There was no trace of human life here, either.
Tatsuya told himself he hadn't been expecting any. There was the eerily-broadcasting radio, but the DJ didn't seem inclined to go anywhere by the way he talked, and probably wasn't human if he was surviving easily in this anyway. Even he himself was hard-pressed to manage for long, and that was while he had a cloak of nothingness wrapped around him.
There was, after all, a significant different between the utter lack of feeling and being the only source of warmth within miles. (Louise did not count, of course; like all snakes she was cold-blooded. She had burrowed her way into one of his inner pockets, hissing irritably at--no, not him, something in the air--and refused to come out.)
There were frozen bodies here and there, although no one he recognized. Not that there were many distinctive features on any of them to recognize, but no one felt familiar. There were very faint chakra signatures here and there, as if whatever malevolent force had done this was content to display the life force of those it had killed on the winds.
It might have chilled someone more inclined to fear, but the only chill he felt was from the weather itself, and moved on.
Broken-open offices, everything inside either perfectly intact or shattered into rubble the way an object that has been intensely frozen and then hit does. Not so much as a plant left alive--of course, those would have died before the people, as in almost instantly. Certainly some of the people here had died nearly as quickly though.
And yet, still no sign of familiar chakra.
This was almost certainly one of the places Hoshikata would have stopped at.
The twins would probably have been with him. Really, aside from cavorting out in the wilderness, which even they were not impulsive enough to do for an extended period of time, there hadn't really been anything left for them in Mist. Their mother had uprooted them quite effectively. And anyone fresh out of the Academy even would have been able to tell there were no lingering chakra signatures on the barren plains and frozen rivers that Water Country's wilderness had mostly become.
Meaning...probably none of them were there when the freeze hit.
He exhaled in relief.
He was careful as he trudged back through the 'snow.' Really, it wasn't all snow, which was why he also had a bubble of oxygen, chakra-warmed, around himself. That wouldn't last forever, though, and he really didn't feel like trying to figure out which layer of deep-freeze the actual stuff was in. Instead he made his way back to the boat silently.
It wasn't until they were back away from Mist and into the tropical seas that Louise poked her head out of his pocket.
"Are we leaving the bad-tasting place? Did you find what you were looking for?"
"Yes," he said. "And not what, who. Fortunately not. I don't think they were there. But I have no idea how to find them now."
Louise made a thoughtful sort of hiss. "If I were trying to find a nestling, I would go to the last place I saw them and track them from there."
"Yes, well..." he trailed of. In absence of anything else, that was as good an idea as any. "Yes. Good idea."
He went to tell the boatman to take them to Lightning Country.
[Leaving Country; S-Rank: 30 Minutes]
Tatsuya told himself he hadn't been expecting any. There was the eerily-broadcasting radio, but the DJ didn't seem inclined to go anywhere by the way he talked, and probably wasn't human if he was surviving easily in this anyway. Even he himself was hard-pressed to manage for long, and that was while he had a cloak of nothingness wrapped around him.
There was, after all, a significant different between the utter lack of feeling and being the only source of warmth within miles. (Louise did not count, of course; like all snakes she was cold-blooded. She had burrowed her way into one of his inner pockets, hissing irritably at--no, not him, something in the air--and refused to come out.)
There were frozen bodies here and there, although no one he recognized. Not that there were many distinctive features on any of them to recognize, but no one felt familiar. There were very faint chakra signatures here and there, as if whatever malevolent force had done this was content to display the life force of those it had killed on the winds.
It might have chilled someone more inclined to fear, but the only chill he felt was from the weather itself, and moved on.
Broken-open offices, everything inside either perfectly intact or shattered into rubble the way an object that has been intensely frozen and then hit does. Not so much as a plant left alive--of course, those would have died before the people, as in almost instantly. Certainly some of the people here had died nearly as quickly though.
And yet, still no sign of familiar chakra.
This was almost certainly one of the places Hoshikata would have stopped at.
The twins would probably have been with him. Really, aside from cavorting out in the wilderness, which even they were not impulsive enough to do for an extended period of time, there hadn't really been anything left for them in Mist. Their mother had uprooted them quite effectively. And anyone fresh out of the Academy even would have been able to tell there were no lingering chakra signatures on the barren plains and frozen rivers that Water Country's wilderness had mostly become.
Meaning...probably none of them were there when the freeze hit.
He exhaled in relief.
He was careful as he trudged back through the 'snow.' Really, it wasn't all snow, which was why he also had a bubble of oxygen, chakra-warmed, around himself. That wouldn't last forever, though, and he really didn't feel like trying to figure out which layer of deep-freeze the actual stuff was in. Instead he made his way back to the boat silently.
It wasn't until they were back away from Mist and into the tropical seas that Louise poked her head out of his pocket.
"Are we leaving the bad-tasting place? Did you find what you were looking for?"
"Yes," he said. "And not what, who. Fortunately not. I don't think they were there. But I have no idea how to find them now."
Louise made a thoughtful sort of hiss. "If I were trying to find a nestling, I would go to the last place I saw them and track them from there."
"Yes, well..." he trailed of. In absence of anything else, that was as good an idea as any. "Yes. Good idea."
He went to tell the boatman to take them to Lightning Country.
[Leaving Country; S-Rank: 30 Minutes]