savetheearth | [General Log] Tuning Towers, Sept. 22 onward.

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[General Log] Tuning Towers, Sept. 22 onward.

Who: Any and all!
Where: The site of Tuning Towers (and/or en route accordingly), at the heart of the business district in Locke City's downtown.
When: September 22nd and onward.
What: Following that mysterious buzzing sound to its strongest point! Perhaps you made plans with numbered associates for a trip downtown, or perhaps you went a-wandering alone to follow the noise yourself - surely you'll hardly be the only one.

[Tuning Towers, the third-largest building in the United States and Locke City's most prominent feature, from a tourist perspective in one sense and quite literally by another - look up and marvel, if you will, should you not be a bit too distracted by the circumstances.

Even if you needed to focus to tune into the buzzing in your brain at the start of whatever trip you took, you'll find that by the time you come close enough to the tower to feel a rising sensation of tremors beneath your feet - unnoticed, as far as one can tell, by the crowds, which almost never lack presence around the building - you'll be able to hear it very easily without even trying. It isn't terribly intrusive in the first couple of days after the return of the lights in the sky. As September moves on and into October, however, the intensity will grow all the more overbearing.

It is, indeed, even worse if you enter the building - only the ground floor is accessible to the unauthorized by the tower's maintenance and management or personnel of the companies making use of it. Apart from that, among the indoor crowds, you'll find nothing unusual on the ground floor - and if you'll find that the buzzing loses its strength the higher you go if you take a trip up to one of the observation floors.]

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Adam's not the only one to notice it. And it's really not helping with Axel's hangover.

"You hear that?" he asks quietly. Quietly, because the closer they get, the more police he's noticing. None too close, but he'd rather avoid being overheard.

"Yeah," Adam says, quiet as well because... yeah, all those police officers aren't escaping his notice either. "The hell is going on?"

"Dunno."

For a moment, Axel considers turning around and leaving. But that would be even more likely to draw attention than walking straight up to the place. So, he does the first thing he can think of.

He pulls off one of his gloves and shoves that hand into Adam's pocket.

"See, hon?" It's said in as normal a tone as his hoarse voice can manage. "I can't believe you haven't been here before. Check out the way it splits, just there."

He turns a smile towards Adam and entwines their fingers in the other man's pocket. Hopefully, Adam will play along.

For a moment, Adam is really, really confused, and the way he snaps his head around to look at Axel with a blush present on his face. But to his credit, he figures it out fairly quickly... he's also just not the greatest of actors. (Hey, he picked music for a reason.)

"Oh, uh, yeah," he said, trying to smile and look natural (which was really hard with Axel just up and holding his hand out of nowhere like that), "That's pretty cool. Wonder how they built it to do that."

"It's actually pretty interesting."

And off he goes on a long, hoarse explanation of how and when the Tuning Towers were built. Some of it he remembers from checking out the popular tourist spots in this city. (Those were typically decent conversation starters, or even fillers.) Most of it, he's just making up on the fly; he even spins in an "urban legend" about some office worker who never went home, and wound up haunting the place.

It's bullshit, but it's Grade A bullshit. To anyone observing, it looks like a guy who's trying to impress his boyfriend. When Axel takes off his sunglasses, the lie is made more convincing: his expression is spot-on.

Hopefully, Adam can take care of steering them into the actual building. Axel's a bit busy with their cover.

Adam knows the real origin, having grown up in and around the city, but as the buzzing's getting louder and louder there's a degree to which he can't hear Axel. But he gets them into the building, trying not to look at the police officers as they go.

Once they're inside, Axel pulls his hand from Adam's pocket to place it on the other man's lower back. It still appears intimate, but it's less conspicuous than sharing a pocket, now that they're indoors.

Still chatting away, he starts guiding them towards the first isolated area that he sees. It's only once they've got some relative privacy (and are facing some ... plastic-enclosed tourist thing that he's not really paying attention to) that he stops and takes a deep breath.

Keeping his voice low, he asks, "Is it just me, or is it loud as hell in here?"

Wow. Axel's good at this.

"It's not just you," Adam mutters, resisting the urge to rub at his ears to try and make the ringing stuff. Still, it's pretty obvious that it is just them.

To be fair, he's had practice. Possibly too much practice.

"You think this was—"

Whatever he's about to say is abruptly cut off. His eyes are wide, staring at something only he can see.

Fourteen figures, all wearing black coats. He can't see their faces; the hoods hide them from view. But he knows, without a doubt: this is Organization XIII. And he's Number VIII.

There's a change; something drapes over his free arm, like he's been carrying it this whole time. A black coat, just like the ones he sees the figures wearing. He doesn't notice. Right now, there's nothing in his head but the vision and the knowledge.

It's ok. Adam doesn't notice what's going on immediately either.

Like Axel, he's caught up in a memory that he didn't know he had before now. Running away from... something. In a cave. Was that a three headed dog?!

