dualislogs | well, i know i had it coming …

Entry tags:

well, i know i had it coming …

WHO: Open to all Dualizens
WHAT: Your regularly scheduled NAPs event for the month
WHERE: Dualis Danger Lock
WHEN: Feb. 10-13
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 just fine! But for the rest of you, the Head knows this is gonna 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 (possibly invasive) personal questions and receive results - or ignore the card and yeet yourself straight into a brand new friendship, whatever works! 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?!

And who doesn’t like meeting friends in a cramped, high-stress environment? That’s how some of the best friendships are forged - under pressure. Like diamonds! Luckily, for this month, NAPs provides just such an ideal friendmaking environment, courtesy of the brand-new escape room mega-complex, Dualis Danger Lock! This establishment boasts six different highly challenging escape rooms, all designed for small teams of two to three apiece. Usually, the six rooms offer six different themes - jewel heists, high-stakes espionage, and so on - but this month, each escape room differs only in the layouts and clues, because the themes are all the same.

That’s right - you’re attempting to escape from prison. Good luck with that!

After you’ve bonded with your new friends over sharing your skills at puzzle-solving and exited your escape room of choice, grab a table at the food court for snacks and mildly invasive personal questions, or blow off some steam at the arcade. Or, if you have high-pressure steam that needs to be let off, treat yourself to an adult beverage at the Danger Key bar.

Enjoy your freedoms, Dualizens! Enjoy them while they last ...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No Escape

There aren't a lot of things that upset Zack. At all. And there were very few things that can upset him nearly as much as this. He hadn't understood just what was meant before he got here. After all, it was just a NAPs, and he loved those, loved getting to meet people and getting to talk. But then he had walked inside and he'd seen it. Heard someone pitching what the place was, offering to put him with one of the teams. They would put them in a room they couldn't get out of, the person was saying. And their job was to use the clues and tools in the room to get out.

That sentence didn't even finish before Zack found it was almost impossible to breathe. He pushed pas the person and back outside, just about falling over.

It's worse than ever facing a dragon to be honest. He's fought honest to god monsters that could eat him. So why was he panicking over this?

But he was, he absolutely was, and Zack flopped down on the street outside and tried to keep himself from shaking too much.

Its Still NAPS Outside Isn't It?

Well, just because things were bad didn't mean he had to, you know, not talk to people. After a talk to calm down Zack stood outside of the building, waving at people who came in for NAPs.

"Hey, pretty day, isn't it? Maybe we can do the whole meet and greet thing out here, right?"

Better than another freak out inside, right?

The term "escape room" wasn't really a familiar one to Steph. She'd been expecting something fun. Maybe it would be, in the right circumstances. But here? She doesn't trust the city to let them out again, no matter how many puzzles they solve.

She's turning to leave when Zack runs out. She isn't even the person he bumps into. She's seen that kind of thing before. She'sdone that kind of thing before. She follows him out, but stays on her feet and makes sure to leave him enough space so as not to be perceived as a threat.

"Hey. Want me to grab you a water bottle? There's a drug store three doors down."

Breathing is hard. It's like something's pressing down around him. Thick fluid, pressing from all sides, in his eyes, in his nose, in his lungs. But he can breathe. Tube down his throat and he can breathe. And he shudders.

Someone's talking. Zack licks his lips and looks up at her.

"I... water would be good."

She smiles, knowing it's mostly for herself.

"Be right back." She runs off to perform the errand, hopefully giving him enough time to prepare himself for her return if he can't manage to collect himself.

She returns and offers him the bottle, leaning against the wall.

"Here. Take your time."

Manage to collect himself? Hell no. Years caught up in a literal test tube. Nope, not the greatest memory or time. When the water shows up he takes it. Turns it over in his hands. Downs almost half of it before he pauses to talk.

"Thanks. I... I'll be okay in a second."

"Sure." She shrugs. She doubts he'll be okay any time soon. She eases herself down to sit next to him, arms stretched out over her knees, eyes to the distance. If he's anything like her a concerned face is the last thing he wants to see right now.

She gives him another moment before she starts talking, as though simply making conversation.

"Did I ever tell you that I died? Four years ago. Some really messed up stuff happened. I woke up in a place sort of like this, nothing but scars to show for it, but... it took a long time for me to be okay in the dark again. I still have nightmares. Not as often as I used to, but just as bad. Some injuries never really heal, I guess."

Four years ago. So she's had time to process being dead. And then being alive again. Zack...

"Four months. I died four months ago, and when this place is done with me, I go back to being dead. And I'm too scared to tell my best friend that I died saving his life. But it's not that. It's..."

Zack gestures vaguely behind them. At the building.

"Four years captive, experimented on. Getting lucky enough to escape because they got lazy with their little failed projects. I..."

