Day 63: T&M Electronics (Late Afternoon)

[nobleman]

Having the chance to share a meal with Claude and just relax in a setting that was more interesting than that cafeteria back at the institute had been refreshing. Guy couldn't shake his worries about Claude, but he tried to push it from his mind, knowing that his friend would speak up if there was anything serious going on.

After their meal they parted ways to do some last minute shopping, although Guy was reluctant to leave the Twin Pines with the way that the wind was only increasing in strength. Still, he didn't want to be holed up there for the rest of the day, and so he endured it, heading across town as quick as he could for the electronics store.

While he had been thinking earlier about how he'd been there so many times already and wanted to see something new, Guy had a practical reason for returning, which was to stock up on fresh batteries. The last thing he wanted was for his flashlight to go out when he and his friends were in the middle of exploring those caverns, after all.

He took a moment to arrange his hair and clothing after escaping from the wind, and then went about searching the store. While he knew where the batteries were by now, he couldn't stop himself from getting distracted from the various gadgets as he made his way to that particular shelf. There was nothing wrong with that, was there?

[For Leanne.]

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[nobleman]

It looked like Leanne was in a decent mood, which probably had something to do with the fact that they weren't cooped up in that building for once. Guy had to admit that this trip, as pointless as it usually turned out to be, was probably good for their mental health in the end. Guy swore that being stuck in that place was actually making them insane rather than helping them.

Leanne's answer to his question took him by surprise, since Guy didn't imagine that it was common for a patient to see Doyleton by night before coming during the day. There was definitely a story behind that, wasn't there?

"A couple nights ago? How'd you manage that?" he asked. He was doing an admirable job of keeping his attention on her and off of the gadgets surrounding them, something that Leanne herself wouldn't be able to appreciate it. But his manners beat out his obsession, and ignoring a lady was downright rude.

[survives]

"Well..." she began, shooting a glance around them before turning her full attention on Guy. "Somebody took me here! She used this weird ring and..." Leanne trailed off, still not entirely sure just how to describe that experience... besides nauseating, of course, but her stomach was something she was trying not to think about too hard. She settled for a shrug, her smile turning sheepish. "It was really... weird! But it got us here."

In the end, it had been a pretty uneventful trip too, though in that particular case, it really had been for the best. The less they could run into monsters in this place, the better.

"But you've probably been here a lot more times than me, huh?" she asked, remembering what he'd told her of how long he'd been in the institute.

[nobleman]

So it had been one of the portal rings? That was really the only explanation that made sense, unless they had stolen a car like he and Claude had talked about earlier, and Guy figured that was something that would have earned some attention. "Right, of course. It's definitely different at night. I don't know if anyone ever told you, but one time we all got stuck here at night and... well, the townspeople turned into those things that you probably saw your first trip here."

It was still strange to look at the people working in the store, for instance, and realize what they really were. Then again, just because they turned into those things at night didn't mean that their personalities during the day were completely fake. Guy hoped that wasn't the case, anyway.

He turned back to Leanne, nodding in response to her question. "Yeah, this is my fifth time here. Kind of crazy, when you think about it." He'd been here for well over a month by now, and was still working on escape. But something had to be said for persistence, right?

[survives]

Leanne couldn't quite help a wince, remembering everything that Renamon had told her about that particular event. That night had been a lucky one, she knew, in that they hadn't run into any of the townspeople while they were out. What she'd been told about what happened to them every night, about how they likely had no idea of what they did then... It was just one more thing in the list of Landel's atrocities, one more reason there just had to be a way to stop him.

"Yeah, she told me about it," she answered, breathing out a sigh. "It all sounds so horrible... I almost can't believe what happens to them."

But, just then, the sun was out and the townspeople looked... entirely normal, almost painfully so. Focusing on anything else at the moment would get her nowhere.

So she turned her attention back to Guy, flashing him another smile. "Five times, huh? So you've gotta know a lot about it by now, yeah?"

