sixthiterationlogs | things happen, that's all they ever do.

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things happen, that's all they ever do.

WHO: Reyes Vidal
WHERE: The bunker; the inn; the village generally
WHEN: Dec 2-5
OPEN TO: OTA, multiples for inn/village allowed
WARNINGS: Nothing really

Arrival in the Bunker (now locked to Kat)
The last he knew, he’d been trying to hitch a ride off Port Meridian, the crashed ark turned human city. He’d been standing in the elevator while it rose sluggishly towards the shuttle bays. Boring enough, yes, because the elevators always seemed to run far too agonisingly slowly despite their complexity, but it hadn’t been nothing out of the ordinary—

Until, the next he knows, the elevator has filled with water. The thought Is the ark malfunctioning manages to run through his head, but then he’s far too busy trying to find the door, failing, running his fingers along the crevices and edges of the container, realising it isn’t actually the lift anymore, and then, his worst nightmare: panicking.

Reyes’ nerves are steely even at the worst of times, but water is simply inexorable, unstoppable, unbargainable. Thankfully, the wait isn’t long before the seal hisses open and the water starts draining and someone (his liberator, he supposes) is helping him out, shaky and wobbly-legged and swearing in Spanish.

South Village Inn, a couple days later (OTA)
Predictably, Reyes gravitates towards the inn. It’s the closest thing to Tartarus, the bar he used to haunt — communal spaces where he can people-watch, get a sense for the group as a whole, possibly even eavesdrop.

But unfortunately, this place is nothing like the neon-soaked dive bar on his slum planet.

The room starts off empty when Reyes begins his inspection, but after a while he hears the creak of footsteps on ancient floorboards, and his head pops up from behind the bar, looking a little sheepish — and empty-handed, dusty. Poking around every single cabinet and shelf has led to absolutely nothing. “Is it true?” he asks with a gesture towards the empty bar, with the sound of a man who’s recently received a horrifying diagnosis from the doctor.

Around the village (OTA)
Reyes will be doing the usual for his first few days: roaming, information-gathering, people-watching, committing the layout of the area to memory. He’s also trying to suss out who lives where and if the fuss of a house is worth it, so can probably be found lingering and staring thoughtfully at the empty buildings, where a neighbour can catch him. He would also appreciate anyone willing to show him where to get/find food etc!

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“Then what in the stars is even the purpose of this bar being here?” Reyes sighed, running a finger along one of the undershelves, revealing the layer of dust. It was practically a lament, an exaggerated bewailing of his fate — because griping about this inconvenience at least gave him something to focus on, a pebble in his shoe to make a fuss over rather than the massive, overwhelming, frankly-unimaginable problem hovering over all their heads instead. This one by comparison was molehill-sized, which of course meant Reyes mourned it like a mountain.

“You don’t happen to have a stash, do you? Or know anywhere one may find some? I think I’ve discovered a new goal in life.” He was reminded, then, of his stealing a bottle of Mount Milgrom whiskey. One of the last from Earth, transplanted to a new galaxy. That had been priceless too.

The purpose? The question earned a raised eyebrow from Nida. It was a rather useful one. Why the inn with a bar? Why the houses? Why anything? Not that he could answer any of those questions. Perhaps he never would be able to.

“I haven’t even been here a week. And my priority hasn’t been liquor. Given all the things apparently out to possibly kill us, weather and lack of technology included, alcohol may not be useful except as an antiseptic. Try the doctors maybe? Or send a text out. Hope you have something to barter.”

For goals perhaps it wasn’t the worst if it motivates the man not to give up hope.

And it wasn’t the most heartening or encouraging to hear — although a hostile environment and a literally toxic atmosphere had been par for the course back home, but at least Reyes had been able to take the edge off with alcohol back then. He sighed again and stalked back out from behind the bar, finding one of the wooden chairs and flopping into it. The bar had been the last thing left in this front room for him to examine; he’d already obsessively pored over that village census and list of volunteers (declining to add himself to the list just yet) and the catalogue of events, trying to understand as much as possible about this mysterious place.

“Another new face, then,” he said, finally introducing himself. “I’m also wet behind the ears — literally! — if you weren’t able to tell. Reyes.”

"Fountain fresh, though I think the cold water took years off my life," Nida shrugged.

For now he remained standing, turning to put his back against the counter Reyes had just been behind. There was clearly an appraisal going on, from the way Nida looked him over. And not a 'you look tasty' sort of looking over. No, a 'figure this person out' sort of look over. Too bad there wasn't much to read with new people, who didn't even have their own clothes to add metaphorical color to a personality.

"Nida Nomura," he offered after a beat. "Did you get harassed by ice mice upon arrival, or am I one of the unfortunate few so far?"

“A pleasure, Nomura. And… ice mice?” A droll arch of an eyebrow, a flicker of inquisitiveness. “Are they what they sound like: mice made of ice?”

