caveofsapphires | smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

WHO: EVERYONE. All PCs thus far will be in this log, through active tagging or implication.
WHAT: THRILLS. SPILLS. Hiking trip toward the Diamond City.
WHERE: The Overworld.
WHEN: Forward-dated to May 1st (Tuesday) through May 7th (Monday).
WARNINGS: May contain violence or other mentions of physical harm. This is not summer camp.
NOTES: More information can be found on the OOC post here. Please read it!

Gathered in the morning haze, Sleepers were brought to the mouth of the Cave with plenty of supplies and equipment. Compasses that would point them toward the City. Backpacks full of clothes and food, medical kits, tents and even weapons. Stun rifles and knives — to fight off any unwanted company, they said. ("Watch out for their bite," Ryan had commented. "Those fuckers are downright feral.") The straight and narrow path would get them there in six days if they kept a good clip. They were sent off just like that. Refusals to leave were met with a wall of guard force officers blocking the entrance back into the cave city. No way to go but forward, unless someone was particularly stalwart about remaining.

From the exterminator's station near the mouth, leaving the Cave was as simple as a short hike upward into the fresh air of the Overworld. Dust and an uncomfortable sort of heat pervaded the atmosphere, light winds stirring up the sand and teasing the meager bits of vegetation that had grown. No matter what direction you looked... it was all wasteland, cracked ground and desolate emptiness. Jutting up from scarred ground were boulders and small spires made entirely of glass and patches of stone; instead of reflecting the harsh sunlight, they seemed to absorb it and only add to the muted loneliness of the atmosphere. As far as the eye could see, there was no life to be found.

With no other option, the Sleepers eventually made their way onward.

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"I've been known for it on occasion," Gabriel said cheekily and with grin in return; but this one was a rare one, with only an edge of faux cheer and an undertone of true warmth. You're welcome, Re-l. He rubbed his hands together, half playfully and half to get rid of the sweat. "Now. My turn. Let's just hope I don't decide to try flying without my wings."

He took a deep breath, let it out, and then pressed himself against the cliff, reaching for the first handhold. He shuffled awkwardly across the ledge, slowly--much more slowly than Re-l had gone--and carefully and feeling ridiculously vulnerable to the open air behind him. The weight of his pack seemed to want to drag him backward. He kept his eyes on Re-l, but even without having looked, his imagination provided.

"So did I ever tell you about the time I got this guy kidnapped by aliens who made him slow-dance with them?" he asked with a strained smirk. Now he was the one who needed a distraction.

Re-l considered that.

"Did you have a reason," she asked, "or was it some kind of twisted idea of fun?"

She scratched her head, and sat down against the cliff to wait for Gabriel.

"I think the oddest situation I ever ended up in was when a Proxy kidnapped me and Pino and put us in glass cages so Vincent would have to play a game show." She pulled a face. "That was a very irritating day."

"Well, he was a dick," Gabriel said with the slightest of slight shrugs. "All disdainful about anyone else's perceptions or opinions, especially if they were even remotely outlandish. So I gave him some perspective."

At least he didn't die. Just got a little ... traumatised.

At that the archangel could only laugh, and had to stop to do so without falling. "It wouldn't happen to have been called 'Nutcracker', would it?" he asked with a smirk. "Ah, throwing people into gameshows. That never gets old. I never needed to sink to the kidnapping route, though. Well, except for kidnapping the guys I threw into it--just not their friends."

"Ah, well there's nothing like being taken away from the world you know to induce perspective. Did it help?"

Re-l took a swig of water and licked her lips.

"No, his name was MCQ. He was even more annoying than Vincent." She laughed. "The whole thing was stupid. I just kept waiting for Vincent to turn into Ergo and get us out of there. I would have got out myself, but I couldn't break the glass."

"Probably. Once he got through a bit of therapy." He was starting to get into a rhythm. Breathe in, breath out, shuffle along a few inches, start all over again.

"That was the proxy. What was the gameshow?" He grinned a little in one of his pauses in response to the laugh. Much better than the doom and gloom ice-queen. "Come on, I'm begging for details, here! Give me the nitty-gritty so I know what to do for my next reality-warp."

"Hmmm. I think it was just called the Nightmare Quiz Show," Re-l said. "The rule was that either the challenger of the host died at the end. Of course, MCQ was a Proxy, so he'd won every show before Vincent showed up." She bit her thumb and thought about it a bit more.

"The questions were all about the world around us. And the proxies. It was in that dome that we first heard about Proxy One. And then they mixed in a lot of Philosophy and Literature. And a song title, for some reason. Vincent did really badly. He was never very bright."

She shaded her eyes and looked back at Gabriel.

"You take altogether too much enjoyment from this, considering how unpleasant it was. Though it fits your character, I must admit."

'I taught you all your tricks.'

Gabriel gave Re-l an innocent grin, one a bit strained by his position and the whisper of Lucifer's voice both. "I was in the business. Though, come on, playing just to kill? What's the point in that? Whenever there was a death involved in one of my tricks it was their own damned fault."

