towerofanimus | SEVENTEENTH STAFF ♞ interrupted reverie

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SEVENTEENTH STAFF ♞ interrupted reverie

Characters: Sayaka & pals (you are the pals) (it's you)
Setting: literally every floor because wtf tower??
Format: i start prose habitually but i'll match ya
Summary: Sayaka Miki (+5 years) realizes there is a disparity in the tower that ISN'T just effecting people. Where did floor 100 go?!
Warnings: Sayaka's been effected by the event, and will be notably different than usual (as in hi have a twenty year old with a self-done haircut and and a lot of issues).

She can't recall what exactly it was that made her think "hey, wait a moment, the tower isn't the same as it was yesterday," but here she was, at the lowest floor they were allowed on, taking the staircase up two at a time, because like she gives a damn about falling.

"One," "two," "three," "four," "five--" she firmly states the number of a floor aloud, when she crests the staircase to the next.

The first five floors are the same as usual, though they're serving something different than the last time she was down at the cafeteria - maybe the month had turned and she hadn't noticed. ..Again. She spares a moment for a viewing station on floor five - yeah, home's the same wasteland it always is, not a single blasted rock out of place. It hasn't changed since she was last back out there herself, kicking over wreckage and wishing the world would be ended enough that she didn't have to be here in it.

Six, seven, eightnineten--

This forest is boring. The pool she gives a once-over to, wondering if she could spot a friend in there - but regardless, Sayaka moves on. Having to go through the maze is a stupid dumb waste of time (she never liked randomly generated games, anyway) and the aquarium doesn't hold much fascination for her anymore. She could cheat and just take the stairs down from the dorms, but what if she's wrong and all those floors just got mixed up, rather than just being gone? It'd be a real Riki thing to do.

All the way through eleven-twelve-thirteen-fourteen-fifteen-sixteen-seventeen-eighteen-nineteen-twenty-twenty one is uneventful, but on twenty two she stares up at the hole in the ceiling going to the next place up and frowns. She always remembered there being something - off, at this part, but she shrugs it off and climbs anyway.

When Sayaka's finally made it to the very tip top of the tower, she immediately goes for the elevator to count the buttons. There's not enough. Either she's crazy, or the tower is missing about fifty floors that were there all fine 'n dandy the last time she looked. And while she's never been one to dismiss the possibility that yeah, she's finally lost that last marble -

"What the hell!"

She punches the button panel, and the doors start to slide closed. Wherever it arrives will soon be audience to an aggravated girl.

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[Out around the cafeteria, Kazumi is a bit surprised by Sayaka stomping in]

Eh? Something wrong, Sayaka?

No, now go awa--

_{[Sayaka cuts herself off mid-snub, rethinking it. She might as well ask while she's got the conversation to do it.]}

No, yes, there's something odd. Have you been to the higher floors today? Notice anything?

_{[There's an underlying note of desperation to her tone - c'mon, let her be right about this, because this is too strange.]}

No, not today. I've mostly been down here cooking so far. Is something different about them?

[Guess who else has been prowling around the tower? This girl. Kyoko was just about to leave the restaurant, but nope, there's Sayaka, coming out of the elevator.]

Sayaka!? I've been looking all over for you, y'know! Where--

[But, wait, something's not right here.]

--oi. What's wrong, Sayaka?

_{[When Kyoko's the first person she sees coming out of the elevator, Sayaka's body language morphs into the quintessential expression of "Ugh, you again?" She furrows her brow, looking as contrary as can be.]}

Well, congratulations, you found me! Now that that's over, see you next time -

_{[just gonna step back and reach over for that 'close door' button -]}

How about right now?

[Think you're going to escape her by retreating into the elevator? Think again. She'll just barely be able to slip in before the doors close completely.]

You can't just avoid me forever, y'know!

Now's really not a good time, busy schedule--

_{[Oh, great, Kyoko made it into the elevator. Sayaka leans against the wall, looking somewhat deflated by her continued presence. She has had this conversation at least fifty times, and she is really not in the mood for round fifty one. She's got a fallacy to pursue, and - _{and, sigh it's not like it was going to go anywhere anyway.}]}

_{--could certainly try to.}

[It's almost become like a game of hide and go seek that never ends. Sayaka avoids Kyoko, who seeks her out, but no matter how many times she finds Sayaka nothing ever changes. She can't win, but she refuses to leave her alone.

She crosses her arms, staring at Sayaka.]

Do you seriously think I'll just leave you alone while you're still like this? It's not like before, Sayaka.

