dualislogs | my heart's a battleground ( OPEN )

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my heart's a battleground ( OPEN )

WHO: Aqua and OPEN
WHAT: Aqua's figuring out this barista thing and exploring on off days
WHERE: The Expresso and around
WHEN: Early July
WARNINGS: None for now, will update as needed

Coffeeshop; working days

When Aqua had given thought to helping out around the city and earning her keep, this was not at all what she'd had in mind.

Someone in charge must have thought she needed experience in something mundane and every-day, signing her up for a job at a local coffeeshop. She had considered not going, for half a second, but in the end she knew she needed some kind of income other than whatever stipend the city was giving her and really this is experience she lacks. Maybe it's time to try something completely new. Thankfully, it's only part time work.

So here she is after Dualis Days have wrapped up, learning how to pull a shot of espresso and make a basic coffee or latte. It's a lot to learn and she feels pretty out of her element, but she's doing her best. Anyone who comes into the shop will be greeted with a smile.

"Hi. I'm Aqua. Can I help you?"

Exploring; off days

On the days when she isn't working, Aqua has taken to walking around the city to try to get her bearings. Surprisingly, this was a whole lot easier in the Iteration world. That one at least didn't move around, in her experience. Sure, people got randomly teleported out to other locations at seemingly-random times, but at least the locations didn't change, well, location.

On her first day of exploring, she makes a mental map of everything she comes across. The second day... that mental map gets shattered. Every day after that, she rewrites her map, taking note of where she goes and how she gets there, but every day something seems to change.

Thank goodness the dorms never seem to move. But getting to the coffeeshop on her working days just got a lot harder.

At some point during her wandering, she can be found standing at a corner of a couple of buildings, with one hand at her chin as she frowns thoughtfully down the street. "I thought that curved the other way yesterday. It's like everything just keeps moving..."

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If she thinks it's confusing on the streets, she should try it from the rooftops. Not that Nida's gone up to those too too much just yet. But he is here, just exiting a shop behind Aqua as she makes the observation. And he recognizes that shade of blue and steps up beside her.

"You're probably right. My job back home meant I had to know how to navigate cities very well. From the ground and from the sky. This place is... complicated. I miss the village for its relative static form."

The rooftops are generally too high for her to jump to, even with Doubleflight working here. That seems more like something Ven would rather do.

She turns at the sound of the familiar voice, glad to see Nida again. "The village did have that to its advantage. Even if we were pulled to some seemingly-random location, at least the general locations didn't change. We could still get back to where we wanted to be with relative ease. Here... everything seems to change. There are only a few places that don't seem to move around, but I can't tell if that's really true or if I keep getting turned around every time I try to look."

“Have you used the phone,” Nida suggested, pulling his own out for an example. Just loads up the maps app and it at least shows where they are. “It’s also sorta unreliable. Honestly, I’m a tough frustrated. The garage I work at was here yesterday.”

How did people even find businesses to keep them functional? There was clearly some weird dimensional magic going on here. Because of course his brain went o magic. It was he frame of reference he had.

The phone seems to have a little bit of a chance to be accurate, but even that seems like too much to ask. Aqua takes hers out and frowns at it.

"I don't know how helpful this will be," she admits. "Though the coffee shop I work at has been fairly stable for now."

Now that she's said this, it'll probably change next time she has to go in.

"I was looking around to see if I could get my bearings, but maybe I should try to see if any of the changes have a pattern."

"Oh Aqua, you shouldn't have said that. It's going to move now," Nida laments. Jinxing is the worst thing you can do. Oh, he just feels so bad.

Still, she's thinking her way around the problem and Nida applauds that. AS for him? Well, he's stopped caring. Those last days at the village sort of killed a lot of his 'give a fuck'.

Aqua winces a bit. She probably did just jinx it. "Well, if I did, I'll let you know where it ends up." That might be the best way to look at it. If it moves, she might find a way to keep track of it. Or try to, anyway.

"Were you trying to find a particular place today? I'm just wandering around right now."

So they could walk and talk, if he wants.

