insusurro | ARRIVAL.

𝑰𝑵𝑺𝑼𝑺𝑼𝑹𝑹𝑶: 𝑨 𝑾𝑶𝑹𝑳𝑫 𝑾𝑰𝑻𝑯𝑶𝑼𝑻 𝑫𝑬𝑺𝑻𝑰𝑵𝒀

𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄 you moved under your own power. The shadows that dwelt in the corners of your vision vanished, the world is bright and the shackles of destiny fall from your liberated limbs.

You're free.

But before you can take that next step, before you can alter your fate, a terrible howling fills your ears. It's an ill wind full of malice, one that rips you off of your feet and back, back, back from this chance to seize your destiny. The shadows coalesce into a single entity, its hands locking around your throat. It cannot let this stand.

You think that maybe this is the end. The world goes dark as it rushes past you, this is the end.

Except you wake to the feeling of rain on your skin.

The cliffs around you bare the scars of a fierce battle. Before you, a massive city faces the sea. Behind you, greenery sprawls for miles. Midgar has never looked so beautiful, but it has also never looked so unlike itself. The Sister Ray points proudly towards the sea. A bustling city crawls out from its shadow, looking wealthier and more robust than the slums ever did. You don't have long to ponder this.

Because you aren't alone. Others are coming to, looking just as confused and uncertain as you do. Some are battleworn and bloody, as if they were pulled from a fierce battle. Others appear to be in perfect health, as if they were simply pulled from a long slumber, though no less confused and lost. The howling that filled your slowly begins to fade, and as it does, the rain begins to clear.

𝐌𝐈𝐃𝐆𝐀𝐑 is within a few hours walking distance. 𝐊𝐀𝐋𝐌 lies not much further in the opposite direction. There is no presence urging you to walk to one or the other, no voice from on high telling you what path your feet should walk. Underneath this infinite blue sky the choice to go - or to stay - is entirely yours.

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐃𝐎 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐈𝐓?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Having hotwired his own fair share of vehicles, he's not clueless about what's going on down there, but he plays it cool because he has an objective here. One this person could either help him accomplish or hinder it. It all depended on how they responded to subtle intimidation.]

It looks to me like you've got it all sorted out already.

[No one ever stops to talk to a stranger and expects to see themselves staring back. Sure, in a figurative way Rude can see himself in anyone, but never has he literally looked at another man and thought, wake me up from this dream i m m e d i a t e l y.]

What the hell is --

Who the hell are--

[To make matters worse they both seem to be following the same script. Maybe something unnatural was going on, but on the other hand those two questions were things anyone would want to know in a situation like this. Maybe they just looked similar from far away, so Rude takes a couple steps closer and can peer through the shades to see eyes that looked just like his own. Part of him doesn't want their questions to overlap again, so he waits a little longer before speaking. Once he's figured the things he wants to say are not generic enough to be copied or anticipated.]

Is this some kind of rare materia? Mimicry or something? [Rude reaches behind him to the holster strapped to his back underneath his jacket to pull a gun at the man who looks exactly like him. He's close enough now that he's partially stepping over long legs to get in close. How do you kill a man that looks just like you?] Get up. Get into the passenger seat. We're leaving, and you're going to answer all my questions.

[ Frustration wells up inside of him--and on some level, it's almost comical, the way that their sentences both stop and start as though they're moving from one body to the next, from one pair of lips shaped decidedly similar as the next, and it's easy to get lost in the surreal nature of it all, to look at himself standing there and realize that this is how everyone else sees him, this is the person that they watch go by while he's inside of himself. It's peculiar and entirely different from seeing himself in a mirror: this is a full bodied carbon copy that stares and moves and gestures just like he might.

For a moment, he wonders if maybe it's that. One of those silly funhouse mirrors, some kind of illusion; it wouldn't be the first time there'd been magic he couldn't quite explain. But as he tries to move his arms to see if the other him's arms will move, too, he realizes that he's still gripping that piece of the car console, and considers swinging out with it, even as the other him gets close.

He drops it, once he's cornered. But ah, what a decidedly him thing to do: take control of the situation, pull out the gun in the holster that he knows is there because it's where his would be, provided he hadn't left it in the chopper or wherever it had fallen out to, and he almost takes it seriously--almost, except when he holds his hands up it's to gesture, faintly, with one finger to the gun.]

