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..?"

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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 crept through the door and stopped still. The stars were disappearing in flashes in the sky. She stumbled out into the room, reaching for a blossom of light just as it faded. She turned, seeing her first troll in this tower and it didn't even matter that it was one barely old enough to shed the title of wriggler.

"What's going on? What happened to all the stars?!"

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.

"That's what happens, I think. Or what this place would have us believe happens, when it 'rescues' us. It's-"

She had started speaking before she turned, but when she did she stopped in surprise. There was no way that could be her... but the similarities- they were a little off-putting, to be honest, not to mention that she wore the same symbol wrapped around her so proudly. But it couldn't be Nepeta- the girl would have tacklepounced her immediately for the answer. That left very few options, and none that Aradia was going to settle on just yet. Instead, she cleared her throat and motioned to the walls, where new stars were flickering into view.

"It's always happening. Or that's the way it seems, anyway."

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.

"The letter was true? That's...that's pawful, why--I was trying to..." Disciple's words trailed off and she watched the stars flicker out one by one.

"So Alternia is...gone?" She turned back to her fellow troll, looking for the same sort of despair and perhaps comfort.

"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..."

"True is sort of... a relative term," she began, putting her fingers to her chin in thought. "Because you see, before I came here, Alteria was already gone. Or at least, everyone on it was dead, and Gl'bgolyb had released the vast glub so just about everyone out in the universe was probably dead too." She paused there, considering. "Well- everyone but the twelve of us, even if the numbers are starting to dwindle..."

She looked back over at her, face openly curious.

"Though you... you might be from a timeline where none of this happened at all."

Passing through this room was a necessity, and by now, Naminé had accepted it. The amount of time she'd spent in it the day of her arrival had left a bad taste in her mouth, so to speak, and so she always endeavored to pass through as quickly as possible, paying as little attention as possible to the projections. However, this time, she found that the room was occupied. She had yet to see a troll in person, but she had seen one over the network, and had managed to glean a small amount of knowledge about the species that was enough to assure her that they were not, in fact, Heartless, despite their slight similarities in appearance.

She would have readily admitted her curiosity, but what really made her stop was instead the fact that this girl, herself, was stopped. Instantly, Naminé was reminded of her own stay there. Perhaps the reason was different, but... she couldn't help pausing. Someone else had paused for her, after all, and shouldn't she do the same for this person, if there was anything akin to distress going on? The blonde girl stayed put, silently watching for a moment as she tried to decide whether or not she should ask if this other person was alright; they did seem focused, after all, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing.

"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.

Aradia noticed her out of the corner of her eye, but didn't say anything- the poor girl looked frightened to even be standing there, she didn't want to scare her by making any sudden movements. She settled onto the floor with the diminishing light of the current system, following the path of the dimming stars around the room, fingers tracing the course. She pretended to be surprised when it brought her around to face the girl, and she raised her hand in a wave, smiling.

"Oh- hi! Did you want to study this place too?"

Edited 2011-09-05 01:40 (UTC)

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."

She stiffened as the girl began to turn, and for a moment Naminé almost spoke up, but her uncertainty got the better of her. Her own surprise was genuine; she wasn't exactly expecting a smile, or a wave. "Study?" she found herself echoing. So that was why this girl was here. Feeling slightly embarrassed, Naminé shifted a little before saying, "Oh, no, I-- I've already seen it." Not that that really constituted 'studying', but it was more than enough for her to decide that it was better not to linger there. "I'm sorry, I was just wondering what you were doing here." That was obvious at this point, anyway. "But I think I know, now."

"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.

"I wish I knew," Minami said with a shrug, having entered the room just as the last group of stars went nova and faded out of existence. She'd been in the middle of her daily wandering and about to head down to the cafeteria, which meant going through here again and then to her room to recharge the battery in her MP3 Player. She didn't much like this floor at all because it made her think that maybe, just maybe, that note was telling the truth.

And if the note were telling the truth, did that mean she herself had been the cause of her own world coming to an end?

