Apartment Complex

The Apartment Complex of The City. It's a densely packed area with lots of buildings and skyscrapers ranging in size from huge to only a few floors tall.

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Mulder wrote:How many of us are there.... Kurisu thought before she sighed and composed herself. She couldn't let Okabe do his chuuni act again and scare this person anymore then they already were.

"Hi my name is Kurisu, judging by your reaction you also got transported here mysteriously yes?" Kurisu began before continuing.

"Me and my friends here also got here without our knowledge. We haven't explored much of where we are yet but I'm guessing it would be easier and safer for us all to stick together for now, yes?" Kurisu concluded calmly, a small smile on her face. She was very glad her years among academics had given her people skills...

Prime Spinosaur wrote:"Wait, you guys aren't from around here either?" asked Shinji. Now more confused. To be honest he'd figured that Lilith had dumped him here but that couldn't be the case. "where are you guys from?"

"Akihabara," said Daru.

"Wait, Akihabara?" Shinji sat up. "That place is under water, along with the rest of old tokyo."

"What're you talking about? Underwater? What year are you from, 2020?"

"What? No, 2016," said Shinji. Daru paused, there was no lie in Shinji's eyes, more like actual confusion.

"This is getting really creepy," said Daru. He walked over towards the hallway and turned on the lights.

Okabe had two reactions, initially quite shocked that Shinji just admitted to being six years from the future. Was it possible he was a time traveler like Suzuha? But that still didn't explain how they all ended up together. Not to mention the fact that Akihabara was somehow under water. Did world war 3 occur in Shinji's world line?

But his mental ruminations were interrupted by the sudden shouting of the stranger in the hallway. Okabe dearly hoped he wasn't the owner of this building or they would all be heading to jail.

"Please, calm down!" He said. "We're not criminals I swear!"

Shinji paused when he saw the new arrival in the hallway, blond hair held in a hat, a rather mean look on his face together with rather toned muscles rather intimidated the pilot. Maybe this guy was the owner of the building?

"Uhm...excuse me? Is this your property?" he asked, quietly.

"I-I uhm." Kumo's head was reeling, first he'd woken up in a place he'd never seen before and now he was surrounded by strangers.  "...It's not yours?"

There was a long pause before Daru simply put his large hands over his face.

"Back to square one! This is the worst," he said.

"Though...if we were brought here," started Shinji, thinking. "I woke up in an alleyway some ways back, and a few hours ago too. I wandered over to here by chance and nobody else I met seemed at all perturbed or out of place like us. So why are so many people waking up and appearing here?"

"We just woke up ten minutes ago," said Daru. "Whatever is happening, it didn't happen simultaneously."

"Mayushii woke up on the street as well," Mayuri said. "How strange."

"Whatever it was that stranded us here," Okabe said. "I'm not very keen on finding out what games they intend to play with us. We'll have to investigate further and find out the secrets behind this strange city."

He pointed toward Kumo feeling oddly energized.

"COMRADE! Will you join us fellow lost souls?"

Kumo put his face in his hands and groaned, mentally he started counting. 1...2...3 There was still a chance this was a weird dream. 4...5...6 He could wake up any second now and he'd stop drinking mineral water before bed. 7...8...9 Mizuki would probably laugh at him when he told her about this. ...10 This was real.

"..... Sure I guess." He sighed one last time and crossed his arms. "I don't have anywhere else to go anyway..."

"Let's skip the initiation and get right into the meat of things," said Daru. "I just checked the drive, ontop of being mine nothing had been added at all so any sort of leads we could have would need to be found elsewhere. There has to be a deed to the building or something here, figure out who's name it's in. It'll probably be in an office if there is one here..."

Shinji wiped his tired eyes and then paused at the stinging in them. He looked at his hand to see the dried red. He stared at it for a good long twenty seconds, his breath breath shallow with a shiver as he realized what he was covered in.

People.

He was covered in everyone. Everyone was literally all over him. Touji...Kensuke...Hikari...Misato...

He heard the screams from when he was rising above the atmosphere, as he watched their blue planet turn orange, then red. It kept replaying in his head until he could make out very distinct screams.

He could hear them. He could hear their last screams as they were turned into liquid.

And he was wearing them!

How Disgusting.

Shinji quickly moved qith a burst of speed, accidentally knocking over a box that fell to the ground, strange nick nack gadgets lay on the floor as he quickly moved to the hallways trying to make it to the bathroom, to find one even. He eventually opened the door to a sterile room with white floor tiles and slammed it.