Though Reyes looked the perfect picture of ease (despite the dreadfully unfashionable navy blue scrubs), now lounging in that chair like a throne, he was sizing up Nida just as much as he was being assessed in turn. The boy looked a clean-cut youth, which didn’t raise the stranger’s hackles, and instead started sorting Nida into the not a threat column, whether deserved or not. Reyes supposed appearances could be deceiving, but—

“Do you live in one of the houses, or here?” He gestured towards the ceiling of the room with a flourish, indicating the inn rooms above them. “I’m still learning all the neighbours. Perhaps I should bake. Do a tour around all the rooms to say hello.”

A joke, of course. Where would he even find all the supplies? (Also, Reyes Vidal baking? His right-hand-woman would have cried laughing.)

In a way, Nida would be more than pleased to be slipped into the 'not a threat' column. After all, not standing out too much had been something he'd been trained for, and being underestimated was a useful tool for a mercenary. Especially one his age.

"Good guess, but you'll want to flip that conclusion. Mice that make ice. Froze my pack when I got here, while I was still dripping from the fountain so I couldn't get a coat out or anything. Scared another woman here enough to cause her to set her house on fire by accident. They're a bit of a nuisance."

The other question was one that made him smile. The inn was nice and all, but there was something nice about being around people you already knew and trusted. Which wasn't to say that he didn't trust people here. Mostly they had seemed pretty nice, rather kind, and perhaps a bit out of whack. But there was comfort from being around the people you knew.

"House, with some associates from my own world. And a peakitten. Oh!"

Now there was an idea and Nida was smiling. "You want tipsy, find someone with a peakitten. I'm told the oil on their feathers can induce a state not to far from being drunk. I mean, none of the normal route, but it would have the same end."

Associates from my own world. Reyes wasn’t prepared for the hollow, unsettled chord that that sentence struck. He hadn’t met anyone yet from a spacefaring society, let alone his own, or who came from the Andromeda galaxy — but he wasn’t itching for it either. He wasn’t sure what sort of welcome he’d receive from the Pathfinder apart from a kind of fury, so for now, he was resigned to simply hoping it never came to pass, while also wishing it would.

The rest of Nida’s suggestion, however— “Well, that sounds incredibly promising! A peakitten, you say? What do they look like?” The man straightened slightly in his seat. “I’m accustomed to alien creatures, but I’m starting to think I need an illustrated bestiary.”

"Like a bird and a cat mated, with blue and green colors," he offered, trying to figure out a good way to describe a peakitten. Peacocks weren't exactly something he was specifically familiar with.

Thing was, for all the monsters on his world, normal creatures felt few and far between. Perhaps that was why he had taken Rinoa's strange pet so easily in stride.

What was interesting, though, was the way the man seemed so much more eager with the idea of some form of inebriation.

"Are you looking for alcohol just to get drunk? Because seems sort of a waste of time and effort given this place seems a bit more immediately focused on survival through the winter."

Reyes’ answering smile was a flash of teeth: rueful, guarded. “One helps the other. I consider it a morale booster, which is as important as anything when it comes to survival. What’s your coping mechanism, for finding out that you’re trapped in a strange world, at the whims of some unknown something?”

The whole thing was a deflection, but he couldn’t exactly (or wouldn’t) explain it to a stranger; he waved his hand vaguely. “Don’t mind me. I’m making noise for the sake of making noise. I’m not going to be shivering into withdrawal in the middle of the village green, if that’s your worry.”

"Well, first I ask myself what happened to cause that again," Nida offered, and there was a playfulness to the curve of his lips that said this was a joke. Granted not too much of one. He'd heard Time Compression had been like that.

Withdrawal? Strangely Nida hadn't been concerned about that. Or perhaps not so strange. Looking at the man closely he doesn't see a lot of the signs of deep alcoholism. No, this was someone who appreciated the drink, and from the guarded expression, the admission that he was talking to hear his own voice, well, that only made him feel more confident the man was more complex than an alcoholic looking for a fix.

"Good," he said anyway, arms crossing over his chest and his head tilting just a little to the side. "If you pass out somewhere I'd have to carry you back here and I'm trying to save myself for something actually useful."

He laughed, then, at the teasing implication; almost seeming to relax more now that someone was gently taking the piss out of him. That glimpse of humour from the younger man was like a salve. It was back to more familiar territory, enabling the perpetually tongue-in-cheek and at-ease demeanour that Reyes always automatically projected. As far as he was concerned, just because you were potentially going to starve or freeze to death in a foreign environment didn’t mean you had to be somber about it.

“Good. Don’t bother saving my sorry behind. I can promise that it’s entirely not worth it.” Then his attention snagged on Nida’s first sentence, and one very particular, significant word from it: “And, wait, again? Do tell. That sounds like a tale worth sharing. Has this happened to you before?”

Well the way the man lightened up made Nida smile too. Because tension wasn't really his sort of thing. It was useful at times, but there needed to be something more positive about coming to this place. If he had to be it, he would be.

