paixaorpg | If you give a man a gadget, he's going to want the leather case to go with it. [Complete]

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If you give a man a gadget, he's going to want the leather case to go with it. [Complete]

Character(s): Kariya, open
Content: Kariya, meet Paixao. Paixao, Kariya. How do you do.
Setting: Joutenheim Gate
Time: Afternoon
Warnings: WEWY spoilers.

Well, this was interesting. And definitely a far cry from Shibuya.

A few seconds had been plenty to figure that out, and the next few minutes' observation didn't lend Kariya much new insight, either. It was obviously some kind of Biodome, except for the humungous warrior statues on either side of the way in, the ticket booth next to it, and the line to get in, populated entirely by the Lapin Angelique fall fashion catalog. Fall 1860, that is.

All in all, it didn't look like the kind of movie he'd pay to see. Thus, opting to skip the line altogether, he started moseying toward the door. Wasn't like anyone could see him to stop him, anyway.

"Sir? ... Sir, wait!!"

"Hm?" Kariya swiveled to a stop as he gradually realized that actually was aimed at him.

The girl in the ticket booth pointed urgently to the line. "Please wait your turn, sir! I'll be with you in a moment."

"Oh. My bad." He dipped his head obligingly and headed to the back of the line, hazarding a glance behind him as he went. Nope, wings were still there. She shouldn't have been able to see him.

That really was interesting.

Eventually he reached the front of the line. "Sorry about the wait," said the girl. "Can I get your name, please?"

After a second, Kariya took his lollipop out of his mouth. "Can I ask what this is for?"

"It's just for our records," she said. "All visitors need to sign in."

Kariya didn't really think it counted as a visit if he was here by accident, but he rolled with it. "Aight. Koki Kariya," he said.

The girl scribbled it down in her ledger and reached beneath the counter, producing a brochure and some little black doodad, which she handed off to him. "Welcome to Paixao, Mr. Kariya. There's your journal and some information on the city, you can enter through the gate, and I hope you enjoy your stay!"

"Thanks." He headed away from the counter and inside, vaguely aware of the person behind him (now where had they come from?) getting called up the same way. It was only once he was a little ways inside the gate that he picked a spot on the wall to lean on, held his lollipop with his teeth, and checked out the stuff he'd just been given.

When he opened the journal, his smirk got a little wider. "Sweet."

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By the time she arrived at the Joutenheim gate, it had stopped raining. She was still soaking wet, though, and none to happy about that. But at least Kariya was here, and that was something normal. Partway through her walk she'd stopped hiding her wings, and apparently Kariya had been right when he said they could be seen. Might as well leave them out, then, and be able to defend herself.

Kariya was easy enough to spot, an orange-haired man amongst an ocean of blonds. She approached.

"I didn't think you'd move much," she said with a smirk.

Indeed he hadn't. Between his last message to her and now, he'd stayed almost exactly where he was, apart from moving from the wall to sitting on the back of a nearby bench. Upon hearing her, he flipped his free palmtop shut and looked up, though he had to raise an eyebrow at her bedraggled appearance. "You look like you got in a fight with a car wash," he said frankly, kind of amused.

"What's the point of building a dome if it's going to rain inside?" Uzuki grumbled, sitting beside Kariya. "I would have made you walk, but I didn't want to stand around in the rain."

Of course, now that they had met up, they were still no closer to getting home, or figuring out just what was going on. It certainly wasn't anywhere normal.

"I've talked to a rat today," she said, frustration leaking into her tone. "Nobody knows how to get back. Or why we're here. Or much of anything, really."

Oh, that explained it. He'd been wondering why she'd let him wait around.

"Every place's got a few rats," he said with a slight shrug, taking her figuratively. Even Shibuya wasn't perfect, but that was part of its appeal. "Kind of a pain, though," he added, with a well-practiced weariness. "That means we're gonna have to go figure it out ourselves."

"I mean a real rat," Uzuki said. "Or--he called himself a meerkat. Whatever." She sighed.

"Well, someone must be in charge here," she continued. "We could start with that."

Of course, just who that was might not be so easy to figure out. Maybe a scan of the residents would help? It only took a moment to skim through a few thoughts. But these-- She frowned.

"Have you scanned anyone yet?" Uzuki said, her tone becoming far more serious. "There's... Something weird."

So now she was talking to animals. He gave her a sort of look, but didn't press the possibility of that; after all, he'd just been texting a dream. "Meerkats aren't rats, they're mongooses," he said matter-of-factly.

Actually, he hadn't scanned the place; he'd been preoccupied enough with his new toy that it hadn't occurred to him. Curious what she meant, he gave it a try... and frowned.

It was different. Compared to the cacophony of minds he was used to, it was ... rhythmic. Orderly. Not exactly identical, but weirdly close. Just as homogeneous on the inside as they were on the outside.

".... Huh." He stuck his lollipop into his mouth for a moment, pondering. Something weird was a grave understatement. "Something wack is more like it," he said around the candy.

"Thanks for the info," she replied dryly, and waited for him to scan the citizens.

She nodded. It was unsettling. Perhaps she was more used to Shibuya than she thought. She didn't spend an unnatural amount of time reading minds (though she had gone through a phase of it that was apparently almost a Reaper initiation), but she knew how odd this was.

"It's like before," she said uneasily.

That caught Kariya off guard; he couldn't recall having seen anything like this before, especially not since Uzuki had been a Reaper. He paused a second to rack his brain a little harder, but nothing came to mind. "Before when?" he asked.

