towerofanimus | Endgame: This Broken Jaw of Our Lost Kingdoms; Part Two

For the first hour, Arturia had attempted to kick things. Attempted being the key word. Once more she found herself without a body to call her own. She passed through everything she touched, unable to interact with even the smallest of pebbles or the bodies on the ground. The only thing that seemed to have a hold on her at all was gravity and her thoughts kept straying to the thought about if that were true at all? Like the previous times she had been here, stuck without even being able to so much as touch even the water in the river, she consoled herself with one thought:

'At least I can move about as I wish.'

But this thought was soon eaten by worry and soon the Counter Guardian began to trace the familiar path around Fuyuki, a path that pointedly avoided a house and church she had come to know too well when she had been a Servant. Worry clouded her mind. With mere hours to spare, what would become of the others? Would they manage to succeed? Or would Ruana soon be devouring souls one by one across the worlds to power her sick game once more? Only time would tell and the most Arturia could do at this point was hope for the best and try not to scream in frustration at how she had been ripped away so close to the end.

Edited 2014-07-16 00:38 (UTC)

Naoya woke up, as he had so many times before. Granted, most of the etime he hadn't wandered through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but some parts of the Yamanote Circle were halfway there already. The sound of his geta clacking down the street echoed, and for a moment he wondered when the last time the city had been so silent was. Certainly not since this land had yet to develop cities, or even towns.

He'd tried to see if his curse was still in effect - it was. The one from the Tower, too. The gore on the bodies didn't bother him - or at least, it didn't until he found him Naoya knelt by Kazuya - the Messiah, not his cousin or brother anymore - and shook his head.

"You... you foolish idiot. You wanted to save the world, and now look what that's brought you. You couldn't even save yourself!" No one was there. No one could tell what he was feeling. He didn't have to pretend.

And so when rescue from the Tower comes, it's clear whose world this is and what direction he's in by following the mad, broken laughter and the occasional sobs.

Edited 2014-07-16 00:40 (UTC)

Luke hates visiting his dead world. He's done it several times already and always ends up being stuck in the desert. The ruins of Zao have been explored so many times he could probably navigate them with his eyes closed, and he has no desire to hang out with the dead bodies littering the oasis and city.

So he's spent the past several hours wandering between Chesedonia and the oasis, occasionally whining to no one about the situation.

Anyone coming here will be deposited in the middle of a desert. There's an oasis a short walk nearby, a large city a couple hours' walk in the other direction, and lots and lots of sand everywhere else. A purple miasma fog hangs over everything as far as the eye can see. find Luke wandering around near the portal, wary of actually interacting with it, or just simply desert.

Edited 2014-07-16 00:44 (UTC)

Holy shit.

[Waver had both very fond and very miserable memories of Fuyuki, so to see it like this was just short of terrifying. If he looked hard enough he could almost see the remnants of the bridge and what was probably the Shinto district at one point.]

This is Fuyuki, how the hell are we in Fuyuki City?!

[More importantly, 'why'. There was surely some reason, especially if that portal came from where he suspected they did.]

Edited 2014-07-16 00:49 (UTC)

Gaia had been impressive, once, for a small planet. Now it was just an impressive asteroid field. Once drained of mako and lifestream, it had crumbled. That's what happens when a living planet dies. Reno spent most of his time on the asteroid that held the mangled ruins of a city that had once been Midgar last time, when he wasn't floating around seeing what was on the other asteroids. There were probably better places to hang out, but Midgar had the largest amount of resources, and therefore more things to poke about in.

Reno paced the mostly clear area of Sector 8 angrily, occaisonally glancing over at the remains of Sectors 7 and 1 on either side. One had been badly damaged in the Meteor Crisis, the other, by his own hands. He hardly cared. He'd only been here for hours and he was worried at what happened. Riki attacked, and Shion...

"What's the fucking point?" He stopped suddenly, yelling at the remains of the dead planet. "What's the point if it all turns out like this in the end? Why?" With more force than necessary, he kicked at an abandoned car, making it shake back and forth.

