Mar 03, 2010 15:01
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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rika,
kirk,
klavier,
axel,
meche,
kagura,
tenzen,
anise,
minato,
rude,
leonard,
the doctor,
ranulf,
england,
indiana jones,
naminé,
utena,
luke fon fabre,
zex,
niikura,
taura,
hayes,
peter parker,
kurogane,
lunge,
lana skye,
mello,
brainiac 5,
xemnas,
ange,
albedo,
anthy,
nunnally,
remy,
tsukasa,
agatha,
peter petrelli,
mele,
two-face,
yuffie,
erika,
the scarecrow,
sync,
battler,
scourge,
tyki,
wolverine,
zack,
l,
haseo,
shinji,
sechs,
senna,
haine,
scott pilgrim,
aigis,
gumshoe,
dahlia,
ritsu,
hanatarou,
beatrice,
sora,
prussia,
ashton,
rei,
claude,
renamon,
keman,
guybrush,
alkaid,
von karma,
hanekoma,
guy,
heat,
kairi,
kio,
venom,
depth charge,
kibitoshin,
allelujah,
fai,
riku,
aerith,
rolo,
yue,
ema skye,
mccoy,
scar (tlk)
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.
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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.
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"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.
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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?"
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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.
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"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....
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"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.
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"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?"
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"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.
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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...
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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.
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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..."
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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."
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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.
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No. Not thinking like that. Yuffie wanted to hope, and so she hoped. The moment broke and so did her stillness, and she bumped shoulders companionably with the now-human Nanaki. Physical contact was a rare thing for her these days; it felt weird, now, after all this time. "It's a real trip, lemme tell you. One of these days, I swear we're gonna blink and find all of AVALANCHE fallin' on our laps. Cid, Barret, Reeve. Vince. Bunch of old farts," she added, lightly.
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"Maybe some other people too," he said quietly, hopefully.
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