Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen

[culbutiri]

Characters: Nesir Aeser, you
Setting: Floor sixty two (beach), floor seventy two (door maze)
Format: Either
Summary: It's Nesir's birthday, she decides she should actually get round to reading her regain, and then sets herself a challenge
Warnings: Maybe talk of assassins/murder/last event. Nesir is generally not a nice person though she is not actively murderous at the moment...

[Beach] Nesir was quite surprised when she saw the date, though she knew it was coming up. In a few days she would have been in this place for an entire year and today she as sixteen. Nesir's birthday had never been celebrated and she wasn't about to start doing so in this fake place but she noted that she was a year older and that in her world she would have been considered an adult today. Ready to be apprenticed or to go out and find work, if she hadn't been a temple acolyte, if she hadn't been a dark trained assassin who had been training and working since she could walk.

The last few days she had spent training, working out her anger and frustration of being stuck in a room with Sephiroth for a week, of the hallucinations and the hunger. It helped that they ahad decent food, even if it was all pumpkin flavoured, which reminded her of her first month here, a year ago. She failed to see why in a world where everything was an illusion they had to eat pumpkin, surely there were other foods they could pretend to give them.

As it was the 'reward' she had been given had been thrown into her trunk and ignored for the last few days. Because as curious as she was, she at least knew when she was too angry to deal with more things. But today was as good as any day.

She liked the beach floor, because as little as she had actually spent time on the seafront as a child the sound of the sea reminded her of home, so she sat on the sand, cloak drawn around her and took out the folder. As expected it didn't have that many answers, the first few entries were almost medical, her and her sisters birth was recorded; they had been early it seemed and no one had expected there to be two of them.

Anyone on the beach floor would see Nesir lost in her reading, a half angry, half confused, sad look on her face.

[Maze] It was always good to be challenged, and Nesir needed something to focus on. For once she didn't feel like killing things, though she would, if need be. Her daggers were ready. She hadn't tackled this maze before but she set off, determined to solve it.

A decision she was beginning to regret a few hours later when she opened yet another door, to more doors, helplessly lost.

Comments

[terra_nullius]

"What defines losing one's way in a place like this? There doesn't seem to be much guideline..." Perhaps murdering residents was something along those lines, but he doesn't voice his thoughts.

[culbutiri]

"I guess that do be highly individual, everyone do be having their own standards. I would be saying giving up would be losing your way." Acceptance, not fighting anymore. They would all lead to death in the end.

[terra_nullius]

"That does make sense." It really does. Settling for whatever is thrown one's way, like a lamb to the slaughter... it is almost distasteful and his nose wrinkles just slightly at the thought. "If I ever get to that state, I hope one would put me out of my misery. I couldn't imagine simply laying down and not trying to do anything I could."

[culbutiri]

"I will be keeping that in mind." She smirked at him, liking him. She liked most people who weren't prepared to lie down and roll over to the administrators.

"Even if all the odds do be against us, fighting for what we believe in do be one of the few things that do be making us different from monsters and sheep."

[terra_nullius]

"You may be keeping it for quite some time, with any measure." He gave her a slight grin in response. "Nevertheless, if my spirit flags I will trust you to lower it in appropriate fashion."

That's definitely something he can get behind, and he nods as she says the words. People who act, who do, who learn and improve, versus those who simply wait for things to be handed to them, who only learn what is spoon-fed to them by others after the fact. "The question is, how many sheep are there for shepherds in this place? Have many fallen to complacency, or does fighting spirit still exist?"

[culbutiri]

"It do be depending, sometimes things do be happening and people do be fighting, but there do be many who do be trying to plead or bargain with the administrators." She sighed, "I think it do be hard for them to be excepting that they do no be caring about us."

[terra_nullius]

A bit of a snort, at that. "What a waste of time. If they were going to be helpful, they wouldn't have set a place like this. If anything, any allowance that they give is merely a pandering. It may not be worth it, considering what they may do in return for such a thing."

It could all be in the approach, he surmised, though he pushed that thought aside for the time being. A half-formed idea, nothing more.

"I suppose, though, that it does get difficult the longer one spends here. Perhaps this place feeds off of hope, sucking it away from those who come until nothing is left but a dull, complacent husk that was once a vibrant person."

[culbutiri]

"That do be being a good way of putting it." Nesir agreed, "Hope do be having no place here."

[terra_nullius]

"And the items they give... just ways to prolong the death of hope." His eyes flicker to the folder, but don't stay, drifting back up to her again. "Tidbits to carry us along or stir some sort of emotional response."

