"Eh?" asked Konata Izumi, her thoughts about desserts momentarily derailed.
About fifteen feet away in the classroom, a blue spark had hung in the air for a moment before disappearing.
"What was that?" asked Kagami Hiiragi, turning around to look. "I heard something."
The lights flickered. Instead of the whole room at once though, it started dark where the spark had been and then proceeded away in a ripple effect.
"Okay. That was weird. Is there a power outage?" asked Kagami.
"It... can't be," said Konata, carefully putting her sandwich down.
"Maybe someone just ran into a power pole?" asked Miyuki Takara.
"Okay, that was very strange," said the teacher, looking up at the lights. Nanako Kuroi was genre-savvy but dismissed the idea at once as being ridiculous. There could not possibly be a yoma about to appear.
CRACKLE!
A ball of lightning formed and hung in midair.
"AHHHH!" reacted Tsukasa Hiiragi. "We have to abandon the building!"
"What color is that?" asked Konata, though not to anyone in particular.
"Silver, no - green, wait," said Kagami, staring with narrowed eyes. Her initial panic at the possibility of an electrical fire being dropped at the way the thing was acting.
POP!
The sphere became a dome through which several shapes were visible.
Shoom!
"Okay, this is NOT Tokyo-3," said a thin boy.
"Byakugan!" said a young girl.
"AH!" said Konata, taking a declaration pose. "Shinji Ikari! Asuka Langley Soryuu! Misato Kisaragi! Rei Ayanami! You've come to take me to a life of adventure and... Naruto Uzumaki?!"
"Hinata Hyuga! I totally ship you two!" declared the teacher.
"Uhm, ano?" asked Hinata, wondering what watercraft had to do with anything.
"No way! Sasuke and Naruto are the perfect couple!" declared one of the other students who hadn't fled.
"Couple of what?" asked Naruto, not getting it.
"Just the way he obsessed with getting Sasuke back for three hundred chapters," continued the student, who'd been hiding behind her desk but was now standing to properly make declarations.
"She's suggesting that you and some boy named Sasuke are lovers, is this true, Naruto?" interrupted Jiraiya.
"WHAT?!" yelled Naruto. "No! I like Sakura!"
"Can we just get back to Tokyo-3?" asked Misato.
"Pika pi?" asked one of the pokemon as it investigated one of the strange humans.
"Still not Tokyo-3," complained Misato.
"Still not Konohagakure," noted Jiraiya.
"Pi pi pika pi pika."
"Why?"
"Because you would have jumped in there."
"I could have explored strange new worlds! Sought out new life and new civilizations! I could have boldly gone!"
"You could have ended up lost in space," said Kagami.
"That was an opportunity I'll never have again," sulked Konata.
"Well, at least you got something out of it," pointed out their teacher.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," indicated Konata, still apparently sulking.
"You've got a pokemon under the desk whose head you're rubbing," helpfully pointed out Kagami.
Konata smirked just a little bit. "She's a Froakie. Wait till I get a chance to evolve her."
"Ninja Log, day 2 of our journey."
"It's the seventh."
"No, I'm pretty sure we've only been hopping from one universe to the next for two days now."
"No. It's the seventh of the month. Why not use the real day?"
"It was hot in your world, mid-summer correct? Look outside the cave. I estimate those snow drifts at roughly three meters."
"Okay, whatever," allowed Misato, trudging back into the relative warmth from the hot spring.
"Ahem. Ninja Log. Day two," said Jiraiya into the handheld recording device he'd grabbed. "We are currently letting Naruto rest up as we found a cave with a hot spring. This is particularly good as we are apparently in a world or location where something BAD happened."
Asuka peered out the cave entry, shivering slightly before retreating again. "Add that the moon has a LOT more cratering than usual. I think we're still in Tokyo, it's just that this world has an ice age. Maybe from a meteor impact. One of my old college professors would be really excited if she were here."
Jiraiya shrugged. Astronomy and meteorology were not exactly subjects he'd gotten too far in studying. Ninja education tended to be a bit more focused on what could keep you alive at a particular moment. "That fits. As near as I can tell, we actually just move a short distance physically when we shift from one world to another. Without a beacon or target of some sort, Naruto's teleports tend to land on the nearest survivable point from where we were - even if across entire universes."
Asuka considered that and nodded, if a bit grudgingly. "So you just look like an idiot."
Jiraiya chose to ignore that. "Right now, this place isn't too bad. The cave has only one entry and is warm. The outer environment is colder than Snow Country. After two minutes out there, exposed skin begins to freeze. So not a lot of enemies to wander across our position. Doesn't mean they aren't out there, just they're unlikely to stumble across us in the dark."
Next stop:
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(Posted Sat, 18 Jan 2014 16:16)
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