[OOC: DREAM A LITTLE DREAM]
"I hate people who lie to themselves."
She jerked awake, eyes opening to a dark room. Starlight and a streetlight a block away cast light through her closed window. Everything was quiet, beyond the usual sounds of the animal life and late night wanderers that peppered the early morning hours of this place that felt like home. She ran tired, shaking hands through her hair, feeling in the pit of her stomach she couldn't return to the kind of sleep that waking thought would grant her.
"Tea," she mused out loud, "I'll make myself some tea." Her voice echoed back to her in the silence, a disconnected sound. She shivered, craving something warm and hot to drive out the cold settling in, growing worse as she tossed back the blankets of her bed. Her feet touched down on the wood, and then fell through, sending her tumbling to the ground, grass staining her knees, a vivid, blue sky above her head. The mental dissonance in realizing she was still dreaming left her looking up, mouth opening to ask why, nothing coming out. There was no room for why. The cold inside her alleviated for a moment in the warm mid-morning sunlight -- or was it early afternoon?
Sounds from behind prompted her to rise to her feet, wiping the dirt from her knees. The dreamer turned, catching sight of three paper-cut-out people next to three thick wooden poles stuck in the ground. One, an orange paper person, was tied up with rope to the middle pole. The two others, pink and red respectively, sat cross legged on the ground, lunches in hand.
The orange paper person crumpled, their stomach growling loudly. Both the other paper people didn't seem to notice, though the red one sat up straighter.
"Ha!" Defiant, like any child faced with a reality they didn't choose to accept. "I'm not hungry at all!"
Another loud rumble made it clear he wasn't telling the truth, and the red paper boy straightened further. "Here." He held out his lunch, and the orange and pink heads folded toward him.
"But if you do that--"
Red interrupted Pink, voice cutting in reprimand. "Without food, he'll just be in the way, and that will only hurt us."
"Sensei just said--"
"Don't worry." Less of an edge this time, more self assurance from Red. "I don't sense him near here. After lunch, we'll work together and read the names."
Pink's head folded down, regarding the lunch within her two-dimensional hands. She reached some conclusion, one that the dreamer could see as clearly as if it had been painted in words. It was a moment more, and then Pink's own lunch was offered to the orange paper boy, and he paused, laughing softly. "Hehehe... Thanks."
In the silence that followed, a whirlwind of air hit the assembled paper people, sending a ripple through them that almost sang. A new figure, brilliant silver-flashing white, touched down in front of Red, Orange, and Pink. "YOU THREE!" His bellow carried through them, and Pink cringed way, hands held up to stop whatever she felt was coming. Red looked defensive, Orange unsure -- yet with the next words, Silver brought all three from the adrenaline-rush of sudden tension into the realm of equally sudden shock.
"...Pass." Silver straightened, arms folded over his chest. The dreamer felt herself pulled forward, staring at this colorful array as they took in this single word, and felt almost as surprised as they did. They'd passed? Passed what? Would they be able to read the names, as Red had said?
None of the paper people reacted as she stood in their midst. Slowly, she turned around again. A giant, monolithic stone had manifested behind Silver, at the same time towering over his form even as it was apparent Silver was taller than the monument itself. Names she couldn't quite make out were beautifully carved into it's gray surface, revealing a lighter gray in the crevasses of each letter.
"These are the [ fzzt ]s who are recognized as being heroes of the village." Silver turned away, falling quiet while his audience of four looked on. "Team Seven," he said at last, "Training's over. Report for duties tomorrow morning."
Orange shivered, a mixture of excitement and thrill passing through his paper form. "Hey! Sensei! I've decided to get my name carved on that stone too! Hero! Hero! That's what I'll become!"
The dreamer felt herself frown, wanting to reach out, to say that in no world would this many names in one place be a good thing, to not strive to end up recorded like this is stone. She didn't have a chance to follow through. As Silver responded, all four paper people began folding in on themselves, smaller and smaller, until they were dense, fluttering paper-cranes.
"These aren't just normal heroes."
The cranes lifted from the ground, bathed in sunlight, looking awkward and uncertain.
"These are all heroes who died while on duty. This is a memorial."
But can we read the names?
