trans_9 | [open] rebuilding what we can at the cost of what we can't do

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[open] rebuilding what we can at the cost of what we can't do

Sakura look a left turn between two disparate pieces of architecture, eyes sliding over them both without truly appreciating what they saw. An inventory of places that were problematic for being hiding spots, possible ambush zones, tactical advantages in territory ran though her mind, along with figures and numbers for things she kept track of to make sure her thoughts weren't allowed much time to wander.

As it was, they were still getting away from her, heavy with emotions and logical conclusions that played off loyalty and desire to protect all at once. It left her looking pensive as she walked through the city, making her way toward the Great Wall of a country she would never see.

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It was curious, having an offer of assistance from a stranger. She was more used to that in the context of work in Medical Bay, or when asking for assistance in using technology so many took for granted on this ship.

Offers for something like this... She smiled. "I'd be grateful. I've painted fences before, learned some basic ideas of stone-laying out of curiosity back home, but as far as experience, I just have what I've picked up since this place."

She bowed, just deep enough to signify the genuine nature of her appreciation. It felt like the appropriate thing to do, even in a place where not everyone recognized bowing for what it was. "My name's Haruno Sakura."

After a moment, the Astartes returns the bow, though his is definitely of a different sort, the courtly bow of a Knight. "I am Erhart Ritter, of the Eternal Crusade."

He gestures to the wall, "So what did you intend for today, in terms of repairs?"

"I'm glad to meet you, Earhart Ritter." If she was meant to state his affiliation as well, she was unsure.

"I wanted to make sure all the loose, broken stone is out of the area, then see about finishing the stacking of stones by how usable they are. Only a few really broke past repair. I was thinking as part of the internal structure, with the help of cement... if then I wasn't sure about how any of it would handle the humidity here on ship. It may be that was part of what ate away at the wall in the first place, to cause the damage to be so extensive."

"I see. I'll begin clearing the stone, then." He does so without further comment, his massive, inhuman strength and size making short work of the stone clearance, and begins stacking the possibly useable ones shortly thereafter.

"No fortress can last forever, even the Fists and Iron Warriors know this. Destruction is inevitable, the key is to know how long you can prevent the decay. Holding out, against the elements... or a foe."

She found it pleasant to fall into a pattern of clearing out the area of small debris while her unexpected companion handled the heavier lifting. No reason to object to each using their strengths to their best ends.

"Everything has an end," she agreed, running the back of one hand over her brow. "It's knowing the difference between an ending and the time to rebuild and sustain that's important. One of the things."

The Wall had probably hit an end, but Sakura wasn't making claims on her own depth of understanding the difference. Distractions could win out over logic. "Some things are worth preserving for what they remind you of. Even when they're not of your world."

"There is a time to rebuild, yes. Lord Dorn rebuilt the Imperium, together with Guilliman Roboute, and the other remaining primarchs during the Scouring."

He pauses, briefly, as she probably has to rest at some point, and looks at her, red lenses boring into her eyes. "So what does this place remind you of, then?"

Her own pause was notably longer. She had to think, choose to think over what this meant, if it meant anything. She's surprised to realize it does. A connection to the solidity of what home had been, a connection to the walls that had defined her life in so many ways she hadn't recognized at the time. Hadn't realized until now.

"Home," she said. "We had walls... taller than this, around my entire village. After most the village was leveled, the wall was the only thing really left standing. The houses had given way under the force of the," she hesitated. How to describe what had happened? "The explosion. The wall suffered minimal damage, even when the ground was gutted out right up to it."

Strange how starkly that stood out in memory, in those months before leaving to fight on the front of the Fourth Great Shinobi War.

"That must have been an impressive village, then. Were you at war when it was destroyed?"

He shifts stone as he waits for her answer, busying himself in the chosen task of all sons of Dorn. Building and rebuilding fortresses for the protection of humanity.

