paradisalost | [THREAD] looking for patterns in static;

Who: Gojyo (

mirrorsanddoubt)
What: C is lost and confused! Gojyo is generally helpful!
When: Naotiemz?
Where: Random hallway #14, because that's where everything cool happens.
Rating: PG until decided otherwise.

C had attempted to analyze the situation logically, but that hadn't worked out so well. The last thing he could recall was passing out in the rain in front of that strange military man, and yet he'd woken up in a strange room, completely dry and with his clothes repaired. Nobody had told him to do anything and the area wasn't secured.

Analyzing the situation on an emotional scale didn't give much else except a bad feeling. He couldn't feel any connection to A anymore. Part of him was relieved, but it left him scared, too. What if A was getting angry because he couldn't sense C either?

He'd been wandering about the hallways for about fifteen minutes. He hadn't run into anyone, and was kind of worried about what would happen if he did. He was debating knocking on a door to ask where he was, but... How would that turn out?

So he'd kept walking.

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Gojyo was bored. It wasn't that he missed the constant attempts on his life, per se, but there was really nothing to do in the castle besides smoke and gamble, and he was sick of gambling.

He was on his way down to the kitchen to get a beer, hoping without much optimism that he'd meet a couple of women on the way who'd offer to entertain him. He'd considered staying in his room and just getting some magic out-of-thin-air beer, but that wouldn't have solved his boredom problem. He even took the stairs just to kill time, glancing down each hallway as he reached whatever floor was next, and that was how he ran right into a short kid.

"Whoops, sorry," he said, backing up. "You okay?"

With his head down, watching one foot go in front of the other, he'd almost ran right into someone coming down the stairs. He also took a couple steps back in surprise, resembling a deer that'd been caught in headlights.

His posture straightened but he looked towards the ground again. He repeated the words 'I'm not going back' over and over in his mind while he answered.

"I... Don't know." he mumbled, "I don't know where this is."

The man in front of him didn't really look like he belonged to the military. He didn't feel like he was with the wizards, either. But they weren't in the city, obviously, so where could they be?

Gojyo hesitated, giving him a critical look.

"Yeah, I don't really know where it is, either," he said, leaning against the wall. He dug a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and propped it between his lips. "Besides Paradisa," he mumbled around it, with a lazy one-shouldered shrug. "But that doesn't mean anything, really." He shoved his nearly-empty pack back in his pocket. "Did you just get here?"

He looked back up at the stranger, honestly a little relieved that he didn't seem intent on taking him anywhere. He wondered who he was. C fidgeted with his sleeve a bit, hands still by his sides.

"Paradisa means 'garden' or 'sacred place'..." he said, mostly to himself. He'd gotten that that was the name of the place from the strange book in the room he woke up in. He wondered if he should have stayed and read more of it.

He answered the question, "Yes". A moment later he asked, "Do people arrive here a lot?" He looked to the side at one of the doors and added, "Is that what all these rooms are for?"

"Don't know," said Gojyo, fishing his lighter out of his other pocket and flicking it open. He paused to light his cigarette, and tucked his lighter away again. "I just got here a few days ago."

Was it just a few days? He tilted his head and tried to remember--maybe it was a week. Maybe it was longer.

"Least I think it was a few days," he decided.

"Does time pass differently here?"

He wondered if it was like the cage. It felt like a cage, for some reason. But time stopped in the cage, so maybe it was like that, in a way. He raised his head and relaxed a little, starting to feel less like he was in trouble and more like he was just... Speaking, conversing.

"And if you were brought here too, where were you before that? Is there something that we have to do here? Who brings people here? Who are..."

He stopped and looked down awkwardly again. With nothing to look at but his own bare feet, be became aware of the smell of the cigarette smoke. It was oddly familar, but C couldn't remember from where.

"Sorry... Am I asking too many questions?"

Gojyo took his cigarette and turned his head to exhale away from C. "Ask all the questions you want, but it won't get you anywhere. I don't know any more than you do." He gestured to the hallway with his cigarette. "I was asleep in an inn before I came here. And as far as I know there's nothing we're supposed to do, I dunno," he shrugged again, "nobody's told me anything. Doesn't even seem like there's anybody in charge."

"Oh... That's strange." He was worried about how he couldn't feel A. It was impossible for them to not be able to feel each other's emotions no matter where they were in the world--but what about other dimensions? Other existences?

"Who are you?" He asked suddenly, the subject jumping to mind. Inns were from a timezone far from that of C's. Even the way he talked sounded like he came from somewhere completely different than where C was used to.

Gojyo considered him for a moment before answering. He really was just a kid; he couldn't be older than fourteen, probably, and he was confused and alone.

He took a drag and glanced away for a second, and tapped cigarette ashes on the floor. Oh well. That'd teach the people who ran the castle to have no ashtrays anywhere. "I'm Gojyo," he said. "What's your name?"

'Gojyo', although the name wasn't familiar. So he really wasn't with the wizards; that was good. C was a little disappointed that he didn't have much of a real name to give the man, but his designation was all he had.

"C," he said, "At least, that's what the wizards called me." he raised his hand to rub at his eye absently, "How... Do we get food around here?"

Gojyo raised his eyebrows at 'the wizards.' Couldn't be good, whoever they were, especially since they'd evidently seen fit to give the kid a fantastic name like 'C.'

"Kitchen's this way," he said, starting down the stairs with a lazy follow-me wave. He might have taken the elevator, since now he at least had someone to talk to, but he was still hoping to see some women on the way down.

"So," he said, still trying to decide whether he really wanted to know, "who're the wizards?"

C tagged along absently, stepping lightly on the stairs one at a time. He stayed a couple steps behind Gojyo out of habit, as he was always the third to follow back home. That is, until he became the second.

"You don't know?" he said curiously after a moment, but then wished he hadn't of said that--he obviously didn't know, since he'd asked about it. He fished around for a description of them, "The wizards are the most powerful psychics in the... World I come from."

He glanced through the windows as he passed by. It astounded him on some level to see so much green in once place, "They're in charge of the military, like a government."

Gojyo pondered this in silence for a few minutes as they walked. There was kind of a massive gap in the kid's story, and he had a feeling he knew why.

"So then you don't remember the name your parents gave you?" They're dead, I was taken from them at a very young age, I never knew my parents. It would be one of those, he was pretty sure, but he asked anyway, maybe because he was hoping the kid would say something normal about his parents, and maybe out of a morbid desire to have it confirmed that other worlds did shitty things to kids, too.

[THREAD] looking for patterns in static;

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