Well...What Now? [Luffy/Open: Aqures Tosf]

[theendiswherewestartfrom]

August 14 - Aqures Tosf
[Luffy:]

Once Jack comes out of the Crystal Stasis, it doesn't take him long to figure out what's happened. The vortex manipulator now reads the "right" date again. City destroyed, them, what, removed from time?

Jack sighs deeply, and the first person he approaches is Luffy. He slides the treasured straw hat off his head and offers it over.

"Well. That didn't work."

Pause.

"You owe me a new sword, you know."

[Open:]

There is a principle at work here, one that Jack swears used to even be in the Torchwood handbook. Everything has gone wrong: somehow Jack's partly to blame.

This isn't a surprise or even something that is a problem. But Jack will wait for his fellow Heroes to come to him. They'll be expecting answers, either on the stunt he pulled at the Temple, or on what has happened to them, now. He had the answers last time, didn't he? In the meantime, though, there's a laboratory, no, a whole island to explore. Twenty eight years. How much has changed?

Comments

[theendiswherewestartfrom]

Oh. It's still funny, not funny, that Jack thought the Marshal was going to be the one to do something rash during this trip. He actually does feel disappointed in having let the man down, and that look on his face is worse than anything else he could do.

"Because...it's worked before?"

Jack sighs deeply. It's a lame-ass excuse, and he knows it, but that's what he was thinking. "It's a long damn story. The short version is that I can't die. Not permanently. Not before coming here. And that I've pulled that exact same stunt before and had it work. Offer myself up instead to world-devouring ancient evils, anything that feeds on life, or on death."

"And I just- come out on top in the end."

[red_planet_blues]

"Nothin' on this planet works the way it should. When has it ever?"

There's nothing Sparks hates more than needless sacrifice. In his mind, there was always a way around a no-win situation. Except they were currently standing in the crumbling ruins of Aqures Tosf. That did sting quite a bit.

"We barely know what our crystals do to us, but one of those is that none of us can die fer good. 'Less ya use one of those weapons the Empire had. But we all know that Kalki is like, light-years ahead of us when it comes to that kinda stuff. Anyway, the more of the story is: knock that off."

Sparks folds his arms sharply and huffs. Seriously, what is he going to do with the lot of you Heroes?

After a moment, though, he shoots Jack a sideways glance, looking curious and skeptical.

"So. Back where yer from, you seriously couldn't die?"