towerofanimus | Locked in the Tower ✪ Part One: Who Saves the Superheroes?

Entry tags:

Locked in the Tower ✪ Part One: Who Saves the Superheroes?

Characters:	Late arrival David "Little David" Puskás and anyone and everyone!
Setting:	Any Dormitory Floors and staircases leading down to Floor Ninety-One. Later, the Cafeteria.
Format:	Starting with Prose, will match tagger's choice.
Summary:	Some people take the news that their world has been destroyed with nonchalance. Little David ... is not one of them.
Warnings:	Beware of low-flying superheroes!

Introspection

     David "Little David" Puskás bolts upright in his bed. The sleep paralysis left him in a state of mild panic. You'd think a Blaster like himself wouldn't be bothered by that sort of thing, given their reputation for being able to fight even in their sleep—but rarely does something like this just happen out of nowhere ... what was he doing before, anyway? Wait—no, that's right, he was about to return to Primal Earth after performing another dimension-scouting mission for Portal Corp. How'd he wind up out of his armor and in some kind of white spandex bodysuit? And in somebody else's bed? Because there's no way this could be his digs in Kings Row. His bedroom wasn't nearly this big or bland, and he sure as heck didn't share it with three other people—

     At last, David notices the letters waiting for him on the nightstand. Without getting out of the bed just yet, he reaches over and picks them both up, scanning over the first one.

     Your world has been destroyed.

     David's guts turn to ice.

     I saved you.

     No.

     Let's all be happy here.

     No.

     Screw. That. Noise.

     David doesn't even bother reading the second letter. Both of them are slammed down onto his nightstand as he tears right out of his bed—he needs to get out of here, wherever this is. He needs to get back to Primal Earth. He's got to see this destruction for himself, and if it's true—there's got to be a way to fix it. Somehow. If nothing else Silos and his Menders at Ouroboros would know what caused it and what to do—where is his gear?!

     It takes David a second to notice in his mild panic to notice the trunks and open the one at the foot of his own bed. With all the sloppy second-guessing of an impromptu fire drill, David starts gathering the pieces of his suit from the trunk, strapping them on and suiting up much as a knight would don plate mail. Once he's fully suited up and the helmet's heads-up display clicks on, David starts grabbing for his gadgets and weapons, only to find that there's only a scant few things waiting for him in the trunk—and what did they do to his rifle?! Completely in pieces, none of his ammunition to be found anywhere, not even the nanofactory—screw it, he can find a replacement on Primal Earth easily.

     He just needs to get out of here, right now—wait. First, he opens the travel cigar case he'd just placed on his belt and places a fresh stogie in his mouth. Then he bolts for the door, kicking off into the air as his back and boot-mounted plasma thrusters flare to life.

     Can't forget the cigar. Not even during the apocalypse.

Option A: Any Dormitory Floors and stairways between Floors 101 and 92

     "GANGWAY! GANGWAY! HERO ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS!"

     Little David's yelling that as he rockets through the Dormitory Floors and down into the tower proper. If he's not the only person here who's been "rescued" from the end of their world, then he has no reason to suspect that people wandering the hallways are potential minions of whatever villain laid Primal Earth low. Or so he's thinking right now. That, and he's not exactly in a position to go "defeat all enemies" lacking in ammunition and an assembled rifle as he is.

     So right now he's focusing on finding an exit out of this place as fast as possible, and he's flying as fast as he can manage through the corridors and hallways of each floor in pursuit of that goal. Initially he tries traveling up the tower only to find that the first dormitory floor is the highest accessible point, then tries making his way down instead. For a short, squat guy wearing a suit of armor that makes him look like Danny DeVito trying out for an American football team, he's surprisingly nimble, almost like a flying dolphin—not once does he splat into a wall, though he does kick off of them a few times to keep his momentum up as he rounds corners and traverses staircases.

     "OUTTA DA WAY! GET OUTTA DA WAY!"

     Of course, the same avoidance of an ungraceful collision with the confines of the tower can't be said for surprise pedestrians in his path ...

Option B: Floor 91 - CLOSED TO ~~FIRST RESPONDER~~

swordedpast

     Continuing his trek down the tower's floors, trying to find some means of escape, Little David's already seen how bizarre the floors can get. He hasn't given most of them more than a glance, though, because—let's face it, would a giant ball pit be the ideal place for a dimensional gateway to other worlds? If that letter had any truth to it (and considering how this tower's owners managed to grab him right in the middle of returning to Primal Earth), there are billions—no, probably orders of magnitude more than that—of lives at stake. Ball pits are a secondary objective.