[Even if Diarmuid's memories of this place tend toward the terrible instead of the fond, seeing it like this is not something he feels very comfortable with. Suddenly, he is very glad he was never sent home like so many others were. This...would have likely driven him insane very quickly. That is why, instead of thinking about it too hard, he gives himself a shake and tries to focus on Waver's unspoken question. Why has the portal brought them here of all places?]

Are we here because two of us are from worlds that know this place?

[Perhaps, but that doesn't sound right somehow...]

Sheba has been returned to the ruins of Weyard several times since she first opened her eyes in the Tower - she's seen Lalivero, and Tolbi, and so many other places that she had visited with her closest friends on their journey. Now, she's found herself in Jupiter Lighthouse. The beacon isn't lit - it's long since gone out with the death of her world.

It's almost funny to her, how the more things change, the more they stay the same. This lighthouse hadn't had the answer the first time she visited it, and it doesn't have the answer now.

She's had some time to make the climb, and she has to admit that without the monsters, it's much easier to do. Sheba is at the top of the lighthouse, her legs dangling over the side of the aerie as she sits at the tower's edge. The portals, however, will deposit people at the very base of the tower.

But don't worry. The door is open - a Jupiter Adept has already passed through, after all.

The first thought Asch has after making his way through this ripped portal isn't so much a thought as a glare, leveled at the miasma hanging in the air around them. He tries to fan it away from his face, to not much point - there's no clear air to take its place, so all that happens is that the mist swirls in front of him a bit.

Home sweet home. Well, it's not actually his home, but close enough. The oasis, and Chesedonia in the distance, all exactly the way he remembers them from the short time they spent in the Qliphoth. Even so, he still can't sense any fonons. It's disconcerting, gives the whole thing the quality of a dream (or a nightmare).

"Try to breathe in as little of the miasma as you can," he says to Zelda, and anyone else from another world who might have followed them through. "I don't know if it can still poison us, but it's better not to risk it."

Quark had never been returned to his dead homeworld during his stay in the Tower. Though he should have known what to expect fromm hearing other residents talk about their individual experiences, nothing had prepared him to find himself back in the warehouse, surrounded by the still bodies of his fellow hostages. Of his Grandpa.

He could have been sick. He should have been sick but found himself unable. Quark found himself feeling nothing even as he cried and cried and begged his Grandpa to please just wake up and not leave him there all alone forever. Not even Zero Jr. lit up the screen to welcome him. Quark would have welcomed being called Quirk by the AI, even if it was nothing more than a taunt.

Each hour felt like a lifetime. When he had found himself with no more tears left to shed, Quark had begun to shuffle through the warehouse--as far as he could go, anyway. Many of the doors were sealed shut, their digital locks forever disabled. Perhaps they could have been pried open, but there would be no point in trying with fists as small as his.

Eventually he stops walking, curling up on one of the thin cots in the infirmary (one of the few accessible rooms), facing the wall. He can be found there, shivering and sniffling but otherwise still, his hat removed from his head but held to his body like any other child might cradle a stuffed toy in comfort.

Edited 2014-07-16 01:12 (UTC)

Fu... yuki?

[Oops, someone doesn't recognize anything going on here; aside from the standard corpses everywhere, it's all alien to her in a way entirely different from the Tower. There's confusion in abundance, but she's not quite shocked in the same way Waver and Diarmuid are.

That portal, though... Maybe she truly is grasping for the faintest hopes she find but--]

... Perhaps... Zo wished for us to be here? He somehow broke the barrier between the Tower's world and this one?

[If Dax was right about his growth, then the barrier between worlds would be child's play, wouldn't it?]

I've learned that there are some questions you don't want to ask because of the headache. I think those are some of them.

[... Yeah he doesn't know this place at all.]

[Zelda isn't the only one completely unfamiliar with the landscape - the redhead that follows her through is just as confused. He's glancing around the whole place, keeping watch for any threats even though, logically, there shouldn't be any. Not in a dead world.]

If Zo did it, then there's the question of why, and why he waited until the timer gave out.

[Too many questions, no apparent answers.]

