resistivity | inbox;

Careful not to spill it...

[ Minato follows with the shuffling gait like old man with a high fall risk, but it's a habit born out of a week of unsteady cavern ground where a single misstep could lead to him getting pierced through the side by some crystal shiv or another.

That's what's in the can, btw- Mako would be able to feel something sloshing around inside the half filled can, and hear the occasional clanking of something against the sides. ]

I won't.

( he leads him back to his own room. korra and bolin are both out, which leaves just the two of them. mako sets the can down on a slab of rock he's obviously raised up out of the earth as a bedside table and gestures for minato to sit down on the edge of the bed. another blanket gets piled on top of him, and the small fireplace he's built (also out of rock) gets a moment's attention. he'll have a decent fire blazing before too long, and then he just sits on the floor nearby. )

How're you holding up? Did you get enough to eat while you were down there?

[ Four blankets. He sure is being spoiled today, much appreciated over the days of sleeping on stone and not knowing night from day- something like that really messes a person up. Rather than taking the bed, Minato joins Mako on the floor and scoots up as close as he can to the fireplace without something catching on fire from an errant ember.

Ahh, the warmth. He could fall asleep right here if he knows he'd immediately pitch forward into the flames as soon as he nods off. ]

I'm alright. I had half that can of beans, [ he nods his head towards the can Mako set down next to the bed ] and got an apple from Konoha before I headed in.

[ There were some attempts at catching fish, but mostly he survived off the goodwill of others and then turned back as soon as they found those carvings and decided there was nothing left to find. ]

What about you? Fishing was probably easier for you, since you could just zap the water...? [ Or would that kill everything in the entire lake? ]

( excuse u, that's not how anyone who's half decent fishes. mako nudges some of the blanket nest a bit back from the flames and then sighs. he's made it a mission to have some nonperishables on hand in the room in case anything happens, so he gets back to his feet and hunts around. comes back with an assortment of dried nuts and fruits, probably also courtesy of konoha. he dumps the little bag into minato's lap with a clear unspoken order of eat that. )

No. We weren't really low on food, though. Konoha was with us, you might have noticed she can summon food out of nowhere? So she helped out a lot, and we made regular meals most nights. Sounds like we had the easiest time of it.

[ If Minato were starving, he would have called one of his Personas out to zap the entire lake— you catch your meal and cook it at the same time, this is how the pros do it. But apparently he had other things on his mind besides eating, such as trying to keep warm, and not bleed out, because his arms a full of cuts and shallow wounds when he lets the blankets fall back a little to free up his arms and look through the bag. ]

I keep thinking I should've followed you guys... You can make fire, and Konoha can make food, and we'd all be set.

[ He fishes out a string of dried peaches, smiles at it, and then ties it around his neck like a necklace instead of actually eating it, before rooting through the rest of the bag like a squirrel trying to work out the best way to keep the most on his person for storage (the bag, he could just keep the bag) ]

But our group wasn't too badly off either. We had to look out for each other to get through the place, so it was kinda nice seeing that.

( and he notices, because how can he not? he's a cop. he's trained to look for details no one else sees, much less the ones everyone else can. one thing he is mostly certain about, having seen the way that minato deals with that sort of thing before: )

Hey, make sure you get those looked at. Lance might be able to heal them.

( lance, and not korra, because lance is learning and he's the only one that's going to keep his waterbending when the power fluctuation stops happening. they need a trained healer, and he wants to learn it. the marks aren't serious, but they're probably not exactly comfortable, which makes it a perfect starting point. )

If you haven't met him yet, he's a waterbender, he's learning waterhealing. If you contact him over the watches, you can tell him I sent you his way and he'll try to help.

( also spirits, minato, you're supposed to eat. you're supposed to. eat the. no. don't do — well, he did the thing. )

Will you just eat it? I'm not going to kick you out.

[ Minato looks up from where he was busy trying pick apart a seam at the end of his sleeve where the fabric had been doubled over to form a cuff- if he can make a hole big enough, he could probably stuff a couple of nuts inside and they won't fall out as he walks. ...he gives it a try now, but it doesn't fit. ]

I haven't met him yet, so I'll go say hi. But, "water healing"? How does that work, aside from washing everything with clean water...? [ he's assuming that's what it is, because the other mental image is more on the side of "fluid" bending, and involves magicking the blood back inside his body if he starts bleeding everywhere, and it's sort of too late for that. ] I already did that.

