towerofanimus | 001 || so we didn't screw up as badly as we could've

Entry tags:

001 || so we didn't screw up as badly as we could've

Characters: Jade Strider and all of the people
Setting: Room 2-01, Floor 30, Cafeteria
Format: Starting action, but I'll do whatever!
Summary: Jade wakes up in the tower, and has quite the day before she finally makes it to the network terminals.
Warnings: Probably foul language and violence against generic Tower monsters, will update if needed

[Room 2-01]
[Her waking up is rather uneventful. One minute she'd dragging some needles across a giant disc while talking on and off to Eridan, the next minute she's... well, asleep apparently. It's admittedly a bit blurry and blinding since she doesn't have her sunglasses on, so those are the first thing she reaches for.

She simply skims the letters without much of a care (yeah yeah the world is over she's got it whatever), and she makes her way towards the trunk at the end of her bend. She quickly wrestles the white suit off to put on her pants and red atom shirt (she didn't really feel up to Godliness at the moment), and starts shuffling through the trunk for the rest of her belongings.]

[Floor 30-- Perpetual Nighttime]
[In a dramatic stroke of Jade Strider Luck, Jade ended up falling plop down on the floor when the staircase fell, letting out an unceremonious yelp. She recovered quick enough, standing up and... it was a toss up between looking at everything tinted dark and looking at everything blurry, so she hazarded a chance her eyesight might've improved with the whole god tier thing, and propper the sunglasses up on her forehead.

Not that it... helped much, so she just opted to keep walking until she found the staircase. And that was when she noticed she stepped on something and holy shit ow her foot ow ow ow-]

What the--!! [She'd been smart enough at least to bring her gun with her, and immediatelly whipped it out while she tied to clumsily jump away from whatever was at her feet, and started shooting blindly at where she thought the black blob of evil might be.]

[Floor One-- Cafeteria]
[It was quite the trial to actually get down to the cafeteria, and she had dutifully eaten the oatmeal she had been handed because son of a bitch she was hungry. The oatmeal wasn't quite enough to satiate her appetite for the moment though, and now she had an...interesting looking egg in front of her. And it was black and shiney and she was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be.

Right now she was just kind of poking it and looking at it distastefully.]

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"I would rather eat fatty acids and--" wait Jade you're not supposed to know scientific bullshit stop-- "protein powder than lick a donkey's butt."

Sorry Elian, this was far from the normal child experience, Jade was just a very special child. A special child that had stuck the fork into the egg rather than actually eating it, and the fork was now sticking out of it as if it were some kind of flag.

And she kind of stared at that for a moment before she looking back at the guy in front of her. "Why the fuck are you eating that stuff anyway. You some kind of child monkey astronaut?"

"Something like that. Actually, I was born in a lab." He softly scoffed and stared at her now flagpole fork. His teal eyes blinked for a moment during the stare. That was just weird.

"You could make a glue out of that stuff." He looks down at his plate that consisted of oatmeal and a really bland looking bagel.

It didn't really matter to him now if anyone knew about his past. It was kept secret for so long that not even his co-workers knew about it. It was probably better that way. There would have been too many questions.

He lifted his glass of water to take a sip nonchalantly. "You're lucky that you have a normal existence. I'm Elian."

"I was born in a lab once I think but Rose made it sound really complicated and I think my brother is my dad and I had a brother that lived in the middle of the pacific. So normal's pretty relative."

She's just kind of starting blankly at the fork and the egg as she rattled it off blankly. The best part was that for once she wasn't making up sarcastic bullshit.

"Jade Strider, ace glue engineer and egg critic. Nice to know ya, hermit boy."

He sighed softly and pushed his plate aside slowly. "Hermit wouldn't be far from the truth. I didn't have much of a choice."

Everything that she said was indeed true about normality being only relative and subjective to the person experiencing it. To him, lab tests and torture were a normal thing. He grew up with it. The pain was definitely unpleasant but he never complained. It was all he knew up until he was taken out of that place by his father.

"It would seem that cloning is a more common thing that I had come to expect. Strange how life takes on a surreal approach to existence." Oddly, he smiled the moment his father's words came to mind. "He wanted me to have a normal life. Ironic he kept me locked up for a good while before I was allowed to be seen."

"The outside ain't all it's cracked up to be anyway. Where I lived it was hot as satan's balls every other week, or everything was buried under six feet of snow." Maybe if she were a normal kid that would've been her trying to jokingly make him feel better. She's still joking, granted, but let's also ignore the fact that she was kind of a social recluse and only talked to people on the internet.

The fork was lame though, and she picked up the spoon she had used for her own oatmeal to steal a scoop of Elian's oatmeal for herself. Because she is a classy thing and it was a lot better eating that than trying the mysterious egg.

"You an actual clone? Like another of you walking around doing shit?" At least she waited until she finished eating to speak again.

