Day 52: Lunch

[purpletaint]

[from here]It was a race. A fight against patience and a Song's call. Still, the sedation's dredges churned through him. Two close at hand had a potent effect--much like the night that they were left in that town, and the morning after. Rubedo had came then. Came for them like something out of place, and wasn't that so ironic afterwards--when

Comments

[zack_fair]

Zack's time in the library had been pleasant enough, and had also been a lot more comfortable than his breakfast. ZEX was perfectly nice and all, but there was clearly a cultural miscommunication going on. Maybe the VUX didn't have issues with openly propositioning each other, but humans usually didn't take to it so readily. Granted, Zack had certainly talked up his fair share of women, but at least they were the same species

[zack_fair]

It was starting to seem more and more like Kratos was digging for a particular piece of information, and so Zack had to wonder if there was yet another possible connection. He was quiet for a moment before shaking his head. "No, nothing like that. Although..."

At this point, it seemed like he might as well just tell the man about the mako infusing. Zack didn't have to necessarily connect himself to it, but Kratos also didn't seem like the sort of person who was going to start showering him with pity, so it was probably fine. "What is done is taking the energy in a liquid form and injecting it into people to increase their strength and agility. It can make certain people sick, and it also has a weird effect on the eyes," he explained, while pointing to his own to show the man what he meant.

[spandexorgtfo]

Thank goodness...partially. Kratos casually covered his left hand; he didn't want a repeat of breakfast's incident.

"I should have known..." He sighed. It was almost laughable how similar the situation was. "I'm starting to suspect that all of humanity has some innate, foolish desire to literally take the power of a planet for itself, despite the disastrous consequences."

Zack had been willing to share what was probably a very private aspect of himself; Kratos would return the favor. "We have a similar process where I'm from. Normally, magical ability is reserved for those of a specific bloodline, but there is a material that, when injected, allows normal humans to acquire those powers. I've undergone that process, although, as you can see, it had far less immediately noticeable effects," he said, likewise pointing to his own eyes.

[zack_fair]

So they were both victims of their own governments. While Zack was lucky in that he hadn't suffered much from the mako in his veins, he wasn't sure the same could be said about the Jenova cells. Of course, Cloud was the one who had really gotten the short end of the stick through all of it, and yet he was also the one who had survived in the end. Through Zack's efforts, but still. The point was that being part of Shin-Ra could easily be a death sentence

[spandexorgtfo]

Well...Kratos couldn't honestly say he'd been a victim. The court had appealed to his sense of loyalty and status ("Do you understand what sort of morale boost you could give our men, Sir Aurion?"), but it hadn't taken him much personal debate at all to agree to being pumped full of Aionis. They had a war to win, and he was willing to do anything that would increase their chances of victory.

"It's difficult to say. This world is mostly devoid of magic, so it seems unlikely that they would concentrate on drawing magical power from Earth, or else I'm sure they would have found a way by now, given the level of technology. It's interesting, though, that Landel has chosen to draw in so many people from other worlds who do have magic." That again was leading to unpleasant ideas about human-powered energy sources.

He shook his head. "I should have probably added that the procedure was voluntary. And while the experience was certainly painful, the effects have far outstripped the costs--at least, for me."

[zack_fair]

Listening to Kratos theorize was interesting, but Zack also had to wonder how he was making some of his conclusions. Setting his food aside (it had all mainly fallen apart on him now, and he was full), he leaned forward in his seat and watched the redhead with curiosity. "What makes you so sure that this world is devoid of magic, though? Our skills here are weakened, but that could just be something Landel pulled off

[spandexorgtfo]

Kratos frowned. "I've met several people from Earth, and most of them said that they were skeptical of magic or had had no contact with it prior to arriving here. And a few days ago, many patients were somehow 'cured' and assumed their 'real' selves. An acquaintance of mine who hails from my home was one of those, and her 'real' self expressed a strong belief that magic was not possible in this world based on her own experimental failures. All of it is hearsay and therefore an unreliable base upon which to build an argument, true, but right now the consensus seems to point in the direction of a world with little magic."

It did beg the question of why magic continued to work in the confines of the Institute (and how Landel seemed to have some powers of his own), but that wasn't the issue at hand

[zack_fair]

Zack really hadn't expected such a detailed response, but going off of everything that Kratos was saying, it made sense. So Earth wasn't a place where magic was normally used. That was an interesting piece of information, since it meant that bringing people who did have the ability to use magic into this place may have had some sort of point. Were they being experimented on as a way to uncover the method for using magic and other skills so that those methods could be adapted and used on Earth's people