022 -- [Action || Voice]

[endgames]

[Filtered to Konoha Shinobi and Temari || 100% Unhackable]

Meeting tonight, at sundown. [What about goes without saying - most of them should know already.] Fourth floor's kitchen. Try not to pull a Kakashi.

[And thus starts off the long to-do-list of Shikamaru's day. The filter goes up in the morning, giving - hopefully - everyone time to see it.

He's decided he needs to talk to Naruto before then. On his way out the building he'll stop by his apartment, or send another filter off to him if he's not around. With everything going on he would be surprised. After he's tracked him down, it's off to the other side of the village to find Tony Stark at his casa, to hand over a project he's been working on for the last several nights. Playing delivery boy again, ugh. No notice this time, though. He's acting like a functional human being again, but he's not up for the sarcastic banter. Once he's done there, it's over to the school to find Katara in the thirty minute window he has after classes let out. Apologies are an order.

Specific things attended to... wow, without Masaomi around this week, he has a lot of time on his hands, huh. Well okay. He goes off to the forest with a bag of coconuts of all things and lines them up at head level when he finds a good spot to sit them for tanto practice - or more precisely: strength training. He's never used his short sword much. The one time he did, he wasn't strong enough with it to do as he intended, so he should work on that now.

And okay, surely by then the sun will be going down... or okay, nope. With a few hours to kill, somehow he winds up at the Seventh Heaven restaurant. In part because he figures it could be a good place to drop off some of the coconuts, and also because he realizes on the way over he hasn't actually eaten yet. Or done much of anything this past week, besides getting Asuma up to speed about Luceti, or working on various projects.

Sooo. Might be nodding off there at the restaurant. Might be napping after he eats, if he doesn't get kicked out for it. SITTING DOWN WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA. Fine, he'll pose a random pointless question to the masses, maybe that'll keep him occupied.]

[Voice]

Wonder why they call this place Luceti. Seems like a dumb name. Does it even mean anything? 

Comments

[endgames]

Least you didn't have to fish him out.

[You who cannot swim. His sentence is punctuated by the sound of his tanto coming free. Shikamaru walks over to a nearby stone to clean the coconut milk off of it.]

[deathsdoctor]

[He wishes the other people from his world weren't so free with that information. He dreads the day one of the resident teleporters decides to pull a Yuber.]

Aa... uh, that would have been really troublesome, yes. [Neckrub.] How's he doing now? Adjusting?

[endgames]

Mm. Got him set up in an apartment and everything.

[There's other kinds of adjusting, he knows, but that's the easiest one to talk about.]

[deathsdoctor]

Mm. That helps a lot. [It certainly is.] He's in the same building as you?

And...

Mind if I have a go at one at one of your coconuts?

[endgames]

Yeah.

[It's an answer to both questions. Shikamaru then sets his tanto down, simultaneously kicking a coconut up that was resting by his foot like a soccer ball. He catches it fluidly, and tosses it in Law's direction.]

[deathsdoctor]

[Note the nodachi still leaning against the tree - Law's going for his own tanto and moving so Shikamaru isn't caught in the crosshairs of what he's about to.

And just like that, though he moves purposely slowly enough to follow, the coconut is split into four. The first slash is a normal but weak air blade, the second slash uses Kipinn.]

... you know, at low levels, there's absolutely no difference between a regular flying slash attack many of the swordsmen of my world use, and one created by filial magic. They're both equally effective at cutting and both a good tool to have in a fight.

[endgames]

[He was expecting something like that, though maybe not quarters. That takes some skill there.]

I'm familiar with the techniques.

[Meeting someone with wind-natured chakra is rare in his world, but somehow Shikamaru's had the fortune to meet three such people. His sensei in particular had-- has a lot of skill in applying it to blades.]

Not that I'm much good with them myself. [A slow smirk.] Wind's not really my thing, even if I've learned a thing or two from Kipinn.

[deathsdoctor]

Thankfully this trick doesn't require a mastery. [A small smile.] Sound's much trickier.

[And Law's a noted master at that and other forms of Kipinn's magic. It is probably his best field.

And he's going to put away the tanto for a moment and pick up the coconut pieces, and there's going to be a small sphere of blue light for a moment, and voila, one whole coconut.

Waste not, want not.]

[endgames]

Not as tricky as that one.

[Devil fruit powers remind him a lot of bloodline limits, sometimes, minus coming from an actual bloodline. He doubts the Sharingan could work them out.]

[deathsdoctor]

[Musing:]

Of all the things and powers in my world, Haki's the trickiest of all. A Devil Fruit, in comparison, is much easier to master.

