paixaorpg | Welcome to the Id? [Active]

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Welcome to the Id? [Active]

Character(s): Dilandau and friends
Content: Arrival in Paixao
Setting: Joutenheim Gate
Time: Afternoon
Warnings: Erm... I'm not really sure... it'll kinda depend on who he meets...

The world seemed to blur. The battleground became strange and nebulous. Dilandau could feel himself being pushed back, away, into darkness. No! He didn’t want to go there! He didn’t want to be alone! And still, everything around him was fading into darkness, even as he struggled to keep his hold on the world around him.

Suddenly, the darkness vanished. Dilandau felt himself blinded by the sudden brightness and lifted his arms, as though to guard his face, shrinking back. He cracked his eyes open again, peaking out at the scene around him. It wasn’t the scorched battlefield he’d been in before. It hadn’t been burned black by fire and stained red by blood. It was immaculate. He lowered his arms slowly, staring around him at beautifully painted domes and elaborate sculptural gateway under which he stood. It pictured a battle between two silent titans.

‘Name?’ someone asked next to him and Dilandau jumped, reaching for his sword and turning on the person. The person who had asked was a small, blond woman, who looked entirely unthreatening as she gazed at him over a counter and waited, pen poised to write. He stared at her. ‘What is your name?’ she asked again.

‘... Dilandau Albatou, Red-Iron Army, Dragon Slayers, 47802...?’ he responded quietly, the words coming out as more of a question than a statement in his confusion.

The woman wrote on her clipboard and then smiled at him politely. ‘Thank you. Welcome to Paixao,’ she said.

He stared at her in confusion a moment longer before somebody else spoke behind him. ‘Here’s your journal and some pamphlets on the city.’

Dilandau rounded on the new speaker, half drawing his sword, before staring blankly at the handful of folded papers and shiny, pink box he was being offered. He stared silently for a moment, before this blond person pushed the things at him again and said in an impatient-but-trying-to-be-polite voice, ‘Move along. You’re holding up the line.’

He walked into the enclosed dome area as he was told, with not so much a conscious decision as the programmed obedience of a soldier. Inside, everything was even brighter and more cheerful. The buildings were painted with bright, elaborate motifs and the undersides of the domes were each masterpieces. More blond people milled about this way and that, bustling past him and conducting their business. Dilandau wondered vaguely if this was Austuria. The architecture was frivolous enough and he thought he recalled that Austuria had a lot of blonds. Although, not this many, he didn't think...

The people around him were just milling past, looking unperturbed by his presence, and Dilandau began to chew on his lip nervously. He did not know where he was. He did not know these people. He did not know what to do. Despite the sword at his side, he felt vulnerable and helpless. He began to tremble, as he cast his gaze around, looking for some kind of answer.

'... Jajuka...?' he whined.

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It wasn't that Zexion was trying to avoid the monster that had cropped up in the city of late - if he'd been trying that he would have been farther away - but he was nonetheless not terribly interested in tracking it down. He was hardly a fighter after all; watching the gates seemed like a perfectly good compromise for the time being.

And he wasn't even likely to raise suspicion, given that he'd long since given up the black coat of the Organization for a simple pair of jeans and a t-shirt and had pinned his hair up out of his face before hiding it away under an illusion of medium-length brown hair pulled back into a ponytail.

In short, he looked very much like what one would expect to see from a college student.

"Looking for someone?" he asked quietly as he drew near. If could help, he might as well after all.

Dilandau started when someone spoke to him. He turned, dropping the pamphlets and pink box as he reached for his sword. The person he found himself facing, however, looked quite nonthreatening, a handsome young man. His clothing was strange in the plain, drab sort of way that the girl from the Mystic Moon's had been, but there was nothing smart or uniform-like about it and struck him as being very civilian. Not dangerous; possibly easily-intimidated.

He straightened up and schooled his features into a stern glare, hoping that he hadn't looked as lost and helpless as he had felt moment's earlier. 'Where am I?' he demanded. Using a voice of authority didn't tend to work especially well when you were asking these sorts of questions, but it couldn't hurt. This wasn't the first time he had woken up in a strange place with no memory of how he'd gotten there, he simply had to find where he was and return to his ship. Jajuka usually found him though...

'I have to get back immediately. I have orders. I-I...' He did have orders. What were they? He was supposed to be doing something... Killing Van! That was it. He had to destroy that smug little bastard. He had to send him back to hell where he belonged.

