It was smooth, and very pale, and here and there one of the darker patches sparkled slightly. Still scanning, the young Hyuuga wondered if perhaps the moon was covered in snow? A smudge in the shadowed area caught her eye, and she strained to make out some detail... then gasped as the reality hit her. The moon, a bright circle in the sky no bigger than a fingernail, was actually nearly as large as all of Konoha! What was more, it wasn't a sphere like the world below, more like a shaving cut off from one - the light side was the outer curve, while the inner face was dark, the waxing and waning of its phases caused by the U-shaped planetoid spinning as it traveled through the sky. The smudge she'd seen was the lit sign of a building nestled on the the lower slope of the dark inner face, and she gasped at the wonder of it all.
Sakura, for her part, was glad for anything to divert her attention from the fact that she had no idea where to aim, and asked, "Ne, Hinata, what is it? Do you see something?"
A good half hour later, Naruto was still occupied with where Hinata had guided his hands and what it meant and NOT squeezing like some kind of pervert.
Well, maybe just a little squeeze, now and then. Just to let her know he didn't mind if she didn't, right?
Another thing Sakura was trying to distract herself from was one of the things he hadn't noticed, along with the fact that she felt ambivalent enough about it not to have pointed it out and caused grievous bodily harm yet.
Eh, teenagers.
Regardless of all that, Hinata hadn't managed to spot any other sign of inhabitants, even now that she knew how tiny a sign she had to look for, so she pointed and explained, "There's a building over there. I haven't seen any others, so it's probably the best place to go."
Sakura made an affirmative sound and adjusted course accordingly, then wiggled a bit, trying to get more of the seat under her. Frankly, her butt was getting a little sore from supporting both herself and Hinata, but the new position didn't help with the other thing on her mind, and it's not like she could tell Naruto to scoot back when she'd just slid back tighter against him.
Naruto in fact was now hanging a bit off the back of the seat and had to grip tightly with his knees, but the only thing he'd noticed as Sakura moved was... not the Vespa's seat. Suffice it to say that he now had a third thing on his mind as well. His cheeks began to feel rather warm.
Like I said, teenagers. What can ya do?
By the time they eventually landed, none of the trio could walk quite normally - Naruto was stiff from keeping his legs tensed in order to not fall off (apart from anything else,) Sakura was numb from sitting with an extra person in her lap for so long, and Hinata, well Sakura had kind of bony knees, and her own were feeling a bit weak anyway at the moment.
Once they'd gotten a bit closer to their destination Hinata had been able to make out more details - the smooth, pale surface she'd at first taken for snow was a dense covering of enormous, tree-like mushrooms, while the glittering darker areas were ponds and streams. The huge billboard she'd first noticed turned out to be a sign that read "WELCOME TRAVELERS" and the building a combination of hotel, store, and machine shop. There was platform ringed with small lamps where they were able to land, and a smaller sign proclaimed it "Shuko's Travel Station."
Two other scooters were parked there, and something that looked like a large steam-truck with skids instead of wheels. A small, energetic cat-girl in a stained coverall and a baseball cap with ear-hole cut outs was just putting away a wrench and closing up her tool box beside it as the genin arrived, and whistled appreciatively as they pulled to a stop nearby. "That's a classic model you kids've got there, nya, don't see too many of them these days. I'm Shuko, welcome to my travel station. Yer stayin' long?"
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Wed, 19 Aug 2009 01:44)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.