Another New Arrival (Active/Open)

[bridgeartist]

Character(s): Jess Aarons, anyone else who happens to stumble upon him.
Content: Jess arrives in Paixao
Setting: Joutenheim Gate
Time: Late Afternoon
Warnings: None for now.

Comments

[limitbreakpilot]

Between the sudden outbursts of monsters (both shadowy and not) and assorted minor annoyances of the city (read: ShinRa) Cid had been almost inclined to shut himself up in shop for good. Or at least until he'd remembered that Shera would have chewed him out pretty good for becoming more of a recluse than he already was even if he had 'working on an airship' as an excuse. A damned flimsy excuse, sure but it was something and having the skies even in some form would make the hellhole of a city better.

But it wasn't like that couldn't wait for a bit. He'd probably need some more odds and ends first anyway. Which didn't have a damned thing to do with why he was at one of the gates, but hell, anyone would end up know one of them if they wandered enough. And just in time for another arrival, it looked like.

"It's called Paixao," he answered, knowing full well that answer was most likely going to be horribly unhelpful. He wasn't feeling like being helpful anyway, so that was the best he was going to give just now.

[bridgeartist]

Jess spun around and looked up at Cid Highwind. He almost blurted out that he knew that already, but fortunately he was better mannered than to be so rude to a stranger. While he still had someone's attention, he might as well get one pressing question out of the way, "...But I'm...still alive, right?"

[limitbreakpilot]

"Why the hell wouldn't you be alive?"

Sure, the city had a damned annoying tendency to bring back from being dead but if someone hadn't died it seemed perfectly obvious to him that they wouldn't be dead now. Of course the city was fucking bizarre at best but why in the hell should it mean you were dead? He'd heard some strange things about what you saw when you dead but this... wasn't really any of them.

As for the second stranger's comment, it was ignored, given that it didn't seem to be directed at him.

[bridgeartist]

The boy seemed to subconsciously straighten at Cid's words. The fact that this man found the idea utterly ridiculous seemed convincing enough for Jess to believe he must be alive, though it still did nothing to explain where Paixao was or how he found himself here.

Before he could attempt to formulate a more intelligent question, however, he heard the Prince address him and glanced his way...and kept glancing his way with a fair amount of interest. It seemed like this man could have walked out of a storybook.

It took him a moment before he remembered to reply, "...Yeah, I have no idea how I got here."

[limitbreakpilot]

Needless to say, the Prince's reach for his weapon didn't go unnoticed. Cid had been following trigger-happy swordsman around for too long to not notice, really. He had no damned idea why the guy'd go for it when he wasn't armed. If he'd had Venus Gospel with him, sure, but he'd left that back at the shop. Nothing really to fight out here at the moment at it was a damned pain in the ass to carry around all the time. Couldn't even swing it over his shoulder like Strife had done with that giant bar of metal he called a sword.

"The hell does it matter?" he asked the other man. "Not like the place gives us the damned courtesy of telling us how we got here after all. It's like some Ifrit-damned pit trap or something."

[bridgeartist]

Pit trap? So both of them had woken up here too? Where had they come from?

"The last thing I remember? ...It was raining and I was going home, Leslie waved to me, and I went to go into my house." Jess paused and started to frown. The more he tried to straighten his thoughts of what happened that day, the foggier his memories seemed to be. He couldn't remember anything after saying goodbye to Leslie.

"Then I was at the gate. But that happened to you too? You're not from here either are you?"