uncagedforjustamoment

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[The camera flicks on to reveal a young man with eyes so pale lavender and missing pupils that it might appear as if his eyes are white and unmarked at first glance. There's a small frown on his lips, and his eyes squint in a curious determination.

Through observation and intuition, he's puzzled out the purpose and general function of the device well enough to activate it, but unfortunately it has...so far...not provided illumination over where he's woken or how. Waking up after death is no surprise--it's happened more than once before, though the last time it happened to him he hadn't been as certain of his own death when he lost consciousness as this time.

Waking here, however...is less...understandable.]

Explain to me where this place is and why I've been taken. Have I missed the end of the war? [That seems the most reasonable conclusion: otherwise he would have been brought back out to the battlefield, wouldn't he?]

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Ooh, I've never heard of that one.

[This is obviously an exciting thing for her. A war she's never heard of means he's probably from a world she's never heard of!]

Is Shinobi where you're from?

[Such excitement over a war is inappropriate. Her apparent insensitivity toward this earns an unamused frown.]

Shinobi is a profession, not a place. [The response is automatic, and it takes a moment to realize how truly out of place such a question is. Even the youngest and most remote civilian would likely know how the word Shinobi is used.] You should already be aware of that.

[The frown just makes her pout in return. It isn't her fault she's only up to date on her own universe.]

Well, I'm not. Whatever they are, we don't have them where I'm from.

[He frowns. That is...next to impossible. There is no part of the world so untouched by Shinobis that the word would be unfamiliar. However, if there are others from the past...it could be that this woman also hails from a time so long ago that the word wasn't used.

Perhaps before the Sage of Six Paths?]

Very well then, now you know what it is.

...Not really. I know it's a job, but there are lots of jobs.

It is a fun word, though.

[...The concept of attempting to explain what a shinobi is to someone who's never even heard of the word is...unpleasant. Also, not particularly relevant to his current concerns.]

Surely there are others here who will be capable of explaining what it is to you. If you don't have the answers to where I've come from, where is this place?

[Fine, fine, she'd be good and drop it. For now, at least.]

You're in Johto. Or you should be, if you just got here and you're still in New Bark Town. There's Kanto, too, but you have to take a ferry to get there.

[If she chooses to pick it back up with someone else later he doesn't really care.]

And Johto and Kanto, where are those?

[Well, sure, it might be with someone else.]

They're... here. [She does look a bit contrite over that answer, at least.] I know that's vague, but I don't know any more than that. They're part of the Pokemon world. None of us belong here.

[He will continue to assume it will be until proven otherwise. He frowns at her response, although at least it seems she says it out of ignorance rather than a failed attempt at wittiness. He is not a fan of such quips.]

Is there a map of these places to be studied? [After all, if she comes from the chaos before shinobi, he could hardly expect her to recognize any landmarks and names he also would.]

[Better! She knows the answer to that one!]

Uhhuh! They're on your Pokegear! There's big maps of the whole country, and then you can zoom in for maps of cities or Routes.

[Well, that's a relief at least. If by some twist of madness she hadn't known what a map was, he'd be very...vexed.]

On this? [He frowns and glances down at it, rather than the screen. He has no idea how he might access any of that through a communication device, but it's not as if he can't puzzle it out.] This is all one country?

[Hey! She's knows all the normal words, okay?]

I think Johto and Kanto might be separate, but no one really seems to care very much either way. You can go back and forth between the two all you want.

[She'd try to talk him through how to find the maps themselves, but that's hard to do when you need to keep the screen on at the same time.]

[Shinobi is a normal word. It's as commonplace and in certain ways even more important to know than 'map'.]

You 'think'? Isn't there a leadership for either one? Lords, or...[if she lacked knowledge of 'shinobi' she'd certainly not know the word 'kage', considering the concept came around much after her time.] other forms of leadership?

[That's an immediate negative headshake.]

Not like that, no. I mean, there's the gym leaders. They're kind of in charge, from what I've seen, but that's more because people respect them and they help protect everyone from wild pokemon and Team Rocket and things like that.

I don't think there's a king or a president or anything, but maybe they're just really shy?

[He frowns.]

For there to be laws and an organized civilization such as this, there must be some form of leadership recognized by the people of wherever they lead. Perhaps outsiders have not been allowed access to see this leadership yet...

Well... I guess there are the police officers. Maybe ask them?

You do make a really good point, though. And there are those Elite Four that people talk about sometimes, but I don't know anyone who's ever met them.

...Has no one else thought to yet? [It's not that he's unwilling to ask, it's that he's disappointed in people that no one else has apparently done so already.]

The Elite Four? And who are those?

Not that I've ever met, but I've hardly met everyone. [Trance hasn't been here all that long, herself, and very few people would probably bother to tell her such a thing even if they did know.]

They're sorta like the ultra bosses in a video game, except no one's been able to get to them in a really long time. I bet the gym leaders could tell you all about them, though.

[...Nothing she just said to explain them made any sense. Gym Leaders he understood the function of at least, although he saw little reason why they would be involved in law making. Then, he could only puzzle out so much a culture so strange to him.]

Perhaps if not the police these gym leaders themselves must know who they serve. Where are they?

[Finally an easy question. ...Sort of.]

All over Kanto and Johto both. Usually in the bigger towns and cities, though. Anyplace with a pokemon gym. I think there's a list somewhere on your gear, too, but pretty much any town you get to, if you just ask anybody where their gym is, they can tell you.

...You might have to fight them first, though. The gym leaders, I mean. Not just the regular people, although some of them, too.

[...Why is it no surprise to him that the gym leaders would require being 'defeated' to answer simple questions? No matter how society changed, some things would always remain the same.]

I see. And those 'regular people' would be students of the gym leaders, I presume?

Mmhm! [She nods again, smiling proudly like he's getting it finally.]

All the gyms seem to have lots of people who go to study from the gym leaders.

I don't really spend much time fighting mine, though, so I don't visit the gym here very often.

[He sighs. Indeed, it does sound much like home in that way.]

And I presume they will all take offense to someone attempting to speak to their leader without first dealing with them?

I don't know that I'd say that, exactly, but the gym leaders are all kind of.. um... picky? About who they talk to, I mean. Really picky. So getting their attention's a good start.

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uncagedforjustamoment - 2013-08-17 01:41 (UTC) - Expand

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[video] Wow I don't know why I kept thinking this was an end-tag.

[video] No worries, no worries.

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