Room 206, Thursday Afternoonish

[dark_slippy_thing]

Okay, so the chair was gone from its place of prestige in front of the door. This didn't bother Valentine so much, really. It had been a nice thought, but there really wasn't much that a chair was going to do to keep the forces of evil and shadows and all of that jazz from barging into his dorm room in particular to turn him into a shiny black mass of coal. Not that it was going to happen. But Valentine was reserving the right to be paranoid.
However, his Dorito crumbs were all but gone, and he was down to his last corn nut.
Things were starting to look dire for Valentine. But Valentine, as Valentines tend to be, was stubborn and cowardly. And if there was something out there that could level the school, he was not going to be seen anywhere near it.

	Hooray! Rikku was back, having had a fabulous vacation with Jude in Spira, and Rikku had presents. And Rikku had finally caught up on her sleep, and Tidus was with Yuna and all was right with the world, and hey! When was Fandom Chicken 3: The Chickening starting, anyway? If he had recast her spot, she was gonna be ticked. Okay, the school itself appeared to be missing but details were not enough to dampen her spirit, here. She knocked on Valentine's door, bouncing to herself.
	Valentine made a mental note that the amount of people wanting to knock on his door must be directly inversely proportionate to his ability to actually up and answer it. "It's not locked," came the reply, muffled through mattress and door alike.
	His voice sounded weird, but weird was standard for Valentine. So Rikku shrugged and hopped in the room anyway. "Hiya! It's Rikku, I'm back! I g-- whoa. Where are you?!"
	Valentine's not-tied-in-a-knot-around-his-person arm sneaked its way up between the bed and the wall and waved a little hello to Rikku. "Under here," he muttered. Okay, so this was getting perhaps a little humiliating. "And entirely by my own choice. Absolutely."
	This was a little weird even for Valentine at this point. "There's ... something interesting down there?"
	"Not particularly," he stated, trying to sound casual and mostly coming off as grumpy and perhaps half-starved. "A little glitter, an empty bottle, a corn nut." There was a crunching sound. "Make that just the glitter and the bottle. Nothing really interesting at all."
	"Oh." Rikku considered. "Are you stuck? 'Cause I can help. And I won't tell anybody, honest."
	Valentine took the whole of half an instant to consider his reply. "Mostly stuck, yes. Breathe a word of this to anyone, and..." And. Valentine was terrible at making threats. "I'll ... not be pleased."
	Rikku smiled, wondering to herself how long he would have stayed down there before letting on that he needed help. "Not a word, really. Okay, should I pull up on the frame and maybe you can squeeze out?"
	Valentine frowned as he took in the situation he was in as best as he could. To be free, or not to be free. To starve, or not to starve. To risk tentac-- ack. No. "It's... complicated. I'm in a bit of a knot, you see..." So what if he was stalling? It was a.... thing.
	"You are?" Rikku crouched down, leaning over a bit to peer under the bed. "How did you manage that? Are you okay?" She stretched out a bit to get a better angle, looking to see where he was stuck. "I mean, obviously you're not okay, 'cause you're stuck. But are you, like, hurt?"
	"The stuck is a combination of drunkenness and momentary lapses of judgment," Valentine admitted as he peered back with a deep frown on his lips, dodging the core issue as best he could. "And I'm alright, except that my shoulder is cramping and I just ate my last corn nut."
	Rikku crawled a bit under the bed so she could take a good look at his face. She gave him a sympathetic smile. "You, uh. Got all drunk and depressed and were going 'screw the world, I'm just not coming out again'? Rough day?"
	It was unfortunate that Valentine missed the smile. An understanding expression that he could actually comprehend would have done wonders for him at this point. "Rough day," he agreed with a slight nod. "The school going and me deciding I was not going out there and then Demyx with booze - it was glittery, that was interesting - and then stuck. Not that I've been itching to get out, exactly."
	"Glittery booze? Did it taste funny?" She made a face. "I guess all booze tastes funny, huh? Not really why people drink it." Rikku chewed her lip. "You, uh. Wanna talk about it?"
	Valentine, though he was rather adept at talking about himself, was not necessarily the most adept at talking about trouble when he was the one who had gotten himself into it in the first place. "It was just cheap alcohol that Demyx brought in after I had taken to hiding-- no, not hiding... stealthily avoiding detection here under my bed. It did the trick, now I'm out. Of booze... I'm still under the bed. Obviously."
	Rikku nodded. "I'd offer to go get you more, but, uh, more booze isn't gonna help anything. I tried it once and then it was all 'well, that's great, everything still sucks plus now I'm gonna puke a lot.' Fun, huh?" "So, what are you h- stealthily avoiding detection from?"
	"At the moment, or initially?" It was a perfectly valid question, really. Or it might have been more dodging. With Valentine, it tended to be difficult to tell.