He can't handle it. Not in there. Not for fun. Being trapped in this city is one thing. Figure out the right combination of things to get the Head deposed, get the people he cares about and still has home, and then just... what? Live here? Die here? He doesn't know.

She grimaces. Four months isn't nearly enough time. Four months into her 'afterlife' she'd still been sleeping in an attic, not letting anyone know where she lived.

"Maybe you will, maybe you won't. Here and now, though? You don't have to be okay. And you definitely don't have to play a dumb game, or apologize, or make excuses to people who don't even know you. Hell, I'd even buy you a drink on the other side of town if you wanted. Start a bar fight if you're in the mood. That's always cathartic."

Well, he'd had someone there to support him from the word go.

"I don't really, you know, like fights. Or starting them. People in the bar probably don't deserve me to break their face in."

"Depends on the bar," she concedes. She loves a good fight, but she always makes sure the people she's beating up deserve it.

"Whatever works for you, though."

What works for him? He doesn't even know. All he knows is that his body is still shaking.

"I just... I don't wanna be in an enclosed space I guess. I mean, buildings are bigger than test tubes, but still."

She nods her sympathy, staring out at the skyline again as she thinks. Suddenly she smiles.

"You up for some stairs? I think I know a place."

Stairs? Zack grins.

"Stairs are almost as good as squats. You can't neglect leg day. Sometimes I ran the whole way up the stairs from the ground floor to the SOLDIER offices on the 49th floor."

Yeah, Zack's just crazy, don't mind him.

Yeah, that... sounds like some crazy talk right there. Whatever. She'll let it slide. Instead she gets to her feet and scans the street.

"Wait here just a minute."

She spots what she's looking for and crosses the street into an alley next to an apartment complex. More or less out of view she parkours her way up to the first level of the fire escape and lowers the ladder before heading back to Zack's side.

"Follow me."

He'd been watching her move, and frowned when she disappeared into the alley, but soon he was moving to follow her. And when he saw the lowered ladder he stares in shock.

"Did you do that?"

He does, of course, climb the ladder at her guidance.

"A magician never reveals her secrets," she informs him as she makes her way up, definitely not trespassing or breaking any unspoken rules. It's a good few stories up to the top floor, which naturally doesn't extend to the roof. There's a lower roof right next to it, though, requiring only a few feet of shuffling across two inch detailing before she can hop up onto it. She turns back to offer him a hand if he needs it.

"Okay, you're fucking cool."

He had been following her rather quickly. While he locks a lot of Steph's nimbleness and her specific sorts of training, he's definitely got speed just from pure strength and chemical enhancements. But once he sees her move over that two inches, well... Wow. WOW.

Good thing he isn't overly proud. When Steph offers a hand he ABSOLUTELY accepts it. And once they're on the other roof he grins.

"Wow, you remind me of that weird dude. The one who does the climbing stuff. Can't remember his name."

She just laughs, revelling a little in the praise. She shouldn't be making herself conspicuous, but it's hard to care in an alternate universe where secret identities don't really matter.

"I'm gonna take that as a compliment," she decides, and turns to look out at the city below them.

"I always liked heights. It's much harder for an enemy to climb up than it is for you to fall down. You know?"

"You should. His weirdness doesn't make you any less amazing," he laughs. Heights, though, he doesn't know how to explain. But he agrees at the whole concept. The beauty of the being up high. He pulls his knees up to his chest as he stares out at the night.

"Like I said, I worked in a tall building, on the 49th floor mainly. But it was, like, way taller than that. Not that I care. I... miss small places I guess. I told you I'm from a small village, right? I like being out in places like that. Except mountains. I don't miss mountains."

"Small places, huh? Can't say I'm really a fan." She settles on the ledge and swings her legs over, leaning out into the open air.

"There's nothing like the open sky for freedom."

Open skies. Zack frowns and looks up at the sky.

"I... saw it for a few months, traveling away from the place where me and a friend were held captive for some years. Experimented on. Escaping was SO hard."

"I wish I could show you. I got turned into a bird once, it was easily the best week of my life. Hawks and all."

Bird? Wow, Zack stares at her in shock. And maybe a touch of envy.

"So much better than getting turned into a frog. Or stone."

A bird is freer than that. Man, he wished he could be a bird.

She snorts at that thought.

"And I thought falling out of the sky was bad. Being a frog is a good way to get squished."

"You're not wrong. And there were a lot of things in the area that ate frogs, where I was growing up," Zack admits, chuckling. This... this is easier. She's helping. More than he'd expected.

"It's not easy to be here, in this place. The world is so familiar but so much worse. And I don't get to go home. So I have to make the best of the life they've given me."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

well, i know i had it coming …

Zack Fair | Final Fantasy VII | OTA

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject