InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I live in a giant bucket!"

[ homura ] (resetting) wrote in silverage,
@ 2011-08-08 18:07:00

Entry tags:

!log, homura akemi, rose tyler

Who: Homura Akemi and Rose Tyler.
When: Monday afternoon.
Where: Streets, somewhat near Washington Square Park.
What: Homura's arrival.
Rating/status: E, Ongoing.

As she had done so many times before, Homura reached for the gear on her shield, and there was a snap and a rushing of sand, and the world around her melted away. The whipping winds, that had caught her hair and thrown it back and forth across her face, persisted for a fraction of a second longer than the actual sight of the place––of the time––she was leaving behind. Then everything was still. That time was gone, too; the yellow, unnatural light no longer blinded her and the sound of the distant storm was replaced by the complete silence of that few moments of transit. And the ruins faded - what had once been her city, crushed beneath what had once been her best friend. "She'll have destroyed the planet within a few days."

But then––when she expected to be in her bed again, to wake up on that same morning again and have another month to try and do it right this time, to try and try and try fiercely to find the one way out of the maze she was trapped in––no, everything was wrong, it was loud and bright and smelled of a hundred strange smells and this was impossible. But all these thoughts happened so fast––Homura only had a brief second to hear a blaring, brassy honking sound behind her, to spin around and discover the front of a very old car speeding towards her, before the gears on her shield spun once more, and everything froze in place.

In the greyish light of the world sans time, everything was clearer. The old car, absolutely gargantuan to her modern Japanese sensibilities, was mere feet from where she was standing. Which was in the middle of a street, she realized. A street packed with people in odd clothing, buildings far too tall for her own town, so many of them foreigners that she must be somewhere that wasn't Japan. She took a few breaths; her heart was still pounding and her hair was still hanging into her eyes; but within a few breaths (you couldn't call them seconds, for there were no seconds when time was stopped) she was composed enough to start moving, out of the street, picking up into a light run until she got into an alleyway and ducked behind a dumpster. She let the sand flow again from her timer; time resumed. Light and color and motion all came back, as if the pause button on the remote had been hit once more, and the car that had been about to kill her braked suddenly––and seeing nothing there at all, rolled back to speed and vanished down the street. Some people were staring, but… seeing as no teenage girl had been killed, and none had dived out of the way or been pushed to safety, they must have just assumed they'd been seeing things. For they seemed to go about their business quickly enough. Homura, standing in the alley, with her partial vantage on the street, was still breathing heavily.

What was this? What was happening? Exhausted from the fight she'd just spectacularly lost - again, one more time, lost and because of that lost Madoka – and emotionally drained and suddenly feeling almost like she had whiplash purely from confusion, she couldn't come up with an explanation. Was it a witch's barrier that she'd somehow fallen into? It wasn't––whatever dying looked like, she was pretty sure it wasn't this, because she still had her soul gem (she could feel it on the back of her hand) and you didn't have near misses with car accidents in the afterlife. Had she done something wrong? Had she used her power wrong - had it taken her somewhere else instead of somewhen else? But wishes were infallible. It couldn't go wrong, could it? It just didn't…

She slumped against the wall of the alley and let her transformation go; her soul gem reverted to its form as a ring on her middle finger, and her clothing changed into the typical Mitakihara uniform; completely normal for her, of course. Her hairband was still gone, it must have broken in the fight, and her hair was a complete mess. After a moment of peering out onto the street, waiting for something to go wrong - minions to show up, things to change, any signs to reveal to her that this was no more than the work of a very elaborate, strange witch – she tried to brush her bangs to the side as best she could, and stepped out into the pedestrian flow of the street. She wasn't making a plan more than a step or two ahead yet, but she did at least have that one step: find out where the hell she was.

