[Every time they take a corner, she holds her breath. It's audible. Other than that, she stays quiet and still - a bit stiff, holding on tight - so it might be a bit out of the blue when she replies...]
This is fun.
[holy fuck stop the presses that was a compliment
And there's nothing in her voice to suggest it's not genuine, either.]
[Both eyebrows go up in surprise at the remark, and Erika probably can't see from the angle she's at, but Ryuji's smile is wide, obnoxious as it usually is when he's proud of something, and he picks up the speed a little bit. And... passes right by the elevator.
Oh, shit. He lets the skateboard come to a natural slow down before diverting his feet to enact a change in direction, and uses the sole of his magboots to come to a halt.]
Heh- sorry, I got too excited. Not every day I get to say that I made Erika have some fun.
[He presses the button to call their second ride. It's ride-ception all up in this station, apparently.]
[Ryuji does that thing where he pulls his head forward to get away from the ear pulling, which only serves to have Erika's tug get so much worse, and he's grimacing in pain for his (stupid) mistake.]
[Erika can probably see that it's bright red, all the way from his cartilage to his lobe, and thank god it wasn't the one he had pierced a few months back with the wires that were stuck in his, Ren's, and Akechi's cheek, respectively. Yeah, he's gross.
He presses the elevator button down to the hangar floor.]
What're we doin' down there anyway?
["We" as if he was included on this plan and wasn't just a taxi.]
[When he concedes, she lets go, then pats his head like a dog.......]
Research for Project Mnemosyne. That's the memorial. [Gundam doesn't have a monopoly on pretentious naming! Hers are just classier.] For now, I stashed the files we have on Toto [that's one of her stuffed animals] and left her in the Metaverse. The station systems aren't continuous there, and it got me thinking about using physical distance...like, making a time capsule and throwing it into orbit. I want to know what kind of resources that would take.
[Someone with a lot more dignity would be pissed off at that pat to the head, but Ryuji's... pretty... okay.... with it.... (please keep doing that).
Anyway, as the elevator begins its downward descent, Ryuji listens in to what her plan is. Yeah, Gundam has some pretty fucking stupid names for things, from attacks to just... titling things in general, but he can't complain too much about it. Considering he screams things when he summons his persona, the shounen protag thing is alright.]
Holy shit. You're brilliant.
[He means it when he says it, it's completely without a lick of sarcasm caked into the comment.]
You gonna be okay to get it out of the Metaverse when you're ready for it?
[The door opens wide with its familiar chirp of a sound, indicating that they've arrived at their destination. He settles his skateboard with a foot so that it doesn't slide, gets his balance again and pushes off.
It's good that she has a plan figured out for all of this. Ryuji isn't much help when it comes to anything involving the Metaverse at this point in time, still, where a shadow inside it wants to go after him at the slightest whiff of his existence.]
You thought of everythin', huh? Who's your inside agent?
[He's half expecting Hajime to be the answer, but the thought of him going in there alone is slightly unsettling.]
[This is, in fact, fun. It's been...years, actually, since she's done anything more physically adventurous than taking the train, unless you count zipping around in VR, but virtual sensations aren't quite the same as real ones. The periodic throb of her ankle punctuates but doesn't diminish the feeling of gliding, momentum pulling when they turn or stop, Ryuji shifting to keep his balance.
It's dangerous, but not probably-fatal dangerous. It feels like sneaking in a victory.]
Hmm. Well, they live there, and they always know what I'm up to.
[Is this going to be a riddle? Yes. From what Wormmon could tell her about what Shadows were and what they did in the Metaverse, she suspects anyone experienced with the place must have certain knowledge about them. No harm in verifying that.
[Again, Ryuji could get by with skinned knees and a bruised arm, but he wouldn't live with himself if he came crashing down with Erika on his back- so he's still careful not to take this too far, even though he really, really wants to go faster and throw caution to the wind. It's still experimental for him, too, since he hadn't really touched his skateboard at all, in years, until it decided to show up one day on the station as a grim reminder of what he was missing back home.
