fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part III

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!event: welcome picnic

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part III

Look! More tables and chairs and food! It was like a miracle!

[~~WAIT FOR THE OCD PLEASE.~~ OCD IS UP. This is the SECOND post for general mingling. Use this post if your browser can't handle the comment load of the first mingling post. Roommates, fake siblings and teachers are here.]

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Her smiled widened. "No one minds if you look," she said reassuringly.

"Well, I'm certain the Queen would disapprove, but she's very old and it's none of her business," Alice laughed. Not quite realizing Victoria had been dead for a very, very long time.

...

...

"Queen?" Ino asked.

"English," she explained, gesturing vaguely to herself. "Her Majesty the Queen likes to say rather a lot on the subject of decorum and proper morality, but I've left her island for this one and she's only a figurehead anyway, so it's not her concern at all."

Alice's mind worked in strange roundabout ways.

"Right," Ino said, pretending she understood that, "well, then, yeah. Totally not her concern."

"Where is it you're from?" Alice said, remembering her manners at long last. "I'm Alice Liddell. Oxford, England. This planet, which it seems I should start specifying, as many aren't from this planet at all."

"I'm one of those not from around here at all," she admitted with a laugh. "Yamanaka Ino, Ino's my first name, and I'm from Konohagakure in the Fire Country."

"Kono-ga ..." Alice squinted. "No, I didn't get that, sorry. Ino I did, very nice to meet you, and Alice is my first name. Which you probably gathered from explaining yours was second-first. I believe some Asian countries do that as well."

She hesitated before going on. "Does the ... Fire Country mean there's ... a lot of fire, there? Or is it a creative name, the way Turkey doesn't have a number of birds in it?"

"We call it Konoha, for short," she smiled, "and yeah, the closest thing my world is to this one would be Feudal Japan but with radio and such."

"Mm?" Ino blinked, then laughed. "Ah, no, no! We're the Fire Country because it's hot, and we've got a lot of trees, see? And my village's name translates to 'Village Hidden in the Leaves'."

"Someone earlier was telling me about radio," Alice said cheerfully, "though I've never been to Japan. And that's a lovely name. I beg your pardon, I thought perhaps there was some ... special reverence to fire, or a great abundance of it."

Alice and fire ... didn't get on, exactly.

"Well," she said, "I wouldn't call it a special reverence to fire, but we do follow the 'Will of Fire'. Which is, pretty much, a belief that as long as we don't give up then we'll always continue on no matter what."

"Fire is certainly ... determined," she said, nodding. Hungry, she would have said. Insistent. Consuming. She shook her head, trying to clear those thoughts from her mind. "Does that help? Your beliefs, I mean, does it keep you from giving up."

"I don't give up. Ever," Ino said grinning. "That's not my ninja way."

Which, really, answered that question.

"You're a ninja?" Alice asked. "I rather thought those were gentlemen clad in black. Is the fiction far from the reality?"

"Ninja born and raised," she shook her head, "and that description sounds like our ANBU, they handle the worst of it. Most the rest of us wear colour and everything."

"Is it as dangerous as I've heard?" she smiled. "Or is that a glamorisation as well?"

"Oh no," she said, smiling but her eyes were suddenly serious, "it's dangerous."

Alice hesitated before lowering her voice. "Is it exciting?"

She'd had no formal training, but the blade gleaming in her hand ... how could it not be?

Ino leaned forward and said just one word.

"Always."

Alice grinned, her eyes dancing. "I should hope so. There's an elegance to violence. I had never imagined it would be like that. Did you know they took my blade away?"

"The school?" Ino wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, they do that. Any sort of weapon they take. Got all my wire, and my gun too. You can get them if you're leaving the school grounds, but nothing's allowed on here." Which was severely totally lame in her opinion. She grinned a little. "They can't take away my hands and feet though." A beat. "What did you imagine it'd be like?"

Alice considered that. "Gruesome, and horrifying, and necessary, but something solemn and serious. Perhaps frightening. Not something you might delight in. I hadn't realize blood spatters could be something to wear with ... perhaps it's wrong to say 'pride.' It doesn't feel as though it should be."

"I don't think it's wrong," she offered with a shrug, "I mean, sure, a lot of people around here will tell you that it's wrong and if you kill something then you're supposed to feel bad about it. I don't see the point, really, in feeling bad."

"Guilt can do terrible things to people," she said solemnly. She ought to know, after all; it had been largely grief and guilt mixing with shock to shatter her mind. "I don't suppose it's any of their business, is it? I'm not exactly running up and down the streets carving the arms off children. Their morality doesn't apply to my reality."

"They'll try to make it apply," Ino said, shrugging. "Just ignore it. I do. It's not like that at home."

Yeah. Cable-san and Deadpool and the others weren't having much luck hammering that particular point of morality home.

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part III

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