thequietmods | TDM #1

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!tdm

TDM #1

The ice isn't the only thing cracking right now. Spring storms can be violent, and the thunder is strong enough to reverberate in your chest. Outside of the chilly cave, a torrential downpour makes it nearly impossible to leave the cave and get your bearings. However, through the weather, and past the giant things that seem to be moving in the weather, something large looms in the distance.

The rain and the moving things make it hard to be sure, and you can't even see the horizon line, so it's either a very large body of water, some sort of man-made structure off in the distance, or both. Until the storm clears, no one can be sure which it is.

1. Someone, though, their voice just barely echoing off the walls, seems to be coming up with theories. Is it you? Do you think this is a waste of time?

2. Are you trying to go out into the hostile weather, risks be damned? Is it because you don't care? Do you think you can survive it?

3. Being trapped in a cave full of people stuck in pillars of ice is weird, isn't it? Isn't it even weirder that you used to be in one and now you're not? Are you going to help the others trapped in the ice? It should be warned that trying to break someone out when they're not awake to help will shatter the pillar, and the person inside.

4. As the storm clears up, night has fallen. Thunder booms in the distance and the sound of insects and wild animals picks up. Wolves howl in the darkness. Is now the time to make a move, or are you going to stay in this uncomfortable, but untouched, shelter?

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First things first: it's freezing in here. Literally, if you took a closer look at the walls. Luckily, Tenten has just the solution for that. One scroll later and there's a blazing fire in front of her, far from the ice pillars but not close enough to the mouth of the cave for the the wind and rain to risk putting it out.

She huddles in close, warming her hands, and mentally takes stock of the situation. She's got her scrolls, so that's good. She doesn't have a clue of where she is, and that's... worrisome. There's supposed to be a war going on and she can't miss out on that. But, judging from the expressions she's seeing, the other people here have as little idea of what's going on as she does.

Not promising.

But maybe there's some info to be had. And what better way to get it than... She clears her throat and waves, hoping to catch someone's attention. "I can get some food cooking in a second, if you're hungry. You want to sit down and eat while we wait out the weather?"

Larkin's already on the way over, having noticed the fire. "How'd you manage to make that? And where'd you get food?"

"Had some wood on me," she comments easily, brushing it off as almost comically unimportant. She stretches out a scroll and there's a puff of smoke beneath it. When the smoke clears, there's a cooking pot on a stand that she moves to place over the fire.

"I'm a ninja."

As if that explained everything.

"A ninja," he says, blankly, "I don't think I've heard of those, but then, I'm just a guardsman. Who knows what strangeness the galaxy holds."

He assumes, after all, that he's been kidnapped to some out of the way planet, possibly by his enemy.

"...Really?" She guesses it's possible somewhere that no one's heard of a ninja, but the idea still leaves Tenten incredulous. "We're kind of everywhere. "

The conversation's not slowing her hands down any. Another puff of smoke from her scroll and there's a cutting board and a batch of cabbage. As they talk, she's slicing it into bits and feeding the result into the pot.

"Everywhere where?" he asks, watching her prepare whatever it is. "There's a lot of everywhere in the galaxy."

Carrots! Carrots are next, and they're chopped with ruthless efficiency. Add a bit of salt and some cubes and she just. Covers the entire pot up. "Give it twenty minutes, we'll have some soup."

Then she settles back on her haunches and looks up at him, frowning slightly. "...Earth? I mean. It's not like you can go to other places." Space travel just isn't a thing where she's from.

"Earth? I haven't heard of that planet." He has no idea Holy Terra used to go by another name. "You've never been on a space voyage? Ever?"

"You haven't been to Earth," she says flatly. Disbelievingly. "It's where we are now. People can't go into space, there's no air up there!" She points up, indicating that at least she knows where space is. This guy's obviously a little nuts.

How were you even going to get up that high, a catapult?

"Ships are airtight," he says, equally flatly. Is she from a feral world? "I'm from Tanith and I've been to at least a dozen planets."

He knows he has no way to prove this right now, but it's true.

Feral enough that they don't even have airplanes yet. Give it fifteen years, Naruto technology levels are beyond dumb.

She simply stares blankly at him for a moment, the name obviously not ringing any bells in there. Then she reaches up to feel at his forehead. "It doesn't seem like you've got a fever..."

He leans away from her hand. "I'm completely fine! What, you just fell out of an ice pillar and you don't think there could be people from different worlds here?"

"Trapping people in ice seems like a handy technique to have, at least to me," Tenten comments, dropping her hand. "Other worldly travel, though? That sounds..." Fake. "Different." She'd say it sounded like science fiction, if she had any clue what that was.

"Whereas I have no idea how people could be trapped like this in ice." It seems like some kind of lost technology. When you're from the 41st century, there's a lot of that. "Perhaps if everyone works together, we can figure things out."

