"It may come as a surprise to you, Naruto, but I've been in a similar circumstance once before," said Jiraiya, slipping a small grapnel into place on a line. "Space-time summoning jutsu gone very very wrong. Pulled everything in the room into a hole. Including the researcher."
"You screwed up that bad, huh?" asked Naruto.
"Not me," said Jiraiya. "I was hired to guard the researcher in question. When we reappeared, we were upside down, hundreds of feet above the ground, with a green sky and red foliage and some things that make even me squeamish."
"Oh?" asked Naruto, his imagination going somewhere with that. Mainly involving a world without ramen, which explained his shuddering and squeamish look.
"Oh, and there may be a minute or two where things get really confused," continued Jiraiya. "I forget the term that was used when I reported the experience, but there is apparently a genjutsu that does something similar. I was seeing sour, tasting the sound of my clothes rustling, hearing mauve, and feeling quite disoriented."
"There's a genjutsu that does that?" asked Naruto.
"Yeah, forget the name of it though, something to do with marmalade skies or something," said Jiraiya as he checked the seal on another scroll.
"Oh, so when do you think-" began Naruto, his voice trailing off as he realized he was watching his words form as pink bubbles. "Uh-oh." Was he smelling... chartreuse?
The little bubble of space/time could have gone anywhere.
If one looked at it with eyes that could see probability lines, one would have seen that the little bubble could have ended up anywhere or anywhen. However, if one looked at it with eyes that could see lines of probability - one would quickly be able to see that a number of random possibilities were quickly lowered to near-nonexistence.
Having the bubble erode and disgorge its contents on the surface of a neutron star would be quick and not providing anything in the nature of amusement, so possibilities like that were quickly degraded by the watching entity.
So too were possibilities that were less immediately fatal but still provided less of an opportunity for the two reluctant travelers to end up in potentially amusing situations. So the frozen moon of a gas giant in the Gliece system, among many other similar situations, was likewise moved down the probability scale.
The watching entity saw the possibilities of a survival in a hostile environment to be troublesome. After a brief stay in those environments, unless there was something truly interesting to investigate, Jiraiya would simply use his summoning contract to get back if that means weren't closed to him by the local space/time conditions. So the jungle world known as Midworld was considered but rejected, along with Pern and the Dying Earth and Pellucidar and a host of other possibilities.
No, what was needed was a world that had other people in it - such that Jiraiya would feel comfortable in remaining. Something that would attract his attention enough to intrigue him, and yet different enough that the two could bring some new element back. Familiar enough for comfort, different enough to be exotic or intriguing, useful enough to stick around, while still providing for things to get amusing.
Which led to a certain dimension-breaching sphere at last ocming to rest in a world of fantasy.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Tue, 04 Mar 2014 16:27)
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.