trans_9 | Me, Myself and I [Bendtime after Visitation Day is Over] [OPEN]

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Me, Myself and I [Bendtime after Visitation Day is Over] [OPEN]

Compared to yesterday where the sensoriums had gotten so much use, Lash was glad that it was mostly quiet as she slipped into a free one. The day had passed relatively quickly thanks to running mazes, but even that hadn't gotten her as joyful as she should be, as strange and exciting as it had been.

The world around her changed as she stood atop a giant mountain overseeing the forest below her. Her army stood closer, as her opponent in the horizon began to prepare to attack her. A typical scenario she liked to play out at least once a week, each time using it to test out new invention ideas and fixes she should make to her existing ones.

But she wasn't there. The spark, the thing that made Lash excited about anything war-related and gave her an almost-worrying macabre yet positive outlook on nearly anything appeared to be extinguished. She'd been thinking a lot. Even now, she didn't raise her arms dramatically as she usually did to get the battle started, but merely an uninterested movement of her fingers as she dismissed it all and sat down, dangling her legs over the edge.

"Good evening Mistress Lash! We await your orders!"

She said nothing.

Lash watched the soldiers below her slowly get destroyed, unable to find herself engrossed enough to bother or want to give out commands. Those damn emotions Black Hole hated so much were going to be the death of her, weren't they? She'd seen a lot of her friends reunited with people they cared about and then felt the pangs of jealousy that followed as she waited, mostly by herself, to see if miraculously someone else would step out. She couldn't complain to Stacy about it either, as much as she wanted too, due to the AI falling silent in what she assumed was exhaustion. But that wasn't the biggest thing on her mind, eating away at her as time marched forward.

It was the cold reality of knowing that perhaps, this proved she was the only person rescued from her world.

She never had thought of it as such before, figuring out that everyone simply wasn't ready yet. All the time she'd been here, Lash had never given up hope at meeting one of her old comrades-in-arms. Gone to every poddrop too. Hell, who wouldn't want Commanding Officers from her world with army boosting powers in a war like this? She was a perfect example! The others were just a little more dumb and need more time to be properly awoken, that's all! And yet, yesterday seemed to hit the final nail in the coffin. Even without being completely ready, someone should have come out. Heck seeing Olaf's big ugly angry face would have made her feel better. Was Stacy mad at her? She'd been helping repair her weapons! There was no way she'd just ignore people who actually cared about fixing her up compared to those who cursed her name wherever they walked, right? There had to be a fairness in this! Thinking about fairness now, it was almost bizarre.

...Or maybe Stacy had been fair, and there was no one to be brought out, even for a day.

"Mistress Lash? We await your orders! Please respond!"

Alone from her world. Strangely enough, it frightened her. The very idea that she'd be fighting the war, sure with her friends, but without someone who she knew from before. Her homesickness had disappeared after a few months on the ship, but now it came back with full force.

"Mistress Lash! They've got megatanks! Please respond!" The macabre spectacle played out below her as her own units fought on, still standing where she had placed them against an enemy that had been upgrading and building all the time she was simply leaning in and doing nothing. Lash didn't care. You'd almost think she was a statue in the way she was lost in her thoughts. Eventually she issued a single command that was almost dismissive to everything.

"Whatever. Just blow them up for all I care." The soldiers below yelled out commands and eventually large rockets were launched at the sky, shining in the star-filled night sky. The nuclear-like weapons exploded in the middle of the enemies' troops, giving her a good view of the entire carnage and clouds lighting up the atmosphere. Yet she got no joy from it, even as the normally deadly breeze passed by her. In fact, it only made her sigh as she idly pinched away a tiny rock stuck in her hair. The Wunderkind wasn't sure why she was like this. This was so dumb to care about it so much! Dumb dumb dumb! She'd loved doing this so much before but right now...

It felt really pointless.

For the first time in her life, Lash was completely unamused by an explosion.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sensoriums full of war simulations? That didn't do much in ways of narrowing the list of who the technology was responding to. More often than not it was some battle or training session when Jr. popped into them. Not that it was a really surprising thing - everyone needed to keep sharp after all.

So making his way through the chaos was clearly the best way to try and find a familiar face. Ducking behind trees and jumping out of the way of flying debris (damn some of those pieces looked sharp and painful was how Jr. spent most of his time moving through that and to the mountain. He wondered briefly if he should conjure up his unit to get a faster and probably safer view of the scene before he spotted Lash.

"Oh. You've got all that stuff going down below?" he asked after he sucked in a breath, glad to be. Well. Out of it.

She greeted him with a tiny wave, before looking more at the carnage again.

"Pretty much," she answered in a voice that didn't seem sure at all. "Although I guess it's not really going that well for me right now."

"AHHHH! WE'RE ALL DYING!" a soldier radioed in from below. Idly, she closed communication and shrugged. "Usually it's more fun...just not today."

