towerofanimus | (no subject)

(no subject)

23:30:00
Silent dormitory rooms are lined with bodies--not dead, just sleeping. Throughout the tower it is pitch black and silent. At the base of the tower, countless shining eyes, watching.

23:45:00
The tower hums to life. Lights blink on in one by one; only the dormitory rooms remain dark. A small army of blank-faced humanoids appear and spend the next ten minutes taking various positions around the tower.

23:59:00
An order given. The dormitory room lights blink on.

00:00:00
You are awake.

00:00:30
You can move.

Begin

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Whoa whoa whoa strange kid in a weird suit.

Shoutarou stands up, and the really strange sensation of his own suit hits him. This is not clothing befitting of a hard-boiled detective.

"I'm fine, I'm fine, I--" he starts, patting himself down. He seems to have none of the usual carried items on his person, and his hat is missing.

"...what is this place? What's going on here?"

It's okay, Shoutarou, Fletcher isn't wearing his hat either. They can be hatless buddies.

"I-- I don't know." He looks around again, nervously. "I just woke up and then I couldn't move and..." His voice is shaking, but that's okay, it's not like he knows anything Shoutarou doesn't.

Okay, Shou doesn't know the kid, but he's freaked out too. He takes a breath, then wipes his own face down with a hand. Gotta be the adult here. If this is someone's kid, they're probably looking for him.

"Okay, okay... Let's look around a bit. See what we can figure out." The room isn't too big, there's three other beds beside's Shoutarou's own. The beds have trunks and nightstands beside them, and there's papers there?

Shoutarou grabs them, and starts to read...

Huh? Fletcher hadn't noticed those papers before, but there's two on his nightstand too. He picks his up and starts to read them.

By the time he's finished, he's about ready to crawl back into bed and hide under the blanket until all of this goes away. No, no, no, no... If his world's been destroyed then that means...

"Brother...?"

Shoutarou lowers the letters after reading them - he finds it all hard to believe.

Rather, impossible to believe.

The universe at large has taken away the people most important to him already, now it's finishing the job by destroying his home and leaving him here? Akiko, Terui, Jinno, Makki, Queen, Elizabeth, Watcherman, Santa-chan...

Shoutarou crumples the papers up and throws them aside, standing up and rubbing his face again. This can't be true, can it?

He's about to go find who's behind this and do some percussive interrogation when he hears the kid again. He files that rage away for a moment, then walks over to Fletcher and squats down, putting a hand on the boy's shoulder if he'll allow it.

So very half-boiled, self.

Fletcher's stuck staring at the first letter -- he hasn't been able to put it aside to read the second -- and has almost forgotten about Shoutarou, until the man puts his hand on his shoulder. He jumps, and looks up, hands shaking and eyes wide and teary.

"...it's not true," he says simply, as though just saying it will make it so.

Oh hell, the kid's close to crying.

So much for putting that rage away.

Shoutarou puts on a serious-but-reassuring face. "I..." He doesn't want to say it's not true. What if it is? "...I don't want to believe it. But don't worry - I'm a detective. I'll figure out what's going on here." Small reassuring smile go!

Fletcher sniffles, but wipes his eyes before he can start crying in front of a total stranger, and nods in reply. A detective? Well, that should be useful... Fletcher's detecting skills are pretty useless.

"O-okay. I... I'll help if I can," he says. He will help. Somehow.

He looks back down at the papers in his hands, and looks at the second one now. It's information on the place they're in... and a job notification? He has a job?

Oh, hey, Shoutarou should probably introduce himself.

He puts a hand out for a handshake. "I'm Shoutarou Hidari."

That's a weird name. Fletcher doesn't care right now, though; he eyes Shoutarou's hand, and shakes it weakly. "My name's Fletcher Tringham. It--it's nice to meet you. Mr. Hidari."

"Likewise, though I wish it was under better circumstance--"

Shoutarou is cut off by a thumping noise coming from the trunk at the end of his bed. He turns around, watching the thing for a moment before holding up a hand toward Fletcher to signal him to stay there while he creeps toward the trunk...

The thumping sound makes Fletcher jump. Could this situation possibly get any worse? He backs up, though there's not really anywhere for him to go at this point, and just watches as Shoutarou moves.

His hands instinctively go for where his pockets should be, but he doesn't have any in this weird suit. No chalk, nothing he can draw with to protect himself if something dangerous appears.

As Shoutarou gets closer to the trunk, the top swings open!

...and out flies Shoutarou's little bat-camera-robot. Shoutarou ungracefully moves back when the chest opens, but he facepalms a good bit once he realizes what came out.

