No Adults: The Konohagakure Survivors [HSnJ/WWZ]
01: Sasuke | Table of Contents | 03
Title: 02: Sasori
Fandoms: hs_no_jutsu / World War Z
Characters: Max Brooks, Akasuna no Sasori
Word Count: 1,676
Rating: G
Summary: Max Brooks visits a converted fortress of a high school to interview more survivors of the Zombie War.
Author's Notes: Huzzah for bullshit no jutsu~
Sasori Akasuna does not fit the mental image of a typical computer wizard. He's tall and holds himself with the confidence of a man who is very certain of his place in the world. He wears the patterned robes that apparently denote some obscure rank in this place. He, too, calls Itachi Uchiha "the Boss" but it lacks the same kind of awe the others seem to hold for the man. I ask Sasori why he's remained in what's very much a backwater after VA Day.
Why do I stay here, instead of moving to, say, New Silicon Valley? Or any of the other rebuilt cities? Good question.
[He flicks his zippo on, then snaps the lid over the flame.]
Before high school, my goal was to be a master of my domain, which consisted of computers and information. My adoptive parents left me alone so long as I continued to pull in good grades, and because I was obviously interested in more than the casual aspects of computer usage.
Computers were my whole world. I was designing simple html websites before age ten, and by age twelve Adobe and Dreamweaver were both my bitch. I know C++, C#, Java, COBOL's a favorite, MySQL, and Delphi, to name a few, as fluently as I know English. Making, maintaining, and querying databases were child's play. And hacking... Such a crude term. That "anonymous" group were a group of rowdy cavemen in comparison to what I can do. I'm a fucking brain surgeon when it comes to getting past passwords and firewalls and read-onlys and other so-called protections. The only thing that stops me from entering a computer is a lack of connection to the internet, barring actual, physical access.
I met Itachi in junior high. I'd gotten busted for experimenting on the flammability of different compounds in chem lab instead of doing the actual assignment, and was given detention. He had detention himself for beating the snot out of some kid who probably deserved it, but we had pansies for teachers.
We didn't interact, not at first. But he kept staring at me. Finally I asked him what had crawled up his butt and died. He'd smiled, faintly, then asked what I was in for. I gave him my creepiest smile -- not that it fazed him -- and replied, "Burning shit."
"Actual shit?" he asked in a politely curious voice, "Or random stuff?"
That he appeared interested got my attention, and it turned into a discussion on the burnability of various materials. My knowledge was more extensive than his, but then, when I wasn't on the computer, I was burning stuff in the workshed behind the house. But Itachi had done his own share of burning things, and recommended that the next time they worked with sulfur in the chem lab, to save as much as I could. He'd do the same and give it to me. That way, the next time I got bored, I could make the best stink bomb that had the benefit of really nifty blue flames.
How he knew about my affinity for beautiful destruction, I don't know. I do know he was my first real friend.
He introduced me to his other friends, and explained his terms.
Terms?
Well, for Itachi, friendships are less about being buddies but more to mutually advantageous relationships. The buddies part is simply a plus. The other way to put it would be to say we were all friends with non-sexual benefits.
The terms were rather simple: I would do whatever he asked to the best of my ability, and he would do what I asked of him as well as protect me from "unfortunate consequences", as he put it.
Has he?
Check my record, Max. I'll tell you right now it's squeaky-clean.
The Boss's got the brains, the desire, and the funds to do whatever the hell he wants, and when those don't work he finds alternate means to accomplish his goal. He helped me a lot to get set up with a side business making websites and getting in contact with both professional and private persons who wanted websites and/or databases created. I earned a lot of money doing this, which allowed me to purchase plenty of materials and techie toys to play with.
So far as the African rabies went, I'd heard of it but it didn't snag my interest. Then the Boss sent me back to search about everything related to it - origin, symptoms, side effects, et cetera, along with where other outbreaks might have happened.
