Night 49: Home World - Gaia

[zack_fair]

[From here.]Upon stepping through the door, Zack had suddenly felt kind of dizzy, almost like the floor was falling out on him. He didn't know what that was about, but he didn't even get the chance to try and come up with a reason for it, since the next thing he knew he was being overwhelmed by a whole new set of sensations. First of all, he was

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[thatdamnedninja]

Stepping through a doorway wasn't supposed to feel like this, like the world was going topsy-turvy; like they were stuck in a spin-cycle on the highest settling. The disorientation was like a smack in the gut, but it didn't hold a candle to what came next.

The rollicking, rickety jerks and judders were easily enough to send Yuffie stumbling, careening off to the side. She compensated automatically, pushing herself into a clumy, off-balance movement that was half a roll and half a handspring. It righted her, but it didn't steady her, not until the fingers of both hands closed convulsively against a familiar metal railing.

That was when it clicked. That was when she realized why she was so damn off-balance, not just because oh Leviathan she was on an airship, she was on the Highwind-but also because her hands were empty. Both of them. Her shuriken was familiar weight on her back, and her clothes-she hadn't worn these clothes since that time, since that night, and she hadn't felt like this since then, either. Yuffie might not have

[notthistrain]

What the hell

[zack_fair]

Neither Cloud nor Yuffie gave an answer to his question, but Zack figured that was because they didn't have any good answers. He'd never heard about something like this happening, not even from people who'd been in the institute for a long while, like Aidou. Which probably meant it was a whole new kind of game -- it was a good thing that he was adaptable.

Thought not so adaptable that he was able to hold his balance perfectly well when the airship was pitching around like it was out of control. Zack tried to make his way toward Yuffie as he watched Cloud race toward the lower deck. Cloud could fly this? Since when? Sure, his friend had grown, but enough that he'd learned how to work an airship

[thatdamnedninja]

It wasn't long after Cloud bolted that the airship stopped tossing like a corkboard in open ocean. "End of the world," Yuffie told Zack around a deep, fortifying gulp of air. "Or close enough to it. All thanks to Sephiroth."

She gave herself a moment, staring out across the recent devastation. What once had been a mighty, disgusting city was already cracked and crumbling. Yuffie had no love for Midgar, but even for her it had been hard to watch. All those lives down there… she'd thought, maybe if they could've moved faster, more people would've lived. She'd thought that they'd won, so why hadn't everything come up smelling like roses? Of course, she'd soon learned better. Had known better. Definitely knew better now, experience being like bitter ice-cream on the world's worst cake

Mt. Nibel, Nibelheim

[36_24_35]

[From here]

At their next destination, Tifa did not feel so disoriented as before. Very strange since the longer she had continued to walk, the worse she had felt. Hell, her nose didn't even throb. The fact that she didn't feel terrible was more worrisome than anything else. Bring up a hand to her nose, she was surprised to find her left hand was gloved.

"......" Her right hand let go of her belongings, not truly caring where the can of juice rolled off to. She brought it up to her face where it held the familiar weapon, her God's Hand. "This is..." Her words died in her throat when she finally recognized where she was. In the bowels of Mt. Nibel's mako reactor. Tifa's brown eyes narrowed on Jenova's open door, but didn't move further.

She isn't in there, get a grip.It was good advice, but hard to follow. The journey was over, but the memories still haunted her. One of her boots rubbed across the floor where she had fallen all those years ago. It reminded her of what Cloud had said about this place, about the experiments within it

[noifsandsorbubs]

The transition wasn't quite as startling for Logan, at first. On a scale of unexpectedness, one to ten, a room full of ominous tanks ranked about a five; he'd seen weirder shit in the institute this night alone (he realized with a mental jolt that the room with the falling rocks was just as likely to be outside the institute as the repairs place). This all lasted a split second before the relatively generous lighting led him to notice that Tifa had gone from looking good to looking like she'd jumped out of a motorcycle calendar.

Easy as that was to look at, it was hard to ignore the tanks. 'What are they for' wasn't even a question - a taller man than Logan could have fit comfortably in one. The question was what went on in here, inside the tanks, or maybe behind the door at the top of the stairs.

He'd just stepped on a pipe to look in one of the windows when she spoke, and the word choice made him look at her. Her world. The idea that they might not be on Earth didn't occur to him: the tanks, the military-industrial

Sorry I keep editting this Dx

[36_24_35]

Tifa turned around, her expression a bit distant as she looked to Logan. She was the one familiar with this world now. Her friend needed to rely on her this time and that cleared up her mind like a bucket of cold water. There was no time to wallow in memories she couldn't change. They needed to find the boundaries between Mt. Nibel and the institute, see if any of AVALANCHE had made it to Nibelheim or somewhere else on Gaia. Hopefully they would have a longer leash than in Logan's home.

"This way..." She pointed to a small opening behind them, only large enough to fit one person through at a time. Reclaiming her fallen things and the large can of cocktail juice, the young woman followed after. The lighting grew dimmer beyond the doorway, but Tifa knew this place well enough to get them out even with a negligible handicap.

Speaking of which....She pulled her right hand up to her face, counting her full materia slots. Hoping beyond hope, the brunette walked over to a corner away from Logan and cast an ice spell. The air around grew

[noifsandsorbubs]

Logan didn't make any kind of fuss about what he would or wouldn't carry (although he spared a second a little later to decide that she was just that kind of woman and probably always would be, the kind who wouldn't accept anybody trying to make things easy for her), but he did go back to inspect the pipe she'd hit while she dealt with the sweatshirt.

It was still cold to the touch. That wasn't like what Bobby did, he thought, turning back to her just in time for her to lay out the rest of the path for him. Seemed stupid that there were stairs in the other room and a bunch of pipes and chains in this one, but he hauled himself up the chains after her without complaint.

"So--" he paused to renegotiate his grip on the pry bar, which was making the climb a lot harder than it should have been, and which he couldn't just drop because then Tifa would probably climb back down to get the damn thing herself-- "how'd you do that?"