     When Little David flies down the staircase to Floor 91, his first thought is surprise at finding that the tower seems utterly disconnected from the rest of itself. That is some high technology or magic at work, right there.

     Then he wonders if he could take a shortcut and fly down the side of the tower to find a possible exit back to Primal Earth.

     —and then the flight system's thrusters cut out, as if he had manually switched them off.

     It only takes a fraction of a second for David to recognize just what is happening: Power Suppression!

     Without the flight system active, David has no way to correct for inertia. He's carried right off the stairway, thudding onto the floor and skidding across toward one edge of the tower. He tries to claw at the tower's floor, hoping he can find a handhold before he slides right off the edge of the tower. Who knows how far he'd fall—and if whoever it is that's spirited him away to this tower messed with his stuff upon "saving" him, they probably have taken or taken apart the MediCom Teleporter, too.

     Little David manages to stop his slide just as his legs go over the edge. Now he's struggling to pull himself back up, without much of a stable grip to do it with. Normally pulling himself up off of a ledge wouldn't be a problem, but, well ... Power Suppression is a bitch. So is the fact that the floor is unshielded from the stratosphere, something that he is starting to take notice of in detrimental ways.

     He's going to need some help.

Option C: Cafeteria

     Some time after the ordeal on Floor 91 and having had time to process what information he's gleaned about the Tower thus far, Little David finally heads down to the cafeteria (using the elevator this time) to get some food. Oatmeal, if he's been told about that particular ritual every new arrival must go through. If not, he'll have a small altercation with the units that might be working here, but either way he's going to end up with a bowl of the stuff and not appear all that happy about it.

     Though what's really eating at him is the prospect that his entire universe, everyone he's ever known, just up and died like that. Five years of his life spent as a superhero trying to keep that from happening, and it happened anyway. So he's trying to figure out the cause for that in his head while he eats the oatmeal, going over every possible threat he's been aware of that could be capable of ending the whole universe. At least it takes his mind off of the blandness of the mush.

     And yes, he still has the cigar, currently holding it between fingers in one hand while he eats the oatmeal. And it's never been lit, this entire time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Enoch doesn't seem fazed in the slightest by the awkwardness, simply smiling a little, strained as it would be considering they're talking tower matters, but polite.

"I'm not certain we could in the first place. We haven't been told this, but it must adjust our stomachs so we could eat other things here in the first place. If you try to eat anything else before it, I've heard it only makes you ill."

David glances at the bowl of soup for a moment while the other guy responds, frowning in thought.

"I don't get dat. Why we'd get sick at all. It ain't like dey're servin' us stuff from some bizarre alien planet, yanno? It's all human food. I mean, okay, all da flowery stuff on da menu's kinda weird, but I guess it must be some bistro thing ... dose places always got a silly 'artisan' bent," David adds as he makes a dismissive wave of his hand. Lavender in almost everything doesn't seem so bad when one has encountered a store selling blueberry-flavored coffee.

He pauses for a moment, before looking up at the other man. "You, uh, must got your ear to da ground when it comes to dis place, yeah? Do you—" David's voice falters. Even after he'd come to understand just how many crises threatened Primal Earth from day to day, it's still hard for him to accept what that letter said. "Is everybody here some kinda refugee from a destroyed world? An' ... Does anybody got an idea how it's happenin'?"

Enoch takes a moment to think of the three points he's brought up.

"We're outsiders to this world. These collars we wear do the same to ourselves." Not our bodies, if David has an ear for odd phrasing.

"We're all refugees, yes, but...all anyone knows is that there is a force that is destroying our worlds, spreading from world to world like a disease. We know nothing else about it."

David nods ever so slightly as he takes in what the other man's telling him. Something that kills worlds and spreads like a disease ... well, Mender Silos never said the Coming Storm was a threat to more dimensions than his own, though maybe there are other worlds where the Coming Storm is a threat as well—but if it's comparable to a disease, that probably rules out something like Rularuu. He's pretty sure that if Rularuu ever broke free and started eating dimensions again, people would know it's him, and not a colorless force.