Just a little bit further, and the sight of the hangar's entrance is within view. Admittedly, it is kind of fun, and he thinks for a second about doing a loop around the entire deck just for the hell of it. But Erika has stuff she wants to accomplish, and carefully, he starts letting his board slow down naturally without kicking off more velocity to keep the wheels going.
And it's not that much of a riddle for Ryuji, but the quickness at which he gets it is definitely telling, in a way, since he's slow about a lot of stuff, but shadows? He knows shadows. How to kill them, how to steal their hearts, how ambush them. Not so much what makes them tick- cognitive psience wasn't entirely refined back home yet, but he answers pretty simply:]
You got your shadow holdin' onto it?
[Which is a new piece of knowledge for shadows in general, since he's always known the ones of the personal variety doesn't really cooperate that well with their real versions.
Which means, if Erika is on good terms with it... then it means one of two things. She's persona enabled, or a self-actualized person. He has to ask about the former first.]
Hey... you didn't go in there and find a mask on your face, right? One that was stuck on tight and shit? Can't pull it off without ripping yourself to shreds? I know it's an "out there" kinda question, but... Yeah.
[But it's in a relatively new category of "out there", newly invented for station life. It's a midway point between normal, predictable questions and spontaneous, nonsensical ones: things that make no damn sense at first blink but should be assumed to be meaningful, because life is just that weird now.]
But, no. Venus and I fell in accidentally...I met the Shadow. Then we left. Nothing weirder than that happened.
[She looks up and across the hangar when they reach it, and turns her attention back to the ground for dismounting. Careful, careful. She lands gingerly on her toes and moves her weight to her right leg.]
[Crazy is the new normal, that's for sure. Ryuji wanted to make absolutely sure that she wasn't going in there and having to learn all about personas on her own if that were the case; if she was summoning at will and didn't understand things like resistances, things could go south really quick. Not to mention just having one suddenly makes you weak or strong to things you didn't know you were before. Like... being able to absorb electric currents and hear them, or getting knocked on your ass with a really strong gust of wind.]
Oh, cool. Just... sayin' though. You should always bring someone with you when you go in there. It can get kinda dangerous if you don't know what you're lookin' for.
[Anyway!!! Enough talk about what he knows, he wants to see the hangar. He actually... steered clear of it, since he didn't want to accidentally fuck anything up in here. Like launching something out into space that the station desperately needed. Erika gets down off his back and he presses his foot to the backside of his #blessed board, allowing the front end to kick up so that he could carry it.
Now or never, huh?
Leaning forward, he presses the button to open the place up.]
[And yet she used it as a hangout for a while there...
Life is not a coward's game.
The hangar is directly out of Hollywood sci-fi, with ominous bay doors and high-tech clutter. Erika walks to the rail - favoring that foot - and leans against it, peering out.
Man. Check this shit out.]
...We're looking for any kind of documentation, and if not that, then just...some sense of what it takes to keep things safe in vacuum. I don't really know anything about space, besides what people have been talking about around here.
[And the sight of everything here is loud, vibrant, almost alive in a way that Ryuji can't ever recall the station being. He steps forward, looking around at everything that's in here. Those are... ships, right? Immediately it starts to perk his interest up.
And Erika might be content to be up there by the railing, but Ryuji's already got a few steps down the stairs before he remembers, priorities, and turns to her---]
Man, I wanna go check this shit out, but I don't wanna leave ya here. Need a hand down or... you good? [He comes back up the stairs, and leaves his skateboard safely at the top.]
And... yeah, maybe we can find something in here. Looks like there's a ton of stuff to sift through.
[She shakes her head and eases herself down the stairs by the handrail, carefully but without too much visible difficulty.] You can go ahead. Just stay in earshot.
[Like they're not going to the same place anyways? The logical thing to do would be to examine the unmanned crafts. The cool thing to do is to go check out that sweet spaceship. The right choice is obvious.
Hup hup hup.]
...I wonder how much training it takes to fly one of these.
[With Erika settled on being able to do things on her own terms- namely, descending the stairs as well as she can, he nods. He won't stay out of earshot, though, almost like a puppy who went to the park and was trusted without the leash to not run off and sniff all the cool shit out there in the world.