((ooc: I laughed my fool head off when I saw it was Zexion who had found him. That is the most ridiculously perfect thing ever.))

Well. That was certainly an interesting reaction. Either the mean was naturally jumpy or was on edge due to some event that had happened on his own world. Or perhaps he was simply bothered by the abrupt transit from his word to this own. Such things happened after all.

The fact that he'd gone from seeming nearly helpless to a stern gaze of command didn't go unnoticed either, although the glare had little effect on Zexion. Or at least, not the effect that Dilandau had probably intended it to have. But irregardless of what he did or didn't feel he would still answer the questions asked of him.

"It's called Paixao," he answered, a polite sort of smile settling in on his face. "However, I'm afraid that you won't be able to get back to your world. As a matter of fact, none of us can. We're all stuck here."

Dilandau faltered. Stuck? He'd never gotten that response before. If Jajuka didn't find him, he just had to intimidate a lower-ranking officer into taking him where he needed to be... He chewed on his lip unconsciously, glancing around nervously. 'B-but...' he mumbled, the air of calm authority slipping and then dissolving entirely. He needed Jajuka, but... He'd just watched Jajuka get cut in half. Just like everybody else. Dilandau's breathing started to get faster and more agitated and his eyes grew wider and more panicked by the second. 'I... I... Jajuka...?' he squeeked, desperately needing to be found, told what to do.

Now, that was rather unexpected. Unexpected and yet very interesting. Challenged, the man reacted with pure bluster and challenge, the very image of a soldier but cut that out from under him and he crumpled like a dropped napkin. He'd have to look into that, but first he'd have to get the man from falling apart entirely.

"Might be here," he answered, the lie coming as easily to his lips as the turth would have. And perhaps, somewhere down the road things would happen so that it wouldn't be a lie any longer.

"What does Jajuka look like?" he asked after a brief pause. "Perhaps I could help look."

Dilandau snapped back to focus, having nearly forgotten the other man's presence. He looked at him for a moment and then replied in a harsh voice, 'He's dead.' A thought then occurred to him that made his eyes widen again and scan the area uncertainly. '... Am I dead...?' he asked in a whisper.

Zexion merely raised an eyebrow at that. Death didn't always bar people from this place, or at least, that's what he seem to have gathered from some of the conversations people had had.

"Some here have died in their own worlds, yes. But you, I believe are not among their ranks."

Of course, not even he could tell for certain, but it was as good a guess as any. And if someone was alive here, who cared whether or not they thought they were dead. Certainly not him, that was certain.

Dilandau stared at him, slowly sifting through the words in an attempt to make sense of them. Two pieces came together and he paused, his eyebrows raising slightly and then his eyes narrowed in suspicion. '... There are dead people living here?' he asked quietly.

((sorry about the delay; i got caught up in finals stuff.))

That was what he had just said, was it not? He'd admit it was odd, or at least for those from worlds without things like Nobodies and Heartless, but he wouldn't have thought it so odd as to bear repeating.

"There are," he answered patiently. "Although you wouldn't be able to tell it from looking at them."

'Where?' Dilandau demanded, stepping closer to the man. 'How do I find them?' His eyes took on a desperate, pleading look. He needed to find them. He needed... someone. He didn't want to be alone. He couldn't be alone.

Zexion couldn't help but be more than a little amused at the desperation in Dilandau's eyes. If he was ever called upon to play with this man's mind, he had a feeling he'd know a good place to start. And besides, desperate men often let on to more than they would under other circumstances.

Of course, none of that amusement made its way onto Zexion's face - the only thing one would find there was patience and a willingness to help. "They wander the city much as you or I might; there's nothing to mark them as being any different from the other visitors to this place." A brief pause and than he continued. "There's a message board of sorts on the journal though - you could try asking on that."

Dilandau did not know what a message board was. He knew what a journal was, he'd seen one. A little book where people wrote their private thoughts. It wasn't something he'd ever had any use for. He didn't understand how using one could possibly help in finding someone, however.

'What journal?' he asked, having forgotten the scattered pamphlets and pink box that he'd dropped when the man first arrived. 'How do you do that?'

"This journal," Zexion answered, bending down to pick up the journal the man had dropped earlier. "It'll let you get in touch with anyone else in the city, provided they also have a journal."

