Konohagakure no Sato, Saturday Afternoon (Fandom Time) / Feb. 15th (Konoha Time)

[intraspective]

Really, it had been a month and a half now and Ino had to admit that she was—feeling better. Between her father teaching Zack (and water walking had proved to be quite a hilarious thing to watch) and her father teaching her, she was feeling useful and busy without it being anything too taxing.

She hadn’t seen either of her previous teammates, which stung, but Ino stomped down firmly on that as she disentangled her mind from her father’s and ignored his look. It wasn’t the first time she’d avoided… whatever it was he’d wanted to talk about.

And she doubted it would be the last.

“That’s enough for now,” he said, after a moment. “How about you go and get some air?”

It was phrased as a suggestion, but Ino was well used to her father’s orders. With a quick kiss to his cheek, she left the room, went down the long, dark hall and out into the sunshine. It was a lovely day—February, already, which made her head hurt if she thought too hard about the days and how they related to Fandom—but, Ino thought, as she leaned against the balcony and pulled out her phone, hitting speed dial, maybe all that time had been what she’d needed.

And, across universes, her phone call reached…

[For ze raspberried one. Mwahaha. NFB.]

Comments

[thought-seeker.livejournal.com]

She took a moment to lock the door behind them. It would do nothing if the house was destroyed, Mui knew that, but her heart protested leaving their home and her shop open for just anyone to enter.

Then, she slipped down the street. Other civilians were doing the same, one by one, or in small groups, carefully not bunched together, not even in panic. The children weren't screaming, and the very youngest were all asleep due to mild sleeping pills that they'd have been fed the moment the alarms to evacuate had been sounded.

Even at peace, Konoha was well trained.

And her civilians were moving as quickly as they were able. Over head, on the roofways, the ninja were running, racing, making their way towards the areas under the worst of it.

[puppy_fair]

Try as he might, Zack couldn't take his eyes off of the rooftops. His fingers twitched, he wanted so much to pull his sword from his back and join them. What good would he be? He had no idea, but he was SOLDIER...

And what was that worth, here?

It meant that he was enough to keep Ino's mother safe. For now, that was what mattered.

He didn't even realize that he was grinding his teeth together as they made their way down the street. He didn't dare speak, either. It was like the whole world, the whole situation was slipping by overhead, drowned out by the sirens.

Part of him, that part of him that made his body indistinguishable from the monsters of his own world, hoped that something would be stupid enough to get in their way.

The rest of him hoped that, with this many civilians down here, whatever it was would be dealt with quickly.

[thought-seeker.livejournal.com]

Mui glanced back at him, picking out the impatience in his expression and followed his gaze.

"You'd panic our own people," she said quietly.

[puppy_fair]

"But I..."

He stopped in his tracks for barely a heartbeat before he willed himself into moving again, his face twisted into something between hurt and horrified, tempered only by his own unwillingness to make things more difficult for anybody than they needed to.

His hands balled into fists, and stayed quite resolutely at his sides.

"Where should Ino be headed?"

This way? This way? Every fibre of his being was begging that wherever Ino was, she was heading toward them, as well.

[thought-seeker.livejournal.com]

"She's with her father today," Mui said, her voice stubbornly set on distant. "They'll be at Intel's headquarters."

Which was... no where near them.

[puppy_fair]

Zack's next exhale was something ragged, bordering on desperate. Like he knew where that was? This wasn't ShinRa. You couldn't just pick out the top floor of the tallest building in the village and say, 'oh, sure, she's right up there, then.'

Mui's tone was cutting lines through him again, more Gillian than he'd ever wanted to hear in a person, but her detachment seemed to be something completely different. Rejecting the worry, instead of embracing the end?

His breath hitched, and he set his jaw and furrowed his brow and nodded in an attempt to fend that all away.

"How far do we have?"

Couldn't take to the rooftops. Couldn't confront the attacker. Couldn't find Ino. Had no idea where she was. Couldn't breathe.

He couldn't breathe.

[thought-seeker.livejournal.com]

She could give him the numbers, but they'd mean little to him and, truth be told, Mui wasn't quite sure how to translate them over from her native language. She'd never had to do that before.

"We're making for the Monument," she said, instead, because he had eyes and could see how far they were from it still.

