Of Kunoichi and Elevators
Characters: Seven (seventhspring)
Date/Time: [Feb 20th 2009] - [June 11th 2009]
Location: The Fourth Floor/The City Without Shape
Rating: PG; mild swearing
Summary: Seven finds her trip down in the elevator to meet Cara takes her to someplace else; a life-barren Konoha. Some swearing involved.
-------
The elevator had stirred to life with a throbbing hum, not quite what Seven was expecting. She found herself bracing against the wall, even though she'd used the elevator before, to no adverse effect.
Feeling edgy. She had no reason to, not over the resident she was going to meet at the bridge to the first of the floating islands, nor for anything she knew was coming in the near future. Recent events might have been getting to her - yes. The unsettled actions of people she didn't know and the fact the only person who seemed faintly familiar had been missing since soon after she rolled out of the confines of her cocoon.
She tucked her journal under her arm, standing securely on her own two feet. "Alright, so we're going exploring." Not entirely accurate, but it sent a thrill of curiosity blazing through her, tickling at her urge to know more about this place. Having been so immediately introduced to the fact there were, indeed, multiple worlds out there by stumbling into Rivelata the day she was 'born' had started her burning desire to learn.
She supposed she always had it, from how familiar it felt. Getting together with Cross to go over the medical facility was almost eating away at her concentration. There was something which drove her to distraction even thinking about it, though she held herself back for the sake of learning more about the Tree as a whole before getting mired down in the details.
The elevator slowed, and Seven looked up. Cara. Wasn't that her name? She believed so, looking up as she walked out the doors -- and into an unfamiliar bedroom.
Seven froze. Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the half-closed blinds, reflecting off a full-length mirror to her right. She caught sight of her own reflection, looking perturbed and faintly starting to blush. Invading a stranger's privacy was not on her list of things to do.
She turned, intending to run straight back into the elevator, only to find a glass picture window in it's place. She stared out and felt something akin to panic creep in under her skin, and she bit back the question that sprung to her lips: Where am I?
"Alright," she whispered, turning around to look for a door, just some way out of this place. "Maybe no one's home. All I have to do is get out of here and onto the street, and there'll be no one the wiser."
Plan made, she started forward, walking carefully - concentrating solely on minimizing every sound she made. A soft creak gave her pause, and she looked around, intent on a sign of life. There, the closet -- but no, nothing stirred, no suspicious homeowners blazed in and started asking her questions.
She didn't let her guard down, or at least didn't intend to. Looking over the room once more, she breathed out a small sigh of belief. At least the occupant was likely to be female. She should be spared any overt punishment, if that were the case. Their sense of decor wasn't half bad, either, but she wasn't here to admire the decor. No, she was here to...
To...
Seven paused, straightening. Why was she here? Not in the literal sense of the question - the elevator had opened her into this place, so the literal why was self-evident. The other why, the why of this place, of the elevator taking her on a ride to some unknown girl's bedroom...
There wasn't any answer that came to mind - and her speculations on what this place could really be were starting to form even as she made her quiet way to the door. She found the more she concentrated, the less sound she herself created - even if she still was the loudest thing she could detect in the vicinity.
The importance of this didn't strike until she'd slipped out the door and down the short hall, pausing again at the stairs. There wasn't so much as a shifting of pressure in the house; if anyone was home, they may as well have been ghosts for all she could tell.
Seven moved again, taking the stairs one at a time, concentrating on listening as well as minimizing her own noise impact. No dogs were barking outside - not that she could place why she expected there to be, if she noted the lack. No birds chirped outside, and this was an easier expectation to explain. The Tree had it's own share of birds, and if they were sized to match the tree, they also were almost always vocalizing during the day. No birds at all here struck her as deeply wrong.
She pushed off the last few stairs, landing and going into a roll with her journal in front of her, coming up with her back between a cabinet and a wall. Still nothing, other than her momentary surprise at how smoothly that action had gone.
That man may have been on to something. Rivelata and the sparring she'd witnessed came to mind, and she eyed her hands speculatively. Perhaps she needed to look into this, when she figured her way out of here.
Here. Her head went back up, and she crouched, listening yet again. Still nothing, and that sent a shiver down her spine. There was too little dust in this house for it to have been abandoned, but that could be explained away as everyone being out for the evening.
The silence from outside the house, however, had no easy explanation. Seven gathered herself, then sprinted for what looked to be the front door. She fumbled with the lock, then calmed herself. Easy. Don't lose your cool.
