towerofanimus | Dawn of a... New Life?

Characters: Link
Setting: Around the tower. Don't see a prompt? Pick a spot and Link will find a reason to be there.
Format: I'm starting with prose, but whatever floats your boat is fine for threads
Summary: That new ~~victim~~ person smell is fresh on this boy. As fresh as that ugly white jumpsuit he's still wearing.
Warnings: None. Will update as needed

Room 4-14
He was in the process of carefully sliding the edge of his sword up the side of his right leg to cut the cloth of the jumpsuit he wore. He'd already gotten most of the left leg cut off and cut into strips. He hadn't been able to rip the fabric - such a strange material - but he'd found the razor edge of his sword could slice it open just fine. With an unknown place like this, and none of his clothes anywhere in sight, including belts, Link would have to make something approximating them to carry what few possessions he had left.

There were two sheets of paper that looked like letters on the table next to him. His reading was terrible without the aid of a fairy and he only had a few of the word patterns memorized enough to recognize a few of the words written on them. The first, shorter one, he managed to make out "I saved you" with no issue - so he knew he'd been in trouble of some sort, even if he couldn't remember it - but there were some words he didn't know to recognize by rote between the shorter ones he did: 'world' and 'destroyed' and 'let's' and 'happy'. So while it was nice he'd been saved, it would have been nicer to have someone in the room to tell him what had happened and why he had the weird feeling collar and bodysuit on... and how to more easily get them off. ~~Zippers? What are those?~~

Dormitories - Around the Stairwell
Now in a jumpsuit that had both legs and the right arm poorly chopped off and the remnants re-purposed as make-shift belts/straps to hold all five of his masks, the Ocarina of Time and his sword's sheath (slung across his back), Link was making his way up the ramp that circled the stairwell. The ramp only seemed to go up while the stairwell went down. Knowing that most dungeons required him to go up to get the keys he needed to go down, Link had decided that up was the smart way to go. If he had to change directions, he could and would. In his left hand was his sword and on his right arm was his shield - what would have been a medium sized one on any grown man, was absurdly large on the boy's 3ft frame. The humor of it marred, perhaps, by the horrified face etched into it's mirrored surface.

Cafeteria - First Meal
Link had managed to make his way to the very bottom of the tower - or as far as he could go, anyway - using the contraption called the 'elevator'. It was food store of some kind and that was great, because he was hungry, but all they had were something called 'nutrition bars' and oatmeal. Oatmeal was what Malon fed Epona as a treat. So it probably wasn't meant for people... which only led to him being very frustrated because the strange people who worked there kept trying to give him oatmeal instead of the nutrition bars. He didn't understand it at all and they wouldn't answer his questions, just repeat themselves when saying he should have oatmeal.
[[Edit: this has been resolved, but anyone who wants to find him in the cafeteria trying to convince the people to give him more oatmeal, is welcome to do so.]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, dear.

Link certainly isn't the first person Tara's overheard having this particular fight with the clear-collared workers. But, what with things already getting strange again, she feels a pang of sympathy for him all the same. Besides that, she's more than happy to leave her half-eaten nutrition bar for later. The things are offensively bland.

So she goes up to the boy just as the worker is turning away and taps him on the shoulder. "Um...h-hi."

Link spins around and takes a step back from her, instantly on the defensive, "...hello."

He was also dealing with his heart beating a few hundred times faster than normal because the girl was very, very quiet and had snuck up on him.

And Tara immediately steps well back with a sharp gasp, one hand going to her chest as her heart speeds up in turn. She immediately feels guilty - she certainly hadn't meant to startle the poor kid.

"I, I-I'm sorry. I-I didn't mean...it's just, um...oatmeal. I, I wanted to say...w-when they say you need to eat oatmeal you, you really do. Y-You'll get sick, if you don't."

Link felt bad immediately because it looked - and sounded - like he scared the woman worst than her approach had startled him. He took a deep breath to calm himself and then stepped forward to lift a hand up to her arm in an attempt to offer her a soothing gesture.

He didn't mean to silence her, just get her to take a breather, when he said, "Slower, Miss. Please. It's okay to go slower. I'm sorry I startled you."

Edited 2012-09-02 21:28 (UTC)

He might not have meant to, but Tara closes her mouth with an audible "click" of teeth coming together when he does. Even so, she takes the opportunity to take a deep breath, though, and try to start over.

"Sorry. It's just, um...I, I know it tastes bad, but...y-you really need to, um, eat some oatmeal. Everyone does. W-We don't really know why, but that's, th-that's just...how it works. You'll get sick, if you don't."

[[ooc: Tara is the third person to approach Link about the oatmeal vs nutrition bars thing and it's already been explained to him in one of those, so for the sake of consistency, I'm changing his reason for asking about the nutrition bars. my apologies if this causes any problems.]]

Tough he didn't agree that the oatmeal tasted back, he did offer a kind smile as he let his hand drop and gave a single, firm nod at her explanation, "Thank you for telling me, Miss. Someone already explained that part to me. I'm trying to get them to tell me why they wouldn't give me the bars at first. Why eating something other than oatmeal first makes us sick."

((ooc: Ah, that makes sense. Yeah, it's a risk with cafeteria threads. I still think it would be IC for Tara to have approached him, though, so I think this still works.))

At this, Tara shrugs.

"W-We got theories. But, um, no one knows for sure. I-It is important, though. Even when there's no other food in the tower, oatmeal's either, um, the first thing we get, or the only thing we keep.

M-Maybe just to settle your stomach. Crossing dimensional boundaries, um, probably takes it out of you.

Th-The nutrition bars aren't that great."

[[sounds fine to me!]]

"What's a die-men-tion-all boundary?" He tilted his head to one side, sounding out the strange new word a couple times after he asked the question. "Is that a magical barrier?"

"Sort of," Tara answers, after a beat. "It's, um...well, I, I'm sure you know already, there are a lot of different people, from a lot of different worlds, here. The, um, the dimensional boundaries...those are the things that kept them all as separate worlds, instead of one big world. I mean, um, if you know what you're doing, sometimes you can cross them to go to other worlds, but...it's, um, it's not supposed to happen."

Borders between worlds. That he understood. He gave a firm nod, just one, "Okay. I've done that."

After a beat he smiled and added, "But it is supposed to happen." When you're a hero, fate occasionally steps in. And when you're Mask Salesman, sometimes you did it of your own accord. "I was traveling between worlds before I came here."

Dawn of a... New Life?

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