[Arturia had heard the voices as she approached the street the group appeared in. For a second she was certain she was hearing things. It had happened a few times before: She'd hear a noise and rush to it only to find a tree had given in to its decay and fallen or gravity did its work on something collapsing.

But she had never heard voices before. Not real honest to god voices.

She breaks into a run, for as much as she can run in this disembodied form, and turned the corner to find a tear in the world and several brightly lit and colorful figures before it. Her eyes widen for a moment, the heart that is not there stopping for an instant, before she begins to approach them.]

Hello?

[Has she finally snapped and started to hallucinate people who should not be there? Then again, given all that has happened to her throughout her life, she finds it hard to believe it could only be a hallucination. She has done the impossible before, the people she's met in the Tower make the impossible look like a mere inconvenience no matter how insurmountable it is. At the very least she has to give this the benefit of the doubt.]

[It was obvious this world was dead, so the next voice he heard after Asch's had been a genuine surprise. Waver turned to look over his shoulder and while the spectral appearance was something different it was genuinely a relief to see someone else he recognized.]

[Was this why the portal led them here? And if Zo had indeed created it, was this what they were meant to do with it?]

Saber-?

It wasn't the first time he'd ever been back; it would be dumb to think any time would ever be the last. The world was too fickle. Jin had been back many times over, continually cursed with the inability to let it end. At first he'd spent his time quantifying, analyzing the data of the world around him; he mapped the world, identified landmarks that still remained in some form, mentally described their destruction and decomposition, took stock of elements that could possibly remain. Processed and reviewed like a computer, neatly able to section a part of his brain away like a malicious program.

(At a certain point before he'd come back the last time, he'd grown terrified of his own processes, and terrified of the fact that that was what he had called them just look at what they had done to them everything, everything he had said and talked about being untouchable in the long run maybe that was just wrong)

And so the next time he was back, with too much time to think, too much room to be himself, it was natural for him to both futilely rebel and quietly accept himself and what had happened-- and he'd dropped himself down on the ground in the remains of the closest thing he'd ever called home. Just a run down old warehouse that barely qualified as a building anymore, with a couch that barely counted as a seat and tools and teenage odds and ends scattered on the ground and abandoned, and the water boiler broken. Again.

(He'd tried to fix it again once before, for old time's sake, but it wasn't quite the same when there was no water anyway, and no one to yell at him if there wasn't).

He dropped himself there like a ragdoll, the corner of his glasses perpetually shattered, his hair a grown out and ragged mess, and his countenance astonishingly silent as he tried to format the hours in his head.

Arturia!

[Diarmuid cannot help but call out to her, relieved to see her. She is one of those who he had noticed was missing from the cells and he has been worried about her...

Or still is considering the fact she doesn't seem to have a real body at the moment.]

Are you all right?

[Stupid question all things considered, but he asks it anyway.]

His wandering had been pretty mindless-- it could've been deliberate, or it could've been by sheer force of luck and coincidence that he'd even ended up moving, and moreso that he'd even ended up here. Jin didn't really know where here was, but when he ended up at the base of the tower-- well, the really thought is that at first he thinks he's outside the real Tower. The second thought is that he's outside, at the base of Tartarus, a beacon of a miracle from a world that he hasn't seen in years over.

He of course, dismisses both of these ideas immediately, if not out of pessimism then out of the fact that it's not nearly crooked enough to be either of them. Though it was possibly just as tall.

But as far as he can see there's no where else to go, and the door is open; it's a foolhardy and predictable move to walk inside, but Jin does it almost like moving on auto-pilot, and he makes the trek to the top, strenuous, but-- pretty tolerable, if you consider all of the other shit he's had to go through for the sake of nothing.

He doesn't know quite what he's expecting, but it's not another living being. And certainly not one he knew, supposedly devoid of any tricks. (If it was really a trick by the Tower, he's pretty sure he'd have found someone else at the top.)

A moment of idleness, not quite hesitation, and he takes a few steps forward to allow his voice to be heard when he calls.

"Not planning on jumping off again, are you?"

[Any thoughts of puzzling out their situation very quickly get tossed out the window at the sound of that voice. One that was decidedly absent during those five hours in the cells. Zelda whips around, and the moment Waver and Diarmuid calling out Arturia's names confirms that she's not hallucinating, she's dashing towards her.]

