Day 42, Noon: The Twin Pine Restaurant

[thatdamnedninja.livejournal.com]

Yuffie took the long way around, practically making it a tour of the entire town. She collared--not literally, since the nurses would've thrown fits--a few random citizens along the way, asked as many inconspicuous sounding questions as possible, and then moved on. Wash, rinse, repeat. Sneaking a few covert glimpses into stores and windows confirmed what she'd been talking about with Sam earlier; no dates, no explicitly mentioned locations outside of the town itself… how weird was that? Even the most insular of towns back on Gaia would've coughed up some kind of connection with the outside world.

It was almost like a living ghost town.

Well, maybe she was just thinking too hard. Maybe she was throwing shuriken too hard at the wrong target. Back home, she had a concrete frame of reference. Here, she couldn't take anything for granted; she had no local or international knowledge whatsoever. All she could try to do was get a profile of the immediate area and build it up and out from there. Theories were already budding, popping up like weeds hit by Quadra-Haste, but without facts to back them up, theories were like sand in a desert.

Not that she didn't want to share those theories, sand or not. She did. A lot.

Once she'd developed a viable mental map of the place (as viable as she was gonna get given the time constraints), Yuffie swung back around and jogged back to North Street. From there, she took the alley; a quick right turn; slow to a trot, and there. Her cheeks were tinged pink from the cold winter air, and they stung as she poked her head in through the door.

Okay, so maybe she was a little early after all. That was cool. Very cool. She had some time to set things up, to pretend that she wasn't hideously under prepared for this lunch date. Stepping into the warmth, Yuffie surreptitiously cased the place out as she headed to a table. Homey, in a way that almost reminded her of some of the up-and-coming rural towns. Automatically seeking out one of the more strategic seats--one with a good view of the rest of the restaurant, and one that didn't leave her totally vulnerable to mutant chairs or murderous sandwiches--she made herself comfortable, whipped out a few crumpled pieces of paper and a pen, and began to jot down her findings.

[Closed to Edgeworth.]

Comments

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Grade school. Chidori wondered, for the first time that she could remember, what it would have been like to go to grade school like a normal child. Who would she have been, in that imaginary life? Would she still have needed to draw, to cut herself, if not for Kirijo and their labs and pills and the death sentence they handed her? Impossible to say. She might even have ended up in the same high school as Junpei, been a totally ordinary girl that never would have noticed him. "What sorts of things did you do, in grade school?"

[whos-da-man.livejournal.com]

"Stupid stuff," Junpei replied with a bit of a laugh. "I once snuck into this pachinko parlor and tried to get them to let me play. That didn't... go too well. My father decided I needed something to do cause idle hands and all, so he signed me up for baseball." It was really the only good thing his father had ever done for him.

"So, to keep myself mostly out of trouble - or at least the kind of trouble that got the cops involved - I played baseball." He smiled broadly. "I love baseball. Always wanted to be a star and play under the lights of the Tokyo Dome." His smile faded and he shrugged. "Didn't work out, though."

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Chidori frowned a little, at the way Junpei was talking like his life was over. "You gave up?" He had all the time in the world, didn't he? Certainly more time than Chidori had. She wanted him to be happy, when she was gone again.

[whos-da-man.livejournal.com]

"Nah, I got cut from the team when I hit high school. I wasn't very good," Junpei replied with a sigh. "Then when we moved to Iwatodai, my father wouldn't let me try out at Gekkoukan," he added on with a bit of a scowl.

The smile found its way back onto his face then. "But it's okay. Now I get to be a hero that helps save the world and I got to meet this smokin' hot chick that draws these amazing things one day at the station. I don't think that would have happened if I'd been playing baseball with practice after school and all..."

[fear-attachment.livejournal.com]

[to the afternoon post (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/665943.html?view=55158615#t55158615) we go!]