Jr. winced at the radio call. "Glad these things aren't real," he muttered.

Tilting his head, he rested a hand on his hip as he gave Lash a quick once-over, then moved his gaze back out over the forest he had just stomped through. "Not today?" he repeated curiously. "Accidentally thought up a boring scenario, or is somethin' up?" Last time he saw Lash was when she was going to save Zetta ... he hoped there weren't more lost books happening.

No lost books on the horizon, thankfully. She removed her legs from the cliff and put her arms over them before talking. Her voice sounded completely drab and muffled from her position.

"Pretty much. I feel like everything's boring today, actually." She waited for the explosions and screams below to stop before continuing. "You'd think something like this would be exciting, you know?"

"I ... guess so?" The explosions he understood. The screams not so much. "I mean, you're not down there fighting, either, so maybe that'd help a little bit..."

He moved over to a rock nearby, sitting down on top of it Indian style and resting his arms over his legs. "But if everything's boring, hey, that might be, too. Did something happen?"

"Yeah something did happen," she grumbled, kicking a rock down on the head of one of the soldiers below. "Yesterday happened."

"Yesterday?" It didn't take long for it to dawn on Jr., even though for him, he didn't see it as a terrible thing as much as a don't care as much as the people who had friends and loved ones wake up thing. "You mean Stacy waking people up for the day?"

And then his expression fell. "Are you mad because it felt like a tease?" He had no idea if Lash had anybody wake up for her or not. "Or did someone ... bad wake up instead?"

"No actually I wouldn't have minded anyone bad waking up. I've been looking for an excuse to punch someone. But uh, no one woke up."

"Ooohhh..." He gave her an understanding nod, before pausing as he thought his next words over. "Did you really wanna see someone? I mean, it might have also sucked to only have'em around for just a day, too."

"At least I'd know there was someone from my world around," she finally explained, and therein liked the crux of her problem.

When she put it that way, it was a little discouraging to think about. Nobody that he knew woke up, either. Jr. let out a small sympathetic sigh. "It kind of sucks when the thought creeps up on and eats at you, huh." It was more of an observation than an outright question, since he could tell how she felt on the matter. "I don't have anyone from my world here, either."

He idly fiddled with a loose stone that sat upon the rock he was relaxing on. "But we still don't know. Stacy said the Warden stopped her before she could wake more people up, after all."

She was about to ask what he meant by eating at her but then she looked surprised at his comment.

"So no one woke up for you either yesterday?"

~~"I thought you were a pimp and all the girls would come out, bro."~~

~~"I am and they were supposed to so I don't know what Stacy's deal is."~~

He shook his head softly. "Nope. And like I said, it sucks when you think about it too hard and wonder if Stacy's just spiting you or if anyone's down there at all. But I think if they ended up bringing me here because I have the fated power or whatever we all allegedly have to save the day, then there are definitely people I know who can do that just as well, so it'd be really dumb of Stacy to have skipped over'em. Maybe their avia just wasn't ready yet." Sometimes that seemed to happen a lot. People would wake up and ... disappear soon after, because of the effects the travel was having on them. Jr. himself still had no idea what running the mazes was like, so he considered himself lucky.

"But then again, I guess I can't talk since even though there's technically nobody from home awake, there's at least one person I know who's here even though he's sleeping, just not down in the pods. But that's more not a Stacy or here thing, and he probably won't wake up." But that was okay.

He leaned back on his hands, looking up at the sky. "But, hey. If nobody is down there, that just means when we bring everything back, everyone will think we're that much more awesome for doing the work ourselves."

As much as the reality of the idea sat on Jr.'s shoulders. Another situation, another possibility of letting everyone die, or failing to save anyone. Not this time, hopefully not again.

"Damn you hero types," she muttered, pouting a bit. "Always looking at the bright side of everything. Can't even let a girl like me have one day off from being happy all the time without a need to cheer up the others, huh?"

Although the second part was confusing and she pondered at it quietly. "Wait so you have someone you know but he's not in the pods? But he's sleeping? What do you mean, exactly?"

That got a laugh out of Jr. "Hero type? Hardly!" He considered himself very much not a hero. Quite the opposite sometimes, actually. "It's just kind of weird seeing you like this. Not that you're not entitled to some down time; even the smiles and the keeping up morale can wear someone out after so long." He didn't know if all that was au natural for Lash, but it was still a truth at some point no matter which way you sliced it. "I'm sure someone waking up would be pretty cool, but I figure I'll see'em all again when we finish this up if they don't show up before then."

He hoped. But he never threw in ifs and hopefullys when he talked about that to others. Universe-restoration sounded like a hell of a huge thing, but they said it was maybe possible. Maybe that was one reason for worry. If for some reason they couldn't restore what was lost, then the pods were their only salvation for seeing friends and family again. The thought unsettled him, and he felt a small pull in the pit of his stomach, recalling a promise that the Ohm's destruction would force to be broken if they couldn't bring anything back.

