closed.

[dissent]

CHARACTERS ▶ Anders + Hawke.
LOCATION ▶ The Sleeping Sphynx.
SUMMARY ▶ Sim training absolutely counts as a date.
WARNINGS ▶ Will edit if any.

[ Anders hasn't spent as much time in simulations as he probably should have, and makes a point of refusing to jack into the Matrix proper, but he still has more experience than Hawke, who he'd lead to The Sleeping Sphynx and paid the man in an assortment of odds and ends he tends to use as currency, generally what's given to him in payment for his services that he has no real purpose for. The barter economy was never really and adjustment for him, given his last clinic had been in Darktown. Actually, getting anything at all is a shock.

They load in the white room first, and before Anders can really come to terms with Hawke actually looking like himself again, the city rushed into being around them. Skyscrapers. Cars. Streets full of people hurrying on their way. All of it different from both Thedas and Zion, and yet apparently one of the most common templates for Matrixes out there, including, if history is to be believed, the one Neo came from, before the fragmentation. Modern day Earth.

Specifically, New York City. With ... some minor variations, discussed in advance, a tweak in a code that gives them the capacity to make us of anomalous skills. It's not the same as their magic. More like... the capacity for superpowers. (Maybe it's lifted from Heroes, or the MCU, or a dozen other urban fantasy worlds.) The point is, there are plenty of chances to play around with the impossible.

Anders has a hand curled with quiet possessiveness around Hawke's elbow, like he doesn't want him to get swept off in the crowd, and he's still staring at him, though it's turned more nuanced, scrutinizing his reactions even as he gives him whatever time he needs to adjust. ]

Comments

[dissent]

I didn't actually know there'd be animals here.

[ Anders admits. ]

I wonder if they have cats?

[ He, of course, is thinking of ordinary felines, so when they reach the signpost indicating "big cats" among other animals he doesn't really think anything of it, just directs them down that way. Though they pass other animals first, and what seemed bemusing but charming when it was simply chickens and baby sheep, and then an aviary that reminds him of the one owned by the Earl of Redcliffe, becomes slightly more distressing as they go. The animals are bigger, more suited to the wilderness than the faux homes they've been locked in, and Anders stops for a while outside the cage of a black and white bear, reading the description with a frown. ]

It says here it's a vegetarian. I don't see why they couldn't just let it live in the park.

[forcemageure]

[ It also looks like it's perpetually comatose, so despite any sane former Ferelden's usual response to 'bears' being 'shit, shit, we're all going to die,' Hawke doesn't really make the correlation in this case. ]

Just zap open the latch. It probably won't even wake up long enough to notice.

[ He's not seriously suggesting this, but half the things Hawke doesn't suggest seriously are certainly things he'd do anyway. ]

If you need a distraction I can stand on my head or something!

[ Also something he'd do anyway, if he wouldn't just pitch face forward. ]

[dissent]

[ Anders glances around, but there isn't really anybody in sight; he feels like all the simulated people were back on the busy city streets. It's hard for him to really be concerned about being caught, since he's spent enough time in sims to have a constant awareness of his body lying in a chair in the real world, jacked in through the back of the neck, an operator ever-present. Somehow, this doesn't translate all the way through to thinking of the animals as programs.

So he does it, just a quick spell, the feeling of magic pulled from the fade through to him deeply nostalgic. The door creaks open half an inch, and as predicted, the panda bear does absolutely nothing. Anders shrugs. ]

Well, that was anticlimactic.

[ He leaves it be, tugging Hawke to move on. To yet more caged animals. He's starting to feel somewhat discontent with this whole experience. ]