Journey to The Center of The Earth~ [Open RP]

[Takayama]

His breathing was heavy, the distant sound of rushing water pulling his strained legs further than they were capable of, the occasional stumble or blunder banging away at his already battered frame. His only claim to stability was the now chipped nodachi he had earned at the cost of it's sheath. He could feel it, the rush of a humid summer wind brushing past him. The surface was close, he just had a little bit further and nothing would be left to stop him. He could almost remember the sun, other kids laughing away, the smell of warm soil being tilled for spring. Something was wrong though, a series of increasingly bizarre red flags screaming at the boy as he tried to outpace the volley of footfalls behind him. They would catch up to him if he stopped and there was little doubt that they would want to do more than just lock him back up considering everything that had just taken place. His only chance was forward.

But...

Wasn't he running down?

The ground beneath his feet had gotten steeper in the few moments he had used to process his surroundings, the now ominous wafts of warm air settings his senses on high alert. Unfortunately his inertia prevented him from acting on his first instinct and the sound of those giving chase distracted him from the approaching scene. He realized his mistake only just quickly enough to grind his bare heel on the chipping stone pathway beneath him and teeter over the vast and empty darkness that now lay ahead. Something like stars sat just beyond his reach, but the smell of water had gotten heavy enough to way the only real option he had left.

The foot steps finally ushered into view behind him a small gaggle of distressed monks, each bearing the weapon of their specialty. At the head of them was the now wounded Master Katakura, his now blind right eye in no way hampered his comprehension of the position Takayama was now in. He halted, his enclave pausing just a few steps behind him anxiously. If they hadn't yet absorbed the situation, it was dawning on them.

Takayama let his vision swivel to the group behind him, their leader the only one not to tighten the grip on his weapon as he did. The old man grimaced, a seething hiss slipping between his teeth before Takayama lifted his unwieldy blade onto his shoulder and took a step back.



" BakaTaka... "



A couple of the monks gasped, one shouted. The blue haired leaf refugee had a hard time making out the individual sounds as they fell away from him, the warm current he had felt before becoming a gust that sundered any noise that might contest it.

The view was breathtaking, as was the air that whipped past him. What had seemed like distant stars were slowly becoming lights adorning small buildings and roadways. Somewhere beneath him he could make out boats on a dark and unending sea of steam and shadows, lit only by the occasional lamp or candle. The cavern was beyond reasoning. It was an entire world into itself, prospering just beneath his feet without his ever knowing. If Takayama had ever wanted or needed a scale by which to measure just how unfathomably huge the earth was, this would be it.

The lights were growing steadily and as Takayama gripped his sword a flash of brilliance broke his awestruck mind. He was spinning, the sheer length of the nodachi creating an interesting drag on the wind as it forced it's way past him. He gripped the handle of the blade and reinforced it with his bad arm, leveling the tool to his chest and tilting the blade in just such a way as to start turning him. The world was spinning faster now, one scene overlapping with the next as he found himsel at the mercy of the wind. Like a helicopter seed, he hoped.... Whether he was successful or not was not something he couldn't say outright, but the fact that he was moving at the wind's discretion could only be a good thing. Once the lights were close enough he spaced his limbs out and pulled out of the spin, a few critical moments of focus prying at his sanity before he clenched his teeth at the now rapidly approaching water.

He straightened into a dive, dizzy and still lightly spinning as he extended his sword arm to the sea below him and reinforced it with the palm of his crippled hand.


There would be a splash on the surface of the hot spring sea that would be all but too far away for most to make sense of, but maybe, if Takayama was lucky, someone somewhere would notice...

 

[Junan]

Akira had found his way to the waterfront to look out across the massive expanse. Who could have imagined something like this sat so far under the surface of the world. It was magnificent.

A strange sound caught his ears, less a noise than a flurry of vibrations, something falling. His eye looked up, he whispered the name of the Hyuuga technique that was their standard go-to when wanting to see something that normal eyes couldn't. The cavern lit up, the black becoming a lightish grey, no colour except that which chakra would give, and sure enough there it was. Falling through the sky, spinning in the air, yet there was no time to help, nor any way to achieve help without causing serious injury.

Still he found himself in motion, an automatic reaction to someone in trouble. His massive frame in full sprint within seconds, his height granted him great speed, his legs pumping at full speed, the water erupting under each footfall as he pushed slight excess of chakra to the bottoms of his feet, something they told students not to do, but had become an unconscious technique of his to increase his speed when he was running on water. Whether he was chasing someone or running that little bit of extra pace would always be worth the chakra expenditure.

Throwing his palm at the spot where the boy would impact yet still fifty feet away, the waters surface erupted, and then was silenced as the boy hit the water himself. He was in a dive but the explosion as the boy hit the water was still immense, most normal people falling from such a height would be unconscious, broken bones, Akira could only hope he wouldn't be too late. He dove and hoped that he could get to the boy before the worst happened.

