Goal of the day: 1239 words. Written: 1254.
"Turns out what I thought was a real forest... Oh my god, I'm an idiot."
"Damn it," Naoki said, "well, ideas are born to us." Portal, dammit! Portal!
"Oh my God, it's so much easier!"
Grinning, I jumped close to him across the stone floor, jumped into the pool, which was a little full of real water, avoiding the splashes of the waterfall, which I didn't really manage to avoid, and after grabbing the end of the crystal, I dragged it out of the wall. After turning, I peeled it back anyway, and several smaller crystals flew out of the peeled crystal wall.
"God," I mumbled. I was completely speechless.
"And the idea that it was real… God!"
- I wonder what you will say to Babkiu's chef or what his name is now. Naoki clapped his hands. "So we just broke down his wall."
- Oh my God, - after repeating it, I cleared my throat again.
My shoes, the ends of my pants, and the edge of my sweater closer to the waterfall were already soaked to the last seams. And I stood in a small pool of water moving and disappearing somewhere in the wall, holding my Stone.
And in the wall of the forest horizon was a white hole and the bands, curves and fractures of the cracked crystals surrounding it.
- Well, we'll have to say then that I somehow slipped, - I smiled. Anyway, I didn't feel too good about my act, but I didn't want to feel bad either and there was no need. So I felt just that - embarrassing.
I got out of the pool and shook my wet sleeve. This one got a few dozen drops, but it still stayed wet.
"Well, I'll throw it in anyway, then wash means..."
"You'll have to say, no one but you can hear me," Naoki corrected.
"Oh yeah... Um... Oh, Joe?" - I looked around, looking for the laundry box with the hole. And lo and behold, it was in one corner - it looked like a hole in a cave, only.. Well, holes in caves aren't perfectly round and they don't have round doors. And the buttons in the caves.
- Naoki. - somehow he corrected me.
"Joe," I didn't answer. - Oh... Then why am I the only one who can hear you?
Joe was silent for a few moments. I started to think that he didn't hear the question, so I started to ask if he heard or repeat it. But he still answered in a confused voice.
- Oh... I honestly don't know at all. Good question… Maybe it has something to do with me drinking your blood? When you put your dirty hand in, you cut it somewhere on the way, a gust of wind must have brought your blood stream to me, and I immediately felt it and revived and grabbed your hand.
"Yeah, I remember… And I'll ignore that dirty one, she wasn't like that at all."
I walked through the bathroom door back into the room and looked around at a table. I needed to put Naoki somewhere so I could undress.
- And no one said anything to you when you were beaten... - I started digging, but I didn't dare to finish it. It sounded very strange and unpleasant.
"When was I created?" - as if he read his mind, - Unfortunately, no one mentioned it to me. Me… Um… - he mumbled.
When I got there, I locked the door of the cell and checked by pressing the handle that it does not open. They didn't open. Then I turned around and went back to the bathroom and after finding and feeling the wall with my hands for a while, I found a real ledge or a stone for Naoki to put on.
- Not comfortable talking? - I asked after a pause, still holding him in my palm.
"A little," he said as if embarrassed. And then he added more energetically:
- But I can tell! I was… Created in a lab in the City's Weapons Manufacturing Department. One big team. They were trying to build the best weapon in the world, as their entire lab probably was and probably still is.
I leaned my back against the solid wall near the door and bowed my head as I listened to him. He didn't tell me that.
- However, I was... - Naoki sounded a little embarrassed again for a moment, - ...A failed experiment. I was thinking. Well, the way I am now.
"And that's why you…?" I urged him in silence. Some details were missing for me to fully understand everything.
- Well, I don't know if I can only talk to specific people BECAUSE I'm smart. Maybe it's more just something else. But as you can see, or rather hear, I am talking to you.
- Aha... Pala, is this unusual? - I shook my head in disbelief.
Naoki sighed.
