(Untitled)

[capemods]

WHO: A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE, PART DEUX
WHERE: the City! Or, in Jaime's case, space.
WHEN: the morning after these shenanigans, at any time
SUMMARY: Everybody who's been hit by the aftershock from Vector and Chronos' profound failure has to come to at some point! And this is where you file those threads of heinous confusion. It's time for still

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[speedofnaked]

The lady in question was likewise still asleep, though not for long. The sun rose slowly over the morning waters of the Atlantic, as though it too were dragging itself out of the heady depths of night without memory. The early gulls were already starting their scavenge, though the beach itself below was still clear of people. It was the calls of the birds that first began pulling Terra from rest, and the brightening skyline wore at what darkness the eyelids provided.

She, too, was content; though the morning air on her face was chill, she was warm enough under cloak and leaning against another. She could almost hear his heartbeat, and she smiled. It wasn't often they had quiet moments together, as much as she craved them, and she leaned in a little closer in silent appreciation.

Though, it was funny. She didn't remember visiting Keith yesterday... and the MAC wasn't that close to the ocean enough to be able to smell the incoming tide. Brows furrowing as her mind slowly started to catch up with her surroundings, Terra wasn't sure if she wanted to open her eyes and wake up.

[inthirds]

The shifting at his side made Zel himself stir, grunting a bit with a sluggish reluctance to even consider moving. Sleeping sitting up wasn't the most comfortable way to go about it, but if he moved then it would just be uncomfortable. Her hair smelled nice anyway.

Wait.

Zelgadis grimaced faintly, eyebrows furrowing and lifting in attempt to open his eyes. He cracked one and got an eyefull of morning that was blurred enough with sleep, so sensory input in that respect was rather unhelpful. He sniffed again--yeah, that wasn't a hallucination. So...what?

He turned his head away slowly, neck stiff. With another grunt, he tried to sit up and away from the wall, acknowledging the weight at his side. What the--

Blink, blink-blink; his vision clears to see green and tan and...an arm that wasn't his on a body that definitely wasn't his. That heartbeat of his seemed to halt for an odd moment before going into hyperdrive.

WH-WHAT THE--

[speedofnaked]

Whoever it was she was with was shifting (and it certainly wasn't who she was expecting; the shape and the smell was all wrong, even at this angle and at a beach she couldn't remember visiting), and it was with reluctance that she moved too. If she didn't wake up, if she didn't open her eyes, she wouldn't have to deal with whatever this was, and why couldn't she remember where she was? Amnesia wasn't supposed to come back and swallow up new memories, and she'd already lost more than enough years to constitute a short lifetime.

What had happened? Had she been kidnapped? Sure the Empire didn't exist in this world, but there had been a reason they'd kept her under such tight control and why the Returners had to constantly keep moving to keep her from falling back into their hands. If this was all some elaborate trap, then-

Except...

It was a realization slow in coming, but there was no mistaking that texture of magic of his. How many times had she faced against him in not-always friendly combat?

"... Zelgadis?"

Why the hell was she at a beach with Zelgadis?

[inthirds]

Having a heart attack and dropping dead was a really great idea right then and there; Zelgadis found it a bit unfortunate that he couldn't do it at will. With that option dashed, he had very few left short of leaping up and screaming like a crazy person. As understandable a reaction it was, he still had an image to keep in mind.

Irate distress was the way to go. Irate distress with action; at the sound of Terra's voice, he began to move, worming his arm out from under her and scooting away, ankle tangled in a cloak--his cloak, on her--and with a decent distance between them, proceeded to gawk at her.

Her being Terra.

What the hell?!

[speedofnaked]

Terra, meanwhile, was doing her level best to avoid having a nervous breakdown. Without Zelgadis conveniently leaving her somewhere to hide her face, her eyes got a full blast of sunlight; combining that with the throbbing headache she was only now becoming aware of, it was only natural she cup her head in her hands, heels of her palms pressing against her eyelids to keep the light out.

She was in a strange place with no idea how she got there, and it was all too reminiscent of waking up in the old man's house with nothing to her but her name and the clothes on her back. Terra scrambled to find some shreds of memory that led her here, but no-she hadn't seen Zelgadis in weeks and weeks, she hadn't been outdoors, she hadn't been planning to go anywhere. The last thing she could remember was... being a few fingers shy of finishing clipping her nails? That sounded right. So how, and why...?

And there was no way to tell just how much magic she'd used between then and now, having fallen asleep. She was scared of the holes in her memory, but Terra was a great deal more terrified of finding out about how she'd committed this-or-that destruction, of what great fires had devastated her path.

