fandomhighdorms | Sunday Night, Fifth Floor Common Room

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Sunday Night, Fifth Floor Common Room

All of the furniture in the fifth-floor common room had been pushed out of the way, up against the walls.

On the floor was a rather large sheet of canvas paper, rolled out as far as it would reach. Around the edges of the paper were any number of colored pencils, fingerpaints, brush paints, crayons, stencils, charcoals, stamps, inks, and other such ~~moddable~~ art supplies. There were also sheets of construction paper, scissors, and bottles of colored glue.

There was a sign outside the door, reading, Come make art with me?

Naminé was rather cheerfully drawing a number of stars near one of the edges.

The common room was very colorfully open.

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Ino wandered in, having noticed the sign, and looked around the room. She supposed it might be fun after a weekend ~~handwavily~~ spent studying.

"What kind of art?" She asked with a smile.

Naminé smiled at the other girl. "Any kind you like," she said, gesturing to the supplies and the wide-open spaces on the canvas. "I felt like having a communal art experience and was hoping others might, as well. If not I can just make art by myself."

"I guess it wouldn't hurt for me to stick around," Ino grinned, "It's something to do at least. Don't really have much practise at drawing or anything though."

Not that it seemed to be stopping her as she pondered over art supplies.

"That's quite all right," Naminé smiled. "Art's more about how you feel than talent, I think. I'm not very good at it myself, but I enjoy it."

She found the crayons - she couldn't go too badly with crayons, right? - and sprawled out on the ground and studied the paper. "Which is the important thing, of course." Ino tugged out a green crayon and looked thoughtful, "Unless it's a life or death situation."

"I'm Yamanaka Ino, by the way." Had they met before? She wasn't sure.

She started doodling little Konoha leaf symbols along the edge of the paper.

"I doubt art has ever been life or death," she said with a smile. "At least, I hope not. That adds some pressure to it that would make it somewhat difficult to enjoy, I think. And I'm Naminé. Are those snails?"

"... snails?" Ino looked down at her work and squinted. She supposed... she could kinda see it... sort of. Kinda. "It's my village's symbol." Ino traced the outline, "See? It's a leaf." She drew another, this time in purple, and looked thoughtful, "It could be a matter of life and death though - what if you had to make sure that everyone knew the layout of a place? Then, if you didn't get it right, things would go wrong."

"In that case, I should hope someone more talented than I had a pencil ready," Naminé said solemnly. She leaned over to look more closely at the symbol. "Oh, I see it now, my apologies. I shouldn't squint. Why is your village's symbol a leaf, then?"

"It's mostly a geography thing." Ino said, "We're literally a village hidden among leaves." She quickly drew a hourglass, a few rocks, and some grass. "The hourglass represents the Hidden Sand Village, and this would mean Hidden Rock, and this one is Hidden Grass." She pointed as she spoke.

Naminé scooted closer to look at all of the symbols. "All of your villages are hidden?" she asked. "Is there danger?"

"Not all the villages are." She doodled a musical note and some clouds, "Just the ninja villages. It wouldn't be very good if just anyone could find them." Ino looked thoughtful, "There's always a bit of danger, but it's been pretty peaceful for the last decade and change except for the attempted invasion by Sound ninja." With a gesture to the musical note.

"The Sound ninja?" Naminé tilted her head curiously. "Do they attack using music, then? The resonance of notes and so on? That would be fascinating to study."

"Um. Well, I don't know that much about them really," Ino admitted, "They're a pretty new village and Konoha's not exactly on friendly terms with them. But I've seen one fight by blasting sound waves from his arms, they'd been modified, and another used wire and bells to distract her opponent." She thought about it, "And Shikamaru mentioned something about a flute..." Switching to a pink crayon Ino doodled more leaves, "But while every village has a certain lean towards techniques related to our names it's not always that way."

Naminé considered, and then resumed drawing tiny yellow stars on her own section. "It seems as though ... you might learn a lot, about what can be used as a weapon, should you need it to," she mused. "I'm afraid I'd be hopeless in a fight, in any case. Which is why it's rather good that I excel at running away."

