Be brave enough to burn

[notsogreedy]

Who: All the Alices (and Ankh, his name is Ankh)
What: Just a mysterious castle built on top of a restaurant. What could possibly go wrong?
Where: World Two – Wings to the Sky
Warnings: Who even knows? Will update as necessary.



Ankh wakes up at the edge of the water, his arm draped over a rock and his face cushioned by a bed of sand and seaweed as the edges of waves wash over his body. The first thing he notices upon waking is that it's uncomfortable. The second, upon lifting his head and starting to pull himself out of the water is that it's familiar. Awareness dawning, he scrambles to his feet and looks around wide-eyed half expecting Eiji to be there somewhere. Of course he isn't.

But this... this is his last memory. For a moment he wonders if somehow this whole thing came to an end and he wound up back home, but that's wishful thinking. No, this is just his world. His heart, as the guides like to call it. It's only more obvious that this isn't real as he scans the horizon and finds Cous Coussier where it shouldn't be. And then on top of it... that's-

His eyes widen, and then narrow. He's not sure what to expect out of this other than nothing good.

But, after wringing the water out of his clothes as best he can, he makes his way to the restaurant and curiously to the freezer, where he finds the ice pops he expects to be there. Pulling one out, he gives it a skeptical look for a moment—does he dare assume it's really the same or even safe to eat?--but ultimately pops it into his mouth and discovers it tastes exactly like he expects. That much is something he can appreciate. But as for the rest of this...

With popsicle in hand, he continues exploring.

Comments

[notsogreedy]

"One of them is right." He'll just say it that way. Even if they couldn't tell him, Rei and C-ta had both indicated that there was a right answer and they knew it at some point. "Isn't it?"

[frozentear]

"... I think so? Let me go take another look."

He steps through the doorway behind him, and as soon as Ankh is out of sight - he knows which one it is again. He steps back into the room, then leaves again, then reenters. It probably looks odd, to be honest.

"...I can only remember when you're not there."

[notsogreedy]

It looks ridiculous.

"That sounds right." It's probably telling that he doesn't find that statement surprising at all.

[frozentear]

That sounds right, huh... so this has happened with the others? In that case, he has an idea.

"Help me find something to write with."

There are a lot of drawers around. Ankh can at least make up for punching him by being helpful.

[notsogreedy]

He raises an eyebrow. "You think writing it down will work any better?" It seems... unlikely somehow, but it's so far untested. "Heh. It's worth a shot."

And helpful he is, for once. Even though he never did much around the restaurant, he has a general idea of where Chiyoko kept things. It doesn't take him long to find a pen and some paper.

[frozentear]

"Okay, cool. Stay here a moment."

Sebastian takes the pen and paper, and leaves the room - just far enough so that he can remember the placement of the windows, and draws three Xs and one O in the order of the windows in the room. Then he returns to the room and shows the paper to Ankh.

"Does this work?"

[notsogreedy]

Ankh looks at the paper, which clearly has something written on it, but nothing the slightest bit helpful.

"Not unless you meant to write a bunch of useless scribbles."

[frozentear]

He looks back at the paper and... huh. So Ankh can't read that? There must be something preventing it... But, he can see the scribbles.

"I'm going to try something else. Wait here."

He goes back to the bedroom to draw a bunch of curly lines on the wall around one of the stained glass windows... but which one? He knows one is false for sure. There are two others with people he can't remember - people who could be family, if he had any memories about them. The last one seems true, but... what if he had brought people with him when he went off to watch the city and he just had no memories of it?

Some time later - longer than it would have taken just to scribble around the window - he returns to the restaurant with the pen.

"Go look at the bedroom."

[notsogreedy]

While he waits, he goes and gets another popsicle. Now that he knows the game, he wants to keep eating these while he still has a sense of taste. It's already odd when he's missing some of the texture, but it'll do. When Sebastian comes back, he takes the half eaten ice pop with him and goes to look at the bedroom. Around one window are some of the most bizarre looking scribbles he's ever seen, but they seem to only be around one window. It's the one he might have guessed regardless. Sebastian desires excitement and escape. It's the only image that fits.

He glances back to Sebastian, gesturing toward the window. "You marked this one." It's not phrased as a question, though he is looking for some kind of confirmation. He wonders whether he'll get any.

[frozentear]

"Uh... I... used the pen in this room?..." It's the closest he's able to say, despite knowing he marked a window and it being blatantly clear that he only marked one window.

[notsogreedy]

"Heh." Well, it was a long shot, anyway. "I guess that's good enough." It's the same one he would have guessed regardless, so as of right now, he doesn't really have any reason to doubt whether the marks are in the right place.

"If we can get everyone else to do this, then my job will be easy." And frustrating and awful, given what happened with the first one. But easy.

[frozentear]

"...I wonder if they can. If you're there, they definitely can't."

It seemed like it had only worked because Sebastian thought of it on his own, after all. Who knows whether he could have marked it if Ankh had told him to.

[notsogreedy]

"It should be fine as long as I'm not the one asking, right?" He punctuates that with an expectant look. Not that he can say whether anyone would be able to tell Sebastian what the right answers are, either. Maybe no one can tell anyone. But considering how everything's been going so far, it at least seems more likely that he'll get a right answer out of it that way than if he asked about it himself.

[frozentear]

Sigh.

"Yeah, fine, I'll let the others know."

He's not terribly pleased about the clear expectation, but it makes sense. It's probably faster if he does it than if Ankh tells them what to do and it turns out they can't mark anything at all after that.

"Figured out what to do with them yet?" He glances at the windows, turning his head a bit as he does.

[notsogreedy]

"Yeah." And that's all he's going to say on that subject for the moment unless he's pushed. "But I want to wait until I have all the answers."

He's not stupid. Losing one sense means losing more. He wants to have the answers memorised while he's still very capable of telling which one is right.