[centre][img]http://i.imgur.com/M0w8Wg4.jpg[/img][/centre] [b]The Apartment | Julia Castor[/b] “Huh. Why deux?” Julia’s typing fingers flinched a bit upon the figure on her screen voicing that question, and her falling silent for moments with a rather awkward smile on her face. Sometimes there are stories behind things, and sometimes she really likes those stories. Farily often, actually. She wants to share them with people, but never gets the chance to, because most people never ask, and she didn’t want to come off as childish and overly self-indulgent for bringing them up herself. She finds that dilemma rather upsetting. Then once in a while that thing with a story sparks someone’s interest, and they ask about it - at those times, ironically, she would invariably be at a loss for words. “It- uh -” She found that even more upsetting. She staggered a lot, of that part of her speech only a little part which was something about astronomy, Greek mythology, and “The second star of North River” was recognizable as coherent words, and that only barely. “...it’s - it’s kind of full of far-fetched correlations and all and um … there are things that … but I really like that name? So uh -” She ended up having to literally cover her own mouth, with both hands, to get herself to snap out of that phase and stop speaking. As usual she has absolutely no idea what she just sputtered out. “Hhhhhh…” Finally calming down, the first thing she thought of doing was crying. She sure hoped that this wasn’t the first impression the girl had about the people of her city, or even country. If Julia was to be the first person to gain contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, the aliens would probably not think twice in concluding that mankind was a race of manic, nonsensical beings. Catastrophic. Oh dear this is embarrassing. It didn’t help that Ruée seemed to be disinterested. A bit distressed, even. Julia could only guess why and she wasn’t liking what her mind was coming up with. An apology was probably in order now, but the worst part was probably that she didn’t know what to apologize for. “Anyway, c’est bien. Let’s get moving with other things though, yes?” A sentence uttered through the speakers of the phone drew Julia’s attention back to where she could only assume was where it was supposed to be. Julia did her best to tune into the elaborate explanation Ruée was giving about the whole deal, but her mind couldn’t help but drift away to think about other things, among them, the desperate attempts to fill in the blank session lest in her memory when she was rambling on, and to make sure that she didn’t do anything overly terrible. But then she constantly reminded herself to focus back onto the current conversation, and such the subject of her concentration fluctuated. At the end of Ruée’s instructions, Julia was left partly amazed, partly excited, and partly outright confused. That being the first time she remembered hearing someone drop the whole definition upon mentioning the word “door” possibly contributed to all three of those reactions. “Doors. Okay. Got it.” She didn’t catch the entire content, but at this point she figured the only thing to do was to pretend that she did, and to hope that what she actually did hear would fortunately happen to be the important part. She nodded and looked around, before she headed towards the door to the side of the apartment room, which led to a little square compartment, with a small window. That was where she kept her instruments and various other things. The lock on the stainless steel door was rusted and long broken - long before she even moved in, probably. The elegantly decorated key that Ruée instructed her to use didn’t look like it would fit any modern locks anyway, so Julia decided that the slight sense of coincided juxtaposition was amusing at least. She slid the key into the lock of the compartment door. “wh-” [centre][img]http://i.imgur.com/qEAq8YL.jpg[/img][/centre] [b]Violent Junkyard | Cell City | The Librarian[/b] The Librarian, now designated with the name “Bookman”, hovered in a sitting pose with his legs crossed as he peacefully watched his companion - Gabe, or 0Mari, now - take his fall a little longer, with a slightly more violent end. Flight is a handy thing to learn to do sometimes. When the way you return to your home world includes heaven-knows-from-what-heights free-falls, for instance. He dusted his clothes and straightened his scarf, the looks of the gestures obviously mattering more than their function, for he never touched the ground at the end of his fall - and then offered a hand to his new master. “Play down the ringmaster tones, eh?” He said as he shifted his pose into a proper stance, the tip of his feet dangling at an height that just allowed them to touch the characteristic piles of rubbish that composed the ground of the Violent Junkyard: “I’ll neglect introducing the arrival...of our clown, then.” He decided not to resist the somewhat devious grin, which emerged on his face for a moment as he helped 0Mari back onto his feet and patted him on his back. The young man that had slick black hair and dressed in a waiter’s uniform was now transformed, hair now a puffy mass of silver, and his attire...well, The Librarian gave up on describing that. “Hmm. Nice looks you got there.” he commented. A black cat with a TV head crossed their paths. The Librarian turned around to wave at it, to which it apparently responded