dualislogs | they show you how to swim

they show you how to swim

WHO: All Dualizens, old and new
WHAT: Your regularly scheduled NAPs event for the month
WHERE: Dualis Oasis
WHEN: Nov. 7-10
WARNINGS: Please use these if applicable!

Look at all of these bright, shining new faces! There’s even a few less bright, less shining faces - maybe even a few folks without faces - but hey, this city welcomes all types. Chances are, if you’ve just arrived, you're seeing some pretty crazy things, unless you're used to an eye-blinding amount of neon, robots, weird-ass technology, magic, and an omnipresent police force...and hey, if you are, congrats, you're gonna settle in juuuuust fine. But for the rest of you, the Head knows this has gotta be pretty overwhelming, right?

Well, since your quaint individual processing units are probably having a hard time, why not link up with another one? By which the Head means...

Hello, new citizens of Dualis,
and welcome to your monthly Network Adjacency Protocol~!

NAPs are a monthly community networking event similar to the Earth concept of speed dating! Two citizens (new arrivals and old hands alike) are placed at a table together with a handy cue card of queries to help break the proverbial ice. Ask queries and receive results, or ignore the card and yeet yourself straight into a brand new friendship! But don't be too shy, you've only got ten minutes together, and if you just sit in silence for the whole ten, the Network Admins are likely to come supervise and try to repair the uplink through a mild shock to the ol' central nervous system. You might find yourself saying all sorts of unintended facts about yourself if that happens...probably better to just make friends, right? Who doesn’t like friends?!

The weather outside may be taking a turn toward chilly, but you can still get your swim on during this month’s NAPs, held at the Dualis Oasis, an indoor temperature-controlled aquatic amusement park with giant slides, swimming pools, and lazy winding float rivers. Appropriate swimming gear is required for entry to this part of the park, but there are a number of shops just outside that will gladly sell you swimwear and accessories.

For those of you who wish to avoid a humid environment or just hate fun, a dehumidified lounge and restaurant offer quieter, dryer spaces for chatting and snacking. The actual speed-friending itself is in progress here, but you’re welcome to stick around and continue conversations with your new friends.

So c’mon, what are you waiting for? Just dive right in for fun and friendship - the water’s fine, fine, fine, just like everything else in this fair city. But hey, remember to play safe. No running!

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If they both knew that the other's home was destroyed, too, they'd have a lot more to talk about than they originally thought. But that isn't something Tifa really wants to go into right now, especially given the fact that Cloud is around somewhere and might turn up at the most inopportune moment.

Still, she offers him an apologetic smile in return, giving her head a gentle shake that rustles her incredibly long hair. "It's okay. That's part of why we're here, right? To get to know each other? It's a question anybody would be curious about." It's just that her answer comes with a lot of baggage.

"Your home sounds really impressive." In a way, it reminds her of Midgar, but she hopes it's cleaner and better for the Planet he's from. "My homeworld... has a city kind of like that. It doesn't run right into the sea, but that's mostly because it's enclosed by giant walls. There's not an easy way out of it and if you live in the slums-" She pauses long enough to fold her arms over her body, her hands gripping her upper arms almost hard enough to turn her knuckles white and certainly enough for her muscles to show. "-you had the worst of it. You were stuck in the slums pretty much forever. I hope your city is better than Midgar."

She says it's okay, but as she goes on, Tidus can't help but to regret the topic more—and not even partially for himself anymore. Were painful memories really worth sharing? He's not so sure.

"Is it better here? I mean, it's not great I guess, the way you arrive. I don't know what it was like for you." Was it strange? Well, sure, but actually knowing how other people showed up... he didn't think to ask Yuna.

He tries not to let the thought distract him, and get back to his original point. "But... is there anything good about it?"

They could be, sometimes. If it weren't for the specific memories or the fact that she's been hiding so many important details in those memories from Cloud, it wouldn't be such a problem for Tifa. But everything surrounding the Nibelheim incident is difficult. A problem.

"It's not great, but honestly... I've had worse greetings when I've woken up in other places."

Like being shown the giant Meteor barreling towards the Planet from space and then almost being publicly executed by the government. That was a fun time, for sure.

