Outside of Atlas Gym; Late Thursday Morning [09/29].

[sword_chocobro]

Gladio had been running a bit late that morning, which didn't happen often, which meant that Iris and Ignis were really never going to stop letting him hear about it. But, look, sometimes, you just got into a groove with your workout, and then there were about a thousand messages to get through on your phone because rebuilding an entire world was a pretty demanding business, and then you got distracted by one particular message that brought some of the best news you could have asked for, that they'd recovered the Cup Noodle^TM factory and damage was minimal and they believed they could get production started back up again by the end of next month....

Oh, they were definitely going out and celebrating tonight!

But Gladio finally managed to hurry out the door, into the bright streets of Insomnia, with a faint wince at the light that still threw him off a little on a cloudless day like today, and he took two steps forward from the door before he remembered something for Iris that he'd left on the counter, and so he turned around to go back to get it...

....only to reach out for a door that was definitely not the door to the apartment he'd been staying in while they worked this part of the city, and, instead, was the door to....a gym? A familiar gym, but one he hadn't seen for a very long time, and, with a horrible feeling creeping over him, Gladio took a step back to confirm this impossible suspicion as he looked at the sign.

And then turned to look at the street around him, which was not the once-bustling, quickly rebuilding metropolis of Insomnia, but the quiet little Old World charm of Fandom Island.

"What the fu--"

A series of chimes started to emanate from the phone in his pocket, alerting him to a slew of messages hitting all at once, and he dug out his phone to see what was up and just sort of...stared for a moment. Because the bulk of them seemed to have come from Prompto. Within the last month. And that was when he also noticed the year on all of them, which now also matched the year on his phone.

2022. Not 766.

"Fuck."

[[ oh. hey. it's open :) ]]

Comments

[sword_chocobro]

Naturally, after a wave of incomprehensible rage finished passing through him and seizing his gut, the next thing Gladio was going to do was actually call back the person he'd assumed had just been dead for the past month, but apparently not, feeling his jaw practically lock into place with his anger as his eyes darted around to confirm what he already knew. Glaring at the buildings and challenging them, as if he could make them back down and turn back into the city they should be just from that cold stare.

[hashtag_chocobro]

On the bright side, at least Gladio wouldn't have had to wait very long? Because as soon as Prompto's phone started ringing and he saw the name that flashed up on the screen, he was dropping everything and scrambling to answer it, which was no small task, as he'd been right in the middle of making some lunch for him and Liz.

"Ohmygod," he breathed into the phone, ignoring the smear of mayo that the scramble had left across the screen. "Gladio?"

[sword_chocobro]

"What the fuck, Prompto?" Gladio shot back, by way of greeting. "You're alive?"

First things first, and all...

[hashtag_chocobro]

"I could say the same to you!" Prompto shot back, and, hey, at least his confusion and excitement over this situation was taking precedence enough that there was no room to feel a little injured by how mad Gladio seemed to sound about the fact that he was alive. "I've been trying to get a hold of you, for...god, it's been weeks, now. Ever since..."

As he trailed off, more important things started to rush into his head. "Wait, so what happened? That...that night, in Insomnia, the night we took it back, the night that Noct..."

He trailed off. Gladio had been there, after all, he didn't need Prompto going over all the gritty details.

[sword_chocobro]

Gladio grunted into the phone. "The night both of you disappeared," he continued, "but at least, with him, we knew why. With you, we figured some daemon got you so good, it didn't even leave a trace of you for us to find afterwards."

And then the reality of the situation came rushing to him, and he shook his head. "Have you seriously just been here the whole time?"

And did the island seriously have to drag him all the way back here for him to know that? Couldn't it have just let the texts go through?

Of course not. Of course it wouldn't. Why would anything about this place make any sense?

[hashtag_chocobro]

"Yeah," Prompto breathed out, shaking his head as he went back, yet again, to that battle. "Like, immediately after. All I remember was this bright light, and when I opened my eyes, I was back here, back in--"

And that's when the realization hit him that Gladio had used the word here, as well.

"Wait," he said quickly. "Are you here? On...on the island? Fandom Island?"

It probably didn't hurt to clarify.

"And Iggy? Is he with you, too? What happened? Is everything okay? Are the portals back? What happened with Noct? What happened with Eos? What's going on?"

[sword_chocobro]

"I don't know, man," Gladio grunted out, with another disparaging look around him, and a roll of his eyes, "you tell me. But yeah. Yeah, I'm back on the island, apparently. I just tried to step back into my place to grab something, and, next thing I knew, I was trying to pull open the door to Atlas instead.

"By myself," he added a moment later. "If Specs is here, too, he showed up elsewhere."