☪ Day 7, just before the Reset ⛿ Rooftop of Peaslee Theater
Mischief attracts mischief, apparently. A first meeting that unfolds without any
proper introductions.
⚠
None
There was something immensely less satisfying about stargazing when there were no stars to gaze at.
Nor clouds resting like a lace layer over those non-existent stars.
Nor any moon carrying on its usual path across the sky in its ages-old orbit.
Nor anything of any remote interest to give the dary gray sky of whatever passed for night in Derleth a little pop of pizzazz. Was it even a sky? Perhaps it was just the passing notion of one. Something nameless that everyone had consented to call a ‘sky’ merely because familiarity was a comfort blanket in a place of unknowns.
Ikol exhaled, the large sort of release that came after a deep inhale -- one that often came whilst processing one’s situation and the frustration there wasn’t much to be done to improve it. He dropped his head back against the pillow he’d grabbed from his room, and although it was only minimal comfort against the awkward angles of the Peaslee Theater’s roof, it was better than being jabbed by some errant stonework.
There wasn’t a real plan behind being up here alone and camping out for whatever this reset phenomenon was. Curiosity transected with a willful and stubborn streak when it came to believing others at their word. For all Ikol knew, someone had suggested it was dangerous to be out at ‘night’ because they couldn’t prove that it wasn’t.
He looked at the time on his phone. Shortly now whatever Derleth did at the end of a seven day cycle would unfold. Or fold. Terminology was always a funny business when it came to pocket dimensions, or the spaces between those.
Maybe he should put on some music. Some good moody stuff. It was a moody sort of situation, wasn’t it?
Sylvie's time had been spent dodging the Loki who looked like the Loki she knew, but didn't know her. It was fairly easy when you could literally blend into the shadows. Even easier when it was dark outside. Thousands of apocalypses, and not a single one of them was like this. The sky — if you could call it that — was an inky black that allowed for walking around unnoticed. If you stayed out of the patches of light thrown off by the buildings.
The red head inside the theater looked somewhat familiar, in a maybe I should know her sort of way, but really, Sylvie knew that was another Loki. In another time. And another place. So she skulked into the clothing area of the theater before she was noticed, and when she had given it some time, she headed up the stage's backstage ladder and walkway system.
The woman seemed to be waiting for someone. For a brief moment, Sylvie thought to sit there and watch, but Sylvie was impatient. Sitting still didn't do much for her, except ramp up her anxiety, so she began inspecting the backstage area.
There was a door that led outside. Probably to the roof, she thought. Maybe she could get a better look at that endless void. See if she could figure out what was hidden out there. Something had to be, after all. How would you keep a bunch of people here without some sort of guard dog?
She wasn't expecting to find anyone else up here though, and she would have tripped over him if she hadn't noticed the tiny light from his — too colorful to be a TemPad but she didn't have much of a frame of reference.
Maybe he wouldn't notice if she just scooted around behind him and walked very, very slowly?
There was always the chance that this was someone’s spot, insofar as anyone could claim such a thing in this place. Ikol had taken a certain amount of care to come here unnoticed: invisibility intact, his boots helping him scale the outside brickwork with ease. But now, his coat had been shed and was currently balled up behind his back as a secondary cushion. There wasn’t much of a chance to vanish now that someone had found their way up here and likely spotted him already. The damned glow of his phone had to be illuminating his face against the bleak, murky gray of Derleth’s night.
He looked up -- not with any dire haste, but with an intentionally casual air. If you looked flighty, then people would assume you were trying to run. Implied guilt and so on and blahblah. Besides, he was comfortable where he was.
“Don’t tell me this is your spot?” he asked. He narrowed his eyes, straining a bit to make out her face in the darkness. It wasn’t a face he recognized, which was about par for the course, but that also meant any inherent threat was minimized. He didn’t know her, she didn’t know him. Good.
“Sorry, manners. I’d be happy to share, if you don’t mind.”
No such luck then. At least she'd gotten past the redhead.
Sylvie watched him, as if she was trying to study him. Air of wanton carelessness, which was very clearly an act at the moment. Those types were a dime a dozen, but she didn't recognize him. Then again, she only knew a handful of people, and their faces were etched into her brain forever.
"Just came up here to scope the place out. See what's out there in the void."
She pointed to where the shimmer looked off. There was something strange and almost distended about the spot, but whatever it was was nebulous at best. Maybe it was a wrinkle in the void, a spot to get out of.
"I'm new," she finished, as if to explain, well, everything.
He followed the line of her finger to where the anomaly seemed to break whatever the eye expected to see in that one particular spot, but offered a shrug in response. Tonight’s objective wasn’t to try and poke holes in the backdrop, which was something that probably required a better plan than ‘fuck around and find out.’ He filed that away for further digestion later on. Provided there was a later on, anyway.
