Day 56: Twin Pines Restaurant (Early Afternoon)

[girlsandgadgets]

Having spent almost the entire morning in the cold, Edgar finally decided it was time to address his groaning middle. It was hard enough to focus as he thumbed through the coupon book without his stomach doing flips: he was shivering, but still felt tremendous heat radiating from within him. The attempt at a nap on a park bench hadn't helped his

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[dreadofthegrave]

Battler had to wonder vaguely if he'd been handling this a bit insensitively; the way Guy was talking now seemed a bit like he had struck at something. .... It would be different for them, come to think of it. For a person like him, it was only thinking aloud and picking at what little information he had, but for someone who had been stuck there for a while, the implications of being used would take on a totally different meaning. ... Maybe he'd have to start paying a little more attention to what he was saying. That idea aside, recklessly asserting things about something you barely knew about or even an attempt to be encouraging could cause more damage than good.

"Well, I wouldn't suggest anything like that, exactly. It's the opposite, in fact. Just like you're saying, sitting around wouldn't help them, but it wouldn't help us, either. If everyone really is being maneuvered like that, wouldn't doing nothing just be the same thing as admitting defeat? ... It'd be like saying you can't do anything, because they really are in control and there's no real way to fight back. I can't accept something like that at all...! There has to be a way, right? To throw a wrench in their gears and totally mess up their plans."

They seemed to agree, at least, that laying back and not trying wasn't an option, even if their approaches were totally different, by the sound of that last part. "Escaping, huh....? I wonder about that," he thought aloud. To be honest, he hadn't put much consideration into it. Not to say that he intended on sticking around-no way in hell-but that was just it. Was that really going to fix everything...? It ran a bit deeper than that, didn't it?

He kept his thought to himself, for now. Not that he was going to keep it a secret, but Guy seemed pretty set on his course of action, and Battler had no intention of finding fault with it. With so many people here, there were bound to be different ways of looking at things. Everyone was going to do the way that they felt was right. And even if they weren't quite the same, he was never going to look down on someone trying to fight with everything they had.

"... That's right. Something like that will definitely be found." It wasn't sympathetic or encouraging, but straight-forward and full of confidence, like what he was saying was already true. "I'm not so naive I think everything's going to be easy, but there's something to be said about willpower, right? Giving in is the one condition that absolutely ensures your defeat. As long as we don't do that, we're sure to come up with something."

[razing_phoenix]

In the end, it did seem like they were on the same page here, in that giving up and doing nothing was never, ever an option. Guy nodded along with Battler's words, glad to come across someone who was so determined to keep up the good fight. Granted, he hadn't been here very long, which meant he had a lot of time to be worn down and discouraged, but Guy hoped that Battler kept that spark, that confidence.

"Right. There has to be a way. So long as you're willing to stick through the long haul and accept that this is going to take some time, then you'll be all right." There was no way of knowing how much longer they would be stuck here. It could be a year, it could be more than that. They might be lucky and it would be less. This was the longest that Guy and his friends had been stuck in one dilemma like this, but he wasn't going to let that scare him. They were stronger than this.

It seemed that Battler wasn't so set on the idea of escape, though. Even if he'd just made a vague comment, Guy had gone through this conversation enough times to know what the redhead was getting at. "And it might not be escape. It might be a way to shut them down, a way to return people's powers, or some sort of technology that can send us all home. I'm not really sure what I'm looking for, but it's just easier to call it escape."

Because in the end, that was what everyone wanted: to go home. If they were able to tear down this military and whatever was backing it before that, then all the better. Guy just didn't know if they would be capable of that. On the other hand, he and his friends had stopped Van from destroying the world, so he wasn't about to say that anything was impossible. Just close to it, maybe.

Either way, his pasta was delicious, and Guy paused for a moment to continue eating the spaghetti and the seafood with it. He'd have to remember to come back to this place next trip.

[dreadofthegrave]

"Time...." Battler murmured quietly. He... wasn't so sure how he felt about that, to be honest. It wasn't as though he didn't think he could make it through. Even if it took a thousand years, he'd just keep picking himself up over and over again until he finally made it. It was just like that before, wasn't it? But while that was perfectly fine with him, that wasn't necessarily the case for everyone else. What about the people count on him who weren't here? What happened to them during that time...? ... He guessed he was just going to have to believe that everything would work out somehow. There wasn't really a choice, when there was nothing he could do about it when he was still stuck here.

As for the rest, there were a few things he could have said in return, but before he could really entertain them, something in what he was saying distracted him enough to make him forget about the subject completely. "Um, sorry, but. Powers....?" Was he hearing that right...?

[razing_phoenix]

Oh man. Battler didn't know about powers yet?

Guy had mentioned it without even thinking, seeing how it was common knowledge for most people here. Battler was new, so Guy should have at least considered that he might not know, but it hadn't even crossed his mind. Then again, things like Artes and the Score probably seemed magical to people not from Auldrant, so it was all a matter of perspective, wasn't it?

"Ahh, yeah, sorry. Powers. A lot of people had some sort of ability that they could do before coming here, whether it's healing wounds or being able to light monsters on fire." He was seriously dumbing this down, but it seemed like that might be the best choice for someone who was only now being exposed to the idea. "But upon coming here, those powers are either weakened or taken away entirely. To make things harder, I guess." He didn't see why the military would want to keep those dampeners in place, but it was probably to make sure that they didn't all combine their strength and bust out of here.

"If you're that used to being able to do something and suddenly you can't, well..." It could feel like being crippled. It was a good thing that Guy didn't need Artes to fight. His sword would do him just fine.