Turning around, the dreamer half-expected to find yet another person standing near, but there was no-one there. The voice had been within her own head, as cool as the stone she took a step back toward. Had it moved? Looking up, she covered her eyes. The paper cranes had spread their wings further and further, looking more and more like the birds themselves. Higher and higher they climbed, circling, and the same question came to her. But can we read the names? She was afraid of the morbid curiosity she felt tugging her to turn around and trace down the list of names at her back.
A shiver shot down her spine. She made herself resist, holding still and looking desperately after the cranes for distraction.
Turning for a last revolution in the cloudless blue sky, the four cranes, made of angles and bright, rigid colors, tucked their wings close and dove downward, one, by one. Silver hit first, landing quietly, dropping two glinting bells from his beak. Red came next, backpedaling furiously, yet crashing down and releasing a rounded paper fan. When Orange followed, he did so with abandon, landing at a run and stretching, slowly, into the form of a fox covered in swirls. Whiskers quivering, Orange turned his head toward the sky to watch Pink's descent; but she'd already been changing mid-air. Soft, velvet petals rained down, a veritable storm of flowers the dreamer couldn't quite identify, and with the flowers came the sounds.
You spend so much time making yourself look good, and what do you hope to do? You're useless!
Men never take the time to listen to women. In this world, there is no such thing as being heard.
Thank you.
You were the one to make the antidote?
The most important thing in being a medic is not getting hit! One hit, and then what? You're healing yourself, not your team.
The voices changed, all unfamiliar, except for the thank you. Red -- who had dropped the fan, and picked it up now, molting feathers in the process -- it had sounded like him, which meant next to nothing in this alien landscape. Holding out her palm, she caught a flower whole. She was rewarded with a sudden, sharp searing pain that shot up her arm while her mind was dragged into visions she couldn't break free from.
The first was a bright forest, with impossibly thick trees surrounding a small meadow. Two faceless people, symbols on their chests, lay barely breathing in the shadow of a lean-to. Orange and Red. She recognized them, the paper people from earlier, now granted three-dimensional weight.
Where was Pink? A sharp push at her head, from a hand fisted in her hair, forced the dreamer to look down. A smooth expanse of the same color from earlier met her eyes, along with the realization: She was Pink. Pink was her.
There was no observing anymore. Another sharp pull on her scalp, and a faceless young woman projected contempt down on her.
"You spend so much time making yourself look good, and what do you hope to do?"
Pink didn't know, but that wasn't the whole truth. Her fingers dug into the earth, feeling it warm grittiness pushing up under her nails.
"You're useless!"
No, not that, never that. Holding the feeling of outrage close, Pink felt her hand move, latch onto luke-warm metal, and she was suddenly holding a weapon. Something meant for killing, and throwing -- was she going to kill someone now? Her arm raised higher, higher, and then fell in a deliberate arc.
She was almost shocked by the rain of pink tendrils that cascaded down her shoulders, freeing her head, leaving Pink feeling unbelievably light. No, she felt as a grim smile of determination overtook her face. Never useless.
Warmth brushed across her middle, and as she looked down the world twisted and the forest faded away to black.
Her senses were disoriented. Wherever she was, she knew it was dark, dangerous. A cave she concluded, and she wasn't alone in here. There was someone at the far end, and someone next to her. No faces to make out, just drawings -- even looking down at herself, with the bold, black seven on her chest. The warmth from earlier. Seven, next to a woman characterized by strings. A man with a scorpion hidden in the red clouds of his cloak. Seven, Strings, and Scorpion.
There was no more time to think, as Seven started to move. Dodging long, metal needles she knew with the certainty of the dreamer were poisoned. Her body reacting perfectly, knowing what to do even as her heart pounded and she felt clueless. No hesitancy, rising up to meet an impossible, looming black slab of stone, seeing the names, always the names engraved with their lighter grays.
"Men never take the time to listen to women."
Seven drew back a fist, sent it pummeling into the rock.
"In this world, there is no such thing as being heard."
What a joke. If they wouldn't take the time, Seven would make them. Facing off against this Scorpion, she would make him see.