“Well, by my account from the last half hour, it’s still despairingly dull.” Knees were drawn in from where Ikol was sprawled. The effect was marginal, since he’d been sprawled like a discarded ragdoll when she arrived, but it did present some additional space should she feel inclined to perch nearby. “White to gray, light to dark. I half expected something ghastly to appear, but…” He gestured loosely at the Void beyond the edge of the theater’s roof. The Void, taking its cue, did absolutely nothing.
“Also new. Me, I mean,” he added. “Having the time of my life, really, and it’s only been a week.”
If Sylvie had a motto, fuck around and find out was definitely among the top runners. To be honest, she was having trouble sitting in one place. She had no TemPad, didn't know where she was, or who she was with — that was a recipe for anxiety as one could get. Sitting still was not something she did well, even with a time displacement collar on.
"Second day for me," she said, coming a little closer to the building's other tenant. Not enough that he could grab a leg to throw her off balance, but it was close enough for her. She divided her attention between the man on the roof and the spot in the void. Perhaps there was something out there she could enchant to figure out a way out of here?
Maybe you should stay here, a little voice piped up. Haven't you already done enough damage?
She sniffed. "Where's everyone sleeping?"
Ikol’s brows drew ever so slightly closer as he connected a line from the admission of a second day to the question of where everyone slept. Maybe there were guesses to be made about why, but the surface conclusion was likely that whatever transpired for her in those two days, sleep was not the most pressing matter. Fair enough. He only played at being at ease around here whenever he thought he was being observed. Which, unfortunately, was any time he set foot outside his room.
“Oh, well, congratulations on missing most -- if not all -- of people getting skewed size-wise. There was a crisis involving squirrels.” He watched her inch in the smallest bit, and although the light was too withered to be much help, he thought he caught a small glint of something in movement. Something gold, perhaps, set against an otherwise inkblot of black. There was a thought to reach for his phone to use the ambient glow of the screen to help, but he left it be.
Maybe a simple conversation with a stranger was just what he needed. A little company that didn’t have any preconceived notions about him. He could leave the edges alone without picking at them.
“If you look over that-a-way,” he told her, sending a hand up and pointing with his thumb behind him, “there are dormitories. Did you not get the welcoming committee’s letter?”
She'd gotten it. Pinged right in the head in the middle of a dramatic moment even. Abudctee of a pocket dimension. Derleth University. Here's where to get clothing. There's the cafeteria. Things don't restock. Here's a map. Oh, and it resets. Sure, okay. She'd buy it. When she saw it.
Nothing about where she'd be sleeping though, and she couldn't sleep around — well, in unfamiliar places she hadn't marked off every spot that was a safe haven.
"You trust everything that gets paper-airplaned at you, then?"
Ikol dropped his hand onto his crooked knee, then turned his gaze ahead at the expanse of gray. “Of course not,” he answered, and his voice was barely tinged with a hint of derision, much to his credit. “But the map was handy. Rather hard to mislead anyone trying to navigate around less than a dozen buildings, anyway.”
How long now until the supposed reset? Maybe he should check the time. Or did it matter? It was coming regardless of his awareness of the seconds or minutes.
“I trust myself. I wasn’t up here to try and catch a sunset, you know.”
I trust myself.
That was closer to Sylvie's true motto, but hers was more like, Trust no one.
Wasn't that the tagline of some famous show? She could have sworn so, but she wasn't particularly interested in figuring out which one. It was probably just a painful reminder of all the stuff she missed out on anyway.
"So what were you doing up here?" She tilted her head to give him her full attention. "It wasn't scoping out the void or you'd have noticed that thing."
In the moment she looked downwards, he looked up.
“That thing hasn’t so much as budged. It might be an un-thing. And, anyway, I’m not fully convinced it’s a thing or un-thing that demands my current attention. No, that looks like a thing or un-thing which future me can contend with. Unless, of course, you sort it first. Finder’s claim.” He wasn’t sure how much she could make out in the darkness, but he gave her a small grin. It wasn’t a total act; he had a fully-stocked store of those crooked smiles ready to hand out whenever it felt apt.
“I was up here because I was told to not be up here. Rumor has it that we should all be safe as houses inside those dorm rooms when the Reset happens. So, naturally, I decided to not be,” Ikol explained.
Sylvie found that curious. And oddly familiar. Maybe a bit too familiar, if she was being honest, which she almost always was. With other people, not necessarily herself. It was difficult to be honest with yourself when you kept running into other versions of yourself who were utterly incapable of telling the truth.
"Is that natural for you? To be contrary?"
It wasn't quite a condescending tone, but it was pointed. The line of questioning was intended to smoke out whether he was another Loki or not. She was beginning to believe she'd been sent to yet another void full of Lokis.
You get a Loki, you get a Loki, and YOU get a Loki! Lokis for everyone.
That might actually be the Time Variance Authority's motto, come to think on it.
The question hit less softly, and Ikol was aware that something had tripped -- not in Derleth at large, but in his mystery guest. He pocketed the grin, then gave a shrug. So much for that.
