animus_network | one :O?

You gonna fill me in on this Facility place? [Dave froze up when she reached out. He almost flinched even. Shit, shit, shit. It's kind of hitting him that he hasn't really done things like friendly nudges and the what haves you in awhile. But he didn't stop her and relaxed once he realized he had even stiffened up. Dave just huffs a bit as he tries to fix his hair back to the patented Dave Strider do.]

Woah. TMI. Didn't actually need to know what kind of panties you own. [He follows after her.] Did you get hurt? [It's a lot less forward than just asking 'did you bang up your leg real bad?' at least.]

Um...

[ She kneels down and puts a hand on the trunk, thinking about that. Would she really want to explain to him? If he didn't know what it was, it was probably better for him not to know. On the other hand, she couldn't go forever without explaining some things. It just wouldn't make sense. So she settles for compromise. ]

Sure. Only if you tell me about this one, though! [ She takes a breath. ] Facility is a space station way out in the middle of nowhere, and once you get brought there, you can't leave. You have to wear these-- [ She points at a slim collar that sits directly underneath her indigo one, black and metallic in nature. Dave can probably read a silver H1B engraved in the metal. ] and sometimes they restrict your powers. I don't think mine is working right now, though. You can't take them off.

There used to be interns that ran everything, and they did all of the experiments. [ Jade opens the trunk. ] But they're dead now, it's just Val.

[ And she picks up the brace, examining it before looking back up at him. ] We got kidnapped by Skrulls a few weeks ago. We put up a really good fight! But they knocked us out and took us back to their base for torture. They broke my kneecap while they were trying to get information about the station from me.

Do you want to help me look through my trunk now?

[Dave kind of just stands there dumbfounded for a bit. Yeah. Uh. How does one proceed? He kind of basically stopped at being tortured and that her kneecap got busted and oh my god, what the fuck happened while she was in this shit hole.

And she's just asking you to help her go through her trunk like shit is okay. He suddenly feels like more shit now. Not only did she get dragged to some shitty space station that apparently did whatever the fuck it liked. Now...now she was stuck in a shitty tower where the caretakers did whatever the fuck they liked.

So he kind of just walks over, drops down next to her and...awkwardly hug her? As well as a sitting hug can work.

This is stupid. You're supposed to hug people when bad shit happens to them right?]

Yeah. I'll help you. I'll tell you all about this place too, while we look.

[ It isn't okay -- she's staring at the inside of her trunk with laser precision, staring at the bass guitar which sits right on top. It isn't hers -- it's red for starters, much too fancy to be something Jade would use on a daily basis. But she's biting her lip when Dave reaches over to hug her.

So something in her just kind of folds, and she turns to hug him back, burying her head in his shoulder for the briefest of moments. It would be nice if he could just suddenly understand. But she's pretty sure that he won't be able to without explanation, so she pulls away again and smiles. ]

Good. I want to be prepared! [ Jade finally pulls out the bass and sits it in her lap. ] This was a gift from my friend, Todd. I can't play it very well because of my hands, but it's all I have left since he was terminated. He was a really famous bass player.

[Dave can't help but wince slightly when she presses against his shoulder. Ow. Okay, this was a partly dumb idea. He can deal.

Wow, he never liked the word terminated before. He especially doesn't like it in this context, so he's going to not address it or think about it.]

This tower is controlled by three assholes. Dax, Riki, and Jason. From what I can get, Dax is probably the nicest, which isn't saying much. Riki kind of does whatever the fuck he wants, and Jason is basically the biggest douchebag you'll ever meet. He likes to fuck us around like we're yesterday's favorite plaything. He'll do whatever he so pleases. He wants to perform surgery on us? Ok. Throw us into shitty events that ends with nothing but death. Sure why not. The collars here don't really do anything. We don't know what they do, but we get check-ups every week. There was a time where they swapped the colors around, and everyone basically went a-wall if they had powers, so that's probably not a good thing.

The tower itself is not so bad. Some floors nullify powers and some floors have monsters that can do that too. But there's some pretty sweet shit around. You just have to be careful.

[ She looks at him and nods, setting the guitar aside for now. There are more important things to deal with right now, one of them being Dave. This is probably the best explanation she'll get out of this place -- Rose wasn't any help, nor anyone else -- so she nods and grimaces about the surgery part. Sounds just like home before they killed the interns to her.

Home. When did she start thinking of it like that? She doesn't remember. ]

Don't worry. I'm used to tests.

