endgames | 031 -- [Action

[Today is an understated awesome day, ladies and gentleman. To everyone? Okay, maybe not. But Shikamaru sure is pleased as punch. After a month's stay in the Battle Dome clinic recoveries from the injuries he got in his fight with Hidan, Shikamaru's finally cleared to check out today.

Before he gets the all-clear, he can be found in - brace yourselves - one of the Dome's simulation rooms. He's actually been using them for the past week for his physical therapy. If he's going to be doing a lot of walking, might as well change up the scenery.

Namely, he's replicated parts of the Nara Clan's forest. At its opening, the sky is more open, but the further in you go the thicker the trees grow together. Wandering will reveal easter eggs - old statues, broken and ruined, or a path of moss-covered stone lanterns. Maybe a young deer if you're lucky.

Other parts of the forest seem to be swallowed by shadow completely, offering nothing but pitch black that no amount of light will ease and the sense you're being watched if you step into them.

He'll try and clear up some stuff with Law before he goes, but after that he hits the journal.]

[Voice]

For those of you who saw that Vaskoth place... I figure it's been long enough. Name something you liked about it, if you can recall.

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You must be made of sterner stuff than I.

[/end voice]

[Feels like forever since he's been back in the swing of things. Shikamaru can be found at CH1 of course, in or around his apartment. Throughout the days following, he'll also be at the place formerly known as Azzip's, getting back to turning it into a convenience store.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He gives her time to collect her thoughts. And it pays off. Yes, Mia, yes.]

Go on.

I've tried not to remember too much about it. [Did he talk to her, in that month afterward where she worked so hard to not talk to anyone?] For the most part I saw the hospital and the barracks.

[He was pretty avoidant himself, so no. But he gets it.]

You got that feeling even there?

[The hospital... was about the one place he didn't see a lot of, but he knows it was a mess.]

No, not really. I got to see a little bit of the rest of the enclosure before things...intensified. [Before the decision to abandon those that the Malnosso believed could not be saved. Mia shudders.]

It felt like the sort of place Luceti might become some day, if we ever find- mm. I almost said peace.

...heh. [Somehow, that sounds like an even bigger pipe dream. How sad.] I get what you mean, regardless.

[It is the largest pipe she can think of.]

What did you like about it?

A lot of things. If I had to narrow it down to one though... it had structure.

Because it was a city?

No, it was greater than that. A city is just more buildings and more people. What they had was something special.

Community. Organization. Life gave them lemons just like the rest of us, but they made something better out of it.

Do you not think we have done something useful with our lemons? [It may sound silly via the metaphor, but she's quite serious.] Or did they perhaps find even more favor with the Malnosso than what we have managed?

I'm saying most of the good we do is circumstantial. We need to learn to come together outside of a crisis too. And that's whether we do or don't have anything more to do with the Malnosso.

You've thought about this a lot. What will it take to get us to come together outside of a crisis?

[...that he's still figuring out. There's silence for a moment, and then he continues, a question in his tone.]

We're represented by many worlds here; too many differing points of view for collective action to happen. This is what I'm always told.

If that's what you're always told, that means you don't believe what you hear. How would we reach a point of view that everyone could agree on?

We can't. The goal is always majority rule, but that's beside the point.

[And if he, she wonders, is not in the majority? Will that be his goal still?

That's not the right question.]

You spend enough time thinking and you know enough about being a leader to have a plan for that already, too, don't you?

Mm. Enough to know that a leader doesn't really suit this village. [And least of all, someone like him.]

Masaomi told me a story once, about a leader who had his men sit at a round table. They were equals. I'm not sure how literal that was - he was a king, after all - but that's one point to start.

First you call upon everyone who cares. Bring everyone together, give equal voice and opportunity, and equal knowledge to base it all on.

So you intend to work toward...some form of ruling council instead? [It really doesn't sound like a bad idea. A system to keep the interest focused on the good of everybody, instead of one person deciding everything according to his or her whims.]

Small steps. There needs to be interest in everyone first. Appeal.

And yet there seems to only be interest in the same thing during or immediately after a crisis.

That's why we call it a step, not a plateau.

A step...means you have to take another one.

Aa. But which one is yet to be determined, so I'll keep any musings on that to myself for now. It's to early to predict what direction things will go in.

Mm. And from the looks of things you have a lot to talk about with others here, too.

You're feeling all right, aren't you?

Huh? Yeah, why wouldn't I be?

[Taking that in the purely physical. HE GETS TO LEAVE TODAY.]

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