ITP: Concerning the nature of souls and finding purpose

[no_longer_a_king]

Characters: Arturia [AU5] and OPEN
Setting: Various, with prompts for floors 82, 12, and 60. After the elevator event, but the timeline is otherwise completely flexible
Format: Prose, please!
Summary: Arturia goes around making sure the people she knows are still alive after seeing what's down stairs, and other sundry things.
Warnings: none as of yet.

[A: Various, possibly combined with other prompts if you like.]
It was still like a blow to the guts.

Their actual status here wasn't what had shaken her so badly. They were souls in an artificial body, made by some form of magic. That didn't phase her because that was essentially what her existence had been from the moment she made that contract on Camlann Hill. It was the true of all Heroic Spirits and familiars like them. It was true of Counter Guardians like herself and Archer.

No, what had shaken her so badly had been seeing the bodies. Arturia had thought she had seen battle so much a mass grave couldn't phase her, but when the bodies are people she knew--multiples of people she knew--she'd wanted to retch. If she hadn't had so much experience, she supposed, she would have thrown up right there. So many people, even if they were just acquaintances, as corpses. She had to make sure that what they saw happen in the great machine was real--that they were truly all right.

That was why she was rushing through the Tower now, trying to find as many familiar faces as she could. Visions of slashing through the Grail-tainted Camelot were playing in the back of her mind, the horror of it, the suffering. She had to be sure those graves were not the reality of now. Had to.

[B: Floor 82; Masquerade of Truth]
Arturia had never gone on this floor before and had mostly observed from the stairs. The party that seemed to go on here at all times never interested her and since she rarely saw someone she recognized, she usually passed it on. Now? After how much she had gone through the last few days? She really did want to be around people. Everyone had moments like those, even people who tried to avoid them as Arturia did.

So she stepped off the stairs, walking to the masked gentleman who acted as a 'bouncer' of sorts to the party. He looked her over for a moment and then wordlessly handed her a mask. He reached out to put it on her, but she waved her hand and took it herself before placing it on.

Then he stepped aside and no sooner had Arturia crossed the threshold than another masked gentleman took her by the hand and began to whisk her across the dance floor. Arturia was graceful and skilled on the battlefield and there had been many a time at court or during some kind of festival or banquet when she had had to dance with Guinevere. It was easy to figure out the steps her partner followed and, while she was certainly no dancer by trade, she did not embarrass herself. it was easy to briefly lose herself and simply forget and by the time her partner released her on the other side of the room after their dance was when Arturia realized something:

She could not recognize anyone here. She had a vague feeling she should, but the thought of who it could be was gone the moment it entered her mind upon looking at the person.

Odd. Must be a trick of the floor.

[C: Floor 60; Industrial Kitchen]
In her more private moments, Arturia tended to find herself lingering in kitchens and thinking. Reminiscing, really. About the Fifth War and Shirou. About how the kitchen had been his domain and, painful as the memories were, it was comforting to think of him at times, of the way he'd insist on how she was a person and not a tool, of how he treated her like a guest in his home. True, his teasing had gotten on her nerves, but it had been a very long time since she'd been Arturia and not King Arthur.

But that was the past. Anything that might have happened with Shirou she could not undo and there was only one part she would ever hope to. Perhaps, if she had made more effort, been less weak, then maybe--maybe--things would be different. Maybe she would not have become the World's Sword. Maybe she would have peacefully gone to her rest if she had stayed her hand that fateful day.

This would probably be her only chance to reminisce for a very long time. Things in the Tower had changed and Arturia had no doubt things were about to get busy. No matter how she failed in the past, there were people here who needed help, who needed saving and she....

Arturia was not sure if she was a knight anymore, but she did know one thing: she could not stand by when people needed help. When people she considered comrades and allies needed help.

And so she went through the kitchen silently saying good-bye to her indulgence of the past and mentally prepared herself for the future.

[D: Floor 12; World Death Projection]
Arturia stood in front of the latest of the projections running, this time the object of focus was a red planet bloated with skyscrapers and vehicles that crossed through the atmosphere like bees in a hive. It stayed like this for a few minutes, the occasional bright flash in the sky as two of the vehicles ran into each other and then, it began to glow.

As with the last projection the glow seemed to fade, the vehicles in the sky making looping zig-zags before crashing to the planets. Buildings fell from the impacts. The nearby sun began to dim and slowly, spreading out from this one world, everything began to go dark until the only source of light in the room was the planet at the center of the show.

"Is this what's happening to the worlds?" she asked allowed as the projection began again--a space station proudly bearing the moniker "UFP: NEW HOPE" the center of it this time. She'd never paid attention to this room before, but after being downstairs and finding out what had happened above, she was getting interested in what, exactly, had destroyed these worlds.

Comments

D

[lightofhumanity]

"It would appear so."

chaos had come into the room just as this person-another odd spirit of sorts-had spoken, so he replied. There was no smile on his face.

