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

Kelsier | Memory Room | <Raintalon>

Kelsier stood up, testing the floor in front of him before he took a step forward. It wasn’t the most efficient way of moving around - this was going to take forever - but if tin didn’t even begin to touch the blackness, that was probably what he’d have to do. He didn’t really want to drop into a hole in the ground. He was already feeling the same prickle of discomfort he’d felt in the strange flying thing room…he didn’t know what it was, but he seemed to hate small spaces very much. The problem here was that he had no way of seeing how much space he had.
“Hm? Oh, I’m Mistborn,” he replied casually, venturing further in. “You’ve probably never heard of it. Different world. But I get my abilities from metals.”

Abilities...different worlds...

"Tha-atat...doesn't make sense," she said slowly, not sure what Kelsier was trying to say. If it were Eiffel, she'd know he was making a joke - he was always talking about how

"Yeaahhhh, I'm pretty sure I have superpowers."

The room changed in the blink of an eye, the darkness dissolving to make way for a small, cramped room, lined with servers and computers, dimly lit by a small light fixed into the ceiling.

The man who was speaking was tall and lanky, like someone had taken a regular human and stretched him out a little bit, then put him back down. He had unkempt brown hair and a stubbly, angled face, and was wearing a tank top underneath a half-unzipped green-gray uniform.

L Lawliet | Living Room | strider

L didn’t think what he did had much to do with philosophy, though he couldn’t quite say Orpheus was wrong. Perhaps it was just that philosophy was more general. He didn’t try to figure out what made humans in general likely to try and hurt each other. He just found cases and got in the head of the person behind it. Or people, but generally, there was one main person and a few secondary ones, in his experience.
He was enjoying the way Orpheus watched the signs, the awe in their eyes. It was as though L was showing them another world entirely…which, maybe he was, in a sense. Another way to communicate. There were bound to be things Orpheus had never thought of, woven into the language. Maybe, he mused, the signs themselves would inspire a song.
“Oh…” he hesitated, lowering his hands a little. “It was actually one of your songs. Just one I’ve heard you sing here, before. But I did change the tune a bit, to fit the signs better. I’m not really good at singing in any language, but you get the idea. You’d be better at it.”

Kelsier | Memory Room | <Raintalon>

Kelsier stayed where he was as the darkness faded, though one hand did move to the hilt of his dagger. Yet another thing it was not safe to sleep with, ans even less safe to sleep without. Unfortunately, it did mean he only had the one, but he’d done a lot more with a lot less plenty of times.
The room itself was…strange. Small, smaller, than he liked, and lined with things he couldn’t quite put a name to. He wanted to open the door, but he resisted for the moment.
There was someone new there, too. Kelsier eyed him for a moment, trying to decide whether he was a blinker or not. He had no way of knowing for sure, but…something about the situation made him think this was a House person.
Not one he recognized.
Did Hera?
“Hello, there,” he said after a moment, raising a hand in greeting. He wasn’t sure the man could see him, but it was worth a try.

Kelsier | Memory Room | <Raintalon>

Kelsier fell silent, watching the man’s face as he spoke. He looked, the Mistborn mused, not so far from how he himself often did. He didn’t know him, of course. He had never seen him before and he never would again. But it was the sort of smile that was not forced, but had been once. The sort of smile you learned to forge after the original was stolen.
Hera’s voice told him more than her words did. This was a memory, no, he was a memory.
“I’m sorry,” he said honestly, because the House would never apologize. Because someone should. “Not all the rooms are kind.”

Sal | Pictionary Room | strider

Sal knew better than to pry. What had thrown off the mood was none of his business. It was also not Zuko’s fault, as far as he could tell. The House had given him the paper, and whatever was on it, he had a hard time believing it had been an accident. This might have been his first journey into this place, but it seemed far too powerful to be both clueless and functional at the same time.
“Thirteen?” He asked, a bit of surprise leaking into his voice. It hadn’t occurred to him that kids could be pulled in, but then…he wasn’t technically that much older than thirteen, was he? It was funny, how every age felt younger once he’d left it behind.
“So you probably know a lot more than me about this place,” he guessed after a moment. “I know you said the rooms can be dangerous. Is there anything else I should know?”

Nico wasn’t sure how to respond to Mare. He had asked her something that was far too personal. It was the kind of question that he wouldn’t have answered, in her position. It was a question that she had answered regardless. Nico tried to shake off the feeling that he shouldn’t have asked in the first place. He also had to consider that Kelsier could only hear the question, not the answer. It was the kind of question that was bound to be upsetting to him, too, depending on what the answer was… Nico needed to keep his nose in his own business. But Kelsier was his dad now, so wasn’t this sort of his business, too?
“I don’t meant to be cynical,” he said after a moment, staring at the ground and the drawings of flowers instead of at Mare, “but everyone’s a memory all the time. I mean… the version of me that exists in your head is only a fragment of who I am. The version of me that exists in Kelsier’s head might be a slightly larger fragment, but it’s still only a piece of who I am. How you think of me and how he thinks of me is always going to be informed by what I’ve done in the past. Everyone is making decisions about who you are regardless. Being dead doesn’t mean people suddenly start doing that.” He knew what she meant, though. If she was dead, she couldn’t speak back. She couldn’t defend herself and tell the world exactly who she was and how it differed from what other people thought about her.
“I don’t… think death is the end, in your world,” he whispered after a moment, shifting his position. “I don’t know if every world has an afterlife, but I get the sense that yours does. Whatever lays beyond is just… a transition. Which means it’s another place that you get to define who you are.”

