aterat | Signal Interference

Entry tags:

Signal Interference

Who; Mono and whoever happens to be around
What; Log
Where; Harbor district sewer entrance to start
When; Mid September
Warnings; I will update if specific warnings are necessary. To start I would say: Mentions of solitary confinement/isolation, and abandonment
Note;Mono is now canon-updated to the end of game, and he is not going to be particularly rational atm, so it'll probably take a while for him to calm down and get both himself and his abilities under control depending on the way your character approaches. For more information, see his canon update here.

A young boy stumbled out of the sewers in the harbor district, looking disorientated and somewhat skeptical of the world around him. He shouldn’t be there, really. Not in the ‘children should not be in dangerous places in the dead of night’ kind of way, so much as the… he shouldn’t be in this world, kind of way.

This couldn’t be real, after all. He’d spent months in that room. Months feeling eyes on him despite the presence of the walls he’d built up around him with his powers. Months alone to ponder and let the hurt and anger gnaw at him after his friend… After Six dropped him. After she abandoned him to make her escape from the tower alone, letting go of his hand in the last moment. Just as he had thought that they were going to be free and could resume their joint escape from the city in search of a better place.

This had to be a wishful delusion of a place far better than the Pale City. A place he would much rather be, with people who cared about him (or could they betray him as easily as she had?).

But it wasn’t real, it couldn’t be real. The more the thoughts spun in his head, the more anxious and angry he got at whatever had changed the appearance of the space around him to look like something he couldn’t have. “It’s not real.” He mumbled, the light static that flickered in his sclera more pronounced as he frowned at the sight of the harbor district around him. “It’s not fair. It’s not. Stop trying to trick me.” He balled up his hands into fists. Seeing a place like this, it was too upsetting. He didn’t want to see something he couldn’t have. Mono needed to change it back, to stop being taunted by it. “CHANGE BACK!” He yelled in a desperate and unsteady tone. Energy rolling off of him in waves that seemed to thicken the air unchecked as the already small, rundown harbor buildings around him shuddered almost as though they might really change back.

If he had been more clear minded, he might have remembered that if he’d been in his world… he wouldn’t know or remember this place at all. That fact didn’t even begin to edge its way into the child’s mind as a few windows nearby exploded in shards of glass from the strain. The illusion wasn’t changing, the surrounding images weren’t changing like they should be… It was more like when he’d been outside the tower still and trying to get the hang of his abilities to get to the tower faster before everything had gone south.

Why…? This couldn’t be that place. This couldn’t be real, right? So why…? Was that thing behind this? Was it taunting him out of boredom? Could it even do that?

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He's summoned. Word of mouth can travel quickly between guards, especially when some were mounted on chocobos. And so the word gets back and he's summoned to find the boy that had been missing from his place in their lives for too long. The one Nida had feared had gone home, and so a part of his life had been lost. It takes a while for him to get there though. Takes a while for him to arrive, which is while a new set of windows explode nearby.

The Protect spell keeps them from falling on him in a truly bad way, the glittering shards slipping around the limits of the magic as Nida approaches, confident but slow. From what he'd heard, Mono was far from okay at the moment.

"You know," he said, trying to keep his voice conversational, "when I get mad I try to break things I can easily replace. Saves some money that way. Trees are usually good for it, near the forest."

Not okay was decidedly a decent way of describing it. Mono was currently a mixture of panic and anger at what seemed like such a cruel joke to be playing on him. It was like that thing must have decided just watching him sit alone in that chair wasn’t entertaining anymore, like it wanted a new show to watch. The world wasn’t changing back around him; it wasn’t bending to his powers the way it had when he’d ended up at the bottom of the tower in the first place. Instead of warping around him, things were just creaking and breaking instead.

The boy practically begged for the world to change back, to stop messing with him. To stop tricking him.

Then he looked up sharply at the voice, hands still balled into fists and the static buzzing in his eyes as his power, the signal he was the source of, flowed around him. At first he was entirely still, but then he began to edge back slightly. That couldn’t be Nida… Right? He couldn’t be here either. The boy’s form blurred and looked like it stuttered slightly as he edged backwards warily, before in a blink of an eye he was a few feet away.

“You can’t be here.” He mumbled with a surprising amount of certainty.

The static hurts and Nida is wincing when it builds up. Siren is practically keening in pain from the sound of it, and it's leaving Nida shaking. Which means he has to do something he hates. Which is to unjunction Siren, leaving him vulnerable without his magic and enhancements. At the same time it means he can hear without the great pain of it.