[nobleman]

It was pretty hard to imagine when he looked at the people here now, but Guy had seen it with his own eyes. It was one reason while he'd always get a little paranoid when the day got closer to the end on these trips. There was always a chance that it would happen again and they'd be fighting for their lives against the people who had just been selling them things.

He tried to drag his thoughts away from that, shrugging when Leanne made her next remark. "Not as much as you think. There isn't a lot to know about it, and the people here aren't... that willing to tell us things. They don't seem to know much about the outside world, either." Or they were brainwashed not to talk about it. Anything could be possible, really.

"Still, if you had some questions, I could try to answer." As he spoke, Guy started to wander through the store, figuring that they could at least look around while they chatted. Not that he hadn't seen all of this before -- and the stock here didn't seem to change much from week to week, either.

[survives]

That was unexpected. Sure, back in Basel people didn't know that much about life outside their towns either, but it was hardly the same situation. It wasn't like they could just pick up and go anywhere else they wanted, not without the right papers. Leanne herself had never even been outside of Chandelier until, well... everything. But this? This was the Outside World. Wouldn't living in the Outside World, away from the Cardinals, give people more freedom, the liberty to move from place to place as they pleased?

Then again, so far, the Outside World hadn't exactly been how she'd expected. Landel likely had a hand in more than just nighttime events in Doyleton too. Whatever the truth was, she doubted even Guy knew.

"Thanks," she finally answered, following Guy at a short distance. "It's kinda weird how none of you know that much about this town. But I guess I don't really know that much about how normal towns are supposed to work." She shrugged, still smiling. "What kind of things have the townspeople told you guys?"

[nobleman]

While Leanne was following him, she wasn't close enough that it was making him nervous. So long as she didn't try to move any further into his personal space, things would probably be fine. That was a relief, at least.

The comment she made was strange, though. Why would any of the patients know about the town? It wasn't like they lived here, after all. But as he thought on it a little further, Guy was hit with a realization. Leanne was pretty new still, so was it possible that she didn't know about the idea of different worlds yet? What she said about "normal towns" made it sound as if she was sheltered somehow. Like Luke, maybe?

"Well, hold on a second," he said, pausing and turning back toward her so that he could explain. "There's a reason we don't know much. This place... it's not the world I come from at all. Most patients here are from different places, so this whole world is foreign to us. It's probably the same for you." He blinked and tilted his head at her. "Did you not know?" He didn't want to make her feel bad, but this really did need to be cleared up before he addressed anything else.

[survives]

Leanne frowned, silent for several moments. Renamon had said something like that, though she hadn't quite understood it then. All this talk of different worlds, it was almost beyond her. In the end, she was outside Basel. Absolutely anything outside it was a foreign world, as far as anyone living there was concerned.

But if this area was unfamiliar even to people like Guy and Renamon, if even they couldn't understand it.. Maybe...

She huffed, shaking her head. This kind of complicated thing had never been her forte. She wouldn't even know where to begin to make sense of it all. "It's just kinda' weird, I guess," she said at length. How could she possibly explain this to Guy? "Where I'm from... We're inside and everything else is outside. So I kind of thought..." Leanne shrugged. "It's like everything's a different world to us."

[nobleman]

So what was how it was? Guy didn't quite get what Leanne meant, but either way it seemed that his instinct that she seemed sheltered had been right. Of course, it wasn't that surprising that he was able to recognize it, seeing how he'd spent a good chunk of his life taking care of Luke.

"So you have no way of getting outside where you live? How big is the place you're from, then?" Was she talking about a single city or a whole kingdom? Leanne hadn't struck him as particularly naive -- most of her uncertainty could be chalked up to the fact that she was still relatively new here -- but now Guy had to wonder if she was just good at hiding it.