His tone indicates that he doesn't find that likely.

"I guess it'd make more sense if you knew what a ninja was, but there's a few of us who can do similar things pretty easily." She's never run across them, except that brief tussle with Kisame where he nearly drowned her, but she knows that they're out there. "I think we'd have to find some kind of common ground first, though."

Right now, she's finding that just as unlikely as he does.

"Common ground?" He can't think of much. "Well, we can understand each other talking. There's that. Your stew smell good."

"It should be ready..." She pauses their conversation long enough to pull out yet another scroll. A puff of smoke later and she's ladeling some of the cabbage stew into a bowl and offering it to him.

Her arm's midway there when she pauses and frowns. Then says something in a totally different language. One likely far extinct in the future that Larkin hails from. "...That's weird. We're speaking a totally different language than I do at home. I didn't even notice, it just... came naturally."

Weird.

He takes the bowl and is about to eat when she speaks. "Huh. I wonder..." He concentrates and says, "Ego Gothicam alta loquor."

"Very strange." He tries the cabbage stew and lifts the bowl a little towards her. "And very good."

She's going to just. Sit there for a bit, not even acknowledging the compliment other than a weary nod. What kind of jutsu could do that? Plant another language in your head and make it seem right? A genjutsu of some kind? But to have such a detailed and long-lasting genjutsu, who could do that?

She growls and scruffs her hair with both hands, finally just leaning back against the ground with a groan of defeat. "I just don't know what's going on! I feel like this is insane!"

He shrugs, eating. "It is, most likely. But look on the bright side, we're alive!"

And there's food. He's learned to appreciate the little things.

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71lines - 2022-01-20 16:33 (UTC) - Expand

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mad_larkin - 2022-01-20 17:03 (UTC) - Expand

The White Girl - and really, Tenten will find it hard to think of her as anything else, it's such an ... oddly overpowering characteristic of hers - doesn't seem to do much more than tilt her head, oh so slightly, in the direction of Tenten busying herself at food-making. Her eyes remain closed, icons be damned.

Doesn't seem to, anyway. After a moment of well-it's-probably-not-observation-maybe, the White Girl's stomach breaks the silence for her, with a wholly impolite and inopportune growl.

Somebody ... might be hungry.

That sure is a White Girl. Maybe she doesn't have much color because she's not doing a whole lot? Maybe she's a-

-no. Since when do ghosts have stomachs that growl? "It's nothing fancy," she apologizes, dishing out a bowl stored in her scrolls. "Just a bit of cabbage stew. But it's better than nothing." Cabbage, carrot, and chicken broth. It's about as simple as her recipes come, but it should still be filling. And warming.

She holds it out to the White Girl, trusting that her stomach will guide her even if her eyes don't seem to open any.

There's a long moment where her closed-eye gaze just seems to observe Tenten, carefully, instead of moving to accept the bowl.

Then, in a shift of white on white on white, she unknots herself from her huddled posture and scoots closer to the proffered bowl. Close enough to grab it, if she feels like it, which she evidently doesn't, given that she makes no move to do so, yet.

Another appraising look-without-looking, then a light snort. "... ninja. Hm."

Finally, she lifts one hand - raising one pale finger and passing it, raised, past her own unopened gaze before gently, daintily resting it against the surface of the soup. The broth barely ripples, but ripple it does, then again. Then she removes her finger, holds it up in front of her.

White makes an affirmative noise, then lowers her hand - to take the bowl, gratefully now, though not too gratefully, given she cradles it close like she expects to have to fight - well, someone, who isn't here, and isn't coming - off from trying to also share in the food. Tenten can see the sagging of her shoulders, both from released tension and ... nostalgic disappointment?! ... that settles around her when she realizes her own reflexive gesture was for nothing.

A white mouth twists in a self-recriminatory frown. Then she remembers she ought to speak, and offers, awkwardly: "... ninja poison. And you're only human."

The way she says that, it almost sounds like an insult. ... but a pitying one, nonetheless.

Tenten fights not to roll her eyes at the prodding. Right, a poison test. As if she'd try to assassinate someone she'd just met. Granted, she has, but that was for a paycheck. Straight up offering poisoned soup to someone she'd just met? Please.

"If I wanted you dead, I wouldn't spend twenty minutes preparing soup for everyone first," she points out. "Ninja, yes. Poison, no. And you're right, I'm not a ninja animal or anything like that." She folds her arms over her chest and arches an eyebrow. "Not exactly used to a free meal, are you?"

She sounds... almost pitying, there.

White just gives Tenten a long, level look that lasts longer than it reasonably should - most people would be managing to provide a response beyond that by now.

Of course, most people aren't literally so white it's the only thing you can reasonably be expected to remember about their appearance, or able to manage this without ever opening their eyes, so.

Her face curls up, at last. It's almost a smile. "'Free' is ... for those with nothing to fear from another."

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