sephiroth, “tol alien boy”, SOLDIER first class. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
supersoldier) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
middaeg2020-09-26 10:09 am
supersoldier) wrote in middaeg2020-09-26 10:09 am
Entry tags:
[closed] come back down to my knees
Who: Zack and Sephiroth
When: During the dream event!
Where: dream!Aefenglom
What: Nightmares of the past and present.
Warnings: Will add as they come along.
[Aefenglom is a large city of tall structures and winding streets, an entity of its own design. Midgar, that place of steel and mako-hazy night skies, is much the same way, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that the former easily transforms into the latter, one step at a time.
That’s what happens, at any rate. The skyline warping its shapes and silhouettes, and suddenly a dream-wanderer from the planet of Gaia will find themselves wrapped in the darkness of that familiar place, perhaps overshadowed by the Plate itself — that massive girth of overbearing steel that blocks out the sky for those below it, the skeletal structure and foundation of the more fortunate and well-to-do for the rest who walk atop it.
At the heart of this city, the Shinra building sits like a tower on high. This, too, is not an unfamiliar sight to most, and its halls open up wide like a maw, drawing in those who are particularly intimate with its inner belly, its layout and the often goings-on within. Tonight, however, it is eerily and wrongly emptied of people; everything lit and functioning, but barren. The elevators are still active, their doors sliding open and closed as though to entice a wanderer to enter. (Or one might take the stairs, if they're feeling particularly masochistic.) It brings them to a floor devoted to research and science — the laboratories of this place, often laden with men and women in lab coats, or the smell of anti-septic, or the pulsing, beeping machines that exist to test, to poke and prod. Strange substances in glass tubes; stranger motivations in design and progress. A connecting VR training room, as though to test if this progress holds up under the weight of violent scrutiny.
This room, however, is the one place where there seems to be life: a young man with silver hair shorn short, maybe no older than ten years of age, leaping forward and cleaving an illusory monster across the front with a practice sword. It is as “real” as it would be in “real life” (for whatever that means in this dream), for the thing seems to die in an equally realistic manner, falling to the ground with a thunk, all the fire gone out of it like it were only a shell now.
The simulation ended, a timer appears, displaying how long it took to fell the thing — not long at all, by anyone’s estimation, but apparently not good enough, highlighted in red, and accentuated by how the young boy straightens and turns to look at the stranger who’s just wandered into the room.]
Who are you? You’re making me lose seconds off my time.
[He sounds bored, almost unimpressed. The cut of his green, cat-like eyes belie a searching curiosity, but little else, contrasted against the state of his plain clothing.]
When: During the dream event!
Where: dream!Aefenglom
What: Nightmares of the past and present.
Warnings: Will add as they come along.
[Aefenglom is a large city of tall structures and winding streets, an entity of its own design. Midgar, that place of steel and mako-hazy night skies, is much the same way, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that the former easily transforms into the latter, one step at a time.
That’s what happens, at any rate. The skyline warping its shapes and silhouettes, and suddenly a dream-wanderer from the planet of Gaia will find themselves wrapped in the darkness of that familiar place, perhaps overshadowed by the Plate itself — that massive girth of overbearing steel that blocks out the sky for those below it, the skeletal structure and foundation of the more fortunate and well-to-do for the rest who walk atop it.
At the heart of this city, the Shinra building sits like a tower on high. This, too, is not an unfamiliar sight to most, and its halls open up wide like a maw, drawing in those who are particularly intimate with its inner belly, its layout and the often goings-on within. Tonight, however, it is eerily and wrongly emptied of people; everything lit and functioning, but barren. The elevators are still active, their doors sliding open and closed as though to entice a wanderer to enter. (Or one might take the stairs, if they're feeling particularly masochistic.) It brings them to a floor devoted to research and science — the laboratories of this place, often laden with men and women in lab coats, or the smell of anti-septic, or the pulsing, beeping machines that exist to test, to poke and prod. Strange substances in glass tubes; stranger motivations in design and progress. A connecting VR training room, as though to test if this progress holds up under the weight of violent scrutiny.
This room, however, is the one place where there seems to be life: a young man with silver hair shorn short, maybe no older than ten years of age, leaping forward and cleaving an illusory monster across the front with a practice sword. It is as “real” as it would be in “real life” (for whatever that means in this dream), for the thing seems to die in an equally realistic manner, falling to the ground with a thunk, all the fire gone out of it like it were only a shell now.
