towerofanimus | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Characters: Reno and (open)
Setting: 2-12 for now
Format: Um Prose? Whatever is comfortable
Summary: This is Reno's first day and... well, he's a little bit confused.
Warnings: Nothing right now

Reno couldn't move. He was awake, but he couldn't move. Paralysis had happened to him before, a spell flung in battle, a monster stinging him. But never when he'd been asleep. Still, knowing what it was did nothing to slow his heart or block out the thundering in his ears. Those thirty seconds seemed like an eternity to him, trying to keep the panic down. Breathe in, breathe out... there.

Blink, blink. A finger moved. Well, there, now a foot. He sat up and opened his eyes, blinking in the light- it was too bright for eyes used to the dark. Images were blurry, vague. He rubbed his face and that seemed to help.

Now, where was he? He didn't recognize the room, or the- wait, what the hell is this? A white jumpsuit? That definitely wasn't the last thing he remembered wearing. He wouldn't be caught dead in something like... like... this.

Maybe he was dead.

Reno dismissed that thought- it was more likely he'd been captured for some purpose, though he certainly didn't remember getting captured- and looked around. Two letters for him. He ripped them open and read them.

And read them again. It didn't make any more sense than they had the first time. The planet had been saved... he'd been there, he saw it. Now someone was wanting him to believe it was gone? After all they went through?

Still, there was that chill in his spine.

So, where were the others? Instinct told him not to reveal himself to be awake just yet, to see what would happen next, but...

What if the others were here, and in trouble? He got up and padded to the door to look out.

Nothing, yet.

"Hey, anyone there?" He called, not too loudly.

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"Um-- yes?"

Willow stops in place, having been walking down the hall, and glances over to him. She's short and slight, with shoulder length blazing orange-red hair, and is wearing fairly innocuous, if hippie-ish, clothes. When she sees him still in the white body suit, the hallmark of new arrivals, she summons a reassuring smile. "Did you just wake up?"

"I-" He stops himself before saying anything. Now was the time to think first. Well, the girl looked normal enough to him. Is she part of this bizarre situation, or just someone caught up in it like him? Something about the way she said that- "I guess so. There was a letter. You know anything about that?"

"Just what I've been told," she answers, shifting so that she can face him as she speaks. "The people with red or colorless collars work here; the rest of us are in the same situation as you.

"And before you ask, we don't have any solid confirmation that our worlds were really destroyed." Willow's frowning as she says this, in fact, taking the very idea seriously. "It's all pretty fishy."

Collar? Blinking, he notices hers, and then reaches up to touch his. Funny, he hadn't noticed it until now. "So there's people from other worlds here?" This sounds more and more like some sort of psych experiment... "Sounds like a regular paradise."

Psych experiment is really not that far off, sadly enough.

"It's a peach," she agrees wryly. "It's not as bad as it could be, though. There are people from other worlds, maybe even a different version of your world, wherever that is, or a different time. Just think of all the things you assume about reality... and throw them out the window. It's faster."

Okay. This chick is crazy. Obviously. He quirks an eyebrow at her as if he doesn't quite believe her, yet. "So, see any giant city-sized meteors almost crash into the place lately?" A pause. "The name's Reno."

Willow's pretty unperturbed at any suggestion of her being crazy. No one where she's from even believes demons exist; introducing people to them is old hat for her, by now.

"No? No meteors that I've heard of. Not that I know for sure I'd... hear of it. Um, I'm Willow."

Reno knew demons and monsters existed, they were everywhere on his home planet. He just wasn't sure that this place was real. Now that things were sufficiently awkward... "Uh, do you know how to contact the people in charge of this place? Or how to find someone? My friends might be around."

Awkward is practically her middle name, so she moves on cheerfully enough.

"For the first, no clue. I've been wondering that myself, believe me. If you want to find someone, there's public terminals around, and you can post to the network. They might see it?

"Otherwise... the long way is to check all of the name plaques." Willow nods toward the one outside his own door, which has Reno's name as well as his roommates', listed neatly. "They haven't been wrong yet."

"They have a network, huh. Something to check into. " It was a bit strange for a psychiatric hospital to have something like that. He follows her gaze to the plaque, seeing his name there. This just made things seem a little more real than they had a moment ago.

