (UTC)

She stilled at that, not having quite expected him to ask about them. She should have, she guessed. She'd even mentioned them obliquely earlier.

For a moment, it probably looked like she wouldn't answer. Sakura submerged again, changing direction. When she came back up for air, she was within touching distance. She didn't want to have this conversation at a distance.

She'd rather not have this conversation at all, but remembering... "I think about them a lot, you know. Naruto's an idiot, but he's the best man I know." An odd statement to make about someone presumably the same age as she was, and sincere. All said quietly, with an edge of tension because she knew how well sound carried on water.

"Teams have different designations from year to year. We were Team Seven, assigned together right out of the Academy. Myself, Uzumaki Naruto, and Uchiha Sasuke. The theory is we're a balance for each other." She almost smiled at that, remembering them as they had been at eleven. She'd been so selfish back then. She was still selfish now.

See? She was even mentioning herself in her own thoughts. "Naruto was the bottom of the class, and the class clown on top of that. I can understand why now, but at the time, it just irritated me. Sasuke was top. He kept to himself, and was probably the most driven in succeeding out of any of us. Almost everyone had a thing for him. Kids are kind of stupid that way. I was... would have been top of the female half of our class if I'd been better at practical application by then. I knew the theory better than our teacher. I could explain the theories better than our teacher."

She was talking about herself again, so she cut herself off. "We were assigned to Kakashi -- ahh, Hatake Kakashi. He had a pretty bad record with passing teams. He never had. Needless to say, we were the first group he passed. I'm not sure if that was more surprising to us, or to our Academy teacher." She looked to Marco, hypersensitive to him saying anything condemning. He had before in the past, and she wasn't in the mood to hear it again, not over something that really mattered to her.

Edited 2011-06-21 12:52 (UTC)

He did raise an eyebrow - he wasn't quite sure how putting the worst and the best people together was balanced, and why was she dividing her class into the 'male' and 'female' class? - but he didn't say anything. Instead he just nodded, indicating that she should keep going.

Take that argument up with the entire Academy system. Sakura had thought it was stupid at the time, if her reasoning had nothing to do with logic.

She waited. When Marco didn't say anything, she started reluctantly speaking again. She'd never had to summarize her teammates before. It felt... awkward to be doing so now. "Naruto and Sasuke-kun were competitive. They helped each other improve that way, I guess, if I didn't really understand at first." She shrugged, neglecting to say if she understood it later. She was leaving a lot out, backstory and history that wasn't entirely hers to tell.

"Things were fine until the Chuunin exam. Don't," she warned pre-emptively. "It had nothing to do with how old we were. Sasuke-kun was targeted by a defector of the village, a very dangerous man who'd taken on someone else's appearance to register in the exams. When we were in the forest, he attacked. It won't make sense, but to keep a long story short, this man managed to inflict a seal on Sasuke-kun. It's called a Curse Seal. One in ten survive being marked like that. Sasuke-kun lived."

It changed everything. She hadn't known how completely back then, and it wasn't obvious for some time after. She had trouble saying the next part, not exactly noticing that she shifted back, rubbed at her arm under the water's surface. "Sasuke-kun ended up leaving the village months later. Naruto went off to train with one of the most famous living shinobi in our world." Who also happened to write porn. "I begged our Hokage to take me on as an apprentice. That's pretty much the story of the original Team Seven. Two and a half years later, Naruto came home."

There was that hesitation again, as if she expected to be interrupted and would have welcomed the derailing.

Edited 2011-06-22 01:28 (UTC)

Marco rolled his eyes when that 'Chuunin Exam' came up again - didn't matter what Sakura said, he still thought the whole thing was completely stupid. There were a few other things in her story that didn't really make sense though. "What the hell is a Curse Seal?" he asked. "And why did this Sasuke guy end up leaving?" Who knows, maybe he was the smart one, considering how insane her village was. But Marco had the feeling there was more to it - the fact that he'd left relatively soon after he'd gotten this curse thingy wasn't a good sign.

"Actually, while we're at it...what's a Hokage?"

She answered the last question first, leaving one arm folded protectively over her torso. "The Hokage is the leader of my village. Remember the five great nations? Each one has a kage leading their hidden village. Ours is the Fire Kage. Tsunade is the fifth Hokage we've had since the village founding, over eighty years ago. She's my master."

She frowned, bringing both her hands above the water's surface and performing the tiger seal. "You have to understand the different kind of seals we have. This is a hand seal. There are seals you write out in ink, and then direct to perform a specific function. Think of them like activation codes. You want to perform a specific task or function, and you do a certain seal or set of seals to achieve that task or function. Curse seals are more elaborate. They change you when they're inflicted, anchor themselves to you physically. It allows you access to the creator of the seal's chakra, in a way, but I theorize the access lets something more than that through. It... grows. Kind of like a really bad rash, only it's like watching ink move on someone's skin. The problem is in the seal taking over, and the person who put it on you taking you over at the same time."

If you weren't strong enough. Sasuke had been, one way or another. "As for why he left, I don't know." She did, in part. "At least not well enough to not have to tell you more about Sasuke-kun than I knew for years."

Marco whistled, impressed. "You were the head ninja's apprentice?"