Kelsier | Power Swap Room | strider

“This is not a nightmare.”
Kelsier’s voice rang out, clear and certain, washing over the dream like the first light of dawn. There was no way he could be between Nico and the monsters, no room for him between skin and claws, but there he was, unarmed and unflinching as he stood with his back to Nico.
He couldn’t save Nico from his memories. He couldn’t save Nico from his war.
But he could save him from this. These were powerless creatures in a world he was currently the god of. And if Kelsier was anything at all, if he had anything at all, he had his will. And here? That was all he needed.
The monsters crumbled to dust at his feet, and a wind took it away, because they were no longer in darkness. Sunlight rained down on them, the kind he had only ever seen in the House. Flowers, the flowers he had seen in that first, or technically second, room with Nico blossomed under and around them, brighter even than they had been originally. There were no butterflies.
Kelsier blinked. There they were, as if they’d always been there.

The fact that Sal wasn’t asking about what had caused Zuko’s mood shift was enough to endear the other boy to Zuko. If the way he was approaching the room hadn’t already done it. It wasn’t difficult for Zuko to decide he liked this boy, despite only having met him moments before. He was cool, which Zuko didn’t admit about other people very often. And he wasn’t prying about things that Zuko didn’t want to think about, let alone discuss with a stranger.
“Yeah,” he said after a moment, giving a small shrug. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve been blinking in nonstop since then, but yeah. I’ve been through a lot of rooms. Not all of them are like this, but some are. I mean… this is actually kind of tame for a room. It could still kill you, but only if you’re not being especially careful. Some rooms don’t make it quite that easy to avoid the danger. But then again I guess some rooms aren’t dangerous at all, so…” he gave a small shrug, not sure if that was the kind of information that Sal was looking for.

Orpheus didn’t tend to compliment people ‘just because.’ They didn’t like to say things that weren’t true. If L’s rhythm had been off, they wouldn’t have said anything at all. They wouldn’t have said anything mean, of course, though they would have been happy to give constructive criticism had L asked for. They shook the thought away, giving L a firm nod. They had said what they meant, and they were glad that L hadn’t tried to argue with the compliment. “I think… I’d like to learn how to do that,” Orpheus admitted, intrigued by the rhythmic aspect of the signs. “I suppose in spoken language there are some things that you can’t say in certain rhythms because it simply takes the mouth too long to form certain words, so that same limitation wouldn’t actually be too much of an issue in sign language. Although… rhythm is bound to be slower for me at first, if I don’t know how to move from sign to sign as quickly and fluidly as you do. I can imagine it’s the kind of thing that comes with practice.” They blushed, eyes turning down with the realization that they were getting ahead of themself.
“Oh,” Orpheus murmured, surprised that L remembered that song. Surprised that L remembered any songs, if they were honest. A tiny glow of warmth flickered to life in their chest, though they didn’t give voice to it yet.
“I see,” they said after a moment, beginning to sing quietly as they watched the rhythm of L’s hands.

“Yeah,” Zuko replied, shrugging a little as he looked around. “I guess… most of the time, when you figure out what the House wants, it opens a door and you go back to the living room. Or you just blink out. It kind of… depends. How rooms end is about as unpredictable as the rest of the House, I guess.” In truth, Zuko wasn’t entirely certain why this room hadn’t ended yet. It seemed like they were both done with the room’s activity, and neither seemed inclined to take another turn. Zuko hesitated, frowning a little.
“I guess… if you’re ready to leave, then I have an idea.” He didn’t know if he was ready to leave or not. He was enjoying spending time with Sal, but he didn’t know if the feeling was reciprocated. He didn’t know if Sal wanted to leave or not… it was hard to tell what people were feeling, usually, but it was even harder with Sal’s prosthetic. He picked up a brown marker, turning back to look at Sal.

Zuko glanced over at Sal, then at the whiteboard. He could draw something, but… whatever Sal guessed would be the answer, he supposed. He was just going to draw a door. Whether Sal guessed it was a door to the living room or a door to another room… either answer would technically be wrong, but they would give them a way out. It was in Sal’s hands, now. He gave a small, uncertain smile before he drew a large rectangle on the board, then picked up a yellow marker to draw the doorknob. He was trying to make it look as much like the House doors as possible, but it didn’t really matter. It was technically just supposed to be a random door. It wasn’t supposed to lead anywhere. Hopefully, Sal would get what Zuko was aiming for.

Zuko looked over at Sal, a half-smile on his face. “No, it’s not.”
The House responded in kind, a door appearing on the wall nearest to Sal. Zuko stepped around the small pile of fire flakes on the floor, moving towards the new door. He pulled it open, looking over at Sal and holding it open to him. He didn’t know where it led – he couldn’t tell from here, like most doors in the hallway. He had a feeling it wasn’t the living room, but it was hard to tell. He glanced at Sal, half hoping he would have a chance to do another room with the other boy.