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[Steve thought about pulling Hope's leg and acting like he didn't remember, but it felt ill timed.] Definitely not. My birthday falls on a national holiday back home, makes it hard to ever forget.

[He just wasn't expecting a present and still really isn't, just thinks it's funny that Hope is just carrying around his egg like that]

Really? That makes two of us-- except mine is considered a holiday on Earth instead. [A bit of an awkward one though.

But anyway, Hope holds out the egg.] Happy Birthday, Steve.

[His eyebrows lift as he takes the egg and then he smiles as he looks over the egg then back up at Hope] Thank you. Should I ask what'll hatch? Or should I leave that to be a surprise?

It's a Mudkip-- if you remember our meeting in Olivine, you may recall seeing the Swampert with me. That's her egg.

[It would be rude of him to steer the conversation into the more serious topics that their original plan would be, and honestly, he's still not sure how to go about this thing. Hope has always been a planner, yes, but not when it comes to... well. This.]

Would you like to be somewhere else for our talk, or...? [Awkward.]

[He was about to comment on the egg, but then Hope kind of derails him. There's a second where he just blinks awkwardly at Hope, then looks around.]

Well, would you rather walk around or sit? [walking around makes if it's here or not kind of pointless, but if they're going to sit, maybe they should find a comfortable place to sit]

... Honestly, I'd prefer doing this someplace where people wont be able to listen in. [Even Carol. She seems nice, but Hope doesn't know her well, and he doesn't trust her enough.

Which all boils down to trust, because he trusts Steve with this because he thinks the man can empathize with him somewhat.]

[Makes sense. Carol probably knows about Steve's history, after all, she didn't really question why Steve didn't want to go out into the snowstorm. Still, he isn't quite ready to talk about it with her, even if she already knows.

He nods at what Hope says]

Wherever you're comfortable.

One of our rooms at the very least?

[Hope thinks he should insist on Steve choosing, really, but he's going to be paranoid either way unless it's behind closed doors.

A cafe is too open, too public, out on the streets is a bad idea, and you never know who or what's listening if you go to the outskirts of town. It's a private talk best done someplace where you have a semblance of privacy, and Hope can only think of the temporary rooms in the hotels.]

Your room would be best. Carol is less likely to come in unannounced. [he wouldn't put it passed her to do so with his room and he wouldn't mind. She has a familiarity with him that he hopes to one day reciprocate.

So if Hope wants to keep it as private as possible, then that would be the better of the two rooms]

All right.

[Hope starts heading for his own room. He's still a little concerned about potential intrusions though.]

Is she likely to be put off if I station my two Bisharp in front of my door?

[Paladin and Valkyrie are in fact some of the best defenders he has, and two of the most intimidating as well. But Carol doesn't strike him as a woman who would be easily intimidated. Honestly, he would have had his Metagross and Mamoswine there instead, but they're too heavy and too large-- they'd punch holes into the walls and floor with no problem.]

Edited 2013-07-02 09:50 (UTC)

[Steve follows and blinks at the amount of precautions Hope is taking. It makes Steve feel honored to have so much trust placed in him.]

It'll probably make her think twice about knocking. But she's not really the type to let that stop her if she really needs us for something.

[especially if it's an emergency.]

[A sigh. Barring emergencies, Hope really doesn't want anyone listening in on them. He has so much sensitive memories that he practically lies by omission whenever someone asks him about his world.

It's difficult to lie.] Paladin and Valkyrie it is then. Let's just hope nothing happens.

[He'll shriek internally if something did happen.

When they arrive at his room, he shoos both of ~~Ven's~~ his Bisharp outside into the corridor with an express request to keep everyone out unless Hope lets them in. To make sure though, he locks the door.]

I really don't think anything well.

[Steve let's Hope do as he needs to feel secure, he really doesn't mind. He casts a small look around the room. Right now he's not entirely sure where to sit, so he tries not to stand awkwardly in the middle of the room]

[Hope doesn't give that a reply because this world is unstable and unpredictable, completely at odds of what data is in fact supposed to be. So he wisely keeps quiet about it and instead gestures at the room.]

Have a seat. There's a chair, but you can sit on the bed if you want to.

[Steve nods and goes to sit in the chair, because it's not really appropriate behavior to sit on someone else's bed.]

So, would you like to start or should I? [Decides to just cut to the chase, though he doesn't say it unkindly.]

Mm. [A pause, before reaching into one of his pockets and pulls out a crystal large enough to fit his palm. It looks like it used to glow brightly from within, but right now it's a rather dull green.]

Perhaps to put you at ease, maybe I should go first.

[Yeah, it probably would. The memories are still all so fresh, it makes him almost homesick thinking about them, so he focuses again on Hope.]

It would, thank you.

This is called an eidolith. It's used by certain people from my world to summon creatures called Eidolons.

[He shakes his head. Getting ahead of himself here.] This was implanted into my body shortly after my mother died. I'd been a boy then-- fourteen, to be exact.

[He listens intently, giving Hope the entirety of his attention, though he gazes at the eidolith for a little bit. The implanting sounds uncomfortable for sure, if not bizarre]

Is that normal?

In my world? The last time it had happened was five hundred years before I got mine. So not common. Heard of, but before it had happened to me, I'd written it off as just another embellished tale in our history.

You see, my world used to be divided into two-- a sphere called Cocoon where people lived inside of it, supported by a fake sun, and the land down below, Gran Pulse. I was born in Cocoon and raised to believe that Pulse was hell and the humans living there were monsters and demons.

