Welcome to Gaia! ::

He didn't wait for Dean to reply, either because he was totally confident the other trainee would show up or -- or, well, because Vasily was going to go either way. Within five minutes he was standing outside the portal, pulling his scarf down to frown at it and trying to decide if he was comfortable stepping through on his own after all.

If pressed, he'd say he was just waiting. Because it was polite.

"If we beat this thing, we get cool stuff out of it." Vash looked oddly excited about this, for about twenty seconds -- and then he remembered who he was, and who Dean was, and managed to school his expression back toward casual indifference, instead. With a shrug, like this was no big deal, he stepped through the portal.

This time, it dumped them into a weird room. Vash hesitated, then had the sense to take a few steps down the stairs so he was out of Dean's way when he followed. It meant he got a good look at the pool down at the bottom, the shapes moving in the water --

"Man, I think there are sharks in there."

Vash hesitated for a very long moment, taking in the red lights that speckled the room, and he was genuinely uncertain. Then he squared his shoulders and lifted his jaw a little and dug for a confidence that was entirely faked and entirely forced.

"It's a scare tactic." He smacked Dean on the arm once, harder than he intended, and then started toward the game set up in the middle of the room. It would have been more convincing if his voice hadn't crackled and wobbled just a bit on the reassurance. "No one's actually going to shoot us."

To demonstrate just how unafraid he was, he dropped down at the table and frowned at the tower in front of him. Vasily knew this game and so, confidently, he reached out to grab a piece.

And fell over.

And was shot, slumping forward unconscious onto the table.

He was breathing, so that was a good sign, but it was probably still an agonizingly long time before Vasily woke up again -- breathless and surprised with drool down one side of his face and his eyes narrowed. Groggy, he looked at Dean, and then around the room. He swiped at his face, and grimaced. Then looked to the tower, somehow set up again in his time...

"What happened?"

Two deep breaths in, swiping the rest of the drool -- now half dried -- from his face, and Vash sat back. While Dean pulled pieces free, he studied the area surrounding them, working his mouth and trying to come back into himself. Now he surveyed the lasers with more skepticism, without the careless it's just a trick of minutes before.

Of course, they hadn't shot him. Just tranqued him. But...

"I hope that s**t doesn't do long term damage." It came out somewhere around Dean's last piece, sudden and thoughtless. Vasily immediately leaned in to start pulling free pieces of his own. "That kind of drug can mess you up, can't it?"

"You say that now --" Vash worked carefully, this time, trying not to <******** it up again. And he did pretty well for the first piece, for the second, which he waved in Dean's direction.

"But maybe you won't feel that way when you're shot with one of --"

Of course, the third piece was a disaster in his hand. He drooled on the table again, for torturous minutes, before coming back into himself and looking around

"---again?" It left him griping, but he went for the next piece all the same. "Rigged."

(wrong dice)