[That's something you'd have to ask Itachi one of these days. It would be very difficult in any case if it could.]

[endgames]

If you have one. It's not exactly something you can be taught. Or am I wrong?

[deathsdoctor]

[He's actually going to pause and give that some thought. Because...]

In most cases... no. The fruit's powers are unique to the user. However...

However, there is a certain scientist on the Grand Line, named Dr. Vegapunk, that has been rumored to be studying and attempting to replicate Devil Fruit powers. And I know he's had some success... the World Government has, well not quite living weapons, but close enough, that use one of the Admirals' Devil Fruit abilities.

[endgames]

[...that reminds him a little of Orochimaru.

Shikamaru frowns at that as he mulls it over, lifting the tanto into the light and turning the blade some for examination.]

No world seems to go without its ill-intentioned scientists.

[deathsdoctor]

No. They don't.

...

I can't tell you much about him, really. The man is shrouded in mystery, and not exactly the most popular fellow about. There's no telling how much he does is of his own free will and how much is because the Government wishes him to.

What is certain about him is that he is a polymath, and he researches into all fields for the World Government, and anything he develops tends to be about five hundred years beyond the current cutting edge of design. He seems to develop weapons for them, mostly, though. And failures of his tend to be catastrophic - islands becoming uninhabitable, things of that degree.

[endgames]

[Snort.] Nice guy.

[Scary guy. You can change a world like that.

...]

What would you do if he showed up here?

[deathsdoctor]

Watch him. Try to learn about him before doing anything... if anything needed to be done. Speak with the Strawhats and Whitebeards about him... see what we all know about him... and go from there.

Like we did with Blackbeard. Who we consider a far bigger threat.

[endgames]

Sounds logical. [Shikamaru stands from his seat, scooping up a coconut as he does so.]

How'd that go?

[deathsdoctor]

We all decided more or less to keep a strict watch on him and not attack him right out. No matter how much some of us wanted to kill him. [Admittedly some people needed extra persuasion from one armed Yonkous BUT the word had gotten around through the pirate community.] But if he made a move, we would have all swarmed and tried to keep it from the village. Or lure him to the tunnels. We would have to. The man could take out Luceti easily.

... if he comes back, it's likely not just the village in danger but the entire enclosure. He stole Whitebeard's Devil Fruit... extracted it from his corpse somehow. [He stares hard at a tree... does he really want to reveal so much? ... at least Shikamaru would take it seriously.] So he wields two. It's supposed to be an impossible thing... but with him. Fhn. He's an impossible man. And he may come back wielding more in the future. He and his original Fruit are very strange.

Never appears much of a threat until he has the knife in your back.

... anyway, we are enjoying the reprieve from that quarter. Even had a party celebrating him being gone.

[endgames]

[Another person to watch out for, then, if he ever comes back.

Shikamaru doesn't interrupt Law, listening as he gets to practicing with the tanto again. He wants to ask why he thinks Blackbeard never tried anything, but it seems almost besides the point. Neither here nor there.]

Sometimes I think it'd be great if we could trap people like that here. [The blade sticks; he removes it.] Have a real bash on the outside.

[deathsdoctor]

[That would be nice. He can think of a few who could use a permanent vacation.

And he knows why Blackbeard didn't try anything.]

There's something I could get behind. [He smiles a little in resignation.] Pity we can't have nice things like that.

[endgames]

Maybe someday. I'll plan for it anyways.

[deathsdoctor]

[The response to that is a slightly wider, softer smile.]

I'll look forward to it then.

[He's going to go back to watching those strikes. Studying the angle of the edge of the blade on each slash. Maybe a slight adjustment there? Nitpicking, perhaps, but to be able to make successful and repeated clean cuts? A swordsman must demand nothing but perfection from his technique.]

[endgames]

[That could be part of the problem. He knows how to use his weapon; was trained in the basics when they gave it to him when he was thirteen.

He just doesn't use it often. So he's focusing on strength over form, even if he's progressing each time.

Probably because he's pretending it's Sasuke's head.]

[deathsdoctor]

[Yeah. There's a lot of anger in there as much as there is tension. The assumption is that it's this unknown trouble. How Mister Sasuke fits into he doesn't know, and quite honestly, Law isn't thinking of him. Trouble could mean a thousand things after all.

And even though its progressing, it isn't quite succeeding, is it? And Law thinks he sees a lot of frustration in there as well.

Another quiet suggestion:]

... the angle of your blade is a little too high. Drop it a bit, and the next strike should go right through.

[endgames]

[The adjustment is instant, calculated so quickly in the follow-through that it might appear to have happened without thought.

...and sure enough, it finally goes clean through.]