Said bat flies over to Shoutarou and lands on his shoulder, while a few more noises come from the trunk. Moving over there, he peeks in and hey! Here's a bunch of his stuff.

"Ack!" Fletcher flinches backward when the... thing... flies out of the trunk, but it looks like Shoutarou is okay with it...

He edges forward slightly, since it seems like it's safe. "Um-- wh-what's in there? What is that thing?" He gestures to the robot.

The bat hops to turn around and look at Fletcher, while Shoutarou pulls out a fedora from the trunk. A robot frog, a little bigger than the bat hops out, while noises that would indicate more critters are inside can be heard.

"It's...a lot of my stuff." Shoutarou answers, looking at the trunk's contents with a bit of confusion. These four are here, but his phone isn't? Strange. There's normal clothes, though, so that's a plus.

Looking back at Fletcher, Shoutarou pulls the bat from his shoulder, and removes its memory. It folds up, looking more like a camera now. "This--well, these are tools I use for my work."

'Awake' was such a relative term for Holland; sure, his eyes might be slightly open but it usually took him a few minutes to wake up properly; in the dark, he wasn't really aware of being in a different place yet, and he hadn't noticed not being able to move because he hadn't actually tried to move.

But the voices were unexpected, and just as quick he realizes he's not at home.

Cautious and defensive by nature he simply lies there and listens, not saying anything right away.

. . . what the hell was he wearing? He definitely remembered going to bed in his favorite pajamas.

Since the other two men in the room don't seem to be awake (that Fletcher can tell, anyway), he keeps his focus on Shoutarou and the weird little robots. He moves closer.

"They're yours? Why're they in there?" He peers into the trunk -- clothes, and some hats too? Wait, so would that mean...

He turns to the trunk at the foot of his bed and pulls it open, revealing his own clothing, some notebooks... huh. "They brought our stuff with us?"

"I haven't a clue why, but I'm glad they did," Shoutarou says as he rounds up the robots and removes their Memories, reverting them into tool forms. He fishes a set of clothes out, as well as a hat - which quickly goes on his head, despite not going with the ridiculous outfit he had on.

"I propose we get into our normal clothes and set to seeing just what's going on here."

Spain had always been a heavy sleeper. It took earthquakes to wake the sleeping nation. He rolls over in bed, mumbling nonsensical things every now and then before scratching at his neck in his sleep. As he touches the collar around his neck, his face becomes more troubled and his mumbling becomes more clear, though, in Spanish. You see, Spain is dreaming,

Dreaming that it's the 18th century again, he's on a boat, below deck, and he's captured again. Somewhere in his dream, he can hear that annoying, drunken laugh and it's making him angry. He's in chains and collared again and damn it, England, he'll kill you when he finally gets free. He hears footsteps in his dream and England steps forward, offering the Spaniard some food. English food. This dream is so scary. It's a nightmare. A nightmare, a nightmare, a nightmare. . .

And Spain finally wakes up at the tower, screaming, "¡Pirata! Noooooo!" And he proceeds to fall off his bed.

Fletcher nods to Shoutarou, gathering up one of those sets of clothes -- and then jumps, and drops them right back into the trunk when he hears a scream and a thump.

He crouches down, half to pick his clothes back up and half to hide, and looks over.

No.

Hell no.

This . . . this was stupid. Immediately it was stupid, because Spain was here shouting about pirates and he didn't know where he was and what the hell was he wearing and why did he have a collar around his neck and this wasn't even his bed. His bed was way more comfortable than this one!

Still, with a quiet groan he rolls over, shoving his head under the pillow and pulling the blankets up all of the way. Suddenly he didn't want to know any of the answers.

Shoutarou stands up at the sudden noise, clothes in-hand.

"Pirates?" He looks over at Fletcher, then to Spain. And hey, the person in the other bed is moving around too.

He stops tugging at the collar and stares up at the ceiling from the ground. That isn't his ceiling. No, it's missing his slow turning fan and. . . this isn't his light pouring into the room either. It isn't until he hears someone repeat what he said that Spain realizes he isn't alone.

Scrambling onto his knees, he looks over the bed at the strangers. "Who are you?"

"Um-- I'm Fletcher," Fletcher said. He stood back up, holding his clothes again. "S-sorry... we don't know where we are, the letters said-- they said the world was d-destroyed and someone saved us..."

. . . the letters said what? Netherlands has only been hearing bits of pieces through the pillow over his head, but the boy's words catch his attention immediately. He sits up, pillow in his lap.

"The world was what . . . what letter, where . . . " He starts looking around.

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

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Ugh I keep using the wrong journal pfft