(Post a new comment)

pinkandyellow
2011-08-09 07:26 pm UTC (link)

Rose exited the small cafe, her hands wrapped around a steaming cup of tea. She stepped to the side and leaned against the wall so that she could remove the cap and blow air on the hot liquid to cool it down. It had taken her forever to find a decent cuppa and even then the little bistro, nestled between a hardware store and an Italian restaurant, was still well out of her way. She had only found it by chance. A sudden downpour that had forced her inside one June afternoon, once again delaying her mad search for the Doctor and Jack. She tried to go back when she could, having yet to find another establishment that held the same satisfying quality, but her visits were rare, usually saved for the odd day off.

It was the sound of a car horn, followed by the screeching noise of a quick stop that broke Rose's gaze. Her eyes drifting from the tea she had been staring into and darting toward the busy street. The driver looked perplexed, and cars honked annoyingly from behind him, wishing for him to move on and to resume the proper flow of traffic. Strange, but nothing that would explain why he had stopped in the first place. Her eyes searched the area curiously, stopping when she caught a glimpse of an ally across the way. There was a young woman slumped against the wall. From a distance, it was easy to tell that she didn't look like the typical New Yorker. Her frazzled appearance, something that Rose had seen far too many times before, spoke of someone who hadn't expected to find herself in New York at all.

Rose watched her a moment longer before making a snappy decision. She looked both ways before crossing the street, making sure to watch the woman's movements as she exited the alley. It probably wasn't the smartest decision, but Rose could only think of her own strange arrival in New York. She, of course, had some experience with time travel. But even then, without the Doctor to guide her or the TARDIS to escape to, things had been confusing. Overwhelming, really. She had been forced to figure everything out on her own. She didn't see why that had to be the case here, so she rushed to catch up to her, waiting until she wasn't too far behind so that she didn't have to shout down the sidewalk.

“Hey,” said Rose softly, getting the woman's attention with a gentle touch to the shoulder. “Sorry, just . . . Well, it looked like you might need this.” The cup of tea was held out in front of her, putting distance between her and the woman. She had done her best to come off as non-threatening as possible, but there was no way to predict how this stranger might react to her presence. “Just tea,” she added. “It's New York,” she rolled her eyes, “America. And my id says I'm not exactly in a position to buy anything stronger.” The drinking age was currently lower than most states but she still had no way to prove that she was over 18. Not when she wouldn't be born for another twenty-three years. Not that she was out to get drunk, mind you, but it would have been nice to have the option.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

resetting
2011-08-10 01:51 am UTC (link)

She didn't notice that one of the many people on the sidewalk was coming close to her until she'd already been tapped on the shoulder – but when she felt the tap, Homura turned to look back over her shoulder, startled at first. She should have been watching better––paying better attention––but she was off. Everything was off. At least the blonde western woman didn't seem like a threat, holding out that cup of steaming hot tea. Homura's first instinct, the jump in her stomach and the fight-or-flight response, eased, and she managed to only look mildly shocked.

It did take her a moment to formulate an actual thought, and to put that thought into words, though––"New York?" America, New York, to Homura's somewhat patchy understanding of North American geography and culture they were pretty much one and the same. She had stopped walking by now, and turned her entire body to face the woman in front of her. "But that's––it's not, I'm not sue it's even possible. How did you…" Know to answer Homura's question? Know that she could really use some kind of comfort just then? Even if she would not admit it to herself, she probably really could have used a comforting cup of tea (even if she defined tea a bit differently than Rose did). Or how did she know that Homura was lost, and hadn't even the faintest idea where she was, aside from 'somewhere Western'. She spared a worried glance for the street - had this woman seen, had she noticed something unusual? People usually didn't, when magic was afoot - magical girls and witches tended to choose isolated places for their battles, by and large, and to retreat inside their own little worlds, and so Homura had never actually had to come to terms with trying to keep her powers a secret.

(And there had been that time when, giddy and young and stupid, she'd announced it to Madoka's entire class. But the less she thought about that time, the better.)

