[Day: Wednsday, June 5th. Time: 10:00 p.m.] [After the whole European fiasco earlier, you wound up missing the last ferry back to Tokyo. Fortunately Rei's new aunt was nice enough to put you up for the night. You're somewhere in the big big house.] [Mini Start!] * Makoto gently pushes open the door of the room where he ended up staying for the night, and creeps as quietly as he can manage toward the front door. He remembers where that is, really. * Rei sits in one of the rooms designated for them, peering out the window. Eventually she sighs and climbs out, shutting said window after her. [Makoto has to sneak around Lazar, 'cause he's still in the living room, not moving a bit.] * Makoto finally reaches the front door and opens it, too, assuming nobody's leapt awake and demanded to know what he's up to. He closes that door behind him as steps outside. Once under the open sky, he sighs and rubs his bared forearms. Should have brought the overshirt. * Rei floats easy to the lawn more than a bit away from the house, amazed at how natural that is. Then she falls to the ground, limbs sprawled out in all directions. "Oof!" Mm? ( Makoto, roll me an awareness check ) 2d6 * Dicesuke throws the bones for Makoto (2d6) and gets 5. * Rei stays right where she is. Comfortable grass. [Makoto notices Rei :P] * Makoto tilts his head when he hears an odd sound from one side of the house. He reaches into a voluminous pocket and withdraws one of his heavier yo-yos before creeping around to where the sound seemed to have come from. * Rei doesn't react to Makoto, if she notices him... which she probably doesn't. She shifts a little, moving her tail to a more comfortable position, and continues lying on her back and looking up into the night sky. * Makoto very nearly steps on Rei before he sees her lying on the grass. Oh, it's you. What's up, cutie? * Rei blinks, then flicks her violet eyes up to look at Makoto. "Oh, hi. Just looking at stars." She's wearing the same clothes as before: t-shirt and shorts, which means her feet are bare. * Makoto looks up at the sky for a moment, and then back down at Rei. Been here long? Not really. What are you doing outside? I just needed some air. Not that there wasn't any inside, of course. I just wanted air that nobody else in there had just breathed out. Present company excepted. Ooh. I get it. * Rei considers. "Me too, I think." She goes back to looking at the stars. ( Little does Makoto realize he's breathing the same air Atilla the Hun once did. ) ( Dammit! >_< ) * Makoto nods and puts his yo-yo back in the appropriate pocket. After a brief pause, he settles himself down onto the grass a couple of feet from Rei. "Hope this seat isn't taken." Well, it was reserved for my invisible friend, but since I don't have one now I guess you can have it. Oh, good. Thanks. ( Makoto realizes that the very spot he's sitting in has Kunio's name written onto it. ) ( ... Whoops. Aheheheh. <^_^;; ) * Rei nods. Her tail flicks, and she lifts her hand up and starts tracing patterns in the stars: probably constellations. * Makoto laces his hands together behind his head and leans back on the grass. How's the new body working out? It's... just like my old one, only I can do some stuff I couldn't before. And there's the killswitch, too. Mm? Killswitch? Yeah. Like what the creepy guy with wings did. Oh. You can't control that or reprogram it or anything, can you? I dunno. Maybe we can get him here and experiment. * Makoto nods, but only slightly because the back of his head is resting on his hands. Your original one didn't have that, I guess. Or if it did, nobody ever used it. Yeah. Actually, I bet it didn't. * Rei bites her lip and lets her hand drop. Well, that's kind of something I wanted to talk to you about. Yeah? As far as we know, both of your bodies were... ah... your infancies were both exceptional. Right? Yup. You can use 'engineered', if you want. ( Saying engineered makes Rei sound like a train :P ) (It's better than a beer.) ( Hush, you. ) Okay. Well, what I don't get is that if both of your bodies were engineered and this new one has a killswitch when the other one didn't, couldn't that mean that the original was created by somebody else? * Rei hrms. "It could, yeah. I don't know where the original was made." ( Rei's-R-Us ) (Buy one now, get the second half off!) ( Remember when I told you Rei wasn't unique, 'cause so many people were like her? Well... ) Mm. But no matter where the first one was made, these Asahara guys seem to have had one or more copies made by now. That makes me wonder how they got them, and whether or not the l--I'm sorry. Uhm. Nevermind. * Rei blinks, then sits up and looks at Makoto. Bits of grass are sticking in her hair. "What?" ( Fool. You can't say that much and expect to not have to say the rest :P ) It's just that I wonder about your aunt's family. She had at least one sister who's apparently died and come back as a vampire, and ~her~ genetics, one way or another, are part of you. Did she do it on purpose? Was she tricked? Did it happen before or after she turned into a l-- a vampire? * Rei looks down at the grass. "Oh. Um..." She thinks. I don't think she did. * Makoto turns his head a little to look at Rei. * Rei waves vaguely. "I might've been in a shitload of pain, but I did hear everything that was going on. The winged guy said she would protect me once she found out she had a daughter." * Rei shifts. "That means she didn't know." Good point. That's important, though. It leaves whether or not Asahara got to her before or after she turned into a vampire, and to find that out we only have to know when she died. * Rei nods, turning her attention back to Makoto. "I'd guess before." Okay, so whoever helped create you the first time probably knew exactly what they wanted when they got... whatever they needed to do what they did. * Makoto takes a breath, to give himself time to figure out what the hell just came out of his mouth. * Rei nods again and draws her knees up so she can hug her legs. Somebody wanted to cross a Smorfy with your dad, and they apparently didn't put much thought into controlling the result if you didn't have a killswitch the first time. It probably wasn't Asahara, then, because they