sixthiterationlogs | [ CLOSED ] i made my peace, i'm one with the war

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[ CLOSED ] i made my peace, i'm one with the war

WHO: Ty, Jake, Kira, Bobo
WHERE: Bunker, Various Places
WHEN: Middle of October
OPEN TO: Jake + Kira + Bobo
WARNINGS: TBA

[ For Kira: I’ll Be in My Bunk(er) ]

Call it having a healthy dose of caution for once, but Ty had kept most of his exploring to the villages and the surrounding areas, as if he drew back to the bunker he’d somehow end up regretting it. While it was the most likely place to have answers, the place creeped him out more than he cared to admit. Still, there didn’t seem to be many clues anywhere else, so he took one of the knives from the communal storeroom with him, wishing he had something more substantial, before heading over.

He was still dripping from when he had to swim to the column from the dock, but it was admittedly better than a seven hour hike, drawing the blanket he had kept in his backpack for just this, he dried off his face and hands before entering the bunker, knife within easy reach.

He poked around the storage and break areas, but anything useful had long since been picked clean. Avoiding the room where he’d come out of a tube, he paused when he heard footsteps nearby. His hand went to where the knife was tucked at his side, his voice collected and careful when he called out.

“Hello?”

[ For Jake: There are no Obstacles in Friendship ]

Call it professional curiosity or Ty looking for a distraction and perhaps a way to get his adrenaline fix in this place, but the zoom seeds had been calling his name for a while. He was just glad that he had someone who was willing to test it out with him, and everything was more fun if there was a bit of friendly competition thrown in the mix.

“So,” Ty said, crouching down so he could draw a crude of the area with a stick into the dirt, “we’ll do a loop around both villages, and whoever gets back here first wins. Once we got a handle on it, I think we can expand the arena into the forest. What do you think?” He tipped his gaze up to look at Jake, grinning slightly.

[ For Bobo: Are You Feeling Froggy?]

"Hey, we meet again!" Ty waved jovially as he spotted a familiar hulking figure. Ty was pretty sure he had only seen him out and about in the forest, and he was a bit concerned that perhaps the guy was living out here somewhere, or in a cave, instead of the warm Inn or one of the available houses. And even though he had somehow managed to keep getting distracted from asking the guy's name, he still viewed him rather fondly. The guy was a little strange, to be sure, but perhaps that was more on Ty than anything on him. He just wasn't used to the man's delivery and mannerisms, not yet anyway.

He hefted his pack that he had been filling with tubers a bit higher up onto his shoulder, heading towards the mountain man curiously. It always seemed like he was doing something new and practical.

"What's on your agenda today? You need help?" Ty might as well have a string on his back that when pulled, spouted off that phrase.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He'd gotten back into the habit of having better habits; of picking up work instead of a jar of moonshine--most of which will do better with some age. With the weather turning, he can't really afford to let Ty's appearance fuck it up, even if there isn't a task available distracting enough to save him from it.

Bunker duty hardly applies. He isn't some supernatural insomniac or expert hacker, but on slow shifts he stares at lists and code until the display blurs. Copies things into his journal, tries to count the different colored flames on the walls. If he gets sleepy staring at the usually empty tubes, he picks himself up and picks at the rubble clogging the stairs. Not in any true eagerness to see what's below, if it isn't entirely collapsed--just to stretch his legs and wear out his shift.

The cigarettes help. Nondescript, not his brand and a little dry--but who would he even complain to?

Seriously: who? He's got a list built up and put to paper. One of the entries is calling down the long hall, a strange enough sound in the concrete underground that he wonders if he's missed the load and launch of a new arrival in the time it took to walk down to the slightly caved in area with the bathroom.

"Please tell me this isn't where you wound up living," he greets, like he doesn't already know.

It was telling how quickly the tension eased out of him at the sound of that familiar drawl, even if it sounded too judgmental for Ty's tastes. He turned to face Kira properly, one eyebrow raised as he patted the wall next to him.