Seconds later, she was closing the door behind her and strolled into the street, hands clasped behind her and her most innocent expression plastered across her face.
The oddity continued. Afternoon washed everything in golden hues, but not one sound other than her feet on the dirt could be heard. Oh, wind; she heard wind through trees somewhere nearby, but nothing human, and nothing mobile.
How utterly improbable.
Seven stopped where she was. There could, in theory, be some sort of event or celebration going on. She didn't hear anything, but if this was a town of any decent size, she might never hear anything. If that was the case, then she needed to get up high to look around. Her eyes scanned the nearby surroundings, settling on a telephone pole.
It would have to do. Seven jogged over, impatient, and looked up at the first rung. Just a bit out of jumping height.
She frowned, then backed up. How to surmount this challenge?
Getting a step up was one option, if anything both mobile and able to support her weight were nearby. Granted, she wasn't looking hard, but a glance through the area turned up a pot of geraniums; not quite what she had in mind.
Maybe a running start would help. She took in a deep breath, backing up further, setting her journal down on the ground. When she rose again, it was to launch into a run.
Her first try brought her within inches of her target, though she slid back and barely caught herself from falling flat on her ass. Well, this at least seemed viable. She breathed in deeply again, retreating to a similar distance. Seven needed enough vertical push with her foot to get a hand around that lowest jutting bar.
Goal firmly in mind, she took off, faster this time. Her jump seemed to carry her higher, her push off the pole to hold better than the first time, but both lacked importance when compared to the fact her hand caught hold of metal and held, her body slamming into the wood hard enough to knock the wind out of her. Mission accomplished, if she couldn't help but feel there had to be a better way of getting this done.
Gathering her energy, she brought her other hand up to the next iron bar, shimmying upward until she could fit her foot into the first rung.
Shortly there-after, she found herself perched at the top, with no sign of any sort of gathering in the area. The day was dry enough dust from the road should be visible even if the gathering was not, and nowhere around as far as she could see - up to what looked to be a large barrier wall defining the outer boundary of the town.
Behind her, a cliff-face loomed, along with buildings that struck a chord somewhere within her for familiarity. Was she actually familiar? Did this have more meaning than she might have expected?
...Yes, if her interpretations of Tree events wasn't totally off-base. There was an importance here, and this time, it looked like it was for her; unlike with Dash and the head-protector that ended up in her care earlier.
What gave her considerable pause were the shapes chiseled into the cliff. Faces, five of them, and suddenly it was like being back in her dream. The destruction, the rubble that hadn't ended -- she shook her head, brought back to the empty, barren present.
No. This place - familiar, if not solidly so - must have only been a fragment in her dream, and not fragmented, broken into piles of rubble.
But those people... she looked back at the faces in the rock, and felt they were right, but not who she remembered. None of them had been standing there, where she'd been running.
Dammit. She started down the pole, suddenly desperate to get back to where she'd walked in - if the town was familiar, maybe the room she had walked into was more than just a coincidence.
With seven feet left, she pressed her lips into a thin line and made a decision. The drop and roll were as familiar as earlier, if the impact was very clearly felt through her body. Dusting herself off, Seven looked for her journal, then proceeded to job back the way she'd come.
Her recall proved to be accurate, leading her to the quiet, empty house she'd walked out of with no more than a few hesitations. She looked around, paying more critical attention, feeling for responses and finding more than she'd expected. Nothing clear, nothing specific, but an idea of home familiarity. If this hadn't been a place she'd lived before, it had at least been a place she'd spent a good amount of time.
There was no consideration, other than closing the door, as she made her way systematically through the house. There was an odd lack of photographs, something she noted in the back of her mind.
Seven found herself traveling up the stairs, hesitating before the door at the end of the hall.
Nothing happened when she opened it again. No blinding strikes of acknowledgment, no sudden insights. The same familiarity, though, that haunted her now that she recognized it.
This time she didn't worry about caution, walking around a space that could have been hers, or a friends, or a family member's. A dresser, the short table, the bed, the mirror, the desk...
The desk, on which something caught a bit of the afternoon light. Seven blinked, coming closer, setting her journal on the desk's surface as she caught sight of the first picture she'd seen in this place.
For a moment, she couldn't even think. Seven picked up the frame, retreating to the bed as she felt her legs want to give out underneath her. She recognized those people.