I was at the project for months, digging up bits and pieces of information. Itachi helped with the research, too, and was the one to make sense of the bits and pieces we found. That was another talent of his - making sense of miscellaneous bullshit and turning it into a cohesive picture.
He called us altogether in the auditorium. His and my report was fifty pages long, and he gave everyone a copy before summing it up as such: zombies are fact not fiction, and they're spreading like a plague. We were going to do everything we could to prepare to withstand it.
He'd already chosen the school as the place where we and whoever else made it could spend the duration of the infestation. Given how the infection was moving along, he expected we could be holed up for years and therefore we needed to stockpile as many supplies as we could in the school. We didn't ask how he would manage it; that was part of the trust we had in him.
We all had our assignments. Mine was to continue gathering information and keeping the Boss updated, no matter how insignificant I might deem it. I was also to choose any room in the school, except for the first floor, for my "dungeon" where I could set up my computers and all the accessories. I was the first one he wanted to have pre-emptively moved into the school, because right now our most valuable asset was time. So long as we had that, we could prepare. And in order to have that time, we needed information.
I chose a windowed office that faced east. We got an electrician to do a lot of rewiring--
The principal allowed this?
As I said, Itachi arranged it. [Sasori shrugs.] How he did it is his business.
The office and the nearest circuit breaker were rewired to be able to withstand increased traffic. The internet connections were also rewired; Boss didn't want us worrying about fickle wireless. The modifications took a few days, with the workers starting work before classes started and continuing after most everyone else had gone home for the day. When I saw him, Boss was supervising the project, and always had a laptop handy.
The auditorium became our new hangout. Reason being that it allowed us the broadest range of vision while being in a location not used much, except by the Drama Club. Mister Maito saw us hanging out and tried to get us to join in whatever he was working on, and continued on about how in these dark times we needed to bring back the light of youth and flowers this and spring that and blah, blah, blah. The guy was messed up. No one should be that fucking happy all the time.
It may have been small of me, but I was glad that these meetings excluded Itachi's girlfriend, Temari the Sand Wench. So named because she was a mid-semester transfer from some place on the lakeside, Windy Sands or something, and because I maintained that only a girl with too much sand up her [censored] could explain her omnipresent bitchiness. No idea at all why the guy tolerated her, though it was good to know that he didn't put her above the rest of us. I wouldn't have forgiven him for that.
He told us, too, about his plans for teaching his little brother, Sauce-gay. 'Scuse me, Sasuke. [He in no way sounds apologetic.] Boss wanted to be sure that Sasuke would be able to hold his own if ever stuck in melee combat with zombies, a situation to be avoided at all costs. I sat in on these lessons every once in a while. They were brutally entertaining, and useful. Itachi understood the best teacher for defensive fighting is pain, and he wasn't holding back much. Then Hyuuga joined in, and poor Sauce-gay just got it worse.
[A sharp movement of his hand, and the lighter flicks open again to reveal the flame. It's an immediately followed by another sharp flick of his wrist to snap the lighter's lid closed.]
I can't say everything much improved by the Great Panic, but that's true of everywhere. The city tried to keep everything running normally. Since we're so high above the snow line and with winter coming, we should be fine. Itachi was shaking his head at the reports posted on the news, especially the "go north" mantra. Telling people to "go north" was all fine and good, but I noticed no one ever mentioned what people would need. That is what caused me to be rolling my eyes. As a Minnesota resident born and raised, I knew damn well what the winters were like. Ninety-percent of the people living in the lower forty-eight simply had no fucking clue of what they were in for.
Russia has their General Winter, who pushed back Napoleon and the Germans. What's not made mention of here is that we've got Mistress Winter, scorned by the General. You know how the sayings go, how hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and how the ninth level of hell is frozen by the wind of Lucifer's constantly beating wings. That pretty much sums up winters here.
A lot of people were going to die. If the fucking zombies didn't get them, then starvation and winter would.
[He shrugs carelessly.] Eh, there were too many people on the planet anyway.
