thebastion | Day 138 // Open (and obviously backdated)

Entry tags:

Day 138 // Open (and obviously backdated)

Who: Zulf and/or Zia PLUS YOU
Open: Open
When: 138
Where: Just entering the Bastion
What: Two Ura strangers arrive... Strangers to the people, at any rate, but the Bastion itself knows them quite well.
Format: Whatever
Warnings: None

Around midday, two new arrivals show up in the Bastion. Well... depending on your definition of "new". There's certainly a kind of look in their eyes as if they recognize the Bastion, but they both seem fairly surprised about something. Anyone who's gotten to know the native NPCs will be able to recognize that both the man and the young woman are Ura- it's the dark eyes, dark hair, and that bright clothing. In his hands, gripped tightly, is a Fang Repeater that looks out of place with him. In her palms, held uncertainly and far away from her, is a bright red War Machete.

They speak together in low voices for a short while, making quite a lot of hand gestures to various parts of the Bastion. The longer she stays and takes things in, the more the young woman seems to recover, eyes getting brighter and stance a little less uncertain. The man is quite clearly a bit more tense and certainly more suspicious. The pair seem to bicker for a short while before coming to an agreement. The young woman starts to set off... before rushing back to hand the machete to her friend. As the girl starts to go about the Bastion, the man sighs and heads immediately in the direction of the shrine without a sliver of indecision of where he's going.

Feel free to run into Zia exploring the Bastion, or Zulf either on his way to or already at the Shrine.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

ZIA!

[This is a familiar position he's found himself in... The pain of failure, the pain of loss, isn't something new to him but it's still heavier than anything in his chest. It's tempting to just give up again. They've failed, the Calamity still happened despite their efforts. Would Zia even still be alive?]

[Zulf gives a shake of his head, jaw clenching and his fingers tightening around the Repeater he held in his hands. He isn't much of a shot, but he thought he could be good enough for now. Taking a deep breath and still wading through the floating shards of land that were once a Caelondian neighborhood, he calls again.]

ZIA! [A brief pause-] RUCKS!

Edited 2013-12-28 04:27 (UTC)

[When she wakes up, she decides that she isn't going to move.

Last time, she stayed still, and it was fine. The monsters didn't bother her when she didn't move, and she knows she doesn't stand a chance against them.

She couldn't even run, the way she is—shaking, clutching her harp guitar to her chest like it is a shield, kneeling where she rolled out of her teeny hole in the ground because she can't find the stability to stand.

Everyone's dead, she thinks. Zulf ran off and the Marshals got her father and Rucks must not have even known and the Kid, oh, the Kid—

Her breathing gets so fast that it may as well have stopped and she sputters, tries to get some kind of control, inhale, exhale, inhale...

She shifts her harp guitar in her hands, plucks a few strings. It's just like before. If she treats it just like before, it'll turn out like before. The monsters aren't going to bother her; they don't mind the music. It'll be just like before. The others will be okay.

Zia takes a long, slow breath, and she sings.]

I dig my hole, you build a wall... [It's easy, easy as breathing; this is what she knows.] I dig my hole, you build a wall. One day, that wall is gonna—f...fa...

[She can't. She can't. She hugs her instrument, curls up into a ball, and—

and hears her name.]

Zulf. [It comes out hoarse. She finds a sudden will to stand.] ZULF! ZULF! [And she sprints down the Skyway, stumbling over the forming ground, screaming so loud that her lungs burn.] ZULF!

[Going to be just like before, finding a shape too still and too dull in the shadows, fooling himself into thinking everything is alright-]

[Another deep breath, and Zulf tries to force himself into calmness even as his fingers tremble. He's clutching the Repeater so hard it's starting to hurt, but he's barely thinking about that. He tries his best to think of the last time he had to travel through the Wilds to get to Caelondia from the Terminals, tries to think of home, tries to think of so many things. But still-]

[Standing there with ashes on his hands just like when he sent his parents away to the Mother, sent his adopted Father to her too, and now his love who doesn't even get the blessings of fire, doesn't disappear in smoke-]

[He keeps thinking of the worst.]

[His heart is on the edge of shattering all over again, held together by red string as it is, when he finally hears his name. For a moment, he nearly thinks he's gone delusional. Thinks it's an illusion. Third time's the charm, the time when he jolts into action like a puppet with its strings cut loose. The Repeater nearly gets dropped as he picks up his skirts and runs for it, runs even though his muscles still feel sore from his escape from the Marshals.]

ZIA!

[His lungs are burning, being pushed to their limit, but he doesn't care. He keeps running until he sees another figure, someone who isn't barely held together ash but flesh and blood and cloth and dark dark hair just like his. Almost just like the first time he met her in the Bastion, Zulf feels his heart nearly hurt with joy to see her alive. Maybe because he knows her now, even more than before.]

[The Repeater goes scattering across the ground as he nearly tackles into her, hands going all over her as if they don't know what to do. They go everywhere, checking her face for scratches and her clothes for blood, anything and everything, before he lunges into a hug while his lungs wheeze. He's gasping things in Ura under his breath, hardly even thinking of what he's saying or how he's saying it.]

[She sees him not even a second before he crashes into her. Her legs almost give out underneath her but she grabs him with the hand that's not balled into a tight fist around her harp guitar, keeps trying to go in for a hug like it's the only way to keep him there, but he keeps examining her—I'm fine, I'm fine, she tries to say, but nothing else in her will cooperate and she ends up just gasping like she's about to sob, and finally she's pulled into a hug that she returns with such a tight squeeze that it makes her arms hurt.

Once she can breathe again she starts to laugh, soft and so relieved.] You made it. You made it. [And she laughs, buries her face in his shoulder and sniffs back tears.] I thought I was alone again. [It's a barely discernible mumble. As if she even has to say it; he knows, he must, and it must be the same for him. But they're not alone, because they're both alive. They're alive.

She pulls her her head away enough to speak audibly.] Cut it out. Don't talk Ura at me 'til I can understand it. [But she giggles as she says it, too thrilled to be all that annoyed.]

["Alone again". Yes, they'd both know how that feels, don't they...? And here he'd nearly thought it had been true himself.]

[Zulf looks dazed as she pulls away, still shocked he's managed to find someone, especially one of those he was admittedly worried about the most. He shakes his head when she speaks to snap himself out of it, and tries to smile back. He never could quite smile right again after the first Calamity, even when they came back, and that stays true even now. Still, he tries.]

My apologies. I must have slipped into it without even thinking. You're certain you're alright?

[He can't ask it enough, not right now.]

BEFORE Bastion arrival, right after the Calamity

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Zia!

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Zulf!

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