A pirate lives free [Saya]

"Hm. Seems a game without a winner isn't a game at all. We'll have to this round goes, and hopefully I can find ways to improve upon the rules!" What kind of a rediculous person would make a game without a winner?! THe point of games was to have competition between people. As her mind flowed through possible questions to ask Dana, She paused on memories of playing shogi with her babysitter. How would they have reacted had their games not actually had a winner? How would they know when it was over? Was it possible that by agreeing to start this game she'd just doomed the both of them to an eternity of asking questions of one another? Would they need to retire as ninja now? Maybe they could just always do missions together. It WAS a good way to ensure your team never left or abandoned you. If they were locked into a game of twenty questions for the rest of their life, well then they couldn't exactly go training with others or try to find a new mission. They'd miss their turn! Wait. what happens if you do miss your turn. Would the game be paused for sleeping? That was it! The win condition. The game could just go on until someone falls asleep and then that person would be the definitive loser. 

"OOOH! I love teal! AH green is such a good color too!!! OMGOMGOMGOMG I LOVE pink! Purple is pretty good too!! Heck These are all such good choices. I picked a really good question!" She hadn't actually considered how varied her question could be. What would she have even chosen? If she were honest, all the colors were like. Really good. Black was such a good accent to make other colors pop, and pastels just looked so soft and beatuiful, but yellow?! How could anyone ever forget yellow?! She was ripped from her own color consideration as she realized Dana was looking at her like she was meant to respond to something she'd said. SHe glanced at her sister, who simply giggled. Coach, ever the one to be helpful held up a sign he somehow had in his bag that said "Would you rather have a..." With a cat emoji on one side and a puppy emoji on the other. The answers were immediate. 

A: "Dog"

P:"Cat"

S: "BOTH!!!"

The three answered in perfect unison. Their combined responses created a beautiful dissonance that emphasized both how different and similar they both were. Considering pinochio's personality, Cat was an obvious answer. With Ai's intense sense of care, Dog was the perfect companion for her, and Saya... WEll. Realistically her perfect pet would be a plant, but like, one that could water itself. She loved almost all animals, but she was so busy that actually taking care of herself was a struggle for the girl, and having pets would be a dangerous dance without help. 

THe trio glanced at one another as they realized they'd all answered differently, and just burst out in a deep belly laugh. 

(TWC 7822)

Dana chuckled at Saya's eager comments while Dana decided what her favourite colour was. It was a bizarre occurrence to have her opinions validated so excitedly by another, but it wasn't an unpleasant one. Huh, maybe she should indulge everyone in her opinions all the time! People loved to hear other people's random thoughts completely unprompted, right? Yeah, that was definitely how Dana was going to make loads of new friends from now on and nothing would go wrong!

When three members of the gang all responded with different answers, and Saya answered with both, Dana screwed up her face and puffed her cheeks out teasingly. That wasn't how the question was supposed to play out! Saya was supposed to struggle with the answer like Dana had hers. Hmm, that meant her questions from now on would have to be harder hitting and more difficult to answer! Her energetic mind began buzzing about a whole new host of questions to ask Saya; did she like her pillow hot or cold? Would she rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or 1 horse-sized duck? Why is a raven like a writing desk? You know, the hard-hitting questions. Just as she was about to ask another question she suddenly remembered that a vital part of the Twenty Questions game had gone missing! Saya had yet to ask her a question, she would need to wait!

Down below on the deck next to Pinochio, Dana's clone was still sitting and was rather bored. She'd watched the other clone sacrifice herself to save Dana's clothes, and all this time she'd just been sitting next to Pinochio fighting the urge to give the wooden boy a pat on the head. She could feel the timer on the remainder of her existence slowly creeping forward; her time was almost up. It was weirdly morbid but this was a clone of Dana we were talking about here, so she didn't think anything of it. She wasn't going to go out without some kind of disturbance, though!

