Shooting Range, Friday Around Noon

[withoutverona]

Romeo sat lazily against one wall of the shooting range, carefully cleaning his gun as he waited for Ino. It would feel good to shoot something again, even if it was just a target.

[OOC: For Ino, but open to anyone else who might be in the range.]

Comments

[withoutverona]

Romeo wasn't following her. At all.

He decided it was probably something about Liir -- weren't they dating? -- that he really didn't want to ask about. "I'll get the targets, then," he said, as he went to do just that. "If nothing else I can get you out of that dangeous head of yours."

[intraspective]

It was something about Liir, but there was no dating. Very much with the no dating! Ever. Ew. Siblings, nothing else. It had been clarified on the radio, seriously, siblings.

Ino would flail so bad at the miscommunication. Oh yes. "Well," she considered, "I really could, if I wanted, leave my head but then people'd yell at me 'cause I'm not supposed to here." Yeah. "But yes, shooting!"

[withoutverona]

Unless it involved major drama or his name or one of a few others was mentioned, Romeo's radio listening was scattershot and distracted at best. Poor Ino and Liir.

He set the targets on a stand, and looked over his shoulder at her. "Are you speaking in metaphors, or do you astral project?" he asked, curious.

[intraspective]

That pretty much summed up Ino's general way of listening to radio as well, but still. Reno and Jenny deserved much flailing on Ino's part for saying something like that on the radio.

"...something like that?" Ino offered, making sure her gun was all set and shiny for use. "It's not a metaphor though."

[withoutverona]

He stepped back and pulled on a pair of safety goggles. "How does it work?" he asked. If there was the undertone of a sigh in his voice, it was only because he was sick of learning everyone had powers except him.

[intraspective]

"It's a combination of things," she said, making a face at the goggles but tugging them on anyway. "It's the family talent."

[withoutverona]

"Oh." Romeo was distracted lining up his first shot. He fired, hitting a near-bullseye, and grinned broadly (and not in an especially dignified manner) before answering. "is that one of your ninja things?"

[intraspective]

"Good shot!" She grinned at him, as she picked out her own target. "And, yeah. We're the only family that can do it. It runs in the blood. Quite a few ninja families, Clans, have talents only they can do."

Ino pulled the trigger, and beamed when she hit it precisely right. Triela would be pleased.

[withoutverona]

"Thanks," he grinned, lining up another shot. "You've been practicing."

"So what would happen to your body?" he asked, after firing the next round. "If you left, I mean. Would you collapse?"

[intraspective]

"I promised Triela I would," Ino said, taking aim again. "Or she's going to kick my ass."

And this way it let Ino believe that Triela was coming back.

"Uh huh, totally collapse, just barely breathing and impossible to wake up," she explained. "At least, impossible to wake up just by affecting my body."

[withoutverona]

Barely breathing, dead to the world, like -

"I saw someone like that once," he told her, rather suddenly, keeping his voice level and almost casual. Aim and shoot. "Not for the same reasons, but she had swallowed a potion that made her appear as if dead."

"It's frightening." More than frightening. "From the outside, at least."

[intraspective]

She tilted her head at him. "I've never heard that before," she admitted, "that it's frightening. Shikamaru and Chouji never said anything like that. Does the potion wear off?"

Ino took aim at the target and pulled the trigger.

[withoutverona]

"Did they know of your gift?" he asked, taking longer than strictly necessary to reload. "I didn't know she'd taken the potion, and that may be why it was frightening. I thought her dead." Though thinking was perhaps a charitable word for what he'd been doing in St. Paul's that day.

He swallowed. "It was meant to last 24 hours."

[intraspective]

"Yeah, our Dads are all on the same team, and we've grown up knowing each other's skill sets," Ino explained, "so they know, if I go down like that, that I'm just... elsewhere."

She paused, lowering her gun. "Meant to?"

[withoutverona]

"Meant to," he repeated again, and got off two more shaky shots as he organized his thoughts.

What he finally said was, "It is a very long story."

[intraspective]

Ino glanced over at him. "Feel up to talking 'bout it?"

[withoutverona]

It had been a long time since he told this story, but he was the idiot who had brought it up, so he fired one last shot -- neatly hitting the target where its heart would be -- and put the gun at his side before turning to look at her.

"I wouldn't mind telling you," he said slowly. "It's just ... a sad story with no hero in it. And often it makes people look at me as if I've gone mad."

"But I can tell it, for all that."

[intraspective]

She flicked the safety of her gun on, and considered that.

"I wouldn't mind listening," she said. "For all that it's sad, and can promise I won't think you're mad."

Real life after all had few heroes when it came down to it.

[withoutverona]

Romeo wasn't so sure of that. He thought himself mad, for parts of it.

"So about a year ago, I snuck into a party I was very much not invited to and met this girl," he began as he put the safety on his gun and leaned against the comfortable wall where he had waited for Ino. "Juliet. I loved her like a fire, rushing through me."

"Our families had spent the best part of the last century trying to shed each other's blood. There was no way to be together, not in a normal way." Not the way I'm with Yurika, now.

[intraspective]

She walked over, leaning against the wall, then sliding down so she could sit while reaching to try and tug him down with her.

But, uh, yeah. Ino could already see how it could be a sad story. "What happened next?"

[withoutverona]

He let himself be tugged. Sitting was good, he should remember that next time he decided to share this particular set of experiences.

"I married her the next day," he said. "Before the marriage was four hours old, her cousin picked a fight. He killed my dearest friend." And then --" and this part was still hard, and he was carefully looking at the wall as he told it -- "I shot her cousin, blood for blood. I was banished from the city."

"We had a last night together, and that was all but the last time I saw her alive."

"The very last," he said, feeling like he may as well get through it all at one fell, "was just as she woke up from the potion I
described. I'd been told she was dead, and was not in the best state of mind to observe that she was not."

[intraspective]

Hugs were good too, and she hoped he wouldn't mind her going to give him one.

Ino kept her mouth shut until he was done speaking. "She wasn't dead then," she said, "how did she wind up that way?"

[withoutverona]

It might have looked like he wasn't going to answer. It took him a while.

Finally, he managed two words. "Shot herself."

And, because he was Romeo, several more: "I drank poison because I thought she was dead, then she shot herself because she thought I was. We were both wrong, yet I am the one who lived to tell the story." Which still amazed him.

[intraspective]

Oh.

Ino remained silent for a few moments. "It's quite a history," she said finally.

[withoutverona]

"It's mine," he said, drawing his legs in and trying to sound nonchalant. "It's not that I mind speaking of it, but no one really needs to hear about it." Which hadn't stopped him when he first got to Fandom, but he might have grown up a bit in the last six (ten, counting Paris) months. "I didn't mean to tell you, today, but the idea of a body without breath or movement triggered it in me."