cross your fingers, hold your toes. we're all gonna die when the building blows.

[uzuki]

Characters: Shion & YOU~
Setting: You can catch her passing through the dorm floors, the libraries, the media room, or her moping on floor 12.
Format: Take your pick.
Summary: Shion is a mess, surprise.
Warnings: None yet.


After the elevator incident, Shion hadn't exactly been sure what to do. She didn't know how she felt about knowing how the tower worked. On one hand, it was disgusting and it was unnatural. Jason and the rest were keeping them all in the dark and as prisoners. On the other hand... They were immortal. What difference did it make what body you had, as long as you were the same person on the inside? Your soul... Your essence. That's what she had told Allen, right?

And Allen brought another issue. She wanted to see him, more than anything. But she didn't want to worry him. Sure, he was used to her recklessness, but especially after the KOS-MOS incident, she had been trying to lie low. For Allen's sake, more than her own. It might have seemed otherwise most of the time, but she didn't want him to worry about her. So she tried to calm down, or collect her thoughts. But it just wasn't happening. The more she tried to wade through the mess in her mind, the more conflicted and alone she felt.

In the end, she gave up on false pretenses, and started off for Allen's hideouts. The meadow, libraries, the media room... Eventually she ended up on the twelfth floor, quietly staring into the stars as they blinked out of existence.

Comments

[oforder]

"Shion." She couldn't walk into the library without expecting to meet him, could she? Because sure enough, here he was. The Compass was still situated perfectly on his desk in his little makeshift office, and as perfectly predictable, he sought her out immediately. If he was upset at all by what he saw, it didn't show. Of course, he wasn't; Tohko knew that he actually saw it as a good sign, a good indication of what should be coming in their near future.

"You are unharmed?" he asked casually, approaching her. "Perhaps physically. It appears the inevitable has finally occurred within the Administrators. You should not be afraid, or worried. It was only a matter of time before they began to turn upon one another."

Rather heartless, sure, but it's Wilhelm. "No act is complete without a plot twist. Characters die upon the stage. More often than not, it is one that the audience is fond of."

[uzuki]

She sighed, and closed her eyes for just a few seconds before turning to her former boss. Honestly, the fact that he had an office on the floor had slipped her mind. But there was no getting out of talking to him now. She pursed her lips to keep from grimacing, then shook her head.

"I'm not afraid, I'm more bothered by Jason's actions. Well, Ruana's too, I suppose. But keeping all these secrets, and letting people slip back to their own worlds. Dax was..."

She paused for a moment. If Enoch was right, Dax had allowed them to look behind the scenes, and he died for that reason. Maybe that part did bother her a little more than she had thought.

"Dax was trying to be honest with us, you know. And he told me that our worlds really are destroyed. It might really be true."

[oforder]

"You must know by now that everything in this Tower can potentially be a lie," Wilhelm replied nonchalantly. He patiently listened to Shion again, but were he capable of such, he would have frowned. Shion essentially answered her own question, and she didn't see it.

"Shion," Wilhelm answered. "Would Ruana be capable of allowing people to 'slip' back to their own worlds if those worlds did not exist?" He took a few steps towards her. "Allen is from a previous cycle of the eternal recurrence. His very existence in this place is proof that one, or more likely, both of them have lied to you."

[uzuki]

She looked away. When it came to Wilhelm, she often found herself backing whatever position was contrary to his own, but it was more than that this time. She wasn't sure what was worse. The idea that she had left everyone behind to be trapped in the tower, or that they had all been destroyed. But if what Dax said was true, there was at least a reason for it all. Rather than senseless cruelty.

[oforder]

"Are you, perhaps, bewildered?" He asked, an ironic reprisal of what he had said before, back on Michtam. "Shion," he answered, taking another step towards her. He was only a yard or so away by now.

"I remember seeing you say something rather telling in the Compass," he began. "I had told you before that I did not do what I did out of malice, or evil. You do not agree with the measures I took, but in the end, you knew they were necessary."

Wilhelm's eyes narrow for a moment. "The point I am making is that, whether or not you would like to admit it, I believe that you need my help." There it is. A proverbial deal with the devil. Wilhelm placed one of his hands behind his back. "I know that do not feel that you can trust me, and nor should you. But I am as much a prisoner here as you are."

[uzuki]

She didn't meet his gaze again. For some reason she felt the smallest twinge of guilt. It was true, she understood that his actions had always been necessary... But she still didn't like him. Nor did she want his help. But she did know she might not have a choice in that matter.

"So what you're saying... Is that you have something you want me to do. Is that correct?"

After all, she couldn't imagine another reason for him to suggest that she needed his help.

[oforder]

"No. If I required something of you, I would not be this direct." Probably not the answer she was looking for, but it was true. And it was likely something she already knew, anyway.

"What I do require, however, is that you do not lose what you gained from our universe." He knew she knew what he was referring to. "Beyond that, I ask that you tell me everything you learn about the remaining Administrators. The Compass cannot read them. I believe they exist outside of the collective subconscious."

[uzuki]

"Well..." She'd just gloss over the part about the pendant for now. Since it was likely that Allen would hear their conversation.

"I'm afraid I don't know that much about them, really. When a few of us went into that elevator that's usually not accessible, we ended up in Jason's offices I guess. He has a lot of medical equipment, and seems to perform a lot of grotesque experiments. He also has video access to almost every inch of the tower."

Honestly, she didn't mind helping Wilhelm when it came to the administrators. She could at least trust him not to doom her, and her friends, as long as it didn't suit his ends. Jason however...

"He seems to be in charge of those retrieval units with the red collars. Or he performs their maintenance. But that's all I know, so far."

[oforder]

"That is quite alright," Wilhelm answered. "I have others who do." Shion wasn't the only piece on the board, after all. She's just not a pawn. "I am aware of Jason's profession. It would not surprise me to learn that he does even more than what we are aware of."

He remembers the retrieval units, yes. He met them after the riot. They looked completely braindead. "It would be unlikely to turn them against their masters. They are likely under a form of mind control we are unfamiliar with."

[uzuki]

"Well, there was one interesting thing about them that we discovered there. They were all released when we accidentally set off an alarm, and it seemed that most of them were unable to access the full extent of their power. If they touch your collar, it instantly deprives you of Ether capabilities, so it might be worth noting that without their proper maintenance, they can be handled more easily."

[oforder]

"Do you know what usually triggers this alarm?"