[ He did not, he swam up from the lake and decided that was enough water. ]

[She should probably check if people are around (or even want company or not) before she shows up at their doors, but. She's still not used to the idea that she can just... talk to anyone whenever, wherever. It's too crazy.

So it's with no warning whatsoever that sometime after they return from the tunnels... she's knocking on Mako's door. Or, rather, banging on it lightly with a hoof, because a giant bowl of colorful candy is in her hands and it's precious, she's not dropping it.]

Hello... ? Mako, are you in there? Or, um- Bolin, maybe? I don't know, sorry- Oh, it's Konoha!

[Anybody... ?]

No, it's.

( man, how does he even start explaining it. he's quiet for a moment, trying to work it out in his head. even as he reaches over to swat at where minato's trying to squirrel things away. quit that. eat!! )

I mean, it's not my specialty, but. It's not just washing, it's like... stimulating the body to accelerate its healing response.

[ Ouch... Okay, okay, he'll eat, dipping his head to take a bite from his peach necklace so his hands can remain free to ruin his shirt.

But "stimulating the body to accelerate its healing response." That's such a weird thought... but it's not unbelievable. He thinks for a bit, and then bs's some sort of science explanation he thinks might be plausible. ]

So like... how the body tries to increase blood flow to places it's got to heal. Or how people say to drink lots of fluids when you're sick. Except magic, and faster?

I don't consider it magic, but. Yeah, I guess that's close enough.

( look, he's an expert on fire and earthbending, but as far as water and air... his main exposure to waterbending is through korra, and it isn't like she has the patience to sit down and explain the process. )

( bo's gone. korra's done her best to buoy him up, but she misses him too, and the mood in their shared space has been pretty tanked these last few days, and mako — once a regular fixture in the temple's kitchen — has mostly just been avoiding other people except for korra. he is in fact sleeping in her bed (which konoha is free to interpret any way she likes, and probably be right about it) when she knocks. he drags a hand down over his face, exhales and steels himself to get up and go to the door for her. he's not unhappy to see her, he genuinely likes her, but it doesn't change the fact he doesn't really feel up to company.

he does summon a smile though. )

Hey, Konoha. What've you got?

[Oblivious to Bolin's disappearance, Konoha has just assumed that maybe Mako caught sick. After all, they'd spent a week under a lake, in the chill and damp... it had been cold enough that it had even jump-started her winter coat, beginning to look a bit... shaggier.

When he opens the door and doesn't look too sick, she smiles brightly, holding up the candy bowl to display it's various colors, shapes, and sizes.]

Look, Mako! There's a lot of crazy things outside- have you seen them?

[ Well... Running water and electrical appliances felt like magic when he was little, so the experience (or lack of) is probably something like that. That said, he saw that Mako meant by ~firebending~ aka he suddenly became Thor and summoned a thunderbolt out of the sky, so getting to see waterbending is pretty exciting. ]

I'll make sure to ask him. Can waterbenders do the Moses thing? You know... [ He puts his hands together and pushes them off to the side. A couple of nuts fall out of his sleeve and roll away. ] Parting the seas. To get down there in the lake without actually having to swim.

( what's a moses. minato's lucky he clarifies the matter, otherwise mako would have just been left staring blankly at him as if an answer could manifest out of nowhere. )

Most waterbenders wouldn't be that strong unless it's in the middle of the night on a full moon. ( accidentally making minato conflate waterbenders with werewolves?? ) But uh, in theory, yeah. Usually Korra just bends water around us and makes a bubble.

[ Right. Waterbenders are either werewolves or Shadows, which are also ridiculously strong during full moons and Minato reminds himself to be a little more wary when approaching Lance in the future.

But here is an application of "water bending" Minato can more easily visualize, actually bending water and forcing it away to form a bubble of air. ]

I see... I've been thinking, the way you use that ...element bending... thing... they're all for practical purposes, huh? For me, it's just fighting, so I didn't need to learn control or anything.