She gave him a look. "You know, the last game? When everyone went zombie?"

He had to remember that. They had worked three weeks in a row, after all. And he didn't look as if he was joking around, either.

The look was mutual. Try as he might, he honestly could not figure out what she was talking about. "Uzuki, nobody 'went zombie', or whatever, last game." What did she even mean by that, anyway? Something like whatever was going down here? Because this was new.

Uzuki was getting frustrated now. "I know you couldn't just forget," she said thinly. "It was the third week we'd worked in a row. You said it'd never happened before. And everyone in Shibuya started thinking the same thing."

She affixed him with a stronger glare, as if that might help jog his memory.

However, jogging memories that were not there was an effort doomed from the start. "That can't be right. I would remember getting scheduled for three weeks back to back."

This was really starting to get unnerving. He knew Uzuki wouldn't pull his leg so persistently over something like this, but he seriously could not remember, and it bugged him.

She stared openly now. "But--So what do you remember? Do you remember the first two weeks? That Neku brat? The Freshmeat newbie Reaper who went traitor? Anything?"

She wasn't sure if she should be worried or angry. This just made her angrier.

"No." He shook his head; none of that was ringing a bell. "The last thing I remember was..." Damn, did he even have anything memorable to go on? It was just another week. "We just had two weeks off," he finally came up with. "And we made a bet coming back. Reaper Sport 3." Of course, given how often they did that, he wasn't sure it'd be any help, but it was the best he had off the top of his head.

Had it been a greater length of time, Uzuki might not have remembered. But given the situation...

"That sounds like just before the three games," she said incredulously. "But that's not possible."

She was silent for a while; she was even beyond anger in her confusion.

"What is going on here?"

The lack of Kariya's memories reminded her uneasily of Entry Fees, though she had no idea why those memories would be so important to him.

If Uzuki was that confused, one could only imagine what must have been going through Kariya's mind. She knew when he was talking about, but it was three weeks ago for her...? That couldn't be right. It didn't add up.

But then, it wasn't nearly the first case of memories going missing. And a lot could go down in three weeks. Or more, for that matter.

"... Care to catch me up?" he asked eventually, still watching the wall behind the opposite sidewalk.

"...There's a lot to catch up on," Uzuki said, pondering where to begin. "The first week was normal enough. There was this kid--Neku--in the games, but it wasn't a big deal. First week there were three left, and one decided to become a Reaper. I guess the Neku brat decided to play again. Week two Math Boy was GM. He made taboo noise attack Reapers. Third week... Tch."

She paused. How to explain the third week?

"You said Shibuya was breaking," she said with a bit of a shrug. "Everyone started thinking the same thing--identically. And There was an Emergency Call around the time the Freshmeat went traitor and helped out the Neku kid. I--I don't really know exactly what happened... It was connected to these pins we had, and I guess we went zombie too? I don't know. But... It worked out."

She was right, that was a lot to catch up on. Taboo Noise? Zombies? The UG on Emergency Call? And it all revolved around this Neku kid, whoever he was. He'd have to keep an eye out; it sounded like it had been pretty epic. One of those things where you had to be there, probably.

... Except apparently he had been there. Well, whatever.

"Good to hear," he said, right back to his usual mellowness. But there was still one more thing he wondered about. "Is that where it ends for you?"

A nod. "I just remember waking up here. Well, just outside of here."

She crossed her arms, chewing on her lower lip. She really didn't like this. It made absolutely no sense. They hadn't been erased or anything. Whatever this place was... Well, she had no idea.

"So why are we here?" she said, half talking to herself, half to Kariya.

And then I woke up. Well, that was more or less consistent with Kariya's own experience so far. He had to wonder if that happened often around here; sure seemed common enough.

He smirked at her question, though. "Why indeed? Greater minds have been losing sleep over that since the dawn of time." Not one to lose sleep over circular philosophy, though, he added, "A better question is, why not?"

Of course, he knew that wasn't what she meant, but it was too good to pass up.

"Well if you assume that there's--" She stopped herself before she could continue. "That's not what I meant and you know it, Kariya!"

That got a grin out of him. So worth it.

Anyway, by now he had a real answer. "Someone's bound to know. This place didn't just appear out of thin air." Of course, who knew and whether they would talk was a whole other story. Public officials? Paixao's Conductor-or-equivalent, if such a person existed? Fellow "visitors", if there were more?

But, he swept these pressing questions aside until such a time as there were answers for them. "In the meantime, relax. If we've been working for three weeks straight, it's high time we had a vacation."

Uzuki rolled her eyes. "For you it's just your third week off." But she really didn't put up much of a complaint, because even if he couldn't remember working she did, and it had been exhausting.

"I heard there's a church sitting around somewhere outside of here," she said. "Or we could explore."

She shrugged, smirked just a bit. "Maybe we could find a ramen shop."

"Details," Kariya said simply.

The church thing sounded kind of boring, but taking a walk around the city was a bit more his bag. "I'm down with that last one," he commented, swinging his legs over the back of the bench. (Especially if she was buying, but it'd jinx it for sure if he said anything.)

She grinned. "Okay~"

Despite the situation she was in a better mood than she had been when she got here. The fact that she was rapidly drying off helped to contribute to this. Standing up and stretching, she looked out at the city.

"Might as well head toward the center," she said. "C'mon."

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If you give a man a gadget, he's going to want the leather case to go with it. [Complete]

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