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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"That's true," she muses thoughtfully. "I guess I'm just used to worlds that usually have natives. But you're right. Between this world and the Iteration world, I don't think we've run into any real natives at all."

Which brings up its own questions beyond what they were told when they woke up.

"So I guess that means this world might be in the realm of darkness."

She isn't honestly sure she's convinced of that possibility. Things are different. Then again, there's really no telling and that realm could have countless miles and worlds in it. Aqua's travels only barely scratched the surface.

What she does know is that she doesn't want to be stuck in the realm of darkness again and she doesn't know if she could survive it a second time.

He nodded thoughtfully. Hadn't even considered the Iteration world, it was strange there too. A different kind of strange. "Last one was a pretty obvious science experiment. You don't think this one might be a similar thing?" He scratched his chin. "We got daylight, that's one thing right?"

Surely it can't be completely a world of Darkness or they wouldn't have a sun. Or people living and thriving, regardless of the lack of natives. Right? One can hope? Maybe getting a spooky shadowy tattoo was a bad idea. But it sounded so fun at first! And honestly he's been having a great time with it so far. Even if he's still learning how to control it.

"I think we're just getting ahead of ourselves. It's creepy, but it sure ain't Darkness."

Says the guy who has never encountered Darkness.

Daylight is a good thing. Aqua will agree with that. Something in this world just doesn't give her the greatest feeling, though she can't pinpoint what. Maybe it was the bombing. Maybe it's the way the locations keep changing. Maybe it's the fact that sometimes when she turns, she thinks she can see a flash of Ven or Terra.

Whatever it is, at least she has her keyblade this time. Maybe she can be of better use this way.

"I hope you're right."

He doesn't have the experience that she does with darkness. She knows that well enough. But in this moment, she finds herself willing to cling to any kind of hope she can find.

"Well, I was just walking around today. I can leave you to whatever you were doing, if you're busy."

Seifer would add the utter and complete lack of life outside of the human-ish ones brought there, and plants. Taking the job he had he'd expected he'd be seeing a lot of roaches, rats, and cats, yet he'd encountered absolutely none. No flies, nothing. It didn't exactly make the job more pleasant and it was almost more unnerving not to see the usual scavengers around. There was something decidedly wrong with that.

"Keep an eye out anyway," He suggests. It can't hurt, either way. Of course he can't know what's on her mind but he'd be glad to know he offered a slight bit of hope. Sometimes you need it to keep going forward.

"I've already finished what I was up to for the day," He patted his own arm, wrapped in a clear plastic skin with the new tattoo underneath. Dark tendrils twining around each other up his forearm. He's never had a tattoo before, and it looked cool. "So if you're explorin' and don't mind the company maybe we could look around together. Who knows, might find a coffee joint." And he'd really enjoy spoiling himself with a fancy coffee.

He doesn't have to tell her to keep an eye out here, but she nods anyway. She might not be as wary as he is. Still, she knows she needs to keep her guard up in this place as much as the last world they were in.

The idea of exploring with company sounds like a good one to her and so she nods in response. She'd love to try looking around with someone else. Maybe together they can figure out what's going on and if there's a pattern to the location changes. But first, her eyes are drawn to his arm and the mark underneath the clear plastic.

"What happened to your arm?" she asks.

He meant more specifically about Darkness stuff, which she'd spot long before he would. Generic trouble they could both figure out, the specifics of Darkness however was Aqua's area of expertise.

Perhaps they could. He had a similar thought, or at least they could enjoy an afternoon and that's always worth it. Give them something to talk about on the way back to the dorms. The question gives him pause, and he holds up his arm for her to inspect. "Oh! Yeah, I decided to go try that mod thing out they were talkin' about when we got here."

Speaking of not being careful.

Honestly, Aqua isn't entirely sure what to make of that mod thing he's talking about or the fact that he even let these people - robots? - do something to his arm. She eyes it a little obviously concerned.

"Is that really safe to do?" she asks, her voice echoing the concern on her face. She doesn't want anything to happen to him and while she isn't usually the cynical type, getting something etched on his body in this world doesn't seem like the safest idea.

You know, he hadn't thought too deeply into it. Now that Aqua was questioning it he peered at the healing tattoo beneath the protective plastic with a faint frown.

"...Y'know I'm not sure," Which was probably not the wisest move on his part. Jumping into this without much caution. "But I can't imagine they'd do anything too crazy to us if they need our help, right?" The last place was certainly hard sometimes, but nothing they couldn't handle. "Besides, check this out it's pretty cool."

