onepassingnight | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

[New York City is all around him, a mixture of loud noise and constant movement. He's standing in the middle of the sidewalk, holding a piece of paper and scanning the crowd.

And there she is.]

Kate! [He starts running after her, pushing people aside as he goes.] Kate, wait!

[He runs faster and faster, following her through the streets, darting into alleys and making sharp turns but he can never quite reach her, no matter how fast he goes.

His lungs are burning, his legs ache but he keeps moving, taking another quick turn and nearly crashing into a brick wall.

A wall. A wall with no other exits in immediate view and too high to climb.]

...Kate?

[He looks around, expression momentarily helpless.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

How? She shakes her head, and it dispels a little of that confident air.

"I was just here." She supposes she could explain the nexus, that this isn't the first time, but-

He nods, considering that for a moment before he turns around and slams his hand into the wall.

And it hurts, it hurts like hell.

"Well," he says with a sharp breath, shaking his hand to try and relive t pain. "If it's a dream, it sucks eve more than I thought it would."

"What are you doing?!" It catches her so off-guard that the reaction comes naturally and immediately. She grabs at Neal's hand to stop him.

"Testing the reactions," he says with a pained smile. "You said it yourself. You aren't sure how the world reacts. If this is a dream, or...or something, I thought that maybe something besides the obvious might happen."

He cradles his hand. "Guess I was wrong."

Ami stares at Neal, almost huffy, jaw tight.

Or perhaps making up her mind, because it's after a long moment of this that she says simply, "Give me your hand."

He blinks, tilting his head at her. "Why," he says skeptically, though he's holding out his hand anyway.

"Am I going to regret this?"

And she thought she was the cynic. It makes her give a quiet smile despite herself. She examines Neal's hand closely.

"Tell me if there's pain."

Unless it's injured, there shouldn't be; she takes the hand through its normal range of movement and resistance.

He lets her do what she'd like, surprised by how easily hand moves. He was sure that it would hurt at least a little bit.

"We're good," he confirms with a nod of his head, not removing his hand from hers until she says.

She smiles as she releases the hand. "Let me introduce myself again. Doctor Mizuno Ami."

It's probably good it wasn't injured; she's not so sure bandages and a splint would just appear for her.

"Ah," he nods his head, letting his hand drop his his side. "Well, I guess i did that little test in front of the right person. I promise, I don't go hitting brick walls on a regular basis."

"I wouldn't lift a finger to help you if you did." She can understand using it as a test. Doing it foolishly would be, well, foolish; and she doesn't suffer fools gladly.

"As long as it's not injured, it's fine. It'll stop hurting soon enough."

He smiles at her, slightly more genuine than he had been. Whoever she is, whether she's a figment of his imagination, something else entirely, or the person she really is claiming to be, he thinks he could appreciate her.

"That's what I'm hoping for," he says with a shrug. "What are the chances that, if we wish really hard, I could get ibuprofen?" He says it jokingly, already fairly certain of the answer.

Now, really. What doctor - and what woman - doesn't carry something like that with her, somewhere? Ami grins and produces some from her purse fairly readily.

"Ask politely," she says, but instead of truly using it to taunt him, she's handing it over as she says it, softening it to a joke.

"A woman with resources," he says with a smile, taking the bottle and popping it open. "I like that."

He takes the pills, closes the bottle and hands it back to her. "As nice as this alley is, are you interested in looking around?" He's obviously not going to find Kate and the more he thinks about it, the more interested he becomes in this place.

And, if he can get a little company while doing so, why not give it a try?

She warms to praise as always.

"Shall we go?" It was an acceptance of a sort. She tucks the bottle back in her purse.

(ooc: gotta admit i'm snickering at the thought of neal waking up with his hand hurting and wtfing XD)

"Lets go."

Offering her an arm, he leads them out of the alley and back towards the busy street. It still looks like New York at first glance but the buildings are odd and the people seem stranger than normal. Faces repeat themselves, some like contorted and odd, some can barely be seen at all.

"You said you were a doctor," he starts casually, walking down the street. "What do you study?"

{((OOC: He is going to WTF really, really hard and wonder if someone spiked his coffee the previous day or something.))

She hesitates for a few seconds, then takes Neal's arm as he seems to be expecting her to. It feels a bit strange to be arm in arm with someone she barely knows, but the dream softens it to help her accept it more easily.