A stab, and there he was, and there she was, time having slid past without notice or description, something cold and slick through her flesh, pushing out the other side. Then the burning warmth, driving out the cold, driving back the pain. Green, illuminating the seven the Scorpion had come so close to touching. How dare he. How dare he--
Walk away. Darkness closed in around her, and she felt smaller, but she could recognize herself nevertheless. The seven glowed softer now, the green fading back as footsteps came up the road. She was no longer in the cave, standing free under an overcast night sky. And there -- there was Red, a similar seven on his own chest, ragged at the edges, smaller than her own, but present none-the-less.
Her chest ached with overwhelming loss, as the red that obscured all features faded away. Black hair, black eyes, a blue shirt. A melancholy that settled over everything. Part of Seven was leaving, and she didn't know what to think.
"Take me with you!"
When had things shifted?
"I'd do anything for you!" Seven didn't remember moving, but she must have. She was further down the road, and Red was in front of her. He would leave, and he would never back -- or was it something else? Why was he going? She found herself stepping forward, caught up in these questions, not understanding; then she felt him at her back. The road ahead was empty, and she stilled.
"Thank you." Two words, spoken at her back. Her heart stopped, her eyes widened, then the crashing pain that had nothing to do with the physical lowering her eyes, prompting the tears that started slow, hot trails down her cheeks.
Only then they weren't tears. Sweat, maybe blood, and she was her usual size again, looking back at the Scorpion for a moment with a vial and needle clutched in her hand.
"You were the one who made the antidote?" Was he speaking to her, or to Strings? What antidote? Light flashed, and she blinked, half-hearing words that she already had an answer for.
"I'm just doing my job."
Seven smiled awkwardly at people whose features were blurred into the background of this medical facility. Medicine? She turned around, spotting brown hair, bandages, and Orange standing to the side. And there, behind him, Strings. Behind even her, Silver, still more a three-dimensional wash of color than a person. Maybe it had been Strings in the first place.
Orange stepped forward, and Seven's eyes caught one detail. A bold, bright seven on his own chest, almost pulsing with life. It hit her like the force of a freight train, and she flew backward, slamming through tree-trunks and breathing hard as she found herself smaller once more, outside and away from the color people and the parts of herself she couldn't entirely account for. Team Seven, like Silver had announced before the paper people had folded themselves into cranes.
Picking herself up, Seven brushed off the leaves and bark that clung to her, feeling pain through her whole body. It was familiar, an old acquaintance, and expected. She couldn't account for why. Seven looked forward, sliding soundlessly back in the direction she'd been sent flying from. In the light of the meadow a woman waited, features again largely obscured by a play of both light and shadow.
The woman's voice carried authority. "What's the most important part of being a medical [ fzzt ]?"
One step, another, and impossibly quickly, she was in front of this woman, confused but answering. Was this a trick question? She swallowed, clearing her throat. What was a medical [ fzzt ], and what could be the logical answer?
Seven guessed. "Being able to heal--"
"No!"
The shout of the woman's rebuke shook Seven to the core, and she cringed back, then straightened. It was expected, she felt, and an expectation she chose to meet. "The most important thing in being a medic is not getting hit! One hit, and then what? You're healing yourself, not your team." Snow began falling in this bright meadow, from a cloudless sky.
Seven blinked, thinking to the antidote, the medical room, the warm branching feeling when the sword had cut through her. Snowflakes melted on her exposed skin, small, light touches that she mostly tried to ignore. "Right, but why are you telling me--"
The woman had been replaced with Orange, who blinked at her as if she'd said something absolutely insane. He had blue eyes, she noticed, and blond hair. His seven seemed to burn through him still, flickering with that overwhelming light from earlier. The disbelief and disgust on his face disturbed Seven. It seemed so wrong for such a vital person to look so unforgivably serious. About to ask what it was, what she'd possibly done wrong, he instead spoke first.
"I hate people who lie to themselves. Those who break the rules and codes of the [ fzzt ] world are called trash... but you know what? Those who don't take care of their comrades... are lower than trash."
The falling snow started fizzling, and Orange's eyes drifted from their clear, deep blue to an angry, slitted red. Energy wafted off him in thick, tangible sheets, coalescing at his feet and taking on an orange-red that looked not-quite right. She backed away, watching as he started bending forward, as his skin blackened and the strange aura bubbled off around him. He looked like he was melting.