She wandered to the troll girl--rooming with Kanaya had made her used to it and kept her from staring--and looked out at another batch of stars on the wall.

"Do you think they're really telling the truth?"

"Yes! I was trying to see if I could figure out what makes it happen," shre replied cheerfully, hands clasping behind her back as she rocked back on her heels a little. "I haven't figured it out yet, but the Empire wasn't expanded in a day and all that, right?"

"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."

"...What..." She tried to absorb the idea that everyone on Alternia was dead and gone. It was a little easier when she realized that she had assumed that the other had died or at the very least been taken into services nearly as bad as death. But the entire world they had tried so hard to change...

"A timeline?"

"Oh." It was an odd thing to be cheerful about, certainly, but that wasn't bad. Naminé regarded her quietly for a moment. At least she could go about her work without being saddened by it. "That sounds like a good idea." It really did. "But..." She kind of wanted to ask, 'what Empire', but this other question seemed more appropriate. "...it doesn't... upset you?"

"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.

"Um... well, let me see if I can explain this so you'll understand," she began, folding her legs and holding her closed hands apart. "Let's say my left hand is an event that's supposed to happen. Now- there's a number of things that could go 'wrong', and really only one way it can go 'right'. Now, for each of those possibilities, there is a timeline that's created- that is to say, an alternate but concurrent reality in which things went 'wrong' alongside the one where it went 'right'. Regardless, each one of those now exists," here, her hand unfurled, each finger representing a timeline, "and then within each of them, more events come up, and again, more timelines are created based on the possibilities of what could and what should happen."

She snaked her other wrist under one of her fingers, spreading the fingers of that hand as well. "And so on and so forth, until the timelines where things go 'wrong' eventually end. Usually much sooner than the timelines where things go 'right'. Um... Did that make sense?"

Edited 2011-09-05 17:55 (UTC)

"Well- it's a little complicated. I mean, I'm upset that it supposedly happened, but at the same time, my world had already been destroyed, and all my friends seem to be showing up here anyway, so... it's alright, for now. I'm just not too sure if what presumably happened to our worlds is what actually happened." She gave the other girl a bright, determined smile. "But I'm going to find out."

Dicsiple stared at this, trying to work her head around it. Why would it matter if there were other timelines, the one she was in was the one that mattered...And...There could be millions right. They can't all exist at once.

"I don't...So...you think Alternia wasn't destroyed in my time?" She tried to skip past all the timey-wimey to the root of the problem. Was her world destroyed or not.

"I don't know just yet. Considering the mechanics of important things I was up to before I got here, I find it highly unlikely that it is... but since I'm not sure about the state of the world where others are from, I can't really say for certain that it isn't." She turned her head to look at her, taking in the brightness of her hair and eyes with a certain degree of interest (humans were so colorful!) and then offering a small smile.

"But I don't think just believing whatever this place tells us is really the right way to go."

"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.

"It's a possibility that it wasn't until long after you were pulled here," she replied, making a helpless motion with her hands. "It's also possible that this place did save you from some sort of annihilation, and you were from a timeline that was meant to be doomed."

She didn't really like insinuating that someone was doomed, of course, except that sooner or later that 'doomed' tended to kick in pretty aggressively.

Naminé nodded slowly. "That must make it easier. You're... a troll, aren't you? I've heard a little bit about what happened to your world. I'm sorry." There was a hesitant pause, then, "I'd like to know, too."

"Is there...a way to figure out if I am or not?" Disciple tilted her head, "I'd hate to think...that all our work was for nothing."

"I'm sorry, but without being able to go back to your timeline and double-checking, I couldn't tell you for sure..." And she really is sorry- she knows what it's like to try and try and try so hard only for things not to pan out in the long run. "I wish I could be of a little more help."

Edited 2011-09-07 08:17 (UTC)

She shook her head and smiled, "I know it's not your job to know everything. Tell me have you heard of Signless or seen this symbol?" She lifted her necklace from under her clothes and dangled it out. The cancer symbol was obvious enough.

"I know it's a long shot if I'm from a doomed timeline."

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Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles

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Wrapping it up?

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Sure~

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

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