sixthiterationlogs | Shaking Up

Entry tags:

Shaking Up

WHO: Riza Hawkeye
WHERE: Outside Inn
WHEN: September 06
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Language
STATUS: Open

It had been a few weeks for Riza to adjust to her new life here in the village. She'd taken up residence at the Inn, remembering the feeling of security that had come from living with a group of people at the Strand during her time in Manhattan. It was funny how an event that had concluded months ago could still influence her so much. Although, to be fair, she had spent a year in that alternate dimension dealing with monsters and the threat of being turned into a monster herself. She'd bonded with others there, survived, and come out on the other side in one piece. She'd never thought she'd be put in a similar experience in her life. Who would? Especially when you were reassured by others that the technology used to abduct her and others would be locked down or, at the very least, put under close monitoring.

She should have known then that it wouldn't end with Project Daisychain. Human curiosity had a dark side at times and if one group could figure out multi-dimensional travel then so could others. She had no way of knowing how similar these two experiments would be -- but she was hoping that this one would end just as well as the last one had.

Later, she'll realize it's because she's reliving her past experience that the earthquake disturbs her more than it might have otherwise. Riza is normally a calm and rational person. However, when you spent roughly a year waiting for a giant monster to rampage through the city, knocking over buildings in its path, you learned to act on instinct and those instincts were not lost easily. When the ground starts to shake, Riza tenses up and her eyes immediately go, not to the ground, but to the sky. Her eyes flick across the tree-line like she's looking for something big. She backs towards the inn, bracing herself, her eyes wide with the hint of fear.

She remembers the ground shaking like this before. She can practically hear the deafening roar. She can remember the people screaming and the feeling of brick, mortar, concrete, and steel collapsing around her as she ducks down into a subway tunnel for safety. She can remember the feeling of an entire building coming down on her, Harry, and Sora before Harry managed a last-minute magical shield. She can remember when their first home had been destroyed, forcing them to flee in the dark of night.

The rumbling continues and it's only a few minutes before Riza's rational brain catches up with her flashbacks. She remembers where she is now -- when she is -- and that the village is not Manhattan. She doesn't have to worry about a giant monster stomping through the streets here--the village wouldn't have survived that anyway.

Riza remembers to breathe, taking a shaky gulp of air as she falls back against the wall of the inn's exterior. She sinks to a seated position and closes her eyes for a moment, trying to compose herself again. "Get ahold of yourself," she hisses to herself, unaware if anyone was witness to her little episode.

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"It wasn't a bad one," Raleigh says. Maybe he's a little too immune to this kind of thing but when the ground shakes and it's less than a 6-something, it doesn't really register for him. Having spent as much time as he has in seismically active parts of the world, it's only the big ones that are harbingers of something more ominous other than tectonic plates shifting. Kaiju don't walk so daintily as to cause only a middling earthquake.

"Don't think it's anything to really worry about." The reassurance is mostly for the woman; for his part, he thinks that they might have something to worry about if this place has earthquakes to add onto the flooding. The last thing they need are rockslides and rising water.

Riza looks up, feeling her cheeks flush slightly. She's not used to being caught in such an emotional state, but to be fair the earthquake had caught her off guard and in a vulnerable moment anyway. She puts a hand to the ground, as if feeling for any more tremors. Riza remembers a girl who could have done just that and takes a deep breath. "You're right...I was just reminded of something else and got a little carried away," she finally replies in a calm voice.

"We don't really have many earthquakes where I come from and the last few times I did experience one it didn't end very well," she adds.

Riza feels more composed now and pushes herself back up to her feet, brushing dirt from her gray scrubs.

"I'm a little immune to them," Raleigh admits. "So my threshold for earthquakes is probably way higher than normal. The only thing about earthquakes like that is that there's hardly ever just one - but maybe that's the biggest one we'll get."

Raleigh seems to recall the bigger earthquakes were the first ones and then smaller ones came afterward. This place is a little insane but maybe that still follows the rules.

She better start preparing herself then. She knows she'll make the adjustment eventually, "I suppose we'll have to wait and see. I'm just relieved that it only seems to be earthquakes." She hadn't been here long, but she was fairly certain someone would have mentioned if it was more than just natural disasters to deal with.

Riza looks past to the scenery around them, "It doesn't look like there's any damage either."

"Not really. These old houses are pretty sturdy and they're not that tall. You start having problems when you get the combination of cheap builds and big height," Raleigh explains.

"I spent a good amount of time out on the west coast and in the Far East. That whole area is a big hotbed for earthquakes and volcanoes and usually the buildings are up to code there - especially in Japan."

He extends a hand to her, wanting to introduce himself properly. "I'm Raleigh, by the way. Raleigh Becket."

It makes sense that bigger buildings would have more problems. She's certainly experienced that first hand, since Manhattan hadn't exactly been built with that in mind. Granted, a large monster stomping through a city was a little different than preparing for an earthquake when it came to building a city up to code.