Your safety's on. [ This, of course, is liable to get him shot once the other him actually flicks it off, but--he can't help it, his lips threatening to break into a smile.]

Not to mince words, but I did just get the car running. Maybe you should be the passenger? [ Still, he will, for now, do as he's told--he straightens out on his feet, folds an arm up to adjust his glasses, and then makes his way around the front of the vehicle, slow and almost lazy, until he can reach for the passenger door, click it open, and then drop inside the car.]

[Nothing about this is normal, but he has to treat this like any other unexpected complication to a mission. It's not quite a real mission, but he needs transportation to find his partner--and the rest of the Turks, of course.

Whatever magic or tech this was would have to be sorted out later because they were already wasting time. He doesn't know how long that engine will run and he wants to be out of the city as soon as possible. Rude is ready to reach down and grab the imposter by his collar with his free hand when he points out that the safety is on and Rude keeps as cool an expression as he could manage.]

Didn't think you'd give me a reason to take it off.

[And more reasonably, how could he shoot someone with his face? It wasn't something he could really do unless he was pressured, but Rude slides the safety off to show he means business, resting his finger gingerly on the trigger since this guy was clearly willing to test him.

He gets into the driver's seat and puts on his seatbelt with one hand, holding the gun at his other self with the other. There were things dangling at his feet but the engine was going so he waits for the other man to do the same so they can go.]

Put on your seatbelt.

[Rude lowers his hand to press the muzzle of the gun against the meaty part of the other Rude's inner thigh, exactly where his femoral artery ran. Safety first or bleed out.]

Now put it in drive and tell me who you are and why you're impersonating me.

[ He's touched a nerve--as he imagines that he would, given how he might react to such a declaration, and it's obvious that he's gone a little too far; the safety off, that gun presses up against the inside of his thigh and he looks down at it, once, and then back up at his doppelganger, and his shoulders lift and fall with a breath that could be construed as a sigh of defeat, though he doesn't know that he actually means it. If this stranger really is some mimicry of him, then he doesn't want to risk angering him; even though he imagines that it would be truly hard for one of himself to actually severely harm another of himself without feeling sorry about it.

What the hell are these thoughts, anyway? It's almost funny, if he could find it in him to laugh.

Instead, he reaches with one hand, drags and stretches the seatbelt until it clicks into place and then he's holding up both hands, wryly placating, to show that they're empty and that he hasn't smuggled out something from between the seats, as much as he wishes that he could. He obeys in silence, drags the car into drive and then nods his head towards the windshield because they're moving and because even someone pretending to be him can't be that good of a driver to be able to maneuver a car without looking at the damn road. ]

I'm not impersonating you. Seems like that's the question I wanted to ask you. [ Calmly, almost matter-of-fact.] You know who I am, as plain as I know who you are.

[ Even though it doesn't make sense, at all.] Do you remember coming here? --Hey, watch the curb.

[The only think keeping this from being too weird is the fact that this isn't the world he knows. Midgar hadn't been the city he remembered, so it's possible that somehow by some means he was transported elsewhere all together. A very cheap knock-off version of his own reality. And if that could have been true (it was), then there's no reason this reality's version of him could have been the man in the passenger seat.

Despite that realization slowly dawning on him, he doesn't quite ease up with the threatening positioning of his gun, or his line of questioning. It's hard to drive when he keeps glancing over to a profile view of himself. He swerves once just in time to avoid another vehicle, and again when he's straying out of his lane.]

If we're both the same person, then you know I don't need this to kill you. [Rude lowers his gun, putting the safety back in place and returning the thing to his holster. For now.]

I remember being in a helicopter with Reno and Rufus. I don't remember how I got here just that I was being attacked by those cloaked ghost looking things. I woke up outside Midgar. [Where was he even going? He doesn't know but he steps on the gas, eyes forward and focused so their ride is a lot smoother.] What about you?

ARRIVAL.

okay my turn to be intimidated

never be intimidated by me!

can't help it, also i'm sorry

NEVER BE SORRY EITHER ♥

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