Behind him, she saw the same dark gray stone from earlier.
But can we read the names?
Orange's bright red eyes locked onto hers. "Who are we?" Seven almost lost the question among the grumbling growl that echoed around it. From behind Orange, Red, one arm draped over the stone, echoed the question. "Who are we?" His own eyes glowed red, and Seven swallowed. Everything about this made her intensely uncomfortable, as if she should know more about what it meant in seeing these men with their eyes so changed. The discomfort stayed the same as she saw Silver step around from the other side of the stone, arms folded, looking equally uncomfortable in being there. He said nothing, but the air of expectation was the same as with Orange and Red.
Pink didn't emerge. Then again, like she'd realized before, for good or ill, she was the Pink Paper Woman, the Pink Crane, the Seven that was painted across her chest. And maybe that was the answer. She could take a chance on that, with all of them staring at her as if she should know.
"Seven!" she shouted out in desperation. "We're Team Seven!"
The frightening energies began to calm, settling into an uneasy, shifting mass that she was a part of. A new person approached her, paintbrush in hand. He eyed her critically, his face showing no emotion, before leaning over and tracing the outline of the number on her chest, following the tail of the seven down to her belly button.
"And what does that mean?"
"What?"
"You say we're Team Seven." He straightened, the short cropped shirt he wore revealing the tail end of something painted above his stomach as well. He saw where her eyes fell, and wordlessly pulled his shirt up enough that the seven made itself known. "So what does that mean?"
She fell silent, contemplative, if uneasy. “I don't know,” she said at last. “It has to mean something." She closed her eyes briefly, opening them to regard all four men with utmost seriousness. "I promise I'll figure it out."
The hand at her throat, lifting her up off the ground, was unexpected. Her hands flew up, wrapping around the arm of her shadowy attacker. "Don't hesitate."
She barely registered the words, trying desperately to breathe. She was crying.
"When you hesitate, people die."
Her clawing fingers found flesh, tearing into it even as the grip around her throat relaxed.
"People like you."
Her assailant let go. She fell down, crashing through darkness to the echo of a soundless scream and the tears that she couldn't stop herself from shedding.
I promise...
She jerked awake, eyes opening to a dark room. Starlight and a streetlight a block away cast light through her closed window. Everything was quiet, beyond the usual sounds of the animal life and late night wanderers that peppered the early morning hours of this place that felt like home. She ran tired, shaking hands through her hair, feeling in the pit of her stomach she couldn't return to the kind of sleep that waking thought would grant her.
"Tea," she mused out loud, "I'll make myself some tea." Her voice echoed back to her in the silence, a disconnected sound. She shivered, craving something warm and hot to drive out the cold settling in, growing worse as she tossed back the blankets of her bed. Her feet touched down on the wood, and then fell through, sending her tumbling to the ground, grass staining her knees, a vivid, blue sky above her head. The mental dissonance in realizing she was still dreaming left her looking up, mouth opening to ask why, nothing coming out. There was no room for why. The cold inside her alleviated for a moment in the warm mid-morning sunlight -- or was it early afternoon?
Sounds from behind prompted her to rise to her feet, wiping the dirt from her knees. The dreamer turned, catching sight of three paper-cut-out people next to three thick wooden poles stuck in the ground. One, an orange paper person, was tied up with rope to the middle pole. The two others, pink and red respectively, sat cross legged on the ground, lunches in hand.
The orange paper person crumpled, their stomach growling loudly. Both the other paper people didn't seem to notice, though the red one sat up straighter.
"Ha!" Defiant, like any child faced with a reality they didn't choose to accept. "I'm not hungry at all!"
Another loud rumble made it clear he wasn't telling the truth, and the red paper boy straightened further. "Here." He held out his lunch, and the orange and pink heads folded toward him.
"But if you do that--"
Red interrupted Pink, voice cutting in reprimand. "Without food, he'll just be in the way, and that will only hurt us."
"Sensei just said--"
"Don't worry." Less of an edge this time, more self assurance from Red. "I don't sense him near here. After lunch, we'll work together and read the names."