The clone stood up and would attempt to reclaim the coat she'd put around Pinochio what-felt-like ages ago. If allowed to do so, she would then pull the coat over her head and smooth it out to ensure she looked her best for her disappearance. Just because she was about to go, Dana's clone finally gave in to the urge to finally attempt to pat Pinochio's head with a gentle, if slightly teasing, expression. "Like, see you around, wood dude." She'd say in a completely different voice than usual. She'd made herself sound like a surfer guy through the use of the Ventriloquism Jutsu. Why, you ask? Why not, she would reply.

"Like, bye me and Saya!" She shouted up to the two Senju up on the mast. She'd then give a salute and then disappear into a cloud of smoke, all traces of her existence vanishing as well.

The, now, sole Dana on the ship just rolled her eyes, why were her clones so weird?

WC: 503
TWC: 7713

The three of team puppet shared a glare that only lasted a moment in real time, but in the terrifying hodge podge of her mind space it felt like an eternity. Internally Saya huffed at the two. Why would they even answer?! This was a game with Dana and herself, not dana and herself with special guests two people who don't have the right opinion on what the best animal was! How could they even choose which animal was better than the others! Cat's are so fluffy and cuddly and independent, and they baked the best biscuits, but dogs... Dogs were so fluffy and cuddly and liked to chew bones, and fetch balls and they had those sad little eyes when you didn't give them a bit of your tofu. It was an impossible choice that, the more she thought about, the more upset it made her. The other two retorted giving well reasoned explainations why the one or the other was the best for team puppet, but Saya was having NONE of it. Then she realized she hadn't exactly told the pair about the secret nineteenth floor yet. Sure, they knew that both Ita and gami spent quite a lot of time down there, and also that they were absolutely not allowed down there cuz it was being fumigated with a special bug spray that was only harmful to puppets, so they had to wait until it was gone, but she'd not actually told them she'd gotten a pet or thirty five. 

She would need to come up with some convincing reasons later why they still couldn't go down. It was getting to the point where it wouldn't be plausible for the floor to still be fumigated. maybe she'd just say the exterminator came back again. Yes. He has come back every tuesday to respray cuz they're mutant bugs that only eat puppets, hence the spray that only hurt puppets, and they're immune to the spray so thats why he has to keep coming back so its better if neither of them ever go down there. She was pretty good at plans. 

Pinochio was so lost in their mental convorsation that he didn't even notice when the coat was taken from his shoulders. He stared dazed at the pupeteer, building his argument for cats, right up to the point when he felt it. The worst feeling he's ever felt. the most feelingyest feeling he'd ever feeled--no felt. Grammar is definitely important and not a social construct. He was up in an instant, flinging himself at the girl with rage in his eyes. Unfortunately, She was long gone by then, and he found himself once again flying over the side of the boat and into the drink. Saya just waved at the already gone clone. 

"Ok. So. New question. Who is your idol and why!!!!" Perfect. She wasn't sure if that was cheating, both by asking two questions and by asking such a broad question that couldn't be answered in one word. She also didn't really understand the rules, so hopefully she got a pass. 

(TWC 8337)

Saya was a dirty cheater who cheats! Dana couldn't believe the girl would break the rules so rambunctiously by asking Dana TWO questions! Now she would have to think real hard about not one answer, but two! To be fair to the girl, though, they hadn't exactly established any rules for this little game they were playing. When would it ever end? How long would the two end up asking questions for? Maybe it would turn into a battle of attrition, with either girl vying to be the last to ask questions before they succumbed to sleep. Dana would definitely win if it turned into a game like that; her sleeping schedule was absolutely atrocious.

She mulled over Saya's question seriously, all too aware that there wasn't really anyone she'd consider an 'Idol'. In fact, the closest person she could categorize as one was probably Saya, which proved just how little she got around. Saya was nice, good with people, good at Jutsu; all things Dana really wasn't. She was also one of 6 people she knew from Kirigakure, the other 5 being Ai, Freyja, Pinochio, Coach, and Niko. Not a large selection to pick from by any means. She thought on further, aware that she'd been quiet for about ten seconds or so whilst she did so.

