towerofanimus | First awakening

Entry tags:

First awakening

Characters: Nesir Aeser
Setting: Room 2-01 and then all of the tower ending in cafeteria
Format: Chose I shall follow
Summary: Nesir wakes up, shenanigans happen
Warnings: Nesir's angry, so... rudeness and potential stabbings? I also have A permissions post because I am a flaily derp.

[Room 2-01]

Nesir's eyes opened but she couldn't move, breathing was hard and fear flooded through her wondering who was here, a prank from a priestling trainee? Or something more dangerous? Had she been betrayed...

But then she could move, she sat up looking for the culprit and then froze...

This wasn't the temple. She should have noticed before hand, the bed was too soft the sheets too smooth. Her clothing was too restrictive for the simple shirt she usually slept in. The lights too bright, she squinted. It was as bright as outside... She looked upwards at the lamp and shielded her eyes...

What was that? She blinked and frowned. Strictly it wasn't the first time she had woken up in a place she couldn't remember falling asleep in; but usually such times were caused by drinking far too much ale and the headache usually staved off the panic.

She wasn't the only one in the room, there were three other beds, she frowned at that; as an acolyte she had finally had her own room and it was something she liked. She stood up and picked the papers off the bedside table.

Your world has been destroyed. I saved you. Let's all be happy here. What...

She marched over to the closest bed and flung back the covers. "Does this be your idea of a joke!"

[All the floors ending in cafeteria] Her knives were in her trunk, that was a good thing. The bad things were this skin tight suit was the only thing she had to wear; and it didn't have anywhere to hide her knives. It meant she had to carry one of her daggers in her right, it was probably obvious that it was her weaker side, but she was determined to still use two.

The collar on her neck was the other thing that was making Nesir angry; as if kidnapping her wasn't enough. The collar wouldn't come off by cutting it with knives. She had tried.

She set off down the stairs, each floor brought a new wonder or terror. What in the names of all the gods was this place even? She held her knives close, she really needed to do something about these clothes, they had no place to store weapons. She explored each floor and was glad when she got to the bottom. More so because there was food. Her stomach growled and she went over to the hatch, it wasn't so different than the cafeteria at the barracks. Just... more... something... too white.. too clean... too bright.

When she was given plain oatmeal she pulled a face, but didn't argue and went to sit at a table, she sat watching, wondering what was different between those who had to eat oatmeal and those who got to eat the other food. What made her different, where they different types of prisoners? To fill a different role? She placed one dagger on the table and the other on her seat out of sight. She picked up the spoon with her left hand clumsily and scowled, she tried to eat food she could just pick up most of the time, she hadn't quite figured out eating with her damaged right hand yet.

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"Ain't that just the truth." Kankuro nodded, holding up a spoonful and letting it glop back into the bowl. "I tried arguing against it, but no dice. First meal, apparently." The way she was holding herself suggested weapons somewhere close at hand to his trained eye, but she didn't seem to be about to fling herself over the tables to stab him, so he mentally shrugged and reminded himself that he was armed too. Be a fool not to, here, so far as he could see. Dangerous, this place.

Well, getting to know people was no bad thing, and getting to know people who could fight was generally good. Allies and all that. "The name's Kankuro, by the way."

Nesir took a spoonful, bringing her face down close to the bowl so she didn't drop it everywhere. She hadn't expected arguing to work; which was why she hadn't. She had learned that people who served meals for lots of people tended to take no nonsense. He seemed to be a fighter too, not stone faced like the warriors at the temple but he held himself ready.

She wondered what the face paint was for; she had heard of warriors in far off lands (what land was she even in at the moment... another question to answer) that painted their faces with their allegiances to the gods. But she didn't recognise the patterns.

"Kankuro... It do be nice to meet you, I do be Nesir Aeser."

"Nesir." He gave her a nod of acknowledgment. Odd name, that, but then again, it was as expected. He was already pretty well convinced this was just another twisted version of the other crazy world-mixing joint that had pulled him out of his own world. Lots of crazy names there, too. "Good to meet another newbie to the crazy house."

The way she handled the spoon hinted at a difficulty - natural, or acquired? Without a good baseline, it was hard to say for certain, but if she was the warrior he thought her to be, he'd guess acquired. You couldn't be a competent fighter if you were all that clumsy. At least, not for long.

"Do you be having any idea to why we do be here?" She took another mouthful of oatmeal hoping the bowl hid her missing fingers from him, it was never good to have such an obvious weakness. She noted the name and the violet collar, he didn't seem stupid at least.

He shrugged, glancing down at his own oatmeal; in doing so, he missed the sight of her mangled hand. "I've got my guesses. Was someplace else like this before, 'cept smaller and less fucked up." He paused, having said that, considering. Yeah, on the whole, the facility had probably been less bizarre than this place.

"Somewhere like this? Do this be some kind of kidnapping ring, do you be thinking it is the same people?"

They claimed her world was destroyed; which she didn't believe... but it was obvious that this place was different than where she had come from. The bright not fire lights, the size and structure of the building, people wearing clothing she had never seen before in her life...

It made him chuckle, though with little humor to the sound. "Kidnapping ring? Yeah, that's about the long and short of it. They can reach into all kinds'a worlds somehow, and snatch people out whenever it suits 'em. The place I was in last was smaller than this, and less creepy, but I don't see a real difference otherwise. Same old bullshit, at the end of it all."

He paused. "...Did you get the same letter, too? About your world being gone?"

All kinds of world... So... there was more than one...

Nesir blinked trying to process that. There was more than one world... She guessed there was no reason why not, she wondered if they were ran by the same gods... Everything she had learned to survive in the world... She didn't know anything about other worlds, no idea how she would be expected to behave.