"What's wrong with it? It's lakeside property, has a lot of open space, and I really like the minimalist decor." He shot back, lips quirked up as he walked forward to close the physical distance between them. "And if you're here, I'm guessing there's a rave room hidden away somewhere."

Kira rolls his eyes, leaving them in the upward position to maintain contact as Ty closes in. Less a courteous smoker than a pointed one, he pointedly doesn't aim the smoke away as he exhales, making him weather the smoke if he intends to stand so close.

Which isn't the same as asking him to back up, or walking away.

"There is the rainbow room with all the lists," he offers, eventually skirting around Ty on the memory that he does have a reason to be here, even if Ty might not. "Closer to that first hall." Lists that Ty is curiously absent from, but maybe--

No. He's not going to pretend to understand the redacted entries. They could just as easily be there to keep them on their toes, to fill in for unknowns. Make the Observers look more all-knowing and in control than they actually are. Then again: if they can manipulate and replicate his powers, there's no discounting their being able to predict the future.

He wonders what they see for this. "You didn't come down here to find me," he asks, giving Ty a second look as they move down the hall. "Why are you soaked?"

Leave it to Kira to still have cigarettes in a place like this, and Ty was torn between wanting to roll his eyes or being endeared. Instead, he kept his distance, canting his head to the side curiously at the mention of 'lists'.

"Yeah?" He was already turning to head toward them, curious. He doubted he would find anything when he was sure everyone else had combed through them, but it was worth a look, at least. "Any ideas as to what the lists are for?" Because while Kira may have spent most of his time abstaining from school, it didn't mean he wasn't intelligent and that Ty wouldn't take his opinion seriously. Even without his powers, Ty was sure he was still as instinctive as he always had been.

"Disappointed?" He teased as he fell into step with him, before wringing out his clothes, a bit self-conscious. "I had to swim to get to the pods. Is there a better way?"

He has plenty of ideas about what the lists are for, tempered by the voice in the back of his head that constantly points out probably bullshit. He'd write off all of the bunker as bullshit, if entire people didn't appear in the tubes, joining the world upstairs in a matter of hours.

Glancing at Ty, well. The people can be kind of bullshit too.

"It's probably a lot of misdirection. Ask me when you're older." Or at least versed enough in what's going on to have boat-access. "We keep some little canvas boats in a house along the way, I'll show you on the way back." Turning into the room with the main tubes, his little trashcan fire is almost like home. "If you're here anyway, warm up and fill me in on where you're at, local theories of our existence-wise."

"Just because you're a year older than me doesn't mean I'm going to start treating you like an elder." Ty said lightly, but it was still an odd thing to dwell on. That even more time had passed to create a gulf between them, one that Ty had thought they had been in the process of bridging. Still, the fire was definitely welcome, and Ty stood close to it, happily basking in its warmth like a dog curling up before a fireplace right before taking a nap.

"Hm?" His theories? "I'm not really sure what to think. One guy was talking about witches and demons, someone else mentioned that the Observers sometimes drop off medicine, and even if this place is kind of gloomy, it has everything we need to survive." Which was more laying out facts than actual theories, so he shrugged, holding his arms closer to the fire.

"I think they have us here to test the boundaries of humanity. And maybe the human soul." He glanced up at Kira, raising an eyebrow. "But you've been here longer. What do you think?"

"Almost two years," he corrects, utterly unhelpful. Utterly unhelpful is a way to cope, when Ty is here, warming his hands over a fire like they're back in a section of subway instead of a bunker under the mountains.

When he's saying shit like the boundaries of the human soul in a room where people's clones come out of incubation.

Kira draws deep on the cigarette and settles his gaze on the tubes, empty for now, bubbles of air traveling up toward the ceiling. At any moment they could increase, a flurry of displaced water, and they could be staring at a new face through the glass. Or an old one.

"You make it sound almost noble," which is the kind of optimistic shrug Kira expects from him. "Most of the time I just think we're rats in a maze, and the people who put us here are starved for other entertainment."

