For Thine Is; Zo

[animusmods]

Characters: any characters who are still within the Tower
Setting: the hidden floor
Format: any
Summary: Zo needs help. What will you do?
Warnings: psychological horror

Aria and the other retrieval units stand guard in the room and regard each person who enters with a little bit of caution. The reason quickly becomes clear: Zo lies unconscious on a bed that appears to have been stolen from a hospital recovery room. With the glamour down, he looks spectral: it's possible to look through his body and to the bed beneath. He's not quite a ghost, though, as he can be interacted with.

If Zo is attacked, the retrieval units will be quick to retaliate. They can't help Zo on their own, though--so maybe there's something you can do...

Comments

SPEAK TO ARIA

[animusmods]

If you would like to speak to Aria, you may do so here. She stands most closely to Zo's bedside and looks nearly beside herself with worry.

[fionnuisce]

Okay, so I'll ask the obvious question here: What the fuck happened?!

[Waver had gotten to the hidden floor from where he'd been more or less hiding out in the dorms rather quickly; had the glamour not been down it would have been much easier to tell he was thoroughly shaken.]

And that aside, what are we even able to do to help?

[animusnpcs]

He had a bad reaction to what Sephiroth was doing--an accidental discharge of power. [She seems quite insistent about that.]

He needs to be woken up.

[fionnuisce]

Wait, what did Sephiroth do this ti--no, forget it, that's not important and I don't want to waste time. I assume if waking him were simple, you wouldn't have called us. So what, exactly, is this going to take?

[He half-expected the same as what Riki had asked for to recharge the Tower. While that wasn't an appealing option, Waver wasn't going to be entirely against it.]

[animusnpcs]

You have to interact with him--he's sealed behind a barrier right now and we can't reach him. But all of you--he brought you here. You should be able to speak to him.

[fionnuisce]

Fanfuckingtastic. Before I go and do something stupid, next question: what kind of barrier? The 'tangible wall' sort or the 'touch it and you're a fine red mist' sort?

[Always an optimist...]

[animusnpcs]

It's just a mental one. It's what's keeping him unconscious--it won't harm you.

[zelfies]

"What are we supposed to do?" Link didn't bother to ask what had happened. The 'power' had been failing for quite a while now, and the past several days haven't been uneventful.

So, Link had approached Aria. Now wasn't the time for demanding answers. Too many lives were at risk.

[animusnpcs]

"You have to wake Zo up. He's sealed himself up, but you guys should be able to bypass it, since you're connected by him having brought you here."

[fionnuisce]

Better than expected, then. Last question: wasn't the point of this floor that the administrators wouldn't know of it, or have I missed something?

[animusnpcs]

I trust Zo--if Dax were alive, I'd trust him with this information, too. It's the others I don't want to know about this place. [She pauses.] And--if I didn't bring him here, Ruana might get to him instead.

[fionnuisce]

[Beat.]

That is a hell of a good point. Never mind, then.

[animusnpcs]

I'd rather people be worried about the admins than complacent about them, honestly. But Zo means well.

[fionnuisce]

[Waver cleared his throat and shifted a bit uncomfortably before crossing his arms; while talking was something of his strong point, talking normally was vastly different from giving a lecture or working one's way through political maneuvers.]

[Well...sometimes the only way to learn was through action. Blindly stumbling action though it might be.]

I have no idea whether or not you can hear me right now. My name's Waver--Waver Velvet. I'm the one that sent that letter, and you replied with a crystal--thanks for that, by the way. At any rate, Aria seems to think speaking to you might help matters somehow. Personally, I think it's a bit too sentimental to be effective, but what the fuck do I know at this point?

[Though the last few words were meant to be sarcastic, there was a definite tone of futility to them.]

...Nothing, really. I don't know anything, and being clever is my only real defense around here. So I've turned more or less useless lately. Frankly, I haven't any idea what to even say right now past mad ramblings. I suppose I should at least admit that I might be worried about you in some capacity, shouldn't I

And I have a strong feeling we all very, very desperately need you to wake up.

[fionnuisce]

I wouldn't say I fully trust him or Riki, but I haven't yet been given reason to think either are out to get us.

[animusnpcs]

[There's a little ripple in the air--like a ripple of heat, only it's too cold for that. Zo shifts a little--his fingers twitch--and the air ripples more obviously.]

[animusnpcs]

I wouldn't trust Riki at all. [Aria seems convinced of that.] I still don't know what he was doing in January, and Zo hasn't seen him in months.

[fionnuisce]

[Pausing at that, Waver seemed to process this information before responding.]

What. Where could he possibly have fucked off to?!

[animusnpcs]

He knows the Tower better than anyone--except Ruana, probably. I think--he took soul energy from people, didn't he? He could power any machine in the Tower with it.

[Aria's mistrust of Riki runs deep, apparently.]

[fionnuisce]

...Y-yes, about that...was that not meant at keeping the Tower operational?

[YOU FUCKED UP, WAVER.]

[animusnpcs]

You've seen the countdown on the terminals, right? The countdown to power failure never dropped lower or gained any time unexpectedly.

[fionnuisce]

...Fuck me, did that actually do something?

[waver watch your fucking mouth around the kid]

Er--what I meant was, I'm definitely not sure of what I'm actually meant to say past 'wake up or we're all probably going to die'. [He shook his head, tone sounding flat and slightly defeated.] Actually...shit. What is going to happen if this gets worse? I wonder if it's possible that we'll all end up getting kicked out of here and back home in some kind of supernatural power backfire.

[He actually shuddered at that, glancing around nervously.]

I had better be wrong about that. I'm not quite prepared to leave this place. To be entirely honest, I...think I might very well owe you quite a bit for bringing me here at all.

[animusnpcs]

[Another twitch of Zo's hand and more ripples in the air around his body, and then Zo lifts his hand, reaching toward Waver. He doesn't appear conscious yet.]

[fionnuisce]

...

. . .

[There was a very long silence as Waver contemplated several things with a glamour-less look of rapidly increasing horror. One: everyone including himself had completely overlooked that blatantly obvious detail. Two: if Riki built and ran the Tower, obviously he could just pull a fucking fuse or something and make it look like a power loss. Three: if Riki had been lying--which seemed the logical conclusion--what was that power really for?]

...Fuck. Fucking goddamn lying son of a bitch, we fucked up.

[fionnuisce]

[Waver hesitated at that; what exactly was the right course of action here? Maybe taking his hand would accomplish something, or maybe there'd be some horrific mental backlash that would kill him. Not that Waver really minded dying too much at this point, but going through getting his Magic Crest again would be...troublesome.]

[For the moment, he settled on stepping just a little closer to test out what might happen.]

We're not a very appreciative lot, are we? Despite all of the...everything, I think what most people here fail to realize is you did at least bring us all together. I wonder how they'd feel about the issue if they realized none of us could possibly have met if not for all this nonsense.