LOCKED TO alchemicals

[deaftly]

[He doesn't remember anything. All he knows is that there's a bright light in his face and he just wants to sleep. After a couple of minutes of tossing and turning he finally opens his eyes and sits up. The room he's in is perfectly white, without any sort of interesting features. There's a desk and a chair, but nothing on either of them. They're as white as the walls and floor, and on closer inspection, the bed he's in is just as white and spotless as the rest of the room. The sheets are a bit on the stiff side even though he's been sleeping under them, and the bed is kind of hard for his liking, so he finally squirms out from under the covers and stands.

The clothes he's wearing strike him as being wrong, though he can't recall what the "right" clothes would be. They're white - like everything else - and they're very simple. He doesn't have anything to compare them to, but the material is soft and kind of thin and feels a little odd. He shrugs off his confusion about the clothes and starts for the door. Even the doorknob is white, which strikes him as strange for about half a second before he yanks the door open.

The room that he enters is spacious. Like the room he woke up in, everything is white. There's a sofa, a small table in front of the sofa, and a couple of plush chairs. There's a couple of doors leading elsewhere, and his first order of business is to see where they lead. One leads to a perfectly white kitchen which isn't interesting right now (though some part of him wonders if the food will be just as white) and the other door he comes to is locked. There should be a front door around here somewhere though, right? He doesn't want to be here. He can't remember why he's here (or anything, really) but being here doesn't seem right.]

Comments

[alchemicals]

Hey. Don't get upset; it doesn't mean they're mind-readers, it just means they fucking think as much as we do. It'll be fine. We'll just have to work around it.

[He doesn't know where the reasonably calm tone of voice is coming from, but it pleases him in some vague way; he's mad as hell, that much is obvious, but he's not going to give anyone the satisfaction of making him freak out when he's pretty sure they're watching.]

No one's going to fuck with you either way, okay?

[deaftly]

[Between Kimbley's calm tone and his words, Naki settles down. He still looks mildly confused, but that's kind of his default state.]

...Yeah. You're right. Right! They're not gonna fuck with either of us!

[He looks confident about that now, so Kimbley's obviously doing something right.]

I guess if we can't find a way to time it we'll... I dunno, I guess we'll just wake each other up when one of us is too tired to continue keeping watch? That might suck though...

[alchemicals]

...We should just stay in the room. I'll take the damn floor, I don't care. It'll be harder for them to deal with both of us if they decide they want to start shit with us; if they don't, it's...creepy but at least they'll be leaving us alone.

[deaftly]

Well I don't wanna leave you on the floor all night, that can't be comfortable... I mean we should probably switch when it's my turn to take watch otherwise I'll just fall asleep again.

[At least if he's on the floor he won't be comfortable enough to fall asleep immediately!]

But yeah, that's probably the smartest way to handle it. I don't know if the door's got a lock, but it opens inward, so at least one of us can sit against it and they shouldn't be able to get in.

[alchemicals]

Don't try to catch them for now, you hear me? We don't know what the fuck they want. For all we know, if we try to jump them we're just going to get shot in the head, and I don't know if even you can survive getting your head popped off like a dandelion.

[deaftly]

Probably not...

[Naki nods though, looking determined.]

I promise I won't try anything right now. If we're gonna go up against 'em, we should do it together. We don't even know how many there are, so it'd probably be dumb for me to try it by myself.

[alchemicals]

Yeah, there you go.

[That seems to relax him a bit, anyway.]

Come on, let's just go draw some more or something. We can worry about it later; right now we probably want to keep covering the walls. It's good if we do that.

[deaftly]

I guess it must be, if they gave us more pens.

[Naki's content with that though, and he heads back out into the sitting room to pick up the pens and resume drawing. He's got a lot more boxes to fill with random designs, after all!!]

[alchemicals]

Well, yeah, that too. But I think I've heard somewhere that it'll mess with your head if you're just surrounded by white all the time.

[He picks up another pen and starts drawing, something less complicated than the other design he'd done before.]

I think I've read about them doing that in military prisons or something - they just surround you with a lot of nothing. It makes people not want to fight so much.

[His brow furrows a bit while he talks; it bothers him a bit, though he moves past it easily enough.]

Maybe if we just keep filling the walls with whatever falls out of our heads, we'll start remembering shit. Like the game earlier.

