Originally posted in: http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/series-related-miscellaneous-role-play/ur-l-l-open/t.42762551_16/#30
It's a Final Fantasy X, roleplay, which is meh faves.
It's a Final Fantasy X, roleplay, which is meh faves.
~Zack Felice ~
"Ugh." A figure groaned, fisting the white sheets underneath his body before twisting over and promptly falling on the floor in a mass of tangled sheets and limbs. Cursing, he fought the damned sheets off of his body and through them back onto the futon he was lying on. Groaning again and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with a fist, Zack stretched and glared out through the small window in his modest apartment. Living in Luca was never very easy, considering it was a great city and therefore very loud and obnoxious at obscene moments in the night, but right now it was downright unbearable.
"Yevon, it never fails." Zack whined brushing strands of blonde hair from his face and peering through the sunlit window at the person he was going to kill for waking him so early in the morning. He looked at the street and nearly swore again, as he watched thousands of people hurry by, all chatting and the buzz was starting to give Zack a headache. But it was always like this during the Grand Championship.
"How could I forget?" Zack questioned no one in particular. Not that he expect anyone to listen. He was renting out a very tiny apartment right now by himself. The only reason he was renting was because he didn't really expect to be here all that long. Just visit some friends, hang out at the places in Luca that he had missed, and see the Championship game. He had been here a month already, and didn't expect to be here more than a few more days.
Still cursing under his breath at his misfortune, Zack through on a white t-shirt and hoody and some black pants. Donning a necklace that had been his brother's, he shouldered his sheath before leaving the apartment and joining the fray that was still parading down the street and towards the giant blitzball arena in the distance.
'No breakfast for me...' Zack groaned, his stomach echoing the sound with a hungry grumble. He ignored it, turning down the street with the rest of the screaming, bustling crowd. They were all discussing the upcoming matches and who would win. Luca, of course. 'Nah,' Zack thought. 'They've got some competition. It'd be too easy for them to plow on through. I'd like to see somone take them on or take them out.'
Together, Zack and the thousands of fans easily filled the stadium, where a multitude of other people were watching the games with bright-eyed intensity and a feverish gaze that Zack had once upon a time hoped would be directed at him. 'Alas.' he thought. 'My road would be different.' He sighed and leaned back in the soft chair, putting his feet up on the one in front of him -- to the chagrin of its owner.
Zack, still tired, sleep through most of the lesser teams' matches, waking only because he had to due to the sound. He loved the sport, loved the crowd...hated the noise. 'Eesh.' he thought, leaning further into a bone-popping stretch, this time to the chagrin of the guy behind him, and glanced down the enormous buddle of water that contained the players. 'I'm going to have to move somewhere quiet. Like the Calm Lands, or the Moonflow.' That'd be nice...a quiet place in the fields, where there'd be some flowers near his house and virtually no neighbor for a few miles...it wasn't that Zack disliked people, it was that he liked the peace and quiet more...
"And the tournament goes to....the Luca Goers!" Zack nearly fell out of his chair at the uproar that raised all around him. He'd be lucky if deafness came swiftly, rather than it not coming it all. After the cheering mostly quieted down, ("A whole hour later!" Zack mumbled.) Zack and the fans made their way back from the stadium, murmurs of the game and gameplay tactics coming from left and right, mostly Zack tuned them out.
'Eh, I slept through most of it...' he thought. 'Well, that's what I get for staying out too late and partying too hard.' he sighed and waded through the ocean of spectators back toward his apartment, his sword hanging limply at his side. He could see people eyeing it nervously. At this place, it was more of a mark of maliciousness than protection. Zack tuned out their stares too, at last reaching his house and laying down onto the too-small bed. He fingered the necklace at his neck, thinking back at his brother and thought that maybe he should visit him. 'If I'm ever near Guadosalem.' Maybe he could part ways at his brother's grave instead.
After finally getting some food in, he cleaned the place and left some gil and the key on the floor. It was time to leave, move on to some other place. Maybe visit the Moonflow like he had wanted...
Since it was a few hours after the tournament, there weren't as many people in the streets, but you could see groups of people huddling around the area. Zack paid them no mind as he walked on past them, eyes set on the graveyard, which was a few miles past the stadium. As he passed the behemoth structure he payed his few goodbyes for a while. The stadium had been his favorite place to him as a child, and had a lot of sentimental memories with his brother.
After he passed the stadium he worked his way up a large set of stairs and towards the bordering forest where a small field and graveyard looked like they were hastily put it. This place wasn't a very popular place to live, more like an entertainment place and therefore there wasn't ever a real need for a large graveyard, but Zack had always felt like the graveyard was too small and didn't properly honor his brother's body. Zack let it go, knowing that nothing short of building his own graveyard -- something he refused to do -- would make it feel right. He passed the sparse tombstones and finally found his brothers, laying on an uneven clumb of hill. He brushed the stone and the words etched into it, his brother's epitaph.
"Hey, bro." Zack said quietly, gently patting the gravemarker. "I just wanted you to know I'm heading out. I don't know where I'm going and I don't know when I'll be back. But I'll come back. Maybe after seeing the world, who knows? I'll come and tell you all about it. My time here at Luca is done." And it had been true, he always figured that the Championship would be the marker for him to start his journey. "Maybe I'll find a summoner and travel to all of the temples, the places we always talked about seeing. Yeah...that'd be cool." He dusted off the tombstone a bit, clearing away the moss and vines that had tried to reclaim it. "Alright, bro. See you soon."
He shouldered a small pouch that he had packed with the essentials -- gil and potions and the like. A few years with the Crusaders and their golden rule was engraved into your head: Always been prepared for anything. And, well, he had taken it to heart. With a sigh, he turned and faced the sprawling city of Luca, which had been his home before he left for the Crusaders, and recently, for the month after his discharge. Now he was vagabound for a while, heading to Yevon knows where.
"I think, maybe the Moonflow. I'd like that." Zack turned his back on the city and headed into the forest.
