rakuen | [round 1, day 3] tried counting sheep

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Taking a deep breath, Grenn straightened her back and went through the first basic commands she knew to get beneath the 'first layers' so to speak. Nothing happened, really; the computer reacted as she'd assumed it would, demanding access commands and whatnot...

But then. She frowned. Had her vision just grayed out momentarily? She shook her head and stared at the registers she was suddenly presented with. They were flickering by too fast, though; it felt like she was looking at something that was much more complicated than it looked like, and that this computer couldn't present it to her as it should be seen.

Another flicker, things going black, star-spangled then gray. The only thing she could see were those registers and menues. She had no idea what half of these did, she wasn't even sure where she wanted to go! But trying to disrupt the holo-tech (since that would cripple the battle system) seemed like a good idea... Now just to find---

Another flicker, this time it seemed like her brain stuttered for a moment, a mental grey-out and she had no idea what she'd just entered, but suddenly--- The screen seemed to duplicate, folding out like a folded up paper-crane and there were shimmering screens all around her.

"What the---" She couldn't understand what the text said. Some of it seemed to be actual letters, the rest some sort of symbols and pictograms. She'd just gotten in way over her head. What the frag was this?

"Remember this when you push replay--- It's a game, isn't it? A holographic playg---a prog---"

Gaara was suddenly right beside her, shaking her shoulder just as she reached out, touching one of those incomprehensible screens. If he was saying anything, she couldn't hear it.

The screens flickered, and flushed red.

Oh, frag.

A succinct summary, Grenn. Oh, frag, indeed, the only thing you can think before the entire room warps as the screen did, computers, floors and walls folding and re-folding until there's nothing but Grenn, Gaara, and a million red screens swirling around them in a maelstrom.

--countered an err--

--ency reboo--

--rror and mus--

UNAUTHORISED ACCESS DETECTED

The world snaps back, directions return, gravity is restored. There's suddenly a floor to stand on, if you can stand at all. The computer screen is blank. All screens are, in fact; the entire room is dark.

One by one, the computers reboot around you.

Gaara staggered, his hand falling from Grenn's shoulder as the floor rushed up to meet them. For a few moments, he concentrated on breathing. What kind of illusion was that? Nothing he'd experienced before had been able to remove all senses; was this just the power of technology, or something much greater?

He cleared his throat and elected to stay on the floor for the time being. "Was... that meant to happen?"

"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.

"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?"

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.

[round 1, day 3] tried counting sheep

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