couldn't count on you needing a new body all the way back then. I dunno. Asahara made my dad, and they didn't put a killswitch in him. * Rei pauses. "Least, I don't think they did." * Makoto sits up and turns toward Rei, sitting Indian-style just an arm's length away. "They ~made~ your dad? Like, the same way they--or whoever--made you?" * Rei nodnods, violet eyes flicking down to her knees. "Project S. I thought I told you." I mean... I think he had a natural birth. Probably. I dunno exactly. You did tell me before, but I'm trying to find the differences between your dad and you. Were there... multiple copies of your dad, too? * Rei bites her lip and nods again. * Rei takes a deep breath. "We're pretty sure Dad was a prototype. The others... their growth was accelerated or something, 'cause they were all about Dad's age, but made after him." * Makoto is silent for the length of several slow breaths, staring blankly at something in the darkness. "Kind of like this new body of yours. Maybe... maybe they didn't get enough Smorfy in the mix the first time, so they made another one and that's what the l--the vampire stole from them. So we might have to expect more of you." Maybe. They seem pretty happy using me as a bargaining chip, though. Too risky, unless they have no idea who they're dealing with. * Makoto shakes his head. Just to be safe, it might be a good idea to keep in mind how you'd fight yourself, if you had to. ... Fight myself? Hopefully it'll never happen, but if it does, we can't have you being too surprised. * Rei laughs. * Makoto gives Rei a curious look. Makoto, you'd kick my *ass*. I don't know, you wouldn't have much of an ass to kick if you hid your body somewhere and threw kitchen knives at me all day. * Rei blinks. "Good point." That's the kind of thing you've got to think about, cutie. It's not pleasant, but you never know when another you might show up and do that mind twister thing of yours on one of us. * Rei fidgets and looks off into the woods. "It's not predictable. I don't control what the... um, target sees, or even how long it lasts." * Makoto nods. Besides that, and projecting, I haven't found out I can do anything else. I do have some smorfy powers now, though. Oh yeah? What ~are~ smorfy powers? * Rei shrugs. A moment later, she's hovering a foot or so off the ground. * Makoto blinks. Wow, Rei. Now you can fly with or without a body. Yeah. I'm actually faster at it, now. Probably really fast if I try when projecting. * Rei runs a hand through her hair, and some of the grass falls out, though not all. "Can stick to walls, too, like Maria." Cool. You know physics, right? We need to teach you how to apply that to bombing runs. * Rei grins a little and says, "Potato salad?" * Makoto smiles a little. "Heck yeah. I bet we can hook you up with a little air raid siren, too." With a flashing light! Yeah! But... what color? * Rei falls back to the ground, landing with a thud. She blinks. "Color!" * Makoto pats Rei's shoulder. You'll get used to it. Everything looks really different now. You have no idea. * Rei points at her salmon pink shorts. "I mean, what color's that?" Pink. Mostly. Though it's hard to tell at night. Oh. Maybe I should ask later, then. * Rei hrms and peers at her shorts anyhow. "Pink, huh." Yep. My clothes usually look the same no matter what time of day it is, though. Chomei and Chie even moreso. Their wardrobes won't look any different to you now. Black. They wear all black. * Rei makes a face. Yeah. Lame. Super lame. What's the point of being able to see color if you don't use it? I'm not really the person to ask. I happen to ~like~ black and white, but in patterns. All black is boring. * Rei considers, holds up a finger, then considers some more. "Yeah, I see what you mean." * Makoto grins. I thought about going orange and white, once. Like clownfish. But orange is... well, you'll see when you get back to your apartment. I guess I will. My apartment's got lots of colors, right? Definitely. * Rei smiles. "Good." She falls back and looks at the stars again. * Makoto leans back on the grass again and joins Rei in stargazing. Hey, Makoto? Yeah? What's sleeping like, really? Well, it depends. Sometimes it's restless and unsatisfying, and sometimes it's filled with thoughts you can't control and don't want. The best kind of sleep is warm and deep, like... your brain just sort of shuts off for eight hours or so. Do you get that a lot? Not as much as I'd like. Oh. ... That sucks. I'm sorry to hear it. No, it's okay. I don't think anybody gets as much of that kind of sleep as they want. Well, I don't include you in that, because you don't sleep. * Rei smiles a little. "I'd like to. I mean, even if it is one of the sucky kinds of sleep. You're supposed to feel better after, right?" Yeah, even most of the inferior kinds of sleep leave you feeling refreshed afterwards. If you get enough. If you don't get enough over a long period, well... you can get sick. ~Really~ sick. Yeah. I've always wondered why I don't. I guess your brain must be special. Maybe part of your mind sleeps while you're using another part, so your brain sort of cat-naps in cycles. Maybe, yeah. * Rei sits up and looks down at Makoto. "Are you okay?" * Makoto offers Rei a brief, cheeky grin. 'Course! Somebody in this group's got to be able to keep his cool at all times, and you're lookin' at him. ( Except when speaking with Marco :P ) ( Well... yes. Except then. @_@ ) * Rei grins a little back. "Yeah, but I thought that maybe... never mind." * Makoto struggles to his feet and lists a fist to his mouth, stifling a yawn. He ruffles Rei's hair with his other hand. 'mtired, cutie. I think I'm gonna try to get some good sleep. Wish me luck? * Rei oofs and ducks out of the way. "Good luck. Actually, maybe I'll try, too. I can look at the stars when I'm sleeping." * Makoto smiles. Sounds good. * Rei climbs to her feet, too. Well, g'night then. * Makoto kisses Rei, quickly and before she can react. He's so tricky. Then he turns and walks 'round to the front door without looking back. * Rei blinks, blushes, and watches Makoto's retreat. Soon as he's out of sight, she wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand and looks up at the moon. [End]