"Now I feel like you're just messing with me. Next time I see you, you're going to say it's been a hundred." Ty said unimpressed, before falling quiet at Kira's theory. It would difficult to dispute it, and Ty felt like it would be pointless to try, but what was there to do here but talk? And apparently collect scars and continue bad habits.

"I'm not saying I agree with anything they're doing, but it's always been an age old question. What defines a soul and how can you prove it's existence? What makes you 'you'? Your memories? Your body? Maybe the Observers have advanced so much only the philosophical mysteries remain."

As for the entertainment aspect, he conceded that with a nod of his head. "Maybe that's part of it, but I don't think that's right. They could have given us more weapons or picked subjects that would give better reactions. Most of the people I've met so far seem very capable and adaptable, if they haven't already made a living in unorthodox situations."

"Only because it feels that way." He'd only meant two years older, another birthday due at the start of next month. It might not correspond with the actual time between his memories and when they let him out of his tube, but--how else is he going to track, and what do those memories mean anyway?

Watching the flames, Ty's explanation is--not a bad one. A very Ty answer and assumption to make, especially in how level-headed he seems about the prospect. A lot of people have an easier time talking about Observer motives, probably because they're something abstract. An unknown they don't and might never have a full answer for, and one that doesn't immediately affect their next meal or a warm bed at the end of the day.

Just the possibility of them, sometimes. "Give it some time, you'll see how they fuck with us." The disparity between them is evidence enough, but Kira doesn't want to press on it any more than he has to. "I think they're running out of the philosophical questions too. And if it's about capability, the only reason I'm here is so they can pick apart my powers and find out how they tick."

A horrifying thought at the start, wondering if that was how the Observers always seem one step ahead, but another thing he can't do much about.

"So you've finally matured?" Ty joked, starting to wring out some of the edges of his shirt. He was starting to dry out nicely, but it also meant he was still in the uncomfortable slightly damp phase.

It was easy to disagree with Kira when he hadn't gone through the 'tests' that had been only alluded to him so far. If he was honest with himself, he wanted to see what the tests were, exactly. Perhaps it was his own wishes coloring his theory, that he wanted to be able to test himself in dire situations now that he had been plucked out of NYC during the start of a catastrophic event. He still had his doubts on if he had picked the right path or if he was doing the right thing, and testing all of his training seemed like the best way to leave those doubts to rest.

But the idea of Kira's powers being in someone else's hands was disconcerting. And a bit much, considering how much power the Observers already had if they were capable of bringing so many people here.

"Do you miss them?"

It's easy to spare such an open-ended question a glance, flick his gaze along the cigarette and give some glib answer. It's easy to be obtuse, ask what them Ty even means, but the problem with being known--and he is, by Ty and the people here--he can't keep playing stupid.

Cigarettes, at least, are good for deep breaths and blustery sighs. Gives a visual, something for him to shake his head against as the smoke blows back across his face. "I don't know anymore. Sometimes I think I forgot how to give a shit.

"It was harder at the beginning. Now--I don't know. It would be nice to see things coming, but I'm kind of glad I don't have to feel everyone panic when things go to shit." From what he's read and heard of the last Kira, it sounds fucking exhausting.

Even in a rundown bunker in a town whose name no one knows, with a Kira who has seen more in the past one, two, hundred years than Ty ever has, some things were constant. He didn't know whether it should be comforting or not that Kira still seemed to know how to make smoking look so appealing or that he was still trotting out the apathetic facade around like it was going to fool anyone. Kira's caring had been selective, maybe, but intense. One just had to look on how he doted on Chiyo, his parents, Ty's mom, hell, even Delilah got it every once in a while despite how often they both seemed to disagree with each other.

Reaching over, he plucked the cigarette from Kira's fingers with a grin, taking a small drag. "If you say so."

Is what he would have left it at if Kira had just stopped there, but his mouth twisted slightly at the rest of it. Ty had never really envied Kira's powers exactly for that reason. It seemed to come at too high of a price, with no real benefit. He could only imagine how New York had felt, during the crisis.

