TDM #1

[thequietmods]

The ice isn't the only thing cracking right now. Spring storms can be violent, and the thunder is strong enough to reverberate in your chest. Outside of the chilly cave, a torrential downpour makes it nearly impossible to leave the cave and get your bearings. However, through the weather, and past the giant things that seem to be moving in the weather, something large looms in the distance.

The rain and the moving things make it hard to be sure, and you can't even see the horizon line, so it's either a very large body of water, some sort of man-made structure off in the distance, or both. Until the storm clears, no one can be sure which it is.

1. Someone, though, their voice just barely echoing off the walls, seems to be coming up with theories. Is it you? Do you think this is a waste of time?

2. Are you trying to go out into the hostile weather, risks be damned? Is it because you don't care? Do you think you can survive it?

3. Being trapped in a cave full of people stuck in pillars of ice is weird, isn't it? Isn't it even weirder that you used to be in one and now you're not? Are you going to help the others trapped in the ice? It should be warned that trying to break someone out when they're not awake to help will shatter the pillar, and the person inside.

4. As the storm clears up, night has fallen. Thunder booms in the distance and the sound of insects and wild animals picks up. Wolves howl in the darkness. Is now the time to make a move, or are you going to stay in this uncomfortable, but untouched, shelter?

Comments

[tuckedinyoureyes]

Begin Shiraori Inner Mind Theater:

If I say "no", will you leave? is on the tip of my tongue, but of course I can't say that to someone whose good will I very well may need to take massive advantage of in the days - weeks? months? ... I will break D's entire neck this time if it's years, I swear ... - to come. He looks like he walked out of an MMORPG, all right, so he's almost certainly part of an annoyingly vast ecosystem explicitly designed to help prop up adventuring heroes such that they only question the parts of the system they're meant to, so they feel like they've actually solved some sort of problem. I'm guessing ... yeah, he's either some guy like one of those Legend of the Heroes protagonist guys I can't keep straight or he's from a Final Fantasy spinoff game. He's got a uniform like he's one of the Famicom Upright Citizen's Brigade guys but his hair's immaculate in that extremely rude way only a modeling career or a starring role in a Square Enix game can get you. He's actually thinking, so it's definitely one of those types of guy.

I really, really hope he doesn't have a single clue what I'm thinking about right now because this is the sort of thing you don't want to have to have a conversation about with anybody, because it's agonizingly embarrassing to admit to having played enough of any of those games back on Earth that you have more thoughts about them than you do about how to get a decent job there, please, just bury me on the spot because I want to die. I have a real job, of course, I'm not actually a NEET, so I shouldn't really need to get embarrassed about any of that, and anyway it's not like I really played that many of them myself either. But in a way doesn't that make it worse?

Shit, now's really not the time to be having an existential crisis about completely irrelevant background details that probably aren't even accurate to the situation at hand! He's a real boy, not some MMO Pinocchio! ... and, almost certainly, he thinks he's a hero, or at least thinks enough like one to want to act like one at a time like this. Oh well. At least we're not immediately in danger of dying of anything but starvation; he can probably kill things well enough to make that less of a pressing need once the storm clears, and won't that be useful? I won't have to have his death as my responsibility - although it's funny that I can even still care about a random human's chances of survival around me, given the things I've done. I suppose I would be pretty awful, if I didn't, though - and he just has that look about him. That heroic look that says he just doesn't want anyone else to die for his sake, but that he's totally not expecting a random arrow or anything like that to be what does him in, either. Whatever does do it, I really hope it won't be me. I'm trying to retire from that sort of thing.

... I really, really didn't miss dealing with the heroic sort. You can't ever adequately plan ahead how to save them from themselves, and you definitely can never plan enough ways to stop them. Oh god, I'm going to have to talk to him, don't I. What do I even say that won't make him even more suspicious?! Is there anything I can say? Ugh, probably not! Well. Just ... have to do my best ... don't I ... eeeeeeeuuuurrrrgh.
Sorry, buddy, it's really nothing personal ...

End Shiraori Inner Mind Theater, don't let the spiders eat you on the way out.

Of course, the most of that internal monologue that shows on the White Girl's face is yet another wretched look of already-exhausted agony just from having to look at him. Just the most vivid facial approximation of ಠ﹏ಠ physically possible with both eyes still closed. She presses herself against the wall, tucking her legs up closer to herself, and shakes her head. Then, hurriedly, as if remembering that she has to at least try to attempt words in order to make her meaning more evident, she manages, "I'm unhurt."

[tempusfinis]

Oblivious to her thoughts, her body language and expression are posed in such a way that, while she says she's unhurt, reads as if she's diminishing any pain at worst or simply unwell at best. He seems to attempt to discern more, but all that winds up on his lips is a doubting, uncertain frown. Self-doubting, at that. Whatever he assumes of her or what she may be in need of, is obviously making him stay with her for the time being.

Her answer is followed with a patience silence, as if he expects her to volunteer more, but when she doesn't, his shoulders slope with an exhale. No need to put pressure on her, since she appears so timid and scared.

"That's good. I was going to say... Dunno if there are any healers here, but we'd have had to find one." He says this that he would have, if necessary. Briefly, he glances to the side, looking over the rest of the chamber to take count of those present, and then focuses back on her. Seriousness seems to be the default of his expression, but he appears to make an effort to soften the grimness of it, as if doing so for her sake.

"It's Machina, by the way. And you?"