Pink's head folded down, regarding the lunch within her two-dimensional hands. She reached some conclusion, one that the dreamer could see as clearly as if it had been painted in words. It was a moment more, and then Pink's own lunch was offered to the orange paper boy, and he paused, laughing softly. "Hehehe... Thanks."
In the silence that followed, a whirlwind of air hit the assembled paper people, sending a ripple through them that almost sang. A new figure, brilliant silver-flashing white, touched down in front of Red, Orange, and Pink. "YOU THREE!" His bellow carried through them, and Pink cringed way, hands held up to stop whatever she felt was coming. Red looked defensive, Orange unsure -- yet with the next words, Silver brought all three from the adrenaline-rush of sudden tension into the realm of equally sudden shock.
"...Pass." Silver straightened, arms folded over his chest. The dreamer felt herself pulled forward, staring at this colorful array as they took in this single word, and felt almost as surprised as they did. They'd passed? Passed what? Would they be able to read the names, as Red had said?
None of the paper people reacted as she stood in their midst. Slowly, she turned around again. A giant, monolithic stone had manifested behind Silver, at the same time towering over his form even as it was apparent Silver was taller than the monument itself. Names she couldn't quite make out were beautifully carved into it's gray surface, revealing a lighter gray in the crevasses of each letter.
"These are the [ fzzt ]s who are recognized as being heroes of the village." Silver turned away, falling quiet while his audience of four looked on. "Team Seven," he said at last, "Training's over. Report for duties tomorrow morning."
Orange shivered, a mixture of excitement and thrill passing through his paper form. "Hey! Sensei! I've decided to get my name carved on that stone too! Hero! Hero! That's what I'll become!"
The dreamer felt herself frown, wanting to reach out, to say that in no world would this many names in one place be a good thing, to not strive to end up recorded like this is stone. She didn't have a chance to follow through. As Silver responded, all four paper people began folding in on themselves, smaller and smaller, until they were dense, fluttering paper-cranes.
"These aren't just normal heroes."
The cranes lifted from the ground, bathed in sunlight, looking awkward and uncertain.
"These are all heroes who died while on duty. This is a memorial."
But can we read the names?
Turning around, the dreamer half-expected to find yet another person standing near, but there was no-one there. The voice had been within her own head, as cool as the stone she took a step back toward. Had it moved? Looking up, she covered her eyes. The paper cranes had spread their wings further and further, looking more and more like the birds themselves. Higher and higher they climbed, circling, and the same question came to her. But can we read the names? She was afraid of the morbid curiosity she felt tugging her to turn around and trace down the list of names at her back.
A shiver shot down her spine. She made herself resist, holding still and looking desperately after the cranes for distraction.
Turning for a last revolution in the cloudless blue sky, the four cranes, made of angles and bright, rigid colors, tucked their wings close and dove downward, one, by one. Silver hit first, landing quietly, dropping two glinting bells from his beak. Red came next, backpedaling furiously, yet crashing down and releasing a rounded paper fan. When Orange followed, he did so with abandon, landing at a run and stretching, slowly, into the form of a fox covered in swirls. Whiskers quivering, Orange turned his head toward the sky to watch Pink's descent; but she'd already been changing mid-air. Soft, velvet petals rained down, a veritable storm of flowers the dreamer couldn't quite identify, and with the flowers came the sounds.
You spend so much time making yourself look good, and what do you hope to do? You're useless!
Men never take the time to listen to women. In this world, there is no such thing as being heard.
Thank you.
You were the one to make the antidote?
The most important thing in being a medic is not getting hit! One hit, and then what? You're healing yourself, not your team.
The voices changed, all unfamiliar, except for the thank you. Red -- who had dropped the fan, and picked it up now, molting feathers in the process -- it had sounded like him, which meant next to nothing in this alien landscape. Holding out her palm, she caught a flower whole. She was rewarded with a sudden, sharp searing pain that shot up her arm while her mind was dragged into visions she couldn't break free from.
The first was a bright forest, with impossibly thick trees surrounding a small meadow. Two faceless people, symbols on their chests, lay barely breathing in the shadow of a lean-to. Orange and Red. She recognized them, the paper people from earlier, now granted three-dimensional weight.
Where was Pink? A sharp push at her head, from a hand fisted in her hair, forced the dreamer to look down. A smooth expanse of the same color from earlier met her eyes, along with the realization: She was Pink. Pink was her.