The tea was still hanging there - Homura didn't want to be rude and refuse, so she reached out with both hands and accepted the cup, bending head and shoulders in a slight bow. She took a breath and demanded of herself that she grab hold of herself and get recomposed; gain composure enough to be polite, to fall back on stock language to see her through while she was still completely lost; "You didn't need to go to the trouble, but I appreciate it."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

pinkandyellow
2011-08-10 02:53 am UTC (link)

Rose shook her head and offered a smile. “Oh, no trouble at all.” Rose scolded herself for not paying more attention during their stay in Kyoto, briefly wondering if she was expected to bow her head in turn. But even then that trip had been years in the past and had involved mostly running. So she opted not to, thinking it would probably be ruder if she tried it only to discover it wasn't proper or polite. “I'm Rose, by the way,” she added, choosing instead to offer a polite gesture of her own in the form of a handshake.

“It's . . .” Rose paused and searched for the right word to answer her earlier question, “common, I suppose, for people to turn up here. I'm not . . . I didn't come here on my own. I was pulled here.” From a space ship she almost added, but stopped short, figuring that might just confuse her even more. “Alone at first, and then a few of my friends showed up not too long ago. But they're from my future. People show up from different times.” Rose forced herself to stop then. It would be so easy to just let all the information she had gathered spill out. Like how the year was actually 1964, and how everyone was trapped within the confines of the city, and that no one knew exactly what brought them there. But each blow would likely be more devastating than the last, and while Rose had no plans to lie to the girl, she knew that it was not something you told someone while on a busy sidewalk.

So instead she looked around and spotted an empty park bench. She gestured toward it and then brought the hand back to her chin. “Do you mind if we sit for this? Or there's a cafe across the way if you'd rather.” She looked tired to Rose, who knew how overwhelming (not to mention distracting) the crowds and rush of traffic could be when you weren't at your most alert.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

resetting
2011-08-10 03:24 am UTC (link)

That observation, Rose had completely right; Homura was tired, bordering on the boundaries of exhausted, and with every new piece of information that she got, she felt herself farther and farther away from being able to lie down and sleep like a corpse. She tried to keep her focus on what Rose was telling her –– instead of on how nice it would be to sleep. She furrowed her brow a little bit to do it; "You were pulled here? I thought I'd come here by accident, but." She left off the rest of what she'd meant to say - but someone could have done it to her, instead.

She cast a probing look at Rose's hands; the Westerner was older than her, but she could have been still a teenager, Homura had never been good at judging that kind of thing with foreigners. Was there a ring? Was there a sigil? Could she be Puella Magi, a magical girl, too? But she saw nothing of the kind; when she glanced back up, she followed Rose's eyes to the park bench. "Sit? I don't need to," she lied; she paused to consider it, because Rose was right now seeming like her best chance of an explanation, "but I can oblige. There's more to tell?" she guessed, or perhaps it was more wishful thinking. Because, damn it all, she wanted to know what was going on. The lack of anything completely inexplicably weird was continuing to rule out the idea that this was all created by a witch. So… what was it?

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Rose," she added––afterthought, but still polite, appending an honorific since Rose hadn't given her surname––"I'm Homura Akemi." It was all very nice; even though she maintained a sort of cool distance, almost professional despite her young appearance, she realized this might have been the nicest and most social she'd been in rather a long time. She moved to the bench, settled down, feeling muscles aching just a little.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

pinkandyellow
2011-08-10 03:39 pm UTC (link)

“I was. Yeah. But I'm not sure this was where I was meant to go when it happened.” She was getting off track though. Having had time to think about it, Rose had an idea of where she was supposed to have ended up. The knowledge that the events of Satellite Five had been, or maybe would be, so close in her future was not a pleasant thought. So she swallowed and moved on. “It's just . . . common, like I said. Pulled. Crash landed. Took a wrong turn.” Rose bit her thumb and stared off to the side for a moment. “I don't think it really matters. Too many people have turned up in New York accidentally for there not to be some other force involved.”