Ryuji's a pretty tactile person, and as he moves forward, his fingers trail along the nearby various forms of spacecraft. There's a pulse in this room, he can almost feel it through his digits, and it's making him really, really fucking excited.]
Seriously...
[Logic is good and all, but, yeah- that's where his mind is at too.]
I don't think I've ever wanted to do something as much in my life as I wanna drive one of these bad boys.
[This is a bad idea.
Probably?
Either way, it's like a small awakening of something he actually wants to do on this station.]
[She hadn't wanted to touch things in here willy-nilly...but Ryuji's doing it, so, might as well.]
This whole time, I've really missed virtual reality. It's like having an extra body for things you couldn't normally do. [She touches a hull seam experimentally. Then draws back, eyes landing on one of the docking mechanisms with interest. That's not what they came here for, though...so she starts moving towards the rows of surface probes instead, walking slowly.] Piloting seems like it could be like that, when I think about it. You're controlling something a lot bigger and stronger than you are.
[He turns to her after his hands have successfully felt the surface of cool steel. Ryuji's pretty immature about a lot of things in life, so it's probably no surprise that he says what he says next.]
I've always kinda wondered what it'd be like to be a mech pilot or a fighter pilot. Yeah, look, I know it's pretty effin' lame to think that way, and it's just manga or anime or some bullshit like that. But.
[This definitely isn't what they came here for.]
Maybe it's more than that. Maybe it's just havin' the power to see things move past you at this point? We've been stuck in this station for months... how nice would it be to just be able to glide out across the stars. Feel movement.
[He's getting too hopeful for his own good here, but maybe it's something she can relate to?]
Like cruisin' on by on a skateboard. You know what I mean?
I'm actually not great with vehicles. Moving that fast in something - I was in a car accident a few years ago, it makes me nervous. Being at the wheel might be different, though. And just seeing something new for once.
[And nothing changes. And that's not much of a sign for the rest of it, but that's - that was something? Erika sneaks a glance back, trying to catch and read his expression.
Hmm.]
I really want that. [While the slightly-inappropriate admissions train is still rolling. Saying it out loud gives her a guilt pang and the irrational, nagging feeling that she shouldn't tell Ryuji this because he might tell someone else and that would be bad.] Going somewhere no one's ever been before, and learning all about it. Wouldn't that be the perfect happy ending, after all this?
[And, you know what - with things like these probes, that might be feasible? Maybe? But there's so much involved in building a settlement, shelter and food and water and everything, all the geography and weather they'd have to map out, everything she's never even had to blink at growing up in freaking Tokyo.
I don't... uh. I dunno, happy endings are kinda hard to believe in. Most times things just end up okay, and okay is a pretty good thing to shoot for. Probably. Does that make sense?
[Because there have been so many times on this station where things looked like they were getting better, only to have something slam into them and try to break their hopes. He'd had a few conversations with people where the concept of being okay with not being okay isn't necessarily a bad thing at all.
That virus was a pretty harrowing experience, and... yeah, he wants to live with the feeling that everything that happens should be done with two feet forward. Who knows what the last minute will really be like. All Ryuji knows is that he doesn't want it to be curled up against the observation deck window, alone and filled with the regrets of all the things he never got to do.
Like piloting a spaceship.
And then the concept of being somewhere where they could figure out a new life? Not exactly ideal under normal circumstances, but he can guess there are a few great fucking people on board that could figure it out.]
Hm... You think we could pull off the hunter gatherer lifestyle down there?
Not, like, snorts, or titters, or smiles silently. It starts with a giggle and crests quickly into a proper burst of laughter, and it doesn't last long, but for the few seconds it does it's kind of dry and kind of sad and kind of happy-relieved.
Erika doesn't cry. There's a sudden heavy feeling right behind her eyeballs, though, and she takes a moment without talking to wander towards the second ship and center and settle so that that doesn't go any further.
The feeling recedes. It relocates. A bearable weight under her sternum.
Ryuji Sakamoto is a pretty great guy.]
Maybe. I can't imagine, exactly, you know I'm from Tokyo too. [And uh city life in the 2010s is. Y'know. You get used to certain things.