"Last time I checked, I could kiddo," he said, not taking another step forward, not yet. "Though I my boss might agree with you since the harbor isn't my beat most of the time."

There was a small part of Mono, the part that had been growing since he’d been left behind, that felt a certain satisfaction that the illusion seemed to wince under the force of the static signal that was thickening the air. Serves the thing right for trying to trick him, for showing him someone he missed just to tease him or lull him into a false hope that could be snatched away again as easily as Six had let go of his hand all those months ago.

“No ‘cause you're not real.” He mumbled again, a small quiver in his voice. “Adults can’t be in the tower unless they’re part of that thing.” Which meant they weren’t really human anymore, just part of the amalgamation. “You’re just a trick.” He flickered again, bordering on another skip away in his uncertainty. There was some truth to the other’s words, though, if he were thinking clearly. The harbor wasn’t where Nida usually worked, and he sounded terribly real…

"Last I checked I was real. I eat food. I sleep in a bed. I need to use the bathroom. Hibiscus still pecks at my hair."

This is a bit weird, but he supposes he understands. 'Adults can't be in the tower'. He went home. Like Llewellyn's husband had. And now he was back.

"Ig and I were worried about you, you know. Honestly, of everyone here who could go home, I never wanted you to. Place sounds like shit."

Mono still stared at the man with uncertainty, like he was trying to see through some elaborate trick or illusion… But it was starting to connect, starting to hit him that Nida was saying things that a fake probably wouldn’t know to say… Nor would he even know Nida if they were in his world. If they were in the tower…

If he remembered, then… He was back…? He was back in that weird other world where people were nice and were still people, where he had a home and a bedroom and people…? And… “Nida…?”

Oh… Oh no…

His form jerked and stuttered again as the broken glass on the ground around him made him realize just what he’d been doing before now… He hadn’t been changing the room in the tower, he’d been breaking part of the city he’d returned to in his panic. Now the boy was panicking for an entirely different reason, as his breath started to come quick and his form blurred as he started backing away, another ‘skip’ pulling him further than one would expect as he disappeared in a little blur and then stilled again.

He was the one who’d broken the Pale City, he was the reason people weren’t people anymore… Whether they deserved it or not… What if he did that here? What if he hurt everyone? He couldn’t control some of what he could do. He didn’t even know how to stop it!

Yup… The kid was running now, afraid for different reasons than before.

Hyne did he have to do this when Nida decidedly did not have a speed junction? Sure he was quick for a SeeD and had tricks he hadn't taught the kid yet, but something was wrong.

And, as much as he hated it, he settled Siren's junction back in place. He would need the enhanced senses as he bolted after the kid. Someone needed a hug.

"Mono! Wait up!"

Nida could count one thing as lucky, well… Lucky was a bad word for it, all things considered… But it would make catching up a little easier even with Mono’s odd ‘new’ ability that allowed him to skip ahead a few extra paces at a speed greater than he had been going.

The kid didn’t move like he normally did. Between the unfortunate effects of the signal tower that had caused him to get a little taller and a little more awkward looking, and the fact that he’d been sitting stationary on a chair for several months? His skills built up during his time here were a little rusty, and he was going to need some time to adjust to that on top of everything else.

So the thing that kept him ahead at all was definitely his ability more than his awkward run.

Even in trying to jump over something that normally would have been nothing, he didn’t quite land right and went awkwardly skidding and flailing a bit as he tried to catch himself to move on. “No, go away. You shouldn’t follow me!” The boy responded over his shoulder, fear evident in his tone. Not fear for himself, though, fear for what could happen to this place and the people in it.

Well, this was turning out to be good fun, wasn't it? That was sarcasm, in case anyone was wondering. Nida threw himself over a low set of crates that Mono had tripped around, trying to keep his breathing even as he went.

"Yeah, you know that's not happening, kiddo. We're family. That's important."

Mono knew that Nida was being serious, of course. That was the problem, though. He cared about the family he had here. He didn’t want to lose that, but he also didn’t want to hurt them either. What would they even say if they knew the truth? What if they turned like Six did? He felt tears sting his eyes, because somehow that felt just as bad to imagine. Darting around a building, he stifled a panicked shout of disappointment as he spotted a wall. He was a little less confident than he usually was when it came to climbing, even with the memories of their lessons. And… He’d never gotten to try his ability on ‘up’ as he had ‘forward’ even if up was technically forward right now.

But he had to at least try, and so he was grabbing onto ledges and cracks in the building he could to start hauling himself up and finding stable footholds, but Nida definitely had the advantage now.