So was Primal Earth—and everyone else's worlds—done in by a totally unknown threat? The notion makes David's heart sink ... and a little sick to his stomach when he tries to guess how many innocent lives were slaughtered as a result. Uncountable, to his mind. If he ever got out of here, just how the heck would he stop it from claiming any more?

He might not actively be voicing his thoughts, but his emotions are pretty easy to read on his face—though his thoughts turn back to what the other man said first.

"Dat may be true, us bein' outsiders," David says as he idly tugs at the collar, now reminded of it. "But I never had to wear collars or eat oatmeal when Portal Corp sent me out explorin' other worlds. I was just doin' dat before I woke up here, in fact. Scoutin' out a dimension for signs of trouble."

Edited 2013-06-04 00:04 (UTC)

"Worlds like this are different... I was in another world not my own before this, and it required a guardian's mark to survive in." He unconsciously rubs his right shoulder, where Zeph's mark would have been...

"I don't know quite what it is that makes them so different, though."

David's parsing the guardian's mark as some sort of spell of protection ... or maybe a geas. Or—something. Being a Technology-origin hero made it kind of hard to understand the Magic types when it came to the nuances of arcane study.

Still, so long as they're talking about visiting other, dangerous worlds—

"You've done some dimension hoppin' too, huh? What was bad about dat world you were visitin'?"

"Inadvertently, but yes...we didn't realize it at the time, but the city that comprised that world...it had been destroyed, and was only held together by its earth spirit's magic. I suspect that's why we needed a mark to survive there, though..."

Enoch frowns a bit, more an introspective gesture than any reaction to David.

"Though...that spirit is here in this tower, herself, I should ask her. There was much we came to take for granted when we were there."

David idly taps the thumb of his cigar-laden hand against a finger while listening to this other man speak of the world from which he'd been taken. A world that had been destroyed, held together only by magic? He perks up at the mention of the spirit.

"Dey took you an' somebody else? From da same world, right? Or at least, you an' her were in da same world when it happened?"

Even though he hadn't run into any familiar faces in the Tower yet, or—well, anyone from Primal Earth, despite mistaking several others as residents thereof—he's hoping for some evidence to quell the mounting uneasiness he's been having ... that only one person out of innumerable other people are saved from that dimension-killing disease per world.

He doesn't want to face the fact that he may be the only survivor out of his entire dimension.

And as much as Enoch doesn't want to cause discomfort...it's best the truth be shared. So he shakes his head.

"Not...not quite. We're from similar worlds, where the same events took place, but not from the same one. They...truly can only save one person at once."

At that news, David looks crestfallen. "So it's like dat ..." He looks down for a moment, contemplating the bowl of bland oatmeal before him, before looking back up over to the other man.

"You know—" David's voice falters again, but only for a moment. "You know, thinkin' about it ... I don't get why dey'd pick a guy like me outta da—I dunno, quadrillions of lives in my whole universe to save. I spent da past few years of my life doin' my best to save other people. An' instead of all da people I risked my life savin', dey go an' rescue me from dis—dimension eatin' thing."

David's shakes his head a little, gazing off at some point past Enoch's shoulder. "But—I mean, if it was gonna happen, an' dis is da only place dat coulda rescued dem? Some of what I heard da admins do here from other people ... would I really want dem to be here instead of me?"

"We've all wrestled with that thought, I think. Would we want the others here?" Now it's Enoch's turn to stare at some unknown point, in his case, something beyond the table.

"...One of our hosts was working on research to restore the worlds. He's-...no longer with us, but we might be able to find his research someday." Or Zo might take it up when he gets older, but...that depends on whether or not he keeps his big heart as he ages.

"Not all of da guys in charge are punks? Da way people talked about 'em, it sounded like all any of dem do is screw with people for fun an' profit," David responds with some surprise. "Well, dat and uh—" he adds sheepishly, "—also dat one floor dat's open-air. Da one with power suppression systems in place? Dat was a wake-up call."

"There are a few floors that open to the outside...all of them have this ability. They don't want us to try to fly away from the tower - this tower is responsible for keeping us alive. If we go too far from it, we'll die...truly die, that is."

It was all hearsay, but quite honestly, the way the collars were tied to the terminals and the way their bodies could be manipulated here, he wouldn't be surprised if it was true. Besides, nothing any of the administrators had said had been a lie so far...

