~ Tнє Pαяα∂σχ Hσυѕє ~ now back to regularly scheduled chaos

Hange | Living room | ®Hawkpath® |

Hange Zoe blinked into the living room, six pairs of glasses piled on top of each other over their eyes as they stared, their eyes comically huge through the frames, at something they were crouched over.

As their surroundings changed they blinked rapidly, straightening up and squinting in confusion, and removed the mound of eyeglasses, leaving only their usual frames.

"Ah, House...glad to see you as always, but I was rather in the middle of something..."

Hange | Living room | ®Hawkpath® |

Hange glanced over in his direction, shoving the 10 pairs of eyeglasses they'd been carrying into their pockets as best they could. It didn't work very well - they stuck out at odd angles, and a few looked like they would probably topple to the floor with one wrong step.

"Hello!" they said brightly, examining the child with such interest that it completely evaded them to introduce themself properly. "Are those gloves heat resistant?"

Hange | Living room | ®Hawkpath® |

Hange, however, didn't even seem to notice the questions, now that their gaze was fully fixed on the gloves.

"What are they made out of?" they pressed leaning in and grabbing one of his hands to get a better look. "This material is unfamiliar....we may not have something like this in my world. Heat resistance is important of course, with titans....acid resistance could also be helpful in experiments...what do you do with these?"

Claire - bank room - Toriko

His feet stuttered, then almost danced back into balance when Toriko brought him aside. Claire reared his head back and frowned at Toriko's suggestion. He didn't oppose her opinion, but it was a surprise. Why does this person want to be involved in a bank robbery? And then she said it: reward.
"Oh, so you need money, do you?" Claire presumed, his surprise giving way to amusement. He rarely had a want or need for money where he was from, much less in a dream. It was tempting to point this out to her, but he refrained.
"You might say I find my way out of tricky situations, too. I guess if we do this together, it'll be smooth as silk, right?" The redhead was looking smug with crossed arms. His gaze parted with her for a moment then, and looked past Toriko. "What's this?"
There was a bench next to them in the corridor, with what appeared to be folded shirts lined up in a row. Claire noticed upon picking one up that they were just like the ones the tellers were wearing, with pants to match.
Whether undoubtably good luck, or simply planted by someone working with them, this was an exciting development for Claire. He was beginning to forget there was a serious mission at hand and started parsing through the uniforms for one with a desirable name on the nametag.

Varian | Living Room | <Raintalon>

Varian’s eyes widened a little as Hange not only casually asked the most important question they could possibly have asked, but asked it instantly, within seconds of hearing the word ‘tyrinian’.
“Yes!” He agreed excitedly, pushing his goggles up and nodding eagerly, all other thoughts forgotten. He waved a hand to show them the burn scars mottling it, on both sides. “I actually used it because of how corrosive it is. It acts as a natural buffer against heat due to its atomic structure, the same structure that causes it to be so dangerous. Of course, it did burn me pretty...badly...at first. But then I thought, hinolium stabilizes it, right? So what if I added the hinolium before rendering it? The result is a completely different compound, highly stable and almost totally heat resistant!”

Ronan | Pride Room 3.0 | strider

Ronan Lynch blinked in, arms crossed, eyebrows raised in a way reminiscent of a very judgmental cat.
“Look, it’s not my problem man, okay?” He said, his tone suggesting the exact opposite, it was hard to tell whether he cared a lot or he didn’t care at all, especially without context.
Which was now very much not there.
He swore under his breath as he realized whoever he’d been talking to was gone, replaced by…
He swore again, with more emphasis.
The room he stood in was covered from top to bottom in bright colors. Rainbow flags hung from the ceiling, matched in number only by blue and pink and white striped ones, which swayed as if in breeze, only there wasn’t any. The walls were painted in the same bright colors weaving in and out of each other with impressive precision. Against one wall, a long table laden with art supplies stood, with (shockingly) rainbow beads in one box and blue, pink, and white beads in the other, with different colored ribbon, presumably to string them on.
There was more, but Ronan was focused on what he’d already seen. “Remind me never to say this place is f(oops)ing subtle,” he muttered, mostly for himself as no one else was there,

A small smile appeared on Orpheus’ face, replacing the worry. He had been worried about L when he had woken up with that stricken expression. He wasn’t sure if his friend had faced a nightmare, or if he was so used to living in danger that he couldn’t even wake up relaxed. In all fairness, it wouldn’t have been very safe for him to wake up in his own world, so Orpheus couldn’t blame him for the caution he had to take here. It just made him sad that he couldn’t do much of anything to protect his friend.
“Nothing happened,” Orpheus confirmed, a small smile touching his face. “The room stayed exactly as it was before you fell asleep.” Orpheus hadn’t even reset the chess game, too afraid that moving would startle L into waking up. Waking L up seemed like the worst possible outcome, if only because Orpheus wasn’t sure when he might be able to next get some sleep.
“I’m glad you slept well,” he murmured, meeting L’s gaze as his smile grew smaller but also somehow more genuine. “I wish you could have slept longer, of course, but I hope the sleep you did get will help you get home.” He realized after the word escaped him that he didn’t know if L had anywhere he could consider home. Surely, if he had, it had been compromised at the same time L himself had. Perhaps, Orpheus considered, Watari was L’s home. And Watari was coming to find him, which meant L would be home soon. Soon enough to get sleep before he completely lost his mind, at least.