[She's not who she was ten years ago, let alone when she first met Sayaka. Though she chased her even back then, didn't she?]

What do you think you're gonna accomplish by just pushing everyone away?

_{[Sayaka herself had stopped remembering exactly what her 'win' condition of the game was supposed to be, long ago. Freedom to isolation? That wouldn't feel like winning, no matter what she tries to say. Isolation was hell; she'd lived it. The choice to isolation? Choices weren't even real here -]}

Why don't you go ahead and tell me what I think? We've done this enough by now. I bet I can even quote what you would say next to what I would say next.

"Aren't you a ball of sunshine today?"

Jin had been fortunate enough to catch Sayaka at the topmost levels, while she was still being angry at an elevator button panel. Admittedly, he wasn't in the best mood himself after spending so much time in an abandoned wasteland, but at least for him it was more of a vacation than any kind of profound, spiritual-crushing sadness.

(Well, as much of a vacation as a guy like him could get.)

Add auditory hallucinations to the list of 'signs Sayaka Miki has finally lost it for real this time,' because that almost sounded like -

"Jin!?"

The look on Sayaka's face is almost comically surprised, and she has a drawn out moment of hesitation before the elevator's doors start to close and she is faced with a choice.

Bullet point a, she can turn away, pretend this didn't happen and go back to theorizing _(alone) on why they might've taken out fifty floors at once. This option comes with the bonus of not possibly indulging a sad illusion of someone who's been gone for five years.

Bullet point b, she can indulge the sad illusion _{(because what's it matter if she doesn't?)} and at least have a better afternoon than she was probably going to have otherwise.

...Yeah, let's go with b. She dashes out of the elevator in time for it to just miss clamping on the edge of her skirt.

It would be kind of a lie to say that he wasn't mildly entertained by Sayaka barely making it out of the elevator, but Jin was going to keep the mild bemusement to himself like he usually did.

"In the flesh, as far as I know," He idly joked, tugging at his collar and extending his arm to look at his (covered) forearm as if to confirm it. At the least, he'd be able to report he didn't get sunburn.

Anyways, he turned his attention back to her with a quirk of an eyebrow. "You seem surprised." He wasn't gone for THAT long, and his stuff was still here, geez.

"Are you kidding me? I..."

Sayaka lapses into a mumble, midsentence. _{"Someone's kidding me, anyway."} But she does want to be convinced.

"When did you get back? I've been running up and down the stairs half the day, so - no, nevermind," don't push at the props too much or they'll fall over, "I mean--"

She doesn't know what she means. She's tripping over half of everything she's trying to say.

Yeah, he...Sayaka wasn't exactly the most eloquent person he knew, but she wasn't usually this much all over the place. If it was possible, his eyebrow was just climbing further and further up his forehead.

"Today. What's your problem?" More Tower shenanigans?

~~Jin, careful there, or your eyebrow might just strike out on its own to take to the skies and battle the space whales.~~

"Hold on a sec."

By now, Sayaka's at least had a day or so to piece together some of the current situation in the tower - namely, the remaining populace has been grossly mismatched along what she can piece together of the timeline (which isn't much, when you've been almost a non-participant in a lot of that timeline) and those fifty floors are still on the lam.

Her problem is, as usual, the tower.

With all that in mind, she circles Jin once - and comes to a stop more out of sorts than when she started. Still looks pretty damn real. That's when she stumbles upon a thought.

Well, if there's people saying they're from different times, why wouldn't the tower have just tossed in a Jin from the past? She might as well test the theory.

"Got any clue how long you were out? There's been, um, a recordkeeping issue."

~~He will become the looney tune character and be crazy and alone.~~

Well it certainly just kept getting weirder, and he half-followed Sayaka as she circled around him, though Jin himself remained in one place. This was...a little bit uncomfortable, to say the least. And awkward.

"I dunno... A month? Maybe more. Desolate wastelands ain't really the best for secretary work."

So she's right, and whenever this mess inevitably clears up, she's pretty certain who's going to be cleared right back out with it -

"Oh. Okay. I think I get it."

Her pensive expression persists for a moment longer - then she cracks an actual smile, breaking the strange mood she'd been in.

...Well, everything here is temporary, after all. Usually, she's just gloomy about that thought - but why not enjoy having her friend back while it lasts? She can deal with the profound, spiritual-crushing sadness later.

"There's some weird time thing going on, so I thought it'd be longer! That's not so bad, though."

