towerofanimus | Everything that kills me makes me feel alive

Characters: Reno and Shion, and any roomies or anyone that wants to witness a destructive mental breakdown or get involved and/or punched
Setting: Starting off in Room 1-04, otherwise see prompts- prompts will be posted as comments
Format: 1 inch margins
Summary: Shion catches Reno up to speed on the Tower about certain reveals- let's just call the rest temporary insanity. There will be wall punching
Warnings: this isn't going to be pretty

He honestly hadn't wanted to do this, but the lack of clothing for both him and Shion had left little choice. It was degrading. It was humiliating. It was something he kinda sucked at.

Reno sat on his bed with legs folded up underneath him, wearing his makeshift black bandanas to cover his face, long ago replacing the sheet he'd been using. Spread out in front of him was some black cloth he was carefully hand stitching together. It'd be a shirt when he was done, expect for the part it was taking forever. He didn't want to hang out too long in the workshop, or really, anywhere else in the Tower right then, and he was worse with the machines.

By this rate, he'd have this shirt done by December, if he was lucky. Shion had said he wanted to stop by and talk with him, too, and while not totally secure, it was easier here than dealing with randomly wandering monsters.

Reno frowned at the cloth just before he misjudged the distance between his finger and the needle.

"Ouch! Shiva's tits..."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sparing a glare for the kid, Reno shoved his sewing aside and folded his arms. "You didn't need to bring everything up here, kid." Just, going to ignore that for the moment. The cake baking didn't need to be discussed. That was ancient history... for someone who wasn't even here anymore.

"What are those?" The attention turned toward the sheath of papers, and he raised an eyebrow at his protégé. "Your notes?" It explained why Shion wanted to talk, at least, though he wasn't quite sure he wanted to be briefed just yet- aw hell, might as well get it over with.

The small smile faded at the glare, he blinked sadly and put the clothes on the bed anyways and nodded. "As we said a lot has happened, and you need to know before you move on and do anything."

Sighing, Reno sat back against the top of the bed and folded his arms. "Yeah, let's hear it. What kind of shocking, world shattering revelations do we got, Shion? Ruana's secretly a blue alien virus that can shape shift? Dax is secretly a stuffed bear? Jason's a form of fungus previously undiscovered that can take human form? Is Zo the real mastermind behind everything and the reason why we got candy flavored hamburgers?"

Though he was making light of it, his tone was resigned and serious, slightly dreading what Shion would say.

"Dax is dead." Was how he started. "Not long after you disappeared, Ruana ate him after he caused a breach of security to help a group of people infiltrate."

It is notable that there is very little emotion in that, past numb shock, Shion has no memory of the event at all, and only knew what he had read in his own notes.

That caught Reno's attention. Dax was the one least likely to screw with them, and while he hadn't trusted the guy, he didn't think he was lying to them- not entirely. The last time he had talked with Dax... he thought back to what had been said. It would probably be important to remember.

"Ruana ate- no, nevermind. What else?" The frown was back on his face, and he shifted to a seated position, legs on the floor. "She eat Jason, too?" Well, he could always hope.

"Well the infiltration that he allowed, they discovered piles of body parts. That our souls were put back into after we died, they have an entire soul extraction plant." One thing at a time, it was hard enough living it without it all being dumped on you at once.

That was-

Gripping the edge of his bed, his knuckles started to turn white. "...I thought that might be the case." They were dead. They really were dead. He had figured it out a long time ago... that somehow, a part of them survived and brought here, and were given new bodies.

A theory and confirmation were entirely two different things, though, and he hadn't thought it would hit him this much. He gulped in a breath, and let out a slow, calming sigh. "Yeah. That makes sense."

Their life force was being taken and placed in new bodies... or they were really dead, and this was just Hell. He'd never subscribed to that particular branch of religion. Lifestream Theory was the more common belief among the people. Others believed in the same way as the Ancients; that a Promised Land waited for them. Himself? He just believed they ceased existing. Simple, and to the point. And he never had to worry about what happened when he died.

If they were dead, did that mean this was the after-life? It was for damned sure this was no Promised Land. There were religions back home that didn't follow the Planet Lifestream Theory, ones that spoke of places that were both good and bad that people went to when they died, depending on their actions in life. If that was the case... then this certainly would be Hades's domain.

"So they have kind of a Mako reactor down there."

"Sort of..." He took a deep breath because at least being put into bodies was still... they were still in bodies...

"It's not real." His voice was almost a whisper. "The bodies... we're just... wire and illusion." He raised a hand to his collar, "This is the only truth we can see."

Reno laughed, a little bit surprised. He thought Shion was poking fun at him now. 'Wire and illusion?"

Another snort of laughter. "C'mon, Shion, that's a really bad joke."

"I wish it were." He said with a frown. "We are wire constructs, filled with liquid the colour we can see in our collar." He waved his arms around. "Everything is an illusion, just metal and foil. Your bed is a pod filled with orange liquid, food is just nutrient bars."

There was a significant pause, just before Reno stood up and grabbed a small pair of scissors he had been using to cut bits of fabric.

Shion couldn't be lying... he wouldn't lie about something like that. The kid had no sense of humor. All this time- ALL THIS TIME. He had thought they were dead, but at least had cloned bodies. Bodies that were human. What were they without bodies? Golems? Machines?

It was just too much. Without a word, he held the scissors in his fist, and jabbed them into the skin of his left forearm. It hurt, but he was bleeding red.

"I don't feel like a wire construct. Wire constructs don't fucking bleed." He held his arm out to Shion, as if to dare him to explain. "Why am I bleeding, Shion? Tell me that. And it fucking hurts too."

"Reno!" Shion was too late to stop him cutting himself but tried to grab the scissors off him. "Because the blood is an illusion, wire constructs can still be destroyed and the blood is the liquid inside us." His eyes showed fear as he desperately tried to take the scissors off Reno.

"We can still feel, pain is still real." It was one of the few things that was.

Letting the kid have the scissors, he wiped off the trickle that had started to form into a small river.

"Why is it real? If we're dead we shouldn't feel a damn thing!"

His head was exploding, trying to grasp the idea that they were all just... metal constructs. Just something to use, and throw away.

No wonder the administrators treated them like shit.

He cracked a smile at that, and laughed. It was not a wholesome laugh, not of someone who had got a joke and thought it funny. It was one of someone trying to come with terms that his world, that had been turned upside down on its head, and had grown a whole lot more ugly.

He was a turk. A turk. He could deal with this. He could deal with being dead and a construct and not human and everything he ever believed in was either dead or a mother fuckin' lie

"You're not all dead--this isn't some form of hell or purgatory."

The laughter cut off, and something shifted; there wasn't any expression on Reno's face anymore, only a mask blank of what was going on inside.

Even that was a lie.

He was just standing there, frozen. Waiting for the next thing to happen. For the next straw, that would finally come along and collapse everything. The blood dripping down his arm was immaterial. The pain he felt wasn't even there.

Slowly, he walked through the door and into the corridor.

"We're not..." Not dead, if they were dead then the threat of death in a year, less than that now, it would mean nothing.

Shion went cold at the laughter, this was not meant to happen, he hadn't meant to make Reno angry, make him mad. He was always the first to tell Shion to stay in control.

"Wait, where are you going." He hurried after him, reaching out to grab his hand.

Everything that kills me makes me feel alive

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