Looking through the stream of bubbles he saw the glow of chakra, it was deep. Forming seals he swam down while using kinesis to pull the boy closer. Finally within reach he grabbed the boy with one hand and swam hard for the surface pulling the boy with him. Determination hard on the Raikage's features as his hand broke the surface which still rippled with the motion caused by the boys entry. His hand slammed down on the water as if it were concrete, the well muscled shoulder strained as it pulled Akira and the boy to the surface.

Dammit, I need to train more. Ice will be my next element. he thought to himself as he knelt on the surface of the water resting the boy on his knee.

He went through the processes he'd been taught to review the boy, was he breathing, was his heart beating, was he conscious. If any of these were no's then he would look to take the prescribed procedures. Akira Saito, ANBU for all his life had been training for the past two years in medical techniques under a medical chief's supervision. Now those abilities were coming in handy.

 

[Takayama]

There had been darkness for moment. He couldn't remember exactly why, just that as he had rocketed toward the surface of the water it had shifted somehow, as if to rise up and meet him. It burned. The wafts of steam that had risen past him hadn't prepared him for the sizzling, bubbling madness that was caught within a moment later. The boy hadn't felt hot water in months, but even if the temporary pain had been doubled it would have been nothing compared to the pain in his shoulders and face.

He had hit the water with monstrous force, enough so that he was still fairly dazed when someone or something began lifting him up through the heavy stinging darkness. It was moving quickly, but all the same that surprise of the heat and temporary loss of consciousness had cost him his one chance at a full breath of air. Now he was left with with half a breath and a dense burn in his chest where his lungs must have been. He twitched a little from the sudden trauma, just enough that he almost lost consciousness again. It was just as he was about to gasp his final gasp that the heavy echoes of the dark and burning world around him were shattered by the frigid rush of cavern air sprinkled with the light steam rising from his own body. The blue haired boy ell into a coughing fit before he could make much sense of the impressive figure on whose knee he was now gripping for dear life.

As long as he wasn't a priest...

There were quite a few things amiss with the boy that would become apparent to the veteran shinobi before him. He was emanmciated, his left hand was broken in numerous places. Fresh. His ears were bleeding, probably a symptom of over exposure to a sound Jutsu. There were a few fresh scrapes and bruises here and there, as well as evidence that only a Hyuuga might notice that two of his ribs were fractured. The fall may very well have been the least of it, no doubt in thanks to broken surface tension and mild eddy that had been left in the wake of the master shinobi's quick efforts.

Takayama was breathing heavy now, a gasp here and there signaling that he was still functioning enough to preserve himself with a certain sense of timing. Eventually a noise emerged.


"Where... Where am I...?"


His words barely made sense to him, but he knew they were accurate...

 

[Junan]

The boy was conscious, he had broken bones, but he was conscious, breathing, heart beating, conscious. He coughed the fluid from his lungs as Akira loosely and firmly kept him from falling from the limited area that his thigh provided as a platform. As the boy would look up he would probably notice the scars on the face second to the eye patch which sat over the shinobi's left eye, a large scar running above and below it, though almost surgical in nature this aspect would likely be missed by one not trained enough to notice.

Words exited from the boy asking where he was. The accent was slightly different from that of the local one, yet familiar to Akira, though perhaps it had been caused by the weakness of their exertion.

You are on the surface of the watery mass that surrounds Arcadia. It was the best he could do, unfortunately he was unfamiliar with the name of this area, and although they called it a sea, he had seen a sea, and this was not one. The water temperature was hot, and the water was surrounded as far as his eye could see by a cavern. A lake would be a more appropriate name.

During Akira's assessment he noticed a few things, blood was dripping from the ears, never a good sign but probably caused by the sudden impact with the water, pressure on the brain perhaps, or perhaps something caused prior to the fall, perhaps a reason for the fall, something for Akira to check more thoroughly either way. Two ribs were broken, but hadn't punctured the lunch or else the boy would have been coughing blood. The least of Akira's concerns was the boys left hand which was bruising quickly, some of it twisted in a way which it shouldn't, but that would be able to be fixed fairly easily.

I'm going to carry you to the shore where I can more easily treat your injuries. Tell me what happened as we go, to make sure I am not missing an injury. He lifted the boy and carried him as one would carry a baby, cradled in his massive arms. Standing at nearly seven foot, Akira would have no problem doing so, with broken ribs and bleeding from the ears he didn't want to throw the boy over his shoulder.

 

[Takayama]

Arcadia.... He had heard the word in passing numerous times before. The village directly beneath the temple, but somehow he had only ever had images of a timid settlement of cave dwelling miners that lived in cramped conditions and and subsisted off roots. He had never once dreamed that there was an entire world below, fitted with the streets and houses he had glimpsed from his fall. He coughed again, but kept the noise down enough to catch the warrior's words.


