towerofanimus | 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..?"

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"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.

Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles

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Wrapping it up?

Sure~

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