"Yeah. About that. People around here have been really vague about what kind of bad things happen here. What sort of things have happened?"

There are more where it came from: Kira waves the return away and lights another, leaning carefully over the flames. It won't smell great for the next person, but it's not much compared to damp concrete bunker. The exchange settles Ty a little more in his space, and Kira slips under the nearest corner of his blanket.

"Come on, don't freeze."

Whoever Ty is, whatever they were or are, distance isn't really meant to sit between them. Kira loops an arm at his waist and adds his own heat. Ty might be dry in time to switch with the next shift, and then they can--something. Keep talking, go somewhere else.

Kira might not be able to feel a reaction to his presence, but it doesn't make him any more keen to share. Means he's thoroughly in the dark about where this is going. "It's hard to lay it all out, when someone's new. There's a lot to take in, and some of it you live through, and some of it you just read or hear about."

He resumes smoking, briefly. "Earthquakes, sometimes. We lost people to lightning storms, creature attacks. One girl drowned, getting to the pod that takes us here. Not like you swimming to it, it had some signal when it was under the water, compelled people to find it. She was the first to make it all the way down." It's a gruesome example, but that's why it's a good one--not just a disaster or an accident. Proof that the people here could exert control.

"If you weren't going to get frostbite out in the open with no shoes, I think I'll be fine under a blanket next to a fire." Ty teased, but he didn't shy away as Kira slipped underneath the blanket to press against him. Automatically, his arm went around Kira's shoulder to draw him in closer, ( funny what the body remembered after years and even across dimensions or wherever they were ) leaving a small hole loose so he could slip his other hand through it to take another drag.

It felt nice, but Ty knew better than to read too much into it, instead focusing on the conversation at hand.

"I guess so. It still hasn't really sunk in." That he was separated from his family, that this place was real, that Kira had been stuck here for years already. This just seemed like some odd training exercise, and Ty was a bit worried about what might happen when it stopped feeling that way. When he started feeling trapped and restless.

He snapped back to the conversation at the mention of the girl, disbelief written across his face. "So what, this place can get you to do anything?" Because weather and creature attacks he felt like he could be ready for. But being compelled to do something even if it meant dying...

"It's almost November, and you were in a lake," he argues, for the sake of it. They were always doing things for the sake of it: arguing, smoking, standing too close.

Talking about psychological horror plots that are part of their very real lives, now.

Maybe he should have led with New York; there's no way to talk about it now, when it feels like such a small thing in comparison. Everything there had just been mad-made disaster, no coercion, no evil overlords. Mostly negligent overlords, pulling out of the city when things got rough.

"I don't know about anything, but--it's possible. We don't even know what everyone here was capable of, before losing their powers. So how do we know about the people responsible, and what they have access to? I didn't get caught up in it, and we found her again here, memories intact like it hadn't happened, but someone saw it happen. They can do that kind of thing and then flip the script, throw a party. It's a nightmare we can't wake up from, sometimes."

"If it was bad, I would be the first to complain about it, but I'm not." Ty pointed out, well aware that he was miserable in the snow and didn't care who knew it. Growing up in New York during the winters had been the worst, and when he could needle and beg for it, he had been more than happy to jet off to somewhere warmer until the season got its business straightened out. He wasn't looking forward to it here, not when all he had were scrubs and a jacket and just one pair of long johns to keep him warm, but he was hoping he would be able to find more clothing of substance. Or just make a fire pit in his room.

His frown deepened the more Kira spoke, shaking his head in disbelief. Well, if there was nothing to be done about it, no use in dwelling on it. But he would start keeping a short log then, if he could.

Detaching himself from Kira, he left the blanket over his shoulders, standing up. "Well, thanks to you and your fire, I'm as dry as I'm going to get. Where are the lists? I'm curious to see them, now."

Whatever else he lacks, Kira isn't stupid enough to leave the fire unattended more than a few moments, or to waste the fuel. He is stupid enough to pick at the edge of the blanket, roll the cigarette to a corner of his mouth, think about Ty pulling away like an echo back through time.