"Yes." He watched her scoop up the spoonful of oatmeal and decided that he should try to do the same. "I have two surviving brothers. One died during the conditioning. My father was the only one I ever knew and he," the pause was enough for him to take in that spoonful of oatmeal, "it's not important right now."

It hurt to think about what happened to his brothers. He felt their powers being drained. Granted that he didn't know them, he was able to feel them. The connection he had with his father was enough to make his hands shake. He already had his time to grieve. Now, with the threat of his world possibly being destroyed, which wouldn't be that far from the truth, Elian had his doubts.

"This shit's terrible." In goes another spoonful. At least the taste allowed him to feel like he was alive again.

She kind of stared at him when he paused, and it seems like he was having some issues? Whatever, that wasn't any of her business at least. "I had a clone once," she added nonchalantly, shifting the conversation away from the topic that he obviously wasn't excited to elaborate on.

"She came from the future. Technically she was me from the future but we invalidated that timeline. So I guess she's still technically me."

Jade shrugged at her own explanation (mostly she was just filling the air with words), and let out a chuckle that she tried to suppress when he voiced his opinion on the oatmeal. "Amen to that."

He looked up as he chocked down the spoonful of the thick, bland, oat mixture. "Interesting. I think, if I ever met my future self, I would tell him not to tell me anything. I think it would corrupt what could happen in the future. Good or bad, it's a part of life. Didn't you think it was cheating when you met her?"

He was starting to feel a little better and more like his age than someone so old. Being around Jade has helped him realize that he's still a kid. "Um, can I ask you something?"

She gave an ever-so-slight shrug as her gaze once again returned to the mysterious black egg. "I get what you're saying; going back in time to tell your past self stuff that you don't remember hearing will totally wreck the timeline." Speaking from experience hooo boy. "But she was from an extended Doomed Timeline, so I was never gonna experience what she did anyway. Not that she told me much of what happened. Didn't really ask."

Aaaand she started poking the egg ever so slightly to just kind of have something to do. "Go for it."

"I see. I was wondering if you could tell me about your world, if you don't mind." In his mind, anything has got to be better than what he faced. The Inners, in his opinion, had it better than what people made it out to be. Either way, the wall separated people. Separated lives. He saw the Tower as something similar only that those walls weren't visible.

"Maybe, it can help us understand one another better." With all this stuff going on, it helps to talk. "What's a Doomed Timeline?"

She lifted her head again so that she could actually pay more attention and apparently took his question as a chance to eat some more of his oatmeal. But apparently that was also a tacit agreement to infodump!

"A Doomed Timeline is an anomaly in the timeline when something happens that isn't supposed to happen. I'm a Time player see, so I can jump back and forth into the past and future. If I go back in time and do something that wasn't supposed to happen, the timeline doesn't rewrite itself like in the movies-- the universe has got a really particular order to it. So if I change things in the wrong way, instead of changing the future it splinters off into a separate timeline, which ain't supposed to exist. Eventually everyone in that timeline dies since it wasn't supposed to happen."

And she set her spoon down and ripped the fork out of the egg, explaining all of this in a very blassé and nonchalant the subject. Fuck if she hadn't heard the shpiel from Eri before. "In that vein, since I'm a time player, the versions of me from the Doomed Timelines can intersect with the main timeline, like if I go back in time to try and stop something that has to happen on the main timeline. That's called a Doomed Self, and they usually get killed off within the hour. That's why I was talkin' about shovels before. Need something to deal with all the bodies."

The infordump didn't bother him at all. In fact, he listened intently and with keen interest. The information gained fortified his will to open up and trust just from moments like these. "I see. So in essence, any of these Doomed are eliminated should they intersect your path. I see this as a mathematical proposition, and an interesting one."

His eyes seem fixed on the strange egg on her plate and wrinkles his nose at first before returning to the situation. "Let's say that the shovel is the end result, you are the radical in the equation and all others are variables. How would you know when to use the shovel other than the obvious signs of death? Another issue would be that there are so many intersections, grouping them all could take time to organize and sort out. As a player, I don't think I would fit in your equation other than I'm only outside the diagram as a compliment that will eventually be factored out at some point."

Strangely, he was very calm during his rationalization. "How do you know which timeline is the right one?"

Jade took a long quiet moment to just stare at him. Not for lack of understanding, granted-- actually she understood it perfectly, but it wouldn't be very cool to let on that she could actually understand such a ludicrous thought process. Bro would probably rip on this kid for trying to sound all smart, hell even David and Eri would.

"The shovel's just a shovel, kid. Use it when there's a body and blood all over the ground. It's pretty simple."

At the question however, she... looked away again, but this time seemed to be making a pointed effort to avoid eye contact. "Heh, I guess that's the thing about time travel-- you never know if you're the Alpha, or some other dude with your face is the main guy and you're about to face down a knife in your head so that the universe can fix itself."

