Lavi Awakes
Who: Lavi, Albel Nox Where: The park, street outside the park When: Day 3
When the floor gave way beneath him, Lavi almost expected it. The end of the world wasn't just near, it was right on top of them, and he was about to fall into it. "Oodzuchi Kodzuchi, extend!" he shouted, triggering his Innocence in one last desperate attempt to save himself. "Extend, extend, extend!"
The shaft of the hammer grew rapidly, the head reaching for the part of the floor that still remained but not quite able to grow faster than Lavi was falling. He was going to die literally by inches.
From out of nowhere a shining metal claw grabbed at the hammer and caught the head, stopping Lavi's descent abruptly enough that it wrenched his shoulder. He clung to the hammer shaft desperately, and the Asian Finder who had been guiding them caught his ankle in turn. Above him he could see Allen lying flat on the remaining floor, his Innocence extended as far as it could go to grab the hammer.
"Hang on!" the younger man shouted. "I'll pull you up, just hang on Lavi!"
Grunting agreement, Lavi struggled not to let his grip slip. It would have been difficult enough if he'd only had his own weight to support - he'd been badly burned when he'd turned the fire seal back on himself to save Allen, and he didn't have much strength left. But the Finder was heavy. Looking down into the man's panicked eyes, Lavi seriously considered just kicking free. The Finder was nothing to him, just baggage, and he wanted to live. Without that extra weight he would be able to hold on to the shaft long enough for Allen to pull him up.
Before he could make up his mind, a sickening crack echoed through the room - and through Lavi's very soul. Another crack followed shortly after, and Lavi felt his hammer tremble in his hands. Horrified, he looked up again and saw a web of cracks slowly spreading through the hammer's head. It had been damaged in the fight against Tyki Mikk, and now it was giving way beneath the pressure of Allen's grip.
There was a brief moment as the cracks spread when Lavi and Allen's eyes met. Lavi had just enough time to read the grief and denial written all over the younger man's face, and to accept the fact that there was no way out of this. The Innocence would shatter, and he would fall. There was nothing either of them could do to stop it.
There was only one thing he could do - minimize the weight of guilt and grief Allen would carry away with him. "Good luck," Lavi whispered, and smiled slightly as he closed his eye. He didn't want Allen to see the terror he felt.
With a noise like a glass window shattering into a thousand pieces, the Innocence gave way completely. As he went tumbling into the abyss, Lavi prayed it would at least be over quickly.
The last thing Lavi had expected to do was wake up. He didn't quite believe it at first - he just lay there with his eyes closed, feeling the touch of air against his body and something hard and cool beneath his back. He was lying prone, and the feel of the air currents suggested he was in a relatively enclosed space - there were walls somewhere not far away that the breeze was bouncing off of. Somewhere to his left there was a fountain, a cascade of waterfalls that made a sweet noise as the water fell. Where was he? Still in the ark? Back at HQ? Trapped in Road's inner dimension again?
He didn't hear anyone else around, so he decided it was safe to show that he was awake. Taking an experimental deep breath, he felt his chest rise and fall without any sensation of pain. The horrible burns he'd suffered from his own Hi Ban attack were gone. Cautiously he opened his eyes, wanting to know just what the hell was going on.
The sudden and unexpected flood of information caught him totally off guard. He wasn't just naked; someone had removed his eyepatch, and he hadn't been prepared to deal with the cascade of detail that came when he could see with both eyes. Hastily he lifted his hand and covered his right eye, struggling to sift through the information dump and make sense of what he'd seen.
Finally he managed to sort it all out, and he looked warily around with one eye still covered. He was in a... he hesitated to call it a 'park', exactly, because it wasn't like any park he'd ever seen before. He'd been resting on some sort of bench, and there were walls all around him at a moderate distance. A path wound through the vegetation nearby. "Okay. What the HELL?"
When no answer was forthcoming, Lavi shook his head and cautiously stood. His body seemed to be working just fine, all the damage vanished as if it had never happened. He wondered briefly if it could be Miranda's doing - her Innocence's ability to turn back time and revert a person's body to its original uninjured state had a similar effect. But this didn't feel quite the same, and anyway they'd lost Miranda early on.
Of course, they'd also lost him and he seemed to be just fine, if feeling a bit exposed. The thought of his vulnerability made him reach automatically for the Innocence that should have been hanging at his side. A sick wave of horror washed over him as his hand encountered nothing but air, and he remembered. Oodzuchi Kodzuchi had been shattered when Allen had tried to pull him up out of the abyss. His Innocence was gone.
Shivering, Lavi looked wildly around. If there were any Akuma or Noah, he was completely helpless. The hammer which had been a part of him for the last two and a half years was gone, leaving a gaping hole in his soul. But he was still alone, not so much as a buzzing fly in sight.
Which was weird in and of itself, actually. What had happened to the Finder who'd been clinging to him? They should have fallen together, so if this was where they'd landed in the ark the man should be here. Someone had stripped Lavi, for that matter. He sincerely doubted the Black Order would just dump him in a place like this and leave him alone there, so it had to be the Noah. The possibility of it being one of Road's forced realities was becoming stronger by the moment.
Well, he wasn't going to learn anything by standing around here. Forcing himself to ignore his nudity, he strolled casually down the path towards the nearest wall.
As if summoned by thought, or completely indifferent to his presence, a winged creature, insectlike, appeared with quick beats of four heart-shaped, velvet wings, maybe seven inches across. It crossed the open space around the fountain, heading towards a large clump of the overgrown plantlife.