"Oi... Don't really have one?" She said with a questioning inflection to her tone, "Oi guess, maybe the Fae? They're not really a 'who' per say but they are responsible for a lot of things and oi think that's grand."

She smiled and nodded to herself, happy to have come up with - what was hopefully - a suitable answer. Dana assumed that it probably wasn't what Saya had been looking for, but she really didn't have anything else she could answer with. However, the turn to ask a question had now fallen to her. Saya had asked her three whole questions that had been difficult to find an answer for, and Dana needed some payback! Her last question had been answered easily, now it was time for a much harder one.

She smirked, sure that this question was the one that was going to stump Saya: "If all tofu and its variants disappeared from the world, along with all knowledge on how to make it... What would ye eat instead?" Ha! Now that was a good question, it was really the kind to make people think about their lives and come to a startling realization that would change them forever.

WC: 420
TWC: 8133

Dana didn't have anyone to look up to? That was a worrisome statement. Girls needed a proper role model, someone to idolize, and put posters of on their wall for motivation. Someone whose ideals matched their own to a degree that it made wanting to complete tasks to one day meet and make them proud a reailty. That person for Saya was Aios. There was a village leader in the rain village years ago. She was well known in certain comunities, but not really around here. Still, She remembers one day as a young child seeing a flier that had been spread from the sky across the entire land advertizing the greatest show on earth, and on the front was a huge picture of a girl with puppets. She was dressed in the most rediculous clothing Saya had ever seen, and she held a micorphone confidently in her hands. The moment she read the title, she knew she knew what she wanted to be when she grew up

"Aios, The cosplay queen of the village hidden in the rain. Coming to a stage near you" She'd never made it. Many suggested she'd died somewhere in the middling coutry, But that didn't matter. Like so many other performers saya was inspired to follow suit and make it to this most prestiegous rank. She would be the next Aios. "What. What is a 'the fae'? " It didn't sound very fun in Saya's opinion. Being responsible for stuff is the lowest thing on her to do list, but if Dana liked them there had to be some secret trick to make them awesome. 

"I. Wh. But. I.... I've never thought about it. I mean I've had alot of favorite foods over the years. my mom said when i was little I would only eat bananas, and there was a delicious hot pot place out in the islands country that I used to go to alot. I also had a peanut butter and pickles phase. " Ai cringed at the last comment. While she wasn't exactly around at that time, she still could remember the sour smell of the sanwhiches. Her caregiver used to wear a clothes pin on her nose when she served breakfast to small saya because the girl loved her sandwhiches with extra pickle juice. The end result was the soggiest bread imaginable, tinted green and dripping as it fell apart in her hand. No one was sure if any of the peanut butter ever actually made it into her mouth, or if it all ended up on the plate while she pawed at pickle soaked bread until she was full. "I suppose, Whatever the lady at the shop fixes other than Tofu would be my go to. I have a tendency to just pick one place that I like and only eat there. That's why i'm so obsessed with Mappo tofu." She'd have to consider her next question, to ensure she met the girl's energy. That one was tough. 

"Describe your perfect jutsu. If you could create a technique that did absolutely anything you wanted with no chakra restrictions what would it do?" 

(TWC 8859)

Dana just smiled mysteriously when Saya asked her about the Fae, not elaborating any further or answering the girl's question. While she desperately wanted to tell Saya all about the wonderful stories of the Fae, she was choosing to remain true to the spirit of the game. Saya had already cheated by asking her TWO questions at the same time, but Dana simply could not allow the third question on top of all that! If she wanted to know, then Saya would just have to wait for her turn to ask about them. A stickler for the rules thy name is Dana, to put it plainly.

Dana's eyes lit up at Saya's description of what she used to eat as a child, green eyes catching the light vibrantly. Peanut butter and pickles? Those were, like, two of Dana's most favorite things ever! How had she never thought to combine them both? This girl was a certified genius. "That's... That sounds amazing!" She gushed, almost slipping off the mast in all her excitement. Why would Saya ever move on to eating something else when she could just be eating peanut butter and pickles instead? That sounded much better than mappo tofu, even if the lunch she'd had on this boat was pretty excellent.