Looking back at her, he gives her a lopsided smile. "Thanks, Willow."

"You're welcome! Don't mention it." She smiles back, wide and friendly.

"There should be a trunk at the foot of your bed with your stuff in it, by the way," she goes on. "I thought I'd mention it so you didn't have to wander around in that." Her smile gains a mischievous edge, just some friendly teasing.

He grins now. "Oh, yeah, I saw that. I guess I was focused on finding out who was behind the practical joke more." Reno does not mind the white jumpsuit, not at all, though it did kind of remind him of the "clean rooms" back home at first. Nothing about his body to be ashamed of. Nope. He's rather proud of it. "I'll take a look at it later."

Willow has to admit that she's intrigued by his ability to volley back her teasing, as it's a quality she really appreciates in her friends.

"Well gosh, if you want to rub the self-confidence in my face." The way she says it, though, it's clear that it's more teasing. "I woke up and about had a heart attack. I felt like a Tron reject."

Teasing was a part of daily life in the Turks. He could give out some pretty choice teasing, when he wanted.

"Self-confident? Me? Nah, I just eat my vegetables." It's easy to forget where he is, just talking with someone. The slight ~~panic~~ concern he felt before is gone now. "I never heard of Tron rejects. Let me guess- it's got something to do with pretty girls dressing up in white catsuits."

Shion's first reaction to seeing someone new in his room was to freeze. A moment later he had found his voice and his manners, "Hello..." He forced himself to calm down and smiled at the new person, after all they were probably scared themselves and confused at waking up here. Shion didn't want to make that worse.

Reno was rifling through his trunk now, full of odds and ends from home, but turned only enough to look at who was addressing him. "Hey." Reno said, only sounding slightly perturbed, a shirt in hand. It was easy to be more relaxed now, he'd found his electromag rod inside the trunk.

Shion entered the room fully and went to sit on his bed, still watching the new person curiously. "Did you just wake up here?"

Well that was a stupid question, it was pretty obvious. But Shion didn't say anything, just smiled as he waited for an answer.

The turk gave a return smile, and shook his head. "Yeah, but, I don't have time to mess around here."

Reno had time to think about his situation. It was simply impossible, it had to a gag or ruse, and he'd be out of here in no time if he had anything to say about it. He tossed a shirt and a pair of slacks on his bed, and closed the trunk. "I'll be leaving as soon as I get in contact with whoever's in charge here. I'm not believing that 'your world has been destroyed' crap."

"It's not easy, I have not seen them yet and I have been here for three months now..." A long three months where nothing made sense and Shion had seen horrors worse than he could have ever imagined.

The real world, if it was even real. Shion didn't believe the world had ended either, if only because it was the only thing standing between him and total despair. "It is more likely we have been kidnapped... though I don't know why..."

"I don't think we have vegetables like that where I'm from," she says dryly, always happy to use silly conversation as a diversion from the crisis going on.

"It's something like that. It's an old 80's movie about people that live in computers, and they all coincidentally are highly attractive and wear catsuits, sometimes white."

Reno wasn't too sure about the living in computers part, but the rest sounds fun. "I'll have to look it up sometime." He grows serious again, remembering where he was.

"I should probably investigate that trunk you mentioned and get something decent to wear-" he hesitates here, as if deciding something- "I'll catch you later?"

Reno sat back on his haunches in front of that trunk, and thought about Shion's words. This might not be as easy as he'd hoped, if they were that hard to find. "There's got to be a way out of here, at least."

Shion shook his head, "There doesn't seem to be." He had searched the floors quite thoroughly when he had first came here and there was no way to get out unless it was through the elevators that they could not enter. But then again, the last two times Shion had been taken in that elevator nothing good had come of it so...

"The only openings are far too high up in the tower."

"You mean there isn't any front door?" Reno snorted, though he wasn't really surprised by that. Everything was indicating kidnapping and attempts at trying to brain wash or get to him somehow.

That wasn't going to happen any time soon. The people behind this place had a fight on their hands. "The name's Reno."

"Sure thing!" She gives him a friendly smile, the expression coming to her easily. "I'm the only Willow around, so it shouldn't be too hard to find me if you need me. I'm all about the helping random strangers."

The only Willow? The hell did that mean? Reno decides to ignore that part. "Thanks, Willow. I'll remember to look you up."