He lifted a hand to try to help direct it as a shadowy, wispy tendril formed out of nothingness, waving in time with his motions. He'd only just had the thing installed, so control was awkward. But he did manage to make it reach out and coil back up on command, before letting it dissipate. "I can use 'em to interact with things too. Once I figure it out."

Aqua isn't so sure that it really was a good idea and her general sense of foreboding increases as Seifer answers her question. She isn't the cynical type, so she won't be the one to point out the flaws in his logic. This is probably just as well, considering that all thoughts of concern fly out of her mind the second he starts playing with the shadows. Aqua reacts instinctively, summoning Stormfall to her hand in a flash of light.

"You have darkness now?" she asks, her voice sharp with concern and maybe a little tiny bit of fear. "You have to be careful. That kind of power is dangerous."

Edited 2019-08-17 14:50 (UTC)

"Woah, hey!" The tendrils vanish upon the summoning of that keyblade. He's unarmed, and would really appreciate not getting his head bashed in just for playing with shadows thank you. "It's not Darkness," He insists. "It's just... shadowy."

Although he does look a little doubtful now, after what they've been talking about. Did he just take on a bunch of Darkness? It sure didn't feel like anything wrong. Maybe a bit weird but that's to be expected when taking on a new power, right?

Aqua's look of polite disbelief shows that she isn't entirely convinced of that. But she does at least let Stormfall point down at her side instead of at him. It looks like darkness to her. He did stop using it when she threatened it, but given her experiences with Xehanort and Vanitas, that doesn't mean a whole lot. Still, Seifer is her friend and she'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

For now, anyway, and mostly because a lot of her tactics, good intention or no, hadn't met with good results with Terra.

"What is it then?"

He stopped using it because he didn't want to get pummeled with a keyblade. While he doesn't understand this Darkness thing, he does understand weapons drawn. And he's largely disarmed right now. Minus the uh, extra arms, technically.

"Shadowy stuff, totally different," Right, he's not very convincing. But look! He reaches out to gingerly dump over a trash can... "Crap that's not what I wanted..."

And then gingerly attempt to right it again and pick it up. Look! Totally not evil! Just clumsy.

Honestly, Aqua isn't entirely convinced just yet, but she likes Seifer well enough and, well... a part of her is still trying to treat everyone with a connection to darkness of any kind better than she treated Terra. She will always have reservations about darkness and want to fight it in every way, but she is starting to understand that sometimes she has to use more subtle methods. She can't always whack it with a keyblade.

So for now, she lets Stormfall fade from sight again, eyeing the shadowy darkness Seifer's using with a healthy dose of wariness. She supposes she'll just have to trust him not to use it for ill and hope that she'll be nearby to help save him if the darkness starts taking control.

"So, you're using it as another arm?" she asks, a small bit of curiosity shining through.

A keyblade to the face would be a quick way to put a damper on their friendship, that's for sure. Besides, now that he has the tattoo it's not exactly going to be easy to get rid of it. Once it turns around to bite him on the ass as it inevitably will, he'll understand what she meant about Darkness being a terrible idea.

He's fine, look, no problems here! Just a few extra pairs of hands.

"Yeah! Exactly. Everyone always says they need more than two hands, right? Well now I got 'em." And they conveniently tuck out of the way when he doesn't need them anymore.

She still isn't convinced and isn't sure she ever will be, but at least she's trying. This is a huge step for her, to even give anything remotely like darkness a chance, but she's... making the effort to do better. To be better for the rest of her friends than she was for Terra. Seifer probably doesn't know how big a step this is.

"All right," she says dubiously. "But please, promise me you'll be careful. And if anything starts to go wrong with it, tell me. I've..." She pauses, lets out a soft sigh that's full of worry and even more than a little bit of self-recrimination buried inside, and then continues. "I've already lost a friend to darkness. Even though we got him back, I really don't want to see another friend go through that."

She's just the big sister everyone doesn't know they have. She's worried about everyone here, but especially about this new darkness. If Seifer looks like he's going through even a part of what Terra did, Aqua wants to be there to help him fight it.

Trying means a lot. Giving Seifer a chance means a lot more than he can ever articulate. The fact that she's trying to accept this, no matter how questionable, does mean something to him. While he can't quite grasp the full severity of her concern over Darkness, he does understand he's probably flirting with trouble here. The question there is when isn't he? He doesn't know, but damn if he did know he'd be really touched.

"You'll be one of the first to know," He promises. Easy enough to keep, she's his roommate and all. He nods slowly at her confession, frowning slightly. "What's it do, how d'you know it's becoming a problem?"

Seifer could use a big sister or two to keep him in line. He makes bad life decisions a hobby.

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my heart's a battleground ( OPEN )

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