Alright, now things were getting creepy. Unless Sayaka had become bipolar in a month, she didn't usually have giant grinning mood swings. ~~Or maybe he's just not used to being smiled at.~~

"'Longer'?" Cue the wary tone, 'cause uh...Jin didn't really like the sound of that at all. "Sayaka Miki getting something within a five minute span? The hell is going on with you?"

"Maybe I got smarter!"

...Okay, not even seconds later and she can't keep a straight face after saying that, and snickers. Once she's recovered her composure, Sayaka offers a... semi-decent response:

"I think they broke time. Somehow. There's a bunch of floors missing and people who look wayyy different ages than they did last weekend, so..."

Alright, not even Jin can keep a straight face with a set up like that. He even deigns to let out a small chuckle of amusement while Sayaka's regaining her composure. "Yeah, maybe in Wonderland."

"'Broke time'?" Well that sounded concerning! "Are you losing it? They can't just lose a whole block of floors like that."

Then again, new floors usually appeared over night, so maybe it wasn't THAT unreasonable.

"Oh, sure. Been thinking I was losing it since I woke up this morning. But anyway--"

To be more honest, she's been thinking she was losing it for this whole conversation.

"They've already broke everything else to see what happens, so why not crunch down a bunch of years and like fifty floors?"

"They've never reduced the number of floors before, though. Why would they?"

Sayaka seemed pretty convinced though, so this was...kind of moving away from hilarious and more towards concerning.

"Are you imagining things?" Probably the work of another experiment, if he had to guess, but...

[ Mami had been taking a stroll around the tower, thinking she's been here for a good ten years, when suddenly A WILD SAYAKA APPEARS-- ]

... Miki-san?

Language.

[Darkleer's severe drawl carries a hint of exasperated annoyance in it, as he looks down at the human almost challengingly. Seriously, he's being doing this shit for far too long. But he'll keep doing it. Forever it seems.]

Don't be crude.

_{[Oh. Oh, it's a troll! An uncomfortably large grin cracks its way across Sayaka's face. She used to be generally weary of trolls, but more experience taught her a crucial life lesson: they can be great to rile up if you prefer to not be thinking too much about whatever you were doing beforehand. She appreciates the break from her near-spiral into a deadly case of 'caring about weird stuff happening in the tower.']}

Mine? It's Japanese. And yours is, uh - Alternian, right? I bet what I just said doesn't even sound like a word the way you're really meant to hear it. Lookin' at it like that, does 'crude' even apply at all?

[You cannot rattle this lineface, Sayaka. You just can't. Darkleer arches an eyebrow at her reply.]

Charming.

[The deadpan clearly shows that Darkleer feels anything but about her antics.]

Lancer is surveying the destroyed remains of the cathedral. Whoever had been here had done an even more thorough job than before. He has to wonder at which inhabitant could hate the sight of a Church this much.

He turns as he hears the sound of someone stomping out of the elevator.

"Sayaka...?"

What's wrong Sayaka? [Romeo looked at her worriedly as the elevator opened at the cafeteria.] Did something happen?

_{[Sayaka opens her mouth, closes it - and gives her fuzzy mind a few moments to sort out what her mental image of Romeo is, anymore. She loses track of the dates so easily - and even though it's been years, she feels all those years, she still can't get over people getting older. Any dissonance between the age he looks now and the age that's established like a sore thumb in her mind is hastily smoothed over by that self-doubt.

She's still just the same little girl who signed away her own soul, and that's the painfully important part, in the face of people whose lives kept marching.]}

We're missing some places. Or I forgot how to count.

Have you been up? Not all the way up, but upstairs. Close to the top but not the top.

_{[She sounds flighty and subdued, which are both things Sayaka Miki usually is not.]}

Yes. But not today. [She sounds worried, and that made Romeo worried because she was usually so sure of herself, at least in how she showed herself to others. He looked at the elevator and frowned.] There should be more...

Someone finally makes it back to the staircase after swinging the Arch at empty space behind him repeatedly every time he felt something brush the back of his head.

When he climbs onto the staircase with a heavy sigh at the things in there, he takes a moment to catch his breath. He hears someone approaching behind him, and he leans to the side to let them pass. And sees it's someone who, thankfully, has not mysteriously aged. If this is Riki's idea of a joke, it's a bad one.

"Hello, Sayaka..." He still sounds a little tired from not being sure of the things in the dark, but he's willing to get up and walk with his young friend a ways. Especially because he wants to know he's not alone in all this aging and time perception weirdness clearly going on.