He shook his head to try and rid the thought and focus back on Lash and her question. "Ah, ha ... it's a long story," he answered sheepishly, his left hand moving up over the right side of the his chest. He'd never had to really explain this to anybody on Stacy before ... he wondered how to word it right. "But it was before I woke up here. Think about it like ... having another half, and that other half finally being a part of you again. It was kind of like that, for one of my brothers."

Part of that didn't completely make sense. She knew Jr. was a clone since the time on Galilee, but clones in her world (created by her, no less) didn't live very long and where in no way given the memories of their predecessors. They hadn't gotten that far yet, admittedly, and when the project was put on ice, it was only because of the immense energy of the Black Crystals that allowed the Bolt Guard to bring out a few - to the same disastrous results. She could still recall the clone Andy disintegrating in Max's arms, asking him if the real Andy had any friends.

Shaking that off, she concentrated on what he was saying about his brother.

"So like your body being almost split in half, and having someone else walk around that had part of your memories?"

"Not exactly. But he and I were born together. Er, conjoined," he added to clarify. "So I could feel his heartbeat right around here." He patted that left hand over the right side of his chest gently, even though there was nothing to feel there anymore. "When we were separated our powers went off in separate directions, too, but even after that, it always felt like we were part of each other, so it did always feel like we were one body split in half, in a way. It took a while, but..." A while was an understatement, as well as what it entailed to get there. The smile when he recalled finally uniting with Albedo was a bit of a sad one, mainly because he had to lose somebody else in the process.

"But he's back where he belongs, now. It's what he always wanted." Through the obsessions and the torture and torment and the insanity, every reckless, rash and destructive act Albedo had performed, every single action he took was for that one simple goal.

Lash, unfortunately, saw it a lot as some sort of really wacky science. The type where conjoined twins shared their body like that was certainly strange.

"That is uh...different, I guess. Is he like a split personality from you now or?"

"Split personality..." That moved his train of thought to his other brother and his father. Of course, he and Albedo weren't anything like that, considering his father just did what he pleased and invaded his other brother, trapping him inside himself and using his body as he pleased. Douche.

"He's still himself, but ... if he ever woke up and wanted to talk to other people, I'd let him. So I guess in a way..." His tone of voice didn't sound very convinced that that would happen, however.

He gave Lash a sheepish laugh and rubbed the back of his head after that. "But yeah, it probably does sound weird! Either way, aside from him, since he'll probably be sleeping for a while, it's not the best feeling to feel like you're alone here. But I mean, with Stacy being Stacy and all, we shouldn't bank too much in everything she does and what it could mean."

Wow that sounded more like invasion of the body snatchers now (not that Lash would know, not really having seen the movie but regardless).

"So he's still himself but in your body," she repeated, not quite understanding. "Wow, I dunno what I'd be like if I had someone else stuck inside me, sleeping or not!"

Answer: You'll find out come November.

"And yeah that's true," she added, almost muttering. "Stupid Stacy."

It was actually kind of like that in Jr.'s father's case. Again. Douche.

"It's ... well I'm probably not good at explaining it!" he admitted. "Since for me it doesn't really feel weird..." He wondered briefly how it felt for his other brother and said douche of a father. But again, the thought of the situation just made his jaw clench slightly. He didn't like thinking about it. He'd been pissed enough just knowing about it.

"If anything, we can blame the Warden for stopping her before she could do any more. And once our friends wake up we can just laugh about worrying. Do you have a lot of friends and people you want to see?"

"Yeah. There's Hawke, Flak, Adder, Jake, and Sonja, but I'm thinking of not going next time. Maybe hang out with Zetta or something. Pretty doubtful they'd come out after all the time I'm here anyway."

"You never know!" he said. Even if he felt similar to Lash, he had to do what he could to try and keep optimistic about it if it was that much of an emotional issue.

And since Jr. had just given Lash a talk-up about his brother, it was clearly her turn. "What are they like? Your friends. And..." he glanced to the scene below them. "What is it that you guys do exactly, anyway? Are you in a military?"

"Back at home? I was a Commanding Officer. Actually they all were, from different nations. Jake was from Orange Star, Sonja was Princess of Yellow Comet. Hawke, Flak Adder and I were from Black Hole." A pause. "We were the bad guys!"

Gee, who saw that one coming.

"What are those, different militaries? Or planets?"

That confession was ... well somehow it wasn't a complete shock. But... "The bad guys...?"

He furrowed his brow, trying to make sense of that. "How are you bad guys? I mean, bad guys never admit that they're the bad guys... Your enemies are always technically 'the bad guys' from your end, aren't they?"

Me, Myself and I [Bendtime after Visitation Day is Over] [OPEN]

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I love that picture I expect him to jump up at any minute.

He would not make it far. 8(

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