"It is odd..I never thought my universe would end like this. It was always on the brink of destruction..but I did not think it would be destroyed in this manner."

D

[ghostytrainer]

John's always had mixed feelings about this floor. On the one hand: giant space projections are pretty awesome! On the other: the fact that the projections always show a universe being destroyed is a little unsettling. Even to someone who believes that the universes are not as gone as the admins would like everyone to believe. Even after everything that happened downstairs in the admin levels last week, John still clings to this hope. Sure, they may all be endlessly reanimated souls shoved into copies of their own bodies but that doesn't mean more factors can't be in play here.

In any case, upon catching sight of Arturia, John decides against bypassing the floor and leaves the stairs. He crosses the room, putting his hands in his pockets as he approaches the young woman and drawing level with her just in time to hear her question to nobody.

"You believe them then?"

D

[swordedpast]

He approaches her in silence when he sees the familiar figure. Archer has been wandering the tower since the network came back on, unable to fully process the revelations in those posts. No, that's not true. He can process them all right. But if he thinks too hard on what he saw, all thoughts lead back to the same one: why, now of all times, was he spared when so many died? Why again? Wasn't the first time punishment enough?

By the time he ends up on the twelfth floor, he's too numb from the endless repetition of self-blame and bitter regrets inside his head to feel much at the sight of that white-clad vision of the woman he's thought of so often. He approaches her in silence and only speaks when he draws near.

"I wonder. Saber. Do you think it's still our duty to stop this?"

He nods at the endless display, and as he asks the question, he feels it sink in: he acknowledges this other spirit as just like him, in a way she was never meant to be.

D

[unkindnessof]

"...Is it?"

Raven had, from the moment he arrived in the Tower, tried to avoid dwelling on the claims that their worlds were destroyed, and therefore this floor by proxy. It's simply absurd. Surely nothing of the sort could have occurred so quickly as to have them go to sleep in their own worlds one moment, and wake up the next in their rooms here. Not without any warning.

Still, faced with as many illusions as had cropped up over the past few days, it's hard not to doubt.

He'd come onto the floor to reassure himself, 'of course not, it couldn't happen,' but instead. Instead, he simply watched the projections cycle.

"I always thought... that if something were to happen to the world I came from, it would have been something else.

"Not this, whatever it is."

A) Between floors

[adorably_evilish]

This was probably not a familiar face she had wanted to see, their encounters hadn't been the most... welcoming and yet, it was hard to miss the Yordle who seemed rather calm in spite of all that had been happening.

As he made his way up the floors, he heard the hurrying footsteps and looked up, his Black Torch at the ready before he noticed who they belonged to. He lowered his rod for slightly but kept on guard. You never knew with this place even if the particular subject might not have been the best at games.

"In a hurry?" he called out as she approached.

A, forward dated to Friday "evening"

[angramaintsu]

How fortunate it was that she was to run into Rin Matou all by her lonesome. It was rare enough to find her in the dormitory levels these days as she took to wandering the more dangerous floors to avoid others involved in the Holy Grail War.

So there's an unhealthy amount of animosity rising once she sees Saber. It wasn't that she felt anything ill towards her, but she had heard stories of the knightly girl that amounted to her fighting against people such as herself. It was only natural that Rin's finger flex defensively before she shuts down her paranoia for arrogance.

"You look like you've seen a ghost." The irony isn't lost on her, in fact she smiles at the joke of telling a ghost she's seen one when the person she's staring down is more alive than herself. "Has a monster made it's way onto this floor? I'll dispose of it."

B; Floor 82

[whiteblackknight]

A ballroom? On this floor?...How interesting. The mask was a bit tacky, however. Recognizing others on this floor seemed a little iffy, but not by sight. It was more like trying to remember an old friend, picturing the face and their personality but still just out of reach of who they were. Was it a trick, or was Mr. Walker's memory just being touchy?

Experience has taught the latter.

Whoever this...person was, she could dance quite well. Allen found himself reaching out and saying "may I have this dance?", and not because he didn't want to, inwardly. He might not be as good, but "dancing" is very similar to what he's done in the past. How hard could it be?

floor 12

[fusedstars]

"Unknown," spoke Hei, just arriving on the floor. He was on his way to hunt for some more food when he stopped on this floor, taking note of that question. Honestly, he didn't know what exactly did all of this, information everywhere scattered thanks to those random clone naps.

"However, I choose to focus on the threats testing our sanity within this tower, even if there's little I can do about either situation."

He wasn't a mage, a Servant, or anything like the other people here. Without the meteor shard, he couldn't hold a candle to most, even with his extremely deadly skills.

A; Library

[yougotthatwrong]

...Hello?

[There's the sight of a confused boy as he stared at the girl looking about.]

Can I help you with something?

[And at that question, a similar face popped into his mind; the girl by that weird floor-less floor.]