She wanted to ask him if he had any idea what happened, but fear stopped her tongue as effectively as any mute spell could.

[inthirds]

"What the hell!" Zelgadis repeated, aloud this time. He exhaled, ending in a bit of a growl. Sure, the sun was bright, but his first impulse was to assume she was so horrified of him to even look. Dammit, you know...! "What's this all about?! What did you do?"

[speedofnaked]

"I didn't do anything!" she shouted right back, voice rasped enough that the sentence ended in a surprised cough. Swallowing several times, she reeled back from such violent tones. "I was hoping you knew what this was about."

[inthirds]

"Like I would!" He huffed, scrambling to his feet and squinting eastward. It was too warm already to be the City, so where...?

"Ngah--!"

Zelgadis crumpled back down to his knees, doubled over, head swimming. "Wh-what even..." he winced, his stomach threatening to hurl up whatever it was he'd had last. "What's...going on...?!"

[speedofnaked]

As much as she wanted to just go back to sleep and pretend none of this was happening or had happened, the likelihood of that working was about as slim as finding a flying chocobo in this universe. Slowly, but not quite slow enough for her eyes to adjust to the sunlight, Terra lowered her hands to the roof, blinking rapidly for tears.

"Your guess is as good as mine," she admitted, vision coming to her enough to examine her surroundings. She half-wondered if white magic was effect against headaches, while the other half wondered-

"...... this is your cloak. Why am I wearing-?"

She finally looked his way at the question, but he seemed a great deal worse off than she did. And, whatever the hell was going on, it seemed he was just as much victim as she was. The concern carried in her voice. "Zelgadis...?"

[inthirds]

"Guh," he replied miserably, his forehead lightly bonking the roof. The sun was barely up and he felt overheated and sick. It wasn't like any drug he'd heard tell of before, but then...he wasn't in the same world he'd heard tell of those things before anyway, so that wasn't much help. It only made the possibility of being drugged that more real, and that...was little comfort.

"Hey," he said, muffled. "What do you remember...?

[speedofnaked]

She shook her head first in reply, but that was a mistake. The throbbing just got worse. "Nothing. Nothing that explains this... I was in my apartment all day."

The gulls were squawking again overhead and towards the ocean. With slow movements Terra finally pushed and pulled her way to her feet.

"You?"

[inthirds]

Zelgadis gave himself a moment to overcome a wave of nausea before even starting to think of recalling. "Hnh...I was..." Where was he? The library, the sparring yard...Illidan's temple...

More stomach knots. You don't think that...?

"Nowhere unusual," he said slowly. It wasn't really a lie; how many times a week did he go there? "Once I left the park..." He lifted his head up slowly, grimacing against the sun. "Nothing."

[speedofnaked]

"Huh..."

So they weren't anywhere near one another... and it didn't seem like anyone was near them now. Absently she began digging through the folds of her scarves for the couple hidden pouches, more specifically for her communicator.

Terra had already forgotten what she was wearing over that.

"And I don't know where we are......... or why I have wire clippers." That's what they looked like, anyway. She experimentally opened and closed the things once or twice, as if to verify that it really existed. "Why do I have wire clippers?"

[inthirds]

"Gh--!" Nausea forgotten, Zelgadis rose up on his knees, quickly swiping the clippers out of her hands, falling back on his butt with them in tight grip. His face flushed a deep violet, canon be damned. "Q-quit! Rummaging through my stuff! It's not yours!"

...Granted, he hadn't had much use for the wire clippers since his hair required less...pruning. But that wasn't the point. He wasn't sure if his amnesia extended to somehow littering his pockets with other embarrassing items.

[speedofnaked]

She blinked a couple times - for once not due to the sun, but confusion. It took another moment before she looked back at her arms, still covered by the too-big sleeves of his cloak.

"Sorry," she mumbled, tugging the hems of the sleeves and withdrawing her arms inward so she could pull the whole thing off, "I didn't mean to-"

The rest of her sentence was muffled beneath the fabric as she started pulling it over her head, eventually coming free and gathering the bundle of his cloak in her arms. Her hair, already loose from its ponytail, only became more tangled and fritzy with static.

"Here."

[inthirds]

Zelgadis could do little but watch, and it was almost certain the blood rushing to his head was boiling, and blacking out was a certainty--if not a blessing, but that never happened. He just gawked, watching her crawl out of his clothes.

Here? his brain thought dumbly. What here? Another couple, stupid seconds passed before he registered the bundle he was now staring at. The clippers clicked in his loosened and tightened grip, shaking him into motion, reaching up and snatching his cloak back.

He exhaled, still nowhere near calm and collected. But at least he had his clothes.