thebastion | Day 204 :: any format [OPEN]

Entry tags:

Day 204 :: any format [OPEN]

Who: Rob and anyone
Open: Open
When: Day 204
Where: The entrance to the Bastion, then everywhere
What: The latest survivor has just arrived and doesn't realize that his world is gone yet.
Format: Any, will match
Warnings: I don't think so?

This had certainly been an unexpected event. One moment Rob had been walking to the game shop to hang out and the next he was lying on the sidewalk, part of the street and the small park he was passing the only recognizable landmarks. It was like someone had picked up a section of the world and deposited it here. Or dropped it; things were looking kind of broken. He had an initial moment of panic and confusion at the sudden change in his situation, but that quickly gave way to calm, and then to a bit of excitement at the prospect of an actual adventure in some fantasy world, since that was obviously what this was. With no people, monsters, or animals in sight, the buildings he could see in the distance were as good a destination as any, so he set off walking towards them.

A few hours later he walked into the Bastion, a bit sweaty from the heat since his backpack was too full to fit his coat in, but otherwise in a good mood, twirling the shard he'd found between his fingers. The new arrival was around 5'9" and broad-shouldered, with long brown hair, a reddish-brown goatee, and his ears and septum pierced, the septum with a fairly thick circular barbell. He wore a shin-length black canvas coat with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows, baggy black BDU pants tucked into red high-top skateboard shoes, and a black T-shirt with a red symbol on it, the front of it tucked up behind a matching belt buckle. For someone who'd just had their world destroyed, he looked to be in a pretty good mood. Maybe he didn't know yet?

A while later he could be found wandering around the Bastion, looking everywhere that didn't look like a private space and awkwardly pausing when he saw people, unsure how to strike up conversations with them. It wasn't like he could just walk up to them and press X to have them infodump, but these were people he was going to be around a lot and he knew it would be a good idea to get to know them all. How did video game protagonists do this?

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Takane wasn't really one to go out into the world and just walk around unless she had some purpose for being outside. Still, she and Haruka had been cooped up together for quite a while now due to the threat of the plague that had been going around. Colin hadn't wanted the two teenagers who were already not in the best of health run a risk of catching something that was bringing even the healthiest of people down really hard. So, while they weren't exactly told that they couldn't go anywhere else, it really was common sense not to.

Now, though, the cure for that plague had been found and was in the process of being administered to the sick patients. Things were looking better, and Takane had been driven crazy by being forced to stay inside (though Colin DID have a nice computer, and that did help as far as distractions were concerned).

Being cooped up for days with Haruka hadn't made anything better.

Don't get her wrong, with the situation they were currently in, she knew it was better that she was able to keep an eye on him. He just drove her insane. A lot. She had to get out for a little while.

What with things being the way they were at the moment, Takane hadn't exactly expected many others to be out and walking around. She was proven wrong, however, when she accidentally ran into someone.

And fell.

To the ground.

Ow.

"Hey! Watch where you're going!" She instantly snapped. Never mind that she could have been paying more attention, too ...

Rob had stopped to look at the Monument. Since he hadn't seen anyone around when he'd stopped, he hadn't been paying attention to his surroundings and wasn't prepared for Takane. He stumbled to the side, taking a step before regaining his balance.

"You're the one who ran into me," he retorted, voice just on the edge of anger.

Takane picked herself up and brushed herself off, her eyes set in a glare at the other guy. She crossed her arms over her chest. Clearly, this is a situation she should have just walked off from. No, though. No, she was going to stay right here, and ...

... Do something.

She didn't exactly have anything more to say about the whole running into him thing, though, and she wasn't about to apologize for that right now, so, she moved on to an only slightly related subject.

"Why're you just standing here, anyway? What's so special about this thing?"

Takane hadn't been here for very long, but she'd had a few things explained to her, at least. She didn't know much about the monument, but then, she hadn't really taken much of an interest in it to begin with.

Rob's eyes narrowed when he saw the glare and his nostrils flared around the curved barbell in his nose. He'd expected the girl to just leave right away, but when she didn't he crossed his arms over his chest as well, shifting his feet slightly. There was silence until she spoke.

"Dunno. I just got here. Trying to decide if this is just some modern art or a magical artifact."

Oh. Okay. He just got here. He was in the same boat she was, kinda. She turned her gaze from him, to the monument.

"Has anyone told you that this place is housing the survivors of people's who's worlds got blown up yet?"

One would think Takane would be less blunt about that sort of thing, but ... nope, that's not what's happening here.

"No," he responded in a calm conversational tone. "But if something could destroy an entire world then I wouldn't think there'd be any survivors."

At least he didn't react to that news the way she had. Takane shrugged a little.

"You'd think that'd be the case, but everyone here's saying that the worlds everyone comes from are all blown up. Something called the Calamity got to them, they say."

She's certainly not sure why the Calamity would leave people like her around, anyway. She's of no use to any other world, really.

Rob furrowed his brow and uncrossed his arms, brushing back the sides of his coat to stick his hands in his pockets.

"How'd they know their worlds are gone? Did they watch 'em blow up?"

That seemed like a wild assumption to him; he might as well assume that when he closed the refrigerator door the contents were beamed into space, only to be retrieved when the door opened again.

"That's something you'd have to ask them. I personally just woke up on the Skyway with my friend who was just out of heart surgery, so I had other things to worry about when I got here. I was only told about it after all of the excitement from that was over with. I have no reason not to believe it, though. This is clearly not the world I lived in and I have no way of getting back to that."

A wild assumption, yes, but she hadn't ever really questioned it. She was just in major denial for a while. She was still kind of moping about it, too, but the whole plague thing kinda took precedence while it was still a huge deal.