	Rikku crossed her arms under her head and considered, looking up at the bed frame over them. "Either, really."
	Valentine was too proud to admit that he was hiding possibly partly to avoid further confrontation with Demyx. He was also rather iffy about letting on that he had been terrified out of his wits by the destruction of the school, but at the moment, it seemed like the lesser of two evils. "I'm sure you've noticed that the school is a little more ... not there.... than it was before." This was Valentine skirting around a direct answer.
	"Yeah. I heard there was an attack or something. Man! I take off and I miss the good stuff!" Rikku shook her head, and then facepalmed at herself. "I mean, uh. That had to be kinda scary, huh? Is everyone okay?"
	"I haven't heard about anyone getting hurt," Valentine mumbled, maskpalming somewhat, himself. "Mostly, I've been under here."
	Rikku nodded slowly. "But ... you're okay now, yeah? I mean, that had to be freaky, but - they left. Right? You're here and it's okay now."
	"Right. I'm here and I'm in one piece and that really doesn't change the fact that something leveled the school. Just like that. Gone. Just like--" Valentine caught himself and shook his head. "Fandom was supposed to be the place I went to in order to avoid this sort of thing. Nice and safe, you know? I'm not a fighter. I'm a performer. I juggle."
	"I am a fighter, and it's still kinda freaky to think about." Rikku shivered. "It's supposed to be safe here. I mean, nobody's died in months, can you believe that? Spira's ... Spira's not like that." She rolled on her side a little (as much as one could while crammed under a dorm bed) to face him. "Where ... you're from. It's kinda bad too, yeah?"
	Valentine went silent for a moment, giving a faint nod, his frown deepening somewhat. "Bad for people who do have a place to hide, nevermind those of us who don't. Imagine stepping into a city that's covered in perpetual shadow-- everything seems to be rotting or fallen away or taken to dust. You can't turn a corner without being accosted by a hungry sphinx. And sphinxes are the nice ones to run into. It's the sky itself you have to watch out for."
	Rikku bit her lower lip. After a long moment, she asked him softly, "What does the sky do?"
	"It reaches down in a mass of creeping blackness and it swallows anything-- and anyone -- that it touches. Just this ravenous dark. Nobody knows what it is or why it's there." He attempted one of his typical fake 'onward and upward' grins. "It makes it difficult for a juggler to earn a living when half the city has left and the other half has been turned into charcoal-dust."
	Rikku stared for a few seconds. "Whoa." And then shook her head quickly. "How ... how do you ... what do they ... how do you even fight that?"
	"You run away," Valentine said, making certain to hold his smile as long as he could. "You get very adept at running, really. And hi-- being stealthily difficult to detect. Slipping through the darkness unnoticed, like a panther." And hiding under beds.
	The hell with it. This time Rikku did reach out to lay a hand on his shoulder, very tentatively. "I'm sorry," she said, forgetting that he hated that word. "That sounds awful. H-have they ... nothing works on it? White magic, black magic, explosions, Summonings? Anything?"
	Valentine glanced at the hand on his shoulder, not entirely certain what to make of it, before he replied carefully. "Nothing has been able to push it out of the city, if that's what you mean. Little explosions sometimes slow it down, like the light-sparks when my juggling balls go off. But you can't stop something like that. It's huge. I don't know that anyone is crazy enough to get themselves killed trying, really."
	Okay, him looking at the hand means he's not comfortable with it, probably, right? So she gives his shoulder a quick squeeze and pulls it back to her, hugging herself tightly instead. "What about big explosions? I mean, your balls are just flash bombs, aren't they? Something like Flare, or Holy, that's ... that's powerful stuff, you know?" She took a deep breath. "And ... there has to be a way to stop it, or else it's just gonna ..." Her voice trailed off.
	"Swallow everything?" Valentine didn't mind finishing sentences for people. He squirmed about somewhat, trying to untangle his arm and set himself back into some semblance of coordination and dignity. "My little juggling balls are harmless. It's just light. But it slows the shadows down enough that one can make a decent getaway. If they're lucky."
	"Light stops it?" Rikku bit her lip. "Why hasn't anyone tried ... I don't know. Flood lights. Huge, massive explosions. There has to be something. Doesn't there?"
	"Flood lights?" Valentine quirked his head faintly, then shook his head. "The shadow moves too quickly. Nobody has time to do anything in retaliation. Running is the safest bet. The smartest bet. You have a better chance of remaining alive if you run."
	"You can't run forever," Rikku said softly. "And you'll run out of places to run pretty quickly, won't you?"
	"I ran here," Valentine stated evenly. "And until the school was totaled on Saturday, it had seemed like a pretty good choice."
	"Yeouch." Rikku folded her arms, thinking. "Is ... is that what came here? The sky-thing? It followed you? That's really freaky."
