If I can't see the sun, maybe I should go

[1st_zack]

Zack had tried to forget things. He'd been so emotional when he hadn't been himself that he was over compensating and keeping it all inside. He didn't want to put the burden of his guilt on his friends, his family, anymore than he had already. Ironically, making him even more like Cloud. Or was it that Cloud was more like him in that way

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[followmycords]

Kristine was feeling despondent. So far, while the island was a pleasant enough place to live, the people left something to be desired, especially when they went around switching personalities every five minutes. Yes, she was still a little bitter about that. All right, more than a little. It hadn't been fair to her, and she hadn't even been able to drown her sorrows - or at least thoroughly smother them - in any cottage cheese.

The scenery was still pretty, she reflected as she walked barefoot along the beach, shoes in hand and red jacket in the other. Shimmering seas, sand stretching away to the edge of nowhere, warm sun, guy waving around a giant sword, it was all very picturesque.

It took Kristine approximately thirty seconds to realize there was something wrong with that picture, and she went over it again in her head as she stopped. Sun. Sea. Sand. Guy with giant sword - a-ha.

"Good grief," she muttered as she turned and caught sight of him again. How could he lift that thing? It wasn't polite to stare, Kristine knew, but in this case...she just couldn't help it.

[1st_zack]

Though he'd been paying attention to his form and sorting through his thoughts, he wasn't being completely unobservant. That would have been just plain reckless. He finished the last combination of moves he'd been working on before dropping into a casual ready stance.

"Hey," he said with a wave and a friendly smile.

[followmycords]

Giant Sword Man was speaking to her without chopping her head off. That was a good sign. Wasn't it?

"Er, hello," said Kristine. "That's...quite a large sword you've got, there." All other opening lines seemed far less obvious than that one.

[1st_zack]

"Is it?" he asked with sincerity. It was a normal sized sword as far as he was concerned. Larger than his training sword, but smaller than Sephiroth's Masamune and about the same size as Genesis' sword. It was certainly wider than the other two. He shrugged.

"I guess it is wider that most. I knew a guy who had one that was six feet long. That's a big sword."

[followmycords]

Well, she supposed it beat a fast car in terms of practicality on the island.

"I don't suppose he had some kind of deep-seated security or Oedipus complex," she mused. "Six feet seems a little excessive."

[1st_zack]

Zack smirked at the thought. He doubted Sephiroth had any deep-seated security issues since he was easily the best SOLDIER in the whole company. Mommy issues though might have been another thing altogether.

"Yeah, he might have had a thing for his mother," Zack admitted.

[followmycords]

"That explains it, then," said Kristine, thinking unwillingly of Lister.

"I'm Kristine," she said, smoothly diverting the conversation should it come to discussing this particular man's possible Oedipal motivation for having a sword that, while it was not six feet long, came bloody close.

[1st_zack]

Zack shook his head slightly as a small grin crossed his face. That barely touched the surface on Sephiroth's issues, but talking about that man with someone who didn't know him would have been awkward at best, near impossible at worst.

"Hey Kristine," he said, swinging the Buster sword back into his sword holster. "I'm Zack." He waved his hand in a quick, short hello, rather than crossing the sand to shake her hand.

"What brings you to this particular stretch of beach?" he asked. He assumed it probably had something to do with last week's personality issues.

[followmycords]

She shrugged. "I was just walking," she said. "I doubted anything too terrible or shocking would happen to me on the beach." She still hadn't ruled out sharks, but as long as she kept away from the water she thought she would be all right.

She wasn't sure how she felt about a man with a giant sword, but as long as he wasn't pointing it at her...

How did he even lift it? She wondered.

[1st_zack]

"Yeah, that'll do it," he said casually. "Unfortunately, shocking things do happen on the beach."

"People turn up there. Nothing quite like meeting someone on the worst day of their life." Not that it always was that way, of course. The chances just happened to be in favor of Tabula Rasa not being a good kind of surprise.

"Of course, if you'd run into me last week, that just might have been the worst day of my life. Tough call."

[followmycords]

"Last week was..." Kristine searched for a suitable adjective. "Strange."

That didn't even cover the half of it. Lister acting like Dave, Rimmer acting like...a human being, all of it. Kristine supposed she was just lucky she didn't know more people who had been changed.

[1st_zack]

Zack had a vision of what he'd woken up wearing on Saturday morning and felt the need to reiterate his previous statement and add to her adjectives.

"Strange? And horrible. Awful. Terrible. Nearly the worst time I've had here. I hope that never happens again," he said, covering all of his bases. "At least not to me. Some people were kind of sweet."

[followmycords]

"That's pretty horrible, if you're not used to it," Kristine said.

"From what I understand so far, this island likes messing with its inhabitants." She wasn't sure, yet, if it was worth it or not.

[1st_zack]

"Are you used to pretty horrible?" he asked. It seemed an odd thing to say.

"Messing with its inhabitants is an understatement. And then to top off the crazies as some people call it, there's disappearance. And people are gone just as easily as they arrived."

"You're new here, huh?" He'd caught on by the 'from what I understand so far' part. It wasn't exactly subtle.

[followmycords]

"I think when you're used to horrible, anything less comes as a bit of a shock," Kristine opined. She smiled wryly.

"If by 'new' you mean 'popped out of nowhere only a week and a half ago', then yes."

[1st_zack]

He nodded. He understood the sentiment, though didn't exactly agree. He believed in the light at the end of the tunnel that would make everything that had been suffered worth it. Or would make it all better. Accepting horrible as normal wasn't part of the plan.

"Yep, that'd be new. But a week and half saves me from giving you the speech. Or having to walk all the up to the Compound. So have you got people here?"