It seemed they were of the same mind when it came to the last room. As far as anyone else was concerned, it didn’t happen. As far as they were both concerned, it didn’t happen either. Neither of them seemed willing to admit that there was a part of them that had enjoyed the chance to just… relax and exist with baby animals. Zuko could tell just from looking at Ronan that he had a reputation to uphold, and Zuko had the same. They weren’t supposed to be soft. They were just supposed to be… well, whatever the world expected from them. Hard. Determined. Angry. Zuko knew all too well what armor he put around himself to hide his soft center. It was a pity that humans didn’t have exoskeletons. Zuko had needed to build his own out of anger.
Zuko watched Ronan, noticing the slight hunch to his shoulders, the tightness to his expression, though he was very clearly trying to look like he didn’t care. Zuko noticed, but he didn’t know if he was reading it correctly (he had a tendency to misread signs of anger or tension, so he would rather not call attention to it), and he didn’t know what to say even if it were appropriate to mention.
“I mean, if your enemy has a migraine, they’d probably be pretty easy to crush in battle,” Zuko shrugged, crossing his arms as he looked at the flags. He had a feeling they were supposed to represent something, but either Ronan didn’t know or he wasn’t offering up the information. “It might be some sort of strategic move.”
Zuko took a step forward, fingertips dusting over the fabric of another trans flag. There were so many of them, and Zuko had rarely seen symbols in a room unless they had some sort of purpose. This seemed to count, and it didn’t seem to be random, either.
“Any clue what the House wants from us here?”

Ronan | Pride Room 3.0 | strider

As long as they were both not talking about it, Ronan was fine with playing the House’s game, just a little. They didn’t need to discuss what had happened. For all intents and purposes, it hadn’t happened. Ronan didn’t plan on ever mentioning it again, at least, and Zuko seemed to feel the same.
He wasn’t good at introspection. He wasn’t good at seeing himself in others, or seeing others in himself. But even he could see the similarities between himself and Zuko, between the anger, the way they both seemed to wrap themselves in it...and that was as far as that thought went. He wasn’t going to see where it led.
He could read Zuko, better than more people. Maybe it was just that they were similar and Ronan didn’t have to translate as much, but still.
He snorted at the comment. It wasn’t wrong, exactly. Maybe that was what made it funny. He didn’t confirm or deny the theory, but with the contest he had...yeah, it was funny.
His expression didn’t change as Zuko continued, but his eyes flicked away, betraying him. He was pretty sure he knew exactly what the House wanted from him, at least. He wanted eager to please. But lies weren’t in his nature, so he merely gave a noncommittal shrug and looked at the wall.

Right, so Ronan probably knew something. Zuko frowned, staring around at the multiple flags as he tried to figure out exactly what they could mean. There were other decorations, too. The walls, for one, and the station in the corner with the beads. If the House thought they were going to be making jewelry, it had another thing coming. They had already both let down their offenses once within its walls, it was going to have to try a lot harder to make it happen again.
Zuko wasn’t entirely certain what about his comment had been funny. He had meant it more or less genuinely, so there must have been context Ronan had that Zuko didn’t. That, or he had just made a joke without meaning to. That happened more than Zuko was comfortable with. He didn’t know how he felt about people misreading what he said and thinking it was funny.
“So it’s not a nation,” Zuko said after a moment, tugging a little bit on the nearest rainbow flag as though that might do something. He looked up at the ceiling, doing his best to make sure nothing had come loose with his small tug. “Do you know what it means, then, or is it a mystery to both of us?” It would be significantly harder to get out if neither of them knew what it was. He gave a small sigh, tracing a finger along a wall until he reached a table set out with pronoun pins. He picked one of the ‘he/him’ ones up, turned it over a few times in his hand, then looked up at Ronan. He didn’t know what to make of this.

Zuko didn’t really know what it was like to have friends. There were people in the House he liked, of course, and Ty Lee and Mai were close-ish to being his friends (they were mostly Azula’s friends, though, so he doubted they counted), but nobody Zuko was particularly close to. He saw a lot of himself in Ronan, but he didn’t know if they could be friends. It was entirely possible that they were a little bit too similar. Only time would tell. You couldn’t force a friendship, especially when neither party was particularly interested in breaking through any barriers to a potential friendship. If it happened, it happened, and Zuko wasn’t going to thank the House. If it didn’t, then so be it. They were strangers right now, it wouldn’t be a big loss.
Zuko glanced up, brow raising just a little bit at Ronan’s confession. Well… confession was a generous term for it. If it was a confession, then he would share with Zuko what he knew. Zuko wasn’t going to press. It probably didn’t matter anyway.
He tossed the pin up in the air, catching it a moment later before he twisted it around again so it faced him. The words were set across the same blue, pink, and white backdrop as the flags. There were other pronouns on the table, too, and though Zuko didn’t necessarily understand their significance, he at least knew which to grab. Uncertainly, he pinned it to his shirt, wincing a little as it went through the silk. That wouldn’t be easy to replace if it left a hole.