Nida comes into the dead end and almost wants to laugh because hey, good place for the kid to practice. Mostly, though, he's got a massive advantage here. He runs at the wall and used the forward momentum to get his feet against it and push himself up to hit a window ledge on the second floor before he's hauling himself higher.

"Mono, don't be like that. Do you have any clue how much we miss you? I just want you to come home."

Mono stifled another panicked sound as he slipped here and there. Falling was not something the child was keen to do again. In fact, he would very much like to not be doing what he was doing at all, if he had to be honest. Nida’s words were unfortunately leaving the boy more than a little conflicted. “You don’t understand! I can’t! You don’t know what I could do!” He shouted over his shoulder, before noticing that Nida was actually a lot closer than he’d hoped the man would be.

Not that it was surprising, Nida would always be better at this than he was, and the fact remained that Mono had also been mostly stationary in a chair for several months… So he wasn’t at his best, either.

Yeah, Nida had an advantage. In fact, he'd gotten up high enough now to sit on the edge of a window, so he can watch the kid. Yeah, he was definitely watching.

"You don't know what I could do, Mono. I'm quite a serious warrior, and I'm bound to the magic of a great elemental spirit. I think a lot of us are seriously powerful, the ones brought here."

The fact that Nida had gotten ahead of him meant the boy had two options. Keep going up, or try to get back down… But that would likely result in a similar issue, Nida would still beat him to the bottom of the building and it would be an awkward back and forth until he’d probably tired himself out, and either fallen or gotten caught, anyway.

Mono wanted neither of those things, of course, and so he was stuck dangling from a lower window ledge before he finally pulled himself up more securely and looked up at Nida with a particularly upset expression. He knew Nida was powerful, knew most people here were… and maybe Nida could do things that Mono didn’t know about or could do. But like the man said, he was a warrior. He was someone who did the right thing and helped people. He stopped monsters around the city and guarded it.

It was frustrating to not be able to just accept that and go home… Upsetting to realize he needed to tell the truth and probably watch the expression on the other’s face change to something that would ultimately crush him inside. He didn’t want to look up and see that kind of expression on the fact of someone he cared about, not like he had when Six, standing above him, let him go. “It’s different!” He bit out, scrunching his static filled eyes shut and trying to say what he needed to. “You’re good! You protect people! You stop monsters! But I’m a monster. People aren’t even people in my world anymore and now I know that’s ‘cause of me! I don’t even know how to stop it and sometimes I won’t even wanna stop it!” Mono blurted out, hurt bleeding into his voice as he admitted what he really hadn’t wanted to say to the face of someone he looked up to for such a long time.

Oh Mono... So wrong to assume Nida's a good person.

"I'm a good person now Mono. There are people in my past who would see me as a monster, even if I may have done something different from what you did."

Should he say it? He thinks... He thinks he might almost need to do it actually. So Mono understands that people can choose to change, at any point. And it's a secret he wouldn't share outside of the family if he's honest.

"I wasn't just a monster hunter, Mono. I was a mercenary. I was a mercenary hired often as a spy and sometimes as an assassin. I chose to become a good person."

Mono looks up at that again, still huddled on the ledge he was balanced on. That didn’t sound right to Mono. It didn’t really match up with the Nida he knew… So he looked a little confused, listening very carefully even as he shifted uncertainly. The concept of a mercenary wasn’t something that he knew particularly well, of course, but he knew what everything else meant… Could guess from there what the man was trying to say. At the very least, having something to try to think about and understand seemed to interrupt the panic that he’d been spiraling into.

The flicker in his form seemed to calm some, and he shook his head a little. “But you still chose to, right? What if that’s… what if some people don’t get a choice?” He’s not sure if he would ever get one, somehow…. somehow he always ends up back in the tower. Someday he’s going to be that man, angry and bitter and letting the signal he gave off ruin the city and its people, letting that thing feed.

"I still choose to," Nida says, and he frowns, considering Mono. Considering long and hard.

"I've seen that too," he says at last. "In Edea. In Rinoa. In Seifer. In my world there are darknesses that can grasp and grab and possess a mind. That doesn't mean that someone can't get free of them. That they can't choose good after that. Sure, then they spend their time trying to atone for what they did, but that doesn't mean they didn't choose to do better in the now."

