tunasub | the long-awaited...

She watched with distracted disinterest as the doctor's coat slipped out of view through the doorway, the door closing behind him with a gentle click. Her fingers rested, as always, on the uneven and scaly surface of her right arm, and her gaze dropped to the ground.

It had been a surprise for Manuela when she'd opened her eyes one day - it might have been night or morning, she wasn't sure - and found herself staring down the walls of the USA's most secretive holding facility again. Now that she looked back on it, maybe it hadn't been surprising enough, all things considered. After all, she couldn't pinpoint the last thing that happened in Nautilus, or the first thing that had had happened here in America. At some point, everything became fuzzy, blending together, and eventually, she'd realized that she wasn't where she thought she was any longer. It was like slowly falling to sleep - the world slipping away, shedding its skin to become something familiar but altogether different.

Or maybe it was that she'd finally woken up.

There was no proof that Nautilus had ever really existed, after all. She clearly remembered her arm being deformed and hideous, her fingers glued together with waxy flesh and chitinous plates until they weren't anything she recognized - but none of that was the case here. It was as it had been the day she'd first seen it - discolored, ill-textured flesh, nothing more. She'd looked on in wonderment as she was able to flex all five digits. There was no bird of paradise in the corner of her room, no odd cat-shaped robot waiting at the foot of her bed for her to wake up. The only sign that anything at all had changed was her missing bracer - the one she'd given to Rion. But when she asked about it, the doctors said that she'd only ever had the one.

Manuela had spent a long time wondering about it. It had been more than a year that she'd spent in that place. She'd laughed and bled and lived there - and for a girl infected with the deadliest strain of the most horrible virus on the planet, that was really something. But in the span of her few months here, it had grown more and more fantastic, more bizarre, more impossible. She'd catch herself trying to Bend things. And after some time, it had seemed like foolishness. The doctors monitoring her condition had said she'd passed out for some time on the helicopter; that she was probably suffering from some serious trauma, and some strange dreams certainly weren't out of the condition, and T-Veronica was almost entirely a mystery to them so who knew what side effects it might be having? But she was healthy, they said. That was good. And she'd stay that way as long as she was here.

She never asked how long that was going to be.

She found herself writing it all down. The things she remembered from the city, that is, because it seemed like it was slipping away into fantasy every moment. They allowed her to do that - so she did; she wrote in her small, girlish handwriting about Vincent's voice and his little house in the North, and the smile on V's mask and the car that blasted opera music, and Rion's grumpy look and the dry feeling of his hands. Sometimes she wrote about her father, and sometimes about those days in the jungle with the snakes and flies, but more than anything, she wrote about Nautilus, closing her eyes and frowning and trying to remember. Like she was doing now, locked up in a special little room in a country far from home.

Because she still believed that it was real. Nautilus was - is - home.

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Her eyes widen at that. What? Well, really, what else would he have done - it was hard to imagine him just walking out of here - it was hard to imagine herself just continuing to live here after seeing him again, really, but... She clasps her hands together at her chest nervously, eyes flicking from his face to the door still creaking open.

Something. Anything. Manuela should definitely say something about this in protest, or at least skepticism. How were they going to break out of here and get back? Could Rion just teleport them out again? Her understanding of Angelii powers was shaky, but she knew that he was a little bit more fragile than he liked to seem. And she'd lived here for a long time, and -- in the end, this was all happening very fast, but she knew one thing. This wasn't her home.

"O... Okay...!"

She can't bring herself to smile in her confusion and surprise, but there's a hint of excitement in her eyes, in spite of herself. Maybe she deserved this sort of imprisonment, after all the things that had happened; even so, Manuela, for once, decided to indulge herself just a little.

If it meant anything, it wouldn't have mattered whether Manuela protested or said anything otherwise. Rion had decided on something. He decided that he was going to get the hell out of this place.

She was coming with him.

No one should be locked up like that, especially not Manuela, no matter what she thought

So it was refreshing that she didn't say anything. It made things a lot easier because it wouldn't have changed anything. Still, Rion made the instinctive effort to grab her hand, once the door was open. "Come on, we're leaving." He tugged her forward.

He wouldn't admit it, but Rion had no idea what the hell he was doing at this point. He was going off of what just felt right. If he was going to regret something in his life, it wasn't about to be this.

She lets him tug her forward, staring a little bit worriedly at the hallway around them as she steps over the threshold. It wasn't as if she'd never been out before - she got to leave the room a few times a week for various tests and the like. It was more that she knew for a fact that her doctor had just been here, and that they patrolled regularly. Manuela was hardly an expert on the US government, but she did know that this was the kind of facility that they wouldn't want on the radar. Her existence was somewhat dangerous, and she was pretty certain she wasn't the only patient here. But for now, the coast is clear. Whatever difference that made.

She looks back to Rion, looking faintly apologetic. Usually, she could be relied upon in times like these, but now... Useless as always. "Um... I don't know the way out. I've never seen the entrance..."

Could he just send them both back with his Angelii powers? She had no idea. Her excitement was waning just a little bit as the question of 'how' started forming. And there was no doubt that they were on a limited budget of time before they got found out.

The fact that Rion didn't know anything about government probably wouldn't have made Manuela feel any better, would it? He was acting all on impulses now, what felt right and what controlled him. It didn't take long before that illusion began to wane, and he began to realize once more that he had no idea what in the hell he was doing.

"Then we're just going to have to make one, right? I'll take us back to wherever I came in."

As if that was supposed to inspire much confidence for poor Manuela. Rion really didn't know. He was trying to follow his memory to wherever it was that he came in from, and maybe find some kind of loophole there somewhere.

Of course, that didn't make much sense, but in hindsight, this whole scenario was pretty much as nonsensical as one could get. He could Bend reality into a thing that was beyond sense, and it still wouldn't make any difference.

"M-make one?" She sounds nervous about that. Understandably. "You can't... the security here is very good. I don't think you can break the walls - a-and you will get caught for sure..."

Positive, as always. Her words became more half-hearted as she continues - it might have been half a year or so, from her perspective, but she still remembered Rion well enough to know one thing: he was stubborn as a mule, and usually as bad-tempered, too. Manuela grimaces a little bit, glancing nervousy around the corridor. She couldn't hear any footsteps or anything, but...

"We should hurry..."

At least he's picking up on the haste. This situation is still so unbelievable; maybe her fear of the security wasn't entirely negativity, but partially due to her trying to rationalize things somehow. But the hand around hers is definitely real, and she can't help but want to believe in his words, even if that cockiness of his is definitely going to be getting them in trouble soon. There's an odd balance being struck between the feeling that she's doing something terribly wrong and the feeling that this is just what she's been waiting for all along.

"... I hope you're right."

As they exit from the hallway Manuela's room is located in into the general wing of - wherever she was these days, there are certainly plenty of doors to choose from. Most of them look like they'll branch off into more hallways and holding cells, but there's an elevator towards the end, and no one in the corridor. Nervous, she gestures towards it with her bandaged arm.

"There -- we are in the basement level. I know that. We must have to go up..."

Her gaze misses the security camera in the corner of the room, undoubtedly observing this activity.

the long-awaited...

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SORRY FOR THE DELAY

IT'S GOOD, BRAH

SEVERAL YEARS LATER