by freaking out and running away. Alright then. He turned back at his human master: “Okay. Officially this time: Welcome to Cell Cit - uh - ” And he was wondering why 0Mari wasn’t listening. One of the junkers at the front of the pack chattered its teeth, hissing in a somewhat irritated tone. “ - Listen to me. Keep quiet, don’t make eye contact.” He said, leaning in from the side in a whisper, “Don’t. Provoke. Them. Now slowly - ARGH!” He liked the Violent Junkyard, but he really didn’t appreciate the wildlife around this place. The conjured book materialized just in time in the air, situated squarely on the trajectory of a junker leaped their way, propelling the mechanical beast off in another direction with a muffled thud. The Librarian ducked and the hardcover copy that had turned into a projectile itself as a result of the collision scratched his hair as it flew by. A strange gust of wind decelerated the fluttering pages and then propelled the book back into his extended hand, where it was caught and conveniently smacked into the jaw of another attacking creature. The Librarian staggered backwards a few steps, taking flight for brief moments so that he didn’t trip over. The rest of the pack was still growling angrily in the circle around their corner. “Seriously, on the FIRST. BLOODY. DAY?” [centre][img]http://i.imgur.com/gQwN1T6.jpg[/img][/centre] [b]Alona Hotel | Cell City | River North II[/b] “Hhhhh…” Julia - or, as it would be more suitable to say now, River North II. - struggled to push herself up from the ground, recovering from a face-down collision with the the ground. Was she just...falling? Where was this? Shaking her head and brushing the strands of hairs out of her eyes with one hand, she wondered as she recognized the feeling on the palm of her other hand to warm and with a wool-like texture - a carpet of sorts covered the ground. She only realized the peculiarities upon finishing her work with tidying her hair. Did it grow out that much already? She ran her fingers through the side of her hair and surprisingly found that it reached the length that she could pull the tips in front of her face. Not only that, it was now a pure white, with an almost light-fibre-like texture. “Weeeeh?” ...and upon that exclamation, she believed she saw a wave of dark red pulse through the ends she was holding in front of her eyes, and leaving a shade of light pink behind as it receded. [i]My hair...changes colour?[/i] She looked down upon her own figure to notice that the hair was only a fraction of what has changed. [i]Wah, this coat is pretty![/i] She thought as she extended her hands a bit clumsily into the air in front of her, not yet accustomed to the volume of her new garments. A simplistic, typical trench coat; of a comfortable dark shade of blue as its colour. She could see that under it she was wearing a plain white blouse, not unlike that she was wearing earlier, the collar wrapping around her neck where the collar flaps of the coat left a triangular opening in the front that ended at the strap tied around her waist. She pushed herself off the ground and took a moment to muse over the boots as well. [i]Wow, when did I get dressed in these?[/i]She then returned her attention to her hair, which was now fluctuating a joyful deep orange. She felt her face and neither the face nor the fingers felt as they did before. Julia tried hard to decide between collapsing to the ground confused, jumping and shouting in amazement, or freaking out because this is insane and she didn’t know what to do. Maybe all three at once. Finally managing to calm herself enough to not do anything stupid out of excitement, she tidied her attire and figured what to do, only for all that effort to go to waste when she saw the girl that appeared on her cellphone screen earlier standing nearby. “Ruée! - ouch -” She definitely didn’t pronounce that right as she launched herself into an embrace with the young lady, who apparently wasn’t expecting such an action; and that resulted in something that was less of an embrace and more of a tackle, ending with a few steps of staggering that was an attempt to restore an unstable balance that collapsed entirely soon after, the back of Julia’s waist bumping into something and the two of them crashing into the ground with a loud thud. She let out a whimper as she lay on the ground, lacking the strength to push herself back up again. She stared blankly at the ceiling light and the fan that was rotating behind it. The ceiling was a creamy white. “...where are we?” As the pain in her back slowly faded, so did the initial rush of excitement, and now the sense of wonder in Julia’s mind was gradually being replaced by questions, answers to which her senses started to look for. A room. Flora. A...tree trunk running through the corner? Wooden door, beautifully decorated. Two beds, one of them not aligned properly - probably her fault just now. What was this...a hotel of sorts? She laid her head back onto the ground, giving up the attempt of straightening back into a sitting position just with her torso. She probably wouldn’t want to move for a while, she thought; only to negate herself two seconds later, springing back onto her feet when she turned her head to see Ruée just having crashed into the ground along with herself earlier. “Oh dear I am so sorry about thi -” The door slammed open behind them. “Darlings~ Welcome to Alona Hotel~ How are you feeling~? Do you need more towels~?”