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Day 55: Courtyard [2nd Shift]

Mar 13, 2011 03:55

After what seemed like an eternity of being amused, irritable, bored, in pain, in excruciating pain, and any combination of those, Guybrush was met by the same soldier who had led him to the cafeteria. He wasn't offered a trip to the Sun Room to check the bulletin board, but didn't push for it anyway. That would have been more walking, and moving ( Read more... )

leela, kirk, sechs, s.t., klavier, bella, scott pilgrim, badd, izaya, firo, doctor facilier, zex, guybrush, dexter, franziska, kinomoto sakura, lunge, lana skye, ruby, dean winchester, mello, the flash, grell, byrne, albedo, guy, venom, nigredo, depth charge, mele, lightning, damon, two-face, lion, rapunzel, castiel, canada, the scarecrow, matt, yue, sasuke, morgan, zack

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zack_fair March 13 2011, 20:06:47 UTC

Well, that had been humiliating ( ... )

thestormishere March 13 2011, 23:29:12 UTC

It... it was snowing in the courtyard.

And despite how much Lightning would have liked to remain calm and quietly defiant throughout every shift of the day here... the former-soldier-made-l'Cie was fascinated by it.

For good reason, of course! In general, it just did not snow where she was from. Sure, there were a few places where you could find colder 'weather' inside Cocoon, but every single one of them were tourist attractions through and through, and she had never been, not even as a child. As an adult she was just fine with the temperate climate the rest of the artificial world was under- in fact, she was really biased for the increased temperatures that surrounded Bodhum and its own tourist-pulling beaches. Naturally, she never got the 'go see the snow' thing... what was the point in going somewhere that was uncomfortable on purpose?

Yet speaking of cold, the former soldier was so preoccupied at the revelation that she almost didn't realize just how freezing it was out there too. For a moment, her thoughts jumped to how ( ... )

zack_fair March 14 2011, 02:20:53 UTC

Distracted as he was by watching the gloomy sky and feeling the snow on his skin, Zack did eventually realize that someone was lingering nearby and possibly watching him. Whoever it was wasn't being totally obvious about it, but he had pretty good senses considering his training ( ... )

thestormishere March 14 2011, 17:39:22 UTC

When Zack approached her, Lightning couldn't help but tense slightly, careful to maintain her distance just in case he 'tripped' or otherwise attempted to touch her again, setting off yet another weird vision in the process. Of course, that sort of thing seemed like it only happened during the night, but... look at them, surrounded by soldiers and dressed like trainees of some sort. Before yesterday, the 'staff' had been absolutely set on making everything out to be something it wasn't. Things had changed and they clearly weren't fooling around any more; she couldn't trust things to be 'normal.'

And now they'd said outright that that this military presence meant planning to use them for something, which in other words, meant that her suspicions had been proven painfully correct. It wasn't hard for Lightning to fill in the blanks and guess where their eventual aim might land.

For obvious reasons, it made the unwilling Pulse l'Cie distinctly uncomfortable. She was not in a joking kind of mood, and all things considered, she found it ( ... )

zack_fair March 14 2011, 21:35:40 UTC

It stood out to him the way she reacted, like he posed some sort of threat. Zack felt bad about that, since the way he'd tripped had been completely accidental and beyond his control. He was really hoping that the institute had been responsible for that in one way or another, since he couldn't see how he would ever be that off his game ( ... )

thestormishere March 15 2011, 19:53:57 UTC

"Hm." Lightning was satisfied with that answer, particularly since she didn't actually care that much where Cloud was or what he was doing in the first place anyway. Or at least she told herself that she didn't care. The apathy was harder to accomplish under the circumstances... and after what she'd seen and heard over the last few days.

That was... annoying. Once she might have been completely unaffected- she'd been a sergeant in the Guardian Corps, after all, and dealt with people who were distressed for one reason or another all the time. Then, it hadn't really been her problem worrying about them-- people who weren't Serah, anyway, so although she could act for the sake of keeping others calm, before she'd been made a l'Cie the concern had always been more or less superficial. It was the kind of thing better reserved for ones like Lieutenant Amodar, who was unusual in his light-heartedness. He didn't have to be as concerned about how he appeared to those around and ranked below him, but her strengths lied in being able to get ( ... )

zack_fair March 15 2011, 21:34:47 UTC

While it took a while, Lightning did eventually speak up again, and what she said was enough to throw Zack off balance (not literally this time, at least) for a few seconds. So that was how it had happened? He hadn't realized that he'd been brought up in conversation between them; hearing of his status as not dead from someone else must have been really bizarre for Cloud. But since Cloud was Cloud, he hadn't even mentioned or explained that.

What it meant, though, was that he owed Lightning an explanation. Zack sighed and ran a hand through his hair, kicking at some of the grass (still only barely touched by snow) with his foot.

