—laughter fell from his lips as she went on to point out how clueless he is about everything, even Harry Potter. frankly, he could hardly remember if he had ever watched a movie, and even if he had, he did not remember a thing of any of it. “the only thing I can recall about Harry Potter is that I’ve been told I would be in…” he began and then paused for a second, trying to remember what that House was called. it was a House, right? “Gryffindor,” he recalls, after another moment of silence. but as she went on to explain about Zoro and not Zorro as how he had initially thought, Nicholas was left quite not understanding a word once again. at least, he had an idea of what an anime is. as the conversation went on, the former SEAL was kind of beginning to grasp the concept of…everything she had been talking about till now. it, of course, sounded weird to him; that genderbent concept was still quite weird sounding to him. for why would he want to be, for example, a Wonder Woman, be like what? a Wonder Man. absurd. though, alright, it seemed for logical…in a way, to want to be a female Naruto, for instance.
“okay, I felt ancient till you explained all that,” he laughed. though he knew what LARP is, yet how did he come to hold this knowledge was a tad weird. mainly because they kind of used that in a way during training; usually had a dumb doll to be the hostage, set up in a makeshift village or abandoned old one, or something, whilst they practiced a raid, and some would refer to it as LARP, jokingly. “in any case, should I need to dress up, I will let you know…” and then added after a minute, tone teasing; “so, it’s practically Halloween for you guys all year round? I mean, you dress up whenever right?” he meant no offense, of course.
“but what does the name mean?” he questioned, and if she had made any assumptions that he knew shit about Naruto, she was entirely wrong, for he had not a clue. he had heard of Naruto, but the only thing he knew was that it was a short boy with spikey blonde hair. falling silent, he watched as she gave a command to Akamaru and he executed perfectly. “man, that’s rather wicked!” he nodded. “why did I not think to train my dog in a strange language instead of the usual commands…” he laughed. “I bet people hear you say that to him,” he gestured vaguely, for whatever was the phrase she had used, “and don’t know what to expect.”
“Oh, right on! Go Gryffindor’s, am I right?” She laughed, though she was under the impression that the man wouldn’t really know any different, and that was weird to her. Not knowing the anime’s she talked about was one thing, but not knowing Harry Potter? “Oh my god..” She deadpanned seriously. “The new generation in this world might not universally ever know Harry Potter! What a horrible way to live!” She joked. “Ancient? Unless you’re ten years older than you look, Handsome, I doubt you’re much older than I am. If you’re older than I am at all. Don’t go saying things like ancient! Though.. if I am ancient, I look damn good.” When he compared what she had done to Halloween, Cordelia laughed a little and shook her head. “Just for comic cons and the like. I had a pretty heavy following on instagram and twitter for my personal cosplaying, so I did it a bit more often. Or LARP – but LARP is original characters, and not dressing up as an existing character. I do it now sometimes to try and boost morale in the group. But only the practical ones, because I definitely don’t have a death wish.”
She wasn’t sure, but thinking back, she couldn’t remember anyone else ever having asked what Akamaru’s name meant. “Red Perfection, technically. I mean.. Aka and Maru mean Red and Perfection and .. I’m guessing put it together, and what have you got? Bippity boppity boo?” She shrugged a shoulder with an amused grin. “You have no idea! You should have seen the looks on the trainer’s faces in puppy school. They were teaching come, and I was teaching Accio. And he has no concept of the word walk, either. There’s a Harry Potter spell that creates water, so we use that one. And instead of telling him to speak, he’ll howl when I say the torture curse. He’s a huge hit at conventions, that’s for sure. Other commands are to attack, dropping something from his mouth.. a bunch of random things, really. Almost two dozen commands? And yes, I had far too much spare time on my hands to teach him these.”
