towerofanimus | Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles

Entry tags:

Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles

Characters:

timegame & Open
Setting: Twelfth Floor
Format: I'll follow your lead!
Summary: Aradia thinks maybe watching other universes 'die' might give her a clue as to what's really going on in the tower
Warnings: Depends who answers, really!

There went another one.

Supernova-bright one second, ashen and dead the next, and yet still, no sign of what night have happened to dim that many stars and planets all at once. Maybe whatever it was moved on a spectrum her eyes alone couldn't see. Maybe it was some strange power like the one they had not been meant to face.

Or maybe these holograms of system after system meeting an end like a universal flash-fire were as fake as the flimsy excuse the tower's notes gave for their being here.

She turns to another sector of the tower wall as another batch of stars appears across the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and floats toward where the system's sun is. She watches it glow, closing her eyes and pretending the glow flickering from it is Green instead of blue-white for a moment. Pretending things are (as bad as they were in her world) back to normal. Another moment, another flash- it was a quick one this time- and the glow dies out and she sighs, eyes opening as the next set of stars flickers into being.

She finds the sun again, but doesn't face it, instead reaching out to trace a finger between stars.

"...just what is this supposed to mean..?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The moment he comes down far enough to see this level, he knows it is going to be one he spends a lot of time on. It reminds him intensely of one of the few things he'd actually come to enjoy about being the Helmsman... seeing the vastness of space all around him, as if he were simply hanging in it unprotected but safe. He was the ship, in a very visceral way, through his biowire connections to it.

And so, even though he hates every moment he spent as the Helmsman, this place feels reassuringly familiar and comforting. He is where he 'belongs', at least as far as his subconscious can determine, which means the constant near-panic feeling of 'I'm disobeying' is eased.

Entranced, he walks further out, not noticing until it's too late the young adolescent troll girl who's already in the room. He freezes, eyes wide and panicked, not knowing how to proceed. Should he try to slip away before she notices him? Should he kneel and beg forgiveness for intruding?

She catches him out of the corner of her eye as she turns to inspect another cluster of stars for any evidence of what it is that's snuffing them all out so quickly. Two things flash through her mind almost immediately.

The first is that this is an adult troll- and even in passing that thought is enough to set her shoulders tensely, fingers beginning to curl into defensive fists. The second, which overrides the first a few moments later, is that this adult seems to have two sets of horns set exactly like another familiar pair, and she turns to face him fully, curiosity overriding her caution like it tended to more often than not.

"Sollux?"

Another alternate, perhaps- or an apparition of the tower. Whichever it is, she intends to find out.

He's hardly the most threatening-looking adult she could have encountered - his shoulders are hunched and he's trying to make himself look smaller. He doesn't know yet what her blood colour is, and as a child he's not sure she even is allowed to give him orders - but he's not sure she isn't and that's enough.

Worse, she obviously just asked him something, and he has no idea what that word is. A name?

"I'm thorry, I didn't mean to intrude," he blurted out.

Not Sollux then? But he was wearing the yellowblood's symbol, and her wings gave a brief, thoughtful beat before she rose a little higher into the air and drifted toward him, hands clasped behind her back.

"It's not a big deal, really! In fact, taking a break is probably something I should've done a while ago!" She smiled gently, taking in his demeanor with a certain degree of interest- she was fairly sure she'd never heard of an adult acting like this around a younger troll, but still...

She shook her head a little, and then held out her hand, smile brightening to a degree.

"I'm Aradia, by the way! What's your name?"

The room was dark enough - and he'd been distracted enough by the dying stars and his own near-panic - that he'd actually missed her wings until she rose higher.

He stared in disbelief and fascination. He'd heard of trolls with wings, but he'd though they were only a legend. If her wings were any indication of her blood colour she was even lower on the hemospectrum than he was. That, plus the fact that she was a child and the collar he spotted around her neck as she flew closer, finally allowed him to relax. She was a slave too, then.

He extended his hand to meet her, tentatively smiling back. "I'm called... the Ψiioniic," he said with a touch of defiance. He would not introduce himself as the Helmsman, even though saying his old name made him flinch slightly in reaction to his conditioning.

"Ψiioniic..."

The namesake of Sollux's powers then? Or something else entirely? Regardless, she took his hand in both of hers and shook firmly, pulling her hands away after a moment of lingering (413 milliseconds, to be exact).

"I guess you've just gotten here, right? Welcome to the tower, I guess! Everyone keeps saying it's dangerous and all this other stuff, but as long as you stay away from the floors where your powers don't work, you should be fine...! Um- assuming you have any, that is!" She laughed a little, and drifted down to settle on the floor, motioning at the stars reflected everywhere in the room. "I'm trying to figure out what keeps making them go out, but every time, they just kind of... go dark." Her smile faltered a bit, turning a little sad. "It's such a shame..."

"I'm a mage," Ψiioniic confirmed, almost shyly. The thought of there being places here where his powers wouldn't work was both terrifying and enticing. He'd be helpless without his telekinesis, but a respite from his vision twofold and the screams of the soon-to-be-dead was an appealing thought.