"That's because for him, I've been dead for... probably a few years now." He still didn't know the exact time period, but judging by how old Yuffie looked, it had to be a couple years. Granted, she'd done some of that growing up while he'd been locked in the Nibelheim mansion, but the change she'd gone through was still drastic. The change Cloud had gone through was drastic as well, for that matter ( ... )

thestormishere March 16 2011, 05:51:14 UTC

Well, at least he hadn't bothered to ask why she and Cloud had been talking about him, but in the end, it turned out that he thought he'd died too. Wonderful.

Lightning looked at the man out of the corner of her vision, lips pressing together. Come to think of it, he had said something to the effect of 'I shouldn't even be here' the first time he'd mentioned it, hadn't he? Maybe she should have known then, even if that was easy enough to explain away as being dramatic. She'd heard people exclaim that kind of thing after tripping over a coconut in the soft sand of Bodhum's beaches ( ... )

zack_fair March 16 2011, 20:10:16 UTC

It was hard to tell whether or not Lightning believed him, but Zack was hoping that she did. He'd gone on out a limb by telling her about all this in the first place, though the fact that she'd spoken to Cloud meant that he wouldn't have been able to avoid this conversation either way. Still, if this set a precedent for how people were going to respond to his secret, then it was just going to give him more reason to keep it to himself.

He didn't see much of a point in fighting to convince her, either. Lightning would think what she wanted. He knew the truth of the matter, crystal clear.

However, when she spoke up again Zack barely knew what to think. She'd seen something? She'd seen that? The memories came flooding back, especially since for him it hadn't happened that long ago. It was still a relief to know that Cloud had come so far since then, an insecure grunt who had been ruined by mako poisoning turned into a capable fighter ( ... )

thestormishere March 17 2011, 17:36:49 UTC

Lightning wasn't sure if having Zack confirm what she'd experienced as apparent fact was good or bad. In a way, she'd been ready for him to just go and face her brief description with confusion- then, she could just accept that the whole thing was a product of her imagination, caused to run wild by whatever magical crap or drug had been thrown at her by this... disgruntled idiot platoon. It wasn't pleasant, but it would at least allow her to dismiss it and stop worrying about how it had been done.

Yet Zack clearly knew what she was talking about anyway. She looked away again as he went on, slightly disconcerted even if she refused to show it. She thought it strange just how (relatively) nonchalant he was about it, because while it was one thing to be alright with accepting death, it was another entirely to....

Well, maybe she just wasn't sure how you were 'supposed' to act, if you'd thought you'd died and then somehow returned to life without any idea how. He'd mentioned he'd been here for a while and had friends to back up what he ( ... )

zack_fair March 18 2011, 01:34:23 UTC

It really didn't make any sense. Zack could agree with that. From what he was understanding, the vision of his death had suddenly assaulted Lightning when they'd crashed into each other, which meant that physical contact had been the trigger. But he'd made contact with Cloud and his friend had seemed fine, so was it Lightning who had been the cause of it? But how, and why ( ... )

thestormishere March 20 2011, 16:13:13 UTC

Lightning took in that answer, absorbing each of the unusual terms she heard: Shin-Ra... Midgar... and yet no mention of fal'Cie or l'Cie like she would have expected or perhaps even hoped to hear. Given the two men's form, she wasn't surprised at all to learn they were - or used to be - from the military, but...

"I see..." she said slowly, and though she didn't nod in understanding, her tone probably said enough when compared to her normal one. She knew a thing or two about defecting, even if hers had been... relatively peaceful. At first. Perhaps those PSICOM grunts should have known better, to suspect a sergeant who willingly handed off her custom gunblade and jumped on a train towards Pulse was up to something, but they'd been like her, hadn't they? People from Cocoon grew up knowing there was little to fear from their fellow man- it was Pulse they had to be careful of.

All of them had been so stupid....

Lightning tried not to think about it, else she grow upset, but still she felt something seem to twist inside of her at the ( ... )

zack_fair March 21 2011, 00:35:17 UTC

That wasn't much of a reaction after everything else that had been explained, but Zack figured that Lightning was just letting it all sink in. Also, it was probably hard to know how to feel about it when he was speaking in such vague terms. And on top of that, what could you really say to someone who had died only to come back in the middle of a fake mental institution turned fake boot camp? With all that in mind, Zack could see why she was rendered speechless ( ... )

thestormishere March 22 2011, 21:12:01 UTC

Although Lightning was more or less adapted to being around people with less-than-solemn attitudes by now, that didn't mean it didn't still irk her when someone threw her a flippant response when she was trying to be resolved in her own way. She didn't bother sighing aloud at Zack, though... she'd save that for what she considered a worthier target: their military escorts.

She figured anyway that the actual meaning of her words were probably lost on the man- she could already tell that he was one who was likely all 'live life to its fullest' and that kind of thing, but there just wasn't time now to further explain. Therefore, her expression remained unchanged through the exchange, even as he moved to go and she opted for one last remark.

"Call me Light," she said simply, using that as her own farewell as her gaze drifted away to rest on the nearest, boulder-faced soldier instead-- and noted with disdain that it was one of the men she'd attacked the previous day. Regardless, she had no intention to directly 'report,' even as she ( ... )

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