- Oh yes, and I thought I was explaining such elementary things... Well, yes, it's unusual. No known crystal can talk to others. Maybe there are some, but no one makes them. And I'm talking. I am! I am! - his words sounded proudly.
"You're a weapon," I snapped. And I immediately realized that it might not have sounded very polite.
Naoki fell silent.
- I am a weapon. True. But I am also a person... Gil, what am I more to you, he suddenly asked, a weapon or a personality?
"Maybe it's personality?"
I thought a little.
"Personality, perhaps?" I answered, not sure what he wanted to hear more.
- Thank you, - he said softly, - for a moment I thought that you would be like those members of the Council... When these degenerates saw that I only get strength after receiving human blood (well, they didn't try much blood on me, mostly the most common , because human blood was one of the most common in their labs) and after calculating that it was not worth it to mass produce people like me.. I was thrown into the junkyard of unsuitable weapons under the Arena. That vortex. Brrrrr.
Naoki even changed color to black at those last words.
"He must not have liked being there very much?"
"How long were you in that vortex?"
"I don't know," he replied. - Maybe a few months. Maybe a year. Maybe even for a few years... For the first few days, I thought that they threw me there only temporarily and that they would soon change their minds and move me out... Or one of the tens and hundreds of fighters passing by and never coming back would take me... But nothing. No one came back, no one took me, because I was still somewhere in the center of the vortex, which no one would have reached. And time passes there... Very slowly.
Naoki was almost completely black, with pink and alternately greenish stripes and waves shining through it.
"Yo, nothing… Nothing really…"
"I sympathize," I said. I didn't know what else to say or how to calm him down. To pet him or what the hell to do?
- That's it... During the testing in the laboratory, it also appeared that only one person can hear me. [[It's just that no one has been able to link how it's related]]. Until now - so it is obvious that everyone who communicated with me, they had given me blood...
Naoki started to regain his natural pinkish-green color again. So I placed him on the ledge and began to strip off his wet clothes. It's good that before you came to the cell, Antonio and I went to the doctor a second time, who fixed me and removed the bandages and applied some kind of smelly, skin-sticking mass. This one, she said, will glue her together, but it stinks all over her clothes. Meh.
- This was also not a very good idea or feature for mass production, it turns out. Security, schizophrenia and something else - such phrases were thrown around back then. I imagine their government said the same thing.” A flash of black shot through Naoki again.
- Oh... How did you end up like this? - I asked him, taking off the upper part of the clothes - the sweater - and putting it in the hole of the washing machine.
- What? As a form and shell or as a personality? he asked back, glowing yellow.
"It's clear in form, probably like all the other crystalline things everywhere..."
- How is the personality? - leaning on the wall, I pulled my pants down with my hand.
"Well, I don't know..." he mumbled, "I just took it and appeared." And how did you come about as a person?
I stopped in the middle of the whole trouser maneuver and thought as I stood up.
"Well, I just woke up."
"Well," I nodded in agreement, "I'm just opening up." I woke up after Arena and that's it. i am now
- Well, - repeated Naoki, as if waiting for such an answer, - and I believe that everyone does. No one comes into existence thinking that they are somehow incomplete and have yet to emerge. Somehow I think everyone comes in already believing they are full. I turned out like that too. Like you, I see.
I nodded my lips in agreement with Naoki and since I couldn't think of any other questions for him, I continued to wash my pants. I threw these in the washing machine too. I remained completely naked. The only good thing is that it was not cold at all - although a few splashes of the waterfall reached me, but they were very warm. Nice!
- Close and press the button, you said? I asked in front of the washing machine hole in the artificial cave.
"Yes, that's right," Naoki replied, and then added:
"Wash your ears so you don't have to ask next time, okay?"
I snorted and slammed the door shut, which creaked quietly. I then pressed the button and stretched out with a very soft hiss.
- Okay, of course. Maybe you also needed to be washed along with your clothes?
"Oh yes, I really like water," he replied in a sarcastic voice.