Names were so close, but they couldn't quite form. She ran her finger over the glass, looking at those four faces, one of them her own. "How old were we?" She could try to guess, based on how she looked now. Maybe a few years ago, perhaps more. Drake was younger, that she could tell. He'd filled out as he aged. The yellow haired one... he, too, was older in her dream, and the man with silver hair must have aged as well. He couldn't have been too old himself, despite the color of his hair. That he was older than either of the three young faces staring back at her was certain. Size, if not the way he held himself, made that apparent.
Maybe this had been her room. Drake didn't seem the type to decorate in pastels, and she couldn't find it in herself to say either of the other two would feel right in this setting. Besides, would she have visited a male in their home, extensively?
"Hell no." She grimaced, and feel quiet again. She wanted this photograph, to keep, if not in this barren realm.
Seven reluctantly stood, placing the frame on top of her journal. She hadn't sated her curiosity, and took to exploring through the few books she found on a shelf. Most were on scientific subjects; a few appeared to be pleasure reading.
Flipping through the pages of one, she found a folded chart marking a section on tea-leaves. Curious, she unfolded the paper, finding an outline of a man with various lines drawn like extensions of a circulation or nervous system.
She read the title out loud. "Chakra Pathways." Why did that sound so familiar? Even more so, it felt like something she'd seen before, perhaps even knew -- but based on the chart alone, it could be nothing more than a word unique to this world, describing the circulation system. Given the concentration of lines around the heart and brain, that might very well be what it was displaying.
She refolded it, but kept it out. She needed time to think over what it was, and what it meant.
Even as she closed the book to return it to the shelf, she heard an unmistakable ding. Glancing toward the window, she found elevator doors slowly sliding open.
"Oh no you don't," she said, dropping the book and leaping for the desk, chart slammed on top of the picture and journal, all then slid off the desk and into her hands. She raced for the doors, only hesitating for a moment as another reflection caught her eye. What the hell. She could look whatever it was over later. Shifting everything over to one arm, Seven nabbed the object that had attracted her fleeing attention and then closed the distance to the elevator doors.
She was safely pressed against the back wall when the doors slid shut, turning to look at which floor was pressed. As long as it was a floor in the Sphere with living beings in it, she didn't care. She just hoped she wasn't too late for her meeting with Cara.
Date/Time: [Feb 20th 2009] - [June 11th 2009]
Location: The Fourth Floor/The City Without Shape
Rating: PG; mild swearing
Summary: Seven finds her trip down in the elevator to meet Cara takes her to someplace else; a life-barren Konoha. Some swearing involved.
-------
The elevator had stirred to life with a throbbing hum, not quite what Seven was expecting. She found herself bracing against the wall, even though she'd used the elevator before, to no adverse effect.
Feeling edgy. She had no reason to, not over the resident she was going to meet at the bridge to the first of the floating islands, nor for anything she knew was coming in the near future. Recent events might have been getting to her - yes. The unsettled actions of people she didn't know and the fact the only person who seemed faintly familiar had been missing since soon after she rolled out of the confines of her cocoon.
She tucked her journal under her arm, standing securely on her own two feet. "Alright, so we're going exploring." Not entirely accurate, but it sent a thrill of curiosity blazing through her, tickling at her urge to know more about this place. Having been so immediately introduced to the fact there were, indeed, multiple worlds out there by stumbling into Rivelata the day she was 'born' had started her burning desire to learn.
She supposed she always had it, from how familiar it felt. Getting together with Cross to go over the medical facility was almost eating away at her concentration. There was something which drove her to distraction even thinking about it, though she held herself back for the sake of learning more about the Tree as a whole before getting mired down in the details.
The elevator slowed, and Seven looked up. Cara. Wasn't that her name? She believed so, looking up as she walked out the doors -- and into an unfamiliar bedroom.
Seven froze. Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the half-closed blinds, reflecting off a full-length mirror to her right. She caught sight of her own reflection, looking perturbed and faintly starting to blush. Invading a stranger's privacy was not on her list of things to do.
She turned, intending to run straight back into the elevator, only to find a glass picture window in it's place. She stared out and felt something akin to panic creep in under her skin, and she bit back the question that sprung to her lips: Where am I?
"Alright," she whispered, turning around to look for a door, just some way out of this place. "Maybe no one's home. All I have to do is get out of here and onto the street, and there'll be no one the wiser."