Like with that professor idiot who preached against infidelity and then went and had a run of affairs with his pretty female students. Hey, if he'd backed away and said no, the construct would never have turned on him, especially not once he freaked because he'd been kissing someone suddenly less pretty than he'd thought she was.

"So if your knucklehead was such a knucklehead, how'd you get out of that one?"

Re-l coughed into her hand, definitely not trying to hide a smile.

"Remind me never to get caught in one of your games."

She draped a hand over her forehead to shield against the sun.

"Oh, the quiz was ridiculously easy. Nobody but Vincent would have needed thirty minutes to get to a million points." She flicked her hair back over her shoulder. "I always assumed that proxy had a death wish. I think a lot of them did."

She looked over at Gabriel.

"Did you spend all your time constructing ridiculous and elaborate traps, or were you actually useful on occasion?"

"Hey, my games were fun!" Gabriel paused a moment to breathe and smirked. "Sometimes. Mostly if you were me. Or if you played them. It's not my fault people kept trying to cheat or break the rules."

Not that he'd have played a game on Re-l. Sure, she had attitude, but she wasn't inherently a dick. Not inherently. He didn't think. It was hard to say with so much static between him and her soul.

"If the questions were that easy, how is it the proxy never lost?" Gabriel asked, half bemused and fully intending on ignoring that last question, just because it hit some raw spots he was trying to ignore. He sidled forward and his foot hit a lump or a pebble in the ground, he wasn't sure which. It didn't matter anyway, because either way it made him glance down and after a day of climbing Gabriel finally got his glimpse of the ground.

The sound of the professor hitting the pavement from three stories up rang in his head and the blood drained from his face. This was much, much higher than that. With effort Gabriel tore his gaze away, back up at Re-l, and he smiled weakly. "So y'ever heard of an angel who might be scared of heights?"

"I'm sure you thought they were very fair."

Re-l shifted a little against the cliff. It was warm, and that made her a little sleepy. Her concentration wavered.

"Like I said, I think the proxy had a death wish. He probably made it easy for Vincent on-"

The rattling pebble stopped her in her tracks and her attention snapped back to the cliff. She pushed herself up and hurried to edge of the ledge. Her eyes scanned the situation desperately, but she couldn't move out onto the ledge. She'd just get in the way. Pressing herself against the cliff, she held out her hand towards Gabriel.

"Look at me!" Her eyes focused on him, full of the same determination as her voice. "Take a step. Don't look down. Keep looking at me. I can almost reach you."

She needed to keep his attention and so she began to talk about the first thing that came into her head, just for something to say.

"Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the strangest thing that ever happened to me was - well it was before I came here. I told you about Daedalus. He was the man who raised and created me. The Chief of the Medical Bureau. But in the end he didn't much like how I turned out. So he used cells, from Monad Proxy, to make a clone. I never met her, but I saw her. I admit, it surprised me. I never thought Daedalus would go so far. But then she didn't look very much like me. She had white hair, and gold eyes, and wings. Like a real angel. Daedalus certainly thought so. But then she went off after Vincent. She left Daedalus, just like I had. He never forgave either of us, right to the end." She swallowed, her throat drying out. "Stupid, wasn't it?"

He was looking at her. He was hardly even blinking, he was looking at her so hard. Sweat trickled down his brow as he took a sliding step without his gaze shifting.

"Created, eh?" he said, his voice strained. "You said that the other day. When you say 'created' d'you mean grown in a test-tube or cloned or what?" Then he smirked, and although it was a wan thing, there was a trace of amusement in it. He took another step. "Well, the wings part is right. Most of us have wings. But the majority don't really even look human if you could see us and not have your eyes burn out. Or the case of archangels like me, have your brain explode."

The archangel wasn't going to comment on the stupidity. Wasn't going to comment on the fact that her father cared and it came out all the wrong ways, compared to his, who seemed to stop caring at all. Bad comparisons, there. His third and final step put him in reach of Re-l.

Re-l felt his hand close around hers and gripped as tight as she could, using the angle of the cliff as a counterweight to stop herself moving.

"An artificial womb," she said, her voice shaky with the exertion. "Everyone in Romdeau was. By the time we came along humanity had long since lost the ability to reproduce unaided. Daedalus was in charge of the wombs, and he was given special care of me because I was the Regent's granddaughter."

She was half pulling Gabriel now, to keep him moving.

"That sounds like the old stories. Can you do that here, do you think?"

"That sucks." He gripped her hand tightly and decided to never, ever mention just how tightly he was doing so, how much of that was fear. (In his head, the professor, yet again, went splat.) "I hope you guys could at least still have sex; otherwise I'd just have to feel bad for you."

He submitted to the pull, shuffling along inch by inch. There was no need to think, no need to consider the fear, when there was a force dragging him to the end.

