nexus_crossings | (no subject)

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"This isn't... the way to the video store."

Mai couldn't begin to guess why the way ahead looked so different. What happened? She had been minding her own business, looking for something to do until it would be time to go to school.

What really weirded and creeped her out was the fact that the familiar buildings, sidewalks, and streets weren't present. I can't be dreaming this up. I don't have dreams like this! What in the world was going on? Was she still in Tokyo?!

There was no way all those office buildings and skyscrapers could change so fast! It just wasn't physically possible. It didn't make sense!

Mai was on the move as she was failing to make sense of this. She felt slightly relieved to see someone nearby. Slightly, for if this person turned out to be somebody who would harm her, she would run for it.

Forget the video store. She wanted to go home. "Excuse me! Could you please help? How far is Shinjuku East from here?" Mai couldn't remember feeling so uneasy and on the verge of freaking out.

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A young woman in drab, dusty clothing looks up from a worn paperback and frowns worriedly. The poor girl must be lost. "Sorry, I don't know," she says quietly. She's never even heard of Shinjuku, but that's not relevant, if this is the girl's first time in the Nexus. "Do you remember how you got here?"

Mai hadn't expected that kind of answer. She had hoped that the lady would point in a direction, or--or something! Just how was she going to answer her question without sounding like a crazy person? How could she explain in a way that made sense?

It didn't matter how the woman was dressed, or whether she had a home of her own to go back to, or not.

"I was walking, and..." She shook her head, certainly not looking or feeling any less insecure. This was crazy. Insane! She couldn't have gotten lost on a pathway she had taken again and again. "The video store's just a few blocks down the street!" Mai was going to be late for school! She couldn't get caught skipping out again. She didn't want to end up in detention. "It's like everything changed when I followed the sidewalk..." She shook her head and shut her eyes a moment, clearly distressed. "I know that doesn't make sense, but that's what happened."

What if I can't go back? When that thought crossed her mind, she immediately dismissed it. She was going to find a way back. Dad. Call Dad. She looked back at the woman, not caring how "Could you at least help me get to a phone? I have to call my dad... Where are we, anyway? Do you know?"

Edited 2016-08-25 01:25 (UTC)

"We're in the Nexus," Adia answers. "Or... a Nexus, anyway. A lot of different realities intersect here. You might have accidentally walked through a portal and ended up here." She looks around uneasily. "Like a public telephone? I haven't seen one. I'm sorry." Would a telephone even work here? Anything's possible, but...

"Look, um. Just so you know. You aren't going crazy. Or dreaming. I thought that the first time I ended up here, too. I got back to where I was supposed to be soon enough." She tries to smile reassuringly. Not that she much wanted to go back home, personally, but this girl clearly does. Or at least not be lost anymore.

The Nexus? Different realities? That had to mean they were someplace far, far away from Tokyo. We're in... That sounded so hard for to believe right then, that she had stepped into another reality.

For that moment, Mai felt like she couldn't breathe. The part about there being no payphone sucked. "What about a cell phone?"

She had been furious at times over Dad almost never coming home, but it wasn't like she didn't want to see him again. She'd tell him that, but not really mean it. She didn't want to lose the only family she had, even though Dad wasn't always there when she needed him. Running away meant being even more alone than she had felt before.

I'm not going crazy... That was good to know, but what was said after that sure wasn't. She got out? "You got out? But you're still here!" Almost everything was going wrong, and then more wrong by the minute, and most of it defied all nature. Fear had just entered into her voice, and into her brown eyes as they widened. "What should I do? Walk around until I find another of these portals?"

Edited 2016-08-25 02:37 (UTC)

"I don't have a phone on me," Adia says in that same apologetic tone. Oh, this poor girl. When Adia had first stumbled into the Nexus, she had been looking for an escape. Even now, when she visits, it's to get a break from the troubles of her own world. She can't imagine what it's like to feel trapped in the Nexus...

...but she knows how it feels to be trapped, period. "Here... sit down for a minute." She makes room on the stone bench, setting her book in her lap. "I'm here now, but I can travel back and forth from here and where I normally live. The portals I've seen here don't usually leave people stuck, but it doesn't happen immediately."

"No internet either?" What am I going to do?!

Hardly anything was going right, and being trapped in some other world, even if it was only temporarily, was proving difficult to process.

Mai had plenty of woes as it was, and this was getting to be too much. Two tears slid down her cheeks. "Stuck?" Her head lowered, and fell silent until she almost fell onto the stone bench by the sympathetic stranger. "For how long?"