They both had. That early morning in February could have been payback for another morning in January, half a decade gone, Kira resetting Ty's alarm to give himself time to leave the apartment.

He also knows, well enough, that Ty isn't going to leave the lists alone. Especially if Kira tries to steer him elsewhere. It isn't something he thinks Karen would tell him, in their little deal for the new year, but someone eventually would. Kira lifts a slab of stone and slides it over the bin, smothering the fire, putting out his cigarette on the top. "Down the hall, closer to the entrance. There's a computer terminal."

He joins Ty in the doorway. "I'll have to check back here a few times, until my shift ends. We try to let people know if someone's set to ship to the fountain."

Ty glanced down the hallway, cigarette still absently held in one hand as he listened to the directions. He was a bit surprised when Kira followed after him, turning to look at him with a small grin.

"I can look through a computer without getting into any trouble. If you have to stay here, don't let me bother you." He paused to take another drag from the cigarette, before going back to stub it out on the same stone Kira had. He picked up the blanket to fold it swiftly, considering. It seemed strange that they were stuck in this relatively tiny village, and they didn't hang around each other more, though maybe that was on Ty. Getting used to the idea of this place had taken some time, and he had kept himself busy in order not to panic.

"I can come see you before I go. Were you going to do anything after your shift?"

The best he can give is an inelegant shrug: plans are always loose, around here, and change with the whims of supply, demand, and existential horror. He'd planned a meal, a nap, and some time at the still before sundown--but now Ty is asking. Now Ty is on his way to look at the lists, the most recent of which has Kira and the names of their known dead.

New Years is a ways off, and he's not ready. Never going to be, for that.

With Ty, it's all about distraction. If not from the lists, then from thinking about them too much afterward. "The pod takes you back to the lake, I kind of wanted to walk the track out and see the mountain for once."

Nothing he should be doing alone, but he makes it sound like he would and will, if Ty doesn't tag along.

Even if Ty was well aware of the tactics that Kira was using, it didn't make them any less effective. Especially since it sounded like looking around the lake and mountain could be dangerous, Ty's mind instantly flashing back to the wicked looking scars that Kira had showed him. The one barely visible on his head, that he hadn't gotten here. Ty hadn't been around to help protect him from getting the former, but the latter was inexcusable.

"I'll go with you." Ty said grudgingly, as if it was his idea and not just because of what Kira was insinuating. "And you can tell me what you don't want me to see on the lists."

Because Kira was the best at keeping secrets, but it wasn't like he could keep this one. Ty could always come back later to look at the lists, or ask around.

"We're still debating what the lists even mean," he dismisses, waving a hand through his own smoke to walk through. It's close enough to the shift change, he can wait it out in the pod bay. Barring catastrophe, he could just leave--but there's no telling who might be late, when the pod might break down, when the system might decide to malfunction. Clones or otherwise, do-overs abounding, he doesn't want to be the one who slacks off and leaves someone dead on arrival.

Propping himself against the wall opposite the door, he's not exactly stopping Ty from walking in, taking a look for himself. "There are six that we know of, on the console. We've copied them down in a few notebooks by now, just to see if they change.

"They're labeled one to six, so there's some kind of order--and they get shorter each time. Some of the names are fuzzy, some are blacked out entirely. And most of us are on at least one of them, but there isn't exactly a pattern to it. And Chiyo's on there, but you aren't--so I guess what I don't want you to dig into is just, something I think might be bullshit. Real-looking information that doesn't mean anything at all, just keeps us looking around here."

"What are people thinking?" Ty asked, poking into the room and heading towards the console to flip through the lists. Now that Kira had mentioned it, even if it was distorted 'Chiyo Akiyama' jumped out on him on the first list as he scrolled through it, frowning. "And have they changed at all since you started keeping track?"

