Day 63: Bus 1

[gald_digger]

As soon as Anise achieved wakefulness, the Head Doctor's words from the previous night immediately came floating back into her mind. People were getting sick. They were going to turn into monsters. That thought alone was chilling enough, but it was nothing compared to the terror that struck her when she sat up and saw her own hand. A red blotch covered the back of it, extending upwards to the wrist. Where did that come from?

The signs are already showing. That was what Landel said.

It couldn't be. Not her. If it was really true, then her life was as good as over. No... it had to be a mistake. Maybe the Head Doctor's words had scared her to the point that she was attributing random things to his threats. She was being paranoid. That was all it was.

And yet, no matter how many times she told herself that, she feared what might happen.

A nurse came to her soon, bearing an outfit for her to wear on the field trip. The striped shirt and gray skirt weren't particularly appealing to Anise, but the purple coat she was given wasn't so bad. It was a little big on her, but it was a nice, feminine color... and the extra long sleeves served to cover most of the strange rash. Anise didn't want to look at it, and she sure as heck didn't want anyone else seeing it.

When it was time to board the buses, Anise quietly took the lunch bag, climbed aboard, and sat down. She didn't look anyone in the eye. Even after sitting down, she merely stared down at the contents of her bag. The muffin didn't look the least bit appetizing - not while her stomach was busy twisting itself into knots, anyway.

[free!]

Comments

[lovecraftcomplex]

"She seemed a little surprised at being alive." That was an entire battalion of dump-trucks full of understatement. Yomi had been completely freaked out, and sRose didn't think she'd been that crazy before she died. Not that she'd met the girl, but there had been a distinct lack of screaming and flopping around like a fish in the Sun Room or other communal areas.

"Knitting needles." It wasn't the most dignified strife specibus, when put so plainly. "Anything long and pointy will work, in a pinch." She'd convinced a set of pens to deign to be wielded, her first night out. "I take it you use something a little more esoteric?"

[tender_cruelty]

"I think it would be quite surprising to wake up after being dead," Allelujah replied, although he didn't have any practical experience in that area. "Dead is supposed to be dead." This place just kept breaking all of the rules.

Knitting needles sounded fairly reasonable really, or at least they did in the Institute. "Giant robot," Allelujah replied and then shrugged. "At home anyway. There's a shortage of them here though. But I can use most things as weapons. I've found bottle of acid and glassware quite useful here."

[lovecraftcomplex]

"I see." Giant robots were thin on the ground around the Institute, this much was true. "Adaptability is a great asset. Perhaps I should cultivate it." She hadn't tried to do more than vary the exact parameters of what constituted needles, but it didn't mean she couldn't carry other things in her hands.

"I haven't been dead before, but I'd been anticipating it. Temporarily, I mean. It's part of how the game works." It wasn't supposed to leave her with a healing hole in her chest, from what little she'd gleaned in the haze of a dead-end dream. But they hadn't dared test the hypothesis, not with only two of them left. "That I'm awake again is the first sign I've seen that this is part of the plan, rather than some kind of malfunction."

PvP combat hadn't been mentioned in any of the reviews, but none of the reviews had actually understood what Sburb was, due to its reality-altering nature and the not-yet-immanent demise of the planet before the official launch. Combat between sessions seemed even less likely, but there had been something linking their own session with the trolls even before her arrival here. If it had, she might not have been as excited; it was the worldbuilding aspects she'd claimed interest in. Life, not death.

[tender_cruelty]

There was a certain sharpness to his smile when he responded to that. "I've always been adaptable," he said easily. "It''s what keeps you... alive." Alright, that did sound rather tasteless considering the situation that Rose had found herself in. Accurate, but tasteless. "I know some places that might be of use, if you want some help," he added quietly, suddenly awkward after that little misstep.

Anticipating it? That made him raise an eyebrow, peering at her curiously. "What game?" he asked, lips pursed together. This was a brutal game perhaps, but he got the impression that this was not entirely what she was speaking about. He did wince though. "I'm not that keen on plans where death is the most likely outcome. Things get messy."

He paused, considering that statement. "Well, when I'm supposed to be the one to die anyway." The other side was always going to have casualties. Perhaps it was callous, but even after everything, he valued his life slightly higher than theirs. Or maybe that was Hallelujah.

[lovecraftcomplex]

"It's called Sburb. It was widely put forth as fated to be the Game of the Year." Game Bro was not exactly Rose's first choice as supreme arbiter of taste, but popularity contests had never understood great literature. She had idly contemplated the lofty fathoms to which she would show them all, one day.

"It might be considered cheating to give it that title when the rest of the year was pre-empted by the end of the world. Then again, that was part of the game, so one could call it a winning strategy." Her voice was remarkably calm. "Dying was only permanent if we did it twice."

She hadn't woken on Derse once since she'd arrived; her dreams had been dreams, simultaneously surreal and mundane. "Immortality was within our grasp, but I was still working out the mechanics of that. She'd barely started scaling her echeladder -- jumping straight for the top rung was John's folly, not hers. "We could safely die once, and come back to life, as long as certain conditions were met. I'm not sure if I've used up my chance or not."

She tilted her head and considered Allelujah. "Are you sure you'd never let yourself be caught doing something heroic and self-sacrificing?"

[tender_cruelty]

"Ah," Allelujah said vaguely as she supplied the details of the game. "I've never really had much time for video games. Always had other things to do." The closest he'd come were training simulations, virtual reality battles to help one adjust to using a Gundam. The rest of the game sounded very strange indeed. "Brilliant marketing strategy I suppose," he said, not sure how exactly to take the idea of a game that led to the end of the world.