Glad that she relented, Rose began to lead them to the bench. “There's more,” she agreed. “But it's not all bad.” Well, it was, but Rose felt the need to add a glimmer of something in there so that maybe she would know that she wouldn't be completely on her own as the information continued. “There's a place called the Welcome Center for people like us. It's free and they help you get started until you can find a job and another place to stay.” Rose wasn't overly fond of the way it had just popped up, but there was no need to tell her that. They helped people in need and, at the moment, that was all that really mattered.

Rose sat down and wiped her hands on her jeans, having opted for something more casual outside of work. “It's just Rose, really. You don't have to . . . Rose works just fine.” Miss Rose sounded odd to her. Like she was old or stuffy. “But Homura.” Rose repeated the name slowly at first, worried she might mispronounce it, then smiled. “It's nice to meet you as well, Homura. Do you mind if I ask. . .” she paused. Rose wanted to ask her age. She seemed rather young, but thought better of it. “When you're from? The year before you came here, yeah?”

Rose gestured to the cars and then some of the people who were wearing outfits more suited to the time than Rose herself was. “I'm not sure if you would notice the difference or not. But all this . . . it's a bit outdated where I'm from.” She cleared her throat then decided it was best to rip the band-aid right off. “2006. That was the year for me. But now it's 1964.”

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

resetting
2011-08-10 11:15 pm UTC (link)

She was prepared to respond to the first things Rose had said - the discomfort at being asked to use a perfect stranger's first name, and having her own name used, but people always said the West was informal like that. And. Really, of all the things she could complain of, this was so low on her list. She was still cupping the tea in her hands; she was about to tell Rose what year she came from, but the words stilled in her mouth.

1964.

Her mouth even hung a little open as she stared at Rose; Homura didn't even fully process that Rose was from several years in her past, because the bizarreness of the situation was only intensifying. That explained the weird garments, the huge car, things she had written off to the strangeness of the west or to this all being an elaborate barrier with a very meticulous witch waiting in the heart of it, somewhere. (There still could be, she supposed, but the thought was meek and small and easily overwhelmed by her shock.) "Nineteen.... sixty four? That's… but that's sixty years ago," there was no way she could have jumped back sixty years. Could she jump forward again? Could her power take her home? She'd never gone forward before. Her eyes were still wide; she let out a breath and tipped her head back a little. "That's so long," she finally declared. "I won't even be born for... I'm not even alive in this century. I'm from 2015."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

pinkandyellow
2011-08-11 02:04 am UTC (link)

That would have to make her, at the very most, only 15. God, she was so young. Which was saying something, considering Rose's own age, but at least she had some experience with this sort of thing. Plus, she had people with her now like Jack and Donna and even the Doctor. But Homura . . . Rose could only imagine how difficult this was going to be for her.

“I know,” Rose agreed, sighing slightly into the distance before forcing herself to turn back to the girl next to her. “It's a lot. Especially since we're stuck in the city. No rules stopping us or anythin'. Just stuck. Even . . . I travel with a man called the Doctor. He's here now. Showed up not too long ago.” She paused, ever so briefly, to swallow the qualifier that seemed to follow him and his name these days. “And, you'll probably think I'm mad, but he has a time machine. In fact, we were in Kyoto before I came here.” A beat. “That's where you're from, yeah? Not Kyoto. But Japan, I mean.” She offered a smile. “It's a beautiful place.” Not that they really stopped to take in the view for all that long. “But anyway, as amazing as he and his ship can be, well, we're still stuck.”