Then for a moment the archangel's gaze actually focused on Re-l, instead of seeing through her to concentrate on the ledge beneath his feet and the cliff against his hand. And that gaze was old and apprehensive in a way only a being who had, suddenly, become something else entirely, become less than what they had been, could be. Then his face closed off and he snorted with affected disdain. "No. I'm human here. I used to be bigger than a skyscraper and now I'm stuffed inside this little bag of meat and bones. Souls are insanely compact, y'know."

"We have the right anatomy, if that's what you're asking," Re-l said, shifting her weight with a grunt. She let him take what he wanted from that, concentrating on the task at hand.

Then he looked at her; not the jittery half glances of the day after the sandstorm but a deep old look that sank into her bones, that laid her open on a table and vivisected her. She felt as though all her secrets, all of the shame and guilt that lay buried in the bottom of her heart were pulled out into the open. She couldn't bear that look. Her eyes dropped to the ground, and for a moment her grip slackened.

Then she remembered herself and pulled again, and with a final heave Gabriel was on wide and solid ground beside her.

"There we go," she said. "The meat and bones are quite good for some things, you'll find."

He saw things. He couldn't help it, with the way her soul responded to the look, even though he hadn't intended it. He saw a woman with white hair and golden eyes. He saw the death of a robot with a cloth head, cursing her, and the overlay of spikes there was so sharp that there was almost no ambiguity as to the context.

It was just as well she looked away then, because Gabriel wasn't sure he wanted to see more. Not now. Not here.

Her sudden yank helped him shake off the reading, and he stumbled thankfully against the cliff, sinking against it and throwing her an ironic smirk that wasn't quite as steady as it should have been. "Yeah, it's good for turning into a pancake after falling fourteen storeys."

Re-l looked him up and down, but he didn't seem hurt. That look he had given her still shadowed her mind.

"You didn't die. Don't complain."

She let go of his hand and moved away a little, just to distance herself from him.

"We should be able to see the city when we climb this ridge. Let's not waste time."

She rolled her shoulders out and set off up the track, ignoring Gabriel solidly.

Well, that was a thing. For a moment Gabriel wondered if she knew he'd seen anything before deciding that if she had, her reaction would have been more explosive.

Still, he didn't move for a minute or two--not until she was further up the track--so he could catch his breath and will his hands to stop shaking. It was only then that he started after her and called out, "You know, if you want me to complain, I can do so much better than that!"

"Why would I want you to complain?" Re-l asked. "It's unhelpful and annoying."

But she stopped and waited, just in case. She used the moment to look onwards. There was a definite glint on the horizon.

"I can see the city," she said, turning back to Gabriel. "We're almost there."

"And a distraction, and gives you something to complain about," Gabriel pointed out facetiously with a flashing grin, deliberately taking his time in catching up. His whole body was aching. He wasn't about to move faster than he had to. "I'm just doing a civic duty and all that."

Finally he came level with her and glanced toward the horizon, shading his eyes despite the fact he was still wearing his goggles. The glare seemed to be easing off--something the faint throb in his temples was thankful for. "The Amazing Race," he murmured with a smirk. "Wonder which of us lucky idiots gets there first."

Re-l glared at him, but she couldn't think of a reasonable comeback, and so her glare had to suffice. She let him catch up with her and then started moving again, climbing further up the ridge, her eyes on the city.

"I haven't seen anyone today, which I suppose means they're all behind or ahead. It doesn't matter, though. What's waiting for us when we arrive seems more important."

Hah. Gabriel mentally chalked up another mark in his favour and gave her his most winsome smile. "As long as we get there, I don't care if the whole population is dancing the Macarena in their birthday suits," the archangel informed her, and then added, "Though I might be a bit weirded out if we get there and the others have decided to join them."

"I think that would be most unlikely," Re-l said, shaking her head, "but we should be careful. It would be sensible to split up and approach the city from different angles, or at different times. There's no point in giving them any information they don't need." Something jostled her memory, and she snapped a finger. "Names. From now on, my name is Masa. I'll call you Sylvester."

They had crested the last hill, and a long but easy descent to the outer ring awaited them. They would be there by evening.

He'd have to teach her to have some imagination. Gabriel snorted. "They know we're coming. The Caretaker would've gotten it to them, or else they'd be unprepared to indoctrinate us."

Right. Of course. The archangel made a face at the sound of his name, shaking his head. "Couldn't have picked a better one," he muttered as they reached the top of the hill. Then he sighed, and grinned, and stretched. After desert, rocks, ravines, cats, robots and sandstorms, the sight of that city was almost beautiful. It was certainly striking; he wondered if that was a real diamond. Well, either way.

"Last one inside the gates gets their hair coloured," he said cheerfully, only half meaning it, and started down the hill toward the city.

Re-l opened her mouth to say something, and then shut it. There was no point in telling him that she would not give them anything that they might use against her later, anything they could threaten her with. He would only take it the wrong way.

She let him walk until he was a good way ahead of her, and then at last began her own journey.

"My hair doesn't take colour," she said to no one in particular.

"Then I'll just have to put that to the test, won't I?" Gabriel was the only one to hear or answer, and he did so jauntily without turning around, without taking his eyes off the promise the city held.

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