	"It could have been anything, really," Valentine admitted, almost sheepishly. "I saw the school in a mess, and then I barricaded myself in here and got... stuck. But it's the principle of the whole matter. Something big flattened the school. I'm not going out there."
	"You never know, huh?" Rikku shook her head. "Hey, do you still have those smoke bombs I gave you?" And to herself, musingly, "If White Magic worked on dark mojo ..."
	"I haven't had a reason to use them yet," Valentine said, wiggling a hand into his pocket and offering the little bombs back. "I still have them, yes."
	Rikku looked at him curiously, then reached to close his hand over the bombs. "No, I meant ... keep them. They might be helpful. If you need to run away? A good smoke bomb will give you a few seconds of cover, and sometimes ... sometimes a few seconds makes all the difference."
	"I can appreciate that," Valentine said with a small, cramped-under-the-bed nod as he finally managed to mostly un-wedge himself from between bed and wall. "Needing to run away, anyhow. But smoke against shadow seems almost like it would be feeding the fire."
	"You're right," she said softly. "But to run away ... it's better than nothing, yeah?" She chewed on her lower lip for a minute. "What about ... what about light, powerful enough that it blew itself up? Healing magic turned outward into white magic explosive mojo?"
	"Running away is surviving," Valentine agreed, then kind of stared at Rikku for a moment as he tried to piece together what she had just said. "Light healing magic explosive mojo? What?"
	Rikku sifted through the items in her leg pouch carefully until she found what she was looking for. She carefully held out an obsidian-colored unpolished stone for Valentine to see. "It's a Blessed Gem," she said. "It casts Holy. Most white magic is protective and healing, and black magic is what can hurt someone. But when you get white magic strong enough, it can kinda ... implode things, by itself. Still protective, just - inside-out. Yunie could cast it. I can't, I'm not really a mage or anything. But I have this."
	Valentine eyed the stone for a moment before looking at Rikku skeptically. "It's a stone that implodes into... light?" If he was following correctly. "How does it work?"
	"It's a stone that has a spell in it," Rikku explained, holding it out if he wanted to take it and inspect it. "If you throw it, it shatters and that casts Holy, which swoops in with bright lights and clouds." "I, uh. When I broke reality and I was trapped in a dimensional space-thing, I threw one at the weird monster that was climbing towards me, and it kinda blew out the walls. That's the only reason I'm back here. I ... it saved my life, you know? I guess that much white magic can counteract a lot of dark." She shrugged, still feeling a twinge of fear at how close she'd come to ... okay, not thinking about that.
	"It's a good thing you had it with you then, then," Valentine said honestly before throwing in his obligatory, "I'd have a hell of a time casting another Rubber Chicken, if you didn't." He offered a bit of a smile, then looked at the stone again. "So... there are rocks. That save lives... That's good to know." He reached forward with his finger to perhaps prod at it a little. He was a curious Valentine.
	"There are." Rikku nodded. "They're hard to get. I have a lot that explode in different ways, you know, they cast massive spells like Flare or they're grenades or, I even have a Dark Matter. But ... I only had two Blessed Gems. And now it's just that one."
	"It must be nice, to have something like that at your disposal," Valentine mused, continuing to eye the gem. "Far more useful than a flash-bang-ball intended for more eye-grabbing juggling stunts."
	Rikku took a long breath. "Yeah. It is. But I have lots of explosives and ... my world's safe, now. Yours ... isn't." "So I don't ... need that. Not really. And you do." She bit her lip.
	Valentine stared at Rikku for a moment, his mouth open in disbelief. "You're... giving it to me, then?" He brushed his fingers against the gem again and tried to gather his wits. "Just like that?" Not that he wasn't thankful, of course. With this little thing in his pocket, he might actually be able to will himself to wriggle out from under the bed.
	Rikku smiled a bit lopsidedly. "It's ... you need it more than I do. If it can help you ... with your world and all that badness in it? Or just running away from it and being okay. Then I want you to have it. And ... and I hope it does."
	It took Valentine a few more moments to piece together a reply in his mind. He could have said a profuse and heartfelt 'thank you,' or even agreed that it would be most helpful if and when he returned to his own world. He could have done any one of a million grateful-type things, actually. Instead, he took the gem, tucked it into his pocket, and squirmed uncomfortably. "Thanks," he mumbled. "Lets get out from under the bed."
	"You bet!" Rikku grinned back, glad Valentine was feeling up to braving the world again. "'Cause I totally brought people presents from Spira and everything. And I'm not naming names here, but I think someone might have gotten some cake."

(OOC: Preplayed with the_merriest. Not for interaction, but OOC is totally welcome. Long and babbly, but this was a fun thingydoo to play. :D Thanks, Rikku! I owe you exclamations of "OMG AWESOME" for coding this beast, you!)