Next time he saw Jake, maybe he'd ask him what he thought, and if there might be a way to find out what the redacted names were, exactly. Other than what Kira was telling him, it seemed odd that most of the names were of people he didn't know. If this was a project to test the capabilities of people or the existence of souls, he might have thought the Observers would have brought in famous people. It would be easier to pick out people who were noteworthy than go hunting through random people and pray for the best. But considering the length of the first few lists and all the redaction, maybe that could be an explanation.

He only nodded, half-listening as Kira spoke, frowning at how many times he saw Kira's name on the lists.

"Right. But it's better than ignoring any clues that might be here outright."

Someone will tell him, eventually. If not for the fact of public record, public discussion, then for the fact of it being Ty. Kira wouldn't be surprised if he'd befriended half the village already, just by walking around being affable and capable of physical labor.

As Ty went into the room, Kira held back, drifting in for the last comment.

"I mean if you want to buy into and deal with the idea that we're hardly the first clones they've popped out of those tubes," Kira says, blowing smoke at the console, "go ahead." His dismissive tone brooks nothing of his own buying in, his own beliefs. To say he hadn't been rattled by his name on the final list would be a lie--being on any list that short has to be a bad thing--but it had only confirmed things he'd thought about the separation of Kira's past and present.

So rip the band-aid. "That final list? For the most part, it matches the names of people we've witnessed deaths for. Not entirely, but enough that people think that might be the point of the whole thing. Lists of people who died before they hit a reset button on the whole thing.

"I don't know about that, though. Or I guess it doesn't give us enough information, because those lists keep getting smaller, and why would they reset the whole village over a dozen people dying? Especially if they can just reintroduce them at any point? It's just a bunch of lists on a computer, and we can't trust it."

"When I first got here, I was lucky enough to talk to someone who had been here for a while. She said she'd seen a lot of people come and go, and while I'm sure they could have changed her memories around, it seems like a lot of work to change it so often. And for what?" Ty asked absently, flipping through the lists, going through it to see if he recognized any of the names for the people he knew currently. Maybe the Observers were cycling through people who couldn't handle the strain of multiple clonings?

But he felt everything come to a screeching halt when Kira mentioned 'deaths', his blase tone not matching his expression.

"Excuse me, deaths?" He repeated, far more calmly than he felt, the word in conjunction with Chiyo and Kira feeling like a bucket of ice cold water being doused in his face. It was one thing, to talk about experiments abstractly, but quite another to see a list of the dead and know two people he loved had been on it. And Kira's last death had been witnessed? He felt sick, realizing now why Kira hadn't wanted to tell him. There was no universe that he took that information well, and he wondered if Kira had wanted to foist that reaction off on someone else. If it had been in the books, maybe he would have been saved from bearing the brunt of it.

"You are on five of the six lists Kira." He said, voice cracking in grief or anger, he wasn't sure. Probably a mix of both, if his sudden inability to grip the console was any indication, his hands slipping through it. "How can it be 'just' anything?"

"And you're not on any of them," he counters, crossing his arms and kicked a leg up to the other side of the doorway. Braced for the storm of Ty's fucking breakdown over it all, and maybe he should have just said fuck it. Maybe he should have handed over the job of watching the tubes to his stubborn friend here, and left.

"You're not even on the oldest one, which up until recently, seemed to list everyone who had ever been here. Lists people we've never even seen, this go-around."

Dragging deep on the cigarette, he wonders what happens if he just--flicks it onto the console, burns the thing down. If it's like the fountain in the old village, they'll just repair it. If it's like the tubes they'd found on that first sweep--they wouldn't be able to. "It's here to fuck with us, Ty. They do shit like this all of the time. Props strewn around to make us think about what happened, instead of what might happen next.

"I don't know why I'm on that list. No one saw me die, no one ever found anything. We were in a simulation for more than a year, and I disappeared, and when I came back I was--me. This. Remembering different things. They could have just written a string of code for that, and just--look at me, Ty. I'm right here. I'm not dead."

[ CLOSED ] i made my peace, i'm one with the war

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