[ With what she hopes is a reassuring smile, she pulls out-- ] Oh, ankle braces! I'm pretty sure Tsunade packed this trunk for me. She gets really mad when I don't wear them. [ Putting them aside; if he wants to ask he can do so, but that's one injury she's not keen on explaining. She pulls out the next few items without explanation and in quick succession: a few cardboard looking nutritional bars (jade makes a face), a few bottles of tequila (a confused then sad one) and a packet that looks like it's growing mold. Jade takes a moment to sniff it, then recoils. ]

Ick! Don't eat this, it's super gross.

[ Finally, between the folds of her clothes, she pulls out what she thinks is spare glasses-- they're shades.

She stares at them for a moment, running her thumb over the edges. Then she smiles, swapping them for her own frames. ] We match! What do you think?

[Haha. Rose. Helpful. Good luck with that.

He doesn't say anything to that. To be honest, the fact he didn't just look horrified was a feat in itself.

Except now he's going to stare at her in horror as she pulls things out. Why...Why does she need ankle braces? Why is her trunk full of weird and terrible things? What the fuck is this place and why did she come from it?

She smiles at him, but he can't smile back. He can't even poker face. He just looks legitimately upset. And not at Jade. Just at what's been happening to her apparently.] Jade. [His voice is strained. He's no longer super cool kid Dave Fucking Strider. He's just really worried best friend Dave Strider whom has no idea how to deal with the fact that one of his best friends has gone through hell and back.]

[ The face, the voice gives her pause. She's been living with just Daves for months -- and something about it makes her want to reach out and run a thumb reassuringly over his cheekbone, tell him it's going to be okay.

So she does. He's still little, she thinks -- Dave has gone well past fifteen and is reaching sixteen in facility, but this Dave is still her age. She can't compare the two and expect this one to deal as well as the one that's been there for years. ]

The facility isn't really nice. [ This is the start to her explanation, she can feel it. ] They brought us there so that they could turn us into super soldiers -- they, that's the Consortium. They blackmail people, interns and doctors, into doing what they want by holding their families hostage. There's this computer, too -- her name is Val. And she can be nice, but mostly she's mean too. They all test us every week with something new, to see what we do. But sometimes our bodies can't take it any more, and they die. It isn't planned, it just kind of happens. Sometimes people die when you're in a coma, and you-- [ They're all dead, she remembers that week, falling out of her pod to trip over the body of not only Dave, but Rose and John back home.

John didn't make it that time. ] you can't help them. And sometimes really bad things happen, like being forced to dip your hand in acid, or having needles shoved under your fingernails. You can't do anything about it.

I don't want to make you scared...but you should probably know that this kind of stuff happened. And if the universe isn't destroyed, then Miss Val and the Consortium are still doing horrible things to all of my friends.

Edited 2012-07-17 08:52 (UTC)

[Oh...Dave takes a bit to just let the information sink in. Week by week? At least here there's downtime. Maybe this place will be kinder to her. What the fuck. Is he seriously actually thinking about a place being less severe than another place? That's seriously fucked up.

It's fucked up that she came from somewhere even worst. It sounded like death was a pretty common thing. Not that it wasn't here either. It was. Just probably not as bad as it was there.

He needs to stop thinking. He'll figure out a way to somehow fix those things. Somehow. There are ways right? Shit. Why can't he be the optimistic type who thinks that miracles and shit happen.]

You read the letter right? I mean, I still think it's all a load of shit, but we're told that something destroys the universes. They showed us some scary monster or whatever apparently is the cause of it. [And he really can't believe it. He's not sure if it's denial or because it's just dumb at times.] No two universe is the same. Each time one of us grabbed, it's a separate universe because whatever destroys them too quickly to do more.

[He's not going to believe the John that was just here was some separate universe John. Or the Rose. Or whoever comes in because the people that come in are still his friends.] But shit like that tends to get taken with a grain of salt considering it came from Jason of all people. [Dave really dislikes Jason AS YOU CAN SEE.]

But I guess this stuff is just standard. We get put into games and events by whoever is in charge of the tower. Playing hide n' seek with murdering teddy bears. Last month was an entire month of using us to see who would get control of the tower for this month. It's all fucking childish and dumb. [And painful for them.</small.]

[ She's still stuck on "no two universe is the same," taking off the shades to put her glasses back on while she thinks about that. But...how can Ishtar be here, if that's the case? How can we remember the same things? Jade doesn't really think that theory holds valid -- there's obvious instances, like Rose. But then there are people who knew exactly what went on at home, the same stories, everything. It was people like that she had faith in, not someone she had never met before. ]

Has anyone found a way out? [ Her mind's jumping between the facility and here; there are too many parallels, too many things that line up. John's not here to do the organizing, and Jade's just working off of what he gave her. She's let him down so many times, but not this one. ] Or started talking to other people? About leaving here? Or taking them down?