The simulation ended, a timer appears, displaying how long it took to fell the thing — not long at all, by anyone’s estimation, but apparently not good enough, highlighted in red, and accentuated by how the young boy straightens and turns to look at the stranger who’s just wandered into the room.]
Who are you? You’re making me lose seconds off my time.
[He sounds bored, almost unimpressed. The cut of his green, cat-like eyes belie a searching curiosity, but little else, contrasted against the state of his plain clothing.]
no subject
And here he thought he'd never again get to see any part of Gaia, let alone Midgar. It's the place he'd been straining to reach in those last few months of his life, his own sort of "promised land" in that he'd thought maybe if he got that far, he could find shelter, a place to recoup and rest, and then he'd figure out the rest.
Well. It hadn't turned out that way.
He knows this isn't the real deal. As he walks through the front doors of Shinra HQ, that much is obvious, with how it's completely abandoned. Zack is one of the few people who'd never minded taking the stairs, liking the excuse to get an extra workout, but this time? It feels like the elevators are beckoning him inside, so he steps through the metal doors.
The lift starts moving on its own, and it spits him out on one of the science floors. This is the part of HQ he'd always avoided if he could get away with it. It's where he'd had to report for his mako treatments, but everything else about the place had always left him ill-at-ease. Now he understands where that feeling had been coming from, a little too well.
He follows distant sounds down the only path that seems to be available to him and ends up in the VR simulation area. And who does he find in the training room, but a boy with silver hair and unnaturally-green eyes.
Zack stares for a few seconds, the boy's words registering but only distantly. After his run-in with Yazoo before all this, he feels like he's doomed to continue running into silver-haired specters. Of course he would end up dreaming about Sephiroth. But... is this his dream, or someone else's? ]
... Don't let me get in the way. [ He shakes his head, then makes a vague gesture around them to indicate the training space. ] You can try again.
[ It buys him some time to process what the heck is even going on, at least. ]
no subject
Curiosity enough in its own right, but even now -- this young, so much smaller than the intimidating stature of the man he grows into -- there's a cutting criticism, a sort of mild disbelieving offense, at his question having been ignored.]
You didn't answer my question.
[The environment warps and wanes: You can try again, Zack had said, and the dream appears to take it to heart. The VR program cycles through its catalog of enemies designed to be flung against the boy's practice sword -- monsters, or creatures oft found in the wild, beyond the steel walls of Midgar. People, too, faceless enemy troops who cry out in virtual pain after being cut down, or set aflame with magic, or any manner of violent efficacy he can dole out to improve his time, more and more... Even if the silver-haired child does little more than stand and watch Zack as the violence plays out on loop behind him.]
Who are you? You don't work on this floor.
no subject
So, as disorienting as this dream might be, Zack isn't going to let on that he's too thrown by any of it. He can't quite stop himself from watching some of the recordings of what he assumes must be past attempts as they play out in the center of the sim room. How many hours a day did Sephiroth spend in here?
Zack's jaw tightens, if only for a moment, before he glances back to the young boy and shakes his head. ]
You're right. I'm with SOLDIER.
[ After just a brief pause, he closes the distance between them and extends his hand. Zack's aware that this could quickly shift into something much more like a nightmare, but he's willing to take the risk. One way or another, he needs to conquer the dream and claim a prize from it — his entire reason for being here, in other words. ]
Name's Zack.
no subject
[There's no flair of surprise or recognition to the way he says the name, monosyllabic and almost unimpressed. But in those bright green eyes, there's the ghost of something close to familiarity -- as though he should know the name, as though tethered to it should be an array of memories associated with it if he really reached deeply into recollection and hauled them up, one by one. But a dream is never so kind -- malleable and hazy -- and this same recognition slips away as easily as it had arrived.
In the background, the distant rumbling of a monster casting magic, then a retinue of enemy infantryman falling under the cut of an invisible blade, an amalgamation of color and violence. Sephiroth shifts properly to look at the hand extended to him, and almost doesn't know how to respond, beyond the logical. Who extends handshakes in his direction? No one, certainly none that he sees daily, but this man has flung expectation at him with that simple gesture, and so he completes the shake after extending his own.
The images halt behind them both.]
SOLDIER... 1st Class? Are you here for testing?