Day 48: Cafeteria (Breakfast)

[should_be_dead]

Luckily for Mele, the night had ended before Tenzen had changed his mind and deemed Mele appropriate for target practice. Even if the situation of who was mocking who had seemed to change into the Iga ninja's favor. Despite her behavior, perhaps the insolent woman could serve some sort of use nonetheless. He had been trapped in this place for a

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[thatdamnedninja]

"You could've got your nurse to write one for you," Yuffie shot back, immediately. He had a right to be freaked, but damn, she could've done with some warning. For all that he tried to be the wise old mystic, Nanaki sure knew how to be a doofus sometimes. Might've had something to do with him growin' up differently from the two-leggers he looked down his nose at. Or maybe it was just how he was, who knew? Nanaki was Nanaki.

His stammering outrage was just enough to make up for his (perfectly justified, not that she'd admit it) thoughtlessness. "You so do." She rocked back in her seat, affecting a thin veneer of smug satisfaction that only just reached her eyes. Behind it, her mind was still chasing itself 'round in circles.

"Cloud?" she asked, perking up. So he had found somebody! Phew. That was one person off the to-be-kicked list. And Tifa, huh? Man. Was Landel going after the full set, or what? "If they were okay when you blacked out, they'll be okay now," Yuffie explained, glancing from Nanaki's-Nanaki's!-face to the sausage he was… pawing at. She cleared her throat, picking up her knife and fork to demonstrate.

It was probably gonna take a bit of time for her to come to terms with Nanaki The Human. She recognized the mind but not the body, and that was as disconcerting as all get out. Weird was one word for it. Slightly uncomfortable was another (two). But, all the same, Yuffie couldn't just leave him on his own to come to terms with it. She'd give him whatever help she could.

[flamingfurball]

"I doubt she would cooperate," he huffed. "If you don't want to, that's fine." He'd try. Maybe. What would he say, though? And holding a pen...? He'd only just gotten used to texting, and that took a lot of effort just to press buttons. Of course, that was with paws.

He chose to ignore Yuffie, hoping that would end her teasing. He did NOT look like that Turk. Speaking of which.... "Tifa said it's not ShinRa. She spoke to Rude."

Tifa. She and Cloud were safe then, he was glad. He hadn't been much help, he supposed. Although he'd dragged Tifa down to potential safety, so that was something. Yeah. His father would be proud, he was certain of it!

"He was with Tifa and we went to find somebody."

He glanced sideways at Yuffie's demonstration of cutlery and ignored it. Once he learned how to chew properly, THEN he'd work on his table manners. He lifted the sausage and bit a little piece off, throwing his head back and swallowing. It wasn't very satisfying. A bigger piece. Teeth chomping down twice, head back and-

Nanaki coughed and hacked the lump back up onto the plate. Not chewed enough? Well, humans really did like to exercise their mouths. He leaned forward and picked it up again with his mouth, giving it a few more chomps and realising his jaw could move a little more freely as a human. Like a bovine, see?

[thatdamnedninja]

"She will if you're convincing enough," Yuffie countered easily. "Try it. I've seen nurses write notes for people before." He'd have to work something out, one way or another. There were enough AVALANCHE members around to make playing messenger more trouble than it was worth. She sure wasn't gonna do it.

She let it slide for now, in favor of rolling her eyes. "Yeah," Yuffie drawled. "I've been here for, what, seventeen days now? Found all that out a long time ago." Seventeen days. She was practically a veteran. "What else did she tell you?" There was a lot to know, and even if Tifa'd spoken to Rude, she couldn't know all that much. Probably. "If you've got any questions, I'm the one to ask."

It was still weird to think that she was more in the know than Cloud, but that thought flew right back out of mind at Nanaki's next-display. Yuffie grimaced. "Ewww!" she exclaimed. "Use your hands if you've really gotta, but for the love of Da Chaos, please don't do that again. Ever." She'd even said please! Her! Yuffie Kisaragi, saying that word! "I'll show you how to do it. Just watch, okay?" With her nose still wrinkled in disgust, Yuffie cut off a piece of pancake and chewed it slowly.

[flamingfurball]

Again, Nanaki decided to ignore her. So maybe he would try. Or ask somebody else. or just let people deal with it when they had to.

Seventeen days didn't sound like a long time, but he supposed seventeen days of being locked up was a lot for somebody who'd never experienced that before. Nanaki had done well over a year with Hojo. This place certainly seemed a lot more pleasant.

"She arrived shortly before me. Who else is here? Who's in charge?"

Nanaki tilted his head, not sure which bit had made her act that way. The spitting out or the re-eating? He always hacked up furballs and grass in private. Until the forest...the cubs.... Nanaki felt a pit of darkness in his stomach and looked away quickly. Yuffie was here. Familiarity. Life.