Adam jerks back into reality, glancing around and trying not to look too conspicuous as he sees Axel's still out of it. So he'll just take his arm, and... hope that'll help.

The redhead jumps, turning wide eyes to Adam. For a moment or two, it's likely very clear that he's not really seeing anything.

Then his vision clears, and he blinks. Still wide-eyed, and now breathing a little faster, but definitely there.

He opens his mouth. Closes it; for once, at a loss of what to say. Instead, he looks down at his arm, curious about the added weight.

"...."

Unlike a strange vision, this thing is physical. Tangible. Real.

And there's still no words, it seems.

Well... this might be a problem. The whole Echo thing he understands, but he's a little worried about other people here understanding it.

"Uh..." he says, glancing around to make sure they're not about to be arrested, "Let's... go over here, ok?" He starts leading Axel towards another 'tourist' spot that's been recently vacated. At least it looks like they're moving and not staring blankly into space.

Axel follows, quiet for the time being. He had been quite comfortable, wrapped in denial. To have that ripped away by something he can touch is....

"But now you can be nothing instead of just being a Nobody. You're off the hook."

He clenches his jaw and slowly exhales. Real. That ... vision wasn't just some random hallucination. It was real.

"... Sorry."

His voice is controlled. Too controlled. If Adam looks, he'll see that Axel's expression is one of tightly constrained anger and ... fear...? Certainly nothing like the confidence he's been portraying thus far.

Edited 2013-12-07 06:36 (UTC)

Look Adam does. And... the look on Axel's face worries him.

"It's fine," Adam replies quietly, still trying to keep his voice low. This was entirely too public to have this kind of conversation. "...Come on. Let's go somewhere else." At least one of them (aka the one with the less traumatic memory) can pretend that nothing's going on. Right?

"Yeah," Axel says, not agreeing so much as just going along with it. "Yeah, let's."

He's regaining his composure, but it's slower than he'd like. It's not often that something really shakes the redhead; when it does, it takes him a bit to get back on his feet.

Mentally, he begins running through a list of things he knows for sure. Things about himself. Things about his life. Slowly but surely, his carefully crafted image reassembles.

By the time they've gotten away from the building, Axel will look as though nothing happened at all.

Adam will wait until they're far enough away from the crowd of cops for him to breath comfortably. "Are you ok?" he asks then, still holding onto Axel's arm but not trying to steer him as much now.

A sigh escapes between clenched teeth, sounding more like a hiss than anything.

"Y'know, I'm really not a fan of the timing of these echoes." He sounds irritated, but otherwise unaffected. "This is the third. Or the third and fourth, I'm not sure how it works. Second one happened while I was in the middle of talking to someone. But the first one? That happened while I was having to fire someone."

He sighs, shifts the coat hanging over his arm, and moves to wrap his other arm around Adam's waist again. No hesitation, even if he doesn't have the excuse of providing a cover.

"And this one smacks me in the face while I'm trying to get to know you. It's irritating."

Adam opens his mouth to ask what kind of Echo Axel got before suddenly there's a hand around his waist, and there's no cover for it this time, and wow did everything he was just thinking fly out of his head.

He needs to get better at this. It kind of feels like this always happens.

"Yeah, that... sounds really annoying." He'll just stay here pressed next to you, then. "I've only had one before this, and it was in the middle of the night."

"That's when you got the sitar, right?"

Yes, he remembers the name of the instrument. And, even though he's not particularly interested in it, he latches onto that subject and continues with:

"From the way you described that thing, it's lucky no one else was around. No hiding that, right?"

It serves two purposes. First, to check and see if Adam was with anyone the night he received his echo. Second, to steer the conversation farther away from his own loss of composure.

And yes, he's keeping his hand right where it is, like it's no big deal at all.

Edited (UGH THE NAAAAAME) 2013-12-15 23:24 (UTC)

"Yeah, that's right." He's kind of impressed, Axel! Good job.

As it turns out, this is a perfectly good distraction technique. Adam doesn't know Axel that well, anyway, so he wouldn't want to press too much. So... having these other options is helpful. "Yeah, I'm really lucky. Hell, even if I had a roommate it would hard to hide. The thing doesn't exactly fit in my closet. At least a coat is easy?"

"Can't argue that."

He lets the coat fall into his hand so that he's able to hold it up before them. Although folded in half, it's clear that the silver zipper shining bright against the black material runs the entire length of the coat.

"What's this even made of? Leather?"

"It's really long, too..." Adam frowns at his, tilting his head to the side slightly as he thinks, "Well, it's certainly not something you see every day..."

"Thankfully." It's an interesting material, but seriously. "I hope I'm not expected to wear this thing."

"I don't think anyone can make you. ...Maybe I shouldn't say that." For all they know, someone could Echo back wearing something all the time.

"... Probably a good idea not to."

If his fashion sense ever starts getting messed with ... well. These echoes will be far more than an inconvenience.

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ninthmelody - 2013-12-16 00:50 (UTC) - Expand

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