Day 44: Sun Room, Second Shift

[superdynamic.livejournal.com]

[from here]

He really had beat the rush. Suzaku found a chair as close to the corner and as far from the bulletin as he could, and turned it to face the wall before curling up in it. His nurse frowned at him again, but she was still being cooperative, and frankly he didn't care what she had to say in the slightest. He didn't care even if he got sedated. All he cared about was finally having a few moments to himself, to sort out what Euphie's love meant and what the hell Lelouch's problem was.

It felt like he had all the pieces of a puzzle and was just too stupid to figure out how they fit together. What Lelouch had said about Shirley at breakfast and the tone he'd taken with Euphie on the board, Lelouch asking how Suzaku was, Lelouch dying. . . "All we can do is move forward and look out for the ones we care about." Euphie struggling to get out her last words, pain overtaking Suzaku's consciousness while he fought pathetically to carry out Lelouch's order. . . The last couple days, when he'd felt like he was finally figuring this out, seemed so far away now.

There were a couple things that were certain, at least: he hated what Lelouch had done, he always would. But he -- he didn't hate Lelouch, and he hadn't for a while now, and that wasn't going to change. And he didn't have much time, because everyone but Suzaku was terrifyingly mortal. And Lelouch was an idiot, but he still wasn't sure about the how and why of that one yet.

[for the Saucinator]

Comments

[vstheworld]

"Unless I'm secretly a Transformer and no one told me, then yeah, what you see is 100% pure Pilgrim." That would actually be pretty sweet, thought Scott. He could just imagine himself having something cool hidden under his skin, like shoulder cannons, a chest-mounted tape deck, or a machine gun butt. Wait, no, that last one was Astro Boy. Oh well, either way, robots were cool.

"Anyway, like I said, I don't know if I was playing a game before or not. That kind of thing blurs together for me sometimes," he explained, making a gross understatement. "I'm betting now, though, that I wasn't. Last thing I think I remember before waking up here was going to sleep at my girlfriend's apartment. I could still have woken up to play something in the middle of the night and not remembered, but somehow I don't see Sleeping Me as being in the mood to make nice with Awake Me until, like, 11:00 in the morning at best."

He paused, recalling more of their bulletin exchange. "So you said you were playing a game for sure, though, right? The Earth or something like that?" That made Scott hopeful that he could still be wrong - that this could all still be just the most advanced game he had ever played and he just didn't remember picking it up. "What's the game you played like? Is it like this place in any way you can tell?"

[feartehreaper.livejournal.com]

This guy was a serious junkie. Haseo found himself annoyed at him all over again, though it showed only in the way his brows knit together just a little more as he listened. Why exactly was it him and the others from 'The World' who were stuck running around in weird bodies, while just about everyone else seemed fine? Sure, there were benefits to being a real-life Adept Rogue- like how otherwise here he'd probably stand as much chance defending himself as a house cat catching a fish on the open sea, but on the other hand... really.

He crossed his arms, shifted his weight, and thought really hard, but nothing significant seemed to come to him out of what Scott was saying and asking. "There are... some similarities," he said, "but this is definitely not the game." He laughed slightly, though his tone was dry and obviously lacked any real amusement for the situation.

"Uh, but yeah, this body is my character from the online game called 'The World'... and I was definitely in the middle of something before I just-- woke up here, like this. There's a few of us, actually... some that I knew from before I got here and at least one that I didn't." He felt utterly ridiculous explaining this, and again his eyes drifted from where they were trained down at the Institute-given callouses on his hands to his friends having their own discussions. Hopefully giving some information could get some reflected back to him though.

"I know I kind of asked this earlier, but it's been a while since then..." ...And you seem a little more reasonable now and/or in person-- "Have you noticed anything weird that would make you think this is a computer game or... simulation? Like the walls glitching up...?" Or a friend spontaneously dying and then being fine the next morning... the normal, really.

[vstheworld]

Now Scott was even more confused about the situation. Certain things shared between video games and the real world just went without saying - health meters, levels, power-ups, that sort of thing. Even a few of the more out-there things like the existence of save points and 1-Ups didn't faze him anymore. Waking up in the body of your game character in the real world, though? That was something he never would have thought possible. Maybe I should've been thinking harder about this maybe being a dream. Maybe? I don't even . . . Oh man, just go with it for now, he thought, scratching his head.

The next bit of what Hazmat said was a little easier to answer. "Now that you mention it, there were some weird things about last night, aside from the creatures and stuff. I think I remember, like, a flash of some pipes on the ceiling and some doors in the wall that were gone the next time I looked at them." He hadn't thought much of the occurrences at the time, more excited about traveling with Indy than anything else, but now that he thought about it, that had seemed weird. "You and your game world buddies think that something's up with that, maybe?"