DAY 45: Sun Room (Second Shift)

[violent-varmint.livejournal.com]

There was something fishy going on in the Institute today. All over the bulletin board, people were talking about having "woken up", having been "cured"... and it seemed as though ZEX was one of them. Tanaka wouldn't have recognized the note at all if it hadn't been signed - his wording, his handwriting, even his name had changed - and a part of him still wondered if it had been an imposter, trying to pull the wool over the Captain's allies.

But it'd be easy enough to find out the truth. Whoever it was had agreed to meet him, and Tanaka was waiting for him just outside the cafeteria doors, ready to catch him as he came from breakfast. If "Max" was an imposter, then he'd discover the identity of a hidden enemy. And if he was really ZEX...

...well, he'd have a whole new set of things to worry about.

[for a spoiled rich brat brainwashed Admiral]

Comments

[whos-da-man.livejournal.com]

Oh. Well, if there hasn't been any outbreaks of Apathy Syndrome where Rey's from, maybe the Dark Hour doesn't exist there, just like it didn't exist in the institute.

"Okay, maybe you have a point. So, other than the war thing, what's it like back home?"

[denied-future.livejournal.com]

The question should've been easy to answer, but it wasn't. One reason being that Rey spent most of his childhood isolated from public, which was definitely not something he cared to mention. The other reason was that tension between Coordinators and Naturals had existed long before Rey was even born. The war was simply an extreme example of what his world was like.

"Relatively normal," he ultimately said. "I imagine that it's probably not too different from your world, outside of the Dark Hour."

It was a boring answer and he knew it, but Junpei would just have to deal.

[whos-da-man.livejournal.com]

"Dude." Junpei stared for a long moment. What a crap answer that was.

"You have giant friggin' robots. There's got to be some other fun toys and things to do," he pointed out. "And,, hello, space? Come on, man..."

[denied-future.livejournal.com]

That was the problem: Rey was a soldier who'd never really known what it was like to live an ordinary civilian life, unlike Shinn or Lunamaria. Either could probably tell Junpei about whatever had been popular before they joined the military, but Rey couldn't. He hadn't bothered to keep track of that kind of thing.

"Then what do you want to know about? It's hard to see from my world from an objective view," he said, keeping his tone neutral. Inwardly, he was hoping the shift would end soon. The conversation was getting too close to his personal history for his liking.

[whos-da-man.livejournal.com]

"Well... how about what was the coolest electronic gadget you had as a kid? I've always been into video games, so I always had the best systems on the block," Junpei replied.

"And what are movies like? With the technology to create mobile suits, I can see movies being like total immersion where you stick a headset on and you're like right there." He grinned. "So what's it like?"