"Nothing much. Magical compression of the time stream into a single point that in the long term would only be survivable by a Time Sorceress. Granted you can live in it for a short time if you have enough other people confirming your existence and vice versa. But even that doesn't last."

Reyes blinked.

He’d crossed galaxies. He’d woken up from six hundred years of cryosleep, he’d landed on new planets and felt the stirring awe at seeing things that no other human being ever had, he’d found friends among aliens, but—

“I don’t say this often, but… none of that made any sense to me,” Reyes said slowly, his usual coy tone melting into true surprise. Then, echoing Nida’s words while almost laughing again, this time in sheer delighted incredulity, “Nothing much, just time compression. Dios, it’s humbling, really! More things on heaven and Earth, and so on.”

"I think techinically the compression wiped out most of the planet before it was broken and everything was restored, but yeah," Nida shrugged. More things on heaven and earth.

Of course that didn't get into the haunted look in his eyes at remembering what it'd been like. That brief moment that you felt, deep in your core, that something was wrong. The body later coming to terms with the fact that it just hadn't existed for a while, later on. Most people were lucky, they didn't know what had happened so they hadn't noticed. Nida had been braced for it.

Nothing like non-existence itself to make mortality that much more pressing.

"I mean, it's a lot bigger of a scale, but you get used to time based magic. Or you do when you're fighting monsters who can sling stop and slow spells."

Reyes had been slowly getting accustomed to the idea of entire universes that ticked differently from his own: not just another galaxy with different biomes, species, creatures, but different rules entirely, physics suspended, demons existing. (But then again, if it looked like a duck and quacked like a duck— what was a thresher maw but a kind of demon?)

“And I thought we had it special, with people who could levitate objects, or put up protective barriers, or tear others apart at the cellular level, or disrupt their mind.” People were understandably horrified by biotics, in his world. He continued, musing, “Perhaps someday, with enough practice, they’d have learnt to change time itself with those abilities. But — does this mean that you do magic?”

Levitate objects and put up protective barriers? Yeah, he could explain those well enough. The tearing people apart on a cellular level makes him feel pretty bad. It's pretty insane to think of that, intimidating.

"Float spell for the first, shell, protect or reflect for the second depending on what you want to protect from, and that's terrifying but the closest I could think of would be a meltdown. As for now..."

He waves his fingers. Nope, nothing here. No magic. But he wasn't the best of it before, and he didn't even have it now.

"No GFs, no magic. This world stripped me of it. And the enhancements that came with it."

Reyes clicked his tongue slightly, considering. The acronym was lost on him, but he’d already admitted enough ignorance for one day. The fact that everyone had, apparently, lost their abilities was far more interesting — and made him grateful all over again that he only relied on his own reflexes, nerves, and skill. He’d had nothing else to lose.

“You should let me know if those enhancements ever come back. I’d like to see that.”

"Yeah," Nida chuckled, shaking his head. "It wouldn't really be something too impressive. Being a bit more agile, a bit stronger, a bit more durable. Mostly just moves you just beyond the normal ability of a human. It's not that impressive."

Of course he really didn't think about how fast people really moved in a fight. His scale might be a bit off the normal perceptions because everyone he had grown up with had used the junctions so much. The conversation itself made him anxious for that power. But there wasn't much he could do about that.

“I’ll be the judge of what I find impressive,” Reyes said dryly, amused. “What you’d described before, that certainly sounded impressive.”

He stood up from his nonchalant sprawl, finally, and stretched until his spine popped. He could feel that restless itch to get moving again. It had been difficult, going from having an entire planet and galaxy at the top of his fingertips, to being trapped in this small slice of a safe zone. Step outside the explored zones and you risked death, without even an environmental suit or blaster or shuttle to help you out.

“Well, I suppose I should get on that whole practical survival thing, as you’ve pointed out. It was good meeting you, Nida Nomura. Probably keep seeing you around. Not like we’ve got that many places to go, eh?” A wry smile.

Well now that was a dismissal if Nida had ever seen one. He nodded briefly to the man, sparing him a slightly warmer smile than Reyes had given him.

"It was a pleasure, Reyes. I wish you luck in finding someone with alcohol to spare. I should probably finish my reading before I go out to explore the forest. Because really, is it living without a little risk?"

And there his smile is wider, more genuine. There was excitement out there, and he intended to make use of it, even if it probably wasn't the smartest thing. Good to actually feel useful for a few minutes between the practical living. Besides, they needed more food in the house and he didn't mind foraging. It was familiar.

Is it living without a little risk. Reyes’ own grin widened at those particular words. The smuggler/spy was a curious mix of both meticulous and devil-may-care, and that was a chord that he thought he recognised in this teenager, too. “Truer words never spoken, my friend,” he said, and then with a faux salute-turned-wave, left the inn and grudgingly went back out into the cold.

He was lost, adrift, not settled in yet, but still gathering as much information as he could, testing the waters with as many people as he could. They were parting ways amicably and knowing a little more now than they did before, and that, both parties could consider a win.

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things happen, that's all they ever do.

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