Tifa curbs those thoughts back around to his question. Any good parts of Midgar? Hmmm... She has to think about that one. "Well... there's one piece of one Sector in Midgar that has a small patch of flowers growing. It's the only place in all of Midgar that has natural growth." And that was all because of Aerith. Now that Aerith's gone... Tifa doesn't know if anyone else can grow anything like she can. No one else has the connection to the Planet that Aerith did.

Flowers were...nice. A splash of colour to an otherwise dreary reality the woman was describing. But it sounded bare all the same, nothing that could pick up the spirits, or keep them so. Was the situation with this place the best? Not really. But it really was a shame it couldn't be better.

"Being picked up and brought here can't be great, even if this Midgar wasn't the best either, but we can make the most of it, right?" He's a bright smile, trying to offer some optimism to their so far drab conversation. "We're gonna be stuck here for a year. What do you plan on doing?"

Midgar was very dreary and dull in some places. Tifa hasn't even gotten to talking about the truly awful parts about Midgar and likely won't. Shinra was a terrible organization. The same people who were responsible for Sephiroth and turned a blind eye to the entire Nibelheim incident were also responsible for dropping the Sector 7 plate, destroying an entire population below it and probably the one above it as well. And even if they didn't outright support Don Corneo's sex trafficking, the fact that everyone knew about it and nothing was done to stop it was approval enough.

"Well, right now I'm trying to get my own bar off the ground," she answers, leaning into the new topic easily. "That's what I did for the four years I lived in Midgar. Maybe this one will be as popular as 7th Heaven was back there or maybe it won't be, but at least it'll be something familiar."

Right down to the secret rebellion headquarters in the basement.

"What about you?"

"I haven't been here long, and the career I was going for back home doesn't exist here, so..." Tidus raises his hands, chuckles as he explains, "I was in sports, so I'm going to need more than a year to go down that again."

But maybe as a side project, sure. "But maybe I can get into...swimming." He nods his head, in direction of the large pool. "I'm going to anyway. There's a lake outside the city with my name on it."

He grins. "And I'll try out other sports too! But putting together your own bar," he goes back to after a beat, returning to her goals, "that sounds pretty cool. More financial than any of my ideas." A pause, and he makes a small throwing motion with a hand.

"I heard there's a bar with axe-throwing. You got anything like it?"

He asks it with humour, maybe not entirely serious. Then again, he's actually kinda interested in giving axe-throwing a go...

Sports, huh? That sounds kind of blissfully fun. Sure beats the stress and strain she's going to be under with this bar of hers. Granted, it's a strain she knew she would be getting into, but all the same...

"If we were at home, I'd say you should try chocobo racing at the Gold Saucer," she says. That could be fun, as long as Tidus wasn't like the rest of them and hadn't gotten himself thrown in prison. Chocobo racing from the literal bottom wasn't much fun.

"No. And I haven't looked into that one. Throwing axes around drunk people doesn't sound like a good idea. Much less if the drunk person is the one throwing the axes." That just sounds like a prime example of what not to do while inebriated. She can just imagine the various wounds the patrons probably get on a daily basis. "If I can get one, I'd like to have a piano in a corner, but that's a lot less dangerous than axes."

"Okay, maybe not axes," Tidus will sheepishly agree, and he would love to brainstorm alternative options, except: "But you've raced chobobos?"

His eyes are alight. Tell him all about this, stat. He has to know more!

"Well... not me," Tifa admits. "But Cloud did. You could ask him about it. I just got to watch it a bit. It was exciting, but those chocobos looked really stubborn. They weren't easy to ride."

Granted, the whole thing had been to bust them out of prison, more or less, but who's really counting all of that? It's just another long line of Shinra's bullcrap. They weren't really the responsible party anyway.

"Really? Well, introduce me sometime." Because hey, Tidus wouldn't mind talking about chocobo races on another planet with a guy sometime.

"I didn't get to ride them much, but they're seriously fun. The first time I saw a chocobo," and he shares it with a laugh in his voice, "I thought they were freaky! I'd never see birds that big before! And powering up a boat too? But they got us where we needed to go."

But really, whoever thought to do that had some bizarre ideas. Not that it didn't work.

Honestly, the chocobo racing might be one of the better things to talk about with Cloud. If they stick to just the chocobos and the races, there's less chance of getting into why Cloud had needed to race them and thus staying away from the topic of Sephiroth. That's always a good thing.