01: Sasuke | Table of Contents | 03
Title: 02: Sasori
Fandoms: hs_no_jutsu / World War Z
Characters: Max Brooks, Akasuna no Sasori
Word Count: 1,676
Rating: G
Summary: Max Brooks visits a converted fortress of a high school to interview more survivors of the Zombie War.
Author's Notes: Huzzah for bullshit no jutsu~
Sasori Akasuna does not fit the mental image of a typical computer wizard. He's tall and holds himself with the confidence of a man who is very certain of his place in the world. He wears the patterned robes that apparently denote some obscure rank in this place. He, too, calls Itachi Uchiha "the Boss" but it lacks the same kind of awe the others seem to hold for the man. I ask Sasori why he's remained in what's very much a backwater after VA Day.
Why do I stay here, instead of moving to, say, New Silicon Valley? Or any of the other rebuilt cities? Good question.
[He flicks his zippo on, then snaps the lid over the flame.]
Before high school, my goal was to be a master of my domain, which consisted of computers and information. My adoptive parents left me alone so long as I continued to pull in good grades, and because I was obviously interested in more than the casual aspects of computer usage.
Computers were my whole world. I was designing simple html websites before age ten, and by age twelve Adobe and Dreamweaver were both my bitch. I know C++, C#, Java, COBOL's a favorite, MySQL, and Delphi, to name a few, as fluently as I know English. Making, maintaining, and querying databases were child's play. And hacking... Such a crude term. That "anonymous" group were a group of rowdy cavemen in comparison to what I can do. I'm a fucking brain surgeon when it comes to getting past passwords and firewalls and read-onlys and other so-called protections. The only thing that stops me from entering a computer is a lack of connection to the internet, barring actual, physical access.
I met Itachi in junior high. I'd gotten busted for experimenting on the flammability of different compounds in chem lab instead of doing the actual assignment, and was given detention. He had detention himself for beating the snot out of some kid who probably deserved it, but we had pansies for teachers.
We didn't interact, not at first. But he kept staring at me. Finally I asked him what had crawled up his butt and died. He'd smiled, faintly, then asked what I was in for. I gave him my creepiest smile -- not that it fazed him -- and replied, "Burning shit."
"Actual shit?" he asked in a politely curious voice, "Or random stuff?"
That he appeared interested got my attention, and it turned into a discussion on the burnability of various materials. My knowledge was more extensive than his, but then, when I wasn't on the computer, I was burning stuff in the workshed behind the house. But Itachi had done his own share of burning things, and recommended that the next time they worked with sulfur in the chem lab, to save as much as I could. He'd do the same and give it to me. That way, the next time I got bored, I could make the best stink bomb that had the benefit of really nifty blue flames.
How he knew about my affinity for beautiful destruction, I don't know. I do know he was my first real friend.
He introduced me to his other friends, and explained his terms.
Terms?
Well, for Itachi, friendships are less about being buddies but more to mutually advantageous relationships. The buddies part is simply a plus. The other way to put it would be to say we were all friends with non-sexual benefits.
The terms were rather simple: I would do whatever he asked to the best of my ability, and he would do what I asked of him as well as protect me from "unfortunate consequences", as he put it.
Has he?
Check my record, Max. I'll tell you right now it's squeaky-clean.
The Boss's got the brains, the desire, and the funds to do whatever the hell he wants, and when those don't work he finds alternate means to accomplish his goal. He helped me a lot to get set up with a side business making websites and getting in contact with both professional and private persons who wanted websites and/or databases created. I earned a lot of money doing this, which allowed me to purchase plenty of materials and techie toys to play with.
So far as the African rabies went, I'd heard of it but it didn't snag my interest. Then the Boss sent me back to search about everything related to it - origin, symptoms, side effects, et cetera, along with where other outbreaks might have happened.