And an idea of how to properly work it, but that almost went without saying. Besides, if asked he might not mind explaining how it worked.

Dilandau's hand shot out and snatched the pink box away from the man, bringing it back towards himself for closer examination. He found that it opened and displayed a screen, which lit up upon opening and displayed text and small pictures. He scanned the words on the screen before looking back up at the other man. 'How does it work? How do I search for others?'

"You can't exactly search for people," Zexion explained patiently. "The system isn't quite advanced enough for that. But you can ask about them on the message board. You can find that here," a finger pointed out how to call up the message board, "and the rest is similar enough to posting to the journal itself."

Hopefully the concept of typing entries wasn't too alien to the other man. He'd rather not have to explain that as well.

Dilandau watched as the man pointed and changed the screen. It was by far the smallest computer he'd ever seen, and yet the images on it's screen were much clearer than those he'd seen on any of the large imaging screens in Zaibach. It also had color, which was a novel concept. The 'message board' presented him with a box and a blinking cursor. He made a few experimental taps on the keyboard before starting to type out a message.

His gloves made it difficult, sliding on the keys and hitting more than one at a time, and he grimaced. He bit the top of his glove and pulled his right hand free of it, letting it dangle from his teeth while he finished the message. He poked at the screen, as the other man had, and was faintly interested in the way that this produced a response from the 'journal'. Zaibach's viewing screens didn't have buttons embedded in them, and these ones seemed even able to change where the buttons were located.

'What now?' he asked, without looking away from the screen.

What now? Theoretically that was something best decided on one's own. He couldn't guess what the man might have mind, or least not yet anyway.

"You wait and see if anyone answers." It was a rather hit or miss method of finding people, but it wasn't like Zexion cared one way or the other.

"And in the meantime, the entirety of the city is open to you." Not quite the truth, but close enough to make little difference. "Standing around here is bound to get boring after a while."

Dilandau did not much like the idea of having to wait. He looked back down at his journal, glaring at it. He flipped it shut after a moment and pocketed it. He'd check it again in a few minutes.

Dilandau was somewhat thrown. He didn't really know what the man was telling him to do. The city was open to him? What the hell did that mean? And yes of course it would get boring to stand here, but what was his point? The man didn't seem inclined to elaborate, and Dilandau hated to show ignorance, but he needed to know and this man was not volunteering information very easily, which meant he would have to ask. "So then what should I do?" he asked, an annoyed frown on his face.

What should he do? Why in the worlds would he know what the man would want to do? Besides, if he needed this sort of direction in all things it was quite frankly a surprise he'd made it this far in his life.

But if he needed direction, well he could arrange for that. The man seemed willing enough to follow as he said and Zexion had no problems with using that to his advantage.

"What would you like to do?" he countered. "There's any number of things to do in the city and if you'd rather not look around just yet I'm sure you'll need a place to stay. Unless you intend to sleep on the streets - and with the monsters this place has started seeing of late I rather doubt that would be the wisest of decisions."

What would he like to do? Dilandau had never had that question posed to him before. He was sure there were things he wanted to do, (like destroy Van Fanel, of course) but when asked so suddenly, he drew a blank. Chesta and a few other Dragon Slayers had occasionally asked him if he would like to do something, but at those times there had always been a suggestion attached to the question; play cards, drink together, cast a wager on a sparring match, watch the stars (the latter had always struck him as an odd suggestion and Chesta had always gotten rather flustered when he'd questioned the reason for it)...

The strange man before Dilandau had made a number of suggestions, as though Dilandau were meant to choose between them. His last suggestion did seem to be the one the man was stressing, however, and Dilandau clung to that. It wasn't as though he was intimidated by the thought of facing 'monsters', but sleeping on the street was quite definitely bellow his station.

"Where should I stay?" he asked and then paused as he realized another crucial piece of information he was missing. "Who are you?"

"My apologies," Zexion answered. "I should have mentioned that sooner. My name is Ian."

Except for the part that it really wasn't and was bore only a vague similarity to a name he'd once had. But it certainly fitted his new appearance and was something he could remember to answer to.

"As for where to stay there's a fair variety of places, and a wide range of what each has to offer. Do you have any preferences for what you would like your lodgings to have?" Once he had that he could suggest which place would be the most like what the man was used to.

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