"Not at the time. We were a few months afterward, but believe it or not, the attack that did that damage didn't have much to do with why we went to war. Not in the end. The one who attacked us was dead by then."

She brushed some more of the debris away, content with the progress.

He continues to build, and shift the rock for a while, listening, then says just a single word, once he finds out about the fate of the attacker.

"Good."

Sakura straightens, then smiles a little to herself, humming some kind of positive endorsement of his single word. Positive, if there was much she hadn't understood or expected during Pain's attack. Naruto's survival, for one.

She lapses into silence, content not to be speaking when she still isn't sure how much she wants to say. More general than specific; what's the point in too much past context when the present and future were what defined what they did? Not their home lives... even if that wasn't true.

"Looks like there's just enough of the stone left intact to handle the majority of the rebuilding. I wonder if some can be scavenged from other structures around here." She looks up at the alien skyscrapers (alien no matter what race constructed them), blinking slowly. Considering.

"Quite possibly. But would it be scavenging or stealing? Those structures may well have residents."

He looks slightly askance at all of them, giving a hard stare at the ones he knows to be alien-constructed.

"Scavenging. We can knock and ask if anyone's home first, to be on the safe side, but the waking population of the ship is in the hundreds, not thousands. Not even tens of thousands or millions, which this ship could technically support." She frowns. "One way or another, it already is, believing the numbers down in the pods."

"Very well. Do you wish to undertake this immediately then?" He looks ready. But then, Erhart is always fit for work. Or war.

Sakura looks between him and the great surroundings that pass as space-ship held indoor-outdoors and nods. "Might as well get started now."

Erhart will walk with her out into the city, beginning the door-knocking and stone-borrowing endeavor. Because, really, who's going to say no to him?

Those with less common sense than bravado. Mostly nothing stirs when they knock, leaving them free to start pillaging like the pirates they probably weren't. Part of a defunct stone building is like striking gold, if Sakura debates the stones themselves. "With a little refitting, they should work, right?"

"That they should. Soon the structure will be defensible once more.... but I still don't understand the why of this place at all. How do so many structures, of both human and Xenos construction come to be jumbled together here in the first place?"

"I don't know." Sakura settled on the simple truth. It worked for her as much as against her in this case.

"The prior crew gets the blame for all of this," she said, gesturing around them. "And it's not only buildings. There's artwork, weaponry, creatures and people themselves... things of power that we have no idea about, too. Nothing too scary up until it breaks free or is let loose or whatever else the Warden does based on prior programming. Is it programming?"

Sakura stopped, not entirely sure.

"I can't say. I don't trust the infernal machine running this place."

"That makes two of us." More than two, in her experience, but she said as much with a smile and glance upward. "The City gives me the chills. THe not good kind, if I'm being honest."

"Astartes like myself are incapable of feeling fear, it has been removed from us. However... it does disturb me as well, on a deep level. Like something is existentially wrong, or heretical about the place."

He looks at her, the gesture almost companionable.

"Do you fear it?"

"I don't like it," she said after a while. "It's not the same as fear. I'm afraid, time to time. Who wouldn't be?" Sakura paused, grimacing. "Outside of Astartes, I guess. Anyone with enough emotional repression probably isn't, either, but they're also not a lot of other things."

The City was... not restful. She didn't know how else to put it. Chills, whatever she used to describe it lacked the particular poignancy of her feelings.

Down at the heart of it all, it wasn't home, and she was afraid that it might have to be. One day. "I've got bigger things to worry about. Not knowing what else the City's kept hidden from us, that the Daligig and the Warden didn't think worth mentioning..."

She grimaced. "We'll find those things out one way or another on our own."

"Secrets can be very dangerous things. But as long as humans exist here, I shall protect them and people like yourself."

He nods very formally to her.

"Counting me as something other?" She was teasing -- and curious -- and yes, definitely teasing. Abrupt mood shift aside, she didn't want to dwell on what was dangerous. Everything was. Even the things they knew outright.

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