I was at the project for months, digging up bits and pieces of information. Itachi helped with the research, too, and was the one to make sense of the bits and pieces we found. That was another talent of his - making sense of miscellaneous bullshit and turning it into a cohesive picture.
He called us altogether in the auditorium. His and my report was fifty pages long, and he gave everyone a copy before summing it up as such: zombies are fact not fiction, and they're spreading like a plague. We were going to do everything we could to prepare to withstand it.
He'd already chosen the school as the place where we and whoever else made it could spend the duration of the infestation. Given how the infection was moving along, he expected we could be holed up for years and therefore we needed to stockpile as many supplies as we could in the school. We didn't ask how he would manage it; that was part of the trust we had in him.
We all had our assignments. Mine was to continue gathering information and keeping the Boss updated, no matter how insignificant I might deem it. I was also to choose any room in the school, except for the first floor, for my "dungeon" where I could set up my computers and all the accessories. I was the first one he wanted to have pre-emptively moved into the school, because right now our most valuable asset was time. So long as we had that, we could prepare. And in order to have that time, we needed information.
I chose a windowed office that faced east. We got an electrician to do a lot of rewiring--
The principal allowed this?
As I said, Itachi arranged it. [Sasori shrugs.] How he did it is his business.
The office and the nearest circuit breaker were rewired to be able to withstand increased traffic. The internet connections were also rewired; Boss didn't want us worrying about fickle wireless. The modifications took a few days, with the workers starting work before classes started and continuing after most everyone else had gone home for the day. When I saw him, Boss was supervising the project, and always had a laptop handy.
The auditorium became our new hangout. Reason being that it allowed us the broadest range of vision while being in a location not used much, except by the Drama Club. Mister Maito saw us hanging out and tried to get us to join in whatever he was working on, and continued on about how in these dark times we needed to bring back the light of youth and flowers this and spring that and blah, blah, blah. The guy was messed up. No one should be that fucking happy all the time.
It may have been small of me, but I was glad that these meetings excluded Itachi's girlfriend, Temari the Sand Wench. So named because she was a mid-semester transfer from some place on the lakeside, Windy Sands or something, and because I maintained that only a girl with too much sand up her [censored] could explain her omnipresent bitchiness. No idea at all why the guy tolerated her, though it was good to know that he didn't put her above the rest of us. I wouldn't have forgiven him for that.
He told us, too, about his plans for teaching his little brother, Sauce-gay. 'Scuse me, Sasuke. [He in no way sounds apologetic.] Boss wanted to be sure that Sasuke would be able to hold his own if ever stuck in melee combat with zombies, a situation to be avoided at all costs. I sat in on these lessons every once in a while. They were brutally entertaining, and useful. Itachi understood the best teacher for defensive fighting is pain, and he wasn't holding back much. Then Hyuuga joined in, and poor Sauce-gay just got it worse.
[A sharp movement of his hand, and the lighter flicks open again to reveal the flame. It's an immediately followed by another sharp flick of his wrist to snap the lighter's lid closed.]
I can't say everything much improved by the Great Panic, but that's true of everywhere. The city tried to keep everything running normally. Since we're so high above the snow line and with winter coming, we should be fine. Itachi was shaking his head at the reports posted on the news, especially the "go north" mantra. Telling people to "go north" was all fine and good, but I noticed no one ever mentioned what people would need. That is what caused me to be rolling my eyes. As a Minnesota resident born and raised, I knew damn well what the winters were like. Ninety-percent of the people living in the lower forty-eight simply had no fucking clue of what they were in for.
Russia has their General Winter, who pushed back Napoleon and the Germans. What's not made mention of here is that we've got Mistress Winter, scorned by the General. You know how the sayings go, how hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and how the ninth level of hell is frozen by the wind of Lucifer's constantly beating wings. That pretty much sums up winters here.
A lot of people were going to die. If the fucking zombies didn't get them, then starvation and winter would.
[He shrugs carelessly.] Eh, there were too many people on the planet anyway.
01: Sasuke | Table of Contents | 03