She placed a gentle hand on her shoulder then. She just couldn't get over how young she was and Rose felt the need to give her something, anything really, that might give her some comfort. “I've seen the Doctor do some amazing things though. So if anyone is gonna to figure this thing out, then it'll be him.” And Rose found that, as she said it, that she actually believed it. If he said he was the Doctor (and Jack said and Donna said and all his other companions said) then she knew that he would have to be trying to find a solution to the problem. That's what the Doctor did, after all.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

resetting
2011-08-11 11:02 pm UTC (link)

She didn't need comfort; she didn't need––but even if she didn't need it, there was something about having someone close by, someone to console her, that… Oh, hell, she didn't know, it was complicated and confusing, just like everything over the last several minutes had been, but at least it wasn't a car trying to hit her. So she stiffened at the touch on her shoulder, but didn't flinch away. "I'm from Japan," she nodded, a bit numbly. "Mitakihara. It's not all that far from Kyoto."

It was easy to convey the information, while she looked out across the street. She took a breath, and then looked back at Rose and shook her head a little. "And I don't think you're crazy. Time machines exist," she declared, matter-of-factly. If this girl's friend had a time machine, she'd know it any way. And that was making Homura curious about Rose, more than she'd been before. What kind of time machine was it? How did it work? How had he gotten it? She finally raised the cup of tea to her lips and took a tentative sip; it overrode the questions for a moment. The taste was different, tangier than she was used to and stronger; Mami had liked Western teas, and Homura could remember several occasions (or several repeats of the same occasion) where she'd sat at Mami's table and sipped tea a little bit like this. It wasn't just the tea that connected Rose and Mami in Homura's mind - it was that compassion, that pat on the shoulder and attempt to reach out and help a complete stranger.

"How does it work?" She asked, after a moment. It was a better conversation topic than you remind me of a dead friend or I really need to repay you for this tea but I don't have any American money. "The time machine, I mean. Does it let you go to any time you want?" That would have been useful - to have more control, not to merely be stuck in the same month, but to be able to… what? Her brain was still wrapped around the problem of Kyubey, Madoka, and at first all she could think of another sort of time machine was that maybe there would be a way to use it to fix the situation. Which wouldn't be much use at all, if she was actually stuck in a completely different time and place.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

pinkandyellow
2011-08-12 01:24 am UTC (link)

The fact that she stiffened didn't go unnoticed and Rose moved the hand back to her lap. “I'm from London,” she offered before her eyes widened slightly. It was Rose's turn to be surprised. She really hadn't expected Homura to accept the whole 'I've traveled through time' line. At least, not so readily as fact. A general theory maybe, but 2015 seemed a bit too close to her own time for it to be something that would be accepted so easily.

Unless people had stopped writing away aliens and what not since the whole Downing Street disaster.

“Oh!” said Rose, feeling as shocked as she probably looked. “Really? Um . . . I don't know how it works exactly. I mean, I couldn't tell you the mechanics of it or anything. But yeah, any time. Future. Past. Present. Kyoto was the – uh- sometime in the thirteen hundreds, I think. And my first trip was to the future. The year five billion, if you can imagine.” She smiled and then slouched down in her seat a bit. It was easier to relax, even just slightly, when she actually had a proper answer to give. “It can go anywhere, really. Not just different times. But into space too.” She pointed toward the sky. “Anywhere you might fancy. Farther than you can see.”

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

resetting
2011-08-12 03:11 am UTC (link)

Rose was surprised - for a moment Homura had to struggle to see why, and it vaguely occurred to her that she might not have been spending enough time with people. It wasn't as if her people skills had been exceptional to begin with, but… well, it had been a long time since she'd really talked to someone. Was it the time travel thing? Maybe she shouldn't have said anything.

"The universe still exists, five billion years on?" She had to ask - just to confirm it - to confirm that what she'd been told about hadn't come to pass, the universe hadn't burned itself out yet. Although then it begged the question why not and that threatened to drag Homura down a very unpleasant path of thoughts. "And you were in Kyoto in the Kamakura period? That's incredible." Before becoming a magical girl, she'd probably have had far more questions - what was ancient Japan like, what was the future like? - but now, and here, she remained self-interested. (Before becoming a magical girl, she probably couldn't have immediately identified historical periods, but that's what a lot of time repeating the same material in Japanese History will do to you.)