Nothing was in his stomach that came out, only mucus and water, as well as bits of blood his throat had been torn by the act.

He panted with shallow breaths, his hands clutched tight against the toilet.

"I'm sorry," he whimpered. "I'm so sorry."

"Shinji wa-" Okabe tried to call out in vain.

He tried not to panic as the teen ran away but found himself growing concern. He was about to go after him when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Mayuri was looking up toward him with a concerned expression on her face.

"Mayushii will check on Ikari," She said. "You should help Daru and Makise, Okarin."

"Alright, Mayuri." Okabe said. "Just make sure he's okay."

Mayuri nodded and held a determined look as she quickly walked out of the room. Okabe returned his attention to the others who were looking toward him.

"Daru's right," He said. "We should look around for any information we can gather. The more we know the sooner we can help each other out."

Meanwhile Mayuri was cautiously approaching the bathroom. She was unsure what exactly was happening to Shinji but she could tell something had upset him greatly. His sad look reminded her of Okabe when he would become saddened by something. She hoped to help Shinji in some way but didn't want to make him more hurt.

Calmly she knocked on the door to the bathroom.

"Shinji?" She said. "Can you hear me?"

Daru nodded and they continued to explore the building, he came to a single room that was near the entrance. It was a brown door with a rectangle window with black cross-hatchings obscuring the view somewhat. Underneath the window in a plaque it said.

Future Gadget Laboratory Administrative and Archival Office

"This is getting weirder and weirder," muttered Daru as he opened the door. The office had a desk with another computer on it, maybe the answers were on this computer, however, Daru seemed more interested in the next door which he peered into, it had boxes of files all sorted alphabetically, though Daru noted that most of them were actually empty, as though the building and it's business was fresh off the conveyor belt.

Daru went to the only box that seemed to have a bit of weight to it, opening to a set of files. It was a bank account, one Daru wasn't familiar with, it probably wasn't any of theirs either.

First City Bank Account: Future Gadget Laboratory
Current Account Balance 13000000.00 USD/1444352000.00 JY
Account Administrators Rintaro Okabe, Kurisu Makise, Itaru Hashida

Daru immediately started gawking. He sifted around and found a folded piece of paper with three visas in it to this "First City Bank". This account had more money than Daru knew what to do with.

In the same file he found a deed...in Okabe's name.

"What the hell is going on...?"

------------------
"I'm fine," said Shinji, he seemed out of breath. "I...I just need to take a shower...is...is that alright?"

"Th-that much money!?" Kurisu yelled in surprise. This was getting weirder and weirder to think that she'd ever see that much money...let alone entrusted to Okabe of all people. They sure had someone watching their backs.

"I... I don't get this at all," Okabe admitted flatly. "Maybe the organization really is real."

He leaned into the computer screen with disbelief. He hadn't seen that much money before in his life and he somehow owned an entire building. Even in his wildest dreams he didn't see himself accomplishing such a wild goal. Just what was going on in this strange city?

Okabe moved back and looked thoughtful. Nothing was making sense but this did solve issues of their means of living in this strange new place.

"Well in any case, I think its safe to consider this place a base of operations for now," Okabe said. "Daru see if there's anything else helpful up here."

...

"Okay that's fine," Mayuri replied. "But Shinji if something is making you sad, you can tell Mayushii. I'm not very smart, and I don't always know what to say but when people are sad I want to help them. So if you ever need anything just ask, okay?"

"Well, we got three cards, the account is in Okabe's, Kurisu's and my name, we'll divvy up the cards among us three and then we'll try and get a layout of wherever the hell we are," said Daru. He typed in the address on the deed online and pulled up a google map...

...Only for the address to come up invalid. Daru narrowed his eyes and gave a grunt of frustration. He clicked "use your location" and tried to get directions back to Akihabara. He waited a good three minutes before he got an error message.

Error: Cannot find location

He next tried typing in the city on the address.

"Have...any of you heard of New Duckburg?" asked Daru, after he pressed enter and the results came up a second later. "Because Google hasn't."

---------------

There was nothing but silence on the other end.

Shinji contemplated for a moment. How could he tell her what had happened, everything was different. There hadn't even been a second impact, and there was no second impact then there was no Evas. None of what had happened to him had occurred there.

Would she even believe him?

