the great wall of something, all right

[haruno]

When Marco had mentioned the Great Wall of China back when she'd first pod-popped, she'd figured he meant some sort of landmark for a place she didn't recognize. Next to a word like "sky-scraper," and she guessed that this landmark had to be significant enough, or at least big enough, to hold up against something with a name that implied a

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[livestoannoy]

Marco shrugged. "How the hell should I know?" he said. "I never studied Chinese history or whatever. It's a wall. It's big. People like to stand on it and take happy snaps."

He nodded to one of the nearby streets. If he remembered right, the Wall wasn't too far away from where they were now. "Come on, down this way."

[haruno]

Again, why exactly had she consented to this? Sakura rolled her eyes, changing direction at his indication. "Figures this is when I leave the camera I don't have at home." He clearly wasn't into this for the historical value. Then again, she should probably get around to asking if he was Chinese in the first place.

Eventually. For now, Sakura was content to lapse into silence, taking in her surroundings while sorting out how bizarre this city-within-a-spaceship really was.

"Why'd you ever mention it in the first place?"

[livestoannoy]

"Because I wasn't kidding when I said it was huge. Hell, you can see it from space. Or at least you could, before the Ohm went and decided to blow up the world."

Marco glanced around as he walked, but not with as much interest as Sakura. He'd already been this way before anyway - and after a while, you got used to the randomness of the City.

[haruno]

She paused, a hitch in her step as she tried to imagine how big something would have to be to be noticed from space. It was surprisingly difficult. "Now Stacy keeps it in the middle of the rest of her collections." In a way, it felt like some haphazard librarian doing their best to save what they could from a burning library. You couldn't reach everything before the flames, but what you could became all that more precious, if incomplete. "Another piece of what's otherwise gone missing."

She frowned, pulling herself out of whatever thoughts that statement lead into. "I take it you also don't know why it was built in the first place?"

[livestoannoy]

"We're just in one big giant museum," Marco said dryly. It was much of a stretch to take that one step further, when you think about it - who's to say that they weren't museum pieces as well?

"Eh, it was to do with keeping the Huns out or something," Marco said, waving one hand dismissively. "Either that or they really wanted to keep out the rabbits."

[haruno]

"Guess having your garden eaten through one time too many can inspire you to go to just about any length." His point as far as a museum went was interesting, and not even because the concept of a museum was entirely familiar to Sakura. Had she been able to follow the metaphor to it's end, she'd be wondering what kind of curator asked members of its collection to fight against the ones making its collection necessary... or historically valuable.

"What about the really tall buildings around here? Do you know more about their history?" Unless they, too, were Chinese. Then this was hopeless.

[livestoannoy]

"Them? No way. Most of these aren't even from my world. But..." Marco rounded around the corner of a skyscraper - and there in front of them, running along in-between the towering alien buildings, was the Great Wall of China. "...this one is! Voila, I present to you the Great Wall of China. Or at least the bit of it that's left."

[haruno]

Sakura came to a halt beside Marco, looking at the presented Great Wall of China. She didn't know what exactly she had expected, but now, standing here, she figured the least she could have counted on was the Great Wall being large.

Standing what, nine meters maybe? At the tallest? Sakura was more closely reminded of her home village walls than anything particularly great. Might be thicker, she thought, trying to think of something to say besides the, "Oh," that slipped out.

"Marco," she said, "Are you Chinese?" She wasn't going to be less than polite about someone's personal heritage -- even if they didn't get behind the history all that much.

[livestoannoy]

At that point, Marco started laughing. And not just a chuckle either; this was the kind of laugh that indicated that Sakura had said something completely hilarious and that he was quite possibly laughing at her for having said it in the first place as well.

"You think I'm Chinese?" Marco managed to say as he clutched at his sides.

[haruno]

Sakura frowned, moving past Marco as he laughed like cross-world cultural ignorance was new to him. "Only because 'Jackass' probably isn't a nation on any world," she muttered as she started purposefully toward the wall, eying it up and mentally comparing it to the village wall back home.

She'd expected taller, if only from how he'd talked about it before, but in this alien landscape it was positively dwarfed by the buildings looming around it. Still, once she was closer to the wall itself, she could acknowledge it was quite a feat -- especially for normal people.

You know. Ones without chakra abilities.

She continued to ignore Marco for the interim, so very outwardly invested in studying this oh so historically precious to his not-Chinese self's world.

[livestoannoy]

"Ouch! So Barbie does have some bite then," Marco said, grinning and apparently completely unperturbed by Sakura's insult. If anything, he was impressed - that one was good.

"You don't seem very impressed," he observed, walking up to lean casually on the wall. "Would it make a difference if I told you that it was over four thousand miles long?"

[haruno]

Sakura paused in pulling off her glove, eyebrows lifting in surprise. "Just a little," she said, pressing one palm flat against the stones. "Four thousand miles... they really wanted to keep those 'rabbits' out something fierce." She did the mental math, coming to some interesting realizations.

"Something that long would link most the major shinobi nations together."

She glanced down along the length of the wall, trying to imagine miles and miles of this. "That's amazing."

[livestoannoy]

Marco had never heard of the 'shinobi nations', whatever the hell they were, but that wasn't too big of a surprise - with her apparently natural pink hair and the fact the she didn't know what China was, it was pretty clear that Sakura wasn't from Earth.

"There's only part of it here. Stacy's big, but she's not that big."

[haruno]

"Sometimes a part is all you need to preserve the greater memory." It was a working theory back home, at least. Sakura took her hand off the wall, looking up and narrowing her gaze.

"It's pretty sturdy, you'd say?"

[livestoannoy]

Marco raised an eyebrow. "It's still around after a good number of centuries and more than a few invading armies," he said. "It's not going to just fall down."

[haruno]

She contemplated the top of the wall, then looked back toward Marco. Most things around here were weighted decisions, though she figured the one she was currently making wasn't too surprising to anyone who'd met Allenby or seen Sakura herself out in the city.

"Wonder if it looks the same from the top."

And with a quick grin, she backed away from the base of the wall, gathered chakra into her legs, and leaped up to see for herself.

Sakura cleared the lip of the wall, landing on it's wide pathway. Thus when she next spoke, it was to call out with, "It's a lot wider than I was expecting!" Such facts were necessary to state.