Why was this so hard? Nothing about this place in the last week had panned out well, even if he knew it was in part because he’d spent countless hours prodding the other Loki in the side for amusement value between fishing for useful answers. Maybe the steely-eyed android he had started attempting to befriend was going to be his best chance at any sort of alliance, after all.
“Curious, let’s call it.” He picked up his phone after reconsidering an earlier decision. If Derleth ran like clockwork, then they had five minutes to spare. “To find out for myself what actually happens. Tell me you weren’t thinking the same, coming up here… likely expecting to be alone.”
"I was trying to find a spot to get a bit of sleep." She hadn't slept since she got there. Dozed once or twice, but unfamiliar sounds and places made things difficult. Anything out of the ordinary, and she was up and about, eyes darting everywhere for perceived threats. "I know where the dorms are, but I'm not sure how you find what room you have."
Or if she even wanted to be in it. But you had to see it and inspect it to find out.
He wasn't exactly wrong though. She didn't know when the reset was actually going to take place. She knew the time, but hadn't bothered to ask anyone which day it was. Had she arrived on day three? Or seven? Apparently, it was day six that she'd showed up.
"Is it true they're magically sealed so that only the person they belong to can get in?"
Ikol hummed a response. His mental count on their allotted time was dipping towards four minutes. That wasn’t nearly enough to offer to help her find her room, if she wanted that at all. The distance she was keeping was noted well. Not that he expected anyone to snag a seat and hang, of course, but maybe a wishful part of him held onto the thought that someone would. One day, someone would.
No dice tonight. Ah, well. More of the same.
“I came to in my room, so that made everything easier. I did try a few doors just to verify --” He dipped his head to the side, feeling moved to amend the statement with a little more truth. “Well, I tried many doors. No luck. It seems that entry is upon express invitation only. I suppose if you want to find yours, you could always take it one by one until something gives.”
He glanced upwards at her, brows raised. “You don’t want to grab a seat?” He pointed to a spot across the way, something that seemed comfortably distanced from him. “There are maybe three and a half minutes before something either does or doesn’t happen. I’ll lend you this for the last stretch.” He then extracted his pillow from behind him and held it up on offer.
"That sounds like a lot of work for a room," she answered, but she was wondering if maybe she couldn't try that. If for no other reason, then she could make sure that the doors wouldn't open to anyone who shouldn't be able to. Magical DNA locks would make her feel a lot safer, in so far as Sylvie could ever feel truly safe.
It was interesting that he could read her standoffishness and hadn't pushed for something closer. It was a nice little bonus, but she had to remember that if she was surrounded by Lokis, then any one of them could turn on the others.
(Even her, she remembered forlornly.)
"Thanks, but I don't need the pillow." She waved a hand, gesturing that he could keep it, while she moved to sit down in the spot that he'd pointed. It was the middle road. Meeting halfway. Compromise. Her idea of comfort though, was different from his. Sylvie could get to her feet faster than he could should something change. "I'd have tried every door I could have even after I'd found mine. Never know what you could find."
Since the pillow was turned down, Ikol tucked it back beneath his head with little fanfare. It was still marginally lumpy thanks to the rough surface behind it -- that, and Derleth didn’t seem to have invested in comfort on the whole. He prodded some of the filling around inside the cushion to try and marginalize the unevenness before forfeiting the effort entirely mere seconds later.
“I’m sure you’ll have every opportunity to go exploring. Honestly, beyond this week’s mishap, Derleth seems a bit sleepy. I know, I know. Bad luck to tempt fate.” He bobbed his knee a bit, some of the restless energy of anticipation starting to make itself known. “If fate can even be tempted. Jury’s out on that one.”
His phone started to chime, and Ikol snatched it up to disable the alarm he’d set earlier on. “That means one minute to go,” he explained, eyes transfixed on the gray canvas above and around Derleth. It didn’t look much different than when he’d climbed up here. Maybe he’d expected it would as it encroached on 1:32 AM.
"Fate is just someone else in control. It's all an illusion, built on nothing more than lies."
Sylvie realized she'd given away information, but to be honest, everyone should know this. Whatever sacred timeline/fate bullshit the TVA spouted, it was not worth the lives of every variant and timeline. Multiversal war didn't have to mean the end, and who knew it there would actually be that war. People knew what was going on now, they could stop it before it began.
Sylvie didn't mean to mirror him, but her own leg was beginning to twitch a little. It wasn't quite bobbing. Maybe he didn't see it in the darkness, but she could feel it. She hated the way the time collars jerked you around from one place to another, rewinding you to a place you'd already been. She wasn't wearing one right now, but this whole place could just be a giant one.
"Guess I'll see you on the other side?"
Her response was exactly the sort that would divert one’s attention from an unnaturally colorless expanse of nothingness right before some forecasted time loop nonsense played out. Ikol raised one brow and turned to look at the woman sitting some distance across from him, but there wasn’t much of an opportunity to crack that nut. Not now.
“Guess so,” he replied, willing himself to turn back to the view before them. His voice was fairly deadpan as he offered one final thought: “Happy New Year.”