#claus 01

People-watching had always been something Emi enjoyed, as she was doing now; sitting atop a railing, legs swinging, the little girl looked out among the crowds around the amusement park in the Golden Ward. Most people were bustling around, laughing and dragging their friends towards the stalls and rides... but there was one boy that was just standing there, looking blank.

Then her eyes caught sight of his round, metal arm, which caused her stomach to drop in dread, and she felt the urge to run.

But the cannon and the boy it was attached to were familiar, so she swallowed back her fear and peered closer. A boy in a helmet, with a cannon for an arm... yes, she knew this boy! And she also knew that contrary to the twinge of fear she’d felt upon first laying eyes on him, this boy was nice. Her memories were hazy -- it’d been a couple years, after all -- but that was something she was certain of. Now, she just had to remember his name, so she could go talk to him...

It took a little while of staring, eyes squinted, before a name came to her. As soon as that name sprung to her mind, she grinned wide, jumped down from her perch on the railing, and burst into a sprint towards the Masked Man.

He cusses and clutches at it, rubbing PSI into the offending spot until the pain eases. The creature coiled around his legs whines. Poor Dratini. He’s probably freaking the poor thing out. He reaches down, hand open for a comforting head rub.

“It’s fine.” He says softly, smiles. “Just a little antsy.”

The screen in front of him is still a dead black. Just looking at it puts a strange pit in his stomach; the thought of the monitor, any monitor, as anything other than a tool of wicked ambition is nearly absurd to him, but...

but if everything leading up to today is for real—if he’s not about to have some massive, elaborate and cruel prank pulled on him, like he half expects—then he may just get to see a familiar face beyond the glass pane soon.

“Have fun,” comes his chaperone’s dry voice from the other end of the room. “Remember: You gotta touch the green, not the red.”

The door clicks softly as Clair leaves him to his own devices.

A minute or so later, the screen lights up.

Green. Right.

For a moment, it doesn’t even register with Lucas that anything has happened. The face on the screen is so similar to his own that deceptively, it nearly seems like the screen’s gone dead again, his own face reflected back at him in that dark mirror.

Until his mirror image moves when he doesn’t. He feels as though his heart nearly stops. Lucas tries to say something, anything really, but nothing comes. Tightening up, his throat sabotages him. The best he can manage is a hoarse cough.

Way to make an impression.

@mustbesotired

This was not a safe place in the slightest. You could feel the electricity in the air, in a way. It wasn’t the demons roaming around, although the sight of one had almost startled Nero. No, it was the feeling of foreboding. The knowledge that one could be called on to battle for one’s life, as it were. It gave the expectation that those chosen were the most fearsome and cunning the universe could provide.