Shion blinked in confusion and shook his head. "No... Unless it is somewhere we can't get to." After all... new people had to get here somehow but Shion had never seen anyone entering. Nor had he witnessed people being taken back to their rooms when they died.

But it had to happen. Because... otherwise there was no explanation.

"Reno... nice to meet you I'm Shion."

That fit right in with this crazy place, and it was only getting crazier the more he found out about it. Reno flopped down on his bed, trying to let the situation finally sink in.

"Same," Reno mumbled, before giving Shion a hard look up and down. "You've been here three months? Where'd you come from?"

Shion nodded, "I come from earth... yet I seem to come from a different earth than others. Everyone comes from different worlds and yet many things are called the same. I am from the city of Number 6."

He would be surprised if Reno was from his world, of all the people he had met so far he hadn't found anyone else from a similar place from him, which made him more certain the world had not ended. After all, if you were going to save just one person in a world, it wouldn't be Shion.

Everything he heard about this place, even if he didn't believe it, was setting off an alarm in his head. He was a Turk, he should be able to handle anything that came his way.

...but this, if everything was true, this might just be something he couldn't handle.

"Multiple universes." He muttered, remembering something he had heard a long time ago.

Shion nodded, he didn't understand it. He did not see how it was possible for multiple universes to exist and yet for everyone to end up here. Nothing made sense, everything he had learned could not prepare him for this place.

It was too much, too much to think about, to understand. And it terrified Shion. "Where are you from?" He had to stay focused, keep thinking.

"Midgar," Reno said, without thinking, then he hesitated and thought about it. What exactly would he tell a theoretical alien? "It's a city on Gaia."

"Gaia?" Shion had never heard of it, but then again there were so many more worlds then he could ever imagine. More worlds than even someone like Nezumi could imagine, someone who knew how to imagine and how to think and hadn't be stifled by their existence in a perfect city.

"What is your world like?"

Thinking, thinking and conversation.

Another previously hypothetical question made real. How could he even start to explain what it was like on the Planet? "The sky is blue." Not entirely a joke, either. What was the sky like on other planets? "It's got a number of large cities. Wars, weapons, trees, grass, lifestream, materia. Meteors threatening to crash into it. The plays they put on in Midgar are pretty cool."

Shion listened carefully, he knew nothing about other worlds either. It sounded a little different to his own world. "Meteors? Do you manage to stop them?"

Reno cocked an eyebrow at Shion. The more he thought about what had happened just before the Tower, the more uneasy he became. "There was only one. It was the size of a small moon."

Unspoken words died at the back of his throat. The idea that the Meteor had succeeded destroying Gaia was- it was impossible. He had been there, he saw what happened with his own eyes.

"Do... do you think it hit..." He frowned, the worlds couldn't have ended. But... his own world. What if the Parasite wasps had...

No... surely. It was impossible... He shook his head. "It isn't destroyed... it is impossible. Even if your world was in danger that wouldn't have impacted the other worlds. It is scientifically impossible, such an event would happen on such a wide scale especially for them to end simultaneously which is what they are claiming apparently yet people come at different times and..."

He was babbling but he was scared and nothing made sense...

That had the effect of snapping Reno out of his own thoughts. The turk watched Shion, for a moment before he reached out to touch his shoulder. "Hey, calm down. The last time I was there, Lifestream had taken care of it."

The touch made him jump, but it brought him back to himself and he calmed down a little, trying to still his swirling thoughts. "Lifestream?"

Rubbing the back of his head, Reno chuckled a little. "Heh, don't tell me. Never heard of Lifestream before." That was an extremely curious idea. How did Shion's planet live without Lifestream?

Shion shook his head. "No... sorry..."

"Maybe you call it something else." That had to be it. It was a given that planets were alive, giving birth to the lifeforms that inhabited it. "Some people call it 'blood' of the planet. You sure you don't have anything like that?"

"No... I don't think we have anything like that..." He frowned, remembering the ecology that he had learned as a child. "Do you just mean the way the systems of how living things are connected to each other, through food chains and co-dependancy?"

Somehow he didn't think so, since that couldn't stop a meteor...

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/late but hi roommate

o/ can we make this after Willow? purely for my sanity XD;

Yep sure!

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/sobs and curses canon point