"Running away is the smartest thing to do when you're over-matched." Ino agreed, "Unless it's safer to remain hidden for a time." Neither were options she liked, but oh well. "Pretty much everything can be used as a weapon by at least a few ninja." Ino added a few random swirls to her section, "Shikamaru, one of my teammates back home, uses his shadow for instance."

"Luckily, running away becomes far simpler when one can portal," Naminé said with an amused laugh. "Which would be far more reassuring if not that sometimes, one's pursuers can, as well. His own shadow? How can he attack with that?"

"Ooooh, like the portals that are used to get here?" Ino asked interestedly, "Is it a common talent in your world? By attaching his shadow to someone else's they're forced to do whatever he does, and there's others but that's the one he's best at right now."

"He can do that, really?" Naminé smiled. "That must be terribly useful."

And then she held out her hand, and a tall purpley-black oval appeared before her. "It isn't everyone in my world. Just people who are what I am. We live inbetween, so we have access to the spaces and cracks. Every space connects to Darkness, so connect two points to Darkness, and you have a portal."

Ino shrugged, "He holds them still long enough for Chouji to get close enough to pound them or for me..." She shrugged again and leaned closer to look at the portal. "How do you live inbetween? Could you do the opposite with light, do you think?" Pause. "What are you anyway? Uh, if that's not rude to ask."

Naminé considered. "The shadow-move, I suppose it would mean you couldn't do anything harmful to the person. You would need someone else to do that, unless you were willing to be as harmed yourself."

She smiled faintly, watching the colors ripple. "It isn't rude. I'm ... a Nobody. Someone's shadow. Just the left-over bits from when something terrible happened to her, and her heart was lost. I'm not real, not Light, not Dark, not anything, so I'm inbetween all of it. We're in the twilight. I've never tried, with Light. I suppose you'd need a heart for that."

"Mostly with that technique, though there's ways of getting around it - if say, there's a cliff nearby he could walk whoever off it with out hurting himself 'cause they'd be moving in front of him, you know?"

"You don't have a heart?" Ino tilted her head and frowned a little, "How do you feel things then? Because if you can feel things, then you've got a heart, right? Are you just an illusion or something?" She thought that Naminé looked pretty real for someone who didn't exist.

"I hadn't thought of that." Naminé considered. "And there might be things you yourself were immune to, but the person you were controlling by shadow wasn't. How interesting."

She flickered the portal shut, watching the space where it had been for a long moment. "The truth is, I don't know," she said finally. "DiZ said that we Nobodies had no hearts and couldn't feel. That we remembered feelings and convinced ourselves we still had them, but didn't. I think ... I think maybe he's wrong. I'm not certain how it works. I can't have her heart, she has it back. But maybe I have one of my own, after all."

Ino considered that. "Maybe you didn't have one to start with, but the longer you're around made one grow? Like it had to fill the space or something. Because you convinced yourself that what you thought were your feelings were real, they became... real?" She had no idea what she was talking about. "But I don't think it's a nice thing to tell someone that what they're feeling isn't real." That she knew for sure.

Naminé looked over at the other girl. "Do you think that can work? Growing a heart, I mean. I've wondered myself." She looked down at the canvas. "I feel as though I can feel. And DiZ ... well. He isn't terribly nice to start, I'm afraid. So maybe we can discount his opinion just based on that. It would be nice to think so, at least."

"Maybe hearts are like... flowers?" Ino offered, drawing a blue flower and then a couple of yellow hearts around it, "And maybe even hearts can put down seeds that will sprout under the right circumstances. So even if the orginal isn't there, something else will grow."

She propped her chin in one hand, "That's better than thinking it's all fake, or something."

Naminé laughed, and began adding a few flowers to her stars and trees. "Maybe you're right. I ... someone offered me his heart, once. Maybe you can take a piece of someone else's heart and grow your own, like taking a cutting from a plant. Maybe Light fills all voids, just when you aren't looking."

The flower she was drawing had a happy face on it. It seemed appropriate.

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Sunday Night, Fifth Floor Common Room

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