capeandcowllogs | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

WHO:

gallitrap
WHERE: out.....
WHEN: sometime in the recent past or near future
WARNINGS: a certain level of hideousness probably
SUMMARY: Two characters get whirled together in a CR smoothie.
FORMAT: input from a keyboard

Czeslaw was out on the town again, wandering at random in his quest to figure out what the hell happened to Fermet and the ship they had been riding on and all of the other alchemists they had been traveling with.

Wherever he was at the moment, it was a locale with a ninety percent forecast for green hair.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Of the teal and pigtailed variety, not curly and pony-tailed today. Ruka was, for reasons of her own, avoiding most of the people she knew who'd been affected by this recent wave of... whatever this was. It was one thing when she'd been reduced in years, it was quite something else to be the one picking up the pieces.

And what stressful pieces they were. It felt like the whole world had gone crazy.

So, rather than head back home or to any of her usual haunts, Ruka was keeping close to building walls in one of the mostly-abandoned business areas (one could never be too careful of cars, after all), trying to sort through how to more capably cope with all this madness— or was, until she spotted a familiar head of dark hair about half a block up the way.

Starting a short jog, she really hoped he hadn't been affected.

Unfortunately for Ruka, her hopes were for naught. The first clue to that end was probably the way he was dressed--his usual suit was gone, replaced with what were basically peasant clothes. He could have stepped out of an illustration from a history book.

It would be worse when he spoke, because then the accent in his usually-neutral voice would be obvious.

It wasn't until she caught up to him that, at the sight of his clothing more than anything, that Ruka realized her error. It was unfortunately too late to turn back, though, because she'd already called out a pleasant, friendly "Hey!" on the last leg of her approach.

Whoops.

Czes turned to face her, looking almost resigned at her appearance. Did everybody in this strange future place sport strange hair and fashions?

"Hello," he said softly. He was sporting one of those awesomely vague European-but-not-British accents. "Can I help you, miss?..."

Yes, but nobody had stranger hair and fashions than Ruka. Be glad she's not wearing short-shorts ~~(animators)~~.

"Oh, no," she replied, trying to blot over her own discomfort with the scenario — it was obvious he didn't recognize her. "It's, well, you looked like someone I know, is all."

"People keep telling me that. Everything seems familiar but I don't understand anything I see. It's so..."

He gestured helplessly. "Mystical. I didn't think the new world would be like this."

He hadn't really meant to babble at her, but once he had his face darkened a shade. It probably wasn't appropriate to spill his guts to a girl.

"I mean, ah, I'm sorry. Miss."

She shook her head quickly, pigtails swaying, and falling into the familiar habit of deflection did more to smooth out her visible discomfort than anything. "You don't have to apologize. You're one of the kids who just got here, aren't you?"

It hurt to lie, but as far as she know, none of these people would remember their stay as children once they returned to their right ages. If they returned, anyway. Nothing was ever permanent in the City, but Ruka was finding it hard to keep hoping.

"Yes, I--"

...was as far as Czeslaw got before Ruka's question really sunk in.

"Sorry. Did a lot of us show up at the same time?"

She nodded, looking thankfully a little less out-of-sorts the longer this conversation went on. Whether it was an actual adjustment or simply bottling up her true feelings was hard to tell.

"Yeah. I don't know how many, really, but it feels like a ton."

Czeslaw relaxed a little as Ruka gained her footing. It was awkward, being accosted on the street, but he could handle it. Ruka being friendly helped that quite a bit.

"With all of us showing up, then...our guardians must be here too."

Alas, that small amount of hope had to be dashed. Ruka shook her head, her arms folding together in front.

"No, I'm sorry. All the new arrivals are kids right now. So, unless who you're looking for is one too, then..." Her expression was apologetic. "They might arrive later, but for right now I don't think you'll find them."

Unfortunately, Czes had a poor understanding of how things like being transported to an alternate dimension worked.

"He wouldn't leave me," he protested. "He has to be somewhere."

"And my brother wouldn't leave me, but he's not here either." She'd been hoping to avoid more conversations like this, but Ruka was very well stuck now. She wanted Benjamin to be a friend, after all, and she couldn't claim that title if she just abandoned him like this.

Of course, considering where she was now...

She tried not to heave a sigh at her own behavior. Get it together, Ruka. You've gone through worse than this.

"Sorry."

"No, I apologize."

Because he had to be honest with himself, and he knew what Fermet's thoughts on the matter would be.

"Fermet would probably scold me for not acting like a gentleman right now if he were here...It was wrong of me to act that way."

And he was trying so hard to not seem totally uneducated. It may or may not have been be working, but. For some reason he felt like he needed to put his best foot forward.

"I'm sorry I'm not the person you were expecting. My name is Czeslaw."

He was smiling tentatively, with no reason to believe that this would be a strange response in this situation.

It was not the name she was expecting him to say, but he was not the first person Ruka had met this very week who'd done the same. A more suspicious person might have assumed that he was lying now, and that his name really was Benjamin -- or perhaps that he had been lying before, and his name really was Czeslaw.

But Ruka didn't like distrusting people she wanted to befriend, and it was an instinct she had been working to stamp down over the years. So perhaps he, like Bruno and his younger identity as Johnny, was simply the same person who went by two different names in his life.

Of course, Czeslaw didn't look that much younger than Benjamin, if at all. Maybe he had amnesia, too?

The momentary surprise that may have shown on her face could have been attributed for hoping for the name of her friend and being wrong; it was washed into a greeting smile. "My name's Ruka. It's nice to meet you, Czeslaw." Even smiling, she shook her head in negation, pigtails swaying. "Don't apologize for my mistake."

Czeslaw swallowed another apology (his first impulse) and instead smiled with a little more confidence.

"It's nice to meet you," he echoed. "You know a lot about this place, don't you?"

It was easy to nod at that, folding her arms comfortably behind her back. "Yep. I've lived here for two years, now. It was a little hard getting settled at first, but I like it here, most of the time."

Times like this excluded, of course, but she didn't want to say it.

"Even though it's so..."

He gestured at the street. Technologically amazing was the kind of term he was looking for.

It took Ruka a second to catch onto his meaning. Having already known Benjamin -- or rather, Czeslaw -- to be from a time period long before this one, it was no surprise to Ruka that he was (again) a bit confounded by the changes that had occurred in the nearly hundred years since his childhood.

Of course, what she didn't know was that this Benjamin-slash-Czeslaw wasn't from the 1930's.

"Not what you're used to?" she asked, trying to ease to the topic. She didn't want to frighten him by implying she knew more about him than he'd told her in this encounter.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(no subject)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

/so terrible./

B]

no subject