Sayaka's always had easy tells. For instance, she has a jolt at the sound of Enoch's voice, that can be heard in a chaotic interruption to the rhythm of her steps. She's not walking next to the banister, so Sayaka settles for gripping her wrist in a small gesture of frustration.

This is yet another conversation she doesn't want to have all over again, for the not-even-she'd-keep-count-of-that-th time.

"Enoch," she acknowledges in as neutral a tone as she can.

Okay, that falter in her steps and that tone have Enoch worried. What was going on...?

"Sayaka, are you all ri-..."

Enoch's question is cut off in a gasp as the stairs drop out from under them. Suddenly, they're over by the wall again, the same glowing warning near them. Enoch had never been able to see what the warning was about, because generally, the whispers and things brushing past him were enough to spur him back towards the staircase instead of fumbling in the dark around the glowing writing.

There's a shout near him, and Enoch jumps, the Arch coming back out and opening, its glow providing only enough illumination to see the outline of his upper body, only his knuckles clearly visible, being right next to the beam. Not enough to see by and thankfully not enough to do the same as the flashlight.

[Within the cafeteria, a certain kid can be seen talking to some inhabitants of the tower, nothing out of the ordinary.

So.

How do you like having someone walk up to you and open up the conversation with:]

Um, I have some questions to ask, if you don't mind?

[Complete with a pen and a notebook out on his hands.]

_{[Sayaka ceases her halfhearted attempt at getting a spoon to spin on the table and straightens up - the notebook catches her eye right away, and up go the eyebrows. Blatant fishing for information is.. honestly, not something she necessarily would discourage, but...]}

How many, exactly? I guess if it's not all just about obvious junk...

[His hand with the pen was raised as he joined his index finger with his thumb and let the other three fingers stay raised, giving the signal for the number three at her.]

Just three, actually.

Okay. Hit me.

_{[She'll keep count as he asks them.]}

...How long have you been stuck here?

[One of the most important questions.]

_{[She takes a little while to count up the months in her head, occasionally murmuring lone phrases under her breath - stuff like, "was that before he left?" "I don't think anything happened that time, though..."

Finally, she's got the answer:]}

Six years. I lost a couple months here or there, but that feels right.

That's one question.

The second one, then...

Have you met others that claimed that they're from other periods of time?

Yeah, over the past couple days. There's been a few crazy numbers, but really - the most it ever could be is... seven years, if I remember it all right. That's when they started putting people like us - _{[Sayaka punctuates this by tapping the rim of her violet collar,]} - in here, instead of whatever the hell they were up to beforehand.

And what's unlucky number three?

Edited 2013-01-26 09:07 (UTC)

Um, what's your name?

[Yep.

That's his third question.]

..That's it?

_{[Asking the obvious questions in the tower since 2k12.]}

...Well, okay!

Call me 'the great and terrible Sayaka Miki' on your survey results and we'll be set.

Can't we just leave it at 'Sayaka Miki', then?

[TOO LONG AND DOOM-WIELDING OKAY.]

I guess, if you wanna be boring about it.

_{[Sayaka steeples her hands together in front of her and hunches forward over the table a bit, trying to project a judging look.]}

Y'know, I think that might've all actually qualified as obvious junk. You at least got something neat you're gonna use it all for?

Not really, I'm just documenting the changes in case I can find a clue on how these events work, I guess.

[maybe this is not the information he needs, but information is information after all...]

Oh, I used to do that song and dance!

_{[She claps her hands together, once.]}

Have fun burning yourself out, notebook-bro. There's patterns, but then all you can do with them is dread the inevitable.

[...Whoa, cynical much? Then again, with her timeframe, things such as this are pretty much inevitable.

Kinda depressing, but that's just the way life is, he supposed.]

Even if it's just like that, even if it's futile...

I won't stop looking.

At least, that's my answer.

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SEVENTEENTH STAFF ♞ interrupted reverie

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Floor Twenty-One

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forwarddated to idk the 15th??

this is now elevator shenanigans: the log entry

the Elevator would be a bombin' name for a night club

it'd be stupidly tall and narrow and sway upsettingly; perfect

it's like the tower but a night club and not horrifying. so really nothing like it

so it's the tower's sissier R-18 spin-off that no one wanted

assuming the horror here isn't R-18 anyway

tru enuff

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Infirmary.

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floor 13

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Floor 46

HI THERE DELICIOUS TAG also i vote they get dropped right back in to maximize enoch's frustration

omg yes, vote seconded

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