Plan made, she started forward, walking carefully - concentrating solely on minimizing every sound she made. A soft creak gave her pause, and she looked around, intent on a sign of life. There, the closet -- but no, nothing stirred, no suspicious homeowners blazed in and started asking her questions.
She didn't let her guard down, or at least didn't intend to. Looking over the room once more, she breathed out a small sigh of belief. At least the occupant was likely to be female. She should be spared any overt punishment, if that were the case. Their sense of decor wasn't half bad, either, but she wasn't here to admire the decor. No, she was here to...
To...
Seven paused, straightening. Why was she here? Not in the literal sense of the question - the elevator had opened her into this place, so the literal why was self-evident. The other why, the why of this place, of the elevator taking her on a ride to some unknown girl's bedroom...
There wasn't any answer that came to mind - and her speculations on what this place could really be were starting to form even as she made her quiet way to the door. She found the more she concentrated, the less sound she herself created - even if she still was the loudest thing she could detect in the vicinity.
The importance of this didn't strike until she'd slipped out the door and down the short hall, pausing again at the stairs. There wasn't so much as a shifting of pressure in the house; if anyone was home, they may as well have been ghosts for all she could tell.
Seven moved again, taking the stairs one at a time, concentrating on listening as well as minimizing her own noise impact. No dogs were barking outside - not that she could place why she expected there to be, if she noted the lack. No birds chirped outside, and this was an easier expectation to explain. The Tree had it's own share of birds, and if they were sized to match the tree, they also were almost always vocalizing during the day. No birds at all here struck her as deeply wrong.
She pushed off the last few stairs, landing and going into a roll with her journal in front of her, coming up with her back between a cabinet and a wall. Still nothing, other than her momentary surprise at how smoothly that action had gone.
That man may have been on to something. Rivelata and the sparring she'd witnessed came to mind, and she eyed her hands speculatively. Perhaps she needed to look into this, when she figured her way out of here.
Here. Her head went back up, and she crouched, listening yet again. Still nothing, and that sent a shiver down her spine. There was too little dust in this house for it to have been abandoned, but that could be explained away as everyone being out for the evening.
The silence from outside the house, however, had no easy explanation. Seven gathered herself, then sprinted for what looked to be the front door. She fumbled with the lock, then calmed herself. Easy. Don't lose your cool.
Seconds later, she was closing the door behind her and strolled into the street, hands clasped behind her and her most innocent expression plastered across her face.
The oddity continued. Afternoon washed everything in golden hues, but not one sound other than her feet on the dirt could be heard. Oh, wind; she heard wind through trees somewhere nearby, but nothing human, and nothing mobile.
How utterly improbable.
Seven stopped where she was. There could, in theory, be some sort of event or celebration going on. She didn't hear anything, but if this was a town of any decent size, she might never hear anything. If that was the case, then she needed to get up high to look around. Her eyes scanned the nearby surroundings, settling on a telephone pole.
It would have to do. Seven jogged over, impatient, and looked up at the first rung. Just a bit out of jumping height.
She frowned, then backed up. How to surmount this challenge?
Getting a step up was one option, if anything both mobile and able to support her weight were nearby. Granted, she wasn't looking hard, but a glance through the area turned up a pot of geraniums; not quite what she had in mind.
Maybe a running start would help. She took in a deep breath, backing up further, setting her journal down on the ground. When she rose again, it was to launch into a run.
Her first try brought her within inches of her target, though she slid back and barely caught herself from falling flat on her ass. Well, this at least seemed viable. She breathed in deeply again, retreating to a similar distance. Seven needed enough vertical push with her foot to get a hand around that lowest jutting bar.
Goal firmly in mind, she took off, faster this time. Her jump seemed to carry her higher, her push off the pole to hold better than the first time, but both lacked importance when compared to the fact her hand caught hold of metal and held, her body slamming into the wood hard enough to knock the wind out of her. Mission accomplished, if she couldn't help but feel there had to be a better way of getting this done.
Gathering her energy, she brought her other hand up to the next iron bar, shimmying upward until she could fit her foot into the first rung.
Shortly there-after, she found herself perched at the top, with no sign of any sort of gathering in the area. The day was dry enough dust from the road should be visible even if the gathering was not, and nowhere around as far as she could see - up to what looked to be a large barrier wall defining the outer boundary of the town.
Behind her, a cliff-face loomed, along with buildings that struck a chord somewhere within her for familiarity. Was she actually familiar? Did this have more meaning than she might have expected?