Mono listened quietly as Nida explained what he’d seen of people like that in his world. So there were other people like him…? Or… Not like him, he supposed, but near enough that they had their choice taken from them, at least for a while. “Oh…” He mumbled, clearly considering that carefully. “I think I’ve tried a few times to stop it.” He finally admitted, some of his conflicting memories having started to make some sense in a way. “I still always end up where I started, though. I still always become that man.” He ended with a little shake of his head. “I don’t wanna do that here… I don’t wanna hurt anyone like that, but…” It could happen, the boy thinks. If the wrong thing happened here, he thinks it could. He still felt angry inside, still felt the bitter need to make people pay for making him feel as he did or abandoning him…

But no one had made him feel like that here, at least not yet.

And here was Nida, so pointedly not abandoning him. That's never going to happen.

"Yeah, well there you don't have me and Ignis and that Luna girl Ignis talks about, right? And your boss Tommy. I've heard him talking at the Lodge. He's supposed to be, what, a literal superhero? Think he'd let you do any of that? Nope. You've got something here you don't have there. Family. Friends. Support."

And so your other points are moot. Clearly that's what he's saying.

"Oh, and there's something else you have. A home with two chocobos, a cat, a peacock cat, and your own room, and SO MANY cookies that I helped Ignis stress bake. Well, more like he did the hard work and I bought all these cookie cutters to make shapes."

That was… Very true… He didn’t have anyone like the people here, back in his world. Part of him thought that was best, because he knew what happened to people in his world now. Knew a little too much about what was going on there to not be afraid of it and the idea of it happening to people he cared about. But… Nida was right. “I… I guess that’s true.” He mumbled with a small sniff, eyes stinging lightly. One thing Nida would notice, that while the energy had at least calmed down somewhat around the boy, his eyes remained the same and there was still the faintest power radiating around him. It wouldn’t be going anywhere, not now.

But at least there wasn’t the sound of glass cracking or buildings creaking. He seemed to have calmed down somewhat with his attention so focused on the conversation and puzzling over the point being made. “If I could make sure it won’t happen, if people could stop something bad from happening…” He mumbled, more to himself than Nida. Seeming to be trying to come to a decision himself now. If he could trust people to stop the bad things from happening here, then maybe it would be okay…? Maybe… He could stay with them.

Drew his knees up closer to himself before glancing up at the reminder. A reminder of things that, now that he remembered them, he missed desperately. He missed helping to take care of the chocobos, he missed sitting quietly with the cat or watching Nida’s peacock cat strutting around. He definitely missed the cookies. “I’m sorry…” Finally escaped, his voice cracking slightly. He was sorry for making a mess on his first night back, and sorry for not considering that maybe he could trust people here to take care of things.

Not that it was easy to, considering how quickly the adults had given up in his world to the signal in the first place.

There it was. The kid was calming down. Nida leaned more against his window ledge, happy to just hang out there casually. Better not to pry or push on the power Siren was almost ringing with in the air. Better to just play it cool.

"Don't apologize. It's very clear you did not want to leave, so we're not upset over that. And honestly? Guards thought it was you, so they told me to come and get 'that quick little boy of yours'. Guess they think Ignis and I adopted you.

“They did?” The boy sounded a little confused at that, if only because adoption was still a weird concept to the boy. He knew what it was in theory, but in a world like his? It was as much a fairy tale as any other children’s story was. His earliest memory, one that he sometimes thinks predates even the tower and the cycle he was caught in… was in an orphanage, and that hadn’t gone any better than any other experience around the Pale City had. So, because the boy was distracted, and it was helping to talk about anything but his fears… “Is adoption actually a thing people really do?”

"It is," Nida said, and his expression went... dark for a while. "I've known other orphans that got adopted. But me, I never did growing up."

He'd just been yet another war orphan

“Yeah…? Kinda sucks not getting picked if people were getting picked.” Mono hummed, falling quiet for a moment or two as he thought about the idea. It really was an odd thing for him to think about. “There was an orphanage where I was… I think I was there first, before… Before everything started.” He mumbled, shaking his head a little. “But we never saw anyone get adopted. Even if it was talked about sometimes, then something happened and… I my powers started working then.” But he’s pretty sure that was before the cycle started, and was something that he only remembered vaguely. The sadness, the uncertainty, and then the fire and the subsequent chase as something was after them all. Then his powers happened to work on a tv, and he would be thrown out into the hunter’s forest for the first time.

But when things started anew, and the cycle repeated, he always ended up in the Hunter’s forest instead, skipping that portion of his life entirely.

Exactly. Nida... got that pain quite a bit. Sure, he'd never lived in a proper orphanage, but he'd seen others who had been adopted and still attended Garden. And those that hadn't been who had been tossed there like him.

"Well, here's the thing? Maybe Ignis and I aren't your parents, but we did pick you. We pick you every day. No matter your powers or mine or his, we choose you. We choose you are our family."

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