"I see. Well that's reassuring, thank you." He certainly knew what he was talking about if nothing else.

Riza takes his hand, glad that by this point she's also stopped shaking so much and is in more control of herself, "Riza Hawkeye." She's gotten more of her confidence back if nothing else. It's not difficult to do, seeing as she's been through a lot worse and had to keep going then as well.

"Good to meet you, Riza. The earthquakes are new," Raleigh says. He doesn't know if that's reassuring or not, considering the circumstances, but he hopes it means that the earthquakes aren't permanent.

"Maybe they'll stop after a while. I haven't ever lived somewhere that had them every day or every other day. Even in Japan, they go long stretches without having anything significant at all."

Though, maybe, if there's more of them, she'll get used to them?

Riza doesn't know what to make of it, though perhaps reassuring has been the wrong word to use. It's very likely that if they became a common occurrence that she would get used to it. She'd adapted to a lot of things in her life and in order to keep living she'd have to continue the same.

"Earthquakes I'll be able to get used to. It's pretty normal compared to some other things I've had to deal with. And if they do become common, at least that will make it easier to adjust to."

"Just hoping they don't get stronger than what we've got," Raleigh says. "Because I don't want to have to keep rebuilding this place. I can do it, I have construction experience, but I don't have any tools."

It's hard to keep a place together without the tools to build it right and what Raleigh can do here is pretty limited at the moment. He hopes he can figure out some workarounds; they're going to need them if the quakes keep coming.

"That seems to be the common problem around here -- no tools, weapons, or supplies. It's not very good circumstances, even if you're used to doing without," Riza replied. Just talking was doing a lot for her nerves and certainly distracting her from the concerns of earlier -- even if what they were talking about was related to that.

"Still, that sounds like a useful skill to be able to offer here. I'm afraid I might not have as much to offer, but I'll be damned if I am going to be completely useless." She couldn't let the fact that they had so little stop her. What would she do if the Colonel arrived and she was as useless as he was? The thought is a private joke, but it still makes her lips curl slightly in a small smile.

"Well, you're not useless. I'm sure we can figure out something you're good at that translates to this place," Raleigh says. He doesn't want her to get down on herself when this place seems to be hellbent on making them all suffer. Even he isn't as equipped for it as he could be; there's always things he can be better at.

"The one good thing about it, most people seem willing to teach each other what they know and share resources. It makes the world seem a little less daunting."

It's strange, she hardly knows this person and yet his words are almost comforting. She certainly feels better now. "Thank you, I appreciate that. I haven't had to fill out a resume in awhile, but I might need to start getting creative with how my skills could be used here," she finally says. She'd have to give it some thought, but she figured there had to be something she could do here.

"I do have a pretty good track record for picking up skills quickly. It sounds like despite some of the hardships you all have been doing a pretty decent job of keeping things running around here."

"Hasn't been bad so far," Raleigh agrees. "We work together. I think that's the most important thing I've taken from this place and I think -- I hope that it's something that lasts. I know new people are coming in from time to time but I want for us to keep working together. Something's got us trapped here. If we don't work together, we won't figure it out."

That much, he's certain about. There's very little else Raleigh is certain about in this village but he knows that if they're going to accomplish anything at all, they're going to do it by supporting one another and identifying strengths, not by squabbling among themselves.

Riza is glad that there are people here that understand that. It could be just as easy for everyone to fend for themselves, but they aren't. Riza survived two very different situations because people of such different backgrounds came together for a common cause.

"You're right. That's an important factor in staying alive in a situation like this," she begins, hesitating briefly before deciding she can talk a little about her own experience. It wasn't like she hadn't already shared most of it with Cougar anyway, back when she'd first arrived here. "I've been in a situation similar to this one before. Over a year ago I found myself in a deserted version of a city known as Manhattan. I was brought there along with several others to be part of an experiment to produce giant monsters to terrorize various worlds. We were only able to survive and eventually fight back and escape because we worked together. It would not have been possible otherwise."

She sighs, "So, even though I find myself in the unfortunate situation of being abducted and forced into what is likely another terrible experiment, I am at least comforted by the fact that the people I am stuck with here also seem to share that mindset that we can only get out of it by working together."

"You've been some place like this before? I didn't even know that was possible."

That's something that Raleigh has never considered before. He's always thought that this place is something new, something nobody else has experienced before. But if this place is some kind of experiment or something that isn't so unique - that's important knowledge to have.

"It wasn't exactly like this...but I've seen enough similarities to worry me," she explains. She let's her gaze drift off towards the forest as she tries to recall it. After she'd been sent home, some days it had felt more like a nightmare or a hallucination. There were days she could convince herself it might have been. Until she'd felt the weight of Harry's necklace around her neck or the marks on her body that hadn't been there from Ishval or other encounters. Now she didn't even have the reassurance of Harry's necklace and that bothered her.