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it was for a day or two. She could at least avoid getting busted for skipping school - and she didn't intend to. It wasn't like anyone back home would believe what she'd tell them, about walking into another reality, without warning.

This was however too brief of a pleasant thought as she feared being stuck in this place for weeks, to months. How was she going to tell Dad what had happened to her? Even if she somehow could, would he believe her? Would he even care?

He'd have to if I'm trapped here!

Mai made eye contact again, and wiped away her tears. Maybe if I could learn how she does travels, then... "How do you get to travel? How long were you stuck?"

Edited 2016-08-25 04:11 (UTC)

"Oh... no, there is internet. On a computer terminal, at least." There must be one around here somewhere. Adia always managed to find one when she needed to.

Her eyes widened sympathetically at Mai's tears. Briefly, she thought about offering Mai a tissue, but she didn't have one, and it'd probably be just as dusty as her clothes if she did. "It'll be okay," she said again, as if that could somehow make everything better.

"I was never stuck... I mean, once I tried to leave the Nexus, I was able to go home the way I came. But..." Hesitantly, she pulls out of her pocket a futuristic-looking stopwatch and shows it to Mai. "I got one of these. It's called a PINpoint, and it lets me teleport. There was a vending machine that gave them out for free..." She frowns uneasily. "But... I don't think this is the same place I used to visit. Or the same area of the Nexus. They might not have them anymore."

((I used to play Adia ages ago in a LJ community called dear_multiverse that had PINpoints as part of its setting. It's up to you if you want Mai to have access to that same technology or for this Nexus to be different enough that she needs to find another way home. ))

[[Oh, I used to RP at LJ a lot myself! :D I think I’ll roll with this. Now that Mai has seen Adia’s PINpoint, she’s going to be determined to know more about it. I had this other character at a Nexus spot here on DW, nexus_sages I think it’s called. Declan found his way back through the right door. I’m thinking that may be how she finds her way back to her Tokyo, after the search for the PINpoint vending machine fails.]]

There was internet? There could be hope of contacting Dad after all! This...reality place... wasn’t entirely different from where she came from, but she still felt so unprepared and unsure. Part of her wanted to know why this happened, and wondered how many more people had found themselves in such a weird place, with a weird name.

Normally, Mai didn’t rely on another person for anything, but she had been caught off guard. To know invisible portals existed to snatch people up and trap them hadn’t appealed to her at all.

Mai stared at the fancy looking stopwatch the lady showed her. She made eye contact with her, then glanced back at the watch, bewildered and a bit skeptical. “For free? Why? ...Wouldn’t there be someone making a ton of money off of them?” That explanation didn’t make much sense to Mai. “How does it work?” Other than its metallic design, the PINpoint looked sort of like the kind of watch gym teacher would use to test a track runner’s speed.

Edited 2016-08-25 22:59 (UTC)

"Someone who frequented the Nexus made them," Adia answers. It doesn't make much sense to her either. Her world is far from a utopia where advanced technology is distributed for free. "She was a philanthropist, I guess."

She doesn't offer Mai to hold it, but she holds it out a little so the girl can get a better look at it. "Do you see the little number buttons here? You enter the coordinates of where you live, and then any time you want to return there, you press this other button. You can enter multiple locations. There was another machine that could tell you the coordinates of your world... I really don't know how that worked at all."

"You don't know her name? You never met her?" She sighed. "Who are you? If I'm going to be here a while, then we should introduce ourselves, right?"

She breathed in, and then back out as she moved a finger over her inner wrist, right where her good luck charm would be. It couldn't be seen, for it was supposed to remain covered up. She promised Dad that she would keep it covered. "I'm Mai Kashiwagi."

She saw the numbers on the face of the watch, and thought a moment on what was explained. Mai did okay in geography in middle school. "If this has to do with latitude and longitude, then all I need is a map of Japan. I would be able to find out that way." Mai looked to her. "Is there a map store around here?" She frowned. "Wait. What if the money I have isn't accepted here?"

Edited 2016-08-26 01:22 (UTC)

Adia shakes her head. "I spoke with someone who had met her." She turns the PINpoint over in her hands. "She must have been a genius, to invent something like this..."

"Oh! Yes... sorry, I should have told you my name sooner." Adia mentally chastises herself for flubbing a simple social convention. "I'm Adia Costas. I'm sorry you had to find the Nexus this way, Mai. It really is a nice place, once you take the time to explore it."

She doubts that the coordinate numbers are as simple as latitude and longitude, but she's not about to crush Mai's hopes, especially not that the girl has seemed to calm down. "I don't know about a map store, but you could probably look up a map online. I have seen currency exchange booths, though." Not that she's had the pleasure of using one.