Edited 2012-07-17 18:41 (UTC)

Not yet. We've been mapping out the tower to find any weak points. We have a few guesses about maybe which floors, but nothing exactly concrete since there's only so many people that can risk going to the more dangerous floors. We know the elevator is a weak point, but it's not one we can actually exploit. [They tried once or maybe even more. It's just too small and it's easy to just take them all down from it.] Also, recommending not dying if possible. There isn't really repercussions other than some major awkward sleep paralysis, but it gets longer with each consecutive kick the bucket. So it's bound to get worst probably.

Don't tempt fate just because god tier is convenient. It isn't. [He says it like he knows what happens when it isn't convenient.] Just thought I'd put that out here since you look like you've been doing all sorts of tempting. [He's been eying all your injuries gurl.]

[ She nods, taking it all in. Good, so it seems like they're starting something. She's not really a rebellion leader, but she's spent a lot of time in the presence of them, learning from what they do. If there's one thing Jade isn't good at, it's sitting around and letting people suffer. She'll see if she can find some way to get involved in some manner, but for now it's probably best if she gets a bearing on the place herself. She won't be of much help to anyone if she can't find her way around by herself. ] I've never died before..well, except the times at home, but those don't count. I mean in the Facility. I've never died.

[ She stares back at him, yanking her hand back from his face to stuff it underneath the voluminous fabric of her skirt. Her eyes are hard. ] I've never been able to use my revival powers, and I'm not planning on doing it here!

[ She hesitates - he doesn't deserve her anger just because he doesn't understand. That's mean. She's doing that comparison thing again and she knows it, so she relaxes, taking on more of a tired expression than anything else. Her hands, however, remain firmly hidden behind the skirt. ] I'm sorry. That was mean.

[Oh. He just kind of swallows. The longer he speaks, the worst things keep getting. He doesn't know what happened there and honestly. He probably has no place to speak.]

No. You're justified. I know absolutely jack shit about what happened to you and basically spitting out assumptions left and right. I don't know what you've done and if I'm honest, I've done absolutely nothing since being here other than going through the floors. [Because he thinks he has a better chance of getting around then some of the others.

Everyone else is still better at this hero thing than he is.] I said something really fucking dumb and you reacted accordingly. It's cool. I've been doing that as of late anyways. Sorry. [He's not sure what he's sorry for. For saying stupid things? For not being able to do more? Maybe a mix of everything.]

[ God, she's messing everything up today -- is it this place, or her? Does she always make Daves upset, no matter where she goes? This is the second Dave who's been disappointed in her, and the whiplash in their conversation is wearing on her ability to be strong. There's nothing more that she wants to do than curl up in her bed and cry all of her feelings away, hug her boyfriend and tangle up together, next to each other, and not have to say a word. But her boyfriend is gone, maybe dead. He won't be back. He was already dying anyway, slowly, malaise and depression and continuous injuries with no one to tell him that he was brave and strong.

Would that happen to this Dave, too? Were Daves always destined to succumb to depression, or did it just happen to the unlucky ones? ]

Please don't be sad.

[ Carefully, she takes her hands out from under her skirt; she can't hide from him, not this, not her failures. With this Dave, she's determined to be honest. Jade reaches for his own hands and curls her injured ones around them. The large, terrible looking scars in the middle of her palms are too large for her to fully close her hand around his as tightly as she'd like, but she settles for what she can do. ]

Dave... [ What does she want to say? ] You're not dumb. You're smart, and cool, and you protect everyone even when we think we can handle it on our own. That's not dumb. That's being really brave and courageous.

[ She brushes her thumb over his hand. ] I don't know what's happened to you here, but we're going to make it better. And...you can help me, too. We shouldn't be mean to one another, because we're best friends, and we can help each other. We have to.

[He wants Jade to be well again. Will any of these injuries heal or would she be stuck like this for the rest of her stay here? He doesn't really like the idea. It doesn't help that Jade just doesn't seem as happy as she used to be, which isn't even her fault. It's these stupid places they keep ending up in.]

I'm not sad, Jade. [He says it too quickly, but the way he says it... Maybe he honestly thinks so.

He looks down at her hands, and that makes him kind of sad. Even if one of his arms was severely burned and you can just barely see the bandages tucked underneath his sleeve, it would heal. Her hands would probably stay like this.]