"I used to think travel between dimensions and a situation like this was impossible too. But I experienced it once and now here I am again. It does take some adjusting...but you start to accept that just about anything can be real after that." She shakes her head, "But there are already so many differences...I'm not sure how much my experiences before will be helpful or if they might lead us in the wrong direction."

"It's worth keeping in mind, though," Raleigh says. "Because I've never experienced anything like that but in my experience, there's a such thing as inter-dimensional travel. I've only ever seen it one way, though, and through a breach in the ocean."

Was this similar? Was this almost like how the kaiju had come up through the ocean floor from their homeworld to terraform earth or was this something simpler. Raleigh had no idea. Still, the conversation had him thinking about the possibilities in a way he hadn't before now.

Riza nods in agreement. "Cougar said the same thing when I mentioned it to him. And believe me, I'm not writing off my previous experiences entirely. I just don't want it to form a bias and stop us from seeing what actually might be going on," she explains.

That makes Riza curious though, "And what was beyond the breach in the ocean? How did you reach it if it was so far down?" She isn't sure what the oceans are like for his world of course and the only time she'd seen the ocean was in a world that wasn't her own. But her father had been a scientist and she'd learned a lot under his tutoring -- including about the geography of her own world. Riza then thought of another question and asked, "And what were you doing going through it?"

"Scientists got down there with DSVs," Raleigh explains. "I'm no scientist, so I can't speak to that, but they figured out it went straight through to another world. The things that came out of it...it was horrifying. It's something that I hope isn't the case about this place."

He hopes that kaiju aren't the next surprise to come from the twisting and breaking of the earth. How could they deal with a kaiju here, with no jaegers and no real long-range weapons?

Strangely enough, it was something similar that Riza worried about. Surviving in a city like Manhattan had been one thing. This place would be crushed in a single step with nowhere to run or hide. There wasn't even an underground here to flee into. While it was true the subway tunnels had served as the main dwelling place for the mutant crabs that fell from the giant monster's back, it was easier to take down one of those than it was to fight a monster that was hundreds of feet tall.

"There are many different worlds out there -- I learned that much -- though most of them seem to be at least somewhat similar to each other. Not usually places that would send things from a breach in the ocean anyway," she says. Riza's studying him, trying to figure out if this "horrifying" thing was too much to talk about or if he simply lacked the words to put it into context. "Can you be more specific?"

"Each one is different. They evolve to fight us, start getting things to counter our weapons. Ever seen a godzilla movie?"

That's the closest way he can describe what a kaiju is and he hopes she knows the reference. If she doesn't, he's going to have to do a lot more explaining that he doesn't know that he's capable of doing in a place like this with no tech.

She hadn't, but the reference is familiar. She's pretty sure the name had been used a few times in Manhattan to describe the creature that had been plaguing them. A giant monster, impossibly large, that only seemed to want to destroy wantonly. Of course, the real trouble in Project Daisychain had been the people behind the monster. But for nearly a year they'd lived on the isolated island of Manhattan trying to survive encounters with the creature.

"I haven't seen a godzilla movie, but I've heard of them. Some of the people I was with in that other place mentioned him in comparison to the creature we were having to deal with," she explains, unsure if that helps. Although she has a sinking suspicion she knows where he's going with this.

"Sounds like it could have been really similar to a kaiju," Raleigh says. It's an interesting prospect, a kaiju somewhere outside the Pacific. Did it finally breach the Panama Canal? That had always been a concern back in the day.

"Hopefully none of that shit happens here. I don't think we could handle it. We've got nothing to defend ourselves and we'd have to improvise a hell of a lot more than I would want to."

"We never measured it exactly--but our best estimates were that it was about 300 feet tall," she adds, wondering if that will help make the comparison. She never would have thought she'd meet someone who had actually experienced giant monsters like that anywhere other than her time in the experiment.

"It's unlikely---the smaller monsters were difficult enough. The big one...well the village would be nonexistent," Riza says, trying to mask the concern in her voice. She's paranoid about it, but at the same time the set up here just doesn't seem like it would work. Raleigh is from a world where the monster attacks occurred, but this place screams experiment or set up. They're here for a reason and if it was to be a part of a monster attack it wasn't set up for it. There was no room in this confining canyon.

"We can stay vigilant, but ultimately I'm not sure there's a lot we can do. I have a feeling, however, that this place isn't connected to something like that. If we were supposed to experience something of that magnitude...why hasn't it happened already?"

"Before I left home, we were getting double and triple kaiju events," Raleigh says, nodding in agreement. "So I'm thinking if we were going to be attacked, it would have happened already. We would have already seen signs of it other than just earthquakes."

Kaiju aren't exactly shy, after all, and they always head toward population centers. If there's one out there, it should have shown itself by now.

Riza couldn't dispute that point. "It sounds like you've had a lot more experience with these creatures than I have at any rate." She may have had the multiverse experience, but she'd only really encountered the one monster -- two if you counted the second one those scientists brought in towards the end.

However, it wasn't a regular event. It was just the same monster.

"Whatever is going on here is dangerous in a different way I think."

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Shaking Up

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