Arturia!

[She flings her arms forward, intending to grab up her friend in an embrace... and ends up flying right through her, just barely stopping herself from completely faceplanting on the pavement behind her as gravity does its work.]

... What--?

[Give her a moment, she'll figure out what's going on in time.]

What...is this?

[Diarmuid looks around himself in shock and confusion. He's not sure what he was expecting when he stepped out of the portal, but this isn't it. It's hardly a planet. It once was, that is clear from the remains of the city around them, but now...

Now it's rubble.]

Why did we come here?

A shithole in fuck-all nowhere, apparently. But if Saber was in the last one, I'd bet my damn title some miserable idiot's here too.

[Space, huh. Waver was far too desensitized to weird shit to care at this point.]

The warning isn't entirely necessary - the purple mist by itself is ominous enough to warrant a hand covering her nose and mouth as soon as she's on solid ground again. At least a desert is more familiar than not, even if the landmarks hold no meaning to her.

"Right," she agrees quietly with a nod, then scanning the horizon. So. This is Auldrant, then. "Where would someone go if they were stranded here?"

Seems like the quicker they get this done, the better.

After how many times Ryoji has been forced to return to the place he called home, even for that short a time, he shouldn't be surprised to open his eyes and see his dead world once again. He really wouldn't be surprised, may not even be bothered, if he didn't recall what had happened moments before. Had that been... the end? Was he just sent back, no chance to save any of the worlds, no chance to save himself?

He wants to cry, but the tears don't come. He should have known, deep down, that this was what was to happen to him... wandering around his barren wasteland of a world for centuries.

At least he's not trapped in one place. He can still... drift, at the very least. He wanders around the desolate shells of the places he used to frequent: the arcade, the strip mall, the bridge. Eventually he makes it back to Gekkoukan High. A lot of it is still left standing... the classroom is the same as always. He sits in his old desk (it takes some work, but he finds a way to hover just over the chair), folds his arms over the table, and bows his head.

If he closes his eyes, he can almost hear the voices of students, can almost feel Junpei shoving him to wake him up before class begins...

A voice is the last thing she expects to hear; her prior absences from the Tower have taught her that, when she is on her own world, she's the only living being she'll ever find. No matter how hard she tried in the past, there were only corpses - of people she knew, people she didn't know. She would even have welcomed an attack from monsters, just to know that there was some other living soul on Weyard aside from her.

Not once has there been any sort of a sign. But now - well, the shock of it nearly sends her toppling over the side as she jerks forward, but she manages to keep her balance and looks over her shoulder.

"Jin..?" She narrows her eyes. Funny, she didn't think she would hallucinate him. Felix, maybe, or Jenna - but someone from the Tower? It leaves her more than a little wary and defensive, even if she and Jin are sort of friends, or... whatever you become after getting blown up together and then blowing up some really awful presents. "No, I'm not going to jump. I think I've fallen off enough of these for one lifetime."

She kicks her feet a little and glances out at the landscape - this far up, it's not possible to see the dead people littering the world. It's a relief. "I'm just thinking... that's all. How did you get here?"

Doesn't look like anything I've seen before.

[The scale of the damage looks worse than any other world.]

...So, where do we start looking?

It's so surreal seeing a dead world up close. Having never visited his in all his time in the tower, it's... chilling to see all the corpses. The eerie silence. The stillness and lifelessness.

But in his wandering, Riku's surprised to find someone living. Curled up in a corner. Breath hitching, Riku opts to step closer-- Quark may overhear the sound of footsteps drawing near.

"Hey, hang in there, all right? You're not alone anymore."

Endgame: This Broken Jaw of Our Lost Kingdoms; Part Two

Arturia; Fuyuki City

Naoya; Roppongi Hills

Luke; AU Auldrant

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Reno: Midgar

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Sheba; Jupiter Lighthouse

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Quark; Rhizome 9

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Jin Shirato; Tatsumi Port

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Ryoji Mochizuki; Tatsumi Port Island

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