i know you, that look in your eyes is so familiar a gleam

[thespaceopera]

[ Calibration Rooms ]
( for N-Z characters )

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1. Check the first letter of your character's name as its written in our tags. N-Z names comment here, and A-M names go to the other post.
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ROOMS BY CHARACTER

N - P Nami Natalie Goodman Natasha Romanoff Noctis Lucis Caelum Nono Okita Souji Otono-Tachibana Makie Pavel Chekov Prompto

Q - S Riona Cousland Theirin Rip Hunter Sam Winchester Seymour Krelborn Shinji Ikari Shouta Aizawa Signy Mallory Sokka Sorey Steve Rogers

T - V Takashi Shirogane Takeshi Tyrion Lannister Uraraka Ochako Vash the Stampede Velvet Crowe Victor Nikiforov

W - Z Yuan Ka-Fai Zaveid Zelda

Comments

[therewerefifty]

[Makie makes no appearance. Look at that lazy ho, not even turning up to her own calibrations. Kitty can either travel downstairs into the field of dead trees or eventually find her way onto the balcony. Or investigate the clothing some more. Or none of the above.]

[passingthrough]

[She decides to leave the clothing. If this is where she needs to be she can always come back, right? She finds herself going downstairs and looking around at the dead trees.] Not creepy at all.

[therewerefifty]

[It's not creepy, it's symbolic!

...okay yes, it's creepy. The trees bear many different carvings:

- a stylised depiction of a pack of dogs;
- a slight young man, age indeterminate, wearing loose Japanese clothing and holding a sword in one hand, blade reversed to point toward him;
- a bridge carved across a stylised river;
- a tall man with a blade, huge and curved at the end, taller than he is (if Kitty ever met Mihawk during his brief stint on the Fleet, that's who it'll remind her of);
- a series of cross-hatched cuts with no real picture to them at all;
- a small girl on all fours like an angry cat, most distinctly recognisable as Lilly.]

[passingthrough]

[She touches the picture that makes her think of Lilly, remembering the girl from the brief time they were on the Windrose together.]

[therewerefifty]

[This is Makie's last memory of Lilly; before the Fleet, at the end of her time in Adstringendum.

The landscape surrounding them is poisoned. Grey, rotted trees and grass, heavily darkened sky. Makie is blessed in one way only, and that is that her illness means she has no appetite to eat anyway-- she gave what she had to Lilly, but it ran out a long time ago, and the girl is starving. Makie does what she can.

But it's all moot, because the twisted, rabid monsters that have been seen recently around the ruins that make up their world have finally attacked en masse. Lilly is a cowering shadow tucked behind Makie as she fights, and this isn't a fight that would strain her in the best of health. The foes she fights are no more than the bizarre natural wildlife driven mad by trying to live off this toxic landscape, and rabid is a literal description.

But appetite or no, Makie hasn't eaten in close to a week, and the strain is already felt as she swings around that bladed weapon of hers, slicing through things in an attempt to keep Lilly safe. She feels nothing. She knows, on some level, she has already failed. Lilly came to her already bleeding, already bitten, and she doesn't know for sure what that means, but she can guess. However this ends, though, she refuses to let any of these monsters have a child she's come close to calling her own.

And the fight is far, far too long for someone who had measured her lifespan in weeks at this point in any case. The very last person to fall on this battlefield is Makie herself, air gone from blood-filled lungs and her throat raw, her eyesight long gone blurry and dark with exhaustion and those final, dark stages of a lethal disease. The monsters are gone, but she didn't have the stamina to survive them. And Lilly pulls at her kimono, touches her shoulders and face and chants her name with increasing volume and panic, and she doesn't even have the energy to answer, smile, do anything except finally give in after fighting for so long.

This is how it ends. With a child screaming in her ears and knowing that even if Lilly survived, she'll probably die within the day. But given the deadlands they've found themselves in...

...maybe that's more merciful.]

[passingthrough]

No! [She says it firmly, but also with surprise and concern to no one. She pulls her hands from the tree as if burned. She doesn't want that for Makie or Lilly, but this is a memory. This already happened.]

[therewerefifty]

[The memory fades away, leaving the field of dead trees. But Kitty isn't alone anymore, at least.]

It shouldn't be the end. [Makie's voice is quieter than usual, her fingers touching another tree in this place; a gentle, sad reverence to the picture of the boy with the sword.]

Mr Sam says we both live. That's... nice.

[passingthrough]

[She turns toward the voice.] Right... You'd mentioned that. [It didn't make it easier to see knowing they have lives to return to there.] Still a hell of a thing to go through.

[therewerefifty]

I had always expected to die in much that fashion. I just didn't want Lilly to die, too.

[She's still not sure if Lilly died or not. But either way. Her fingers drop from the tree, and she turns to glance at Kitty.]

You should leave this place. There's nothing but bad memories in this field.