"So it ain't just dat floor. Da whole tower's got power suppression covered? But—" David's voice comes to a stammering halt. He just can't follow the logic of the admins here ... but, after heaving a sigh, he tries again.

"—okay, dey don't want us to die, but den they give us some open floors dat'll cut off our powers, so we can't even save ourselves from fallin' off an' we'll die anyway ..."

While he's trying to hash that out, David makes gestures in the air with his cigar-laden hand, as if he were pretending to be a director for an orchestra.

Edited 2013-06-17 05:08 (UTC)

"Ah...death isn't permanent here. They've...well, they've only taken our souls. Our bodies are copies, so they can repair them, and put us in another one."

Partly, he doesn't really expect to be immediately believed anymore. He's learned people from the future tend to be more skeptical...but at the same time, it was a hard idea to shake off.

That actually makes David drop his spoon back into the oatmeal, the handle clinking against the lip of the bowl. He looks at Enoch directly.

"Wait—they've done what?"

Good thing he's holding his cigar in the other hand, though. He probably would be dropping it from the way his mouth is hanging open.

"Zo, the one capable of rescuing us, can't move our real bodies here, and...I think even if he did, they wouldn't survive here without putting a strain on the tower."

Well, at least he was believed. It was important to spread this truth. Something so fundamental to their life in the tower could come in handy someday. Even if it was difficult to accept...best they hear it from someone friendly instead of learning it some other way.

"We had some visitors from another world come once. Riki, one of our hosts, had to alter the tower quickly. The lights were flickering for their entire stay."

David's still listening—probably ... but while Enoch is talking, he's actually looking down at his body and patting at the upper chest portion of his armor, as if that could somehow discern the difference between the real deal and a fake.

After the mention of visitors from another world, David looks back up at Enoch. He'll process that in a moment. But first, he wants to know ...

"What about our stuff? Is dis my armor, or—what? An' if it is, where's our real bodies?"

"Our real bodies are on our world, preserved by Zo's psionics. ...As for the things we have here, I don't know."

Logic said they must be copies too. If Zo can't bring their bodies he can't bring their possessions either. And yet...his Arch shouldn't be replicable by human hands. But it behaves exactly the way it should.

David looks back down at the oatmeal again, regarding it in a new light. This would be something Doctor Science would probably love studying under a decent microscope. If ... the administrators actually let residents have access to lab gear.

And ... if Doctor Science were still alive.

The important thing, though, is that David seems to be buying everything Enoch is telling him. Which probably says a lot about Primal Earth.

"So dat's what you meant about da oatmeal. Like, it's gotta help dis Zo guy with ... what, keepin' our souls here, an' our bodies preserved back home?" David looks up at Enoch again. "An' den dese guys who came from another world. I'm guessin' it was all dem, an' not Zo or da other guys?"

Enoch nods at the last part. "This world was invaded by an outsider. The others came here after him. I'm...not certain how it ended, but at the end of the month, all of them, invader and would-be captors, vanished."

It was also when...

...Had Dax's psionics given Ruana the strength to force them out?

"Huh," David mutters quietly. It's a mixture of intrigue and, possibly, hope. "I wonder if dat means dey all came here with deir bodies. ... Well, if dey were invaders, dey had to, I guess. No way da admins are gonna give 'em residency in a fancy clone body, right?"

Either way, it would mean that there's nothing necessarily deadly about the state of this world. Right? And if this Zo person has his real body in stasis back home, however he's doing it ...

He's already considering the odds of finding the multiversal coordinates of this dimension, and figuring out a way to come here in his own flesh using Portal Corp's technology.

"They did, and...well, as I said, it put such a strain on the tower its lights were flickering the whole while."

If Enoch knew he was thinking of such a thing, he'd immediately add that the guests were in more danger than any resident ever was - if they died, they were gone. Was it any wonder he rarely saw any of them outside of Ruana's games?

"Huh. Why would bein' here with your real body cause dat kinda thing ..." David rubs the back of his neck with a grimace, as though the collar were chafing him. "Or—wait, did you mean 'dey did' as in 'dey did come here with deir real bodies' or 'da admins gave 'em clone bodies while dey were here?'"

"They came here with their real bodies. Riki had to modify the tower to accept them, and that was what was such a burden to it. Ruana's comment was that... 'it would be messy otherwise'. I'm not certain I want to know what would have happened."

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