"Perfect Jutsu, hm?" Dana muttered to herself. This was yet another question she'd never thought about before, even though it was probably something she should really be planning ahead for. What did Dana want to do, exactly? She'd just been drifting along, not really forming bonds or talking to people for her whole life that it took until now to realize that she didn't have an ultimate goal for anything. Now that she'd started getting out more - meeting people like Niko, Saya, Ai, Coach, Pinochio, Freyja - she found that she wanted to keep those friendships. She was enjoying her time and didn't particularly want it to end prematurely.

"Moi perfect Jutsu would be the ability to bring back friends from death, whenever oi wanted." She said, face serious all of a sudden. It was certainly a lofty goal - to defy such a natural part of life - but it was always best to aim high with things like this. She didn't know specifics, but Dana had definitely read about people being brought back to life by others so it was one hundred percent possible. She made a note to begin research on stuff like this after today, putting it at the top of her priority list.

Now it was her turn to ask a question, and the Senju would suddenly brighten up from the super-serious expression her face had been wearing previously. She didn't know if Saya had intended to, but asking that question had dramatically changed Dana's plans for the future. Well, 'changed' isn't the right word since she never really had a plan in the first place. Perhaps 'cleared up' would be more a more appropriate term.

"What brings ye the most happiness?" She asked, "Something ye could do forever and always feel content doing it?"

WC: 515
TWC: 8648

"It most certainly was NOT! While the two are quite tasty on their own, though I would much rather have other pickeled vegitables as cucumbers pickled are fairly plain and boring, When combined together how Tria liked it, it made a mushy mess that took quite some time to clean off the table. Granted she was like. Seven when she picked up this habit, and the palate of the youth is not so refined. Hers has changed very little in nine years." Pinochio found his opportunity to vent a little of his frustration in his favorite way possible: Throwing shade. It was mostly good natured, though she knew as well as he did that the puppet had hated that phase of her culinary life. Honestly everyone BUT Saya had hated that phase of her culinary life. 

"Wh. What?! Thats... Huh." Saya considered the simple explaination for a few moments. It was a simple enough answer, but goodness was it complex in meaning. Could the power of ninjutsu even be used to such a degree that it could return souls to the bodies of the fallen? She knew that there was medical ninjutsu to heal the injured, but the idea that a ninja could heal someone so wholely that it brought them back from death actually blew her mind. 

"Is that even possible?! That would honestly be the absolute coolest jutsu to ever be created if it were. I can't believe the fates would allow for such a travesty against their will though. Imagine all the souls that would be ripped from valhalla!" 

"Imagine all the souls that would be ripped from Helheim." Ai countered her sisters thoughts quite convincingly. If she thought about it, the temporary loss from valhalla almost definitely was outweighed with the chance to bring people from hel's lands and give them a second chance at the holy halls of Odin himself. What if the gods had resurection magic for ragnarok? 

"Lets see. Performing, practicing, talking, singing, dressing up, sewing, learning new abilities, my friends, mappo tofu, uh... My family of course, parkouring is pretty high up there, conflict resolution, sailing, doing missions, being useful to the people around me, and brightening peoples day.... In no particular order though. I couldn't possible choose between all these amazing things. " With her long winded and incredbly swiftly explained answer to Dana's questions, she now came to the hard part of the game. As much as she wanted to win, She still found the second half of this game with few rules to be incredibly dificult. How do you find the perfect stumper to ask to a friend you don't know that well? What could she even ask. Then she got an idea. There was a concept that she'd brought up in a previous question that had been left in the air. It was something she'd never actually heard of. Something she wanted to gain more knowlege about, and honestly it was just the easiest path to the part of the game she understood. 

"What is the fae?" 