There was no observing anymore. Another sharp pull on her scalp, and a faceless young woman projected contempt down on her.
"You spend so much time making yourself look good, and what do you hope to do?"
Pink didn't know, but that wasn't the whole truth. Her fingers dug into the earth, feeling it warm grittiness pushing up under her nails.
"You're useless!"
No, not that, never that. Holding the feeling of outrage close, Pink felt her hand move, latch onto luke-warm metal, and she was suddenly holding a weapon. Something meant for killing, and throwing -- was she going to kill someone now? Her arm raised higher, higher, and then fell in a deliberate arc.
She was almost shocked by the rain of pink tendrils that cascaded down her shoulders, freeing her head, leaving Pink feeling unbelievably light. No, she felt as a grim smile of determination overtook her face. Never useless.
Warmth brushed across her middle, and as she looked down the world twisted and the forest faded away to black.
Her senses were disoriented. Wherever she was, she knew it was dark, dangerous. A cave she concluded, and she wasn't alone in here. There was someone at the far end, and someone next to her. No faces to make out, just drawings -- even looking down at herself, with the bold, black seven on her chest. The warmth from earlier. Seven, next to a woman characterized by strings. A man with a scorpion hidden in the red clouds of his cloak. Seven, Strings, and Scorpion.
There was no more time to think, as Seven started to move. Dodging long, metal needles she knew with the certainty of the dreamer were poisoned. Her body reacting perfectly, knowing what to do even as her heart pounded and she felt clueless. No hesitancy, rising up to meet an impossible, looming black slab of stone, seeing the names, always the names engraved with their lighter grays.
"Men never take the time to listen to women."
Seven drew back a fist, sent it pummeling into the rock.
"In this world, there is no such thing as being heard."
What a joke. If they wouldn't take the time, Seven would make them. Facing off against this Scorpion, she would make him see.
A stab, and there he was, and there she was, time having slid past without notice or description, something cold and slick through her flesh, pushing out the other side. Then the burning warmth, driving out the cold, driving back the pain. Green, illuminating the seven the Scorpion had come so close to touching. How dare he. How dare he--
Walk away. Darkness closed in around her, and she felt smaller, but she could recognize herself nevertheless. The seven glowed softer now, the green fading back as footsteps came up the road. She was no longer in the cave, standing free under an overcast night sky. And there -- there was Red, a similar seven on his own chest, ragged at the edges, smaller than her own, but present none-the-less.
Her chest ached with overwhelming loss, as the red that obscured all features faded away. Black hair, black eyes, a blue shirt. A melancholy that settled over everything. Part of Seven was leaving, and she didn't know what to think.
"Take me with you!"
When had things shifted?
"I'd do anything for you!" Seven didn't remember moving, but she must have. She was further down the road, and Red was in front of her. He would leave, and he would never back -- or was it something else? Why was he going? She found herself stepping forward, caught up in these questions, not understanding; then she felt him at her back. The road ahead was empty, and she stilled.
"Thank you." Two words, spoken at her back. Her heart stopped, her eyes widened, then the crashing pain that had nothing to do with the physical lowering her eyes, prompting the tears that started slow, hot trails down her cheeks.
Only then they weren't tears. Sweat, maybe blood, and she was her usual size again, looking back at the Scorpion for a moment with a vial and needle clutched in her hand.
"You were the one who made the antidote?" Was he speaking to her, or to Strings? What antidote? Light flashed, and she blinked, half-hearing words that she already had an answer for.
"I'm just doing my job."
Seven smiled awkwardly at people whose features were blurred into the background of this medical facility. Medicine? She turned around, spotting brown hair, bandages, and Orange standing to the side. And there, behind him, Strings. Behind even her, Silver, still more a three-dimensional wash of color than a person. Maybe it had been Strings in the first place.
Orange stepped forward, and Seven's eyes caught one detail. A bold, bright seven on his own chest, almost pulsing with life. It hit her like the force of a freight train, and she flew backward, slamming through tree-trunks and breathing hard as she found herself smaller once more, outside and away from the color people and the parts of herself she couldn't entirely account for. Team Seven, like Silver had announced before the paper people had folded themselves into cranes.