I'm going to carry you to the shore where I can more easily treat your injuries. Tell me what happened as we go, to make sure I am not missing an injury.


There a few things wrong with that statement, first of all they were on an island in the middle of nowhere, second of all... Takayama looked down with the intention of seeing for the first time, his eyes widening as the surreal image began to finally impress itself upon him. The man keeping him from sinking was not on an island. He was not even on a boat. By some miracle he was simply standing above the water, his professional looking boots pressing down on it no differently than they might press down on a tiled floor. It was at this moment that the boy was lifted what seemed like a tremendous height and jostled softly, he and the nameless giant bobbing with the occasional wave and tordent ripple that glanced off the mans steps. Takayama let a few quick memories pass through him before a sensible answer crossed his lips.

"I was trying to take back...". Takayama's vision darted to the spot he had fallen, his eyes looking over the water in a mild panic. The sword. He had let go of the sword at some point in his lapse of consciousness. There was no way to tell where beneath the rolling waves exactly where or how far down it had gone without him. He let the calm of acceptance fall over him, just long enough to finish what he had started saying. "... a family heirloom. It was being dishonoured. They didn't want to let it go. I guess some of them knew Jutsu, I hadn't expected that...

At this the boy would turn his head and try to make sense of everything he could manage about the man who had saved him. He was a shinobi for sure, no normal man could manage a miracle like the one he was experiencing, but there was more and nothing subtle about it.

"You're a shinobi... But you're not from stone are you?

 

[Junan]

Akira's eye watched as the boy glanced towards the water as he began to speak, the shifting of the features, the tightening of muscles, and then the relaxation. He knew the reaction well. Panic and acceptance. The boy had lost the heirloom to the depths. There wasn't anything Akira could do save look for it using his byakugan. It would be unlikely that he could see it, and if he could the jutsu he would need to cast to retrieve the item could have serious ramifications. His kenisis jutsu wouldn't have the range to reach the item, and if he used earth jutsu then he could end up raising the water level which for a place like this could cause problems. Alternatively it might cause a sudden rush of water through whatever exit the water had, assuming that it had one, and could end up causing damage to some town or village with a flash flood.

No, Akira couldn't risk it for something like this.

He knew someone who could get it, someone who was a powerful shinobi, who would likely jump at the chance to get something over this boy. The price the boy would pay for the heirloom would be great, and Akira would not mention the man. Not that he thought he could find him anyway. Instead, let the boy grow in his own wisdom and strength and come back for it when he has the ability, make the decision for himself, or perhaps have the capabilities that would be required.

The crunch of pebbles signalled their arrival at the beach as the boy asked about Akira being a shinobi.

Correct on both accounts. He said laying the boy down.

Activating his byakugan once more he formed some medical seals, healing the minor wounds which would be causing the sharper pains for the boy.

 

[Takayama]

Takayama's eyes widened as the seemingly simple set of handseals began to turn back time on the scrapes, bruises and sharp aches that had settled into his ribs. His ears still rang and his thumb could not be helped without something more, but to have had so many of the small hindrances simply pulled away into thin air was enough to breathe tremendous energy into him. As the warm and flowing sensation eased into a gentle hum the blue haired boy began to sit up, his vision rolling over his arms and legs in fascination. He was going to have to learn how to do that. As focused as he was, his words still seemed to leave without him.

"Thank you, shinobi-sama... I owe you my life...

The boy lifted himself, slowly at first, but with a quiet sort of determination that reflected some deeper purpose not readily spoken. His knees did not buckle like he had expected them to, but they did still ache enough to lend his stance a mild wobble. Once he was settled on his feet he gave as deep a bow as he could manage, followed by a hesitant question layered with tentative tones. It had started out excited, if anything. "... Are you a refugee too? I heard Kirigakure had to be abandoned as well, but my father never really explained-..." His voice trailed off, the boy realizing he may have offered too much to someone he didn't fully understand yet. His eyes fell to the swords at the man's sides, then worked their way over the trim in his military coat and up to his eyes. The swords bore very specific symbols that many in Konohagakure revered, if not worshiped, but they were not of the same cultural artistry that Takayama was familiar with. There was something decidedly foreign about them, the same went for the man's attire. It was too rigid to be from Konoha, something strict and regal about it that he couldn't put his finger on. The eyes were of a clan familiar to him and essential royalty in leaf, but even as young as Takayama was he could tell there was something unusual about the man's skin and facial structure that spoke generations of difference.

It was safer to remember his place for now, he would need to correct himself.

"I-I apologize for prying, shinobi-sama..."