(TWC 9367)

Valhalla? The Fates? Helheim? All these foreign words washed past Dana and she tilted her head in confusion, trying to attach the words to some sort of meaning. The way Ai and Saya were talking about it made Dana think they were talking about an afterlife of sorts? Even Dana the know-it-all couldn't possibly say what came after death, it was as much a mystery to her as it was anyone. She was interested in what Saya's beliefs about death and the afterlife were, especially after hearing the intriguing back-and-forth between Saya and her sister. She opened her mouth to ask the question and then shut it after remembering that she'd just mentally chastised Saya for doing something she'd almost just done. That being, asking a question when it wasn't her turn.

Dana smiled gently when Saya listed all the things that brought her the most happiness. It was a very Saya-like list and was exactly what Dana had expected when she had asked the question. Whilst Saya spoke, Dana wondered what her own list of what brought her happiness would look like. It would almost certainly be considerably shorter than Saya's as it was a simple truth that Dana just wasn't as energetic as the younger girl. Dana's idea of a perfect day was one where she stayed inside and got to draw all day, or maybe going outside to mess with some people. To be fair, though; that idea had recently changed with Dana's sudden surge of social interaction. This day with Saya had been what she'd consider a very happy day.

Perfect! Dana thought, clapping her hands. Saya had asked the question that Dana had been wanting to answer all day! This was a topic that she rarely got to talk about with anyone so this was something that she'd been gearing up to do for, like, ever! She mentally cracked her knuckles and tried to wriggle herself to regain blood flow in her legs; having them dangling down over nothing for several minutes probably wasn't very healthy.

"Where do oi begin?" She asked gently to herself, "The Fae are... Ancient, powerful beings who came from the stars many millennia ago. No one knows what they truly looked like but the most common interpretation of them is snow-white skin and haunting pale eyes." She looked up into the sky with a serene expression. They'd been  on the ocean for a while now and it was beginning to get dark out. It wouldn't become true night for a few hours, but it was something to look out for. Dana assumed that Kirigakure would have a lighthouse to guide them back to the shore but she really had no idea. She chastised herself for going off on a random thought tangent mid-explanation and continued, "There are scant accounts of what their purpose on our planet was, but it certainly wasn't noble. They had an immense fondness for trickery, using their magical powers to cause mischief wherever they could. They didn't harm anyone during this time, though." Her smile took on a hint of strange nostalgia, "To put a long story short; something happened. Their mischief turned murderous and humanity was helpless to do anything about it. Some of the Fae took issue with this treatment and somehow found a way to allow humans to access the same source of magic they could; Chakra."

Dana suddenly blushed and looked away, a completely foreign expression on the normally unflappable girl. She'd been talking for quite a while now and had probably been hogging all the time from the others. She just got really excited when it came to topics like this and tended to forget about the rest of the world, "Uh, sorry. Oi get kinda excited about stuff like this and get carried away."

WC: 634
TWC: 9282

"huh. Kinda sounds a little like the Aesir and Vanir. Thats like, The race of the ancient and powerful beings that visited me in my dreams. Well races. Technically its two separate races I think. I'm still learning all about the culture from ragnar. He's an otter. " As usual, She'd filled in the space between the begining of Dana's statement and the point where she seemed to zone out thinking about something or the other. Saya was intrigued about what had suddenly crossed her mind to cause her to pause like this, then she noticed the sun. Yanno, At this rate they would be sailing until the sun finished it's journey across the sky, disappearing for sleep until the morn. That was fine. She had some level of confidence in her ability to sail in the dark. She had much more confidence in her ability to accidentally sail the ship directly into the dock, destroying one or the other and then using her wood style jutsu to fix whichever was broken, or to just wait until the next time she wanted to sail something more maneuverable and just make the stupid long ship ON the water instead of in her living room.