"I did... do you be thinking it does be true?"

How did people kidnap people from worlds... Was there any way back from that.

"So far as I'm concerned," he said firmly, "it's all bullshit until proven otherwise." That simple. "They'll tell you anything to get you to give up, to despair. If they're anything like the guys at the last place... well, they practically feed off despair." He gave her a firm nod. "Keep your chin up. That's how you handle these places."

They would say anything to get you to despair... Fed off despair, some shadow group? A inter world shadow group that kidnapped people and brought them to places like this.

If Nesir wasn't so angry about being one of the ones who had been kidnapped she would be impressed. A kidnapping on this scale, notes and a tower full of creatures. Dramatic; she still had no idea what the bright not quite lanterns were, or how some of the floors were as they were. Power she guessed, magic.

But most of all she was just angry, why her? Why out of all the people they could have kidnapped did they pick her? She ate her oatmeal angrily.

"I can be coping with it." No one trained by Elina and Kant would let themselves be defeated by a bunch of kidnappers no matter how powerful.

Elina... she would be so annoyed. Nesir smirked, one good thing to come out of this anyways. "So did they be telling you that you did be moving? Or do they no be the giving out information sort of people?"

"Telling me?" Kankuro snorted. "That's a joke. The last guys actually sent me back home for a bit -- guess I got too boring for them, they had me over a year and all. But then these ones snatched me up."

He was still formulating his thoughts on that. Wasn't like he had a lot of evidence to go on, but the idea that this crowd could be entirely separate from the Consortium that had snatched him up before seemed... well, farfetched at best. Naive. More likely there was some connection, as they were probably using similar technologies to snatch people up and carry them off.

"They did be sending you home?" Nesir thought about that for a moment. Quietly she thought this Kankuro was pretty stupid, after being snatched once was bad enough; but it was hard to guard against threats you didn't no existed. Being snatched twice though...

"That do be interesting though, did they no be worried that you would talk..." After all just... letting a kidnapping victim go... unless his mind had been compromised. Was he some kind of spy? Under a compulsion?

She went back to eating her oatmeal thinking, waiting for his answer before jumping to conclusion.

"Yeah, they did." Kankuro shrugged. "They did that, the last place -- if you got too boring for them, they wiped your memories of being there and sent you back to right when they'd picked you up from. So it was like you'd never been gone at all, and you wouldn't remember it at all. Bullshit, I tell you. You're gonna put someone through hell, at least let them keep what they've gained from it." All the terrible memories aside, he'd learned things that he hadn't remembered until he woke up in that stupid white bodysuit.

Well, there was her answer, even if she hadn't asked the questions openly. He was pretty willing to talk -- after all, there wasn't much value in playing coy, not when they'd all be finding out if this place was the same soon enough.

They whiped his memories... Took his memories from him and sent him back so no one ever learned he was gone. The amount of power... Nesir didn't think any priest or priestess had that level of power... That was the power of a god...

It scared her a bit, and she coped with that by eating more oatmeal, the bowl was almost finished now. "So you did be forgetting, but now you do be remembering it all?"

So those who had brought him had undone the mind control...

This was getting worse, everything Nesir heard made less sense and scared her more... She frowned.

"That's right." Not like it was something he really liked dwelling on, but that was the long and short of it. And better to let her know what was the potential here. "That was how they did it. If someone left, they forgot, and only remembered when they came back. Or, apparently, get brought here." Which supported his quiet belief that there was a connection between the two. It seemed illogical, otherwise.

Interesting... Why would they undo the mind control? Unless they weren't the same people... Or were and had some ulterior motive...

"Do you be remembering anything important? Did you ever be meeting these people?"

"Meeting them? Nah, not directly. But they'd taunt us, make sure we knew they were always watching." He snorted. "Bastards. They loved watching us squirm. As for what I learned there, nothing that would help us get out. Survival skills, though. How to deal with the insanity."

Nesir scowled again, her anger growing. It was just her luck she had been captured, well she was used to pain, when it came to surviving it was something Nesir was good at. "Then it do be good you do be remembering them, I do be thinking you will be needing them."

"Yeah, think you're dead on for that one," he agreed. She talked funny, but seemed sensible enough, to his way of thinking. "We can support each other, all us trapped rats in here, but they'll like as not use that against us too." Which just made it all cuter, didn't it?

Support each other... That was something Nesir wasn't good at. Sure her and Ral had helped each other against Herin's gang of bullies and her and her sister had always looked after each other...

Except Nesir didn't think about her. She had never had a whole group of people to support and support her back, she wasn't sure she liked the idea.

"It do be very easy to uses us against each other if we do be trying that."

"It does," he agreed. "And it happens. But the alternative is letting them turn us against each other from the start. So one way or another, they'll try it." And would get the same result, in the end. More frantic little lab rats, more entertainment for the sick fucks that locked them up here.

"That do be..." Clever, "Very wrong of them, but I do be seeing why it would benifit them." Nesir had seen for herself the might of the forces of light combined. Their sheer number guaranteed them victory in almost every fight.

To seperate them, turn them against each other. She took another spoonful of oatmeal, sucessfully finishing the bowl. "So working together it do be then Kankuro."

"Working together," he agreed. At least for now, at least until they had some reason to end it. And that didn't mean not keeping an eye on her. But having connections was a good idea, in any place like this, so long as you kept them shallow and light. Enough to have allies, not enough that they had access to your insides.

Nesir nodded, allies were good. At least for now, when she still knew so little about this place.

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First awakening

[Cafeteria]

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Oh geez! I thought I'd finished this tag, sorry!

No worries!

:D

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