Picking herself up, Seven brushed off the leaves and bark that clung to her, feeling pain through her whole body. It was familiar, an old acquaintance, and expected. She couldn't account for why. Seven looked forward, sliding soundlessly back in the direction she'd been sent flying from. In the light of the meadow a woman waited, features again largely obscured by a play of both light and shadow.
The woman's voice carried authority. "What's the most important part of being a medical [ fzzt ]?"
One step, another, and impossibly quickly, she was in front of this woman, confused but answering. Was this a trick question? She swallowed, clearing her throat. What was a medical [ fzzt ], and what could be the logical answer?
Seven guessed. "Being able to heal--"
"No!"
The shout of the woman's rebuke shook Seven to the core, and she cringed back, then straightened. It was expected, she felt, and an expectation she chose to meet. "The most important thing in being a medic is not getting hit! One hit, and then what? You're healing yourself, not your team." Snow began falling in this bright meadow, from a cloudless sky.
Seven blinked, thinking to the antidote, the medical room, the warm branching feeling when the sword had cut through her. Snowflakes melted on her exposed skin, small, light touches that she mostly tried to ignore. "Right, but why are you telling me--"
The woman had been replaced with Orange, who blinked at her as if she'd said something absolutely insane. He had blue eyes, she noticed, and blond hair. His seven seemed to burn through him still, flickering with that overwhelming light from earlier. The disbelief and disgust on his face disturbed Seven. It seemed so wrong for such a vital person to look so unforgivably serious. About to ask what it was, what she'd possibly done wrong, he instead spoke first.
"I hate people who lie to themselves. Those who break the rules and codes of the [ fzzt ] world are called trash... but you know what? Those who don't take care of their comrades... are lower than trash."
The falling snow started fizzling, and Orange's eyes drifted from their clear, deep blue to an angry, slitted red. Energy wafted off him in thick, tangible sheets, coalescing at his feet and taking on an orange-red that looked not-quite right. She backed away, watching as he started bending forward, as his skin blackened and the strange aura bubbled off around him. He looked like he was melting.
Behind him, she saw the same dark gray stone from earlier.
But can we read the names?
Orange's bright red eyes locked onto hers. "Who are we?" Seven almost lost the question among the grumbling growl that echoed around it. From behind Orange, Red, one arm draped over the stone, echoed the question. "Who are we?" His own eyes glowed red, and Seven swallowed. Everything about this made her intensely uncomfortable, as if she should know more about what it meant in seeing these men with their eyes so changed. The discomfort stayed the same as she saw Silver step around from the other side of the stone, arms folded, looking equally uncomfortable in being there. He said nothing, but the air of expectation was the same as with Orange and Red.
Pink didn't emerge. Then again, like she'd realized before, for good or ill, she was the Pink Paper Woman, the Pink Crane, the Seven that was painted across her chest. And maybe that was the answer. She could take a chance on that, with all of them staring at her as if she should know.
"Seven!" she shouted out in desperation. "We're Team Seven!"
The frightening energies began to calm, settling into an uneasy, shifting mass that she was a part of. A new person approached her, paintbrush in hand. He eyed her critically, his face showing no emotion, before leaning over and tracing the outline of the number on her chest, following the tail of the seven down to her belly button.
"And what does that mean?"
"What?"
"You say we're Team Seven." He straightened, the short cropped shirt he wore revealing the tail end of something painted above his stomach as well. He saw where her eyes fell, and wordlessly pulled his shirt up enough that the seven made itself known. "So what does that mean?"
She fell silent, contemplative, if uneasy. “I don't know,” she said at last. “It has to mean something." She closed her eyes briefly, opening them to regard all four men with utmost seriousness. "I promise I'll figure it out."
The hand at her throat, lifting her up off the ground, was unexpected. Her hands flew up, wrapping around the arm of her shadowy attacker. "Don't hesitate."
She barely registered the words, trying desperately to breathe. She was crying.
"When you hesitate, people die."
Her clawing fingers found flesh, tearing into it even as the grip around her throat relaxed.
"People like you."
Her assailant let go. She fell down, crashing through darkness to the echo of a soundless scream and the tears that she couldn't stop herself from shedding.
I promise...