He bowed again, his mind aflutter with one unanswered question after another. He would rise slowly, his gaze still burning with curiosity and that same quiet determination it had started off with. A determination that hinted at a will fueled by the seething embers and ancient promises...

 

[Junan]

As Akira used the healing jutsu on the boy it seemed that many of the pains he had been suffering were also going away, he was glad for this, it was nice to be a medic for a change.

The other mentioned that he owed Akira his life, Akira simply shook his head as he continued his work, setting bones before healing the wounds, likely causing pain to the boy in doing so, but reducing the amount of work the chakra would need to do, and thus less of a toll on the boys cells.

Finally he was done, and the boy lifted himself up, his energy hadn't returned yet of course, if anything it had likely drained further, something had to be used by the healing chakra for it to work the way it did. Akira remembered Kushin telling him that if he could heal everyone without using chakra then he would. It had been said with a vicious look of course, but he was probably the best medical shinobi he had ever seen. In his own way.

The boy feeling himself out turned to Akira and gave a bow. He stood and a touch of excitement, maybe a little anxiety in the mix as well, and asked Akira if he were a refugee as well.

Akira watched as the boys eyes fell on his blades and then studied his clothing and then features. He then apologised again, as if suddenly he thought that perhaps he shouldn't speak so freely.

No, I am not from Kirigakure. I visited Leaf once though a long time ago, before you were born most likely and trained a couple of shinobi. I am from Kumogakure, the village in the Clouds.

He smiled a little, using some earth jutsu he pulled up a stone. He was a little tired himself. Age was getting to him these days.

I read the reports on what happened in Leaf, a shinobi I know was there when the samurai of the Fire Country attacked. He told me about the rain which fell, sapping chakra from everything and everyone. How did you manage to survive?

 

[Takayama]

Kumogakure...

He had heard the name before, like so many other things, in stories his father had told him on those late nights at the valley of the end. In the dull orange glow of the campfire light, one small glimpse after another would be imparted on the young boy about what being a shinobi meant and who among them had made sacrifices never to be forgotten. His father had seldom spoken of the village hidden in the clouds, but he had spoken of them and some of the tales bordered the impossible. Takayama believed them, perhaps naively, but in a world like the one he had been born into impossibility seemed more likely than it's alternative.

"My father was a special jounin who was part of the task force dealing with leaf corruption, he hunted the Yakuza. It's funny though, the Yakuza actually helped transport families out of the village during the attack. I'd never seen my father beg anyone before, but he knew they had a passage into leaf city and once he realized that leaf... We left as tea merchants. Passports and everything... The Daimyo's men were so focused on the attack that I don't think they paid much mind."

Takayama shifted, his wounds still getting the better of him as he did.

"My father stayed behind... I haven't heard from him since..."

Takayama lifted his undamaged arm to his shoulder, his eyes wandering to the ground as he prodded what had once been bruises and fractures as his attention returned to the present. The man before him was clearly a man of unwieldy strength, at least in Takayama's eyes. Who else would be pulling the earth apart at his beck and call? The boy, though hesitant, felt maybe a curiosity of his could be settled once and for all. Not that he thought his father was a liar, but the opportunity was too strong to pass up.

"... Is it true that the Raikage are gods?"

 

[Junan]

Akira nodded and listened to the boys story. It was a sad one, and Akira couldn't do anything to help, nor could he have done anything.

It was interesting the different villages and their relationships with their countries leadership. Perhaps it was because the Shogun of Cloud had spent his early years growing up in Cloud that meant that he was as friendly as he was. Perhaps it was because it was Cloud which had made the deciding actions to end the civil war which had raged for a decade in the country below. Akira was a Daimyo himself, only due to his position in Cloud however, but it was still a powerful position in Lightning Country. The mountains were his to decide on what to do with.

The boy asked a question though, and it was one which made Akira smile.

No, not quite. The mirth was evident in his voice.

We have had two over the last fifty years ascend into godhood, however we as a whole are not gods.

So how have you found it here in Stone? Have they made you feel welcome?

 

[Takayama]

Takayama had to reflect on this question. He had been through too much and too little to put even such a basic question into it's proper perspective. After what felt like eternity, he managed a soulful tone that echoed the trouble he had found himself in during what he believed to be the last few months.

He would not discover until later how much time had actually passed.

"Well, I guess... In all honesty, the village itself has been kind to me. My step father and the church tend to treat themselves as being in a world apart, but the real people of Stone... They've only ever really helped, even if...."

The boy looked down, his quiet eyes giving off a strange blend of determination and solemn guilt as he chewed on his next words.. He would look up after a while, having come to some unseen decision before responding.

"I'll have to find a way to pay them back. And you as well."


After a short exchange of words the two shinobi would part ways, the mind of the blue haired refugee now decided in his course of action. He would just need to stop to pick up a few things first.




[OoC: Topic left unless stopped.]