"Where I'm from, people just die and tend to stay dead." He felt a pang of renewed grief for the loss of Lockon, swallowing thickly at the memory. "I don't think this place works on any normal set of rules though." It brought people back as though it were nothing.

He frowned slightly at the question, biting his lip as he considered it. "I'd rather be heroic while surviving. Self-sacrificing is all well and good, but what about everyone else who has to pick up the pieces? What about the people you die to save? How would they feel knowing you held their lives as of more worth than their own?"

[lovecraftcomplex]

"Trust me, I'm not about to go flying off the handle at the slightest provocation." Any suicidally missions would be as well-thought-out and considered as her other actions.

She pursed her lips, pondering the question. "I think they'd feel alive, for one, which is a key prerequisite to feeling any other emotions." Even as she said it, though, something in her stomach sank. Lily would blame herself. Ilia would, too, but in a self-servingly maternal way, and Rose was less inclined to feel guilt over that. Lily, though, had some serious self-esteem issues, which would be exacerbated by watching Rose die to protect her. Had been exacerbated. She hadn't been in the room at all this morning, so Rose hadn't even been able to explain not being dead to her.

"Would you change your mind if, instead of saving a person, you were saving an entire universe?" Rose still had high hopes for a timeline in which no one had to be brutally dismembered or otherwise annihilated while midwifing an entire reality, but scale was important. It wasn't exactly saving so much as creating, but not-creating was kind of like killing.

[tender_cruelty]

He thought about that for a moment. Wasn't that what they were doing in the end, trying to stop their world destroying itself with warfare and division? Even if their own all too human reasons kept getting in the way. "Where I'm from..." he began hesitantly, because she seemed very young and he didn't know her so well, but she was older than he had been when he'd become a killer. He sighed, leaning his head back against the seat.

"Where I'm from, I work for an organisation attempting to bring an end to war before humans destroy themselves. Even to save a universe, I think I would fight to the last breath. I cannot imagine going quietly or willingly. I'd try to drag every last one of them down with me at least."

[lovecraftcomplex]

"I didn't say anything about quietly, did I?" Rose smirked, and straightened up in her seat, even though it sent a lance of pain through her chest. "Trust me, I value myself quite highly."

There were just things so much larger than herself. She'd set it all in motion by a childish, selfish desire -- Jaspers, alive and well, if as an ephemeral spirit. And yet it hadn't been her choice to start things at all; it had been foreordained by the creation of her entire universe, building to the point where one Rose Lalonde's mother had adopted a small black cat, and Rose had found one thing she had in common with her maternal parent. They'd both loved Jaspers unironically, and perhaps they'd both mourned him just as unironically. She was still sorting out how she felt on that one.

"I'm still optimistic that we can win. How many times do you get the chance to be asked if you want to be a god?" She'd quoted Ghostbusters, if obliquely. John would be over the moon. Good thing he wasn't here.

[tender_cruelty]

Something about the way that she said that made him smile, a lopsided expression. Maybe he could understand, at least a little. Hadn't he been prepared to die for Celestial Being, even if he had never planned to do it purposefully. Perhaps... perhaps dying willingly for a reason was better than dying aimlessly for none, or through neglect. "Good choice," he said, and there was a glint of gold in his eyes, a sharp twist to his lips that hadn't always been there. Maybe Allelujah had been terrible at valuing himself, but Hallelujah had always made him survive.

"A god?" he asked curiously. "Literally?" Or the way that they had been at first? Powerful beyond the measure of earth's technology.

[lovecraftcomplex]

"If creating a universe counts, yes." There were other technicalties -- there was a slot at the top of her echeladder that looked promising, but the details had not yet come into view. Or into View -- being a Seer seemed to involve a bunch of extraneous Capital Letters. Words imparted with special meaning, senses overdubbed with mystical powers. "We will still be as nothing to the denizens of the Furthest Ring, but we should make a decent showing."

Less annoying than the trolls, that was for certain. Could you even imagine what kind of universe they'd create? The very thought was depressing.

[tender_cruelty]

"I'm not sure," Allelujah admitted, "I never really thought about theology or... creating a new universe." Not in the way that Rose seemed to be talking about it anyway. Helping usher a new world order into being was rather different he assumed.

His head was starting to hurt again, or it had probably never stopped but he was just starting to notice it again. What the hell was the Furthest Ring? "Just be careful while here then," he said, tight-lipped. "I don't think it's part of your game or anyone's game except Landel and he is not on our side."

[lovecraftcomplex]

"True. I'm entirely in agreement with you as to his good intentions, or lack thereof." Sburb had proved itself to have tentacles twisted throughout her life and her world before; ithis being part of the game still wouldn't surprise her, but assuming anything, rather than hunting down the truth herself, had proved fickle.

"I think I already violated your rule, though." She brought her hands to her chest, framing the heart on her sweater. "I'll endeavor not to die again. Next time I might not have as much luck."

[tender_cruelty]

"I almost preferred the military," he said with a sigh. "At least they were honest about what they wanted. Sort of." He didn't expect that even they had told the whole truth, but they also hadn't pretended that they were anything other than weapons to be used. Certainly hadn't pretended to want to help them.

"Luck is helpful, knowing to kill them before they kill you helps too." Rough perhaps, but he had never claimed to be a pacifist. Defense only lasted for so long.

[lovecraftcomplex]

"That's assuming I'd didn't attempt that." She had. She'd failed. "Believe me, I wasn't trying to lose." The only way to win would have been to win. Or possibly not to have ventured into the basement at all, but she doubted it. Waiting around would only delay the inevitable.

Or get them all blown away by a time limit they hadn't even learned about. "I would prefer a little more clarity, as well. There's inscrutable, and then there's merely poor planning. I'm not sure which this falls under."