( open )

[overclocking]

Date & Time: Several days after the necromorph outbreak
Location: A VR room
Characters: Chrono + Rosette + open!
Summary: Lil bit of coping in-between zombie apocalypses and civil wars, nbd
Warnings: None! KEVIN AND BREAK
Notes: Feel free to tag around also! ♥


[ Chrono doesn't bother to close the door when he finally decides to try one of these rooms for himself. Something about the last few days (weeks) (months) has left him unwilling to stay in enclosed spaces too long, with no obvious path of exist. Too much like a lab or an undead-lined hallway.

But these concerns slowly melt away as he sets about instructing the AI, and the room gives way to a place that isn't a room at all.

Mountains rise up in the distance, framing a blue, clear sky, and a faint breeze rustles the treetops of a thick Michigan forest. Birdcalls ride that wind, and the air smells cleaner, fresher, than any moon base could reasonably boast. Where the blanket of trees ends, a large, glassy lake gleams in the sunlight. He takes care with this part—instructs the AI to make the water a temperature a bit too low to be entirely comfortable for swimming, knowing full well that this won't actually be a deterrent. But it wouldn't be right, otherwise.

He takes his time strolling from one familiar landmark to the next, having the computer make adjustments as necessary. He doesn't miss details, either; for all the times that Rosette brought him to this very place, his eyes had missed nothing. They were wide and all-absorbing, like someone who had been born anew and was discovering the world for the first time.

(Likely because, in all honesty, he had been.)

He stops once he circles back around to the open door—a black silhouette hanging oddly in the landscape, and the only giveaway that none of this is real. It's here that he surveys the scene as a whole, the sum of all its little memory-parts. ]

Perfect.

[ Well. There's still a thing or two missing. ]

... Almost.

Comments

[anklets]

I've been with the Order for as long as I can remember, so I couldn't contradict you.

[She threads the daisy she has been winding between her fingers this whole time into the front of her shirt.

Conspiratorially:] Allen and Kanda started out on the wrong foot and were so sour about it that they've stayed that way ever since.

[velveteened]

Really? ( from what he knew of kanda, this isn't that surprising, but — ) It's hard to imagine Allen acting like that.

[anklets]

If only it were so.

[velveteened]

Ah, you really never know what to expect from people.

[anklets]

[ winks! ] Allen has never failed to surprise us.

[velveteened]

( well, if he thinks about it )

He does seem like that sort of person.

[anklets]

He does. [ halving her sandwich, she presents it to him in offering ] Which is something we frankly need.

[velveteened]

( he accepts it with a nod, but doesn't move to eat it right away, considering that response.

slowly, ) At the Order, or here?

[anklets]

Anywhere.

[velveteened]

Then it's a good thing he's here with us.

( "with us," he means, or "among friends;" otherwise it's hard to say it's good for anyone to be here anymore )

[anklets]

I think so, too.

[He's here within range of her fierce guard; she wouldn't know what to do with herself if he were beyond it. She simply hasn't allowed anyone to eke past her fingers since knitting them into the fabric of her world.]

We've always done better in groups.

[velveteened]

That might be true in general.

( thinks of alice, gil, break; so many people here and at home. )

[anklets]

That's the point, isn't it? We're the same no matter where we are.

[velveteened]

Do you think so?

( he's likely said something to this effect too, and on the grand scale it's not so hard to imagine; but the we makes him think of something he's wondered at before, more personally. )

[anklets]

[She thinks that there are some things which will never change, intrinsic to every person, but mainly it's the idea that her friends may lose parts of themselves if they're worn at for long enough that makes her a bit sick to the stomach.]

It's what I want to believe in.