[deaftly]

Ugh, really? That's awful.

[Naki makes a face, but that revelation gets him to quit with the squares and move to a larger blank section of wall. If it's going to drive him crazy, he'd rather hold off on the tiny squares and fill as much space as possible.]

That sounds like a good idea! Just promise me you won't make fun of my drawings 'cause I'm pretty sure I suck.

[That said he's already working on... something. Right now it looks like a lot of really long vertical boxes, but he's doing something.]

[alchemicals]

[He just kind of laughs a little at that, the sound easy.]

All right, all right, I promise.

[That said, he'll look over to see what you're doing after a moment, Naki, good lord.]

[deaftly]

[The boxes are slowly becoming... buildings, probably? The perspective's a little wonky but eventually it looks like Naki's drawing out a city block or something of the sort over on his section of the wall. The drawings aren't very detailed, but at least it adds some color. When he's done with the basics he goes back with a different color to add in some details and even some shading to make it look less like cardboard boxes stacked up. He's trying really hard, okay.]

[alchemicals]

[...You know, that's actually not a bad idea; he doesn't think Naki's necessarily doing it on purpose, but even if they don't end up with anything recognizable, trying to make themselves draw places might end up being useful later, right? At least it might tell them something about where they're from.

Let's see, then. Places. Places...

He turns back to his own expanse of wall after a moment, moving over and deciding that he'll finish what he was working on later; for the time being he just kind of tries letting his mind go blank and allowing his hand to do whatever it feels like doing.

The lines are slower and more deliberate than the labyrinths, which had been easy and come as almost second nature; he's not drawing buildings so much as he is landscape, though. A rather barren one, from the look of it; mostly rocks and outcroppings and ground and sometimes plants here and there but not...much. Desert maybe? Hell if he knows. He'll worry about why it crawled out of his head later.]

[deaftly]

[Naki stops what he's doing when he notices that Kimbley's moved on to something else. He stares in silence for a few minutes before finally asking the most pressing question.]

...What is that? A desert?

[He's familiar with the concept, but he doesn't think he's seen one before.]

[alchemicals]

I think so. I'm just trying to think of places to draw and seeing what happens - maybe we'll think of shit we made up, but maybe we'll think of places we've seen, too.

You made me think of doing it, actually.

[He gestures over toward what Naki was doing over there.]

With that.

[deaftly]

Oh, yeah? I figured drawing a city would be pretty cool, so that's why I started with that.

[He stares back at it, frowning.]

I don't think it's familiar, but... I dunno.

[Naki turns his attention back to Kimbley's drawing after a moment.]

A desert though... Huh. I wonder if you've been to one before? I mean, I wouldn't imagine that would be the first thing most people think of.

[alchemicals]

It's kind of a weird place to start, you're right. Maybe Fucklandia's a desert nation.

[He's being sarcastic...]

Or maybe I just liked stories about jackrabbits when I was a kid, who knows. It's kind of boring either way.

[deaftly]

Well, maybe! I mean if it's a desert then that might explain why you're not familiar with barcodes. I mean, I dunno what technology is like out in a desert.

[...]

And what's a jackrabbit?

[alchemicals]

[dude.]

...Pretty sure they're like bunnies or something. Out in the desert.

[deaftly]

Oh. Desert bunnies.

[...there are bunnies in the desert????]

Well uh, there... was a point somewhere... um... Right, you could have been from a desert!

[He tried, shut up.]

[alchemicals]

[Pretty sure there are bunnies everywhere, they're a fuckin' plague.]

Could have been. I doubt it, unless I was getting sunburned all the time - my skin kind of sucks for some reason - but I guess it's possible.

[deaftly]

[Naki nods a bit at that - it's true, Kimbley does look pretty pale to have been living in a desert.]

Well, maybe you went to a desert at some point or you wanted to go there or something? It must have had some sort of impact on you.

[alchemicals]

Must've, yeah...

[He kind of trails off for a second, though he doesn't seem bothered.]

I don't know, I don't remember anything about it. It's just the first place I thought of.

[deaftly]

Well, it's definitely different! Maybe it'll come to you if you keep drawing.

[He's pretty curious what Kimbley could have been doing in a desert, honestly.]

[alchemicals]

Maybe! Let me know if anything comes to you too, yeah?

[Back to the wall he goes, though hell if he knows what he's going to be doing.]