It had taken her forever to figure out how to get an entire ship out of the small entryway she'd built for her new mansion. By for her to figure out, of course we mean for Pinochio to figure out while Coach simply bashed the edge into a wall, taking off paint but not actually breaking anything. He tried so hard to be helpful. Then there was the whole carrying it across an entire village without alerting the guards that something fishy was up, actually explaining to the guards why she was carrying an entire longboat through the village when she failed to look inconspicuous, and the rest of the time taken to carry it such a distance. Hindsight, she could have skipped all of those steps. She was pulled from her own random ponderings when Dana continued her explaination.

"They kinda don't sound very nice. LIke the trickery part seems pretty cool, but then they killed people so badly that they had to give us weapons of mass destruction in order to protect ourselves from them? It seems like the better plan would have been to just stop killing us, like. How does that work? Were they just stabbing people while showing them hand seals? I feel that thats a really bad way to pass information. " The last line was a bit tough for her. She had conflicting feelings about chakra. On one hand it was the use of chakra that had freed her. She wouldn't be the person she was today, wouldn't have the unbridled joy of her lives without her ninjutsu. On the other hand though, Chakra was the force by which great atrocities were commited. It was because of the destructive nature of chakra they she needed to learn these techniques in the first place.

"No worries! HOwever. It may be late since I had to wait until you answered my question first but....." She really let the but extend, building tension. "I would suggest starting from the begining NOW! Where did you learn about these fays?" Her voice struggled to properly pronounce the word. That quickly she'd forgotten the way it sat in her mouth, and attempted to extend the fowels with a long E sound to find the proper pronunciation.

(TWC 9945)

"No, no." She shook her head when Saya asked how the Fae had brought chakra to the world, "Chakra wasn't a natural thing back then, it wasn't something that can be taught like any skill. And they were never so uncreative that they just 'stabbed people'. Imagine going to sleep in yer bed and waking up floating in the ocean, without anyone fer miles. They weren't all like that, though. Calling them 'good' or 'evil' isn't the right term, oi feel; It's hard to attach morality to beings so different from us. It's more loike... Oi can't think of the right word." She apologized, her language failing her. She'd then carry on with what she'd been saying earlier, having said this during the intermittent break of her speech.

"Fae" She corrected good-naturedly, hearing the younger girl struggle to pronounce the word. "F-A-E." she spelled out, to hopefully clear up any confusion. Saya's question a pretty simple one to answer for Dana, but it would probably be an incredibly unsatisfying one to hear. She shrugged at the question instantly, seemingly answering without even thinking about it. "Oi haven't the faintest idea." She smiled apologetically, "For as long as oi can remember, visions revealing the world's truths occasionally came to me when moi attention is on something else."

It was true; Dana had absolutely zero ideas where most of her knowledge came from. She could draw without ever doing so before, talk, and who knew where her accent had come from. She'd always been aware that her accent was different from literally everyone she'd ever met but she'd never thought about why that was the case because she didn't care. The mysteries of her past were intriguing, but not really enough to warrant she investigate them further than a surface skim. She'd done that in her earlier days when she'd been desperate to have some kind of identity, but now that she had grown and matured enough she felt she was now an independent person from whatever she'd been before.

In her zest to explain everything she could to Saya, Dana seemed to have completely forgotten that they had been playing Twenty Questions. She'd answered several of Saya's questions in a row by now, and that simply would not do! Of course, the cheater who cheats would be the one to take advantage of her lapse in concentration. Now she would have to clap back with an absolute banger of a question to really stump Saya. Wait, had Dana already lost? It was only a loss if Saya called it out, right? That meant she was still in the game!

She struggled to think of a question that would stump Saya, but then she thought of the strange words that Saya had been saying. What had it been, again? Velhaile? Heimhel? Dana was immensely curious where Saya had learned about these strange words, and what they actually meant. So, did Dana want to learn more about Saya or just try and win a game? The answer was pretty obvious, at least to Dana.

"What were the words ye mentioned earlier? Veilhila? Heimiel? What are they? Where did ye learn about them?" She sent a barrage of questions towards Saya, which was totally fair since Saya had done the same a minute prior.

WC: 559
TWC: 9841