[round 1, day 3] tried counting sheep

[ninjasloveme]

Characters: Gaara, Grenn Atair, YOU.
Format: Any
This log is: open (closed in the case of Grenn's thread, open otherwise)
Location: White dorm's courtyard. Other courtyards.
Summary: Insomnia works out badly when you don't have supernatural energy reserves to feed on. Gaara keels over several times over the course of one day.
Warnings: Mention of blood.

He'd only been in this world three days, and already Gaara was feeling the fatigue of insomnia settling back over his brain. Without chakra, he couldn't bolster his mental reserves - without chakra, he shouldn't be able to suppress the One-Tail at all, which he would have noticed if he was thinking straight - and until he could find someone able to determine whether he was the sole inhabitant of his own body, he definitely wasn't sleeping. The other 'students' would be the victims of that mistake if he allowed himself to make it. Mikoto, Sakura, Enki. The risk was unacceptable.

Unfortunately, without those mental reserves, Gaara was just a sixteen-year-old boy. And this boy had just reached his limit.

In the middle of a courtyard, sixty-five hours after he'd arrived, Gaara swayed, rubbed his eyes, and crumpled like he'd been hit with a metal bat.

Comments

[summerstars]

"Nn... No, I---" She felt like she was going to puke. A headache had blossomed immediately as the world reboo--- Wait.

We have to do some maintenance first. ---get rid of you, for a little while---

This is a GAME--- Use your HEAD.

This was a...

"Simulation---" Grenn groaned and clutched at her face, trying to keep her dinner where it was supposed to be. Suddenly, she remembered what her shadow had said, what the 'announcer girl' had said, and could connect her confusion as to why it had felt like she'd been trying to change game-files of a computer game that was running when she'd attempted her hacking.

Because it was. A game.

A simulation.

"I'm sorry, Gaara... Frag---" Her hands were shaking, and she felt ill.

[ninjasloveme]

"Simulation..?" He didn't feel much better; the only upside of the whole experience was that the lurching shift in reality had woken him up completely and replaced the headache with simple, overpowering nausea.

He, too, forced it back, and concentrated on what had just happened. Grenn had logged on, started working, and then... frozen? He shook his head minutely.

"What did you see?"

[summerstars]

He hadn't..? Now she was confused as well as nauseated. And how to explain a simulation to someone who wasn't used to advanced computers and virtual reality..? Well, ironically, kind of what they'd all thought Round Zero was. A shared dream, of course.

"Ugh... I... Well--- The screens all multiplied, were all over the room... What did you see?" Grenn took a few deep breaths and briefly closed her eyes, to still her dizziness and nausea. It didn't work.

Penalty?

"A simulation... you... um, I suppose you could call it a shared dream, or illusion, but made with technology. Your brain... technology convinces your brain you're seeing things and experiencing things that aren't... uh... physically real. If that makes sense..." She wasn't sure it did, personally.