open | all I want is the moon upon a stick

[vaccination]

Date & Time: October 10th onwards.
Location: Around the base.
Characters: Ellie and you.
Summary: Ellie's hangin' around, totally over this moon business.
Warnings: Swearing.



a. the cafeteria
[Ellie sits at one of the tables in the cafeteria, a pyramid of upside-down cups stacked in front of her. It's certainly not the sturdiest of structures, but she's spent some time on it, and she's vaguely proud of her accomplishment. They only clattered to the floor once or twice.

Now that she's done, she leans back and slides down a few inches in her seat. Well. That killed twenty minutes.

She reaches out a hand to slowly nudge one of the cups at the bottom corner of her pyramid. That might be loud if she keeps going.]

b. the observatory
[Space is cool. It kind of makes her feel like she's falling when she looks out the window or through any screens, but she keeps coming back to the observatory to do just that. She's not sure if she likes that feeling or not. The wasteland where Exsilium once was is still visible, but Ellie doesn't seem to pay it much mind right now. She's lying on her back on the floor, sneakers propped up against a wall, comic book held over her face.

Every now and then she makes some sort of noise. This comic is so intense.]

Comments

[blondtactician]

Used to? [Armin focuses on that particular area, his mouth set in a line of concern.] Did something happen to the textbooks?

[vaccination]

Well. No one makes them anymore, and the ones we do have are like twenty years old. You always have to double up in class to use them. It sucks.

[blondtactician]

[Curiosity has finally moved his attention from the comic book to the young woman in front of him.]

Why isn't anyone making more text books?

[The more Armin gets to know people, the more he notices this sort of story is not unique to his world: isolation, disaster. What other things could be responsible for a lacking education? Political corruption, perhaps?]

[vaccination]

Uhh... a lot of bad shit happened in my world. We don't really make a lot of new stuff anymore. There was this infection, lots of people died, depressing stuff.

[Not really for her, but she has come to realize that it's tough for people from other worlds to think about.]

sorry for the increasingly late tags D:

[blondtactician]

Like a plague?

[That's something Armin can understand, and he nods slightly. He also understands her reservation: seeing people react to the state of his world is exhausting.

Across so many worlds, it seems humans are destined to be in jeopardy.]

We don't have a lot of books either. Limited resources, and a lot of subjects are illegal, so old books were either hidden away or destroyed.

I'm Armin, by the way. Thank you for letting me see your book.

no worries <3

[vaccination]

Yeah, like a plague. Like what happened way back in the day. [Waaaaaaay back in the day. Ellie has only a vague understanding of history.]

Ellie. Don't mention it. [A small smile, and then--] Mind if I ask why things are like that in your world?

[blondtactician]

[Armin neglects to mention that Ellie's 'back in the day' is 'most recently a few years ago.']

It's complicated. We're trapped by our enemy behind these high walls. Most people equate dreaming of freedom with certain death. The monarchy has done its best to eradicate all knowledge of how humanity lived before we were reduced to such an existence.

[Armin doesn't bother keeping the bitterness out of his voice. His political views are hardly relevant to the situation, after all.]

[vaccination]

[That doesn't sound too unfamiliar.]

We're behind walls, too. The quarantine zone.

[Though as the Fireflies and the military clash, more and more people are deciding to try their chances on the outside.]

What's outside the walls?

[blondtactician]

Giants - we call them titans. Monsters the size of the buildings in Exsilium, that look human but terribly wrong, somehow. They can only be brought down in a very specific way, and most missions outside the walls have a 70% fatality rate.

Titans attracted to groups of people. And when they find them, they eat them alive.

They don't speak. They can't be reasoned with. They seem to exist only to destroy us.

[Armin speaks softly, with the deadened inflection of one who's witness the horror first hand.]

[vaccination]

[It's weird to be on the other side, the one feeling sorry for someone's world. She knows that tone.]

Jesus. I can't even imagine shit that freaky.

I'm sorry.

[blondtactician]

[This is always so awkward. At first Armin could barely overcome the disbelief that there were worlds that were free of this horror. Of course humanity once lived free of the titans, but nobody remembers those times. It's as impossible for him to imagine a life without them as it is for others to imagine their existence. Armin forces a small smile.]

Thank you, but it's alright. I just hope my limited experience fighting them will be of use here.

[vaccination]

[Ellie gets it. It's weird to get apologies about the only life you've known. They don't have golden days to look back on fondly.]

It has to be. The Initiative brought you here for a reason.

[blondtactician]

...I hope that's the case. Even if time doesn't pass in my world like it does here, I can't help but think it's wrong for me to be here when they need me there.

[Armin studies the bold, brightly-colored letters on the cover of the comic book as if they could provide some kind of insight.]

What is your world like, Ellie? Since the plague? Have they rebuilt?

[vaccination]

Not really. We just sort of survive in the zones. [Zones that keep falling, and Ellie's sure it's a matter of time before Boston joins the list.]

Outside, there are infected everywhere. But I'm pretty sure I've spent way more time fighting off actual people than them. It's scary what they do to survive.

[Murderers, cannibals. Unpredictable. The infected are easy to figure out, at least.]

[blondtactician]

Being trapped in a cage doesn't exactly bring out the best in human nature. [Armin nods. He's seen a lot of awful - from the pure, physical torture of being bullied constantly for heretical beliefs, to so-called missions that were basically mass cullings of refugees in order to free up food supplies.]

The infected don't die?

[vaccination]

Not unless you kill them. They just get worse. They turn into these big, ugly guys--we call them bloaters. Not fun.

[She's glad to have only encountered a couple.]

[blondtactician]

They transform...

[This connects with something Armin's seen, his worries about what the titans might actually be. Because Eren can become one, and they look human in their own way...]

I'm sorry to make you talk about this, and if you don't want to, you don't have to answer. But do you know what caused this plague?

[vaccination]

It's fine. I don't mind talking about it. [It's just how it is.]

No one really knows how it happened. Cordyceps, it used to just be in--plants and bugs, I guess. Then it just somehow jumped to humans.

[blondtactician]

Cordyceps? What are those?

[It doesn't ring a bell, but Armin makes a mental note to look it up in the archives later. Even if it doesn't appear to be a lead at the moment, maybe it could be.]

[vaccination]

It's the infection. The official name is the Cordyceps Brain Infection or something like that, but it's like... a growth. Like the name says, it's in the brain. It kills the host and takes over the body.

[blondtactician]

Like a tumor? That sounds particularly unpleasant. [And not particularly helpful in the way Armin hoped, though that's hardly Ellie's fault.] And no one knows why these things mutated? How awful.

The worst kind of enemy is one you can't assign any sort of reason or understanding to.

[vaccination]

Yeah. Like that. [She won't go into details about how it just sort of bursts and grows from the body. He doesn't seem to need that imagery.]

Things could always be worse. We're alive, right?

[blondtactician]

[Armin actually smiles.] Right! And I got to read a comic book to day. And see all these stars, and the ocean.

It's alright.