Zuko wasn’t nearly as venomous (or poisonous) as Ronan was, but he did have a sharp tongue and a sharper temper. He was tired of being on the run, he was tired of hiding, and he just wanted to go home. He didn’t realize that that, too, made him similar to Ronan. They were two boys on the run from something that neither of them could control, and both would have taken your head off for suggesting that they were running away from anything. The difference was that Ronan’s attack would be vicious words and flying fists, and Zuko’s would be wordless, nothing but smoke and steel. But he didn’t know Ronan. He didn’t know how similar they were, just that neither of them was what they seemed on the surface. The real question was which was the real Zuko? Which was the real Ronan? Or were they both real, both versions? The Zuko who spent hours feeding turtle ducks felt very far away from the hardened boy that stood there now, eyes narrowed and expression unyielding. But the softer, younger boy still existed. You couldn’t have one without having the other.
“Transgender,” Zuko repeated, eyes widening almost imperceptibly as he tasted the word. Whether or not it existed in his world, he didn’t know. He just knew that within the halls of the Fire Palace, nobody had ever said it within earshot of Zuko. Nobody on his ship, either. Still… he could more or less guess what it meant.
“Explain it to me,” he said suddenly, expression suddenly guarded as he looked back at Ronan. He didn’t know if he was right. He didn’t know if he wanted to be right.

The difference between Zuko and Ronan was that Ronan understood that he couldn’t go home until a certain time. Zuko wanted to go home desperately, and he didn’t seem to understand that his father didn’t want him there. He wasn’t supposed to be able to find the Avatar. He had been sent on a wild goose chase by a man who was cruel enough to burn his son. Nobody had told him that Ozai didn’t actually want him back. Nobody had told him he had been sent on an impossible mission. Iroh had tried, but Zuko wasn’t willing to listen. He wanted to go home, so he was going to do whatever he needed to in order to win back his honor and take his seat besides his father. Even if that meant doing the impossible. Zuko didn’t believe it was impossible, anyway. The Avatar had to be somewhere… Zuko just had to keep looking.
He wasn’t thinking about home now, though. He was thinking about Ronan and the tightening of his expression, he was thinking about the flags and the fact the colors on the pin matched the colors of the flags that were hanging all around them. Colors that were suddenly beginning to seem far more sinister. Colors that would be dangerous for Zuko to be seen with, if he were in his own world. The only reason Ozai had been okay with Zuko changing his name and changing how he presented was because he needed a son, and it would be far more convenient to have his firstborn be able to take the throne. So long as Zuko never give any indication anyone had ever thought he was a girl. Those terms were fine by Zuko, but looking at the pin now…
“Right,” he said after a moment, eyes still narrowed as gold met blue. He made no move to remove the pin. It was as much of a confession as he was capable of, at the moment.

Zuko knew he had gotten lucky. If he had been the younger child, if Azula had been born before him… well, he doubted he would have been allowed to grow up as a boy. He had been young when he had decided he wanted to dress like one and act like one, and his mother had been alright with it. Azula had been too young to be their father’s favorite yet, so Ozai, pleased with the ability to secure himself a way of competing with Iroh for the throne, had allowed Ursa to humor him. After a while, it wasn’t humoring anymore. There was just Zuko, and very few people remembered that he had ever been anything different. If he had been older when he had asked his mother about wearing boy’s clothes, he doubted the answer would have been the same. Azula would have been the favorite, so anything that would elevate Zuko to a higher position in line for the throne would have been unwelcome. Ozai would do anything to get himself on the throne. He would do anything to ensure himself a successful successor. Azula was the better bet than Zuko, but by the time Ozai realized that, the entire Fire Nation had come to accept their prince. There was no turning back.
Zuko had no way of knowing how things were in Ronan’s world. He didn’t know how people like him were treated. He just had to hope that it was kind. That there were no conditions, no strings attached in Ronan’s world.
It would have been easy to take the pin off. It would have been easy to obey his father, to not let anyone know he was different, for fear that he might delegitimize both himself and his father on the grounds of lying. It wasn’t a lie. It just didn’t seem likely that the rest of his nation would believe him. But here…
The last thing Zuko had expected was for Ronan to attach a pin to his own shirt. His lips parted and his eyes widened, staring at the pin for a long moment before he finally looked up to meet Ronan’s eyes. A tiny, self-conscious smile poked at his lips, and he was too disarmed to push it away.
“I thought it was just me,” he said after a moment, trying to sound like he didn’t care. He did care. His voice betrayed him.