"They power boats where you're from?" she asks curiously. With Shinra in control of almost the entire Planet by now, they had the means to build things far more powerful than chocobo-power. It's an interesting, but primitive, concept. "That must have been strange. There' a chocobo farm outside of Midgar, between the ocean and a swamp. Probably picked that spot because the only way to cross the swamp without the Midgar Zolom catching you is on a chocobo. Nothing else is fast enough."

"It was different," Tidus admits; different from the boathouse ever needing to be moved, different in being on such a ride under the circumstances he was. Different in a lot of ways. "Most people use them for riding, but you either rented them, or there were soldier types that used them. Didn't see many people keeping them other than that."

So, definitely didn't see any farms. But she had him curious about something, and confused.

"But what's the Midgar Zolom? Isn't Midgar the city?"

So how would the city...catch you...or anything from the city...?

"Oh, I see." Chocobo powered boats had just seemed strange. The extended explanation makes more sense to Tifa. That's kind of how it is on her world. There's the chocobo farm and plenty of wild chocobos if anyone felt like catching them, but usually the only time anyone would ride them would be to escape the Zolom or in the races. They might have been useful in the desert, but they'd had the car for that purpose, so who really knew.

"You're right. Midgar is the city. But the Midgar Zolom is a giant snake that lives in the swamps outside the city. It kind of cuts off Midgar and the surrounding areas and towns from the rest of the continent. Unless you have a boat or a chocobo, you can't really go anywhere else."

"Wow, it must be pretty big." Both in size and what a giant hassle it sounds like. "There's no way to get rid of it? I mean, if it's that much of a problem...and it sounds like you've gotta move pretty fast to beat it. There's no way to build around it on land somewhere?"

It was hard for him to really imagine the stretch of land she was talking about, but if getting rid of the giant snake wasn't an option, a boat or riding a chocobo were, well...options. Though the chocobo one not so great, by the way she was describing having to beat the Midgar Zolom's speed.

And it being a giant snake.

"I don't really know if you can," Tifa admits honestly. "It's such a colossal sized snake that I don't know of anyone who's tried. It's probably Shinra's way of keeping everyone close to Midgar and preventing us from getting to the rest of the world."

Gotta keep those slums nice and filled with oppressed people. It's enough to make the hair on Tifa's arms stand up. She still hates Shinra.

"Don't know if it would destroy anything you tried to build over it, but the swamp has a mountain range at the back and the only way through that is a cave. You just have to get across before the snake finds you."

So... chocobo is really the way to go.

"Wow." A repeat way to first respond, but earned. "So your home is somewhere in the mountains?" He gestures, dictating the mountain range and somewhere farther up. "And then Midgar is this way," a gesture lower, "and then this Shinra guy... are they some kind of leader of everyone?"

They have a mansion up in the place Tifa described first, though a mansion sounds quaint compared to where leaders seem to usually stay.

The other topics are fine, for the most part, but the second Tidus starts directly asking about Shinra, Tifa closes up a bit. Shinra was responsible for taking everything from her. They killed her family, destroyed her hometown, and squashed her second home flat. They took everything from her and so many other people.

"No," she responds, her voice ever so slightly tight. "Shinra Electric Power Company. It's a mega corporation. Their headquarters are in Midgar."

They're pretty much in control of the entire Planet by now, though she doesn't really want to say too much more about them, even if he asks. Also... he's missing a couple of continents in his mental image, but that will take more explaining than she really thinks she can give here.

Edited 2019-12-06 00:10 (UTC)

Tidus may not be privy to her thoughts, but he's aware of the shift in her tone, the stilted language. She's been rather giving in terms of details, and while she still shares now, he can tell the difference.

Bad news. He thinks for a moment, then sits up some, putting his hands on his knees.

"Hey, thanks for telling me so much. Before I went travelling, I never thought about the world outside where I came from, the different lives people had. I know we're all far away from home now, but... I appreciate it." He nods. "Are you going to let people know about your bar through that device they gave us? The one with the online. I wanna check it out when you open."

He knows when it's been a bit too long. There's no reason for him to keep nosing out of personal interest.

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they show you how to swim

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general cw: for corneo - sex trafficking mention

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