Erika sits on the hangar dock, dangling her feet in the well between the walkway and the ship.]
...Sakamoto, can I tell you a story? You'd have to promise not to get...I don't want to hear any "I'm sorry" or anything.
[Listen, if there's an opportunity to walk around in a loincloth picking berries as an option to this other extreme end of civilization (emphasis on the "end" here), then Ryuji's pretty chill with taking that. Oooga booga.
But he figures that whatever is down there planet side, that there's a lot more to see and do than squandering away days to figure out how to trick the replicators into making takoyaki taste like actual octopus balls and not just... halfway there, stuck at the balls part.
The sound of laughter filling the hangar, though, is definitely a welcome reprieve from its otherwise cold interior.]
Yeah, yeah. I'll keep my please's and thank you's toned down too.
Erika swings her feet and swings her feet and puts her elbows on her legs and thinks, quietly, strange pause stretching out after she'd been the one to bring up the topic.
...Maybe she should just jump right to the end?]
Before we came here - things aren't like this anymore. But before, back home, I was - I'd been dying for a while.
[Putting it in those terms is something she's thought to herself on and off but never said, and it feels...wrong. Like someone should scold her.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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This is fun.
[holy fuck stop the presses that was a compliment
And there's nothing in her voice to suggest it's not genuine, either.]
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Oh, shit. He lets the skateboard come to a natural slow down before diverting his feet to enact a change in direction, and uses the sole of his magboots to come to a halt.]
Heh- sorry, I got too excited. Not every day I get to say that I made Erika have some fun.
[He presses the button to call their second ride. It's ride-ception all up in this station, apparently.]
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are they stopped yet?
Are they - okay good because as soon as they're stopped Erika's pulling his ear.]
Who said you had to say anything?
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OY!!!
[THOSE EARS ARE SEMI PRECIOUS MATERIALS.]
Alright, alright. You win. I'll shut up! I'll shut up, c'mon, leggo.
[Erika can probably see that it's bright red, all the way from his cartilage to his lobe, and thank god it wasn't the one he had pierced a few months back with the wires that were stuck in his, Ren's, and Akechi's cheek, respectively. Yeah, he's gross.
He presses the elevator button down to the hangar floor.]
What're we doin' down there anyway?
["We" as if he was included on this plan and wasn't just a taxi.]
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Research for Project Mnemosyne. That's the memorial. [Gundam doesn't have a monopoly on pretentious naming! Hers are just classier.] For now, I stashed the files we have on Toto [that's one of her stuffed animals] and left her in the Metaverse. The station systems aren't continuous there, and it got me thinking about using physical distance...like, making a time capsule and throwing it into orbit. I want to know what kind of resources that would take.
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Anyway, as the elevator begins its downward descent, Ryuji listens in to what her plan is. Yeah, Gundam has some pretty fucking stupid names for things, from attacks to just... titling things in general, but he can't complain too much about it. Considering he screams things when he summons his persona, the shounen protag thing is alright.]
Holy shit. You're brilliant.
[He means it when he says it, it's completely without a lick of sarcasm caked into the comment.]
You gonna be okay to get it out of the Metaverse when you're ready for it?
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It's good that she has a plan figured out for all of this. Ryuji isn't much help when it comes to anything involving the Metaverse at this point in time, still, where a shadow inside it wants to go after him at the slightest whiff of his existence.]
You thought of everythin', huh? Who's your inside agent?
[He's half expecting Hajime to be the answer, but the thought of him going in there alone is slightly unsettling.]
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It's dangerous, but not probably-fatal dangerous. It feels like sneaking in a victory.]
Hmm. Well, they live there, and they always know what I'm up to.
[Is this going to be a riddle? Yes. From what Wormmon could tell her about what Shadows were and what they did in the Metaverse, she suspects anyone experienced with the place must have certain knowledge about them. No harm in verifying that.
Get to riddlin'!]
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Just a little bit further, and the sight of the hangar's entrance is within view. Admittedly, it is kind of fun, and he thinks for a second about doing a loop around the entire deck just for the hell of it. But Erika has stuff she wants to accomplish, and carefully, he starts letting his board slow down naturally without kicking off more velocity to keep the wheels going.