He calmed down and watched her eat. He couldn't see her jaw working as much as a cows so he moved the lump over to his cheek where his teeth could grinding it, chewing and chomping loudly, mouth open until he got the rhythm of it.

[thatdamnedninja]

Yuffie was quiet for a long while, picking through her food. She chewed slowly, swallowed slowly, kept up her demonstration just in case it was needed. Her attention, though, was inward. She knew what she had to tell him, but how to tell him was a whole other ball game.

"Well, it's Martin Landel who runs this place. And his bitch, Nurse Lydia." There was a pinch between her eyebrows, and she reached up to run it away before she could stop herself. "I've never seen either of 'em; they just like taunting us over the intercom like a bunch of sissies." Sadistic sissies, but sissies all the same. It was galling just to think about! If she could just get her hands on Landel, even for one second…

"Anyway," she said, jerking herself out of dreamland. "Anyway. Before I tell you anythin' else, I've got a question to ask. It's important, so pay attention." She waited until he'd swallowed his mouthful before she went ahead and asked, "Have you noticed anythin' different about me?"

It was a weird question, she knew, but it was the only way she could think of to ease him into it. It would've been quicker to just blurt it all out-and hope he could keep up without either flipping his lid or passing it all off as completely crazy-and part of her had been really, really tempted to take that route, but she slammed the brakes on her instincts and let her brain do the talking for once.

[flamingfurball]

Nanaki watched Yuffie, trying to mimic her actions. He managed to swallow the food (it was all mushy and weird now), and pulled a face as it went down. He still had to tilt his head back but he was getting there. He bit his finger as he tried to get another piece into his cheek between his teeth.

The information wasn't very useful to him. He didn't know these people, their purpose or weaknesses. "What do they want?" he asked, mouth full.

She asked a question. A strange one he hadn't realised had been nagging him. Just a little. Something different about her that he couldn't placed and blamed the clothes for. He was starting to panic, but tried to tell himself she'd just had a hair cut or another of those silly things humans got excited about.

"....what is it?"

[thatdamnedninja]

"To screw with us," Yuffie answered, honestly. What? It was the truth! "Just-I'll get to that in a bit."

She shifted in her seat, impatience biting her. No, not impatience; that was there, yeah, but it wasn't Nanaki's fault. The question had been a weird one. A really, really weird one. And for somebody who wasn't even used to being a human, maybe she'd been asking too much. Or, at least, asking the wrong thing. "Nanaki, I'm nineteen. I dunno how old I was when you last saw me-sixteen or seventeen, right? Shorter hair, not so narrow here?" She poked herself in the cheek that wasn't playing host to an impressive set of scabbed-over scratch marks.

Time to take the plunge. "Before I got brought here, it was the year 0010." And she'd been in the middle of the biggest outright war since Wutai versus Shin-Ra. Fun and games for all involved, not.

[flamingfurball]

Nanaki's head went light and Gilligan felt more like a snake now, crawling and coiling about in his stomach, pressing hard against his lungs. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to make it go away. But the only familiar thing near him that could calm him down was unfamiliar now. He'd been too wrapped up in his own problems to realise it.

"I... I wasn't gone that long," he said, quietly. He wanted to get up and leave, find Tifa or Cloud, check them, see how different they were. But he was too unsteady on his feet and he wanted to make Gilligan go away, he didn't want Yuffie to see him so afraid, so....childish.

She couldn't grow up without him. Not so suddenly.... The cubs weren't that old, not that much time had passed, he'd been so sure....

[thatdamnedninja]

"No! No, no. That's not it; you've got it all wrong." Yuffie shook her head, placing her hand lightly on his arm. She gave it a squeeze, friendly and unfamiliarly familiar. "Listen to me before you start jumping to conclusions." Maybe that hadn't been the best way to go about it, after all. Oops didn't seem like it was gonna cut it.

"It's not you or me. It's Landel. He doesn't just take people from their homes, no matter what they're doing and why they're doing it. He snatches 'em right out of time, too." Her tone dipped low, and it took a little bit of effort to keep her spunky-girl speech pattern as it should be. "Cloud's from Meteorfall; he was watchin' it happen, and then he woke up here. Reno used to be here, too; I haven't seen the jerk in days, but he was from the year before me. It's… It doesn't add up, like a paradox, y'know? I bet if-when-we find a way back home, we'll end up right where we were when we left. Me in 0010, Cloud in 0008, Reno in '09. See? You haven't missed anything, it just hasn't happened for you yet."

Sometimes, Yuffie was glad that she could talk without thinking too hard about the mechanics of what she was saying.

[flamingfurball]

Nanaki jolted a little when she touched his arm, but finally looked at her, eyes the slightest bit wet. Or maybe it was just the light.

"Jumping to conclusions?" he repeated, shakily. "You just told me it was 0010 before you got here... I haven't been around people in a long time, I thought...." But everyone else was messed up too. Cloud was behind. Younger. Reno was the same as Nanaki.

