shifted_logs | This ship is taking me far away

This ship is taking me far away

Characters:

silenteden
Location: The bar on the Plane.
Time: The evening after this
Summary: Reiko satisfies Kuhn's need to help by telling him something secret.
Warnings: None that I know of!

Reiko sat at the bar, somewhat distantly, waiting. She was actually taking care of the paperwork of the day, writing up her reports, but was keeping an eye open on the Plane for when he would arrive.

It was odd, in a way. She'd done this once before, but it wasn't going to be the same - this Tomonari didn't have the ravages of his subconscious prepared to break free. She didn't feel that same sort of anxiety about it. Then again, this one was actually nice without that sort of end goal in mind. Tomonari was always up to something, and it was rather easy to figure out what it was...

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Kuhn hadn't found a damn thing at the arcade. Nothing out of the ordinary, no subtle hints as to what he could do to help... nada. If he were honest with himself, he really did expect as much. Nothing's ever that easy, right? Still, he'd held out hope for some sort of hint. It just wasn't his lucky day, he guessed.

He spotted Pi - Reiko - damned-if-he-knew-what-to-call-her - at the bar and made his way over. "No luck in my reality," he said with a sigh as he slid into the seat next to her.

She looked up, letting her attention to the papers drop a little bit, focusing more on the Plane.

It wasn't to be surprised, of course, his announcement - there had not been any intersections in any of the arcades yet. Of course now all bets were off, with that many people in that space... a tesseract was just as likely, at this point. Even if something did show up... could he have done anything? It was difficult to say.

"Perhaps that's for the better. I'm not sure if you're equipped to deal with that sort of trouble," she finally said after a moment.

"Yeah, well, I could have tried, anyway." He carefully didn't shrug. This wasn't some casual matter, obviously. He needed to accept that the Plane had become Serious Business, and he needed to accept that fast. So why was it so hard to do so?

"You said you had something to tell me?"

It was so unusual to find a Tomonari who was so focused on doing things rather than people. All of them - herself included - were so wearied and ravaged by their subconscious desires that it was a foregone conclusion at this point that everything they did would be coloured with them. It was strangely refreshing, even if he knew his actions may have been futile.

Was it really a good idea to divulge this information? No one else knew about it. He wasn't from her world, though, so how could it be a bad thing? He wouldn't spread it around unnecessarily.

"Yes. If nothing else, it may give you something to think about." She paused for a moment, considering how to explain this. "I think that you might be interested to learn about Operation Homecoming."

"Operation Homecoming?" Kuhn repeated, seeming to try out the words for himself, "Sounds official. I assume it doesn't have much to do with American high schools though, right?" Well, even if the joke fell flat, at least he tried?

She glossed over his attempted humour with a practiced ease, not even changing her expression.

"Of course not. It's GU's purpose now. My GU, at least. It' still classified information."

He was far used to his jokes being waved aside by his own version of Pi, so of course he didn't flinch (or feel at all offended, actually) when Reiko did the same. He simply nodded.

"Classified... You sure it's okay to be telling me, then?" He paused, then added, "Well, yeah, I mean, who would I tell? Heh."

"I don't see what the problem is. Your reality wouldn't have a project like this," she stated simply. That was the basis for her telling him... apart from an odd sense of guilt. He was far too nice to someone as bitter and jaded as her - a niceness that his counterpart had slowly lost as his needs had taken over. It reminded her of how he had used to be, before they all had lost themselves with their new duties.

She closed her eyes, pushing up her glasses out of habit. "It's part of what I've been working on the past few months; why I wasn't here very often. It's my job to classify dimensions in an attempt to find a new home for humanity."

"A whole new dimension? Seriously?" Kuhn frowned. Hopefully Reiko would elaborate, because as of right now, the logistics of the whole thing seemed like way too much of a stretch. Then again, if Reiko's version of Yata was anything like his, it would somehow miraculously work at the last second anyway...

"Of course. Preferrably uninhabited," she added. The biggest secret was coming up, of course... the one that she wasn't sure how he would react when he heard it.

"... we're going to open mass transportation areas using our hardware. Essentially, a sacrifice to ensure that the majority of humanity survives."

He nodded, the gravity of that not quite sinking in until half a second later, when his eyes narrowed a bit. "Sacrifice?" He asked, "What sort of sacrifice are we talking?" Please, don't let her say what he thinks she's going to say.

She could read him easily - it had been a couple years after all. It was better to just get it out than mince around.

"We'll be sent to high population density areas to do mass shifts. Due to being split up, there is no way we can move ourselves. We'll have to stay until reality ends."

"That's not right!" Kuhn shook his head. "Can't you find a way to move yourselves after it's all over and the others are safe? Is there really not another way?"

He was, of course, blatantly ignoring the voice in the back of his head trying to remind him that were he in her world's G.U., and were he given the task to stay behind to save everyone else, he'd be fine with doing so.

"We'll be in different countries, all around the world. Getting back may not be possible for some people. It's simply something we will have to accept."

There was a minor note of displeasure in her tone, however. She was hoping to be responsible for Japan's evacuation, simply for one main reason...

Amagi...

"And you can't just... follow behind the rest of the evacuees?" Kuhn either didn't understand, or didn't want to understand, probably no one could tell.

"If I'm holding a portal open, I can't go through it. The instant I stop putting my mind to it, it will collapse."

It was all so clinical, but that was essential to remove oneself from the situation. For all intensive purposes it was a death sentence. More accurately, it was a fact-finding death sentence, as they would be recording till the last minute anyway, showing what happened when reality actually fell apart.

Kuhn closed his eyes. He did not like the sound of this. The fact that she was going to be stuck in some reality as it completely tore itself apart...

"No. This can't be the only way, Pi!" Pi, Reiko... it didn't matter. It didn't. Different version or not, she was still his friend!

"If you have a better proposal, I'm sure that we'd like to hear it." She couldn't help but snap. After all, it was Takumi's plan, and Takumi had all the bases covered. Even if it required sacrifice. After all, they were all barely human anymore as it were...

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This ship is taking me far away

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sorry, notifs were fail and work was fail too :(

It's all good. <3!

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