"I was trying to find my work," Nida admits. This was where it was the day before. But damn if he can't find it now. His phone isn't even helping now. In truth he's a minute or two from sending his boss a picture of his map and insisting 'help me find you or give me the day off.'

He's hoping for the day off.

"Well, maybe if two of us are looking at once, we can find it a little easier," she suggests. She really didn't have anything better in mind anyway and it would be good to talk to Nida for a little while.

Well, he's not going to reject such a lovely offer. In fact, just for his own amusement, he offers her his arm. Why not escort the lady about? Sure, he can tell in her body type and stance that she's a warrior, but it's more fun this way, isn't it?

"Was there something in particular you've been looking for? Maybe I ran into something earlier."

Being a girl doesn't mean Aqua is at all good at doing a lot of girly things. She offered Cinderella a hand down the stairs once and steadfastly turned down Zack's request for a date.

Or, well, she'd been blushing and stammering too hard to get him to notice.

With Nida offering her his arm now, she's at a loss as to how to respond. She knows logically what to do, but she's never been comfortable being on this end of it. So, with very little experience with this sort of thing, she visibly flounders, lifting her hands like she had with Zack.

"We can just walk," she says, trying to bypass her embarrassment. Her cheeks are probably bright red at this point, even though she knows Nida doesn't think of her that way. Or maybe she's just hoping that. "I think we're both looking for our jobs. I wonder how anyone can find anything around here."

Oh, well that earns the same patient smile from Nida. "In my defense? I'd do the same to a guy too, just for the reaction. I'll avoid that in the future. Didn't mean to embarrass you."

Definitely doesn't think of her that way. Just trying to be silly. He needs the lightness in his life to counteract all the darkness in it.

"I imagine there's some sort of system. Frankly I haven't been able to wrap my head around it yet. This isn't... this isn't like my world."

His assurance that he didn't mean to embarrass her just serves to embarrass her further. Fortunately, he saves her having to explain further and she falls into step beside him as they turn down the street.

"This world isn't like any world I've ever been to before, either," she admits. Her personal theory is that this is just a world that's been thrown into darkness and somehow all of the people are being thrown into a dark corridor with it. "I've never known a world that changes like this. Maybe the Mirage Arena..."

She lapses into silence at that thought, a frown crossing her face. Even that world generally stayed the same. It was an Arena and that layout didn't change. But still... something feels familiar.

"This reminds me of what I heard of Time Compression. How things there weren't... normal. But I wasn't there myself, I didn't experience it."

Really, he has no good basis for comparison.

"Time Compression?"

That honestly sounds like something Xehanort would have done, something similar to what he actually did. Aqua shakes her head, to clear her mind.

"I guess that's even more reason to keep mapping out everything we can. Maybe one day something will turn up the same as it has before."

Well now that is a lovely idea. And an epic undertaking. One well beyond Nida’s time or ability.

“You’d probably need a dedicated team that did only that for mo this, if not longer. Could be something you could talk people into doing. For their own good. Makes you wonder, though. Is this tool on the devices from the Head or something people maintain?”

Leaves him curious, that is certain.

"I'm not sure. It might be a little bit of both. We didn't exactly have a decent map of the other world until the very end." And even then, they were lucky to have found it at all. "But trying to map the city would at least give some of us something to do."

People like her, she means.

"There was that Reeve guy trying to make one, but yeah, the situation there was sort of frustrating."

At least someone had benefited from the second kidnapping that happened there. It had all been a mess.

Still, he wishes her luck, even if he doesn't know that it's a viable option.

"He was doing a good job with the limited resources we had," she agrees with a nod. "It must have been frustrating to have spent all that time on it just to be handed a pre-made one later, though I guess it also saved him some time and energy trying to figure it all out."

They'd gotten picked up and deposited somewhere new without any idea of where they were and how to get back far too many times for Aqua's tastes.

Nida shrugs. He hadn't really known the guy in question other than the fact that he was mostly out poking at fields. Of course, the man had disappeared, so Reeve hadn't really figured into Nida's thought processes.

"At leas here they don't seem intent on teleporting us around town."

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my heart's a battleground ( OPEN )

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