"Is... Is Japan a place on Earth?" she asks timidly.

"Yeah, she must have..." Must be quite an amazing person, huh.

"It's fine." A bit of a nervous smile lingered on her expression. "If there are more nice people like you, then I won't have to feel like a prisoner, or whatever." As her situation wasn't becoming much more worse, in addition to knowing Adia was nice, Mai chose to think that maybe it was just some freak accident. If someone wanted to kidnap her for some reason, then she would have seen her captor by now.

"Yeah, that makes sense." Mai smiled a little more. She felt a bit silly for not considering that sooner. "Where would the exchange booths be?"

Mai's eyebrows rose slightly. "You're not from Earth?" For the first time, the other realities aspect was something she thought to be kind of interesting. "How could you know I was from there? Do you know someone else from my world?" Maybe her world's very different from mine.

Edited 2016-08-26 04:34 (UTC)

Adia relaxes a little, relieved to know that Mai thinks of her as nice. "The Nexus was there for me when things have been at their worst at home. I'd hate for it to feel like a prison to anyone."

She looks around the Plaza until she catches sight of a busier area full of shops and buildings. "Over that way, I think... or one of the shopkeepers can tell you at least." She tries to sound confident... this isn't the Nexus she remembers, and though it has many of the same features, she can't be 100% sure.

"No, I'm not," Adia answers with a faint smile. She hasn't had to give this explanation in a while, and it makes her a bit nostalgic. "Earth is a myth where I'm from. I was originally from a planet named Leonis, one of the twelve colonies." She blinks at Mai. "You said you needed a map of Japan? I've never heard of that place before."

[Normally, the words and conversations of Nexus-goers falls on Sasha' deaf ears. He's either engaged in another activity or just doesn't care about the idle babbling of other people. Questions, however, always get a second opinion, as someone might have an interesting thing to discuss. Something about the girl's voice catches his attention, and he stops near her, holding what appears to be a bag of coffee beans in one hand. The Nexus has better selections of drinks than his own home-world.]

"Ah, you're referring to the ward located in Tokyo, correct? Unfortunately, you've stumbled into the Nexus, a multidimensional hub where people meet." [He's not one to beat around the bush, that's for sure.] "Many other variants of Tokyo reside here but can only be found completely by chance. High risk, high reward, so to speak."

Mai moved back a bit, startled to see this man who had green skin. She had not expected that!

A multidimensional hub? Whaaat? Mai had no clue what that was, or why she had "stumbled" into this Nexus place.

After a fleeting moment, her voice came back. "O-Other variants? What does that mean?! There's only one Tokyo I know of!" The high pitched tone and the wide-eyed look on her expression obviously mean she was freaking out. To her, what the green man had explained didn't make any sense.

I'm dreaming this up. Maybe I'm going crazy! This can't be real! Of course, if this was a dream, then she had no clue why this really skinny, strange looking man would be in it.

[And almost immediately after seeing Mai's reaction change, he's already realizing how poor his word choice was. Yes, scaring the new person by being blunt and honest is probably not the best thing to do. He's already rubbing his forehead with one free hand, trying to think his way out of this scenario.]

"It's...complicated. Even I don't know how or why it happens, but people sometimes find themselves here without warning." [He's really trying to not look intimidating or scary, but sometimes that's easier said than done. Blame his world and the fact that he does have that light shade of green to his skin.]

"Many people come here from different places. Some of which are familiar cities to others. Like Tokyo. Or, for example, I'm from Washington, DC. but different versions of that city exist in the Nexus."

What he was saying turned out to be way too complicated to exist in her imagination. Dreaming all this up could be ruled out, but Mai still wondered if something happened, something terribly bad to have caused her to snap.

But Mai couldn't come up with anything... There was nothing she could remember going wrong before coming here.

"S-so, there's some version of Tokyo here?" Mai couldn't quite wrap her mind around the concept. She was still very much in distress, and there was only one person she wanted to reach. "I have to call my dad! Is there a way to do that in this place?" Aside from the fact that he had green skin, not much else about him seemed any creepier. That was probably why she wasn't running away from him.

"Yes. That is correct."

[He's still worried about the girl's condition, given her shock towards the whole situation. To be fair, he's dealt with a lot of young children who have struggles of their own. Then again, those students never found themselves in a multidimensional hub.]

"Some of the phones the vendors sell around here might be able to reach your world. I make no promises though." [Even his own cell phone doesn't have that capability yet, although it seems like people can reach other Nexus-goers with their phones easily.]

"...I will do all I can to help."

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