"...Thanks," said Shinji, halfheartedly. "I-I'll be fine, I'm sorry for making you and Mr. Kyouma worried." He wasn't fine but he couldn't just bring everything to bear on one person he'd just met.

As the water washed over him he watched the red liquid seep down into the drainage, his eyes welled up as he thought of what people they might've once been.

"Goodbye," he said, quietly.

"New... Duckberg?" Okabe stammered. "Just what kind of crazy place is this... A city not on any map that's cut off from the world."

His mind raced across conspiracy theories, past experiences and even old movies and anime he had watched. For a moment he wonder if perhaps SERN had become antagonistic again but it didn't make an sense they've never did anything on this scale in the Alpha world line.

"Perhaps this is some kind of mass experiment. A secret government program."

As he mused Mayuri returned with a solemn expression on her face. Okabe look toward her with an expectant look and Mayuri simply nodded with a sad smile.

"He's taking a shower," She said. "He sounds a bit upset."

"I can't blame him, this is a lot to take in," Okabe said. "Good work, Mayuri."

"I feel like this is too...unorganized and chaotic if it was a government entity." Makise said, deep in thought.

"What would they have to gain by picking us specifically? Without the time machine being made, we have no reason to be on their radar."

"Exactly," said Daru, "we've been a whole lot more discreet about our inventions since the Phonewave. So I doubt it has anything to do with that. Plus I doubt that Shinji kid is some sort of biomechanical genius."

Eventually Shinji came back out and found the others, his hair was wet and free of the dried blood on him.

"That's true..." Okabe sighed. "But in that case I really have no clue who else would have the resources to make a city that doesn't exist. Perhaps this is some kind of dimensional anomaly... A rift in the world lines created by some unforeseen phenomenon."

I wish Suzuha was here. She would be more familiar with things like this.


"Welcome back Ikari-kun," Mayuri said cheerfully. "Wow, you look so cute when your clean. Have you ever thought about cosplay?"

"If so maybe we can create a way to escape. We'd gave to do a lot of experiments, don't want to end up like a Jellyman," said Daru.

Shinji blushed at the compliment, nobody had really said that to him before, with the exception of maybe Asuka, but she had always teased him and could have been joking.

No, she wasn't. She'd loved you, and you betrayed her.

Shinji banished that thought away as he listened in on the conversation.

"Jelly...man?"

Kurisu sighed as she recalled a mix of her fragmented memories and what Okabe had told her of the Beta timeline where Mayuri died and she lived, with SERN taking over the future with the time travel technology they invented. It wasn't stuff they liked to talk about for obvious reasons, but Shinji needed to know.

"It's the codename an organization called SERN used for their time travel test subjects. Every attempt at time travel failed and they turned into a jelly like substance, which is why SERN called them Jellymen." Kurisu explained. She had left some of the wider pieces of the puzzle that they knew, but she didn't want to confuse the poor kid too much.

Shinji blinked.

"Oh," he said, he didn't seem at all phased, "makes sense, I guess. They sound like Nerv."

Okabe was surprised Shinji had taken all that in stride. Barring scientific minds like his fellow lab members the usual reactions to the idea of time travel being invented tended to be more doubtful.

"You sound like you're not too unused to this," He said. "What is Nerv?"

Shinji blinked, remembering these people were from a world where second impact never happened.

"Nerv is uhm, they're a paramilitary group, I guess? They're into science too, I mean I guess you'd have to be to build giant robots," said Shinji, omitting the part that they were lobotomized biomechanical clones of prehistoric alien gods. "To be honest...being teleported into a city that doesn't exist anywhere on Earth is the uhm...8th weirdest thing that's happened to me today."

"G-giant robots?" Okabe repeated sounding more excited then he intended. "Just how did they manage that? Wait never mind... We need to focus."

From his experience with trying to achieve Steins Gate, Okabe had heard far too many impossible stories to deny the possibility of Shinji's tale. In any case his adaption to the current situation reminded him of Suzuha. The future seemed to enjoy making youths mature early.

"You might be onto something Daru," Okabe said. "With this facility and the money we have it would be simple to build devices and try to find a way out of here. Just... no time machines."

Daru held up his hands. "No time machines, but I am suggesting we do something similar with black holes. We know that with proper equipment a machine can be built to travel backwards and forwards in time to different worldlines. I'm thinking that we could simply use that same technology to build say a teleporter, like what we thought was happening with the banana. We'll try and bend space to get out of here."

Shinji blinked and thought, I feel this needs more context than I am given.