dualislogs | 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..."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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.

my heart's a battleground ( OPEN )

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