About five hundred years before my birth, there had been a war between Cocoon and Gran Pulse, and while Cocoon claimed itself the winner, it had sustained considerable damage to its shell that could not be fixed. We have creatures called the fal'Cie, which are completely beyond our comprehension, but they're powerful and one used to operate as Cocoon's fake sun. Even with their powers, the fal'Cie of Cocoon couldn't fix it.

Due to the war, practically everyone was afraid of Pulse, to the point that if a person from that land would enter our world, it would create mass panic in every city, and the city the Pulsian appears in would be evacuated and the people rounded up and prevented from leaving to avoid tainting the rest of Cocoon.

This happened to me and my mother. Word had gotten out that the city we were visiting had not a person but a fal'Cie from Pulse was hiding in it.

[Swallows a little. This one is difficult, now.]

We were rounded up and forced into trains and brought to the lowest part of Cocoon for the 'Purge', as our government called it, but some residents-- rebels, really-- of the city objected and fought back. In an attempt to get us home, my mother accompanied them and died.

[His narration of her death is woefully short for now, because he's remembering it, the same way he'd been remembering all those events for thirteen years.

He'll try to make it a little more descriptive though, if asked. Or if he can find the words to do so.]

Edited 2013-07-05 11:40 (UTC)

[So that's why Hope doesn't like trains. It makes sense when you have memories like that attached to the ride. He knows how painful the loss of a mother can be, he can really sympathize.

A part of him completely wants to get furious about being round up to be "purged." It was so much like that the Nazis were doing, it makes him feel a little sick that more worlds than just his had to deal with that.]

That must have been devastating, I'm sorry.

Thank you.

[He pauses a little, just to get his story in order. This is a man who has no idea what his world is like after all. It's like telling Ventus all over again.]

With the prodding of my new companion, a girl who'd noticed that the woman who fell from the bridge was my mother, I followed the leader of the rebel group to speak to him about my mother-- he was heading towards the Pulse fal'Cie because it had apparently captured his fiancee. In the fal'Cie's vestige, we found not only her but her sister, a soldier who'd quit to be able to find her freely, and a man who accompanied her because she was a soldier.

It was when we all came together that we found out it was the man's fiancee who had met the fal'Cie before it had even been discovered by the military. She had branded a l'Cie-- a person given powers to accomplish a specific goal for the fal'Cie. If they fail, the l'Cie transforms into a monster and has no trace of the human it used to be. However, if the l'Cie succeeds in completing this Focus, they become crystal and gain 'eternal life' as a reward.

[The huff that follows that statement shows just what he thinks of this so-called reward.]

The woman crystallized and her fiance and sister decided to attack the fal'Cie in revenge. The rest of us, we went along with it because with the military closing in on us, there was nowhere else to go.

We had fought the fal'Cie, but it forcibly inserted our eidoliths into our bodies, thus branding us and giving us the same Focus as Serah.

[He doesn't realize he'd said her name, but when he does a fraction of a second later, it's too late to take it back.

Hope starts to pace around his room, an unconscious action as he turns his dull eidolith around and around in his hands.]

While we were being branded, the military had begun to gun down the fal'Cie-- it had most likely died in the attack, because we never found its remains. But they had found us instead just a few hours later, and knew we were a threat as well, despite being Cocoon citizens. Naturally, they had orders to detain us-- kill us if necessary.

Obviously, the only thing we could do was fight back [kill] and run while they regrouped.

[Notice he's not mentioning what his Focus was.]

[Steve listens and takes in the details he understands and translates what he doesn't to the best of his abilities, but some things escape him. Two things haven't, the "Focus" and how the name Serah seemed to be what triggered the pacing.

Hope always struck Steve as a gentle soul, a good person at heart, killing must have been horrible for him at first. He's seen many men become different people once they learned to kill, he wonders how different Hope used to be.]

I'm glad you got out of there alive.

[He'll ask about the Focus later]

[Hope's only glad that Steve doesn't ask. But Hope sits down on his bed anyway.]

There were times that I almost died, though. I had magic, eventually specializing in it, but sometimes, when you're the designated healer of the group, it's difficult to do something when you yourself are almost down. [His scars are old and white now, faint against his skin, but they're still there and he doesn't like looking at mirrors because of him.]

Our situation had gotten more complicated than just an entire branch of the military bearing down on us. We'd found that one of our companions-- the same girl who had been with me from the start, in fact-- was a Pulsian native. She hadn't been branded at the same time we did, because she was already one.

She'd apparently been in the vestige with the fal'Cie as crystal, and returned to her human form thirteen days before the Purge-- and she wasn't alone because there had been one other with her. They'd been crystal statues in the vestige for five hundred years, and I think they were two of the only few native Pulsians left in the world, because when we went to Gran Pulse ourselves to find a way to remove our brands, there were no other people around for miles but us.

[A bit of a pause, because he's rambling and possibly jumping around.]

We had found... too many things while running away from our Focus and trying to remove our brands before it was too late.

It had all been orchestrated by the Cocoon fal'Cie, the ones who'd sheltered us and fed us and kept us safe from the monsters in Pulse. They wanted Cocoon gone and were using us, l'Cie branded by a Pulsian fal'Cie to do it.

[He's just inadvertently revealed his Focus. Oops. But he hasn't seemed to notice yet.]

[Oh, well, now he doesn't have to ask. It's a lot of information to understand. He does his best to take in all he can, a little confused in a couple places, but doesn't show it. No reason to make Hope reexplain something painful.]

They didn't want simple reintegration, did they?

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