She looked up at the sky when Rose pointed - she knew aliens existed, or, at least one group of aliens, and that that meant that there were huge numbers of places out there, but she'd never thought of actually seeing them herself. "And now you're stuck here? How long have you been here?" She hoped the answer wasn't years and years and years, because that seemed to bode worse for her chances, for anyone's chances of getting out of there.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

pinkandyellow
2011-08-12 07:35 pm UTC (link)

Rose nodded and grinned. “Yeah, it does. He took me to watch the sun expand. The end of Earth.” That probably didn't sound much better than the end of the universe though. Even knowing that it was so far in the distant future, Rose remembered watching it happen and how hard it had been to digest the idea that someday her planet would just be gone. “It's not the end of us though. Humans. We move on. We find other planets and settle in. Mingle.” She tacked the last part on teasingly before remembering the age of the girl she was speaking to. It occurred to Rose that Homura was handling her predicament remarkably well for someone so young. “We adapt I guess you could say.”

The past four months had passed so slowly for Rose that Homura's last question caused her to shift uncomfortably in her seat. She was half-tempted to lie. Maybe it wouldn't seem that long to Homura and Rose was simply over thinking it. But having lived it herself, it felt very long indeed. “Four months,” she answered finally. “I've been stuck four months.”

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

resetting
2011-08-14 02:19 am UTC (link)

Mingle? What was she talking about? Did they go to parties and get along with aliens and share cocktails? Homura found it hard to imagine getting along very well with an alien species, but then again, her sole experience with aliens was that one. Who… had been easy to get along with, at least at the beginning. When she'd thought he was her friend. But she was young enough (and naive enough) that Rose's teasing tone went right over her head. She'd missed out on a lot of that, spending so much time in a hospital bed or a recovery room – sex jokes, by and large, went directly over her head.

"That's a long time." She paused; she could say something consoling, but what was there to say? It was, indeed, a long time, but time had become muddled for her; moving through it, through the same stretches of it over and over and over, time had become measurable in a different way to her. And she thought her consolation might have been insufficient; consoling wasn't really her strong suit.

She took another sip of the tea, and looked down into it. She was starting to worry, now––worry about practical things she'd never thought about. Where to live. Where to get food. Not just how to get home - she didn't think her reset would work, here, since she was before the time she'd met Madoka, and besides, if a time machine that was more broadly capable of moving in time than hers couldn't get out…

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

pinkandyellow
2011-08-15 08:20 pm UTC (link)

Rose suddenly longed for the tea she had given away or at least a cuppa of her own. There was something about having a warm cup to wrap her hands around that she found comforting. Maybe it was just because it gave her something to keep her fingers occupied, but more so she thought it had to do with the fact that tea reminded her of home. Tea was her mother's answer to everything, after all. Have a cold? Then have a cup of tea. Met the Prime Minister? Time for tea. Survived an explosion? Here's a cuppa. She supposed there were worse habits to pick up, but she could feel herself falling into another mood. Now wasn't the time for it.

“Like I said earlier,” she said carefully and after a long moment, “it's not all bad. The banks have been pretty good 'bout exchanges if you've got money. I think people mentioned selling silver and gold as well.” She was half-tempted to offer some money of her own. Having the TARDIS around meant money wasn't as tight as it had been when she was paying for all the expenses on her own. Still, Homura didn't strike her as the type that would appreciate hand outs and so Rose kept her wallet where it was. “Then there's the Welcome Center. It's free for 'bout four weeks or so. People always seem to find somethin' before then though.”

That seemed to cover it. Mostly. Things were a lot more organized than when she arrived. The only thing that worried Rose was Homura's age. That might end up being a problem. “And if you have trouble, you can always come find me. Just ask for me on the bulletin. You'll know 'em when you see it. They're all over the city.” She straightened in her seat. “If you want, I can show you to the Welcome Center. It's on my way so it won't be any trouble.”

(Reply to this) (Parent)