Just Outside MCA, The Matrix, Shortly After Zinyak's Broadcast, Thursday

[suitably_heroic]

Several hours of searching his apartment - when he and Cara had gotten back, and again this morning - and then the greater premises of the MCA building, such as the lobby - and Atton had finally found a weapon.

Which was to say he had a broom.

He put his foot down on the head as he stepped outside and violently yanked the stick part out of it. "So what I'm gathering from this," he said, looking up at... wherever that voice had come from, just to make sure he was listening, "is that there's finally someone we can beat the poodoo out of."

They had taken all of his weapons, they had taken the Force out of his head, and they had taken the Ebon Hawk. Atton might not have been Sith anymore, but damn if he wasn't strongly inclined to make sure someone was going to die. Screaming. For this. "And then to finish up, I think I'm going to kick this Zinyak guy in the nuts."

[[ open, though some sp warning applies! ]]

Comments

[myownface]

"Oh, yeah," Sparkle snarked, "because I totally knew this was going to happen if I showed up here on a Tuesday. Come on, like, normally this stuff at least starts ramping up enough on Monday that we know we're fucked by then!"

Yeah, your first mistake was expecting the island to follow your rules, Sparks. Maybe it wanted to keep you on your toes.

...

"Wait, he took the Hawk? Asshole!"

[suitably_heroic]

"You never portal anywhere on a weekday! Especially not here! That's just asking for something to happen!"

Stop yelling, Rand.

"But yes! He's an asshole! I'm going to punch my way through his goons until they cough up the Hawk, and then I'm going to unleash Cara on him!"

Before he cracked and went full-on axe crazy Jaq on anybody.

[myownface]

At least yelling-Atton was kind of par for the course for this sort of thing. Sparkle was taking it with a grain of salt.

"Well, I'll remember that for next time, then! God!"

Great counterpoint, Spark.

"... And I want to watch that. The punching and the unleashing. Can I watch?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Yes! Obviously! You better not go wandering around, getting your stupid rear end in more trouble!"

Because you didn't have a date with Zinyak's unusual punishment system, Atton. "I was gonna have a day off yesterday, damn it."

[myownface]

Sparkle had a few more dates lined up, at this rate, really.

"As if the island ever believed in days off. Except for me. I'm skipping school now to be here."

Not... that he really wanted to be in school anyway. And chilling out with the Friendly Giant hadn't actually sucked, either.

[suitably_heroic]

"And why is that, exactly?!"

... at this point, Atton was mostly just yelling because he'd started yelling and he didn't really want not-yelling to catch up with him.

[myownface]

"Because I can't leave the fucking island!" Aaand now Sparkle was yelling back. Because that was a great coping mechanism, actually. "Or the sim, or whatever the hell this is! I wasn't skipping when I came here!"

Yet.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton digested that information. He still had the feeling something was wrong here, but without his Force powers he couldn't actually pinpoint it as well as he usually could. Urgh.

"...Well, you're still an idiot!" he yelled, once he realized too much non-yelling time had already passed for his comfort.

[myownface]

"And you're super eloquent!"

So there, Atton. So there.

Sparkle crossed his arms over his chest and curled his lip a little, directing a pissed-off look in the direction of the towers.

"Noodles."

Yeah, now he was playing dirty.

[suitably_heroic]

"Are you seriously pulling a 'noodles' on me right now?" Atton asked incredulously.

What even, Sparks.

He glanced over his shoulder at the tower.

"We tried punching those things yesterday. No luck."

[myownface]

"I broke a few windows and wound up spending a night listening to a giraffe and a chicken talking about music or something," Sparkle replied, wrinkling his nose. "I stopped paying attention after the first few minutes, mostly. Did, like, anything happen with the punching?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Nothing at all," Atton reported. "We got fed up with it eventually so we went back to the apartment, where I found out the schuttas took my ship!"

Not getting over that any time soon, no. Possibly also using it to keep from freaking out about anything they were doing to his head right now, but still. It was the Hawk!

[myownface]

Nobody messed with the Hawk, seriously. Nobody.

Sparkle tilted his head a little bit, and then smiled faintly. At least not having his head messed with and his stuff go missing was good for applying a little common sense to the situation.

