first [voice]

[unluckywings]

[there's a few fumbles and beeps as Van fiddles with the tiny buttons on his brand new Dreamberry, completely clueless as to what exactly the thing is. He just knows it looks something like Hitomi's whatever-it-was...pager. Maybe that was it. But it looks like that in the way that the Crusade looked like one of Zaibach's floating fortresses--

Comments

[video]

[stillneedsakiss]

...Ken? Is that you? Are you okay?

[video]

[unluckywings]

[holy shit it's talking. WHY IS IT TALKING.

...he drops the Dreamberry, he's so surprised.]

It talks?

[video]

[stillneedsakiss]

[Aya blinks. That? Is not Ken. Okay. Creepy.

But she can't just leave him hanging now.]

It's just a phone, i-it's okay! It's supposed to talk!

Re: [video]

[unluckywings]

[Nope, just sounds like him! 8Db ...and kinda acts like him too. Maybe it is creepy.]

Phone? [WHAT IS THIS DEVILRY YOU SPEAK OF.

He pokes at the screen.]

...you're not stuck in there, are you?

[...fail, Van.]

[video]

[stillneedsakiss]

No! I'm talking to you from another location. The little picture of me is from a camera installed on it. A camera--

[Yes, Aya has deduced he probably wouldn't know what that is either.]

A camera records what it sees so it can be shown at another time or place. Right now I'm sitting in my room, holding one of those little button-covered box things just like yours. The box thing is called a phone. A Dreamberry to be exact.

[video]

[unluckywings]

[well all this is kinda going over his head, but okay.]

...So I can talk to other people on this.

[He got that much!]

I should be able to use it to contact Hitomi and Allen then, shouldn't I.

[video]

[stillneedsakiss]

Yes, you can talk to other people, but only other people that have one themselves... Do Hitomi and Allen have last names? I'll look through the contacts list-- the list of everyone that owns one of these-- to see if they're here. If either of them are, you can contact them!

[video]

[unluckywings]

Hitomi Kanzaki and Allen Schezar.

[Merle would be with Hitomi, and...he should have been with both of them, too. And Allen. They'd just been all together...why wouldn't they all be here together? Wherever that was?]

We were together not that long ago...

[video]

[stillneedsakiss]

That doesn't mean much here, but I'll look through for you. Hang on a minute.

[Aya takes a browse through the contacts, then comes back to the call.]

I'm sorry. I didn't see either of those names. They might show up later, but for right now...

[video]

[unluckywings]

...I'm alone.

[he really doesn't like that idea too well. But he won't say anything like that.]

I'm not there to protect her.

[between this realization and what just happened to him back home, Van's a powderkeg of angst and mental issues waiting to go off. Yay?]

[video]

[stillneedsakiss]

Well, technically, even though you're here, it might sound hard to believe but you haven't actually left home. Once you go back it will be like you never left. We wake up with no memories of this place and no sense that any time has passed.

[She's hoping that will be some reassurance.]

[video]

[unluckywings]

...then what's the point of being here?

[video]

[stillneedsakiss]

Does everything have to have a point?

[video]

[unluckywings]

[Well when it takes him away from a war he's fighting to save his world and the girl he promised to protect and get home, yeah...he'd rather like this diversion to have a point. But since you said it doesn't matter anyway, he's not sure if mentioning that will make any difference.]

Even if we learn something about ourselves, or someone else--we wake up at home not remembering a thing, right?

Then it's just a waste of time.

[video]

[stillneedsakiss]

You can't waste time that you're not losing.

[video]

[unluckywings]

It still feels like I am.