...Yes, if her interpretations of Tree events wasn't totally off-base. There was an importance here, and this time, it looked like it was for her; unlike with Dash and the head-protector that ended up in her care earlier.
What gave her considerable pause were the shapes chiseled into the cliff. Faces, five of them, and suddenly it was like being back in her dream. The destruction, the rubble that hadn't ended -- she shook her head, brought back to the empty, barren present.
No. This place - familiar, if not solidly so - must have only been a fragment in her dream, and not fragmented, broken into piles of rubble.
But those people... she looked back at the faces in the rock, and felt they were right, but not who she remembered. None of them had been standing there, where she'd been running.
Dammit. She started down the pole, suddenly desperate to get back to where she'd walked in - if the town was familiar, maybe the room she had walked into was more than just a coincidence.
With seven feet left, she pressed her lips into a thin line and made a decision. The drop and roll were as familiar as earlier, if the impact was very clearly felt through her body. Dusting herself off, Seven looked for her journal, then proceeded to job back the way she'd come.
Her recall proved to be accurate, leading her to the quiet, empty house she'd walked out of with no more than a few hesitations. She looked around, paying more critical attention, feeling for responses and finding more than she'd expected. Nothing clear, nothing specific, but an idea of home familiarity. If this hadn't been a place she'd lived before, it had at least been a place she'd spent a good amount of time.
There was no consideration, other than closing the door, as she made her way systematically through the house. There was an odd lack of photographs, something she noted in the back of her mind.
Seven found herself traveling up the stairs, hesitating before the door at the end of the hall.
Nothing happened when she opened it again. No blinding strikes of acknowledgment, no sudden insights. The same familiarity, though, that haunted her now that she recognized it.
This time she didn't worry about caution, walking around a space that could have been hers, or a friends, or a family member's. A dresser, the short table, the bed, the mirror, the desk...
The desk, on which something caught a bit of the afternoon light. Seven blinked, coming closer, setting her journal on the desk's surface as she caught sight of the first picture she'd seen in this place.
For a moment, she couldn't even think. Seven picked up the frame, retreating to the bed as she felt her legs want to give out underneath her. She recognized those people.
Names were so close, but they couldn't quite form. She ran her finger over the glass, looking at those four faces, one of them her own. "How old were we?" She could try to guess, based on how she looked now. Maybe a few years ago, perhaps more. Drake was younger, that she could tell. He'd filled out as he aged. The yellow haired one... he, too, was older in her dream, and the man with silver hair must have aged as well. He couldn't have been too old himself, despite the color of his hair. That he was older than either of the three young faces staring back at her was certain. Size, if not the way he held himself, made that apparent.
Maybe this had been her room. Drake didn't seem the type to decorate in pastels, and she couldn't find it in herself to say either of the other two would feel right in this setting. Besides, would she have visited a male in their home, extensively?
"Hell no." She grimaced, and feel quiet again. She wanted this photograph, to keep, if not in this barren realm.
Seven reluctantly stood, placing the frame on top of her journal. She hadn't sated her curiosity, and took to exploring through the few books she found on a shelf. Most were on scientific subjects; a few appeared to be pleasure reading.
Flipping through the pages of one, she found a folded chart marking a section on tea-leaves. Curious, she unfolded the paper, finding an outline of a man with various lines drawn like extensions of a circulation or nervous system.
She read the title out loud. "Chakra Pathways." Why did that sound so familiar? Even more so, it felt like something she'd seen before, perhaps even knew -- but based on the chart alone, it could be nothing more than a word unique to this world, describing the circulation system. Given the concentration of lines around the heart and brain, that might very well be what it was displaying.
She refolded it, but kept it out. She needed time to think over what it was, and what it meant.
Even as she closed the book to return it to the shelf, she heard an unmistakable ding. Glancing toward the window, she found elevator doors slowly sliding open.
"Oh no you don't," she said, dropping the book and leaping for the desk, chart slammed on top of the picture and journal, all then slid off the desk and into her hands. She raced for the doors, only hesitating for a moment as another reflection caught her eye. What the hell. She could look whatever it was over later. Shifting everything over to one arm, Seven nabbed the object that had attracted her fleeing attention and then closed the distance to the elevator doors.
She was safely pressed against the back wall when the doors slid shut, turning to look at which floor was pressed. As long as it was a floor in the Sphere with living beings in it, she didn't care. She just hoped she wasn't too late for her meeting with Cara.