It's a large assumption, but given that he'd received something of his own, such a folder is a bit out of place.

[culbutiri]

"Or to be making us despair, that did be what they did be doing last month. They did be giving us things to be making us despair. Even when everything do be being fake..."

She looked down at the folder sadly.

[terra_nullius]

"Perhaps fortunate for me," he said with a small grin, though he cut it short at her own sad expression. "They'd have to return the memories of why such a thing would bring despair if they wanted it to affect me."

He hadn't thought his amnesia would be a blessing, but perhaps in that sense it was.

"However, that is of little comfort to anyone else. I take it that this contains rather unpleasant information." He waves a hand at the folder.

[culbutiri]

"I guess that do be one positive way of looking at it." No memories meant that no one could hurt you. But it was a big sacrifice, for memories held good as well as bad. And Nesir wouldn't even like to forget her worst moments if it meant forgetting the good.

"It do be nothing I could no have been guessing." She shrugged, "And it do no be mattering. They do all be being dead."

[terra_nullius]

"That's a good way to think about it, too" he said with a shrug. "If you don't give in to what they're trying to engage in you, then it has no power over you. It's not even a real thing... even if the information is true, it's just an object they made to try to incite a reaction in you. It's better not to care, in the end."

[culbutiri]

"Yes, caring do be being far too much trouble." She agreed. "Be being careful of that, they will be finding a way to be hurting you, even if you can no be remembering. They do be being experts."

It was a form of torture, and one that they had mastered to the greatest ability. "Everything here do be being designed to be making us give up and be being obedient to them, but we can no be letting them."

[terra_nullius]

"They can try. Their illusionary pain doesn't hold much over me. It, like everything else here, isn't real..." he held his arms out in a broad gesture. "So they can do whatever they want. I don't particularly care. They have yet to impress me."

[culbutiri]

"Pain do be being real." She told him tilting her head. "When the glamour did be going down, we did just be being wire frames with liquid inside, but pain did still be hurting."

She laughed, a little too sharply. "The monsters do be being real too."

[terra_nullius]

He shakes his head a little bit. "It's all part of the simulation. The bodies aren't real, and they're programmed to feel pain. So it's just the simulation of pain. If that makes any sense." He doesn't really expect it to. He's fairly certain he's the only person who really thinks this way about it.

[culbutiri]

She shook her head, "When the glamour went down... that did be being all the simulations... all the fake things did be disappearing." He is not really sure what he means by programmed to feel pain either.

[terra_nullius]

He shakes his head. It may be too difficult to explain. "I'm sorry, I'm not certain how to make things clearer... I suppose it's that the bodies we're put into are programmed to experience pain, but it's just part of the simulation of a body. Just as the body isn't real, the things that happen to it aren't..."

If that doesn't work, then he may just give up the explanation altogether.

[culbutiri]

Nesir wasn't a sure she completely understood but she nodded. "That do be meaning that even less do be being real then I did be thinking." She wasn't sure she liked that.

[terra_nullius]

"I don't consider much in this place to be real, even beyond that people say there are objects covered in film to fool our perceptions. People have given different accounts of coming to terms with our so-called reality... I may have just adopted an extreme view. I'm certain you have your own feelings on the matter."

He is curious, but he's not certain pushing her for what may be potentially sensitive information is wise as it is their first time speaking.

[culbutiri]

"There do no be being much real about us." Especially her, "But we do be still having our minds, except when they do be being controlled... And we can be fighting, except when we can't." It was a bit of a depressing thought.

"I have no been having a lot of time to be thinking about it really." Not exactly true but she wasn't about to spill out all her thoughts on the matter, especially when they were still so muddled in her head.

[terra_nullius]

He nodded, distantly, staring out over the water again. "when we are allowed, when we perceive we have certain freedoms. Perhaps we always have those freedoms, it's just the illusion of them being taken away by whatever the administrators are doing. Difficult, I realize, to comprehend, but... I do not desire to give them any more control over things than they already may have."

[culbutiri]

She nodded, still not fully understanding but getting it enough. "I can be agreeing with that, I do no be wanting to be giving them any more power over me than they already do be having."

[terra_nullius]

A bit of a laugh, after a moment of contemplative silence. "Sometimes we have to do things we dislike, or things that are harmful, in order to find something out. I'm not afraid... and I won't let a fear of pain or death keep me from moving."