[puppy_fair]

Zack's gaze flicked up to the monument. That was the best answer that she could give. It gave him a focal point. Something to keep in mind. Something to drown out the worst of his doubts with. That much farther. And eventually it would be almost there, and then just there.

"How much faster can we go?"

Obviously, they couldn't take to the rooftops, no matter how much he wanted to. And everybody seemed so... calm, considering the circumstances. Running was apparently not in the cards. But for Zack, for whom everything in life had always seemed to be one race after another, the going right now was agonizing.

[thought-seeker.livejournal.com]

Her eyes, a pale ice blue to her family's sky blue, hardened slightly.

"We don't."

That was short and simple, no?

"The pace is taught," Mui elaborated, "and running will further panic. Our current pace," which amounted to about a fast walk, truly, "means that everyone is moving at about the same rate. It keeps mobs from forming."

... This worked solely because the entire village as a whole had grown up with it being pounded into them. And because as slow as he might think they were moving, there were no hold ups, no bottlenecks where only a few could get through. Everything moved smoothly, even as people had to make their way around rubble and duck under fallen branches.

[puppy_fair]

Zack winced.

"Oh."

A year ago, he might have argued. A year ago, he might have insisted that they hurry up, or maybe he would have stood there and yelled about how he couldn't just leave without knowing for certain if Ino was okay.

This Zack... was not that Zack. This one had been burned too much to dare risk getting anybody else hurt, Mui especially.

"What happens," he said, the wind considerably swept from his sails as he pushed onward, his walk about as much a trudge as it could possibly be without risking any falling behind, "when we get where we're going?"

[thought-seeker.livejournal.com]

"The mountains are built to shelter the village," Mui replied, stepping over a fallen tree branch and turning a corner. "There's room enough within and underneath them to protect us all."

And so many jutsu to reinforce such a construction.

[puppy_fair]

"So we hide."

Zack wasn't protesting. There wasn't much left in him to protest, at this point.

Ino wasn't headed this way. Ino wasn't hiding, too. She was with her father, her father was... Was somebody who reminded him too much of his own teacher for him to believe for a moment that there was no risk that they'd end up somehow in the thick of this. And there was nothing that he could do to help. Nothing that wouldn't make matters worse.

What would Combat Mode do here? Summons would just enforce panic at the worst possible time, and he had such scant control over things like that, it would be dangerous to risk it.

His breath caught again, and he forced a ragged exhale.

Zack Fair didn't handle being useless well.

[thought-seeker.livejournal.com]

The world shook around them and while the lines paused as people struggled to keep their balance.

"Help me over?" Mui said, to give Zack something to do rather than because she needed it, when they came to a particularly large pile of... what had been a house, once upon a time.

[puppy_fair]

"Huh?" Zack blinked, and then frowned a little and nodded. Where had his head been? Get it back into the game, Zack. Help Mui over the...

The... whoa.

(But at least it wasn't a waist-high fence. Those were so very troublesome.)

"Sure," he said, offering her his hand. This was, at least, something for him to do.

... Which, he suspected, was half the point.

[thought-seeker.livejournal.com]

Mui reached for that hand--while not needed the support was helpful either way--and began to clamber up over the rumble, skirting around a post that was burning merrily. She knew there were water jutsu to put it out, but she didn't know any.

She tugged at his hand, her own way to keep him moving, keep him focused, when so obviously he wanted to be elsewhere and turned to speak again.

Which, of course, was when the world exploded around them.

[puppy_fair]

It was Zack who cried out when the explosion rocked around them, more a reaction than because he was feeling any pain. Mui was gathered up in his arms and pulled close, and he was throwing himself away from the blast, blocking Ino's mother from the worst of it.

That, he could do, too. The burns on his bare arms, on his face... He could ignore those. He'd felt far worse, time and again, and it wouldn't take more than a cure to be rid of them entirely, anyhow.

He landed amidst the rubble with the woman in his arms, crouching over her until he was certain that the flames had settled. And then he dared to turn to see what might have caused that explosion in particular.

[thought-seeker.livejournal.com]

Chaos. Utter chaos and Mui's face went pale at the sight--the next street over, it was simply gone, and along with it a good part of their street. Small burns were all she had, alongside bruises and scrapes and cuts, and there was no point in complaining now. She didn't even have a twisted ankle.

She could still walk.

Mui picked herself up the ground, screams of the dying in her ears and didn't make a sound.