And it's not that much of a riddle for Ryuji, but the quickness at which he gets it is definitely telling, in a way, since he's slow about a lot of stuff, but shadows? He knows shadows. How to kill them, how to steal their hearts, how ambush them. Not so much what makes them tick- cognitive psience wasn't entirely refined back home yet, but he answers pretty simply:]
You got your shadow holdin' onto it?
[Which is a new piece of knowledge for shadows in general, since he's always known the ones of the personal variety doesn't really cooperate that well with their real versions.
Which means, if Erika is on good terms with it... then it means one of two things. She's persona enabled, or a self-actualized person. He has to ask about the former first.]
Hey... you didn't go in there and find a mask on your face, right? One that was stuck on tight and shit? Can't pull it off without ripping yourself to shreds? I know it's an "out there" kinda question, but... Yeah.
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[But it's in a relatively new category of "out there", newly invented for station life. It's a midway point between normal, predictable questions and spontaneous, nonsensical ones: things that make no damn sense at first blink but should be assumed to be meaningful, because life is just that weird now.]
But, no. Venus and I fell in accidentally...I met the Shadow. Then we left. Nothing weirder than that happened.
[She looks up and across the hangar when they reach it, and turns her attention back to the ground for dismounting. Careful, careful. She lands gingerly on her toes and moves her weight to her right leg.]
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Oh, cool. Just... sayin' though. You should always bring someone with you when you go in there. It can get kinda dangerous if you don't know what you're lookin' for.
[Anyway!!! Enough talk about what he knows, he wants to see the hangar. He actually... steered clear of it, since he didn't want to accidentally fuck anything up in here. Like launching something out into space that the station desperately needed. Erika gets down off his back and he presses his foot to the backside of his #blessed board, allowing the front end to kick up so that he could carry it.
Now or never, huh?
Leaning forward, he presses the button to open the place up.]
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[And yet she used it as a hangout for a while there...
Life is not a coward's game.
The hangar is directly out of Hollywood sci-fi, with ominous bay doors and high-tech clutter. Erika walks to the rail - favoring that foot - and leans against it, peering out.
Man. Check this shit out.]
...We're looking for any kind of documentation, and if not that, then just...some sense of what it takes to keep things safe in vacuum. I don't really know anything about space, besides what people have been talking about around here.
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And Erika might be content to be up there by the railing, but Ryuji's already got a few steps down the stairs before he remembers, priorities, and turns to her---]
Man, I wanna go check this shit out, but I don't wanna leave ya here. Need a hand down or... you good? [He comes back up the stairs, and leaves his skateboard safely at the top.]
And... yeah, maybe we can find something in here. Looks like there's a ton of stuff to sift through.
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[Like they're not going to the same place anyways? The logical thing to do would be to examine the unmanned crafts. The cool thing to do is to go check out that sweet spaceship. The right choice is obvious.
Hup hup hup.]
...I wonder how much training it takes to fly one of these.
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Ryuji's a pretty tactile person, and as he moves forward, his fingers trail along the nearby various forms of spacecraft. There's a pulse in this room, he can almost feel it through his digits, and it's making him really, really fucking excited.]
Seriously...
[Logic is good and all, but, yeah- that's where his mind is at too.]
I don't think I've ever wanted to do something as much in my life as I wanna drive one of these bad boys.
[This is a bad idea.
Probably?
Either way, it's like a small awakening of something he actually wants to do on this station.]
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[She hadn't wanted to touch things in here willy-nilly...but Ryuji's doing it, so, might as well.]
This whole time, I've really missed virtual reality. It's like having an extra body for things you couldn't normally do. [She touches a hull seam experimentally. Then draws back, eyes landing on one of the docking mechanisms with interest. That's not what they came here for, though...so she starts moving towards the rows of surface probes instead, walking slowly.] Piloting seems like it could be like that, when I think about it. You're controlling something a lot bigger and stronger than you are.
