(no subject)

[gone_byebye]

The door opens, as has happened so many times before, onto a grey-walled alley. Ray pokes his head out and looks around. "Okay," he says. "We should be all right- come on out, guys."

Comments

[night-hibiscus.livejournal.com]

Looking up does make Yuna a little sick to her stomach, so she goes back to examining the inside of the machina. "Mm-hm."

[gone_byebye]

"There used to be two taller, at the south end of the island, but they were destroyed a few years ago," Ray says quietly. "There was a terrible accident, the worst New York's ever had. We've been very careful since."

Ray's world lost the Towers on 9/11, but it was a tragedy, not a travesty. There was no human agency involved in that destruction.

"Anyway," he adds as they pass the Empire State Building, "we're almost where we need to go. How do you want to arrange this? So we can meet up and go back to my place through the same door, I mean?"

[his-fathers-sin.livejournal.com]

"Tell me how long," he shrugs, "and we'll be here?"

It's not hard for him.

[night-hibiscus.livejournal.com]

"Blitzball players have to have a good sense of time," she supplies.

[gone_byebye]

"Okay, then," Ray says. "Two hours sound good to you?"

[his-fathers-sin.livejournal.com]

"Sure. Two hours I can manage. We'll be good," he says in the same tone he gives Auron, with a grin that translates as, "You can trust me! Really!".

[gone_byebye]

"Okay, cool," says Ray,w ho really ought to know better and who really doesn't. "I'll meet you here, then!"

He pays the taxi driver, then stops. "Were you guys planning on buying anything?"

[night-hibiscus.livejournal.com]

They scramble out of the cab and back into the filthy weather. "Oh! Um, there was some paper with the clothes? I think it's money, on our tabs. Or they were really expensive clothes, and it's... decorative packing material," she says dubiously.

She peers at the money the cab driver is taking. "No, it's money."

[his-fathers-sin.livejournal.com]

"--That's money? Huh." It looks like a bunch of junk to Tidus.

Weirdo world.

Second weirdo world.

"We'll manage."

[gone_byebye]

Ray nods. "OKay, then. There's some coin money, too, but the most valuable coin is still less valuable than the least valuable paper money." He won't go into Sacajawea dollars just now. "I think you should be all right from here. I'll see you in two hours, okay?"

[night-hibiscus.livejournal.com]

"See you!" Yuna smiles and waves goodbye, then turns to Tidus expectantly.

He's the expert!

[his-fathers-sin.livejournal.com]

--The Zanarkand expert.

Uh.

"So. Um."

Right.

"--You want to walk around?"

[night-hibiscus.livejournal.com]

"Okay!"

Yuna never gets to walk around back home!




Wait.

But everything is different here, not least of all that there's less chance of being randomly attacked by monsters. It's with unselfconscious ease and a little trepidation about their surroundings that Yuna takes his hand.

[his-fathers-sin.livejournal.com]

But this is TOTALLY DIFFERENT walking! This is--walking without killer fiends! Or Lulu! Or Auron!

OBVIOUSLY BETTER.

And he doesn't so much mind taking her hand, really, just grins at her and tugs a little as they move along the pavement.

"Man. I'd forgotten what it was like to walk on something like this."

[night-hibiscus.livejournal.com]

"It's kind of like stone," she says, watching her feet.

"Only not." Also, dirty.


The crowd automatically categorizes them as tourists and begins to flow around them.

[his-fathers-sin.livejournal.com]

"We had it in Zanarkand. Except it was smoother, I think." Not nearly as many cracks.

"Man. I didn't realize--it's different, you know? Than even Luca. People and crowds like this, I mean."

[night-hibiscus.livejournal.com]

"Yes," Yuna says, her voice not as tight as it would like to be. She looks around at the shining towers, grim and dowdy in miserable weather, and at the crowds of people and swarming machina.

"I think--I'm not sure, but I think there might be more people in this city than there are in all of Spira," she says. It makes her feel very small.

[his-fathers-sin.livejournal.com]

"I can't tell if there are more than in Zanarkand," he says thoughtfully. "Guess there must be."

Tidus is used to feeling small of late.

"--Must be weird for you, huh?"

[night-hibiscus.livejournal.com]

"A little bit," she admits.

Beat. "Hey! Let's get something to eat."

[his-fathers-sin.livejournal.com]

Tidus grins and starts scanning the streets.

"Man, I don't know what half of these things would even sell."

Tidus is also rapidly learning not to be picky about food.

Except bubble tea.

[night-hibiscus.livejournal.com]

"Let's just keep going until we find something that smells like real food," Yuna offers, failing at multiculturalism. "I'm not in a hurry... it's just easier when you have a goal."

[his-fathers-sin.livejournal.com]

"We'll find something!" He's determined.

And he doesn't mind walking with her in the meantime.

Wakka would probably, he thinks, not approve. But hey, he's a Guardian! He's just...guarding her! Obviously it's his duty.

--He's not entirely sure, he has to admit, that some of these people might not be fiends, so maybe it is.

[night-hibiscus.livejournal.com]

Yuna decides pretty quickly that she doesn't like crossing streets, but the machina that signals the crossing is easy to understand, and even easier is the ebb and flow of the giant tide of people moving through the city streets.

It's a nice day for a walk. (Except, of course, it's not at all, it's cold and damp and sleeting, and as she wonders why she would even think that she rubs the larger ring on the hand not holding Tidus's back and forth with agitated energy.)

"Do they have machina for getting around like these in Zanarkand?" she says, waiting for the traffic to stop. Some of them are huge, blocky and dirty, and some of them are (relatively) small and sleek and shiny, in candy colors and almost-organic curves, and a million other varieties. It's like the manifold kinds of fiends in the world, she thinks.

A rider zips by on what must surely be the local equivalent of a chocobo, a two-wheeled, low, speedy vehicle open to the air.



She kind of wants to ride on it.

[his-fathers-sin.livejournal.com]

"The smaller kind, a little. A lot of people walked. Or took boats around, if you were going to the far side."

[night-hibiscus.livejournal.com]

The little green man comes back, and they cross.

"What about flying ones?"