He looked at the table.

I don't want you to die....

"...is your friend better?"

[thatdamnedninja]

Was it just her, or was Nanaki about ready to cry? Yuffie quickly made up her mind not to look too close, just in case.

"Yeah, well… I guess I could've phrased that better," she muttered, leaving her hand where it was. "I thought you'd be able to tell for sure what year it'd been before you wound up here." Turned out that she was the one who'd jumped to conclusions, go figure.

Instead of dwelling on that, she hopped right on over to the next thought-track. He hadn't been around people for a long time? Nanaki was almost as much as a wanderer as she was, in his own way, but most of his disappearing acts had been limited to the first two years of the Geostigma incident. So, '08 or '09? That wasn't too bad, or so she figured. Could've been a lot worse.

"My friend? Wha- Oh, d'you mean Yuri?" Yuffie hesitated again, unwillingly reminded of the night with the shapeshifter, but she flashed a grin like it was nothing. "Yup! It all got fixed." No harm done, she wanted to add, but couldn't. Too many people had died, including Yuri's mom. She remembered it-couldn't forget it-all too clearly; working herself to the bone to find a cure, to keep her patients' spirits buoyed up. And one by one they'd been pulled under, except for the lucky few.

[flamingfurball]

The small amount of trembling he'd felt began to subside and Nanaki took a calming breath. Being out of time was strange, but....it was better than missing time completely.

He nodded and she explained about her friend, feeling relief a little reluctantly. Guilt was getting in the way.

"Did I....help?" he asked, suddenly getting a headache as he tried to comprehend their realities. Hopefully she'd seen him since he'd gone into the forest. He didn't want to explain that and he hoped that for whatever reason he blacked out, he was still ok...

[thatdamnedninja]

Whew. Nanaki was lookin' a little better, Yuffie was glad to see. She was sure that he wasn't alright, but it was a start. Starts were good. "You did, yeah," she confirmed. "We all did. Some big stuff went down, y'know; it was a real pain in the ass, but AVALANCHE got back together again and saved the day. Turns out that it was Sephiroth all along." Her expression twisted into a scowl, one that she was quick to wipe away.

She grinned. "You came dashing in with Cait on your head."

Breakfast was going cheerfully ignored, she noticed offhand. Or, well, not so cheerfully; things were really kind of rocky. Still, she'd eaten enough to keep Plucky off her case, and lunch wasn't exactly a long time away.

[flamingfurball]

Nanaki might not have his body, but something about the way his shoulders lifted and his head lowered down was very familiar. "Sephiroth? But he was destroyed," he growled. Was her reality COMPLETELY different to his?!

His shoulders relaxed again and he tilted his head at Yuffie. He'd come bounding in with Cait on his head.... Huh. He wasn't sure what he thought of that.

Yuffie might not be eating, but Nanaki wanted more. He picked up a sausage, nibbling along it to soften it up, picking away bit by bit.

"You never told me who else is here..."

[thatdamnedninja]

"Yuppers," said Yuffie. "We got him good. But," she stretched the word out, shaking her head, "seems like the sucker still had a thing about not dyin'. And a god-complex. That too." Finally, after one parting pat, she lifted her hand from his arm and dropped it down onto the table. Her fingers curled loosely. "I still don't understand it all. But that grossness disease was from him, and he had these things-they were like, I don't know, Vince called 'em larvae forms. They wanted a new Reunion."

Lucky for them, for AVALANCHE, that they'd never managed it. Lucky for the whole wide world; they'd only just started really picking themselves up off the ground again, and with Geostigma on top of it all, there was no way the W.R.O. could have been able to launch a successful counterattack. Nope. As usual, when the going got tough, AVALANCHE got roped into doing the dirty work.

Yuffie leaned back in her chair, bringing her knees up. For a moment, she was silent. "I didn't, didn't I?" she eventually said. "Well, lessee. There's me 'n you, Cloud, Tifa," she began ticking names off her fingers, "Zack Fair, Cissnei (a Turk girl), Rude, Loz (that's one of 'em bug-boys I told you about), and…" She stamped down on the urge to wince. "Sephiroth. Pre-crazycakes, apparently. And, um, Aerith."

[flamingfurball]

Nanaki was starting to get even more annoyed with this place. Nothing at all made sense and he still felt that anger coursing through him from before he blacked out, looking for an outlet. His eyes followed Yuffie's hand, wondering why she broke the contact. He was usually petting and scratching him some way or another. Or even resting her hand on his shoulders as they walked side by side....

He went through the people in his head. Zack was dead, he didn't like turks, he liked Sephiroth even less and.....

"Aerith...."

Dead. like Zack. only he cared about her. What if his Grandfather was alive too?! But Yuffie didn't mention him. but if this place brought people back to life.... Grandpa probably wouldn't want it... It would be selfish to wish him back, just to tell him all the things that had happened and see how proud he was.