They'd reached the shelf with the batteries on it and Guy started looking around, trying to figure out which pack would be the best to get. He could probably never have enough batteries and he could always pass out extras to his friends, right?

[survives]

"Really big! I mean... It was practically the whole world for us!" And wouldn't that have sounded like a strange way to put it to anyone from the outside? But what other way could she possibly put it? Growing up, all Leanne had ever known about the Outside World was that it was impossible to go there, impossible to live outside of Basel's walls. "Till I got here, I didn't know people could even live outside of Basel."

"But I guess it's gotta sound really weird to you, huh?" she said slowly, her gaze straying to the shelf that had captured Guy's attention. What were those... Batteries? Those could come in handy, couldn't they? She wasn't exactly sure what they'd need them for, but she couldn't exactly see any of the nurses just handing some over.

[nobleman]

The whole world...? Guy tried to think of being confined to one area, never able to see what else was out there. While he'd lived on an island as a child, his whole life had opened up as soon as his family had been slaughtered. And while it had opened in a bad way at first, obviously, Guy had still become very worldly as a result.

Not that his knowledge about Auldrant helped even the slightest bit while he was stuck here. In fact, he was behind people like Claude who understood more of the technologies here. Still, he'd been getting by well enough, and he was sure Leanne would too.

"It sounds a little weird, yeah, but not as much as you'd think," he said as he picked up a 20-pack of batteries, wondering if he could afford it. He wasn't sure how much this stuff cost. "My best friend, he wasn't allowed to leave his father's manor until he was seventeen." Of course, there was way more to it than that, but Guy didn't need to be telling people Luke's secrets.

[survives]

His father's manor, huh? Leanne could almost relate to that, thoughts of Aetersyl rushing back. But regardless of how everything had ended there, she'd been... happy, had lived a perfectly happy life in Aetersyl. Not being allowed to leave your father's home though, what could have possibly led to that? "But he now he doesn't have to be in there if he doesn't want to, right?" she asked, voice tentative.

It could have easily been nothing serious, nothing more than an overprotective father, but she knew well enough what kind of other reasons there could be for that, just what kind of people could be behind it. (Though even she could tell it was unlikely her particular situation would be repeated.)

"Maybe some of us just come from worlds that are a little weird, huh?" she added after a moment, her eyes still on the shelf. Just from speaking to other people, it hadn't taken Leanne long to realize that Basel wasn't exactly a normal place, not when compared to some other worlds.

[nobleman]

"Oh, yeah, that all ended a few years back." Although Guy had to wonder -- if it hadn't been for Tear, how long would Luke have gone on with that before he'd finally gotten sick of it and left? Would he have waited until he was twenty-one, or would something else have forced him out? The Score had predicted certain things, but Guy didn't want to believe in something like that.

While he was surprised that Leanne didn't ask more about the whole situation than that, Guy had to admit that it was probably for the best. He shouldn't be revealing too much about Luke, even to someone who was a complete stranger with no connection to Auldrant.

"I think that anyone's world that isn't your own is going to seems kind of weird," he remarked with a shrug. "Ahh, but..." It looked like they were going to have to head back to the buses soon, and Guy still wanted to buy these batteries. "I need to pay for this, so I should probably head off. It was nice talking, though." He sent her a winning smile.

[survives]

"Yeah, I guess so," she said with a smile and a slight shrug of her shoulders. "It almost sounds like all of our worlds are way different. I don't know if I could get used to a lot of them. But it's still kinda nice to be out of Basel..." The last Leanne said almost to herself, not sure she really wanted to get into that particular topic. This world, Basel, the Outside World... It was enough to make her head spin.

The moment Guy mentioned leaving however, she stood up straighter, casting a glance around them. Right, of course. She didn't know when exactly it would be, but the nurses would probably not appreciate them hanging around the town after a certain hour. It was hardly an appealing thought, but they'd have to go back soon. "Yeah, you too!" she answered, raising her left hand in a small wave. "See you around!"