The movement caught Lavi's eye, and he turned to follow the creature's progress. It was unlike anything he'd ever seen before, though the closest thing he could picture was a butterfly so that was how he decided to think of it. Travelling all around the world for the sixteen years before he'd come to the Order, he'd seen some pretty damn strange bugs and animals, but nothing like this. It looked... alien.
"All right, so there are things alive here," he muttered, more for the company of his own voice than anything else. "That makes sense, I s'pose the plants have to get pollenated somehow. So what else is around... and how big does it get?"
There was no answer to his query any more than there had been to his waking exclamation. However there were rustlings. Out of sight, beyond what was visible of the overgrown plant life. Some of it was probably just the movement of the light breeze...
Lavi twitched, his head turning to try to spot the source of the rustling. "Great. Just great," he muttered. There was something out there, all right, and he wasn't willing to assume it was friendly. He needed to find people, hopefully friendly ones, and fast. He started heading down the path again, keeping a very wary eye on the bushes.
Nothing broke cover around him. The pathway itself was made of some substance that appeared to show no age, contained no cracks, and was not overgrown, though in placed the larger plants, some of them as tall as medium sized trees, overhung above. The light was growing slowly. From the quality and the direction, it might be early morning.
The whole experience was creeping Lavi out. If it was Road, she'd changed her methods a fair bit. Last time she'd jumped right in and started flinging horrible situations and images at him, forcing him to face his worst nightmares and darkest parts of himself. This felt more like something Tyki Mikk would do, like a cat toying with a mouse, but as far as Lavi knew Tyki didn't have Road's ability to create an inner world.
A thought struck him, and his lips twisted in a wry smile. "Okay, if this is the afterlife? God's got a hell of a sense of humour. Not sure it's one I like, but it's definitely impressive."
The silence, accented with breeze, natural movement, was his only answer. It almost seemed an assent. As Lavi approached the wall, he could see beyond the half-screening of unfamiliar vegetation a gap in it, where it met the path. A gateless entrance.
There was something about the air in that gap, however. It seemed at some angles to shimmer.
"What the..." Frowning, Lavi approached it cautiously. He wasn't sure what that was all about, but he wasn't about to blithely walk into it blind. Looking around, he found a small rock. Standing back and at an angle, just off the path, he tossed the rock lightly at the entrance to see what would happen.
The rock's trajectory seemed to stick for a moment, in mid air. Then it continued but momentum seemed to be lost and it fell to the ground on the path less than a foot beyond the gap.
"All right then." There was no reason to assume that the other end of the path wouldn't end in exactly the same whatever-it-was, so Lavi had a choice between staying where he was and venturing through. Staying where he was wasn't really an option - he wouldn't learn anything here, and there was something in here with him that might or might not be friendly.
Steeling himself, he stepped up to the entrance and tried to pass through, keeping a wary eye on the path behind him. If he got stuck like that rock had, it would be an ideal time for the whatever-it-was out there to ambush him.
There was a vibration that became a tingle as he moved into the gap. Not pleasant, but not damaging. It would be unbearable to just stand there, though, for some reason. If he lingered, he would probably quickly suffer vertigo and want to throw up.
Shuddering, Lavi got through the entrance as quickly as he could. He'd experienced plenty of worse sensations in his life, but that didn't mean he wanted to hang around 'enjoying' that one. "Okay, now what?" he muttered once he was on the other side, examining his surroundings.
More quietude met his next inquiry.
After a moment became noticeable that the quality of the air had changed. Not stale, but clean. Too clean. And the breeze had been left in the park.
The path continued on and now past the wall, he could see buildings. Low, and somehow giving an residential impression, they blocked off the horizon with their number. All dark. They did not resemble human habitations, though their functionality was similar. But the doorways, all blocked with closing panels, were unique in shape.
Blinking, Lavi studied the buildings. It reminded him of one of the ruins of the ancients - familiar, yet completely alien. He'd gotten used to living in such surroundings, since the headquarters of the Black Order was in one of the few remaining functional towers. But this was another style of architecture again, something he'd never encountered before.
Which, given that the Secret Histories of the Bookmen went back thousands of years and included sketches and references to pretty much every major event or location during that time, was more than a little disturbing. There shouldn't have been any civilization on Earth that he wouldn't recognize on sight.
The implications behind that thought made him more than a little nervous. With his lips pressed into a thin line and his hand still covering his right eye, Lavi moved cautiously forward. "Hey! Anyone here!" Calling attention to himself might not be the best idea, but he wasn't going to get anywhere wandering alone and naked in an empty city, either.
Silence implied a negative. A not entirely truthful one, but the city was large, and almost entirely devoid of life.
All right, the first order of business was finding something to cover his eye with so he'd have both hands free. Clothing of some description and a weapon were about equally important next on the list. Chances were good he wouldn't find them just lying about in the streets, so Lavi headed for the doorway to the nearest building.
The shape of the doorways were all uniform, and all odd. There was no hunge, only a panel that seemed a part of the wall, though ceressed into it.
Frowning, Lavi studied the panel and the rest of the door, looking for the way to open it. Eventually he decided to try the obvious first, and put his hand on the panel.
The substance of the panel was neither cold not warm. It was smooth. But it did not acknowlege his touch.
Well, it had been worth a try. Lavi tried running his hands along the edges of the door and down the centre, feeling for anything that might indicate how it opened. He even tried calling 'Open sesame' on a whim.