"Cardiac medicine," she answers him, and the puzzled frown on her lips has nothing to do with the answer. Unless they're suddenly in a world full of clones...

"Didn't we pass by her a moment ago...?"

(ooc: haa. It actually happened to me for real recently. I hurt my finger in a dream, woke up absolutely sure there was a band-aid on it. Took me a few minutes to figure out what was the dream and what was real.

Also not too long ago had a dream where I went back to college, moved in, took a nap- and woke up in reality wondering who the guy next to me was and how he fit with me in a single bed. He was my husband, and it's a double bed, idiot dreamer self. XD

I will definitely be playing on these sorts of things at Passing XD)

He turns to look back at the woman in question and he double isn't too far head of her. "....Yeah, yeah we did."

He turns around, craning his neck to keep an eye on them. "I can see three of them." A momentary pause before he starts really looking around at the crowds. "And more."

He turns back to her. "Well, this just keeps getting weirder and weirder."

((OOC: XDD That is *awesome* I don't have dreams very often, the meds I take kind of kill them off, I think, but I've had a few odd ones and I've heard lots of stories before, so I'm excited to get to play around with all the fun things that happen when people dream.

Plus I am suck a sucker for dreamlogic in things. Dreamlogic and storylogic both make me smile.)

"Illusions?" is her next guess, because that's probably what they'd be if this were happening in her, waking, world. "But why illusions of a crowd in a place where there'd definitely be a crowd?"

(ooc: Passing rocks XD I love playing with all this stuff. the college dream was amazing because I mean, I got into waking life by going to sleep. *twilight zone music here* So that's inspired me to definitely want to play with 'which is which' in Passing some.)

"Illusions?" He looks at her a little oddly. "What do you mean?" Neal is not from a place were illusions are commonplace. To him, getting drugged is much more likely.

Shaking his head, he stops walking and then moves to step in front of one of the walking people. "Excuse me," he says with a bright smile. "Hi there, I wa--" But the person walks right passed him.

"....You know what the worst part of that moment was," he says, looking at Ami. "I'm not sure if they can't see us or if it's just that we're in New York." He laughs.

<small(OOC: It will be awesome! Reality screwing is just a delight and dreams let you do that so easily. It is going to be an awesome, awesome game to play around with.)

Whatever she might have said about illusions was lost in her own surprise. Even in the bustling cities like Tokyo, people kept to themselves a bit but were generally at least approachable. Generally.

"I hate being ignored," she said flatly, and her lips curved upward.

Ami stood right in front of her chosen victim - a person she'd seen three of already (could the nexus please stop making her enemies endless by making her see their alternates over and over and over again? this wasn't much better). For a normal human, in normal circumstances, she'd be very difficult to simply shove past. She'd done it to grown men, tough types before, running right into them.

And besides, even shoving past her was a reaction.

He smiles. "You're not the only one."

He watches as she steps forward, brows arched in curiosity. Hey, if she can get a reaction when he couldn't, the go her. Maybe they could get some answers.

But she won't get an answer, in fact, she won't get anything at all. THe person passes through her before literally dissolving into the crowed.

Neal just stares. "...What the hell?"

Even she was startled, visibly. That answered one thing, at least. The idea of illusions was starting to seem more likely. But the senshi had fought illusions before that had substance. A weaker one, then? Or something else?

And when she had no way to stop them and make them pay attention, how was she going to get those answers?

"A hologram?" she wondered aloud next, before shaking her head. This was ridiculous. She pulled out a small hand-held computer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP3uEdKGq8Y) and it beeped cheerfully as it analyzed the area. It had shown the truth of illusions before; and it should be able to pinpoint the source of this effect - if it had a direct source - or something about its nature.

"A hologram," he laughs. "You know what, I'm not saying no to anything at this point."

He watches her, taking a few steps closer and peering over her shoulder, prepared to stop if it looks like she's uncomfortable with it.

"What does it say," he questions curiously. He's not really sue it's going to help but right now, he'll go with anything.

She shook her head. "It can't pinpoint the source." A pause, and she corrected herself. "No, it's more like it says the source is everywhere." It was, after all, an effect made from the dream, and this whole world was the dream.

To Ami, it was disquieting. Metalia had created monsters from the very Earth. This couldn't be similar, could it? Yet the readings hadn't detected dark energy, and the phantasms, or whatever they were, didn't seem hostile.