When she described how seals worked, he listened closely. This was the kind of information he'd been lacking - details about how her powers worked, what they could do. He'd seen hand seals before, but he hadn't had anything to go on about what they did until now. "So you need some kind of seal in order to use your fancy ninja powers?" he guessed. "What about your wall destroying? You never used any hand movements for that, you just tapped it." He narrowed his eyes at the mention of curse seals. That he didn't like the sound of at all. "So curse seals manipulate people," he said flatly. "They let someone else control you."

"They're far from the only thing, but yes. Curse seals can in theory function that way. There are far more dangerous and direct methods, but the list itself would take too long to lay out, and I personally can't perform any of them." Not the ones she had in mind, at least. It was a partial omission, since improving genjutsu meant she could manipulate the senses; it was a form of controlling someone else.

"... Ninjutsu is a specific set of skills. Chakra itself can be used to directly interface with your environment." He'd neglected a few other instances of her use of chakra that fell outside the parameter of seals. Most of what Sakura did had no need for being directed through seals. "You remember walking on water? That's a standard skill for any shinobi. Using your chakra to spread your weight over a greater surface area, and adjusting for the changes in the water's surface. Waterbugs work similarly." She set her hand on the water, fingers pressing against the surface of the water. It dimpled slightly around each fingertip. Subtle, but demonstrative. "No seals involved, because I'm not asking the water to do anything. I'm manipulating myself, not my environment."

"So your teammate - the guy who cursed him. Do you think he make him leave?" Marco asked. There was something...something missing in what she was telling him, but he couldn't figure out what.

"So you need seals for anything external, is that it? You don't need it to punch walls, because it's not the wall you're manipulating, it's the hardness of your hand?" he said, trying to grasp the workings.

"... No," she said eventually, letter her hand fall through the water. "Sasuke-kun left of his own initiative. He didn't feel he could achieve the kind of strength he needed to avenge his Clan by staying in Konoha."

It took more than Marco would probably ever know to admit that much. It still hurt, constricting her chest as she remembered the last time she'd seen Sasuke. Possibly the last time she ever would.

She moved on, focusing on the mechanics of what she did with a singlemindedness that spoke of avoidance. "In a way. I have to cushion myself from the shock, but in that case I'm mitigating how much force I'm releasing at one point. Properly applied, results can be impressive. An average hit at decent control can break ground for seven to ten meters in the direction I'm aiming, with an average of two to three meters of depth. Normally closer to two," she added, shrugging. "It depends on the bedrock and how much top-soil I'm dealing with."

Edited 2011-06-22 06:21 (UTC)

"Or bring down the Great Wall of China," Marco pointed out. "And wait, avenge his Clan? Avenge who? For what?"

"Why do you need to know?" Her voice dropped low. This wasn't something she was offering up, just because he'd picked up on her slip up.

"Well it's not every day that you hear about someone who goes around desperately trying to get enough power so they can reap vengeance," Marco said dryly. But by now, he wasn't that set on learning the details. He couldn't blame her for not wanting to give up a teammate's secrets. And while they weren't even - yet - at least she'd told him something about herself. Something more than he'd known before.

"Yes, it's really odd the lengths some people will go to for family."

"Going to extreme lengths for your family isn't odd," Marco said flatly.

Edited 2011-06-22 06:38 (UTC)

"I know." She turned away, dismissing herself from this conversation. She was defending Sasuke, she realized, by playing off Marco's own history with his mother. And his father. "Especially not for you."

It wasn't fair of her. She knew that.

She couldn't fully bring herself to care.

Slipping back under the water, she kicked out and angled around, deciding she'd had enough with dwelling on the past she couldn't change. Marco wanted equivalencies? She could at least give him a few cause and effects. If he didn't move, she'd start with instruction on the result of someone pulling your legs out from under you. He was already soaking. Might as well get moving to warm himself up a little -- even if the air was never really cool on ship.

Hey, Marco had already been nearly drowned once today. He was not wanting to let Sakura pull him under the water again, thank you very much. He moved to the side, eying Sakura as she swam under the water.

Spoilsport. It wouldn't have been difficult to follow him, especially not since she was a relatively strong swimmer. She called chakra into her hands, creating an invisible surface area between her cupped palms, shoving water in his direction. He'd probably feel that strong nudge of water, if it wouldn't do anything to him.

She surface shortly after, tossing her head back to avoid the inconvenience of hair in her face. "Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill," she said conversationally. She was already pronouncing it much better than early that morning. (She may have been practicing in her own head.) "I don't remember reading about multiple sentient species native to Earth. Where's he from?"

The wave of water pushed Marco back a little, and while she was still under he rolled his eyes. Sure, show off your amazing ninja powers at the person who's not good at swimming, why don't you.

At the sudden change in subject, he blinked. "Ax isn't from Earth," Marco said. "He's an Andalite. I don't know what their planet's called, they always just call it the 'Andalite Home World'."

Hey, not her fault if Negi had everyone going on about water splitting earlier today. She just hadn't applied herself then.

There were a lot of things she'd have liked to ask, but it got right back into the dance they were doing earlier. Which left her with... a lot less to work with. "How did you me--" She sighed, irritated. "He's a nice shade of blue."

"Yes, he's blue," Marco said, rolling his eyes. "Glad to know you at least managed to notice that despite being completely smashed. Speaking of which - you are so not someone I expected to be the kind to go and get trashed."

"I wasn't trying," she said defensively. "I wasn't even drinking alcohol until Kang offered."

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