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I've always kinda wondered what it'd be like to be a mech pilot or a fighter pilot. Yeah, look, I know it's pretty effin' lame to think that way, and it's just manga or anime or some bullshit like that. But.
[This definitely isn't what they came here for.]
Maybe it's more than that. Maybe it's just havin' the power to see things move past you at this point? We've been stuck in this station for months... how nice would it be to just be able to glide out across the stars. Feel movement.
[He's getting too hopeful for his own good here, but maybe it's something she can relate to?]
Like cruisin' on by on a skateboard. You know what I mean?
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She gives it some consideration. Imagination.]
I'm actually not great with vehicles. Moving that fast in something - I was in a car accident a few years ago, it makes me nervous. Being at the wheel might be different, though. And just seeing something new for once.
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[He scratches the back of his head. He doesn't really know what to say here, and maybe he doesn't have to.]
Yeah, maybe actually directin' where the thing is supposed to go might be better. Sucks that we can't, like... test that out in a game or something.
[Keep going with this line of thought, Ryuji.]
But there's an entire world down below to discover. We could be, like, adventurers, explorers, map makers. Anything we wanted to be.
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Hmm.]
I really want that. [While the slightly-inappropriate admissions train is still rolling. Saying it out loud gives her a guilt pang and the irrational, nagging feeling that she shouldn't tell Ryuji this because he might tell someone else and that would be bad.] Going somewhere no one's ever been before, and learning all about it. Wouldn't that be the perfect happy ending, after all this?
[And, you know what - with things like these probes, that might be feasible? Maybe? But there's so much involved in building a settlement, shelter and food and water and everything, all the geography and weather they'd have to map out, everything she's never even had to blink at growing up in freaking Tokyo.
She raps softly on one of the probe hulls.]
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[Because there have been so many times on this station where things looked like they were getting better, only to have something slam into them and try to break their hopes. He'd had a few conversations with people where the concept of being okay with not being okay isn't necessarily a bad thing at all.
That virus was a pretty harrowing experience, and... yeah, he wants to live with the feeling that everything that happens should be done with two feet forward. Who knows what the last minute will really be like. All Ryuji knows is that he doesn't want it to be curled up against the observation deck window, alone and filled with the regrets of all the things he never got to do.
Like piloting a spaceship.
And then the concept of being somewhere where they could figure out a new life? Not exactly ideal under normal circumstances, but he can guess there are a few great fucking people on board that could figure it out.]
Hm... You think we could pull off the hunter gatherer lifestyle down there?
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Not, like, snorts, or titters, or smiles silently. It starts with a giggle and crests quickly into a proper burst of laughter, and it doesn't last long, but for the few seconds it does it's kind of dry and kind of sad and kind of happy-relieved.
Erika doesn't cry. There's a sudden heavy feeling right behind her eyeballs, though, and she takes a moment without talking to wander towards the second ship and center and settle so that that doesn't go any further.
The feeling recedes. It relocates. A bearable weight under her sternum.
Ryuji Sakamoto is a pretty great guy.]
Maybe. I can't imagine, exactly, you know I'm from Tokyo too. [And uh city life in the 2010s is. Y'know. You get used to certain things.
Erika sits on the hangar dock, dangling her feet in the well between the walkway and the ship.]
...Sakamoto, can I tell you a story? You'd have to promise not to get...I don't want to hear any "I'm sorry" or anything.
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But he figures that whatever is down there planet side, that there's a lot more to see and do than squandering away days to figure out how to trick the replicators into making takoyaki taste like actual octopus balls and not just... halfway there, stuck at the balls part.
The sound of laughter filling the hangar, though, is definitely a welcome reprieve from its otherwise cold interior.]
Yeah, yeah. I'll keep my please's and thank you's toned down too.
[He's a polite boy.]
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Erika swings her feet and swings her feet and puts her elbows on her legs and thinks, quietly, strange pause stretching out after she'd been the one to bring up the topic.
...Maybe she should just jump right to the end?]
Before we came here - things aren't like this anymore. But before, back home, I was - I'd been dying for a while.
[Putting it in those terms is something she's thought to herself on and off but never said, and it feels...wrong. Like someone should scold her.]
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