Rob raised an eyebrow.

"That's how you got here too?"

So much for me being the one hero chosen to save the world. ...But seriously, self, that was never likely to begin with. Odds are it was just random.

"How much've you tried to get back though? Prolly not much since you'd've been looking after your friend, right?"

Assuming her friend didn't die.

Well ... she was lucky other people were around to help, actually, because she nearly died herself. But she won't talk about that. She's still not sure how it happened.

"Eh, not much, I'll be honest. But there was also a plague going around. Colin didn't want Haruka and I catching it."

"Plague?" Rob's tone and face turned serious and worried as his focus shifted from an unconfirmed topic to a potential threat. "What kind of plague?"

"A real nasty one. Lots of people got pretty sick. A cure's been found now, though, so it doesn't seem to be as threatening as it was before."

Though it's still nothing to shake a stick at. Or something like that.

"That's... good. That there's a cure, I mean."

Rob paused, trying to figure out what to say next to keep the conversation from devolving into awkward silence.

"I guess that's why there aren't too many people out and about?"

"You guess right. I advised everyone that it was going to be safer if they stayed indoors and didn't move around too much." Colin says, approaching from off to the side. "Takane, who is this lonely stranger?"

Colin smiles behind his environmental suit's helmet. Yep, you're getting another weird one, Rob.

"Hello there, looks like you made it to our little enclave in one piece," he says. "I'm the aforementioned 'Colin.'"

So far, in whatever timeline these threads occur in, the Meta still has Colin beat in the "weird" department. The environmental suit deepened Rob's confusion about the tech level of this place though. His eyes flicked over Colin but his head remained immobile.

"So long as you look where you're going it isn't too bad," he replied. "I'm Rob."

Colin didn't give a last name so Rob didn't either. He also didn't offer to shake hands, but that's because he forgot to, not because Colin didn't offer.

Takane scowled again, crossing her arms over her chest and looking to Colin with an unamused stare. She should've known he wasn't too far away.

She hadn't exactly given her name to the stranger as well, but Colin had said her name. Good enough. Totally.

Colin seemed to have a handle on things. She didn't need to talk anymore, did she? Maybe? Maybe not? She was just gonna keep herself quiet and talk if she needed to.

"Nice to meet you, Rob. Welcome to Bastion," Colin says in greeting.

He gives Takane a grin then, and he shakes his head. "You're displeased to see me?" he asks her teasingly, before turning his attention back to Rob.

"As Takane told you, we've got a cure for what's afflicted us," he says. "If you get the a headache and start feeling cold, get to the hospital, and we'll fix you right up."

He points off in the distance to the large medical facility, not too easy to miss.

Rob looked where Colin was pointing and nodded, his septum piercing bouncing with the movement.

"I'll keep that in mind."

It was probably good that Colin had given symptoms; having a stranger simply ordering him to take some drug wouldn't have gone over well.

"You a doctor, then?"

"Not really," Takane answered for him. In her experience with him, Colin was a great many things. A proper doctor, though? Nah. That was Yukio.

And it was still weird to her that even Yukio was, because he was younger than her.

Other than that, she still remained largely to the side of the conversation.

"Interphasic Drive Engineer, actually," Colin says, smiling and shaking his head. "Sadly, I'm one of the few people with medical training of any sort here. And that's mostly first aid training more than anything else. Still, we march into battle with the army we've got, and with a plague, it was me and Yukio, or prayer."

He sizes up Rob curiously then, and he gives Takane a glance. "I'm guessing he just arrived?" he asks, before looking back to Rob. "You just came in the from the Skyway? Or did you arrive some time while we were stuck in the hospital?"

Rob made a mental note to ask about interphasic drive engineering at some point; it sounded interesting, but his priority now needed to be on information that was more directly relevant to the situation he was in.

"'Skyway'? Sounds like a good name for that. Kinda cool place. Hm. Is 'Bastion' the name of this world or just this settlement?"

Relevancy was in the eye of the beholder.

Takane only shrugged in response to Colin's question.

"Beats me. He was here when I was taking a walk. I'd assume he's brand new, though. He really doesn't know much about this place."

Nevermind that Takane doesn't know much about the place herself. Only what she's been told. Kinda.

"I told him that his world blew up."

You're welcome, man. Now you don't have to do it yourself.

"Thank you, Takane," Colin says, smiling at her. "That saves me a little bit of trouble."

To say nothing of the fact that it saves him the trouble of trying to do feels. Why are feels so hard?

"Anyway, I don't believe I've actually asked the name of this world. Not that it really matters, since it too was blown up," Colin says. "We're living on chunks of land of a whole bunch of different worlds, but the majority of it seems to be centered on the origination of the incident that took place. Typical region of least resistance, rather common with this sort of reaction."

Rob paused a moment to try and work through what was said, pulling his hands out of his pockets, shifting his stance slightly, and crossing his arms over his chest.

"So you're telling me that an event in this universe - which is, by definition, a closed and self-contained system that neither influences nor is influenced by any other universe (with the possible exception of black holes or spawning other universes through quantum mechanics) - caused the destruction of not only this universe but also multiple other universes. But, in the face of the immense power required to destroy a universe, breach the barriers between universes, and destroy multiple other universes, pieces of matter, including fragile living creatures such as people, somehow managed to not only survive, but cross over into this universe."

An eyebrow is raised.

"That seems rather unlikely. It'd be more reasonable to assume that whatever the event was that destroyed this world, it somehow reached out and transported chunks of other planets in the same universe here. Rather than other worlds being destroyed, it's more likely that there are a bunch of craters and missing persons reports back home."

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