He was smart, cool, and protected everyone. I can't even protect myself, much less protect the people here. [He sat in a pod for an entire month watching other people get operated on. He couldn't even stop them when they dragged him out to have the same thing happen to him. He was just really god damn useless that entire month. Even when he tried to do something, it did absolutely nothing. Maybe her Dave was just better. That wouldn't be surprising.]

Nothing much happened. [Don't worry about him. He's okay. He's totally chill.] I'll help you learn what all the floors are. Which ones are safer and which ones you need to proceed with caution. There's a lot of us here. Not really us, but there's a lot of alternate universes shoved into this melting pot.

If we make it better, will you look happier though? [Because you don't really look happy even when you are trying to be happy.]

No, he didn't. He was you. [ She's staring rather intently at her hands -- should she tell him? Tell him what the price of her selfishness was, why she carries around all these injuries in the first place? How horribly self-centered she can be, how she can't save anyone and even dog whistles can down her? It's something Jade doesn't like admitting, but it's there all the same, creeping in the back of her mind. ]

That would be nice. This place is so huge.

[ She looks up in shock. Happy? Wasn't she already happy? She was alive, her friends were safe (mostly), and she hadn't died. Wasn't that what happiness was, living? There's a moment of terror where she realizes that she doesn't remember what happy used to feel like before the Facility, and it's obvious in her eyes. ] I am happy. I am!

[ But she sounds smaller, a little more confused than before. ]

He was me and I was him. As soon as we divert from the same path, we're different people. He did different things and so did I. [He's not him. He probably wouldn't want to be other him. He's fine being himself...he thinks.] That's just how timelines work. We're not really the same person. Maybe he did things, but you really can't say I did those same things, because that's give me credit I don't actually deserve.

I'll give you the grand tour.

[He looks at her, his face unmoving. He's returned to the poker face, using his shades as a wall more than he had used too. It was just easy to hide behind them. He doesn't think anyone else has really seen them except for a select few.] Jade, the last time I spoke to you was when we were gathering frogs. That was a good five or six months ago for me. [It's strange. Knowing he had not spoken to her for so long. Honestly...has he really been speaking to anyone now that he thinks about it?]

Are you sure you're happy?

[ She looks back at him with sad eyes; she can't hide her own feelings. She's never really been able to hide things from her friends before, and she still can't. The timeline thing confuses her too much to really address it, so she just nods to that. ]

The last time I spoke to you was two days ago. We had breakfast together in the kitchen, and then Jack showed up and tried to steal all of our bacon. You let me feed my pancake to Crowen.

[ The question catches her off guard. She stares at him for a moment more before finally, she closes her eyes, bites her lip between her two front teeth, and shakes her head slowly. ]

No.

[He doesn't ask who Crowen is or why she's apparently friends with Jack. He wasn't whom she spoken too either. Sometimes he really hated this all. It was confusing at best and utterly unendurable most of the other times.]

It's been awhile for me.

That doesn't mean you can't. Giving up here and being miserable is what they want anyways. Can't be letting a few jackasses take us down.

[ She shakes her head, and smiles a bit. ]

I won't. Just because I'm not happy doesn't mean I'm giving up! I promised John that I wouldn't, and I'm not going to go back on that promise.

You can't either, okay? You have to promise me you'll try being happy, too.

[John used to be here. He knows she means a different John, but he kind of misses their friends. Now that he thinks about it, he hasn't really seen his friends much. Maybe that's a good thing.]

I'm not unhappy. Ticked off and unhappy are two entirely different things. [But he didn't promise he was going to try and be happy. Why make a promise he might break?]

[ She catches that. ]

You didn't promise.

[He doesn't say anything for a minute or two.]

I don't want to make a promise I might break. It'd be shitty of me to make it and then not keep it. I can try, but I can't promise anything because I don't really know what's going to happen next.

[Not having control of the timelines is kind of unsettling. Especially because he doesn't have much else in terms of powers here.] I'm not going to give up though.

Me neither. I never give up. Even when people...when they died. We just can't give up, or they win.

[ There's another long silence before she nods. ] If you want to ask me anything, I don't mind. But I want to know things about you, too. You're my best friend. I want to know what happened to you.

[ So that the next time, she can stop it from happening at all. ]

[He's not even sure there's a win or lose in this situation. They didn't really know why Dax, Riki, and Jason were doing this.]

Maybe later. I think we should get you acclimated here first before we go and reveal are deepest, darkest secrets like little girls at a slumber party.

[He's not ready to talk about it.]

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