Let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya

[notzubats]

Who: Everybody! It's a planet mingle!
Broadcast: If You want!
Action: On the Holding Hands plant!
When: From June 23 until whenever we need a new mingle.

[At long last, the fleet has arrived to a new planet. This means it's time for a mingle guys! Get in! ]

Comments

[huaaaaagh]

[He cares, actually, kind of a lot. Asuna would totally smack him one if he looked at another naked girl. But he does still want to help her, so...

After a moment he steps out from behind the rock, and with a quick glance, sizes up the distance between where he stands and the edge of the pool. Okay- okay, got it. That done, he squeezes his eyes shut and starts walking. Five, six, seven, eight, nine steps, it should be good on the tenth-

-MISCALCULATED-]

Whoa--!!

[And into the pool he flops, arms flailing. Such a graceful black swan.]

[experiencepoints]

Look out-!

[DIVING FORWARD TO CATCH HIM

... spoilers: she's equally useless, and when she hits the water, panic hits and she freezes up, unable to move, unable to stand up, the memory and the fear filling her head until she can't do anything but sink and struggle desperately to try to right herself- she could just stand up and be fine but it's hard to stand up in the middle of a panic attack.]

[huaaaaagh]

[crap

CRAP THIS TOTALLY BACKFIRED

Once he hears her - and feels her crash into him - he's all instinct. He flails underwater to get himself upright, opens his eyes just fast enough to pick her up - sorry Asuna, at least it's blurry!! - and kicks off the bottom to get himself back to his feet, lifting her up with him. It's a good thing he'd gotten that strength augment upgrade, or she'd probably have been too heavy for him, even with how small and light she is.

The whole thing probably only takes a couple of seconds, but he exhales with a gasp when they surface, clenching his eyes shut again and holding her nervously.]

Sorry, sorry! Are you okay?

[experiencepoints]

[YES IT DID

As you grab her, memories and feelings flit through your head, too quick to really get a focus on- Fear, terror, panic, anxiety, cold- Pounding on a glass wall as the water reaches her chest and begging Spark for help-

But they're surfaced now. She's breathing. She can breathe, she's not alone. She's not dying again.]

I'm- I'm okay- Kirito?

[huaaaaagh]

[what the heck

what the heck was that

He's momentarily stunned, shaking his head. That- that wasn't him. Is that the effect of this world? Is that how she felt?

No wonder she was afraid...]

...Um, yeah?

[Absently he toes around at the bottom, trying to find the wall so he can sit her down again.]

[experiencepoints]

Are you okay?! What the hell was that- You just walked over and fell?!

[It's a good thing she's light! ... In the water, her hair is probably the heaviest thing about her, let's be real.]

[huaaaaagh]

[Cue a wave of embarrassment rippling through him- she might enjoy that more than fear.]

I... was trying not to look. I guess I missed.

["I guess" you little shit

...Aha! There's the ledge. Okay, carefully setting her down now.]

[experiencepoints]

[If we're being totally honest? She hasn't caught on that these feelings aren't her own yet. Normally she'd protest being set down like a child, but she can't really muster up the give a damn for that right now.]

Why were you not looking?

[huaaaaagh]

[WHY DOES HE NEED TO EXPLAIN THIS he is dying a little bit inside.]

Be...cause you're a girl, and I'm a guy, and we're in the bath together, and- really? You need me to say it?

[He pulls himself up on the ledge, and his eyes are still stubbornly closed.]

[experiencepoints]

Neither of us are remotely interested in each other, and not looking means you could have killed yourself by falling in like that!

[huaaaaagh]

Geez, if I got hurt falling into a bath, I'd die of embarrassment, not the fall itself. Anyway, it's not about interest! It's about respect.

[He offers his hand out to her, brows furrowed.]

[experiencepoints]

[She takes his hand, and now there's less fear, but still anxiety, concern, and now annoyance.]

Stupider deaths have happened. And what are you respecting, here?

[huaaaaagh]

[Yeah, now it's just his fear- the fear of the (probably punching) outrage of a lovely blue-haired fairy girl.]

Your, um, right to privacy?

[experiencepoints]

We're supposedly being broadcast across the galaxy, remember? The right to privacy ended a long, long time ago.

Also, I don't really care if you see, all right? I don't care if anyone sees. It's not like a half-broken dead girl's body is going to cause any particular problems.

[huaaaaagh]

[He opens his mouth to respond to that, then closes it to give it proper consideration first. A comment like that makes the silliness of the situation vanish, unimportant. Half-broken dead girl. As if, because she's supposedly "broken", it doesn't matter if she's seen naked? Is that what it means?

That's not right at all.]

That's... why it matters, I think. We don't get to decide who sees us outside of the fleet, but we can decide for ourselves, can't we? We can say no to each other. It's the one thing that we can control.

[Maybe it's naive, but he can't help that. His voice is earnest, giving her hand a light squeeze.]

You're not broken. But I'm here to help, not look at you while you're naked.

[experiencepoints]

... It's true, and I'm not interested in forcing you to look, but...

[She sighs, squeezing back. The contact does help.]

Seriously, I'm dead, remember? And my body is all kinds of messed up and broken. So... It doesn't really matter to me at all. I am the opposite of sexually attractive, I know.

[That said, while she does think of herself as dead, her body is definitely alive. She's got a pulse and all.]

[huaaaaagh]

W-well, I don't know much about that.

[Nobody else ever grinds his gears the way Asuna does, if he's being honest, so he tends to be a bit more clueless than most about it. But he can at least recognize the aesthetics of someone pretty.]

But you're not, um, unattractive or anything. And if you're talking about the scars [that he totally was trying not to look at earlier and goddammit, goddammit] there's lots of people who don't care about that sort of thing.

[He wants to say more, but... well, the talk of her being dead bothers him more than he's inclined to say just yet. At least until he finds the right words.]

[experiencepoints]

[... She just laughs a little. What does she even say to this? She doesn't want all her conversations with Kirito to be depressing, damn it.]

You're not a good example, though. You're basically the nicest guy in the Fleet.

[huaaaaagh]

[They're back in the tornado of misery again, aren't they.

That makes him snort under his breath, though, leaning back into the rocks.]

That's definitely not true, I'm a terrible human being. What you see before you is the result of expert training.

[experiencepoints]

[That gets a snort.]

If you're a terrible human being, it's only because you're terrible at being a human being. Really, what are you right now? A fairy of some kind?

[huaaaaagh]

Got it in one! This is the Spriggan avatar. It's the one I use most of the time back home.

[experiencepoints]

... Huh.

Spriggans are.... ugly-ass little plant things, in my world.

[huaaaaagh]

Hah, yeah, my sister sat me down one day and told me about some of the Spriggan mythology. They're supposed to be trickster goblins, if I remember it right. It was nice of the Alfheim devs to tweak the visuals.