Looking around at the stars, he studied them for a moment. "I've never theen anything like it," he said. "I've been a Helmsman for a thweep now, but this is nothing like any thtar dying I've seen."

"A mage, huh? Trolls who can do what I'm guessing you can haven't been called that for a long, long time. A Helmsman though... that sounds familiar..."

She paused in thought, and it suddenly hit her what he meant, her eyes going wide. One of her hands settled on his arm, teeth worrying at her lower lip. A helmsman... in the fleet- that could only mean one thing.

"Oh no..! That's awful!"

They hadn't been called that? Why not? It was just a word for high-level psychics, especially the type who could affect physical objects the way he could.

But he sudden dismayed reaction startled him, and he looked around frantically, thinking something had happened among the stars. "What? What ith it? What's wrong?" Red and blue lightning crackled between his horns, just in case she'd spotted some sort of threat that he hadn't. He would protect her, no matter what. She was only a child, after all. And she was being kind to him.

Her grip on his arm tightened, slight and careful, and she shook her head, trying to calm him.

"No, I mean... you were.. you were in a ship, weren't you?"

In a ship, not on it- he'd been all but powering it, and not for the first time, Aradia was almost glad that none of them would have to grow up in their society. Not when something like this had a chance of happening to any of them that were low enough on the hemospectrum for it to be 'justifiable'. She shook her head again, hand going from squeezing to patting gently, trying to get the glow to fade from his eyes and the sparks to stop between his horns.

"I'm sorry you went through that."

"Oh." Realizing why she'd been upset, he relaxed and let his powers fade. "Yeah, I was the Helmsman for the Condesce's flagship." Despite himself there was a faint note of pride buried in the bitterness in his words. At least, if he was going to be bound to eternal servitude, he would be the best fucking Helmsman that ever was.

"It... wasn't all bad," he admitted a little sadly, looking around at the dying stars again. "I liked being in space. It's beautiful. I think I would have liked being a Helmsman, if I didn't have to be a slave to do it."

"The Flagship."

She didn't know whether to be impressed or be horrified, all things considered, so she settled for more of the latter, and the hand on his arm squeezed again. She followed his gaze around, and her expression softened as she nodded.

"I know what you mean. It's really wonderful the way it looks like you can just reach out and touch a star..." She remembered floating in front of the green sun and let her eyes slip closed. "Being able to almost feel the light."

"I could feel it," he said, reaching up to cover her hand with his own. The gesture was so tentative he was barely touching her, but it was contact. "I mean, the ship'th sensors could, but it felt like the thame thing to me." He'd enjoyed being able to interact with the computer directly, too - he just wished it didn't have to be a constant, inescapable aspect of the job.

"What was that like?"

The question tumbled out before she could think twice about asking it, and almost immediately she felt terrible for asking. She'd heard rumors of what happened to those chosen to be helmsmen- and to ask him to think about it to satisfy her curiosity wasn't something she really wanted to do.

"Ah- no, you don't have to answer that, it was silly to ask," she backpedaled, settling her other hand on the back of of his hand, pressing lightly enough that he could remove it if he so wished. "I didn't mean to bring more of that up than necessary."

"It'th okay," he assured her. "That's not the part that was horrible. I... kind of loved it," he admitted, blushing. He knew it was probably sick that he'd felt that way, but he just couldn't help it. "The challenge of flying the ship, the thrill of moving through endless thpace... I really loved it. When I wath concentrating on flying, on what the sensors were telling me, jutht being the ship... that was the only time I could forget the rest of it."

"I see," she replied- and she sort of did. It was a bit like the way she took to the challenge of arranging her time-loops, back when she'd been a robot. It gave her a distraction from all the anger she was constantly feeling, and it made it a lot easier to handle certain things during the game. "Well, I guess that answers my question, in any case," she added with a little half-smile, and tilted her head toward the projections again. "Would you like to join me for a while? I'm not sure how much I'll actually figure out, but it will be nice to have some company while I think..!"

"Yeah... if you don't mind having me here," he said, smiling shyly at her. He hadn't spent much time with children, but this girl seemed nice, and quite mature given that he didn't think she was more than six or seven sweeps. Actually she seemed pretty mature anyway.

And after a sweep of being alone with nobody but the Condesce for occasional company, it was nice to be able to admire the deepness of space with someone pleasant.

"Of course not! Please, settle in wherever you'd like," she replied, clasping her hands and beaming. "Later I can show you were some of the other things are- have you been to eat yet? That's probably something you should do soon..." She added, bouncing a little in place and nodding slightly, as if agreeing with herself.

Slowly, the stars of another universe began replacing the dimmed ones that had just been there, and she turned to face the walls, gray eyes focused on them.

"Oh, it's starting again..!"

He wasn't quite certain that real food was necessarily a good idea - it had been a long time since he'd had anything other than nutrients fed to him intravenously, and he didn't know how well his stomach would handle actual solid food.

But for the moment he settled in, using a tiny amount of his powers to float after her so he could hang in the middle of the starscape, too. He found himself watching her as much as the stars, though... they were both beautiful.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Wrapping it up?

Sure~

and then he follows her around like a puppy for the rest of the day