towerofanimus | Wannabe Locksmith

Characters: Ventus and evrr'bodyyyy
Setting: Room 1-16 and Floor Fifteen
Format: Have prose, will action for CR
Summary: Ven is keybladeless, so he undertakes an endeavor to try and fix his tragic keepsake. Except he is not handy at all.
Warnings: Group B paranoia ahoy, especially since he's working on a weapon. Also splinters.

[Room 1-16]

Ven didn't have any qualms about lending his glider to Romeo; sure, it was convenient getting around the tower, but he had more physical training than most people, so it just a minor nuisance. What he didn't realize at the time was that it also left him without his weapon. granted, he hadn't really done much fighting since the phantoms showed up, but it was always important to be prepared, and it was hard to pull off a cure spell without the keyblade to focus his magic.

So his next idea was the broken training Keyblade he had gotten from Terra. Ven was kneeling in front of his trunk in his room, holding the two halves of the keyblade, one in each hand, looking at them with an uncharacteristic frown. He didn't even know how it had broken, because it was certainly in one piece when he had last seen it. Wonder what had happened....

[Floor Fifteen]

He couldn't spend forever moping around in his room though; there were people who were horribly disfigured and he had to do something to be on the way to helping! Ven had taken the two halves of the keyblade and ran off to the 15th floor. It was just a wooden dummy blade, but it was important to him! And since it was wooden, it couldn't be that hard to fix, right?

Of course Ven had about zero craftmanship skills, so even though he was set up with both halves on a work table, he had no real idea what he was doing. So he was basically going to go about this via trial and error. Someone stop him?

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"--What?" She was quite startled when he jumped up. For a moment she had a hard time even processing what was going on, but once she realized exactly what it was he was so frantic about she couldn't help cringing, her expression automatically growing guilty despite the fact that she wasn't guilty of any of that. "No-- no, that's not what I meant! I meant-- I'd seen some of the experiments about the heart, the ones I was talking about earlier, back in our worlds! I never-- I would never help anyone do something like that...! One of my friends was hurt, too." Well, she meant she'd never help someone cut somebody up; she would have had to admit her compliance in the studies of the heart, but that had not exactly been willing cooperation.

Ven unfortunately interpreted that cringe as a genuine reflex of guilt. Which might have meant that she felt bad about it; but also meant that she had done something.

"Maybe these experiments are the same 'experiments' about the heart' you'e talking about! You said yourself there are certain things that are similar." He kept getting angrier but, at the same time he just kept getting more sad. "I knew it was weird you knew so much...! You are working with them, aren't you!"

"They're not...!" She shook her head emphatically, and she could feel something in her getting frustrated, but instead of getting angry or anything close to it, she just got more and more hopeless, even as she contnued to argue her case. "The experiments I saw weren't like this! They did deal with feelings too, but it's not-- they didn't... they didn't just cut people up like that." Not in the instances she was aware of, anyway. That last accusation, though-- that cut the deepest. She sucked in a breath, suddenly silent and wide-eyed. She'd wanted to help; that was all she'd ever willingly done and all she'd ever wanted to do, and that was why she'd kept her mouth shut about certain things (because even if it was bad for her if her powers were exploited, it was ten times worse for the people those powers were used on, and Roxas and he were the two most susceptible subjects in the entire tower, possibly in the entire universe). It was strange; even then, she could feel no anger, only... sadness, and something strangely akin to grief, and suddenly she couldn't look at him anymore.

It was that much worse because she'd been guilty of doing the bidding of those who wished to harm others before. Now, she was innocent - but the shame remained. Maybe this was her punishment. She should have known she'd never get off so easily. When at last she managed to force her throat to cooperate with her again, she raised her head once more. She tried so hard to keep from letting that distress show, and in a sense she succeeded (or could it be called a failure). Her voice, however, was traitorous and shook slightly as she said, as firmly and calmly as she could, "No. I'm not."

"How do I know? How do I know you're not lying..?! Maybe you're here to spy on us, so that no one can try and get out of here, and you can keep us here and pick the best candidates...!!" His own voice was starting to quiver, and it was increasingly obvious that while he was sad and angry, he was above all scared. Because of what the tower people could do and the fact that he had thought Naminé was so nice before, and now he was keenly aware of the fact that he no longer had a weapon to defend himself.

In the silence before she spoke again, Ven was halfway to a battle stance despite lacking his Keyblade, his arms slightly more drawn in towards his body than normal. And her final statement didn't seem to convince him anything to the contrary of what he was already thinking, so he just stared at her with a mixture of anger and fear.

"Because--"

Because....

Because what? Because she'd tried to help him before? Because there was no reason that she could imagine that she would do something like that? Except, her conscience was quick to remind her, she'd done it before, and the reason then had been self-preservation; she'd stood up to that fear and put her life at risk before, but always, always, she fought with the new fear that, should something like that ever happen again, she wouldn't be strong enough to do it again.

He had every right and reason to be suspicious. It was probably safer for him if she left him be. She'd wanted friends, so badly, and she'd wanted to be his friend, too, but that was such a selfish thing for her to want. She forced herself to look at him, to look at his anger and his fear and the way he acted as though she was liable to attack him at any moment, and no matter how badly she wanted to look away and pretend that that wasn't the case, that she hadn't caused this, she couldn't. It was the truth, and she deserved every bit of discomfort that it caused her. It was nearly impossible to keep a straight face at that point, and she felt a very sudden and forceful urge to weep but did not indulge it.

"...Because I'm not." But that did absolutely nothing to make her case, and she lowered her head to break her gaze away from his. "But-- I understand..." She would not cry. There was no reason for her to; it was pointless and she was well aware that she was actually incapable of sadness anyway. "... why you would think that. And I think--" No. "I think that I should go." Not that that would do anything to make him less suspicious, but she had no desire to upset him farther, or to incite even more fear. Fear.... It was so strange to see it on someone else and know that she was the cause of it and it made her feel ill.

"Is that it?!" That was a pretty shoddy defense. If she was a spy she should've been trying to defend herself more, right? Had he guessed right? Everything seemed to point to the fact that she was some malicious party, that she was one of them; how else could she know so much?! She had seen the experiments it made sense...! But he didn't want it to be true, but it must've been but...!

"What are you...?! Why...?!" Nothing was making sense in Ven's head anymore; he grabbed the sides of his head in distress. Was she admitting it? Was she one of them? "Sh-Shut up!" Naminé wouldn't have to worry about going, because Ven was going to dart out of his room on his own. Everything was wrong, wrong, wrong....

Was that it? ...Yes, it was. There was really nothing she could say to prove her innocence except perhaps explaining her powers, but that... would cause more problems than it would solve for all parties involved. Would he even believe her if she did try to tell him? It was a pretty strange thing to hear. As it turned out, she didn't get the chance anyway; his obvious distress and being told to shut up effectively crippled any attempts she might have made to explain herself further, although she did stand out of her own distress. Automatically her hand started to reach out but she stopped it, knowing full well such a gesture would only make things worse. Just the idea that she'd already upset him this much was horrible enough.

She made no immediate move to follow him upon his exit, but instead after a few surprised moments hurry after to the doorway to make sure that he hadn't hurt himself in his hurry and maybe where he'd gone but no farther than that. Where in the world could he be going? ...Well, anywhere but where she was, she could assume.

Wannabe Locksmith

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