Then--

"We've got to keep moving."

Did it make her heartless to ignore those screams? All around them, just as they were, here and there were other people picking themselves up and doing the same thing. Those in the buildings that had collapsed, those buried under rubble but still alive... there was nothing they could do for them now.

[puppy_fair]

But... if they were screaming, that meant they were still alive in there...

Zack had gone pale as well, but not because of the chaos. Zack was used to chaos. It was the idea of simply pressing on, hearing these people and knowing that he could help. One or two of them, at least. Something.

"I can't."

It was against everything that he was, as SOLDIER. Everything that he was, as Zack.

"I can't just leave them!"

It was one thing, pressing onwards towards safety when he couldn't join in the fight. It was another thing entirely, leaving the living for dead.

[thought-seeker.livejournal.com]

"They're already dead!" Mui snapped, as another explosion nearby rocked the ground and she staggered, keeping her balance by a hair. "They shouldn't even have been in the buildings still!"

Every time, every time, people panicked and forgot the lines. That was why they trained even their civilians in them.

To cut down on the number of people who would hide in their basements, hide in closets and under beds and hope for the best.

[puppy_fair]

A violet apple smoldered, and then dropped from the tree branch that it had grown on, in Zack's mind's eye.

But there had been nobody left to scream, in Banora.

"But..."

He had Potions. He had Ethers. He'd stocked up on both before leaving Midgar, the last time they were there. He had three Phoenix Down to his name. That was three more lives. He had Curaga.

And the people who had been screaming were already dead.

Another piece of him was dead with them.

He didn't even bother coming up with a reply. He started walking, again.

[thought-seeker.livejournal.com]

Mui scrambled after him, her eyes burning. It wasn't that she didn't care, it was that they couldn't care.

And lock away the pain of being unable to do anything for those still screaming.

She caught up, feeling a stitch in her side beginning to form and forced herself to ignore it. There was nothing to be done. No point in complaining--she was still alive. That was what mattered right here and now.

Of course, training didn't overrule everything and when she spotted two children by a tumbled down house, crying about their mother, nothing that Zack would truly understand as it wasn't in his language, but the scene was clear enough, Mui--

Well, it was amazing how fast she could move when she had no formal training to her name, wasn't it? The woman, their mother, was clearly dead. Neck snapped--from the fall she'd taken when the building they'd been walking by had collapsed and trapped her lower body.

But the two children, crying and asking her to open her eyes--they were alive. Battered and bruised, but alive.

[puppy_fair]

"Mui!"

Zack could, at least, move to keep up, crouching beside the children. Biting his lip.

"I can help her," he said softly, looking up at her, begging with his eyes, please, to let him. "We could just grab them and go, but... but I can help her."

Three Phoenix Down. They were almost impossible to come by, but, priceless as they were, they were worthless compared to the lives they could bring back.

[thought-seeker.livejournal.com]

"Get the building off her first," Mui said, distractedly as the two children had latched on to her and she fell into a rapid-fire conversation in the same language as they were babbling in.

It was... possibly for the best that Zack couldn't understand her, here.

[puppy_fair]

Zack didn't need to be told twice. The rubble was deep, but nothing for SOLDIER. His sword was heavier than the broken pieces of the section of wall that had landed on her, and it was barely any effort at all to push it off of her, grab her body under the arms, and pull it out the rest of the way.

He was pointedly not looking at the sick way her head was lolling as he moved her. Couldn't handle that, on top of the rest.

One Phoenix Down. Just to get her pulse back. Just to give her a fighting chance. His hands were shaking as he pulled it from his pocket, prayed to any god that would listen for this to work here, as it did in Gaia. And then, Curaga.

... This was a very well lit corner of the street, between the fire, the feathers, and the healing spell that Zack had cast.

But it wasn't nothing.

Zack didn't think he could handle doing nothing anymore.

[thought-seeker.livejournal.com]

Mui ignored his movements, his lights, all her attention focused on the children and sorting out their story, what had happened, why hadn't been in school--sick, she decided, feeling the fever in their skins--and reassuring them, in her own way.

"You are children of Konoha," Mui told them, her voice low and, perhaps, unexpectedly gentle. Silk over steel. "Stop crying and hold your heads up. Konoha looks after her own."

As, behind them, their mother stirred...