( horizon )

[supersoldier]

EXTERIOR It’s nighttime, and the building before you is impossibly tall, made of dark steel dotted with exterior lights, illuminating the green glowing haze lingering in the air. Military vehicles pass along the street, unearthing themselves from an underground parking garage nearby, though their drivers appear faceless through the glass. The main entrance does not eschew visitors — the interior lights shine brightest through expansive glass doors, which will open for any who wander in.

LOBBY Corporate clean and modern, the lobby is shining, straight-edged, and ambient lit. It is a space that was clearly designed to comfortably host many people, though it is currently (and always) empty. Even the front desk is bulwarked by shining walls of security lights, with no one seated to greet newcomers. A massive set of stairs, one on each side, will lead a visitor upward. It is the epitome of subliminal space, and obviously meant to be traveled through, not loitered in.

CAFETERIA A half-formed cafe adjoining the lobby. You can sit, if you like, but there’s not much else to do. No food and drink being served, no ambient music to fill the space. Very little effort has been put into the creation of this area beyond functional construction, though the spotlit foliage is a nice addition.

STAIRWELLOne way or another, there’s a stairwell that loops up, and up, and up— for as far as the eye can see. The floors are numbered, and maybe those numbers climb higher; maybe they jump round, maybe they repeat themselves. Footsteps clang on metal, and resonate with each step. Surely, at some point, there’ll be an exit — and sometimes there is, a door appearing on one story or another, providing freedom. Sometimes, you just have to keep climbing.

You could go back down the other way, but even that feels like a feat of its own, depending on how far you’ve already journeyed.

VR TRAINING ROOMA training room with wide flooring and nondescript walls, made for sparring. There isn’t much here until, with a flicker of light, the scene erupts in a distinctly different palette of color. Atop the long length of an impossibly large cannon, or the square of a foreign city in a foreign nation, couched by trees. Sometimes it’s not a scene at all; sometimes, a monster greets you, instead.

PERSONAL QUARTERSLocked to all who find it, for the time being.

CODE BY MARWOOD | personal quarters artwork credit

Comments

[supersoldier]

[These cities she shows him, with such an ease that she changes the vista, are glittering, bright, kaleidoscopic. More than even Midgar, a city whose mako smog obscures much at too far of a distance, even with its surreal green glow.

His eyes linger, tracing over each line of every building as though he could commit it to memory. He had not considered how varied the landscape of other worlds could be. Even in Abraxas, the scope of the universe had expanded to two planets instead of one. Wanda's display reminds him that it's bigger than that; a grounded reminder that he is surprisingly small in the grand scheme of it.]

I only travel where Shinra assigns me. If you've visited two cities, that's one more than me.

[In a way. He is familiar with the heart of Midgar, which he counts. He has visited Junon, which he does not.]

[carmesi]

Sounds pretty limited.

[to be 'assigned', told where to go, disallowed from going anywhere else because of reasons that pervade sephiroth's whole existence—a soldier, a man that looks after the assets of the company he works for. she cannot help but wonder why work for them at all?

but not everything is so black and white; she remains looking at him, a narrowing of her eyes as if she could read his mind.]

I traveled because my country was destroyed, but I was only allowed to go to specific places. [perhaps, she thinks, we are not so dissimilar. she turns her head away when she speaks again.] All I really wanted was a house in a quiet town, but I suppose those of this world have different plans for us.