towerofanimus | 0000000

Characters: [OU] Luke fon Fabre and you!
Setting: Media Floor
Format: Starting action tags, but will match you.
Summary: The lights went out while Luke was surrounded by a bunch of monitors. You can guess how this ends.
Warnings: Spastic, flailing redhead.

[If you happen to be passing by floor fourteen as the lights go out, you'll get to hear a yelp of surprise coming from inside, followed immediately by a completely undignified screech of terror. After a lot of banging and what might have been something breaking, Luke will come fumbling toward the staircase, sheet white from being caught completely off guard.]

[Luke had gone down to the Media Room to catch a break, to have something else to listen to other than the screeching that had been going on all over the Tower. He could still hear it in that room of course, not even thinking for a second that it could have been coming from the chips planted inside, but at least on that floor he could blast a moovee (that's what they're called, right?) to try and drown it out.]

[He hadn't counted on the power going out. That had been startling enough, but to suddenly have every single monitor in the room glowing with static and flickering? That was enough to send him running, half afraid something was going to start popping out of the screens. He would put it past anything in this Tower, after all.]

[And damn, he swore that screeching got even worse.]

[So look out, person passing by the Media Room. Luke's about to plow into you; hopefully he won't knock you clear off the stairs.]

S-sorry! Sorry I... d-dammit...!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[She didn't want to distress him, but all Seventh Fonist healers were told repeatedly not to heal their own head wounds, as it was likely that they'd make themselves ill or pass out. How she wished that Natalia was here or that Luke was far enough in using the Seventh Fonon to heal her.

As it was, she attempted to shake her head, despite the pitch black, and ended up making herself nearly throw up. It was really a close thing.]

N-no. [Her voice is shaky and laced with her attempts to keep from being ill.] Too dangerous to do it myself right now.

[If she could get somewhere to rest, she might be able to heal it later.]

What can I do to help?

[He had to help; man, he screwed up. He shouldn't have freaked out like that. Hell, he was so worried about her, he didn't even notice the sound had stopped.]

Please, Tear! What can I do?

[She reached out to grab a hold of his arm and squeezed, tightly, to keep him grounded. One of them needed to be ready in case they were attacked by the monsters she kept hearing about in the tower.]

The room you came out of... Help me there. And don't yell. Hurts.

O-okay... sorry.

[Luke hesitated, unsure; he couldn't see at all. It was like light itself stopped existing, and it kind of creeped him out.]

I'll try. This is probably gonna hurt though, okay?

Okay. That's fine.

[She braced herself for the pain of him helping her up. It was going to continue to hurt for a while. Stupid head injuries usually did. It was just some miracle of Lorelei that she was awake and functioning.]

All right...

[He knelt down beside her, reaching to carefully pull her up, so her head was resting against his shoulder. He didn't want to move her too much, because that would be bad. Head injuries were scary things, after all.]

Okay, re--

[And before he could finish, he found himself interrupted by a voice blaring over the loud speaker, announcing all the power had failed in the Tower. No shit; stupid fontech telling them what they already knew and...]

[...wait, what?]

Glamour? What's that mean?

[...and why was it counting down?]

[The light was both a godsend and something she could have wished away. The body that she knew was right there, that should have belonged to Luke as she knew him, was replaced by a violet liquid and wire framing that reminded her of a few of the experiments she'd seen in Sheridan. The only thing that remained the same was the violet collar that she'd somehow become accustomed to seeing around the boy's throat.

She looked at her hand to see that she was in a similar position. And then she realized what they'd heard meant.]

It's all been an illusion?

[Luke was busy looking around in mute shock at the real face of the Tower, not sure how to process all of it. He'd heard Yu talk a lot about always wanting to see the truth beyond the lies, that even if it was painful it was better to know than to live in an illusion.]

[He wasn't so sure about that.]

Just... how could we--

[He turned to look down at her, but the familiar face he knew was gone; Tear was just liquid and violet, with only the place where the collar used to be staying more or less the same. He looked down to his hand, holding her up, and... it was no different. Just a shimmering light in the middle of them both.]

[They... weren't even real? At all...?]

...w-what...?

I...I don't know. [Inside, she was a wreck, nearly crying out how unfair everything was. Until she closed her eyes and let her instincts carry her into the place that made Luke hate her.

She'd be a normal, teenaged girl later, when she was somewhere safe. Well, safer...]

Luke? Are you okay?

I...

[This wasn't right... this couldn't be right! He'd been able to feel, touch, taste... how could all of that had been fake? The pain he felt in the pods, the horror of fighting his friend and dying, the agony of being ripped apart and turned into something else... that all had been real. So why... why was he fake.]

This... this can't... I can't... w-we can't...

[He was shaking and he couldn't stop, staring down at his hand like it was going to bite him. It couldn't be... i-it was just an illusion, it had to be... it had to be a lie, right?!]

[She could tell that he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. There was only one thing that she could think of that would fix it if that was the case.

With a huge sigh, she reached out and slapped him hard across what should have been his cheek. It was strange to watch her violet and wireframe hand move through the air to connect with his face, but she shoved down the way her stomach flipped to deal with his hysterics.]

Luke! I need you to stay with me. If you insist on freaking out, I will slap you again. Is that understood?

[Luke let out a faint sound of surprise, his hand going to a cheek. Hunh, that... still stung. That was... that was so weird. How could wire hurt?]

Y...yeah...

[His shock had immediately turned to surprise, and now was slowly ebbing of into numbness. All he could think of was why them? What had they done to deserve this.]

A-are you still... uh... b-bleeding?

[She blinked, raising a hand to the back of her head, pushing aside the film that made up her hair and feeling liquid there.]

I don't know if it's bleeding if it's not blood, but there's definitely an injury there. I-I don't know if my healing artes would work. It...it doesn't seem like a bad injury though, so we can try to find the others and see if they're safe.

I wouldn't want to chance using anything right now. Who knows what'll happen.

[It was hard to think, to keep himself from freaking out. Everything they looked at, everything they touched, all of it had been a damn lie. The only thing they had were the interactions with each other... but how much of that had been genuine? He didn't want to think about it; the idea made him ill.]

C'mon.

[He wrapped an arm around her tightly, helping her up to her feet.]

[When she was back on her feet, she struggled to clear her head again. Fainting or throwing up would do neither of them any good, especially if she was the one who had to stay calm, stay rational, despite what it would cost her.]

Let's start with the dorm floors first. They're closer.

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