"Did they take it, or did they just not bother putting it into the simulation they stuck us in? Because, like, he said 'sim,' right? So all the weird shit around here isn't even real? And having a ship would make this way too easy for us." A beat. "Not that we'd be going anywhere anyway."

[suitably_heroic]

Damn it, Sparks. At least check your 'not having your connection to the universe at large yoinked out of your brain' privilege, okay?

Atton was usually sharper than this. Hell, even when he'd been Force-less, he'd been sharper than this. If this was what Jedi-ing led to, it was no wonder Kreia had been against the whole notion.

He pulled a face. "You think someone went to all this trouble just to copy-paste the island?"

[myownface]

"And I think they did a shitty job of it," Sparkle replied, shrugging. "Like, look at today compared to yesterday, man. Shit is breaking. It's been a day and shit is breaking."

A pause.

"Though, like, I guess the hot dog costumes are funny. But people's pets are fucked up, and anything we could find useful is gone, and they put me into a kid's show for a few hours once I started smashing windows. So, like, if they can make Rusty the Rooster real, why not copy-paste the island?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Because it... doesn't make any sense?"

Atton glanced around himself, as if daring the simulation to reveal itself. Nothing. And a really bad feeling set on him. Copy-pasta some buildings, sure. But what he'd been-- "I mean, if what you're saying is true, then that means they sliced into our heads..."

He trailed off.

Somebody sliced into his head.

[myownface]

"Or we're in a really big Danger Shop," Sparkle offered quickly, once he realized Atton had sort of faded out, there. "Like, maybe we're in something more like Galaxy Quest than some kind of shared, fucked up-- like that movie with the chosen one and all the people are stuck in pods being fed each other's liquefied remains or whatever and there is no spoon? We don't know, man. Not for sure."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton rubbed at his forehead.

"I can't feel the Force, Sparks," he said. "The Danger Shop can do a lot of things. It can't do that."

Nothing could, unless they were actively in his head. It was the Force. It didn't just go away, at least not without a cataclysmic event that he would've remembered.

[myownface]

Ah. Right.

"Shit."

Okay. Okay, this wasn't a disaster. It wasn't, right? Except that if this was like that Keanu Reeves movie, how the fuck were they supposed to get out of it? Swinging their makeshift weapons around? There was no broom.

"We make life hell for them," Sparkle decided, blinking up at Atton. "They wouldn't have such high security now if we couldn't actually do real damage here, right? It'd be more effective to just let us rail against those towers and wear ourselves out on our own than to bother setting up, like, armed turtle men to keep us out. We'd be a self-solving problem. Instead they send people to weird little dream-places to get us out of the way when we smash shit, and tell us to behave ourselves, right?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Right. There's something they're trying to stop us from getting at." Beat. "I hope it's this Zinyak's head on a stick."

... He'd tone down the threats, but this guy had SLICED INTO HIS BRAIN.

[myownface]

Yeah, Sparkle would somehow cope.

"It's not on a stick yet," Sparkle replied, "I don't think. But hey, nothing saying we can't remedy that. Jackass is going to make me miss a meeting with my parole officer. I am so going to kick his ass."

He could dream big.

[suitably_heroic]

"Just to start with," Atton said. Crabbily. He squinted at Sparkle. "...And then afterwards I want to know why the hell you came here in the first place."

Because he'd thought that was odd before all of this started.

[myownface]

"Yeah, sure," Sparkle replied, shrugging his shoulders non-committally. "One thing at a time, though, right?"

Look, maybe he was hoping that Atton would forget about that by the time this all blew over, okay? Sparkle needed some hope to cling to, god.

[suitably_heroic]

"Fine," Atton said.

It wasn't hard to keep him angry in the one particular direction right now, anyway. Not that that would last.

"So we need to get more weapons. Some of the bad guys have blasters."

[myownface]

"So... we get the weapons from the bad guys," Sparkle guessed, tilting his head a little. "Using, um... brooms? Rocks from behind? If you get shot in your head, do you get shot in real life?"

Because Sparkle really didn't want to die in this place, thanks.