Things like thinking and pondering scenarios was what he loved doing. Even if it doesn't pertain to him, he was still interested and it showed in his smile, which is now clear.

"We'll find the shovel." Even if it was left unsaid, he appreciated that she listened to his ramblings.

Edited 2012-07-13 08:18 (UTC)

She couldn't resist a small chuckle at this conclusion. "It'd make my life a whole lot easier, let me tell ya. Though I'm hoping to do a lot less dying around here if I can," she said as she was waving the fork around.

"The rest of my world's pretty basic though. I lived in a stuffy apartment smack in the middle of Texas, and my friends and I got transported to another universe to defeat the Black King and make a new world through a video game. The mechanics aren't as complicated as Doomed lines."

His eyes blinked in astonishment. This was only something that he could dream about. In a way, he envied Jade for crossing lines of reality the way she has.

"So, you were chosen? That's pretty amazing. What was it like traveling between dimensions like that? Is there a gate that you had to go through?"

"I guess." She's not really sure how the whole 'Chosen Ones' thing would really work. Skaia suuuuure knew how to choose 'em, didn't it.

"Nah, no portals. We had to use these weird machines to make something out of this pillar of Mysterious Video Game Material that would transport us to the Medium. Mine was a bid egg I had to crack open. One minute you're scrambling around 'cause meteors are about to bashing everyone's brains in, the next it was snowing and there were gears in my backyard."

"How strange yet incredibly fantastic!" Elian saw the world in numbers. The probability of breaching anything that passed from one reality into the next was something that he was tested on over and over again, and was nearly broken for it when he couldn't breach his world into the next.

It was odd. Almost too familiar, except there was no game. There was pain. So much pain, and sorrow that coursed through his body at that place where he was born. His once child-like smile faded fast.

"I'm sorry."

"Huh?"

During Elian's thought process from excitement to depression, jade had apparently thought it was a good idea to maybe try the egg because why not. It was about halfway to her open mouth, when she stopped and blinked at him in confusion, lowering the confection away from her mouth again.

"What for?"

He shrugged and sighed. He wasn't meaning to come across as a wet blanket, and without having anything to really compare the basics of their worlds other than words, he was going by a subjective point of view which he knew was wrong.

"I just felt like saying it. Maybe I'm wrong, but didn't you feel pain?"

"Nah, crossing into the Medium? Not really," She lowered the food back down to the table and shrugged. "It was kind of disorienting, but nothing that bad. Just kind of happened. Like you're removed from one world and pasted right into another. No sweat."

Compared to the rest of the 'adventure,' entering the Medium was probably the least painful part of playing that damn game.

"I understand."

For him, being used to try to open the Other Side was a painful ordeal that often killed those that couldn't take the refining process. His head gave a slight nod. To be disorientated was a whole lot better than having their body torn apart from the planar rift.

He picks up another spoonful of the pasty oatmeal with a sigh.

"At least one thing remains constant. Oatmeal is still gross and video games are a good outlet for aggression."

"Hear hear," She said, which she would say she said ironically but was decidedly unironic in tone, as she lifted the fork-and-egg in a toasting gesture. "That's basically a universal law at this point. Can't have a proper world where kids save up their allowance to get oatmeal from the shop down the street.

"So tell me about your weird space station-y lab place, since you got to ask about my pad. Is it all cloning hoo-ha and shovel variables?"

He lifted up his spoon in the same gesture and nodded his head. With an inhale, he thought about his situation and blinked for a moment.

"I think there's some confusion. I wasn't born in a space station. I was born in a lab in the Mainland. My father was the first Alter user captured and they made me and three others like me from his DNA and one other. The second donor is unknown.

The torture I faced is something I don't want to repeat. Emotions were something that marked weakness for a soldier. Needless to say, if I showed any, I was subjected to unbearable pain. So, later when I faced it on the field, it didn't hurt as bad.

I had three brothers. Elian One died. Elian Three and Elian Four were used to block my power from seeing what was going on. I didn't know my father died until I saw him." Elian took in that thick spoonful of oatmeal and sighed after he swallowed it down.

"My father took me out of that place to keep me from being like my two other brothers. I wasn't known in HOLY until later. I was called a system." It was the best way he could explain his power and it was yet to be seen exactly what he can actually do.

"I have seen everything. As long as there is information in a system, I can find it."

"Can you really be a clone of someone if you're one DNA mixed with other DNA?" ....Nooooot, the important part here, Jade. "Does that make you some kind of Super Wikipedia?"

She's still gesturing around with her fork, but all jokes aside....well yeah she went through crap, but she wasn't some kind of...ro...bot...? Or something? Whatever. She would feel worse, but a cool kid didn't get attached to this kind of stuff.

"Sounds to me like you owe those Holly-Pockets a punch to the face. Sure don't look like any system I've seen and I run a lot of systems."

001 || so we didn't screw up as badly as we could've

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